Video Transcript: Communication

Session 10 — Communication

Opening

Bruce:
All right, we’re back and we’re on session 10.

Abigail:
Yeah, in this session we’re going to look at the issues of communication. There are things to know—you’re going to be interacting with people. I mean, deacons, it’s one thing if you’re on a building team or you’re pounding nails and that sort of thing. But as a deacon—an extension of the mercy of Jesus Christ into the world and to hurting people—you’re going to be communicating, and there are some ways that you can do that wrong, and I know because—

Bruce:
I’ve done it; we’re all guilty of wrong communication.

Bruce:
So—so we’re going to look at what does it mean to be the person who’s communicating. Now this is just the, you know, something I found online about all the things you’ve got to keep in mind when one person is trying to communicate to another. Turns out the Bible says a whole lot about communication, just as some general principles, and so, you know, this is my one that I come back to very often. James Wong, “Know this, my beloved brothers.” This older translation. This is from the New English: Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to become angry—on the slide, but slow to become angry—so that quick to hear, slow to speak.

The old proverb is, God created us with two ears and one tongue in us to listen twice as much as we talk. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may be grace to those who hear. A soft answer turns away wrath; a harsh word stirs up anger. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. In other words, you know salt is used back then as a preservative, also to add flavor to life, that you may know how to answer each person.

And then the prayer from Psalm 41—141—oh, set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; watch over the door of my lips. Keep me from talking too quickly. There is one whose rash words—Proverbs—are like sword thrusts. That’s a picture, isn’t it? But the tongue of the wise brings healing. Just a few more: Proverbs 15:2, the tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out follies. Psalm 14, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord. Proverbs 18, if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.

Just talking with Abby before we started about when I was in a counseling course in seminary—one of the things the prof said, as he reflected on my transcripts and my interactions with people—he said, “You’re trying to come to a—you’re trying to come to an answer and a conclusion and fix it way too quickly. People need to be heard first—heard—that they feel like you’re with them.” So yeah—if anyone gives an answer before he hears, it’s folly and shame. Avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness. That’s a word—good word—for those of us who are preachers. A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. And when words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. And boy, we could go on and on—I mean at least three, four other pages—especially from Proverbs about talking. So communication is an important subject if you’re going to be serving, and—

Abigail:
There’s such a common theme here of that wisdom of—you hear and you understand something. It’s even why we talked so much about the decision making. You know, if you just go off of—maybe you act before you’ve really heard, listened, heard about the whole situation—you may very much accomplish something that is going to be hurtful because you didn’t know X, Y, or Z about the situation. And so you see that common theme of the—yes—just being quick to listen, slow to speak and give your thoughts, because otherwise you end up—that the word folly kept close again—

Bruce:
Humble. Humbling word, right? This is—I’m going to give you a study—communication. I teach preaching—check out my course in—I know how to communicate to a large group, and I, frankly, but there are—here’s just an idea of what is involved in communication. You’ve got one person who’s encoding a message. In other words, the words that are used are designed to try to create a picture in the mind as—somebody else. So it’s encoded. Then you send the message, and it goes through a channel of, you know—was it phone? Is it email? Is it text? There’s a channel, and there’s noise. In other words, there’s all sorts of “get in the work” going on at the same time, right? And then the receiver gets the message and has to decode it.

And so, for a few minutes, we’re going to look at that—you’ve got to decode the message of people who are talking to you. What are some things you should be keeping in mind?

The 7–38–55 Rule (Mehrabian)

Bruce:
There—a man named Arabia, many years ago, came up with a 7–38–55 rule. In other words, he studied a group of people and how they communicated with each other, and his conclusion was that 7% of communication is the spoken word. In other words, if you’re just looking at the words, it’s only 7% of communication. 38% is the tone that you use—the volume that you use, pauses that you use—and, in fact, the tone can change the message even though the words are the same.

Abigail:
I was just thinking that same thing. It’s like—imagine if you lost the ability to read tone—you would have no ability to really talk to a lot of people, right? Because that matters on what’s being said.

Bruce:
The classic example is Paul saying, “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.” Just think about emphasizing each word: I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. Go on and on—each word—and the meaning is just changed just a little bit.

But the shocker to me when I first read this was 55% of communication is body language. In other words, how do you sit? How—what’s your eye connection? Do you—do you hold the eye of the other person? Do you lean forward—

Abigail:
Somebody’s—

Bruce:
—listening to you like this—like this. In church a few weeks ago, and all—the pastor preaching that day looked at me, and I thought, “Oh no.” Yeah—I just communicated something just by body language. And wow. In preaching—we talk, preaching class—we talk a bit about body language. In the process of developing a second course on preaching, and we’re going to look at that even more fully, because 55%—

Abigail:
That’s more than the majority there. So—

Bruce:
Two things: (1) you’ve got to be aware of something about the body language of the person who’s sending you a message; (2) you’ve got to be aware of your body language as you receive that message. So that’s just the beginning.

