Why do you do that? Or: Why does that happen?
In the last post, we talked about the fact that in any long-term relationship (from marriages to business partnerships), there’s a tendency for rigid communication patterns to form. All too often these patterns are unproductive; there are cycles of attacking and defending, complaining and proposing, yes-butting and counter-yes-butting, and so on. We know that this happens, but it may not be obvious why it tends to happen — so we want to take a moment here to look at that question.
Consider a specific example. Imagine that there’s a friend you’ve known for some time. Let’s call her Pat. You like Pat, but it’s often frustrating to spend time with her because inevitably, no matter how the conversation starts out, she winds up complaining. Say you ask her about her job; before long you’ll hear about how her colleagues aren’t pulling their weight, and she never gets the support she needs. Ask her about her husband, and she’ll complain about all the annoying things he’s done in the past two weeks. And the complaints never seem to end. As the conversation goes on, it feels like you’re getting pulled deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit of “alas” and “if only” and “woe is me.” You try to stay positive and give Pat useful advice on her situation, but nothing seems to help. When you finally say goodbye to her, you find yourself either feeling down or feeling exasperated, or a little of both.
Have you ever known someone like Pat? Many of you probably have. In fact, a lot of us, at some point in our lives, in one relationship or another, have been Pat.
Now, from a SAVI point of view, we can understand what’s happening here as a recurring complaint-proposal cycle. For instance:
“Everything always falls on me to do.” (complaint)
“Why don’t you talk to your boss and try to get some help?” (proposal)
“He never backs me up. I’m all on my own.” (complaint)
“How about just cutting back and doing less?” (proposal)
“Oh, then the job doesn’t get done adequately, and that’s even worse.” (complaint)
and so on, and on and on and on and on
Why does this keep happening? There are many possible answers. Part of the reason for this is that there are many possible questions — many different ways to look at the problem. To a large extent, the type of question we ask will determine the type of answer we come up with. Here we’ll look at just two sorts of questions: people questions and pattern questions.
1. People questions ask about what motivates a particular individual’s behavior. Why does Pat keep complaining? Why do you feel compelled to give proposals? Why doesn’t Pat take your suggestions?
In answering these sorts of questions, we can explain the pattern in terms of people’s personalities or emotional states: Pat complains because she is pessimistic or depressed, or tends to take the role of victim. You give proposals because you have a problem-solving mentality, or because you tend to take the role of helper. We could also refer to motivations or intentions, either conscious or unconscious: Pat craves attention or sympathy, or wants to prove to you how difficult her life is. In trying to solve her problems, maybe your real motivation is to make her stop complaining or make yourself feel better.
These are questions that you (or Pat) might examine in individual psychotherapy. You might find the answers helpful in understanding how you react in a variety of different situations in your lives. With regard to your rigid communication pattern with Pat, you can see this as a reflection of your consistent, unchanging psychological and emotional characteristics.
2. Pattern questions take a different approach, leaving individual differences and personality traits out of the equation. We might ask, Why is the complaint-proposal pattern so enduring? Why are all the complaints getting followed by proposals, and all the proposals getting followed by complaints?
In answering these questions, we don’t need to know anything about Pat, or about you. We can just look at the behaviors themselves. Complaints give two different type of information at the same time:
a) information about the situation, which the speaker wishes would change (e.g., Pat’s situation at work), and
b) information about the speaker’s emotional/psychological state, which is passive or helpless (e.g., Pat’s feeling helpless to change her situation)
Why do proposals tend to follow complaints? They’re a natural response to hearing that first type of information: a situation that somebody wants to change. Why do those proposals tend to invite more complaining? Because they don’t take into account the second, more emotional piece of information. In fact, by offering an outside solution to a person’s problem, proposals can reinforce that person’s sense of helplessness — which then fuels more complaints.
A proposal is a perfect answer to the question, “What do you think I can do to change this situation?” What we need to remember is that when a person is complaining, they’re not asking that question. There’s a world of difference between the complaint, “This situation is miserable” and the question, “What can I do to change it?” As an answer to a request for help, a proposal may often be effective. As a response to a complaint, the same proposal is likely to cause more problems than it solves.
These pattern-based answers can help you to understand any complaint-proposal cycle — whether you’re the one complaining, the one proposing, or just an observer. You can view the situation with Pat as just one instance of this all-too-common, self-perpetuating pattern of communication.
