10 years ago, I was at a Neuro Linguistic Programming’ training, about to qualify as practitioner.
There I had an a-ha moment.
It was one of the grounding beliefs of NLP, to be precise:
’The meaning of your communication is the response that you get’.
In short – irrespective of what you meant to say, and the intention behind it, what really mattered is how the listener hears it and responds to it.
And if your message does not land as intended, it is your responsibility to adjust your communication.
I could instantly think of examples from everyday business and personal exchanges.
We say what we want to say and hope, or worst, presume, the message will land as we intended.
Clearly, there was a gap between ‘What I meant to say…’ and ‘What I heard you say…’ and that gap was causing confusion and upset for both the giver and receiver of the message.
But how do we close this gap? What do we do to ensure that our message lands, as we intended?
A decade of experience as a mindset coach, wife, mother, a few more qualifications and complete obsession on the subject later, I can say this:
If you want to start a habit that will reduce drama in your life, today, start here:
- Meet them where they are. Stop the urge to connect the dots yourself and assume what is being said.
Instead just ask them to clarify: ‘What do you mean by….?’ What kind of…?’ ‘Is there anything else about that?’ are equally effective for learning details about your child’s day at school or partner’s work dilemma or enquiring about a client project.
- Use their own words. It’s tempting to paraphrase when engaging, but don’t.
Words contain one’s experience and repeating it back exactly unlocks an instant feeling of being heard, respected and understood. Give that gift to family and friends. In business, it pays to invest the time to capture them (customer questionnaires, notes straight after a meeting) and include in sales pitch, contracts, setting client’s objectives. - Acknowledge their problem and ask for solution: Yes, ask them first. Pause the urge to offer it yourself. Sometimes the simple act of directing attention from problem to solution in the same sentence does the trick: ‘Asking: ‘And when …(problem) …what would you like to have happened?’ will do just that. This works wonders for an upset 5-year-old or a dissatisfied customer or working through a solution with a stuck client, friend or a partner.
If you are able to step outside of the ‘usual’ patterns of responding, which is to fix, make decisions, provide solutions you open up the opportunity for the other person to do this for themselves. My bet is both of you will benefit from it. And be prepared to be surprised.
References:
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States in the 1970s.
Clean Language technique is a set of questions, developed by counselling psychologist David Grove in the 1980. These questions are used with a person’s own words to direct their attention to aspects of their own experience.