Dr. Shiny Unsal identifies three communication mistakes: failing to truly listen, giving feedback without permission (which triggers a defensive response), and avoiding questions instead of gathering information. When people feel heard and safe, communication becomes transformative.
Chapters
My name is Shiny Unsal. I am the founder of Academy of Neuroshine Technology. I'm an author, speaker, ICF-certified coach. I'm also a professor teaching leadership and emotional intelligence at UCLA Extension. I transform lives to create a better world that we can enjoy living in. I believe communication is the most powerful tool, the most powerful skill that we can have. I see 3 communication problems in the world that we all do. The first one is that we don't listen, or we don't even know how to really truly listen. We don't listen fully until somebody is done speaking. We interrupt. We want to say whatever we want to say. And we don't let the person finish their sentence. And that way they are interrupted when they are speaking their truth. Maybe they're speaking their truth. What we do is, "Oh no, no. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're saying. Isn't that great?" So you interrupt. And that way, that brain seems like, "Oh, what is the point of me to tell whatever I want to tell because they're going to listen anyways?" So they hold back. The second communication mistake that I see is that We don't know how to ask permission and we don't even know why we need to ask permission. When you are in a business conversation, when somebody is offering an idea and they are very truly excited about their idea and they're like defending it, oh my God, this is the biggest thing that we have ever come up with. You know, you're just so excited and all that. And yet, In your mind, if you're thinking, oh my God, this sucks, I hate this idea. And then you really truly don't love the idea. There is a way to verbalize it. There is a way to communicate it without hurting the other brain's neurons. Like literally a little bit speaking from neuroscience perspective, those neurons, they are firing and wiring together when they are sharing that excitement with you. And so what you don't want to do is to kill it. So the reason you want to ask permission, because the brain of the neurons of the other person who is speaking, they feel seen, heard, and appreciated. And that's what we truly want in our course. So when you say, I understand you're very excited, I see that you're very excited with this idea, and I have seen that you have You spend a lot of time to work on this and then to bring it to me. And do I have your permission to share what is truly in my heart? And you just ask permission, and this person is now, okay, well, something true is coming. So when you ask permission, this is what's going on at the back of the mind. I am appreciated. I am respected. I'm going to hear something real. So that can be a great feedback for me. I can learn from this. Maybe there is a way for me to improve my idea. Maybe I am too much in love with my idea. Maybe I am not really considering what they truly need. So the brain actually is now open to receive that communication instead of going into the defense and no, no, no, this It's really great. So let me tell you what. So if you don't ask permission, the part of the brain that we call amygdala is going to get triggered and fight-flight mechanism is just going to take over. And instead of them listening to what you're going to say right now, they're going to go into defense and then they're going to tell you why you should listen to them, why it is a great idea. Why they have worked day and night on it, and all this stuff that is really irrelevant to the conversation. And the third mistake that I also see is really, really important, that we don't ask questions. And we don't even understand the reason why we need to ask questions. We assume we know it all. We assume we get the person. But do we really? Most of the time, not really, because we don't have enough information about that person. We don't have enough information about why that is important for them. We don't have enough information how it is affecting their life, their heart, their emotions, and their thinking, and what's going on with them. So we don't get like true information that is worth knowing. And so what we end up doing is we create these hypothetical assumptions, and they're actually not even true. It's like a theory. Oh, you must be feeling that way. And that's really not true. And that is a big communication mistake when we have the communication exchanged only through statements and Commas and periods. I want to see more question marks in communication. What we truly want at the core is we want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want to be appreciated, and we want to feel safe so that we can open up, we can become vulnerable, and then we can really speak from our truth. And these communication mistakes, when you put all them together, Not listening, not asking permission, and not asking questions. Put them all together. That's exactly why we don't feel seen, heard, appreciated, and we don't feel safe in our communications. When you ask yourself, what is going on with me? Why am I having all these problems with all these people around me? Maybe these are the things that you might want to look at.
