We often get asked the question "can you help me to communicate more clearly in interviews?"
Two simple steps to effective communication are rapport and outcomes.
We won't cover rapport here - it's a subject in itself. We'll be happy to discuss rapport with you face to face if you're interested in learning more about it.
For outcomes, there's a really simple idea we can use - you tend to get what you want if you express your desires:
Positively
Congruently
Personally
So, one step at a time:
Express what you want as something you DO want rather than something you DON'T want. Saying you don't want to be a graphic designer gives me no useful information about what you do want to be.
Make sure you do want the thing and that there aren't any side effects. For example. if you want to give up smoking would you lose anything that you weren't expecting? e.g. confidence, social life, hunger control etc. However much you may want to lose a personal trait, there will certainly be some place or time where it could be useful to you. Your unconscious mind will sabotage your attempts to change if there are any side effects to what you want.
Make sure that the thing you want is under your control to change and that it has positive effects on you and the people around you
How would this apply in communication? Well, if your interviewer told you what
he/she didn't want in a candidate then you need to explore the positive
intention i.e. what he/she does want. Then you can ask "why is that
important" in order to start to understand the motives and values.
When you understand someone's values you can communicate much more effectively
with them. Here's an example of a conversation I had with a customer recently
about some problems he was having with a supplier:
| I don't like(supplier's) account manager | |
| why do you say that? | |
| she doesn't listen | |
| why is listening important? | |
| so I don't have to repeat myself - it's a waste of time | |
| so is time important? | |
| yes | |
| why is that? | |
| because I've got lots to do | |
| is action important? | |
| yes | |
| why? what does action do for you? | |
| I like to get things done, to get results | |
| so time and action is important. Is 'efficient' a good word for that | |
| yes, that's it | |
| OK, so what DO you want in an account manager? | |
| ......... | |
Seems obvious, doesn't it.....we all know why listening is important, why action is important , don't we? Yes - you know exactly why it's important to you. Until you know why it's important to your customer, you will be able to satisfy your needs, not theirs. Most of the time, they'll be similar. Do you have an experience of when they weren't?
If we only listened to what the customer didn't want then we could wheel one account manager after another in front of him and he'd never be happy. This would actually annoy him even more, even though we'd be trying our best to make him happy. Instead, we now know what is important to him and we can satisfy him much better. Finding a word to describe the value is good, as it gives you instant feedback - when the person you're talking to says "yes! that's it" then you've 'hit the nail on the head' - by describing his value accurately you've proven that you understand it. This isn't the same as rephrasing, which often leads to more confusion even though it's what people are often taught to do.
He went on to tell me what he does want, so now we can give it to him, making everyone happy.
You can apply the same process in interviews. When you're asked a question, you needn't always answer straightaway. Remember that the person asking the question may not actually understand it himself, so it's always worth a bit of clarification. For example,
| What experience do you have in management? | |
| Is experience important to you? | |
| Yes, you need experience | |
| What would experience give me? | |
| You'd have learned from your mistakes in the past | |
| Is learning from mistakes important? | |
| Yes | |
| So does that mean you're expecting me not to make any more mistakes? | |
| No, you'll always make mistakes, it's learning from them that counts | |
| So is the ability to learn more important than experience? | |
| Yes it is | |
| ......... | |
So you've achieved two things - you've dealt with the issue of experience AND you've helped the interviewer clarify his own thinking.
When someone asks a question which involves values, try asking "what's important about that?" I guarantee that a little more clarity will lead to much better results.
© Communications In Action 2003
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