enlightened communication

Good morning, girls, boys, adults and others who don't fit any of these categories.  Thank you for inviting me along to day to talk about enlightened communication.  My credentials for speaking on this topic are the following:  I trained and worked as a dietitian, then I moved into a health promotion job.  And finally, when I became as grown up as was likely to be possible, I turned to writing and editing.  What do all those things have in common?  Yes, that's right: the ability to communicate - by mouth, on paper and on the computer.

Much is understood about the communication skills used in counselling, therapy, and which can be an ideal approach for anyone working with anyone, helping anyone, and essentially, for getting on well with people and enabling them to be the best they can be.  But what are the additional challenges when communicating with someone we are close to, when the emotional stakes are significantly higher?  The ability to listen actively, to reflect back what you hear, to affirm, clarify and summarise can evaporate more quickly than an ice cream on a hotplate, when someone you love is saying something you simply don't want to hear.... 

I'll now switch out of lecturing mode and move back into the ranks of punter: someone who has had her communication style criticised - yes, CRITICISED, by a beloved.

This story, this journey, began when we were living in France.  My partner, P. became aware of the huge amount of energy sometimes expended when talking to me, how exhausting it could be. 

He conceptualised it as stickiness i.e. using the energy you’d need to move through a sticky substance.  He made a connection between the available energy he had and the resistance I showed.  He explained this to me but it didn’t register enough for me to change the way I communicated.  He then came up with the idea of using cards to indicate the amount of resistance he was receiving from me: green for a little, yellow for a lot and black for extreme resistance.  When I showed resistance, he would hold up the appropriate card.

Now, if this is sounding like something you might have done at nursery school or primary one, when you were learning to read, this is far from the case.  These cards are powerful little demons, providing feedback about communication style problems,  conveying messages difficult to communicate, for example:  I feel undermined when you make a comment like that.

I prepared my own set of cards: the feedback I wanted to give.  For a while, we used these cards during difficult conversations.  Then, as so often happens, we forgot about them.  Several months ago, we retrieved them and started to use them again.  As in France, we were aware that others might benefit from this process.  At this point, we decided to conduct our own research.  To kick off, we spent some time 'unpacking' what it was that these little bits of paper were actually doing.

What we came up with is that personal energy is finite. Resistance drains energy.  Cards minimise negative energy:  it's much easier, less tiring,  to hold up a card with the statement you wish to make, than to articulate it. More specifically there are benefits for both the person displaying the card and the person reading it. We identified the following:

     Benefits for the person displaying the card include:
  
                    The energy is contained in the card, therefore saving the speaker's energy. There is no energy flow when the card is used.  Neuromuscular responses are required to say something as simple as: please don't interrupt me.

  

                        The written word has more of an impact on the listener.

                              As the cards are pre-prepared, there messages contain a neutrality: the
                          comments are legitimate in a way they wouldn’t be if spoken. 

                              They’re not capable of causing digression.

  

         Benefits for the person reading the card include:

                                  The communiqué is made politely therefore causes less offence.

                                  Ambiguity is avoided.

                                 The brain is sent to a different department: a part that processes visual 
communication.  It switches off the part that is engaged in shouting. 

                                The tape is paused while the person holds up the card.  

                                Possibly something that's read rather than heard helps to decrease negative emotion: could also be because it’s coming from a neutral medium.  It’s one dimensional: no body language.  This could work either way: if exasperation/weariness is expressed verbally, it could have more impact on the listener.

                               You don't have to respond verbally

                 
                 You are less likely to want to argue because the message has come from a card.  Therefore you, too, are saved energy.

            Things are less likely to escalate.  The introduction of a card causes a break in the 'piling up' process which can take place in a heated conversation.  It can be likened to introducing a firebreak in a forest fire.  It is something to do with containment.



Understanding the process better, now, I then ran a workshop and enlisted some volunteers to try this at home with their significant other.  I explained that they might already be aware of communication irritations, for example, non-attention, put-downs.  If they didn't, I suggested they had a conversation with their partner about the issues - what bugged them about each other's conversational style.  If they didn't know what these were, they could try analysing a conversation - which might involve stopping mid-conversation/argument to work out what was going on.

I gave them a folder with several sheets of different coloured cardboard, a bundle of plastic credit card holders in which to protect their messages, and a list of possible statements.  I suggested that they confine themselves to six statements, the rationale being that more might become unmanageable.  I also pointed out that their initial statements might require to be changed/finely tuned, as time went on.  I also explained that problems with conversations were highly individual, and that the language in the messages wasn't relevant as long as it was polite.  It could also be helpful to include a positive message.

We agreed to meet up in several months' time to feed back, and that I might conduct some recorded interviews, if there was information that participants didn't feel comfortable about sharing in the group.  It was suggested that in the interim, they might want to talk to me about a problem they are having, which I was happy with.  It was also suggested that some form of shared electronic communication be set up.  I have since set up a shared folder where participants could make comments: a bit like a communal recording of the experience.

Okay, that's enough from me.  Are there any questions?  Spoken or on cards?


Jane