The CommFlow System

Christian Horak

The CommFlow System

A structured approach to understanding and improving interpersonal communication

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Contents

Introduction: Communication is like keyhole surgery (you should be trained before you try it)

Chapter 1: The brain is stupid - Don't be fooled by it

Chapter 2: The social brain. A simple way to understand how to structure an interaction for success

Chapter 3: The Seven keys to communication flow. (Becoming a communication black belt)

Chapter 4: Community

Chapter 5: Intent

Chapter 6: Coherence

Chapter 7: Clarity

Chapter 8: Feedback

Chapter 9: Flexibility

Chapter 10: Influence

Chapter 11: How to get started

Chapter 12: The First Key: Community

Chapter 13: The Second Key: Intent

Chapter 14: The Third Key: Coherence

Chapter 15: The Fourth Key: Clarity

Chapter 16: The Fifth Key: Feedback

Chapter 17: The Sixth Key: Flexibility

Chapter 18: The Seventh Key: Influence

Appendix A: Some key things to know about the science of communication & the brain

Appendix B: The 20-minute body language survival guide

Appendix C: Culture Basics

Appendix D: Managing Self-Talk or "Dealing with the drama in your head"

Impressum neobooks

Contents

Introduction: Communication is like keyhole surgery (you should be trained before you try it)

Today's advanced medical techniques include a concept called "keyhole surgery". The principle is simple: The surgeon makes a tiny cut in the patient's skin, inserts a medical tool, performs the surgery - for example working on a patella in an athlete's knee - removes the tool and stitches or even glues up the small incision. The advantages are that the surgery can be done more quickly, the wound is more manageable and heals more quickly.

What does this have to do with communication? How can this be even remotely related to the world of words, language, logic, concepts and culture?

I thought of this analogy recently when thinking about how communication between two individuals actually works.

In order for any communication to work at all, both persons have to share a lot of things in common; a common language for once! But a common language is not enough. Elements of a common culture are required as well, as is a shared context for the communication.

Only when language, culture, context and quite a number of other things line up, a coherent communications flow can begin. One could say we have "Comm-Unity" and a compatible "model" of the world.

If, however, a shared model is not in place, when "Comm-Unity" has NOT been established, one can see a lot of misunderstanding. And while these misunderstandings are often funny, they are more often very frustrating and sometimes even tragic.

Again, you might say, what does this have to do with "keyhole surgery"?

The analogy is that - when we communicate -, we are actually opening a "keyhole" into the “World Model” of the person we are attempting to communicate with. We are "inserting" the "surgical tools" of our communication (words, body language, speed and tone of voice, outer appearance, pheromones, choice of setting, mode of communication) into the “World Model” of the other person. But we don't really see the "inside" of the other person. We can't. All we see is the response we get, and that has to be interpreted by us using our own World Model. In order for any communication to flow, we have to make a lot of assumptions on the mental "anatomy" of the communications partner. And these assumptions, and sometimes a lack of awareness of the complete scope of our messages are the reasons that so much communication leads to misunderstandings.

So, that is how "keyhole surgery" and communications can be compared. The huge difference between keyhole surgery and communication (apart from the fact that it is probably not a very strong analogy) is that it is usually performed by highly trained surgeons who spend years and years in university, and many more years practicing as residents in a hospital before they get to cut anyone open. The risks are simply too high, keyhole or not, a lot of things can go wrong and we want our surgeons to be the best.

With communication, however, most people are untrained and unaware of how communication even works! And therefore, many of us are quite unsuccessful in getting our points across successfully in many situations.

This book is intended to capture essential ideas about the art and science of communication. To create a Communications Flow System (CommFlowSystem) of training that provides a structured approach to become a master of communication at all levels.

The fundamental axioms of the CommFlowSystem will be based on the following categories:

(1) Community …

how to establish common ground / rapport with the target audience or culture earning the right to establish a flow.

(2) Intent …

how to be clear on the purpose and intended outcome(s) of the communication, (inform, inspire, entertain, educate, call to action, ...).

(3) Coherence …

how to apply ALL means of communication available (body language, setting, medium, language, tools, logic, continuity, etc.) in a consistent fashion.

(4) Feedback

how to solicit and read feedback at all levels (important since the meaning of any communication is determined by the feedback you obtain).

(5) Flexibility

how to adjust to different mental models and approaches to maintain flexibility, respond to feedback and avoid disrupting the flow

(6) Influence

how to apply an understanding of the mind to influence the flow in a certain direction (calming, persuading, objection handling, etc.)

