Would you like to increase your ability to “Speak in Manner Others Can Hear”? The key skill is to start your crucial conversations with a factual observation, not a judgment.

You should observe facts about a situation that you want to discuss. Hopefully, you can state the facts in a way that the other person agrees with or can at least tolerate. Then you can proceed with the conversation. Sounds obvious? Then start noticing how often you and others start crucial conversations with a judgment:

- That idea is not sound.
- The project is proceeding too slowly.
- Joe always takes too long.
- Sally can’t delegate.
- Sam is a micro-manager.

What if the other person strongly disagrees with you? He/she is likely to get defensive and reactive. Defensive means they stop listening to you and start to focus on how to defend themselves or their colleague.

Reactive means they go further and become aggressive back at you. They point out how your view is wrong. Maybe they get annoyed or mad. Or they can become too passive and try to avoid you and the issue. If they are a direct report, it becomes all the harder to get their true opinion out in the open and to get their buy-in for your approach.

In other articles I have described how the brain has a part called the amygdala that responds when it sees a threatening situation developing. It instantly chooses to fight or flee. Neither choice works well in the office environment. One becomes too aggressive or passive.

Now, of course you want to avoid all this happening. Therefore, carefully craft your opening statement. In my Web-conferencing Virtual-Workshop, Leadership Communication™, participants practice this skill at length. Participants describe an upcoming crucial conversation, and we all help them craft their opening statement.

Here is one of the techniques we use. Talk as if you were a camera on the wall. All you can report is what you see or hear. For example, if someone says, “Rob, you were too aggressive!” We help them revise their statement to something like, “Rob, you walked up close to Sam and shook your finger at him. You spoke very loudly.” See how we transformed the judgment “aggressive” into factual statements?

Later on you can bring in your judgments if the other person is still dialoguing with you. Just don’t start with judgments, evaluations, or interpretations. In the beginning, stick to factual observations. That way you can get off to a good start.

Come join us for complimentary sessions of my Web-conferencing Virtual-Workshop series, Leadership Communication™, and see firsthand how you can improve your ability to Speak in Manner Others Can Hear. Call Bill Murray at 919-419-9460.