Communicating in a Pickle

In a Pickle?

Fight Fair Rules:
Things to Avoid When You Disagree
By Lisa Jeffery, MBA, MA
Professor of Communication

It’s not what kind of fights you have, it’s how you fight that matters. Did you know there are skills you can learn that help you handle disagreements in life?

When I watched the movie the “The Break Up” with Jennifer Aniston, I laughed. I saw the couple doing all the things that are counter productive in an argument or disagreement. They lashed out at each other, stabbed, insulted and said mean things. Because of this, they began to address the stabs, and they were never able to address the real issues. Once these things started, they were unable to salvage the relationship.

There are names for the things they did, they are ‘name-calling’, ‘kitchen sinking’, ‘duffel bagging’, ‘projecting’ and 'hitting below the belt’ and put-downs.

These are communication 'crimes'. When the ‘crimes’ happen, it’s difficult or nearly impossible to resolve a disagreement. These knives or bombs appear, the argument quickly goes South... unless you are skilled at recognizing them and dealing with them as knives and bombs. Doing this is actually a skill. A skill can be learned, like learning to ride a bicycle.

Conflict resolution skills are often learned in college-level interpersonal communication classes, conflict resolution courses, or anger-management programs. Knowing these skills can save a relationship, a friendship, a marriage, and sometimes, a life. I teach them in a workshop I call, "Fight Fire With Diamonds" and I have seen them change people's lives, help them solve problems and save relationships.

The Science of Fair Fighting
One way to prevent disasters in relationships is to learn the science of fair fighting and the ground rules of conflict resolution. These show you what not to do in an argument. This is why counselors and communication workshops can help people learn how to solve problems, arguments, disagreements. They give you the skills to learn what not to do, and how you can stay on track, even if you get off the track.

If you have been trained in communication conflict skills, you know this. But the problem arises when you are in a disagreement with someone who does not know these skills and throws very painful (unfair) knives and flames in a disagreement. Sometimes you will confront someone who breaks all the rules of good conflict resolutions. It helps to know the names of what they are doing.

Crimes of a Fight:
1. Name Calling: Names like: nag, heartless, mean, cold, and stupid.
2. Below the belt: These are remarks which are not fair, not about the argument, and highly personal. (They usually target the other person’s most delicate and vulnerable pain).
3. Duffle Bagging: Pulling out unrelated problems that you have been collecting, which have nothing to do with the issue at hand.
4. Kitchen Sinking: Throwing in every old argument, everything but the Kitchen sink.
5. Stereotyping: Unfairly grouping the other person with others: “of course you’re emotional, all women are.” “You are just like… (Some evil, horrible person you both hate).
6. Projecting: Removing the blame, culpability or responsibility from yourself regarding the other’s feeling, and putting the culpability or blame on them. Example: 1st person: “I’m hurt.” 2nd Person: “You are creating your own pain.”
7. White-Washing: Repainting the other person’s feelings to what you say they are. If your partner says "I am hurt," treat it as true.
8. Put-Downs: These things never work to solve a dispute. They are intended to hurt, and are sometimes crass. “Put on your ‘big-girl’ panties and deal with it.”
9. Attacking the Character of the other person: This is off limits, is meant to cause pain, and does not solve the problem.

All of These Are Knives. Stabs. Whacks. Kicks.

They usually cause the following effects:
1. They are unproductive and dangerous to relationships, and detrimental to solving problems.
2. They always make you have a natural tendency to want to defend yourself. But don’t do it, this is just what the abuser wants.  Address the behavior, not the insult.
3. They are the dark-alley paths that leads marriages, friendships and relationships to ruin.

What Can You Do?
If you have been trained in conflict skills, the best thing you can do is try to help the other person avoid these pitfalls and gently guide them to stay on the issue, the real problem to solve. Recognize the crimes, and don’t react to them. If you do, you will be not only be distracted from the original issue, but the argument will get worse. A lot of pain will happen on both sides. You can prevent it before it happens.

Four Choices to Deal with Unfair Fighting:
1. When you realize someone is not arguing fairly, simply do not react.
2. Another way is recognize the hurtful ‘below the belt’ comment, and point out this is not fair fighting, or it is hurtful.
3. Another way is to react to the intent and not the hurtful thing said. (What are you trying to do?) This is often is not the best way. People seldom admit they are trying to be hurtful. They seldom stop and look at their intent.
4. A fourth way is to react with humor and guide the disagreement back to the issue.

