The Ten Qualities of the World's Greatest Communicators

Tony Alessandra

• Editore: G&D Media
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781722520953
• Argomento: Crescita personale
• Categoria: Successo personale

Almost every problem, every conflict, every mistake, and every misunderstanding has a communication problem at its most basic level. We live in a world filled with other people where we live together, work together, and play together. In our personal lives, we need each other for security, comfort, friendship, and love. And in our working environments, we need each other in order to achieve our goals and objectives. None of these goals can be achieved without communication, which makes it the basic thread that ties us together. The better we are at communicating, the more effective we are at achieving our hopes and dreams.Now communication expert Dr. Tony Alessandra, author of the best sellers Relationship Strategies and The Ten Qualities of Charismatic People, will teach you the Ten Qualities of The World's Greatest Communicators. Tony has observed that the majority of the great leaders in the worlds of both politics and business are also great communicators. They have an ability to establish bonds with people that are based on respect and honest communication. Great communicators make others want to trust and believe in them, and they possess a set of skills that enable them be heard in a way that gets results.Learn the 10 qualities and, more importantly, ideas and strategies to develop the same dynamic communication skills of these great leaders. Here's just a sample of what you'll learn: How to use questions to build rapport and trust.How to give and receive feedback with grace.How to engage in conflict resolution effectively.How to develop the ability to make powerful and persuasive public presentations.How to adapt your communication style to build strong relationships with anyone.How to become a charismatic and persuasive communicator.

Communication Adaptability

The eighth quality of the World’s Greatest Communicators is Communication Adaptability, which is your willingness and ability to adjust your communication based on the particular needs of the situation or relationship at a particular time. It is something applied more to yourself (to your patterns, attitudes and habits) than to others.

For any situation, the strategic adjustments that need to be made will vary. The decision to employ specific adaptability techniques is made on a case-by-case basis: you can choose to be adaptable with one person, and not so with others. You can choose to be quite adaptable with one person today and less adaptable with that same individual tomorrow. Adaptability concerns the way you manage your own behaviors. It means adjusting your own behavior to make other people feel more at ease with you and the situation.

Adaptability does not mean “imitation” of the other person’s communication style. It does mean adjusting your communication style in the direction of the other person’s preference, while maintaining your own identity.

Adaptability is important to all successful relationships. Effectively adaptable people meet other people’s needs in addition to their own. Through practice, they are able to achieve a balance—strategically managing their adaptability by recognizing when a modest compromise is appropriate, or, when the nature of the situation calls for them to totally adapt to the other person’s style, they do so. Adaptable people know how to negotiate relationships in a way that allows everyone to win. They are tactful, reasonable, understanding, and non-judgmental.

Your adaptability level influences how others judge their relationship with you. Raise your adaptability level and trust and credibility go up; lower your adaptability level and trust and credibility go down. Adaptability enables you to interact more productively with difficult people and helps you to avoid or manage tense situations. With adaptability, you can communicate with other people the way they want and need to be communicated with. It is practicing the Platinum Rule during interpersonal communications rather than the Golden Rule which states: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Golden Rule implies the basic assumption that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule accommodates the feelings of others. “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” The focus of relationship shifts from “this is what I want, so I’ll give everyone the same thing” to “let me first understand what they want and then I’ll give it to them.”

The concept of adaptability, as developed by Dr. Michael O’Connor, my co-author of our People Smart books, is a two-part process. It combines flexibility with versatility. Flexibility is your willingness to adapt. It is your attitude. Versatility is your ability to adapt. It is your aptitude.

When you have both flexibility and versatility, you display specific characteristics. In fact, formal research studies have identified 10 attributes of people who are highly adaptable. Those who have lower adaptability also display 10 distinct characteristics. Of course, none of us is totally adaptable, or totally non-adaptable, which is why it is so important to know both the 10 characteristics you can adopt to increase your communication adaptability and the 10 that can undermine your ability to adapt.

So let’s examine these characteristics, beginning with the five positive and five negative qualities of flexibility. High flexibility is characterized by these five attributes:

• Confidence

• Tolerance

• Empathy

• Positiveness

• Respect for others

The first attribute, confidence means that you believe in yourself, you trust your own judgment and resourcefulness. We’ve discussed at length how indispensable confidence is if you want to gain someone’s attention.

