. Understanding interpersonal relationships
6th
Confirming and
Characteristics of interpersonal relationships: what makes disconfirming
behaviour: Film :
communication interpersonal? / interpersonal
“Dead Man Walking”
communication and the internet / content and relational
messages / metacommunication.
Readings
Relational development and maintenance: a
developmental perspective / a dialectical perspective
Self-disclosure in interpersonal relationships: models of
self-disclosure / characteristics of effective self-disclosure
Improving interpersonal relationships
Communication climates in interpersonal relationships:
confirming and disconfirming messages / how
communication climates develop / creating positive
communication climates.
Managing interpersonal conflict.
Confirming and disconfirming communication
Like the weather, interpersonal relationships have a climate. It can
be positive or unpleasant and hostile. Certain behaviors contribute
to these positive or hostile feelings. The term communication
climate defines the emotional tone of a relationship. Whether you
are referring to personal relationships or workplace relationships,
the communication climates are shared by everyone. As your
chapter points out, being valued by another person (confirming
communication) or being shown a lack of respect (disconfirming
communication) is what makes the tone of the communication
positive or negative. Keep in mind that disconfirming
communication like every other form of communication is a matter
of perception. Often we perceive a message to be disconfirming
when the intent was not to devalue us. We all have been
disconfirming ourselves, when we failed to return a phone call or
respond to a letter.
Any time two people start to communicate, whether it is at home or
at the job, a relational climate begins to develop. If the messages
are confirming, the result will be a positive climate. Once a climate
(or the tone) of the communication is established, it can develop
into a self-perpetuating spiral. A spiral is an established pattern
where each person’s message reinforces the other’s response.
When you tell a child, “I love you,” the tone is positive and the
reciprocating message will also be positive. If you tell your
coworker that his work is lousy, he will not reciprocate with kind
words. A spiral begins to form that will further increase the
defensiveness and hostility between you and your colleague.
There is probably no type of communication that pollutes an
interpersonal climate more than a defensive spiral. As your text
points out, there are a number of messages that make us
defensive and escalate the conflict. The moment we perceive that
we are being attacked by others and you are not willing to accept
their judgment, you are faced with cognitive dissonance – an
inconsistency between two conflicting pieces of information,
attitudes, or behavior. There are three broad ways of resolving
dissonance without agreeing with a critic. Each of these is
characterized by defense mechanisms. The first is an attack on
the critic and includes verbal aggression and/or sarcasm. The
second is by distortion of the critical information through
rationalization, compensation, regression, or avoidance.
Avoidance can be effected through physical avoidance,
repression, or displacement. Displacement means that you take
your anger and frustrations out on someone else.
In order to prevent defensiveness in others, you should carefully
study the Gibb categories of defensive and supportive
behaviors. Jack Gibb has found six types of defense-arousing
communications and six contrasting behaviors that lessen the
threat and defensiveness by conveying face-honoring relational
messages of respect.
None of the supportive behaviors mean that you have to tiptoe
around issues and hold your tongue at all costs. There are
methods to allow you speak your mind in a clear, direct, nonthreatening way that builds on the “I” language approach of
chapter five. Your text calls this the clear message format. There
are five parts to this and each part can be combined with the
others to have successful and non-hostile interactions. Behavior,
interpretation, feeling, consequence, and intention statements
make up these five parts and their uses alleviate many potential
and actual problems in your professional and personal life.
When dealing with the public, telecommunicators have to develop
the skills to respond nondefensively to criticism. Seeking more
information, asking for specifics, guessing about specifics,
paraphrasing the speaker’s ideas, determining the other’s wants,
asking about the consequences of your behavior, and agreeing
with the critic offer a wide choice of reacting in a sincere and
positive manner.
When faced with criticism by others, it is really possible to respond
nondefensively by attempting to understand the criticism and by
agreeing with either the facts or the critic’s perception. Always
remember that you are dealing with someone else’s perception
and acceptance of facts and criticism does not have to mean that
you accept the other person’s premise. You are simply agreeing
with the other person’s right to have his or her say.
Please know the key terms of the chapter and read the text
thoroughly. I have listed some web links for further study and your
enjoyment.
Title: Dead Man Walking
Commentary: Some of her comments are loaded and get
defensive reactions; most are reflective and nonjudgmental,
allowing Poncelet to hear his prejudices in another voice. When
Prejean's probing digs too deep (she suggests "it's lazy people you
don't like," not blacks), Poncelet asks Prejean to change the
subject-which she agrees to do.