Focus Confidence Momentum

Golf teachers will tell you that you need to see your swing on video to get the truth of what’s really happening. I think there’s just to much information in play for our brain to process what’s really happening when we do a complicated motor skill like swinging a golf club. Seeing it on video helps.

It’s equally complicated with interpersonal communications at work. Think about what’s happening when were having a complex conversation, say presenting an idea. We’re thinking about what we’re saying, what the other person is thinking, what we might be saying soon, what they might say or think soon, body language for both and progress towards the result we want. That’s a lot to compute and not everyone can do it all.

There’s one other factor in play with something like communication. People have a natural inclination to protect themselves psychologically. The ego does this for us. For example, the ego gets in the way of salespeople contacting more prospects. Hearing “no” is painful so the ego concocts reasons to avoid it. The result is less follow up calls, for example.

The ego also generally protects us from truthful self analysis. Why would we evolve as beings that encourage painful self criticism. Some people can do it honestly, but most not.

So one solution is to get an objective outside point of view. After a meeting you could ask someone who was there to discuss what they saw. You don’t have to believe their analysis unequivocally, but having the data is good. It’s also good to make notes of the meeting, as honestly as you can. An analysis later might be better after the heat of the moment dies away.

Another solution is to get a coach to help you analyze your meeting notes, to help consider and implement new ways of doing things and to give you that objective outside point of view. One thing we do at The Coaching Clinic is help develop script ideas for upcoming conversations.