The 5 Cs of Confident Communication : Curiosity
You're a month into 2022 and this can still be known as The Year You Improved Your Communication Skills and Consequently Improved Most (if not all) of Your Relationships: Team, Co-workers, Spouse, Children, Friends....you get the picture...
If you'll remember, we started working on this last month when we learned about The Hula Hoop Principle. Over the next few weeks, I'd like to open up the conversation of The 5 Cs of Highly Effective, Confident Communication. Hopefully, by the time we're done with the 5 C, you'll have a whole new style of communicating that gets you much better results!
So let's get started....
You see, we're all constantly communicating. And if I had to guess, I bet you'd like to improve your communication with most (if not all) of the people in your life. This is a something most people think they can't improve. They think they're either a good communicator or a bad communicator and that's just how it is. (The real problem is when a bad communicator thinks they're good at it!)
The reality is, whether you are good at communicating or bad, we all have room for improvement!
The first C that we're going to spend time on in this series is curiosity. Curiosity is one of those "special/secret ingredients" to being a "people person." But we're not just talking about peppering someone with never-ending questions throughout an entire conversation. The secret here is what the curiosity takes the place of....judgment.
Years ago someone famously wrote about this when they profoundly and simply stated, "Be curious, not judgmental." This seems to have stood the test of time since Ted Lasso latched on to it decades later.
It really is true that whenever you want to communicate well, curiosity is better than judgment.
When we're in a conversation with someone, oftentimes we are tempted to judge that person or what they are saying. Our first reaction is to identify the problem with what they are saying or feeling rather than try to understand why they are saying or feeling it. The result is disconnect and resistance, regardless of who's right. So the key to this principle is to discipline yourself to identify any judgment you may have towards a person or situation in a conversation and replace it with curiosity. Specifically, when you find yourself wanting to cast judgment, my advice is to ask three curiosity-driven questions further than the point of when you want to teach or correct the person.
Implement this over the next couple of days and let me know how it goes!
Next up...we'll talk about how important both Care & Candor are to communication.
Leave a comment below. 👇🏼
Interested in making sure you continue to grow? We are too! Schedule time with Bob to start your journey today!