Part Two
Opting for Control
There's always a tendency to control communication to avoid unwelcome surprises. Most people steer their conversation with habitual instructions to the brain, and these affect everything they say, mostly beyond self‐awareness. With such agendas in place, stemming mainly from fear, they fail to truly show up when they encounter other people.
Control Rules
The first step toward more authentic communication is to look at control. There's a strong instinct to control our environment and plan what to say and how to say it. Control is pervasive and entrenched in our culture, the all‐favoured modus operandi in politics, leadership, management, and every aspect of our lives. Much conversation today, whether social discourse, political interview, or media chat, is in fact highly measured and predictable. Unsurprising, as we've seen, when social media lurks ever ready to spread a thoughtless comment globally and create havoc.
Some protect themselves by sticking blandly in ‘social mode'. They articulate ‘correct' social responses, stay within strict boundaries, and parrot received opinions while revealing nothing significant about themselves. Some act like machines and speak entirely without emotion. Others play games of charm and other manipulation, pretend insouciance or respond in a particular ‘personality' or role.
At the same time, many are inhibited by self‐consciousness, lack of self‐esteem, fear, and other over‐riding emotions. They guard their words, hide their feelings, and prepare in meticulous detail for significant occasions such as interviews, speeches and presentations. In the workplace every effort is made to avoid surprises; people are analysed and assessed; human traits are measured and evaluated – everything possible is done to create certainty and guarantee expected results.
Much has been written and spoken about how to maintain better control of events and people. Gradually, we have devised procedures that minimise surprise so that we know what to do for almost every eventuality. We find control everywhere, even disguised as freedom and spontaneity. Some people, especially in public life, play the role of spontaneity with an easy unconstrained manner that disguises hard‐headed calculation beneath the surface. General bonhomie can act as a strong self‐defence, never allowing the real person to emerge and making anything but superficial connection unlikely. Most common of all is the tendency to speak with a filter permanently in place controlling what is said – for example, conversation with the aim of showing oneself in a good light, winning points, obtaining personal advantage, or pleasing people. The conversation can appear relaxed, but the impression is skin‐deep. Some powerful populist politicians come into this category.
Control shows up too as habits of conversation that we are no longer capable of noticing in ourselves. Maybe we are negative and complain a lot or have the tendency to blame others. Maybe we display constant facile positivity in the face of good sense. Perhaps we instinctively say no to everything and miss opportunities. Such behaviours become our defaults, and they prevent us from living our desires or even asking ourselves whether we have desires at all. This can prevent anything new from surfacing in our lives. And it can get in the way of connection with other people.
WHAT IS CONTROL?
What does control consist of? In the simplest terms it's left‐brain thinking, where rationality with its linear processes, coherent systems and concepts is promoted, while emotion and intuition are consigned to minor roles. With control, decisions are taken consciously, using the evaluating, analysing parts of the brain. Evidence is accumulated, examined and dissected. The method concentrates on building up 'facts' and getting the details right, then abstracting and categorising.
We have arrived at a point in history where the left‐brain rules in business, politics, and public life; and, indeed, in every sphere of our lives we operate by more and more rules and increasing surveillance, accompanied by assurances that it's for our safety and general wellbeing. But we're missing out. There is a sense that the freedom and wonder of life is getting lost, and that it's not a small loss, but is changing us as human beings into something less attractive, less adaptable, and less inventive and creative.
Control certainly rules in the realm of communication. Reflect on how seldom – with a very few notable exceptions – public statements today surprise us. Spin and sound bites threaten to drown out debate. Much talking on radio and television – even the news – is delivered by means of adversarial interviews, micro‐managed in tight time slots by producers, while politicians and business leaders play the game of ‘answering' questions with prepared slogans to ensure predictable outcomes.
Well‐versed politicians, scripted interviews, party lines, stock answers and stock emotions have become the common currency. Switch on the television and all too often you are greeted by an over‐energetic smiling and laughing face that neither energises nor projects happiness, or a bland face that reacts to neither charm nor insult – it's make believe, robotic even, ‘a mask of Plasticine smugness' as Russell Brand once referred to the expression of a typical politician. There are notable exceptions, but as we shall see, control agendas play a big part here too.
