Three tips to communicate effectively

Some time ago I had the chance to attend a live webinar coaching class with the awesome Brendon Burchard.

If you don’t know who Brendon is, I highly recommend you that you check him out! He is a high performance coach, he is grounded, he shares his experiences but always shows the facts and research behind what he teaches, he is super practical and he is just a quirky joyful person with a lot of experience on his field. 

Whenever I have a chance to hear something he talks about, I pay attention and that’s what I did on one Friday for more than two hours. 

For these past couple of weeks, unless you’ve been living in a cave or without any access to any social media or TV, you’ve seen what is going on, not only in the US but in the whole world, and you are aware of the pivotal moment we are going through as a society. 

There are many different opinions and voices to listen to, there is too much information and it can be really overwhelming to sift through everything that is said. 

But, at the same time, you want to make sure you sift through the information and are critical because you cannot just take whatever is being said out there…

So, when you know that you can trust the sources of information you look at, it really simplifies your life. 

That’s how I feel when I listen to Brendon, I trust him because I’ve seen many times before that he does a great job at explaining ideas backed with facts and research and he doesn’t try to just give his opinion on issues. 

Anyway, coming back to the current issues, I wanted to hear what he had to say about what’s going on. And I spent two hours listening to practical ideas that’ll help me with what to do in this time!

I want to share some of his ideas with you because maybe you feel like I do, confused, overwhelmed and not knowing what to do or how to say what you feel.

Brendon talked about how to start a movement, civil leadership, shared ideas for personal change and talked about how to deal with backlash after you shared something publicly. 

Speaking out about your feelings is always hard but it feels even harder now, it seems that whatever you say it might come across differently, it might cause a slash of critics to come out, and you don’t know how to communicate effectively anymore.

I feel that learning how to communicate without creating more separation is an important skill to master and is quite important now. 

So, I’m not going to share everything he talked about here. I want to focus specifically on how to share your voice and ideas so you can communicate well and reach a speedier resolution on whatever topic you are discussing.

When it comes to share your voice, your feelings, your ideas or the outcomes you want to achieve, Brendon points out that if you are able to do it without generalizing, without accusing, without speaking for others, without assumptions and without condescension, then you will reach a faster resolution. Easy right???

And don’t forget that to make sure you are communicating effectively you need to always share your values on each piece of communication…piece of cake…

Nobody said this would be easy…communicating well and effectively is not just a skill but an art too! The good thing is that it’s learnable!

First things first, how do you avoid generalizations?

You do the opposite. You have to be specific about what you are talking about. You have to frame the conversation and let people know what is the focus of the talk, and what will not be discussed. Ideally, at the beginning of your conversation you want to clarify what you will be talking about and what will not be talked about. When you make things specific, you are making them productive. 

At the same time you want to be aware, as Brendon mentioned, about what is called the “Exclusion fallacy”. Basically, this is when others will attack your point of view because you are not talking about something that is excluded from the conversation. 

Let’s say that you are talking specifically about the importance of food on overall wellness. Others might attack your idea saying that is not totally correct because you didn’t mention that wellness is also affected by sleep and exercise. They are attacking your idea on the basis that you didn’t include other topics that might also be important. If this happens, you want to be very specific and address why you leave other topics out of the conversation so everyone is on the same page. And, if someone attacks you referring to what is excluded in the talk, just acknowledge why it was left out and deescalate the conversation. 

Now that you know that you shouldn’t generalize, how do you avoid accusing others?

What Brendon suggested is to be weary of accusing people of any intention or malice. What it’s important to know is that all accusations are based on assumptions. So, don’t assume that you know how others would feel, or react and don’t pretend that you know what they think.

And if you are making any accusations, change them to be statements of observable behaviors. Whenever you point out any type of behavior, make sure you note the facts and don’t accuse the person of anything else.

Imagine that your kids let the room full of their toys after playing all afternoon and they didn’t pick them up after finishing playing. Would you go to them and tell them how lazy and untidy they are? You don’t want to start accusing your kids of being lazy, you don’t want to start name-calling…but you want to point out the fact that you noticed that they didn’t clean up the room after they were playing… Keep your observations to the facts. Don’t make accusations. 

The only assumption that Brendon noted you can do safely about someone is the assumption that the person in front of you has struggled in their life one way or another and that they want a better life. That would be a safe assumption to make, besides this, never lead with assumptions.

Lastly, how do you avoid being condescending when you are sharing your ideas?

This is hard. It’s something you need to keep checking on, you need to continually ask yourself about it. Check how others respond to your communications, do they tell you that you sound condescending? See if it’s true. Check your messages from others’ point of view and look out for the condescending tone in them. 

Overall, communicating well is something that doesn’t come easy to most of us. It takes practice, awareness and being open and asking for feedback. The more open we are to see how others react to our ideas and feelings, the more we can see if we are communicating well. 

So, tell me, have you noticed how others react to your ideas when you share them? Have you noticed how you express your feelings to others? Do you make observations or accusations? Do you assume that you know how others feel?

And, again, if you haven’t check Brendon’s work, don’t wait anymore! 

Now let me know below, I’d love to hear from you! 

xoxo,

Sofia