You may have guessed by now that SAVI tends to give explanations based on patterns, rather than people. This doesn’t mean that pattern-based explanations are necessarily better. They’re just different — serving a different purpose, answering different questions, and potentially offering different sorts of solutions.
You might ask yourself, in which situations do you find it useful to focus on the people? When might it be useful to focus on patterns instead?
(By the way: For those of you who would like to learn a better way of responding to complaints, instead of giving proposals, stay tuned!)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Moving from Rigid Patterns to Conversational Flexibility
Reflections on the perils of long-term relationships and the value of doing something different
One of the participants in a training we gave on Wednesday made a funny comment that helped to illustrate a rather serious point about communication. Ben and I had been having a mock argument that went something like this (you’ll have to imagine our voice tones, which were hostile and defensive, respectively):
Amy: You made it so hot in here, Ben!
Ben: I was just feeling really cold.
Amy: You could have put on a sweater instead of freezing everyone else out!
Ben: I guess I just wasn’t thinking.
Amy: Well, you should have been thinking!
I pointed out that if the two of us had these sorts of conversations every day, people might start to draw conclusions about our personalities. I asked the group what assumptions they might make, expecting one of the typical answers we tend to get — that I was mean, domineering, or abusive, or that Ben was defensive or weak. The response we got instead: “I’d assume you two were married!”
Readers who are familiar with SAVI will recognize this comment as a perfect example of a Work joke. It got the whole group (including us) laughing. It also raised an interesting point. What made the joke so funny was that we all recognized a kernel of truth in it: married couples often do get caught up in just this sort of communication pattern. Whether it’s attack/self-defend or another ineffective pattern — like Yes-but/Yes-but or complaint-proposal — people in long-term relationships tend to have the same sorts of bad conversations over and over again, day after day. In the words of psychologist Gay Hendricks, “Most couples have not had hundreds of arguments; they’ve had the same argument hundreds of times.”
This phenomenon isn’t limited to romantic couples. You see the same thing with business partners, children and parents, long-time friends or colleagues, and even whole groups of people. Have you ever been in a meeting and had a dreadful sense of déjà vu? It can feel as though you’re having the same old frustrating debate or tedious discussion you’ve had countless times before. And in a very real sense, that’s true. Even if some aspects of the meeting change from time to time — you discuss different topics, and a few new people join the discussion, while others drop out — the group as a whole can stay rigidly locked in the same unproductive communication pattern for weeks, months, or years on end.
There are two interesting questions we could consider here. First, why and how do these persistent patterns develop? There are many possible answers. In a later post, we’ll propose one powerful, yet often counterintuitive explanation. For now, we’ll stick to the second, more practical question: How do you break out of these patterns?
The answer is simple: Do something different. An attack/self-defend cycle lasts only so long as someone keeps attacking and someone else keeps defending. Once either person changes his or her behavior, you automatically have a different conversation. Similarly, in a Yes-but/Yes-but debate, as soon as one person stops “butting,” there’s an opportunity for something different to happen.
Now, we’ve said our answer is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. On the contrary: breaking out of a long-standing, deeply ingrained pattern of communication is extraordinarily difficult. It takes time, practice, and a great deal of patience. Remember that improving your communication is more like learning a sport than like learning an idea. Say you’ve been playing tennis for 20 years, and one day you decide you want to improve your serve. You need to practice many, many times to override your natural tendency to do it the old way. Only gradually does it become automatic. Likewise, only gradually can you gain the capacity to refrain from responding to attacks with self-defense (or with Yes-buts, or counter-attacks, or whatever else you typically do that isn’t effective). You have a lifetime of experience doing it the old way, and overriding that habit takes time.
So, is it really worth all that time and effort, just to change one bad communication pattern? In our humble opinion: Without a doubt! Here are just two reasons why:
DO try this at home:
We encourage you to try this out. Think of something you do that isn’t very useful, something that tends to lead to an unproductive or frustrating conversation — it could be the way you respond to your colleague’s new ideas, your child’s requests for candy, or your partner’s complaints about money. If you can’t think of anything, ask the people around you. They’re likely to have plenty of good examples!
Then start to build your awareness. Notice when you tend to react in this unhelpful way. At first, you probably won’t realize what you’ve done until after the conversation is over. Gradually, you can start to pick up on it earlier and earlier, within the conversation — until the point where you can catch yourself right before you speak. That’s your opportunity: Go ahead and try doing something different. Ask a question. Give a paraphrase. Agree with some piece of what the other person said. If you tend to stay silent, say something — anything. If you tend to fill every quiet moment with chatter, try saying nothing for a few moments. And notice what happens.
