Part 2 of the Transforming Communication interview is here…
…Richard: Yeah, that’s a good question, too, because a lot of people will have done something like assertiveness training, or done some kind of listening skills course. And what they’re learning there is some very specific skills that are often quite useful.
What I’m doing with Transforming Communication is putting those sorts of skills in a much wider context. And so I’m not so much just interested in giving people a set of skills for getting what they want, which sometimes happens with assertiveness training, and I’m not so much interested in giving them a set of skills just to help someone else clarify and feel good.
I’m actually interested in helping them create a whole relationship that works.
From the research with couples, for example, John Gottman in America has done a lot of research over the last ten years about how couples actually get on. And one of the things he showed quite clearly is that the quality of the atmosphere between the couple determines how long those people will stay together.
And that quality isn’t just about learning even how to resolve conflicts. It’s about the whole relationship, it’s about how they talk to each other. And he found that you could reliably predict from listening to any 3-minute segment of conversation between a couple whether they’re going to stay together for the next year.
Now that’s quite exciting because it means that we are now starting to learn not just someone’s theory about what’s making a relationship work, but actually what you specifically say, what you specifically do when you’re in a relationship that enables two people to get on with each other, cooperate, achieve things together, and want to stay together longterm…
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Wow, wouldn’t you want to know what makes the difference? Find out in part 3 of the Transforming Communication interview…
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