People Skills summary

Did you know that you spend more time listening than doing anything else? A study showed that people with different occupations spent 70 percent of their waking hours communicating. And, of that time, listening accounted for 45 percent!

However, society doesn’t prioritize listening skills. In fact, people grow up receiving antilistening advice like, “Don’t pay any attention to them.” Parents demonstrate inattentiveness and offer roadblock-laden responses to problems – behaviors they inherited from their own parents. Furthermore, experts say that people can only listen effectively from one-third to two-thirds of the time – yet most schools structure classes so that students spend significantly more time listening than practicing any other communication skill.

Say you’re having one of those days when everything seems to go wrong. The car won’t start, you’re late for an important meeting, and then you spill coffee on your white shirt. You come home, and now you’ve accidentally burnt the lasagna. Your partner says, “When will you learn how to cook?” How do you feel? 

Now imagine that instead of ridiculing your cooking, your partner says, “Wow, you’ve had a rough day – first the car, then the meeting, now the lasagna.” How would you feel then? Grateful for the nonjudgmental response? Validated because they’ve accurately summarized your experience? This is an example of the third listening skill cluster: reflective listening.

Being able to listen effectively is hugely important, but it isn’t everything. Vital relationships are sustained through a complementary balance of listening and another form of communication – asserting. 

If effective listening can be described as offering understanding and acceptance to another person, asserting is when you disclose your own needs, emotions, and desires.

Even if you’ve written and delivered your assertion message with the utmost respect, the other person will probably be defensive. But this is a normal human tendency. After all, it’s uncomfortable to learn that you’ve negatively affected someone’s life. 

Also consider that defensiveness tends to trigger defensiveness. That means you might unexpectedly find yourself feeling hostile – but try not to act on that feeling. It’s easy for an attempted assertion to turn into a defensive back-and-forth between two people. When that happens, the asserter’s needs often remain unmet, and both people’s self-esteem suffers. 

Even for the most skilled communicators, conflict is unavoidable. In the best-case scenario, it’s disruptive; in the worst case, it’s highly destructive. But some forms of conflict can also be beneficial to a relationship’s growth. 

So how can you approach conflict in a way that minimizes potential damage? Before diving into details, it’s important to note that there are two major types of conflict: nonrealistic and realistic.