Articles

Why Didn’t You Say That In The First Place

Dr. Larry E. Webb Communication that wins a positive response from others can provide you with a new way of life. Nothing is more essential to success in any area of your life than the ability to communicate well. Nothing can compare to the joy of communicating love, of being heard and understood completely, of discovering some profound insight from another's mind, or of transmitting your thoughts to a rapt audience. Self-concepts are enhanced, attitudes broadened, beliefs deepened, perspectives clarified, hopes restored, frustrations dissolved, hurt feelings healed. This is what psychotherapist and pastoral counselor Reuel Howe called the "miracle of dialogue". Therapists have seen such miracles occur in the midst of their counseling. Perhaps you too have experienced those moments when you have felt so fully connected to another person and so fully understood that it was truly a spiritual experience. The Hasidic philosopher Martin Buber called this the meeting of I-Thou. The connecting of the deepest core of our being to the authentic core of the other. Our communication is not always so successful. The story is told that when Pope John Paul II visited the United States in 1979 a news reporter rushed up to him and asked what he thought of the go-go girls in New York City. Having been warned by an aid that some journalists might distort his words, the pope hesitated and then asked curiously, "Are there go-go girls in New York?" As the story goes, the next morning a front page article read "The first question the pope asked upon his arrival was "Are there any go-go girls in New York?" It is clear that none of us are free from being misunderstood, not even a pope. Miscommunication has caused nations to go to war, businesses to go bankrupt, and families to break up. Although the technology of communication enables us to penetrate outer space and make of our world a global village, we are not nearly so effective in penetrating the inner space of the human mind and heart. Instead of creating understanding and closeness, our words sometimes produce the opposite effect of what we intended. We hurt another's feelings, provoke anger, and create psychological distance, when what we really desire are understanding, intimacy, and companionship. When NASA sent Apollo 17 and its crew to the moon, slight adjustments were needed throughout the flight in order to keep the rocket on track to reach its goal. If the adjustments were not made at precisely the right time, the rocket would have missed its target by millions of miles, and the crew might have been lost. Effective communication works like those steering adjustments. When the goal of our communication is not quite being effected, we can learn to make slight adjustments in what we say, how we say it, how we listen to others, and thereby reduce the risk of missing by a million miles and losing the relationship. I have three basic reasons to have strong hope in your achieving better communication: Communication is a set of learned behaviors. If you have learned negative patterns, perhaps by your early childhood experience, or other relationships, you can also learn positive patterns.   You can make a significant difference in the quality of your interpersonal communication. Although you cannot control how another person will speak to you, you can control your own response to that person and thereby greatly influence the results of your conversation.   When you act on new insights, you achieve understanding. Remember the old adage: I hear; I forget - I see; I remember - I do; I understand. There is no such thing as instant success. If you learn of new ways to communicate, you will need to try them on - to act; to do them before you will realize their effect. We have practiced our present patterns of communication for so many years, it takes intentional repetition of new behaviors to change our unconscious ways of responding. I am hopeful about you improving your communication effectiveness because I know you have a great deal of control over the communication process, more than you may have realized. But let me spell that out further for you. As quickly as I can I want to share seven things that may contribute to your communication failures and seven things that can contribute to your communication successes. To help you remember them I will use the letters in the word failure and the letters in the word success to identify these crucial issues. You are someone special! When you choose to express your best self - that self that is open, humorous, interested in other people, willing to share thoughts and feelings, eager to learn, able to listen deeply........when that self talks, people listen! Ralph Waldo Emerson said What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ...............He also said Who you are stands over you.....and thunders so I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. It has been said that blaming your faults on your nature does not change the nature of your faults. The phrase that can help you most is "I can be different if I chose to". Our most troublesome communication problems are personal....they are manufactured within us. To express our best selves we must overcome the failures and practice the successes. FAILURE stands for Fear, Assumptions, Insensitivity, Labeling, Uncertainty, Resentment, and Egotism. Fear, Lets take fear first: John B. Watson, the father of behaviorism, believed that infants are born with just two fears. That only two things could elicit the fear response. One was a loud sound, and the other the loss of support. If