(7) Clarity

how to achieve utmost simplicity and how to remove confusion, clutter and waste in your communication

The main goal of this book is to distill my personal experience as well as 100's of books read into an essential guide that will help anyone to become a better communicator.

Chapter 1: The brain is stupid - Don't be fooled by it

Our brain is a very advanced machine. It has evolved over millions of years. It operates at amazing speed and can store and retrieve huge amounts of information. The brain justly gets a lot of praise for being the main driving factor for putting our species on top of the food chain. Well done, brain! But in spite of its great performance, the brain is essentially "stupid". Just like a digital computer, the brain is essentially a sophisticated data processing machine and will faithfully execute any programs that are fed into it, through nature or nurture.

"Well", you are probably thinking, "I am not sure I agree with this! How can the brain, the main seat of our intelligence be stupid? What is this guy thinking?" Of course, it’s a gross exaggeration to get your attention. But let me explain.

The brain is essentially a collection of biological and chemical mechanisms that have evolved to provide the most appropriate response to a certain stimulus. The brain basically operates to continuously answer ONE main question.

"Is the stimulus I am receiving at this time a threat, or a benefit?"

This basic question is constantly, rapidly and subconsciously evaluated by all senses, continuously compared with stored information, and all other sensations and, if the answer is conclusive (it's a threat / it's a benefit), a number of mechanisms are brought into action that trigger or modify our behavior (fight, flight, excitement, sadness, etc.). These behavioral triggering and modification mechanisms are immensely complex and involve 1000's of different chemicals and bio-electrical systems.

Truly, the brain is an amazing machine. And it does its job really well. But, like I said, it’s essentially stupid. The brain and will continue to simply execute the inherent or learned programs, and it continues to optimize its response machine based on new inputs, experiences and training to further optimize its reflexes and automated responses. And the most important insight of recent scientific discovery about these responses and decision is: This process is neither purely emotional nor purely rational. It’s both emotional and rational at the same time!

There is an entire region of the brain, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), whose job it is to constantly take ALL INPUT, emotions, experiences and rational options and integrate them into a positive emotion to act. And it’s that positive eMOTION that provides the MOTIVation to act and decide; automatically and in split seconds, but always based on the whole experience. So, in short, no emotion, no decision. (see note at bottom of chapter 1).

As a consequence, since we do have a wealth of emotions we can integrate with our rational thoughts in sub second time, one thing the brain does extremely well, is to "jump to conclusions". Often, even a partial or very fuzzy stimulus is enough to trigger a full scale physical or emotional response. In a life and death situation, even the partial sight of a tiger should be enough to trigger the flight response. In a normal everyday communications situation, this sudden triggering of a full response to a partial trigger is a root cause of much conflict and misunderstanding. What is good for basic survival of the species is not always good for excellence in communication.

So we need to be careful not to be constantly "fooled" by the brains trained programs and "auto-triggers". We need to respect the constant automatic evaluation against the "threat/reward" criterion when we communicate. We need to be aware that the brain is a very sophisticated pattern recognition machine. A whole set of neural structures and a chemical called Dopamine is specifically built to look for patterns, try to predict what happens next, and will reward the person with a release of Dopamine, which generates "pleasure".

This pattern recognition machine is the main driver behind learning. The more unexpected the positive outcome is, the more Dopamine is released. And the brain will look for patterns even when the event is completely random. That's when the brain is starting to "make up stories", and we need the help of the rational mind and our connection to the real world to "make sense" of it all. (Note: there is a lot of scientific literature on this, in case you want to learn more about this)

When dealing with a real world stimulus, the brain is usually very reliable and allows us to react with blazing speed. It does this by evaluation of the external stimulus against a stored response program based on patterns. A good example is how we train our brain as well as our muscle reflexes to play better and faster tennis, or how to drive a car, without paying much attention to the mechanical actions needed to steer, shift, brake etc. But take care! The brain also reflexively responds to communication in a highly automated way.

This tendency to "auto-respond" gets even more severe when the body is flooded with one of the main chemicals such as adrenalin, that is preparing the body for an emergency response. This is the reason why you need to be fully awake and aware of the responses you are generating in your audience. What you say does not matter. Only what is being heard, and what reaction you are generating.

Using these auto-triggers, the brain's patterns and conditioned reflexes can lead us into a response that is entirely based on a constructed model of the world, not the real world at all. As a matter of fact, many of our responses to communication are entirely based on assumptions and the brain's speculations regarding the threat/benefit value of a future stimulus. And since the brain is constantly using this model, these assumptions, and the associated reactions can be very wrong or misguided.

