Читать книгу The CommFlow System - Christian Horak - Страница 7

In the past it was quite common for most everyone to get trained in a martial art at some level. Be it the use of blades or fire arms, be it the use of your hands and feet, or sticks or stones, getting trained in attack and defense was quite common. Tournaments were available to showcase your fighting skills. Thank goodness, we don't need to expect to be engaged in armed conflict or duels as much as in the past, and the martial arts have largely become a recreational activity. So even today, many people still go through formal training in a martial art, acquiring "belts" in Judo, Karate, Kendo or other disciplines. Yet, while in today's age we don't any longer tend to throw down the gauntlet or meet at dawn to settle our disagreement in duels, we are constantly and increasingly engaged in communication "wars" and "duels". We are fighting for attention, struggling towards persuasion or decisions, and are generally stumbling from misunderstanding to misunderstanding, both at a professional and private level.

It has been very surprising to me to see that there is no martial art level training is available for communications excellence. No general test for "communication fitness" Yes, granted, there are 1000's of training programs available for the individual sub-disciplines of communication: Books and classes on how to sell, how to persuade, how to present, how to negotiate, how to train, how to coach, etc. And surely some of these programs are being run, written or taught by true masters of their art.

However, the surprising thing is, there is no "belt system" available, no system of global schools or “DoJos”, no lifelong master-apprentice relationships, etc. How can it be that one of our essential skills that elevates us above the rest of the animal kingdom is so grossly under-represented in the training field?

Having observed this lack of structured "belt-system" approach throughout my entire career, I had begun collecting my thoughts quite a while ago in the late 1990ies. Then, recently, I discussed the idea again at a dinner in Palo Alto, and, after received quite a lot of encouragement, I considered it time to try to create such a structured communications learning system. The name I have chosen is the CommFlowSystem, to denote the fact that this should be about establishing smooth communication flows. But the name is surely not the most significant element of the idea, and it might change again as I receive feedback on my approach.

The main idea is to aggregate and simplify the different aspects of communication around 7 key areas. These 7 areas act as "keys" to communication "locks" or barriers to flow. It is not enough to have only one key. Any communication interaction usually requires us to use most - if not all - of these keys at the same time, to fully "unlock" the gates of understanding and agreement. Most of the time, many of us use these keys intuitively. But many times, when communication breaks down, we don’t really know why we cannot get our point across. It could well be that we are not aware which specific communication locks have not been opened.

The seven key areas are:

(1) Community, or how to establish common ground with the target audience (2) Intent, or how to choose the right tools for the purpose and intended outcome(s) of the communication (3) Coherence, or how to apply ALL means of communication available in a consistent fashion (4) Clarity, or how to remove confusion, clutter and waste in your communication (5) Feedback, or how to establish a bi-directional flow in the communication (6) Flexibility, or how to maintain flexibility in the communication to achieve flow (7) Influence, or how to change the state of the communication in the desired direction The next 7 chapters will drill down into each of the areas to explain why the key is important to establish a communications flow and a few tips and tricks in each area.