The DNA of Relationships (21 page)

* EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION TAKES WORK. *

Perhaps we really ought to start with the expectation that, at least on some level, we are bound to misunderstand and misinterpret one another. We might even admit it out loud: “More than likely, I am going to say some things that you could take wrong, misunderstand, or misinterpret.” If we did this, I think we would tend to be more cautious, more deliberate. We would be more careful to make sure that understanding really takes place.

But let’s make this a little more personal. If you hear something that hits you wrong, instead of just reacting—“How could you say such a thing?”—you might instead try saying, “This is what I just heard, and this is what I think you meant. Before I get upset, I need to find out if I’m right.” Check it out before you jump to a wrong conclusion.

I have been humbled countless times by thinking that I understood the malicious intent of a person and so reacted harshly—only to discover that what I thought he said was not what he meant. I totally blasted or misjudged the person and so damaged our relationship.

It helps to remember what the Bible says: “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.”
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What lies within often lies
deep
within, requiring careful and sustained effort to draw it out.

Think of effective communication as something of a deep-sea dive. If you want to visit the rusting hulk of the HMS
Titanic
, silently resting two and a half miles down on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, you don’t just jump into the water and start swimming. You have to prepare. You have to know what you’re doing. You have to know what kind of submersible you will need. You have to allow sufficient time for both the long descent and the even slower ascent. Without sufficient preparation, you won’t be seeing anything but a lot of cold water (and maybe an occasional hungry shark).

Effective communication is a complex business. If you go into it expecting things to flow easily and without a lot of effort, you’re just kidding yourself. I recommend that you adjust your expectations from “simple” to “complex,” especially in three key areas:

1. Expect problems and misunderstandings.
Even the best communicators sometimes fail to understand others, or they fall short of making themselves understood. We’re all human. We don’t always follow through on what we know to be best. We don’t always use the proven techniques that we know work. Often we don’t even know for sure why we act or feel a certain way. Effective communicators expect problems and misunderstandings. Because they do not look for seas as calm as glass, they don’t feel surprised when a nor’easter hits. They prepare themselves to work through the storms to reach the sunny skies waiting on the other side of the rain clouds.

2. Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience.
Effective communication takes time. You and the other person may not connect or get on the same wavelength on the first or second (or third or even fourth) attempt. Impatience can doom the goal of genuine understanding. Being in a hurry works against the commitment to care that is essential to all effective communication. How can you genuinely care for someone while you’re tapping your feet and reaching for the door?

Instead, relax. Be careful. Recognize that effective communication deserves patience and a deliberate attempt to understand not only the words being said but also the emotions behind the words. Slow down until you get that. It will make the communication much easier and much more effective.

3. Expect a lot of trial and error.
People have different ways of communicating. While all of us can master and use a powerful set of tools for effective communication, the way we use those tools varies from person to person.
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We get the best use out of them by adapting them for our own style and personal bent—and that requires trial and error.

You didn’t give up on driving a car just because you felt a little intimidated the first time you sat behind the wheel, did you? You didn’t abandon your pursuit of reading when you choked on a few words from
The Cat in the Hat
, did you? You didn’t swear off all future attempts at tying your shoes when you bungled your first attempts, did you? Of course not. It takes trial and error to get good at any skill—and that includes the skill of communicating effectively.

Effective communication is a complex business. But you grease the skids for its success when you start out from the right position.

You Can Start on Your Own
A lot of people mistakenly think that they can’t practice the elements of effective communication unless they get the full cooperation of the other person, but that is not true. In fact, you can do a lot of effective communication even without the conscious cooperation or understanding of the other person. In fact, you have a tremendous impact, all by yourself.

You can choose to listen for the heart and clearly communicate what you’re sensing, regardless of whether the other person knows the process you’re using. You can choose to speak more articulately, in a way that the other person can more easily understand. You can also choose to listen carefully and grasp the other person’s feelings.

You can exercise the Power of One. You can have a positive influence on your relationship even if the other person does not fully cooperate. You can do a significant amount to make a huge difference, even without a lot of cooperation from the other person.

So don’t stay stuck. Don’t stay in neutral. Put to work the strategies I’ve just outlined for you—and start building a stronger relationship
today
.

Effective Communication Saves Time
Does it seem as if identifying the emotional nugget will take far more time than other methods of communication? A lot of guys think so! But, in fact, it actually
saves
tremendous amounts of time.

Think about it. If you don’t have to repeatedly go back over the same old ground, then you can spend your time on other things. Many husbands who come in for counseling initially balk at the idea of trying to identify and focus on their wife’s core emotion. Yet they soon come to embrace it, once they see that by getting to the emotional nugget, conversation on the topic can get wrapped up pretty quickly.

Guys, take note:
Effective communication is ultimately more efficient and takes less time than any other method
. A lot of men feel frustrated when their wives seem to go on and on. They don’t understand that the reason they go on and on is that they don’t feel
emotionally
understood. If these husbands took the time to actually uncover their wives’ emotional concern, the conversation would move on and they wouldn’t have to hear the same thing a dozen times, from six different angles. When guys finally “get” this, the lightbulb goes on for them. They get excited about their ability to condense the conversation.

“That’s all I have to do—help her see that I truly understand her feelings?” they ask, amazed and delighted.

