- Today we're talking about
positive communication skills. We have a very special
guest, Dr. Julien Mirivel, so let's get into the details. (upbeat music) Hey there, welcome back Alex Lyon here, and today we have a very special guest, Dr Julien Mirivel he's professor and interim dean at the University
of Arkansas Little Rock, he's here to talk to us today about positive communication skills and you could say, he
wrote the book on it. "The Art of Positive Communication" it's available on Amazon. It's a real pleasure to have him here, talking to us today, and he's also a really
good friend of mine, so please welcome Dr. Julien Mirivel, how are you doing my old friend? - I am doing fantastic, it's so good to be able to
spend some time with you, and all of your subscribers. Glad to share the moment, I'm looking forward to
this conversation with you. - Thanks for being here,
I really appreciate it. I'm glad we finally
got you on the channel. So let's jump right in. How did you first become interested, in positive communication and how did this model come about? - Okay, you know my whole
passion with communication has always been about how? It's a big question, and I want people thinking
about that question. What does it look like when
we communicate at our best? So the first thing really, was not about positive communication, it was really about a
fundamental question. What does it look like when
we communicate at our best? What it looks like when we
communicate at our peak? What behaviors exemplify
what we're capable of doing in most of our social
life, with our parents, with our family, with our friends at work, at home, with our kids? and I really wanted to know, what are some of the small behaviors that we have control over that can make a big difference in all of those relationships? So it really all started
with big questions about the nature of excellence, the nature of ethical communication, and what it takes,
small concrete behaviors that all of us can practice that are gonna help us create
positive relationships. - Wonderful, and this
model has six parts see, six key communication skills or what you call critical behaviors. So let's go through all
six for our viewers. The first one is the
importance of greeting people, what is so important about
greeting one another? - You know the reason why
greetings are so important is because they literally are at the opening of every conversation we have with other people. So it's the starting point
of every relationship, the starting point of every friendship, of every loving, romantic
relationship we have. Even in the morning if
you've got children you know, one of the first thing that takes place, is your kids, you know, greet you they come to see you, and so greetings are at
the really starting point of how relationships happen. And I find them to be really, greetings are really critical because of the functions that they serve, in this early, early points. - Yeah I've noticed that myself. If I'm meeting up with somebody or if I bump into somebody, if the greeting is a little off, if it doesn't have that
positive connection it really sets this strange tone, for the rest of the conversation. - Yeah, so the behavior is really about, and in the model I talk about it as something that is an encouragement to kind of to move in towards people. 'Cause greeting is the
opening up of connection and it serves the really
critical functions of creating the beginnings
our relationships, right and we feel it when it's absent. So, what is the first thing
that's going to disappear when people have a conflict? Is that they're not gonna
wanna greet each other. They're gonna wanna separate. So greeting is kind of the
opening up of that bridge, opening up of that connection, almost anywhere in the world. Every culture we've ever studied, people have greeting sequences in place. You know in France, it's a couple of kisses on the cheeks, in Saudi Arabia it's Assalamu
Alaikum, peace be upon you. If you go to China, it's
(speaks in foreign language) beautiful greeting if
you go to India, namaste. You know, I see the light in you and I start this interaction with the fact that you have character. So I find that greetings
are really important in the point of emphasis, because all of us have
the ability to greet not always in all languages, but we can certainly learn how to move in, and we can learn to write the opening of emails with a warm tone, we have that capacity, so it only becomes a point of intention. - Excellent, alright so start with a good, strong
greeting, a warm greeting, a greeting that presses in, and connects with other people. So behavior number two, is about asking good questions. So what kinds of questions
really build relationships? - Okay so the questions that people, that I like to talk to people about is being able to learn how
to flip your questions. So maybe I can give you
a contrast in example. You know, you're coming
to work in the morning, you're walking through the hallway and the first inclination as it would be for me is, I see my staff or I see people I work with them like, did you have a good weekend? And you'll notice here, that the only answer is yes or no. It's a closing off of the encounter. We call those questions
closed-ended questions, but I could just do the same thing. I could walk in, and say
hello to some of my staff, and I could say, hey what
did you do this weekend? And it's a small change,
but now when I say what did you do this weekend? I'm actually putting myself
in a position of curiosity. I wanna discover what went
on in that person's life. So asking questions in the way of kind of doing it positively, is making that shift from
closed-ended to open-ended, so that you can open up a little bit more of that discovery of the other person. - So this open-ended questions might start with how or what, and it invites people to share more detail and literally they open the conversation rather than the closed-ended questions sort of shutting the
