46 posts tagged “communication skills listening”

Today we are going to finish our series by putting this knowledge into action for us. There are 2 active and 1 passive ways to implement values during the course of your effective communication.

Passively:

1.       Surveillance - You can simply keep an eye and ear out for values based content in someone’s speech. If you are talking to someone and they continue to talk about all of their wild adventures… It is safe to say that they value stimulation. Also, based on the Basic Human Values theory it is safe to say that they probably also value hedonistic and self-directed circumstances as well. You can also bet that this individual is probably not very interested in talking about conformity or security.

Actively:

1.       Elicitation of Values – You can use specific questioning strategies to elicit someone’s values during the course of a communication for the purpose of using that information later in the conversation. There are two separate levels at which you can elicit values. As I mentioned previously, an individual’s psyche is made up of four major “systems”. These systems are the core evolutionary drives (most abstract, held subconsciously and relatively unchangeable), the value systems, the belief systems that surround each value system and explicit goals (least abstract, consciously/logically held, most specific and easiest to change). In light of the fact that values are the “connective tissue” that between a person’s core evolutionary drives and their explicit goals value systems can range from very abstract and subconsciously held to very specific and consciously held. So this creates two separate “levels” of elicitation and the questioning to draw out each is directed toward two separate kinesthetic classifications:

a.       Action/movement – Questions that elicit what someone HAS ACTUALLY DONE in life as a whole and in certain contexts/scenarios will elicit deep rooted, subconsciously held values. By discovering what people do specifically and making an accurate interpretation of this you will have a clear view into their most abstract value systems.

b.      Somatic feeling – Questions that elicit someone’s “feelings about…” will elicit their less abstract and more specific, consciously held value systems. When you begin to talk about someone’s “feelings”, you will in effect be eliciting their EVALUATION of a certain feeling that has arisen inside of them. These evaluations are generally much more critically driven and are in effect a form of rationalization geared toward “making sense” of the somatic sensation. This rationalizing and critical thinking will come from the prefrontal cortex which is in charge of rational thought and as such provides more surface level, consciously held information.

If you had to choose one or another, the deeply held, more abstract values are much more powerful in persuasion and understanding what is really going on inside of someone’s head. If you understand these values about someone, chances are that you know more about them than they themselves do. In effective persuasion it is most effective to have elicited and understood both side of the coin. Although the subconsciously held values are more powerful, the consciously held values can cause conflict if they are offended in some way and this can make the difference between success and failure.

2.       Priming/activation – You can effectively activate certain value systems during the course of a communication. This can be very powerful when you are attempting to direct HOW someone is evaluating your communication. In other words, you can help direct what criteria someone will use to evaluate the efficacy or worth of the content/subject matter you are presenting. Although an individual will hierarchically categorize values, they will indeed still possess ALL of the value systems in their psyche. This means that even though someone most highly values Hedonistic pleasure over all else, there is still a part of them that values the necessity of conformity in order to stay safe so that they can continue to pursue hedonistic pleasure. Because of this you can “steer” which value system is being used as their lens at a given time. This is done through priming… There are two methods that are effective for priming:

a.       Hypnotic/metaphorical language – By creating vivid and “life like” scenarios in someone’s mind you can activate particular value systems. For instance, if you create a vivid visual of a robbery that took place and how it affected the lives of an entire family due to the brutality of it, you WILL activate someone’s security value system.

b.      Questioning – A quick run through our questioning post will help immensely with this… You can use specific questioning strategies to draw specific value based content from someone’s own mouth in order to activate certain values. For instance, asking someone how they think YOU should best spend your vacation if you are looking to have an exciting one WILL activate stimulation and hedonistic values in someone.

It is important to understand that your values are NOT digital… they are analog, they are on a continuum and can NOT be turned on and off like a light switch. You can influence them, but you can’t CONTROL them. If you learn and practice the above information though, you will be well on your way to becoming a communication expert yourself.

As always, to learn more about values and how they can help provide effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

Ok, from the preceding post’s you are crystal clear on what values are and how to classify them. So no let’s talk a bit about what they do and how you can use them. Values have 3 major functions or roles that they play in the course of a person’s life:

1.       Motivators – induce valences or the linking of actions that a person will take in response to situations or scenarios. In other words they are a major factor in determining what someone will do in a given scenario… Fight, flight, talk, sit, plan, etc… Values will play a major role in determining this.

2.       Attentional, perceptual and interpretational filters – Values can be considered chronically activated goals. High priority values are continually and readily accessible and are put into play in most situations. As a result, they are a strong determinant as to what information is processed, at what “angles” the information is viewed from (perceptual filters) and what the information means to the person evaluating it.

3.       Future planning filters – Due to the overwhelming strength of values and their influence on life direction they are a huge determinant of what actions will be planned in the future and how they are planned.

I won’t go into the specific studies that ground this work, but if you are just dying for more information you can seek out the work of Norman Feather, Milton Rokeach, Bas Verplanken, Rob Holland and Peter Gollwitzer. Much of their work empirically grounds the information above in conjunction with Shalom Schwartz’s work.

Something that is important to know about values though is that they only have affective influence on behavior when they are activated. Activation is generally situational and if a situation does occur that necessitates the use of values as a filter, the more readily accessible a value is to the working memory of an individual the stronger it’s chances of activation.

