By Robert Bolton, Ph. D. 1986.
Chapter 1: Skills for Bridging the Interpersonal Gap
The deepest problem of people is loneliness, isolation, and difficult of self-esteem in our society. Whereas the problem in Freud’s early decades was sexual repression, and the chief problem in the early thirties, when Karen Horney wrote, was disguised hostility, today it is loneliness.
Communication is the lifeblood of every relationship. When open, clear, sensitive communication takes place, the relationship is nurtured. When communication is guarded, hostile, or ineffective, the relationship falters.
There is one thing certain about your methods and style of communication: they are primarily learned responses. Your most influential instructors were probably your parents, who in turn learned their approach to communication from
Many of us, however, were taught to communicate poorly by well-intentioned people who themselves were taught inadequate ways of relating. As far as communication is concerned, many of us are victims of victims.
Five Sets of Skills
Five clusters of skills critical to satisfying interpersonal relationships are taught in this book:
Listening skills. These methods enable a person to really understand what another person is saying. They include new ways of responding so that the other person feels his problems and feelings have been understood. When these methods are used appropriately, the other person often solves his problems without becoming dependent on you.
Assertion skills. These verbal and non-verbal behaviors enable you to maintain respect, satisfy your needs, and defend your rights without dominating, manipulating, abusing, or controlling others.
Conflict-resolution skills. These abilities enable you to deal with the emotional turbulence that typically accompanies conflict—abilities that are likely to foster closer relationships when the strife is over.
Collaborative problem-solving skills. These constitute a way of resolving conflicting needs that satisfy all parties—it is a way of solving problems so they stay solved.
Skill selection. These guidelines enable you to decide what communication skills to use in any situation in which you find yourself.
Summary
Although interpersonal communication is humanity’s greatest accomplishment, the average person does not communicate well. Low-level communication leads to loneliness and distance from friends, lovers, spouses, and children—as well as ineffectiveness at work.
Chapter 2: Barriers to Communication
Advising
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 Keane 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!’”
Chapter 3: Listening Is More Than Merely Hearing
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
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 in an unknown tongue. And when it is our turn to listen, which of these are we?
—Anonymous
The clusters of listening skills taught in this book include:
Attending Skills A Posture of Involvement
Appropriate Body Motion
Eye Contact
Nondistracting Environment
Following Skills Door Openers
Minimal Encourages
Infrequent Questions
Attentive Silence
Reflecting Skills Paraphrasing
Reflecting Feelings
Reflecting Meanings (Tying Feelings to Content)
Summative Reflections
Chapter 4: Four Skills of Reflective Listening
Listening in dialogue is listening more to meanings than to words. . . . In true listening, we reach behind the words, see through them, to find the person who is being revealed. Listening is a search to find the treasure of the true person as revealed verbally and nonverbally.
—John Powell
Chapter 5: Why Reflective Responses Work
Unfortunately, most people are prone to zero in on and solve the least important problems—the presenting problems—while the more critical problems and issues remain hidden.
Men in our society tend to receive permission to feel some things but not others. Typically, it is acceptable for men to feel angry and act aggressively, but it is not all right for them to admit fear or to want sometimes to take a submissive role. Women, on the other hand, are often allowed to experience fear and cry, but are taught not to express or even be aware of anger when it consuming them.
Chapter 6: Reading Body Language
The Importance of Body Language
A person cannot not communicate. Though she may decide to stop talking, it is impossible for her to stop behaving. The behavior of a person—her facial expressions, postures, gestures, and other actions—provide an uninterrupted stream of information and a constant source of clues to the feelings she is experiencing. The reading of body language, therefore, is one of the most significant skills of good listening.
“No words are so clear as the language of body expression once one has learned to read it.”
Nonverbals: The Language of Feelings
Though there is overlap in the type of information transmitted verbally and that which is transmitted nonverbally, there is a natural division of labor, so that each source is better at conveying certain types of messages.
Words are better at communicating factual information. If you are trying to tell someone the title of a book or the day’s weather, the price of an article of clothing or the essence of Plato’s philosophy, you rely primarily on words.
Words are also used to describe emotions and are typically used in combination with body language to do this. In the emotional realm, however, the advantage is with body language, as Paul Eckman and Walalce Friesen note:
The rapid facial signals are the primary system for expression of emotion. It is the face you search to know whether someone is angry, disgusted, afraid, sad, etc. Words cannot always describe the feeling people have; often words are not adequate to express what you see in the look on someone’s face at an emotional moment.
Nonverbals not only portray a person’s feelings, they often indicate how the person is coping with her feelings.
People’s feelings about their relationships are primarily communicated through their nonverbals.
Our approach to communication stresses the primacy of feelings. Unquestionably, the content of the conversation can be very important. When the emotions are strongly engaged, however, they should normally receive primary attention. Since nonverbals are the major means of communicating emotions, they are central to understanding many of the most important things that others communicate to us.
