Seven Actions for Effective Communication

Seven Actions for Effective Communication

Action1. Listen more carefully and responsively. Listen first and acknowledge what
you hear, even if you don’t agree with it, before expressing your experience or point of
view. In order to get more of your conversation partner’s attention in tense situations,
pay attention first; listen and give a brief restatement of what you have heard (especially
feelings) before you express your own needs or position. The kind of listening
recommended here separates acknowledging from approving or agreeing.
Acknowledging another person’s thoughts and feelings does not have to mean that
you approve of or agree with that person’s actions or way of experiencing, or that
you will do whatever someone asks.

Action2. Explain your conversational intent and invite consent. You can help your
conversation partners cooperate with you and reduce possible misunderstandings by
starting important conversations with a stated invitation to join you in the specific kind
of conversation you want to have. The more the conversation is going to mean to you,
the more important it is for your conversation partner to understand the big picture.
Most conversations express one or another of about thirty basic intentions, which imply
different kinds of cooperation from your conversation partners. They can play their role
in specific conversations much better if you clarify for yourself, and then identify for
them, the role you are asking for, rather than leaving them to guess what you want.
When you need to have a long, complex, or emotion-laden conversation with someone,
it can make a GIANT difference if you briefly explain your conversational intention first
and then invite their consent. Many successful communicators begin special
conversations with a preface that goes something like: “I would like to talk with you for
a few minutes about [subject matter]. When would it be a good time?” The exercise
for this step will encourage you to expand your list of possible conversations and to
practice starting a wide variety of them.


Action3. Express yourself more clearly and completely. Slow down and give your
listeners more information about what you are experiencing by using a wide range of
“I-statements.” One way to help get more of your listener’s empathy is to express more
of the five basic dimensions of your experience: Here is an example using the five
main “I-messages” identified by various researchers over the past half century:
At anytime when one person sincerely listens to another, a very creative process starts on
in which the listener mentally reconstructs the speaker’s experience. The more facets or
dimensions of your experience you share with easy-to-grasp “I statements,” the easier it
will be for your conversation partner to reconstruct your experience accurately and
understand what you are feeling. This is equally worthwhile whether you are trying to solve
a problem with someone or trying to express appreciation for him/ her. Expressing yourself
this carefully might appear to take longer than your usual quick style of communication. But
if you include all the time it takes to unscramble everyday misunderstandings, and to work
through the feelings that usually accompany not being understood, expressing yourself
more completely can actually take a lot less time.

Action 4. Translate your (and other people’s) complaints and criticisms into specific
requests, and explain your requests. In order to get more cooperation from others, whenever
possible ask for what you want by using specific, action-oriented, positive language rather
than by using generalizations, “why’s,” “don’ts” or “somebody should’s.” Help your listeners
comply by explaining your requests with a “so that...”, “it would help me to... if you would...”
or “in order to... .” Also, when you are receiving criticism and complaints from others,
translate and restate the complaints as action requests. ....”).

Action 5. Ask questions more “open-endedly” and more creatively. “Open-endedly...”: In
order to coordinate our life and work with the lives and work of other people, we all need to
know more of what other people are feeling and thinking, wanting and planning. But our
usual “yes/ no” questions actually tend to shut people up rather than opening them up. In
order to encourage your conversation partners to share more of their thoughts and feelings,
ask “open-ended” rather than “yes/ no” questions. Open-ended questions allow for a wide
range of responses. For example, asking “How did you like that food/ movie/ speech/
doctor etc.?” will evoke a more detailed response than “Did you like it?” which could be
answered with a simple “yes” or “no”.

Action6. Express more appreciation. To build more satisfying relationships with the people
around you, express more appreciation, delight, affirmation, encouragement and gratitude.
Because life continually requires us to attend to problems and breakdowns, it gets very
easy to see in life only what is broken and needs fixing. But satisfying relationships (and a
happy life) require us to notice and respond to what is delightful, excellent, and enjoyable,
to work well done, to food well cooked, etc. It is appreciation that makes a relationship
strong enough to accommodate differences and disagreements. Thinkers and researchers
in several different fields have reached similar conclusions about this: healthy relationships
need a core of mutual appreciation.

Action7. Make better communication an important part of your everyday life. In order to
have your new communication skills available in a wide variety of situations, you will need
to practice them in as wide a variety of situations as possible, until, like driving or bicycling,
they become “second nature.” The seventh action is to practice your evolving communication skills in everyday life, solving problems together, giving emotional support
to the important people in your life, and enjoying how you are becoming a positive influence
in your world. This action includes learning to see each conversation as an opportunity to
grow in skill and awareness, each encounter as an opportunity to express more
appreciation, each argument as an opportunity to translate your complaints into requests,
and so on.

One deeper level of this seventh step concerns learning to separate yourself from the
current culture of hatred, animosity and violence, and learning how to create little islands of cooperation and mutuality.