Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Have you ever walked away from a conversation with your spouse or your teenager and thought: "We were not on the same page." Those daily communication gaps stack up and make up our most important relationships. So how do you bridge that gap? Leadership expert and cultural strategist Patrick Dickerson said there is one skillset that can make a huge difference in how we bond with the people we care about: connection intelligence. Most people have heard of emotional intelligence, being aware of of emotions, but connection intelligence goes one step further. It's the awareness to create trust, understanding and stronger relationships with others. Dickerson said it applies just as much at home as it does in the workplace.
“If it's important in the boardroom, it's important in the family room because each one of us leads in some capacity or another,” he emphasized. He shared the three building blocks to making better connections and avoiding unnecessary conflict.
Active Listening
Dickerson explained that most people think they’re good at active listening, but it's something that everyone can work harder on. “Active listening is listening to hear, not to respond,” he said. “Most of us in our conversations, we're already thinking about what we're gonna say next. That's listening to be heard, not listening to respond.” He emphasized that active listening requires slowing down and paying attention to what is being said as well as what is not being said. " Those nonverbal cues, facial expressions, hand gestures and that type of thing," he explained. "Those are keys because then people know that you're really listening to them." He said it takes discipline and requires you to really be in the moment. He shared the example of when a spouse or teen comes home after a hard day, and you can tell. “Our first intent is to kind of jump in with solutions,” he said. "But instead we need to say, 'tell me what happened,' and then allow them to be heard."
Empathy
Dickerson explained that empathy is the ability to experience people's experiences without trying to respond and react to them. " Empathy creates opportunities where you can really make connections. It takes an emotional situation and allows you to make a deep connection," he emphasized. He suggested when someone is having a hard time to say something like, " Hey. You had a bad day, that must have been incredibly difficult," or, "That must have been really frustrating for you. Tell me more about it."
Trust Building
Dickerson emphasized that trust has to be earned, even in family relationships. "In a family dynamic I think there's already a little bit of embedded trust, but it still has to be earned," he said. He explained that the important thing to remember about trust is that it is not earned once. You continually have to build up trust with small, simple actions. "Trust is earned when they know that you're listening. When they know that you are going to act on what you say, those are very important things," he said. Say you're having a conversation with a family member and you say, "Let's continue this conversation later." Trust builds when you make sure that you do come back around to that discussion. “That's gonna give you a big check mark in the trust column and a big deposit in your bank of trust,” he said.
Find more advice from Patrick Dickerson online, @patrickdickerson_, or xcelspeaking.com.
