Your immediate response is likely to be:
"Absolutely- I just don't understand other people!" Anyone relate?
I watched a talk on YouTube given by a world renowned speaker who focuses on the health care industry. She was really entertaining and her observations were profound. She explained that, on that particular conference, she had spent the previous evening asking delegates
what they loved about their jobs.
Every one of the large group was employed in some capacity within the health care industry and every person, without exception,
said they loved the people they were taking care of. She then followed the question up with one asking what they found
most difficult about their jobs - guess what their answer was?
PEOPLE! They hated that people were always backbiting, getting irritated with one another, didn't get their work done, took offense etc. How ironic!
We can all relate. We dislike these qualities in others as well as in ourselves, and for good reason.
People are complex and relationships are messy - never more so than between colleagues.
There will always be misunderstandings, but one of the principle keys to effective communication is
understanding yourself. What are your focuses, what are your trigger points, where does your strength lie, how efficient are you at adapting to what is required by the other person? All of these issues impact what we say and how we say it.
What we say and how we say it can gain another's cooperation or shut them down completely. If we understand ourselves, we're more likely to feel confident enough to operate from a higher level of authenticity- honesty. We're fully on board with our challenges and therefore, more likely to be accepting of others' quirks and frustratingly different focuses.
The personality typing modules on all of our communication and management courses are
wonderful tools in helping us to gain an overall understanding of where we fit and recognise where others are likely to feel comfortable. This pretty much undergirds
effective communication; authenticity allows for us to drop our defences and encourages others to do the same. With authenticity, we have more emotional energy to move away from the dishonesty of manipulation and actually gain co-operation.
I don't believe that personality typing tools are the beginning and end of self-awareness, because I'm cognisant of the fact that we're individuals. However,
self-awareness is the bedrock of self-development, and personality typing tools are integral to gaining this knowledge.
At Staff Training, we gear much of our content to
assisting in the process of gaining insight. We use tools which are practical and apply to all aspects of self-awareness. We've been in existence for nearly 20 years and are constantly researching and updating our material in order to keep it relevant in a fast changing world.
Visit our
website or email us at
info@StaffTraining.co.za for more info, or give us a call at 0861 996 660.
Book today:
Communication Excellence
Staff Training is a South African soft skills training provider with more than 60 workshops on offer.
