Communication Harmony: The 3 Powerful Secret Words to Eliminate The Drama And Conflict From Every Conversation

By Karen Phillip

The direction of many of our conversations can be changed quickly when you know how. Once you learn to lead the conversation, others will follow, ensuring your discussion is productive, rather than explosive. These skills can be used anywhere, with anyone. They calm the conversation and put the focus on the solution instead of the problem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evolve Global Publishing
• Release date: Aug 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463625712

Book preview

Introduction

The only control you have is over yourself; however,

you can indeed influence others.

If you consider all your relationships, especially those with your family and work colleagues, how would you describe them? Unless you can say they are all healthy, smooth, respectful, patient, kind and understanding, then these relationships and how you manage to communicate within them can be improved.

Most everything we experience—including the quality of our relationships—is a result of the quality of our communications. If we have relationships that need improvement, then it starts with us improving our communicating. When we improve our communication techniques, we can alleviate the heightened emotions that go along with the frustration of not being heard or understood in the way we need to be (25). We can guide a conversation so that all parties are heard.

However, the problem for so many of us is that we have never learned how to use language effectively. We know how to say things to express ourselves but most of us have not learnt to listen, accept another's differing opinion, negotiate change, mediate issues and understand the reason for another person’s perspective. We also likely have not learnt how to ensure we are heard and understood. Once we develop these skills, we can influence conversations and guide them toward the results we want.

It sounds complex, right? It isn’t. In fact, by learning the communication skills outlined in Communication Harmony, you can dissolve any issue that anyone starts to escalate. You can subtly shift the dynamics of the conversation so that you are guiding it and at the same time, you are reducing the other person's frustrations, anger and demands on you. Regardless if it is your partner, boss, colleague, child, or friend, when you enact these communication skills, the other person is moved to listen to what you have to say. You can guide them to engage with you in a real way, so you both connect and move forward.

If your life has been occupied with conflict or drama, you often have disagreements and/or you want to learn how to change your communication and language style to connect with others better, then congratulations, you can. Communication Harmony presents a range of researched-based communication skills and practices so that you can achieve calmer, happier and more fruitful conversations with everyone in your life. B y harnessing these communication techniques, it should alleviate the distress that you and the other person may feel, so you both can be heard, understood and informed far better than in the past. After all, we all want to find common ground in our conversation exchanges. We want to influence the other person, have them understand what we are saying and achieve, if not complete agreement, at least respect and understanding of each other's opinions, ideas or beliefs. Communication, after all, is about providing the other person with information you want them to hear and understand.

The Skills, Issues and Areas Addressed in This Book

In guiding you to become a powerful and effective communicator, this book covers the following:

•How negative experiences from our past can infiltrate our present to adversely influence our conversations and what we can to do to ward against it

•How to achieve shared understanding and clarity in muddy conversations

•How gender processing differences affect our conversations and what to do about it

•How to apologise appropriately and effectively

•Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)—what it is and how to apply it to communicate more effectually

•Three unique powerful words to swiftly redirect a conversation from escalating emotion and dissension to solution-driven connection

•How to control your reactions and move forward when someone's behaviour or words seem strange or hostile

•Non-verbal communication: tone and body language—how to read it in others to gain insight and how to initiate your own for best possible results

•How to approach a serious conversation so all parties are best positioned to be open and receptive

•How the human brain's wiring sets up subconscious traps, which misguide us in our communications with others and what to do about it

•How to discover when someone is lying to you

•The prominence of workplace interactions and how they affect your life

Learning these masterful skills means you will never fall into an uncomfortable disagreement or even a heated argument ever again. In fact, your conversation exchanges can be positive and the outcomes fruitful because you will learn how to make the other party want to listen to what it is you are saying.

If this is what you want to achieve, you can.

My Background

Early in life, I lived in a conflictual home. Then in my early adult life, I lived in an aggressive, narcissistic marriage for almost twenty years, while working in a competitive corporate world, I found conflict in everyday life, both at home and at work. This became my normal. Every day was a struggle to survive and the conflict became a survival skill, so I thought. After leaving that marriage, raising three children and studying for many years, I started a new career as a counselling psychotherapist—a lifestyle doctor with qualifications in sociology, family studies, counselling, psychotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), clinical hypnotherapy, mediation, fitness, and nutrition. These past twenty years have comprised of working in social science, counselling, developing new communication skills, and aiding those wanting and needing to remove the drama and conflict from their daily life. Through developing these skills and learning how to communicate effectively, while eliminating all conflict from every conversation, my life completely changed. I met an incredible man and upgraded to a marriage that has been wonderful, happy, connected and conflict-free for the past eighteen years. And no, we have never had an argument. While our opinions may differ at times and frustrations may appear, conversations have always been respectful, kind and understanding using the communication tools presented here.

