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TTC - Effective Communication

1. Effective communication involves getting the desired result from an interaction, being understood as intended, and having all parties feel satisfied with the exchange. 2. People generally see communication as simple and automatic, based on a cultural model of exchanging information, but it can become complex with differences, disagreements, or disruptions. 3. When communication breaks down, people tend to blame external factors and the other person rather than considering how they may have contributed to the problem. This self-serving bias and desire to maintain an illusion of control and competence makes improving communication skills challenging.

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218 views10 pages

TTC - Effective Communication

1. Effective communication involves getting the desired result from an interaction, being understood as intended, and having all parties feel satisfied with the exchange. 2. People generally see communication as simple and automatic, based on a cultural model of exchanging information, but it can become complex with differences, disagreements, or disruptions. 3. When communication breaks down, people tend to blame external factors and the other person rather than considering how they may have contributed to the problem. This self-serving bias and desire to maintain an illusion of control and competence makes improving communication skills challenging.

Uploaded by

Daniyal Qureshi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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TTC Effective

Communication
Skills
LECTURE NOTES
Lecture 01: Magic of Everyday Communication
What is communication?

Why do we need to communicate?
 As humans, we need to sustain relationships with others in order to get
what we think we need and want from life.
 To do this, we use a collection of behaviors described as communication
skills.
 Although we use them every day in our lives, we are often unaware of how
they develop and function
Communication & Effective Communication
Face-to-Face Talk
 Everyone knows how to talk, and we talk endlessly and generally it works
 We talk and assume
 The other person will get what we need and what we mean
 So we speak in gestures and the other respond in certain ways
 and we think that we’ve been effective from our point of view
a) The ability to talk isn’t like magic?
 We can accomplish so much in our daily lives just by talking
b) Situations where Magic doesn’t work
 There are situations where magic doesn’t seem to work, our
interactions don’t give us what we want
 When you are resisting other’s attempt to get something you don’t
want to give
 Make your beloved see something from your prospective
 They don’t seem to understand / care
 To be cool when the others are angry / complaining / frighten /
demanding / demeaning
 Here
 We can’t find the words to say
 We get confused / unclear / upset / wanting
 We say wrong things so we can’t get what we want
 Here our talk, that was so effortlessly now becomes complicated and
difficult
 Result
 Our talk fails us, and communication breaks down
 Challenge us emotionally
 Effects our sense of competence and effectiveness
 Talk still a magic?
 No
 Fact
 It isn’t
 It is a skill, we can learn and get better at it
c) What is there in these situations?
 These situations involve these 3 D’s
 Differences (behavior / beliefs / opinions / values)
 We can’t understand immediately these differences
 These things suddenly emerge when we think we are
talking to people like us
 Disagreements
 Differences have hardened into positions about
 How to think about something or what to do
 We can’t find our way around their positions and reach a
proper agreement on the situation
 Disorder
 Other people say things that seems out of place / inappropriate
 3 D’s emerge and just undermine our sense of the ease and
simplicity of talk
 How
 They stimulate the negative emotions attached to
 Unpredictability
 Threat
 Surprise
 Fear
 Why
 When we talk to others, we have positive picture in our mind
and yearn for good information
d) What is Good Information?
 Relevant
 When people say things to us instead of following us what we said
 Truthful
 Speaking their minds honestly
 Clear
 Speaking in a way we can understand
 When we talk to others, we make automatic predictions about others
 We don’t want to work hard to understand them and ourselves
when it comes to everyday talk
 We need this good information, so we don’t have to work
 when we do have to
make conscious
choices, we need
good information to
feel normal / effective
in the moment when
we have to choose
e) How is the talk
complex?
 Example:
 A stranger asks you
for direction
 What do you do?
 Picture / Image (reality) in our mind that we want to communicate
 Collect verbal symbols (words)
 Ignoring multiple arbitrary meanings of words
 Assemble words into recognizable order/structure (sentences),
nongraphical in nature, to communicate this graphical image
 Speak along with nonverbal gestures
 Gestures
 Intentional (hands), we can control these
 Unintentional (facial movements, tonal qualities of voice),
no control
 Information flies trough air in a situation / context
 where we assume there are no distractions from external sources
 We believe the other will
 physically hear and see everything we said
 Stay mentally focused (pay attention) through the entire message
 Decode / translate non graphically message correctly
 Will pick our meanings, not theirs (from the archives of
meaning based on their experiences)
 will avoid distractions
 Internal thoughts / feelings / beliefs of their own
 Finally give us feedback that they did understand our message

 What are the chances of effectiveness?


