Are You Communicating Efficiently? Discover the Master, Student & Peer Framework
Have you ever met someone you highly respect and consider to be of such great importance that you were super stressed only by meeting her/him in person? But during the interaction you were surprised by how humble (s)he was? You expected mostly to listen, but you ended up speaking as much as (s)he did?
Well it happened to me several times. And something struck me. Why was I so much surprised that someone was listening? Why isn’t this behavior the norm?
A Typical Conversation
When you enter an interaction with someone, you undergo many influences. You are influenced by the reputation of your conversation partner. You are influenced by his/her hierarchical position. You are influenced by the way (s)he talks, moves, dresses. You are influenced by the stories told and the knowledge shared. You are also influenced by the environment where the conversation takes place (how and why it happens, the people present, the location and how the place is organized).
I won’t behave and talk the same way with the President in her/his office than I would in a bar with a friend of mine that I know well (or even with the President in a bar).
The Three Postures
You have, what I call, the three main “communication postures” you can adopt: the posture of master, student or peer.
In a working 1-to-1 communication, if one is adopting the master posture, the discussion partner shall go into student posture (and vice versa). The peer posture on the other hand implies a horizontal discussion, where the other is de facto a peer.
In a dysfunctional conversation, people will adopt non-compatible postures. If the two discussion partners are trying to stay in a “master” posture, there is either no listening (everyone is waiting for their turn to talk) or a dispute (as opposed to a debate, which would imply a symmetrical “peer” posture).
The question of the right posture to take shall be raised. But in fact there is no good or bad communication posture, the key question is the fluidity of the three within a given discussion.
Fluidity: When You Get Stuck In Your Role
When you think of someone stuck in a posture, you often have examples of people always trying to lecture others. They always know better. They always have something to add. They are stuck in the master posture. This is a common trap for people in position of power. The boss, the investor, the pundit. Amazon has a name for these people. They’re called HiPPOs, which stands for “highest paid person’s opinion.” It’s interesting to look at how they’re defined: “HiPPOs are leaders who are so self-assured that they need neither other’s ideas nor data to affirm the correctness of their instinctual beliefs. Relying on their experience and smarts, they are quick to shoot down contradictory positions and dismissive of underling’s input.” The part in italics precisely describes the rigidity of their posture: every time someone tries to communicate as “peer” (or even worse, “master”), they are dismissed.
But unhealthy communication is more linked to rigidity than being stuck in a specific posture. If you are always behaving as a student, you won’t be able to share your insights. You won’t grow and make others grow.
If you are stuck in peer, you live with the illusion that every opinion has the same value. It’s healthy to challenge one’s belief, and to get back into the “peer” mode in a teacher/student discussion, with the right level of humility and assertiveness. Yet, sometimes you need to just listen and take into consideration that others are much more experienced and knowledgeable about certain things. Don’t start to challenge the validity of a sociologist’s research just because you have a specific example in mind that could be in conflict with her/his discovery.
The key thing to have in mind is to make sure that you keep a very liquide posture, in any situation, with anyone. No one is an absolute master, student or peer. No situation should let you stay in a given mode. Or you’ll just suffer from many biases (the most common one, for people stuck in master, is being overconfident) and you won’t be able to build a healthy, value-adding conversation and relationship.
Taking vs Letting
We have the tendency to put the blame on someone because (s)he takes a posture and stays in it. But we should not fool ourselves. People take but they also let things happen. Your boss might be stuck in the master posture with you because you don’t manage to not be the student. There are habits and norms that are slowly building overtime and that put rigidity within the postural palette. They key is to be able to go into peer posture with anyone. The young intern, the big boss, the politician, the cleaner. Anyone. Better: being able to go into “master” with people with more social status or a higher hierarchical position, and into “student” with people with less social status or a lower hierarchical position. This is the best way to grow and let people grow. It allows better relationships and above all a better circulation of knowledge.
Group vs 1-on-1
Everything we said can be applied to any communication, be it a one-on-one or group discussion. In a group, the interaction possibilities are just way more numerous and the trap of rigidity within a posture is therefore even bigger. The costs of change are higher (more people involved, more expectation, more effort to analyse everyone else’s posture).
If you are interested in digging deeper into this subject, I highly recommend the absolute amazing book: Pragmatics of Human Communication (Une logique de la communication) by Paul Watzlawick.
You will recognize notions that influenced me, including the distinction between content and relationship in a discussion, and the idea of symmetry (submissive/dominant) or complementation (peer).
What Should You Remember?
You shouldn’t try to always identify what posture you have at any given time. This is almost impossible, as stated by Paul Watzlawick:
“Like all other complex conceptual systems which attempt to make assertions about themselves (e.g. language, logic, mathematics) communication typically encounters the paradoxes of self-reflexivity when trying to apply itself to itself. What this amounts to is that the patterns of communication existing between oneself and others cannot be fully understood, for it is simply impossible to be both involved in a relationship (which is indispensable in order to be related) and at the same time stand outside it as a detached, uninvolved observer…” (How Real is Real, Paul Watzlawick)
Yet, the mere fact of knowing that there are different patterns of interaction and keeping the master, student, and peer postures in mind, you can make sure that you keep enough fluidity within your communication manners. And maybe help others from time to time to recover some of their fluidity ;)
