Professional Life Coaching: Coach Joelle

Hi Tiffany!

I trust you enjoyed the riveting lessons that my cat Linguine shared last week. I acknowledge those of you who sent the video along to friends, family and bosses to nudge them into being responsible for their communication so they can stop being frustrated and start getting what they want.

Not a day goes by that I do not see the importance of clear communication in my own life or in the lives of my clients and I have a particularly entertaining example that happened the other day at Whole Foods.

My husband and I did our regular weekend jaunt to whole foods and I was in a particularly chipper mood. In the line to check out, I was suddenly grabbed by the need to MOVE so I showed my husband a couple of my new ZUMBA moves while we waited in line.

A woman in another line caught my eye, she was smiling. I gave her a big toothy grin and shouted "ZUMBA!" to imply, of course, that I was a huge fan of ZUMBA and I was practicing my moves. At which point my husband smiles at me and says, "she probably has no idea what that is."

Whoops! He is probably right!

This is one of those key elements of good communication, to not make any assumptions about what is "common sense" or what you think is an obvious shared understanding. My assuming that my fellow shopper knows what ZUMBA is, potentially sets her up for a very odd experience.

Let's try this from her point of view.

Here she is minding her own business when she sees a woman dancing in the aisle beside her.

She looks over and smiles, secretly wondering if something might be a little off that I am shimmying at Whole Foods.

Suddenly I break into a big smile, wave at her and shout "ZUMBA!" At which point she realizes that I must be from out of the country or maybe I have some disorder that I am dancing and shouting gibberish.

Oh my gosh, we cracked ourselves up over how that must of looked.

So, you know what they say when you "assume", you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me" in the middle of Whole foods.

Which brings us to....

Part two of the 4 part video series What do you want... and how you can get it! (A.k.A things I learned from my cats.)

In today's lesson, the very persistent Bandit (may she rest in peace) demonstrates a couple of less-than-effective ways to try to get what you want.

Check out this 3 minute video to make sure you don't make these communication mistakes.

Enjoy and we will be in touch next week with part 3!

Joelle

(haven't watched part 1 yet? Check it out now! )