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16 Improve your Communication Skills Learning the art of conversation 1. Copy the other person’s body language to create a ‘mirror image’. 2. Ask three questions – but no more until you have done the next two things. 3. Find something from what you have just learned that will allow you to compliment the other person – subtly. 4. Find something in what you have found out to agree with. 5. Repeat until the conversation takes on a life of its own. (With thanks to Chris Dyas) Information: displaying the shape of our thinking Once we have created a relaxed relationship, we are ready to share information. So what is information, and how does it operate? Every time we communicate, information changes shape. Children have enormous fun playing with the way information can alter in the telling. Chinese Whispers and Charades are both games that delightfully exploit our capacity to misunderstand each other. Understanding – as we’ve already seen – is mental patternmatching. ‘Ah!’ we exclaim when we’ve understood something, ‘I see!’ We may have a different perspective on a problem from a colleague; we often misunderstand each other because we are approaching the issue from different angles. If we disagree with someone, we may say that we are looking at it differently. It’s all about what patterns we recognise: which patterns match our mental models. ( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.
17 What is Communication? Information is the shape of our thinking. We create information inside our heads. Information is never ‘out there’; it is always, and only ever, in our minds. And the shape of information constantly changes, evolving, as we think. Information is dynamic. Information is unique as a resource because of its capacity to generate itself. It’s the solar energy of organisation – inexhaustible, with new progeny emerging every time information meets up with itself. (Margaret J Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, Berrett-Kohler Publishers Inc, San Francisco, 1st edn, 1992) Creating shared understanding of information, then, means displaying it in a form that the other person can recognise. You could draw pictures or diagrams. Better still, you could find out what mental patterns the other person uses – and then fit your information into them. Pictures and models usually simplify information, making it easier to understand. When we communicate, we never merely hand over information; we create meaning out of that information, and then share that meaning. If the other person can’t understand what we mean, then our attempts to communicate have failed. Action: influencing with our ideas As well as creating relationships and sharing information, we communicate to promote action. And the key to effective action is not accurate information but persuasive ideas. Ideas give meaning to information. Put simply, an idea says something about the information. A name is not an idea. These phrases are all names but, for our purposes, they aren’t ideas: ( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.
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198 Appendix Steven Mithen’s book
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200 Appendix Chapter 9: Networking:
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