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Site News: “Talk.tips” is our new, fun, quick, alternative website address. (“.tips” is a new kind of domain name, and works the same as .com, .net, and .org.) Why the additional name? Well, “Communication-Skills.net” is a great site name for search engines to index, but a hard name for people to type over and over again. Once you have discovered this site, “talk.tips” will get you back to the home page with a lot fewer keystrokes. “communication-skills.net” will continue to be the official URL of this site, so all old links and references will continue to stay valid. In the coming weeks I will be developing quick alternative addresses for every page. Editor 🙂 10/19/2024
Introduction and Summary — People Communicate to coordinate.
How this workbook came to be, the Seven Challenges briefly described, and how we can build more effective work teams and happier families with a more cooperative style of listening and talking. These are the interpersonal coordination skills that can help you and your team go from just surviving to actively thriving.
Read more >> View this chapter as: web page pdf file
Click here for the One-page Summary
A Quick Reference to the Seven Challenges Workbook
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full workbook
Communication Skills Challenge One:
Empathic and Responsive Listening
Listen more carefully and responsively, acknowledging the feelings and wants that people express in word and mood. Actively acknowledging another person’s experience does not have to mean that you agree or approve. Compassionately allow people to feel whatever they feel. People are much more likely to listen if they have been listened to with actively expressed acknowledgments.
MeganneForbes.com
Communication Skills Challenge Two:
Explaining your conversational intent and inviting consent
by using one of 30 basic conversational invitations such as, “Right now I would like to take a few minutes and ask you about… [subject].” The more involvement a conversation is going to require of the other person, the more you will benefit by sharing your conversational goal and inviting the conscious cooperation of your conversation partner.
Communication Skills Challenge Three:
Expressing yourself more clearly and more completely with the “5 I-Messages”
For better conversations, give your listeners the information they need to…
>> understand (mentally reconstruct) your experiences more fully
>> empathize with what you are experiencing
One good way to discuss important topics
is to slow down and use “the five I-messages”:
That means sharing with your listener, me …
First, what you observe …
second, how you are feeling about it …
third, the reasons and needs that move you to feel that way …
fourth, what you want to request from me right now …
and fifth, the positive results you hope for
from my agreeing to your request.
In complex situations, this sort 5-part of self-inventory can
- >> help you understand your own needs and feelings better,
- >> help you have more productive conversations, and
- >> help you to negotiate gracefully to get more of your needs met.
Communication Skills Challenge Four:
Translating your criticisms and complaints into requests for action
and explaining the positive results of having your request granted. Do this for both your own complaints and the complaints that other family members and team members bring to you.
Focusing on the positive outcome shows respect to the recipient of a request as having a positive contribution to make, and shifts focus from past mistakes to present and future successes.
Read more >> View this chapter as: web page ::: pdf file
Communication Skills Challenge Five:
Asking questions more “open-endedly” and more creatively.
“How did you like that movie?” is an open-ended question that invites a wide range of answers. “Did you like it?” suggests only “yes” or “no” as answers and does not encourage discussion. Sincerely asked open-ended questions can open up our conversation partners. In asking closed-ended, yes or no, questions, we may be missing information that we really need to know. (How comfortable are you with this suggestion?)
Communication Skills Challenge Six:
Thanking: Expressing more gratitude, appreciation, encouragement and delight…
…in everyday life. In a world full of problems, look for opportunities to give praise. Both at home and at work, it is the bond of appreciation that makes relationships strong enough to allow for problem-solving and differing needs. Thinkers and researchers in several different fields have reached similar conclusions about this: healthy relationships need a core of mutual appreciation.
Communication Skills Challenge Seven:
Adopting the “living-as-continuous-learning” approach
Make the practices described in Challenges 1 through 6 of this Workbook important parts of your everyday living, learning, team-building and family nurturing. Pay attention to each conversation as an opportunity to grow in skill, awareness and compassion. Work to redefine each of your “momentary opponents” in life as a learning and problem-solving partner. Assist the processes of change in your world by personally embodying the changes, virtues and styles of behavior you want to see in others.
more access links:
Download free PDF copy of Workbook in English / Português / Español
Order paperback from Lulu.com ($12 + shipping)
One-page Summary
Quick Reference to the Seven Challenges Workbook
And, a special invitation…
web us/blog us/recommend us — Spread the word about free teaching and training materials. You can encourage the development of more cooperative communicating in families, organizations and nations around the world by placing one of the following links to the Seven Challenges Workbook and/or to our library of free resources on your personal, organizational, school, college, university or business web site and/or blog. Copy the following link and insert it in the appropriate page on your site. (Thanks and blessings)
Introduction and Summary
The Seven Challenges Communication Skills Workbook
Click here for PDF version of this Section
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, resolving conflicts, and building more effective teams, I believe they are a large and worthwhile chunk of it, and great places 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 book 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.
Another list of Seven!!! Seven ways 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.
Benefit 1. 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.
Benefit 2. 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.
Benefit 3. 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 .
Benefit 4. More comfortable with conflict. Because each person has different talents, there is much to be 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.
Benefit 5. 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 unpleasant situations, we can feel good about our own skillful responses.
Benefit 6. More satisfying closeness with others. Learning 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.
Benefit 7. 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.
more access links:
Download free PDF copy of Workbook in English / Português / Español
Order paperback from Lulu.com ($12 + shipping)
One-page Summary
Quick Reference to the Seven Challenges Workbook
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