I’ve noticed that the Reveal Culture examples / Tell Culture done right resemble greatly the kinds of communication advocated in the many strands of conflict/communication training I’ve taken. Connecting your requests to needs, looking for interests instead of positions, seeing the listener’s perspective, etc.
For instance, the Tell Culture example example “I’m beginning to find this conversation aversive” is quite close to the example from my training “I notice I’m having a reaction,” except that it’s closer to being judgmental. For comparison, here’s a quote I have in Anki, I believe from the book “Difficult Conversations”: “When doing active listening, strategies for making the tension explicit include signaling that you’re having a reaction, sharing how you’re feeling, and postponing the conversation because of emotions.”
The people who gave Malcolm’s friend the “Crocker’s Rules” impression were probably failing to not mix in judgments into their tells. I recently taught a workshop on this, which reminded me just how hard this is for many people.
It’s become very apparent to me that one person with high communication skills can go a long way towards making up for deficits in all whom they interact with. If Reveal Culture/Tell Culture as you understand it really is recommending adopting some of the habits recommended by books like NVC and Difficult Conversations, then I do see this as primarily being about skill, not culture, although learning these skills can be quite deep and can entail some personality changes. One possible reconciliation: having a default preference toward sharing your inner world and accepting those of others may make people much more tolerant of unskilled attempts to do so, where people inadvertently give their positions and judgments instead of their observations, feelings, and needs.
Having skills and using them in a particular context aren’t the same thing. When talking with rationalists I’m using language out of Circling a lot. I do have the skills to use them. On the other hand those language patterns don’t come easily when talking with my family. There are different cultural norms for the family conversations that do lead me to interact differently in them.
I’ve noticed that the Reveal Culture examples / Tell Culture done right resemble greatly the kinds of communication advocated in the many strands of conflict/communication training I’ve taken. Connecting your requests to needs, looking for interests instead of positions, seeing the listener’s perspective, etc.
For instance, the Tell Culture example example “I’m beginning to find this conversation aversive” is quite close to the example from my training “I notice I’m having a reaction,” except that it’s closer to being judgmental. For comparison, here’s a quote I have in Anki, I believe from the book “Difficult Conversations”: “When doing active listening, strategies for making the tension explicit include signaling that you’re having a reaction, sharing how you’re feeling, and postponing the conversation because of emotions.”
The people who gave Malcolm’s friend the “Crocker’s Rules” impression were probably failing to not mix in judgments into their tells. I recently taught a workshop on this, which reminded me just how hard this is for many people.
It’s become very apparent to me that one person with high communication skills can go a long way towards making up for deficits in all whom they interact with. If Reveal Culture/Tell Culture as you understand it really is recommending adopting some of the habits recommended by books like NVC and Difficult Conversations, then I do see this as primarily being about skill, not culture, although learning these skills can be quite deep and can entail some personality changes. One possible reconciliation: having a default preference toward sharing your inner world and accepting those of others may make people much more tolerant of unskilled attempts to do so, where people inadvertently give their positions and judgments instead of their observations, feelings, and needs.
Having skills and using them in a particular context aren’t the same thing. When talking with rationalists I’m using language out of Circling a lot. I do have the skills to use them. On the other hand those language patterns don’t come easily when talking with my family. There are different cultural norms for the family conversations that do lead me to interact differently in them.