Last week I was delivering a session on having quality conversations, especially in stressful situations. Things like controlling your emotions and seeing things from someone else’s perspective, were discussed.
I loved covering this topic as I feel it is an easy one to forget. We have so many conversations each day, it’s easy to get caught out and revert to type.
Funnily enough, the next day I had a chance to put my teachings into practice myself!
We are in the process of moving my Mum from Grimsby to Bournemouth and, anyone that has been involved with buying and selling a house and being in a chain, will know this can be stressful. I received a call to say that the people selling the house, we are buying, were getting impatient and wanted to return our deposit and sell to a cash buyer, leaving my Mum potentially homeless.
As you can imagine the adrenalin hit my brain straight away, followed by the relevant emotions (anger). I stomped around the house telling everyone what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. As you can imagine this was unhelpful and got other people angry as well. Fortunately, I was only venting and eventually calmed down. I thought about a the situation. “How was I going to change their minds?”
Well first things first “Why were they getting impatient?” We were heading towards a 10 week completion date, which is not bad when you are in a chain. It didn’t make sense.
I had been given the information via a 3rd party so needed to check out, for myself, what was going on with the process and why people were getting impatient.
When I called the estate agent, it turns out that the various solicitors were not communicating effectively. They were all waiting for someone else to do something before doing their bit. It was a farce!
I could now understand the impatience and it put things into perspective for me – I would probably have acted in the same way. This is the problem with dealing with a variety of different people who only communicate certain things to certain people, no-one gets the full picture and everyone makes assumptions.
Unfortunately, this is real life, and it is often the case – we have loads of people to talk to. Things to arrange, projects to complete, targets to hit and it all needs great communication to be successful.
It’s even harder if the person is not in the same room, building or Country. That is why we need to pay attention to our communication, especially when the stress is rising and emotions get involved.
My personal opinion is that we need to be more compassionate and take into consideration what is happening with the people around us, it helps deal with differences and mis-communication.
Other ways to have a quality conversation are:
- Be interested, not interesting!
- Seek first to understand, before being understood
- Be curious
- Ask great questions
- Listen to speak
All very cheesy, but when did you last try them?