Mark Goulston can help you get through to anybody, anywhere, anytime. He has trained FBI and police negotiators, been a UCLA professor of psychiatry for more than 25 years and worked as an executive coach and team-building expert.
In his new book, Just Listen, he provides techniques for getting through to others at every level. He says the key to better communication is, first, to make the other person “feel felt.” When they believe they are understood, they will become more open to what you have to say.
Goulston says nearly every breakthrough that people have with one another is preceded by not merely talking to each other but beginning to truly listen and hear what the other has to say. It is only at that point that they realize they may have misunderstood each other when they were speaking before.
He tells of an insurance company whose franchisees were told they should begin to sell financial instruments through a new program. Yet, every explanation of the program was met with, “Yes, but.”
The franchisees argued that selling financially “risky” products would turn everything they did for their customers upside down. “Previously, they had only sold auto, home, property and casualty policies.
The only thing that eliminated their anxiety was listening. When they were trained to listen without an agenda and ask only questions about what was going on, things changed.
An interesting thing happens when people admit they are scared. At that moment, says Goulston, not only do they physically relax, they can actually become realigned with each other.
