Forming and Tapping Relationships in a Group Interaction

Mentioning people, using names and referencing people allow us to personalize our remarks to groups.

In addition to initiating and encouraging interaction, we can structure and deliver our remarks to form and tap relationships in group settings such as presentations or meetings. Again, looking at them strictly as avenues for molding relationships and business culture, let’s ignore message.

Whereas we might rely upon our message to do this, delivery techniques exist too. First, we need to remember that within all groups are sub-groups and within these are individuals. We can briefly tailor them to sub-groups and even individuals. State of the Union speeches are prime examples.

Second, people don’t remember our entire message. Thus, people won’t need to like our entire message; they only need to like a small portion to like it all. Different people will like them for different reasons. So, we target our remarks to different sub-groups and individuals.

The techniques accentuating this approach are:

• Mentioning individuals
• Using names
• Addressing by people’s names
• Make positive references to individuals and sub-groups

For example, mention individuals even if they’re aren’t in the interaction. The mention will not only get back to them, but we will demonstrate that we recognize people’s efforts. Use names. Just as names make for an attractive article, names make for attractive remarks. Address people by name when they ask questions or make comments. If we don’t know their names, we ask. We demonstrate their names are important.

Finally, we make references to individuals and sub-groups:

• Jeannette and I were just discussing this yesterday.
• Anwar’s question relates to Nicole’s remark earlier.
• Our Data Integrity team worked well together.
• Our Project Managers in our IT Division kept us on target.

These techniques allow us to connect individually in group settings. Though we can’t mention everyone, unless group is small, our effort will demonstrate to all that we value such connections.

 
 
Here are two examples of State of the Union speeches in which the message was parsed to appeal to different issues groups, governmental units and other constituencies. Moreover, names were used and references made to individuals regardless of their attendance. This personalization helped to convey personal connections with entire audience:

• 2014 State of the Union Speech by Barack Obama (text) video
• 2007 State of the Union Speech by George W. Bush (text) video