Blogging About Communication

Communication in Your Life

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  • YOU HAVE DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS, BUT ARE THEY CONSTRUCTIVE?

    A constructive conversation is a special kind of talk. It’s an intentional and candid dialogue with the focus placed on achieving mutual understanding. The goal of a constructive conversation is problem-solving, not winning. It’s a robust exchange of ideas, in which the parties feel heard and respected. Engaging in a constructive conversation enables people with different perspectives to understand each other. This requires a special skill-set. The focus of the constructive conversationalist is on finding shared ground to move forward. That means it’s not a debate or argument where you seek to persuade the other person that you’re right. It’s not a lecture or monologue.  Do you have the skills required to have a constructive conversation?

    DO YOU HAVE AN OPEN MIND?

    Constructive conversationalists are curious. They are people who want to learn from others rather than prove themselves right and others wrong.

    CAN YOU BUILD ON IDEAS TO ESTABLISH COMMON GROUND?

    Constructive conversationalists seek to understand others’ viewpoints as much as they want others to understand theirs. They are bridge builders.

    DO YOU ASK QUESTIONS TO IMPROVE UNDERSTANDING?

    Constructive conversationalists ask for more information. Comments like “Tell me more about that” and “What are the roots of that idea?” help in gaining perspective.

    DO YOU USE THE “YES, AND” APPROACH?

    Not wanting to shut down what another person says, they acknowledge what others say and then build upon it.

    ACTION PLAN

    Constructive conversation is less about avoiding arguments and more about navigating challenging discussions without becoming defensive or offensive. The next time an issue that typically divides people arises, without abandoning your own beliefs, seek to understand where the other person is coming from and why they think as they do. That’s constructive!

  • WHO’S ON YOUR TEAM?

    We often need to work with others to make decisions, solve problems, and accomplish specific goals. In effect, we function as a team with each of the individuals we work with performing a particular role with respect to the others and works with them, cooperating to achieve a desired end.

    What Actions Make a Team a Dream Team?

    The best teams displayteam emotional intelligence, displaying a set of practices that meet the needs of the people on the team. Team members recognize, understand, and manage emotions within the team and when the team interacts with others. The best teams also adhere to established group norms—the “do’s and don’ts” that regulate the behavior of members and make it possible for them to work together to reach their goals. Additionally, the best teams commit to preparing as a team, understand the dynamics of their development, and have members who participate actively, performing helpful membership and leadership roles.

    What Actions Make a Team a Nightmare?

    Communicating in a team can become frightful if members focus on performing roles that are self-serving rather than helpful. Among harmful member roles are the blocker (disagreeing with others to keep anything from being accomplished), the aggressor (criticizing or blaming others for a lack of progress), the personal recognition seeker (needing to be the center of attention), the dominator (insisting on getting one’s way), and the jokester (engaging in horseplay). Each of these roles diminishes the team’s chances of success.

    How can You Tell if Your Team is Healthy?

    If you can answer the following question with a yes, you’re on a healthy team.

    1. Do members support one another?
    2. Do members make decisions together?
    3. Do members trust one another?
    4. Is communication open and candid?
    5. Does the team aim to excel?
    6.  
    7. Your Action Plan
    8. Identify the kinds of roles you perform when part of a team. Think about ways you can stress your strengths to help the team realize its goals. Also consider the weaknesses that you and other team members have. Strategize regarding the steps you can take to prevent member weaknesses from impeding the team’s operation and outcomes.

  • WHO DO YOU TRUST?

    According to American novelist Ernest Hemingway, “The best way to discover if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” How many of the many people you interact with regularly do you trust? How many of them do you think trust you?

    What is Trust?

    Trust requires the presence of both trusting and trustworthy behavior. Trust is the connective tissue of a relationship. It indicates a willingness to rely on or depend on another person. When we put our trust in a person we feel safe with them. When we feel safe, we become more willing to display our vulnerability.

    The Bases for Trust Building

    What makes you decide to trust someone? You likely believe in the person’s integrity—that they are a person of good character. You believe in their motives—comfortable that hidden agendas do not drive their behavior. You find their behavior to be consistent—you’re able to predict their actions. You appreciate their discretion—you believe they will act responsibly and with your welfare in mind.

    There’s Risk Involved

    When people in a relationship trust each other, they take a risk. Either party can be harmed because of the other’s behavior. When you place your faith in someone, you recognize that it is possible for the person to use your belief in them against you. Should this occur, it usually shatters your trust. While developing trust takes time, unfortunately, it’s relatively easy to destroy.

    Your Action Plan

    Weigh the costs expended when someone you trust disappoints you. Weigh the benefits gained when someone you trust lives up to your expectations.  Do a cost-benefit comparison. When rewards outweigh costs, the relationship is worth investing in.

