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

by Robert Bolton PhD

  SUMMARY

  There are several alternatives to collaborative problem solving—including denial of the problem, avoidance, capitulation, domination, and compromise. Any one of these may be appropriate in certain occasions, but consistent use of these methods leads to negative consequences.

  The collaborative problem-solving method usually has favorable consequences. Its six steps include:

  Define the problem in terms of needs, not solutions.

  Brainstorm possible solutions.

  Select the solution that will best meet both parties’ needs (after having checked out possible consequences).

  Plan who will do what, where, and by when.

  Implement the solution.

  Evaluate how you worked the problem-solving process and, at a later date, how well the solution turned out.

  The “preliminaries” that take place before people begin the first step of the process are usually of critical importance. If the problem-solving process doesn’t work, recheck to make sure you avoided the common traps that are barriers to the effectiveness of this method, look for hidden agendas, and/or recycle the process.

  This method has many applications at home, at work, and in school. It can be used in goal setting, as a supplement to listening at a certain stage in helping relationships, in rule setting, and in individual problem solving.

  This is a most important skill. As George Prince says, “When you fail to use your creative problem-solving talent, you strike at the quality of your own life.”20

  * In one-to-one problem-solving, it has been my experience that both individuals are usually pleased with their mutually arrived-at solution. Sometimes in groups (and occasionally when only two people are involved) the mutually arrived-at solution “may not reflect the exact wishes of each member.” You may be asking, “How is this different from compromise?” Compromise is achieved by “mutual concessions.” Consensus is a process that arrives at “group solidarity”—a “general agreement.” There is a fine but important line between compromise and consensus that deserves longer treatment than is possible in this chapter. One of the major differences between the two is emotional: People usually like a consensus better than a compromise. Also, there is frequently a relational difference. The process of consensus tends to create closer relationships than does compromise.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Three Essentials

  for Effective

  Communication

  Guard your inner spirit more than any treasure, for it is the source of life.1

  —An ancient sage

  IN COMMUNICATION,

  SKILLS ALONE

  ARE INSUFFICIENT

  Researchers and theorists in the behavioral sciences claim there are three key qualities that foster improved communication: genuineness, nonpossessive love, and empathy.

  Genuineness means being honest and open about one’s feelings, needs, and ideas. It is a stubborn refusal to let one’s real self “travel incognito.”

  Nonpossessive love involves accepting, respecting, and supporting another person in a nonpaternalistic and freeing way.

  Empathy refers to the ability to really see and hear another person and understand him from his perspective.

  In the late 1950s, psychologist Carl Rogers hypothesized that these three qualities are essential to constructive communication.2 Since then, over one hundred research studies have been conducted which support Rogers’s theory. Empirical data show that high levels of these key attitudes in therapists lead to constructive relationships with clients. Low levels are associated with harmful therapist-client interactions. Other data show that teachers who embody these qualities foster greater student achievement than teachers who are deficient in them. A student with these qualities is likely to improve his roommate’s grade-point average substantially.

  Physicians and nurses can facilitate a patient’s return to health through the expression of these characteristics as well as by their surgical and pharmaceutical techniques. Managers with these attitudes elicit greater motivation and less resistance from their employees. Salespersons with these qualities tend to have customers who are more satisfied, and this is reflected positively in sales volume. Genuineness, nonpossessive love, and empathy create fulfilling marriages and constructive parent-child relationships.

  Communication flows out of basic attitudes as well as through specific methods and techniques. Communication techniques are useful only insofar as they facilitate the expression of essential human qualities. The person who has mastered the skills of communication but lacks genuineness, love, and empathy will find his expertise irrelevant or even harmful. Important as they are, the techniques of communication by themselves are unable to forge satisfactory relationships.

  GENUINENESS

  Genuineness means being what one really is without front or façade. The authentic person experiences his feelings and is able to express those feelings when appropriate. A genuine person can spontaneously be himself with another so they know him as he truly is. “What you see is what you get.”

  By contrast, that inauthentic person conceals his real thoughts, feelings, values, and motives. His defensiveness and concealment before others unfortunately block his own self-awareness. Soon, that which is most authentic and spontaneous in him is buried so deep that not even he can recognize it.

  Genuineness is essential to all vital relationships. To the degree that I lack authenticity, I am unable to relate significantly to any other person. I must dare to be me to be able to relate to you.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a short story about a man who would not be himself with others. The man vanished into thin air whenever the people around him left the room. His whole identity was dissipated by his efforts to be the kind of person he thought others wanted him to be. No core self was left when the “audience” was gone.

  No one can be fully self-revealing. Everyone pretends to be something other than he really is—at least part of the time. Indeed, the word personality comes from the Latin persona—an actor’s mask. The genuine person knows it is impossible to be completely self-revealing, but is committed to a responsible honesty and openness with others.

