People Skills_How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts
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Then, too, reflective listening makes more sense to some people when they consider six peculiarities of human communication:
Words have different meanings for different people.
People often “code” their messages.
People frequently talk about “presenting problems” when another topic is of greater concern to them.
The speaker may be blind to her emotions or blinded by them.
Listeners are often easily distracted.
Listeners hear through “filters” that distort much of what is being said.
Reflective listening provides a check for accuracy and a channel through which warmth and concern can be communicated.
While theory helps inform one’s decision about whether to experiment with reflective responses, the ultimate test of the worth of these methods cannot be determined by the rationale developed in this chapter but only by your experience of using the skills appropriately and well in daily life.
CHAPTER 6
Reading
Body
Language
We all, in one way or another, send our little messages out to the world…. And rarely do we send our messages consciously. We act out our state of being with nonverbal body language. We lift one eyebrow for disbelief. We rub our noses for puzzlement. We clasp our arms to isolate ourselves or to protect ourselves. We shrug, our shoulders for indifference, wink one eye for intimacy, tap our fingers for impatience, slap our foreheads for forgetfulness. The gestures are numerous, and while some are deliberate … there are some, such as rubbing our noses for puzzlement or clasping our arms to protect ourselves, that are mostly unconscious.
—Julius Fast
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, posture, 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.
Only a small portion of the understanding one gains in face-to-face interaction comes from words. One prominent authority claims that a mere 35 percent of the meaning of communication derives from words; the remainder comes from body language. Albert Mehrabian stated in a widely quoted article that in situations he examined, only 7 percent of the impact was verbal—the remaining 93 percent was nonverbal. You may question the specific percentages arrived at by these researchers, but few people dispute the general direction of their findings—that body language is a very important medium of communication. Psychotherapist Alexander Lowen puts it this way, “No words are so clear as the language of body expression once one has learned to read it.”
Nonverbal communication was the only language used throughout most of humanity’s existence. For many, many centuries there was absolutely no oral or written language. Therefore, body language was the sole means of communication.
When language finally developed, people commonly allowed themselves to be distracted from body communication. Some, however, continued to focus on nonverbal cues. An ancient Chinese proverb warns, “Watch out for the man whose stomach doesn’t move when he laughs.” In the eighth century B.C., the prophet Isaiah commented, “The show of their countenance doth witness against them.”
While body language has been a source of interpersonal understanding from the very beginning of the human race, only in the past few decades have behavioral scientists started making systematic observations of nonverbal meanings. They have developed intricate notational systems, filmed people interacting for slow-motion frame-by-frame analysis, and conducted thousands of other experiments. The scientific study of body language is still in its infancy, and though conclusions are somewhat speculative, major contributions have already been made to our understanding of human interaction. When we add this research of modern scientists to the observations of sensitive people throughout history, we have a significant means of understanding others through reading body language.
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 best for 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 because, as Paul Ekman and Wallace 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 feelings 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. For example, the expression on a person’s face may indicate that she is angry. The rest of her body shows what she is doing with those angry feelings. A person may approach another with menacing posture and clenched fists, ready for combat. Or she may try to repress the anger through muscular tension. Again, she may vent her feelings by stamping her feet, flailing her arms, slamming the door, and so on. You can gain insight into what a person is doing with her feelings by watching her body language.
People’s feelings about their relationships are primarily communicated through their nonverbals. When people position themselves at a considerable distance from each other, tense their bodies, avoid facing each other and making eye contact, the relationship is probably not faring very well. As Gerard Egan says, the averted face may mean an averted heart.
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.
THE “LEAKAGE”
OF MASKED FEELINGS
There are times when each of us uses words in ways designed to hide our feelings. Sometimes these tendencies toward deception are buried in our subconscious and we are not even aware of our efforts to conceal. Similarly, each of us has learned to control our body language. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we try to control the expression of emotion that is communicated through our nonverbals. We may shrug our shoulders in feigned indifference when in fact the issue is very important to us. We may camouflage anger with a false smile. We may tense certain muscles to prevent crying when we are sad. We may put on a “poker face” to cover up the emotions that we are experiencing. In other words, under certain circumstances and in varying degrees, each of us tries to mask our feelings with deceptive body language.
