My Dreams Aren't Weird, Are They?

To function adequately you need seven to eight hours sleep each night, preferably unaided by drugs or alcohol. A person can last for about 72 hours without any sleep whatsoever until it becomes detrimental to their health. Eleven days is the longest anyone has gone without sleep before they died. Yikes! This is not said to scare you, rather it is to reassure you that when you think you haven’t slept for a few nights it is most likely that you have. You just haven’t gone into REM sleep.

Rapid eye movement (REM) is when we dream and allows our brain to go through the day’s events. We enter a series of sleep cycles across the night with each REM period increasing in duration. A full sleep cycle lasts between 90 and 120 minutes and we will have four to five cycles each night. If you are sleeping poorly you may only have just the one cycle hence you will feel tired and your brain may not function as it should.

Looking at your brain using a computer analogy, dreams are important as they allow our brain to 'defrag' the events of the day. When we have a weird dream, say the one where the lion jumped onto the boat as we were flying over a mountain, it is our brain not quite putting the files in the correct file tray as it works through events. During the day you would have seen the picture of a lion, travelled on a boat, and watched a movie about flying so your brain just mashed it up a bit and came up with this version. Don’t worry about these dreams, they are normal.

Bad dreams are where your brain is struggling because you have probably been involved in something that has impacted your amygdala (the emotions part of your brain) causing an emotional response. That active memory is then stored in your hippo-campus (the brain’s vault of memories) and has left an impact, a scar or mark in your hippo-campus. Don’t be bothered by one or two nights of bad dreams. If the bad dreams carry on for more than three days then you should go and see a professional to put some perspective on what is occurring.

The other thing that may have caused the bad dream is that you are hot. No, not in that way, temperature hot. Our brain continues to operate if it is warm hence we have trouble getting to sleep when the air temperature is high. If you wake up from a nightmare try removing a blanket and see what happens, I bet it works.

Stop Arguing With Me!

I was asked yesterday by a follower if I was able to provide some advice around managing customers who continued to argue their point and did not accept what they were being told by the service representative.  Hmmm, good luck with them.

There are some people who just like to argue regardless of what you tell them, then there are others who see themselves as always being right.  These dogmatic people have a higher degree of narcissism than most of us.  Their sense of self-importance and need to focus on themselves is at the extreme end of the communication continuum and are very difficult to appease.

There are several ways to manage this type of person.  The best way that I have found is to make it all about them, more than you would with other people.  Use sentences such as "You make a good point", "I can see where you are coming from", or “This would frustrate you". 

The difficulty arises when you can't actually help them.  For example, the company policy disallows you from doing what the customer has asked of you.  Honesty is the best policy but with an explanation as to why.  I call it 'the reason for the reason'. 

Policies are developed for two reasons; to protect the company and to protect the customer, more so the former reason in most situations.  Often we will say, "I'm sorry but I can't do what you are asking because it is our company policy".  You know what the customer hears when we say this - "We have rules for situations like this and I can't change them". 

Try explaining to the customer why the policies are in place, to protect them.  Say "Lance, I apologise that I cannot help do any more for you.  We value our customers and have policies which are designed to protect everyone". Try variations of this as it has to be said in your own words otherwise it sounds disingenuous. For example “Our policies have been developed over years of business Lance to protect everyone, I apologise that there is little I can do to change this”.   

Breaking down this sentence - Use the customer’s name early in the sentence to personalise the conversation, use the word 'apologise' as it is more formal than the word sorry and we say sorry far too often so it also becomes disingenuous. Then explain why the policies are in place, to protect everyone them included.

Finish off the conversation by giving the customer something that they can take away, it need not be tangible although this would be more helpful. It could be as simple as “What I am going to do is to mention your situation to my supervisor as you raise a valid point”. Be honest remember, if you lie you will lose credibility and a customer. Always do what you say you are going to and don’t over-promise. Under-promise and over-deliver.

Bottom line, sometimes people just have to have a reality check.

Listen To me Damn It!

Sometimes when we are communicating with others our mind will wander off. This is because the average person talks at 150 words per minute while our brain can comprehend 600 words in that same time.

