Key to Effective Communication

"Good understanding wins favor." Proverbs 13:15 (NIV)

The first key to effective communication is a willingness to consider the other person's point of view. This takes a willingness to humble yourself. Even if you disagree with them, at least make an attempt to try understand why that particular point of view is important to them. There many benefits of a commitment to understand but here are three.

A willingness to understand

• is one of the quickest ways to diffuse an argument and to earn trust
• a way to open yourself up to learn and grow and expand your world view
• gives us a way to connect with each other.

One of the worse things we do is to ignore each other. In the bank the other day, I heard one of the tellers share how upset she was that someone had called and accused them of not paying their utility bill. "I'm so conscientious about paying my bills! It frustrated me." A couple of tellers looked at her and turned away. No one took the time to acknowledge her frustration. As I stood there at the counter, I said, "That must of been frustrating for you." She turned to me and shared the whole story which only took about two minutes. I listened empathetically. Her frustration acknowledged, she seemed relieved and went about her business. Every time I go into the bank now, she gives me a big smile.

One of the best gifts we can give to each other is to listen and understand. We will be discussing 7Tips to Effective Listening and Talking Togetherin our next post.

Comments

[Rebecca]

I was encouraged ,and reminded by this story , of how important it is to be willing to humble

myself and listen to the other person's point of veiw.

I tend to fight for the right to be right and forget how important the relationship is.

Thank you for sharing your experience and understanding to us. these are pearls of wisdom. :-)

Rebecca