Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Lesson 9 Secrets on Really Listening


Multitasking the Right Way
Your natural inclination to multitasking can be redirected to make you a better negotiator.  Track mentally within the 7:38:55.  Here's how.
Consider the following: there are a variety of sources that provide that people roughly speak at the rate of about 125 - 160 words per minute and our brains have the capacity to process about 400 - 600 words per minute.  Therefore, if you are keeping track of only the contentthen you have excess mental capacity that's not being used.  If you don't know what else to keep track of, your mind is invited to wander (or multitask).
Overload
But if you accept anything resembling the 7:38:55 ratio, or any ratio that places an emphasis on tone of voice and body language, then there may be as much as 5x more information to process from the tone of voice alone.  This begins to stretch the capacity of the brain without even adding in the brainpower necessary to construct verbal responses or take good notes. 
Even More Overload
Additionally there are estimates that equate the amount of visual information being given off by a person's body language to be approaching the equivalent of 1000 words per minute.  If this is anywhere near true, the visual data alone, without asking the brain to do anything else, stretches your mental capacity to keep up.
Therefore, the advice here is for you to use the negotiation skills being provided to bring your full focus to bear on the negotiation at hand.  Use the skills to clarify and dig more deeply into what's being said in order to discover the value.
Here's what the best practice is:
Compare how something is being said to what's being said.  Gently react to any perceived incongruence - use a label.  Whether consciously or unconsciously, your counterpart will leave you clues as to hidden problems by their tone of voice and body language.  A lack of clues is no guarantee of either veracity or problem free implementation, but a presence of clues correlates very highly with problems.  It then becomes your job to gently uncover them.

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