COMMUNICATING: MORE THAN WORDS

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Sally and I were talking about a friend of ours today. The topic was her anger. Sally and I both have a problem with anger. Unlike some people whom we both admire, we do not enjoy conflict. 

What bothered us the most was not how she pushes people away when talking to them, but the tone in her voice. Her attitude. The way her eyes roll back in disdain. Even the way she stands and folds her arms---kind of chippy, cool and scrutinizing.

Suddenly, I remembered some notes I had taken down years ago about communicating with people. When we talk to people, when we attempt to communicate with another person, what we actually communicate often has little to do with the words we are speaking.

Only 7%. Isn’t that interesting?

Now listen to this amazing statistic.

55% of our communication is conveyed by the tone of our voice.

The other 38% is conveyed by our body language.

In other words, people get what we are saying mainly through how we feel about what we are saying. And, I would add, people get what we are saying by how we feel about them. Our tone, our body language. That’s 93% of how we communicate.

Verbiage is important. Getting our story down is crucial. I believe we can get better every day at telling our stories and crafting our words whenever we speak, teach and coach.

The bottom line, however, is about how we feel about what we’re saying, and how we feel about the people we’re talking to. If we’re comfortable in our own skin, if we have a passionate belief---not rigid, but passionate---in what we’re saying, then, more than 90% is going to get through, even while we're stumbling over our words.

So, if we love what we do, and love others while we're doing it, we will win.  

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