interrupt people! We may be wildly excited; they may have misunderstood; there may be time pressure or even danger; some people are just very long-winded. What am I saying is that, if it becomes a habit, it will reduce the power and effectiveness of your communication.
Exercise: Breathe!
Are you an interrupter? Do you know someone who is? If so, here’s a simple exercise to try. Breathe.
Before you speak, develop the habit of taking a deep breath. This is much easier and more natural than the old-fashioned advice to count to 3 (or even 10!) before speaking, which itself distracts you from listening to the other person.
As you take your lovely big in-breath, you may just notice that the other person is still speaking!
PEOPLE-PLEASING
Most people like to be liked, but when that turns into a great fear of being rejected or of failing, the result can be people-pleasing, a behaviour pattern that equates one’s own worth with the perceived happiness or approval of others. This is often (though not always) due to experiences of wounding rejection or harsh criticism early in life.
People pleasers may say yes when they mean no, for example going out when they would much rather stay in. They may agree in conversation with opinions that they fundamentally disagree with internally. They may deny their own truth in how they dress, behave and interact with others in order to be liked.
We all have this in us to some degree, especially in the formative and emotionally vulnerable teenage years when we try on identities, join tribes and even adopt uniforms to feel ‘part of’. Who wants to be a social reject? Also in totalitarian societies people-pleasing can be a life or death affair: not many people in North Korea are interested in standing in their own truth and fearlessly expressing their real opinions, and quite understandably so when the consequence is almost certain death. The same forces can be in play in any social group founded on bullying and intimidation, and when such a group dominates a country the resulting people-pleasing behaviour from millions has devastating consequences, as the Nazis demonstrated in the 1930s and 40s.
In free societies, we do have a choice, and as with all the leeches, it’s a question of degree. If someone is (and is perceived to be) very driven by people-pleasing, it will rob their communication of power. Agreeing with people all the time can be perceived as weakness, invalidating the views expressed. Honesty and authenticity are absent, and as we’ll see later, they are key foundations of powerful communication.
Exercise: Values
If you find yourself people-pleasing overmuch, try taking some time to think about your own values. These are probably best expressed as single nouns, for example loyalty, passion, generosity, curiosity or fairness. Ask yourself: what do I stand for? What is important in life? What are my principles? What’s not negotiable? Write down everything that comes to you… take your time, come back from time to time until you are sure you’ve captured every possibility. Then whittle them down to a manageable number, maybe 4 or 5 at most. If you can make a mnemonic out of them that helps to make them more memorable! (As an example, my values are faith, love, acceptance and gratitude, which spell FLAG – easy for me to hold on to even with my patchy memory!)
When you have your core values clear, it becomes much easier to stand in them and not be blown around by other people’s opinions or needs. You also gain a litmus test you can use from now on to make decisions easier: is this course of action in line with my values?
FIXING
For some people, it’s not acceptable for others to be upset. This may derive from people-pleasing, or it may be that strong negative emotion is itself something to be feared, either because of too much of it in a violent or explosive family of origin, or perhaps because of complete lack of experience of it, with a cool, reserved family of origin where emotional expression was unacceptable.
Either way, fixing is trying to make it all right. “Don’t cry” or “Don’t be upset” will be the primary response to pain.
Sometimes people need to be upset, and to express that in grief, sadness, anger or other strong negative emotions. If repressed instead of expressed, these emotions can go deep and dark and corrupt people as they fester.
My aunt told me a story that illustrated how even well-intentioned fixing can cause damage. She was born in Cardiff, Wales in the 1920s. When she was a little girl, her parents told her that she was going to have a baby brother or sister. She was so excited! The spare room was decorated as a nursery and as she watched her mother’s bump grow she imagined playing with her new sibling. Eventually the day came and her parents went off to hospital. She waited at home with a neighbour, watching through the net curtains… but when her parents returned, they were alone. Nothing was said; she was sent to stay with relatives. When she returned, the nursery had been redecorated. She did eventually get 2 little brothers, and much, much later she learned that her first brother had been stillborn – but she never forgot the confusion and loneliness she felt that day. Doubtless my grandparents decided not to discuss it so as not to upset her, but the effect on her was that a bond was broken and she found it harder to trust people from that day on.
Fixing, whether by withholding like that or by distracting or obscuring with extravagant affection, can deny people the feelings they need to feel and thus obstruct healing. Not only that, but many fixers habitually deny themselves strong feelings.
When communication is driven by the need to fix, it will lose power and effectiveness because there is a hidden agenda at work – one that is all about the fixer’s needs, even though it may be disguised as love.
Exercise: Expressing
Many fixers grew up in reserved families and learned that it is not ok to express, so if you are generally very reserved and avoid strong emotion, a great first step to allowing other people to express strong emotions is to practice doing it yourself. The best access to letting go like this may vary widely from person to person. Some might try watching a few very emotional films and letting themselves have a good cry! More direct and beneficial for others might be to take up a martial art, as long as the teaching emphasises the spiritual aspects of the art and not just the physical: paradoxically, punching things in a spiritual way can put you in touch with the gentler, feeling side of yourself. For yet others, strong experiences like bungee jumping or parachuting or even extreme sports might be very liberating. At the very extreme, there’s primal therapy!
Try a few tentative steps and see what works for you. This is all about balance: we are not our feelings, and we don’t have to express every emotion to the max – but equally it is not healthy to repress our own strong feelings, or to stop others from having theirs.
THE 7 DEADLY SINS
In my fifth TED talk, I listed 7 deadly sins of speaking. Of course, this is an arbitrary list, but since the talk went up on TED.com in 2015 I haven’t had anyone suggest anything major that’s missing, and many people have communicated how useful they find it.
Again, I want to stress that I am not saying these 7 things are inherently wrong, and to be banned or deplored. Most of them can be useful or enjoyable in moderation, even if as guilty pleasures. However, as with the 4 leeches, I am suggesting that people who habitually (often unconsciously) indulge in any of these traits become harder to listen to, as well as less good at listening.
People sometimes ask me to explain the relationship between the 4 leeches and the 7 deadly sins. The answer is that the leeches lurk behind and generate all 7 sins – and behind all of the leeches, as we know, is fear.
Let’s meet the 7 deadly sins.
GOSSIP