Values don’t necessarily need conscious thought in order to affect behavior. On the contrary they rarely are given any conscious thought… They simply “occur” in the subconscious mind and the result “happens”. The result can be anything from a directionally particular communication to a directionally particular action to complete inaction.

As a result of this, events such as a promotion or an accident will employ and retard the usage of different value systems. Also, in light of the fact that accessibility of a value greatly affects the activation of a value priming can play a major role in what values are being employed at a given moment. Priming can happen from something as slight as reading value-based terms in an article or even an epitaph for that matter…

This brings us to the meat that you have all been waiting for… that is “how are values valuable to the effective communicator?”   I realize that there seems to be quite a bit of information here and there also seems to be some contingencies involved as well. Not to fret though, this can all be summed up into two very simply yet powerful concepts that can be used when communicating with someone.

1.       Predictability - Values are an extremely permanent and predictable entity in a person’s psyche. Can they be changed? Of course… Are they easy to change? No. So what this means is that by eliciting someone’s values you have a very accurate filtering system and map by which to direct both the type of content you will use in your communication and the frames in which it will be presented.

2.       Priming - Values can be activated through priming. This means that you have some control over which values will run in someone’s subconscious so that you may better persuade and influence their behavior during the course of a communication.

So as you can see values can be very readily used in effective communication if you know how… Tomorrow we will finish our miniseries on values by determining how to elicit surface and core values along with showing you how to prime someone in order to facilitate particular value usage.

As always, to learn more about values and how they can help provide effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

In the recent past values were considered one of the key ingredients to a successful attempt at persuasion. If you knew and understood what someone’s values were, you could simply package your communication around them and presto… you had their button pushed.

It would be great if that were so, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately depending on how you look at it) the human brain is not so simple. The reality of the matter is that it takes quite a bit more to successfully persuade someone. That being said, values are an important, powerful and integral part to being able to understand and communicate effectively with someone. As a matter of course, a professional communicator necessarily needs to thoroughly understand human values to be effective.

So what are values exactly? If you do some searching on the web you will find a plethora of definitions… mix those in with your own notions of what values are specifically and you have smorgasbord of terms. So in order to effectively move forward let’s first define “values”.

·         Values are a type of belief that are tied inextricably to emotions. Whereas standard beliefs are objective and hard informational concepts that dictate action and operation. Values are an emotional belief that dictates direction or course of action.

·         Values are not dictated by a specific action or scenario. They operate at a much higher level of abstraction and transcend boundaries. This separates them from norms and attitudes which are action, object or situational specific.

·         Values are hierarchical in their importance relationally with each other and serve as standards or criteria for directional selection.

So to sum all of this up, values are emotion based beliefs that act as standards to govern and dictate the DIRECTIONAL “mode of operation” in a person’s life.

Relationally, within a person’s psychological make- up, values provide the person with life-direction FROM their core drives (the 16 evolutionary drives) and are surrounded by operational beliefs to dictate specific actions to be taken for the purpose of moving the individual further in the direction that the values are pushing toward.

Allow me to give you an example. Let’s say we are evaluating the evolutionary drive of “power/achievement”. A value that springs from that may be knowledge as acquiring knowledge will facilitate the accomplishment or exacting of power/achievement. Beliefs that surround the value of “knowledge” and act as operational guides may be studying, reading, practicing, researching, etc…

Based on research conducted by Shalom Schwartz that spans 67 nations and 35,000 respondents there are 10 foundational value systems that are characterized by their central motivational goal. All values will fall into one of the ten systems. The systems are:

1. Self-Direction – This includes values such as Independent thought and action, ability to choose, ability to create, ability to explore, etc...

2. Stimulation – This includes excitement, novelty, challenge, etc...

3. Hedonism – This is pleasure and sensuous gratification and includes physical appearance, wealth, eating, etc…

4. Achievement – This is personal success through demonstrating competence according to

social standards. This includes practice, skill, ability, etc…

5. Power – This is control or dominance over people and resources. This includes strength, knowledge, prestige, etc…

6. Security – This includes safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self.

7. Conformity – This is the restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm

others and violate social expectations or norms. This includes mental focus, sacrifice, drive, etc…

8. Tradition – This is respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that

traditional culture or religion provide the self. This includes tradition, respect, humility, etc…

9. Benevolence – This is preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is in

frequent personal contact. This includes compassion, generosity, helpfulness, etc…

10. Universalism – This is the understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare

of all people and for nature.  This includes conservationism, education, kindness, etc…

Tomorrow we will talk about the Values Theory and how each of these values systems interacts with each other to develop a predictable personality in someone.

As always, to learn more about values and how they can help provide effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

Today we finish our 5 part post on questions and effective communication so let's get right into it...

Leading – I would have to say that the Socratic style of questions is the most well known and famous style of questioning in existence today. Prosecutors, negotiators, politicians and business people will use this form extensively during the course of their careers. As a standalone, a leading question can be any TYPE of question and you are free to use whatever type is necessary to lead the person along the predetermined path you have established. When taken as a group, the linking of multiple leading questions results in a strategy and can be amazingly powerful. There are two types of leading questions and they are toward or away class leading questions.