The second high flexibility attribute is tolerance, which means you are open to accepting opinions and practices that are different from your own. We can easily think of people who are intolerant of others because of religious or political beliefs. Those intolerant folks may attract like-minded people, but they don’t gain the attention of a diverse audience.

The third high flexibility attribute is empathy. The root of the word empathy is pathos, which means “feeling” in Greek. Empathy is a term for deep feeling. It means, “I feel what you feel. I can put myself in your shoes.” Another word with the same root, sympathy, means merely acknowledging someone else’s feelings. It results in kindness and pity, and it comes from the head. Empathy results in feeling the pain, or the joy, of the other person. It comes from the heart.

The fourth high flexibility attribute is positiveness. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking, has sold well for over forty years because it contains such a universal truth. A positive attitude leads to positive events in your life.

The fifth high flexibility characteristic is respect for others. This is the sincere desire to understand and consider other people’s choices, commitments and needs in relation to yours.

Just think of the successful individuals you have admired, both friends and public figures, and you will probably notice your list is full of people with high flexibility strengths.

Now let’s consider the five Low Flexibility traits:

• Rigidity

• Competition with others

• Discontent

• Being unapproachable

• Difficulty in dealing with ambiguity.

The first negative flexibility trait, rigidity, can be illustrated with the attitude: “It’s my way or the highway.” It can also come disguised in such sayings as: “That’s just the way it is,” or “Those are the rules,” or “That’ll never work.” Do those kinds of sayings ever come from your mouth?

Competition is the second low flexibility trait. Competition with others is fine—in sports, in contests for salesperson of the month or in the lottery. But generally, most of our days are spent in collaboration with others, people we work with, live with, and interact with in public. A person who lives his life in competition with everyone—and we all know someone like that—might be admired for his achievements, but he doesn’t get the freely given attention and support of others. A person who exudes the message that “I’m smarter, or prettier, or wealthier, or more committed than you are” doesn’t garner people’s trust. That’s because the message is clearly “Me first.”

The third negative flexibility trait is discontent. This is the opposite of positiveness. In more vernacular terms, a person with this trait is called a complainer, a whiner, a wet blanket. It’s easy to see why this person doesn’t get support.

Being unapproachable is the fourth negative flexibility trait. Nobody who wants to gain power and influence and with others would describe themselves as “unapproachable.” Yet sometimes we hear things like: “I’m sticking to my guns no matter what.” Or, “Don’t come to me with a problem if you don’t have a solution.” Or, “I’m only interested in what works.” The attitude behind those statements is: “Don’t bother me unless it’s worth my time and it corresponds to what I already believe.” Obviously, this attitude is not conducive to collaboration!

The last negative flexibility trait is difficulty in dealing with ambiguity. Because ambiguous situations can have several possible meanings, interpretations or outcomes, some people don’t like them. For these people, it has to be either/or, one way or the other. They get nervous in the face of the unknown. “Let’s nail this down.” “Let’s choose one now and go for it.” At times, that approach may be necessary. But rigid people always want to get closure on one meaning, one interpretation, one outcome, as early as possible. And often that approach leaves out the opinions and contributions of other people. It certainly leaves out the possibility of serendipity. On the other hand, people with a high tolerance for ambiguity create more options for good outcomes, including choices they couldn’t have predicted.

Now let’s look at the other half of the adaptability formula, versatility. Our research indicates that people have a better developed level of flexibility than versatility. Versatility requires a set of personal aptitudes. While many people are willing to modify their behaviors, they often lack the necessary set of abilities. Versatility is something we acquire over time through a variety of resources. These include formal education, daily life experiences, and observations of others who demonstrate high versatility behaviors. It generally means approaching every situation as a new opportunity for learning and growing.

The five high versatility traits are:

• Resilience

• Vision

• Attentiveness

• Competence

• Self-correction

As we look at them one by one, try to honestly assess how much of each ability you possess.

