Communication Needs - Feedback
Feedback Is Important For Good Communication.
Part of our Communication Needs is feedback. Feedback indicates how well your message is being understood; it helps to sort out communication problems and is vital for developing and maintaining business and personal relationships. In fact, it is one of the most important parts of the communication process
Any reply to a message is ‘feedback’. You ask the time, someone says “5.20pm” (receiver’s feedback) and you say “Thanks” (your feedback). Feedback can be classified in different ways. It can be:
- verbal or non-verbal;
- positive or negative;
- process or action;
- a combination of any of these.
As a coach I suggest you take note of what feedback you give in different situations and consider whether the feedback you give is meeting the communication needs of the person you are talking to.
Warm Regards
Andrew Fleming
Confident Future Newsletter
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A good thing or bad thing?
What do you think?
Defeat may be a stepping stone or a stumbling block according to the way you accept it.
After an accident left me paraplegic I had a choice to get on with my life despite the challenges or wallow in self pity. I chose to focus on what was good and what I could do. I have gone from strength to strength and my life has got better and better. When I talk to groups in my capacity as an Inspirational Speaker, people regularly feed back to me that I do more than a lot of others. I am truly happy despite challenges most can’t imagine.
I constantly see people who are physically fit and healthy yet I believe more disabled than me due to the way they think and what they believe.
Do you believe in yourself as much as you need to have the best life possible? If you don’t then what will you do about it starting today? If you do then how do you pass that ability on to others and help them improve their lives? Let me know by posting a comment below.
Andy Fleming
Confident Future Newsletter
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Better Communication
Through Being A Good Active Listener?
Active listing will enhance your communication experiences by allowing each person to feel important and valued. Communication then becomes more effective. Here are a few tips to improve your active listening skills.
- Know why you are listening
If you don’t know why you are listening, you won’t gain as much from communicating as you will if you have a definite purpose in mind.
- Listen with your whole body
Active listening involves you physically and mentally. Read the sender’s body movements, and exchange non-verbal feedback. Look directly at the sender, express interest with your face, eyes and hands.
- Give feedback; respond to the person
The best listening also involves talking, as you respond verbally to what you hear. If you agree, say so; don’t leave the other person guessing. A comment, which confirms that you have heard and understood, is better than just a ‘yes’ or a nod of the head. An ideal response is to rephrase the speaker’s words, indicate support, and then ask a question. “I agree that you’ve had to take care of the children more than me recently. How can I help support you?” Seek further information by asking questions like: “what happened next?” or “what do you think your options are?”
- Show empathy
Make it clear that you understand the other person’s point of view, even if you do not agree with it. Active listening requires sensitive judgement about when people want to talk and when they don’t. Use one ear to listen to meaning and the other to listen to feelings (like reading between the lines). Remember, words often mask real feelings.
As a coach I would like you to take the time to consider how putting these things into practice could enhance your communication experiences? I think it is a good skill to invest time into. The time required to learn and practice this skill is very small compared with the big prize of Enhanced Communication.
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Insanity - what is it?
One definition of insanity is to believe that you can keep doing the same thing you have always done and achieve a different result.
So if we want to achieve different results than what we are currently getting we need to do something different. Often the first thing we need to do is to think about it differently because we attract what we think about.
Your subconscious mind thinks in pictures and doesn’t register the “in between” words we all use. For example if you think I don’t want to be broke anymore, your subconscious mind will not register the “I don’t want to be” part and will focus on the “broke” bit and that is what you will attract to yourself.
Instead of thinking about what you don’t want, think about what you do want. For example, money is easy to come by and I am a master at attracting it to me. Your subconscious mind can’t tell what is real and what isn’t and if it believes what you are thinking about is real, then, it will get your conscious mind to take the steps to make it a reality.
The next step is to put yourself in the path of new opportunities or recognize the ones that are already around you and do something about them before they pass you by. There are lots of ways to expose yourself to new opportunities. There are a multitude of wealth creation seminars you could attend. You could join a networking group to meet people looking for similar things or network with people you meet at seminars that have a similar mindset.
If you spend your time with people that don’t believe they can achieve more than they are currently achieving then how likely are they to believe that you can achieve more than you are currently achieving? Are they likely to support you in your beliefs? That is why people say that you are who you associate with.
If someone tells you, that won’t work, make sure that you question what there qualification is to advise you of that. They may be right but they may have very little idea what they are talking about and buying into their story could cost you the opportunity of a lifetime.
Changing what we think, believe and do can have a huge impact on our future and often the required changes are quite minor.
Are you doing what you need to do in order to get different results or will you continue to get the same results because you continue to do the same things?
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Listen and Enhance Communication!
I often wonder whether people are really truly understanding what I am communicating to them because it feels like they are there really only in body and not listening properly, to what I am communicating to them.
Our communication experiences are enhanced when we actively listen to each other. Active listening means putting everything else out of your mind and acknowledging the other person with eye contact, facial gestures, words that confirm you understand, and perhaps even touch so they have feedback that you are listening properly and valuing what they have to say. Here are some of the reasons that active listening improves communication.
