Enhance Your Communication, Enhance Your Career
Communication woes plague professionals across the board: Supervisors reprimand you in front of others. Coworkers tactlessly reject your ideas. Clients lash out at people to get what they want.
Rather than pushing back, getting even, or seething in silence, you can gain control of the situation and diplomatically deal with unkind people and behavior. The solution is called Verbal Aikido, and it’s a communications technique that won’t get you fired.
Aikido is a Japanese form of self-defense that uses non-resistance to debilitate an opponent’s strength. The Aikido practitioner seeks to counter attacks without bringing harm to the attacker in order to create balance. In other words, when pushed, you pull; when pulled, you push.
This technique is just as effective with verbal attacks. It allows you to respond to a verbal attack by accepting the comment, redirecting it, and reaffirming your stance in a positive manner. Avoid being hostile and building emotional barriers!
Verbal Aikido Basics
The cardinal rule of Verbal Aikido is to not repeat the accusation. By doing so, you absorb the negative message.
EXAMPLE:
If someone questions a business purchase with an accusatory, “Why are you wasting the company’s money?” don’t respond by yelling, “I’m not wasting the company’s money! I need these items to perform my job!”
Such a response reinforces the blame on you. Instead, a verbal aikido practitioner would redirect the comment by saying, “Let me tell you how I invested the company’s money.”
Your Verbal Aikido response also reaffirms your control over unneeded emotional responses, thus giving the other person nothing to push against.
EXAMPLE:
Suppose you’re giving constructive criticism to a male co-worker who tells you, “What I did is perfectly fine. You’re just too emotional. All you women are alike.”
Instead of becoming emotional and reinforcing his claim, say, “I agree. I can overreact at times. Let me explain why I feel this way about the situation.”
This response accepts the basis of the situation without absorbing the negative aspects. However, you redirect the accusation by agreeing. The response also reaffirms the other person’s feelings of frustration. As a result, you diffuse the confrontation and can work toward repairing the situation.
There’s no doubt that being able to communicate effectively is a major determinant to professional success. Hostile and emotional reactions only add fuel to the discussion … while counter responses restore harmony and balance.
So the next time you’re the recipient of a verbal lashing, analyze the comment. If the other party is pushing your buttons, pull back. If the other party is pulling you in a direction you don’t want the conversation to go, push forward.
Remember these five tips:
1. Protect yourself from others who try to infect you with their anger and hostility by being Direct with Respect®.
2. No matter who is dishing out the verbal assault, whether it’s a client, coworker, or supervisor, never repeat the accusation. Doing so will only force you to absorb the negative message.
3. You can diffuse any verbal attack by dissecting the comment and then deciding whether to push or pull as you accept, redirect, and reaffirm the statement.
4. When you give the other party nothing to push against, you gain control of the situation.
You are able to remain positive during the conversation, not defensive.
5. When all else fails, have the courage to walk away from someone who is verbally attacking you. Don’t be a willing participant in an uncontrollable negative situation.
The more proficient you become at Verbal Aikido, the more natural it will become – and the stronger all your verbal communications will be.
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If you want to go further into your own professional growth, check out the link for the on-demand
Communicate with Impact Course
“Joyce Weiss has a knack for getting to the point when it comes to communication. Her Communicate with Impact program has taken us to another level in our communication through out all ranks of our organization. This has allowed us to cut through our personal barriers to get to the real issues at hand.”
Nancy Wasczenski, Presidnet, Parda Federal Credit Union
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Until next time…Remember
“You Get What You Tolerate!”
Joyce Weiss, M.A., CSP
Conflict Resolution Consultant and Accountability Coach
New Facts About Stress: Falling Down Isn’t The Problem…It’s How You Get Up That Counts
Life is fraught with uncertainty. No matter how hard we try to avoid the potholes, there’s always another obstacle looming on the horizon.
How we recover from our personal and professional mistakes makes all the difference in the world. My latest book,
Take the Ride of Your Life!, has some useful tools for making that graceful recovery.
1. Look at those old patterns
The obvious mistakes are easy to correct … it’s what we don’t see that causes the most damage. Have you ever noticed certain situations keep popping up? And some problems just get worse?
Start observing your rituals. This will help you decide which patterns are working and which ones are keeping you down.
2. Get some positive feedback
The most valuable and underused tool we have is input from our true friends. Who else can you trust when you’re stuck in a rut?
It’s difficult to recognize our own shortcomings, but a trustworthy friend can gently introduce areas for improvement. Open yourself to hearing what they have to say, and drop the defense mechanisms!