someone behind you suddenly popped an air-filled paper bag, you would instinctively be startled and the fear response would have been triggered. If your chair this morning suddenly gave way, on the way to the floor you would be entirely focused on an instinctive fear response. Just my mentioning the thought of your chair giving way may have made a few of you uneasy. All other fears, according to some psychologists, are learned. Since they are not a part of our original makeup, they do not need to remain against our will. When we feel fear our communication changes. We may say nothing, withholding feelings, we may withdraw from relationships, we may become defensive and attack those we feel are responsible for our uneasy state of fear. The second contributor to communication problems is assumptions. At times assumptions can aid us in understanding communication. Assumptions are a problem when we trust them to be accurate without question. While you are listening to me your brain is making countless assumptions. Each of my words, gestures, voice inflections, is being interpreted through assumptions. Not all of those are the same as I am intending. A study of the 500 most commonly used words in the English language revealed over 14,000 different definitions, more than 28 per word. As speakers we often assume that listeners are attaching the same definition to each word that we intend. Our third obstacle is insensitivity. Failure to accurately perceive the feelings of another is sometimes caused by an unwillingness to risk caring about that person. At other times insensitivity may be the result of preoccupation. We may be so focused on making dinner or watching a television program that we miss an important concern of our children or spouse. We may get so caught up in an idea of our own that we fail to see the impact it will have on the people around us. Insensitivity is insulation......its like visiting Yellowstone National Park and keeping your eyes closed.   Our fourth problem is labeling. In the biblical story of creation Adam's first task was to label the animals. Labeling is our minds attempt to create order out of chaos. If we can label it, perhaps we can control it. But when we label people we can contribute to their disablement. Think of the labels you may have received as a child. Were you called......skinny, fatso, brain, dummy, klutz, peabrain, nerd, etc. Even though a label is not the same as the thing it signifies, people may come to believe they are what the label implies. When we label we cut communication short and break off the process that leads to understanding.   Our fifth obstacle is uncertainty. When we are uncertain we tend to falter in sharing our ideas and be too fearful to listen well. Uncertainty is often the product of a childhood in which we were made afraid of making the wrong decision. So we wait until it is clear what others think, often going along even when we privately disagree. A climate that encourages our views and ability to think can help us get through our fear.   Sixth on the list is resentment. Resentment is a bitterness of the soul that feeds upon itself. Few of us enjoy communicating with resentful people. They have harbored old bitterness and injustice to such an extent that it becomes a consuming passion and drives them from enjoyment of much of anything. If you are carrying around old resentments I would suggest you ask what purpose they are serving now. Are they keeping you distanced from others so you might be less likely to be hurt again? Are they supposed to let others know how hurt you have been so they will give you sympathy? What do you need those resentments for? My guess is that whatever you are keeping them for, they are not working. That is, they are not helping you in any useful way, and that if you would let them go, new relationships would come to you and old ones could possibly be restored.   Seventh and last in the word failure is the "E" which is egotism. Whether egotism is caused by excessive self-love or self-hate, it blocks good relationships through showing no respect for others. Every conversation is used to serve the persons ego needs, to show how good, knowledgeable, experienced, etc., the person is. Often hearing the experiences of other s is delightful. But when that is all we hear, and when the egotist show no reciprocal interest in our stories we soon find ways to avoid them. Each of these seven problems is personal, but becoming aware of our tendency toward any of them can be the first step toward improving our communications with others. And that leads us to the stepping stones of success. The letters in the word success help us remember these seven important steps: S - Self-awareness U - Understanding C - Care for others C - Control of emotions E - Esteem of one's self S - Self-confidence S - Sharing of one's self Our trip to success begins with: Self-awareness. The Delphi oracle summarized important wisdom in the two words "Know thyself". Unfortunately the oracle didn't explain how one goes about knowing oneself. Aristotle learned long ago that the personality of a person was a major contributor to communication. We can learn about ourselves through external sources like therapists and personality profiles. We can learn about ourselves through real friends. Someone said "A friend is one before whom I can be myself." As you begin to pay attention to your inner thoughts and ideas, and have a safe environment to share your thinking and feeling, you become clearer about who you are. Your personality becomes transparent....that is, people can see and come to know the real you.   