4 Steps of Effective Communications for Good Relationships
What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart. — Marshall Rosenberg
What Makes a Life Happy?
Harvard’s did the longest research on happiness and healthy life for almost 80 years on 900+ Individuals and surprisingly results in shows —
A good life is built with good relationships. Period
For maintaining good relationships communications play a very crucial role.
Good Communication means expressing your feelings and needs clearly to others and also understanding feelings and needs of others.
4 Steps for effective Communications are below —
1. Observe
First thing is to observe what is happening in the situation, what people are doing and saying without any judgments.
Observation is an important element when we need to clearly express to another person. Observation should be separated by evaluation. When we mix observation and evaluation and express, another person will likely take it as criticism and hence resists.
One should ideally observe and then gently tell what specific behavior he observed is not right instead of evaluated things and telling him evaluated things.
Observing without evaluation is the highest form of Human Intelligence.
2. Feeling
Understand your inner feeling when we observe the actions/situations. Are we feeling hurt, scared, joyful, irritated, etc?
The difficulty in identifying and expressing feelings is most common in Professional codes and personal relations. The best way is to build a vocabulary of feelings that will help you to articulate your feelings and clearly describe a whole range of emotions.
Clearly distinguish between what we feel and how we think others react or behave towards us
Holding responsibility for your feelings is very important, what others do may be the stimulate of your feelings but not the cause. What we are feeling is our responsibility.
3. Needs
Once we have identified feelings it is important to directly connect it to our “needs” from the other person.
The more directly we connect our feelings with needs, and if we express our needs we have better chances of getting them met.
When we express our needs indirectly through the use of evaluations, Interpretations, others are likely to hear criticism, and when they hear criticism they put all energy in self-defense instead of listening to you compassionately.
From the moment people start talking about what they need rather than what is wrong with each other, the possibility of finding ways to meet each other needs greatly increases.
4. Request
It is important to express by verbal or non-verbal means what are our needs and what we are wanting from the other person that would enrich life and make it wonderful for each other. Say your needs clearly, as clear as it can.
If we don’t express and value our needs others will not value either.
We generally get depressed because we are not getting what we want, and we don’t get what we want because we have never been taught to get what we want. Instead, we have been taught to remain good, if we are going to be one of those good things better we get used to depression.
Request Vs Demand —
If you criticize the other person for not meeting your needs then it is called demand. When another person hears a demand from us, they see 2 options — submit or rebel. Hence, always express your need as request.
Art of Listening — with compassion and empathy
- Listening with Empathy
While expressing yourself is important, it is equally important to listen to someone, then you will be able to establish mutual empathy in communication.
No Matter what words they use to express themselves listen to their observations, feelings, demands, and needs with empathy.
- Listen not respond
While you listen someone doesn’t just listen to respond, you need to empty your mind and listen with the whole being.
Also, not always people are seeking advice when they tell you things, hence ask before offering any advice.
Sometimes just your presence is enough for someone.
Presence — Don’t just do something stands there
- Paraphrasing while listening
When people tell you something try to understand there inner feelings and needs and the best way is to paraphrase it and confirm with them about their needs and desires.
Eg. She — You never listen to me
You — It sounds like you are frustrated and you want to feel more connected when we speak.
The best way of communication is to keep on reflecting on a person by expressing her feelings until she exhausts her emotions.
Communication with Ourselves —
It is very important to connect with ourselves with compassion. We should avoid self-hatred and self-evaluation because it impacts our self-efficacy which in turn impacts our learning.
- Evaluating ourselves when we have been less than perfect
If the way we evaluate ourselves leads us to feel shame, and we consequently change our behavior, we are allowing our growing and learning to be guided by self-hatred.
Whenever we are using the word “I should have done this” it implies self regret and no learning and it hampers our growth.
- Have to Vs Choose to
There is a big difference between “Have to” and “choose to”. It is important to choose to do something out of desire Vs have to do things out of guilt, shame, punishment, etc.