Active Listening (and Avoiding Distractions)

Bruce:
So—okay—so we’re going to talk about active listening: solid eye contact; reading emotional cues—you know, somebody says, “I’m fine,” and they look like the dog just died—you know, you’re—you’ve got to interpret that message; giving feedback; checking, do I have this right?; summarizing; paraphrasing; questioning—“Tell me more.”—avoiding distractions.

Abigail:
I think avoiding distract—like, as I look at this list for my active listening, I feel like, you know, pretty confident about my active listening skills, but that one can get me a lot—the distraction. I think in the world we live in today, you’ve got your phone constantly sitting there. You know, right now, I have two little—too’s—so I run into a lot—again, I think how you treat your spouse is really important, but I am the queen of my husband trying to help me, and I’m just like, texting someone else. And it’s like, the amount of time—he’s like, “Abby, Abby,” like, “You do this to me all time.” I’m like, “Not—not okay.” So it’s easy in the world we live in to be inundated by distractions, but when you do that, you communicate to the person that you don’t care what they’re saying, and you can easily miss what they’re really saying if you’re distracted at something else, yeah—

Bruce:
My wife just said to me the other day—she says, “You forgot to get something at the store,” and—just—“Didn’t you hear me?” “No—well, we had this conversation beforehand,” and she said something, and my mind—No.

All of this is part of—you, as a deacon, are going to be engaging people. And sometimes it’s—so, you know, you face-to-face with the person. Sometimes it might be two of you, which is very helpful, because—you know—two people, you can talk later about what—you know—what you heard, and how you heard it, and what the cues were.

Reading Body Language (High vs Low Involvement)

Bruce:
So in active listening, here are things to be aware of—regarding particularly body language: eye contact—high involvement means you’ve got a connection with the eyes; low involvement means somebody won’t look you in the eyes, or you wander away with your gaze to something that’s happening beyond, or whatever. All of a sudden, that listening has been damaged.

Direct body and facial orientation—you’re looking at the person, you’re facing them; you’re not involved, busy doing something else. Indirect/low involvement is indirect body and facial. Leaning toward or leaning away.

When I talk to somebody—I did a promotion once for church planting, and this was for my denomination, and so they came to my office to film this. And I had this great idea—had a solar watch that belonged to my father’s uncle. But later I saw the film, and I was slouching in my chair, like—I thought, “Can we do this over, please?”

Abigail:
It distracts you from what you’re saying when—

Bruce:
—you see yourself. I was communicating—not consciously, but unconsciously, subconsciously—“that wasn’t really all that important to me.” So how are we looking with our body? Open body positions vs closed.

Touching someone—now, in this world, got to be very careful about that, especially if it’s male and female, female and male—very careful—or even with children. But the reality is, when you’re meeting someone, a strong handshake—looking their eyes—“It’s good to see you”—communicates a ton. And even when it’s somebody you know—a good friend—and you put an arm around somebody who’s hurting—that communicates great deals.

So expressiveness—facial expressions; vocal expressiveness. Relaxed laughter is the opposite of that monotone voice. Composure—nervous mannerisms—are you worried about stuff? You—and your posture. Relaxed, but not too relaxed, as opposed to those things that are low involvement and engagement.

Floor holding—in other words, the idea is we’re exchanging times when we are engaged and we’re holding the floor. You know, often—sometimes—you say somebody’s holding the floor—they’re up talking: “I’m talking now.” And we do that.

Positive reinforcement—nod your head, smiling is always good. Global energy, fluent speech, gestures, as opposed to the opposites of those things. All of those things are important to the communication process and how you meet somebody.

And you can bet that if you’re meeting somebody who’s got a need, you’ve got to be very attentive to listening to them, to hearing their words—but also their body language—very attentive to what they are saying, but also what they are doing as you listen in. And so that’s just something about active listening.

Empathetic & Reflexive Listening (Feelings Behind Words)

Bruce:
There’s also a thing called empathetic listening, where you’re listening not just for what they’re saying, but for the feelings behind. And—even when I was first learning this skill—after I was in ministry, I realized I was doing a lot of counseling and, frankly, was pretty lousy at it. Later on, I would tell people who are married—come to you—“Would you meet with me and my spouse for marriage counseling?” I’d say, “No, you don’t want me,” because first—first five couples I met—we—they got divorced. So I usually solved that problem by finding them a qualified counselor—them.

But, you know, the whole idea is—active listening means I’m actively listening to you, but I’m not just listening to your words; I’m not just taking that in—I’m listening for what the feelings behind [are]. And so the counselor that I studied with gave us a formula to work with—and sent us something beyond—to do, an action activity. He gave us—I’d have to do with my wife—which was fascinating. But he said, here’s just a: have the person say—for 10 minutes that you want to get to know somebody better—have them say for 10 minutes, and you don’t interrupt, and they just say, “I feel ___ when ___.” So usually starts out really—“So I feel happy when sunny outside. I feel blank, blank, blank.” And then we had expanded to 15 minutes, and then we had expanded to 20 minutes. And after a while, you get deeper and deeper and deeper.

