Identify Your Communication Style

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st,: 2024

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It might seem strange for a book on communication to say the following, but it’s true - Good communication is a natural, normal human ability, and it’s something that anyone can do with ease. You might then ask if that’s the case, why are so many people so bad at communicating? The answer is that communicating well is simple and easy, but we first need to remove the formidable barriers that stand in our way to doing so. This is what can be difficult. People are only able to communicate at the level that their inner psychological barriers allow them to. For example, if there are two people, and one person has amazing communication skills but the other is trapped in a core belief that conversations are battles they need to win, then the conversation will never move beyond this battle framework. Basically, one’s emotional state, beliefs, habits, personality, and general attitude to life are the ultimate limits to how well they are able to connect to and communicate with others. Certain psychological states will improve your ability to both send and receive a message, while others will undermine it.

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With that in mind, what barriers are there, and how can we replace them with something more useful? Assumptions. Assuming is simply coming to a conclusion you don’t strictly have evidence for. It almost always leads to misunderstanding. Communication, after all, is about learning about the other person and their message. If we think we already know all there is to know, then why have a conversation at all, right? Imagine that a boss doesn’t give detailed instructions to a new employee because she assumes that the employee will already know how to do the task. The employee doesn’t and so fails at the task.

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Here, the barrier of assumption has stepped in and prevented any real communication from happening, but it can also rear its head once communication is underway. If you’ve ever had an argument and both found yourselves saying things like, “But I thought you meant X!” then you likely were both guilty of making assumptions. In conversations, it’s so easy to assume that all the mental models, frameworks, systems of meanings, values, and definitions that we hold are neatly shared by other people. We forget that they have their own goals and interpretations of events, and they may have their own understanding that can be identical to ours, completely opposite, or anything in between. How do we know what kind of world the person in front of us is actually inhabiting? Well, we communicate with them! And this means no assumptions. Instead, ask questions.

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Pretend you are a reporter or documentary filmmaker or alien from outer space ...or all three. Empty your mind of any preconceptions and don’t guess. Ask the other person to tell you what they think and feel. Sometimes, with some topics, you’ll need to confirm even this, because after all, we all use words and ideas in different ways. Think of someone asking someone else to marry them. That person says yes. But what exactly have they agreed to? How big is the overlap between their respective understanding of the word “marriage”?

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Aggression and Anger. We’ve already seen that aggressive (or passive-aggressive) communication styles cause upset and don’t even achieve the person’s communication goals anyway. But for obvious reasons, anger, resentment, or even rage can be serious obstacles to effective communication. It’s simple - To communicate, we have to make contact. We connect with someone else, and this requires us to let our guards down and become receptive and open to what the other person is sharing. If the other person is angry, they will come across as a threat—and why would you ever be receptive to a threat? Most sane people will close off to aggression and disconnect in an effort to protect themselves. This means that if you are leading with anger, you are automatically creating a condition in which communicating cannot take place.

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Think about that - You cannot communicate with a threat, real or perceived. You can only defend against it. If you lead with anger, you can only expect defensiveness from the other person—and this gets you nowhere. Imagine the sadly all-too-common example of trying to make a complaint on the phone or get a refund from a dodgy company. Yes, you’re entitled to feel angry, but will that anger help you solve your problems any quicker? If you spend fifteen minutes yelling at the person on the other end of the line, it’s just fifteen minutes you’ve wasted, and at the end of it, you’ll probably still be at square one. Instead, own your emotions. Feeling angry is not a problem; approaching someone else with hostility and aggression is.

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The alternative is not to force yourself to pretend to be calm. Rather, it’s to own your feelings and identify them as belonging to you. Instead of blaming the other person or directing your emotion to them, hold that emotion as something that belongs to you only. Using “I” statements will mean you can say, “I feel so overwhelmed right now,” instead of, “You’re stressing me out!". Preconceived Attitudes . Here is the question yet again - What is the point of communication? What is it for, ultimately? The way you answer this question shows you the attitude you hold toward communication.

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For some people, conversations are a fight or a courtroom drama or a way to prove how “right” and worthy they are. For others, the point is to get their needs met or share and express or simply reach outside the limits of their own inner perception and connect with another human being. Naturally, the attitude you have to conversations will depend on the beliefs you hold. These beliefs also include the habitual roles you’ve always assumed in conversation with others. Do you routinely show up as the therapist, comedian, drill sergeant? Are you always preaching and explaining, or do you repeatedly defer to others and let them lead? None of these orientations are right or wrong in themselves. But if you are a) unaware that they are there in the first place or b) constantly communicating with people who don’t share your attitude, then you can expect conflict and misunderstanding.

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precisely what it does! In a: 1980

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Because they were expecting discrimination, they interpreted everything that occurred in the interview as evidence for that conclusion. In other words, if one sees themselves as a victim, one can’t help but suddenly perceive everything as an attack. The participants would easily say that what they perceived was something in the interviewers. But what do you suppose the interviewers made of them? Chances are, they, too, could detect the preconceptions the interviewees were bringing to the table—perhaps even unconsciously playing along to confirm them. Instead, practice compassion—for self and others. Really good conversation is supremely democratic. There are no winners and losers and no hierarchy.

