Communication is the fundamental element of interacting with others.  What does that look like?  How can we interact better with strangers, friends, family, groups?  What do we need and why do we need it?  What are common communication problems and how can we effectively overcome them?

Win and help win - Ambitious, positive sum, and collective

Everyone wants to build social capital. Nobody wants to do the thankless, tedious work of figuring out the project management of a new relationship w/ unknown utility

What Do We Need

What hunger am I searching for, what hunger is the other person looking to satiate?

Tracking and Sparring

Baby switches from stimulus hunger to recognition hunger.  The most favored forms of stimuli are those provided by physical intimacy. After the period of close intimacy with the mother is over, the individual for the rest of his life is confronted with a dilemma upon whose horns his destiny and survival are continually being tossed. One horn is the social, psychological and biological forces which stand in the way of continued physical intimacy in the infant style; the other is his perpetual striving for its attainment. Under most conditions he will compromise. He learns to do with more subtle, even symbolic, forms of handling, until the merest nod of recognition may serve the purpose to some extent, although his original craving for physical contact may remain unabated.

As the complexities of compromise increase, each person becomes more and more individual in his quest for recognition. This recognition hunger requires ‘stroking’. A movie actor may require hundreds of strokes each week from anonymous and undifferentiated admirers to keep his spinal cord from shriveling, while a scientist may keep physically and mentally healthy on one stroke a year from a respected master.

“After stimulus-hunger and recognition hunger comes structure-hunger. The perennial problem of adolescents is : ‘What do you say to her (him) then ? And to many people besides adolescents, nothing is more uncomfortable than a social hiatus, a period of silent, unstructured time when no one present can think of anything more interesting to say than: ‘Don’t you think the walls are perpendicular tonight?’

“Social programming results in traditional ritualistic or semi-ritualistic interchanges. The chief criterion for it is local acceptability, popularly called ‘good manners’. Parents in all parts of the world teach their children manners, which means that they know the proper greeting, eating, emunctory, courting and mourning rituals, and also how to carry on topical conversations with appropriate strictures and reinforcements. The strictures and reinforcements constitute tact or diplomacy, some of which is universal and some local.”

Win Friends and Influence People

When you interact with people, give them your undivided attention, express genuine interest in their lives and ask great questions. Ask open ended questions (questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no). Get people to elaborate on their thoughts by mirroring them. Someone tells you they had a hard day, simply ask back “A hard day?” and they will begin opening up. Someone tells you they absolutely love a certain thing, ask them what it is they love about it. And actually listen.

Put another way: Generate love and warmth. Make people laugh, smile, have the warm fuzzies. That’s how you become popular and liked. It also makes you feel good. Connect, compliment, listen, affirm, eye contact, smile, touch, generate warm feeling and love for the other person.

Accelerated mutual disclosure

The Crab Bucket is an analogy to describe that unfortunate aspect of human nature that says ‘If I can’t have it, then neither can you’. Whether it be out of envy, resentment, spite or shame we very often try to sabotage people who we peg as being on the road to success. Now, in an actual bucket of crabs any individual crab is perfectly capable of climbing to their freedom if the other crabs don’t pull them back down. But they invariably do, meaning that no crabs get to escape.

For hard conversations, have a plan going in. Take 5 minutes beforehand & set your intentions.   Ask yourself what you want from this interaction, drill down how you need to think & behave..and how you want the other person to feel. You’ll make better decisions in the moment.

How to Have Good Relationships

Make others look good in front of the people they care about most.