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The Seven Chal lenges Co mmunicat ion Sk i l l s Workbook & Reader Communicat ion-Ski l l s .NET

Communication Skills Introduction and Overview HOW THIS WORKBOOK CAME TO BE, MY QUEST FOR THE SEVEN CHALLENGES,

AND HOW WE BENEFIT FROM A MORE COOPERATIVE STYLE OF LISTENING AND TALKING

Searching for what is most important. This

workbook proposes seven ways to guide your

conversations in directions that are more

satisfying for both you and your conversation

partners. I have selected these suggestions from

the work of a wide range of communication

teachers, therapists and researchers in many fields.

While these seven skills are not all a person needs

to know about talking, listening and resolving

conflicts, I believe they are a large and worthwhile chunk of it, and a great place to begin.

The interpersonal communication field suffers

from a kind of “embarrassment of riches.” There

is so much good advice out there that I doubt than

any one human being could ever follow it all. To

cite just one example of many, in the early 1990s

communication coach Kare Anderson wrote a

delightful book1 about negotiation that included

one hundred specific ways to get more of what

you want. The problem is that no one I know can

carry on a conversation and juggle one hundred

pieces of advice in his or her mind at the same time.

So lurking behind all that good advice is the

issue of priorities: What is most important to

focus on? What kinds of actions will have the

most positive effects on people’s lives? This

workbook is my effort to answer those questions.

My goal is to summarize what many agree are the

most important principles of good interpersonal

communication, and to describe these principles in

ways that make them easier to remember, easier to

adopt and easier to weave together. Much of the

information in this workbook has been known for

decades, but that does not mean that everyone has

been able to benefit from it. This workbook is my contribution toward closing that gap.

1 Kare Anderson, Getting What You Want. New

York: Dutton. 1993.

How we benefit from learning and using a

more cooperative style. I have selected for this

workbook the seven most powerful, rewarding

and challenging steps I have discovered in my

own struggle to connect with people and heal the

divisions in my family. None of this came

naturally to me, as I come from a family that

includes people who did not talk to one another

for decades at a time. The effort is bringing me

some of each of the good results listed below (and

I am still learning). These are the kinds of

benefits that are waiting to be awakened by the

magic wand… of your study and practice.

Get more done, have more fun, which could

also be stated as better coordination of your life

activities with the life activities of the people who

are important to you. Living and working with

others are communication-intensive activities.

The better we understand what other people are

feeling and wanting, and the more clearly others

understand our goals and feelings, the easier it

will be to make sure that everyone is pulling in the

same direction.

More respect. Since there is a lot of mutual

imitation in everyday communication (I raise my

voice, you raise your voice, etc.), when we adopt a

more compassionate and respectful attitude

toward our conversation partners, we invite and influence them to do the same toward us.

More influence. When we practice the

combination of responsible honesty and

attentiveness recommended here, we are more

likely to engage other people and reach

agreements that everyone can live with, we are

more likely to get what we want, and for reasons we won’t regret later.2

More comfortable with conflict. Because each

person has different talents, there is much to be

2 Thanks to communication skills teacher

Dr. Marshall Rosenberg for this pithy saying.

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gained by people working together, and

accomplishing together what none could do alone.

But because each person also has different needs

and views, there will always be some conflict in

living and working with others. By understanding

more of what goes on in conversations, we can

become better team problem solvers and conflict

navigators. Learning to listen to others more

deeply can increase our confidence that we will be

able to engage in a dialogue of genuine give and

take, and be able to help generate problem solutions that meet more of everyone’s needs.

More peace of mind. Because every action we

take toward others reverberates for months (or

years) inside our own minds and bodies, adopting

a more peaceful and creative attitude in our

interaction with others can be a significant way of

lowering our own stress levels. Even in un-

pleasant situations, we can feel good about our own skillful responses.

More satisfying closeness with others. Learn-

ing to communicate better will get us involved

with exploring two big questions: “What’s going

on inside of me?” and “What’s going on inside of

you?” Modern life is so full of distractions and

entertainments that many people don’t know their

own hearts very well, nor the hearts of others

nearby. Exercises in listening can help us listen

more carefully and reassure our conversation

partners that we really do understand what they

are going through. Exercises in self-expression

can help us ask for what we want more clearly and calmly.

A healthier life. In his book, Love and

Survival,3 Dr. Dean Ornish cites study after study

that point to supportive relationships as a key

factor in helping people survive life-threatening

illnesses. To the degree that we use cooperative

communication skills to both give and receive

more emotional support, we will greatly enhance

our chances of living longer and healthier lives.

3 Dean Ornish, MD, Love and Survival. New York:

HarperCollins. 1998. Chap. 2.

Respecting the mountain we are about to

climb together: why learning to talk and listen

in new ways is challenging. I hope putting these

suggestions into practice will surprise you with

delightful and heartfelt conversations you never

imagined were possible, just as I was surprised.

