The authoritarian approach to communication training
Many of us feel instinctively threatened by the prospect of attending a training on communication. Too often have we had to deal with what I call the “authoritarian approach to communication training”. ?
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You will recognize it immediately.
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Giving feedback on your communication, or your way of talking and expressing yourself, is abused as a handy tool for intimidating you into submission.
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For most of us, the way we speak is an intimate part of ourselves. Our voice, our accent, our speech melody and our speed reflect who we are.
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Hence, any feedback on our communication skills is a potential threat to our self. Since many of us feel that we cannot change this easily, any criticism exposes us as unattractive and incompetent.
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Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University, introduced the differentiation of two mindsets. With a growth mindset, you believe that your personality and intelligence can be change; with effort, of course.? With a fixed mindset, you believe that the way you are now is more or less determined and cannot be much improved.
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People may have growth mindsets in some areas (e.g. in their hobbies, or in playing videogames) and fixed mindsets in other areas (e.g. singing, or telling jokes).
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Related to speaking in foreign languages, students may have a growth mindset in the area of learning new vocabulary, but a fixed mindset regarding their accent.
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You may have a growth mindset for the beginning phase of language learning (“I am confident that I can reach a basic level in Spanish!”), but a fixed mindset for becoming an advanced speaker (“I will never speak anywhere close to a native speaker!”)
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The problem with the feedback we have typically received on our way of speaking – by our parents, teacher or colleagues – is this: Most of it came from a fixed mindset.
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You were either good or bad, competent or incompetent. You have a pleasant or an unpleasant voice. Your accent is impressive or cringeworthy. You speak clearly, or nobody can understand what you want to say.
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Most probably, there was little nuance in the feedback you got. And, probably, you were left with no solution. It was not like, “here is what you could do to improve this”.
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It was more like receiving a stamp on your forehead. Many of us still carry this imagined stamp for the rest of our lives.
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“I am no good in speaking”
“When I speak, people turn away”
“My speech is so confused that it irritates everybody”
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Probably, nobody ever took the time to lay out the underlying criteria for his or her judgement. You just assumed that the person giving the feedback must be an authority on communication.
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And the person giving feedback almost never ponders about his or her implicit standards. Everybody assumes that his or her views on communication are universal.
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This is further aggravated by the way some communication trainers position themselves.
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They teach communication in such a way that the only way of becoming an excellent communicator is to switch from wrong to correct behaviors.
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The correct behaviors are the ones exhibited by the communication trainer, of course. He or she is the communication superstar everybody needs to emulate:
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·??????? With the perfect pronunciation and intonation;
·??????? With the perfect choice of words and expressions;
·??????? With the perfect grammar.
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The problem with this is, as we will learn further in the book, that “perfect” communication would mean a way of communicating that perfectly matches a concrete situation and the people therein. Because there is an infinity of possible situations with a combination of the most different people in it, there is also an infinity of choices how to communicate “perfectly”.
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Therefore, the rigid “one ideal way of communicating” ignores the most important ingredient: the recipient of our messages.
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The fact that some self-appointed authorities on correct speech dare to lecture us, while the vast majority not, does not mean that the latter have no preferences or opinions.
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As you will discover, if you dare to ask, their feedback would differ greatly from what school teachers and communication trainers would make you believe.
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As a small preview: Most normal people would be more concerned with your listening abilities and the quality of your questions, while representatives of the “speech police” would reprimand you for using parasitic sounds or words like “uhm” or “like”, or for confusing “I” and “me”.
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(This is an excerpt of my upcoming book: “B2B selling in foreign languages”)
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Want to get rid of insecurity and bad feelings regarding the foreign language(s) you have already started to learn? Want to learn a new language, without going through various levels of standard courses? You feel you are making no progress?
Go to Amazon and grab a copy of my classic book ”The GO Method – breaking barriers to language learning”.
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Profit from new strategies, insights and techniques that will make you use foreign languages more successfully in international B2B sales. Get rid of fear of mistakes and blocks during trade shows, presentation and sales calls.
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Gerhard Ohrband is an international trade facilitator, business psychologist and author of 9 books from Hamburg/Germany. He speaks 21 languages and assists B2B sales executives in selling successfully in foreign languages.
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