Yep. That’s it. Sounds great, doesn’t it? This may sound selfish on a man’s part, but when you think about it for a second, why wouldn’t you want to save time and reduce frustration?

Guys, hear me: If the woman in your life—whether she is your wife, your dating partner, your daughter, your friend, or your colleague—repeats the same thing over and over, I can almost guarantee that she does not believe you understand her heart. You could say at that point, “I noticed that you are repeating yourself, and that causes me to question whether you believe I am understanding you. Am I missing something?”

It is amazing what happens when a woman feels deeply understood emotionally. She will be much more inclined to stop talking about the issue, for she no longer has any reason to keep going.

The last thing I want to do is spend any more time than necessary on unpleasant topics. Sure, if you shut down the communication, you might not have to deal (at least immediately) with more words—but you probably
will
have to deal with the cold shoulder, the distance, or all the other things that come from not taking the time to attend to a person’s feelings.

Is this method easy? Not in one sense—it’s probably very different from what you’ve done to this point in your life. But practice makes perfect! And over time it gets much more efficient. At first, I admit, it feels awkward. It feels very unnatural, and you may be clumsy at it. But as you get more practice, it gets easier. It streamlines. In fact, this is the most streamlined form of communication that I know.

So learn to listen with your heart. Put your problem-solving urges on hold for a while, and listen with your heart. Problem-solving skills remain extremely valuable, of course, but they are much more effective after you understand the emotions involved. So save time! Get efficient! And look for the emotional nugget.

Safety First…and Second
What would happen if you discharged a loaded cannon in your bedroom? Not a pretty sight. But what if you made sure that you used only the best artillery shells and the latest guidance systems? How about if you first read the most up-to-date manual, talked to a retired gunnery sergeant, and made sure the weapon was clean and thoroughly inspected before you fired a live round into your ceiling?

“Who’s stupid enough to do something like that?” you ask. “Everybody knows that you don’t fire a cannon in your own bedroom!”

Why not? That’s easy—it’s a question of environment. No matter how good your equipment and supplies might be, if you use a cannon in the wrong environment, you’ll get disastrous results.

It’s exactly the same story when it comes to effective communication. You can have the best tools, the latest insights, the greatest determination, and the most powerful strategies and
still fail
if the environment is wrong.

So what is the “right” environment for effective communication? We talked about safety a couple of chapters ago, but it’s worth a review here. In a safe environment, no one has to worry about being shamed or rejected or punished or attacked for stating personal beliefs and feelings. In a place like that, heartfelt communication can bloom and grow.

When I believe someone is allowing me to feel the way I feel, without judging my feelings, I feel cared for. On the other hand, I never feel cared for when someone tells me that I “shouldn’t feel that way,” that my feelings are “stupid” or “wrong” or “excessive.” If they tell me that my feelings are anything other than what they are, I do not feel cared for. And I don’t feel safe.

Effective communication ought to begin with a simple and firm commitment to the goal of safety. Of course, agreeing on basic ground rules and an effective strategy for communication can help to create a safe environment.
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But the commitment to safety must come first. Make safety your goal, and watch intimacy blossom. Otherwise, you may find the ceiling raining down in chunks.

But it doesn’t end there! In fact, the way you communicate also
creates
a greater measure of safety. If you listen with your heart, to the point that the other person feels deeply understood and cared for, you increase the person’s sense of safety. The more safety that exists in your relationships, the more openness, real intimacy, and connection will occur. When a person feels safe, he or she is more inclined to become a willing participant in the relationship.

In other words, a safe environment makes effective communication easier, and effective communication creates more safety. They work off of each other to improve your relationships.

Whose Fault Is It?
One last issue needs to get unpacked before we can move on to the next chapter. Many of us spend a whole lifetime consistently “missing” each other because we remain in the iron grip of a deadly myth.

Let’s take a little quiz. Here is the question:
When you find yourself in a conflict with someone, how much of your conversation includes questions like the following?

• Who is right? Who is wrong?
  
• Whose fault is this mess? Who’s to blame?
  
• What really happened here?
  
• How will we solve the problem?
  

Probably 90 percent of the people who come to us for relationship help begin their sessions by asking exactly these questions. They really believe that if they can establish “who’s right” and “what happened,” they will set the stage for effective communication. They think that by doing so, they’ll improve their relationships.

But you know what? They rarely do.

When we focus—at least, as a place to start—on trying to determine who is right and who is wrong, we embark on a totally useless pursuit. Starting anywhere other than attending to the emotions will get you derailed most of the time. When we begin by attempting to figure out who is to blame or what really happened, we succeed only in fueling power struggles and hurtful disagreements.

When people feel emotionally heard and understood, on the other hand, they tend to relax and to trust that you really care. Eventually they will be able to move toward determining right and wrong. What really happened might be useful to know in finding a solution. But it is very hard to get on the same page and to feel relaxed if you do not first feel that your emotions are being heard, cared for, and understood.

Effective communication makes thorough understanding its goal. The Bible counsels, “Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”
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* COMMUNICATION IS UNDERSTANDING, NOT DETERMINING WHO’S RIGHT. *

The apostle Paul had healthy relationships in mind when he said, “Let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.”
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Rather than trying to fix blame or nail someone to the wall, Paul tells us, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.”
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