3 Ways Your Habits Stop Effective Communication at Home and Work
By: John M Reisinger
Our habits support what strategies we can use for effective communication. Consider the conflicts and frustration you experience every day. If you objectively observe these communication experiences don't be alarmed to find 98% of them are habitual communication breakdowns. Meaning, it's predictable that you will react the same way every time you encounter a specific stimulus (Think difficult co-worker, demanding spouse, and whiny children for clearer visual).
Most people never examine their habits when they're trying to resolve conflicts, triggered into frustration, or become upset over innocent comments. Our habits tend to run us, like we're on automatic pilot just reacting to whatever turbulence we encounter. Still worse, unexamined habits prevent effective communication because we unintentionally inflame them by using strategies not coherent with our habits. I call this Communication Frustration because that's often the result for everyone involved when the following 3 habits take over our conversations.
Habit #1 - Moralistic Judgments
This habit implies wrongness or badness with people who don't act according to our values and desires. The habit of moralistic judgements includes language such as "You're selfish", "He's lazy", "They're jealous", "She's not smart", "It's inappropriate", "That's rude", "That's not right", "That's wrong", "They're bad people", "She's a good person". Other forms of judgements include blame, insults, put-downs, labels, criticisms, and diagnoses. The focus of moralistic judgements is always on who IS what by classifying, labeling, and dichotomizing people and their actions.
Habit #2 - The Habit of Making Comparisons
Pointing out how someone is deficient or lacking in some way are the focal points when making comparisons. Other ways of making comparisons are "You always", "He could never", "She deserves better", "I'll do it myself", "You're not fair" , "I'll never be like", "It wasn't meant to be". Making comparisons is very concerned with rationalizing who deserves what. Determined by what happens to us and those we care for.
Habit #3 - The Habit of Denying Personal Responsibility
The aim of this habit is to persuade others we aren't responsible for our thoughts, feelings, and actions with obscure language that shifts our personal responsibility to other people. More forms of denying personal responsibility include phrases like "I have to", "You make me feel", "I need to", "It's not my fault", "I was told to", "I really should", "You know I can't", "That's not our policy", "The rules say". We deny personal responsibility when we assume a lack of choices for events and behaviors we want others to believe we were powerless to control.
It's not a matter of if we do these things, but the degree to which we all do them. How are these habits showing up in your life? Are you comparing and manipulating to get your spouse, children, and co-workers to do what you want? Are you denying responsibility for your thoughts and feelings? Are you making others responsible for your actions and commitments? Are you using company policies, rules, and management to deny responsibility? Remember you're not broken, but your strategies may be.
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