Biting your tongue, showing interest and the coming of snow…

Good morning and thanks for reading my blog on this cold winter morning, well cold anyway and nice to see some sun. If you had not noticed winter is finally here, so exciting. 


'There is snow on dem dare hills!' 


I know most of you are probably saying, ‘what a crazy man excited about cold miserable mornings’, crazy I’m not but excited I am you see it’s my favorite time of year. In the immortal words of British adventurer Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes;

‘There is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing’.

It is a bit the same with communication, there is no such thing as bad communication, just inappropriate words. Likewise ‘you can say anything to anyone as long as you say it in the right way’. I have a wonderful friend of mine who has an amazing way of using the right words at the right time. He could be telling you that you smell but he does it in such a way that you walk away thinking it was a compliment.

So what does it take to make sure that the words we are using are the most appropriate as possible? There are two parts to making sure that we use the most appropriate words as possible. The first is awareness, awareness of what is happening in and around the conversation and awareness of what words are landing well and what words are giving us negative feedback. Our awareness needs to include a consciousness of what words we are using and what words we choose to use in the next moment. The second part will help us in the first part and that is our ability to truly listen to the conversation and in particular the person who is speaking. When we listen to a conversation with both ears we become attentive to how the communication is landing. Most of the time however we are so concerned with what we are going to say next that we don’t actually listen to what the other person is saying.

Listening is therefore one of the most important things in the communication process. If there is no listening it is very hard to have true awareness of the communication process. So how do we listen to a conversation as we are having the conversation? Well I’m glad you asked, one of the techniques that I use is a thing called active listening, I know you have probably herd of or learnt about active listening. For those who have not and those that are not using it here is a refresher.

Active listening comprises of three parts:

Part one: Listen to what someone is communicating to you.

Part two: Paraphrase back to them what you have heard.

Part three: Listen to the response.

In action it might sound something like this;

Person 1: I am really concerned about spending that sort of money on the project because it seems irresponsible.

Person 2: So spending that amount seems irresponsible?

Person 1: Yes in my experience we could achieve the same result spending far less using company X.

Person 2: Yes if we use company X you believe we could save and get the same result?

Person 1: Yes I do.

I know it is a silly example but as you can see the effect is two fold, one the person feels heard and that you understand them and two you begin to have a greater awareness of the conversation because you actually heard what was being said. When you have to paraphrase a conversation back to the other person you make sure that you have heard what they are saying and therefore listen more attentively. It is very embarrassing paraphrasing back when you have not actually heard what is being said.

So go out into your week bite your tongue and let the other person finish what they are saying, show interest by using active listening and build a greater awareness of communication happening around you, I dare you.

Oh and back to the great weather we are having, snow is on the way (the picture at the top of this blog is an image of Mt Buller as of this morning so snow is actually here, oh and to the right is me out for a gentle morning of skiing, well maybe me a few years ago.) and if you have not guessed by now I LOVE SKIING. In the next few months if you don’t hear from me I’ve gone skiing, see you on the slopes...

Have a great week Regards Marcus

Letting Go! What's that got to do with communication?

So it’s the end of one busy week and the start of another. Sometimes the weeks just seem to blend into each other in a never-ending blur of meetings, phone calls, training and coaching. Now its great being busy and I love what I do so it’s easy to keep going. However sometimes the internal dialogue gets the better of me and I begin to second-guess myself. In the world of communication the inner dialogue can be our best friend and our worst enemy.

Today the internal dialogue is having a field day about expectations of what I should be doing. After having a restless night and waking feeling less than well I just want to have a moment off. Just a few moments to give back to myself and allow sometime to recover and rejuvenate, but alas the inner dialogue is pushing me to do more…

This is were our inner communication can be a killer, the stern master that wants to take control by forcing you to fulfil an expectation that has been set by the unknown. It is very tricky and will use any means to have you go against the more intuitive side that tells you to stop! The fear of not keeping up with expectations, of not doing what you should or have to do. So what has letting go got to do with communication? Everything!

Sometimes we need to let go of the inner dialogue that desperately wants to control us and force us to do more, to live up to more expectations and to not let the world down. Often we don’t let go of this inner dialogue until we are too sick to keep going or we face a life changing experience. These experiences can be paradigm shifting for the brain and resets the expectation level of the inner dialogue, but can hurt.

With this in mind it is also interesting to look at the outer dialogue and how hooked we get on trying to share our opinion about anything. I am often amused when I get the opportunity to listen to a group of people talking to each other as more often than not each member of the communication desperately wants to share there opinion and ends up not listening to the other preferring to communicate at each other not to each other. Our inner dialogue is a little like this and will tend to talk at us not to us.

So letting go is one of the most important things we can do when we are communicating. Letting go of our need to speak at the other in a desperate effort to prove that we are worth it. The more we can let go the more chance we have of hearing the other and participating in the conversation not trying to hijack the conversation because we need our opinion validated.

Letting go of the inner dialogue and listening to what we truly need will help us to remain balanced, healthy and on track to manifest the things that we truly want or desire.

So letting go is easier said than done. It is a process that takes some practice and as I write this I am battling the letting go to allow me to recover, rest and respect myself. So maybe the first step is being kind to yourself, respecting the beautiful fragile self so that you can honour what you really do need, above and beyond the expectations.  In my case I follow a process that helps me to let go;

Step 1: Be kind to yourself and ask the question what is the kindest thing I can do right now?

Step 2: If you hear yourself saying ‘I should’ or ‘I have to’ or ‘I must’ beware as this is the inner dialogue trying to take control. Do what you truly want to do and if you must do something, as we all do from time to time, rephrase the inner dialogue to choose to do it.

Step 3: Listen, turn your ears and awareness on and listen to what your inner dialogue or the other person is saying. When you have heard what is being said ask a question about that communication that you just heard. This helps you to confirm what you have heard and it shows respect and interest in the conversation. Consciousness gives us the opportunity to participate and from an inner dialogue point of view, change our reaction to what is being said.

Step 4: Let go of what you don’t agree on both internally and externally, try and keep your opinion to a minimum and frame it around constructive communication rather than aggressive opinionated communication.

Step 5: Communicate with people not at people, this goes for the inner dialogue as much as the outer communication.

Communication is probably the most important thing we can do in business and in life. The more effectively we communicate the better chance we have of getting what we want. We learnt from a very early age that if we wanted anything we needed to communicate in one fashion or another.  Often the louder we communicated the faster we grabbed the attention of our parents and the faster we received what we were after.

Now as we grew we realised that there were better ways of getting things than just yelling and so our communication style grew. We refined things to the point that we generally got a lot of what we asked for. Then we were set free out into the big world were we had to restructure our communication style to once again get what we wanted.

Now even though we have all been on a process of learning how to communicate, to the most part it has been unconscious and situational, directed by the people we associate with. Because of this most people don’t really know how to communicate effectively. So this is the start, learn to let go and start to communicate more softly with yourself. Learn to let go of desperately trying to talk at people and start to communicate with people.

Have a great week and be kind to yourself and the world and watch the rewards come back to you.

More on communication next week until then have fun talking with yourself and others.

Regards Marcus