How To Help Another Person To Listen
Today, I'm going to help you become a better conveyor of what it is you want to convey.
Humans are social beings that have different levels of cognitive ability. Cognitive ability is all about memory, paying attention, and listening.
Helping others to understand is helping them to listen. In doing so it will help them to quicker understand what it is you're trying to tell them. And that's the whole point.
Unfortunately, many people think it's up to the one listening to figure out what it is you're trying to tell them.
To talk without a listener who understands is a 100% loss of time and energy
The reason why many don't focus on delivering the message effectively is because:
They are stressed
They are too focused
They are impatient
They think they are being clear when they aren't
But I'm here to tell you that it's way easier than you think.
Let's dive in.
1. It's all about your state of mind
The most important thing in becoming a great communicator is to make sure the receiver understands you.
If a receiver, a person, does not understand what you're trying to describe to them, you need to focus on helping them understand through empathizing.
By asking them to summarize what you have told them you steer them into becoming great listeners as I wrote about in "How To Listen and Your Brain"
That's your sole purpose when telling something to another person.
2. Design thinking is the same as effective communication
So what has design thinking to do with effective communication?
As you can see from the image above your main focus is to:
Empathize with the listener
Define what they missed in your message
Ideate – Think of a new way of describing what they misunderstood
Prototype – Make it clear in your head
Test your new message with the same information in a different way
As you can see by testing you create new ideas of how to retell the information in case they still don't understand.
In your subconscious, you will come up with new ways of telling the same information even before testing it on the person.
In some cases, when you test by retelling, you find that they understood the information and that you misunderstood what they did not understand.
3. Great communicators create a win-win scenario
Create a win-win scenario by:
Empathizing with the listener
Define the listener's problem
Ideate in your head a new version of the message
Prototype a new story to tell
Test your new story on the listener
By doing this with empathy, you instill trust and create long-term relationships, and they will reciprocate when the time comes.
I have done this in sales over 120,000 times with different customers over the phone, and they always feel safe and trust me afterward.
I also use this as a User Experience designer when describing a solution to stakeholders, as a scrum master helping developers solve their problems, or as a product owner or manager.
If you want to learn how to be a great listener then read my article "How To Listen and Your Brain"