Many people approach conversation in the spirit of being thoroughly prepared, pinning their confidence on studied subjects of conversation and planned lines of enquiry. A man who had reached the top of his profession told me once, to my surprise, that he often prepared conversational topics before meeting people so that he wouldn't be left hanging without something topical or interesting to say.
Control has a lot going for it. You avoid unwelcome surprises and the unpleasant chaotic feeling that you're no longer master of yourself. Life constantly demands an instant response. A tiger wanders up to our cave – Hide? Run? Attack? Freeze? Quick – choose! An employee is underperforming. Talk to him? Show him a new way? Sack him? Decisions, decisions! We don't feel quick enough on our feet; it's so much more comfortable to have a ready answer. But does it work in conversation?
CONVENTIONAL CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS
The instinct to control responses in conversation is usually based on the good intention of responding well, but with control we never get beyond a general competence in communication – the deeper possibilities of conversation just don't happen.
Most coaching in the art of conversation follows the control method. If you doubt your conversational skills and seek help from experts or books, you will probably be assisted to become more articulate. You'll work at your use of language, and study to get accent and inflection right. You'll practise to make your sentences flow, and you'll learn anecdotes to have ready to call upon. You'll buff up your opinions and hone your arguments; you'll become skilful in the arts of oratory and debate and also in small talk with its polite balance of question and answer. You'll learn how to put expression into your voice so that you sound interested – spontaneous even.
CALCULATION
More of us than would admit to it go into conversation at least some of the time with a calculation. It may be a simple aim to look good, to win points, or to be liked. These calculations are sometimes conscious, but often they are largely invisible to us – default responses that direct the tone and direction of the interaction. It's so normal that few of us notice that defaults are operating. But as we don't fully show up when such filters are in operation, the result is lack of connection. Desire to control conversation to feel more secure turns out to be the very factor that prevents us from truly connecting with people.
Whenever human being speaks with human being wonderful things can happen – but only if both parties are fully present. If one or both are in 'default' mode, nothing new or interesting emerges.
We are all used to showing each other only a fraction of our interior world. Depending on whom we're talking to, we've learned to hide the parts of ourselves that might be seen as weak or needy, angry or unattractive. So, to avoid experiences that have in the past brought us rejection or loneliness and to gain love and acceptance from others, we edit ourselves little by little. Laughter is one of the whips that keep us in line. To avoid unwelcome laughter, we suppress our spontaneity and originality – even our humour and creativity – and learn to appear ‘ordinary' (or for some, ‘special' within strictly understood parameters). With such strategies, we no longer respond spontaneously to others and thus diminish ourselves, becoming smaller, less authentic versions of who we really are.
Control Agendas
If you want to excel at the art of conversation beyond mere facility with words, it's helpful to recognise your own agendas. We don't tend to notice them because they are habitual and finally become automatic. Many things we say to each other are meaningless, but to us are perfectly normal. We just don't realise that our way of speaking to each other, familiar as it is, is a choice, because it's our usual medium, the water we swim in.
Certain situations trigger particular thoughts, which create the same response from us, day after day. These vary from person to person, but for each of us change remarkably little over time. Basically, they are simple instructions to the brain for different circumstances that guide what we say and how we say it. They are usually driven originally by inner gremlins of ‘musts' and ‘shoulds', such as, ‘I've got to look good here', or ‘I need to impress my boss at this point', or ‘Danger! I must hide this'. The instructions we use most become habits, and eventually become buried in the unconscious and invisible to our conscious selves – though still a burden: we should‐er our shoulds heavily!
At our house, we have a newly installed three‐way tap in the garden. You turn a switch one way and water from the tap is directed into the garden hose; switch it another way and the water comes through a short length of tube to fill the watering can; a third position produces water straight from the tap. Many of us approach conversation in the same way by automatically switching on the appropriate tap. In a social situation we adopt a charming and friendly stance; in a work situation we may adopt the business tone of our professional role. It works pretty well. We are accustomed to such adaptation and even expect it in deference to ‘politeness' or social convention. It can be seriously disconcerting when someone breaks the code instead of ‘playing the game'.
The filters we have in place lead us to say certain things and refrain from others, setting patterns for conversation. These patterns become so ingrained that they govern much of our behaviour. With some people it's like singing to a single tune, with a title such as ‘Win at All Costs', ‘Complain and Blame', or ‘Defend My Reputation', which they play again and again. Others act out the typical human responses of fight, flight, or freeze by becoming a conversational bully, scaredy‐cat, or corpse.