1. Toward-leading questions are for the purpose of taking the person to a desired end result or destination. In other words, if you want to lead someone down a particular path of logic or reasoning so that they will arrive at a specific conclusion you will use these. The magic of this type of question/ing is that it directly creates the mental linking between concepts in someone’s mind in order to achieve a solid long term result. It is one thing to simply implant a concept in someone’s mind. It is an entirely different animal when you implant a concept AND link it to an already-held concept or belief in their mind. This is powerful. Take the following example… Let’s say you want your spouse to go to the grocery store with you on their day off. You already know they will say no if you ask directly so you need to make it enticing to them. Toward-leading questions are a great resource for this type of scenario. You know that your spouse loves to save money so you will need to link the concept of saving money with shopping at the grocery store. Your questioning might sound something like this:

·         You: Do you remember when you bought that circular saw on clearance and saved all of that money?

·         Them: Yah… that was such a good deal!

·         You: It really felt great to save all of that money, didn’t it?

·         Them: Certainly did…

·         You: You are really good a finding those types of deals aren’t you?

·         Them: Yah! I am the best.

·         You: I think you would agree that I am not so good at it, wouldn’t you?

·         Them: Yah… you are the worst.

·         You: What do you like so much about getting those deals?

·         Them: Well, it is almost like making money…. I mean, you have to buy it anyway. Getting it at a discount is like putting money back into your pocket.

·         You: Well can you help me make some money today? I need your help…

·         Them: Sure, I love doing that…

·         You: Well you see I have to go shopping and…..

I think you can get my point. What we have done is taken a starting point and connected it to an end point by leaping through several different subjects and levels of abstraction to arrive at your spouse going with you to the grocery store and actually being happy about it.

1. Away-leading questions are for the purpose of simply moving away from a particular mental state or subject matter. These are great for when you want to pull someone out of a negative state and in fact are used for that almost exclusively. If your communication partner has had a bad day or is hurting for some reason or maybe you are just talking about something that you want to get away from, the best way to do this is with Away-leading questions.

Imagine that your coworker just got passed over for a promotion and they are just angry about it… The job, the company, the people… your coworker just hates all of them right now. You know that if they stay like this for very long that they are going to do some real damage to their career here. Leading questions can help get them out of this state of mind. The questioning may go something like this:

·         You: So you are seriously angry right now? (Pacing)

·         Them: Yah! I hate this place… I really deserved that promotion.

·         You: Yah I sometimes hate it as well (Partial pacing)… Not that I am suggesting that we completely leave that subject, but do you remember the picnic we went to this summer with the team?

·         Them: Yah… what about it?

·         You: Do you remember when we caught Joe passed out drunk on the toilet?

·         Them: Yah! HAAA… I forgot about that. Oh my god, how funny was that?

·         You: I know, what a slob! What do you suppose that guy is doing right now?

·         Them: He is probably out somewhere…..

I’ll let you take it from there… As you can see we have led our coworker, at least temporarily away from his immediate mental crisis. Obviously it will take quite a bit more work to get over the sting of losing the promotion but we have provided temporary relief by using an Away-class of questioning.

Elicitation – These are, as their title explicitly implies questions whose sole purpose is to elicit information. Their purpose is generally to get MORE information so that you may make an educated decision about how to proceed further with your communication. These are usually used on fact finding missions but can also be used for the purpose of gain insight into personal beliefs, notions, evaluations, etc… Whenever you need information to make a decision about your next move, you are going to be using Elicitation questions. These are broken up into two classes, primary and secondary elicitation questions.

1. Primary elicitation questions are the initial attempt at eliciting information on a new subject. This means that these are the first line of questioning that occurs to draw out information at higher levels of abstraction in relation to the subject at hand. For instance a car tire may be considered the highest level of abstraction for the subject matter and the tread type, the manufacturer, the mile-rating, the speed rating are at lower levels.

1. Secondary elicitation questions are for the purpose of probing further into each subject to elicit the lower levels of abstraction. So probing, clarifying, verifying, etc… All of these are done by elicitation questions.

Imagine that you are sitting in a restaurant eating when you receive a frantic call from your mother. She is hysterical on the phone and just keeps yelling that she needs help! This will sound something like this:

• You: Hello…
• Mother: OH MY GOD… I need you to get over here and help me!
• You: Mom, are you alright? (Primary elicitation)
• Mother: NO, I am not alright! I need you to get here…
• You: Have you been hurt? (Primary elicitation)
• Mother: Not yet, but I am being chased around the house…
• You: Who is it? (Secondary elicitation)
• Mother: I don’t know who!
• You: What do they look like? (Secondary elicitation)
• Mother: They are short and furry and have a long tail!
• You: Mom… is it a mouse? (Secondary elicitation)

You get the idea… In the conversation above you were simply looking for factual information so that you could make a decision on how best to act on the matter at hand.

Hypnotic – Hypnotic questions are questions that conjure up experiential scenarios in the mind of your communication partner for the purpose of creating a particular somatic experience. For example, you may make someone feel really happy by helping them to create, mentally, this summer’s experience of sitting on the shore of a lake… with the water lapping up onto their feet and all the while the sun is shining down and warming their shoulders as the birds chirp in the surrounding trees at the wind blowing through the leaves…

Hypnotic questions reside in three classes and they are the situational, content and submodal classes.

