Communication is always complex. Any situation
you get into will have variables of time and place and participants
that can be used to make your communication in that situation more
responsive. You can use these 50 partterns as buidling blocks in
thinking of how to communicate more responsively.
First you should use a paper-and-pencil
approach. Pick a situation that you will soon be involved
in. Pick the first pattern that comes to mind. That will
be the most obvious one. Write it down at the top of a sheet of
paper. Then go to the cross-references at the end of that
pattern. List all the patterns you find there.
Now go through each of those patterns and read the
text and recommendation for each one. Think through your
situation and decide which of these patterns actually apply and how
you can build as many of them into the situation as possible.
Now go back and write on the same sheet of paper the
cross-references for each of the second level of patterns. Read
those. Re-think your situation. You should now have a
clear idea of which patterns you will want to emphasize to be most
responsive in the situation you are entering.
For example, you are a manager in a medium-sized
company. You have a meeting coming up that you think is going to
be another disguised omplaint about your own work. You feel that
too much is coming at you at once for you to be able to deal with and
that is why your employees are beginning to complain that you're not
listening to them. You recognize the need to get out from under
your workload and find out what is going on in the company around you
in order to be more effective in responding to them.
The first couple of patterns that might occur to you
could be:
Distribute tasks (8)
Creative wandering (44)
Slow down (34)
And slow down is exactly what you would like to be
able to do if only you could get away with it!
Write those patterns down on a piece of paper.
Then look them up and find the cross-references given with each
pattern. You'll find these patterns:
Distribute tasks (8)
Situational ecology (1)
Distribute ownership (7)
Chain and network, not hub and wheel (9)
Optimize goals (18)
Asynchrony over synchrony (21)
Flextime (22)
Write those down too. Go back and read those
patterns and their recommendations.
Now go to the next one of your original notes and
write down the cross references. This is what you'll find:
Creative wandering (44)
Situational ecology (1)
Learn by going (3)
Lateral messages (4)
Move around (10)
Cultivate your own humanity (49)
Enjoy the humanity of others (50)
Write those down and re-read the discussion and
recommendations.
Finally go back to the third pattern and write down
the cross-references as follows:
Slow down (34)
Asynchrony over synchrony (21)
Speak last (31)
Pause (32)
Wait (33)
Write those down and read the discussion and
recommendations.
Now if you just keep on going cross-referencing
you'll end up with all 50 patterns, so just work with those for
now. First, pay attention any patterns that have been
repeated. In this case:
Situational ecology (1)
Asynchrony over synchrony (21)
have come up twice. Read those over and think
about how you can alter your situation using those patterns.
For example, the idea of 'situational ecology' is
that you should analyze your situation and just forget about anything
that is outside your control. You feel harried but the best bet
is that you're feeling harried about things that there is nnothing you
can do anything about anyway. Just let them go.
Concentrate on what you do have some control over.
The look at the next one. You may feel swamped
by things that really require no response at all. The idea of
'asynchrony' is that for many things you can and should be out of
sync. Try to find ways of delaying your response to anything
that doesn't absolutely require an immediate reaction. But
remember don't carry it around in your mind! Just schedule a
time to come back to it and put it out of your mind until then.
Next look at some of the other things on your
list. There may be ways in which you can distribute tasks and
ownership. Your sense of being overloaded may well be because
you are trying to do everything yourself. Distribute things
where you ca.
Your sense of being overloaded can also come from
trying to make all communications go through you. Try to use
chain and network communications, not hub and wheel (9). Get out
of your position at the center by wandering 'creatively' (44) around
your organization and see what you can learn from other points of
view.
Finally, in the meeting itself you will want to pay
a lot of attention to the small details of communication by speaking
last (31), pausing (32), and waiting to be sure others have had a
chance to speak (33).
This should give you enough suggestions to get you
started working on improvements in your situation.
Here is another example of how you can use Responsive
Communication in dealing with a particular situation:
Let's say you are a personnel officer in a
medium-sized company. One of your division directors has come to
you because his personnel and complaining about crowded office
conditions and long hours spent commuting to work. They aren't
getting as muuch work done as they could be. The director thinks
if they spent more time in the office they'd get more done.
There seems to be something missing in your
understanding of the situation so you decide to start by writing down
Situational ecology (1)
You find in studying the whole situation that the
personnel in question spend a lot of time working in their home
offices, equipped with microcomputers. They work most
effectively early in the morning or late at night and like to go
skiing or hunting during the day. They feel they are getting a
lot done, though it is not visible to their director. The
director, who has his own computer in the office but not at home, is
terrified of the new wave of high technology.
Then you look at the cross references. This is
what you find:
Situational ecology (1)
Start locally (2)
Learn by going (3)
Chain and network, not hub and wheel (9)
Optimize goals (18)
Be cranky (42)
Creative wandering (44)
You get your local start by listening to what's said
by and about the persons involved. You encourage the division
director to listen to what his personnel are saying.
The idea of 'learning by going' is that you can try
out the idea of working some hours at home yourself. You go for
a walk to think through a problem and are approached by a major client
of your corporation who compliments you and what your personnel are
doing.
The third pattern suggests that you try reorganizing
your communications structures by talking more frequently to different
employees and sending out fewer memos.
You may have been trying to maximize certain goals
which always leads to minimizing others. There may be ways in
which you can optimize goals for greater productivity. You try
to help everyone get some of what they want. You try to find out
what people expect to happen at the office and encourage them to get
together to work it out. You encourage people to find tasks that
they can best do out of the office and take time to do them at times
that work out optimally for everyone. You refuse to take sides
or support any one person.
It is also pssible that all of you are trying to
protect others when they are perfectly willing to change. Be
sure to express your opinion, even where you expect it will not be
popular.
All of this may be easier to bring off if you wander
creatively inside and outside of the ofice and encourage the manager
to go along. Listen to what people are saying.
To take a different situation, let's say you are a
teacher who needs to talk to the mother of a junior high school
student. You know there is a problem but you aren't sure if it
is an academic problem, a discipline problem, or something that is
going on in the family. You know it is a ticklish situation in
which you have to be able to be a very good listener to avoid any
possible hostility.
The first thing that comes to mind is that the
school might be a very threatening place for both the student and the
motehr. That suggests to you the pattern
Neutral turf (30)
And so you pick a place such as a coffee shop,
community center, park, or shopping center that you can all feel at
ease in but which none of you feels is your 'own' territory.
Other patterns that will emerge as important will be
Speak last (31)
This tells you that when you meet, you'll need to be
on your guard to be sure the mother and the student have a chance to
bring up what is on their minds.
You'll also want to
Watch your diet (48)
so that you don't verbally dominate the
situation. Remember that you should probably NOT have a cup of
coffee and a pastry, even if you meet in a coffee shop, because of the
effect that will have on speeding up your conversation.
Even though you want to become as warm as possible
with the mother and student,
Start cold, warm up (19)
tells you to be sure to begin formally and maintain
respect. You can warm up as the situation allows, probably
through establishing
Human identity (39)
by finding things outside of the school situation
that you have in common as human beings. Be sure to avoid a
string of direct questions.
Use a statement (13)
not a direct question, and
Give information (14)
about what you see as the problem so that they can
respond on a basis of knowledge.
You can use Responsive Communication as we
have shown in these examples, or any other way that seems suitable
to you. The point is to use these patterns as ways of thinking
about building situations so that you will be a better
listener. After you've worked out several situations on paper
you'll find that you are starting to think more naturally about
situations using these patterns. By then you may only need to
use the book itself as a reference point from time to time.
