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More premises about effective
communication...
Premise 11)Your communication skills and effectiveness
can be improved
over time - any time. Like any skill, this
takes willingness to learn and change + motivation + patience + practice.
"Improving your communication effectiveness"
really means committing to get
your current
primary needs met more often and helping others do the same.
This promote a more productive, satisfying life - specially if you give
young people the priceless gift of effective communication skills!
Premise 12)Getting the maximum benefits from acting on these communication premises re-quires that your
true Self
(capital "S") consistently
guide
your other
personality subselves. Project 1
in this nonprofit site
and its related
guidebook provide perspective,
practical options,
and resources for achieving that over time. Do you know
who controls your life now?
Premise 13)Effective communication requires
shared knowledge,
awarenesses, and
a commit-ted, cooperative attitude and effort among all people involved - so it
is notalways
possible at the mo-ment. This is specially true if one or more
people are ruled by a false self. When
this is true...
Pause and reflect. do these communication premises seem realistic and
credible? Do you think you and other adults and kids can
communicate well (fill their primary needs) in important situations without applying
these basics? How many average adults do you think could name and
describe even five of these 13 premises? The good news is - anyone (like
you) can
learn to apply them at any time!
Now let's
shift from conceptual to practical, and put these basics to work...
Seven Communication Skills
Recall this premise: all animals (including humans) instinctively
communicate to reduce current dis-comforts - i.e. to fill current
needs. Can you name a more essential learned skill?
People can use the basic concepts above and learn to use seven related skills to get
their and others' needs met more often, in mutually-satisfying ways.
The
skills are...
Awareness - paying nonjudgmental attention to specific things going on...
inside us - i.e. our thoughts,
feelings, and our subselves' dynamic needs and behaviors;
between us partners (verbal and
nonverbal dynamics), and...
around us (our environment);
Making this skill automatic (a habit) is
essential for the other
six skills to be effective.
Clear thinking - in important communications, intentionally...
avoiding vague pronouns
and phrases (e.g. it, that, them, this issue, work through, etc),
staying focused, and...
developing and using a clear,
descriptive
vocabulary;
Empathic (or
reflective, or active)
listening - hearing with your heart. Fluency in this vital skill re-quires awareness and clear
thinking;;
Digging down below surface needs to identify each partners' current
primary needs. This requires the three prior skills;
Assertion of our perceptions, opinions, and needs. This requires the four prior skills
+ self and mu-tual respects + a clear awareness and acceptance of our
personal rights. This skill is respectful-ly...
identifying andrequesting or demanding what we need, and...
calmly handling expected "resistances" with empathic listening and then re-asserting,
until we get credible compliance or shift to problem-solving.
Metatalk: talking together
about how we communicateusing awareness and a special set of
terms- as mutually-respectful teammates
with a common goal, vs. adversaries; and...
Problem-solving or
conflict resolution, which is far more productive
(need-fulfilling) than deba-ting,
explaining, arguing,interrogating, lecturing, preaching,
hinting, demanding, analyzing, figh-ting, and withdraw-ing.
Have you ever seen these vital skills summarized before?
Has anyone ever taught you why, how, and when to use each skill effectively?
Could you describe each skill now to an average pre-teen? Could the other
important adults in your family and life do that, starting with your
childhood caregivers?
Are you modeling and teaching these basics and skills to the
young people in your life now? Doing so is a priceless
life-long gift to them and their descendents
When Do I Use Each Skill?
Learn to use them in these specific social
situations:
Use awareness and clear thinkingin allrelationship
situations and important decisions. Focus on your respective communication and other
primary needs, five messages, three channels, current percei-ved meanings
[specially R(espect)-messages
and
E(motion)-levels, and the
processes
and
outcomes in and between you
partners.
Awarenesses create the input to metatalk.
Use mutually-respectful empathic
listeningwhen your partner is currently distracted by intense emotions
and needs and can't hear you.Effectiveempathic listening brings a partner's
intense
emotions down "below their ears," which restores their hearing
and comprehending. This skill requires
empathy, genuine (vs. pseudo) mutual respect, patience, and awareness skill.
Listening is not
(necessarily) agree-ing!
Use respectful assertion if you need to talk more than your
partner does - specially if your emo-tions are intense. Use assertion when their ears are open (e.g. via empathic listening). Effective
assertion requires genuine mutual respect, and fluency in the three communication skills above.
Alternatives to as-sertion are aggression(focusing on your own needs only
(R-message = "I'm 1-up") and submission(dis-counting or ignoring your own needs
(R-message - "I'm 1-down").
Use
metatalk, digging down,
and problem solving any time you and a partner have
conflicting
communication
and
other needs. involves...
clearly identifying what you eachreally
need now,
cooperatively
brainstorming what options exist to fill your respective primary needs;
and then...
staying focused on seeking a compromise that fits well
enough for both
of you.
Usually, problem-solving
fills all participants needs well enough only if
each person is guided
by their true Selves, wants
to maintain a two-person
awareness bubble, and
consistently receives genu-ine mutual-respect (=/=) R-messages!
Reflect: how likely is it that the adults and kids who are most important to
you could name and describe these skills, and when to use each of them?
What if they could?
Options
Commit to raising your communication
awareness and effectiveness. Imagine doubling your ability to get your
social needs met comfortably, and people coming to view you as a master communi-cator and
model;
Periodically review this communication
quiz, and ask selected others to use
and discuss it.
Study and try out these options (and self-study
course) on improving
communication with adults and
kids.
Study these examples of
lose-lose and win-win
communication between partners, and compare them to your habits.
Choose options on analyzing and
resolving most relationship
problems, and make them habits;
Review these Q&A
items about effective communication, and these tips and useful
phrases;
Choose other Project-2
articles and continue learning and experimenting. For example, follow the
links to read more about each of the seven skills, and/or take this
inventory of your communication strengths.
Consider finding a partner who shares your
interest in learning and applying these skills, and enjoy helping each
other do so.
Keep a communication notebook, journal, or
blog about your experiences and successes.
Teach other people about what they can
achieve with these powerful ideas - specially kids!
Recap
Effective communication is the most
powerful skill people like you can learn to fill their primary needs.
Regardless of education and life
maturity, typical
adults - specially many parents - can't com-municate effectively because
they're
wounded and unaware.
From over 40 years' study and experience, this
Project-2 article
introduces a series on effective communication
basics and resources. It proposes (a) a two-level
definition of effective communication,
13 premises about it, and (c) summarizes
seven powerful, learnable
communication skills:
My
unique, practical guidebook for
learning effective communications is Satis-factions
-
7 relationship skills you need to know. (Xlibris.com, 2002).
It integrates the key articles and resources in this site."Satisfactions" means "Our needs are filled."
Also widen
your perspective with these selected books
on aspects of effective communication. In 45 years' study, I've never
found any book that focuses on the basic premises and seven
skills in this article - have you?
What would your life be like if you could fill your daily and
special needs (solve your problems) twice as often as you do now
- and feel good about how you do that? What would it be like if
your de-scendents were able to do that?
+ + +
Pause, breathe, and reflect - why did you read this article? Did you get
what you needed? If not, what do you need? Who's
answering
these questions - your
true Self,
or
someone else?
The Web address of this
two-page article is
http://sfhelp.org/02/intro.htm
Seven Communication 
When Do I Use Each Skill?