Over the past two decades, I have been fortunate enough to have worked with thousands of couples, families, and individuals, teaching them strategies to remove all drama and conflict from their life, work, and relationships. I now teach these strategies at many seminars and am regularly on television and radio. The information in this book will teach readers these very same strategies to eliminate drama and conflict from their conversations and to guide your conversational exchanges to a positive and constructive outcome, all without anger or argument. This book comprises my last twenty years of study, work, and communication development, presented here for you all to learn and use.

On a regular basis, I conduct workplace training sessions for employees so they can learn these communication skills and improve customer and colleague relationships within their workplaces. Through the communication strategies I have developed, I help employees safeguard that what they are saying is absorbed correctly and what is being said to them is clear. These are the very strategies I lay out for you in Communication Harmony, so you too can enjoy the same good outcomes.

As a registered mediator with the Attorney General’s Department, I use my experience and expertise to help couples, who have separated, create their parenting plan. As considerable emotions come into play and often derail ex-partners from reaching resolutions, they depend on me to provide the communication tools, so they can reach a fair solution.

My experience writing for numerous journals, in both print and online media, and speaking regularly on radio and national television about communication has allowed me to help others create healthy relationships, particularly amongst family members and in workplaces.

Communication Harmony's Layout

While we all can speak and hear, we are not taught to communicate effectively or even correctly. We learn to communicate through trial and error over many years and often fail to become really good at it. This is why so many people continue to argue and experience drama in their life. We strive for a happy and connected life with those we share our days with. This can absolutely be achieved, once you know how. This book is the 'how', it is the communication bible everyone needs.

Communication Harmony is designed to help you get the very best out of life. Your life isn't a rehearsal, it is the only life you get. It's so easy to get stuck in adversarial conversations that damage you and your relationships. Communication Harmony is a step-by-step guide, so you can achieve your full potential but it will also help you to lead the conversation for the outcome you want. It is a fast way to learn how to direct conversations for the outcome you desire. The impact you can create will be powerful, persuasive, and effective. Communication Harmony is a unique approach to mastering communication skills and using them to aid both personal and professional development by directing conversations and influencing others.

Most people are not aware of the impact their words, conversations, and responses have on others. Words are very powerful and can leave us with a permanent impact. You will learn it is also imperative to use body language, tonality, and language skills to change the patterns of behaviour of others for a more beneficial outcome that you want. It is up to each of us to learn the skills to acquire a happy and connected life. Communication Harmony will teach you those skills, plus more. Imagine never needing to have an angry discussion again. No fighting, no conflict, no communication distress. How wonderful would life become and it can, once you learn how?

For more information or to discuss any training or appointments, please contact Karen via the website: www.communicationharmonybook.com.

Enjoy reading—and applying—all the information in Communication Harmony to help make your life, conversations, and relationships happier, calmer, and stress-free.

CHAPTER 1

First Steps to Rewarding Communication

Bridging the Many Differences

We have a considerable number of different relationships in our lives. We have relationships with:

•our partner (and/or ex-partner)

•parents

•children

•friends

•siblings

•extended family

•in-laws

•work colleagues

•boss or business board

•customers

•neighbours

•teammates

•social media connections

So many relationships, conversations, connections. These relationships come with numerous different personalities, beliefs, ethics, standards, and previous life experiences of each individual. And all of us bring with us to our relationships unique perspectives we derive from our particular upbringing, religion, family culture, political point of view, and the list continues.

When you consider the many variations and differences that all the people you are acquainted with hold—whether it is a passing, professional, social, or familial relationship—then it can seem like communicating so that both parties truly listen to each other, exchange ideas, and connect (as opposed to lightly disagreeing or heatedly disputing) is nearly impossible . . . or even highly unlikely.

This book provides you with a set of amazing tools to bridge even the most unlikely of differences and chapter 1 gets the ball rolling. In chapter 1, you will learn about the following:

•being responsive rather than reactive

•keeping negative experiences from your past from derailing your present communications

•paraphrasing as a tool to do both of the above

•using your knowledge about gender processing differences to manage your expectations when conversing with someone of the other gender

•applying all five apology criteria when a dispute arises

The understanding and use of correct phonetics and semantics improve communications(24). Phonetics is concerned with speech and how we analyse its sounds, while semantics is understanding the meaning of the verbal language and the phrases another person uses(6). These words and phrases, combined with understanding body language and eye pattern movements, can change the way you speak to, and understand, another person. It allows you to guide the conversation and obtain more clarity and meaning. The other person can then obtain clarification of what you are saying. This negates confusion and permits clarity in the conversation.

