My name is Jay and I am an Indian male nearing 40. As a part of the exercise, my role was that of a 16-year-old Texan girl - Wilma. Wilma isn’t anything like me. Her mother died and her father wants to marry someone else. She is confused. To me, the text of the play was boring. My teacher (the wonderful Kevin Phipps) asked me to identify one line from that monologue that talks to me and prep deeply about it.
This is my story of how that evening opened up some knots deep inside me. This is about how my hobbies helped me improve communication at my workplace. I learned the following 3 actions for a genuine connection in communication:
Listening
Being present
Living a truthful point of view
**Listening **
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Listening isn’t just hearing words the other person is saying. You listen with your whole body. You are aware of the words, the emotions and feelings it generates in you and the emotions and feelings your responses seem to generate in the other person. Listening is comprehensive.
The acting technique that I was learning was the one taught by Sanford Meisner.
For the first few days, your exercises in a Meisner class sounds like a bad fight between the 2 friends:
“I am angry.”
“You are angry.”
“Yes, I am angry.”
“Yes, you are angry.”
“You are laughing.”
“I am laughing.”
“I am irritated.”
“You are irritated.”
And so on. You label your feeling and say it out loud. The other person responds using the same label. You keep repeating it until…. Well, until something happens. Something inside you, or something that you see in the other person, makes you change. We build everything on this foundation of “Listening”.
This exercise alone will give you unimaginable depth in social and professional interactions. More often than not, we stop ourselves from committing to our truth.
Being aware of your emotions, help you make the right decisions.
Every conversation at work is loaded with these emotions. Emotions of other people or your own.
This awareness gives you visibility to the insecurities, joy, ambition, enthusiasm and genuine care even love that the people around you would feel at the workplace.
**Being present **
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Sounds like meditation or mindfulness? Well, it almost is. Except for one big difference. Acting is doing.
I learned that in communication, the way to be present is focusing on your partner.
Your partner could be an audience of 100 in an auditorium or a single person you are trying to work with. We spend a lot of time prepping the data and logic for the presentations. However, there is no emotional preparation. We are dealing with people and emotions drive our likes, dislikes, and decisions. Being emotional helps you to be empathetic.
Do not judge people, listen to them, and give them the gift of your presence. I learned this from my partners on stage at the acting class. My partners would give me gifts on stage in the form of provocation, care, ridicule, and so on.
We can do this in 4 steps:
Knowing your spine phrase - or what you would call a “Transformative purpose” in business-speak - the key that drives your life. This guides us whenever we are lost. This makes the decision for you.
Knowing the key facts - Things that don’t lend itself to opinion/interpretation.
Knowing your key phrases - this works especially in one-to-many communications. If there is a message you want to convey, know your intention and the action you want to induce to deepen its impact. Deepening the text will make you own it. For Example, in one of my recent presentations, there was this line I knew I would share with my audience “IT Systems doesn’t improve your productivity, the people designing them and running them improve your productivity.” And out of the 3-hour workshop, this was the line that talked to me. So gave myself permission to explore this further and remember every occasion where I lived that truth. The joy of success and customer satisfaction that I felt every time I went through an experience that supported it. The conviction of what you say comes through when the line you speak comes from deep within you.
Go in with an Emotional prep. Prepare something emotionally; Anything is better than nothing. Know if you want to motivate, cajole, rebuke - know your action verbs in an interaction
**Living Truthful Point of View **
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This is the most difficult one for the corporate world. They train us to hide our point of view. Many times it is the fear of coming across as stupid, unprofessional or combative, that holds us back. Creating a safe space in interaction is the way you can address these fears. Even when you do not say the words or intentions once, if you have it, it comes across.
I am a consultant. My job is to solve problems for my customers. I care for them. “Care” is my key action in most of my conversations now, and I like to believe the customers I work for, get it.
The more difficult part, however, is revealing yourself. The ability to be vulnerable - committing to your fears, concerns, and emotions - makes you relatable. It can be your superpower and every superpower brings its own sense of discomfort. When you wield it, your partner in conversation will intuitively empathize because at the core we are all the same being.
Coming back to my 16-year-old Wilma self (From Part1). I had to connect. The line that affected me the most in that text, without me knowing why, was “Sometimes my old house looks so lonesome, it tears my heart”. I ***listened ***to myself responding to it.
“My old house” - the 1000ft house which I grew up in, felt very big to me when I was a child. I remember playing cricket in the open parking space. I remember my mom dividing a small hot roti into two and serving half to me and a half to my dad in our kitchen. That house in my mind was strong, accommodating, and full of love. The house in my mind had the earlier healthier versions of my parents. But the house my parents lived in now, was crumbling - it wasn’t repaired after the 2001 earthquake. They had to tear the house down and rebuild it, while I was far away from them in a different country. And they did. The house that stored my memories and house that exists in my memories doesn’t exist now. And now when I look at the old house in my memory it looks lonesome - without me, without the youth of my parents, without the vastness and strength it had. Sometimes my old house looks so lonesome, it tears my heart. When I write and think about it, I tear up, at times. And it makes me feel guilty. I am not doing enough for the house. I found a truth within me that connected me to Wilma.
That evening opened up some knots deep inside me. I had a “listener” sitting on the chair opposite mine. He did not have to say a word. He just had to listen. I started with the monologue and moved back and forth between the text of the monologue, what I felt and the single line that impacted me the most. My teacher directed me through it. Soon, I was crying. Sobbing like a 16-year-old in distress. That was the first time I felt confident about acting. Acting is not “Being someone else” - It is reacting truthfully to imaginary circumstances - pretty much what we do as consultants every single day.
What is that one thing you learned outside your workplace that has shaped your view about work?