People
listen less when they have a one-way agenda. You
can identify a one-way agenda very easily. You
have a one-way agenda when all you want to do
is get your point across without any feedback.
It's like a person I worked for many years ago
said, "This is an I-talk-and-you-listen meeting."
Those are not very much fun and, from my experience,
counter-productive.
The
difficulty of one-way agendas is that those on
the receiving end do little, if any, listening.
You have not afforded their point of view any
validity so they shut you off, even though it
may appear they are paying attention. Question:
How do you get your point across in the most effective
way while giving credence and consideration to
another's point of view? Answer: The Agreement
Frame!
The
Agreement Frame is something I learned in Neuro-Linguistic
Programming (NLP) training. It's so simple and
so effective in becoming a better communicator.
Here's how it works: When someone says something
with which you disagree, respond with The Agreement
Fame. Do this especially if you care about the
person or the outcome you are seeking. The Agreement
Frame has you use a form of one of the following
phrases:
I respect your point of view about blah,
blah AND . . .
I appreciate what you are saying about
blah, blah AND . . .
I agree that one could feel that way about
blah, blah AND . . .
After
the word "AND" you say exactly what you want to
say. For example: "I respect your position that
all left-handed people are superiorly intelligent
AND my theory is blah, blah.
To
agree, appreciate or respect
someone's position you have to listen to it to
repeat it. Many times when we have a one-way agenda,
we are not listening. We just wait for the person
to take a breath so we can inject our thought.
In most cases when we do this, we use the word
"BUT."
"BUT"
is a word our mind is conditioned to. When a person
hears someone say "BUT" after they've stated their
position, a part of their mind immediately turns
off to the next thing that person has to say.
We discount anything that follows the word "BUT"
due to this conditioning. If you say, "I love
the dress you're wearing BUT . . . , you
may as well have said, "I don't like that dress"
because that's the message they received.
The
Agreement Frame is very useful when writing or
giving a face-to-face review of an employee's
work. If there is an area of an employee's work
that needs addressing, schedule it after you have
given the person credit for their accomplishments.
The key is to leave BUT out of it. Suppose you
say, "Your performance in customer service is
excellent but you need to give more attention
to the proper filling out of paperwork to be considered
for promotion." This statement does not communicate
both pieces of information to the receiver. The
compliment, "Your performance in customer service
. . ." did not register with them once you added
the BUT. Here's the same idea without BUT. "Your
performance in customer service is excellent AND
if you give more attention to the proper filling
out of paperwork, you will be considered for promotion."
This
nuance of change will allow you to make the points
you think are necessary without having the person
feel like they've committed a capital crime. It
works everywhere. It takes some effort to employ
The Agreement Frame and it's worth it.