question down really quickly, and not really inviting much detail. A yes or no question
doesn't invite much detail, it doesn't lead to those warm, positive relationship building moments. - Yeah and you can, I mean
anybody here can go home, you know with their partner, their spouse, even their children, and you can test the difference. You can say, did you have a good day? And then just here the response and probably you'll get something minimal. Yeah it was not too bad, but if you ask, you know, what did you do during the day? Suddenly the answers, the possibilities, are going to open up and people will always take you up on it. You know, it's not a law, but it's a guide and when you make that transition you'll notice you are learning a lot more about people around you, and that connects you. That's where the connection is, it is the discovery and the learning about the other people. - Excellent and number three, another aspect of positive communication is helping people to feel
good about themselves. So how can our viewers, make other people feel
good about themselves? - You know, it's actually really simple, it's figuring out what
are the good things, the strength, the things to celebrate about the people around you. It's really an other oriented move, where I am paying attention, and you are paying attention to what is going well with the person that you're interacting with, and being able to bring that to life. So complimenting is very simple it's just celebrating
that person's strength, that person's abilities. To notice what you see in them that's going so well and that's really all it takes, is easy easy complimenting of that person and it helps to, you know, in our field it helps
to communicate to people who they are, it affects people and that's the lesson that we know, is we know communication affects people. So complimenting is the decision to kinda use communication in a way to bring people up, to
celebrate their strengths, rather than say their weaknesses. - That's wonderful, so
along the same lines, how can our viewers, create more closeness with other people? - So the way to create closeness you know, in the kind of the fourth
behavior of the model is really about disclosure. So we create intimacy, it's very simple. We create intimacy with other people, by revealing who we are and the more intimacy we feel, typically it's because we've been, we've had the courage and the willingness to
get into that relationship and say, this is really
who I am, you know, this is really what I'm thinking, this is really my values, this is why I believe in, and the more we can shed
away the kind of the masks, you know, the way we pretend to be the more we can really connect. You know, an easier
way to think about this is to think, I like to kinda share people okay today like right now, you could just text someone, you could email someone, you could call someone and just tell them, you
know I'm thinking of you and I'm just really grateful for you. I'm grateful to have you in my life and you'll notice if you do that, it takes a little bit
of vulnerability, right there's a little bit of this thing that you have to overcome. But the beautiful part of that easy thing is once you express the gratitude that's gonna necessarily impress, the closeness that you
have with that person. It's gonna help you
deepen that relationship. - Yeah and I gotta say, you practice what you preach. When you send me texts, you say hey I've been thinking about you and you really do that well and what it does is, it
frees me up to reciprocate. It creates room for me
to be authentic in return and then you do feel closer. You know I can't tell you, how many times you've said, hey man, just thinking about you, miss you, looking forward to talking soon and if I'm like hanging
out with my wife Erin, I'll say, oh Julien was
just saying this nice thing, isn't that great? And it really does create
that bond of closeness. So I do appreciate that and you're not just writing
about it in the book, you've lived it.
- (laughing) - So it sometimes
- Yeah we try to, we try to do it, can I just
share a quick story here? - Yeah sure - I once asked people in
an audience that I love, I asked people in an
audience like 300 people, to say, to do that exercise. So we're in a room, everybody's sending these
beautiful messages of gratitude 300 beautiful messages of
gratitude into the world and then somebody raises their hand and they're like, I got an
answer, I got an answer! So I said well, what did they say? and the response was,
who the hell is this? (both laughing) And so I want people to know you know, it's not always
going to be reciprocated and people may be confused by that move, but it is positive communication to have the courage to send that text and to say to that person, I'm grateful for you, and I love you, and I miss you, and I value that connection, I value that relationship. - Right, yeah there's
a little risk involved in expressing closeness, but I find more often than not, if you're around the right
people to begin with, they do appreciate that and they handle it pretty well. They maybe do not know
how to do it back yet, but you're leading by example, by trying. - So number five in the model, is about when people are enough. So we're not always feeling great sometime we're struggling, right. So what's the best way to communicate when people are feeling down. - You know, the first
thing I will say here for people it really is hard, sometimes we feel like we don't have the skills to help people and to say and communicate
the right thing, at the right time, you know. That's a pretty common human experience somebody is not feeling good and we wanna help them and we don't know what to say. But the research that we've done, does show us that the best thing we can do is to have the willingness, to even just put a few words together, to encourage that person. You know, so even to be able to say, hey, I'm here with you. You know, I don't know what to do but I'm here with you, and I stand by you, and you're going to overcome this, and we're gonna do it together, you can see suddenly the
