One of the most frequent areas of skill building in our business coaching programs is in the area of communication.
Participants in the coaching are required to bring a “highlight reel” of their successes and/or challenges. One particular executive I worked with was struggling in his relationship with his direct report. His direct seemed to be falling into a pattern of making excuses rather than solving problems. In the communications coaching, the client learned how to use language to more effectively set the context for the conversation and use the language of curiosity (versus the language of blame or judgment) to open up the conversation.
The client was amazed how open his direct report was when he used a different and more thoughtful approach to word choices. The language of curiosity created a more open and collaborative space.
If you think about it, we are linguistic beings – words are “the water we swim in”. Yet it’s startling how incompetent, sloppy and downright stupid we can be about our word choices. Mastering communication skills lead to higher leadership effectiveness, business results and personal satisfaction.
