COMM 243 Chapter 9: Improving Communication Climates

The Assertive Message Format: Behaviour

A behavioural description is objective and only describes the raw material to which you react. It does not involve interpretation.

The Assertive Message Format: Consequence

A consequence statement explains the results of the situation you've described so far. There are three types of consequences: 1. What happens to you, the speaker 2. What happens to the person you're addressing 3. What happens to others Consequence statements are valuable because they help you understand why you are bothered or pleased by another's behaviour. Also, telling others about the consequences of their actions clarifies the results of their behaviour. As with interpretations, we often think that others should be aware of consequences without being told, but that's not necessarily the case. Explicitly stating consequences can ensure that you—or your message—leave nothing to the listener's imagination.

Agree with the Critic: Agree with the Facts

Agreeing with the facts seems sensible when you realize that certain facts are indisputable. If you agree to meet at four and don't show up until five, there's no question, you're late. But why is it so difficult to accept these accurate criticisms without getting defensive? The answer lies in the confusion between agreeing with the facts and accepting the judgment that so often accompanies them. Most critics don't merely describe the action that offends them; they also evaluate it, and it's this evaluation that we resist. Of course, to reduce defensiveness, you must honestly agree with the facts. It's humiliating to accept descriptions that aren't accurate, and pretending to agree leads to trouble.

Agree with the Critic: Agree with the Critic's Perception

Agreeing with your critics may be fine when you think the criticisms are justified, but how can you confess when they are completely unjustified? You've listened and asked questions to understand the criticisms, but the more you listen, the more positive you are that the critic is totally out of line. Even in these cases, there is a way of agreeing—this time with the critic's right to see things a particular way. You may feel more comfortable agreeing with and acknowledging accurate criticism when you understand that you're not necessarily obliged to apologize. If you're not responsible for the behaviour that your critic finds objectionable, an explanation might be more appropriate than an apology. Apologizing is fine if you can do so sincerely; but you will be able to agree with critics more often if you understand that doing so doesn't require you to grovel. Before you counterattack these hostile critics, ask yourself whether a defensive response will be worth the consequences.

The Assertive Message Format: Interpretation

An interpretation statement describes the meaning you've attached to the other person's behaviour. The important thing to realize is that interpretations are subjective and that we can attach more than one interpretation to any behaviour. Once you're aware of the difference between observable behaviour and interpretation, you'll see how many communication problems occur when senders fail to describe the behaviour on which an interpretation is based.

The Assertive Message Format

Assertive communication occurs when you let people know what you want by addressing the issue in a straight forward, respectful manner and this approach gets the best response from listeners. A complete assertive message has five parts: behaviour, interpretation, feeling, consequences, and intent.

The Assertive Message Format: Using the Assertive Message Format

Before you try to deliver messages by using the assertive message format, there are a few points to remember: 1. The elements may be delivered in mixed order: Sometimes it's best to begin by stating your feelings, and at other times sharing your intentions or interpretations or describing consequences works better. 2. Word the message to suit your personal style: The words that you choose should sound authentic in order to reinforce the genuineness of your statement. 3. When appropriate, combine two elements in a single phrase: Whether you combine elements or state them separately, the important point is to be sure that each one is present in your statement. 4. Take your time delivering the message: It isn't always possible to deliver all these messages at once, wrapped up in neat paragraphs. Most likely you have to repeat or restate one part before the other person understands what you're saying.

Levels of Message Confirmation: Disagreeing Messages

Between disconfirming and confirming communication lie disagreeing messages—messages that say "you're wrong" in one way or another. Some disagreements are quite hostile, but others aren't as disconfirming as they may first seem. There are three types of disagreeing messages: 1. Aggressiveness: Aggressiveness is the most destructive way to disagree because it attacks the self-concepts of other people to inflict psychological pain. Aggressiveness demeans the worth of others through the use of name calling, put-downs, sarcasm, taunting, yelling, and badgering. 2.: Complaining: When communicators aren't prepared to argue, but want to register dissatisfaction, they complain. Some ways of complaining are better than others. Satisfied couples tend to offer behavioural complaints, while unsatisfied couples make personal attacks. Personal complaints are more likely to result in an episode of escalated conflict because they attack a more fundamental part of the presenting self. While complaining isn't necessarily a sign of a troubled relationship, the complaint should be coached in behavioural language rather than as a personal criticism. 3. Argumentativeness: Calling someone argumentative is an unfavourable evaluation, yet we value the ability to create and deliver a sound argument in lawyers for example. Communication researchers define argumentativeness as presenting and defending positions on issues while attacking positions taken by others. Argumentativeness is associated with positive attributes such as an enhanced self-concept and communicative competence. To maintain a positive climate while arguing, make sure to attack issues, not people. Also, arguments are better received when they're delivered in a supportive, affirming manner.

