Keith E Rice - Communication Skills

- the Integrated SocioPsychology Approach

Some people think they are good communicators. And some people are really great communicators. However, a great many of those the 'good communicators' deal with might well wish they could tell them they are not such good communicators as they think! (The fact they don’t tell them also informs you of something about themselves and/or their relationship with the ‘communicator(s)’.)

Just think of how many disagreements and rows are caused by miscommunication and misunderstanding. Friendships have come to grief, marriages been ruined, work relationships soured, sales orders lost, production disrupted, accidents caused, etc, etc, as a result of poor and/or ineffective communication. Even wars have resulted from it! (Miscommunication was a thread weaving through the series of blunders which dragged Europe in to the horrors of the First World War; while the Argentinean government's misunderstanding of the British government's intentions in the South Atlantic led it into the disastrous decision to invade the Falkland Islands in 1982.)

Effective communication is one of the most difficult aspects of human interrelationships to get right. Why?

The prime reason is that we carry maps of reality in our heads - a fact first realised through the work of Edward C Tolman (1932) and Alfred Korzybski (1931), the latter famously saying: "The map is not the territory". In other words, the map of reality is not actually the reality itself but a representation of it - more or less accurate. The formation of our maps can be influenced by any number of factors - including temperament, the ebb and flow of vMEMES in our vMEME Stack, the existing schemas we have and the frames of reference we apply in our meta-stating process.

The result of which is that people carry different maps of the territory (reality) in their heads. Sometimes those maps can be very different to the maps others carry in their heads about the same thing. Even when the maps are fairly similar, even small differences can lead to devastating miscommunication. As an analogy, would you want to fly on an aeroplane where the pilot and air traffic control were even 5% in disagreement about how the plane should approach and land…?

Therefore, any course which aims to improve communication skills, has to start with at least a basic understanding how we take in information and how we give it out – how our maps are formed and how they influence our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. To become a really skilled communicator involves understanding what motivates people and how to communicate in terms of what’s important to them.

Day 1
The aim of this session is to understand how and why communication goes wrong and to provide some ideas as to what you can do about it

Content:-

# The message received is more important than the message sent
A look at how we make sense of the information we take in and the role our perceptual filters play in those processes. Includes the part emotional memory plays in the processing of information.

The sense we make of others’ communications is often not what they intended. Thus, there is a responsibility on both ‘transmitter’ and ‘receiver’ to maximise the likelihood of accurate reception.

# How we communicate
In person, with speech and body language. Via sound only – wireless, telephone. By the written word (including texting and e-mail.)

The mechanisms involved in each mode of communication and the problems and pitfalls associated with each mode.

# How to be a better ‘receiver’

Tips for reading body language, sensing from vocal tone, listening actively and ‘reading between the lines’.

# Tips for being a better ‘transmitter’

Strategies for maximising the likelihood of your transmission being received the way you intended it to be.

This section is based in large part on the NLP concept of Present State-Desired State.

Day 2

The aim of this session is to enhance your ability to ‘read between the lines’, realise what is really important to the people you are communicating with and use that to improve communication.

Content:-

# Realising the power of ideas
Investigating the world of memetics – the transmission of ideas (memes) as ‘mind viruses’.

This section looks at how to work with someone’s existing schemas (internalised ideas) to make them more favourable to your memes.

# vMEMES – the core of motivation

If we want to get someone to do something, then we need to understand why they would do it. What would motivate them. That requires an understanding of vMEMES, the powerful neurological systems which lead us to have different motivations in different circumstances.

# How we form maps - and why yours is different to mine
Here we consider the many factors which influence the formation of our maps - from our biology to our values - and apply some simple tests to find which ones apply to you!

# The effective communicator

In this section we consider the characteristics of the effective communicator and how to get the best out of the people you have to deal with.

Also includes strategies to recover relationships when communication goes wrong.

As with all my training, the workshops are highly interactive and we aim to have fun as a means of strengthening the learning. The sessions include games, role play, case studies and assessments of communication styles alongside the more formal learning activities.