People Skills_How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts

by Robert Bolton PhD

  The attending listener attempts to cut environmental distractions to the minimum. At home, the TV or stereo may be turned off in the room to provide the interruption-free and distraction-free environment that is so important for human interaction. If need be, the telephone receiver can be taken off the hook or unplugged, and a “Do Not Disturb” sign can even be placed on the door. In many offices, the door can be closed, the music or intercom turned off, and the secretary can hold telephone calls until the conversation is completed. In the factory, finding an undistracting setting is difficult but not impossible. Good attending in a manufacturing plant may involve using the feet before using the ears—to get to an office or some other place where you will not be disturbed and where the environment is not distracting.

  Removing sizable physical barriers fosters better communication. In offices the desk typically intrudes between the speaker and the listener. A. G. White’s study of medical case-history interviewing discovered that 55 percent of the patients initially sat at ease when no desk separated the patient and the doctor; only 10 percent were at ease when a desk separated the patient from the doctor.17 For some people, a desk is associated with a position of authority and can trigger feelings of weakness or hostility. When a listener sits behind a desk, the interaction is more likely to be role-to-role rather than person-to-person. If an office is too small to place two chairs away from the desk for conversation, it is desirable to have the visitor’s chair beside the desk rather than across the desk.

  Good attending fosters improved observation of the other’s body language, which is an important part of listening. When a desk or other large physical barrier stands between you and the speaker, it is extremely difficult to note what the other’s body is communicating.

  Psychological Attention

  What a person wants most of all from a listener is a sense of psychological presence. He wants the listener to really be there for him. Physical attending fosters psychological presence. When I am in a good environmental setting, have comfortable eye contact, appropriate body motion, and maintain the posture of involvement, my psychological attending usually improves. My physical attending skill also helps the other feel my psychological presence.

  However, if I try to fake attention when listening to another, I deceive only myself. The listener who is truly present to another displays a vitality that registers on face and body his interest and concern for what the other is saying. The person who is not really “there,” even though his body takes an attending position, is inevitably detected. The speaker notes the glazed eyes, and his “antenna” picks up other signals that reveal that the listener’s heart and mind are not with him. Without psychological presence, no attending technique will work.

  Consciously Working At Attending

  Surprisingly, we find that most people have a fairly accurate informal knowledge of attending before we teach them any attending skills. In our seminars, the trainer often says, “Position yourselves to show me that you are really interested in what I am saying.” Most people in the group assume a fairly good attending position. Then the leader says, “Show me by your body posture that you couldn’t care less about me or about what I am telling you.” Virtually everyone demonstrates a clear idea of what nonattending behavior is like. So why do we make such an effort to teach attending skills? There are basically two reasons.

  First of all, because the teaching of these skills does sharpen understanding of attending. People raise to the level of their awareness some understandings that were previously vague and hazy. People invariably learn something new and/or develop a deepened insight into what they already know.

  Secondly, and more important, we find that a focus on the methods and merits of attending motivates many people to do what they already know how to do but often neglect to do. A focus on attending serves as a consciousness-raising experience that often motivates people to utilize these skills. Once people start attending at appropriate times, they are rewarded by a new quality of interpersonal relationships. Allan Ivey puts it this way:

  Some may question the possible artificiality of attending behavior or other skills…. They validly object to seeing life as a series of exercises in which the individual constantly dredges into a “handbag of skills” so he can adapt to each life situation. Our experience has been that individuals may sometimes begin attending in an artificial, deliberate manner. However, once attending has been initiated, the person to whom one is listening tends to become more animated, and this in turn reinforces the attender who very quickly forgets about attending deliberately and soon attends naturally. A variety of our clients and trainees have engaged in conscious attending behavior only to find themselves so interested in the person with whom they are talking that they lose themselves in the other.18

  People tend to think of communication as a verbal process. Students of communication are convinced that most communication is nonverbal. The most commonly quoted estimate, based on research, is that 85 percent of our communication is nonverbal! So attending, the nonverbal part of listening, is a basic building block of the listening process.

  FOLLOWING SKILLS

  Beatrice Glass’s car collided with another auto. As soon after the accident as possible she telephoned her husband, Charlie, and reported that she had been in an accident. “How much damage did it do to the car?” was his immediate response. When he had that information, Charlie asked, “Whose fault was it?” Then he said, “Don’t admit a thing. You phone the insurance company and I’ll call our lawyer. Just a minute and I’ll give you the number.”

  “Any more questions?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied, “that just about covers it.”

  “Oh, it does, does it?” she screamed. “Well, just in case you are interested, I’m in the hospital with four broken ribs!”

