Agile Communications

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Why develop agile communication skills?

Reduce stress and frustration while getting our message across to influence stakeholders with our ideas.

What are we doing?

Identify someone’s Preferred Representational Systems (PRS) and then adapt our communication to their way of thinking. Specifically we can make minor adjustments to the words and phrases we use to engage people’s cognitive centres in their brain so they more readily understand what we are communicating.

How do we become agile communicators?

By being adaptable to people’s way of processing ideas and way of thinking.

The following slides cover the steps to achieving this.

Ever tried communicating the vision of a new project but the stakeholders did not see your point of view?

Or times where it seemed what you said went in one ear and out the other?Ever experience cases where the other party did not fully grasp the concept you were trying to convey?They just didn’t appreciate the detail, the facts and the figures that you’ve put into a proposal?All this can prove especially frustrating when working with non-technical stakeholders that do not understand what you are trying to achieve.

Agile Communications

Presented by Kevin Wong

Engaging stakeholders and getting our message across to a global audience

Background of ProblemBackground of Problem Solution OverviewSolution Overview

Method and reasoning

revealed on the next slide

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Brilliant communication skills is the key to success

www.AmaxingResults.com


Research in psychology has found that each person has a preferred “representational system” (or “sensory modality”) for representing, coding, storing and giving meaning to our experiences and the information we take in. The main ones are:

Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic Internal Dialogue

By learning to (1) recognise other people’s preferred representational systems, and (2) adapting our communications, we can engage them in our vision of what’s possible and lead with excellence.

It’s about seeing things from the other person’s point of view, so they process what you communicate in the most efficient way and connect with your message. Communications is the key to success and engineers need to master the ability to voice our profession to a diverse global audience.

For example, engineers whose PRS is Kinaesthetic will typically enjoy being outdoors, physical activity, or hands-on with whatever they are constructing. They like to really “get a feel” for what they do in their profession and do what “feels right”. The choice of work and activities they most enjoy involves a kinaesthetic aspect to engage with their PRS.

Other engineers are good at detail, they enjoy developing ideas and concepts in a logical process. If you identify highly with this statement then your PRS may be Internal Dialogue. When you speak or write to someone your words and language reflects this – highly detailed, logical, facts and figures, that “make sense”.

Developing the agility to adapt our communications to different representational systems will enhance our ability to inspire others and enhance our success as leaders.

MethodMethod

Step-by-step method on the next slide

PrimaryRepresentationalSystem – communicate in their language






Step 2 – Identify other people’s Preferred Representational System

• Look at their appearance

• Observe their behaviours

• Talk to them and notice their choice of words

• Read their emails and notice their choice of words

Step 1 – Identify your own Preferred Representational System

• Take a moment to remember a time when you had a great holiday, really put yourself back into that place and focus on what was happening and why it was a great holiday for you.

• Now describe it and notice the words you use – are they describing pictures of what you saw, sounds of what you heard, feelings from the experiences, or a collection of details and the individual steps that you followed?

• Notice what came to mind initially – Pictures of where you were? Sounds of things happening around you? Feelings of the activities you were doing? Or specific details, facts, and figures of something you were working on or observing?




A matrix of PRS is revealed on

the next slide

WhatWhat’’s your PRS?s your PRS?

WhatWhat’’s their PRS?s their PRS?







External Environment

Organized, neat, orderly, lots of pictures and images

Things placed where convenient, within reach, may be messy

May seem disorganised, facts and figures nearby

Eye Patterns (as you look at them)

Up for visual, looking around, searching to build a clearer picture

Left and right horizontally Bottom left, look straight at you

Bottom right, often defocused as if looking through you or into space

Breathing Top of lungs, faster Middle of chest Bottom of lungs, slower Shallow

Dress

Well-groomed, bright colours, complex patterns, shapely clothes. Fashion conscious. Accessories. Brand labels can be important. Particularly enjoys shopping for new clothes.

May take on visual representational system but often mismatched

Loose clothing, can appear scruffy, comfort and the feeling of the material is more important than its appearance, easy to move around in, accessories are heavier and chunkier

Functional clothing to serve a purpose more important than how it looks or feels

Body Shape Thin, tall, or shapely Often thin Muscular or overweight Thin

Identifying PRS from AppearanceIdentifying PRS from Appearance

* Visit our website for a more comprehensive matrix that includes behaviour patterns



People’s appearance span the whole spectrum and the images below are just some stereotypes to illustrate the point.




Identifying PRS from AppearanceIdentifying PRS from Appearance




Visual Words

• See

• Look

• View

Step 3 – Match their Preferred Representational System




Adapt Your Language & BehavioursAdapt Your Language & Behaviours

Auditory Words

• Hear

• Tell

• Sound

Kinaesthetic Words

• Touch

• Feel

• Grasp

Internal Dialogue Words

• Think

• Sense

• Understand

Visual Phrases

• See what you can…

• I like the look of that

• My view is that…

Auditory Phrases

• I hear where you are…

• Tell me about how this…

• I like the sound of…

Kinaesthetic Phrases

• Touch base soon

• I like the feeling of that

• I’d like to get a grasp of…

Internal Dialogue Phrases

• I think that…

• It makes sense to…

• I understand that…

* Visit our website for a more comprehensive matrix that includes over 100 words and phrases

Best Remembers

• Seeing how something goes together, easily forget verbal instructions as mind wanders

Best Remembers

• Verbal instruction and being told how to do something

Best Remembers

• Doing or walking through an activity

Best Remembers

• Reading each step and detail of a process, with clear logic on why things need to be done a particular way



Step 1 – Identify your own Preferred Representational System

Step 2 – Identify other people’s Preferred Representational System

• Look at their appearance

• Observe their behaviours

• Talk to them and notice their choice of words

• Read their emails and notice their choice of words

Step 3 – Match their Preferred Representational System

• Be behaviourally flexible so that you are a more effective communicator

• It’s about doing whatever it takes to get your message across

• It’s not about you, it’s about them

• Match the words they use

• Present information to them in their PRS




* Visit our website for more comprehensive resources regarding Agile Communications

SummarySummary

What if we…?


Agile Communications

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Transcript of Agile Communications