Bond With Your Manager: Try This Powerful Technique Today
Attack Your Manager’s Subconscious Mind!
• Different people respond to different stimulus.
• There are three ‘types of people’ – auditory, kinesthetics (touch/feel) and visual – each of them have their own unique communication preference.
• Use the table below to find words which your listener prefers based on his communication preferences.
Don’t you feel a natural rapport with your family and school friends?
Not only do you have common interests but you also share similarities in body language and voice tones. You automatically feel relaxed in their presence. You have picked up many mannerisms from your close friends whom you like and they in turn feel comfortable with you as you seem more and more “familiar” to them.
You easily connect with the people you like and they feel that you speak their ‘language’. How do you do it with strangers specially your manager who may not belong in your inner circle of friends?
How can you do it fast?
NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) research provides you with a unique and powerful tool to analyze the communication preferences of other people so you can quickly bond with them.
Three kinds of people
It is proven that each of us has a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic (touch/feel) preference for communication. Of course we use all of our sensory channels. However, researchers have found that we each have an unconscious preference for using one channel over another.
Thus, if an auditory-oriented employee complains that a kinesthetically-inclined manager just “doesn’t listen to me…she just can’t understand no matter how many times I tell her,” then this lack of rapport is simply due to differing ways of communicating valid ideas.
The Three Kinds Of People
How You Should Talk To Them
To Bond & ‘Connect’
Auditory People
• Auditory orientation is a primary component of communication style.
• Are they fast talkers? No. They fall between fast and slow talkers.
• They subconsciously focus on sound – “That movie had great dialogue, nice music. You should have heard it”.
• Tell me what you think the strategy should be?
• That sounds like a great idea!
Kinesthetically Inclined People (Feelings)
• Like to talk slowly.
• Relate to feelings, touch, emotions, gut feeling, mood-oriented: “The whole theater was packed. We could hardly move. You could feel the excitement.”
• Learn by actually doing things.
• What do you feel our new product strategy should be?
• I can get in touch with that idea. I feel it’s the right way of doing things.
Visually Oriented People
• Express themselves primarily through visual imagery.
• Prefers to read reports versus listening to verbal updates, podcasts etc.
• Usually talk fast.
• What do you see as the most important elements of our product strategy?
• This gives me a clear idea of your direction.
How does this help me to bond with my manager?
Managers bond with those employees whose communication style is in sync with them. To establish rapport, we can adapt certain aspects of our body language, posture, voice tone and pace for our listener.
However a faster way of establishing rapport with your manager is by matching his or her preferred modes of taking in information. For example, if a manager prefers to have reports they can review (visual), they will likely prefer a written summary to a verbal discussion. To establish rapport and build a satisfying relationship with such a manager, you would need to respond in written form, even though it might not be your own preferred approach.
Matching your manager’s primary sensory preference is the single most critical element in building trust, and is a powerful, easy and fast technique for improving on-the-job communication and performance.
