Exercising Authority

It is not easy to maintain authority on a group of people without using the power that your position provides. But, the best way to lead people is by not using those powers but using your managerial abilities, skills, knowledge with the harmony of the right communication techniques. When I take a look at the people around me that I respect the most, (job, friends, family) I realize that what they do most of the time is to understand and guide me to the right direction. It is hard to truly understand someone, as discussed at the earlier posts, but it it possible with emphatic thinking. What I observe is that me respecting those people, makes it possible for me to accept what they say easier than anyone else's claims. Thus I understand that respect is one of the most important element when considering leadership. A true leader should be the mirror of the group, reflect its skills, show them how beautiful they are. He should let the others shine and let them be autonomous. An understanding leader doesn't necessarily means that he shouldn't give up his authority, on contrary, he should always be present and influential.

Respect and Authority

Personally I value respect a lot. If I sense any lack of respect towards me from anyone, I disconnect with him. I find it very irritating to communicate with someone who is not willing to hear my opinions and not respecting my presence. Respect in work environment depends on personal skills, trust and achievements. We need to respect and be respected while experiencing and expressing authority. When mentioning authority we should also talk about how to maintain our power while leading someone. Many different kinds of leadership is present but the best way is an emphatic and trustful way. We did some communication examples in class when in a presence of authority, shaping our sentences trough subjective and requesting to say no. In order to be respected, we should have an energy which affects positively to whom we interact and we should let everyone be autonomous. We should remember that us having the power doesn't mean that we should use the power and  we shouldn't act predicting that someone would use the power he or she has.

Trust

As I missed the last weeks class, I thought It would be nice to share this video about trust which was the topic covered. I think trust resembles to a ramp, it is very easy to loose someones trust and really hard to earn it back.

Empathy

-How did make such a mistake, I am so stupid!
-Everyone does mistakes don't worry just pay more attention next time.

THIS IS NOT EMPATHY!

Hard to accept right? But that's true, this is not empathy, this is consolidation.
Empathy is to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Being able to really understand without trying to judge, help, advise, consolidate or change the subject. People often try to take responsibility about other's problems. They try to take action on other's behalf. The sentence that I have written on top is a perfect example of that. That person knows that he is not stupid or he needs to be careful next time. Emphatic response should have included the feeling and the needs that he observes, meaning that he understands and connects with the other without taking any action. Such answer could be a question such as "You feel disappointed with yourself because you wanted that job to be perfect?" Empathy is instinctive for us, people are born with empathy and understanding others, reading intentions and minds. It is crucial to know that someone can feel what I feel when I express the situation I am in, because I need to be understood. Feeling and needs are same for every human being so we are perfectly capable of empathizing with others and it is a perfect way to fulfill other's needs.

Listening Attentively

To be honest, I used to think that active listening is being concentrated on who is talking and trying to understand what he or she is trying to say until I attended the course about listening. As we are contaminated with scenes of people not even letting the others end their sentences, in most of the conversations we witness, I find it normal that I felt like an active listener when I let people complete their process of explaining their thoughts. What I learned is that listening is more complicated that it seems and there are various techniques to be able to truly connect with someone. As most of the things we learned in this class, active listening has the purpose of fulfilling the needs of being understood. We try to let people share what is alive for them at that moment with us by guiding them with some techniques such as body language, nodding our head, making small comments that shows the other that we are there for them and listening. There are also methods such as paraphrasing what we heard in order to show that we understood what is said and in order to fulfill the need of being understood. Another interesting technique is to give people time to think about what they said and why are they talking by waiting before commenting. This also gives us an opportunity to suspend our judgments for a while and truly see what is going on. I observe in life that having someone understand us, makes us want to share more with them and increases our energy and sympathy towards them. That's why I believe we should practice active listening and become a good listener.

The C.C. Process

This will be a brief blog about the conscious communication process, as we spent the last 3 hours mostly on practicing basic examples of the OFNR method which we use to make people more inclined to listen our further comments. What was important about the stating an observation is that it should be specific in time and context. "He never brushes his teeth" vs "I didn't brush his teeth last week". While expressing feelings, we should be careful about offending the others with accusations such as saying "I feel excluded". This phrase is the same as "you excluded me" thus it is an accusation. We should also take responsibility about our feelings. Saying "I feel sad because you left me", means that you are the reason of my sadness but the actual reason of me being sad is that I don't enjoy being alone. Someone leaving me is the stimulus in this example.
One thing I didn't find correct with the class was about the examples of expressing needs. The examples were in conflict with the theories we were thought as some strategies were accepted as needs. The example that stuck in my mind is the one were "spending the evening together" is considered a need. I recall that we were told that actions we do to fulfill our needs are strategies therefore spending the evening together is a strategy to fulfill the need of companionship, entertainment and such...

Translating Messages

The main aim of the last class was to give us an idea how to perceive the messages people give to us or how to shape our expressions in a way which doesn't disconnect us from the outside environment. Considering that the best way to live is to live in a life of connection, we should tell what we think in a way that people can understand what is important for us. Learning this process of having a proper communication we were thought is important because there isn't any guarantee of connection in life, it depends on what we say. The prof used the phrase "enemy fire" which each of us was very familiar with the concept as we face it in our everyday life. We were focusing on avoiding doing the enemy fire, as it only disconnects the conversation. We learned a method which is hard to use in real life because when in a conflict, we face high temper and it becomes hard to think. Taking long breaths is a possible way to get rid of our anger, then we can use the formula we were thought, Observation-Feelings-Needs-Request. This is a formula we can use either to connect to our world or the other person's. "I observe ... , therefore I feel..., because I need... . Evaluating the situation using these sentences makes us understand what is alive for the other person and increases our energy to connect and solve problems.
Many people tells their judgments as if they were facts. In my opinion this is the most common reason of disconnection. An interesting note from the class was that compliment is also a judgement, which makes people addicted to it and even tough it works great in short term, its long term results make people's performance drop if it stops.