Kris Krohn here today on Limitless TV and I've got Marianne DeNovellis our
guest mentor joining us again. We're having a conversation about how to amp
up your communication skills.
Improving communication. Improving communication. Improving communication.
That was weird communication right? like So Marianne, so excited to have
you here to talk with us today about what we can do to drop some gold nuggets
on us about what you've witnessed, I mean you're the ultimate breakthrough coach
the marriage coach, you're always in this conversation of communication. And today
we want to learn from you about what we can do to upgrade our communication
skills. First of all I want to know how do you know that your communication
skills need to be upgraded? Do you constantly find yourself, oh people don't
understand what I say or maybe you're a parent or a mentor and in some way shape
or form you need to give instructions or communications and maybe you're finding
that no one follows the directions that you give. That's a clue that you need to
improve your communication. It's amazing how many people are out there he's had a
friend over here last night at my house we were doing a breakthrough group and
and the breakthrough that she was working on was hearing herself. Seeing
herself, validating herself, and when we don't have a good relationship with our
highest and best selves it often expresses itself in communication errors
with our with the rest of the people in our world. Totally happens all the time.
So the question is, how do we upgrade our communication? Now that we've identified
that that's what it is that needs to be upgraded, how do we upgrade our
communication? The first thing is this, so many times people will be in a
conversation just like you and I are in and they will be hooked and
they're wanting to be interrupts and they want to just they listen to speak
rather to listen to understand. Wow that's interesting because I often feel
like I've got a lot of important things to say and I'll be honest that sometimes
I'm actually listening not to understand but I'm often listening because I just
want to know one of my wins at my turn what am I going to say next and it's
such a one-sided disconnected conversation than the other times what
I've witnessed that, oh actually I don't know if I have something to share but I
definitely want to understand you so I'm listening. Yeah and you'll see people
have heard this old adage like you have two years and one mouth use them
accordingly. When you listen to understand rather than listening for
waiting for your chance to speak, you will learn so much more about what
actually needs to be conveyed. But I think there's truth
in the opposite. There's a lot of doormats out there that they're acting
like they got 20 years and no mouth. Meaning they're just always listening
and they're never taking a stand to share their opinion or how they feel
about something. Often it's because they either discount themselves or they feel
like maybe their values not up to par with the other person and so it's like
the pendulum swings in I can't wait to talk over you and then on the other side
it's like, I don't have anything valuable to say. Right and either way it's totally
one-sided either way it's all about one person or the other. And I've often heard
this, if I agree with another person 100 percent of the time then there's
something wrong. Right? there's so much value in disagreeing actually. Well
actually I want to hear that what do you mean there's value and disagreement? I
mean isn't the purpose of communication to always get on the same sheet of music?
You could take it that way but if that's that's the confusion between balance and
harmony. Balance is saying one is higher than the other, one is more valuable than
the other and one has to be down another for another one to be up. That's the
mistake people make with balance. With harmony you're talking about the same
sheet of music. With harmony you can have hundreds of instruments playing at the
same time and it creates beautiful music. you could have so many different things
going on. So many, trombone does not play the same notes as a piano they're
not agreeing, they're harmonizing and coming together in a different way. So
you're saying that if you're having a conversation with a client and you're
trying to both maybe persuade them to do something or you're inviting them to do
something that you want, how do you reconcile then what happens when the
conversation doesn't go your way and the person has a different opinion that
maybe it's valid or maybe it's hard to see that it's valid because it's not
your opinion. Like how do you deal with life in that situation? This is one of my
favorite conversations to have because I used to be awful at this. I have a very
leader warrior get her done, get out of my way energy and that I can get in
the way of progress sometimes. As odd as that sounds, wanting to make so much
progress can actually block me from making it when I ignore others. So here's
my favorite question to ask, if I feel I have a strong opinion or a new idea or
something that I want implemented I'll share the idea and then I'll ask this
question, what are your thoughts? That opens up there's so many new ways of
thinking.
Wow and it actually sounds like you're creating safety for
the other person to say, hey maybe you think maybe you agree with me maybe you
disagree with me but there's an energy though that says and it's either
way. I love this idea it's almost like it comes down to respect right? It's this
conversation of it's okay if we think different, it's okay if we want to do
something different, it's even okay if our goals are
different because it seems like if respect comes before a mutual outcome
that that whether we get on the same page or not we can be okay with each
other as opposed I think in my life I've often in aired in the communication of I
need people to think like I think where I want people to be on the same page or
or or we're gathering people to have a like-minded group set out to do
something and you're right that can close a lot of slab actually a lot of
doors in people's faces.