Communication Climate

Communication climate refers to the emotional tone of a relationship—the way people feel about each other. The importance of relational climate cannot be overstated. For example, couples who create and maintain an emotionally healthy, positive climate have happy, enduring relationships. Couples who are unsupported—whether gay or straight, rich or poor, parents or childless—are likely to break up or endure joyless lives together.

Preventing Defensiveness in Others: Control versus Problem Orientation

Controlling communication occurs when senders impose solutions on receivers with little regard for the receivers' needs or interests. Control can involve almost anything. When people act in controlling ways, it creates a defensive climate. In problem orientation, communicators seek a solution that satisfies everyone's needs. Problem orientation is often typified by "we" language which suggests that the speaker is making a decision with rather than for people.

Levels of Message Confirmation: Disconfirming Messages

Disconfirming communication shows a lack of regard for the other person, either by disputing or ignoring some important part of that person's message. Communication researchers have identified seven types of disconfirming messages: 1. Impervious Responses: An impervious response doesn't acknowledge the other person's message. It is very disconcerting when there's no reaction from a person with whom you're attempting to communicate. 2. Interrupting: While an occasional interrupting response is not likely to be taken as a disconfirmation, repeatedly interrupting a speaker can be both discouraging and irritating. 3. Irrelevant Responses: A comment unrelated to what the other person has just said is an irrelevant response. 4. Tangential Responses: Conversational "take-aways," where listeners don't entirely ignore the speaker's remarks but use them as a starting point for a shift to a different topic, are called tangential responses. 5. Impersonal Responses: Impersonal responses refer to clichés and other statements that don't truly respond to the speaker 6. Ambiguous Responses: Ambiguous responses have more than one meaning and leave the other party unsure of the responder's position. 7. Incongruous Responses: An incongruous response contains two contradictory messages, one of which is nonverbal.

Communication at Work

During your career, you are likely to spend more waking hours on the job than in any other setting. This means the emotional climate of the workplace can be just as important as salary or working conditions in shaping the quality of your life. In fact, positive communication climates lead to increased job satisfaction. Two factors are consistently connected to supportive workplace environments: 1. praise and encouragement: Employees feel valued when their work is recognized. 2. open communication: Employees appreciate managers and co-workers with "open-door policies" allowing them opportunities to get and give feedback, make suggestions, and voice concerns. Climate is equally important in virtual organizations as in face-to-face communication. When most contact is text-based, taking time to treat co-workers cordially can make a real difference. By now, it is clear that communication can influence and change a climate. One climate that is not always positive in the workplace has to do with mental health. The sad thing is that these same individuals are also discriminated against, bullied, ridiculed, devalued, and excluded in the workplace. Accounting for this might be the many myths surrounding mental illness. Another factor that can influence communication climate is leadership style. The three traditional leadership styles are described as authoritarian (controlling), democratic (works with subordinates), and laissez-faire ("hands off," nonleadership). Matching the right style with the task is important. Two additional approaches are known as transactional leadership and transformational leadership. "Transactional leaders set goals, clarify desired outcomes, provide feedback, and give subordinates rewards for good work." There are many employment situations where such a style would produce very positive outcomes. Employees would know what was expected of them. The second "newer" leadership style is the transformational leader whose focus is on creating a vision for the future and then motivating people to buy into and work toward it. In so doing, they develop leadership in others as well. They do this through the use of charisma, inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. It appears that the transformational leadership style is most in keeping with the notion of creating a positive communication climate in the workplace.

Nondefensive Responses to Criticism

Even though you may have the best of intentions, it's hard to be reasonable when you're being attacked, and even harder when the criticism is on target. There's a tendency either to counterattack or to withdraw nonassertively. Because neither of these is likely to resolve a dispute, we need alternative ways of behaving. There are two such ways. Despite their apparent simplicity, they have proven to be among the most valuable skills many communicators have learned.

Seek More Information: Ask about the Consequences of Your Behaviour

Generally, people criticize when some need is not being met. You can respond to this kind of criticism by learning what consequences your behaviour has for them. Actions that seem perfectly legitimate to you may cause difficulties for your critics. Once you understood this, criticisms that previously sounded foolish take on new meanings.

Preventing Defensiveness in Others: Neutrality versus Empathy

Gibb uses the term neutrality to describe indifference—a lack of concern for the welfare of another that implies that the person isn't important to you. This makes people defensive because they don't like to think of themselves as worthless. In contrast, Gibb found that empathy blocks out indifference. Empathy means accepting another's feelings by putting yourself in her or his place. This doesn't mean that you need to agree with that person—you simply convey your care and respect in a supportive way. Gibb also noted the nonverbal expressions of concern were just as, if not more, important to the receiver than the words used.