Of course, we’re not suggesting that different is always better. Just because you usually respond to your husband’s complaints by making proposals, that doesn’t mean you’ll have better luck by telling him to shut up and stop whining. Even if you avoid inherently problematic types of communication like attacks and leading questions (in SAVI lingo, Red light behaviors), doing something different is no guarantee that the conversation will turn out just as you want it to — or even that it will turn out better than it would have if you reacted habitually. However, simply by enhancing your flexibility, you’re doing something very important. Remember that the first step in any change is to break free from your old habits. Once you’ve done that, you can keep experimenting until you discover a new communication pattern that works for you.
One of the participants in a training we gave on Wednesday made a funny comment that helped to illustrate a rather serious point about communication. Ben and I had been having a mock argument that went something like this (you’ll have to imagine our voice tones, which were hostile and defensive, respectively):
Amy: You made it so hot in here, Ben!
Ben: I was just feeling really cold.
Amy: You could have put on a sweater instead of freezing everyone else out!
Ben: I guess I just wasn’t thinking.
Amy: Well, you should have been thinking!
I pointed out that if the two of us had these sorts of conversations every day, people might start to draw conclusions about our personalities. I asked the group what assumptions they might make, expecting one of the typical answers we tend to get — that I was mean, domineering, or abusive, or that Ben was defensive or weak. The response we got instead: “I’d assume you two were married!”
Readers who are familiar with SAVI will recognize this comment as a perfect example of a Work joke. It got the whole group (including us) laughing. It also raised an interesting point. What made the joke so funny was that we all recognized a kernel of truth in it: married couples often do get caught up in just this sort of communication pattern. Whether it’s attack/self-defend or another ineffective pattern — like Yes-but/Yes-but or complaint-proposal — people in long-term relationships tend to have the same sorts of bad conversations over and over again, day after day. In the words of psychologist Gay Hendricks, “Most couples have not had hundreds of arguments; they’ve had the same argument hundreds of times.”
This phenomenon isn’t limited to romantic couples. You see the same thing with business partners, children and parents, long-time friends or colleagues, and even whole groups of people. Have you ever been in a meeting and had a dreadful sense of déjà vu? It can feel as though you’re having the same old frustrating debate or tedious discussion you’ve had countless times before. And in a very real sense, that’s true. Even if some aspects of the meeting change from time to time — you discuss different topics, and a few new people join the discussion, while others drop out — the group as a whole can stay rigidly locked in the same unproductive communication pattern for weeks, months, or years on end.
There are two interesting questions we could consider here. First, why and how do these persistent patterns develop? There are many possible answers. In a later post, we’ll propose one powerful, yet often counterintuitive explanation. For now, we’ll stick to the second, more practical question: How do you break out of these patterns?
The answer is simple: Do something different. An attack/self-defend cycle lasts only so long as someone keeps attacking and someone else keeps defending. Once either person changes his or her behavior, you automatically have a different conversation. Similarly, in a Yes-but/Yes-but debate, as soon as one person stops “butting,” there’s an opportunity for something different to happen.
Now, we’ve said our answer is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. On the contrary: breaking out of a long-standing, deeply ingrained pattern of communication is extraordinarily difficult. It takes time, practice, and a great deal of patience. Remember that improving your communication is more like learning a sport than like learning an idea. Say you’ve been playing tennis for 20 years, and one day you decide you want to improve your serve. You need to practice many, many times to override your natural tendency to do it the old way. Only gradually does it become automatic. Likewise, only gradually can you gain the capacity to refrain from responding to attacks with self-defense (or with Yes-buts, or counter-attacks, or whatever else you typically do that isn’t effective). You have a lifetime of experience doing it the old way, and overriding that habit takes time.
So, is it really worth all that time and effort, just to change one bad communication pattern? In our humble opinion: Without a doubt! Here are just two reasons why:
- One bad pattern goes a long way. Think about it — if you are essentially getting stuck in the same argument hundreds of times, mastering that one argument can help you transform hundreds of separate conversations. Once you become more aware of a particular pattern, you may be surprised to discover all the different places in your life where it shows up. If you tend to get caught up in Yes-but debates in your meetings, the odds are that at least some of the time, you also Yes-but at the dinner table, in your casual conversations with friends, and in many other situations. By changing a single behavior, you may be able to simultaneously improve your job performance, marriage, and social life. If you ask us, that’s a pretty impressive return on investment.
