"Most people don't listen with the intent to understand; They listen with the intent to reply." _ Stephen R. Covey
How often does it happen that when 2 people talk, having internally the same intention, and after a couple of minutes they end up in a verbal fight, or a misunderstanding appears on the surface?
I am sure that we all go through this several times a day and it can take a lot of your energy and time to get over it. Not just that, imagine the impact this has on the relationship with the other person. Their perception of you, or your perception of them, might change completely, only because we are ready to attack on what the other is saying, instead of really deeply listening to their intentions.
Especially in modern society, where everybody is so focused on their gadgets, or completely shut off from the outer world because of their earphones, our listening skills are further declining.
Not only our listening skills, also our conversational abilities are declining and more specifically our questioning capabilities. How often do you find all the answers to your questions? probably not as often as you wish. Later on in this article we will tell you exactly how to master the art of questioning, getting the answers that you want and most importantly, to get that success that you are looking for in any area of your life.
Once we engage in a conversation, be it at work or with your spouse, with your kids or when you are selling, we will discover that either party will have a need or want. This could relate to getting a task done, a shoulder to cry on or someone wants to buy a product.
Tony Robbins has discovered after many years of research, studies and practical experience, that all human beings basically have 6 needs:
1. Certainty - we all need a sense of security;
2. Uncertainty / Variety - Shaking things up now and then is very exciting;
3. Love (or connection) - We all need to feel loved or connected;
4. Growth - Be it professional or a growing / developing relationship;
5. Significance - Don't you need to hear how good you are sometimes;
6. Belonging - Being part of a group of people with the same interests gives great satisfaction to most of us.
If we understand what the person's current needs are, we can influence them in any way we want.
"Curiosity killed the cat..."
We all have heard this saying but is this really true?
If we look at it from an NLP point of view, this would be incorrect. When practicing from an NLP point of view, it is extremely important to listen with the intent of being genuinely curious about the other person. if you ask just for the sake of asking, or with a suspicious mind, they will feel it and close the so-called door in your face. All your efforts in building rapport and connection with them is gone with one single question.
Another obstacle to avoid is mind reading. We tend to know what the other person is talking about or what they need, but in fact, this is very dangerous. Whatever you see around you, could be very different from what the other person is seeing at that moment.
Generalization, Deletion and Distortion
Imagine you and a friend are having a conversation, and you decide to describe how amazing the food tasted last night in that new restaurant. I am sure that you are very accurate in what you felt, tasted and smelled. Do you think that your friend will have the exact same experience as you did? Most likely they will not.
Our brain has created filters for every single impression that reaches us. In a previous article we went deeper in how the brain works, feel free to have a look at that to refresh your mind.
As a summary, we generalize, delete and distort loads of information so we don't to overload our brain with information.
This means that what we perceive as the truth, is actually not the entire truth as many details are being left out. The same goes for anyone else we are interacting with, they also filter parts of the information out, therefore we can easily get caught up in mind reading for example.
A quick way to show you how it works is to have a look at the below image, what do you see first?
Did you see a rabbit? With the ears pointing backwards to the left and the mouth towards the right?
Or did you see a duck? With its beak to left?
This is how we perceive our own world, which can easily be different than someone else who is looking at the same picture. Now wonder how we end up with misunderstandings!
The power of targeted questioning
As per the statement from Stephen Covey at the beginning of this article, we are more concerned with creating a reply than to bother about what the other is saying. hence we are losing a powerful tool that can immensely increase the depth of our relationships.
When we start to really listen to understand, we automatically become more curious about what the person moves in their daily life. Once we become more curious, we tend to start asking more specific questions which allows us to have more meaningful conversations and relationships.
If we translate this into the perspective of a sales person, by targeted questioning we can find out what drives their motivation to buy, reducing generalizations, deletions and distortions and removing the so called "smoke screens" that a client will surely put up.
John Grinder, one of the founders of NLP, found that there are 5 language patterns uses to generalize, delete and distort.
Let's have a look at the patterns and what you can answer in order to break down the smoke screens and eventually overcome objections before they arise. That's what we call being one step ahead!
we quickly highlighted that the co-founder of NLP, John Grinder, came up with these 5 questions. Initially there were 13 items that came up regularly, since this was too much for most of the people, he sought out the 5 top questions.
Nowadays, we tend to get more lazy and want to have the fastest way to get to things, for those out there who are looking for this, there are 2 secret words that will cover it all.
Starting any question with one of these 2 words, will set you up for success in getting to the answers that you are looking for and to a successful close of the sale.
Starting a question with How and / or What triggers the mind to really answer from within. people will dig in previous experiences and emotions, exactly the point where you can influence anyone in to doing whatever you want them do.
In our next blog we will teach you how to identify other language patterns and how you can use them to get what you want, every time.
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