Preventing Defensiveness in Others: Strategy versus Spontaneity

Gibb uses the word strategy to characterize defence-arousing messages where speakers hide their ulterior motives. Dishonesty and manipulation characterize this strategy. Even if the intentions of strategic communication are honourable, victims feel defensive when they discover they were played for a naive sucker. In contrast to this behaviour is spontaneity, which simply means being honest with others. Gibb's notion of spontaneity involves setting aside hidden agendas that others both sense and resist. Spontaneity doesn't mean indiscriminately saying whatever you're thinking and feeling. That's blurting, which is detrimental to interpersonal relationships. Blurters tend to be high in aggressiveness and neuroticism and low in empathy and perspective taking—they are unconcerned about the harm their comments might cause.

Saving Face and the Assertive Message Format

Gibb's categories of supportive communication offer useful guidelines for reducing defensiveness and saving face.

Preventing Defensiveness in Others: Certainty versus Provisionalism

Gibb's final type of defense-arousing behaviour is referred to as certainty. Communicators who regard their own opinions with sureness while disregarding those of others demonstrate a lack of regard for what others hold to be important. When this occurs, you're likely to take it as a personal affront and react defensively. In contrast, there is provisionalism. This occurs when people with strong opinions are willing to acknowledge that they don't have a corner on the truth and will change their stand if another position seems more reasonable. Instead of words like can't, never, always, must and have to, provisional speakers say perhaps, maybe, possibly, and could. They seem to have an understanding of what research confirms: People respond better to open-minded messages.

The Assertive Message Format: Intention

Intention statements make up the final element of the assertive message format. They can communicate three kinds of messages: 1. Where you stand on an issue 2. Requests of others 3. Descriptions of how you plan to act in the future We're often motivated by a single intention. Sometimes, however, we act from a combination of intentions, which may even be in conflict with each other. When this happens, our conflicting intentions often make it difficult for us to reach decisions

Seek More Information: Ask What Else Is Wrong

It might seem crazy to invite more criticism, but sometimes asking about other complaints can uncover the real problem. Asking if anything else bothers your critic isn't just an exercise in masochism. If you keep your defensiveness in check, further probing can lead to the real source of the critic's dissatisfaction.

Defensiveness: Causes and Remedies

No type of communication pollutes an interpersonal climate more than defensiveness. The word suggests protecting oneself from physical harm. In this case, however, we are most likely protecting our presenting self.

Seek More Information: Paraphrase the Speaker's Ideas

Paraphrasing, which involves active listening skills, is another strategy to understand a critic. It is especially important when critics think your behaviour has created a problem for them. By clarifying or amplifying what you understand critics to be saying, you'll learn more about their objections.

How Communication Climates Develop

Relational climates begin to develop as soon as two people start to communicate. If the messages are confirming, the climate will be positive. If not, it will be hostile or defensive. Many climate-shaping messages are nonverbal—smiles or frowns, the presence or absence of eye contact, tone of voice, or the use of personal space all send messages about how the parties feel about one another. Once climates are formed, they take on lives of their own and grow in self-perpetuating spirals: reciprocating communication patterns in which each person's message reinforces the other's. In positive spirals, one partner's confirming message leads to a similar message from the other, which leads the first person to be even more confirming. Negative spirals are just as powerful, though they leave the partners feeling worse about themselves and each other. Escalatory conflict spirals are the most visible way that disconfirming messages reinforce one another. One attack leads to another until a skirmish escalates into a full-fledged battle. Although they are less obvious, de-escalatory conflict spirals can also be destructive. Rather than fighting, parties decrease their dependence on each other, withdraw, and become less invested in the relationship. But spirals can also be positive. A word of praise can lead to a returned compliment, which can lead to an act of kindness, and can result in an improved relational climate.

Levels of Message Confirmation: Confirming Messages

Research shows that three increasingly positive types of messages tend to be the most confirming: 1. Recognition: The most fundamental way to confirm someone is to recognize the person. Recognition seems easy, yet there are times when we don't even respond to others on this basic level. 2. Acknowledgement: Acknowledging another's ideas and feelings is a stronger form of confirmation. Listening is probably the most common form of acknowledgment, but counterfeit listening—stage-hogging, pseudolistening, and so on—has the opposite effect. Acknowledgment includes asking questions, paraphrasing, and reflecting. Reflecting a speaker's thoughts and feelings can be a powerful way to offer support. 3. Endorsement: Endorsement means that you agree with another's ideas or find them important. Endorsement is the strongest type of confirming message because it communicates valuing. But you don't have to agree completely with another person to endorse a message; you just need to find something that you can endorse. Outright praise is a strong form of endorsement, and one that can be used surprisingly often.

