People Skills_How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts
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Praise is often used as a gimmick to try to get people to change their behavior. When someone with ulterior purposes offers praise, there is often resentment, not only of the effort to control, but also of the manipulativeness experienced. David Augsburger says that it is not always true that to be praised is to be loved. “To be praised more often is to be manipulated. To be praised is often to be used. To be praised is often to be outsmarted, outmaneuvered, out-sweet-talked.”10
Even when it is not used manipulatively, praise often has deterimental effects. Have you ever noticed how people defend themselves against praise as though they were protecting themselves against a threat? Their guardedness and defensiveness cause them to come up with stock denials such as:
“I don’t think it’s that good.”
“It wasn’t much, really.”
“I can’t take the credit for it; my assistant, Charlie, thought it up.”
“It was mainly luck.”
“I could have done a lot better.”
When people hear about the perils of evaluative praise, they often think behavioral scientists believe all forms of encouragement are detrimental. This is far from the case. Expressing positive feelings toward people is an important element of interpersonal communication. Constructive ways of doing this will be explained in Chapter 9.
SENDING SOLUTIONS
CAN BE A PROBLEM!
Another group of roadblocks involves sending solutions to other persons. The solutions may be sent caringly as advice, indirectly by questioning, authoritatively as an order, aggressively as a threat, or with a halo around it as moralizing. Some ways of sending solutions obviously carry higher risks than others. All of these ways of sending solutions, however, are potential barriers to communication, especially when one or both of the persons is experiencing a need or a problem. Sending a solution often compounds a problem or creates new problems without resolving the original dilemma.
Ordering, threatening, moralizing, advising (and often asking closed-ended questions), are ways of sending solutions. I am not suggesing that sending solutions is never appropriate, but sending solutions can erect barriers and can thwart another person’s growth.
Ordering
An order is a solution sent coercively and backed by force. When coercion is used, people often become resistant and resentful. Sabotage may result. Or people who are constantly given orders may become very compliant and submissive. Orders imply that the other’s judgment is unsound and thus tend to undermine self-esteem.
Threatening
A threat is a solution that is sent with an emphasis on the punishment that will be forthcoming if the solution is not implemented. Threats produce the same kind of negative results that are produced by orders.
Moralizing
Many people love to put a halo around their solutions for others. They attempt to back their ideas with the force of social, moral, or theological authority. Moralizing speaks with “shoulds” and “oughts” but it chooses other wordings, too. “It’s the right thing to do.” “You don’t visit me enough.” “Shoulds” are often implied, even when they are not stated directly.
“Moralizing is demoralizing.” It fosters anxiety, arouses resentment, tends to thwart honest self-expression, and invites pretense.
Excessive or Inappropriate Questioning
Some kinds of questions have their place in communication. But questions can be real conversation-stoppers, as illustrated in this familiar question-and-nonresponse routine:
“Where did you go?”
“Out.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Day after day, parents in American homes ask, “How was school today?” and day after day they hear the droned nonresponse, “OK.”
Some people ask questions constantly. When this happens, they experience an almost total drying up of conversation. When loved ones share so little with them, these questioners desperately resort to more questions to keep at least a trickle of disclosure coming from the other person. But the added questions retard the communication even more.
A large percentage of the population is addicted to questioning. While there are constructive ways of asking occasional questions (as will be seen in the next chapter), extensive questioning usually derails a conversation. Jacques Lalanne, president of the Institut de Developpement Humain in Quebec, says, “In everyday conversation, questions are usually a poor substitute for more direct communication. Questions are incomplete, indirect, veiled, impersonal and consequently ineffective messages that often breed defense reactions and resistance. They are rarely simple requests for information, but an indirect means of attaining an end, a way of manipulating the person being questioned.”11
Advising
Advice is another of the most commonly used of the roadblocks. At its worst, it represents an “interfere-iority complex.” Though I have known and taught others many of the important reasons why advice is rarely constructive, and though I have decreased my advice-giving enormously, I still find myself dispensing advice inappropriately. The advice-giving trap is a rather constant temptation to me, and I find I am most apt to give in to it when someone I love talks over a problem with me.
Well, what’s wrong with advice? Advice is often a basic insult to the intelligence of the other person. It implies a lack of confidence in the capacity of the person with the problem to understand and cope with his or her own difficulties. As Norman Kagan puts it, “In essence, we implicitly say to someone, ‘You have been making a “big deal” out of a problem whose solution is immediately apparent to me—how stupid you are!’”12
Another problem with advice is that the advisor seldom understands the full implications of the problem. When people share their concerns with us, they often display only the “tip of the iceberg.” The advisor is unaware of the complexities, feelings, and the many other factors that lie hidden beneath the surface. Dag Hammarskjold, the introspective Swedish diplomat, said:
Not knowing the question,
It was easy for him
To give the answer.13
AVOIDING THE OTHER’S CONCERNS
A journalist once commented that the first law of conversation is that if there is any possible way to derail the train of dialogue, someone will do it. The remaining three roadblocks—diverting, logical argument, and reassurance—are notable for getting conversations off the track.
