BETTER BUSINESS
Listening to the spoken word is a complex process Why don’t people listen properly? By Phil Turtle, Managing Director, DataCentre Industry PR
Phil Turtle, Managing Director of Data Center Industry PR delves into his training as a master practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to help us all improve the effectiveness of our communication with our ‘publics’ inside and outside the workplace… Of course it’s effective
communication that makes or breaks our relationships with our publics and underpins PR in its widest sense. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience
Phil Turtle explains how different people listen differently...
of an older relative who’s become a little deaf. My gran was one such person, and
often my family and I would want to roar with laughter when we asked her something and then would get the answer to a completely different question. Soon we realised that we needed to ask, wait and listen - then figure out what question she thought we had asked her. But what I didn’t realise until many
years later was just how similar this is to what happens to everyone in everyday life - and why it’s like that. The first thing most of us
don’t understand is that everyone communicates differently. I’m sure most of us assume, without even thinking about it, that we all process communication the same way that we do ourselves and that what we say or write is what they hear or understand. Well that couldn’t be further
from the truth and that’s why misunderstandings and miscommunications happen so much. Between our eyes, our ears and our brains we have a lot of filters. We’ve evolved that way because, incredible though our brains are, they simply cannot process all of the information our eyes, ears, noses and skin receive constantly. From this we need to understand
one massively important concept about communication. Communication is not
what YOU say or write - it’s what the OTHER person hears or understands. And a lot of the time, it’s not at all what you thought you’d communicated.
Doing things better There are a number of ways to significantly improve the chances of communicating - by understanding and then working with, the different ways people prefer to communicate. People communicate using three main ‘protocols’. Some find it far easier to relate to things visually. They think in pictures or diagrams and often they will give this away by using phrases like “Yes, I see what you mean.”, “So how would that look to you?” Interestingly, ‘visual’ people tend to
talk faster and louder than most. So if you want to get your point over in the most effective way to a visual person then use pictures or even use words to create pictures in their minds.
Why cant people listen? 38 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 3 2014
www.netcommseurope.com
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