My two cents to communication
I’ve been thinking a lot about communication lately. I’ve been reading a lot about it, and I’ve been practicing it a lot. I’ve been trying to improve my communication skills, and I’ve been trying to understand how communication works.
It took me around 1 year to understand myself better. You can call this year 1 year of sabbatical, you can call it 1 year of having no work, you can call it 1 year of self-improvement, you can call it 1 year of self discovery.
I literally don’t care.
I just know that it took me 1 year, to build up myself. To become more confident and a lot of people helped me to reach this point. One year, to realise, one year to understand, one year to learn. I haven’t reached any of my goals for this year, yet I feel confident.
I feel confident, it’s still possible. 3 months left, to reach my goals.
So what am I even writing?
Yes, I write confusing, my brain jumps from topic to topic. Let’s streamline this blog post.
Mastering communication involves the steps of how to communication without communicating.
What does it mean? It’s so confusing, because you always communicate even when you try not to, have you thought of mimic, gestures, body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and the way you speak?
Yes you have, but have you thought about the way you think? The way you think about the other person, the way you think about the topic, the way you think about the situation?
So what do I mean by communication without communicating?
I like to nudge you to think of the very basic level of communication. I can only speak for myself, yet I think it’s having one current situation, having one piece of information, and then you have to think about what you want todo with this piece of information.
Simple right?
No, I guess not, there is lots more involved in this.
So what do I mean by communication without communicating?
I mean, you have to think about the situation, the person, the topic, the information, the way you want to communicate, the way you want to be perceived, the way you want to be understood, the way you want to be seen, the way you want to be heard, the way you want to be felt, the way you want to be thought of, the way you want to be remembered.
Super complicated right?
Yes, it is.
Is there a shortcut?
Yes there is, at least in my eyes and depending on the context of course.
The shortcut is to focus on simple, streamlined and clear communication.
Thinking in different industries, people come up with lot’s of different ideas how to solve a problem, yet it’s all similar in its core and the more you learn about different perspectives, the more similarities you will find.
So what is the shortcut?
- Talking in Given, When, Then. (GWT)
- Talking in Lage, Auftrag, Durchführung. (LAD)
- Talking in Situation, Task, Execution. (STE)
- Talking in Problem, Solution, Outcome. (PSO)
- Talking in Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation. (SBAR)
- Talking in Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. (OODA)
- Talking in Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. (DMAIC)
- Talking in Plan, Do, Check, Act. (PDCA)
- Talking in Detect, Analyze, Respond, Learn. (DARL)
Framework Talk
As you can see there are lots of frameworks out there, which you can use to communicate better. It all depends on your background and in which industries you are working in. Yet it all comes down to the same core.
I personally realised it through the GWT framework, which is used in software development. And today a friend told me about the LAD framework, which is used in the military.
So what is the point of this blog post?
There is no point, I just wanted to write about communication and how I see it. Thanks for reading. Bye!
PS: This streamlined way of communication is of course not applicable to all situations. “It depends” as the software developer would say. Find your own way, yet tonality and body language is key in communication among living creatures.
And knowledge sharing happens best in a streamlined way.