- When people notice how well you listen to them, they usually reciprocate and try to understand you better. They feel valued and therefore value you more.
- Communication improves, Relationships improve. Friendships develop and deepen.
- You receive more accurate information because communication is more effective. People explaining problems are more inclined to give you the whole story.
- People encouraged by your active listening often discover solutions to their own problems. The opportunity to talk things over is all many people need to see the issue in its proper perspective.
- You get on better with people. Active listening combined with empathy makes it easier to solve problems or at least reach a compromise.
- You can discover not only what people are saying, but why they are saying it. You learn more about what is really going on ‘between the lines’ through more effective communication
They all seem pretty good reasons to take the time to improve active listening skills and a small investment for our prize of better communication. What could you do to improve your listening and enhance your communication?
Confident Future Newsletter
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Why Invest in Yourself?
“If a man empties his purse into his head no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” Benjamin Franklin.
This is so true and it is something that I am passionate about and something I want help others see.
If you are not investing in yourself, then who is?
I took the opportunity to see Robert Kiyosaki in Auckland recently and a lot of what he talked about was the importance of financial education. And sadly there is very little in the way of financial education in our schools.
Then to take it a step further he spoke of the importance of having a team of people around you that are all experts in certain areas so that you can quickly get advice on whatever you may need to know. Extremely successful people like Robert Kiyosaki all ask you to consider what the qualification of the person giving you financial advice is. When Uncle Jim or the neighbor across the road say don’t buy that investment property or don’t start that business or the share market is too risky, you need to really think about why they are saying that. Do they really know? In a lot of cases they probability know someone that lost money on a property or somebody who started a business and didn’t make it or lost money on the share market. But what knowledge did those people have in the given area? If you ask the people that have made a lot of money in any of those areas they will all tell you that if you have the right knowledge and follow a system then you can do really well.
Part of investing in right knowledge is investing in the tools to give you the right mindset to succeed at whatever you want to succeed at. There are so many wealth creation vehicles out there today. You can simple buy someone else’s proven system if you want to. That isn’t to say it will be plain sailing all the way. Evan with the correct knowledge there are likely to be hurdles along the way. That is where mindset is so important. The difference between the ones that succeed and the ones that fail is generally mindset. The successful ones didn’t give up and found a way over that hurdle. And all too often the ones that failed gave up just before they succeeded because they didn’t have the mindset to get over the last hurdle.
The best thing that you can do for yourself and your family is invest in the knowledge and mindset that is required to succeed. What steps are you taking toward this? If the answers is none, then when would now be a good time to start?
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Communication Needs - 10 Ways to
Here are 10 ways to make communication more enjoyable for everyone.
- Smile at strangers. Some of us have taken our parents’ warnings to not talk to strangers a bit too far. Just because you smile at someone doesn’t mean you are inviting him to step over your boundaries.
- Refuse to get involved in ‘my story is worse than yours’ contests. You don’t have to complain about the traffic, your kids, the significant other, the boss, just because everyone else is. Communicate the good and positive things in your life, rather than the negative things. This type of communications is much more enjoyable for those involved.
- We were given two ears and one mouth. Learn to listen twice as much as you speak. You’ll be considered a great conversationalist! You will also be more likely to truly understand what is being communicated to you.
- Be in the moment. Keep your mind where your body is. If you allow yourself to be distracted you are more likely to miss the true nature of what is being communicated to you.
- Communicate acceptance with your eyes. Keep your eyes on your conversation partner. Let her know you are involved with her words.
- Speak with a smile. Open yourself to the conversation.
- Say please and thank you to every soul you meet. Gratitude begets appreciation. Appreciated people feel happier.
- Moods can be contagious. Deal with your mood before conversing.
- Be ready to laugh. Laugh loudly, laugh often. Adult’s average 12 laughs a day. Children laugh over 400 times a day.
- Breathe. Our bodies need a good supply of oxygen to function at peak performance.
Just imagine how much nicer our communication experiences would be if everyone we had to communicate with practiced the above ideas. To look at it from the other direction - if you come across someone that isn’t smiling or laughing or is clearly in a bad mood perhaps you could still practice the above things, and particularly the part about listening twice as much as you talk and find out why they are down. Often allowing someone to unload what is bothering them can make a huge difference to them resolving the problem. You are meeting their communication needs.
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Communication Needs - Do You Listen Properly?
Do you ever consider whether you are listening properly when you are in a conversation? Not listening properly can prevent you getting the most from your communication experiences as you do not meet the communication needs of whoever you are conversing with.