Habitual responses are quite lazy. We see what we expect and react accordingly. For example, we may have labelled a certain friend irresponsible, and he only has to say he's decided to take a day off work for us to jump to our automatic conclusion and think ‘irresponsible!'
The biggest weakness of the process of filtering is the impossibility of real connection with the other person. Agendas in all their various guises bring tension into breathing, posture, and body language and create a barrier. However much you may be fulfilling your agenda, you are not genuinely present to the other person. Yet, selfish or well‐intentioned, agenda‐driven reactions become accepted as regular communication in our minds, even as they skew responses and cause the real rewards – such as connection, creative thinking, and combined intelligence – to be lost.
They come in various guises.
1. LOOKING GOOD
The desire to look good often highjacks a conversation. Like many agendas, it involves subterfuge and disguise. People who are most successful at hiding may even seem open and available, while their real persona is safely protected and tucked away out of sight.
We all adopt masks at times. Feelings are catching and we don't want to burden others with our negative states, so we sometimes smile when we are sad and put aside our wounds at times when sharing them with others won't serve them or us. But we need to know we are doing it; we need to be conscious of it.
‘Playing by the Rules’ in Social Discourse
Instruction: Be nice! Say what people want to hear! Obey social convention!
Quite a lot of conversation is talking for talking's sake – gossiping, moaning, socialising to be seen, collecting people like trophies, merely doing what is expected in a situation. We conform to society's conventions that allow us to hide behind the polite formalities and empty routines of small talk. For many, there's a constant fear of transgressing the codes of communication of their particular circle. Some groups engage with each other with strict formality, others engage in robust debate or competitive repartee, but the most common default is being nice. You become a member of the group by following the group norm.
Being ‘nice', we say what we think others want to hear. We reiterate empty phrases: ‘And how was your holiday? Oh, that must have been exciting (in a non‐excited voice). And what's Bill doing now?' That's fine at the beginning of a conversation but arid as a destination. That empty brightness of voice and erect posture reveal to any perceptive observer that you're not communicating at all, rather avoiding real communication by putting up a front of politeness. Even when smoothly managed, it brings formality to social situations, and unless transcended increases the distance between you.
Kate Chopin describes the process in her late‐nineteenth‐century novel, Awakening. The art of conversation, she says, at least for a woman, is to say nothing, just look appropriately pleased or sorry or indignant and always interested and entertained. And amazingly, the man will speak of you as entertaining and intelligent when you have said little more than, ‘What do you do?' Isn't it great that women are no longer like that, we say – and then pause to wonder whether that is true.
Acting a Professional or Expert Role
Instruction: Look the part! Sound business‐like! Maintain the status of your title!
If you want to hide in plain sight, there's nothing more straightforward than to use your work role as a mask. You stand straighter and stiffer than other people and use the abstract lexicon of business‐speak to sound more masterful. You may devote much energy to projecting an image of ‘infallibility'. The mask is impenetrable, never affording a glimpse of more vulnerable human emotions, such as sadness or disappointment. It successfully keeps others in the organisation at a distance.
Often, both participants in a communication are playing roles. In a business environment, conversations often take place between title and title. One senior manager I coached said he didn't want to know anything about the people who worked for him and certainly didn't want them to know anything about him; he found such information completely irrelevant. Communication for him was between boss and employee and followed set patterns of limited scope. Despite perennial talk of equality, much in the work sphere emphasises hierarchy by maintaining a particular kind of work‐speak that simplifies relationships and distances people from each other.
Such simplification, though appearing to maintain control, can have serious downsides. Without genuine communication, much that is important for a business passes people by or fails to happen, and the failures can be catastrophic.
Time and again in business and politics, people find themselves in the role of courtiers admiring the Emperor's new clothes – making comments with a verve and energy they do not feel or acting impassively while feeling strong emotion. To use ambiguous language is exhausting – it's a kind of lying and lying always saps energy. Maintaining your position, reputation, credit, or standing is exhausting too.
Many politicians, business leaders, and media personalities identify so completely with their role that we would be hard‐pressed to separate the person from the role. For them, the process of listening is merely an opportunity to prepare their own next sally.