  • FRIENDS

    How many real friends do you have? Although sadly some eight percent of Americans report having no close friends, more than fifty percent report having between one and four good friends, and over thirty-eight percent report having five or more close friends.

    Characteristics of Close Friendships

    Close friendships share these eight characteristics: (1) The friends enjoy one another’s company; (2) They accept one another as they are; (3) They trust one another to act in the other’s best interest; (4) They respect one another to use good judgment in making choices affecting the other; (5) They are willing to assist and support each other; (6) They are comfortable sharing their experiences and feelings with each other; (7) They understand each other; and (8) They feel free to be themselves.

    BFFs Have Unbreakable Bonds

    What makes a BFF? To be considered BFFs, each friend’s behavior needs to be consistent, responsive, and predictable. Each friend also needs to prove themselves to be available and reliable.

    Give and Take

    When friendships are genuine, there is a natural give and take of support. Voluntary and reciprocal, friendships are not performed out of a sense of duty, but as a result of our integration in and connection with one another’s lives.

    How Do Your Friendships Measure Up?

    If your “friendships” are shallower than you would like them to be, ask yourself if you are confusing social connection with real friendship. The joys of genuine friendship cannot be replaced by electronic stimuli or bots. Building true friendship requires time, effort, and self-reflection. Not dependent on likes and empty affirmations, real friendships need nurturing to build bonds that last. How do we do this?

    Your Action Plan

    Compile a list of what you consider to be “best-practices” for building lasting friendships. Seek to confirm if you are proactive when it comes to friendship. When proactive, friends do the following: They create opportunities to spend time together. They focus on the other person. They demonstrate a willingness to self-disclose, confiding their private thoughts and feelings. They offer one another support, particularly when the other person feels psychologically vulnerable. Simply put: real friends have each other’s back.

  • IS IT HARDER TO LISTEN TO PEOPLE YOU KNOW WELL?

    A recently published cartoon depicted a woman speaking on her cell. Her husband interrupts her from another room, saying: “Mind if I comment on a conversation I’m not listening to?” Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation?

    We Display Closeness Communication Bias

    The closer we feel to someone, the more we think we know them. This belief can lead us to overestimate our ability to understand them when it actually ends up contributing to our misunderstanding them instead. We imagine we know what they’re thinking, but focus on our own perspective rather than theirs. To really understand another person, we need to listen to them. We cannot look into our own thoughts and see their world.

    We Overestimate Our Listening Ability

    Most of us think we listen better than we do. Large numbers of people estimate their listening accuracy to be between 70 and 80 percent. That’s far from the truth. Many of us listen at only 25 percent efficiency—meaning we lose 75 percent of what we think we’re listening to. To get what you seek in life, spend less time focusing on yourself and more time focusing on others. Spend less time talking and more time observing and listening. Listening requires focused awareness and the desire for full understanding.

    Avoid Common Errors

    Many of us jump to conclusions, give in to distractions, split our attention, miss important words, interrupt others, try and simplify what we hear, feel the need to enhance what we hear, and react emotionally. We need to replace these harmful behaviors by considering the other’s perspective, working to understand the complexity of their message, and searching for areas of commonality.  We need to engage one another in genuine conversation.

    Action Plan

    When conversing with another person, commit to decentering—place the focus on the other person, not on yourself. To be sure you understand the other person, paraphrase their message. Begin by making a tentative statement: If I’m not mistaken . . . Follow the tentative statement by repeating their basic message in your own words. Then ask a question: Did I get it right? Demonstrating willingness to understand another’s perspective increases the likelihood of listening accurately. You don’t have to agree with another person to understand them.

  • THE STORIES WE TELL

    Are you a storyteller? Whether you post to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or some other venue, what’s ends up being of most significance to others are the stories you tell about your life. The role of storyteller is one of the oldest in history. Episode by episode, we reveal our lives and connect with others.

    WE ALL HAVE STORIES

    Storycorps is an organization that collects the stories of ordinary people that the U.S. Library of Congress then archives. It is a treasure trove, an amazing collection of human voices representing the wisdom of humanity. Prompts such as “What was your proudest moment?” or “Can you tell me about someone who influenced your life?” guide the storyteller in relaying a life story that educates, clarifies, or inspires. The point is, we all have stories. Our job is to find our stories and tell them.

    AN ART AND A SKILL

    Storytelling is both an ancient art form and a valued communication skill. The stories we tell invite others into our world. They communicate who we are and what we stand for. Amid all the information clutter, the stories we tell stand out. In fact, according to Plato: “Those who tell the stories rule society.” The author John Barth adds: “The story of your life is not your life. It is your story.” The more personal and authentic your stories, the easier it becomes for others to identify with you. Through the stories you tell, others reflect on experiences designed to capture their hearts and minds, or as executive coaches Richard Maxell and Robert Dickman assert, “A story is a fact, wrapped in an emotion that compels us to take an action that transforms our world.”

