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Create Breakthrough in your communication!
By Mike Wang | February 24, 2008
Are you always facing deadlocks in your communication with people? Always getting into arguments where no one is the winner and both party ended up upset, angry or disappointed at each other?
How can we get through the communication barrier and understand both parties view point in a new light? Let me highlight this by describing a simple demonstration.
First of all, imagine that i have a cardboard with both sides painted in different colours, one side is blue and the other side is orange. Standing in the middle of a room, i hold the card up and ask people what is the colour of the card. People on one side of the room would say that it is blue while the other side would say that it is orange.
The people would not understand why is it that people of the other side of the room could get such a simple question wrong and see it wrongly, firmly convinced that theirs answer is the right. Consider that there is no right answer in this question and that both views are equally correct and valid coming from the view that the people had of the card.
Bringing this back to the context of communication, Im sure that there are many people would had faced similar context where people are engaged in deadlock, each firmly believing that he/she is right and the other party is wrong.
The way to have a breakthrough is this area is the willingness and generosity to give up your view as the only “right” view and to walk over to the other side of the room to see how is it over there. Only by walking over to the other side of the room can we see that the card is painted 2 different colours on each side and both people are correct!
However, most of the time, we are so caught up in our looking good and fear of looking back that we don’t like to admit to the other person that something could be wrong for the sake of saving some “face” for himself. We are so afraid that we are wrong that we are adamant in our view is the only right view. Human being always want to be right and to look good / avoid looking bad. So how can we cause the change in that?
To cause a change, first share your view as a possible view you had and not as the only “right” view. Communicate to the other people why is it that you had this possible view that how it is and be willing to listen to the other party considerations. One of the main reasons that communication break down is because people don’t listen carefully to what was being said and always make an interpretation of what was being said. Wrong interpretation resulting from not listening is of of the main stumbling block.
So after sharing your view as one of the “possible” view, you listen with intent to the other person view to fully get what he/she is trying to say. After listening, you might find that both views might be equally valid and just represent 2 different ways of seeing things. When you are listening with intent, you don’t stop the person before he/she finishes speaking. You don’t judge, evaluate whether the people speaking is right or wrong. The main point is to fully see the problems from the viewpoint of the other party. Try that on and see the types of results that you can achieve!
Topics: Self Improvement- Overcoming Hurdles |