Category Archives: communication

Be Respectful

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NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

I can just see every writing teacher cringing to see ‘Be’ as my verb in this action mantra.

I just cannot think of a better way to express this fundamental admonition.  It’s like the cheer we all know from high school—instead of ‘aggressive’, it’s, “R.  E-S.  P-E-C-T-F-U-L.  Be. Respectful.  B-E Respectful!”  Ha, the two words even have the same number of letters so the rhythm transposes perfectly.  Hmmm, maybe we can start a movement from the sidelines here.

In the grocery check-out line.  At the Target returns desk.  On the phone with customer service.  Driving.  With your in-laws, your coworkers, your spouse, your children, your direct reports, the building custodian. With your kids’ teachers.  With elected officials.  With people who disagree with you on issues that matter deeply to you.  With the person aggressively disrespecting you to your face.  With the authoritarian police officer using excessive force, the boss acting out of sheer prejudice, even malice.  With the militant supremacist throwing rocks and spitting at you.

Why be respectful? Because it’s the best way to show that you see the other person as also human, equal in worth to yourself, even if they don’t feel or think the same about you. They may say they do—don’t we all say it? It’s not socially acceptable to say out loud that we think someone is beneath us—at least not in public, or ‘polite society.’ Is there actually even such a thing anymore, polite society? Every year it seems easier for people to demean one another out loud, viciously, violently, in public, with no politeness whatsoever, and no consequences. I think every one of us needs to query ourselves truthfully about how much we really value and believe in equality, and get honest about where we don’t: Own it. Stand up and accountable for it.

But if we are sincerely convinced that we see all humans as equally valuable, that we harbor no occult supremacist ideals, then the least we can do is be respectful toward one another in all of our interactions. It may even serve as a prophylactic, keeping us from speaking or acting on our latent negative biases, if we simply commit to practicing respectfulness.

Disrespect is the first arrogant step down the slippery slope of dehumanization, and that descent leads straight to relationship hell.

Listen to Connect

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NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

When you see the doctor, how long can you speak before being interrupted?  How long can someone speak to you before you interrupt them?  What kind of listening is happening in these situations? What do these disruptions do to the flow of conversation?  Of relationship?

This post took off as a call to Always Seek Stories, then Find All of the Stories, then Listen More Deeply, and then Listen to Understand, before finally landing on connection—it’s where I always land, isn’t it?  What am I after here, what is the bottom line?  I really just want us all to truly hear one another.  Right now we declare, opine, profess, criticize, and judge far too often.  We filter our inputs through bias, anger, tribalism, and passion; we meet others with guard up and weapons drawn, ready for a fight.  What we need from each other is to sit down, shut up, and listen.

It can be exhausting, though.  Because to really listen deeply and hear, often what is not being said, is a master practice in slow, patient presence—in self-control and regulation.  It is a quintessential requirement of true empathy and friendship, to put our own concerns and inner chatter aside and open fully to another person’s experiences and expressions—especially the subtle ones.  Is this even in our nature?  Perhaps it was when life was much simpler—when all we had was each other and nature, and survival was only and ever about just being, whether alone or together, doing or resting—when tribal life had fewer layers and levels, and our attention had only a fraction of the distractions we have today?  Back then, individual survival depended fundamentally on survival of the group, so interpersonal cohesion and cooperation was literally a matter of life and death.  One could argue the same is still true; we are still humans, an innately social species.  But it seems, at least in the United States, we increasingly see our own individual survival as threatened by people around us (especially people whom we perceive as different in any way) rather than sustained.

Mom and son plan her move from the home he grew up in to assisted living.  He will drive in from another state for the big day.  She declares (demands?) that he should come a day earlier than they agreed, but does not say why.  He feels impatient and tells her no.  Wife asks husband to help her move a new rug to its final position on the floor—tonight, please.  He says no, it’s not flat enough yet, and it will take too much time.  What are the deeper requests and needs beneath each of these appeals and rebuffs?  My friend is the son; I am the wife.  We reflected together recently on what our loved ones may have felt that they did not say, what lenses we each wore in these conversations, and how they filtered (and/or distorted) our responses.  He may go earlier to help ease mom’s anxiety about a big life transition; Hubs and I moved the rug after I explained that I wanted our houseguest to feel more comfortable.

