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How To Talk To People: Better Communication Skills

发布时间：2012-06-09

文章出自：https://www.360docs.net/doc/4f15499368.html,

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For conversation to flow well, it's important to ask open questions, these often start with ?how', ?when', ?why' etc.

An open question is something like: "What sort of things do you do in your spare time?"

This really gets the conversation flowing. Try to avoid asking closed questions. These are questions that can be answered with yes or no answer, such as: "Do you like films?"

Closed questions tend to kill the conversation.

Step 2: Active Listening

People speak at 100 to 175 words per minute (WPM), but they can listen intelligently at up to 300 words per minute. Since only a part of our mind is paying attention, it is easy to go into mind drift - thinking about other things while listening to someone. The cure for this is active listening - which involves listening with a purpose. It may be to gain information, obtain directions, understand others, solve problems, share interest, see how another person feels, show support, etc. It's also important to give feedback to show yourself and the other person that you've understood what they've said. Do this by summarising and repeating what you heard.

Step 3: Create a 'cocoon'

If you're finding it particularly difficult to concentrate on what someone is saying, try to imagine a ―cocoon‖ around you and the person you're listening to. Imagine that the

cocoon is blocking out all outside distractions, so you can really focus on what they're saying. Try repeating their words mentally as they say it - this will reinforce their message and help you control mind drift.

Step 4: Engage with the other person

When someone is trying to get your attention, or engage you in conversation don't turn your back on them, or answer over your shoulder. Instead, turn and face them, engage with them. Good communication is when you really engage. When you are talking to people observe your body language and your tone of voice. Remember to use open strong gestures, look people in the eye and smile when you talk unless you are complaining about something.

Step 5: Assumptions

Don't assume you know the other person's thoughts and feelings. Learn to identify when you do this. It normally occurs when the facts aren't present to support your belief, so always check with the other person what they mean when they say something.

Step 6: Antagonistic sentences

If you need to talk to someone about a diffi cult topic then avoid using sentences like ―You should know me better‖, ―Why are you trying to upset me?‖, ―You've never understood me‖, ―I thought we were going to enjoy ourselves‖. These are antagonistic sentences, and are not productive in any way and will just ensure there is a conflic Conjoined twins through Amanda Clark's lens

发布时间：2012-06-09

文章出自：英国卫报

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When it was suggested that conjoined twins Lupita and Carmen Andrade could be separated, the 12-year-old girls were devastated. ―Why would you want to cut us in half?‖ they asked their mother. As it happens, when they met with surgeons, the girls discovered separation was impossible because they share too many vital organs and their lower spine

The girls were born in Veracruz, Mexico, and moved to the US on a medical visa at the age of two. They now live in New Milford, Connecticut, with their parents, sister Abby and dog Toby. Annabel Clark first photographed them four years ago and has been doing so ever since. Clark was worried about exploiting the girls, but Lupita and Carmen made sure there was no chance of that. Yes, life has its difficulties, but they are too busy with gymnastics and school plays and socialising and playing piano to think about exploitation or pity.

―We are connected by the torso, ‖ Carmen says. ―My sister Lupita has a curve in her back that is very serious, and I have problems with my stomach.‖ Despite this, doctors have said they have every chance of enjoying old age. Though they are close, in every sense, they are not sentimental about their relationship. When Clark asked if they were best friends, she was given short shrift. ―No, we‘re sisters, ‖ Carmen replied. ―But are you also friends?‖ Clark persisted. ―We‘re sisters, ‖ Lupita replied adamantly. ―Just sisters

Clark started taking their photographs as part of a project documenting medical missions in which children were brought to the US for long-term medical care. They have had, and continue to have, intense physical therapy, and started to walk only when they were three or four years old. Carmen operates the right leg, Lupita the left. The girls are at a regular school and say they never argue. The only cause of friction is that Carmen could be in normal classes, but has to be taught alongside Lupita in a special needs unit. Carmen says she gets a little bored at school

