Excerpt from The Marriage Whisperer: Top Five Communication Strategies




Top Five Communication Points

1. Being a good communicator in a work setting or among friends is not evidence you communicate well in your intimate relationships. We stumble through mood upheaval and drama in our personal communications. A higher level of emotion is present and shapes our communication. You are entitled to express, “That’s not what I understood,” but how can you seriously claim to know “that’s not what you meant” when your partner says it is.

2. While you (or the other) can provide excellent or better audiorecall of the precise words spoken, it does not mean you are a better communicator than your partner. You have a more detailed recall; that’s it. Your recall is not the same as having an accurate understanding; communication is about understanding.

3. Forget hooking up with an official source to “prove” what the other person meant with the words he chose. The dictionary does not interpret or dictate personal meaning.

4. In conversation, meaning is put into the words by the speaker when spoken and put onto the words by the listener when heard. Forget the dictionary. Focus on usage and intent. Do a listening check.

5. When your listener does not catch what you mean, express yourself with different words. Do not keep repeating the same words, which were not understood the first time. Insisting that you (and your words) were perfectly clear is foolish. You were not. Clarity is in the ears of your audience, the listener—and he/she did not get it. Remember that people who describe themselves as good communicators are only as good as the communicator on the other side. Words have no meaning as sound waves in the air. They have meaning when they are sent, and they have meaning when they
land. We have not communicated because I heard what you said. We communicate when what you mean is what I understand.

We communicate
when what you mean 
is what I understand.


     Author Dr. Patt Pickett

TMW is available at retailers and online, as well as at the MSI Press webstore (use code FF25 to get a 25% discount for readers of this iblog).



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