Join Us for the Next SpeakStrong Audio Conference:
How to Successfully Talk to Your Doctor:
Assertive Communication Skills to Take Charge of
Your Health
with Dr Paul Dugliss, author of The Myth of Cholesterol.
This conference provides the inside scoop about
the physician patient communication skills you need to successfully talk
to your doctors and take charge of your health. Join us to learn how to
turn your physician
patient relationship into a partnership.
It's Thursday, June 7th at 12:30 MDT and 7 PM MDT.
Click here to learn all about it.
http://www.speakstrong.com/doctor.html
New articles:
How to Be the Assertive Manager Your Employees
Want to Produce Results For
For some quick tips about how to talk to your
doctor, here's an article I wrote several years ago.
My list of all available articles is at:
http://www.speakstrong.com/articles
This Week in the World
A Conversation About Conversations
Rosie left the show The View early this week because
she and co-host Elisabeth had a hostile exchange where neither woman could
hear what the other was saying.
Cindy Sheehan left the anti-war movement this week
because she was worn down from attacks and slurs by …the left.
A very educated and intelligent friend concluded a
political discussion this week by saying, “But truly I don't know
what is reality and what is spin. And I don't have the energy or time to
dig for the truth.”
What’s going on? According to Al Gore's new
book Assault on Reason, the national conversation is “broken" and needs to be fixed. He says logic and reason have been replaced with slogans and propaganda. He’s working to jumpstart a national conversation about the national conversation. That’s a conversation worth having.
Conversations about conversations – I often
have them and I often recommend them. I’ve had many conversations
with my own family about sarcasm being an unacceptable conversational
modality. When I hire, I have conversations about how I like to be updated
and how I like to address mistakes and track them to their source to
ensure we don’t make the same ones again. When there is a
communication breakdown, I’ll stop discussing the issue and refocus
on how we can shift the dynamic and communicate better. Often when people
ask me how to say something, I’ll suggest that instead of discussing
the issue itself, they have a conversation about how to have the
conversation.
When the conversations are broken at home,
relationships suffer. When conversations are broken at work, business
suffers. When the national conversation is broken, we all suffer.
Who benefits when it’s hard to know
who’s telling the truth and who’s not? Who rejoices when
people give up even trying to differentiate truth from spin? The clear
answer is - the dishonest win. The dishonest don’t need to convince
anyone they’re telling the truth. They only need to create a
smokescreen of doubt and confusion to avoid being held accountable.
When you can't tell truth from spin, it's time to
have a conversation about conversations. I have a few helpful phrases
below, and there are many more in PowerPhrases.
To post a comment in my blog, click here, scroll down to comments, click and post.
PowerPhrase of the Week
Phrases for a Conversation About Conversations
Here are some useful phrases for your conversations
about conversations:
• I thought I heard a dig. Did I?
• That sounded like sarcasm. Did you intend it
that way?
• We’re not hearing each other. Let’s
take turns talking until we both feel understood. I’ll listen first,
if you like.
• I want to hear what you have to say, but when
you speak to me this way, I find it difficult to focus on your words.
• I think we’ve become adversarial in this
discussion. I’d like to get back on the same team.
When the conversation seems unproductive, use these
phrases to have a conversation about conversations.
comment
Be your own advocate. PowerPhrases: The Perfect
Words to Say it Right and Get the Results You Want tells you how.
Poison Phrase of the Week
I Guess That's Okay
A vendor who was in town from out of state asked to
meet with me. I was busy working on my new website and suggested 3:30
would work best for me. He replied,
- I guess that's okay.
Only after we met for an hour did I discover he was
driving back to Nebraska after our meeting - and would get home after
mid-night. I had assumed he was staying in town, and would have arranged
to meet with him earlier had I known the time was inconvenient.
It would have worked better had he said,
- If that's the best time for you, I can delay my
trip back a few hours.
That way I would have considered whether to adjust
to his schedule or still ask him to adjust to mine.
comment
Ask Meryl
Recycled Stickers
I LOVE the idea of recycle stickers. Can you tell us
where to order the stickers so I can put them on my recycled boxes?
Meryl Responds
We print ours ourselves on Avery labels. You can
find ours here. We have the newsletter info on ours. Edit away and use if
you like.
comments
Reader Success Story
No Story this Week
comment
Reader Comments on Previous Newsletters
Click and scroll down for the latest posts.
It's a Gender Thing
Recycled Packaging
Audio Telephone Conferences
Article Topics
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Issue 272
May 31, 2007
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only respond privately. We appreciate your feedback on our response. If we
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SpeakStrong
Quote
from Meryl
"Initiate conversations about conversations."
~ Meryl Runion~
SpeakStrong Definition:
To express yourself both powerfully &
effectively;
to say what you mean, mean what you say, without being mean when you say
it.
SpeakStrong
Quote
from the wisdom of others
""Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a
diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?"
Al Gore
|