Facial Expression
There is broad agreement among behavioral scientists that the face is the most important source of information about the emotions. To discover what the speaker is feeling, observe her changing facial expressions in a way that does not threatens her.
Reflect the Feelings Back to the Sender
As a reflective listener, once you have discerned the feelings of the speaker by reading her body language, you will normally try to reflect them back to the speaker in your own words. In the process of verbalizing what you think the other person may be feeling, several things may be achieved. First, you check on the accuracy of your assumptions about the other person’s feelings. Secondly, you may help the speaker become more aware of the feelings she is experiencing. Thirdly, your reflection encourages the other to speak about the feeling part of her situation. Fourthly, when the speaker hears her feelings reflected back by an accepting listener, she usually feels understood. The loneliness she may be experiencing can be diminished by the empathic response. Finally, if the person chooses to speak deeply and freely about her feelings, there may be a catharsis that brings about a release from tension and an emotional and/or spiritual renewal.
Chapter 7: Improving Your Reflecting Skills
Emotions are the key to vital communication. In reflecting emotions, it is not only important to ascertain the right kind of emotion, but also the right degree of emotion. The feeling word should match the other’s experience.
Chapter 8: Three Approaches to Relationships
Impacting
Assertive people enjoy a personal venturesomeness that launches them into nourishing relationships, ennobling work, creative leisure, an/or causes worthy of their devotion. I use the word impacting to describe this nonaggressive spiritual adventuresomeness that takes a person outside himself.
An impacting individual reaches out to other people, establishing vital relationships. He also influences institutions and society. <more>
Each of us has a psychological need to give and receive love—to be caught up in a few significant and powerful relationships. We also need to devote ourselves to a worthy purpose. As George Bernard Shaw says, the true joy of life is “being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; … the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
Submissive Behaviors
People who typically behave submissively demonstrate a lack of respect for their own needs and rights. They do this in many ways.
“The Price of Nice”
Another price paid by the submissive person is that his relationships tend to be less satisfying and intimate than he desires. Any worthwhile relationship involves two real people. But the submissive person forfeits himself, crowding himself into what he thinks is another person’s picture of what is lovable. He has very little real self left to love with or to be loved.
Perhaps the most frequently enacted tragedy of all times is that in which people give up being themselves and living their own lives so that they will be loved, only to find the ultimate consequence of their sacrifice is an inability to have the fulfilling relationships they sought.
The Advantages of Assertion
One of the most striking things about assertive people is that they like themselves. They are in a much better position to feel good about themselves than are submissive or aggressive individuals. Although assertiveness isn’t the only factor in building a sense of self-worth, there is much truth in therapist Herbert Fensterheim’s claim that “the extent to which you assert yourself determines the level of your self-esteem.”
Research has proven conclusively that learning to make assertive responses definitely weakens the anxiety and tension previously experienced in specific situations. As the increasingly assertive person realizes he can and will gain his needs and defend himself, he does not approach others with fears about being hurt or controlled.
Chapter 9: Developing Three-Part Assertion Messages
One of the most productive ways of asserting involves the use of a message that contains three parts:
- A nonjudgmental description of the behavior to be changed;
- A disclosure of the asserter’s feelings; and
- A clarification of the concrete and tangible effect of the other person’s behavior on the asserter
For example:
Behavior When you don’t clean the counter after making snacks,
+
Feelings I feel very annoyed
+
Effects because it makes more work for me.
Limit yourself to behavior descriptions. Do not draw inferences about the other person’s motives, attitudes, character, and so on.
Chapter 10: Handling the Push-Push Back Phenomenon
The skill of sending assertion messages effectively involves learning to expect and deal with people’s defensive responses.
In the face of people’s predictable defensive responses, the simple statement of an assertion message rarely achieves results. My colleagues, students, and I have a high degree of success using an assertion process with these six steps: (1) preparation, (2) sending the message, (3) silences, (4) reflective listening to the other’s defensive responses, (5) recycling steps 2 through 4 as often as necessary, and (6) focusing on a solution.
Chapter 11: Increasing Your Assertive Options
Self-Disclosure
We camouflage our true being before others to protect ourselves against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price. When we are not truly known by the other people in our lives, we are misunderstood,. When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the “lonely crowd.” Worse, when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we tend to lose touch with our real selves.
The aura of assertiveness results primarily from the body language one develops as he becomes more assertive. The assertive person looks and acts strong, confident, and fair. Even when he is not consciously trying, he telegraphs signals that define his space, communicates his healthy sense of self-esteem, and lets people know that he will defend his rights and dignity while respecting the rights and acknowledging the dignity of others.
Summary
There are many ways of increasing one’s assertiveness. This chapter described several methods:
- Natural Assertions
- Self-Disclosure
- Descriptive Recognitions
- Relationship Assertions
- Selective Inattention
- Withdrawal
- The Spectrum Response
- Options
- Natural and Logical Consequences
- Stop the Action, Accept the Feelings
- Say “No!”
- Modify the Environment