1. Situational refers to the “where” and the “when” of the experience you are trying to create. For instance, in relating back to the above example we are talking about the shore of the lake (where) and just this past summer (when).
2. Content refers to the “who” and the “what” of the experience. They (who) rode their bike there and brought nothing but a book with them (what). They were surrounded by the lake and the trees (what)…
3. Submodal refers to the submodalities of each experience. The color of the leaves, the sound of the birds, the feel of the water, etc…

So to help create the experience above you would simply direct the person’s thought process by starting with the highest level of abstraction (situational) and move down the pole into the submodal questioning. This will set things up appropriately and is the most effective method of creating the experience. So, in sticking with our lake experience example above:

• You: What would you say was your most enjoyable experience this year?
• Them: Hmmm. I would probably have to say when I went to the lake…
• You: When was that?
• Them: Oh it was sometime in July… right after the fourth… I remember I was still on vacation.
• You: What was it that you like about that so much (high level abstraction, content based question. )
• Them: Well I remember just being by myself (who) and just being free for awhile…
• You: What was there exactly? (lower level abstraction, content based)
• Them: Not a whole lot, that what was so great… Just me and the trees and nature…
• You: It must have been so peaceful… What sounds are there around that lake? (submodal auditory)
• Them: Man… The locusts are buzzing along with the grasshoppers… I love the sound of the birds just chirping away in the trees…
• You: Were you able to get in the water at all? What did that feel like? (submodal kinesthetic)

You can take it from there… So what you are doing is asking questions that will elicit experiential information in their minds and help them to re-experience that pleasant time in their past.

Conveyance - Conveyance questions are used to communicate a particular feeling or state of mind from one person to the other. Probably the most often used and renowned type of conveyance question is a rhetorical question.  These are asked with a built in answer and almost exclusively convey annoyance or sarcasm. Conveyance style questions can be used to portray sincerity, compassion, interest and a whole host of other feeling and mental states. As an example, imagine that you want to convey to someone that you truly care about them and what they want out of your relationship. Your sincerity can be conveyed by asking them very deep, thoughtful and emotion eliciting questions.

• You: I can tell you are angry and I really want to respect your privacy so would it be ok if I asked you some questions to help me better understand you?
• Them: I am angry… but ok.
• You: I am under the impression that you are angry with me because I came home late. Is that true? (closed, elicitation)
• Them: Yes
• You: I am sorry that made you angry, that wasn’t my intention. When I come home late, what does that mean to you? (open, elicitation)
• Them: It means that you don’t care about my feelings…
• You: I do care about your feelings. What can I do that will truly show you that I care? (open, elicitation)
• Them: I don’t know…
• You: How would you feel if I promised to call EVERY time I am going to be late and kept my phone with me no matter what? (Away-leading)
• Them: That would be really nice…
• You: Do you remember that time when I had to drive all night to get home, but I did it? (Toward-leading)
• Them: Yes…
• You: How did it feel to know that I was going to do anything just to get back to you? (submodal hypnotic AND Toward-leading)
• Them: Nice… I knew you loved me then…
• You: I did love you and I still do… Do you remember that even though I drove all night I was still late though? (Toward-leading)
• Them: Yah…
• You: But you still knew that I loved you didn’t you? (Toward-leading)
• Them: Yah…
• You: So isn’t it safe to say that just because I am a little late sometimes doesn’t mean that I don’t love you? (Toward-leading destination)
• Them: Yes…
• You: So can we agree that if I am going to be late and call no matter what that you will be ok and know that I still love you even though I am late? (Elicitation)

OK, ok… I think you get it. We conveyed true sincerity and love in the above communication through the usage of conveyance questions.

You can now consider yourself 18,000 times more knowledgeable than the next best person with respect to using questions for effective communication.

To learn more about questions and other forms of effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

To begin wrapping up our five part miniseries on questions I am going to give you some examples of each type of question and then illustrate a scenario where they can be used to further the progress of the communication.

Now in rooting around the internet you will find a ton of “types” of questions. I want you to understand that although some of the noted researchers, academics and philosophers of the world may have coined some of the more popular “types”, there is no formally accepted universal group of question sets.

One of the more popular set comprises the Kipling questions. Rudyard Kipling wrote a short poem outlining what he calls his six honest men… I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

Probably the most academically used and accepted formalized set is based on what is known as Bloom’s Taxonomy which is a classification of the different objectives that educators set for students (learning objectives). We will spend some more time on these in another post, but as a quick illustration they are made up of Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluative types of questions. Their usage is based on increasingly complex levels of learning and is applied in that fashion.

What I would consider the most famous questions are “Socratic” questions. These are laser specific, acute style questions that lead a person down a predetermined path to the desired outcome. Socrates, obviously, used this style and gave it the fame that it has today.

A  list of some of the more popular and most often used types are:

1. Open – These allow for an almost infinite number of possible answers.
2. Closed – These are generally answered with a yes, no, maybe or a specific single subject.
3. Specific – Eliciting a laser specific answer based on an acute thought process.
4. Probing – These types of questions elicit more specific information to elaborate on the currently held subject.
5. Hypothetical – This is a form of question that throws out the presently held “rules” of reality in order to free the mind of confining parameters and produce new unique information.
6. Reflective – This type causes the person to think through previously occurring situations and thereby giving them the “future” oriented temporal position. Have you ever heard of the term “retrospect is always 20/20”?
7. Leading – These questions do just what they are called… The lead someone down a specific path.
8. Descriptive – These questions will draw out details of description of an event or object.
9. Relational – These will extract information that helps to “bind” or “link” two objects and/or events together.
10. Clarifying – These questions are like probing in that they extract more information from an already held subject. The difference though is that clarifying questions extract more information about the person’s actual answers, rather than about the subject of discussion…
11. Verifying – These questions simply solidify the “correctness” of your understanding of the subject at hand.
12. Qualifying – These types of questions are fashioned to extract specific informational parameters that help the questioner determine whether or not to move forward with the communication.
13. Dialoguing – These questions are simply a binding agent in the communication. Their utility is to grease the wheels and keep things moving along.
14. Cause/Effect – These questions elicit information that is a super specific binding agent between a causal agent and the resulting effect. They help facilitate the direction and placement of responsibility and thereby assign an action agent for any future change.
15. Factual – These questions erase any emotion and seek ONLY unbiased, objective information.
16. Evaluative – These types of questions solicit a person’s currently held complex equivalence of the subject at hand.