Defending Self‐Image
Instruction: Beware – danger! Protect yourself! Pull up the drawbridge!
When you defend your self‐image to look good, other people's first impression of you may be of confidence and openness, but gradually other characteristics become evident. You seem confident, yes, but you never risk vulnerability. You may be full of opinions, but you don't express personal emotions. You may miss someone's impromptu injection of humour while you're busy defending yourself. You promote yourself and put your energy into making sure the cracks don't show. Your eternal vigilance destroys your ability to be spontaneous even as you act with confident ease and geniality.
The cracks show when, in your instinct to defend, you make knee‐jerk responses, programmed by how you've reacted in the past. Someone fires at you, ‘You're too sensitive', and you respond in the instant, ‘No, I'm not!' Or someone accuses you of being too frightened to volunteer for a bungee jump and you retort, ‘Don't be ridiculous!' There is no inner dialogue with the self in such responses. Some person or event presses your trigger and your gun goes off with no micro‐space for choice.
When you try to protect yourself through self‐defence, power struggles ensue, creating further necessity to defend and control. So, control, like any rigid defence, brings about what it's aiming to prevent.
One kind of defence that hides itself well is curiosity. Not a bad thing in itself, indeed an interest in the other person is crucial for good conversation, but some communicators use it as a screen to hide behind. They ask question after question, but reply to questions asked of them with phrases that hold others at a distance from their own affairs, thus keeping the ball constantly in the other person's court.
2. COMPETING TO WIN
Many, many are the ‘I'm better than you' defaults. Listen to the masters of this genre, and you'll notice that they never pass up the opportunity in conversation to win a point and come out on top.
Some want to come across as cleverer than others. For some, it's their eye to the main chance: everything they hear translates to dollar signs, ‘How can I profit here?' or ‘Where's the advantage for me in this?' Some want to be the most successful; others want to emerge as the most powerful. Some want to be the most dramatic – even the most tragic or long‐suffering if it's a way to achieve drama. Some succeed in having the last word in banter. Some merely want to be centre stage, to be the most important or get the most airtime. Others are interested in status. Some – and certain politicians spring to mind – sell themselves without pause, without a care for truth or good sense as long as they dominate the scene.
Winning Profit or Power
Instruction: Find the advantage! Get the best deal! Come out on top!
This is the salesman's default. At its worst, it won't matter how many lies you tell, so long as the prize is won. If this filter motivates you, you won't have shame – it's the winning that counts. You have a powerful instinct to tell people what they want to hear, so that they'll buy what you have to offer. This may apply to car sales or to your personal image. So long as they buy it, anything goes. You'll recognise examples of this agenda in politics as well as in the salesroom.
Winning the Argument
Instruction: Win the point! Defend my viewpoint at all costs! Prove that I'm the cleverest!
You want to come across as the most knowledgeable or the most erudite. Every conversation is a debate, and debates are to be won. This style of conversation doesn't mind difference or even conflict – everything the other person says is an opportunity for you to reload your own argument and fire. You make points that reveal your superior knowledge or learning, and resist flexibility or compromise. Indeed, though you can express opinions forcefully, any convincing counter‐argument feels like a personal attack on your sense of self.
Such desire to win may make you leap in early in a conversation to state your business in case you run out of time. People who are highly competitive usually hold a belief in scarcity. They think that there is not enough to go around and that they need to fight to be first to get at the prizes. With this belief, other people including friends can only ever be rivals.
Surpassing in Status/Comparing
Instruction: Look superior to the other person! Dominate the conversation! Obtain deference!
You want to look superior at all costs, and this might involve name‐dropping and hinting at powerful connections. It gives you a distorted view, as everything is judged on its usefulness to your self‐promotion and advancement. Your friends and lovers have to be beautiful to shine positively on you as their friend; contacts are dropped if they are not going to advance your interests; house, car, and hobbies have to promote your image. Your eye is always on personal advancement; you look out for deference.
If someone else tells an anecdote, you make sure you have an anecdote to cap it, even if it's a story of disaster. Okay, so they ran into a storm on a sailing holiday and had a hard time getting back into harbour? Big deal. Your boat was scuppered on the rocks and you were airlifted to safety at a cost of 100 000 dollars!
Conquering with Charisma
Instruction: Woo with expansive friendliness! Make people laugh! All eyes on me!