words start to add up, you know about what the possibilities are, but what our research has shown us, is that when people make that move when they take a little bit of moment, to say, you know I was thinking of you and I'm here for you and I think you have a
bright future ahead of you, whatever the encouragement might be. Those conversations stick
in that person's mind, literally forever, you know, our conversations have an afterlife. So what we're doing is,
once we speak the words it stays in that person's mind and two years down the road, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, people can come back to it. They can relive that moment, and they can feel the
strength out of that statement and you can take any
ordinary conversation, any simple phrase can become
an extraordinary moment for somebody who is not
doing well at that time. - Yeah, I like how you emphasize this, it can be almost anything. You don't have to say,
the perfect statement or the thing that is so
deep and so profound. It can just be your way, almost anything you say, to say you're there for them, shows them that you are in it with them that if they wanna say more, just knowing you're available for that, is a huge encouragement to them. You don't have to solve their problem with a perfect expression. Just any, just trying to begin with, is a great move in the right direction, when people are down. So number six, we can't
get away from this, without talking about listening. It's a huge part of good communication, so what is an easy ways
that we can overcome those common listening barriers? - Yeah, listening is a is a tough cookie (laughing)
- Yeah - I mean you know, in
the art of communication it's probably the ultimate and certainly learning how to listen deeply to another person,
it's a big chance. Especially when we
disagree with them right, if we feel like we have a
stance that is opposite to them. So, it's very complicated but I wanna give one little tool, one little technique 'cause it does help to think about it very physically right, when we don't wanna listen, we tend to close off. So like we close our hand, you know, we tend to close our heart, we tend to just kind of
withdraw from the interaction, but listening is the exact opposite. So it may be very helpful instead of to thinking of a skill to think let me just open up my hand here and see if I can receive what this person is telling me, without judging it without, you know, I don't have to agree with that I just have to acknowledge it as part of that person's experience. And when you open your hand, you can see here, I'm leaning in, I'm already
coming into the camera, so that's a huge shift
from, I'm tightening up, I'm withdrawing to I'm
opening my hand, I'm moving in and I think that openness, is what's gonna change that little bit the dynamics that are gonna taking place. So when I think about listening, I always think first, can I open my hand? And can I lean in? instead of withdrawing,
instead of fighting either internally or externally. - Yeah and I really like the opening up, the physical gesture of opening your hands is more than just a physical gesture. It puts you in the state
of mind of being open and also I like how you said, you don't have to agree. Being willing to listen, does not mean you're
agreeing with the person. You're just becoming a better listener and you might just learn something. You may not agree but
at least you appreciate where they're coming
from at a deeper level and they're going to feel more heard and that creates a bond as well, even over a difficult conversation. They feel respected, they feel valued, when you really listen. - Yeah I mean you're absolutely right and I really think this is the magic actually of communication
and learning communication is when you have the right technique, it can really get the knot
out of relationship right because sometimes we have
these knots with people and we can't seem to get out of them, but listening is one of those things that's gonna unloosen those knots and I kind wanna share this story because I was working with
somebody for three years and we now have this amazing
professional relationship, but also kind of friendship and in fact, tonight I'll
be going to her house bringing my children, but three years ago it wasn't like this. That connection wasn't quite like this and what really solved
our knots professionally and later on personally was doing a very simple exercise. I just said, what do you need from me? And then to reciprocate this, so for her to say, you know
what do I need from you? And what do I need from you? and to be able to listen
to one another's needs changed the relationship drastically because I was able to voice, you know, I need this from
this professional relationship and she was able to say I really need this and for us to slow down and to hear that. And then to try to work
on meeting those needs really changed a lot in our connection. So, it's called what I need from you, as an exercise can be
really, really meaningful. - Awesome, thank you so much Julien. So let's tell people again, they can get your book on Amazon, "The Art of Positive Communication," they can find your website
on at julienmirivel.com and your TEDx Talk is on YouTube. I will put links to all of those resources in the description below this video. Julien thank you so much my friend for being with us today,
it was a real treat. - Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure to share
this moment with you and all of your subscribers and I really appreciate the
opportunity and the moment. - Thanks and if it is the first time you're watching this
channel Communication Coach, we have a lot more videos, so feel free to check out
the channel, take care.
