I truly believe relationships are the critical part to have a happy life and enjoyable work. Communication, in particular, is essential to build and maintain a good relationship. Sometimes we prefer to be alone, which allows us to enjoy a creative, joyous, and fulfilling time. In many other situations, however, we suffer from loneliness, which I believe can be solved by building better connections with others through effective communication. This is critical for a solid relationship in marriage, parent and children, and work. I recently read a book called “People skills” by Robert Bolton. Despite the seemingly ordinary name, it does teach tons of really useful tactics to communicate with others while addressing the needs for both parties. It contains 3 parts: listening, assertion, and conflict management, which step by step helps you to be a better communicator. This blog summarizes what I learned from the communication barriers and listening skills part.
Barriers for Communication
There are three major categories of communication barriers: judgment, sending solutions, and avoidance of the other’s concerns. Judging the other person includes criticizing, labeling, diagnosing, and praising. For example, we often use labels to stereotype others, which prevents us from knowing ourselves and other individuals. Praise is often used as a way to manipulate behaviors, e.g. a parent may praise their child as a “good boy” for him to go to bed early, which usually leads to the opposite result. Sending solutions, such as ordering and threatening, often compounds the problem. Even advice is often dangerous, which may insult the other person’s intelligence. Additionally, people sometimes divert the conversation when they feel uncomfortable with the topic, especially when there are strong emotions associated with it, such as anger, conflict, death, etc.
All of these barriers, if not overcome, will lead to failed communications and eventually ruin the relationship. The first step, as you may have heard, is to become a better listener.
Listening
Listening is much harder to do well than it sounds. As the author Robert puts it, “Listening is more than just hearing.” It actually includes interpreting and understanding what the speaker means. What a speaker wants from a listener is a sense of “psychological presence”. Listening skills include: 1) attending skills, 2) following skills, and 3) reflecting skills.
Attending skills include a posture of involvement (e.g. leaning forward, body toward the speaker), maintaining eye contact, and a non distracting environment. It shows that you are interested in the speaker and in what she has to say. Maintaining an open position with arms and legs uncrossed is another important part of the posture of involvement. Tightly crossed arms or legs often communicate closedness and defensiveness.
Following skills means facilitating the speaker to express her situation, which include door openers, minimal encouragement, open questions, and attentive silence. Door opener usually involves a description of the other person’s body language, e.g. you look unhappy, then an invitation to talk e.g. Care to talk about it, and finally silence — giving the other person the time to decide whether or what to talk. Also don’t forget about attending e.g. eye contact, open body posture. Minimal encourages are simple responses that keep the speaker active, e.g. I see, really? It doesn’t imply either agreement or disagreement. Open questions encourage the speakers to talk more, e.g. what happened? Be careful to only ask one at a time. Attentive silence means you use the attending skills while being silent, which often serves as a gentle nudge to continue the conversation.
Reflection skills include paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, reflecting meanings, and summative reflections. Reflective response restates the other’s feeling or meaning in a way that demonstrates the listener’s understanding. It should be concise and non judgemental (so the other person won’t become defensive). The author emphasizes the importance of addressing feelings first, which I totally agree with but ignored before. Oftentimes the other’s feelings may not be obvious. In such cases, we could ask ourselves what would I feel if I had such an experience. A good template to start with is “You feel [annoyed/frustrated/etc.] because [insert the event or content that’s associated with the feeling]”. It’s important to let others express their feelings first because when we are in strong emotions, it is really hard for us to think rationally.
In addition to what people say, we have to pay attention to their body language because it often conveys more information than words. The other person’s facial expression (e.g. eye twinkles), vocal volume, speed of speech (e.g. high volume, emphatic pitch → enthusiasm), posture and body actions all communicate rich information about their emotions. Both words and body language are important, especially when there is discrepancy. When a woman says, “no, no,” but there is “yes, yes,” in her eyes, for example, it probably means that she is experiencing conflict between her desire to express affection and some “ought” or reservation that tells her to hold back.
In summary, listening well requires skills and, based on my experience, most people are not good listeners. One feedback I got previously was people didn’t feel they were heard during my communication. After practicing the listening skills above, especially summarizing and reflecting back what people said, I haven’t heard such feedback anymore. Even if I disagree with others opinion, they feel they were heard and had a constructive discussion, which is essential for gaining alignment during teamwork.
