Pitching a project idea at work? My pride is at stake.I’m constantly communicating, negotiating, and managing conflict, whether it’s convincing a colleague to tone down a provocative proposal or getting my five-year-old to button up her itchy sweater. Much of this communication I do without intentional thought, and often—as I look back on it—I can see that my motivations were sometimes skewed.
Pitching a project idea at work? My pride is at stake.
Bargaining at a Mexico City market? I want to win.
Arguing with a colleague? I don’t want to back down.
Renting a California beach bungalow? I don’t want to be a sucker.
Whenever I bought a car or asked for a raise, I was aware I was engaged in a formal, consequential business interaction. It’s like the evening chess games my son and I play: I make my move, he makes his, but we’re both thinking a few moves ahead.
But for most of my daily communication—in the office, at my kids’ school, or at home—my dealings aren’t deliberate. I’m not considering what I want, or what others are after. And there can be strange reasons for my moves: Perhaps this person bought me a cup of coffee yesterday, or maybe I feel sorry for him—he seems a little stressed out. Sometimes I’m involved in a self-made competition, so I dig in relentlessly.
I’m a wife, a mother of four kids, a journalist for a major international news organization, a daughter, sister, and friend. I like to run in the forest and snorkel above coral reefs. I sing really loudly in the morning while I make breakfast, and I fall asleep in movie theaters. Each of these apparently simple pleasures has its communication pitfalls. The wife, mother, and journalist ones seem obvious: a steady stream of discussions over where we’ll spend Thanksgiving, whether that chemistry homework is complete, and how to frame an investigative project. But what about when a mountain bike class is bombing down my favorite redwood forest running trail? Or when the snorkel gear rentals are suddenly exorbitant? Or if my neighbors don’t want to hear me belting out ’70s hits before dawn? And what does my husband really think about me falling asleep at the movies, again?
An avid baker, I’m a believer in recipes. I’ve done Julia Child’s 17-page French bread and the King Arthur Flour’s five-day sourdough bagels. The resulting goodies, toasted with butter, are all the proof I need that following directions, step-by-step, is worth it.
Yet it’s been a revelation to realize there’s a recipe for communication.
There came a day when I was mired, truly mired, in a spiraling, escalating issue. I was furious, hurt, and self-righteous. I was also stuck. I sought help from Geoffrey Tumlin, frantically laying out my case.
Geoffrey is a remarkably gifted communicator, an astute listener, and a master at lining up the right conversational tactics to support a larger, more important goal. His easygoing Texas warmth and natural sense of humor blend with a rigorous West Point background and a top-flight academic mind to create a delightful mix of insight, understanding, and accessibility. Geoffrey Tumlin knows how communication works and how good communication can work for you.
Over years of study and practice, Geoffrey has formed a deliberate and straightforward method for strengthening interpersonal communication skills. Now these methods, which he’s brought as a consultant to major, international companies, are distilled into simple-to-follow recipes. Easier than bagels!
Geoffrey hadn’t written this book yet the day I called him. But he knew the principles. Calmly and thoughtfully, he listened to my outrage. What he suggested was, initially, a little hard to swallow. I was part of the problem. I was responsible for the solution.
But then, step-by-step, we walked through the moves I could make to get what I wanted. And following his guidance, which is now pinned to the wall of my cubicle, I got there. No. We got there. In the end, the person I was communicating with and I were both satisfied with the solution.
It meant muting my good comebacks. Sarcasm was out. So was being snide. I needed to be honest, I needed to be clear, and I needed to listen. Then and only then, as Geoffrey so patiently explained, would I be in a position to make the most of the situation.
It worked.
As a journalist, I once had an opportunity, collaborating with three brilliant and dogged colleagues, to gather enough archival, interview, and physical evidence to document a disturbing and powerful war crime. We wrote our news story and handed it to our editors, who were skeptical. Their concern was protecting the credibility of our entire company. Our concern was getting this story out and letting the truth be told. We spent months fighting—not communicating—over this. Finally, after a different editor stepped in to mediate, we found a way to compromise, to get the story out, and to bring about a small resolution for the soldiers who had fired and the civilians who had been fired upon.
The story went on to win a Pulitzer Prize “for revealing, with extensive documentation, the decades-old secret of how American soldiers early in the Korean War killed hundreds of Korean civilians in a massacre at the No Gun Ri Bridge.”
While the recognition came for our investigative work, I know, as do my colleagues, that the real success was breaking our internal logjam and moving from fighting about the story to resolving our differences and helping the story see the light of day. What a difference good communication makes.
“The ways that we communicate—and the ways that we don’t—shape our relationships, and our relationships shape our lives,” says Geoffrey Tumlin in this wise, important book. “The most important people in our lives deserve our very best communication.”
I’m working on it.
—Martha Mendoza