  Charlie’s responses may have been more callous and blatant than those of the average husband, but what he did is typical for many people. Because Charlie’s wife had a problem (an automobile accident that resulted in her hospitalization), Charlie’s role in the conversation should have been primarily that of a listener. But he did most of the talking.

  One of the primary tasks of a listener is to stay out of the other’s way so the listener can discover how the speaker views his situation. Unfortunately, the average “listener” interrupts and diverts the speaker by asking many questions or making many statements. Researchers tell us that it is not at all uncommon for “listeners” to lead and direct a conversation through the frequent use of questions. It is also common for the “listener” to talk so much that he monopolizes the conversation!

  Four following skills foster effective listening: door openers, minimal encourages, open questions, and attentive silence.

  Door Openers

  People often send nonverbal clues when they are burdened or excited about something. Their feelings are telegraphed in facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture, and energy level. For example, Jerry, who is normally exuberant, had not laughed or entered into the family repartee for four days. When they were alone, his wife, Darlene, said, “You don’t seem yourself these past few days. You seem burdened by something. Care to talk about it?” That was Darlene’s way of sending a door opener.

  A door opener is a noncoercive invitation to talk. There are times when door openers are not necessary. The speaker plunges right into his theme. Sometimes, however, you will sense that the other person wants to talk but needs encouragement as Jerry did. At other times, the speaker will be in the midst of a conversation and will show signs that he is unsure about continuing. A door opener like this may help him proceed: “I’m interested in hearing more about it.”

  People often send door closers (roadblocks) when door openers are much more appropriate. When a child comes home from school with dragging steps and an unhappy expression on his face, parents often respond in ways that tend to make the child withdraw into himself. Judgmental statements are apt to pour forth.

  “What a s
ourpuss you have on today.”

  “What did you do this time?”

  “Don’t inflict your lousy mood on me.”

  “What did you do, lose your best friend?”

  Sometimes, they try to reassure:

  “Cheer up.”

  “Things will get better. They always do.”

  “Next week you won’t even remember what happened.”

  At such times, advice giving is another favorite tactic:

  “Why don’t you do something you like to do?”

  “Don’t mope around all day. That won’t help anything.”

  “I’m sure that whatever happened wasn’t worth ruining your day over.”

  Instead of yielding to the temptation to use roadblocks, parents could send a door opener:

  “Looks like things didn’t go well for you today. I’ve got time if you’d like to talk.”

  “Something unpleasant happen to you? Want to talk about it?”

  Door openers typically have four elements:

  A description of the other persons body language. “Your face is beaming today.” “You look like you are not feeling up to par.”

  An invitation to talk or to continue talking. “Care to talk about it?” “Please go on.” “I’m interested in what you are saying.”

  Silence—giving the other person time to decide whether to talk and/or what he wants to say.

  Attending—eye contact and a posture of involvement that demonstrates your interest in and concern for the other person.

  All four parts are not necessarily present in every door opener. One day, a friend with whom I had shared a great deal of my thoughts and feelings saw that I was troubled. He motioned to a chair and said quietly, “Let’s hear about it.” On another occasion, he simply said, “Shoot.” These brief door openers worked well because of the trust and frequent self-disclosure in the relationship. If other people had said those things to me, I might have clammed up. The personality of the listener, the nature of the relationship, and other factors will determine the most effective door opener in a given situation.

  Silence and attending alone often constitute a strong inducement to talk. A housewife who complained that her husband seldom talked with her decided to try attending to him when he wanted to talk. She discovered, to her dismay, that he seemed most ready to converse when he got home from work—and that’s when she was in the midst of dinner preparations! For years she had continued attending to her cooking while calling questions over her shoulder about how his day had gone—but received virtually no response. Her new approach was to serve dinner forty-five minutes later, to take fifteen minutes to relax before her husband came home, and to spend a half-hour talking with him alone. For that half-hour, both the children and her cooking tasks were excluded. She says her husband now engages in significant conversations with her.

  Another housewife who found it inconvenient to postpone the dinner hour planned to cook much of the meal earlier in the day on three days a week so she could attend to her husband’s conversation when he arrived home. She says, “What a difference that has made! Some days we talk the whole time. On other occasions, our conversations are quite brief—but even these are not the forced exchanges we had when I used to grill him with questions while I prepared dinner. Some days, of course, we do no more than exchange greetings. But the whole interpersonal atmosphere of our house is changing because of my quiet, attentive availability during those three half-hour periods a week before dinner.”

  A person sending door openers needs an awareness of and a respect for the other person’s probable feelings of ambivalence—he may want to self-disclose, yet be hesitant to do so.

  One way to deal with ambivalence is to recognize and reflect back to the speaker how difficult it is to talk about painful experiences. When the speaker seems to find it difficult to speak about the things he is saying, a listener can reflect:

  “It’s pretty hard to talk about.”

