If you want to engage effectively with others to foster lasting systems change, communicating in a resourceful, positive way is hugely important. But understanding the importance of effective communication is not the same as being able to put these skills into practice, especially when the stakes are high.
Fortunately, we can draw on over fifty years of research and practice to upgrade our interpersonal communication skills. Much of this work centers on the foundational contributions of Harvard professor Chris Argyris, who developed the field of “action science” in the 1970s. His ongoing research over the next forty years deeply influenced a wide array of other theorists and practitioners from pioneers in systems thinking like Peter Senge and the founding faculty of the Harvard Negotiation Program, as well as Diana McLain Smith, Robert Putnam, and Philip McArthur of Action Design LLC. Another notable contributor is psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication.
The payoff from all of this field-building work over the past 50 years is a set of practical skills for communicating more effectively in high stakes situations. It’s not an exaggeration to say that these skills are truly a breakthrough with profound potential significance for all of us. Over the decades, many thousands of people have been trained in these techniques, and yet they still remain largely outside mainstream use. Why? Because we are going up against millions of years of evolutionary psychology here—we are hardwired to be emotionally reactive and zero-sum in our interactions with others.
The good news is that with practice and commitment, you can rewire yourself. I encourage you to seek out the many resources, materials, and training opportunities available through institutions like the Harvard Negotiation Program, Action Design, and the Center for Nonviolent Communication, as well as outstanding consultants, coaches and trainers working independently--such as Kwame Griffith, who has taught much of this content to me and the participants in our Joyful Impact accelerator for philanthropy advisors.
For now, in this series of introductory posts, we'll share an overview of five key tools that are a powerful foundation for building your skills as an empathetic and collaborative problem solver.
This is about taking stock of the emotional intensity of the issues you are dealing with in any given interaction. How ready are you and the other person to engage resourcefully and respectfully? How likely is either one of you to get triggered into an emotionally intense “fight or flight” reaction? This is where it can be helpful to remember the seven universal human needs: security, novelty, social status, social connection, social contribution, self-evolution, and self-transcendence. Are either one of you struggling to meet any of these universal human needs in this interaction? If so, these are the parts of the conversation in which your “fight or flight” brain is most likely to take over the controls and send you or the other person into an emotional overdrive.
The techniques that follow will help you identify when your defensive instincts are getting activated and help you reset yourself to a more resourceful stance.
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These are the same materials we use with the social entrepreneurs in our accelerator program and the funders we coach one on one. The world has never been more in need of a new, greatest generation of change agents and that's why we're opening up free access to these materials to anyone who's ready to make use of them!