- Making one change now will help you make other changes later. When you first start out trying to change your communication, it can feel like an uphill battle. For most people, conversational self-awareness — noticing how you’re talking, while you’re talking — is a completely new experience. The good news is, the more you do this the easier it gets. Over time it starts to feel much more natural and take a lot less work. Plus, every time you acquire specific new communication skills, you’re also increasing your overall conversational flexibility. Suppose that you start off by learning how to respond differently to complaints; this will make it a little easier to learn new responses to interruptions and Yes-buts and eventually (often the biggest challenge) personal attacks.
DO try this at home:
We encourage you to try this out. Think of something you do that isn’t very useful, something that tends to lead to an unproductive or frustrating conversation — it could be the way you respond to your colleague’s new ideas, your child’s requests for candy, or your partner’s complaints about money. If you can’t think of anything, ask the people around you. They’re likely to have plenty of good examples!
Then start to build your awareness. Notice when you tend to react in this unhelpful way. At first, you probably won’t realize what you’ve done until after the conversation is over. Gradually, you can start to pick up on it earlier and earlier, within the conversation — until the point where you can catch yourself right before you speak. That’s your opportunity: Go ahead and try doing something different. Ask a question. Give a paraphrase. Agree with some piece of what the other person said. If you tend to stay silent, say something — anything. If you tend to fill every quiet moment with chatter, try saying nothing for a few moments. And notice what happens.
Of course, we’re not suggesting that different is always better. Just because you usually respond to your husband’s complaints by making proposals, that doesn’t mean you’ll have better luck by telling him to shut up and stop whining. Even if you avoid inherently problematic types of communication like attacks and leading questions (in SAVI lingo, Red light behaviors), doing something different is no guarantee that the conversation will turn out just as you want it to — or even that it will turn out better than it would have if you reacted habitually. However, simply by enhancing your flexibility, you’re doing something very important. Remember that the first step in any change is to break free from your old habits. Once you’ve done that, you can keep experimenting until you discover a new communication pattern that works for you.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Learning Ideas vs. Developing Skills
Do bright ideas going into your ear actually affect what comes out of your mouth?
It’s easy to get a bad impression of communication training. If you’ve spent enough time working in a business environment, you’ve probably attended at least one or two communications seminars that didn’t accomplish anything at all. We hear this from many people we talk to.
This doesn’t mean the trainings are bad; sometimes they’re a lot of fun. Often people learn a few interesting ideas that they can share with their friends, and maybe pick up some new terminology. (For instance, they’re able to understand their difficult boss as a “steamroller” personality type, or they realize that their compassionate friend must be practicing “active listening.”) But just hearing about these ideas doesn’t help people make substantial changes in their own conversations, and a few days or weeks or months later, they forget most everything they learned.
Sometimes, of course, the situation is even worse. There are plenty of courses that don’t accomplish anything and also aren’t in the least bit fun. We see the result of this in disgruntled employees whose supervisors have to drag them kicking and screaming into our courses. The thought of a communications seminar evokes horrifying images of either monotonous, droning lectures or a touchy-feely hand-holding session where everyone has to say only nice, friendly things to one another.
Now, a confession: Some of those trainings have been taught by us. Not the terribly boring or hand-holding ones, but seminars that have effected no lasting change. Why? There wasn’t enough time to have people practice anything, so instead we just talked. The truth is, no matter how skilled you are as a teacher, it is impossible to teach people to communicate differently simply by talking about it.
In talking about conversational fitness, we want to encourage you to think less about abstract ideas or principles and more about concrete actions. Good communication isn’t something that you know; it’s something that you do. Understanding just isn’t enough. To succeed, what you need is skill.
For this reason, effective communication courses need to function more like sports training than academic classes — at least in certain ways. The key is practice. Imagine trying to become skilled at basketball just by being told what to do and watching experienced players do it. Not a good idea. To gain those skills, you’d need to get out on the court, get the ball in your hands, and try doing those things for yourself. When you failed at certain types of moves (as you would inevitably do, just starting out), you’d need coaching to help you adjust and refine your techniques to get a better result.
