Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

38 Improve your Communication Skills
1. Clarify your objective 
Work out at the start of your conversation what you want to 
achieve. 
Think of a conversation as a journey you are taking together. 
It will very quickly start to wander off track if either of you is 
unclear where you’re going. You will complete the journey 
effectively only if you both know clearly where you are aiming 
for. 
What’s vital is that you 
state
your objective clearly at the start. 
Give a headline. If you know what your main point is, state it at 
the start of the conversation. 
Of course, you might decide to change your objective in the 
middle of the conversation – just as you might decide to change 
direction in the middle of a journey. That’s fine, so long as both of 
you know what you’re doing. Too specific an objective at the start 
might limit your success at the end. This problem is at the heart 
of negotiation, for example: what would you be willing to settle 
for, and what is not negotiable? 
Headlines 
Newspapers rely on headlines to get the story’s message 
across quickly. You can do the same in your conversations: 
I want to talk to you about… 
I’ve looked at the plan and I’ve got some suggestions. 
I know you’re worried about the sales figures. I’ve got 
some clues that might help. 
I’ve called this meeting to make a decision about project 
X.
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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39 Seven Ways to Improve Your Conversations
Objectives roughly divide into two categories: 
• exploring a problem; 
• finding a solution. 
When you are thinking about your headline, ask ‘problem or 
solution?’ You may tend to assume that any conversation about a 
problem is aiming to find a solution – particularly if the other 
person has started the conversation. As a result, you may find 
yourself working towards a solution without accurately defining 
or understanding the problem. It may be that the other person 
doesn’t want you to offer a solution, but rather to talk through the 
problem with them.