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Take a deep breath and put yourself on an even keel with the other person. Try to shelve any ideas about who is playing what role, and compassionately encounter the person you find as you find them—your equal. At the same time, be on guard for any deep-seated beliefs that have made you decide that you will be the loser in any interaction before it even happens. The subtle ways that your behavior will change when you have genuine and healthy self-belief can make all the difference in the world. Fear. Aggression impedes communication because it puts the other person on the defensive. But if that person is already on the defensive, the conversation is already impacted. Defensiveness is essentially putting up a wall.

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Trying to communicate through a wall is not easy, and it usually results in one thing - confusion and serious misunderstanding. This is sometimes why fear and aggression can lead to communication breakdown; the more walls that are put up, the harder it is to hear one another, and in the confusion, more fear and anger are created, necessitating even more walls .... A person who is fearful is not listening. They are not curious. They are not focusing on anything other than their own self-preservation, and this makes them a bad conversationalist on the most fundamental level. Have you noticed how, after watching a horror movie, the bedroom that seemed perfectly innocent yesterday now seems riddled with potentially frightening nooks and crannies? If someone is fearful, their impulse will be to protect themselves or escape—and you cannot communicate to or from that position. Imagine someone in the middle of a severe panic attack—they may literally be unable to hear you.

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All they know is their own crushing panic, and you may as well not even exist for them. Fear can make us see things that aren’t there and, in communication, can make us detect threats where there aren’t any, so the person having the panic attack suddenly decides that you’re to blame for how they feel! Fear narrows our focus inward, so we lose perspective and can no longer connect with our environment. Naturally, real connection will be stunted. Instead, relax and be curious. One way to do this is simple - ask an open-ended question. You don’t have to lower your walls entirely, but at least be curious about what’s on the other side! Inflexibility and Need for Control.

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When you get together with someone and have a conversation, anything can happen. The thread of the talk can go in any direction, and at any one moment, the words either person says could steer the thing in a completely novel and unexpected direction. And this is a good thing! When two people get together to communicate, there is a chance for them to co-create something that is bigger than the sum of both of them. But, this can only happen if both parties are willing to relinquish a little control and let the conversation flow as it will. Being inflexible, closed-minded, or hungry for control mean that we enter any discussion with a fixed idea of what it should be ...therefore preventing it from becoming anything else. This shuts us off from listening, from learning, and from responding spontaneously in the moment as it unfolds. It also makes us very boring and predictable!

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Imagine two people on a blind date. It soon becomes clear there is no chemistry, but rather than trying to force it, feeling awkward, or calling the entire evening off, both decide that they’re still having a nice time, and why not go to the arcade, since they’re out anyway and it’ll be fun? Incidentally, nobody would be surprised if in ten years’ time, this became a cute “how we met” story. Often things happen best when we let go of the idea of how we think they should happen! Instead, be willing to be surprised. Let the other person lead, and be genuinely open to the idea that they may steer the conversation in a way you did not expect or prepare for. Everyone has something to teach you. Judgment and Premature Evaluation.

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Have you ever found yourself rushing in a conversation? You hear someone talking, but internally, you think, “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that ...” and you subtly try to move them along. Why? Sometimes, this kind of haste signals that we have been too quick to come to conclusions about what we’re being told. As with making assumptions, we think we already understand everything there is to understand and no longer need to engage. As we dig deeper, this sometimes tells us that we have prematurely gone into judgment mode before really hearing the other person. We all have preconceived notions in our heads. When someone talks, we might flit through our catalogue of notions and see which ones match closest—then grab ahold of that and stop listening to what the unique person in front of us is saying.

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Judgment—even “positive” judgments, kill what is real and nuanced in the present moment. We fail to see the other person and their message and instead substitute it with our idea of who they are and what they’re saying. This is the root of prejudice and bias. If we are interacting with two-dimensional stereotypes of people and not real people, then our communication is always going to be lacking. Psychologist - So it seems like you have a lot of resentment toward your mother. Patient - Well, no, not really. But I do think something changed when my brother was born and—. Psychologist - So the problem is your brother?

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In this exchange, the psychologist has already come to a conclusion, and they’re not really interested in gathering any more data. They have a hammer (i.e., “everyone has an issue with at least one family member”), and they’re going to look at everything like it’s a nail. Instead, cultivate wonder. This may be the hardest mindset shift of all, but to become a genuinely good communicator, you need to maintain a sense not just of curiosity or interest in another person, but of near-continuous awe at what a privilege it really is to step outside your own head for a moment and step into someone else’s. In the remainder of this book, we will take as a starting point the value that communication is a way to create connection. We label anything that gets in the way of this connection as a “psychological barrier” and work to remove it. Are there other barriers than the ones listed above? Definitely.

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We can point to an attitude of distraction and inattention, lack of trust, cross-cultural limitations, and even exhaustion as things that prevent people from properly connecting. Whatever they are, though, with self-awareness and practice, we can work to lessen their impact on us. That's all for this episode of Social Skills Coaching. Thanks for listening. I hope you found today's discussion on communication styles helpful. Until next time, remember to be mindful of your communication style and use it to your advantage. With a little effort, you can become a more likeable, charismatic, and productive person. Thanks again for listening.