The goal of this course is to train team members in communication skills that foster empathy and enhance understanding of the client's position, thus facilitating the flow of productive activity. Much time is devoted to analysis of the impact on corporate profits of things like absenteeism, turnover, and technical inefficiency. These are important issues to be sure, but how much improvement in work flow can be realized through simply paying attention to communication? How many sales could have been made, or clients retained or work hours been shortened if only there had not been misunderstandings among the parties involved?
We cannot introduce the concept of client relationships without acknowledging that we are the key players in the exchange of ideas and information. Thinking of communication as an art that requires skills allows us to approach it from a perspective that is both practical and analytical. How information enters our mind, how it is processed, how we react to it, and how to observe and recognize this in others makes us powerful forces in our realm. We can use our skills to guide and to influence, to inspire and to motivate, and by so doing bring about enormous levels of positive change.
By first examining who you are, you can understand how you receive and process information. By learning how others do the same, you learn that you are at the same time similar and different from the others around you. By celebrating these differences and working with them rather than against them, you can move faster and farther than you ever thought possible, find friends where once you found enemies, and make discoveries and breakthroughs in areas that you had formerly believed were unavailable to you.
After learning about yourself, you can then apply the same procedure to others, like colleagues, clients and co-workers. You will discover some similarities as well as some differences. Endeavor now to communicate with them in a different way and observe the results. Practice the techniques and develop some skill. If you acquire a skill and practice it every day for twenty-one consecutive days, you will have created a habit. If you practice it for twenty-eight consecutive days, you will create a behavior. Then you can go out and change the world.
Part I: Self-Assessment
1. Hard Wiring: Directional Flow
At birth, you are tested for a variety of key factors, like whether you are breathing, have all of your parts, or if you are a boy or a girl. One of the tests also checks your startle reflex, and this is a predictor of whether you will be an introvert or an extrovert.
In all of nature, there is balance: light and dark, right and left, male and female, fast and slow, high and low. We learn in our science classes that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Introversion and extroversion are functions of energy flow in humans, we are born this way, and we react accordingly. For some of us, we use energy to interact with other people, and after a certain point, we must be alone to rest and recharge before we can consider being with others again. We all need rest at times, but some of us need much more than others do when it comes to dealing with other people. If being with others causes us to expend more energy than we derive, we are introverts.
On the other hand, some of us need to be around others to feel energized and stimulated. Too much time alone, and we are enervated, listless, and depressed. If being with others creates more energy that it uses up, we are extroverts.
We often associate shyness with introversion, but shyness is a conditioned reflex, where introversion is built in. There are shy extroverts. Shyness results from the physical response we feel when we are in the company of others, and also from the degree of self-absorption that we are feeling at the moment. Shyness can be induced or reduced. Introversion and extroversion are a part of your basic make up.
Given that we all like a little quiet time now and then, how do you see yourself when it comes to being with others? Are you energized or depleted and ultimately stressed? Does being alone too much leave you feeling depressed and listless or revitalized and restored?
- Do you believe that you are an extrovert?
- Do you believe that you are an introvert?
- Would you consider yourself shy?
2. Learning: Identification and Association; Literal vs. Inferential
From birth to the age of about eight years, you are learning about your world from your primary caregiver at the most basic level. The way in which you learn involves storing information from your surroundings, as it enters your consciousness from your five senses and your emotions. First, you identify something, and then you associate it with something else. That is how you classify it as good or bad, pleasure or pain, nice or not nice. You are born with only two inherent fears: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. All other fears are learned. Thus, you are able to store information that cookies are good, touching the hot stove is bad, and the barking dog next door is frightening.
