This is the last article in a short series on communication, persuasion and change and we are focusing on situational communication - which is to do with how you adapt your style of communication according to certain key situational factors.
Goal Oriented Communication
People communicate for many different reasons but in this article we are looking specifically at situations where you have a clear objective that you want to influence and persuade the other person:
Situational Communication
The Task-Relational Spectrum
Effective communicators change their styles to fit the situation and move appropriately along the spectrum of a task versus a relational orientation.
[1] The task end of the spectrum is directive
It is where you deliver short, focused instructions and tell the other person exactly what you want them to do in as few words as possible.
This can include telling the other person what you want them to do, how you want them to do it, when you want them to do it, where you want them to do it.
A task focused communication is a one-way communication.
It will typically be used in one of two contexts:
[2] The relational end of the spectrum is about affiliation
It is about preserving and deepening a relationship with the other person.
Relationship oriented communication is where the communicator engages in a two-way communication that includes listening, facilitating, and supportive behaviours.
It will typically be used when your intention is to be collaborative, participative and collegiate.
Most of your communications will likely be somewhere in the middle area of this spectrum.
The
key point here is having the flexibility and insight to be able to read
the situation and thus be able to adopt the most appropriate style of
communication on the task-relational spectrum.
This is not about your tone of voice, the type of language you use, the style of your delivery or your body language - important as these are.
Situational communication is about taking account of 3 often ignored factors about the other person:
How to engage with people
As it says in the old African saying in the header to this article:
"If you want to go far, go together."
Bringing people with you is a process not a one-time event.
Here are 3 tips for getting people to care about what you find important:
Everyone has a background of prior experiences in many areas of life.
These past experiences will most likely have a significant influence on how someone responds to your attempts to influence and persuade them to accept your suggestions and proposals and to take action to support you in the achievement of your objectives.
As individuals, and organisations, we
all carry scar tissue from past bad experiences and we are energised and
motivated by past good experiences. In the business world we refer to this as "change readiness". If
you understand the other person's past experience, of whatever it is
that you are wanting to persuade them to do, you will tailor your
communication to take account of this.
So make sure you understand the other person's past experiences of this type of holiday before you try to engage their suppport.
Example:
You are pitching the idea to someone you know socially the prospect of their family and yours [plus children and dogs] sharing an Airbnb property that is large enough for 2 families and has enclosed land attached suitable for dogs to run around safely and unsupervised.
Because you are sensitive to the importance of establishing the other person's change readiness, over the course of several conversations you find out that they had a holiday like this 2 years ago with another family and it didn't work out.
Alternatively, you find out that they have done it before and it was a big success.
Clearly you will tailor your approach to address and take acount of these prior experiences.
In addition to understanding someone's past experience and change readiness, it is important to understand their current stage of development and competence. In summary we refer to this as maturity.
Readiness is the preparedness and ability of a person to
take responsibility for directing his or her own behaviour in a specific field of knowledge and activity.
The level of
maturity displayed will depend on the nature of the specific task, function, or
objective for which you are seeking to gain their engagement and support.
The higher the level of maturity the greater will be your emphasis on a relational style of communication.
Conversely, a lower level of maturity will require you to exercise a task oriented style of communiciation.
Example:
Whenever I have been on holiday with my grown up daughter I am very happy to delegate the planning and arrangement to her because I know that she has travelled extensively and taken holidays all over the world.
I was recently trying to encourage a young friend to take a gap year before university and to travel overseas. She liked the idea but was nervous about it, so I adopted a more prescriptive approach and tried to coach her through the process and a range of options she could consider.
If I had reversed my approach to each person the results would have been a disaster!
In your personal life there will be situations when it is necessary to give some feedback on their behaviour.
This can be hard enough in the workplace where you are responsible for other people and how they perform. But out of the workplace it can be very difficult and can lead to serious friction in relatiomships.
