Practicing Interpersonal Communication

Translating your Complaints and Criticisms into Requests for Action

Translate your (and other people's) com-plaints and criticisms into specific requests, and explain your requests. In order to get more cooperation from others, whenever possible ask for what you want by using specific, action-oriented, positive language rather than by using generalizations, "why's," "don'ts" or "somebody should's". Help your listeners comply by explaining your requests with a "so that"..., "it would help me to... if you would"... or "in order to"... Also, when you are receiving criticism and complaints from others, translate and restate the complaints as action requests.

(I introduced these two topics -- making requests and sharing our positive expectations -- in Chapter 3, but they are so important they deserve a chapter all their own).

Why many people have a hard time making requests

It often feels easier to say, "You're wrong". than it is to say "I need your help". Making requests leaves us much more vulnerable in relation to our conversation partners than making criticisms or complaints. So people have a tendency to complain rather than to request. If we make a request, the other person could turn us down or make fun of us, and the risk of disappointment and loss of face is hard to bear. If we complain, on the other hand, we stand on the emotional high ground and our listener is usually on the defensive. However, to improve our chances of getting cooperation from another person, we need to ask for what we want and risk being turned down. With practice we can each learn to bear those risks more skillfully and gracefully.

Why criticisms usually don't get the positive result we want: Whenever we place people on the defensive, their capacity to listen goes down. Their attention and energy will often go into some combination of defending their position, saving face and counter-attacking. Only when they feel safe are they likely to listen and consider how they might meet our needs. The truth of the complaint is not the issue. Because mutual imitation or emotional "echoing" is so much a part of ordinary conversation, a criticism from one partner, no matter how justified, tends to evoke a criticism from the other, bogging the pair down in a spiral of accusations. To avoid this trap, try to approach the other person not as an adversary in a debate but as a problem-solving partner.

Specific action requests help to focus your listener's attention on the present situation

Focus on the actions you want to take and the actions you want others to take in the present and future. (For example, use verbs and adverbs, such as "meet our deadlines regularly"). Avoid proposing changes in a person's supposed character traits (nouns and adjectives, such as "slow worker" or "bad team player"). "How can we solve this problem quickly?" will generally produce much better results than, "Why are you such an awful slow-poke?" In the latter kind of statement, I am actually suggesting to my conversation partner that the behavior I want changed is a fixed and perhaps unchangeable part of their personality, thus undermining my own goals and needs.

Talking about specifics will help to keep the current conversation from becoming one more episode in whatever unresolved conflicts might be in the background of your conversations. Your listener, like all of us, may sometimes be in the grip of feelings of embarrassment, resentment or self-doubt unrelated to the present situation. The more vague and open-ended a criticism is, the easier it is for your listener to hear it as part of those other conflicts. Instead of saying something like "Why does it always take you so long to get things done?", try saying things like "I would like you to fix the faucet in Apartment #4 by five o'clock, so the tenants can use the kitchen sink when they get home tonight?" Of course, your tone of voice is important here. It's important that you your-self are not carrying forward old complaints. Life is lived best one day at a time.

Explanatory clauses can move people to cooperate

Research in social psychology has revealed that many people respond more positively to explained requests than to unexplained requests, even when the supposed explanation is obvious or doesn't actually explain much of anything. Notice the difference between the following two ways of expressing requests:

"Will you please open the window?"

"May I please have a glass of water?"

AND...

"Will you please open the window so that we can get more fresh air in here?"

"May I please have a glass of water? I'm really thirsty".

For many people the second form of the requests is much more inspiring. Why this is so is not certain. My hunches include that by explaining the reason, the speaker is treating the listener as a social equal, worthy of being persuaded and informed as to why a request is being made. The listener is invited to comply with a request to accomplish the stated goal rather than simply to submit to the will of the speaker. Another possibility is that since many requests are linguistically ambiguous and could easily be taken as orders, the explanation emphasizes that the statement is a real request. Whatever the reason, explaining your request makes it more likely that your listener will cooperate.

Explanatory clauses allow your conversation partners to imagine new solutions

While any sort of explanatory clause seems to help, a real explanation of your goal allows your conversation partners to understand the context and purpose of your request. When for some reason they cannot meet your needs in the way you have asked, they may be able to meet your needs in some way that you had not thought of. (For an inspiring discussion of this topic, see Getting to Yes, by Fisher, Ury and Patton. They suggest that if you explain your overall goals rather than sticking to a very specific bargaining position, your negotiating adversaries may be able to propose mutually beneficial solutions that satisfy more of the needs of all parties. One main idea of their book is to turn your adversaries into problem-solving partners).