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

by Robert Bolton PhD

  Sales manager: Yes, that’s right. One of my top priority goals for this year is that every salesperson in this department achieve the sales quota set for him. What can I do to help?

  Salesman: Well, I’m having trouble with one of my target accounts. How about coming with me on my next call? If I can get that one account, I’ll be over my quota.

  “Unreal!” That’s what many people think to themselves when they read a dialogue like this. “People don’t converse that way in real life.” It’s true, most people don’t talk that way. And the misunderstandings that develop in their “normal” conversations are enormous. But in some companies, when one of the persons is under stress, the other listens this way and misunderstandings are kept to a minimum.

  The Presenting Problem

  May Not Be the Major Concern

  People rarely begin a conversation by communicating the things that are of greatest concern. A woman involved in counseling said, “I was so afraid before the counseling began that I would get to that subject—and afraid that I wouldn’t.” This ambivalence about speaking of what is most significant to the person is very common. What is most important to share is often the area where we are most vulnerable.

  Each person conceals much of himself from others. Everyone “travels incognito” to some degree. Yet it is often those very things that we sometimes most want to discuss that we hide most carefully. This results in a phenomenon popularly known as “beating around the bush.” The speaker does not come directly to the point. In fact, he may not even hint at the real point of what he is saying. The speaker’s drive to talk about one topic may impel him to converse with you, but his anxiety about that topic may keep him speaking about another subject altogether.

  Psychologists sometimes speak of the “presenting problem” and the “basic problem.” A parent may come to a teacher or guidance counselor with a complaint about the way his child is being treated in school. With skillful listening, the conversation may move to topics of greater concern to the parent. The child’s treatment in school is probably a real concern, but something else, like a failing marriage or anxiety about inability to cope with the child at home, may be the most basic problem on the parent’s mind—and the one he most needs to discuss.

  Much like the swimmer who puts his foot into the water to test the temperature before deciding if he will take the plunge, many speakers “test the water”—to see whether they can trust the vulnerable areas of their lives to another. Research shows that empathie reflections which demonstrate understanding and acceptance are much more likely to foster exploration of these important areas than are the more typical responses in our culture. 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. Coming up with good solutions to minor problems while the deeper concerns are not even addressed is one of the biggest sources of inefficiency in industry, government, schools, families, churches, counseling centers, and other institutions.

  The Speaker May Be Blind

  to Her Emotions

  or Blinded by Them

  In our culture, people commonly have two types of problems with their feelings. On the one hand, they are often unaware of their own emotions. On the other hand, feelings sometimes surge through a person with such force that reason and other factors become impotent. The person finds himself dangerously out of control and is unable to direct his own destiny at that time. The first condition comes when we are blind to our emotions. The second condition is caused when we are blinded by our emotions. Reflective listening helps in both situations.

  Ours is a culture that teaches people to repress their feelings. From an early age, children are taught to distort or repress their feelings. “Be nice to your sister” … “Stop crying” … “How many times have I told you not to get angry!” … “Let the other children play with your toys” … “I don’t care how you feel—do it” … “You don’t know what is good for you” … “Stop acting like a scaredy cat“ … “Stop that silly laughter.”

  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 is consuming them. Other cultural conditioning teaches women, as well as all people in certain religious subcultures, to place others’ needs before their own.

  To the extent that emotions are stifled, people lead dwarfed and stunted lives. Our emotions help shape our values. They are a fundamental part of our motivation and help to determine our direction and purpose in life. Emotions provide us with needed clues for solving our problems; they are central to our relatedness to others. As Haim Ginott points out, reflective responses help children (and adults) become aware of their inner world of emotion:

  How can we help a child to know his feelings? We can do so by serving as a mirror to his emotions. A child learns about his physical likeness by seeing his image in a mirror. He learns about his emotional likeness by hearing his feelings reflected by us.

  The function of a mirror is to reflect an image as it is, without adding flattery or faults. We do not want a mirror to tell us, “You look terrible. Your eyes are bloodshot and your face is puffy. Altogether you are a mess. You’d better do something about yourself.” After a few exposures to such a magic mirror, we would avoid it like the plague. From a mirror we want an image, not a sermon. We may not like the image we see; still, we would rather decide for ourselves our next cosmetic move.

  The function of an emotional mirror is to reflect feelings as they are, without distortion:

  To a child who has such feelings, these statements are most helpful. They show him clearly what his feelings are. Clarity of image, whether in a looking glass or in an emotional mirror, provides opportunity for self-initiated grooming and change.6

  The emotional mirror provided by reflective listening is of great worth to adults, too.