Many years ago I learned simple simple but powerful tips from Ken Blanchard in his seminal book The One Minute Manager
The absolute key to giving negative feedback
is to do so constructively and without destroying the other person's self esteem. Never lose sight of the fact that you are addressing the behaviour and not the
person.
As the old preachers used to say: "Love the sinner not the sin"!
Example:
When I was a young manager in a large corporation, many years ago, I had a number of staff working for me on business developement.
There was one girl on my team who was quite well intentioned but chaotic and she failed to deliver to me some important documents on time for a business meeting.
Having recently read and been impressed with, the "One Minute Manager" and so decided to put it into practice.
I took her to one side and quickly explained that her behaviour was unacceptable, and I told her why.
She looked extremely upset and became tearful. But as I then proceeded to praise her as a person and a good intentions, her face changed and she broke into a smile.
I will never forget that first experience of practising these tips.
Free Download:
Situational Communication - Summary Notes
Further Reading:
Persuasion
[1] The Art Of Persuasion The One Fundamental Principle - Create A Win-Win
[2] The Art Of Persuasion Advanced Communication Skills - Gaining BuyIn
[3] The Art Of Persuasion Planning For Success - Here's How To Do It!
Change
Getting From A to B Is Not Aways A Straight Line
Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Change Questions To Change Your Outcomes
Communication
How To Influence without Authority - 6 Key Tips
Situational Communication - Different Strokes For Different Folks
Return from "Change Questions" to: Communication Persuasion and Change
Or to: Walking The Talk
- What if everything we think…
LATEST ARTICLES
Everything Is Connected And Why You Don't Feel It
...And Why It Matters
As human beings we are skating on very thin ice with our sense of self and certainty about "how things are" and what we like to think of as reality:
Who Is In Charge Of Your Brain?
How Not To Be Stupid. Who is in charge of your brain? This is not a silly questions. It matters because the outcomes that you experience in your life are determined by how you respond to the events th…
How To Be A Winner On A Very Large Scale
The Incredible Benefits Of Selective Attention. This is not a typical article about how to be a winner. We are not going to talk about goal setting, the importance of habits, the power of focus and al…
The Metagame Approach To Life
How To Achieve Your Biggest Objectives.
The metagame approach to life is all about winning and achieving your biggest objectives by:
- Understanding the bigger picture
- Being better by doing things d…Shantideva - The Way Of The Bodhisattva
Walking The Path Of Compassion. Shantideva the 8th century Indian Buddhist sage is famous for his treatise "The Way of the Bodhisattva" delivered as an extended teaching to the monks of Nalanda monast…
Reframing History - Deconstruction And Discussion Not Destruction
History is always about context, not imposing our own moral values on the past. For those of us fortunate enough to live within western democracies, we are living in an age where a vociferous and into…
Tao Te Ching - Connecting To Your True Source Of Power.
How To Be Lived By The Tao. The Tao Te Ching is one of those books that many people read, few understand, and even fewer put into practice. The only way to know the Tao is to experience it, and it is…
How Things Really Are - The Inbuilt Design Flaws
Chaos, Disorder And Decay Is The Natural Order Of Things. Nobody has the perfect life. We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health…
Intuition Or Anxiety - Are There Angels Or Devils Crawling Here?
How To Tell The Difference Between Intuition and Anxiety. How do you know whether the voice of your intuition is real or just the product of your inner anxiety? Several months ago I was having a drink…
What Is Truth - How To Tell A Partial Truth From The Whole Truth?
