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What Is Your Communications Strategy?

Written by: Eric Garner

Article Overview: How you communicate depends on your communications strategy. This article will show you the 3 kinds of strategy you can use and the benefits and pitfalls of each one.

What Is Your Communications Strategy?

What Is Your Communications Strategy?

All communicating is ultimately an act of exchanging information between one person and another. Although raw data is the means by which this exchange takes place, the nature of the communication depends on the relationship of the people involved. When the relationship is based on high trust and high co-operation, the communication is likely to be open and honest, the source of effective communications. When it is based on lower levels of trust and support, it is likely to involve some degree of suspicion and self-protection. When it is based on low levels of mutual trust, it is likely to be characterised by blame and misleading, the very stuff of ineffective communications.

1. The Low-Trust Strategy. The Low Trust strategy of communicating means having low trust in others and low levels of co-operation. This strategy is prevalent in blame cultures.

This strategy is characterised by the following features:
· being defensive ("I didn't say that!!")
· watching what you say
· choosing your words carefully in case others catch you out
· when committed to communicating, only passing on what is legally correct or what others have said
· having someone to blame
· watching your back
· keeping extensive records (the secreted tape recorder in the back pocket)
· being two-faced; saying one thing to a person's face and another behind their back.

2. The Compromise Strategy. The Compromise strategy of communicating involves some trust and some co-operation with others but only under certain conditions and in pre-defined ways.

It is characterised by the following features...
· being polite and formal
· following the rules of communication but sticking to the letter ("we can't meet without a quorum")
· being precise and accurate with facts
· sticking to what is known rather than revealing hidden feelings and attitudes
· being careful
· having a good working relationship but nothing more
· following procedures but having hidden agendas.

3. The Open Strategy. The Open strategy of communication involves high levels of trust combined with high levels of co-operation.

This strategy is characterised by the following features:
· finding areas where you and others have mutually beneficial interests
· a belief that you and others can work things out together
· a willingness to put others' needs ahead of your own
· a certainty that by sharing and listening, something of added value can be created
· a sharing of ideas, information, feelings and beliefs at a deep meaningful level
· openness, honesty, understanding and trust
· showing yourself to be vulnerable and imperfect
· being yourself without pretence.

Whatever your starting point in communicating with others, make it your responsibility to move the level of trust and co-operation to the highest it can possibly be.

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Article Tags: communications



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