I just experienced a nasty neighbor.  Without a lot of detail (this is a blog, not a book after all:-), suffice it to say that whether it’s the stress of the economy, machines disconnecting us from real human interaction, spoiled and entitled people,  or even narcissists, we do not always get the nice treatment we deserve. 

That said, what do we do when we have to communicate with a neighbor, colleague, boss, relative, or stranger in the store who doesn’t play fair, blames you for their bad acts, or talks over and around you?   Three quick and helpful tips:

1. Remember that you can not change his/her value system (who the person is).  At best you can change behavior (what he or she does).  Think of creative ways to get him or her to do that….perhaps a benefit to this difficult person.  What it’s “only fair” or “the right thing to do” usually won’t get you anywere.  If this person’s values were like yours, you wouldn’t have the problem in the first place, most likely.

2.  Keep your emotions in check.  Yelling, crying, or other signs of loss of control means a controlling person has you exactly where he or she wants you.

3. Don’t apologize for having to report him/her to the authorities, home owners association, or the boss.  The problem is in the bad behavior, not in the reporting of it.

For more information re how to handle this and other critical communications in your life–at home and at work, check out my book and book on CDS on my website product page: www.whydidisaythat.net  OR www.mooreoncommunication.com    

Thanks, Ronnie Moore aka Moore on Communication

Thanks to everyone for your “what happened to your blogs”….after a few months of technical difficulties and tough decisions re business directions and passions, I will be blogging regularly starting first of the year. Meantime, check out my website for great information, great deals on books and book on CDs, and sign up for my newsletter (free). Best to you all. See you early January here!

This post is the first of a multi-part series of looking at how we can communicate more compassionately to people in pain and how we can garner more comfort when we need it.

Let’s start with how you can comfort someone else, and let’s start with three “do’s” of communicating to comfort:

1. Know your goal.  Do you seriously want to help or do you take the opportunity to share your own war stories?

2. Ask the person in pain what she or he needs.  I will ask my husband, when he’s going through something difficult, to tell me what he needs at the moment: for me to just listen and let him vent or for me to listen and then suggest and try to help.  Bottom line: communicating to comfort is not accomplished without becoming other-person centered.  It’s finding out what he/she needs and trying to provide that, not saying what you think  the other needs to hear.

3. Get professional help is you believe the other person needs it, and despite your good intentions (and good communication), you’re not qualified to help.

*Excerpted my from book Why Did I Say That? Communicating to keep your credibility, your cool, and your cash!  For more in-depth information on this and many other life-critical communication topics, go to my website for a discount price on the book or the book on 4CDs.  I promise the information will improve your relationships at work and at home, will save you money, and empower you.  And net proceeds go to a very needy cause: www.mooreoncommunication/products

OR

www.whydidisaythat.net/products

In my continuing crusade regarding the terrible customer service we’ve learned to accept, I propose three suggestions that might help:

1. The customer is not an interruption to a customer service provider’s personal phone call, chat with a colleague, or other task.  Ideally, as soon as you are spotted at the counter, in the store, wherever it may be, everything else should be dropped to accommodate you.  At the very least, you should be acknowledged with something like, “I’ll be right with you.”….and a smile.

2.  Don’t say “Thank you” as the customer.  The customer should be thanked.  Say “You’re welcome” instead.  I caught myself the other day saying “please” and “thank you” to someone who threw the food in to my car, change following.  Yet, my good manners kicked in and I automatically said “Thank you.”  Things have gone terribly wrong.

3. Demand that the customer service provider focus on you, not on a colleague, a side conversation, a cell phone.  A supermarket cashier can scan items, bag them, take your money, and make change without even looking at you.  Maybe we’d get more attention if we could buy groceries on Facebook?

A sad state.  More soon.  Keep your suggestions coming, and thanks for the great comments re the blog and my book/CDs. 

Best, Ronnie

www.mooreoncommunication.com

Sorry for the delay in posting, but look forward to more regular musings starting now.  As promised, I am starting a series of weekly postings pertaining to customer service issues.  Communication is at the root of all customer service, but that fact is often ignored or unknown.

Let’s start this series with avoiding a common mistake: forgetting your ultimate goal.  Here’s an example:

• A customer complains to a young (teenage young) sales clerk about a damaged blouse she purchased and requests her money back. The clerk keeps saying the store does not offer refunds.  The customer keeps saying the buttons don’t stay in the button holes and therefore the blouse is defective.  After the third “we don’t offer refunds,” the customer starts screaming.  Although the customer is in the right (no store can refuse to deal with a defective item), she forgot her ultimate goal: to get a refund.  By screaming at a young person who had no authority and probably no say in setting policy, she reduce her chances of achieving her goal, of getting her refund.  How likely is the clerk to find a supervisor and otherwise work with this customer if the customer is screaming at her? 

More on this next post.  Bottom line: always keep your goal in mind when you start communicating.  It’s like driving a car.  If you know where you are going, where you want to end up, you’re going to take turns, roads, etc. to get you there.  Otherwise you’re just driving (or communicating) endlessly.

This was excerpted from my book Why Did I Say That? Communicating to keep your credibility, your cool, and your cash!  For more information on critical, relationship-saving communicaton, customer service, and conflict resolution issues, go to www.mooreoncommunication.com/products

I give net proceeds to great charities.  Please help us out and get some great books and books on CDs in the process….at a discount.