  Genuineness has three ingredients: self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-expression.

  Self-Awareness

  The noted nineteenth-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast once attended a party with a group of friends. Someone asked him to draw a caricature of everyone present. This he did with a few skilled strokes of his pencil. The sketches were passed around for the guests to identify. Everyone recognized the other persons, but hardly anyone recognized the caricature of himself.

  Though Freud and others have demonstrated that it is not easy to know oneself, it is clearly possible to grow in that ability. Many techniques have been devised to foster self-understanding.3

  To increase one’s self-awareness, however, it is not necessary to read books, attend workshops, or employ an Eastern spiritual discipline. Each person has more understanding of himself than he is now using. It is common to tune out the messages from our inner self or to ignore them if and when they have made themselves heard. For example, a person may feel lonely and then try to distract himself from this unpleasant awareness by turning on the TV set. Another person may feel insignificant and become a “work-aholic” to drive that awareness from consciousness. One of the quickest ways of following the Socratic injunction “Know thyself is to refuse to tune out or ignore the awareness about self that is at least dimly perceived by the conscious mind.

  Self-Acceptance

  People ignore their inner promptings primarily because they do not accept the full range of their feelings and thoughts. Many people are ashamed of their anger or their sexual impulses and fantasies. Though these are part of every normal life, many people have been at least partially programmed to think these dimensions of themselves are “bad” or “sinful.” Sometimes we compare ourselves with the façade others present us, intimidate ourselves, and becom
e less self-accepting.

  Many types of experience can lead to increased self-acceptance. Encounter groups under effective leadership, psychotherapy with a genuine, insightful, and understanding therapist, friendships with accepting people, religious conversion, and many other life experiences help build self-acceptance.

  Often, improved acceptance of oneself is derived from training in communication skills. Many participants in our workshops say that the most important result of the training for them is that they are more comfortable with all of their feelings and that they like themselves better after having taken the course than they did before. The ability to communicate effectively seems to effect an increase of self-esteem in many persons.

  Self-Expression

  Self-expression is the third ingredient of genuineness. The self-expressive person is aware of his innermost thoughts and feelings, accepts them, and, when appropriate, shares them responsibly. Even in circumstances of great anxiety, he can reveal what he feels at the moment in a frank and disarming way. David Duncombe, whose writing has significantly influenced the discussion in this section, says the authentic person’s openness touches every area of his life.4

  When bereaved or worried or embarrassed, the real person is able to disclose much of what he feels. When his actions violate his own expectations or those of others, he can admit his shortcomings. He can also give unselfconscious expression to his joy and speak freely about his successes.

  When the genuine person is angry, he expresses it (as discretion permits) in a way that has maximum likelihood of removing the frustration, clearing the air, and restoring and improving his relationships. He may also responsibly express his affection without apology or excuse.

  Every human being has conflicting feelings. The authentic person can openly express the degree to which his friendships, marriage, and work provide both satisfaction and frustration. When he behaves in a way that falls below his own expectations, the genuine person can express his real sorrow but can also speak of the joy he may also have experienced.

  In the preceding paragraphs, several qualifying words and phrases were used. The authentic person can disclose his feelings, and be truly himself when it is appropriate. Being authentic does not mean unreservedly associating aloud to every person one meets about every reaction one experiences. It is simply not appropriate to be totally open about all of one’s feelings with every person at all times and places.

  While the authentic person does not express every feeling he has, neither does he present himself in a phony manner. He does not erect a façade that will misrepresent him. Those feelings which he persistently experiences will be expressed responsibly.

  Genuineness does not stand alone. Love and understanding create the climate that nourishes genuineness, and these qualities enable authentic communication to be a beautiful rather than a brutal thing. One of the most delightful descriptions of the way genuineness develops is found in a children’s story, The Velveteen Rabbit:

  “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

  “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse…. “When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real. It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time…. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”5

  NONPOSSESSIVE LOVE

  Nonpossessive love is the second key quality that can foster meaningful communication. Many terms have been used to describe the quality that I am calling “nonpossessive love.” Some of the most commonly used labels—“respect,” “acceptance,” “positive regard”—convey only a portion of the meaning I want to communicate. Even though love has such a wide range of usage that the word has been rendered almost meaningless in modern English, there are enough desirable, personal, and historical overtones to the word love to justify using it.