Second, Understanding is a major set of skills. By asking for clarification, by checking how others have heard you, a person can increase understanding in their communication. Some people may intentionally misinterpret you. (Such as the reporter with the pope) Or such as the teacher who was trying to impress her students about the damaging effects of alcohol consumption. To do so she placed a worm in a glass of water and another worm in a glass of gin. Showing the students the glass of water in which the worm had no apparent ill effects and the glass of gin in which the worm had promptly died, she asked the students what this proved. One bright lad replied "If you drink you won't get worms." Even when we think the conclusion of our communication is obvious, there may be those who require more work on our part to reach understanding. Care for others is our third step to success. When a person feels you care about them they listen more intently to you, and even if they disagree, they give your message full hearing. If people feel you do not really care about them, that you only want to convince or control or sell them, they will give you little attention at all. If you really care, that message must come through clearly with whatever else you have to share.   Our fourth step to success is control of our emotions. Some people think they have no control over their emotions. They have assumed that emotions such as anger, frustration, depression, envy, resentment, and jealousy enter their minds, determine their thoughts, and dictate their conversations. They take the attitude of helplessness about their emotions. Or they blame others for them. "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't feel this way". They see their relationships deteriorate, their children rebel, their friends withdraw, and still they blame others. Our emotions may be a habit, but they are also a choice. When that inconsiderate or unsafe driver cuts in front of me and applies the brakes, I may respond with anger, follow the driver and look for an opportunity to do the same thing to him. Or I might feel relieved that no one was injured and slow down my vehicle allowing more room for the unexpected. I can spend my day looking for all the mistakes others make and giving them credit for making my day a mess, or I can look for all the beauty and thoughtfulness and be glad that so rich a world exists around me. I can make a choice! And that choice will drastically make a difference in my communication with others at home, work or church. Our fifth step takes us to esteem of one's self. Self esteem is not egotism, it is ego strength. You can choose to see yourself as the unique creature that you are. You can accept the human dignity that is rightfully yours and affirm the highest esteem of your closest friends. Low self esteem is often the result of accepting someone else's standard for your personal worth. One of the responsibilities of parents is to contribute to the healthy self esteem of their children. Coach John McKay, coach at the University of Southern California for many years, had the opportunity of having his son play football for him. A sports writer asked McKay if he was proud of his son's accomplishments in football. He replied, "I'm pleased that John had a good season. He does a fine job and I am proud of him. But I would be just as proud had he never played the game at all." The sixth step to success lifts us to self-confidence. The structure of self- confidence is built on the foundation of self-esteem. Self-confidence is the sense of unfailing support from within. It is the art of relying and trusting on your inner resources for any situation. Self-confidence enables you to speak up for your ideas, to hold your own against unjust demands and judgmental attitudes without the need for retaliation or defensiveness. Self-confidence is a building that takes a life time to construct. I hope you are well along the way with yours.   Our last step up to success is the sharing of one's self. People may talk about themselves without really sharing their real selves. We may have become cautious about sharing through the insensitivity of others in responding to genuine attempts. But if we never allow others to know our authentic being we hold from our communication an integrity that comes only through connection to our inner self. Psychiatrist Paul Tournier says, "no one comes to know himself through introspection....rather it is in dialogue, in his meeting with other persons. It is only in expression of convictions that we become clearly conscious of them. He who would see himself clearly must open to a confidant freely chosen, a friend, a doctor, a spouse. Many businesses do not feel like a safe haven where thoughts and ideas can be shared. If this stifling culture exists it robs that business of its most creative talent cutting its ability to solve problems and be its most competitive in the marketplace. We are so much stronger when organizations provide a safe place to be authentic with one another so that the ideas and convictions of our hearts, minds and souls can be woven into significant and common action for the highest possible quality of life. Eloquence is not a necessity for good communication. Authenticity is. Authenticity is achieved when we climb these seven steps to success. Self – awareness Understanding Care for others Control of our emotions Esteem for one's self Self-confidence Sharing oneself If improved communication and a high trust organizational culture would benefit your organization, I encourage you to contact The Kilgore Group about how we might help you achieve your goals. «Back