We may be successful at choosing words to create a façade. But when we try to control our nonverbals, our bodies usually blab the truth about our feelings. Lie detectors are effective precisely because people who can concoct a very misleading story have a much more difficult time controlling their bodily responses.
Even when a person makes a determined effort not to show emotions in body language, her true feelings usually leak past the attempt at control, though sometimes only for a fleeting moment. In one experiment, researchers instructed a man not to show any emotion when viewing a film designed to arouse feelings. When interviewed later, he was confident that he had successfully concealed his feelings. The pictures taken as the subject viewed the film, demonstrated how his feeling of disgust temporarily
“leaked” through all his efforts at control.
The observation of body language is important to an effective listener because it communicates what is most important to the speaker. When a person is reluctant to put her feelings into words, or is unable to find the right phrases to describe her emotions, or has repressed her feelings to the extent that she is not consciously aware of her feelings—in each of these situations, the person’s nonverbals usually indicate the person’s true feelings. As Sigmund Freud said, “Self-betrayal oozes from all our pores.”
GUIDELINES FOR READING
BODY LANGUAGE
Five guidelines have helped me become more effective in responding to “our silent language—the language of behavior.” First, I make a conscious effort to focus my attention on the cues that I think will be most helpful. Second, I try to see each of the nonverbals in proper context. Third, I note incongruities when they exist. Fourth, I heighten my awareness of my own feelings about the interaction. And finally, I often reflect my understandings back to the other for her confirmation or correction.
Focus Attention
on the Most Helpful Clues
Contrary to popular opinion, we are presented with too many rather than too few clues about feelings from the person to whom we are listening. As listeners, we receive information about the speaker’s emotions from six sources.
In the auditory channel there are three sources: (1) the specific words that are spoken; (2) the sound of the voice; and (3) the rapidity of speech, the frequency and length of pauses, how often the speech is disrupted by words like “aah” and “mmm.”
In the visual channel there are three additional sources of information about the person’s feelings: (1) facial expression, (2) posture, and (3) gestures.
This bombardment of stimuli can be overwhelming to the listener. A person often misses some of the most significant messages coming from another person because she was distracted by other, more commanding sources of information. There is a common tendency to over-rely on what psychologist Wilson Van Dusen refers to as the most untrustworthy source—the words that are spoken. Greater sensitivity to and concentration on the nonverbal elements of communication will usually facilitate better understanding.
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 threaten her.
Over one hundred years ago, the naturalist Charles Darwin, who propounded the theory of evolution, wrote a pioneering book on body language entitled The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. One of Darwin’s key hypotheses, that people can decipher someone’s emotions from facial expressions, has been confirmed by recent research.
The face not only discloses specific emotions, it telegraphs what really matters to a person. At times, a person’s face will take on a natural and lively intensity. This may occur in the midst of a conversation that seems relatively unimportant. When this happens, the listener can zero in on the area of conversation that seemed to cause the reaction and thus converse about topics of high emotional priority to the other person. You can undoubtedly recall moments in otherwise mundane conversations when your companion’s face lit up and she described a particular interest with great animation.
The eyes and facial tissue surrounding them can be most eloquent. Eyes twinkle with mirth, become red and watery with sadness, and glower with hostility. The eyes convey important information about how your relationship with another person is faring. They display affection and trust with one person, distance with another, and disengagement from a third person. In many cultures, warm eye contact is the purest form of reciprocity, the highest level of psychic union. Perhaps that is why the French novelist Victor Hugo advised, “When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.”
As a person grows older, her most consistent emotional state tends to become permanently etched on her face. Some older faces are joyous and open, suggesting a lifetime of happiness. Others express chronic disapproval, as though nothing in the world ever was quite right for them. (Maybe it wasn’t.)
Vocal clues. There is a passage in The Journal of John Woolman that describes the eighteenth-century Quaker’s communication with Chief Papunehang, who commented to an interpreter about the prayer whose English words he had not understood: “I love to feel where words come from.”
