Communicators' Rule No. 1

What is the biggest obstacle we face when we are dealing with a communication breakdown? Whether it's the spouse not doing XYZ when they said they would, the boss who isn't hearing how overloaded we are, or the customer being difficult, we can be blocked by the "common cold" of communication: making someone wrong.

In our own thinking, we document our side of the case and its reasonableness. Of course we are right. That means the other person must be wrong. What is up with them?

Discussions intended to prove our position and clear everything up - just speaking my truth, you know - don't have a high rate of success.

Years ago I learned from master teacher David Crump, in his famous Essential Experience Workshop, to remember Rule No. 1.

It is simply, "No one is made wrong."

This was especially challenging for people who were tapping into anger and disappointment from their childhoods, or people who were certain that if the other person in their life would just change, things would be fine. When we heard stories that would lead us to judge someone as hopelessly and maybe harmfully wrong, David would suggest that we all "take a bath in Rule No. 1."

Sitting with the intention to make no one wrong eventually produced a deeper, different way of resolving the issue. Often it led to a healing that had seemed impossible.

Most of the time, we run more subtle versions of making people wrong. It's an easy trap to fall into when something is not working out according to expectations - or when we are not clear ourselves or are afraid of speaking up.

Even more insidious is how we make ourselves wrong. "No one is made wrong" includes us.

Three things to keep in mind about this right-wrong bias:

1. It always has a cost. Whatever your argument, whatever your "rightness" in the situation, being right will come at the cost of someone being wrong. That will come back to bite you one way or another.
2. You do not need to give up your position, your choices, or your perceptions. Knowing that the other person has different perceptions doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong.
3. Getting hooked is an opportunity to learn. When you find yourself stewing or feeling old familiar feelings, use the opportunity to catch the thread of one of your own old stories: how you are a victim or how other people don't measure up. By yourself or with a skillful friend or therapist, follow the thread and release energy that has been bound up in that story.

As a communicator, the first and perhaps most helpful thing you can do in communication breakdowns is to invoke Rule No. 1. The process of adopting it may take a little while. Once people get there, there is room for everyone to be heard. Forward motion becomes more likely.

This is a good time of year to bring Rule No. 1 into our conscious awareness, as shorter days, family gatherings, and work demands may all bring up sensitive feelings and interpersonal pressures.

While you're feeling buoyant and anticipating the coming months, set yourself a reminder that when things start to get touchy, no one - including yourself - will be made wrong. It's quite possible that this will lead to a new level of mutual understanding.

What Can Communication Coaching Do For You?

Especially at work, what we communicate is who we are. As leaders and co-workers, we enhance or detract from the success of our enterprise with the communication competence we demonstrate. This is a skill set that has to grow to keep pace with complexity.
Working with a communication coach is a high-leverage way to accomplish several objectives at once:
-dedicating time and focus to this crucial area of your work life
-learning new skills tailored to your style and your goals
-and, perhaps most important, having an observer who can give you feedback and a place to test your thinking.

Many well-known C-level executives and other leaders rely on coaches, particularly to prepare for communication situations. If you want to reduce the stress and optimize your traction in communicating, it is likely that your HR folks or your department's budget can provide funds for coaching.

No longer seen as remedial, communication coaching is fuel for career advancement and business success. For entrepreneurs, the return on investment is easy to measure through direct results.

Some criteria for selecting a communication coach:
- they make a clear contract for a number of sessions and / or a measurable outcome
- they do not have a conflicting relationship with you, i.e. they are not your boss or your best friend
- they are able to explain their approach, the communication models or assessments they use, and how this is applicable to your goals
-they will have an introductory conversation with you to determine best fit.

One of the criteria for choosing a coach is what you can learn from him or her. Coaches who are skilled with communication models help you put them into practice on a daily basis.

We all have blind spots, or simply preferences that don't match up with those of co-workers or customers. Coaching can help prevent breakdowns or help us learn from them. An extra benefit is getting a reality check from a trusted advisor. Priceless.

We live in an amazingly complex world and an information-rich environment. The more intelligence you bring to it, the more you gain. Communication coaching helps you focus on what matters most to reach your goals. If you're ready, let's talk!