Keep in mind that while each skill presented in this book is effective on its own, when you apply several of the skills in your communications, the resulting positive effect is even more pronounced. So, each skill you encounter comes into play and builds over the course of this book.

Do not worry—we move through each skill carefully, and I supply many before-and- after examples, so you can gain a complete understanding of each skill. And before combining all the communication tools from this book in one go, take the time to practice each skill individually.

Next up—the importance of responding rather than reacting.

Responsive, Not Reactive

Though we learn to talk and we can hear, it doesn't mean we can communicate well. Think about it—if we had good communication skills, if we understood one another better, and if we listened with curiosity to understand, would there be such conflict and arguments in our lives?

The answer obviously is no. Life would be quieter, easier, happier, and far less stressful.

Currently we have such a high number of people suffering from anxiety. While there are a variety of reasons this can occur, in my experience, it has become a big issue because we are not designed to face the great amount of conflict and arguments that we are facing today in our daily lives. Our lives have become so busy, with so many expectations, which typically results in us feeling so stressed that we react to any large or small thing that occurs.

What I hear regularly is the regret people have for reacting to something they would have previously just let go. They question themselves on why they now react: What is happening to me? Why am I so on edge? Then after their emotions have escalated, they react without considered thought or logic. Things are said that can’t be unsaid, and behaviours can be childlike instead of intelligent or mature. Then this, of course, creates guilt within us, and we stress even more, so that our anxiety is further raised, and the chain reaction of reacting (rather than letting it go) continues to repeat.

We are so busy these days. So much more is demanded from us to be the perfect employee, dedicated to the job, organisation, or cause; the perfect parent and partner; the best son or daughter; the most available friend. Then we are often so involved in social media, what others are doing and saying, what others are feeling, how their life seems so much better than ours. The pressure is insane, and social media, we now know, is filled with falsities, innuendo, and camouflage. What should we feel, believe, or do?

I recall this initial conversation between a couple. Notice how it demonstrates the language that can sometimes be used when we are in an emotionally heightened state, without logic entering the conversation. This couple had been together for eight years, had two young children, and started to find fault in each other’s behaviours. According to them, they used to be happy and neither realised why each of them felt angry, frustrated, and fed up. We shall call the husband Tim and the wife Ali. It went this way:

Ali: He just picks at everything. I can’t do anything right. He annoys me now. He doesn’t notice anything I do, only what I may miss or forget.

Tim: That's so wrong. You just don’t do much. That's why I don’t notice much. Do stuff and I will notice it.

Ali: You're calling me lazy! How dare you, you creep? I do everything around the house, for you, for the kids, and I work part-time. You are such a creep. I hate you sometimes.

Tim: Boo-hoo. This is how we try to talk: she insults me, cries, then expects me to be nice to her. Why should I? She acts like a cow. And apparently, I now annoy her as well. Good to know, Ali.

Ali: You do annoy me. You do the stupidest things, worse than the kids.

Tim: So now you are calling me a child, yet I earn the money to keep you and them? If I left, you would struggle without me. Maybe I should teach you a lesson and walk out. How would you like that?

Ali: Fine, go, I don’t care, the kids wouldn’t care. You are always cranky at them for everything, the y can’t do anything right either. Maybe it would be easier if you weren’t around, the home would certainly be calmer.

As you can tell from this brief conversation, the first in their sessions working with me, both partners threw insults at the other, neither listened, neither demonstrated care about what the other felt, and both ignored the other's needs. Both their emotions were high and only increasing. It was also reaction based—a chain reaction of reacting; and no listening and responding. This is a very child-like conversation that, of course, degenerated into more insults and hurt; more reacting and heightened emotion. This is what each of them had been experiencing for the past year and they were both over it. They said they wanted to learn to get along, accept, and tolerate.

They really wanted to understand and like their partner again.

Fact is, all people continually evolve, and unless we stay in touch with each other, we can lose touch. By staying in touch, I mean, checking in, listening, asking relevant questions about how they feel, being attentive and appreciative, and asking what you can do for them and with them. Kindness is the key. Being responsive, rather than reactive, is also essential.

Child-like conversations serve nobody well. Not us, not our family, children, friends, colleagues, or community. So many of us are walking around stressed and reactive. This then escalates anger. We need to break this cycle before more damage is done to ourselves and those around us.

Once we can start to become responsive rather than reactive, we can lower our stress levels and emotions, so logic becomes more automatically dominant in our responses. Before