The effective listener hears far more than the speaker’s words; she listens to the pitch, rate, timbre, and the other subtle nuances of voice that communicate meaning. The voice provides one of the best ways of understanding an individual. That is why, when a patient enters the consulting room of psychotherapist Rollo May, the counselor often asks himself, “What does the voice say when I stop listening to the words and listen only to the tone?”
At an elementary level, virtually everyone distinguishes meanings by noting differences in vocal qualities. For example, the statement “What a weekend I had” can have at least two different meanings depending on the tone of voice of the speaker. The ambiguous phrase might mean that it was a most enjoyable weekend. With different vocal qualities, however, the listener would assume that it was quite unpleasant. If an individual’s voice is quavering when she says, “I quit my job,” it might indicate she is sad, angry, or fearful about leaving. If, on the other hand, her voice is bright and bouncy, it would suggest that she is basically happy about the termination.
Feelings like anger, enthusiasm, and joy tend to be accompanied by increased rapidity of speech, higher volume, and higher pitch. A slower-than-normal rate of speech and lower volume and pitch tend to characterize feelings such as boredom or depression. Dr. Len Sperry suggests that the following voice characteristics (technically called paralanguage) are likely to have the meanings described in the right-hand column:
Paralanguage Probable Feeling/Meaning
Monotone voice
Boredom
Slow speed, low pitch
Depression
High voice, emphatic pitch
Enthusiasm
Ascending tone
Astonishment
Abrupt speech
Defensiveness
Terse speed, loud tone
Anger
High pitch, drawn-out speech
Disbelief
Some people become exceptionally proficient at understanding others by listening skillfully to their manner of speaking. Erle Stanley Gardner, the famous mystery writer and creator of Perry Mason, told of the skill his lawyer-partner developed in detecting critical information from vocal clues—information that went unnoticed by virtually everyone else. In an article in Vogue magazine, Gardner said:
During the years that he was my partner, when we were in court together, he made it a point not to look at the witness on the stand; he kept his eyes on a piece of paper, sometimes taking down what the witness was saying in shorthand, sometimes simply doodling, but always listening to the voice of the witness.
At some stage in the examination, my partner would nudge me with his elbow.
Invariably that meant that the witness was either lying at that point in the testimony, or was trying to cover up something.
My untrained ears were never able to detect these subtle changes of voice and tempo, but my partner could spot them with startling accuracy.
Although you and I may never reach the proficiency of Gardner’s partner, we can notice the pitch and timbre of a person’s voice, the rhythm of speech, and the rapidity of expression. These vocal qualities help us to tune into the mood of the speaker. This feel for the speaker’s emotions can then be reflected back to her.
Posture, gestures, and “actions.” A person’s posture and body movement can speak volumes about her feelings, self-image, and energy level. The movements of the head, arms, hands, legs, and feet can be very revealing. A person wanting to terminate a conversation, for instance, may stretch her l
egs, bob her foot, straighten the papers on the desk, close her briefcase, and/or sit in an upright position in preparation for leaving. One person discovered that when his boss wanted to terminate a conversation, he would make a “desperate looking grab for his cigarettes in his left-hand coat pocket.”
We can also learn about people’s feelings by understanding the meaning of what, for want of a better word, I shall term actions. Child psychologists are aware that much “annoying” behavior at home can be a cry for help in veiled form. Parents of young children often discover that when a baby is born into a family and receives much attention, the older sibling(s) may revert to babyish ways. This behavior is usually an urgent plea for more attention. The child who consistently disrupts the classroom has probably decided that the only way she will be noticed is to misbehave. The executive who grows less productive may be demonstrating disappointment or anger at lack of mobility in the company or dissatisfaction with her relationship to her boss. The empathic listener observes these kinds of actions and devises ways of checking out the accuracy of her decoding.
People who teach, conduct meetings, do group sales interviews or presentations, or in other ways find themselves in a group leadership role need to be sensitive to the corporate posture of the group with which they are working. I teach many day-long seminars. Frequently there is a “body language consensus” in the class. At times, the group is erect and alert. At other times, there is a slump when the entire group demonstrates low energy. To maximize the learning climate, I need to note the “posture-talk” of the group and, when there is a slump, either terminate the session or utilize methods for energizing the group.