Of course, Clark says, she had preconceptions about what the girls would or would not be able to do. ―When they did a ha ndstand, the first time I met them, they shattered any ideas I had about how mobile they‘d be. I think they wanted to show me what they were capable of.‖ At first they were curious about Clark‘s equipment and the process of photography –what does a light meter do? What‘s with the camera that doesn‘t have a screen on the back? – but before long they forgot the camera was there

Clark sees her work with the girls as long-term, showing their transformation into teens and womanhood. What does she hope to achieve from the project? To change the way many of us look at people such as Carmen and Lupita, she says. ―There seems to be a conventional way to talk about conjoined twins: bring them on a talkshow or give them their own series. I never feel that those types of shows lead to more tolerance or understanding. I hope these photos make people feel like they are hanging out with Carmen and Lupita, rather than watching them from a distance. I want people to see not only how amazing it is to be in their presence, but also how similar their world is to that of other girls their age.‖ ―My favourite kind of music is pop, hip-hop and R&B, ‖ Carmen says. Lupita loves animals and talks of being a vet. They have not yet had that difficult conversation of what happens if they want to pursue different careers

Clark is hoping to publish a book of the photographs and use any proceeds to help the girls with their medical needs. The pictures were shown in an exhibition in New York, and

the photographer was fascinated by the way people reacted to them. She loves the picture of the girls lying on the bed because, at first glance, they look like perfectly normal, if unusually beautiful, twins. ―It gave people a chance to really see them as the two individuals they are, ‖ Clark says. ―Once they looked at the picture of the doll, they realised and started to ask questions

The girls are far more interested in the memories the pictures hold than the fact that they have been exhibited in a gallery. Clark says, ―When they saw a photo of th emselves in the snow from 2009, Lupita exclaimed, ?Remember when we made the biggest snowball in the town? That was fun.‘‖

The girls love music, and being conjoined provides an extra challenge. ―It is kind of interesting, ‖ Carmen says. At the piano, she plays the right hand and Lupita the left. Now Carmen is keen to take up violin, but can see there could be issues: ―I think I might hit Lupita in the face.‖ How do they feel about being conjoined? ―I like it, ‖ Lupita says. ―But sometimes I don‘t.‖ Yes, they‘re aware people stare at them, but they have found the perfect riposte. ―I have a very good method, ‖ Carmen says. ―They stare at me like I‘m crazy, I stare at them like they‘re crazy. Treat people the way you want to be treated: they want to treat me l ike that, I‘ll treat them like that.‖ ?

Why does a president need a

wife?USA is more conservative than France and Germany

发布时间：2012-06-09

文章出自：纽约客

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For politicians in this country, family is not off limits—not really, at least. How can it be, when every time I go online I see a smiling Michelle Obama asking me to join her in support ing her husband, and Ann Romney is out deploying the first person plural? ―Mitt and I have compassion for people that are struggling, ‖ she said this spring.―That‘s why we‘re running.‖ Both of them are on Twitter, sidekicks if not running mates, with what must be approved and vetted tones and takes. It feels like voting for a Presidential candidate, in this country, means casting a vote for his marriage.

The reality across the Atlantic is different. In mid-March, Germans elected Joachim Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor who is not married to his partner, to the Presidency (a more symbolic job than Chancellor). Two weeks ago, Fran?ois Hollande was sworn in as France‘s new President. He and his companion, the veteran political journalist Valérie Trierweiler, are the first unmarried couple to reside in the Elysée Palace in its history. TheTimespoints out that the new Presidents‘ domestic situations ―raise some concerns about protocol—how to travel together to places like Saudi Arabia, for instance, where unmarrie d cohabitation is not accepted.‖) Trierweiler, whom Hollande calls ―the love of my life, ‖ has been married and divorced twice before, and plans to continue her work, if with a tilt away from politics. I fear that, in the United States, Trierweiler would be considered something of a loose woman—or just too complicated—and a man who tried to run for President while with her would face multi-million-dollar attacks for a lack of ―family values.‖