8 Magic Relationship Rules of Conflict:

1. Stick to the argument at hand.

2. Own your message. If you’re angry, don’t attribute your anger to someone else.

3. Don’t apologize for your feelings. Feelings are real. Accept them, respect them.

4. Make your message about behavior, not an attack on the other’s person’s character or personality.
5. Make sure your verbal and nonverbal messages match.
6. Avoid evaluating, interpreting, or criticizing, or putting your partner down – stick to the problem.
7. Time a fight. Discuss when the flames of anger are controlled.
8. Speak in I language, not you language. Example: "I was hurt," not "you hurt me".


Finally, Think About Your Amygdala.
What’s that? It’s that little almond-sized thingy deep within the middle of your brain where emotions happen. Daniel Goldman, in his book “Emotional Intelligence” said we are often ‘hijacked’ by our amygdalae. He said there are three signs of an amygdala hijack:
1. A strong emotion.
2. A sudden onset.
3. When we reflect later, we regret what we said or did.

This is important to remember in conflict resolution. The little hijacker takes over our airplane and takes us South, really South. We can prevent amygdala hijacks by recognizing them, stopping a hijack before it happens, and most importantly, refusing to negotiate with hijackers.

In other words, think before you speak. My absolutely favorite principle of communication is "Once something is said, you can never take it back."

"Lisa-isms"



In a pickle? My gosh, who ever created that expression?
--Lisa

The Art of Explaining Things

Take Some Tips from the Best: Use Magic and a bit of Stardust

That's it. I'll tell them, Ivan. My friend Ivan called from Alaska and quipped that I need to go to Washington to tell them how to explain the stimulus package so people understand. I said, "Hey, that's what my newsletter is about this month, The Art of Explaining Things!" Then my Persuasion class at Barry University decided that the White House needs to explain the stimulus package in a way that the people in Liberty City understand! (Liberty City is a particularly rough area in Miami, the home of may historical racial riots.) "So that," I said, "is your final exam!" They screamed. I was joking.

But I did think about my hero, the best 'explainer' in the universe; the man who explained physics to millions; the man who explained the Space Shuttle Challenger's o-ring problem on live TV in the 1980s; the late physicist and Renaissance Man, Richard Feynman. I discovered Mr. Feynman's gift when I checked out his 1963 lectures on Physics from the library. I was hungry for thought on long boring drives. Little did I know that Feynman would pack my imagination into a rocket, and shoot me to the moon! My brain was never the same after listening to Richard Feynman. I was amazed at how smart I was, and how much I knew about Physics. He said that we are made of stardust, the same particles that make up the stars, and now I understood chemistry of the universe, completely. He took me to a new point of view.

When Feynman explained nanotechnology, he described how we could write the 24 volumes of the encyclopedia Britanica on the head of a pin. When he explained the fun of understanding systems, he called the workings of machines 'the guts'. The examples go on and on. I could listen to Feynman forever. Feynman is the acknowledged inventor of quantum computing, an expert in nanotechnology, but he was gifted in explaining highly complex things to ordinary people. (And he had so much fun at it!) We loved to listen to him, and gave him the Nobel prize. Feynman died of Cancer in 1988. The world lost one of its comets.

So I began to study Richard Feynman: the way he talked, his brave and courageous way of living life and explaining life. How did he do it? How can I learn (and teach) the magical techniques of this gifted communicator? How can I use Richard Feynman's style to help people learn to motivate others, captivate audiences, win clients, influence and inspire people? After reading most of his books, and books written about him, I came up with some ideas to practice communicating as dazzling as Richard Feynman.

5 Ways To Explain Things so People Remember Them - Feynman Style

1. Use vivid, visual words. (Create a visual snapshot in people's minds). For example, Feynman uses jumping into a pool to explain light.

2. Evoke the senses: Feynman explains the Space Shuttle Challenger accident with glass of ice-water on TV, and dropped the shuttle's o-ring in it, clamped. When he pulled it out, it remained misshapen when the clamp was removed -- showing that the cold prevented the o-rings from contracting!

3. Break down information into a journey. For example, you can use train trips and each point is stop. You can use a flight, a mountain climb, a hike. Feynman used "exploring a new continent" to explain nature. He said, "We see water and call it a river because that's what we know. But actually, it's a lake!"

