Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

Cultivating ease 
Good thinking happens in a relaxed environment. Cultivating 
ease will allow you to enquire more deeply, and discover more 
ideas. 
Most people aren’t used to ease and may actually argue 
against it. They’re so used to urgency that they can’t imagine 
working in any other way. Many organisations actually dispel 
ease from the workplace. Ease is equated with sloth. If you’re not 
working flat out, chased by deadlines and juggling 50 
assignments at the same time, you’re not worth your salary. It’s 
assumed that the best thinking happens in such a climate. 
This is wrong. Urgency keeps people from thinking well. 
They’re too busy doing. After all, doing is what gets results, isn’t 
it? Not when people have to think to get them. Sometimes, the 
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66 Improve your Communication Skills
best results only appear by 
not
doing: by paying attention to 
someone else’s ideas with a mind that is alert, comfortable, and 
at ease. When you are at ease, the solution to a problem will 
appear as if by magic. 
Cultivating ease in a conversation is largely a behavioural skill. 
Make yourself comfortable. Lean back, breathe out, smile, look 
keen, and slow down your speaking rhythm. 
Encouraging 
In order to liberate the other person’s ideas, you may need to do 
more than pay attention, treat them as an equal and cultivate 
ease. You may need to actively encourage them to give you their 
ideas. 
Remember that the other person’s thinking is to a large extent 
the result of the effect you have on them. So if you: 
• suggest that they change the subject; 
• try to convince them of your point of view before 
listening to their point of view;