And at the same time, I do not want to imply that

learning new communication skills is easy.

I wish the skills I describe in this workbook

could be presented as “Seven Easy Ways to

Communicate Better.” But in reality, the recom-

mendations that survived my sifting and ranking

demand a lot of effort. Out of respect for you, I

feel the need to tell you that making big, positive

changes in the way you communicate with others

will probably be one of the most satisfying and

most difficult tasks you will ever take on, akin to

climbing Mt. Everest. If I misled you into

assuming these changes were easy to make, you

would be vulnerable to becoming discouraged by

the first steep slope. Forewarned of the amount of

effort involved, you can plan for the long climb.

My deepest hope is that if you understand the

following four reasons why learning new

communication skills is challenging, that under-

standing will help you to be more patient and

more forgiving with yourself and others.

First of all, learning better communication

skills requires a lot of effort because cooperation

between people is a much more complex and

mentally demanding process than coercing,

threatening or just grabbing what you want. The

needs of two people (or many) are involved rather

than just the needs of one. And thinking about the

wants of two people (and how those wants might

The Seven Challenges Workbook -- Introduction -- Page Intro-3

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overlap) is a giant step beyond simply feeling

one’s own wants.4

The journey from fighting over the rubber

ducky to learning how to share it is the longest

journey a child will ever make, a journey that

leads far beyond childhood. Reaching this higher

level of skill and fulfillment in living and working

with others requires effort, conscious attention,

and practice with other people.

A second reason that learning more effective

and satisfying communication skills does not

happen automatically is that our way of

communicating with others is deeply woven into

our personalities, into the history of our hearts.

For example, if, when I was little, someone

slapped me across the face or yelled at me every

time I spoke up and expressed a want or opinion,

then I probably would have developed a very

sensible aversion to talking about what I was

thinking or feeling. It may be true that no one is

going to hit me now, but a lot of my brain cells

may not know that yet. So learning new ways of

communicating gets us involved in learning new

ways of feeling in and feeling about all our

relationships with people. We can become more

confident and less fearful, more skillful and less

clumsy, more understanding of others and less

threatened by them. Changes as significant as

these happen over months and years rather than in

a single weekend.

A third side of the communications mountain

concerns self-observation. In the course of living

our attention is generally pointed out toward other

people and the world around us. As we talk and

joke, comfort others and negotiate with them, we

are often lost in the flow of interaction.

Communicating more cooperatively involves

exerting a gentle influence to guide conversations

toward happier endings for all the participants.

But in order to guide or steer an unfolding

process, a person needs to be able to observe that

4 I am grateful to the books of developmental

psychologist Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self and In

Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life,

(both Harvard Univ. Press) for introducing me to the idea

that cooperation is more mentally demanding than

coercion. After that idea, nothing in human communi-

cation looked the same.

process. So communicating more cooperatively

and more satisfyingly requires that we learn how

to participate in our conversations and observe

them at the very same time! It takes a while to

grow into this participating and observing at the

same time. At first we look back on conversations

that we have had and try to understand what went

well and what went badly. Gradually we can learn

to bring that observing awareness into our

conversations.

A final reason (four is surely enough) that

learning new communication skills takes effort is

that we are surrounded by a flood of bad

examples. Every day movies and TV offer us a

continuing stream of vivid images of sarcasm,

fighting, cruelty, fear and mayhem. And as beer

and cigarette advertisers have proven beyond a

shadow of a doubt, you can get millions of people

to do something if you just show enough vivid

pictures of folks already doing it. So at some very

deep level we are being educated by the mass

media to fail in our relationships.5 For every

movie about people making peace with one

another, there seem to be a hundred movies about

people hacking each other to death with chainsaws

or literally kicking one another in the face, which

are not actions that will help you or me solve

problems at home or at the office. Learning to

relate to others generally involves following

examples, but our examples of interpersonal skill

and compassion are few and far between.

These are the reasons that have led me to see

learning new communication skills as a

demanding endeavor. My hope is that you will

look at improving your communication skills as a

long journey, like crossing a mountain range, so

that you will feel more like putting effort and

attention into the process, and thus will get more

out of it. Living a fully human life is surprisingly

similar to playing baseball or playing the violin.

Getting better at each requires continual practice.

You probably already accept this principle in

relation to many human activities. I hope this

workbook will encourage and support you in

5 For an extended examination of this issue, see

Sissela Bok, Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment.

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 1998.

Page Intro-4 -- The Seven Challenges Workbook -- Introduction

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applying it to your own talking, listening and

asking questions.

Seven ways of being the change you want to

see. Because conversations are a bringing

together of both persons’ contributions, when you

initiate a positive change in your way of talking

and listening, you can single-handedly begin to

change the quality of all your conversations. The

actions described in this work-book are seven

examples of “being the change you want to see” (a

saying I recently saw attributed to Mahatma

Gandhi, the great teacher of nonviolence).

