(This is a two part article on 10 Steps to Highly Effective Communication in Relationship - part two will appear next month) In his 1981 book, Crisis Counseling, Dr. Eugene Kennedy says that “if one wished to draw a bead on the target of marital dysfunction - communication would be the bulls-eye!” I've got a couple thoughts on how to make our relational communication highly effective. I'll talk about 10 steps - 5 this month and 5 next month.
Step 1: Ask for an appointment. Research has shown that when people feel threatened they stop listening and defend. Don't begin a conversation with “We've got to talk” or “I want a word with you”.
Step 2: Confine the discussion to one topic. How many times have your difficult or serious discussions become hash because the listener drags in something they're unhappy about and you counter with something else you're unhappy about and pretty soon no one can remember where the conversation started.
Step 3: Tell your listener what you'd like them to do. If we want something from our listener then we ought to let them know what it is…rather than hoping they'll guess their role correctly. It's not out of line to say: “I just need to vent and it would help me a lot if you would just listen - you don't have to solve this for me” or “I have a problem and I'm not sure what to do. Please listen to the whole problem then let me know what you think”.
Step 4: Begin with an I-Message. I-Messages are tools that help us communicate feelings about behavior without making the listener feel blamed. I-Messages are constructed in this fashion: “When you…”(describe a behavior), “I feel….”(insert a feeling word), “Because…”(tell them why), “And what I'd like you to do is…”(offer a suggestion). “When you interrupt me with your solutions I feel frustrated because I don't think you're hearing me. And what I'd like you to do is wait till I'm done before commenting”.
Step 5: Give your information in small chunks. Our huge brains are only capable of holding so many ideas at one time before we begin to replace the ideas with new ones. I've heard a figure of 5 (plus or minus 2) as the number of ideas we can hold. When we reach our limit we intentionally forget an old idea to make room for a new idea. If we give too much information at one time the listener can't hold it all so it's better to give three short paragraphs than one large one.