So let’s get into the1st of the 5 functional classifications that we discussed above, talk about an example and illustrate how it can be used. We will finish up the following 4 tomorrow...

Quantum – Inductive and deductive questions are crystal clear examples of quantum style questions. Inductive questions expand the scope of the thought process that someone is currently employing. For example, let say that you are talking about a “tire”… inductive questions will expand the person’s attention upward to the level of “car” and then further to the level of “transportation” and then possibly further to the level of “the universe”… Deductive go in exactly the opposite direction…

In sticking with the inductive example, let’s take a look at a scenario where this would be beneficial. Imagine that a friend of yours is pining away over a recently lost love… Now we have all been down this path and we know what is going on in their head. Loneliness, all of the great “potential” lost, they are never going to love again… blah, blah, blah… A great question to ask them would be “How do you see this break up fitting into the overall plan of your life as a whole?” What this does is immediately open the attentional-scope of the broken-hearted lover and gives instant perspective to their situation. By effectively placing the “drop” (their breakup) into the big bucket of water (their entire life) you will have a great start on diluting the short term damaging effects of the breakup.

Tomorrow we will wrap things up by finishing the last four classifications… To learn more about questions and other forms of effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

In following yesterday’s post on why questions are generally superior to statements in a persuasion setting, let’s talk about what questions can do to someone’s perspective exactly. There are 5 major functions that questions can serve during the course of a communication interaction. These functions are NOT exclusive to themselves either… A question can mix and match and employ any or most of them in a single phrase. I will provide a quick explanation and example for each.

1.      QUANTUM - Questions can offer a re-directing or quantum view of things. What this means is simply that there are always many different ways to look at and evaluate a situation. A situation can be evaluated from the positive, the negative or unbiased positions. You can also change up the scope, content, context, temporal position, value hierarchy, inductive/deductive, etc… by using questions. I have these two functions combined because they are both simply a directionalization of the persons immediate thought process. Examples:

a.       Re-directing – Let’s say someone crashed their car and are pining away about the difficult times ahead. In other words, they are focused on the negative aspect of this. A re-directing question may be “What could happen that would make this a blessing for you?” or “How are you going to rebound as quickly as possible from this?” This type of questioning will begin to take the person’s mental focus away from all of the negative aspects and get them to begin evaluating positive things…

b.      Quantum – Let’s take the same example with the accident victim above. A quantum question may be “How good is it going to feel 4 weeks from now when you got your insurance check and are just sitting down into the leather seat of your brand new car?” This question takes their thought process out into the future AND re-directs to a positive situation (buying a new car).

2.      LEADING - Questions can be used to gently lead someone down a particular path. Leading questions simply use a battery of questions whose answers will logically lead to the conclusion that would like the person to come to. An overt example of this is in the Socratic questioning method. Socrates would use this style of questioning to either help people learn or to berate and embarrass others. In working with the example above with the crashed car, imagine it is your friend and you want them to get a convertible. This way you can cruise with him to the beach…

You: Hey man… aside from food, what do you love most in this world?

            Him: Chics!

            You: Exactly… What are one of the best things for picking them up?

            Him: My arms….

            You: Interesting. Ok… the next best thing?

            Him: A cool car.

            You: Yah… and what is one of the coolest things a car can have for the summer?

            Him: A convertible top!

            You: That is so right… So what are you going to do with that insurance check?

            Him: Spend it.. (ok, he is a bit slow…)

            You: On what?

            Him: A convertible….

3.      ELICITATION - Regardless of the ancillary effect questions have on a communication discourse, they are almost always used for information elicitation. This can be broken up into primary and secondary groups. The primary group is simply the first attempt at eliciting information on a new subject. In other words this is you primary line of questioning each time you begin a new subject. Secondary questions are basically confirming and probing questions that follow up and clarify the information provided for the primary questions. So you can imagine it this way… Primary are the base and secondary are on the surrounding periphery. Some examples:

a.       Primary – Whose is responsible for causing this accident? (Initial subject is the initiator of the accident)

b.      Secondary – Do they have insurance? Do they have a license? Were they drinking? (These probe specific qualities of the initiator)

4.      HYPNOTIC - Questions can have an imaginative, and thereby hypnotic/trance inducing quality to them. What this means is that through the usage of questions you can create vivid imagery inside of someone’s mind and thereby help facilitate state changes. You can do this by asking questions that elicit structural, contextual and content oriented information. Some examples:

a.       Structural – If you had a million dollars, what would you do?

b.      Contextual – Where would that happen? Who would be there? When?

c.       Content – What would they look like? What would they say? What sights would you see?

5.      CONVEYANCE - Questions can be used for the conveyance of information. The usage of leading-style questioning can “reveal” your intended message from the other person’s mouth. They can also act as a buffer for the presentation of certain types of information. The strategic usage of questions can also display mental states or emotions. Some examples:

a.       Leading style for information conveyance – Do you remember what I told my parents I wanted for my birthday? Yes. Do you think they can afford it? No. Who do you know that can? Me. Well how happy would that make me if you did that? Very…

b.      As a buffer – Do you remember the thing we were dreading so much? How long do you think we can go on without it happening? Well have you seen the news today?

c.       Displaying emotion – How did that make you feel? What did that mean to you? What can I do to help you? (Compassion). Rhetorical questions can be great for this as well… Who gets the “stupid” award today? (Annoyance)

Now, if you have done any searching on the internet for questioning strategies, methods, types, etc… You probably already know that there a ton of different “types” of questions. Most of the things I have found are borderline ridiculous. If you want, you can simply continue to move the level of abstraction lower and lower and begin defining question types as, for example, “The bathroom sick after partying too late question”… Going to acute in the definitions is overcomplicating things. All questions that you can think of will indeed fit into one of the 5 functional categories above. Tomorrow we will talk about some specific examples of each category and we will talk about the usage of strategic examples for everyday life.

To learn more about questions and other forms of effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

I think it is safe to say that the human race generally doesn’t like to be TOLD what to do.

Why can’t you just “tell” someone what to do? Well, in some cases you can… If whatever you are proposing makes blatantly logical sense to both parties and there is equal benefit to both of them, then simply telling the other person what to do does work.

The reality of the matter is that not all “scenarios” are created equal. What makes complete sense to one party on the first communication pass-through usually doesn’t make the same sense to the other party. This is where the difficulty and confusion can come into play.

We are going to talk about some of the main reasons why you can’t simply “tell” someone what to do and therefore need to use questioning scenarios. Again, when I use the term “tell” I am referring to directionally forward statements…

Among any of the immediately available “projects” running around someone’s working memory that may conflict with your request, there are two major forces at play in a person’s subconscious that are battling against the demands you may be making of them.

They are the psychological immune system and the scarcity principle. Let’s talk about each to see how they are sabotaging your efforts.

1. Psychological immune system – Have you ever seen a small-in-stature man walking around with his arms puffed out with his chest pushed up and a mean look on his face like he is ready for anything? Or maybe a morbidly obese woman shopping with a baby t-shirt on, skin tight jeans, belly hanging out and make up that “beats” the proverbial band? Well if you have, what you are bearing witness to is the side effects of the human races “Psychological Immune System”.

I have spoken about this in other blog posts so I won’t go heavily into it here. I’ll give you short synopses though: Our psychological immune system is a set of cognitive processes and filters that directs our attentional processes, information filters and thereby our actions in a way to keep us “level headed”.

There is actually a phenomenon in the psychological community knows as the “Lake Wobegon Effect”. This is named after Garrison Keillor’s fictional community where “the women are strong, the men are good-looking and the children are all above average”. This phenomenon describes the human race’s propensity to think of themselves, individually as smarter, better looking, more likely to succeed, less likely to get hurt and so on, than the next guy.

The processes by which people are able to do this are all part of the psychological immune system. People will absorb information that suits their beliefs, deflect information that does not, massage statistics, rationalize… even go as far as to make things up and completely refute irrefutable evidence in order to maintain the strong confident and attractive persona that they hold onto.

As are result of this, a HIGH premium is placed on being considered “rational”, “logical” and “consistent”. This high premium is the DRIVE that forces people to battle to the death in some case to be “right” rather than be “effective”. Any direct push on someone’s currently held notions or belief systems is in effect calling them “wrong” in holding those beliefs or notions.

This fits into our current schema in that a direct, hard statement, evaluation or demand can and usually does overtly assail the other person’s currently held beliefs and notions. The result is almost always an “equal and opposite reaction”. The force of your statement will usually be met with a force of their own. Protecting their concept of consistency and correctness is going to be TOP priority.

2. The scarcity principle - Loosely stated, the scarcity principle dictates that as an item’s availability becomes more and more limited, the value of that item become increasingly higher.

In no other vertical is this more evident than when the “item” is an individual’s personal freedom. When I say personal freedom, I am referring to their currently available options or choices regardless of subject vertical. These can be anything from the ability to simply stay put versus going outside, to being able to eat what they want to hanging out with whoever they want, etc…

Basically, when any limitation is placed on the options available to someone there are a certain set of processes that are set off internally that can cause ever increasing anxiety and stress. As that person is forced closer and closer to making a decision, these processes and the feelings resulting from them grow more and more unpleasant.

The two major factors at play are:

1.  Loss of choice - making any decision will automatically delete any other choices, and
2. Lack of control - being “forced” into that decision.

The scarcity principle goes way back to our evolutionary processes and is wrapped around our own personal safety. It heavily involves our fear-system and more importantly our amygdala which controls the release of fear based hormonal cocktails into our systems. This can be incredibly powerful…

By making statements, hard definitions, evaluations and most importantly, demands that go against a person’s already identified interests; you will IMPOSE both of the major factors associated with the scarcity principle onto the communication recipient.

How can you avoid these? By asking questions of course… Isn’t that what we are talking about? The usage of questions as opposed to statements will produce comfort (at least more comfort than statements) through three major factors:

1. Questions do not DIRECTLY attack or refute existing notions or belief systems. Questions “elicit” their beliefs (which we will inadvertently give them) rather than “force” our own onto them. This will allow them the room to “be correct” in their decisions.
2. Questions allow them choices. Questions do not box someone in immediately… Have you ever heard the story about boiling a frog? If not, look it up. The net sum is that if you throw him into boiling water he is going to jump right back out. But, if you slowly heat the water he will become comfortable and used to it step by step… Questions can do the same exact thing. They do not fire of someone’s critical thinking as readily as statements.
3. Questions give complete and unfettered ownership of the outcome of the communication to your recipient. By allowing the illusion of ownership, and thereby control of the conversation and the outcome you will do wonder with avoiding the activation of the scarcity principle.

By now it should be obvious that questions should be a very integral part of your communication tool box. Tomorrow we will talk about what you can do specifically with questions and then we will look to finish up the series by discussing types of questions and possible strategies for you to use them with.

To learn more about questions and other forms of effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

Questions are one of the most powerful forms of verbal communication that a person has at their disposal. When you are in situations where you want or need to persuade someone, the saying really is true “you get more flies with sugar”. Well, in the delivery section of your communication tool box, questions really are the proverbial “sugar”. Gentle, tactful and skillful persuasion via questioning is MUCH more effective than anything else.

What about flattery you ask? What we are speaking about in this post is structure and form, not content. Flattery is content… But since you asked, flattery is nice in small and judicious doses, however too much places you into a weak and unappealing category to the other party. Brown nosing, sucking up, pathetic… what ever you would like to call it, it is traditionally not amenable to establishing a strong, egalitarian relationship between two parties. As such, this greatly limits the scope of flattery’s power. In any relationship, it is IMPERITIVE to have an equal footing with your partner as with out it you will not achieve your personal goals.

I want you to imagine your communication as residing in one of three directional “categories” in it’s delivery…

1. Making hard and definite “other oriented” (about the person your talking to) statements, orders, evaluation or observations are in fact a “PUSHING” communication. Imagine these types of conveyances pushing onto, and in some cases bowling over your communication partner. Examples are: “You are wrong when you say that X = Y…” or “I know that your outfit is not right for you…” or “You have to leave right now and go get that for me…” Directionally these types of communications are forward.
2. Making “self oriented” (about yourself) statements, orders, evaluation or observations are generally “NEUTRAL” communications. This means that they are neither pushing nor pulling on your communication partner. Examples are: “I know that you want to go to the party but I am not sure I am up for it…” or “I really don’t think I should wear this outfit.” or “I don’t know if I am going to be able to help you later.” These types of communication are directionally neutral.
3. Asking questions and making “other oriented” requests can be considered “PULLING” communication. In other words, you are pulling your communication toward your “side” of the fence rather than trying to push them. Directionally, these types of messages are backwards. Now, I realize that the term “backward” may have a negative connotation to it, however in this instance it is a powerful and effective tool.

I want you to imagine two people, standing upright and about 4 feet away from each other. The person on the left is “A” and the one on the right is “B”. I also want you to imagine that there is a rope that is running between the two that is tied around their necks.

Let this rope represent the communication, and therefore the mobilizing “force of action” between the two of them.

When I say action, this may mean getting them to do something for you, understand your side of the equation, agree with you, etc…

Now imagine that “A” is trying to get “B” to give them a ride to the store to buy a Twix candy bar… “B” agrees with “A”, they are indeed really good but this doesn’t mean that “B” is automatically on board. Therefore “A” has some work to do…

1. Push - Now if “A” starts to make statements (“I know you don’t want to, but you should do it any way”), observations (“You are not a good friend if you don’t do this…”) or even demands (“Get off your ass and give me a ride.”) then they are leaning forward in their communication. What does this do to the rope? It only give it slack and thereby allows “B” to move further away from them and pit in harder on “their” side.

1. Neutral – Let’s just see what this does… “I sure am hungry…”, “I would love a Twix right about now”, “I am really happy when I am able to eat a Twix”. Well, you can see where this is going. The two of them are just staying put, the tension on the rope is not changing so neither is the position of “B”.

1. Pull – If “A” starts to ask questions or make requests, now “A” is using this rope effectively to “pull” “B” onto his side of the fence. “I am wondering if you can help me by giving me a ride…”, “Do you remember that time I helped you out when you needed a ride? Well I think I need you to help me…”

You may have heard the term, “like pushing a rope…” Communication and persuasion are exactly that. You really can’t push a rope, it will only bunch up. You can however pull it and by doing so you can go a long way toward reaching your goals.

Effective communication is a powerful rope… It can have an almost unlimited tensile strength. It’s power is in it’s ability to pull… not push. When using it to push, it can do very little… The most effective, efficient and potent delivery of “pulling” is in the usage of questions.

So how come you can’t push the proverbial string? Tomorrow we will talk a bit about freedom and personal validation to demonstrate what happens mentally when humans are presented with directionally “toward” communications and why questions help you to avoid this.

To learn more about questions and other forms of effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

Yesterday we discovered how the brain uses the mental lexicon to determine the literal meaning of the communication that is being presented to it. Today we will finish the segment by talking about how the brain fits that information into its own world to determine the interpersonal meaning of that communication to the listener. This begins with referencing against the categorical information stored in the brain.