  Carl Rogers says of this general characteristic that it “means a kind of love for the person as he is, providing we understand the word love as the equivalent of the theologian’s term ‘agape’ and not in its usual romantic and possessive meanings.”6 Another noted psychotherapist, Karl Menninger, speaks of this quality as a person’s “patience, his fairness, his consistency, his rationality, his kindliness, in short—his real love” for the other person.7

  The ancient Greeks distinguished between three kinds of love. One, Philia, stands for friendship. It is the love of a David and a Jonathan in the Bible. It is the kind of relationship celebrated in Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Many ancients thought of philia as the happiest and most fully human of all loves.8

  Eros is affectionate love. It includes the drive of love to create and procreate but is far more inclusive than sexual love alone. It is the love of Romeo and Juliet, or of Tony and Marie in West Side Story (a modern version of Shakespeare’s love story).

  Agape (pronounced ah-GAH-pay) is concern for the well-being of other people. As Waldo Beach and H. Richard Niebuhr note, this love is “not an emotional sentiment of liking, nor romantic attraction, seeking love in return, nor yet an intellectual attitude,” but “the will of the self in devotion to the neighbor.”9

  The most rewarding relationships have more than one of these components in them. The love of a man for a woman, which may begin as eros, is enriched by philia and deepened and stabilized by the commitment of agape. The dedication of this book refers to a relationship in which all three of these ingredients are present.

  Loving Is Not Necessarily Liking

  One of the basic issues that at one time or another confronts virtually everybody is this: How do I love somebody that I think I should love but whom I don’t even like? Teachers often believe they should care for every child in their classes, but of course there are always some they dislike. Some managers think they should like every person reporting to them, but, alas, they invariably find that they dislike some of their employees. Parents often believe they should love their children equally, but when they are aware of their feelings, they may note a greater fondness for one child than another. There may even be stages in a child’s development when the parent simply does not like his own child. Frequently people do not like the people they believe they are supposed to love. This is a major problem for both the theory and practice of effective interpersonal communication.

  The group of scholars who have wrestled most seriously with the theoretical aspects of this problem are theologians of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Because their ethic calls for love of neighbor and because they typically have found it difficult to even like some of the people they were commanded to love, many theologians addressed this issue rigorously. Their insights on this topic are relevant to the relational problems all of us face, whatever our religious convictions (or lack of them).

  The theologians overwhelmingly believe that commanded (or ought-to) love has a largely nonemotional meaning. Millar Burrows in his Outline of Biblical Theology asserts that what is demanded “is not an emotion but an attitude of the will…. to love one’s neighbor is not to feel affection for him but to wish and seek his good.”10 The Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber put it this way: “The act of relation is not an emotion or a feeling…. Feelings accompany love, but they do not constitute it…. Hence love is not the enjoyment of a wonderful emotion … but the responsibility of an I for a Thou.”11

  In his Basic Christian Ethics, Paul Ramsey gives the best explanation I have ever read of what nonemotional, willed love is like. Dr. Ramsey compares “willed love” for others with the tendency in humans to seek their own good:

  How exactly do you love yourself? Answer this question and you will know how a [person] should love his neighbor. You naturally love yourself for your ow
n sake. You wish your own good, and you do so even when you may have a certain distaste for the kind of person you are. Liking yourself or thinking yourself very nice, or not, has fundamentally nothing to do with the matter. After a failure of some sort, the will-to-live soon returns and you … lay hold expectantly on another possibility of attaining some good for yourself….

  [Agape] means such love for self inverted. Therefore, it has nothing to do with feelings, emotions, taste, preference, temperament, or any of the qualities in other people which arouse feelings of revulsion or attraction, negative or positive preferences in us…. [Love] depends on the direction of the will, the orientation of intention in an act, not on stirring emotion. The commandment requires [a person] to aim at his neighbor’s good just as unswervingly as man by nature wishes his own.12

  Willed love, then, should not be confused with liking another person. To suppose I can like everyone I meet leads to phoniness and guilt. Affection can often be nurtured, but it cannot be turned on or off like a faucet. I’m so glad to be rid of the idea that I am supposed to like everybody! There are people I don’t like. Their behaviors are disagreeable to me. Our personal chemistries do not seem compatible. There is no reason to force myself to be fond of people I do not like. But I can will to do good and not evil to them. I can will to seek the highest good for them. Within the meaning of this definition, I can love even those people whom I do not like.

  It is often not the most lovable individual who stands most in need of love, but the least lovable. Within any given individual’s life, the moments when he seems most impossible are the times he stands most in need of love. Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun makes this point. A grown son, Walter, has squandered the family’s money, with the result that they must live in a less desirable environment than they had planned to. He has trampled on the family pride. His sister is furious with him. It seems like there is nothing in him left to love, and she feels only contempt for him. His mother is also hurt and disappointed, but she knows that love can persist when liking has all but disappeared. At this moment of crisis, she reminds the family of the essence of agape when she says: