Clean Intentional Communication when Delivering and Receiving Feedback
Imagine this situation... You have a friend, family member, colleague who’s behaviour is causing a reaction in you. You may be annoyed, angry, upset, anxious, concerned, offended, cautious, disappointed, disapproving, disgusted, hurt, shocked, sad... The first thing to note is that you have a “reaction”. Any reaction must be noted, no matter how slight. A reaction has a charge to it. You are no longer neutral. You have been plugged in. Clean intentional communication no longer exists for you. This immediately brings the situation into your personal domain. Some part of their behaviour is causing you upset. The operative word is “You”. Your reaction is about you, not about them and what they have done. Delivering feedback while you are in a reactionary mode is ill advised. This is in distinction to observing someone’s behaviour and not having a reaction. Just noticing. When I am in my role as coach, which is not all the time, I am much more able to observe people and their behaviour without being plugged in and having a personal reaction. My role as coach has an objective view. It is not about me, the person doing the coaching, at all. To really be in the role of coach requires permission and agreement from all parties. To coach without permission is a personal violation, even if our intention is good. When we coach without agreement, the place we come from has a personal agenda, and therefore, on some level I am getting something from being the coach to you, without your permission. I might be getting my need to be right, or liked, or smart, or witty, or provocative (sadly my personal favourite..ughh) met. When I coach with permission and agreement, the place I come from is pure service. This raises the likelihood of clean intentional communication. (This is the true space of a coach, however, not all coaches have the ability to go to this place of service beyond self.) Permission and agreement grants the right for me to be there in total service to you, which may include speaking of my experience of you. The distinction is that as a coach, in an agreed coaching conversation, if I am right, or wrong, on or off target about my experience of you, that is irrelevant. Because it is not about me getting my needs met, its about me supporting you in the best way possible and towards meeting your needs. This is the space that is created in clean intentional communication. If we have a reaction to someone’s behaviour, and we notice the reaction within ourselves, the journey becomes an internal one. We need to go inside ourselves and explore why we reacted as we did. In our understanding of our reaction we will find gold and the key to no longer reacting to this kind of behaviour again. Our inner inquiry towards holding the space for clean intentional communication may include questions such as.. Why is this behaviour causing me a reaction? What about this upsets me? Am I observing something in their behaviour that I do not like in myself? If I can describe in words their behaviour, what words would I use?(examples- non supportive, disrespectful, untrustworthy, arrogant, uncaring...) Once I have determined the words to describe the behaviour that gets me into reaction, the question to ask is where do I see this very same behaviour in me, and in the way I am with others? Avoid at all costs the knee jerk tendency to discount any possibility of this behaviour living in you. I can promise, if you stay with the question, and be open to seeing aspects of yourself that you may not have in your current awareness, you will find the connection. If you feel the person is not supporting you, where do you not support? Not just them, but in your life with other people and your self? And where do you not support them, specifically? If we really stay with our own inner inquiry, either on our own, or in partnership with our coach, we can discern what we have to learn from our reaction to the other person’s behaviour. We can move closer to clean intentional communication. The paradox is that we usually think it is the other person that needs the work, needs to change, needs fixing, and we therefore can spend hours, weeks, months or years, being upset with them for this behaviour. When all along, we had the answer in us, and it is us that needed to make a change.
For things to change...First I must change....This is really tough work. It requires a level of willingness and vigilance that few people can stomach. It often feels much easier and more fun to make the other person the bad guy. It’s their fault. They need to change. Not me. I am just fine! We spend hours gossiping about the other person, or the organisation, or the company, blaming the other for our woe’s. The truth is, the other person, or entity, is just there to support you to see the aspect of yourself that needs light shone on it. What about when we not only observe someone’s behaviour, but we also speak up about it? Or someone has spoken up about our behaviour to us? (When someone has voiced their opinion of you, with or without your agreement?) How do we be sure that from our part, we speak from clean intentional communication? There are at least four places our delivery can come from. (When I say “come from”, I am talking about our being. Who are we being when we deliver the statement about their behaviour? What is our motivation under our motivation?) 1. We can be speaking from projection. ~I see you being lazy, and I really hate the laziness in me, and so when I see it in you, I get annoyed.~ or..I see you as not listening, and I really don’t like the part of me that doesn’t listen so I get annoyed when you don’t listen. 2. We speak because we have a personal agenda. I want you to be different. I want you to show up in my life more like....(more reliable, on time, clean, organised, smarter, better at this or that...) I want you to be different so MY life is better, not so you are more aligned and whole. 3. We can be speaking from a place of judgment and criticism. Often when we do this, we have elements of either projection or personal agenda involved. However, we can also be missing big chunks of information, and therefore speak of our limited view. There is great danger in this, as when we jump to conclusions, or make assumptions, the damage we may inflict can be life changing. Please review the article on the conversation for understanding, for more about this. 4. We speak from a place of daring to care....this is the place of clean intentional communication...I genuinely see your behaviour as not aligned to your true nature, and so I speak up, not because I need you to be different, or because you behaviour has plugged into my own faults, or because I am judging you, but because I genuinely care about you and want to see you become more aligned and more in your truth. I presence intentional communication. What you think of me, whether you choose to do anything about my words, thoughts and requests are irrelevant. If I stayed silent and did not speak up, I would be affirming that your behaviour is acceptable, and on some level, I would not be supporting you..instead I would be a silent witness and colluding with you on your behaviour. For example, if someone only ever makes demands laced with heavy expectations instead of requests, every time they ask me to do something, I am going to feel backed into a corner, or resentful, unless I speak up. But if I speak up from anger, or upset, I am speaking from my reaction. Clean intentional communication is no longer present. If I speak from projection, I am speaking from my reaction. When I speak from care, I speak from a clean space inside me that cares about them enough to speak, and risk myself, in order to support bringing light to their awareness. I need to get passed my own personal issues and upset to speak from this place. Of course, how I speak up from this place is critical as well, and I will get a considerably different response from them if my words come from daring to care, and not from reaction. Speak from anger, get anger back. Speak from attack, get attack back. Speak from criticism, get criticism back. In our work with the
Dare to Care program
we develop the skills for people to be able to speak from this place of clean intentional communication.
To Return from Intentional Communication to Conscious Communication Skills
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