This Communication Skill Can Transform Your Life

(upbeat music) - Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dile. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this episode, you love this podcast, do me a favor, share a episode of this podcast with someone that you know and someone that you love. All we're trying to do is just impact more people. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm gonna be teaching you probably the most important skill that you can have to deepen your connection to other people and transform your life. Now, communication is something that we learn from people that we're raised with throughout our entire lives. But have you ever taken a step back and asked yourself, how can I be the most effective communicator possible? What do I need to learn to communicate as effectively as possible? And we've all heard it. Communication is the number one key for any relationship, whether that's a romantic relationship, whether that's your friendships, your family, your children, any other breathing human. Basically, if they can fog a cup because they're breathing, this that I'm gonna teach you today will deepen your connection with other people and your communication with them. The problem is that most of us were never actually taught how to communicate. It's not something that we're born with, it is a skill set. And so for me, when I was younger, I realized I'm a really bad communicator. I'm shy, I don't communicate effectively. How can I become a better communicator? Because human connection is amazing. When you're really connected with another person in a great conversation, your body releases dopamine, it releases oxytocin, you feel good about it. And so let's try to get better at being communicators. So first off, what we need to know is communication, as I said, is a skill. It's not a talent, what it does is it takes practice. And according to the American Psychological Association, EQ, which is emotional intelligence, is one of the strongest predictors of relationship satisfaction. And communication is where EQ becomes visible. And so what I'm gonna take you through is something that Dr. Carol Comfort came up with. And it's the key to communication. And it is an acronym, it is L-U-V. And so I'm gonna take you through L and U and V. So the first part, L stands for listen. To listen to another human with no need to respond, no opinions, no extra input, to just listen. Empathetic presence is the act of being fully present with another person. Not just physically in the same room as them, but emotionally present with them, mentally present with them. And what that means is when you're in a conversation with somebody, setting aside your own thoughts, your own judgments, your own beliefs, and any distractions that might be in the way of this other person. In today's fast-paced world, distractions are everywhere. And everybody's got an opinion. But to be fully present with another person when they're talking with you, shows that you value them and you respect them, even if you say nothing. If you wanna be a better communicator, the first thing you need to do is shut up. It's crazy, it doesn't make any sense, 'cause you think like, oh, I need to be a better public speaker, I need to say bigger words, or maybe I need to say something more effectively or communicate a specific way. No, we need to shut up. It creates a safe space where the other person feels seen and heard. So many people just wanna be seen and heard nowadays. So put distractions away, put your phone away, get other devices away, make eye contact with the other person that's in front of you, square up your shoulders with them, nod, show that you're listening to them every single step of the way. The most value that you can give someone in a conversation is silence. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation before where you sit down with somebody and they're a really big talker and they talk like 90% of the conversation and then you get done and they're like, well, that was such a great conversation. And you're like, I didn't say anything, right? So what I want you to do is to listen better, to give them space, to sit there without judgment. And I get it, as a guy, this can be really hard because men, we always wanna try to fix things. So if someone comes to us with their problems where I was like, what can I do to fix it? Let me put on my Bob the Builder hat. Listening is a skill. Don't try to fix problems. And the easiest way to do this and to get a better at listening is to know that when that person is done talking, you're going to count to three without responding. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Reason why is because when you just jump in and you say what you wanted to say, you don't listen to them in the first place. And at the same time, what usually happens is if you give someone extra space, they'll usually continue to start talking again and they will go deeper and you'll get to know them even deeper because they went deeper. And according to Harvard Business Review, there was a study that was done and they found that people who felt actively listened to by their managers were 80% more likely to report trust in psychological safety with that person. So practicing the wait time, that intentional three-second pause before speaking increases understanding, slows down reactivity within yourself and within them. And what's weird about it, according to studies, it actually makes the other person feel smarter because they're given more time and they're allowed to process. And so psychologists call this low arousal communication. It's used in therapy. It's used in trauma-informed parenting. It's lower volume, slower pace, fewer words. All of those equal higher trust. And so a pro tip that I can give you that one of my first mentors really gave me is stop trying to be interesting and be interested. Stop trying to be interesting and be interested. And if you do that, you will be a much better communicator and people will feel like you're a much better communicator. So that is the L, okay? Next one is you stands for understand. While words convey the surface message, the nonverbal cues like body language and tone and facial expressions often carry the emotional weight of the conversation. And so verbal and nonverbal is what you need to think of. So a really interesting thing, years ago when I was younger, I had a manager, his name was Jeff. And there was like over 700 offices in the company that I was in. There was men and there were women. And Jeff was the number one developer of female managers. He had more female managers than any other person in the entire United States, including other female managers. And so I asked him, 'cause I was like, hey man, like, you know, what's the difference between men versus women? And he's like, I want you to read this book. It was a book called Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And I read it to understand how our brains work differently, how we think differently, how we communicate differently. And I also saw studies, I started researching this. There was a study on those done on little boys and little girls, they were around four or five years old. They had them go into a classroom. And what they had them do was they had them just sit at the classroom, they put them in there and then they watched them through, you know, a mirror where they didn't know that they were being watched on the other side. And little boys would face the front of the classroom and have conversations facing the same direction. So they're both facing the same direction. They turn their heads and they look at each other and talk to each other. Little girls were more likely to turn to each other to square up each other's shoulders and like have each other's, like looking dead in each other's faces and give each other nonverbal cues. They're head nods, they'd say stuff like yes, which is a verbal cue. And this is the reason