Diverting
One of the most frequent ways of switching a conversation from the other person’s concerns to your own topic is called “diverting.” The phrase “Speaking of …” often signals the beginning of a diversion. Much of what passes for conversation is really little more than a series of diversions. For example, I overhead this interchange between four elderly ladies visiting a friend in a hospital:
Patient: This was such a painful operation! I didn’t think I would be able to stand it. It was just …
Person A: Speaking of operations, I had my gallbladder out in Memorial Hospital in 1976. What a time I had …
Person B: That’s the hospital my grandson was taken to when he broke his arm. Dr. Beyer set it.
Person C: Did you know that Dr. Beyer lives on my street? They say he has an alcohol problem.
Person D: Well, alcohol is not nearly so bad as drugs. The son of the principal of the high school is really messed up by drugs. He shouldn’t deal with other people’s kids if he can’t manage his own.
Whoa! What happened to the patient’s concerns?
Sometimes people divert a conversation because they lack the awareness and skills to listen effectively. Sometimes they are grabbing the focus of attention for themselves. At other times people resort to diversion when they are uncomfortable with the emotions stimulated by the conversation. Many people dislike talking about affection, anger, conflict, death, sickness, divorce, and other topics that create tension in them. When these topics are the focus of conversation, they divert the conversation to a topic more comfortable for them.
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Logical Argument
Logic has many important functions. When another person is under stress, however, or when there is conflict between people, providing logical solutions can be infuriating. Though it may seem that those are the very times we most need logic, it nevertheless has a high risk of alienating the other person.
One of the main problems with logic in situations of personal or interpersonal stress is that it keeps others at an emotional distance. Logic focuses on facts and typically avoids feelings. But when another person has a problem or when there is a problem in the relationship, feelings are the main issue. When persons use logic to avoid emotional involvement, they are withdrawing from another at a most inopportune moment.
Reassuring
“What on earth can be wrong with reassurance?” is a question we get from many people.
Like the other eleven barriers, reassurance can drive a wedge between people. Haim Ginott writes:
Once in a blue moon, almost every parent hears his son or daughter declare, “I am stupid.” Knowing that his child cannot be stupid, the parent sets out to convince him that he is bright.
Son: I am stupid.
Father: You are not stupid.
Son: Yes, I am.
Father: You are not. Remember how smart you were at camp? The counselor thought you were one of the brightest.
Son: How do you know what he thought?
Father: He told me so.
Son: Yeah, how come he called me stupid all the time?
Father: He was just kidding.
Son: I am stupid, and I know it. Look at my grades in school.
Father: You just have to work harder.
Son: I already work harder, and it doesn’t help. I have no brains.
Father: You are smart, I know.
Son: I am stupid, I know.
Father: (loudly) You are not stupid!
Son: Yes, I am!
Father: You are not stupid, Stupid!
Ginott goes on to explain:
When a child declares that he is stupid or ugly or bad, nothing that we can say or do will change his self-image immediately. A person’s ingrained opinion of himself resists direct attempts at alteration. As one child said to his father, I know you mean well, Dad, but I am not that stupid to take your word that I am bright.14
Reassurance is a way of seeming to comfort another person while actually doing the opposite. The word comfort comes from two Latin words, con and fortis . The combination literally means “strengthened by being with.” Reassurance does not allow the comforter to really be with the other. It can be a form of emotional withdrawal. Reassurance is often used by people who like the idea of being helpful but who do not want to experience the emotional demand that goes with it.
ROADBLOCK NUMBER THIRTEEN
When people are introduced to the roadblocks, a fairly typical reaction is, “That’s just what my husband has been doing all these years! Wait till I tell him about all the roadblocks he sends.” Or, “Gosh, my boss uses just about all of these barriers. The next time he does it, I’m going to point out how he’s roadblocking me.” This is Roadblock Thirteen: telling other people they are sending roadblocks. Roadblock Thirteen belongs in the judgment category. If you want to improve your communication, pointing the finger of judgment at others is a poor place to begin.
Guilt, Remorse, Regret
After hearing a presentation on the roadblocks, many people experience pangs of guilt. They suddenly become aware that some patterns of their communication are barriers in important relationships and have probably caused needless distance between them and other people. After presentations on communications barriers in our workshops, people typically make comments like these:
Awareness of the three major groupings of roadblocks was like a stab and I cringe for all the situations that I “blew” that could have been productive had I known how to respond properly….