The first high versatility trait, resilience, means knowing how to overcome setbacks, barriers and limited resources. Mainly, it has to do with your emotional strength. The very successful Lawrence Kasdan, screenwriter of many hit films including Raiders of the Lost Ark, endured over 60 rejections before he finally sold first script.

Could you have persevered through dozens of turn-downs? How many cold calls can you make in a row that all turn out to be “No, thank you?” If you keep on going until you succeed, that’s resilience.

Vision is the second high versatility trait. I think it’s easy to see why someone who has the power to imagine, to be creative, to suggest alternatives, is going to be more influential than someone who can’t.

The third high versatility trait is attentiveness. That means being aware of elements in the environment. It can be as simple as noticing when someone is getting bored, or sensing that now’s not the right time to present your ideas. It is knowing when to act and when not to act. It means paying attention to more than your own needs.

The fourth high versatility trait is competence. Competence begins with expertise. It also involves a problem-solving ability that goes beyond your specialty. If you don’t know how to answer a question or fix a problem, you can find someone who does. It means having a can-do attitude and following through on it.

The fifth high versatility trait is self-correction. That means that once you initiate a project, you ask for feedback and place priority on problem-solving, not on being right. It means you’re able to see when you’ve developed a non-productive pattern in your behavior. It is being able to say: “I think this approach isn’t working. I’d better try something different.”

Again, the five high versatility traits are: resilience, vision, attentiveness, competence, and self-correction. Now let’s round out the picture with the five low versatility attributes: subjectiveness, bluntness, resistance, single-mindedness, and unreasonable risk-taking.

The first negative versatility trait is subjectiveness. That means seeing everything strictly from your own perspective. “This is the way it looks to ME.” And that’s the only way you can look at it. True versatility allows you to see things from other people’s perspectives. You may be willing to look at an issue from another perspective, but CAN you do it? In order to reduce your subjectiveness, practice with an issue that you feel strongly about. Can you really articulate the argument of someone on the opposite side?

The next negative versatility trait is bluntness. Evaluating someone’s idea by saying, “That’s stupid!” may be brief and to the point.

But it will cause hurt feelings and a lack of motivation. You can win a lot more people to your side by saying, “You know, this doesn’t look like it’s going to work. Let’s explore some other options that might work better and see if we can incorporate some of your ideas as well.” Developing your tact and verbal skills takes time. It is especially helpful to listen to the kinds of phrases that tactful people use: “Let me tell you how I see it,” “I know you’re feeling strongly about this and I can appreciate that,” “Let’s see if this fits for you.” Tactful people make sure their words don’t feel like assault weapons.

The next negative versatility trait is resistance. This generally means resistance to change. Obviously, we do not have to accept any and all changes that come down the pike. But every military general, every politician, every medical researcher knows you are dead in the water if you always stick to the “tried and true.” Breakthroughs happen when people try something new. If you catch yourself saying: “this is the way we’ve always done things around here,” think about it. What are you resisting?

A fourth negative versatility trait is single-mindedness. This is akin to tunnel-vision. It means you have one goal and a set way to achieve it, and nothing else matters. Single-mindedness means you can’t see that other people have goals too. Let’s recall our discussion of trying to inspire people with a larger vision of what you are seeking, where you help them to see how your plan will fill their needs too. Here is an example of single-mindedness: someone who loves birds so much that she will do anything to protect them. This includes wanting to set out poison for neighboring cats and squirrels. She does not find it in her interest to unite with other people to help all the animals live in a balanced ecosystem; she is only concerned about her beloved birds.

The final negative versatility trait is unreasonable risk-taking. If you want to go bungee-jumping and risk your life, that’s one thing. But when you are asking people to follow your lead, to go forward on your vision, you need to assess and take responsibility for the risk level that you are creating. How much did John DeLorean assess the risk that his investors were taking by giving him money for his new car company? In retrospect, he was very careless with their money. When you have high versatility, you are able to see a variety of avenues toward the success of your goal, and you choose those with the least amount of risk to those who follow you.

Only when you develop the willingness and the ability to adapt can you develop personal power with large numbers of people. You need flexibility and versatility.

In order to test your flexibility and versatility quotients, here’s a quiz. In the following p...