  Sometimes, instead of being blind to our emotions, we are blinded by them. On these occasions, feelings block our rational capacity. We talk about “being in the grip of powerful emotions,” implying that, for the moment, feelings have usurped our inner being and control us. When people are ruled by their emotions in such a way that neither reason nor willpower have any influence, they are apt to behave in ways detrimental to themselves and/or others. In such situations, reflective responses can help the person cope with his feelings and use his rational ability.

  Many people believe that if a person inflamed with an emotion is encouraged to talk about it, the feeling will escalate. It is also widely thought that people in the grips of an emotion are more likely to act on the emotion if they verbalize it. For example, it is commonly believed that a person who is furious with another is more apt to harm him if the angry person speaks about his emotions. Actually, the reverse is more often true. When a person has a chance to talk about strong feelings to an empathic listener, the likelihood of acting irrationally on the basis of those feelings is diminished. The process of talking on a feeling level drains off much of the excess emotion so that the speaker has less need to act out the feelings irrationally.

  Many Listeners

  Are Easily Distracted

  While speaking one’s real meanings is not easy, at the other end of the conversation the listener is often beset by problems, too. Many listeners are easily distracted and slip off on a reverie while the speaker is talking. Also, everyone has at least a few emotional filters that block or distort some of the meanings being sent to us. Let’s turn now to ways in which reflective responses can help the listener deal more effectively with these problems.

  One of the reasons for poor listening (and also for good listening) is that people can think much faster than they can talk. The average rate of speech fo
r most Americans is about 125 words per minute. This rate is slow for the ear and brain, which can process words about four times that fast. While we listen, we have a lot of spare time for thinking.

  The typical listener uses this spare time poorly. After beginning to listen to a friend with interest, the listener’s mind may grow bored with the slow pace of the conversation. He soon finds he can take a mental vacation and still get a bit of the message. So while his friend continues to talk, the “listener” plans the next day’s work or relishes last week’s tennis victory. He checks back with his friend from time to time, notes the drift of the conversation, and makes a few appropriate remarks, but spends most of the time with his own thoughts. Listeners sometimes stay out on a reverie too long and then miss a central point that was shared.

  Remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare? Poor listeners often end up in the predicament of the hare who raced the slow-moving tortoise. The hare stopped by the side of the road to go to sleep; the tortoise finally passed him and won the race. When the hare awakened, it was too late to catch up. Poor listeners get off the track for a while and then find they cannot catch up to the thoughts being expressed by the tortoise-paced speaker.

  There are many times, of course, when we manage to go off on mental tangents and still concentrate on the conversation enough to have a fairly good understanding of its content. This does not constitute good listening by my definition. The hearer is not deeply involved in the interaction. He is not personally present with the other in a rich and fulfilling way.

  Filters Distort

  What the Listener Hears

  John Drakeford writes about “attention filters” that keep us from being overwhelmed by the increasing amount of sound in our modern world:

  The brain … is programmed by years of experience and conditioning to handle the auditory impressions with which it is fed. Like a busy executive’s efficient secretary who sorts out the correspondence, keeping only the most important for his personal perusal, some sounds are summarily rejected, while others have the total attention focused on them….

  Not unlike the ground crews of jet airlines who carefully position ear guards for protection against the earsplitting sounds of the whining engines, modern man has had to develop a self-protective mechanism to defend himself from the constant acoustical bombardment of twentieth-century living. Most humans are engaged in a lifelong process of gradually building up their own personal internal ear plugs and training themselves to ignore certain sounds….

  There is obviously wisdom in the natural tendency we have not to listen. The mechanism protects us in so many ways. But it also does us a disservice because it causes us to miss many of the things to which we should listen.7

  In addition to the attention filters described by Drakeford, each of us has what might be called emotional filters that block or distort our understanding. Most people have heard of Pavlov’s famous experiment in which he taught a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. In the 1930s, Gregory Razran, of New York’s Queens College, conditioned people to salivate in response to certain words like “style” and “urn.”8 Razran’s experiments demonstrated that it is possible to systematically give words emotional connotations that are totally unrelated to their rational meanings.

  The conditioning process by which most of us develop our emotional filters is often less systematic, but not necessarily less powerful than Razran’s approach. In our childhood, parents, teachers, or other esteemed adults or peers may have coupled words like communist, hospital, politician, black, and cop with quiet sneers, scowls, frowns, or other gestures of contempt. Other seemingly neutral words and ideas may have been accompanied by smiles and other signs of pleasure. Once such conditioning takes place, often without design, the child (or adult) reacts to the words emotionally. The gut-level response to the now emotionally laden word interferes with the reception of messages containing that word.

  In a training session for executive managers, the distortion from emotional filters was clearly demonstrated. Five executives were asked to leave the room. The people remaining were asked to study the picture shown in Figure 5.4, which was projected onto a screen.

