People Skills

“Although interpersonal  communication is humanity’s  greatest accomplish- ment,  the average person does not communicate well. Low-level  communica- tion leads to loneliness  and distance  from friends, lovers, spouses,  and children as well as ineffectiveness at work.”
“Communication skills, no matter how finely structured, cannot be a substitute for authenticity, caring, and understanding. But they can help us express these qualities
more effectively than many of us have been able to do in the past.”

Robert Bolton

ften the best books  are those that  authors needed to write for their own use. In the preface to People Skills: How  to Assert Yourself, Listen  to Others,  and Resolve  Conflicts would  never have got into the communications field were it not for the fact that  his own people skills were so bad.
The book  was written  over a six-year period  while he was running  a consulting  firm, and the material  was tested on thousands of people doing the company’s  communication skills workshops. Participants involved everyone from top executives to hospital  workers  to small business owners  to priests and nuns.
There are virtually  no jobs where communicating well does not make a big difference to our success. As many people have found,  particularly those in a more technical  field, the actual  “work” is only part  of the job; the rest is managing or dealing with people. Therefore,  if we can communicate well, this can account  for at least half our achievements.

Removing  the roadblocks
People yearn for a closer connection with one another, Bolton notes. They may be lonely not because they don’t have others  around them, but because they cannot  communicate well. Yet if we can put a man on the moon and cure viru- lent diseases, why aren’t we all great communicators? It is partly  because we learn a good deal of our communication skills from our family; chances are our parents  were not perfect communicators, and neither  were their parents.
Nearly  everyone wants  better  communication skills, yet often without knowing  it our communication is full of roadblocks that  prevent  real commu- nication  with others.  Two of the main ones are judging and sending solutions.
When talking  with someone,  it is difficult to listen to what  they are saying without putting  in our “two  bits’ worth.” This is the nicer side of judging. The other  is criticism and labeling. With people close to us we feel we should  be critical, otherwise  we don’t see how they will ever change. With others,  we feel the need to give them a label such as “intellectual,” “brat,” “jerk,” or “nag,” but by doing so we cease to see the person  before us, only a type. Our  “good advice”  is in fact rarely constructive, because it usually represents  an affront  to the other  person’s intelligence.
We may be so used to having roadblocks that  we wonder  what  will be left if we remove them from our style of conversation. What  remains  is the ability to understand and empathize  with other  people, and to make our con- cerns clearly known.

Listening skills
Are your conversations a competition in which “the  first person  to draw breath is declared  the listener”?  Not  many people are good listeners. Research has found  that  “75  percent  of oral communication is ignored,  misunderstood, or quickly forgotten.”
There is a huge difference between  merely hearing  and listening, Bolton notes. The word  “listening” is derived from two Anglo Saxon words,  hlystan (“hearing”) and hlosnian  (“waiting in suspense”).  The act of listening there- fore means more than  just something  physical, it is a psychological  engage- ment with another person.
Listening is not a single skill, but if genuinely practiced  involves a number of skill areas, which are described below.

Attending
The common  estimate  given in research  papers  is that  85 percent  of our com- munication is nonverbal. Therefore  attending skills, which are about  the extent to which we are “there” for someone  when they are speaking,  are vital to good communication. You are not looking  somewhere  else in the room,  but through your posture,  eye contact,  and movement  show the other  person  that they are your focus; you are “listening  with your body.”
Bolton describes when painter  Norman Rockwell was creating  a portrait of President  Eisenhower.  Even though  the President  was amid the worries  of office and about  to enter an election campaign,  for the hour  and a half he sat for Rockwell,  Eisenhower  gave the painter  his full attention. Think  of anyone you know  who is a great communicator and they will be the same: They fully attend  to you with their whole mind and body.

Following
Following  skills relate to how we follow up what  someone  says to us. Though commonly  we advise or reassure,  a better way is to provide  a “door opener” phrase.  This may involve:
❖  Noting  the other  person’s body language:  “Your  face is beaming  today.”
❖  Inviting the other  person  to speak: “Tell me more.” “Care  to talk about  this?” “What’s  on your mind?”
❖  Silence: giving the other  person  space to say something  if they want  to.
❖  Our  body language:  offering the message that  we are ready to listen.

Doing any of those things shows respect; the other  person  can talk or not talk as they wish. There is no pressure.  Bolton comments  that  a lot of people are initially uncomfortable with silence, but with a little practice  it is not hard  for us to extend  our comfort  zone.
In developing  our skill at following,  we become adept  at discovering exactly how the speaker  sees their situation, unlocking  or bringing  out what- ever is waiting  to be said. This is valuable  to both  parties.