You can be highly defended and yet seem the opposite. You may project an image of natural spontaneity and be everyone's friend with a generalised affability. You may act the joker and seem happy‐go‐lucky even, but behind the scenes you're calculating the effect. Such fake spontaneity, including buffoonery and a happy‐go‐lucky image, is very common in public life today. There are Teflon politicians who create a charismatic public image, yet maintain a calculating eye on personal advancement, always working in their own self‐interest.
Such behaviour may convince for a while, but that warm voice is actually no more open than the friendly‐sounding electronic voice at the supermarket till informing you where to put your shopping bag. Your charisma never really invites people in; your friendliness never really connects with individuals, even as it beckons them to believe the image. Author and coach Tim Gallwey talks about the acts people have to make us believe they are wonderful, that are covering their actual wonderfulness. It's hard to relate to an act.
3. PLEASING AND APPEASING
It may seem strange to think of pleasing people as an agenda, but for many people keeping other people happy or on‐side takes precedence over all else to such an extent that they are incapable of acting differently, even when they are aware that it annoys others. Sometimes, it presents itself as a kind of superior moral unselfishness. But as a default behaviour it stops people from thinking independently, encourages clinging and insincerity, and seldom promotes good relationships.
Pleasing People/Needing to be Liked
Instruction: Make people love me! Look happy! Everything is entirely okay!
A strong desire to please drives much of human behaviour, with its constant subtle undertones: ‘Will this make people like me?', ‘How will this come across?', or ‘Might this upset someone?'
How impossible it is to say no to something when you cannot bear the slightest possibility of making someone unhappy! How difficult to speak your truth when you fear that others won't agree with you! Yet your voice and body language contradict you when you appease and placate. Someone asks, ‘Would you like to come to the party?' And you reply, ‘Er,' – slight stutter – ‘er, yes, I'd … love to …' – voice tailing off.
The desire to please leads you to second‐guess what the other person would like to hear, and then seek to provide it. Fear of getting it wrong or being rejected or coming across as selfish or aggressive or inadequate make it almost impossible to get it right and can be tiresome for other people.
You feel that you must be cheerful and positive at all times. ‘How are you?', they ask. ‘Oh, I'm fine', you reply with a little rise in pitch at the end of the phrase. This kind of pretence for others' benefit is another way of creating a barrier between you and the other person in conversation.
Not Rocking the Boat
Instruction: Don't threaten the status quo! Don't risk things getting worse! Yes, dear!
A particularly deadly form of pleasing is the default of not rocking the boat. Experience has perhaps taught you that opposition makes things worse, so you tread constantly on eggshells, avoiding conflict, never making a fuss. You try always to be the person that other people expect you to be. But you are not really present in any conversation; you are constantly wary – mild and acquiescent on the surface, but only as an act. Your responses are all fear‐based, aiming hopelessly to keep the peace.
Put Others First
Instruction: Put others first at all times! Sacrifice! Self‐immolate!
Agendas do not necessarily have their roots in selfishness: you may, for instance, feel that you always have to care for others before yourself or be generous as a principle. But when positive traits become fixed habits or compulsions, you are no longer free to respond in the most useful or creative way to people and circumstances.
Then you oppress others in your insistence. Someone once said to me of a mutual friend who had caring as a default: ‘She has to feel sorry for me all the time – it's so exhausting!' If you have this default, other people are aware to a certain extent that you ‘have to' behave in this way, and don't react with appropriate gratitude to the ‘gifts' that you offer. Your self‐sacrificing attitude feels like a burden on them.
In any case, compulsive goodness often hides non‐expressed anger and resentment, which is picked up subconsciously by others and prevents close relationships.
4. PRESUPPOSITION AGENDAS
Numerous other agendas are based on your beliefs, and profoundly affect your ability to respond in a real way to others because they create instant knee‐jerk reactions in you. True awareness doesn't know what it'll find. Agendas masquerading as beliefs instantly put the other person in a box.
Examples of this kind of filter might be:
- ‘Success requires hard work'
- ‘Marriage is sacrosanct'
- ‘I must be perfect'
- ‘Being late signifies disrespect'
- ‘People aren't generally to be trusted'.
