Engaging people when you speak to them

At the weekend I had something horrifying happen to me. My husband had told me he needed to leave the house to go to Heathrow to wave off his relatives,who were returning to Australia.
Unfortunately I didn't 'hear' this when he told me, and I was swimming. He was forced to leave late - taking our son too. The consequence was that he missed seeing them.
I felt dreadful about this, but it also enabled me to really consider why this method of communication went so wrong. Although my husband had spoken to me (I don't doubt him), he has a tendency to 'talk at' people. The problem with this is that he assumes you have heard without checking that you are 'engaged' in the conversation. He doesn't register whether or not I am listening. This is also a problem with colleagues at work.
In order that a conversation is two way - speaker and listener, we need to have a check list. This could be.

• Asking - "Is this a good time to speak?"
• Watching - is the body language mirroring yours or at least indicating they are taking note of you. (Clues could be eye contact; moving their body to face yours).
• Stopping activities; check the listener has stopped what they were doing. So if they were watching the television; cooking; on a computer, that their attention is now focused on you and what you have to say.
• Check that they have understood what you have said.
• As a precaution, repeat what you say the next day.

For more advice please go to http://www.executivevoice.co.uk

Reading other people

We had a tremendous time at the Fielder Centre, Hatfield for the 'Make an Impact with Your Voice' workshop. The delegates discovered new aspects of their vocal and communication styles and how they could be more effective in a variety of business situations.

There were a number of very interesting discussions, but I am going to share one with you. A highly successful academic shared her frustration in communicating with an external member of her staff. The woman concerned closed her eyes, moved her head around and generally didn't connect with the academic. The workshop participants all interpreted this behaviour in different ways - was she nervous, disinterested, self absorbed,arrogant, vain, shy??

The academic - who interpreted the external staff member in the same way as me, was, understandably finding it difficult to have an engaging conversation with her. Obviously when you are speaking with someone that has profound mannerisms, you are going to react to these - and not necessarily in a positive way. We remember previous instances and people that have these mannerisms and if we are not careful, we can fall into the pattern of reacting to these memories.

Our aim is to be as an effective communicator as possible. Occasionally that is a real challenge, but in these situations, it is worthwhile taking a mental step backwards, neutralise the memories to say it is a new situation, and start again! We are as responsible for communication not working as much as the person we speak to, and if we can be open and friendly, the chances are that the conversation will be more successful.

Of course, there are going to be people we don't get on with, or who are impossible to communicate with - but let's try to give them the benefit of the doubt until you have tried a number of styles!