4. Make up a metaphor, use something people know. Turn complex things into things that we know and which we can relate. I use "self-esteem does not arrive by FedEx" to explain that you must learn and apply techniques to raise your own self-esteem.

5. Don't explain something the boring way, no one will remember it. Be brave, be different. After practicing metaphors in my coaching session, one of my clients created a brilliant metaphor to explain a quantity of liquid used in his manufacturing process. Instead of "ml" or "millileter" he said the amount of liquid "equivalent to the weight of the ink in a fingerprint." (Bravo, George! Now that is a Feynman-style thing, something people remember!)

You Can Practice! Two Feynman-Style exercises to help you transform your 'tech-talk' or 'sales talk' into music:

1. Imagine your information as place. Feynman used a pool. You can imagine your 'thing' as a building! Take auditing, for example. What does the entrance way of auditing look like? When you enter a room, what do you see? What does the basement look like? This technique works for flight safety as easy as it works for the steps in mediation or meditation! Play with your visual journey until you perfect your message in a way people can "see" what you are explaining. You may have to experiment with several places before you find the right one that works.

2. Choose an unrelated object, like an orange, or something odd. People will connect your information to the visual and will remember what you are saying. Be unusual. For example, use an orange to explain a mortgage! (What happens when you turn it into juice?) Have some "Feynman" fun! I was coaching a client on how to present her complex natural therapy in 5 major steps. We used the poster in the room - a Dr. Seuss poster of the "Cat and the Hat" -- to move from point to point. All five points fit the five things the cat was juggling! (She didn't use the poster in her presentation, but she mastered the technique of helping people move from step to step.) And that's the "Feynman-style" trick of getting people to REMEMBER what you are saying. (Hooray, Amy!)

Try these exercises to explain anything: your relationships, your business, your service, your product, your vision, physics, or (yes!) even stimulus plans!

It takes some practice to acquire the skill, but it's fun, and highly effective. You won't find your answers on your first try, but you get better at it! Mr. Feynman, you did much more than teach us physics, you taught us the art of explaining things!

Fun With Feynman

Here are some fun Videos about Richard Feynman:

Feynman explains confusion by talking about the ape, two sticks and a banana.

Feynman explaining nature as a game of chessFeynman talks about uncertainty
The Website for Feynman online

"If you have any talent, or any occupation that delights you, do it, and do it to the hilt.

Don’t ask why, or what difficulties you may get into."

- Richard Feynman

Hear more about the techniques of Richard Feynman and other Excellent Communicators in Lisa's The Art of Being Memorable Workshop and KeynoteA fun and lively program that helps you polish your authentic self, find the sparkle that's inside you, and ignite it. Learn techniques to improve your authenticity, listening skills, confidence and impact. (Also available in private executive coaching.)

For more tips on being a great public speaker, contact Lisa Jeffery for private executive coaching, workshops or keynotes.

Lisa Jeffery's Lisa-isms (Saying of the Month)

Lisa-isms

Saying of the Month

Like Richard Feynman, aspire to light your words on fire!

Spanish Speakers like Yellow

It's yellow! No, I mean it's jello! Well, jou know what I mean!

I get tickled with how my Spanish speaking accent reduction clients always get the "Y" and "J" sounds mixed up. I love the yellow/jello problem. It's typical in the accent of Spanish speakers speaking English. Why does it always happen and how do we stop it? That's a question they always ask me. We both know that they know how to make both sounds correctly, but it always happens.

What's going on with that? Well, first of all, it's not a speech mix up, it's a brain mix up. The brain gets confused and wants to switch the sounds in the Spanish-speaking mind. You want to say J when you're supposed to say Y and vice versa and you keep getting it mixed up. It's because the language of Spanish switches it. So how do you fix it?

Well I like to suggest tricking the brain. Say it wrong, and say it right, say it wrong, and say it right. Stand up and change positions as you say, this will signal the brain that something different is happening. Say each sound until the brain understands.

If you've ever seen fresh snow, kids love to make a path through the fresh snowfall. If it's deep, all the kids follow the same crooked path to school. That's what you have done for the sounds these letters make in your brain. You will keep following the path until you build a new one.

Here's a trick for jou (I mean you!)

To make sure you say the Y sound correctly, say i as in "it". Hold the sound i, then push your toungue forward, but don't let it touch the gum ridge. So here's how you practice:
i-yellow
i-you
i-young
i-yes
i-yell

It sounds strange at first, but the more you practice this technique the easier it will be to say the y sound instead of the j sound.

