Enhancing Conversations and Communication Skills

[Steady Hands]

Introduction

The intention of this thread is to discuss tips, skills, experiences, and intentions relating to conversations and interpersonal communication.

A few questions follow to spark some inspiration:

• What challenges have you faced in conversations, and how did you overcome them and/or how do you continue to manage them?
• What tactics or styles have you seen other people embody that reflect learnable insights?
• How would you like to improve your future interactions?

Personally, my main goal is to continue enhancing my interactions and communication skills in the professional field, especially in conversation. Most of these concepts can be applied to the personal sphere, and many can be extended to the medium of writing and 2D screen-based communications.

Many CiK readers work in jobs that don't require extensive speaking engagements. In general, the most important relationships and interactions across the lifespan still involve verbal conversations - that is, talking with someone in-person or on a phone call / video chat. Nonetheless I'll include a link for consideration to assist in enhancing comms on CiK: Enhancing the Quality of Conversations on CIK and the Retention of Members.

A few related threads include:

• Marketing and Sales Thread - more focused on online marketing.
• The Workplace Thread - involves general chats about experiences at work.
• Daily Interactions With Women - includes tips about engaging women in day-to-day life.

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Communicating in Conversation

Before getting into the many micro-tactics like the rate of speech, I'll start with a broad yet essential concept. This is about learning and can be applied to many domains, especially conversations.

Tip 1: Knowledge is overrated. Use it or lose it.

• There's an everyday cognitive trap that, as a way to preserve our self-confidence, inaccurately shrinks the perceived gap between our beliefs and behaviors. It's extremely easy to identify with an ideal but not embody it.
• Many of us have insatiable appetites for intellectual stimulation. Yet almost everyone including myself overestimates the value of receiving information and knowledge. We often consume data from the external world and think 'I get this'... and then forget about it by the next day.
• Relying on more information to make us feel ready before taking action also reflects a common pattern of immediate self-protection that delays longer term growth. I expanded on this in the Approach Thread.

But what does 'learning' really mean...

• Can we imprint the learning onto others as smoothly as it was given to us?
• Are we effectively implementing the idea in real life?
• Even if we can initiate an action, can we maintain it across time and situations?

Here's a timestamped video primer that relates these questions to communication skills:


Considering the limits of mere consumption and observation, I'll also be using this thread to keep myself accountable with practices to maintain or develop. Please feel free to add your own thoughts, experiences, and insights.

 

[Iakobos]

Great thread idea. I was a language teacher for several years, have extensive experience in media production and more recently have been an instructor/trainer in a high-intensity technical profession so I have thought a loooooot about communication. I 1000% agree with your point about how getting a lot of INPUT doesn't actually add up to much if you can't or won't OUTPUT it. Even better if in the process of outputting you can synthesize or apply the information in a novel way. I've long felt that if you can't succinctly explain an idea or concept (or at least the cliffnotes version) to someone in plain English with important takeaways, you don't actually understand it yourself. For my career change I had to self-study many textbooks worth of information, and explaining to my wife (bless her patience) what I'd learned in layman's terms was what really helped me lock in the knowledge, find my gaps in understanding, and so forth. Highly recommend to anyone who has the objective of deeply understanding and communicating a knowledge base.

In general, if I had to narrow it down, my #1 rule of communication would probably be: Know your audience. Which applies in countless ways to every form of comms.

Personally I do very well with communication in any kind of professional or structured context, or in one-on-ones, but I struggle much more in chaotic group situations, both socially and professionally. Bits of small talk aside, I mostly mind my own business and only pipe up if I'm involved by someone else or I have a particularly relevant insight to a conversation.

I have sometimes thought about behaving with more leadership and initiative in group situations (thinking mostly professionally here) but what holds me back is not really wanting to be someone who bothers other people or makes things about themself. However I wonder if part of that is cope justifying taking the easy road and skating by when developing a more assertive/leaderly professional persona could lead to better opportunities as well as self-actualization down the road. I don't have access to direct promotion in my current situation but I feel there are opportunities to practice and grow.

So I guess I am interested in tips for an introvert on how to develop authentic leadership communication and personality in loosely structured group environments without being overbearing to others.

 

[Steady Hands]

Great thread idea. I was a language teacher for several years, have extensive experience in media production and more recently have been an instructor/trainer in a high-intensity technical profession so I have thought a loooooot about communication. I 1000% agree with your point about how getting a lot of INPUT doesn't actually add up to much if you can't or won't OUTPUT it. Even better if in the process of outputting you can synthesize or apply the information in a novel way. I've long felt that if you can't succinctly explain an idea or concept (or at least the cliffnotes version) to someone in plain English with important takeaways, you don't actually understand it yourself. For my career change I had to self-study many textbooks worth of information, and explaining to my wife (bless her patience) what I'd learned in layman's terms was what really helped me lock in the knowledge, find my gaps in understanding, and so forth. Highly recommend to anyone who has the objective of deeply understanding and communicating a knowledge base.

