Our Goal: Helping individuals and organizations create common ground connections
Enhance Your Communication by Connecting with Others
What are common ground connections? When we establish common ground with others we seek to find things that we have in common with another person. It’s hard to communicate with someone with whom we have nothing in common. Sometimes we go deeper than common ground and create a “connection” with another person. Connecting with others means the two people are literally thinking in the same ways. Each person thoroughly understands the other. They “click.” Combining these relational skills into common ground connections just makes sense. The skills of common ground connection are already a natural part of everyone’s communication skills. Unfortunately, they often don’t use them deliberately and in all their conversations. They miss opportunities to get close to and understand others through their communication. How will you know? One way you can tell when you are connecting with others is through the ease and degree of comfort “felt” during a conversation. There’s no tension or anxiety when two people have connected deeply. Both can relax and enjoy the conversation because each can truly be themselves. They understand each other thoroughly. They develop a trust between them that allows both people to safely open up more than they normally might. They’re motivated to use their best communication skills. They truly enjoy communicating. Particularly with people with whom you disagree, finding common ground connections will help you. You may have tried various things to fix the communication problems in some of your relationships without success. The common ground connection approach may provide you with the answers you’ve been looking for. Using your existing communication skills. Each person already communicates well in most situations. They've developed a communication style through the years that works for them. There's no reason to "start over." Use the communication skills that you know work for you right now along with the skills of common ground connection to enhance your communication. What are the rewards of using this new approach? What are the rewards in using common ground connections? Readers will have an idea of the benefits of adopting this new approach because they’ve realized them already. They can remember conversations in the past in which they really felt close with someone. They may have just had a good “feeling” that they were sharing something special with another person. One of the goals of the common ground connections approach is to increase people’s awareness of skills they already possess. Information supporting this approach helps each person identify the skills they have used in past conversations. With that awareness they also are better able to duplicate those communication skills in future conversations. Those skills may be slightly different for each person based on with whom they interact and in different situations. That’s the ultimate goal of this approach—to help people deliberately yet flexibly use these natural skills in all their conversations. We’ve all had the experience of talking with someone and suddenly realizing, “Wow, we’re really connecting!” The conversation is smooth and effortless, and both people completely understand one another. Disagreements don't matter because of that close connection. These conversations result in more satisfying and productive work relationships. We've all established common ground and connection in our past conversations. It was great. It felt good. The question we pose to individuals is why not do that in every conversation? Don't just wait for it to happen--make it happen! Each person's thinking: To put these actions together requires each person to develop a new awareness in all their conversations. This thought process enables the person to "choose" which communication behaviors will be most helpful in being "successful" in understanding the other person.The behaviors must be modified based on the individual with whom the person is interacting and each unique conversation in which he/she is engaged. Creating common ground connections requires a flexibility to adapt in all conversations. It's just not possible to compile a list of the exact communication behaviors needed by every person in all conversations. Every conversation is too different. Each person in every conversation is unique and unpredictable. Creating a common ground connection enhances your individual and company-wide communication skills, and leads to a number of positive results for any company, including:
Explore Your Future This website has details on how you can develop your own or your company's communication skill set through the concept of common ground connection. Explore these pages to learn how this unique and comprehensive approach can help you and your company develop the most important skill set in any organization--communication. |
|
(317) 986-4201 / www.common-ground-communication.org