    TAYLOR’S LESSONS

    Taila Lee, author of “The Taylor Swift Essentials: 13 Songs that Display Her Storytelling Prowess and Genre-Bouncing Genius,” demonstrates that Taylor Swift is well aware of this. The stories Swift tells with her songs reveal her vulnerability. Her personal narratives are relatable, featuring vivid descriptions, and imagery and metaphors that bring the stories she tells alive and connect her with her fans.  Talking about subjects such as grief and loss, social ostracism, feeling diminished, and emotional highs and lows, Swift’s stories display a number of storytelling lessons: (1) They have a structure—the narrative unfolds in a coherent order; (2) They have a setting—the story takes place in a specific space and time; (3) They have a unique style—Swift’s lyrics are revealing and empathetic; (4) They serve her fans—Swift’s stories make every performance a special night for them; and (5) They feature surprises and symbolism—colors and props help Swift share larger life reflections. Swift’s storytelling is so effective that a number of colleges and online platforms offer Taylor Swift courses to explore her brand of storytelling and its cultural impact.

    YOUR GAME PLAN

    Well delivered stories arouse emotions like anger, fear, concern, and happiness. You can use them to engage and inspire, shaping the reality you seek others to imagine. For example, if your goal were to convince your audience to take action against bullying, you might consider sharing with them the tragic story of two girls, ages 12 and 14, who were charged with a felony—aggravated stalking—for relentlessly bullying another 12-year-old girl with tragic results. Their target committed suicide by jumping off a tower.

    Try your hand at storytelling: Pick one of these story starters and tell a story from your experience that shares a lesson you learned: Once upon a time; I’ll never forget the first time; It was the scariest day of my life.

    The essence of sharing your life is telling a meaningful story.

  • ARE WE TOO FOCUSED ON NOT BEING “WOKE” TO BE CIVIL?

    Are you and your friends and colleagues able to disagree without coming off as disagreeable? Do you think we should be able to express displeasure without displaying rancor or offending others? Do you?

    IN THE NEWS

    Recently President Trump used the “R-Word” when referring to a number of people he disagreed with. Contrastingly, both Lizzo and Beyonce purposefully removed the word “spaz” from their song lyrics to avoid offending individuals living with disabilities.

    IT’S NO JOKE TO DEHUMANIZE OTHERS IN THE EFFORT NOT TO BE WOKE

    Although the extreme left used wokeness as a weapon against their own party, alienating themselves from much of American society, the extreme right used it as a rationalization to increase the use of vitriolic language. I believe that those of us in the middle believe that there’s nothing wrong with infusing civility into our word choices. We ought to be able to tell others what we think of them and their ideas without diminishing their personhood or dignity. The use of insults, vulgar expressions, name-calling, and in general, any speech that degrades and encourages hostile responses from others is not a sign of strength. Using pejorative words that stigmatize and demonstrate one’s contempt for others only serves to highlight the user’s inability to conduct themselves civilly.  

    THE COMPETENT COMMUNICATOR

    Competent communicators display civility when conversing with or about others. Rather than come off as confrontational, they invite input from others. Rather than put others on the defensive, they do their part to diffuse potential conflicts, opting not to be confrontational or condescending. Instead of constructing and responding to messages angrily, they rely on reasonable discourse and explore common interests.

    BACK TO BASICS

    The original meaning of the word “woke” signified awareness of racial and social injustice. At its core, it’s about being awake to potential prejudice. Only in the last few years was that meaning co-opted as a political insult for being “overly progressive” or “overly sensitive.”

    ACTION PLAN

    Decide if you think being called “woke” is a complement or an insult. Whether you view being woke as a badge of honor or a sign of excessive activism, keep in mind that what it means to be woke depends on who’s using the term and in what context. However, you feel about being woke, using uncivil language diminishes the user.

  • ARE YOU NEW CAREER READY?

    According to LinkedIn, many of the jobs we aspire to fill today have title descriptions that did not exist 25 years ago. Among these jobs are social media influencer, online content creator, knowledge architect, prompt engineer, story-teller, growth officer, and conversation designer. Many of these newer positions involve working with Artificial Intelligence.