It’s like suddenly knowing the enemy and finding out that it’s me! …
I had always thought of myself as a “good listener,” never realizing that I was often guilty of actually shutting off communication by the way I was listening….
The responses you identified as barriers were things I’d always felt helped conversation, and I’ve been using many of them pretty consistently! As I listened to you talk about the roadblocks, I felt remorse and regret. These thoughts flew into my mind: “I’ve failed as a parent and a teacher.” “I wish I could have learned this fifteen years ago.” “How did I get to be forty years old without discovering that these were roadblocks?” After the guilt, however, I became hopeful. After all, it is practically impossible to counter a negative approach unless you know that it is destructive. Learning about the roadblocks is the first step to positive action for me.
We all use roadblocks sometimes. Their occasional usage rarely does much harm to a relationship. When employed frequently, however, there is a high probability that roadblocks will do considerable harm.
These conversational bad habits can be corrected. The awareness that comes from reading a chapter like this can help greatly. You can figure out which roadblock you most want to eliminate and concentrate on eradicating that one. It is difficult and discouraging work at first because roadblocks are habitual ways of responding and it requires time and effort to change any habit. At the same time that you try to eliminate the roadblocks, you can use the communication skills described in the remainder of this book. Several thousand years ago, a sage taught that it is much easier to stamp out a bad habit by supplanting it with a good one than it is to try to stamp out negative habits by willpower alone.15 That wisdom still holds today. As you learn to listen, assert, resolve conflict, and solve interpersonal problems more effectively, your use of the roadblocks will inevitably diminish.
SUMMARY
Certain ways of verbalizing carry a high risk of putting a damper on the conversation, being harmful to the relationship, triggering feelings of inadequacy, anger, or dependency in the other person, or all of these things. As a result of one or more of the twelve roadblocks, the other may become more submissive and compliant. Or she may become more resistant, rebellious, and argumentative. These barriers to conversation tend to diminish the other’s self-esteem and to undermine motivation. They decrease the likelihood that the other will be self-determining—they increase the likelihood that she will put the focus of evaluation outside herself. Roadblocks are prevalent in our culture; they are used in over 90 percent of the conversations where one or both persons have a problem or a strong need. Yet these conversational bad habits can be corrected, primarily through the use of the skills taught in the remainder of this book.
PART TWO
Listening Skills
One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider our problems, can change our whole outlook on the world.
—Dr. Elton Mayo 1
CHAPTER THREE
Listening Is More
Than Merely Hearing
I often ponder over the nature of true human sincerity, true transparency…. It is a rare and difficult thing; and how much it depends on the person who is listening to us! There are those who pull down the barriers and make the way smooth; there are those who force the doors and enter our territory like invaders; there are those who barricade us in, shut us in upon ourselves, dig ditches and throw up walls around us; there are those who set us out of tune and listen only to our false notes; there are those for whom we always remain strangers, speaking an unknown tongue. And when it is our turn to listen, which of these are we …?1
—Anonymous
THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING
If you are at all typical, listening takes up more of your waking hours than any other activity. A study of persons of varied occupational backgrounds showed that 70 percent of their waking moments were spent in communication. And of that time, writing took 9 percent, reading absorbed 16 percent, talking accounted for 30 percent, and listening occu
pied 45 percent.2 Other surveys underscore the large amount of time that people in different walks of life spend in listening.3 It is important to listen effectively because of the sheer amount of it that you do each day.
Furthermore, many of the most important facets of your life are greatly influenced by your skills (or lack of skill) in listening. The quality of your friendships, the cohesiveness of your family relationships, your effectiveness at work—these hinge, in large measure, on your ability to listen.
Unfortunately, few people are good listeners. Even at the purely informational level, researchers claim that 75 percent of oral communication is ignored, misunderstood, or quickly forgotten. Rarer still is the ability to listen for the deepest meanings in what people say. How devastating, but how common, to talk with someone about subjects of intense interest to oneself only to experience the stifling realization that the other person was not really listening and that his responses were simply automatic and mechanical. Perhaps it was after an experience like this that Jesus was quoted as saying, “Thou hearest in thy one ear but the other Thou has closed.”4
Dr. Ralph G. Nichols, who developed innovative classes on listening at the University of Minnesota, writes:
It can be stated with practically no qualification that people in general do not know how to listen. They have ears that hear very well, but seldom have they acquired the necessary … skills which would allow those ears to be used effectively for what is called listening…. For several years, we have been testing the ability of people to understand and remember what they hear…. These extensive tests led to this general conclusion: immediately after the average person has listened to someone talk, he remembers only about half of what he has heard—no matter how carefully he thought he was listening. What happens as time passes? Our own testing shows … that … we tend to forget from one-half to one-third [more] within eight hours….5