Gregg Oliver
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Why don't we speak up?
In my classes on Influence, we learn to identify 1) key behaviors that are at the heart of creating change and 2) “recovery behaviors” that represent what to do when things aren’t working as expected. Two generic recovery behaviors are 1) speaking up, and 2) training. It sounds easy; when a process isn’t working as expected, we need to speak up.
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Openness
The elements of the engagement stance (Presence, Engagement, Empathy, Openness, Curiosity, Depth, Safety, and Collaboration) are so vital to good communication that I will post articles about all of them over the coming weeks. These eight points are the keys to the kingdom, and if you master nothing else but these, you will be amazed at the improvement in your communication. I covered Curiosity already, so I will look at a Presence this time.
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Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. It is therefore the essence of connection in communication.
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Authenticity
All of the components of the engagement stance are important, but if you miss out on authenticity, you will have a hard time establishing credibility. When someone you speak with lacks authenticity, it feels manipulative, even if there is no evidence of manipulation.
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Safety and Trust
There have been many times in our lives when we have wanted to say something, but elected not to. Afterwards, we may wish we had and ponder why we didn’t. Sometimes, we remember when we said something and wish we hadn’t, or a time when we blurted something that was harsher than we meant it to be, or the other person was offended even though we were “diplomatic”. We feel like the other party will get mad. Or we don’t feel like it will help. Or we feel that the other person won’t understand. Or we feel they will say something that we don’t want to deal with.
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Conducting a Critical Discussion
For the last few weeks, I have elaborated on the elements of attitude that provide the best point of view from which to approach a discussion. Studying these elements and learning how to incorporate them authentically into your communication will help you remain collaborative and avoid falling into the advocacy trap. More on this in upcoming weeks. Now it's time to look at some of the elements critical to conducting the discussion.
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Advocacy
In communication, the single largest difficulty for nearly everyone comes when a critical discussion transforms from the logical "give and take" that I described in my last newsletter into something less productive. Two familiar forms of this are Advocacy and Defensiveness. I will talk about Advocacy today.
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Defensiveness
Last time I wrote about Advocacy as an impediment to the logical give and take that distinguishes collaboration. I characterized it as a learned behavior, and one that can be partially or fully managed by a skilled communicator that recognizes it and knows how to steer a group around it. I also mentioned another impediment - Defensiveness. That is the subject this week.
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The Debates
If you have taken any classes thorough Pathfinder, you may remember me saying that this is the season for rhetoric and persuasive speech. As we enter the last 40 days before the election, things will reach a pitch. It will be fun to see what you remember from class. For instance: · Can you restate the controversies in one to three simple sentences? · To what issues would the topoi lead us in the various controversies? (example - for a claim of fact, the topoi would suggest the questions "How would we know if it is true?" and " Have those conditions been met?")
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