    THE TRANSFORMATION IS UNDERWAY

    Can you predict the many ways that AI is going to transform your work future? Can you envision jobs related to AI that you would like to hold four to five years from now? According to The Wall Street Journal, there are four jobs that organizations will likely need qualified people to fill: They are The Explainer—persons able to explain how AI works;The Chooser—persons able to decide the technology or AI systems that is best suited for each specific task; The Auditor and Cleaner—persons able to resolve problems like bias and skewed outcomes attributable to AI; and The Trainer—persons able to instruct workers on how to use and get the most out of emerging technologies.

    WHAT’S NEXT?

    What other positions can you see being redefined or reshaped in the evolving workplace? To be sure, working and learning will merge. Being AI fluent will become a necessary skill for employment.

    ACTION PLAN

    Imagine a self-wanted ad written a few years from now that would be of interest to you. Here’s an idea: write your own dream help-wanted ad. Then ask AI to rewrite it. Did the technology change everything? Did it help you “rethink” how you see yourself working? Did it lead you to a career opportunity you had not yet considered? It’s time to intentionally prepare yourself to ask the right questions about the trajectory you’d like your career embody.

  • THE POWER OF WORDS

    Do words matter? Might changing the word school to learning community affect the behavior of students and educators? Might relabeling a population a community alter how members think about themselves? How do the words we use influence our attitudes toward one another? How might they influence our attitudes toward how we should approach our differences?

    THE SITUATION

    Due to political and legal pressures, feelings about the words Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have changed. Many colleges and organizations have either ended or sidelined DEI offices and programs. To say the least, the DEI landscape is under flux and challenging to navigate. What are schools and businesses to do? Instead of being interpreted as creating a welcoming environment that values difference and ensures equitable access opportunities, some now perceive the practice of DEI to be discriminatory.

    SOME FAVOR REFRAMING DEI

    Might renaming diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts make it more palatable? What if the program was called Inclusion, Belonging, and Engagement (IBE) or Accessibility, Talent Development, and Opportunity instead (ATO)? Might the words used change people’s perception?

    SOME FAVOR SUBSTITUTING A DIFFERENT APPROACH

    Critics of DEI believe that Merit, Excellence and Intelligence (MEI) should be the priority, not DEI. They prefer prioritizing talent and achievement, skills and performance, over identity characteristics. The contention is that people should be treated as individuals rather than as group members.

    BLEND APPROACHES

    Some who believe that DEI ignored merit, call for a remix that balances DEI and MEI factors, giving consideration to both individual merit and diversity.

    YOUR GAME PLAN

    Look at your institution where you study or the organization where you work. Consider what needs to be done to foster a space where merit and diversity are not perceived of as at odds with each other? Might focusing on idea diversity in addition to identity diversity help? Demonstrating acceptance for demographic differences, as well as for a wide range of perspectives and life experiences, can avoid the creation of ideological echo-chambers that impede effective decision-making. Where viewpoint diversity exists, more robust discussions occur. Such discussions can help sharpen arguments—encouraging critical thinking, idea-testing and idea-refinement, and producing better outcomes. In settings where constructive disagreement is able to flourish, dialoguing succeeds in nurturing bridge-building—the discovery of ways to communicate constructively across differences. It’s not only DEI or MEI, but the ability to engage constructively with disagreement that ultimately will lead to better performing schools and organizations.

  • WHAT’S YOUR WORD OF THE YEAR?

    Dictionaries are known for identifying a word of the year. In 2023, different dictionaries identified as the word of the year “rizz””—short for charisma, and authentic.  In 2024, the words chosen were polarization and brain rot. For 2025, Oxford University Press has selected “rage bait” as its word of the year, underscoring the potential for online content to intentionally anger users. Contrastingly, Dictionary.com chose the slang expression “6-7” to connote uncertainty or signify that something is merely okay. Theoretically, these words were selected because of their ability to sum up and reflect the nation’s mood during a defined period of time. Interesting.

    How Words Interact

    Might the word choices people make become polarizing? Might polarization in addition to dividing us into opposing groups be causing people to experience brain rot, that is, mental exhaustion attributed to excessive online consumption? As they “chat-up” others, might users of these words be exposing our deep divisions as the echoes of their musings reverberate across online platforms?

    What Happens Online Doesn’t Stay Online

    Increasingly, online communities are participating in sharing and shaping our use of words. They are accelerating the creation and communication of new linguistic trends that reflect the shared experiences of different communities of users. Ultimately, a word’s users devise the hashtags that we then use to categorize and search for content. They also become powerful drivers of how we use new linguistic terms offline, influencing our communication in daily life.

    Action Plan

    Reflect on the past year. Consider three words used during 2025 that help to sum up your mood—your wishes and aspirations—or vision for the future. Then settle on one word, a linguistic snapshot, that you believe highlights and brings clarity to a significant shift or major issue in the public sphere. Create a vision board to illustrate how you hope to live your word in 2026.