50 Psychology Classics (9 page)

People complain that reflective listening takes more time and effort. It does in the short term, but it is likely to avoid major troubles that blow up later on as the result of poor communication.

Bolton likes to think of listening as the
yin
(the receiving aspect) of communication, while assertiveness is the
yang
(the active aspect).

Because of the poor communication skills most of us have been taught, when we want something we choose between either nagging or aggression, or
we avoid the issue altogether. These responses stem from the basic “fight or flight” modes we operate with as animals. But as humans we also have a third option: verbal assertion. We can stand our ground yet not be aggressive. This is easily the most effective means of communication for most situations, yet most of us either forget assertion or don't know how to use it.

The whole point of assertion statements is to produce change without invading the other person's space. There is no power or coercion involved, as the focus is on a result. We can remain very angry, and the other person knows it from what we are saying, yet at the same time it allows us not to be hostile or aggressive. They are left to decide for themselves how to respond to the message, which allows them to retain their dignity—while we have taken a big step in getting what we want.

What we really want in life is situations where everybody wins. Bolton presents the counterintuitive idea that if we define a problem in terms of solutions, one person wins and the other loses. To get win–win outcomes, we have to focus not on the solution but on each party's needs.

For instance, he worked with a group of nuns who only had one car between them. Several of them needed the car to make visits and go to meetings, so there were inevitable clashes. When one person had the car, the others lost out. But Bolton asked them what each of them needed. The need they identified was
transportation
, and use of the group's car was only one solution to that. Seeing the situation in terms of needs meant that many other possible solutions appeared.

As the old saying goes, “A problem well defined is a problem half solved.” Bolton provides a step-by-step process for identifying needs, which then lead to a solution. Using this method surprisingly elegant answers can be found to questions we may have thought were intractable. But it first requires us to really listen to what other people require to make them happy.

People Skills
has been around for a quarter of a century and still sells well. What is the secret of its longevity? First, the book rests on a strong intellectual foundation, referencing ideas from the likes of Carl Rogers, Sigmund Freud, and Karen Horney. Secondly, it sticks to the fundamentals, not trying to cover every aspect of interpersonal relations but focusing on three vital, learnable skills: listening, asserting, and resolving conflict. Although the book seems long and there is a fair amount of repetition, it contains some highly useful tips and techniques that can be applied immediately.

Nowhere does
People Skills
ask us to change our personality to become a warm and fuzzy “people person.” What it does do is show us well-researched
techniques that can make a dramatic difference to our effectiveness. We suddenly understand what people are really saying, and we begin to be able to communicate what we truly want in a direct fashion.

Conversely, if we still have a tendency to think that having good people skills means the ability to manipulate others into doing or saying something that suits us, not them, Bolton's book reminds us of the three pillars of respect that
really
produce good relationships: empathy, nonpossessive love, and genuineness.

Bolton is the head of Ridge Associates, a training and consulting firm founded in 1972 that focuses on workplace communication and interpersonal skills. He previously created training programs for the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene and also founded a psychiatric clinic
.

His other book, written with his wife Dorothy Grover Bolton, is
People Styles at Work: Making Bad Relationships Good and Good Relationships Better
(1996)
.

“Lateral thinking is like the reverse gear in a car. One would never try to drive along in reverse gear the whole time. On the other hand one needs to have it and to know how to use it for maneuverability and to get out of a blind alley.”

“The purpose of thinking is not to be right but to be effective.”

In a nutshell

Learning how to think more effectively is not difficult and can dramatically improve our ingenuity in solving problems.

In a similar vein
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creativity
(p 68)

Edward de Bono is inevitably associated with the word “thinking,” and no one is better known for getting people to work on the effectiveness of their thought patterns and ideas.

De Bono's early books were among the first in the popular psychology field. The writing style is not exactly bubbly, but the quality of the ideas made them bestsellers. De Bono coined the term “lateral thinking,” now listed in the
Oxford English Dictionary
, in
The Use of Lateral Thinking
(1967), but it is
Lateral Thinking
(subtitled
Creativity Step by Step
in the United States and
A Textbook of Creativity
in Britain) that is more widely read and still in print.

When de Bono started writing in the 1960s there were no practical, standardized ways of achieving new insights. A few people were considered “creative,” but the rest had to plod along within established mental grooves. He promoted the concept of lateral thinking as the first “insight tool” that anyone could use for problem solving.

The lateral thinking concept emerged from de Bono's study of how the mind works. He found that the brain is not best understood as a computer; rather, it is “a special environment which allows information to organize itself into patterns.” The mind continually looks for patterns, thinks in terms of patterns, and is self-organizing, incorporating new information in terms of what it already knows. Given these facts, de Bono noticed that a new idea normally has to do battle with old ones to get itself established. He looked for ways in which new ideas could come into being via spontaneous insight rather than conflict.

Lateral thinking is a process that enables us to restructure our patterns, to open up our mind and avoid thinking in clichéd, set ways. It is essentially creativity, but without any mystique. It is simply a way of dealing with information that results in more creative outcomes. What is humor, de Bono asks, but the sudden restructuring of existing patterns? If we can introduce the unexpected element, we need not be enslaved to these patterns.

Lateral thinking is contrasted with “vertical thinking.” Our culture in general, but in particular our educational system, emphasizes the use of logic, by which one correct statement proceeds to the next one, and finally to the “right” solution. This type of vertical thinking is good most of the time, but when we have a particularly difficult situation it may not give us the leap
forward we need—sometimes we have to “think outside the box.” Or as de Bono puts it, “Vertical thinking is used to dig the same hole deeper. Lateral thinking is used to dig a hole in a different place.”

Lateral thinking does not cancel out vertical thinking, but is complementary to it, to be used when we have exhausted the possibilities of normal thought patterns.

It is not enough to have some awareness of lateral thinking, de Bono asserts, we have to practice it. Most of his book consists of techniques to try to get us into lateral thinking mode. They include:

Generating alternatives—to have better solutions you must have more choices to begin with.

Challenging assumptions—though we need to assume many things to function normally, never questioning our assumptions leaves us in thinking ruts.

Quotas—come up with a certain predetermined number of ideas on an issue. Often it is the last or final idea that is the most useful.

Analogies—trying to see how a situation is similar to an apparently different one is a time-tested route to better thinking.

Reversal thinking—reverse how you are seeing something, that is, see its opposite, and you may be surprised at the ideas it may liberate.

Finding the dominant idea—not an easy skill to master, but extremely valuable in seeing what really matters in a book, presentation, conversation, and so on.