Get More of What You Want in Your Relationships
It’s the final section in the book, so I’m on the home straight. The focus here is asking clearly for what you want. It’s all about communication and having conversations. I can’t wait. Sigh.
“This chapter will focus on strategies for maximising the likelihood that you get what you want in any situation – in other words, how you can communicate in a way that increases your OBJECTIVES EFFECTIVENESS. The acronym for these skills is DEAR MAN.”
DEAR MAN is the script for potentially effective communication. And it’s probably the non-AI version of what people now ask chatbots when they’re stuck on how to repair a relationship. Chatbots can be very effective here, which is fascinating, and a bit alarming.
As we all know, conversations can go wrong. There are pitfalls.
Pitfall 1: “We often don’t clearly communicate what we’re asking for, why we’re asking it, or why the other person would want to consider agreeing to it.”
Pitfall 2: “We often communicate in a way that feels (or is!) judgemental or critical. For example, we say things like “You shouldn’t have done that” or “How could you say that,” and when we are deep into Emotion Mind, we may say much harsher things than that! Rather than achieving what we want, these types of comments usually just bring about defensiveness and attacks in return.”
DEAR MAN is a set of communication strategies which will help us to ask for things with clarity, and make us less likely to fuck the whole thing up.
First set of skills coming up –
DESCRIBE THE FACTS
EXPRESS HOW YOU FEEL
ASSERT YOURSELF
REINFORCE THE OTHER PERSON
For maximum effectiveness, we need to describe just the facts of whatever situation we’re talking about, and nothing else. We will have to express how we feel, taking care to put judgements aside as they’re likely to wreck the conversation. We will need to assert ourselves a bit without starting a fight. And finally, we’ll need to reinforce the person we’re talking to by expressing appreciation or stressing the positive outcomes of what we’re suggesting.
Simples. What could possibly go wrong? Well…
“…your request gets shot down. Not only that, but the other person turns the conversation around, and it ends up being about something entirely different from what you were hoping.”
Enter the MAN skills.
“If the DEAR skills provide the script for what to say in asserting yourself, think of the MAN skills as strategies for how to assert yourself when the objective is a high priority, including how to respond effectively if the other person doesn’t agree or react the way you hoped.”
MAN skills below -
(STAY) MINDFUL OF YOUR OBJECTIVE
APPEAR CONFIDENT
NEGOTIATE
Staying Mindful means ignoring any attacks from the other person, pressing on with your communication goal, and maybe bringing out a technique I can’t stand - the old broken record.
Let’s say your neighbour Hank likes to release his pet rabbit Walrus into your garden each night with the unstated aim of eating your plants. You might want to chat over the fence to Hank to get him to stop. Here’s the technique in action -
ME: Hank, I’d really like you to stop Walrus getting into my garden at night. He’s eating all my nasturtiums.
HANK – I don’t do it deliberately. He’s a wild one, that Walrus.
ME: Sure, but you need to keep him in. I’d like you to stop him getting out. My plants are getting destroyed.
HANK: He’s a rabbit. It’s inherited behaviour going right back to the first rabbit on earth..
ME: That’s as maybe, but I would really like you to stop him getting out. My garden can’t take it.
And so on.
The broken record technique annoys me so much, especially when people do it to me, that I had to check who invented it. And the answer is, maybe, Manuel ‘Pete’ Smith, psychologist and author of -
I grudgingly accept that the broken record technique may sometimes be necessary, and that it can be effective, but it’s so annoying. And, as the authors say, “the other person may very well not appreciate it.”
Let’s move on to the Appear part of the MAN skills. This is about acting confidently “in a manner that communicates that your opinions and desires deserve to be taken seriously.”
And the N in MAN is for Negotiate. This will mean suggesting alternatives to whatever you asked for, offering to do something in return, or accept less than whatever you tried to ask for in the first place.
As you can probably tell from my tone here, these techniques make me tired just writing about them. In my experience, discussions and relationships will either go largely well because the other person is generally reasonable, or they’ll fairly reliably go badly because the other person is very often unreasonable, or in the grip of complex emotional forces they don’t (yet) understand. Or won’t ever…
Does this mean these skills aren’t worth bothering with? No! The DEAR MAN techniques improve communication, and make bad outcomes less likely. Here’s a final note from the authors –
“No matter how interpersonally skilful you are, there is unfortunately no way to guarantee that you will achieve your goals in a given situation. After all, you can’t control how the other person will respond! For this reason, we recommend that you evaluate based on your approach rather than the outcome. If you have used you skills effectively, give yourself an A+, even if you don’t get the results you wanted! Over time, you will achieve your goals more often by sticking to these strategies.”