Categorization:

As we stated previously, the lexical activation is dependant on all of the prosodic, syntactic, contextual and phonetic information/components we spoke about above. Once a literal meaning has been placed on the word/s and sentence/s the brain will “categorize” this information based on the existing reference memories/information in the brain.

Categorization is simply to process of referencing the meaning that has been assigned with the past experiences and knowledge that the listener holds to form abstract representations of what the speaker is conveying. These are basically summaries... or more specifically personal summaries of the communication.

There are several models that have been proposed for categorization in the brain. Suffice it to say that categorization is the grouping of “structurally/contextually/subjectively similar items” in the brain for further referencing in the future. Categorization is an evolved process that allows humans to quickly and efficiently “size up” a place or scenario for quick action.

For instance brain-imaging studies have shown that neurologically, language is organized by “semantic categories” and not according to just by individual words. For example, let’s say in an experiment participants are asked to name a number of animals, tools or people, specifically. When they do so, certain areas of the temporal cortex will light up as different examples of each one are named. This is a great example of categorization…

By referencing the literal meaning that has been established through the previous process against the existing categories in the brain of the listener, they are able to effectively make “sense” out of the communication. This “sense” that has been made will interact with the left and right hemispheres of the brain to develop a personally meaningful abstract representation and begin to develop their own personally meaning from the communication. This brings us to the complex equivalence…

The complex equivalence of the words and phrases to the recipient:

The term complex equivalence refers to your own personal attachment and meaning that is placed on abstract concepts. For instance, what does “protection” or “anger” mean to YOU. Your definition and conceptual activation of these words will be different than someone else’s who grew up in a war torn country (assuming that you the reader did not).

Once all of the above has taken place and actual words have been translated, it is the left hemisphere that interacts with the Wernicke’s area and the mental lexicon to determine the rational, pragmatic meaning to the listener of each word, phrase and sentence. It is the right hemisphere that determines the emotional connotation attached to each word, phrase and sentence. At this point, the communication that is coming in has been turned into abstract representation in your mind and both hemispheres of your brain can begin to assign your own personal meanings to the communication you are receiving.

This is where your belief systems, value systems, core drives, working memory and other cognitive functions come into play. You are now able to respond and act accordingly based on the information that you are receiving.

I know that took quite a bit out of you, but you are now officially an expert on how the brain “listens” to communication. To learn more about the neurology of listening and other information pertaining to effective communication, please visit my website The Communication Expert.

Yesterday we discussed the initial exposure to the sound stimulus and phonemes. Today we are going to talk about how the brain turns the phonemes into words via our mental lexicon so let’s get to it…

Decoding of “words” meanings with the Mental Lexicon:

The following all happen interactively so they don’t necessarily happen in a specific order aside from the necessity of defining what each word is specifically as the initial activation. As such, let’s talk about words first.

As the words are being decoded from the sum of their phonemes and their place in the prosodic structure, they begin to take on their own morphological structure. “Words” are stored as single entries in what is known as the mental lexicon (a language user's mental database of words). Although they are stored as single entries, they are linked to a single stem word. For instance the words discount, discounting, counting, counter, discounts, etc… are all stored as their own individual word but are linked back to the stem work “count” for meaning. This is the generally accepted (based on empirical evidence) concept of how the language lexicon is set up.

As the person receives and further deciphers the words in sequence, “candidate” words that are compatible with an incoming speech signal (continually developed portions of each word based on the sum of the phonemes) are simultaneously and continuously activated to actively compete for recognition. Multiple possibilities are enacted and either thrown away or used depending on the arrival of more prosodic and content based information. As more information comes in, “candidate” words are discarded to eventually arrive at a single “most likely candidate” for the word that the speaker is most likely trying to convey.

The phoneme by phoneme concept is most overtly displayed by the activation of full words based on partial/non-words. For instance saying “facil” activates the word “facilitate”.

Once an actual word is recognized from the sum of its phonemes, its specific meaning will further depend on the combination of what object/sensation/concept it represents in real life, the context in which it is stated and most important the syntax in which it is used.

What syntax means literally is the order of the words or sequence in which the words are arriving in the mind of the recipient. This obviously is based on the temporal receipt of them and this temporal receipt (timing) determines in what order they are referenced against the mental lexicon … This is where the sentence/syntax decoding interactively comes into play. Syntax is incredibly important as is displayed by the classic example of “the dog bit the man” versus “the man bit the dog”… Obviously, there is a major difference between the two sentences.

Along with the syntax, the actual context of the communication will play a major role in determining the meaning of words and/or sentences. This refers to the communicator’s physical appearance, their nonverbal communication, the surroundings, the domicile (house, church, store, etc…), the culturally accepted “ways”, etc… Content/context is small label for a massively broad theme, but I think you get the point.

So… by combining:

1. The arrival sequence (syntax) of the words
2. The sum of the phonemes (the specific word or words), and
3. The prosodic structure
4. The context of the conversation (geographically, culturally, socially, etc...)

The mind will reference the four factors above with the listener’s lexical representation of each word (what it means and how it “should” fit in sequence with the other words) to develop actual, literal meaning for each word and by the end of the sentence being spoken, to the sentence itself.

Wow… You are now an expert on the mental lexicon and how interacts with speech to create literal meaning. To learn more about the neurology of listening, the mental lexicon and other information pertaining to effective communication, please visit my website The Communication Expert.