Seven main reasons that prevent effective communication

Do you find communicating with others difficult? 

Maybe you lack confidence and so don’t find it easy to say what you really want to? 

Do you have experiences where you really want to say something to someone and feel that no matter how much you want to say it “you just can’t”? 

Do you find certain people get you really upset and angry and by the time you speak to them everything comes out in the wrong way? 

Do you have to deliver presentations at work and it fills you with dread however at the same time you want to be able to do it, to progress in your career?

I am sure if you have read this far, then you must have answered “yes” to one or more of these questions…so lets explore more…

So what makes up our communication?

Communication comes in many forms, both what we call “verbal” and “non verbal”. Verbal is the words we use,  non-verbal is how we communicate through our “body language” and “how” we say the words. Think of the number of different ways you can say “Yes” to someone.  Do they all mean the same thing? We also have communication called our “inner communication” how you communicate to yourself and “outward communication” how you communicate with others, 1-1, 1- many, in person, by text and so on.

So why do so many of us find communicating so difficult and often terrifying - my thought is, because its not something we are really taught to do at school or college…we are not given a “here is how to communicate effectively” handbook when we are born - which I think would be very useful and this is why I love NLP.

If you haven’t come across NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), NLP is a huge body of knowledge, techniques and empowering mind sets that really enables us to understand how each of our minds work uniquely and how we can make changes in our mind if they way our mind is operating isn’t creating the desired outcome.  Also how we can understand how other’s minds work, so from a communication perspective, we can communicate in a way that they most easily understand. This also comes into learning as we all have different learning styles, so when you use NLP to deliver any content, as a delivery method you can ensure the information is delivered in a way that suits all peoples learning styles.

Do you know the words we use are only 7% of our communication?

YES, you read that correctly…. words are only 7% of our communication and so by focusing only on words, we are missing out on the remaining 93%!  NLP as a model enables us to understand and tap into this whole bandwidth of communication and so become more of an effective and excellent communicator to ourselves and others

NLP gives us this handbook and helps us understand how to change both our inner and external communications to ways that work better and how to use all forms of verbal and non verbal communication systems. NLP also teaches us how to effectively communicate with other people’s Unconscious Mind.

From the studies of NLP, we have our Conscious Mind, which is the mind we make sense of things with, the mind of logic and we also have our Unconscious Mind, this is the mind we feel with and the mind responsible for our habits and behaviours. When we communicate with others, we want to learn how to communicate effectively with the persons Unconscious Mind as this is the mind where we want the message to go to, to most effectively act on our communications

Have you ever had the experience where you think you have said the most sensible thing ever and communicated it really well and the other person has no clue what you mean? We have all had these experiences, NLP teaches you how you can understand how each persons mind works uniquely and how you can “adapt” your communications in a way that you message is received how you intended - even if thats in a completely different way to what would work for you

How can you communicate more effectively?

Follow these simple steps to start to make communication easier and more effective for you

 - as best as you can, make sure you are in the right “frame of mind” to say what you want, communicating when stressed, angry or upset tends to have things come out the wrong way. If someone has done something that upsets you it’s important to wait until you are in a calmer place to tell them, so you can be effective in your response. 

 - make sure you know what you want to say, rather than what you don’t want to say…our Unconscious Mind can’t process a negative, so if you say to yourself or someone else “I don’t want “X” its highly likely you will get X. Spend time finding out what you really want to say and know what  meaning you want to express 

 - make sure you take time to let all parties have their say, I love the American Indian way, with a Talking Stick where only the person holding the stick gets to speak and the others listen AND everyone gets their turn - BRILLIANT!

 - whether you are communicating 1-1 OR 1-many in a presentation for example, its important to be yourself, be comfortable, breathe nice and deeply as this helps you to feel relaxed and trust in yourself