While this may sound very idealistic and self-

sacrificing, you can also understand it as a

practical principle: model the behavior you want

to evoke from other people. The Seven

Challenges are also examples of another saying of

Gandhi’s: “the means are the ends.”

Communicating more awarely and com-

passionately can be satisfying ends in themselves,

both emotionally and spiritually. They also build happier families and more successful businesses.

A brief summary of each challenge is given

in the paragraphs that follow, along with some

of the lifelong issues of personal development that

are woven through each one. In Chapters One

through Seven you will find expanded

descriptions of each one, with discussions,

examples, exercises and readings to help you

explore each suggestion in action.

Challenge 1. 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.

 Some of the deeper levels of this first step

include learning to listen to your own heart, and

learning to encounter identities and integrities

quite different from your own, while still remaining centered in your own sense of self.

Challenge 2. Explain your conversational

intent and invite consent. In order to help your

conversation partner cooperate with you and to

reduce possible misunderstandings, start important

conversations by inviting your conversation

partner 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. 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 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.

 Some deeper levels of this second step include

learning to be more aware of and honest about

your intentions, gradually giving up intentions to

injure, demean or punish, and learning to treat

other people as consenting equals whose

participation in conversation with us is a gift and not an obligation

The Seven Challenges Workbook -- Introduction -- Page Intro-5

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Challenge 3. 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: (Please read down the columns.)

The Five I-Messages =

Five dimensions

of experience

Example of a

"Five I-Message"

communication

1. What are you

seeing, hearing or

otherwise sensing?.

"When I saw the

dishes in the sink...

2. What emotions are

you feeling?

...I felt irritated

and impatient...

3. What interpreta-

tions or wants of

yours that support

those feelings?

...because I want to

start cooking

dinner right

away...

4. What action,

information or

commitment you

want to request

now?

...and I want to ask

you to help me do

the dishes right

now...

5. What positive

results will

receiving that

action, information

or commitment lead

to in the future?

...so that dinner

will be ready by the

time Mike and Joe

get here."

Anytime one person sincerely listens to

another, a very creative process is going 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 them.

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.

 Some deeper levels of this third step include

developing the courage to tell the truth, growing

beyond blame in under-standing painful

experiences, and learning to make friends with

feelings, your own and other people’s, too.

Challenge 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. ....”).

 Some of the deeper levels of this fourth step

include developing a strong enough sense of self-

esteem that you can accept being turned down,

and learning how to imagine creative solutions to

problems, solutions in which everyone gets at

least some of their needs met.

Challenge 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-

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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”). In the first part of Challenge Five we

explore asking a wide range of open-ended

questions.

“and more creatively...” When we ask

questions we are using a powerful language tool to

focus conversational attention and guide our

interaction with others. But many of the

questions we have learned to ask are totally

fruitless and self-defeating (such as, parents to a

pregnant teen, “Why???!!! Why have you done

this to us???!!!”). In general it will be more

fruitful to ask “how” questions about the future

rather than “why” questions about the past, but

there are many more creative possibilities as well.

Of the billions of questions we might ask, not all

are equally fruitful or illuminating; not all are

equally helpful in solving problems together. In

the second part of Challenge Five we explore

asking powerfully creative questions from many

areas of life.

 Deeper levels of this fifth step include

developing the courage to hear the answers to our

questions, to face the truth of what other people

are feeling. Also, learning to be comfortable

with the process of looking at a situation from

different perspectives, and learning to accept that

people often have needs, views and tastes

different from your own (I am not a bad person if

you love eggplant and I can’t stand it).

Challenge 6. 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, 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 relation-

ships need a core of mutual appreciation.

 One deeper level of this sixth step is in how

you might shift your overall level of appreciation

and gratitude, toward other people, toward nature,

and toward life and/or a “Higher Power.”

Challenge 7. Adopt the “continuous learning”

approach to living, making 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 Challenge

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 challenge

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 violence, insult and injury, and learning

how to create little islands of cooperation and

mutuality, islands that you can gradually expand

to include more and more of the people you

encounter on your life journey.

Conclusion. The creative wave. I hope the

information and exercises in this workbook will

help you discover that listening and talking more

consciously and cooperatively can be fun and

rewarding. Just as guitar playing and basketball

take great effort and bring great satisfaction, so

does communicating more skillfully. As you begin

to brighten up your worlds of family and work

interaction with the new skills described here, you

will be carrying forward the creative explorations

of the many psychotherapists, teachers, scholars

and peace activists whose inspiration and

assistance have made this Workbook possible. .

The Seven Challenges Workbook -- Introduction -- Page Intro-7

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Introduction exercise. Before you continue reading, take some time and write down the ways in which

you would like to improve your communication and interaction with others. For example, what are some

situations you would like to change with new communication skills?

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