Preventing Defensiveness in Others

Researcher Jack Gibb offers some useful tools for reducing defensiveness. He isolated six types of defence-arousing communication and six contrasting behaviours that reduce the level of threat and defensiveness by conveying face-honouring relational messages of respect.

Seek More Information

Seeking more information makes sense when you realize that it's foolish to respond to a critical attack until you understand what the other person has said. Even attacks that appear unjustified or foolish at first often contain some truth, if not much more. Many readers object to asking for details, and their resistance stems from confusing the act of listening open-mindedly with accepting the comments. You can listen to, understand, and even acknowledge the most hostile comments without necessarily accepting them. If you disagree with a person's criticism, you'll be able to explain yourself better after you understand the criticism. On the other hand, you might see that it's valid, in which case you have learned some valuable information about yourself. In either case, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by listening to the critic. After spending years of instinctively resisting criticism, learning to listen to the other person will take some practice. Here are several ways to seek additional information from your critics:

Seek More Information: Ask What the Critic Wants

Sometimes your critic's demand will be obvious: "Turn down that music!" or "I wish you'd remember to tell me about phone messages." In other cases, some investigation will be needed to learn what the critic wants. When asking a question, we must ensure that it is accompanied with the right nonverbal behaviour.

Preventing Defensiveness in Others: Superiority versus Equality

The fifth defence-creating behaviour is superiority. When people get messages that suggest that, "I'm better than you," they get defensive. Gibb found ample evidence that many people who have superior skills and talents are capable of projecting feelings of equalityrather than superiority. Such people convey that, although they may have greater talent in certain areas, they see others as having just as much worth as human beings.

Seek More Information: Ask for Specifics

Vague attacks, such as, "You're being unfair," or "You never help out," can be difficult to understand, even if you sincerely want to change. In such cases, ask the critic for specific information. "What do I do that's unfair?" is an important question to ask before you can judge whether the attack is correct. You might ask, "When haven't I helped out?" before agreeing with or disagreeing with the attack. If you are still accused of reacting defensively after you've asked for specifics, the problem may be in the way you ask. Your tone of voice and other nonverbal clues can give the same words radically different connotations. Only request specific information if you genuinely want to learn more from the speaker; otherwise, it will only make matters worse.

Face-Threatening Acts

We don't feel defensive when others accept and acknowledge important parts of our presenting image. But when confronted with face-threatening acts—messages that challenge the image we want to project—we are likely to resist. Defensiveness, then, is the process of protecting our presenting self, our face. While responding defensively to a face-threatening attack may seem logical, over time defensiveness erodes relationship stability.

Levels of Message Confirmation

What makes a communication climate positive or negative is basically the degree to which the people believe themselves to be valued by one another. Social scientists use the term confirming communication to describe messages that convey value and contribute to supportive communication climates. On the other hand, disconfirming communication describes behaviours that show a lack of regard and make listeners feel defensive. It is obvious that confirming messages are more desirable than disconfirming ones.

Preventing Defensiveness in Others: Evaluation versus Description

When we feel like we're being judged, we tend to interpret it as a lack of regard. Such statements focus on our actions and this can make us defensive. Gibb refers to this type of defensive-arousing behaviour as evaluation. Unlike evaluative "you" language, description focuses on the speaker's thoughts and feelings. Descriptive messages are often expressed in "I" language, which provokes less defensiveness. Had the individuals from the examples above used descriptive language, your response would have been different. Note how the descriptive statements focus on the speaker's thoughts and feelings without judging the person. But effectiveness also depends on when, where, and how the language is used.

Seek More Information: Guess about Specifics

When your sincere and well-phrased requests for specific information aren't successful because your critics aren't able to define precisely the behaviour they find offensive, offer a guess! In a sense, you become both detective and suspect, the goal being to figure out exactly what "crime" you've committed. Like the technique of asking for specifics, guessing must be done with goodwill and the appropriate nonverbal cues if it's to produce satisfying results. You need to convey to the critic that for both of your sakes, you're truly interested in finding out what is the matter.

The Assertive Message Format: Feeling

While reporting behaviour and sharing your interpretations are important, feeling statements add a new dimension to a message. For example, consider the difference between saying, "When you laugh at me (behaviour), I think you find my comments foolish (interpretation)," versus, "When you laugh at me, I think you find my comments foolish, and I feel angry." It's important to recognize that some statements seem as if they're expressing feelings but are actually interpretations or statements of intention.

Agree with the Critic

While you can't honestly agree with criticisms that you don't believe are true, you can agree with either the facts or the critic's perception of the problem.