Let me repeat. The brain is stupid. Its internal mechanisms cannot differentiate between a "real world" stimulus and a modeled or imagined stimulus. Just like a real world physical input (such as the smell of a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream can make your mouth water and make you want to sit down for a snack), communication in the form of images, words, sentences, and sounds will invoke an IDENTICAL response in the brain.

The brain cannot differentiate between the fear invoked by the sight of a physical Tarantula spider (if you are afraid of spiders) and the fear invoked by the sight of a picture of a Tarantula, or the fear invoked by the mentioning of the word "tarantula". It is the same chemicals that are being released into the body, the same response being triggered, and it needs a conscious effort of our awareness (conscious mind) to manage the triggered response. This is also true when we try to negate the image with words. If you, for example, say "do not think of a Tarantula", the brain cannot help but evoke the image, and therefore the response of the spider. The brain cannot process negatives.

What does this mean for communication? It is essential that we understand the brain at this level to optimize our communications. Here are a few things to remember:

(1) The brain is a very advanced threat/reward evaluation machine. Try to consider this before you initiate or respond to communication because this happens automatically in any interaction.

(2) The brain has/makes a model of the world, and will respond to communication with the same mechanisms it uses for responses to physical stimulus. So, when we communicate, we are basically connecting two world models based on abstract concepts such as words. As we can see in everyday life, this does not always work the way we intend it to work, unless we respect the world model mapping of the person we are interacting with.

(3) The brain cannot process negatives. All concepts/images invoked in communication will produce a response. Even if you bracket it with negatives such as "don't", "but", "never", etc., the brain always scans and processes for the basic concepts that it can relate to phyisical stimulus.

In later chapters I will go into more detail on examples on how the brain operates on information. Just let this short introduction be a reminder that "we cannot not communicate". Every message we send, we send at multiple levels including tone of voice and body language, and every message will always be interpreted by the receiving brain. Keep this in mind the next time you are in the middle of a misunderstanding. You might be more responsible than you thought.

Chapter 2: The social brain. A simple way to understand how to structure an interaction for success

In the last chapter, I explored a bit how the brain is actually a highly evolved pattern recognition machine that continuously evolves external stimuli in terms of threat vs. benefit to come up with the most appropriate response. This is also true of any social interaction and communication. The part of the brain, the "social brain" so to speak, that is mostly responsible for this is called the limbic system. The limbic system "prefers" to evaluate any situation, and therefore communication according to the following 5 criteria:

(1) Status

(2) Certainty

(3) Autonomy

(4) Relationship

(5) Fairness

These 5 criteria are easily remembered with the acronym SCARF, and although they are listed from 1 to 5, they always get evaluated concurrently, not necessarily one after the other. Let’s drill down a bit.

(1) Status means that the brain, (which is always looking for ways to increase security, power and ways to have fun) will scan each situation and immediately evaluate the situation in terms of its impact to the social standing of the person. If the status is threatened, you get a threat-response, and not much clear and unimpeded communication after that.

(2) Certainty means that the brain will always check if the situation is stable or at least reasonably predictable. If things look too flaky, again, you get the threat response and the listening process pretty much stops at that point.

(3) The same mechanism is then applied to Autonomy, to evaluate how much flexibility is available in the situation. When people feel "cornered", they again will be forced into a threat response by the social brain.

(4) The same is true when relationships are threatened, or even if things seem to break the common sense around (5) fairness. You should easily be able to see how this automatic evaluation by the social brain can stop a conversation dead in its tracks. This is even made more complex when we are trying to communicate across cultures, where questions of status and relationship can be vastly more complicated that in our fairly homogenous western culture. The same applies when we are communicating under pressure. An excellent in depth treatment of this subject around the SCARF model and the Social Brain can be found in David Rock's article for the NeuroLeadership Journal. Here is the link to David's excellent work. http://www.your-brain-at-work.com/files/NLJ_SCARFUS.pdf So, what can you take away from this for your everyday communications situations? A) Remember the SCARF acronym

B) When you begin a communication, try to think about how you can acknowledge or reaffirm the persons status in the situation, how you can create a stable and predictable environment, how you can give the person you are communicating with more options to respond, how you can tie into the community and culture of the individual to increase the feeling of relatedness and, last but not least, how you can maintain fairness in the situation.

Just following the 2 points above has helped me almost immediately after learning about the SCARF approach. As I continue to develop this book, I will also add specific examples on how to apply this to everyday situations such as giving performance feedback to an employee, or trying to influence a purchase decision, or even when having a simple chat at dinner with an old friend.