With your eyes newly opened, look for new ways of dealing with habitual mistakes, write down an action plan, and see how it works.
3. Forgive yourself
Our inner voices can be merciless! Forgive yourself. Quit carrying the guilt and shame around like a heavy suitcase. Torturing yourself with past failures helps you achieve … nothing.
Blame is another reason we don’t always get over our mistakes. We blame others for our mistakes, thinking this will shrink our guilt.
Once you get beyond guilt and blame, you can start enjoying the ride.
If you want to gain more tips on new facts about stress, check out the link for your own copy of the
life coaching book, Take The Ride of Your Life!
“Joyce has an amazing ability to help people see how simple it can be to “shift gears,” to make those small changes that can lead to dramatic and overwhelmingly positive improvements, both at work and in their personal lives.”
Bob Danzig, author, speaker, professor, and former Nationwide CEO of Hearst Newspapers
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Until next time, Remember…
“You Get What You Tolerate!”
Joyce Weiss, M.A., CSP
Conflict Resolution Consultant & Accountability Coach
Many of my clients ask me to address ideas on how to get promoted, start their own business, or how to get noticed in the company. These are some of the tips that I share in my accountability coaching sessions.
Let me know if you have any questions on them and please do respond in the comment box below.
If eighty-hour workweeks and impending layoffs are leaving you apprehensive about your career decision, you’re not alone. These days, countless professionals are yearning for more fulfilling careers.
Unfortunately, many business people are going through their day-to-day work activities and feeling as if they’re pedaling a bicycle uphill in the wrong gear.
They secretly yearn for the feelings of freedom and self-reliance they used to have when they were children pedaling away on their very own Schwinns, Huffys, and Evans Colsons.
How can we recapture those childhood feelings of independence, adventure, and joy?
1. Safely navigate work’s potholes, ruts, curbs, obstacles, and challenges.
In order to excel professionally, you need the ability to learn from any past mistakes rather than dwell on them.
The truth is that the only wrong mistake is one we don’t learn from – when things go wrong, we have a choice. We can criticize ourselves and curse our own bad luck, or we can coach ourselves, extract value from what we learned, and focus on how we can handle that situation better in the future.
The next time something devastating happens to you, whether it’s a layoff or a failed project, remember there are lessons to be learned.
2. Take the direct route.
Many people are so confused at work that they don’t know what is expected of them anymore. It’s during these times that people need to use straight talk to solve issues.
Being Direct with Respect® means being able to communicate openly and honestly without hurt feelings. Encourage Be Direct with Respect® in your office by thinking about what you really want to say, writing it down, and practicing it.
The more you use it, the more comfortable you’ll feel, and the more your colleagues will follow your lead.
3. Stay balanced when the road is bumpy.
The majority of people are running on empty.
If your workday feels out of balance, the quickest way to identify what is missing is to know your core values: What’s holding you back from achieving balance in your day? Can you say no to the things that aren’t consistent with your core values?
When you ignore your personal values for the sake of others, keeping balanced is a challenging ordeal.
To gain balance, you first must be true to yourself. When you can gear down, relax, and enjoy the flowers on the side of the road, you can finally see the right path.
4. Stop pedaling in circles.
How long has it been since you’ve tried something new and different in your work?
After evaluating yourself personally, ask people you trust to make suggestions on how you need to grow.
Use their advice to guide your education decisions. Do you need to take a computer class, a writing course, find an accountability coach, or attend a management training workshop?
To carve a new career or enhance your current one, you must take responsibility for your own future and learn new skills on a daily basis.
Conclusion
Your ability to safely navigate workday obstacles, use straight talk, stay balanced, and keep learning will help you recapture the feelings of your youth – when your bike was your ticket to exhilaration.
You’re the one in control! Sometimes the journey will be easy coasting, while other times it will be an uphill bumpy trek.
Either way, it’s up to you to shift your professional life in gear and create your own career path.
Check out the article Is Your Enthusiasm for work Flickering Out? to find more ideas
on how to develop your own career path in the link below:
Leadership Consulting Article
Was this helpful?
Let us hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
Feel free to share these tips with your team-Just be sure to give Joyce credit when you share or publish.
Sign up at the RSS feed on the blog site to be included in future blog posts from Joyce on this subject.
Until next time, Remember…
“You Get What You Tolerate!”
Joyce Weiss, M.A., CSP
Conflict Resolution Consultant & Accountability Coach
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Joyce in Excellence Magazine: Four Ways to Solve Problems
Joyce in HAP Magazine: Three Strategies for Communication