Thanks for sharing. I appreciate your mutual interest in this area. Mastering interpersonal communication can provide huge ROIs over the course of a lifetime, for both personal relationships and professional careers.

In general, if I had to narrow it down, my #1 rule of communication would probably be: Know your audience. Which applies in countless ways to every form of comms.

Great advice. What are some examples of how you get to 'know your audience' and then respond to your audience based on this knowledge?

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Here is one approach to the topic.

Tip #2: Understand and adapt to others' personality types and communication preferences

For the purpose of enhancing conversational effectiveness, understanding differences in personality types and communication preferences is very useful. This is more of a process-based approach (understanding the WAY others experience and interact with the world and HOW they prefer to receive/give information), rather than a content-based approach (understanding specific needs, goals, fears etc).

For example, adapting your presented level of detail to the needs of the audience is a powerful approach. Does the person in front of you want lots of detail and specific information, or are they more interested in the big picture and broader frameworks?

In the video below, Vinh uses colours to frame these and other differences. While I find linking colours to communication styles hard to remember, there are some solid tips here.

This color system is based on what I learnt from the book Surrounded by Idiots which has helped me immensely when it comes to immediately identifying what type of person someone I meet is so that I can adjust my communication style to be more effective at connecting with them. If you want to learn how to talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere, emotional awareness is key, and this tool will help you develop your EQ muscle to better connect with anyone, whether at work with your boss, colleagues or your personal relationships

Personally I do very well with communication in any kind of professional or structured context, or in one-on-ones, but I struggle much more in chaotic group situations, both socially and professionally. Bits of small talk aside, I mostly mind my own business and only pipe up if I'm involved by someone else or I have a particularly relevant insight to a conversation.

I have sometimes thought about behaving with more leadership and initiative in group situations (thinking mostly professionally here) but what holds me back is not really wanting to be someone who bothers other people or makes things about themself. However I wonder if part of that is cope justifying taking the easy road and skating by when developing a more assertive/leaderly professional persona could lead to better opportunities as well as self-actualization down the road. I don't have access to direct promotion in my current situation but I feel there are opportunities to practice and grow.

So I guess I am interested in tips for an introvert on how to develop authentic leadership communication and personality in loosely structured group environments without being overbearing to others.

Managing structured one-on-one conversations, especially with someone we know is *a lot* easier than navigating unstructured interactions in groups, in particular with people new to us.

This reflects a challenging and worthwhile endeavour. It's one which I have wrestled with for sometime, as I have little interest in being the centre of attention in informal social conversations.

However, I know that pushing myself to be involved is important for establishing visibility, likeability, and authority in the eyes of colleagues and leaders. It's also critical to initiate meetups and accept invitations for social events, presentations, or even non-essential meetings. To get motivated to join, I need to be patient and think long-term. Gotta remind myself that my larger career goals could be more easily achieved through consciously developing relationships both within and beyond my existing team.

Some people are liked pretty much univer-
sally. In other cases, likability is relative: One
person’s friend may be another one’s jerk. This
is because our positive feelings can result from
people’s inherent attributes or from the situa-
tions we find ourselves in with them. This dis-
tinction is important to keep in mind as we try
to manage this tendency of people to favor lik-
ability over competence in their choice of
work partners.
Social psychologists have long known that
we like people who are similar to us; people we
are familiar with; people who have reciprocal
positive feelings about us; and people who are
inherently attractive, either in their appear-
ance or their personality—that is, they are con-
siderate, cheerful, generous, and so on. Each of
these sources of personal likability can contrib-
ute, for better or worse, to the formation of an
informal network

From 'Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks' by Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo [PDF copy].

Like many men, I've often fallen into the trap of attending -- single-mindedly -- to tasks and actions, while neglecting warmth and affiliation in relationships. One implication is that, even in work-oriented meetings, I still need to pay close attention to enhancing positive relationships and others' perceptions of my warmth and authority; rather than merely attending to duties, ticking off jobs, and distributing responsibilities.

This brings us to..

Tip #3: Being viewed as likeable and confident, not just being skilled and competent, can be the determining factor in getting the next step up.

Further reading

From the 'Axis of Influence: How Credibility and Likeability Intersect to Drive Success'
By Michael Lovas, Pam Holloway [LINK]



From the article Competence and Likability as Keys to Success:

Competence gets a foot in the door. Likability gets the job. Striving for both is the key to success.

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Now, getting back to your situation.

- Can you explain a bit more about the context of the "loosely structured group environments"? Are you thinking of situations among people of a similar, lower, and/or higher hierarchical level? Is this seated at a dinner table in a restaurant with known colleagues after work, standing up and moving around at a networking function with unknown people, or another context?

- What does "authentic leadership communication" mean to you and how does this relate to your longer-term career goals?