The Root Cause of Agendas is Fear
What drives these agendas? There's a compulsion – a familiar feeling of necessity. An inner voice urges, ‘you must', ‘you've got to', or ‘you can't not', sometimes with the implied postscript, ‘or else …'.
Behind the compulsion lies one root block: fear.
Looking good, social convention, professional role playing, self‐defending, winning points, establishing status, charming, pleasing, putting others first – these responses are all attempts at control, at satisfying the gremlins of ‘got to' and ‘can't not'. And, through continued use, these blocks and attempts to control gradually sap our vitality and silt up the fountain of energy inside us.
This process takes place on an individual level and on a systemic level. Whole organisations run exhausting agendas – hidden myths to do with competition, perfection, or the impossibility of mistakes, kept in place by fear – and in truth such cultures are debilitating for employees and inimical to creative thought and connection.
On an individual level, each of us is scared of what might happen if we allow our vitality free rein. I might make a mistake or come across wrong, I might make a fool of myself, I might not be good enough, I might not be acceptable, or I might be discovered to be a fake. And so we cement into habit ways of behaving that started out as over‐concern about our communication with other people and an intense need to be in control. We might like to think that emotion has nothing to do with it, but we're afraid of what others think – and they probably feel the same about us – so we fail to hear what pops up inside us to say and creep around the truth because we think we don't know how to say it.
Fear surfaces in various forms.
SELF‐CONSCIOUSNESS
Worry about how you might be perceived turns your attention and energy inwards. Instead of thinking or doing or being, you think about thinking, doing, or being. You start to evaluate your performance even as you live it, stripping any enjoyment from it.
As you search your brain to find the right thing to say or the right question to ask, at some level you're aware of yourself in action, so you are no longer present. Fear of saying the wrong thing even makes you say the wrong thing. Thus, even as you create something, you tear it apart and consume it like a snake swallowing its own tail or like a car driver accelerating with one foot firmly on the brake.
TRYING TOO HARD
Fearing failure, people try too hard and become tense. This is quite easy to spot in others, harder to realise when you're doing it yourself. You can notice it in people's language, which becomes convoluted and clunky, practically ensuring that they don't get what they want. ‘I suppose you couldn't get me a copy of that report, could you?' ‘I couldn't ask you a favour, could I?' The negative forms just cry out for the answer no.
A common effect of trying too hard is tediousness. Speakers attempt to include everything, and this striving kills any spontaneity or possibility of intuition and creativity, let alone connection with those they're speaking to. Concentrating on getting everything right, they forget why they're trying to get it right. When you strive in conversation, you set yourself apart from who you really are, and it's impossible for others to reach you in any meaningful way.
All that compulsion to look and sound competent, the striving to look impressive, the effort to win points, makes people clumsy with their interjections and not balanced enough to follow a conversation in its flow so that it can develop naturally. Comments often jar, efforts to hide effort feel uncomfortable, and everything conspires to create a vicious circle where they work ever harder and make things difficult for themselves.
One form of trying too hard is a striving for superiority. You walk into a room convincing yourself that you're better than everyone, misunderstanding that real confidence is to walk into a room without having to compare yourself with anyone at all.
INNER CONFLICT
When you become fearful, you attempt to hide parts of yourself that you feel are not acceptable and present yourself as something you are not. All this effort represents a huge and pointless drain on your energy.
You may recognise the paralysis that freezes you when there's an internal struggle inside you; for example, when your desire to move forward in one direction is matched by an equal and opposite fear of losing out if you do. Maybe you want to win something from someone but at the same time want them to see you as non‐competitive. Or you want to be open and honest while wanting to hide big chunks of yourself at the same time. There are few things as exhausting as being pulled in different directions at once. It's also difficult for people interacting with you as they experience awkwardness or confusion.
STRESS AND PHYSICAL TENSION
Every kind of fear‐based control introduces stress into the system and blocks you. Authenticity and spontaneity are sacrificed. Others detect in you something artificial and even untruthful. You cease to be quick on your feet and fall back on stock observations and responses. Struggling internally, the body loses some of its aliveness. You lose your natural flow and become tight. This happens particularly when you suppress emotions or pretend different emotions. The psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich described this muscular defence we create against emotions we do not want to feel as ‘body armour'.
Control will never lead to conversations that are organic and satisfying. Its checks and balances are crude compared to whole‐mind thinking. We need a more intuitive approach.