Upcoming Interview on "Negotiation Tip of the Week " a Podcast Show

I am so very proud to be the featured interview on an upcoming podcast "Negotiation Tip of the Week" with Joshua Weiss, PhD. Please tune in to the podcast at, http://www.negotiationtip.com/ or listen from my website http://www.visual-listening.com/.

Joshua Weiss is currently the Associate Director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University in 2002. Dr. Weiss has spoken and published on negotiation, mediation, and systemic approaches to dealing with conflict. In his current capacity he conducts research, consults with many different types of organizations, teaches courses on Negotiation, Mediation, and Conflict Management and Resolution, and practices the art and science of negotiation at the interstate, intrastate, and organizational levels.

Have a FANTASTIC week!

Rik

Your Voice is Your Handshake

Each time we answer the telephone we are shaking hands with the caller. You wouldn't think of entering a meeting without washing your hands to freshen up your kinetic communication. Neither would you hand out a business card that was bent and crumpled? Why wouldn't you have the same expectation of your vocal introduction? And how rude of you not to thank someone for their business card.

Would you think it appropriate to mumble when speaking in a crowd? How well are you listening to your communication partner? If you shake hands and receive a like grip you feel confident in the relate ability of the other person. The same holds true for your verbal communications.

This is all true and more so when like the millions of people around the globe that each day use the telephone to connect with someone new. When you consider that more than half of your daily communication is done over the telephone why would you not think of how you sound to the person on the other end. Likewise are you hearing all they have to say? There are hidden signals in every communication event and I have made it my goal to help you hear more and listen better.

In the coming weeks I am going to take you on a journey through the communication cycle. The Art of Visual Listening is your "Verbal Handshake" tune up. When you consider that 85% of what you say is nonverbal and you are spending more than 50% of your day on the telephone you need this tune-up. This means that on the scale of effective communication you aren't even at 10% effective!

In this tough market we all need to take advantage of every opportunity to improve our communication skills offered to us. This is the single most important tool a professional can hone, your voice.

If you can't wait for next week feel free to contact us and we'll schedule a training session one-on-one or for your entire firm. Either way you should consider getting my book to help you follow along with this unique training.

Have a FANTASTIC week!

Rik

Talk, Talk, Talk…

This post to the blog is a direct result of my personal experience with customer service reps this week. I am not much different from the rest of the world. There are times when I find it necessary to call a company and speak with a real person regarding some product or service challenge I am experiencing. This week it seemed that I needed more assistance that usual.

I discovered there are three specific types of customer service reps.

The first is the friendly chatter.  This is, in my opinion the best. This is a true service oriented rep. He/she always speak to the customer like they are talking to their favorite aunt or uncle. They are very pleasant and very helpful.

The second type is the speed reader. This is a customer service reps who is reading from a script and will not or cannot be stopped in mid sentence or they will lose their place. God help you if this happens because they will start the whole script all over again. They simply will not be interrupted!

The last is the mumbler. This customer service rep starts out like to friendly chatter, good so far. Then the wheels come off the wagon.  While they are researching the question at hand they mumble to themselves.  They think they are having a conversation with when in fact they are completely confusing you, the customer. You are confused because you’re not sure if they are asking you a question, if you should answer or are they talking to someone else. Neither is true, they are trying to talk themselves through the navigation of the problem.

Almost all customer service reps begin their conversation with the same basic phrase, something like, “Hello how are you today?" Or, "How might I help you today?” most of them mean it, for others it’s something they’re supposed to read from the script. And still others have been counseled by their supervisor regarding their communication skills and think they are supposed to say this phrase to be “in” a conversation.

So, how can you tell which type of customer service representative you are speaking with? There are some basics of human communication “The Art of Visual Listening” that are important to keep in mind. If you own my book, “Don’t Look At Me In That Tone of VOICE!” read the section on page 26, titled “Perspective and Emotion: the GGNEE Effect©. If you don’t have your copy you can buy it from this blog today!

Here is an excerpt from the book;

“This diagram illustrates the GGNEE (pronounced “Jenny”) Effect© of how varying perspectives eventually narrow down to a universally-shared, emotion-based response.

Communication, with or without conflict, begins on the macro level of gender. This is the single most obvious and identifiable differential in any type of auditory communication. For the most part, a male voice is different from a female voice. Plus, the way men convey an idea is very different from the way women convey the same idea.

Within the first few seconds of a telephone conversation, we can easily garner some glaringly basic facts about the other person. Gender is one of the first facts we learn, followed by the approximate age of the speaker, and so on. “

Once your brain has taken all of this into consideration you have made some assumptions. By the way, all of this happens instantly and without your consciously knowing it is occurring. Now you begin to listen to the subtleties of tone, inflection, rate and numerous other factors. Tone, this will indicate mood. Everyone who has been or who has had an assistant has heard “Smile when you answer the telephone.” Why, because your smile can be heard on the phone. That's tone. Intonation is the emphasis placed on words or syllables, as in “Read my Lips!” Rate is the speed of the person’s speech. If they or you are nervous your rate will increase. If they are comfortable with what they are doping the rate will be more measured and thus a more easy/friendly pace.

I hope this help you the consumer of services and those that render support in speaking and listening better.

So, until next time, “The better we listen to one another, the better we hear one another…

Rik

Hearing is Believing

What can you really hear?

The following is based on actual news events. The details remain accurate however, the name of the location and those involved have been changed. As you read the incident notice the quote from the victim's friend.


Home Invaders Surrender after Standoff
Actual incident date: November 2009

ANYVILLE, USA. -- Three burglars surrendered to Law Enforcement after a home invasion and standoff. Police received a call just before 12:30 p.m. that said there was a home invasion in progress.

Police spokeswoman said a resident of the home was on the phone with a friend and said,
"Don't shoot me."

"That friend could tell by the phone conversation what was going on and notified police,"
said the officer.

A negotiator and SWAT officers were called to the scene.  Upon arrival, police assessed the situation and determined the home was still occupied. One of four men who invaded the home was immediately arrested. The three others remained in the house but surrendered later.

The art of Visual Listening is based on just such an interpretation of human communication. In this instance it helped greatly that the victim and the friend on the telephone were familiar with one another. This is NOT however a requirement to use the techniques of Visual Listening. We discuss in the book, "Don't Look at Me in That Tone of VOICE!", how we all possess a sense of intuition if you will. We discuss how this instinct is primal to all human development. We the all possess an innate ability to read into the sounds of another human their emotional state, even their physical state or body language.

To is easy practice this skill. Next time you record a television program, turn it on and turn your back to the TV screen leaving the volume at a normal level. Then picture in your mind the physicality of the actors, their body language. Try to listen for all of the other sounds present and write down everything you hear. Now check your assumptions by rewinding the program and watch it to see if you were correct.

This is a great exercise and can be repeated often with any number of programs. For a real scenario variation try adding background noise to your location things such as other ongoing conversations.

To better follow the thread of this topic you should buy the book right now! You'll learn more about human communication in the unseen world of the telephone. You will learn about The Art of Visual Listening!

Until next time, listen carefully and think before you speak!

Manager or Dominator

How do you know you were heard?

When you begin a conversation with someone on the telephone do you manage the conversation or dominate it? If you manage it you are a rare and gifted communicator. One that is understanding, respectful, patient and friendly. If you manage the conversation you are a person who is more concerned with the success of the communication event, and less with making your point or having your story heard. Most times when we talk to another we have an agenda, something we need to communicate.

What we often forget is communication is a two way street and the other person most likely has an agenda as well. To make the most of our encounter we must always remember, the other person has things they need or want to communicate too. Let them, and you'll be seen as a great communicator, not a dominator. Give the conversation room to grow and expand, listen to what they have to say. As my father used to say, "Use your ears more, they have a bigger role in life, that's why there are two of them."

Just like these gears, as each speaker takes their "turn" the "conversation" gear changes directions. This allows for the free flowing of thoughts and ideas. You never know what you'll learn from someone else until you "Hear" them!

Everyone sees life from their perspective, through the eyes of their own id. This "self centered" approach to communication is fraught with land mines. Misunderstanding, Misinterpretation, misrepresentation, hurt feelings and in some cases anger. Do you think you hear other people in your conversations? Do you think they felt as though they were heard? Did you feel like you were heard?

Think back on your last telephone conversation, what were you doing while the other person was speaking? If you are thinking about what you have to say, how your story applies or what you need to buy at the grocery store, you cannot possibly be following the conversation or processing what the other person is saying to you.

A truly great communicator is not the one doing all of the communicating all of the time, it's the person who is willing to listen and understand the thoughts of the other person...first!

To better follow the thread of this topic buy my book. You'll learn more about human communication in the unseen world of the telephone.  You will learn about The Art of Visual Listening!

Until next time, listen carefully and think before you speak!

Four Things You Need to Know About Telephone Talking

In the beginning man uttered grunts and groans to the person next to them to indicate a rudimentary thought. The hollow tree stump to be used as a drum was the next evolution. This gave way to fire, and smoke signals were born. This was closely followed by telegraph, radio, telephone and then the pinnacle of communications the internet.

Somewhere along this progression we lost our ability to understand the most basic of all human communications, the voice. We lost the ability and some would argue the desire to really communicate and to really understand one another. Over the next few postings I will be discussing this in greater detail. I would love to share this communications journey with you. In order to come along you'll need to go to my blog and become a follower. Following my blog does not obligate you to anything other than you might enjoy what we discuss on this site. It also helps promote the blog by raising it in the search rankings. Please take a moment and become a follower right now. Click here: Visual-Listening Blog

Now back to our story. If you were like me, you bugged your parents for months until they finally relented and bought you your first drum kit. This is where it all went very bad. You began to communicate, not realizing that everyone within a three block radius could hear you murdering the drum solo to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. It is precisely this range of sound that attracted the ancients to use the drum, originally a hollow tree. They could communicate over vast distances.

There was a limitation in the beginning. If your village was under attack and you sounded the distress call on the drum it sounded "Tonally" the same as "hey what's for dinner" There was no sense of urgency to the sounds.

This problem was resolved in central Africa by the Bantu speaking tribes. They developed the drum equivalents of their language a sort of Morse code. A word, whether, in English or a form of Bantu can have a completely different meaning depending on the intonation expressed. In my book, Don't Look At Me In That Tone of VOICE! I discuss this in terms of a musical sing song-ness to our speech. These tones indicate many things such as urgency, fright, pleasure, etc.

The drums of the Bantu can easily replicate these tones. There are, as you might expect, limitations to this form of communication. Many words contain the same number of syllables. One might assume confusion would set in, not so. The tribesmen of the Bantu speaking nations say they can hear the difference by the context the drummed phrase is sent in. As you might imagine a message sent using drums could be quite lengthy.

Now we return to your mangling of the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida drum solo. How good a communicator are you? Can you hear the tonal changes in the voice of the person you are speaking with? Do you pay attention to these "Speech Road Signs?" Are you listening to the overall speech and not simply thinking about what you are about to say? I recommend you take a tip from the Bantu drummers. They cannot drum (speak) over one another, if they are to hear and comprehend the message. Thus you too should listen to the entire message before you formulate your thoughts and response.

Until next week, listen carefully and think before you speak!

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There are great exclusive offers only available for Blog followers. Here’s the first offer. Be among the next twenty people to follow my blog and you could win one of the first, autographed copies, of the new 2nd edition of “Don’t Look at Me In That Tone of VOICE!”

Have a FANTASTIC week!

Rik