Lesson 2 of 7 - grow effective communication skills

Metatalk Skill

Talk Cooperatively 
About How You're Communicating

 By Peter K. Gerlach, MSW
member NSRC Experts Council

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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/cx/skills/metatalk.htm

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        This is one of a series of articles in Lesson 2 - learn communication basics and seven powerful skills to get more daily needs met more often. Progress with this Lesson depends on simultaneous progress on Lesson 1 - empower your resident true Self to guide your personality in calm and conflictual times.

        The unique guidebook Satisfactions (Xlibris.com, 2nd ed., 2010) integrates the key Lesson-1 and Lesson-2 Web articles and resources in this nonprofit Web site, and provides many practical resources. 

        This YouTube clip previews key points in what you'll find in this article:

      Metatalk Communication Skill

           "Meta-writing" is writing about writing. "Meta-singing" is singing about singing. "Metatalk" is talking about communicating - i.e. cooperative discussion between partners about their shared communication process. Use this skill to verbally describe your communication awareness so you can affirm what works, and improve what doesn't.

            Rather than talking about "our fight last night," metatalk focuses on "how we're talking now about our fight last night." Mutually-respectful metatalk is an essential skill for identifying and resolving communication problems. Fluency with this skill can also help you discover and reduce significant psychological wounds (Lesson 1).

           Growing your metatalk skill involves...

    • learning some or all of the communication concepts and terms below, and...

    • using the terms strategically to help identify, discuss, and fix internal and social communication blocks.

Metatalk Concepts and Terms

  • Effective communication

  • Five core communication needs and need conflicts

  • E(motion)-levels (above or below the ears)

  • Face and body (nonverbal) language or messages

  • R(espect)-messages (1-up, 1-down, or  "=/=")

  • Empathic listening and alternatives, including moralizing, lecturing, blaming, hinting, questioning, preaching, monologing, defocusing, changing the subject, whining, intellectualizing, explaining, withdrawing, numbing, pro-claiming, threatening, demanding,...   

  • Listening reflections and introjections

  • Interruptions (vs. introjections)

  • Trust levels (low > high)

  • Communication sequences (chains of be-haviors and reactions)

  • Communication patterns (repeated sequences over time)

  • Meaning levels (e.g. conscious and unconscious, overt or implied, and individual and group)

  • Voice dynamics (tone, pitch, accent, rhythm, pace, inflection, volume, affect, ...)

  • Flooding (a partner giving too many ideas, words, and messages at once)

  • Concreteness and clarity vs. vagueness, ambiguity, and generalizing

  • Inner and outer distractions

  • Awareness "bubbles"

  • Communication outcomes

  • Communication styles - e.g. placating, blaming, intellectual, or unfocused...

  • Communication focuses - person/s, topics, timeframe, and inner and mutual processes

  • Communication-process mapping

  • "Pressure of speech" - excessively loud, fast, intense speaking and gesturing with high E-level and a solo awareness bubble.

  • Thinking / feeling balance in a person, communication sequence, or relationship

  • Pleading (1-down attitude) vs. requesting (mutual respect) vs. demanding (1-up)

  • Persecutor - Victim - Rescuer relationship triangles


  • five concurrent communication messages

  • seven communication skills

  • Individual and shared emotions and feelings

  • Communication pacing (speed of thinking and speaking)

  • Positive or negative framing of communication content

  • Three communication channels

  • Mind-racing or churning

  • Eye-contact focus and patterns

  • Mind reading (assuming)

  • "Self talk" ("thinking") - inner-family dialogs, conflicts, sequences, and patterns

  • Decoding - computing meanings from someone's perceived behavior

  • Implied and double (mixed) messages (signs of inner conflict)

  • Word and body-language associations and implications

  • Empathy levels (low > high)

  • Problem level - level 1 (surface) to level 2 (intermediate) to levels 3 or 4 (primary)

  • Surface and primary needs

  • Hearing and hearing checks

  • Outcome expectations - (will I or we communicate effectively here?)

