Understanding how differences in culture and communication styles can create communication difficulties can go a long way to helping you to develop empathy and understanding with other people. But even the best communicators can have their communication skills undermined when, for example, they are caught up in a whirl of emotions, face humiliation, feel misunderstood or are surprised by someone else’s response. You can find yourself resorting to all kinds of inappropriate and unhelpful behaviour.
Being a brilliant communicator is often about feeling confident in situations where you may not feel comfortable.
Whether you’re trying to lead a group of people, strike up a conversation at the bus stop, get someone else to calm down or tell someone you don’t understand what they’re talking about, there are two qualities that you need: confidence and empathy. Confidence means that you believe you have the ability to communicate well. Empathy gives you the ability to understand (but not necessarily agree with) other people’s point of view, ideas, opinions and feelings.
The good news is that if you don’t think you have much confidence or empathy, you can learn to develop these qualities.
Confidence
First, it’s important to understand that confidence is different from arrogance – that’s when someone has an exaggerated opinion of their own importance. An arrogant communicator tries to impress others, while a confident communicator doesn’t worry about whether others are impressed or not. Confident communicators are more concerned with mutual respect, consideration and understanding.
Build up your confidence and self-esteem. Make a habit of talking to people everywhere you go. Say good morning to the person who delivers your post. Ask how their day is going.
If you’re at the supermarket, talk to the checkout person. On the phone talking to someone at a call centre, ask how busy they have been today. At work, make a point of talking to someone you don’t usually chat to. Acknowledge a neighbour and stop to exchange a few words.
The only way you’ll condition yourself to talk to people and get over your fear of it is to do it frequently. What’s the worst that can happen? Yes, you may be rebuffed or rejected, but feel the fear and do it anyway. By the time you’ve got over the fear, it’ll be a habit. And good habits are hard to break!
Do confident people ever feel anxious about communicating with other people? Yes, they do, but the difference between them and people lacking in confidence is that effective communicators take action and take responsibility for the outcome of their communications.
Rather than focus on how much fear or anxiety they feel, confident people make use of their courage – they communicate with other people despite their fears or worries. They recognise they have to start somewhere.
Confident people take action – they don’t wait to feel confident before they start communicating.
Ali met Tom when they were both working for the same company three years ago. Ali says, ‘When I first got to know Tom, it was amazing how confident he was with other people. Whether he was conversing with the manager or colleagues, or negotiating with clients, he was able to communicate easily with anyone.
‘More informally, he could chat with unfamiliar people about everyday topics and, within minutes, was joking and chatting with them like they were old friends.
‘I envied Tom his lack of self-consciousness.
‘The reason I didn’t initiate conversations with people was because I didn’t think they’d be interested in talking to me. Even though I had several interests, I thought that I wouldn’t have anything interesting to say to someone, and that any conversation I tried to start would become awkward and strained.
‘What I came to realise and believe is that a lot of people feel this way to some extent.
‘In general, other people have good intentions – you have to start from a position of trust and believe that other people are not waiting to catch you out. If you are talking with them, they are simply focusing on you, the present situation and the topic of conversation. This realisation was a turning point for me!’
Simply knowing that other people often feel anxious and self-conscious about talking with and listening to others automatically gives you the second important quality needed for better communication skills: empathy.
Empathy
People with good communication skills want other people to feel positive about communicating with them. The most effective way to achieve that is to communicate with empathy.
Being empathic is different from being sycophantic; that’s when a person is over attentive and their aim is to gain favour or ingratiate themselves with the other person. Being empathic simply means that you are willing to try to recognise and understand someone else’s situation, point of view, thoughts and feelings.
This does not mean you have to agree with their ideas, opinions or feelings. It also does not mean that you make their situation your own. You can show interest in another person’s situation and readiness to respond to their needs and feelings without taking over.
Empathic people are good at drawing on their own experience in order to relate to what others are saying and feeling. But they use it only as a starting point, not as the end itself.
Communicating with empathy means you accept that there are differences between you but you don’t let those differences hinder communication. And, because empathy helps you to understand a person’s experience from within their frame of reference, it goes a long way to overcoming cultural differences in communication.
Empathy connects people. Empathy builds trust and can make communication easier and quicker.
Imagine that a colleague, friend or family member calls and complains endlessly in a self-pitying way, and is not being open to solutions. Without empathy, it’s easy to lose patience and sympathy. But put yourself in their shoes. You can do this by imagining what feelings and emotions they are conveying – stress, feeling overwhelmed, ill or victimised? If you’re not sure, ask, ‘Are you feeling stressed?’ or ‘Are you very worried?’ Whatever they’re feeling, you have probably felt the same, so you can empathise. Then you can continue communicating with that understanding in mind.
Looking for clues
The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes requires imagination and effort on your part. You have to do most of the work; other people don’t always spell out what they’re feeling. Others do give clues, not overtly, but in more subtle ways. Look for these clues. You have plenty to help you: what the other person says, what they don’t say, how they say it and what they do.
Practise by being more aware of the connections between verbal language, paralanguage and body language. Do they all ‘say’ the same thing? Also, watch out for changes in the way the other person communicates.
The value of empathy comes not just from understanding the other person’s feelings and frame of reference, but also from how and what you communicate as a result.
Communication strengths
No matter what level of empathy and confidence you have, the best place to develop your communication skills is from a position of strength. Using your communication strengths will help to build your confidence. Why? Because confidence comes from knowing you can do something well, and when you use your strengths you are doing something well.
From the quizzes in the last chapter you will have identified some of your strengths. How can you be sure if one of the ways you communicate is a strength? If it feels natural to you and allows you to communicate well in a specific situation, it’s a strength. Maybe you communicate in a direct and straightforward way; you’re clear and concise, you get to the point quickly and keep things moving.
Or maybe you feel comfortable taking time to relate to and connect with others, or you do well in conversations that consider and expand on new ideas and possibilities.
Perhaps you enjoy communicating with others during shared activities or you are good at taking in complex information just by listening. Maybe you find it easy to describe ideas and concepts to others simply by visualising the ideas as you talk.
Go back to the quizzes in Chapter 1 and pick out three of your communication strengths. Write down examples of how and when you use those strengths:
- at work
- with family
- with friends
- in any other situations.
Be aware of those areas where you are strong, where you have effective communication skills, and make use of them. The trick is knowing when to use which strength. Think of situations in which you’ve used your communication strengths successfully and times when you’ve used them unsuccessfully. Are there any patterns?
Be aware of your strengths and make those your pillars. That’s when you are a confident communicator – you know you are able to communicate well and can apply and adapt your communication strengths depending on the other person and the situation.
Using communication strengths
Bryony works for a website development company. She enjoys hill-walking at weekends. Bryony’s strengths are that she takes time to relate to and connect with others, particularly during shared activities. She enjoys conversations that explore new ideas and possibilities; she finds it easy to describe ideas and concepts to others in a clear and concise way.
At work, Bryony’s strengths are her patience with clients and her ability to help them to clarify what they do and don’t want. She takes time to understand clients’ ideas and needs, and explains to them how they can or cannot be used on their website.
In her spare time, Bryony loves hill-walking because it gives her the opportunity to get into conversations with different people, expand her social life and keep fit while on the move!
Communication weaknesses
Having brilliant communication skills is not, however, simply a matter of identifying and using your strengths.
Remember, communication is a dynamic process, subject to a range of personal and cultural contexts. Sometimes it’s possible to be too direct or too passive. For example, maybe you like to have time to think before you speak – this is a strength when you want to be sure you explain something clearly, but it could make things difficult for you in job interviews where you’re under pressure to think on your feet. Or perhaps you like conversations and discussions to keep to the point. This can be a strength if you are chairing a meeting but can be a problem if someone else is in charge and allows discussions to wander off the point.
In these sort of situations, a range of expectations and emotions can get in the way of effective communication.
Expectations and emotions
When expectations and emotions get in the way, strengths, confidence and empathy can fall away and you can find yourself resorting to a range of negative communication and behaviour. For example, sulking and ignoring the other person or yelling, using abusive language and refusing to cooperate.
Ask yourself if you have reasonable expectations about the way other people communicate. Do you, for example, think that if someone else knows you well they should ‘know’ what you mean?
Are you on the same wavelength?
Couples in a relationship may think they are clear about what they mean when they communicate with each other – many of us think we communicate better with our partners than with strangers.
But research by Savitsky et al has shown that, often, partners in a relationship communicate with each other no better than they do with strangers. Why is this? It would appear that when we have a close relationship with someone, we believe that there is more insight and understanding between us than there really is.
Conversely, when people talk to someone they don’t know, they automatically provide more information because they don’t have a ‘closeness bias’ with that person.
The researchers carried out further studies between people who were friends. Just like partners, friends overestimated their effectiveness in communicating with each other. Communication problems arose when people expected each other to have the same perspective. It didn’t occur to them that the friend may not share the same information or their perspective.
Often, we believe that there is a right and wrong way for us to communicate with each other. Most of the time, we are completely unaware of how our expectations can create communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, conflicts and distrust.
Incomplete communication, in which expectations are not clearly spelled out, can be confusing and allows emotions to take over.
Emotions are messengers that communicate something to you; they are communicating feelings and can play a big part in influencing how you communicate.
The part of your brain that springs into action when you are emotional is different from the area of your brain that operates when you are analysing, rationalising or reasoning. This means that when you are emotional (angry, jealous, excited, etc.) you cannot think or problem-solve. It’s as if a wall has come down and you are behind it.
The same thing happens to other people when they become emotional. In any conversation you have, it’s as if you are speaking with the emotion rather than the person. This doesn’t often turn out well!
Thinking of emotions as positive or negative can limit your ability to communicate. Emotions just exist; there is no good or bad, right or wrong emotion. They are only positive or negative if the resulting behaviour and communication are positive or negative.
The challenge is to recognise and acknowledge your emotions, understand how you are feeling, put your emotions to one side and allow the thinking, reasoning part of your brain to take over.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your emotions, intentions and responses, as well as those of other people. When you demonstrate emotional intelligence, you are an effective communicator because you are not ruled by your emotions; you don’t allow your emotions to take over and do all the communicating. You allow your emotions to inform your communications, not take over.
When you use emotional intelligence, your understanding and experience of emotions helps you to be empathic; you can take into account how the other person’s emotions can affect what and how they are communicating. You use your own experience as a guide, but keep in mind that the other person might feel or think differently from you in any given situation.
Without an awareness and understanding of emotions, it’s difficult to communicate well. The feelings of others will escape you unless you’re familiar with your own emotions. The more aware you are of your own emotions, the easier it will be for you to understand and communicate with other people.
The better you are at knowing and managing yourself and your emotions, the better you become at understanding other people’s emotions. Improve your emotional intelligence!
First, identify what emotion you are feeling. Second, ask yourself the message the emotion is giving you. And third, allow the message to inform what you say and do.
For example, an emotional response might be, ‘I’m furious! It’s all your fault!’
Using your emotional intelligence, your response would be, ‘I’m furious. I am so angry I can’t think straight. Let’s talk about this when I’ve calmed down.’