Totally and especially in relationships
like marriages. If I'm in a relationship with my spouse and I say this is the way
it has to be done you don't get to have an opinion you don't get to say anything
different then it could actually harm both of us but if I'm in my my
conversation with my spouse and I asked that same question what are your
thoughts and half the time that happens the personal response was something
that's actually valuable to what we're trying to accomplish in the endgame
anyway. If our friends are watching this because they want to improve their
communication skills then the question is blind spots.
Blind spots. How do we identify them first of all and how do we overcome them?
Blind spots and let's just first identify what they really are. Blind
spots is if you've got point a and point B and you're looking to traverse the
space in between, there are things that you don't know. That's kind of scary. But
more importantly that you don't know that you don't know them. Yeah like I'm
thinking of like an obstacle course and being blindfolded and trying to get from
point A to point B and it's like, Oh things that I'm blind to? that seems kind
of dangerous. And there's a difference between things that you know
that you don't know for example, I know that I don't know how to fly an airplane.
I know that I don't know that but there are things that I don't know that I
don't know and that's the most dangerous information at all. But I don't know that
I don't know. And it seems like the one of the biggest blind spots might be do
you really know the person in front of you that you're communicating with? Do
you really understand their fears and their hopes and their dreams?
Do you understand what kind of day they're having? do you understand the
recent events in their life? do you understand that if six months have
passed you probably don't know this person because we're evolving and
changing and that can be often be a big blind spot is we we act as if we assume
we understand the other person once you often we're really not on the same page.
Yeah and the best way to get rid of those blind spots and that's the
question, is how do we uncover the blind spots and see not just our perception
but the actual truth of what's in front of us? And you said it perfectly. We
really don't know and think about how often your body replaces its own brain
and some skin cell whose own bone cell every six months they say that we're
entirely different human being cellular structure wise. And on top of that all
the experiences you had really you are a completely different person and for me
to assume that I know everything in your world is really the biggest blind spot
of all. So my question when I ask this person is, what is your experience? I'm
gonna dig deep. The number one most interesting topic to anyone in the whole
world no matter of race religion color experience whatever, the number one most
interesting topic is this, me. That means your most changing topic is you. So I
want to know what you're interested in. I want to know what you're and what your
topic is. I want to know what you're interested in so that I can be
interested in it so that my blind spots are totally uncovered. Wow that is really
really powerful nugget. So there's three really big things I've gotten out of the
day so far. The first one is listening to understand as instead of listening to
speak. And then the second idea that you've presented that I think is really
brilliant is this concept of respect. Which is, it's okay to celebrate each
other's differences and we can harmonize with each other even if we're playing
different music notes and different instruments but this third idea is super
super intriguing to me. This idea that if I'm more interested in getting to know
the person across the table the one I'm having a conversation with, that we're
gonna create more common ground in commonality and probably give us the
highest likelihood of seeing it whether we can be on the same sheet of music or
not. Like it's by caring about them. Yeah it's actually seeing them for who they
are. Seeing what some valuable to them seeing what's important to them and that
way you can understand okay is this a team where we get to work together or do
we get to play a different game?
Wow Marianne if you were to drop one final
nugget on us when it comes to these advanced communication skills from all
of your life experience marriage working with couples working with people helping
them step into their power, is there any final advice that you'd give us on on
how to be a more powerful and effective communicator? Absolutely one of my
favorite nuggets is this and I could write books on this but I'm gonna give
you the sweetened condensed version right now. We have a hundred words that
come out of our mouth for every 450 that go on in our brain and let's say only
7% of our communication is actually with our words. The rest is in our body
language. It's in our tone. It's in our energy. It's how our body shows up. So if
you're communicating someone you really want to know what's on their mind, listen
to all of the music. Listen to the body language. Listen to the tone of their
voice and of course listen to their words but be aware that everything
they're trying to say can only come out as a small percent of the entire message.
Wow it's like do we even really understand who we are? we have agendas, we
think we know it's best and in the end, the best we can do is offer invitations
and do our best to see and understand people for who they are. Absolutely.
Marianne thank you so much for sharing today really appreciate that hopefully
friends this has been hyper useful for you on your uping your communication
game.
Marianne thank you so much for joining today. I love having you on the
channel. I love getting your insights. You know you've gotten such powerful results
in your life and you continue to do so and just know that I think you've
dropped some precious nuggets on us today that we can all take into our
lives when it comes to amping up our communication skills game. Make sure that
you subscribe and Marriane do you have a final message for our viewers today?
Totally. Always remember that communication is two ways. Be an active
participant in your communication. There's so much gold to find on the
other side. Awesome. My friends live an awesome incredible limitless life and
we'll see you in the next.