The psychology of communication
A major focus for internal communicators can be around the tools, channels and techniques that we have available to us to help us to get our messages out to our audience. But what’s really important on top of that, is to understand a little bit about the psychology of the audience, what’s going on when it comes to the messages that we are relaying to them and how we need to tailor those messages in order to fit the psychology of their brains. I was at a health and safety conference recently, and I was fortunate enough to be presenting, I was actually facilitating alongside someone who presented on the psychology of the human brain and particularly in relation to health and safety. I had a chat with him afterwards and found that we had a lot of ideas in common and actually what he was talking about had a massive overlap and a massive significance, not only for health and safety, but for organisational culture, for organisational communication and actually for general leadership and management as well. So I invited him to be a guest on the podcast to talk about what he knew about psychology and in particular behavioural psychology. Also how we could relate that to some of the challenges that organisations and internal communicators face when it comes to transmitting our messages, and not only transmitting them, but engaging our audiences in those messages.
So we’re going to be looking at a range of different issues in this interview around the conscious and unconscious mind. We’re going to be looking at how some of the techniques that are used when it comes to taking immediate corrective action, when we spot something wrong from a health and safety perspective, can be applied to our general work. Then we’re going to spend quite a lot of time talking about habits and the importance of habits in organisations, how habits form our cultures within our organisation, and that how we, as internal communicators, need to be mindful of those habits and how we can influence them through our communications. So this episode is all about the psychology of communication.
Guest profile
Mark Allan is a behavioural and cultural specialist, executive coach, and study skills presenter. He helps individuals and companies gain knowledge and insight into human behaviours. Mark also works within the education sector and utilises psychology as a way of helping students understand more about the learning process and how to study/revise effectively. Behavioural psychology is the basis of all of Mark’s work.
Useful links
Link to a relevant episode of the podcast: https://thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/blog/podcast/the-iconist-the-art-and-science-of-standing-out/
Mark’s LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/mark-allan-a1787813