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April 20, 2013 by David Hofstetter Leave a Comment

Watch What You Say

How important is communication? Very important you say. Here are some better questions; do you watch the words or phrases you use? Are you aware of the words and phrases you use and the order in which you use them? Maybe? Sometimes? How about in the heat of the moment?Megaphone.jpg

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Words

What is your reaction when someone says ‘this is unbelievable’? Was it used as a positive or negative? What do you think about? Is it really unbelievable or did it just happen so it is believable. It is one of those words that can be used either way.  Instead of unbelievable, use words that are either positive or negative but try to stay away from words that can be used either way, unless all the listeners will interpret them the same way. Use words that can add excitement and that describe what you are trying to convey accurately.

While it may seem like semantics, words like that can change our physiology as well as the context of the conversation. It can make us mad or excited. The word unbelievable sends our brains a message that is not believable but it just happened so your brain gets a mixed message.

Use words that describe something clearly. Use words that don’t desensitize the situation. Use words that accurately describe the situation.

Phrases

How crazy does it make you when you are working on a project with multiple people and one of the people says to you the project that you and they are working on is a mess, needs to be redone, and isn’t going to work? You ask what do you mean, my part, your part or what? The response is I’m not going to talk about it right now.

What?! You are going to leave me hanging? That’s not fair but it happens. Either don’t say anything or give the person a nugget of information to reduce the stress of not knowing.

Here are only two examples. We should be careful of the words and phrases we use.  Make sure that your listener is going to interpret your message the way you intend.

I bet we have all done it, especially in the heat of the moment. What are the words or phrases that make you crazy and are inappropriate but we fall back to on in the heat of the moment?

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