Then, move on to sentences and have some fun! Here are some practice sentences:

Joe dropped the jo-yo into the yam-flavored jam.
Jill will yell if Jake Yates drops the yoke on her jacket.
You young jury jerks just yell and yell and you jeer too!

Accent reduction does not have to be a miserable, tedious process. It can be fun if you can laugh at yourself while correcting yourself. My accent reduction clients often begin correcting themselves in about the third week of accent reduction coaching. That's when the miracle happens!

For more information on accent reduction coaching, classes and helpful hints, visit my website and sign up for my mothnly newsletter. http://www.crossingborderscommunication.com/.

Hooray for Dylan!

Hooray for Bob Dylan! Homer would nod with approval, T.S. Elliot would cackle with delight, and Abraham Lincoln would grin and say bravo! I myself was delighted when I was driving in my car and heard the news story about some blogger who discovered that Bob Dylan used the lines of the civil war poet Henry Timrod, the poet laureate of the Confederacy in his new album. "Oh, this is wonderful, this is perfect," I yelled at oncoming traffic... Whaooooooo! In keeping with my series on "Steal like Crazy until you Make Yourself Up", thanks Bob!Bob Dylan has only done what every great speaker, great poet, and great songwriter has been doing for centuries, for millennia. I don't like that they are calling it 'borrowing' though. Motoko Rich of The New York Times called Dylan a magpie... now that's more like it!
"In Mr. Dylan's case, critics and fans have long described the songwriter's magpie tendencies, looking upon that as a manifestation of his genius, not unlike other great writers and poets like T. S. Eliot or James Joyce who have referenced past works."T.S. Elliot said that ""Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." Homer himself said that "Poetic License" which we now call "Artistic License" is being able to take what you want for your yarns, speeches and songs. I have a license, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill had one, and now Dylan does too! And in doing so, not only do we enjoy his songs, but we learned about about an obscure poet who was lost in American History!This is why I always say to my clients and students: read, read, read, watch, study great speakers, find sparkling words, copy their STYLE! Then.... play like you are them! Chances are, the style of the speaker you like is the same style you have deep in your psyche. Until you become a pro at it, this is the best way to "make yourself up."Anyway, the words Dylan used from Timrod were fantastic: “More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours,” How magic is that? Heck, Dr. Martin Luther King stole words from Lincoln, who stole words from the Bible!
"The opening words that resonated to the ear were about cadence as well as content. He began with two rhyming words: four score. This set in motion a symphony of melodious sounds. The Hebrew cadence, rendered in Elizabethan English, would have been stated slowly by Lincoln: “Four . . . score.”
The biblical ring of his opening words was rooted in lines from Psalm 90: The days of our years are threescore years and ten; And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years."So there you have it. I'll have more on "Steal Like Crazy Until You Make Yourself Up" later as I become a magpie myself and look for more goodies to "steal." (And Homer nods....)

Steal Like Crazy Until You Make Yourself Up!

The Constantly Reappearing "Stolen" Techniques of the Great Speakers

I have a fun assignment in my public speaking class. We study the greatest speeches ever made. My stack of these speeches is now a mile high, because I’m very greedy and love finding new speeches. A funny thing happens as we start to study the great techniques of the masters: the same techniques pop up over and over again. They all copy each other! For example, Abraham Lincoln’s message in the Gettysburg Address was the same message in the funeral oration at the ancient Greek leader, Pericles's funeral during the Peloponnesian War as described by Thucydides!So after great delight in studying these speeches, I came up with a brilliant stolen idea: “Steal like crazy until you make yourself up!” (I’m talking techniques, not plagerism!) So here are some of the techniques that appear again and again in speeches. You too can steal these ideas. They turn a speech into magic!

1. Techniques to Copy from the Great Speakers:
2. Use parallel sentences: Start your sentences (or paragraphs) the same way.
3. Us vs. them (one or the other) (polarizing)
4. The Seesaw Effect (ask not what… but what)
5. Metaphors (highly successful!)
6. The List (the Homeric List – Homer first made use of the list. It’s powerful!)
7. Repetition, repetition, repetition
8. Play on words -- Using unusual words in different contexts
9. Opposites - contrast
10. Comparison
11. Pushing the boundaries, risk
12. Use word pictures (trickling down our economy) (twilight struggle)
13. Use what I call “sparkling” words.
14. Story telling, and parables
15. Weaving a (metaphor) theme….. throughout the speech
16. Tapping into a shared myth
17. Shock
18. Irony
19. A new twist to an old theme
20. The use of asking questions (and sometimes answering them.)
21. Evoke the senses
22. Create a sense of community
23. Conversational style
24. Alliteration
25. Ask Questions instead of statements (and repeat them throughout the speech.)

