Communicate and Motivate (Part III)

Part III of our “Communicate and Motivate” series will focus on why and how to Listen and Respond with Empathy.  Part I focused on simple Interaction Guidelines, part II focused on Enhancing Self Esteem in Your Team.

As a refresher, the five Key Elements of good communication that will help you to maximize your ability to give and receive information, recognize accomplishments and help others solve problems include:

• Maintain or enhance self-esteem
• Listen and respond with empathy
• Ask for help and encourage involvement
• Share thoughts, feelings and rationale
• Provide support without removing responsibility

Listening is a great way to build trust and enhance communication.  It increases your understanding of how others feel and what they need to be successful.  When you respond with empathy, this lets other people know you understand why and how they feel the way they do.  Emotions such as disappointment or anger can be vented when your respond empathetically.  A positive emotion met with your positive response may help take that motivated individual and send them to the stars. 

When you respond with empathy, you keep the discussion moving in a positive way towards the objective while defusing possible negative emotions.  It also shows that individual that you care.  But you should resond to both facts and feelings. 

If someone says, “I’m feeling so much pressure,” your natural response might be to say, “suck it up, we all feel the pressure.”  However, if you resond with “It’s obvious your workload is causing a lot of aggravation to you,” or “I too would be hurt if no one asked to help me,” you are telling the person you understand and care about that person’s feelings.

 Whether in sales, management or on a team, listening and responding with empathy goes much further than, say, cutting someone off to try to get back on track.  When an individual knows they are heard and their feelings are understood, it makes it easier to get back on track with the discussion, moving it toward positive outcomes. 

In our next segment, we’ll talk about how to ask for help and encourage involvement.

Part I can be found here.

Part II can be found here.

Part III can be found here.

Part IV can be found here.

Part V can be found here.

Part VI can be found here.