  • Values conflicts vs. concrete conflicts

  • Excessive verbal repetitions

  • Flat (emotionless, "low affect") speech; may go with intellectualizing

  • Meta-comments - factual observations about your communication process

  • Mental images and senses

  • Using metaphors, parables, and stories to convey complex meanings

  • Using logic (deductive cause-effect thinking) vs. "organic" thinking

  • Black-white thinking - reducing complex topics or situations to only two alternatives, and missing key options

  • Emotional "tone" - e.g. serious / "heavy" > playful / humorous / "light"

  • submission > assertion > aggression

  • process awareness (low > high)

  • internal and environmental distractions

        Effective thinking and communication are learned arts vs. a science because they're shaped by emotions and unconscious impulses, thoughts, and associations as well as logic. They are the main skills we depend on to get our personal and social needs met throughout our lives - yet most people never study them! Have you?

        Just as skilled tradespeople develop their own terms, we communication artists need to do the same (above). Most of us receive no training in these communication factors, though we need to use them every day. The good news: you can learn to use these factors any time!

       Reality check: could you teach someone clearly (say a beloved child in your life...) what each of these ~50 concepts means now? Could your family adults do that? Are your kids learning these well enough? What if you or they don't?

        Motivator: the high majority of my ~ 1,000 therapy clients and students have been unaware of most of these communication terms, so they had consistent trouble resolving personal and social conflicts. Unawareness is often a major contributor to relationship stress and ineffective childcare.

        Learning these concepts and using them with a mutual respect attitude can greatly improve your communication productivity and effectiveness if your true Self steadily guides your other busy subselves. 

        Notice your self talk now...

  What Does Metatalk Sound Like?
       Recall: metatalk is talking cooperatively about your communication process. Each of us develops our own metatalk style and vocabulary, but the theme remains constant: clear, objective descriptions of our communication observations.

       Imagine that you’re talking with someone who repeatedly interrupts you. You notice this because  you've learned to maintain a two-person awareness bubble in important discussions. You note that you're feeling disrespected, hurt, unheard, and increasingly irritated and frustrated. You then consciously decide to make a firm, respectful meta-comment, like …

    "Chris, I notice that pretty often you start to talk before I'm finished. I'm not feeling heard by you, and I'm starting to get irritated and frustrated."

You could stop there, or you might add...

    "Were you aware of doing that?"; or … "I'd like you to let me finish saying my thoughts." The latter is an assertion.

       Another scenario: your communication partner laughs, and says: "I just had the most unbelievable fight with my sister. It was awful!" You feel confused, and say (a metacomment):

    "I just got a double message from you, Burt, and I'm confused. Your words were: 'the fight was awful', but you chuckled and smiled."

       Notice how this message would change if your voice tone was blameful [implied R(espect)-message: "I’m 1-up"] or apologetic (implied R-message: "I’m 1-down"). Teamed with focused process-awareness, metatalking skill is vital, because it’s the input to identifying (then solving) interpersonal communication problems.

       Awareness + empathy + metatalk can help you give empowering feedback to a communication partner.

 Reality Check

  • Can you clearly define (a) effective communication; (b) awareness skill, and (c) metatalk?

  • See how many of the communication concepts above you can clearly describe to another person. The more of them partners understand, the better able you'll be to spot and resolve communication blocks and get more needs met.

  • Once you understand these concepts, practice becoming nonjudgmentally aware of them among (a) your busy subselves and (b) the adults and kids in your life.

    Recap 

        This article is one of a series introducing communication basics and seven powerful, learnable skills. The article introduces the skill of metatalk - talking clearly and cooperatively with a partner about your process-awareness observations - i.e. about how you communicate.

        This skill requires (a) your Self to guide your personality, (b) a steady two-person awareness bubble,  (c) a genuine mutual-respect attitude, and (d) learning to use a special vocabulary of common communication dynamics (above).

        Use these requisites and the related six skills to identify significant communication problems and reduce them together as teammates, not opponents!

Next - see these examples of metatalk in action

+ + +

        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 this question - your true Self or someone else?

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Updated April 25, 2012