What is Syntax About and What's On Our Website

Our Premise is that...

...our ability to communicate effectively with one other is the most crucial priority in today's global workplace.

By observing the behavior of successful individuals, teams, and organizations, we recognize habits and behavior patterns that constitute the SYNTAX, or structure, of success.
These are organized into five skill areas in a framework that serves as a common language, an organizational foundation for reaching goals and bridging differences.

The purpose of Syntax is to spread understanding and behavioral skill in the foundations of effective communication in efficient, easily learnable ways. To do this, we offer services and educational products to large and small enterprises and to facilitators, coaches, and consultants.

The sources on which Syntax is based include
Neurolinguistic Programming,
Fernando Flores' work on conversations and action,
Transactional Analysis,
Appreciative Inquiry,
Human Performance Technology,
and over twenty years of introducing Syntax to professionals in organizations.

Many of our assumptions are explained and demonstrated throughout our website at www.syntx.com. Feel free to browse for yourself, and come back often to catch handy hints and good ideas.

After sending out the latest SYNTAX Messenger, about a turning point toward positive organizations, I saw this site at Twitter. An example of organizational wellness and wisdom.

"hope140
At Twitter, one thing that drives us is our desire to make a lasting impact as a company. Being a force for good is at the heart of that mission. Looking outside the walls of Twitter HQ we see lots of good stuff happening all the time, which invokes an incredible sense of hope that keeps us going.

The open exchange of information is just beginning to become an everyday part of how the world communicates. As folks like you spread positive knowledge through the platform, we'll be collecting it and highlighting good social movements that you might want to get involved in. So drop in every once in a while to see what's happening."

I think that's a very cool mobilization of the power - not directly financial - of a modern social information company.

Nothing Substitutes for Attention

Attention is the essence of who we are, the elixir of communicating with others.

There's an old saying that "The master's gaze fattens the flock." Our full attention to what we are doing and the people around us fattens the flock of our dreams. Especially now, with distractions pulling at us constantly, we are challenged to focus our attention on our priorities.

Hurrying and overload both diminish the quality of attention we can pay to both people and details.

The wastefulness of hurrying was underscored last week as I exchanged email messages about a business transaction. Some of the details came through garbled. I asked for clarification. Rather than reading her own email to see what I was asking, the sender sent me an explanatory attachment which did not at all clear up the garble. It took us three more exchanges plus apologies and extra phone messages before we backed out of that minor mis-communication. Nothing substitutes for actually looking at the details.

Hurrying leads to such things as sending on an email message without changing the subject line, hitting 'reply all' to avoid choosing the relevant recipients, jumping to conclusions rather than listening. Then we have to hurry even more to undo all those extra steps.

Overload makes it hard to focus and keep track of what is important to us. It's good to remind ourselves that giving attention to too many things means we are giving full attention to nothing. If we have been on the run too long, we can get locked into overdrive. Those around us never receive that long loving look or deep listening from someone they trust. We don't tap into our deeper resources for ourselves either. Nothing substitutes for attention to people.

Sometimes we get stuck, whether in overdrive, or in obsessing about something in the past or future that we cannot influence in this moment.

Even when we think there is no time, it is helpful to step out of the rush, shake loose from demands, worries, and trivia, and take an inventory of where our attention is. Come into the present, feel your physical self, take a breath, clear your mind.

Discover again what matters, and put your full attention there. With attention, time is well spent.

Listen with Your Senses - to Morgan Freeman

Neurolinguistic Programming, or NLP, teaches us to listen with our senses; that is, to hear the specific words people say that tell us the sensory system they are using.

We speak in seeing, hearing, and feeling terms that actually represent how we are thinking. If you listen with awareness of sensory systems, you can appreciate the diversity of our personal syntax.

This week, the insightful TV interviewer, Charlie Rose, had actor Morgan Freeman on his show, talking about what it was like to play Nelson Mandela in the new movie Invictus.

To the conscious listener, Freeman gave an elegant demonstration of how his senses inform his work.

