Communicating with Emotion – why its important

I recently saw another blog post about communicating with emotion and it got me to thinking about the whole area of effective communication. You can read what they said here .

The thing is we really don’t think about the emotional part of communication enough. We communicate all day long mostly without thinking about it and then wonder why people don’t listen to us or do what we suggest! We don’t take time to think about the way in which we communicate our message.

Meaningful communication is made up of three main areas – the words we use, how we say it (tone) and body language. As we all know words can be misunderstood and indeed sometimes the same words mean different things to different people depending upon their viewpoint, role, or emotional feelings at the time they read them. If we just rely on words alone to convey our message then there is a good chance we will not get our point across.

Even more importantly we must take account of the tone and body language that we use. Effective communication happens when words, tone and body language all match. This is known as “congruence”. Its not a term we see much but its vital that we understand and use this to our advantage. You see the thing is that as human beings, as we listen to someone communicating, we subconsciously listen for the congruence in whats being said. Our subconscious is constantly asking  “does this person mean what they say? Does their tone and body language match the words that they are saying” and if our subconscious does not judge that they do, then we don’t believe them. This is not to say that we think they are lying, its just that we are not convinced and therefore we don’t take on board what they are saying. In other words because they did not communicate with emotion – put across that they believe in what they are saying – then we don’t take them as seriously as we could or should.

So communicating with emotion is vital if we want to be taken seriously. Do not be afraid of showing that you believe in what you are saying and that you care passionately about the outcomes. Communicating with emotion is not about getting upset or shouting but is about communicating our feelings in a convincing manner. Do this and your communication will be much more effective and people will take you more seriously.