Effective Communication: Do You Make These Common Mistakes When Talking to People?

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Here are three common mistakes together with tips on how to deal with them:

Judging Your performance Against Unrealistic StandardsBe honest with yourself. Accept that where you are now in terms of your communication skills is only your starting point - not your finishing point.And assess your performance and your progress against your typical level of effectiveness. Not against some desired state of perfection or ultimate goal.Goals are very important as a destination to aim for but do not use long term goals as a standard to judge your current performance against - that is a recipe for disillusionment and massive frustration.
The Failure To Learn Each DayAs people we can be lazy. This means that a lack of follow through on our goals can go unnoticed. After all we can always catch up some other day.This attitude will kill your dreams faster than you can spell failure.
Attempting To Be OriginalMany years ago I put myself under huge pressure by expecting myself to be original with each person I met. This is a sure-fire strategy for failure and a great way to get stressed out for no reason.Guess what I later discovered?There is no need to be original. You can have the same conversation all day long with different people and nobody will suspect a thing! People are happy to talk about mundane topics because there is no effort involved.