Mental Health and Work

Here’s How Mastering a Powerful Skill Made Matilda a Champion.

Three simple yet effective communication tips might help us improve relationships and open up new possibilities at work.

A lack of empathy and compassion in our conversations might not be apparent.

Matilda, a well-educated employee of a large business organization, struggled to build work relationships with her colleagues and clients.

Her technical and service excellence achieved outstanding results during the performance appraisals; however, her interpersonal relations showed low marks.

As a result, she got disappointed as she studied communication at an advanced level in college. Interestingly, the same poor performance was recorded in her appraisal in the next three years.

First, she thought her managers mistreated her. However, seeing her other high scores, she understood that something must be wrong beyond her awareness. Thus, she decided to obtain feedback from her first-line manager.

This career talk initially hurt her feelings. Even though her manager frankly shared his thoughts, Matilda took offense to be labeled as judgemental.

Taking this to her heart, she decided to discuss the situation with her trusted mentor, who advised her to obtain anonymous 360-degree feedback.

Using a third-party online survey tool, she requested honest feedback from her colleagues, friends, supervisors, business partners, and clients.

The survey results indicated a 100% consensus on a single phrase. All contributors found Matilda “disapproving reactively.” The picture was crystal clear. Putting her ego aside, Matilda repented to her hasty judgments.

Her mentor prepared an action plan to improve the situation. I share the strategy at a high level focusing on the key points.

1 — She observed thoughts and feelings during interactions.

Matilda was unaware of the insecurities that entered her psyche during her childhood. She hated to be criticized by her parents, teachers, and friends.

As a result, she developed a coping mechanism by reacting to situations too quickly. Her fear of criticism was the root cause of her neglected behavior, according to her mentor. Her mentor was an accomplished psychologist who was able to capture sophisticated communication patterns.

Her mentor introduced her to mindfulness practices. The first lesson was to observe thoughts and feelings during conversations.

Initially, this practice was hard for Matilda as she had an overexcited mind, but she learned to focus on each thought and emotion deliberately. As a result, she improved her mental task-switching capability.

The essential technique was to see each thought and emotion as an object giving them shapes and colors to transition from one form to another.

In addition, Matilda practiced this technique in her free time, practicing 15-minute meditation each day. Moreover, she started self-conversations to practice imaginary situations.

These meditative sessions significantly improved her focus, attention, and task-switching.

2 — She stopped the urge to react instantly.

Matilda’s brain was overactive. Consequently, she used to react to the statement of others too quickly. Sometimes she commented too fast, even to her colleagues or clients, before completing their sentences.

Interestingly, most of her initial reactions sounded hostile to others, even though she had good intentions.

Her mentor advised Matilda to focus on her breath while listening to conversations. Then, her mentor suggested she take a deep breath before responding and mentally counted up to five before replying.

This simple technique was highly challenging for her overactive brain. The urge to answer quickly created strong neural connections manifesting as a habit.

She needed to change this routine. It took her several months to weaken the old pattern and strengthen the new one.

3 — She responded softly by reframing her thoughts.

The third step to mastering her communication was to learn about reframing her thoughts before responding. Matilda already knew about reframing techniques from her advanced communication courses.

Truth-telling was a life principle for Matilda. So, her mentor advised that she could still disagree with politeness refraining from a hostile and abrupt tone when needed.

Matilda was capable of creating at least three versions of a sentence mentally in a few seconds. Furthermore, she used this technique in her writing abundantly.

Therefore, her written communication skills were excellent in her performance appraisals. Nevertheless, she struggled to do that in verbal communication. Her mentor planned a lifestyle change for her.

Recognizing this weakness was an eye-opener for her. All she needed was to transfer her writing skills to speaking skills. Like any habit, it took her several months to achieve it.

However, the rehearsals with her mentors and trusted friends expedited the acquisition of this skill. Whenever a thought came during the conversations, she changed them to softer and more positive versions. She added softness to her new lifestyle.

Conclusions and Takeaways

Mindfulness practices only have become widespread within the last decade. Nevertheless, these practices have been part of many civilizations throughout human history.

Since, as humans, we developed the neo-cortex, we have had the opportunity to tame the false alarms of our emotional and reptilian brains. As a leadership skill, mindfulness is an excellent tool for cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation, increasing our emotional intelligence.

In my opinion, even though Matilda was a well-educated person, her emotional brain took over when she was communicating during stressful situations.

Her reptilian brain clashing with her belief system appeared to perceive ideas coming from her colleagues and clients as a threat. Unfortunately, she was unaware of this situation and only understood it when an independent and more experienced person gave her insights.

I propose five takeaway points from this short story reflecting small lifestyle changes.

1 — Observing thoughts and emotions is essential to making sound judgments.

2 — Controlling our urges to react is essential to establishing healthy communication with others.

3 — Reframing thoughts in a digestible and palatable format can enrich the quality of communication.

4 — Empathy and compassion for others might open the communication channels and empower both parties.

5 — Accepting our weaknesses and mistakes by leveraging more experienced people might improve our communication skills.

Using these practical steps, within a year, Matilda developed excellent verbal communication skills that delighted her colleagues and clients.

She was pleased that her friends accepted her and established more intimate relationships. Her mental and physical health significantly improved.

Matilda obtained a perfect score for interpersonal skills in the next appraisal. This simple and powerful skill contributed to her becoming a senior executive in her organization.

Matilda's promotion resulted from avoiding hasty judgments about colleagues and clients. Communication skills gained through informal learning are also secrets to a healthy self-employed life.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a happy and healthy life.

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