When asked how he observed Mandela to get into the character, he said it wasn't anything he saw or heard. He asked Mandela if he could hold his hand. He said he could not explain or intellectualize it. He could feel the quiet inside.

Later in the interview, he described getting into another character, a principal who inspired students. Freeman had learned the technique with that principal. He held his hand and could feel huge amount of energy going on inside. Feeling that charge allowed him to step into the role. The change in the actor's demeanor was visible as he spoke of this. Several times he mentioned that he couldn't put what he knows kinesthetically into words (and then, being a brilliant person, he did anyway).

He talked about approaching Clint Eastwood to direct Invictus, and when asked why Eastwood, he said "His feel for storytelling. I don't know how to tell you what that is.. He just knows when a scene is dragging..." giving another example of his strong kinesthetic (feeling) system.

Later, Freeman talked about a peak experience of an acting day with Matt Damon, saying it was the "connection" between them that was so memorable.

Morgan Freeman conveys great depth of emotion as an actor. Listening to him speak and watching how he responds to questions illuminates the personal syntax that makes his talent possible.

You may want to try listening to people's personal syntax with this filter: are they using words that indicate seeing, hearing, feeling? In what sequence? Do not categorize people as either visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. We all use all systems, in different sequences and priorities.

If I say "I have to get a feel for what you are saying before I can picture it," I am really telling you how I think and how I can best receive information at the moment.

Whether you are a manager, colleague, teacher, or parent, it's worth knowing how each person's way of processing - their personal syntax - reveals their talent and special kind of intelligence. The first step is to hear, then to practice flexibility in your own speech, to match the sequences used by the other person.

You can learn more about this in our book Smart Work, or by taking a SYNTAX course, or by researching NLP resources online. Having the distinctions of sensory representations is both entertaining and extremely helpful in making choices as we work and live with other people.

Check it out, especially the next time you have a chance to watch a master talk about his or her work.

Can You Say "And"?

Have you noticed the difference in how people respond when you use the word and instead of but in a sentence?

If you listen to newscasters and politicians, you will frequently hear the word but as if for emphasis. It disrupts the flow of the thought that came before, perhaps to set up an important point in a debate. This may work - though I wouldn't count on it - if you really are in a debate. If you don't want a debate, your choice of words can have much more influence than most people realize.

A friend with a couple of kids at home remarked on the huge difference she has found when she catches herself about to say but and changes it to and. For example, when her nine-year-old says he wants to go to a friend's house at a time they already had plans, she can say, "You want to go to Joe's house AND we already have plans to go skating." He gets it right away and is a lot less likely to argue than if she had said the same thing with but in the middle.

I used to wonder if this was just one of those ideas that communication coaches believe in and that don't have enough effect to make it worth the effort of changing. After years of practicing the A word, and catching instances of But that I wouldn't have otherwise noticed, I can report that it works not just for communication but also (there's a legit use of but!) for expanding our ability to think about complexity.

When we are in either-or mode, we are less equipped to deal with the blended realities we are sorting through every day. When we are able to handle both-and, we absorb and manage mulitple priorities. We still make decisions, clarify thoughts, and challenge assumptions.

If you baven't tried it, don't assume that and and but are pretty much parallel with different meanings. At first you may not hear yourself saying but, AND if you go on a "but diet" (note that I could have said but and didn't), you will become better at hearing and changing from but to and. AND... maybe you'll find some unexpected breakthroughs in conversations with yourself as well as others.

I believe that the little mindshift this represents may be a key to getting along better on many levels in a diverse, pluralistic world. Certainly, rigid boundaries cause stress and conflict, which may be avoidable with more flexibility.

Whether you are interested in the bigger worldview or not, try it out for yourself. For a while you may find yourself saying the transitional version, which sounds like "ButAND". It does smooth out, or it becomes a signal among familiars that we are on the verge of expanding our thinking.

Be wary of the "however" solution - those in the know call that "a but in a tuxedo." Has the same effect even if it sounds fancy.

You could get a huge payback for a little effort when you decide to go conscious on your use of but and and. Check it out and share what you learn. AND we will be glad to hear about it!