With communication, we find that there are often very large gaps between knowledge and skill. A person can fully understand and believe in a principle (such as the importance of open inquiry, or of collaborating rather than competing) and yet consistently be unable to put it into practice. What matters most is that you can use what you know when it counts — right in the midst of the heated confrontation with your boss, the tedious staff meeting, or the same old fruitless argument you keep having with your friend or colleague.
It should come as no surprise that this type of capacity isn’t something you can’t suddenly grasp in a two-hour seminar. We have yet to meet the person who has independently, without assistance, mastered the full range of communication skills needed to make their conversations work well. (This includes us of course!) In the last post we listed five of those skills for you to consider. Here now are five more. Again, ask yourself, which can you do easily, and which are more of a challenge? Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is very little skill, and 10 is an ideal level of skill.
6. Bringing in new ideas in a constructive way
When you come up with a new plan or suggestion, are you able to express it in a way that is relatively easy for other people to hear, understand, and potentially agree with? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
7. Bringing out new ideas from others and using them creatively
Are you skilled at eliciting the best, most creative ideas from those around you, and then building on them to generate innovative solutions? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
8. Bringing focus and resolution
If you see a discussion going nowhere, with lots of people talking past one another, are you able to refocus the conversation and help the group reach a decision or some other type of resolution? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
9. Using humor effectively
Are you able to use humor in a way that builds morale and adds fun to a conversation, without distracting from serious topics? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
10. Giving useful feedback
When things aren’t working well, do you give clear, constructive feedback and then follow through to be sure that it leads to lasting change? And, when things are working well, do you give sincere, positive feedback that helps others to feel respected and appreciated? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
It’s easy to get a bad impression of communication training. If you’ve spent enough time working in a business environment, you’ve probably attended at least one or two communications seminars that didn’t accomplish anything at all. We hear this from many people we talk to.
This doesn’t mean the trainings are bad; sometimes they’re a lot of fun. Often people learn a few interesting ideas that they can share with their friends, and maybe pick up some new terminology. (For instance, they’re able to understand their difficult boss as a “steamroller” personality type, or they realize that their compassionate friend must be practicing “active listening.”) But just hearing about these ideas doesn’t help people make substantial changes in their own conversations, and a few days or weeks or months later, they forget most everything they learned.
Sometimes, of course, the situation is even worse. There are plenty of courses that don’t accomplish anything and also aren’t in the least bit fun. We see the result of this in disgruntled employees whose supervisors have to drag them kicking and screaming into our courses. The thought of a communications seminar evokes horrifying images of either monotonous, droning lectures or a touchy-feely hand-holding session where everyone has to say only nice, friendly things to one another.
Now, a confession: Some of those trainings have been taught by us. Not the terribly boring or hand-holding ones, but seminars that have effected no lasting change. Why? There wasn’t enough time to have people practice anything, so instead we just talked. The truth is, no matter how skilled you are as a teacher, it is impossible to teach people to communicate differently simply by talking about it.
In talking about conversational fitness, we want to encourage you to think less about abstract ideas or principles and more about concrete actions. Good communication isn’t something that you know; it’s something that you do. Understanding just isn’t enough. To succeed, what you need is skill.
For this reason, effective communication courses need to function more like sports training than academic classes — at least in certain ways. The key is practice. Imagine trying to become skilled at basketball just by being told what to do and watching experienced players do it. Not a good idea. To gain those skills, you’d need to get out on the court, get the ball in your hands, and try doing those things for yourself. When you failed at certain types of moves (as you would inevitably do, just starting out), you’d need coaching to help you adjust and refine your techniques to get a better result.
With communication, we find that there are often very large gaps between knowledge and skill. A person can fully understand and believe in a principle (such as the importance of open inquiry, or of collaborating rather than competing) and yet consistently be unable to put it into practice. What matters most is that you can use what you know when it counts — right in the midst of the heated confrontation with your boss, the tedious staff meeting, or the same old fruitless argument you keep having with your friend or colleague.
It should come as no surprise that this type of capacity isn’t something you can’t suddenly grasp in a two-hour seminar. We have yet to meet the person who has independently, without assistance, mastered the full range of communication skills needed to make their conversations work well. (This includes us of course!) In the last post we listed five of those skills for you to consider. Here now are five more. Again, ask yourself, which can you do easily, and which are more of a challenge? Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is very little skill, and 10 is an ideal level of skill.
