Think before You Speak

Since a human is a social creature, interpersonal communication plays a significant role in his life. This notion has been defined by many scholars and is mainly understood as a process of exchanging some information between the source and the target receiver or receivers. Interpersonal communication includes quite a number of concepts such as persuading, listening, conflict resolution, verbal and non-verbal communication, handling emotions, handling different types of people and so on. In his article Think Before You Speak Graham Yemm touches upon one of them, namely, the ability to influence other people while communicating with them verbally.

The article explains that the vast majority of people is usually disappointed with the results of their efforts to make their interlocutors understand what was meant or do what was needed. It happens due to people’s inability to present thoughts and ideas clearly since before the talk most of them think only about the result but not the process of putting the idea through.

Graham Yemm suggests that certain points should be taken into consideration and some steps are done to make the process more successful. He elaborated the given advice on the basis of the fact that communicating involves not only verbal aspect but also some non-verbal ones such as tone of voice, gestures, the emotional state of the interlocutors, past experience, ability to understand words used and many others. The author gives a list of so called filters that may prevent the listener from understanding what was meant or headed to and a result do not do exactly what wanted him to.

Moreover, Graham Yemm states that all the people can be divided into three groups according to their preferable way of expressing themselves, that is, visuals, kinaesthetics and auditories. The difference between the representatives of these groups lies in the ability to use visual, feeling based or audio channel while presenting their thoughts or ideas and this ability influences their way of getting any information accordingly. Bearing in mind what type the listener belongs to, would help the speaker build the talk more effectively by using his listener’s preferred way of processing information. Still, it works only in face to face communication as while addressing a group, the speaker should take into consideration the fact that he will probably need to use all the three styles to have a proper impact on the listeners.

Therefore, the author of the article conveys the idea that establishing the final goal before the conversation does not meant it will be effective enough. To make the communication effective one should take a number of steps. Firstly, he should think about his receiver or receivers in the terms of his knowledge about them, their possible reaction to the information given and their possible level of understanding. Secondly, the speaker should consider the receiver’s channel either it is visual, kinaesthetic or auditory and build his communication strategy accordingly. It is quite a lot to think about before the talk starts, still if the speaker is interested in the result and not in the talk itself, it is worth the trouble.

The ideas presented by Graham Yemm seem to be quite reasonable still the ability to influence other people while communicating with them verbally was studied by other scholars who elaborated their own specific ways to get more in talking to others (Anderson, 1993; Rivers, 2012). To form some definite opinion about this concept and its essence, to define the effectiveness of the pieces of advice given, other existing views in this sphere should be considered as well.