Issue 25 May 4, 2004

The ProCompass Newsletter is a publication of ProCompass Management Services shared with over 400 subscribers on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please share this information with your friends and associates.

To unsubscribe from this newsletter please follow the link at the bottom.

If you have questions or inputs regarding this newsletter please contact us at mailto:Contact@ProCompass-ms.com

In this Issue:

Is Your Behavior Affecting Your Communication?

I spend a lot of time talking to business owners, managers and employees about their businesses and one thing that keeps coming up is the importance of communications. Almost everyone agrees that communications is critically important to his or her business.

Communication is one aspect of human behavior that sets us apart from all the other creatures of this earth. Through the course of evolution mankind has developed very sophisticated and complex methods of communication. From simple sounds to spoken language and then to written language. Over the past 150 years we have further developed our communications through electronic means; telephone, radio, television, cellular communications and of course the Internet. These are all modes of communication that we are familiar with and all possibly use to some extent in our daily lives.

Yet, despite all these advances in communications, and our increased ability to communicate, communication is often observed to be one of the major problems for many businesses and organizations.

Very often when organizations set about to improve communications they will engage in the latest techniques or technologies to make improvements. While such technologies may make some significant improvements, they almost always overlook the fact that communication is basically a form of behavior. People are going to adapt the available modes of communication to fit their behavior patterns.

If we all had the same patterns of behavior our communications efforts would be much simpler. Right? Well, this is a nice paradigm to dream about, but the fact is that everyone has their own unique form of behavior which affects they way they communicate. When communicating with others you have probably noticed some of the following characteristics:

q Some people like a lot of details

q Some people like to make quick decisions

q Some people like to develop relationships

q Some people like time to think

q Some people like to negotiate

q Some people like to stick to business

�..and some don�t

These characteristics are part of an individual�s behavior pattern and greatly influence how a person communicates with others. Is it any wonder, with these great differences in behavior and communications styles that we often misunderstand another person, or fail to get our point across?

So are we destined to endure these behavioral barriers to communications and just another limitation of the human conditions? Fortunately not! Communication and behavior are learned characteristics. We developed our current modes of behavior and we can learn to adapt of modify them to better fit our communications needs. With a little training and practice almost anyone can learn to recognize another preferred modes of communicating and adapt his or her communication style to improve the communication process.

People tend to like interacting and doing business with others who they perceive as being like themselves. Learning to recognize a persons behavioral tendencies and adapting your own to better match the other person will do wonders to improve the communications process.

Visit the ProCompass Strategic Thinking and Business Planning Flyer Back to Top

Visit the ProCompass Website Here

To Unsubscribe to the CompassPoint newsletter, click the link Here

PRIVACY POLICY: I do not rent, trade or sell my email list to anyone for any reason. You' will not receive any unsolicited Email from a stranger by being a part this list.

John Yost

ProCompass Management Services

(831) 438-7833

john.yost@procompass-ms.com

http://procompass-ms.com