50 Improve your Communication Skills in the person’s body language or behaviour: nodding, smiling,
leaning forward.
Conversely, refusing permission can be explicit – ‘I’d rather
we didn’t talk about this’ – or in code. The person may evade your
question, wrap up an answer in clouds of mystification or reply
with another question. Their non-verbal behaviour is more likely
to give you a hint of their real feelings: folding their arms, sitting
back in the chair, becoming restless, evading eye contact.
5. Move beyond argument One of the most effective ways of improving your conversations
is to develop them beyond argument.
Most people are better at talking than at listening. At school,
we often learn the skills of
debate
: of taking a position, holding it,
defending it, convincing others of its worth and attacking any
position that threatens it.
As a result, conversations have a habit of becoming
adversarial
. Instead of searching out the common ground, people
hold their own corner and treat every move by the other person
as an attack. Adversarial conversations set up a boxing match
between competing opinions.
Opinions are ideas gone cold. They are assumptions about
what should be true, rather than conclusions about what is true
in specific circumstances. Opinions might include:
• stories (about what happened, what may have happened, why it happened); • explanations (of why something went wrong, why it failed); • justifications for doing what was done; • gossip (perhaps to make someone feel better at the expense of others); • generalisations (to save the bother of thinking); • wrong-making (to establish power over the other person). ( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.