When we should be listening to understand the other person, it is likely that we are:
- Perceiving listening as a passive activity and therefore finding the prolonged concentration impossible to maintain;
- Already speaking before the other person has finished or preparing to respond in our mind;
- Not clearing our minds beforehand, so the ‘noise in our system’ shuts out or distorts what is being said;
- Filtering what we hear through our own picture of our world - our paradigm;
- Reading our own experience into the other person’s life. We hear it often… “I know exactly what you mean. When I did that…”, “That reminds me of when I…” or “Let me tell you what happened when I did that…”
- So tense with emotion that our ability to listen is seriously impaired;
- Distracted or bored because our listening style doesn’t match the speaker. Larry Barker, a communications consultant, came up with findings that differentiate types of listening styles - people, action, content and time oriented. People oriented listeners, for example, like to hear about the colour and descriptors around a story, whereas an action oriented listener just wants to get to the bottom line. Therefore, our preference may result in shutting out some of the information because it doesn’t fit our style of listening.
Do you find yourself doing these things when you communicate with others? If you do then consider how you could enhance your communication experience by improving your listening skills and meeting the communication needs of the person you are communicating with. As a coach I suggest you learn about active listening. It will make a big difference to your ability to satisfy the communication needs of the other person and they will feel more valued and likely to reciprocate, enhancing the communication experience for both parties.
Confident Future Newsletter
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Listening - Part of Our Communication Needs!
I often wonder whether people are really truly understanding what I am communicating to them because it feels like they are there really only in body and not listening properly, to what I am communicating to them. They are not meeting my communication needs as I need them to listen properly.
Our communication experiences are enhanced when we understand what the communication needs of the people involved in the conversation are. One of these needs is active listening. Active listening means putting everything else out of your mind and acknowledging the other person with eye contact, facial gestures, words that confirm you understand, and perhaps even touch so they have feedback that you are listening properly and valuing what they have to say. Here are some of the reasons that active listening improves communication.
- When people notice how well you listen to them, they usually reciprocate and try to understand you better. They feel valued and therefore value you more.
- Communication improves, Relationships improve. Friendships develop and deepen.
- You receive more accurate information because communication is more effective. People explaining problems are more inclined to give you the whole story.
- People encouraged by your active listening often discover solutions to their own problems. The opportunity to talk things over is all many people need to see the issue in its proper perspective.
- You get on better with people. Active listening combined with empathy makes it easier to solve problems or at least reach a compromise.
- You can discover not only what people are saying, but why they are saying it. You learn more about what is really going on ‘between the lines’ through more effective communication
They all seem pretty good reasons to take the time to improve active listening skills and a small investment for our prize of better communication through meeting the conversation needs of whoever you are conversing with.
Confident Future Newsletter
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Can Money Buy You Happiness?
“I know that they say money can’t buy happiness but I’d like to find out for myself.”
This is one of those quotes that got me thinking;
It was my partners sons birthday yesterday. He seemed pretty happy with all the presents he got. It was money that allowed those thing’s to be produced and for us to purchase them.
Whenever you see an ad for World Vision, Save the Children and the like, the kids that now have a full belly or fresh water or a chance at education always have smiles on their faces. It is money that allows those things to happen.
When you buy a new car a new TV, a new house etc that seems to put a smile on your dial. All made possible by money too.
I have attended many personal development seminars that all take a sizable monetary investment. Most of the people I have met at such events are extremely happy at seeing new possibilities. Again it is money that makes these events possible.
I am a Foundation member of XL Results foundation. This is a networking group for entrepreneurs with the aim of ending world poverty through helping it’s members to excel in business so that they have the ability to help the world’s problems by having more income than they need and therefore the ability to give. Within this group there are people putting meals in children’s stomachs, others making cost effective solar lamps to allow children to study at night, others planting trees to clean up our air or saving endangered species. One lady who started a charity to help her people in Zimbabwe was given $1,000,000 by another member because he had more than he needed and she had the cause. More things made possible due to money.
The people doing these things are getting a huge amount of satisfaction at being able to contribute to the things that they are passionate about.
As a Success Coach I see my clients and hear of colleagues clients making amazing changes in their lives. These people make a sizable monetary investment in themselves to improve the quality of their lives and a lot of them significantly improve their income as a result of being coached, and in the process create many different options for them and their families.
What have these people done differently?
- Such people invest in themselves,
- take responsibility for their actions and lives
- take the steps to modify their behavior.
And as a result of this reap the rewards.
An interesting point is that the most dedicated and successful clients are usually the ones that are stretched the most by the coaching fee. This is because of what they have at stake. No matter what you are doing:
“If the money you pay out hurts you in the pocket you are a lot more likely to make changes that you may find difficult in order to get your monies worth from the investment you are making.”
As part of my coach training I was required to coach people for free for a 3 month period. Out of 10 such clients only 5 got any results. The reason is that they didn’t value it and so didn’t put the effort in and hence got no results.
So money can fix a lot of the world’s problems and that will make a lot of people very happy on both sides of the equation. I personally think that we owe it to ourselves and this wonderful planet that allows us our amazing and precious lives, to do what it takes to be the best that we can be.
So can money buy you happiness? I’d like to suggest it depends on:
How you define happiness?
What steps you are taking to be the best you possible?
Who or what are you investing in?
Confident Future Newsletter
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