Private speaking: interacting on purpose
Every interpersonal interaction is potentially important. But you won’t recognize which ones are and which ones aren’t until you learn to treat your private interactions with the same degree of care that you treat your public interactions.
Interacting on purpose
Spend a little time before each interaction to be sure you know what you want to accomplish—what your message is—and how the other person is likely to respond. Armed with this planning you can then decide whether it’s safe to proceed or whether you need to spend more time getting ready. Some of the techniques we’ll talk about may be overkill for some low-intensity interactions: only do as much work ahead of time as absolutely necessary.
This approach will lead to a uniquely powerful style of interacting with others. I call it interacting on purpose.
Sure, it’s “just” talking
With the exception of purely social interactions, all private speaking shares the central goal of public speaking: communicating a message for others to act upon. The size of the group is smaller, but your small group messages can benefit just as much as the public ones from the application of a little thought and discipline.
Know what are you trying to accomplish
The first step in improving your private speaking is identifying what it is that you are trying to accomplish.
For example, you might stop by your boss’s office to get his or her opinion on a new direction for your project. The primary purpose is to get feedback before deviating from the planned course of action. But you might also have a secondary purpose of demonstrating to your boss that you are actively working on the project and contributing innovative thinking.
You will be most effective in your private interactions if you identify all of your purposes—primary and secondary—ahead of time, and come up with a strategy that gets them all accomplished. Not doing this may mean that you meet one of your goals, but not the others, or that you may meet one at the expense of the others.
Make sure what you say lines up with what you want to accomplish
In the example above if you ran the new idea by your boss, but didn’t identify it as a new idea, you run the risk of your boss thinking that you were just stopping by on a gratuitous social mission.
If she doesn’t realize or remember that what you are proposing is new she might be irritated that you are “wasting” her time reviewing something that was already decided upon, she wouldn’t have a chance to evaluate the idea as a change in direction, and she wouldn’t associate your visit with a demonstration of innovative thinking and initiative.
In short, you wouldn’t accomplish any of your goals and you run the risk of being branded as an ineVective communicator. So be up front, clear, direct, and complete. What, exactly, are you interacting for?
