One of the key pillars of life is communication.

NLP is often described as ‘the systemic study of human communication.’

So, in making the presumption that the art of communication is so important, why are we often so lousy at it?!

When studying people in communication mode, it never ceases to amaze just how many talk ‘at’ each other rather than ‘with’ each other.

Q: In order to speak ‘with’ someone, which of our senses should we automatically employ first?

A: Auditory

Yes, believe it or not, an awful lot of us just want to say what’s on our mind / give our opinion when we would be much better served to listen carefully first, before speaking.

Another NLP-ism is ‘the meaning of a communication is the response that it gets’ and one can’t accurately respond without having listened carefully to the comments or remarks being made.

The three elements of communication are Words, Physiology and Tone.

When broken down by percentage, this is how it looks:

This chart tells us that up to 93% of all communication is done unconsciously, using non verbal means and ONLY 7% is performed consciously, i.e. via our words.

This goes to show that by simply focusing on speaking, speaking, speaking, we are making little headway in terms of communicating properly.

When two people are not communicating well, there will be an obvious sign of no rapport.

A Game Changer Says …

There is a well known saying that ‘God gave us two ears and one mouth’ for a reason. Whether religious or not, we are most definitely better served by adhering to it.