Open communication: its power and its limits

People should not be treated like mushrooms. The “mushroom theory of management” is something I have seen practiced in many workplaces and close personal relationships. The people in charge or those with important information treat other people like mushrooms by keeping them in the dark and feeding them (let’s clean up a bit) the fertilizer of unreliable or biased information. This amounts to using communication to enhance personal power by hiding important information from others. Manipulating situations by revealing or hiding information is even more powerful when the uninformed have rights to the hidden information.

This problem is the subject of many procedures to open communications between people or within groups. At work it can be called “team building”; they can be communication techniques or exercises used in retreats; or it may be a project that requires group decision making. In court or at work, there may be mediation procedures to resolve disputes. In personal life, it can be premarital counseling, marriage counseling, or individual therapy.

In each of these situations, open communication is encouraged as essential. It can also be therapeutic in all these situations so that, at the end, it is seen as a “peak experience” that enhances understanding and interpersonal closeness. In fact, the therapeutic value of open communication can become the main objective that is sought.

The point I will make is that the therapeutic effects of communication are not effective as a goal to be pursued. Open communication, and the therapeutic benefits it can bring, works best when communication is enhanced as a step toward achieving some really important goal. The primary measure of success should be reaching that goal, not how people felt about the quality and depth of communication in the process.

Based on my personal experience, I believe that goal achievement leads to therapeutic benefits beyond the value of communication itself. To show what I mean, let’s look at examples of work, mediation, and personal counseling.

For over a decade, I was a facilitator or trainer leading “interventions” at retreats, training events, or as part of project team development. I was an Organizational Development consultant working with top and middle managers of a large government agency. There was resistance to interventions from managers (including my own supervisors) and employees who heard about “sensitive feel” exercises that would excite them in public. Many seemingly innocuous games could be used to get people talking while following some basic rules to prevent them from blaming others when they express their own views.

Time and time again, I saw people who feared emotionalism quickly get passionately involved in exposing the wounds they had been carrying for years and asking for more personal understanding from others than they had been receiving. There were invariably many teary eyes before the end of the process and an immediate glow of positive affirmation throughout the group.

When feelings were shared without making specific agreements about improvements, the situation usually returned to the previous condition within a few days or weeks. Managers sometimes wanted to do follow-up exercises to try to build on the goodwill that had been experienced, but resistance grew too great due to short-lived success the first time. No one would say anything negative about what happened, but they summed up their feelings with “I was there, I did that.” It wasn’t good enough for them to want to repeat it.

I soon learned to link communication exercises to negotiating rules that would accommodate the larger concerns of work groups. Requiring consensus decisions in these discussions ultimately led to very open expression of concerns and requests for change. No one was allowed to dictate, although the supervisor always had veto rights when company policy or other top management expectations were violated. The result would be trade-offs so that no one gets everything they want but everyone gets enough to feel that the situation has improved. The process would be successful if communications were open and therapeutic benefits felt. But agreeing on the necessary changes and following up with an evaluation to ensure they were met perpetuated the benefits of therapy and gained credibility for the process as lasting change was experienced.

I became so successful with negotiation as part of improving work teams that I decided to become a certified mediator. For several years I worked with courts in 5 counties near my residence and mediated disputes in various state agencies in addition to my own. The intended goal of mediation was to resolve a problem at work or to bring someone before a judge for a final decision. In both cases, one of the parties to the mediation knew that they stood to lose much of the higher authority if the mediation failed to resolve important issues. However, the pressure was never one-sided, because both sides stood to lose something of value if the higher authority made a decision because it could not be handled amicably at a lower level.

Negotiated agreements required both parties to make concessions, giving up something of lesser personal value in order to gain something considered more important. Each side had something to gain from the agreement and something important to lose if the agreement was not honored. The result was more amicable dispute resolution, leading more and more employers and court systems to resort to mediation.

Mediators are trained to set boundaries for the negotiation process so that open communication within boundaries is sought as dispute resolution is achieved through the leadership of a neutral discussion leader. Sometimes there were therapeutic benefits that began to repair the damage in the relationship when the children worked through disagreements in the probate process, or when the divorcing parties reached an agreement that allowed them to put the interests of the children above all else. , or when employees realized that their supervisor was not treating them viciously. with the intention of forcing them to leave their jobs.

One of the reasons I stopped doing mediation was the development of a movement that called for going “beyond superficial problem solving.” It was said that the real objective was to emphasize the depth of communication rather than reaching agreements. If a dispute was resolved and agreement went through, they were quantitative measures of the success of the mediation. The new approach wanted to emphasize the quality of what happened during the mediation process rather than the outcome, which could possibly be a perfunctory agreement that avoided the deep-seated problems in the relationship of the people involved. In other words, the therapeutic value of open communication, which could only be measured by asking people how they “felt” when the process was over, became the goal instead of achieving a measurable goal that could be imposed later. I became unwilling to participate in shows that started down a path that I felt was destined for disappointment.

You can expect the situation to be different for counseling related to marriage or very personal matters because open communication seems to be an important goal. Freudian analysis involved making people talk so that they become aware of what was behind some problems and thus achieve an improvement. There are other counseling methods that focus on both parties really listening to each other while communicating more and more freely, but following important rules of taking personal responsibility rather than blaming others. There is no doubt that many people feel that their marriage was saved or that their lives were changed for the better through this type of counseling.

I have also seen many cases where there is an initial rush of good feelings that was not followed by positive changes. In three long-term relationships, I’ve experienced bonding with women who shared inner burdens from the past and responded enthusiastically to being heard and appreciated. But that initial glow didn’t last because my partners didn’t make personal adjustments to get over their injuries. In one case, a father was slighted for his treatment of the family and his behavior was projected onto me as the relationship lasted longer and longer. The same issues were discussed in counseling for years, but she kept insisting on seeing, for example, my reading that was part of the job as well as work relaxation, like following in the footsteps of someone who wouldn’t hold a job but just read pulp. fiction all day. In two other situations, the scars of emotional abuse in long-term marriages that had ended were described over and over again. The initial sense of understanding from open communication did not last when the issue came down to what someone was willing to do to put old hurts behind them and make positive decisions about the future. Failure to achieve results indicating positive change undermined the therapeutic glow that brought us together.

Personal and marital counseling can also benefit from negotiating agreements. Parents who are blending families but disagree with the rules can benefit when the parents come up with a set of rules that they will agree on and continue to negotiate modifications if needed as the rules are implemented. In some cases, it may be beneficial for parents to include children in the negotiation. These are times when all parties are encouraged to openly express their feelings and concerns, but are also asked to moderate some of them as they agree on behaviors to improve problem situations. Returning to the negotiating table to voice concerns and continue to work positively for improvements is also a positive outcome. No agreement is meant to last forever, and events bring surprises that must be accommodated. Using open communications to support a process of mutual respect for resolving personal and family problems is a true win-win situation.

Communication is a true blessing. It’s wonderful when someone really listens to you and responds by opening up in return. That wonderful feeling that we have and a sense of inner healing is what we mean by the word therapeutic. But at work, in court, and at home, it’s often essential to go beyond that initial glow to realize the benefits of that wondrous experience. Words that are not followed by appropriate actions can lead to a feeling of betrayal. Communication with other human beings can be wonderful and very therapeutic; but to have the most lasting positive results, it must be in the service of some achievable goals to which communication is the means and not the end.