The workplace is a complicated place.
Imagine a spider web of people, managers,
supervisors and staff members who need to
work together, interacting in various ways
to fulfill the organization's mandate.
Disagreements and conflict are bound to
occur; between staff members, between staff
and management, and between clients and
members of your organization.
As a result of working
with thousands of government employees to
help them acquire and use defusing hostility
skills, we have concluded that a good amount
of bad feelings, organizational problems,
destructive conflict and inefficiency result
from a lack of skill in the WAY that people
communicate with each other. This isn't that
surprising if we consider that our society
tends to glorify the confrontational, John
Wayne type heroes. And, that as children
learn language, they tend to learn
confrontational, negative language before
they learn how to get along with others.
Cooperative communication
or the skills needed to get along in the
workplace, or, for that matter, anywhere
else, are in relatively short supply,
because we simply don't teach them to
children or adults. So we get unnecessary
conflict and friction. We get arguments that
are more oriented towards winning than
solving problems, and we get the so-called
personality conflict, a convenient phrase
that allows everyone to avoid responsibility
for interpersonal problems. We get teams
that don't work well because they lack the
skills. We get meetings where the majority
of time is wasted because people don't
interact effectively. We get clashes with
clients and customers that occur as a result
of both parties moving into confrontational
ways of interacting.
We've moved forward in
defining the elements of cooperative
communication so that they can be taught to
people. But what is cooperative
communication?
What Is
Cooperative Communication
Some ways of
communicating increase friction and anger.
Other ways of communication tend to cause
people to work WITH us, and not against us.
While it is clear that blatant accusations,
name-calling and personal attacks are
confrontational (the opposite of
cooperative), there are many more subtle
ways to ruin a communication. To illustrate
some of the techniques of cooperative
communication, let's take a look at the
following sentences:
"You never finish the
work on time."
"It seems like you are
having some difficulty with the timelines.
What can I do to help?"
Which of these phrases do
you think is more likely to elicit a
productive dialogue? Clearly the first at
least "sounds" antagonistic", while the
second doesn't. Another example: "If you
had bothered to read the report, you would
know...."
It might be that the
report wasn't clear on those points. Would
you like me to explain?
What are the cooperative
rules here? In our first set of examples,
the initial statement uses an absolute word
"never", and as a result tends to cause the
other person to argue. In addition the
phrase sounds blaming. The replacement
phrase lacks those confrontational
characteristics, uses a qualifier "seems",
and offers to work together. In the second
phrase set, the key word is "bothered",
which suggests that the person is lazy, or
uncaring, and that is what will be heard. It
also is a blaming statement. In the
replacement phrase, we introduce another
qualifier "might", followed by an offer to
solve the problem.
In both phrase sets, the
first phrases are likely to create argument
and personalized conflict while the
replacement phrases are more likely to
result in real problem solving.
There are a number of other aspects of
cooperative communication, far too many to
outline in a single article. However,
cooperative communication involves the use
of techniques that are designed to prevent
destructive conflict, enhance workplace
morale, and save considerable time and
energy.
How Do People
Learn Cooperative Communication?
Our estimates are that
between 5-10% of people consistently
communicate in cooperative ways, although
that estimate is certainly not scientific.
Minorities of people acquire these skills
through experience, but unfortunately,
experience is a slow, unreliable teacher. As
a result we have decided to offer our
Building Bridges series of seminars. At
present there are two separate components to
the process. The first seminar
"Communicating Cooperatively in the
Workplace", provides the basic components of
cooperative communication, and highlights
the advantages of using those components.
The second seminar is entitled "Thorny
Workplace Communication Problems" is a
case-study based approach that allows
participants to work through real
communication situations, to determine how
they can apply cooperative communication to
them.
The first seminar can be
done stand-alone, while the second requires
the first as a pre-requisite. Since we
believe that seminars should be
custom-designed, we will not be including an
outline of content, since content will vary
considerably from workplace to workplace. If
your workplace problems centre on meetings,
then the content would differ from a
workplace that had general team-based
issues. Or, if your major concern is written
communication, the content would be
different than if you are primarily
concerned with verbal communication. What we
can tell you now is that these seminars will
be much different than the standard
communication courses on the market, and
avoid many of the tired, ineffective old
saws that are often included in basic
communication seminars.
If you would like more
information about cooperative communication
elements you can order our help card on the
subject (Communicating Cooperatively in the
Workplace) by using the order form included
in this newsletter. Whether you are a
manager or staff member, you will find that
learning and using cooperative communication
techniques can reduce the amount of
destructive conflict around you, save
valuable time, increase team effectiveness,
and reduce supervisory/ management time
dealing with conflict that is a result of
confrontational communication approaches.
Post your comments at
amin@aiminlines.co.th
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