Page 289 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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Interpersonal Effectiveness | 277

• The use of constructive language is important in interpersonal
effectiveness.There are three no-nonsense tips for people to follow.
First, avoid questionsthat start with the word ‘why’. The reason for this
is that questions startingwith ‘why’ often put people on the defensive.
Typically, these are questionsfor justification, not clarification.
Second, avoid the words ‘yes’ and but’. It isbetter to replace the word
‘but’ with ‘if’, ‘and’, or nothing at all. And thirdly, it is no use saying
‘I disagree’, because you then enter yourself into anunnecessary debate
or discussion. Of course, you are entitled to disagree, buta much better
approach is to change how you formulate your words.
• It is important to appreciate the other person, not despite her or his
differences, but because of them; and to understand differences and
where they come from. There’s nothing more unequal as treating
different people equally and you have to understand that different
people will work in different ways. It is also about really listening to
the other person in order to better understand her or him. And it is
about creating environment for people where they have the freedom
to be themselves; it is to do with realizing that we need to avoid the
temptation of turning the other person into a copy of us. It is about
enabling people to excel and accepting that they achieve excellent
results in different ways.
• Another important element is being able to understand the com-
plexity of the communication processes. The biggest problem with
communication is the illusion that it has already been accomplished.
Hence, it is much better to start from the conviction that when you
communicate you are misunderstanding and you are being misun-
derstood. When you start from this you become much more focused
on checking your understanding, and you give the other person the
true feeling that she or he is being understood - and that helps in
relationships with people.
• You need to learn how to deal with resistance to change and have a
constructive attitude when looking at problems and making sugges-
tions for improvements. If you try to force people in their ways of
working you are basically making them work against the grain, and
nobody is effective when doing this. Another point is about embracing
conflict and seeing conflict as a source of energy. There are many posi-
tive outcomes of conflict and so it is not about avoiding conflict but
about embracing it. Finally, it is about being obsessed with learning -
learning about you and learning about others. Relentless self-renewal
is critical.

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