A cure for conversational blind spots 바카라 배팅 전략
Three decades ago, I began my first experiment in Conversational Intelligence®. The corporation Union Carbide hired me to work with 17 high-powered sales executives in danger of losing a bid for a key contract. My job was to figure out how 바카라 배팅 전략 could raise their game and beat the other seven competitors.
For two weeks, I had them role play potential conversations with “customers” and charted what 바카라 배팅 전략 said. The patterns were clear: The executives used “telling statements” 85 percent of the time, leaving only 15 percent for questions. Additionally, almost all the questions 바카라 배팅 전략 asked were actually statements in disguise.
The exercise showed 바카라 배팅 전략 were talking and talking to bring their counterparts around to their point of view, all the time thinking 바카라 배팅 전략 were still conducting good, productive conversations. Having observed thousands of executives in similar, real-world situations—from prospecting to performance reviews, business development to innovation—this is a common problem.
Master 바카라 배팅 전략 natural impulses
People often think 바카라 배팅 전략’re talking to each other, when 바카라 배팅 전략’re really talking past each other. 바카라 배팅 전략 carry on monologues, not dialogues.
There’s a biological explanation for this. When we express ourselves, our bodies release a higher level of reward hormones. The more we talk, the better we feel.
Our bodies start to crave that high, blinding us to the conversational dynamics. While we’re being rewarded, the people we’re talking to might feel cut off, invisible, unimportant, minimized and rejected, which releases the same neurochemicals as physical pain.
Feeling rejection sends them into a fight-or-flight response and releases the corticosteroid hormone cortisol, which floods the system and shuts down the prefrontal cortex, or executive brain, letting the amygdala, or limbic brain, take over. To compound conversational challenges, the brain disconnects every 12 to 18 seconds to evaluate and process. This means we’re often paying as much attention to our own thoughts as we are to other people’s words.
These are natural impulses, but we have to learn to master them because clear, two-way, compassionate, non-judgmental communication is necessary in leadership. It’s how deals get done, projects get run and profits get earned.
Recognize 바카라 배팅 전략 blind spots
Stop assuming that others see what 바카라 배팅 전략 see, feel what 바카라 배팅 전략 feel and think what 바카라 배팅 전략 think. This is rarely the case. Your blind spots make 바카라 배팅 전략 fail to recognize that emotions, such as fear and distrust, change how 바카라 배팅 전략 and others interpret and talk about reality.
바카라 배팅 전략 think 바카라 배팅 전략 understand and remember what others say, when in reality 바카라 배팅 전략 only remember what 바카라 배팅 전략 thought about what they said. Don’t underestimate your propensity to have conversational blind spots.
Start paying attention to and minimizing the time 바카라 배팅 전략 “own” the conversational space. Share that space by asking open-ended discovery questions so 바카라 배팅 전략 stay curious. For example, 바카라 배팅 전략 might ask, “What influenced your thinking?” Then listen non-judgmentally to the answers and ask follow-up questions.
Through coaching, the Union Carbide sales team noticed when 바카라 배팅 전략 were making assumptions, interpreting incorrectly and jumping to conclusions. 바카라 배팅 전략 started asking discovery questions and paying close attention to their customers’ answers, which expanded their frame of reference and gave them new insights into needs and opportunities. The executives presented themselves as conversationally intelligent partners, not sales people—and 바카라 배팅 전략 won the contract!
Don’t get hooked on being right
When 바카라 배팅 전략’re in a tense meeting trying to defend your position on a big project and start to feel yourself losing ground, your voice gets louder. 바카라 배팅 전략 talk over one of your colleagues and correct his point of view. He pushes back, so 바카라 배팅 전략 try to convince everyone 바카라 배팅 전략’re right.
It feels like an out-of-body experience—and in many ways it is. In terms of its neurochemistry, 바카라 배팅 전략 brain has been hijacked.
In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building and compassion shut down. The amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over.
The body makes a chemical choice about how to protect itself. In this case, it wants to protect us from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong. As a result, we are unable to regulate our emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality.
We default to one of four responses:
Fight—keep arguing the point
Flight—revert to and hide behind group consensus
Freeze—disengage from the argument by shutting up
Appease—make nice with 바카라 배팅 전략 adversary by simply agreeing with him
These harmful responses prevent honest and productive sharing of information and opinion. I find that the fight response is by far the most damaging to relationships. Unfortunately, it is also the most common, partly due to another neurochemical process.
Break the pattern
When 바카라 배팅 전략 argue and win, your brain floods with different neurochemicals—adrenaline and dopamine, making 바카라 배팅 전략 feel good, dominant and even invincible. It’s a feeling that we want to replicate. So the next time we’re in a tense situation, we fight again and become addicted to being right.
Many successful leaders suffer from this addiction. 바카라 배팅 전략 are skilled at fighting for their point of view, which is often right. However, 바카라 배팅 전략 are unaware of the dampening impact their behavior has on the people around them.
If one person is getting high off his or her dominance, others are getting drummed into submission, experiencing the fight, flight, freeze or appease response, which diminishes collaborative impulses.
Fortunately, there’s a hormone that can feel just as good as adrenaline: oxytocin. Activated by human connection, it opens up the networks in our executive brain, increasing our ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. 바카라 배팅 전략 goal as a leader should be to spur the production of oxytocin in yourself and others, while avoiding those spikes of cortisol and adrenaline.
Three exercises to try today
Here are three exercises to do at work to cure 바카라 배팅 전략 addiction to being right:
- Set rules of engagement. If 바카라 배팅 전략 go into a meeting that could get testy, start by outlining rules of engagement. Have everyone suggest ways to make it a productive, inclusive conversation and write the ideas down for everyone to see. For example, 바카라 배팅 전략 might agree to give people extra time to explain their ideas and to listen without judgment. These practices will counteract the tendency to fall into harmful conversational patterns. Afterwards, consider how 바카라 배팅 전략 and the group did and seek to do even better next time.
- Listen with compassion. In one-on-one conversations, make a conscious effort to speak less and listen more. The more 바카라 배팅 전략 learn about other peoples’ perspectives, the more likely 바카라 배팅 전략 are to feel compassion for them. And when 바카라 배팅 전략 do that for others, they’ll want to do it for 바카라 배팅 전략, creating a virtuous circle.
- Plan who speaks. In situations when 바카라 배팅 전략 know one person is likely to dominate a group, create an opportunity for everyone to speak. Ask all parties to identify who in the room has important information, perspectives or ideas to share. List them and the areas they should speak about on a flip chart and use that as your agenda, opening the floor to different speakers, asking open-ended questions and taking notes.
Connecting and bonding with others trumps conflict. I’ve found that even the best fighters—the proverbial smartest guys in the room—can break their addiction to being right by getting hooked on oxytocin-inducing behavior instead.