  Another way of dealing with a person who is feeling very ambivalent is to make sure your door opener is an invitation rather than a directive to talk. Door openers should always be noncoercive.

  Unfortunately, some people not only open the door, they try to drag the other through:

  Sam: You look sad, John. Feel like talking?

  John: Not really.

  Sam: I can tell you are troubled. You know you can talk to me.

  John: I don’t feel like it right now.

  Sam: You really ought to get it off your chest, you know.

  John: Yeah, I know. Later maybe.

  Sam: But the time to talk is when you are feeling things …

  The empathic person respects the privacy of other people and is careful not to be intrusive. He honors rather than violates the other individual’s separateness. When appropriate, empathic listeners invite conversation. They do not try to compel it.

  It is difficult to offer a door opener, not to be taken up on it, and still let it go. However, in relationships where there is little trust or where communication has not been flowing well for some time, door openers will probably find little response from the other person. It takes time, skill, and goodwill to rebuild trust. Use of listening skills can help nurture this trust once more. If and when the relationship is restored, the door openers will probably find a welcome response.

  Minimal Encourages

  We have already stated that one of the listener’s responsibilities is to allow the speaker room to talk about a situation as he sees and feels it. Many people, in their effort to stay out of the speaker’s way, lapse into nonparticipation. Simple responses that encourage the speaker to tell his story in his way yet keep the listener active in the process are called minimal encourages. Minimal encourages are brief indicators to other persons that you are with them. The word minimal refers to the amount the listener says, which is very little, and to the amount of direction given to the conversation, which is also very little. The word encourages is used because these words and phrases aid the speaker to continue speaking. Just a few words can let the other know you are listening without interrupting the flow of talk or breaking the mood. Minimal encourages will be sprinkled throughout a conversation. In the early stages of an interaction, they may be used more frequently to help the conversation gain momentum.

  The simple “mm-hmm” is probably the most frequently used of the minimal encourages. That brief phrase can suggest, “Please continue. I’m listening and I understand.” There are many brief responses that the listener can use:

  Tell me more.

  You betcha!

  Oh?

  Yes.

  For instance …

  Really?

  I see.

  Gosh.

  Right.

  And?

  Then?

  Go on.

  So?

  Sure.

  I hear you.

  Darn!

  You undoubtedly have your own favorites. Repeating one or two of the speaker’s key words or the last word or two of the speaker’s statement also constitutes minimal encourages. When the speaker says, “I can’t figure out what to do. I guess I’m just confused,” the listener may respond “Confused.”

  A skilled listener can communicate much empathy through voice and facial expressions even when only one or two words are said. I watched a film of one of America’s leading therapists listening to a woman tell how furious she was at things her mother had done to her. His empathic “You betcha” seemed to give her the feeling, “He understands how angry I am and he still accepts me.” When one of our children told my wife of a big disappointment at school, Dot simply said, “Darn!” but her tone of voice, facial expression, and other nonverbals made it a very feeling-ful response.

  Minimal encourages do not imply either agreement or disagreement with what the speaker said. Rather, they let the other know he has been heard and that the listener will try to follow his meaning if the speaker chooses to continue. Thus, when I respond to a speaker with �
��Right,” it does not mean that I agree with the speaker. Rather, it means, “Yes, I hear what you are saying—go on.”

  This kind of response has often been parodied. We hear tales of the psychiatrist who says nothing but “mm-hmm” for fifty minutes and at the end of the session says, “That will be fifty dollars, please.” Obviously, these expressions can be overdone or used mechanically. However, when sensitively orchestrated with a variety of other responses, they assist the speaker’s self-exploration.

  Infrequent Questions

  Questions are an integral part of verbal interaction in our society. As with many other kinds of responses, questions have their strengths and their limitations. Comparatively few people in our culture know how to question effectively. We often rely on questions excessively and use them poorly. Questions usually focus on the intent, perspective, and concerns of the listener rather than on the speaker’s orientation. When that happens, questions are a barrier to communication.

  We distinguish between “closed” questions and “open” questions. Closed questions direct the speaker to give a specific, short response. They are often answered with one word like “yes” or “no.” Open questions, on the other hand, provide space for the speaker to explore his thoughts without being hemmed in too much by the listener’s categories. Closed questions are like true/false or multiple-choice test questions, while open questions are like essay questions. When an employee walks into her boss’s office, the latter could ask either a closed or an open question:

  Closed question: “Do you want to see me about the Rumsford job?”

  Open question: “What’s on your mind, Ann?”

  The open question is usually preferable because it does not suggest the agenda to the person who initiated the interaction.