How the truth and nothing but the truth is often not the whole truth. My great aunty Flo broke her arm and died. It is true that she broke her arm in 1923. It is also true that she died in 1949. But t…
Duality And Life Beyond Your Thinking Mind
Duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuses on the limitations of time, foreground and background, duality and "stuckness". The first aspect of duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuse…
The Conscious Mind Is Limited - Be Aware And Be Prepared
Being aware is the first stage of being prepared. The conscious mind is limited in so many ways. There are some who would argue that there is no such thing as conscious thought and that it is represen…
Your Inner Map Of Reality - Here's Why You Think The Way You Do
The big picture of how your inner map of reality creates your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Your inner map of reality is based on the filters of your own ethnic, national, social, family and rel…
The Failure Of Cancel Culture - Suppression Not Engagement
Why we need to wear our beliefs lightly and develop negative capability. Throughout history people have campaigned to fight beliefs, ideologies, and injustices that they perceived to be oppressive, di…
4 Big Reasons Why We Get Stuck In Our Attempts At Personal Change
Most People Spend Their Entire Life Imprisoned Within The Confines Of Their Own Thoughts. This first of the 4 big reasons why we get stuck is, in my view, the most important. The "self-help industry…
How Do I Change And Why Is It So Hard?
We Would Rather Die Than Change, And We Usually Do In my experience, the vast majority of people who say they want to change don’t change. Most people reading this won’t change because they don’t real…
The Illusion Of A Separate Self - Windows 11 With Self Awareness!
Beyond the content of your mind you are so much more than you think you are. When we talk of "myself" this is the conventional way of referring to our self image which is in fact the ego's constructio…
Finite And Infinite Games - Dazed, Confused & Ultimately Transcendent
This is not an instruction manual, it is a wake up call!
Over this past week I have read Professor James Carse's highly regarded "Finite And Infinite Games - A Vision Of Life As Play And Possibility"…
The Gap And The Gain - How Your Brain Sabotages Your Happiness
How Your Lizard Brain Sabotages Your Happiness We are hardwired to measure our progress in any and all areas of life where we have goals and aspirations. We can't not do it. But what we measure and ho…
How To Wake Up - 4 Simple Practices To Help You Wake Up Now
So What Exactly Does It Mean to Wake Up - What Is "Enlightenment"? There is nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about waking up we’re actually having glimpses of enlightenment all the time. Enligh…
Situational Communication - Different Strokes For Different Folks
Situational communication is about taking account of 3 often ignored factors about the other person. You are a situational communicator when you recognise that effective communication is not an event…
How To Influence Without Authority - 6 Key Tips
The secret to how to influence without authority is that you get what you really want by giving other people what they really want. We live in an interconnected world and knowing how to influence with…
Change Questions To Change Your Outcomes
Asking The Right Questions Is Critical For A Successful Change. Every time we initiate a significant change - whether in our personal life or in an organisation - we will most likely over-estimate our…
Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Group culture is: "How we do things round here". We like to see ourselves as free agents making our own choices and living authentically but the reality is that The Matrix has many layers and we are u…
Why Getting From A to B Is Not Aways A Straight Line
In circumstances of significant change, the progress from A to B will not be in a straight line. We run our lives largely on auto-pilot. In most circumstances your experience of getting from A to B is…
The Art Of Persuasion Planning For Success - Here's How To Do It!
To be successful in the art of persuasion you must ensure that certain things happen. To be successful in the art of persuasion you must establish a framework of what has to happen to get you to that…
The Art Of Persuasion Advanced Communication Skills - Gaining Buyin
Create The Environment Where They Want To Buyin to Your Proposal In order to build the win-win you have to uncover what it is that the other person really wants or needs, and to do that you have to as…
The Art Of Persuasion The One Fundamental Principle - Create A Win-Win
The art of persuasion is based on the simple idea that you get what you want by enabling the other party to get what they want. Being a nice friendly person with good inter-personal skills may be a go…
Communication Persuasion And Change - Key Skills To Survive & Succeed
It's not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most responsive to change, the most persuasive, and the best communicators. We are living in an age of unprecedented ch…
The Eisenhower Box - What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent
What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent And What Is Urgent Is Seldom Important. The Eisenhower Box is a time management and decision-making model devised by President Dwight Eisenhower to help him prioriti…