  After the group had examined the picture, the projector was turned off. One of the managers was asked to return from outside the room and listen to a description of the picture by a man who had studied it. Another manager was then called into the room and asked to listen to the description as it was repeated by the manager who just preceded him back into the room. This procedure was followed until all five men had returned individually and heard the description. The last man was asked to face the group with his back to the screen and tell what he had been told the picture contained. The projector was turned on so the group could visually compare the scene with the verbal description they heard.

  The distortions that occurred in those descriptions were considerable. The black and the white man were now fighting. Some of the other passengers were involved in the fight. Others were frightened. The razor was in the hands of the black. The white man wore the business suit and the black was dressed as a laborer.9 Each executive heard the descriptions through his own emotional filters, resulting in gross misunderstanding. Emotional filters inevitably impede our listening ability.

  Figure 5.4. Projected picture from experiment on accuracy of communication. Source: Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Rumor Clinic.

  Our expectations of others constitute another set of filters through which we listen. During sensitive union negotiations, a manager suddenly realized that he was not listening clearly. He asked a labor leader to repeat his comments and later admitted to a friend, “Sometimes I don’t hear him clearly because of what I expect him to say.” Numerous couples are in a similar boat. A husband may think he knows what his partner will say on a given topic and respond on the basis of his expectations rather than in terms of what his wife actually said. Parents and children misunderstand each other similarly.

  A person’s self-image may distort the reception of the other person’s thoughts and feelings. Someone with low self-esteem may expect criticism from others and read that meaning into the most innocent of statements. One woman is defensive about her homemaking; when her husband praises his mother’s hash, she thinks he is criticizing her cooking. The husband feels insecure about the amount of income he earns; when his wife mentions she is tired from housecleaning, he takes it as a slur on his ability to provide her with help. A woman who had very strong filters said, “My husband says I could read something into a cookbook.”

  In the First and Last Freedom, Krishnamurti says:

  To be able to really listen, one should abandon or put aside all prejudices…. When you are in a receptive state of mind, things can be easily understood…. But, unfortunately, most of us listen through a screen of resistance. We are screened with prejudices, whether religious or spiritual, psychological or scientific; or, with daily worries, desires and fears. And with these fears for a screen, we listen. Therefore, we listen really to our own noise, our own sound, not to what is being said.10

  Reflective responses are effective ways to correct the misunderstandings that occur because of our filters. If what we reflect back is inaccurate, the other person virtually always corrects it.

  A Check on Accuracy:

  A Channel for Warmth and Concern

  Since it is so difficult for humans to say precisely what is on their minds and in their hearts, and since it is so hard for us to listen without distraction or distortion to what others are saying, we desperately need a check for accuracy in our conversations. To do this, the effective listener frequently reflects back the gist of what he has heard as a check that his understandings match the speaker’s meanings.

  As important as accuracy is in communication, most people want more than that. They crave the warmth and concern that can come to them from another human being. In moments of strong feeling, significant worries, or serious problems, a person often feels alone and needs human cont
act and support. The empathic listener is there for the other in a unique way that communicates warmth and concern. The reflective listener helps the other person to experience community in the midst of a lonely struggle.

  SKEPTICISM IS BEST DISSOLVED

  BY ACTION

  Explaining some of the rationale for reflective listening helps many people realize why this method of listening can foster better interpersonal understanding. Theory contributes to “informed consent” and thereby allows a person to experiment with new ways of relating, not just because some “authority” advocates those methods, but because his own mind agrees that these methods may make sense after all.

  The ultimate test, however, is not in the mind but in the arena of daily life. Regardless of theory, the issue of whether effective reflections used appropriately tend to enhance or diminish communication must be determined in the rough and tumble of one’s daily interactions. Ultimately the worth of reflective responses cannot be decided in the mind but must be decided on the basis of experience. As Thomas Carlyle, the English essayist, wrote, “Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action.”11 Constructive skepticism field-tests the hypotheses it is examining.

  The next two chapters contain guidelines that will help you develop improved reflecting skills. They will help you develop sufficient ability to give this approach to listening a fair trial.

  SUMMARY

  When people are introduced to reflective listening skills, they are often skeptical about its appropriateness in their lives. They feel awkward and phony when they first use the skills. This, however, is only one stage of skill development, and will quickly pass if they continue developing the skills. Some people complain that this method is too “structured. ” That complaint seems less pertinent when we see that all communication is inevitably structured and when we realize that structure does not prevent the expression of individual style. Again, people say this method thwarts their spontaneity. While it may be good to value many kinds of spontaneity, the damage done by the impulsive use of roadblocks makes reflective responses seem more appealing.