Landmines in Communication

I’ve been reflecting on the landmines that show up in our conversations that leave people feeling like the conversation is not a safe place.

A while ago I was observing a conversation of four or five friends. One friend was in the middle of talking about her last camping experience, suddenly, another person interrupted her and began to tell their own story about their camping trip.

As I watched this interruption occur, an immediate change appeared in the first person’s facial expressions that went from excitement to pain, frustration, feeling devalued, and even resentful of the interruption.

The person who interrupted was not even aware of what happened. No one felt heard, no one felt understood, and no one felt connected.

Steve Shapiro said: “Your quality of Life is determined by the quality of your relationships. Your quality of relationships is determined by the quality of your communication. Your quality of communication is directly linked to your ability to effectively listen.”?

It strikes me that in business or in our personal lives, most of us in some way have become reflections of subconscious generational communication habits that are really driven by the self-worth need to feel safe and valued.

My experience has been that there are at least seven of these unhealthy communication habits.

• Being preoccupied in a conversation with the dialogue in your own head.
• Needing to be right.
• Finishing other’s sentences for them.
• Mentally waiting for a break in the conversation just to share your ideas.
• Assuming others understand what you are not saying.
• Turning the spotlight back to you in your conversations.
• Solving other people's problems for them/fixing them.

It also strikes me that these communication habits are usually easily seen and felt by others but in many cases are not apparent to us. Why is that?

First awareness. When triggered the subconscious will quickly pull you into the habit before you are even aware of it.

Second, when we are in these unhealthy habits of communication the light of focus is turned on us. As it is, we are blinded, unable to see in the moment--or even not at all, that we have stolen the light away from them and this dims our ability to truly hear and see them and ourselves.

Thus, words are said but connection does not happen.

We can communicate while focusing on ourselves, but we can only connect when we don’t need the focus on us.

If it would benefit you to have a conversation about altering ineffective habits of thinking and improving communication, I’d be happy to have a chat-- please dm me.