Till next week,

Ronnie Moore

First frustrating communicator is what I’ve trademarked the “stealth communicator.”  Stealth communicators frustrate, confuse, and exhaust their listeners because they don’t mean what they say; espect you to read their minds; and practice indirect, mixed message, “guess what I really mean” communication.  From “How do I look in this dress” or “Do these jeans make me look fat?” to burying a statement in a question “Are you cold?” when they mean “I’m cold, please turn up the heat”; these communicators drive us crazy.  Is someone in your life stealthy?  Are you?

This “read my mind, guess what I really mean, blame everyone for the actions of one because I don’t want to confront the real culprit, mixed-message” form of communication damages and detroys relationships–with family, spouses, friends, co-workers, and clients.  Just got a call from a major show to possibly come on and talk about it.  Hope Oprah and the women of The View read this!

Stealth communication is the most asked-for topic in my speeches and seminars.  If this is a big issue in your life, and you want more information and help than a blog can provide, check 0ut the entire chapter I devoted to the topic in Why Did I Say That? Communicating to keep your credibility, your cool, and your cash!…a portion of the proceeds goes to charity.  Go to www.whydidisaythat.net/products for specials on the book and book on CDs.

In my book, Why Did I Say That: Communicating to keep your credibility, your cool, and your cash! I devote an entire chapter to when to use email and other technology, how to use it, when it works, when it doesn’t.  In my last two posts, I shared real-life examples of how constant connectivity is hurting our relationships, at home and at work 

If we want peace, balance, and real relationships with people, we need to set boundaries….fast.  Three suggestions:

1. Set boundaries.  You may not be able to tell your boss to stop looking at his/her Blackberry when talking to you, but you can set rules for your dinner table.  In my house, we do not answer the phone, check email, or stare at our Blackberry when we are sharing a meal…at home, or in a restaurant. 

2. Request (politely) that your nail salon, doctor’s office, or movie theater, be a “no-phone” zone.  If you’re paying for a relaxing pedicure (see my last post), and you’re surrounded by cell phone conversations and ringing phones, you have a right to ask the merchant to change the policy.  You may not get what you want right away, but if enough people complain enough, it may affect change.

3.  Don’t use technology and don’t ride with a driver who calls, texts, etc. while driving.  This is serious, foks.  If two drivers of two different cars are both looking at their phone, who is looking at the road?  This is a boundary (and a law) that has to change.  We rightfully punish drivers who are impaired by alcohol, but we let seriously distracted drivers operate a ton or two of deadly, moving metal, and we do nothing.

Next few posts will cover quick tips on improving your relationships through better communication.  For in-depth information and guaranteed results, get my book: www.mooreoncommunication.com (go to products).  Next post soon.  Best, Ronnie

My love/hate relationship with today’s technology (see Post #1) rears its ugly head again.  In my first post, I talked about how a dozen employees went out to share lunch together only to see half of them spending that time only with their food and their cell phones.

Another incident, just today.

One of my rare treats for myself is a pedicure.  So very relaxing, I close my eyes while my feet bathe in warm, sudsy water, and the pedicurist massages them.  Lovely.

Today I had a woman on either side of me, and the pedicure stations are only a few feet apart.  Both women were on their phones for the duration.  In addition, cell phones belonging to other clients and employees rang incessantly while the noise from a TV show on a huge monitor blared throughout.  I could not wait for my pedicure to be over and my polish to dry, so I could escape to the relative quiet of my car.

This constant connectivity has made peace and quiet obsolete.  Is relaxation passe? Must we always be talking, surfing, answering email?  In Post #3 I will talk about how to bring peace, quiet, and boundaries back to your life while living in a constantly connected world.

Till my next post, take care, and check out my books and books on CD, geared to helping people change their spoken and written communication for the better.  A discount has been posted for you on the website.  You can also view a quick video, if you’d like.

My husband and I had a rare lunch together on a workday recently. We were seated a few feet across from a long table of about a dozen co-workers…and I was a jealous.  As a sole practitioner, a communications consultant, speaker, and trainer, I work and travel alone.  When I’m in my office, working on a project or writing, other than a part-time assistant (who often helps me virtually from her home), I’m also alone. I love my work, and I’m grateful—and it can get lonely.  “Sometimes, I wish I had a more traditional 8-5 job.  I miss the camaraderie of chatting in the break room or having lunch with my friends at work,” I said to my husband (also a self-employed consultant).”

“Look again,” he replied.  “I just counted six people in that group who have barely looked up from their Blackberries.  Half of them haven’t said a word to anyone, no eye contact, no communication.  They might as well have eaten lunch alone at their desks.”

I looked again, and I watched as constant connectivity disconnected the group.  I long for what I call more “eye time”….more in-person time with friends, family, and colleagues.  And the people who have that, by the very nature of their jobs, who can have lunch together, breaks together, and drinks together, spend their “eye time” eying a little cold machine instead of enjoying the warmth and laughter of the human beings right next to them.

How did technology go from being a productivity and convenience tool to the object of our attention and affection?  How is constant connectivity affecting our personal and professional relationships? How can customer service providers provide excellence to customers at their counters when the customers are on their cell phones for the duration? What will happen to our teens and 20-somethings who cut their teeth on their technology who now have to run meetings, communicate with their clients, and get along with each other?

It’s a problem, and I see it as a communications crisis in the making. In my next blog, I will talk about this in more detail, give more examples, and suggest a couple of baby steps to start making change. I would also like to include your thoughts on this topic. Send them to me, please.

Till my next post (should be posted within a few days), take care, and check out my books and books on CD, geared to helping people change their spoken and written communication for the better.  A discount has been posted for you on the website.  You can also view a quick video, if you’d like.