Fast Food Friday - For Professional Photographers

© olly

​This is indeed "fast food" today, but that doesn't make it any less relevant.

I started the series to give you quick ideas on how to fine-tune your business. Some topics have been more complicated than others, but each one has been relevant to some aspect of building your reputation, brand awareness and efficiency.

Today's "blue-plate" special ties to your business, your clients, and for some of you your personal life and other relationships. So many of you have lost the art of communicating. I'm not talking about the talking side of the equation as much as learning to listen. And when I use the word "listen," I'm also talking about paying attention to what you read as well, especially in the volley of comments back and forth in Facebook forums.

Here's the point today - you've got two ears and one mouth, so listen twice as much as you talk. 

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Five Tips to Help You Be a Better Communicator

Click to link to Amazon for more info and add it to your own library.

I added this book to my library recently, and while it was published in 2012, there's nothing dated in author Jim Smith's approach. 

One section that caught my eye was about developing your listening skills, and I want to share a few of my favorites, which so many of you ignore:
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• During conversations, listen for the content, meaning, and feeling in what the other person is saying. Stop interrupting!
• Listen to understand, help, see, and support, not to comment, disagree, and find fault.
• Allow moments of silence when the person finishes a thought to allow for further comment from the other person. Don't jump in!
• Listen for what the other person is not saying.
• Ask for clarification only when necessary.

They're five simple tips that all fall under the umbrella of learning to shut up. And from my own style and personality, at times I'm guilty of all of them. However, I'm work in progress and honestly trying to raise the bar on my listening skills.

What I find I do too often, along with so many of you, is immediately jump in and start talking. And, while it's not rude, the process absolutely is. Instead of listening to whoever was talking to me, I've tuned them out to formulate my answer the minute they're done.

So, the next time you're having a conversation with somebody, think of those five points above. You might find what I have, in our rush to respond; we've lost a big part of the true art of communicating.

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