why a lot of times that like men, if you've ever heard, say you've had your wife or your girlfriend be like, you're not listening to me and you're like, what are you talking about? I heard the entire thing. It's usually because you're not giving the nonverbal cues in the verbal cues to show that you're listening, which is part of the you, which is understanding. Head nods, square up your shoulders, uh-huh, yeah. So what you're saying is, dot, dot, dot, or if I understand correctly, dot, dot, dot, giving them facial expressions, giving them reflections back, like repeat back to them to make them know that you're listening, that you're present with them, and that you're understanding them. All of these show to the other person that you're listening and that you're present. But more than anything else, they make the person feel seen and heard. And one thing that I have learned in the past couple of years is just how many people are starving in this world to feel like they are seen and heard and understood and that their emotions are valid. And there's a 2011 study that was done by UCLA that found up to 93% of emotional meaning and communication comes from nonverbal elements. So 55% is from your body language. So just your body language is communicating with the other person. I'm listening, I'm understanding, I'm here, right? So 55%, 38% is the tone of your voice. So the way that you're speaking and the tone that you're actually speaking back in, the cadence, the speed of it, right? And only 7% is the words that you actually use. So when you're trying to have them feel understood, you wanna use what's called reflective listening. So what I'm hearing is dot, dot, dot. And it not only clarifies what they're saying to you, but it tells the other person like, "Hey, you matter enough for me to get this right." And when someone feels truly understood, their cortisol levels drop. So they actually, that's a stress hormone, drop. Oxytocin rises, which is the love chemical, and their nervous system starts to shift from threat to trust to relaxation. And so, when you look at it, it's listening, it's understanding, so that's L, that's U. And then the last one is V, which stands for validate. This one is very, very important 'cause many, many people are not good at this at all. Very few people can effectively do this. And if you do this, people will love to communicate with you. It's something like I completely understand. You don't have to agree with the person to say, I understand you. I understand why you feel that way. You can have a completely different opinion. You can have a completely different belief system, but you can say, you know what, I understand. Tell me more. Oh yeah, I can see where you're coming from. All of those is validating another human because perception is reality. They are living in the reality that they're in based off of how they're perceiving it. And so by validating another person's feelings or experiences, you're not necessarily agreeing with them, but you're acknowledging their perspective's legitimacy. And so stop trying to fix everybody. A lot of people don't want to validate. They want to go in and fix. I've done this before. I want to fix people. I want to fix problems. Lots of men like this. Oh, let me tell you what the problem is. Versus just validating the other human. That is called the savior complex where you're like, I'm just going to save everybody. Stop trying to save everybody. There's a clinical psychologist named Dr. Marsha Linhem who is the founder of dialectic behavior therapy. And she describes validation as recognizing and accepting another person's feelings, thoughts and behaviors as understandable. That's it, just understandable. So when you validate someone, you reduce their emotional defensiveness because their nervous system no longer feels like it has to fight to be hurt. And so with a phrase like, yeah, that makes sense, can be really disarming for another person. Once again, it doesn't have to be because you agree but because you acknowledge how they got there. And so another thing you can do to also help in this situation is to ask questions. If you want to help fix somebody, if you're a fixer like me, instead of coming in and trying to give advice, ask questions. When you ask questions to another person, they're usually able to gain more awareness through conversation. And then they think, man, that was such a great conversation with another person when in reality what you did was you asked them questions that allowed them to expand their perception. And so you don't have to give them any answers. You just ask questions and allow them to come to it. Helping someone grow is not about taking away their pain. It's about helping them suffer less. And so if somebody is, pain is something painful happens in our life, suffering is the pain that we're continuing to live through because we're continuing to pull this pain with us and now we're suffering because of it. Something could have happened six months ago and someone's still suffering from that thing. And so instead of me going in and trying to fix somebody and telling them, hey, here's what I would do. It's like, maybe I can ask them questions to give them a different perception so that they can start to free themselves from their own suffering. That's what I would do if I were in your situation, you're a quote unquote fixer like I am. So even if you don't agree with somebody, once again, you can still validate them. Even if you don't agree with somebody, you can still listen to them, you can still understand them and you can still validate them. They did the best with what they had. And so what you're trying to do effectively here is to have compassion and understanding. One of the things that I have found about humans is that we all just wanna be understood. That's it, we all just wanna be understood and feel like the feelings that we're feeling are valid. Too many people are invalidating other people's feelings. According to a motivational interviewing research, open-ended questions promote insight and ownership, far more than giving advice to somebody. So instead of saying something like, hey, here's what I would do, what you wanna just ask the question is like, hey, what do you need right now? It shows true empathy. It shows you're allowed to feel this. I'm not here to fix you, I'm just here to be with you. Every human is basically asking two questions in every interaction. Unconsciously, not even sitting down and going, oh, I'm asking myself these questions, but unconsciously, they're asking themselves, do you see me like to this other person that you're sitting across from? Do you see me? Number one, and number two is am I safe with you? And when you communicate and you use the LUV, the love when you're communicating, it's allowing the person to be, yeah, this person sees me. And number two, I am really safe with this person. So when you're communicating with love, LUV, the answer becomes yes to both. So you might have clicked on this because you wanted to become a better communicator and speak more fluently and succinctly and be understood more. But really, if we're trying to be the best communicator that we possibly can, it comes with number one, listening, number two, showing people that we understand what they're saying to us, and number three, validating them. If you do that, you don't have to worry about learning any big words or seeming interesting. People are going to love you way more just because of those three steps. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on the Instagram stories, tag me in it, Rob Dowd Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. If you wanna learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast, you can go to coachwithrob.com right now. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave it the same way. I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission, make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.