A Good Communicator

A good communicator strives to achieve the one and only one goal existing in our daily conversation: Make others feel good.

For a long time, I thought communication is about truth and information. Now I realize that people have to feel good before they accept any opinion or information.

How to make others feel good? It requires great care with the words we choose. First, we should never criticize, explicitly or implicitly. Explicit criticism is commenting on what the person did wrong. Sometimes it is commenting on their hairstyle or clothes. A small comment like this will generate a lot of negative feelings, especially when a person has self-doubt. We should avoid criticism like avoiding a snake. It never reaches its goal, but makes a person feel bad. We should remove criticism from our heart, completely. Whenever we feel justified to critize a person, ask ourselves: Is this something they can change? If not, then accept it. For every shortcoming of a person, look at 10 strength that person has.

Offering advice or uninvited suggestion is implicit criticism. It means we think the other person is not doing the best they can do. People are consumed with their own doubt, fear and worry. Our comment can trigger strong negative feelings. The best thing we can do in this situation is offering concrete help. Advice is cheap and it requires significant effort from that person to make changes. Concrete help is hard for us, but easy for others to accept or reject. Avoid offering advice like avoiding fire. Stop thinking we are smarter than others. Even if we are absolutely sure we know the better way, the other person has to go through it him/herself. A smart person refuses giving advice of any sort.

What words would make others feel good: 1. Appreciation 2. Praise on what they did right. 3. Second-hand comment from others on this person’s good quality.

Parellel Universes

When two physicists discuss their subject of atoms and photons, an outsider knows little of what they talk about. Similarly, when a physicist walks into a room of stock traders, the jargons from this group of people will elude him. While we share the same physical world, we actually live in different universes of knowledge and concepts.

The abstract universe is where we reside most of the time. We discuss and debate with our colleagues, read publications or web pages in our domains, and think about it most of time. Ultimately, we are what we know and what we do. Our profession determines our unique knowledge, social norm in interaction, and feeling of achievement.

As human knowledge has branched out and is fast growing, more and more independent knowledge universes are generated. Nano technology, gene therapy, laser surgery, and many other new fields create their own expert and gurus. If you are talking to someone outside your profession, how can you convey your unique knowledge? How can you create the connection between two universes?

The connection is built on common knowledge. First, get to know the knowledge of the other person. Then use analogy from daily life to get across your point. This requires us to constantly think about the basic principle of our field, and link it to commonsense knowledge.

New knowledge is created when we disseminate it. That’s because we have built a bridge between two fields, and enriched people’s life.