Connect With Your Colleague on the Emotional Level

• 00:04 All of us think and talk at least two different levels.
• 00:07 There's the intellectual level, and then there's the emotional level.
• 00:10 When you are listening to someone speak,
• 00:14 you need to of course listen to the actual words and
• 00:17 figure out the intellectual content, the messages of what they're saying,
• 00:23 but you always have to listen to the emotional side.
• 00:28 How do they feel about what they're talking about?
• 00:31 As we mentioned earlier, it could be something in their body language, if they
• 00:36 are agitated and their face is red, you know they might be angry or upset.
• 00:40 But sometimes it's just going to come out in their voice,
• 00:43 are they raising their voice?
• 00:44 Sometimes to be really serious and underline something, people will whisper.
• 00:51 Really listen to them, watch them, and try to get a sense
• 00:57 of how do they feel about the messages they're conveying to you.
• 01:03 Clients, customers, prospects, bosses, colleagues,
• 01:08 are communicating all the time with us.
• 01:10 Not everything is of equal importance.
• 01:14 They're not necessarily going to tell you,
• 01:16 this is the most important thing I've said to you in the last month.
• 01:19 Sometimes you simply have to pick up on that based on their emotional side,
• 01:25 the emotional way they're packaging their message.
• 01:29 So you gotta listen, voice louder, softer.
• 01:33 Sometimes it's because they're speaking faster, there's a sense of urgency.
• 01:38 Sometimes it is, in fact, the body language.
• 01:40 So you've gotta look, listen to every aspect of what they're doing
• 01:45 with their body, not doing what their body.
• 01:48 Doing with their voice, not doing with their voice,
• 01:52 to figure out exactly what they're trying to communicate at an emotional level.
• 01:58 When you're listening to someone in a workplace conversation,
• 02:02 you don't interrupt too much, as we've discussed, but
• 02:06 you do occasionally want to react and to give back.
• 02:09 So if your boss is telling you about how awful things were before the Internet,
• 02:14 and they had to go knock door to door.
• 02:17 There's nothing wrong with saying, wow, you must have felt really awkward
• 02:21 sometimes knocking on people's doors and getting the door slammed in your face.
• 02:26 There's nothing wrong with occasionally sharing back something that
• 02:31 relates to how the person felt, showing some empathy, showing some sympathy.
• 02:38 You don't want to overdo it, but you also don't want to just sit back and
• 02:42 make the person think you're just a robot taking everything in.
• 02:47 So occasionally, sharing back with the person,
• 02:51 expressing how you've understand their feeling,
• 02:56 or you want to know more about their feeling,
• 03:00 can be a very helpful thing in creating a bond between you and
• 03:05 the person who's trying to speak to you, trying to communicate with you.

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