📗Lately, I have been looking for materials that I can read or watch during my regular “brain break” time. A lot of my friends coincidentally mentioned certain Buddhist Zen Master’s philosophy books. He is #ThichNhatHanh, a Vietnamese scholar and peace activist who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I found one of his books online related to #communication, which is my field of expertise. And I found his teachings are kind of the same fundamentals in our professional coaching training too.
This month, I highly suggest you try reading “The Art of Communicating.”
There are a lot of inspiring insights from the book, which are also practical for today’s digital world, even though this book was published in 2013. The author made references to our unmindful reliance on mobile phones too. It helps us look at communication from a more mindful level. It is mentioned in the book that communicating starts within ourselves, such as through mindful breathing and walking. It also has a lot of recommended #practices in communicating compassionately, covering #relationships, resolving #conflicts, and building #communities in the workplace.
#TheArtofCommunicating is an easy read that has many good points and stories to learn from. My main takeaway from reading this book is that we have to practice compassionate communication – #understanding the underlying concerns or “suffering” with #DeepListening and #LovingSpeech.
There are 3 points that I would like to emphasize, especially in a work setting:
💡Open-mindedness - When we’re doing meetings, we have to be open to other people’s views and respect their words. We have to practice listening to others’ insights and invite people to participate and share their experiences because this is where great ideas come from.
💡Mindful communication - I used to have a bad habit of speeding up meetings due to time constraints. What I didn’t realize is that I may have interrupted their questions by responding instantly. But now I realize that I have to listen without interrupting to create openness to understand each other.
💡Active listening - A lot of people, including myself, only focus on the “speech” part when it comes to communicating, but we have to remember that it is 2-way. We have to listen too. There are many levels of listening in leadership/communication training, e.g. passive, active, empathic, etc. which are the keys to understanding each other.
A good read.
🦚Take a few minutes to reflect:
Recall a significant communication that happened in your life. How much do you understand about the situation, the other person, and of yourself? How sure are you about your understanding of them/of yourself?
Comments