Interpersonal Communications
Interpersonal Communication Skills - E Is For...
We are launching a series about communication that focuses on family interaction, rather than on workplace dynamics...
Of course, many tips and guidelines that help you develop family relationships can be carried over to the workplace environment. Learning to get along with the most important people in your life can help you get along with others, most of whom don’t play a major role. We have so many communication ideas and so much relationship advice that once again we are starting an alphabetical series. However, we don’t promise to handle the letters in strict alphabetical order, nor even to do all of them.
E is for eager. Show your energy. Be an eager beaver, which means you really give a dam. When your kids or spouse come up with a new idea don’t immediately throw cold water on it. Get excited. Go through the process with them. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should be refinancing your house to buy the manufacturer’s entire stock of left-handed spatulas. But don’t immediately come up with one hundred reasons why it would never fly. Recently a woman I know was approached by her daughter in her mid-late twenties to help buy an investment property for about 700-800 thousand. She did not have any such money. Instead of saying no, you are out of your … mind, she said I’ll talk to the bank. She went to the bank and hid her eagerness. Everybody was happy with the final outcome, namely nothing.
Gown by Matthew Eager, Australia.
E is for enamored. Just don’t forget that you are in love with your family. Sometimes it’s hard, but let them know about the love that you have for them malgré tout (in spite of everything.) Please remember that they also have reason to sometimes find loving you difficult. The more you show your love the more that they will feel it, even if they aren’t ready to show it.
Enamored at the beginning of a lifelong adventure.
And now for some of the things you want to avoid.
E is for entrenched. Don’t be entrenched in your hide-bound ideas. As Bob Dylan said a long time ago, The Times They Are A’Changin. That was 1963 and what was true then is even more true today. At the time of this writing nobody knows if we are going to have a Black American President or a Woman American Vice-President. Those weren’t the choices in the 1964 election, in spite of Dylan’s prophetic song. So don’t necessarily reject your loved ones’ ideas because things weren’t done that way, way back when. One of the easiest ways to get young people not to listen is “When I was your age.” We know it won’t even fly with a sibling who is two years younger, so don’t even think of trying it out on a member of the next generation unless you want to entrench their resistance.