But it was to teach us to listen to feelings. What are the feelings? And even to ask somebody, “Well, how does that make you feel? How does that make you feel?” And sometimes we don’t pay attention to feelings—especially you may have grown up where feelings were put down, where they were not acknowledged—and it’ll be hard for you to talk about feelings. It might be hard for you to recognize feelings in another person. But it is essential. It is essential that you know the feelings of the other person, not just the facts.

And then reflexive listening is even to reflect back to the person what they’re feeling. So—as a listener—you know, I would have to say in this counseling training course, “It seems to me that you say—you are—you are saying that you feel ___. You feel this way when this kind of thing happens. And what about this kind of thing that’s close to that—do you feel the same way about that?” I’m trying to reflect back to them what they’re saying to me.

You know, this is—if you’re married, try this with your spouse sometime. It is—it’s fun; it’s difficult. That’s—when I first did this with my wife—“Okay, I feel ___ when ___.” So first started with all fun stuff—“You know, I really feel like I love you when…” “I feel ___ when…”—and we started getting into some stuff that was a problem that we hadn’t addressed. You know, one of the big tensions for us every—was the holiday season. When we were first married, we lived near our parents—both sets—and my wife’s mother would plan Thanksgiving… somewhere around Christmas—planning Thanksgiving for the next year. And my mother—my mother—would be planning about Monday before Thursday—Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. And so there was this constant thing—“Well, who are we going to have holiday with—Christmas, New Year’s?”

And so at one point she got to the “I feel so frustrated that, you know, commitment, and I can’t give it to her, because I don’t know what your mother’s doing.” And so we had—but it led us into a conversation. And—and so the decision about what we are going to do as far as—on this, you know, “We’ll do these holidays in these years,” etc. The point is—when you get to that kind of empathetic, reflexive listening, you start getting the depth of the heart of a person, right?

Abigail:
What are the things that are on their heart right now and affecting how they feel and affecting why they’re making this decision they’re making—

Bruce:
All right—and that will lead you to better—better hear and be a better servant of mercy of Jesus Christ in his name, because you will be not just addressing the immediate need, but the person’s need to connect with people. Remember when we talked about that—we said it’s got to be done in relationship; it’s not just handing out handouts, not sharing the love of Jesus with people.

Confidentiality (When to Share / When Not To)

Bruce:
So—having said that—there’s this other issue, and that is confidentiality. A reality: you are going to encounter people who will share with you information that should not be shared—and, in fact, it can be very destructive if it’s shared. Now, in our world today, at least here in the United States, lawsuits are happening all the time because somebody broke confidentiality.

And I came across, you know, the rules for doctors. So—if you’re a doctor—what are the rules about—for your health professional? My wife is a nurse who teaches nursing and—so what are the guidelines for keeping things confidential? Here’s their list for a medical professional:

• Consent. Do they give you consent to share? That’s important. One of the things—when I do training with elders and deacons in my home church—I say, when things you hear, you have to ask, “Can I share this with—?” I ask people, you know—when I’m talking with some of the people I’m mentoring in ministry—they’ll tell me something. I say, “Can I share this with my wife? I would—I would like her to know that we can both pray for you knowledgeably.”
• Court order. Of course—sometimes, you know, you may be called. I’ve been called upon to be examined by a court because of a lawsuit, and I had met with the child in the counseling situation, and so I got a court order that I had to share with the attorneys involved about this situation.
• Continued treatment. Sometimes a clinician may release confidential information—in other words, continued treatment of a person. And—for instance—you know, I will have to give my doctor permission to share that with somebody that he has referred me to. So, yeah, okay—I need more treatment; this person’s got to know what I’ve been dealing with.
• Complies with the law / mandatory reporting. In other words, if you know that you’re in a situation where the person you’re talking to has abused a child or has been abused by somebody else—you’ve got to report that. You can’t hold that in.
• Communicate a threat. In other words, if you know that what has been shared with you—somebody is threatening another person, or—or is being threatened. That’s the kind of thing that you break confidentiality for.

Abigail:
The key thing here—yeah—

Bruce:
Other than those things—wow. Keep it. Keep it to yourself. So much damage is done when companies share something about somebody else. So much damage is done within the church in particular. So—you know—within deacons and deacons’ meetings where maybe you’re sharing about the various needs—you’re dealing with people—and somebody that has listened to you goes and says to somebody else—“How did you know that so-and-so, you know, has this challenge, this problem, this need?” Oh—wow—that’s one of those things going to give the church a bad, bad reputation. So be aware. Be aware.

And I said—when we ended up the last session—that we’ll look at finances next. Now we’re going to look at finances.