Communication Activities

The transcript discusses the importance of effective communication skills, such as active listening and paraphrasing. It suggests practicing these skills by engaging in conversations, possibly on difficult topics, and having a third party observe and provide feedback. It also emphasizes the need to be present in the moment and avoid distractions. The transcript mentions that coaching sessions should be kept short, around 8 to 12 minutes, to maintain attention. It concludes by stating that practicing communication improves overall communication abilities. Again, I'm going to use for the activities for communication, active listening, the ability to paraphrase back what somebody said, and thoughtfully listening without interruption. Really being in the moment, not thinking about what you're going to say while someone's talking, which we are all guilty of, and a simple activity is to practice it, to have a conversation, maybe pick a tough topic, and do it. One cool thing you can do is actually have a third party. You can do it in groups of three. Now we can also suggest this in the supplemental coaching. If you get together with one of your employees, you can also have a second person there and maybe have that person count the number of times they demonstrated active listening and the number of times they looked like they were going to interrupt, or maybe the number of times they actually interrupted. And then you reflect upon it afterwards, such as, so what did we learn? And I'll guarantee you, when you first start this, it's amazing of the aha moment. People will say, wow, that's a lot harder than I thought. See, we're so stimulated. We are so overrun with things coming to our cell phone, the news, our computers. We are so easily distracted. It's one of the reasons when we encourage people to coach, don't coach in your one-on-one sessions longer than 8 to 12 minutes. Pick a target area, and here's why. If you try to coach someone for 30 to 45 minutes every week, they are not going to be attentive that whole time, sadly. So again, going back, activities. Practice the areas of definition. You can even do this with written communication. So again, when you're practicing communication, you become a better communicator.