 Not great
1. What is Effectiveness in communication?
 Effectiveness in communication is: (3 things)
 We got what we wanted
 A moment of positive emotional connection
 Some kind of tangible results
 We’ve been understood from our point of view
 The other got exactly what we said
 The other seems fine with the exchange
 No indication of uncertainty, frustration, fear or anger at their part
2. Why do we share a model of talk that is simple or based on
simple exchange?
 It’s part of our cultural learning based on deep cultural philosophical
tradition
 The rhetoric (Aristotle)
 Art of persuasion
 art of using language effectively (written / spoken) to influence
/ persuade people
 The right words spoken at the right time in the right way
for the right audience will change them in predictable
ways
 Purpose = getting other people to change even though they may
resist
 We think talk is in instinctual gift and automatic
 Why
 Because our lives are so well structured, and our social situations
are deeply regular and patterned
 Driving = at the beginning and at the expert mode = automatic
 Same is talking, we’ve been doing since we learned to talk, so
automatic
 The other say: the talk is kind of a game
 They think that talk is a kind of cultural model and it looks like a lot of
games we play
 Tennis Game
 We throw the ball over the net, we force the other to change
according to our predictable ways
3. Our sense of SELF in talk
a) What do we think about ourselves when we talk?
 We are perfect and never blame ourselves
 When others don’t get our message
 The problem lies with them
 They’re not getting our message; we get it so that’s why
we said it
 It is there problem
 We threw the ball over the net……. It is their fault if they
can’t reach to get it, if they can’t return it
 Example:
 You’re in a conversation
 You’ve told somebody something as clearly as possible, but
they don’t get it
 Now you will tell them again
 This time, more slowly / intensely / loudly, but they still don’t
get it
 What is first question that comes into your mind?
 What’s wrong with them? They still didn’t get it
 Or we don’t get is the reason for the problem
f) Self-sealing belief by Chris Argyris (1923 – 2013)
 We don’t have to learn new things about ourselves in a communication
every time there is a problem, because we can automatically go for any
denial of responsibility
 It’s their fault, not ours
 Neuroscientists say
 Our brain seems to be hardwired to reinforce we are the best /
perfect
 I’m a very comfortable communicator: A natural response
 A Neuropsychologist in her book “A mind of its own” by Cordelia
Fine says
 When asked we say
 We’re more honest and better motivated employees.
 We are better driver than the average people
 Even we just had the accident and lying in ICU
g) Social Psychologist (Self-serving Bias)
 We never consider ourselves at the bottom in every dimension of
general behavior
h) Vain Brain
 It excuses our faults and failures and keeps us blind
 Proud (Being proud you can never see your flaws, instead you see
them as qualities)
 Vain Brain sets us above all others
 When things go well, we take full credit and
 when don’t
 we blame circumstances
 Student (success…………. Worked hard man……
fail……….. Teacher / board / university…………………)
 We devalue the things we don’t get
 Grapes are sour (Fox & Grapes)
 It isn’t worth our effort
 Vain brain also reinforces our cultural model of what to do when our
talk is challenged
 We start debating, we assume that talk here is a fight and we have
to win no matter what
 We start from the point that we only have the right answer
 And if we don’t have it, we will get it by proving the others wrong
 we listen to find flaws in the other arguments, and we build
counter arguments by defending our assumptions as objective facts
/ truths
 Why?
 because we know we are right on this and we know we are right,
we are way better than average
 3 Idiots (Success)
 Counsel (impose)
 Vain brain allows us to gain and keep illusion of control in our life
 Experiment: A light switch might control the bulb in a lab
 Fact = the bulb goes on / off at random
 The more people whose pressing synchronized with the
bulb, the more they believed that they controlled it
Summary
 Cultural learning tells us that
 Talk is about words (not more than that and its simple)
 Talk is influential Getting what we want
 Saying the right words at the right time (convincing other people to
change the way we want them to)
 A game: batting the words back and forth
 A contest: if someone disagrees with us
 We are better than average, when our thoughts are challenged when
consider ourselves right
 If they don’t get it’s their problem not ours
 Fact is
 To get better at talk we need to learn / know more and blame far
less when we are dealing with difficult situations
 Getting better at talk is challenging but not impossible
 We have to learn to speak more consciously in ways that prevents our
hardwired overconfidence and natural responses from taking over to
make things worse
 Learn
 to speak so that people will listen to you more openly
 To listen so that people will speak to you more openly
 So you can get good information when faced by life disagreements and
disorder

THE END (Lecture 01)


Lecture 02: The Complex Layers of F2F talk

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