Communication is 9/10ths of a successful relationship – not just with your partner, but with your colleagues, your friends, your kids, and everyone else who matters in your life.
Most of us aren’t great communicators, because it takes a lot of knowledge and practice to become one, and it’s not like the world goes out of its way to teach us these skills early in life. Even in adulthood, we get more bad training than good from society in general, and the Internet has only made us worse.
And for the Grown-Ass Man trying to set a new standard for his life – which includes being more transparent, more deliberate, more clear to others in all that he says and does – acquiring these skills is an urgent priority.
Communication 101: Verification
The single biggest problem in any communication is this: there is little or no verification between the communicating parties that what was heard is what was actually said. Alan Greenspan said it best: “I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
It happens to us all, and it happens all the time.
The most popular fix is a technique called active listening. Active listening is the process of hearing what someone is saying, then paraphrasing it back to them and waiting for a nod that you are hearing them correctly.
Even if you do this, and nothing more, your communication with your partner, your colleagues, your friends and your kids will improve immeasurably.
But you’re a Grown-Ass Man, and you don’t do things halfway.
David Deida, guru of the healthy masculinity self-help culture, raises the very valid point that in much of our communication, there’s more than one meaning in any given message. When the boss complains to us about something - “You were late again today!” - the content of the message isn’t the full meaning of the message - “You don’t seem very dedicated to the company!”
In our relationship with our partner, it’s the same way: “You didn’t call me at lunchtime; you always call!” could mean “You’re losing interest in me!”
Active listening, valuable though it is, doesn’t get to the heart of this second meaning, this underlying emotion or conclusion or judgment. And as a Grown-Ass Man, you’re more concerned with the well-being of those who are important to you than you are over any individual incident or verbal exchange. You want to hear and understand the full text of the other person’s message.
Active listening is a start, but you can’t then proceed to guess about the underlying emotion/conclusion/judgment. You could well be wrong, and that would only make things worse. Instead, you have to surface that second meaning – prompt your partner to bring it out into the open so you can both address it.
Miles Sherts offers some method for this in his book Conscious Communication. It’s a variation on active listening that he calls supportive listening. In supportive listening, your task is to paraphrase what you heard your partner say, but to add your impression of the second message, so that your partner can either verify or correct it.
Here are some examples, per Sherts:
Your teenager is upset about how her job is going. She comes home and says, “I can’t believe my boss did this to me! I am quitting this job right now, and never going back to work there!”
Sherts breaks the supportive listening response into three parts: Feelings, Facts, and Impacts:
“It sounds like you feel angry about what happened at work today, and you don’t want to go back there because you don’t feel comfortable with what your boss did.”
Now the conversation isn’t about talking her into not quitting; it’s about helping her process her feelings.
Another example, per Sherts:
Your son comes home from school very upset: “That teacher is a jerk, and those kids are idiots. I’m never going to open my mouth in that classroom again!” Turns out the teacher prodded him in front of everyone when he gave an incomplete response to a question.
The supportive listening response:
“It sounds like you felt hurt and embarrassed when the teacher pushed you to keep answering in front of the class.”
Again, more space has been opened up for processing his feelings.
This style of dialog is well-suited to the mission of the Grown-Ass Man. Your focus on compassion for those you love and your growing generosity make it the most appropriate way to strengthen your relationships while bolstering your own commitment to living earnestly. And you’re offering structure, which in addition to being generous is a way to ease the anxieties of the people around you.
Practice this. Replay some recent conversations with your partner in your mind, and revise them with supportive listening. What would you have said differently if you’d been applying this model? How would the conversation have turned out differently?
By applying supportive listening, you make your exchanges less defensive; you are less a “fixer”, which no man should ever be, and more of a support, which your partner – and all the people you’re close to – really want and need.
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