Magnus Ljadas Blog

Tom raises from his chair and practically leans over Pete while saying with a harsh tone of his voice:

“The solution you proposed last week did not work out. In fact it caused us to lose precious time and now we have to do it quick and dirty anyway.”

Pete is trying to make himself smaller to avoid being crushed under Tom.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have aired that stupid idea in the first place. I’m just awfully sorry. Stupid me!”

“Yeah, you’re right”, says Tom–now sitting in his chair again.

“May I add something?” Glen continues without waiting for an answer–”According to our development method, we should spend 15% of our time not doing project stuff. I read this very interesting article on creativity that said most inventions are made when we are doing non-productive things.” (Glen is winking his long finger and index finger on both hands when he says “non-productive”.)

Tom stares at Glen for a while and says: ”Will you get to the point?”

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Let’s examine what’s going on here. According to (now late) family therapist Virginia Satir there are five styles of communications and four of them are dysfunctional (!). In a conversation between two people there are three components: me, you, and the context. Only by taking all three parts into account the conversation can be congruent and fully functional. If you remove any part (me, you, comtext), the conversation becomes dysfunctional. Let’s start with Tom. Tom is using the blaming style, leaving out the other person. He’s emphasizing the blaming style using body language. Pete is leaving himself out. He turn himself into a victim and swallow all of Tom’s accusations. Pete is placating. Glen on the other hand is leaving pretty much all out, being hyper-reasonable and irrelevant. No one is being congruent and I doubt this group is very effective.

What communication styles have you seen in action today?