Communicate Like This

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Blame is a much more emotional version of accountability. It’s usually pointing fingers at others in order to deflect the spotlight being turned on you. Often times, you’re mad at someone about something, so you make the matter worse by accusing them, by blaming them.

Accountability, however, is a much more logical, less emotional way of pointing out when a given situation or expectation was either complied with or not complied with.

Blame is a drill sergeant screaming in the private’s face. Accountability is a coach helping correct a situation and preventing it from happening again.

We cover the topic of Integrity in some detail. Integrity, for the purposes of this podcast and practical reality, simply means doing what you said you would do by when you said you would do it. Demonstrating Integrity builds trust and having trust reduces stress, arguments, misunderstandings, and miscommunication. The other side of the coin of Integrity is Respect. If you don't do what you say you will do, then basically you're demeaning the other person as not being as important as you are and you get to do what you want, regardless of how it impacts others. Hear how comedy bits from the movie Good Morning, Vietnam and Saturday Night Live highlight the issue of lack of respect.

We finish up the interview with Chris Olson, who is on the same journey as most of us are who listen to this podcast, that being to reduce stress, arguments, misunderstandings, and miscommunication in our lives. I think it’s fair to say that Chris is learning first hand that actually putting all of these communication tools we’ve been talking about to consistent use is pretty hard. What I also think he’s learning is that you can’t expect instantaneous results. To really get better at effectively communicating, it takes commitment and a deliberate, conscious effort to put your actions into alignment with those Core Values and Principles that we know as ACE ARTIST. Stick with the plan and you will get there. Be focused in your efforts. Opportunities abound every single day when you interact with people, so have that awareness that you do have the tools available to you, all you have to do is put them into action.

This is the first episode of Communicate Like This with a live interview. Chris Olson reflects on his journey with the concepts of Core Values and Principles and the use of communication tools in his real-world life. Listen as Chris talks about how he tries to use this stuff with everyone, from his six year old son to Chris's dad, and everyone in between. 

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If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all of the communication tools you’ve been learning, relax. We talk about how to simplify that process of actually putting the tools into action. Have an awareness at the front of your mind at all times, before you open your mouth to speak, that you need to have an awareness of the discussion situation you’re in and that there are communication tools you can employ. You’ve already learned what the tools are (so far) and when you have that bigger picture awareness, when something comes up that you think doesn’t feel right, your brain will automatically pull out the communication tool you need to help achieve a mutual understanding.

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We explore the true meaning and value of the Core Values and Principles (CVPs) by looking at the situation of a yelling match between two people. We examine how yelling violates each and every one of the CVPs. If you truly want to Continuously Improve and make your communication more effective, then this episode gives you practical techniques to figuratively hit yourself upside the head with a 2-by-4 to stop yelling and start communicating.

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Judgments are formed in five steps—action, observation of the action, assumptions made about the observation, judgments, then speaking the judgment out loud. Judgments are often the reason the punchline to many jokes is “. . . and that’s when the fight started.” This episode gives you the tools needed to not only recognize when judgments are being made, but how to overcome negative judgments. There’s a lot of judging about judgments in this episode, so listen with your ironic comments at the ready.

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This episode summarizes Part 1 of Defensiveness from the previous episode and continues the conversation about defensiveness. This session is chock full of new tools and old tools to use to combat defensiveness. Listen closely to hear words from a different famous philosopher other than Marshawn Lynch. 

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While assumptions may be at the root cause of most arguments, often the trigger for an argument starting is when one party becomes defensive. When they’re accused of something, they will lash out with their own accusation about you. Then the conversation gets moved away from the original issue about them and on to you. If you then become defensive about their accusation, then the conversation devolves into an argument and you never resolve the original issue. This episode talks about communication tools you can use to deal effectively with defensiveness.

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Picking up from the cliff-hanger in Episode 12, we’ll talk about how you can best deal with someone who hasn’t yet learned these effective communication tools when you’re in an argument or discussion. We’ll also discuss the tool called The 5 Whys and how it gets to the root causes of issues. Last, we’ll talk about the concept that all effective communication is 50% sender and 50% receiver. These are all important to help you along that path of Continuous Improvement.