Hi, I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins. I'm here today to share with you the strangely simple pattern
for effective communication. I'll cover the 5 strategies and then I'll give you a special
gift that's going to make it a whole lot easier.
To understand these strategies you first need to know just a little bit about how
your brain works. I'm a professional psychologist and I've learned a lot about brain science and
brain physiology. Your brain is equipped with something that we call the fight or flight
mechanism. This is simply the way your brain is trying to take care of you and that's one
of its main jobs to keep you safe and to take care of you so that you can live and breathe
another day. Because of that, anytime your brain picks up on a threat of any kind it will kick
you into the fight-or-flight response. This is a chemical response triggered by your brain
where different chemicals like like adrenaline and cortisol and other neurotransmitters
are secreted right into your bloodstream to prepare your body to do one of those two things
fight or get the heck out of there, fight or flight. That's how you're going to say stay. That's how
you're going to stay safe if you're being attacked by a bear. Picture that for a minute, you're walking
along just enjoying the weather suddenly a big angry bear comes out from behind a tree.
Wants to rip your face off. Notice what would happen to your heart? It would start beating
really fast. Your breathing would get rapidly shallow because your body is experiencing that
chemical reaction that puts you into the fight or flight response. You either need to fight the bear
put up your dukes or get out of there as fast as you can. Fight or flight, it makes sense right? Your
brain's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. This is important to understand as we get into our
communication strategies. Here's strategy number one, don't be a bear. What I mean is
coming into a conversation or communication with another person. If you are snarling and
ready to rip their face off. What are you gonna trigger in them? The fight-or-flight response.
It's the way their brain is designed as well. So, if you're coming at it with any level of hostility or
accusation or snarling whatever that means for you. That's going to shut down the communication
very quickly as they go into their fight or flight response. You'll usually see that this is happening
if they become defensive or resistant or if they're trying to dodge it or get out of the
way or if they're fighting back. That'll be a sure fire sign that they're seeing you as a bear.
Don't be a bear. Strategy number two, don't see a bear even if they are coming at you
snarling and ready to rip your face off. You'll naturally have that fight or flight reaction
If you feel like someone is attacking you. In communication that's what gets in the
way most often and you'll find yourself becoming defensive. Now, you don't control how they show up.
You with me on that? It's not up to you whether they're snarling or not.
It's up to you whether you see a bear or not. It's kind of funny because one of my clients
is a veterinary hospital in British Columbia and we were doing training with the whole
hospital staff on this communication model and I shared with him, "Don't be a bear", and everybody
got that and I said, "Don't see a bear", and there were snickers all throughout the whole room.
People are just kind of chuckling about this and I'm like, what? "Dr. Paul, we actually see bears",
this is in British Columbia and they actually treat bears in their hospital. But what if we could take
a position where we don't see bears in the people that we're interacting with and communicating with.
How you perceive them is up to you. Here's a little hack that might make that easier. Hurt people...
Think that through, hurt people, people who are injured or hurting. Hurt people sometimes show
up like a bear. You don't have to see a bear. You could see a person who's hurt or a person who's
frustrated or a person who is struggling with some issue in their own life. It's not even about you.
But they're snarling a little bit because of their own pain. Would that change how you see them?
You don't have to see a bear. So, that's strategy number two, don't see a bear. Are you finding this
helpful? If you're trying to take some notes don't worry I've done the work for you. I've put together
the five strategies right here starting with don't be a bear, don't see a bear,
we'll get to the other three in just a minute. If you want a copy of this list just go to the URL
that's on the screen and put this together for you for free just go grab it drpauljenkins.com/communication.
That'll be your communication cheat sheet. You're welcome. Now,
let's get to number three to understand the next three strategies we have to understand
a little bit about the basic communication model. Now, in every communication, there's a sender and a
receiver. So, the message originates over here with the sender and it goes over here to the receiver.
This is true in radio and television. It's true in a conversation with your spouse or your child.
Sender, receiver. Before the sender can send the message over they have to encode that message.
Usually, encoding happens with language like english for example. I'm encoding all of this in
English. Yeah, isn't that clever? Because I know English. Now, we could use a different language
that's a whole different code. Codes also include body language and facial expressions. That's why
we went over don't be a bear and don't see a bear first, that's all part of the encoding. Once it gets
encoded over here on the sender side it has to be decoded over here on the receiver side and before
it can even get decoded on this side it has to go through this whole cloud of noise in the middle.
Noises anything that interferes with the signal from the sender to the receiver and
it could be physical noise like a jackhammer or a backhoe working in your cul-de-sac or whatever.
It could also be mental noise. Have you ever been in that conversation with someone where
you can tell there's a whole lot of noise in their head? Because the lights are on but nobody's home?
You can tell they're thinking about something completely different from what you're discussing.
That's noise. Also, culture and gender and tradition and thought patterns and experiences, all of those
things can contribute to the noise that happens in between. With everything that could go wrong it's
amazing that we can contribute at all. So, if the sender's message is A after the encoding and the
noise that it passes through and the decoding. By the time it gets to the receiver it looks like B
instead of A. Our goal is to make sure that A equals A, so that what is received is what was
sent. That's when true communication is happening. So, let's go to strategy number three, eliminate
the noise or at least reduce it as much as you can. Even being aware of it is going to help. When
you track that, "Oh, I've got some noise in my head around this thing", good, notice that. So that you can
quiet the noise a little and in your environment. Let's say you're having a conversation with a
member of your family. Put the phone away unless of course, you're talking to them on the phone. But
I'm talking about a face-to-face conversation. Set the devices aside. Turn off the television. Reduce
the noise so that we're not getting distracted and having a lot of interference in that conversation.
This should go without saying but you go to a restaurant. Vicki and I do this sometimes when
we're out for a dinner and we'll look around and people at the table sitting with someone that
they supposedly love and have a relationship with and they're both buried in their digital devices.
Noise is going to get in the way so reduce the noise. Strategy number four, listen to
understand. This I got from Stephen Covey who is one of the greatest leadership trainers that ever
hit the planet and he said that our first goal in communication should be to listen to put ourselves
in that receiver position first and this is a little counter-intuitive because
usually, our goal, our motivation, in communication is to get our message across to the other person.
Covey is suggesting, "Hey, let's reverse that. Let's take the receiver roll first and listen to
understand", notice that understanding and agreeing are not the same thing. This trips people up too
they're afraid if they express understanding that that person's going to think I agree with them and
well, we can't have that. No, it simply means that A equals A. Alright, the message came through.
It was delivered. It was communicated. Check, we got it. Listen to understand and then the fifth
strategy for effective communication is to express to be understood. This is where we pop over to the
sender role and I would suggest that you postpone your need to be understood until the person that
you're in communication with is satisfied that you understand them. That's why we put it in that
order. First, listen to understand. Second, express to be understood and notice the goal is the same
understanding. We are not expressing to persuade or convince or rebut or debate
what we just heard. We are expressing to make sure that A equals A. So, you're going to encode it
in a language that you know this other person understands. You're going to take care of your
facial expressions and your body language in a way that helps them to
understand what you're trying to communicate. Do those five strategies help? I think that they will.
Remember to grab your communication cheat sheet. I put this up for you earlier and I've got a free
copy of this that I'll send to you just tell me where you want it, drpauljenkins.com/communication.
I'll put it right in your inbox. I've got you on this.