Have a look at these listening lapses and see how many you do:

* Do you think of the next question while the other person is still speaking?

* Do you ask a question and then listen just for the answer you want to hear?

* Do you start talking without really knowing what you are going to say?

* Do you interrupt people because you think you know what they are going to say?

* Do you interrupt people because don't like what they are saying?

* Do you lose eye contact because you are disinterested in what the other person is saying?

* Do you get fidgety or annoyed when you have to listen for more than 10 seconds?

* Do you often wish that people would talk faster?

* Do you finish off other people's sentences?

* Do you interrupt when people say something that you've heard before?

* Do you change your thoughts as someone is speaking because you've wrongly guessed what they were going to say?

* Do you regularly do most of the talking?

* Do you let your thoughts wander away when people say something you don’t agree with?

* Do you associate low intelligence with someone who talks slowly or has a disability?

* Do you talk louder when speaking with someone who has a disability?

* Do you raise your voice and/or stand up when you want the caller to stop and listen?

* Does your voice change to sound arrogant when you know that you are right?

Work on the ones that you need to so that you will be a much better listener and others will enjoy your conversation more than they do already.

How To Actively Listen - 8

There are many variations of active listening available on the internet. Over the next few days I am going to take you through the eight strategies used successfully world-wide by those involved in crisis negotiations.

A summary is a long paraphrase and is used towards the end of a communication.  Once you believe the conversation is close to a conclusion, go over the facts of the conversation in your own words.  Ensure that you cover the important words so the message remains the same as told to you and do so without any of the emotions the other person would have spoken of.  

What you are doing is putting their story into your words.  This continues to assist with the rapport building process and confirms that you have the facts accurate.  Ask for clarification if you have parts incorrect.

It is often a great idea to add an emotion at the end of your summary such as “...and because of this you feel frustrated/annoyed/angered/confused.”  Again don't worry if you don't quite have the right emotion label. 

A summary is also helpful to end a call for those people who just won't go away.  The summary indicates that you are coming to the end of the communication and it is time to move on. 

So, there are the eight strategies of active listening skills.  They are used in varying forms with various names across industries such as sales, marketing, PR, and interviewing.  Try focussing on open questions and minimal encourages first until this becomes natural for you then introduce paraphrasing and reflecting.  Keep I-messages and emotion labelling for particularly difficult communications.

Tomorrow I will look at empathy and rapport, both necessary in controlling difficult conversations.

How To Actively Listen - 7

There are many variations of active listening available on the internet. Over the next few days I am going to take you through the eight strategies used successfully world-wide by those involved in crisis negotiations.

Effective Pause & Silence

An effective pause is a short piece of silence placed at the beginning and at the end of an important statement which helps to highlight what you are saying. It is like a verbal bold and underline to reinforce the delivery. As humans we love to communicate and we dislike silence, we like to hear noise all the time.  (Too often though we like to hear the sound of our own voice!)

A short pause used in this way will get the person's attention as they listen intently for a sound, your next words.  Don't leave the pause for too long otherwise it will interrupted by the person asking you a question and your important message will be lost.

Silence (not saying anything) is a longer pause and used a number of ways. The first is when someone is talking flat out and allows you to identify their problem.  When someone is talking the best thing to do is to let them continue so that they can maintain their flow of thoughts. Stopping someone in mid-flight is similar to stopping someone during a sprint race, they will have to start again slowly to gather momentum.

Another use of silence is when a person is being untruthful.  At the completion of their sentence, restrain from talking despite your inherent desire to do so, and watch how effective it serves your purpose. If the person is lying and asks if you are listening, respond with “Yes, and I want to ensure I record what you have said accurately”.  This is a way of signalling that you disbelieve their last sentence and recording it for future reference.

A further use of silence is when someone is reluctant to talk.  Generally, the less that someone is talking the more we have to talk as this will encourage dialogue.  If this doesn’t work however then resort to saying nothing and wait for a response.  They will eventually ask if you are still there and you respond with “Yes, and I want to hear what you have to say”.

Tomorrow we will look at the last of the eight strategies for active listening, the summary.