"Lisa-isms"



"Steal like crazy until you make yourself up!"
--Lisa

The Abilene Paradox...

"That's why we ended up in a mess!"

Here’s a funny form of miscommunication that often happens in organizations, teams, families and even couples! (You have probably experienced it before, but didn’t know what to call it!)It’s called the “Abilene Paradox”
Management guru Jerry B. Harvey observed the paradox in his book "The Abilene Paradox and other Meditations on Management." ISBN 0-7879-0277-2
Here’s the story of why it got that silly name:It’s hot summer afternoon in Coleman Texas. A newly-wed couple and the bride’s parents are playing cards next to the fan and sipping ice-cold lemonade on the porch. The new father-in-law thinks the kids might get bored and suggests an adventure to Abilene for lunch, although he’s totally happy to stay next to the fan. Everybody else (who is also happy to stay home next to the fan) thinks the father wants to go, and they are eager to please him, so they all agree it would be a good idea too, including Mom, who really hates going to Abilene.So they jump into the old station wagon with no air-conditioning and suffer the 53-mile drive to Abilene in the scorching Texas summer heat. They’re soaked and grumpy when they get there, and the food is awful. Mom gets sick. Then they have to pile back in the hot car and take the 53-mile miserable drive back home. Finally, back on the porch, sipping their lemonade, they discover that not a single one of them actually wanted to go to Abilene in the first place, they just agreed because they thought everyone else wanted to go, and it was dad's idea and they didn't want to disappoint him! That’s the Abilene Paradox!When the Abilene Paradox happens, millions of dollars can be wasted in an organization, families can break into arguments, and couples can split up! Everyone is angry!The Abilene Paradox is a paradox in which the limits of a particular situation force a group of people to act in a way that is directly the opposite of their actual preferences. In an Abilene Paradox, people take actions in contradiction to what they really want, therefore they defeat the very purposes of what they try to accomplish.The Abilene Paradox is not a symptom of not being able to manage conflict, but it is a symptom of not being able to manage agreement. In groups, people are afraid to communicate what they really feel or want, and often agree with the CEO or a strong member of the group, in fear of disagreeing. The results can be disastrous.Groups that suffer from the Abilene Paradox display a number of characteristics:
* They agree individually in private about the nature of the situation or the problem facing the organization * They agree individually in private about the steps that need to be taken to cope with the problem* They fail to accurately communicate their desires and beliefs to one another* Failing to communicate, as a group, they make decisions that make them take actions counterproductive for their actual intention* As a result, they become frustrated* The cycle of inability to manage agreement will repeat itself if not dealt with accurately through communication
The Abilene Paradox theory is often used to help explain extremely poor business decisions, especially notions of the superiority of "rule by committee" or “group think”.
Does your organization, board or family suffer from the Abilene Paradox? How can we fix this communication problem? The first thing you can do as a CEO is to encourage and reward staff members to speak up -- courageously and honestly for the welfare of the organization, family or team. If you are a CEO, have you created an environment where your employees fear disagreeing with you? How can you encourage your staff members or employees to communicate courageously and honestly? If you are a staff member or employee, you can take steps to learn how to communicate courageously and honestly.
For both these things to happen, an organization needs to create an atmosphere that encourages rather than discourages opinions and disagreements. Disagreements are healthy for the end result.
But they can be difficult because of a phenomenon called the “The Spiral of Silence” a phemonen observed by communication expert Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann.Noelle-Neumann illustrates the interactive relationship between our own opinion and a perceived public opinion. The spiral of silence process is driven by a fear of isolation, which overrides the worth of our own judgment and triggers us to permanently scan our environment for clues of opinion and go with the flow. This happens even when we feel something is wrong!(Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion. Journal of Communication, 24 (2), 43-51.)So practice communicating with courage, and reward courage in your organization. When you communicate with courage, you become brave enough to say what you really feel. It’s as simple as that! Be a "Nelson Mandela" or a "Rosa Parks". Now that's progress!