Systemically, educational
consultants provide a great resource toward achieving the mission of learning
for all. Optimally, the educational
consultant is an effective communicator promoting empowerment and
collaboration. However, a key to being
an optimal resource is effective utilization of communication skills.
While key
communication skills include listening skills, feedback skills, and
presentation skills, it is essential to recognize the role of one’s mindset in
the communication process. One’s mindset is the greatest
influence upon whether communication skills will be optimized. Based on one’s mindset, communication efforts
become either “effective” or “ineffective.”
If one approaches any
relationship with the mindset of willingly advancing collaboration and
empowerment, the subsequent communication can elevate the tenets of peace, joy, and love. By contrast, whenever someone approaches any
relationship with the mindset of control, the subsequent communication typically
escalates fear, anxiety, and frustration.
Therefore, it becomes essential to calibrate one’s mindset to
effectively utilize communication skills that promote optimal learning.
When learning a new way
of thinking, better results occur when acting
our way into right thinking rather than merely trying to think ourselves
into right action. Yet, when learning to
truly embrace and promote empowered collaborations, it is helpful to reflect
upon which mindset will be utilized prior to engagement. With practice, a mindset elevating the tenets of peace, joy, and love become evident in ALL your
relationships.
Currently, do you seek
to advance collaboration and
empowerment through communication that elevates the tenets of peace, joy, and love
in ALL relationships? Or, do you rely
upon the desire to retain control? In
the latter, you may not yet realize you are thereby establishing communication
that escalates fear, anxiety, and frustration!
Therefore, when honest self-awareness fails, another question is, are
the people in your life happy, joyous, and free from their relationship with
you or do far too many exhibit misery, irritability, or discontentment from
their interactions with you?
To summarize, before we
can esteem to being effective consultants, we need to want to willingly empower
and collaborate with others. Prior to willingly
empowering and collaborating, we need effective communication. A prerequisite to effective communication is a
mindset seeking to
invite others to positively grow through the relationship. Such invitations require communication
grounded in peace,
joy, and love. Given this, does it
matter whether the relationship is with a colleague, family member, significant
other, parent, child, or student?
Once our mindset
is right, we can use learned communication skills to better effect. A mindset seeking to elevate the tenets of peace, joy, and
love, provides a fertile place for subsequent growth. Perhaps the following parable now has more
meaning:
"A
farmer went out to sow his seed. As he
was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate
it up. Some fell on rocky places, where
it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were
scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up
and choked the plants. Still other seed
fell on good soil, where it produced a crop…” (NIV,
Matthew, 13: 4-8).
To
Cite:
Anderson, C.J. (February 7, 2014) Effective communication requires a fertile
mindset [Web log post]
Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/