The French writer Laurent Binet (whose first novel, ―HHhH, ‖Jame s Wood reviewed inThe New Yorker) followed the couple during the campaign for a book he is writing (he was inspired to follow the runup to an election by the series ―The West Wing‖). ―In France, ‖ he told me, ―we don‘t consider it a crime to hide your private life: it‘s even the meaning of the word ?private.‘ ‖

Binet expects no backlash from French Catholics in response to this first First Couple

―living in sin.‖ He points to the model of French la?cité—a state-sanctioned secularism forbidding religious involvement in government dealings, and vice versa—and stresses the Dreyfus-era guarantee that religions remain ―in their place, which is to say in the private sphere, ‖ he said.

―Manifestly, the fact of not being married did not prevent Hollande from being elected. It was never, throughout the entire campaign, raised as an issue.‖ He went on, ―Hollande and Valérie Trierweiler have officially been a couple for five years. Seen from this angle, marriage would be only an administrative formality.‖

Aletter pub lished inLe Mondecelebrated the new ―contours‖ Trierweiler brings to the role. The Lyonnais letter-writer invited her to ―show respect to republican audacity, and do away with the old remnants of the ancien régime, ‖ by demonstrating her understanding that the ―corps amoureux‖ is of a private nature and should not blend into the ―corps constitué‖ (the constitutional body), with its public essence. ―It would be wholly beneficial for her, of course, and above all for democracy.‖

Trierweiler has said publicly that she doesn‘t expect Hollande to support her financially. He ―isn‘t the father of my children, ‖ she stated, and that is not ―my perception of life.‖ WhenParis Matchput Trierweiler‘s image on a March cover, she tweeted, ―What a shock to discover myself on the cover page of my own magazine, ‖ and added, ―Bravo to Paris Match for its sexism.‖

This French ―first girlfriend‖ met our own First Lady earlier this month, at the G8 summit. Trierweiler said that Mrs. Obama ―was really one of the people who has m ost impressed me in all my life.‖ Admiring her charisma and force of presence, Trierweiler observed,

―One would think she, herself, could have a political career.‖

And yet Michelle Obama has had to suppress her career ambition to fulfill the ceremonial role. This is a woman who, after all, met her husband when assigned to supervise him on the job—Michellementored Barack as a summer associateat the Chicago law firm Sidley and Austin. She‘s had to subsume herself into her husband‘s brand identity, for the pu rsuit of popularity and poll numbers (his, if it bears saying).

Hollande earlier had a relationship with Ségolène Royal, who is herself a politician, and Binet didn‘t see much difference between the pair and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Both women lost the Presidential elections they ran for and both men won (Hollande after Royal‘s campaign against Nicolas Sarkozy, Bill before Hill‘s). But Hillary Clinton forged her career, first in the Senate and now as Secretary of State, only after her husband had left office. While she was First Lady, she was scrutinized and criticized for appearing to act in ways that were considered unwifely.

Why must the President‘s wife still be a wife above all? It is no longer a matter of looking like the rest of America. Women are doing better, economically, than ever: more women than men work in managerial and professional positions today (even if the glass ceiling keeps men in a strong majority in top executive positions), and more are enrolled in colleges and graduate schools. Unmarried, childless urban women in their twenties areout-earning men by eight per cent. Barely half of adults in the country are married (fifty-one per cent, as of last December), when the median age of first marriage is higher than it‘s ever been (26.5 years old for women, 28.7 for men).

TheDaily Mailpublished an article last weekinquiring, ―Is France‘s new President about to pop the question and make his girlfriend Valerie Trierweiler an honest First Lady?‖ I asked Binet whether he thought Hollande and Trierweiler would decide to marry to smooth the diplomatic path. ―No, ‖ he told me. ―If Valérie Trierweiler gets married, it will be because she wants to get married.‖