AI Hacks for Better Conversations Elevate Your Communication Skills

Video transcription

AI and the chatbots can be a great tool to improve your interpersonal communication skills and train yourself on better communication. I’ll explain how to use it and give a practical example in this video. Hello, I’m Stephen Goldberg bringing you practical tips and ideas on leadership, team development and employee performance in the workplace.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who was telling me about his wife and their poor communication, how she takes things he says the wrong way and it creates conflict between them. So I said well give me an example of something recent that happened that she took the wrong way and it was just a simple thing at home where when they leave things on the washing, clothes washing machine somehow the machine shakes and the things get thrown behind it and they’re hard to retrieve. So I said well tell me how you approached her, what did you say and he explained it and I said well if it’s not working how about taking a different approach and at first he was not open to the idea, he tends to be a somewhat of a stubborn person and thinks that well she’s the one to blame for not understanding what I’m saying and taking it the wrong way.

I’m just saying it very honestly and simple just trying to improve the situation. But she wasn’t taking it that way and if he always approaches her in the same way with anything or everything it’s going to raise conflict over time and she’s going to start to resist him, resent him and take revenge. Those are the three R’s that often shows up when people don’t like how you’re saying things to them or rubbing them the wrong way.

They become resistant, they resent you and then they find a way to take revenge and that’s a very toxic response, not a very responsible one and it should be eliminated in every organization and every family. So I gave him some tips on how he could approach her differently and part of it was kind of asking a question to engage her in problem solving to how to resolve this issue so it’s not like he’s imposing his way of doing things on her. And he thought well okay I guess I could try that and I hope he does.

And I thought well let’s see what the AI chatbot, I used Copilot to explore this and I asked Copilot how would a better way to approach this or a way to approach it that wouldn’t get her upset or feeling attacked by my friend while I used myself as an example. And so I just want to read the response from the chatbot and it said maybe framing your advice as a shared goal or mutual benefit might help. Instead of we shouldn’t leave things on the washing machine, you could try hey I noticed the washing machine can throw things off.

Can we find a better place to put these items so they don’t get lost? It’s like finding a balance between addressing the issue and showing you’re on the same team. What are your thoughts? And of course you can go on and massage that with the chatbot and get it to where you feel it’s a good way to approach that person. Now this is an example of a family situation but it’s the same in the workplace.

We often approach people perhaps in a way that doesn’t agree with them and leads to conflicts. So using the chatbot if you’re having to express something that’s delicate to somebody maybe about their performance and this would go for co-workers on the same team or for the boss and employee. Maybe you’ve been through interpersonal communication skills training but you find it hard to apply because you need to think about it.

You need to think about your approach and maybe you’re resistant to changing. But like I said to my friend who resisted my idea to change his approach, I said well then are you happy with the results you’re getting? And he said no. I said so well then if you want to change the result you need to try a different approach.

So finally he agreed as I mentioned he’s quite stubborn. So it’s the same thing at work. If something’s not flowing well in your communication with somebody look at how you could change your approach and consult the chatbot.

We’ll give you some great insight into what you can do and this is also really good for people in sales. How can you change up your communication? Maybe you want to engage somebody in a discussion about your product or service and they’re not responding. Use the AI tools to come up with more innovative, more effective ways on how to approach people or to respond.

So there’s so many ways you can do it to improve communication and I hope this tip makes sense and that you’ll act on it. If you haven’t already subscribed do so now and turn on notifications to get news of new videos. Thank you for listening and we’ll talk again soon.