Paraphrasing
Bolton defines paraphrasing as “a concise response to the speaker  which states the essence of the other’s content  in the listener’s own words.” For example, when someone  is telling us their problems,  we report  back to them in our own words,  and in one sentence, what  they are saying. This lets them know  we are really listening, and indicates  understanding and acceptance.  We may feel strange  doing this at first and think  the other  person  will wonder  what the hell we are doing, but in fact most of the time they will be glad that  their feelings are being recognized.

Reflective responses
This type of listening provides  a mirror  to the speaker  so that  the state or emotion  they are in is recognized.  Bolton gets us to picture  a young mother  on a morning  when everything  is going wrong.  The baby cries, the phone  rings, the toast  gets burnt. If her husband notices this and says something  like “God, can’t you learn to cook toast?” the woman’s  reaction  is likely to be explosive.
But picture  an alternative. The same events happen  and the husband says, “Honey, it’s a rough  morning  for you—first the baby, then the phone,  now the toast.” This is a reflective response,  acknowledging what  his wife is experienc- ing without any judgment  or criticism. Imagine how much better  she will feel!
Reflective responses work  because people don’t always wish to spell out what  they are really feeling. They beat around the bush. Only by being reflec- tive, not reactive, are we able to discern their real message. Psychologists  talk of the “presenting problem” and the “basic  problem.” What  presents is what  a person  says is the matter, and behind  it is the real problem.  This is why we have to listen for the feeling in a conversation. That  points  us in the right direc- tion, whereas  a common  mistake  is to try to make sense of the words  only.
People complain  that  reflective listening takes more time and effort. It does in the short  term, but it is likely to avoid major  troubles  that  blow up later on as the result of poor  communication.

Assertiveness skills
Bolton likes to think  of listening as the yin (the receiving aspect) of communi- cation,  while assertiveness  is the yang (the active aspect).
Because of the poor  communication skills most of us have been taught, when we want  something  we choose between  either nagging or aggression,  or we avoid the issue altogether. These responses stem from the basic “fight or flight” modes we operate  with as animals.  But as humans  we also have a third option:  verbal assertion. We can stand  our ground  yet not be aggressive. This is easily the most effective means of communication for most situations, yet most of us either forget assertion  or don’t know  how to use it.
The whole point  of assertion  statements is to produce  change without invading  the other  person’s space. There is no power  or coercion  involved, as the focus is on a result. We can remain  very angry, and the other  person knows it from what  we are saying, yet at the same time it allows us not to be hostile or aggressive. They are left to decide for themselves how to respond  to
the message, which allows them to retain  their dignity—while we have taken  a big step in getting what  we want.

Conflict prevention and control
What  we really want  in life is situations where everybody  wins. Bolton pre- sents the counterintuitive idea that  if we define a problem  in terms of solu- tions, one person  wins and the other  loses. To get win–win  outcomes,  we have to focus not on the solution  but on each party’s needs.
For instance,  he worked  with a group  of nuns who only had one car between  them. Several of them needed the car to make visits and go to meet- ings, so there were inevitable  clashes. When one person  had the car, the others lost out. But Bolton asked them what  each of them needed. The need they identified was transportation, and use of the group’s car was only one solution to that.  Seeing the situation in terms of needs meant  that  many other  possible solutions  appeared.
As the old saying goes, “A problem  well defined is a problem half solved.” Bolton provides  a step-by-step  process for identifying  needs, which then lead to a solution. Using this method surprisingly  elegant answers  can be found to questions we may have thought were intractable. But it first requires us to really listen to what other people require to make them happy.

Final comments
People Skills has been around for a quarter of a century  and still sells well. What  is the secret of its longevity? First, the book  rests on a strong  intellectual foundation, referencing  ideas from the likes of Carl Rogers, Sigmund Freud, and Karen Horney.  Secondly, it sticks to the fundamentals, not trying to cover every aspect of interpersonal relations  but focusing on three vital, learnable skills: listening, asserting,  and resolving conflict. Although  the book  seems long and there is a fair amount of repetition, it contains  some highly useful tips and techniques  that  can be applied  immediately.
Nowhere does People Skills ask us to change our personality to become a warm  and fuzzy “people  person.” What  it does do is show us well-researched techniques  that  can make a dramatic difference to our effectiveness. We sud- denly understand what  people are really saying, and we begin to be able to communicate what  we truly want  in a direct fashion.
Conversely,  if we still have a tendency  to think  that  having good people skills means the ability to manipulate others  into doing or saying something that  suits us, not them, Bolton’s book  reminds us of the three pillars of respect that  really produce  good relationships: empathy, nonpossessive  love, and genuineness.

Robert Bolton
Bolton  is the head of Ridge Associates, a training and consulting  firm founded in 1972  that focuses on workplace communication and interpersonal  skills. He previously  created training programs for the New  York  State Department of Mental  Hygiene  and also founded a psychiatric  clinic.
His other book, written  with  his wife Dorothy Grover  Bolton,  is People Styles at Work:  Making  Bad Relationships Good  and Good Relationships Better (1996).