Listening to connect means more than attuning to other people.  It includes monitoring and studying our own inner ‘weather report’, as I read it described somewhere.  If I’m feeling cloudy with a chance of lightening, that may distort my perception of whatever enters my atmosphere, compared to when I’m sunny.  If I listen and hear myself first, I can calibrate my inputs as well as outputs.  I may decide to steer clear of storms I see brewing in others, until my own ether is less reactive. 

By tuning my own strings, I can play better harmonies more nimbly.  I feel confident in my ability to attune to others; I can drop wholeheartedly into the movement of melodious exchange, in resonance with other instruments in the orchestra.  When I relax into simultaneous presence to self and other, I narrow the distance between us.  We become one in collective, each individual contributing something unique, independent, and inextricable at the same time.

Thanks for following along this past week, friends!  Hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I’m enjoying writing them!

Judge Judiciously

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NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

The person who cuts you off in traffic is not (necessarily) an a**hole; nor is the person who voted for the other candidate (necessarily) stupid, evil, or out to destroy the country.  These are judgments we make, knowing nothing else about people, driven too often by a toxic cocktail of negative emotion and prejudice.  I wrote a few days ago about resisting early closure and asking more and better questions, in order to come to better conclusions—to make better judgments.

What good does it do us to judge quickly?  It feels decisive and righteous, for one thing.  It can make our decisions easier and faster when we don’t stop and question our assumptions and biases, or examine the influence of our own emotional baggage.  We get to dwell in the comfortable, if somewhat distorted, status quo of our own worldview, perhaps oblivious to the unintended impact of all that we ignore and dismiss.  This works for a while, maybe.

But we’ve probably all experienced that humbling moment when we realize how a snap judgment led us seriously astray.  What did it cost us?  Perhaps we lost a great job opportunity, or damaged a relationship that we care about.  Did we ruin a negotiation?  Maybe we lost someone’s trust, which we may never fully earn back. 

I’m not saying we should never make judgments.  Decisions must be made, after all.  Hiring, firing, mergers and acquisitions, voting, marriage—all human relationships and collaborations require us to dance, sometimes in elaborate steps of give and take, call and response, and iterative, reciprocal disclosures and choices. I think drawing premature, oversimplified conclusions closes more doors than it opens, especially in our minds.

So when is judgment required and important?  What makes judgment ‘good’?  I think it’s when our core values are at stake and at play.  I witness someone lying because telling the truth is costly or painful.  I know that another person says they believe one thing, and yet their actions speak differently, for whatever reason(s).  Does a given decision before me align with my core values of honesty, integrity, fairness, inclusion, kindness, and generosity?  If not, I can judge the action, and not necessarily the person who makes it, as dishonest, lacking integrity, unfair, exclusionary, unkind, or selfish.  If I make a judgment, I should be willing to defend it with conviction.  In my mind that means employing both evidence and sound reason, not just escalating emotions—unless, of course, I am aware that my judgment comes from exactly the latter.

This is an all too human foible that we would all do well to recognize.  When we see someone judging suddenly and severely, we can ask, ‘What core value, belief, or identity do they feel being violated here?’  This type of judgment can rarely be reasoned away with evidence to its contrary.  Read The Culture Puzzle by Moussa, Newberry, and Urban, Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein, and The Power of Us by Van Bavel and Packer, to see how our various strongly held identities trigger intense emotional hijack when we feel them to be threatened.  Under such conditions we slide into tribalist survival mode, aggressively attacking our perceived attacker, elephants loose, operating in fixed rationalization the whole way. 

If we can take a few deep breaths and withhold our own judgment for a moment, exercise some curiosity, empathy, and compassion, and not take their words and attitude personally (especially if they are judging and attacking us), perhaps we could see them as a fellow human, get a glimpse of what really matters to them, and appreciate why they’re so riled up. Maybe we could even learn something new. We can de-escalate. And once we do that, we can render wholly unnecessary our need to judge in return. How liberating.