6. Bringing in new ideas in a constructive way
When you come up with a new plan or suggestion, are you able to express it in a way that is relatively easy for other people to hear, understand, and potentially agree with? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
7. Bringing out new ideas from others and using them creatively
Are you skilled at eliciting the best, most creative ideas from those around you, and then building on them to generate innovative solutions? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
8. Bringing focus and resolution
If you see a discussion going nowhere, with lots of people talking past one another, are you able to refocus the conversation and help the group reach a decision or some other type of resolution? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
9. Using humor effectively
Are you able to use humor in a way that builds morale and adds fun to a conversation, without distracting from serious topics? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
10. Giving useful feedback
When things aren’t working well, do you give clear, constructive feedback and then follow through to be sure that it leads to lasting change? And, when things are working well, do you give sincere, positive feedback that helps others to feel respected and appreciated? Rate yourself from 1 to 10:___
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Conversational Fitness
A new metaphor for communication: Conversational Fitness
When it comes to communication, are you fit or flabby?
What do we mean by conversational fitness? Think about what it means to be physically fit. Fitness isn’t a single, isolated thing — it includes a wide range of skills and capacities, and there are many different ways you could measure it. For instance:
Conversational fitness works in much the same way. There’s no one skill or personality trait that makes someone an effective communicator, and we all have a few weak spots. While some aspects of communication might come naturally to you, there are likely to be others that take a lot more effort. Some may be so challenging that you do your best to avoid them altogether. To increase your level of fitness, you need to identify the areas in which your performance isn’t quite up to snuff and come up with strategies to improve it. In physical terms, that means devoting a certain amount of time and energy to the types of activities that will build your strength, flexibility, agility, stamina, or whatever else it is that you need to work on. With communication, boosting your fitness requires a different type of practice — developing greater skill and flexibility in the way you express yourself and respond to what other people say. Below is a list of 5 basic communication skills that you can develop using SAVI. (There are many others; we’ll keep posting more over time.) Take a minute to read through them and ask yourself, which of the following can you do easily? Which are more of a challenge? Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is very little skill, and 10 is an ideal level of skill. If any of these topics are of particular interest to you, let us know! We’re happy to answer any specific questions you might have.
When it comes to communication, are you fit or flabby?
What do we mean by conversational fitness? Think about what it means to be physically fit. Fitness isn’t a single, isolated thing — it includes a wide range of skills and capacities, and there are many different ways you could measure it. For instance:
- How quickly can you run (or jog, or walk) a mile?
- How long can you run (or walk, or hike, or bike) without getting fatigued?
- How many pounds can you lift with each of your major arm muscles?
- Can you touch your knees, or touch your toes, or put your palms on the floor?
Conversational fitness works in much the same way. There’s no one skill or personality trait that makes someone an effective communicator, and we all have a few weak spots. While some aspects of communication might come naturally to you, there are likely to be others that take a lot more effort. Some may be so challenging that you do your best to avoid them altogether. To increase your level of fitness, you need to identify the areas in which your performance isn’t quite up to snuff and come up with strategies to improve it. In physical terms, that means devoting a certain amount of time and energy to the types of activities that will build your strength, flexibility, agility, stamina, or whatever else it is that you need to work on. With communication, boosting your fitness requires a different type of practice — developing greater skill and flexibility in the way you express yourself and respond to what other people say. Below is a list of 5 basic communication skills that you can develop using SAVI. (There are many others; we’ll keep posting more over time.) Take a minute to read through them and ask yourself, which of the following can you do easily? Which are more of a challenge? Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is very little skill, and 10 is an ideal level of skill. If any of these topics are of particular interest to you, let us know! We’re happy to answer any specific questions you might have.
- Expressing feelings directly
When you’re feeling frustrated or upset, can you communicate that clearly, without complaining or blaming other people for your problems? Rate yourself from 1 to 10: ___ - Responding effectively to others’ strong feelings
When other people express sadness, disappointment, or anger, can you help them to feel heard and understood — even if those emotions are directed at you? Rate yourself from 1 to 10: ___
- Setting clear boundaries
Are you able to say No and set limits firmly, with no irritation or hostility? Rate yourself from 1 to 10: ___ - Giving and asking for data
Do you effectively test your ideas against reality? If you see other people getting caught up in overly optimistic schemes or overly pessimistic worrying, can you steer the conversation back to a more level-headed focus on the facts? Rate yourself from 1 to 10: ___ - Resolving conflicts collaboratively
If you disagree with someone else’s opinions, do you have strategies for reaching a mutual understanding and finding areas of common ground? Rate yourself from 1 to 10: ___
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