Two indispensable ingredients for effective communication …

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You may have great listening skills and terrific talking skills and still be ineffective at communicating with other people.

If that’s the case, you’re likely lacking two indispensable ingredients for effective communication: self-awareness and other-awareness.

The internet, libraries, and book stores are littered with material that will teach you how to listen to others, or effective talking skills, or both, but most of those articles, books, blogs, and even seminars and workshops leave out the necessary ingredients of an awareness of self and others for successful communication.

SELF-AWARENESS
It may sound odd to hear that we lack self-awareness regarding effective communication since how could we expect to communicate successfully with someone else if we first don’t have an awareness of what we think, feel, and want?

Good question!

But most of us habitually enter into conversations with others without first giving little — or any — conscious consideration of what it is that we really think, really feel, and really want. In other words, we lack an awareness of self.

The underlying reason to that is as simple as the fact most of us take little time to purposely think, to develop our thoughts which formulate our feelings, and to direct what it is that we really want from ourselves, or others, or “out of life.”

Awareness Wheel, as presented by: Miller, Sherod, Phyllis Miller, Elam W. Nunnally, and Daniel B. Wackman. Talking and Listening Together: Couple Communication I. Littleton, Colo.: Interpersonal Communication Programs, 1991. Print.

Because this is such a common lack and so negatively impacting on our efforts to communicate with anyone, the Couple Communication I program, for which I’m a certified instructor, first teaches participants how to develop a greater awareness of self and others, and then how to use that with specific listening and talking skills. Key to this process is the use of the “Awareness Wheel” (pictured at right), which is a registered copyrighted tool developed by the originators of this nationally-acclaimed, award-winning educational program.

With the Awareness Wheel being a base tool for specific talking skills, you gain a greater self-awareness by exploring the elements of the wheel:

    • Sensory Data – What is it that you have seen, heard, experienced, etc. about this issue?
    • Thoughts – What are your thoughts — assumptions, beliefs, interpretations, expectations, evaluations, opinions, etc. — about this issue?
    • Feelings – What are your emotions — happy, frustrated, disappointed, sad, angry, excited, etc. — about this issue?
    • Wants – When it comes to this issue, what is it that you really want for yourself, as well as for others and “us” (if a couple)?
    • Actions – Regarding this issue, what have you been doing? What are you currently doing? What are you willing to commit to doing in the future?

That’s a very fast introduction to the Awareness Wheel, but likely enough to help you sense how such self exploration could lead to a much greater self-awareness, which can directly enhance your communication with others.

OTHER AWARENESS
Using the Awareness Wheel with specific talking skills helps you build your self-awareness and more effectively communicate your position from enhanced understanding … but you’re not done yet! Communication is not complete just by verbalizing your thoughts, emotions, and wants.

Next, you can use the Awareness Wheel, this time with specific listening skills, to help build your “other awareness.” So often we think we know what someone else thinks, feels, or wants — until we stop to listen to them!

If we only build our self-awareness, but have a lack of other-awareness, then we’re only communicating “at” the other person rather than fully communicating with them.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
More than 700,000 couples internationally have taken the Couple Communication I training with outstanding results. That’s because they’ve learned to use the Awareness Wheel, coupled with specific talking and listening skills, as tools to enhance self- and other- awareness and from there communicate collaboratively. When we use skills to communicate from a position of being self-aware and other-aware, our capacity for effective communication is greatly enhanced.

What is your current level of self-awareness with regard to your communication with others? What’s your current level of other awareness with regard to your communication with others? Do you think your efforts to communicate with others could be enhanced by developing your self- and other- awareness?

Scotty