The other day I was at a restaurant with a friend of mine for whom specific communication styles is a subject of intense interest. At one point in our conversation the waitress came by and asked if everything was okay. I told her, "You took my knife when you took the salad plate away..." and the waitress shot off before I could finish with, "... could you please bring me another one?"
One of my kids had a fascinating class last year, the FLASH (Family Life And Sexual Health) program offered by King County, and incorporated into not a few schools. Needless to say, my kid aced the class; that's sorta unavoidable given who her parents are. But one of the best things they had in the class was a series of lessons entitled The Consensual Communication Style.
The CCS is basically described as a way of setting the ground for a conversation about getting what you want. It basically consists of a two-sentence mechanism: (1) express a fact or an emotion, and (2) request a change. Of the eight examples, only one was positive: "I like when you hold my hand. Can we hold hands more often in public?" All the rest were negatives: "It makes me uncomfortable when you put your arm around me like that. Can you not do that?" But the basic premise of the material, that you silently formulate a set of possible outcomes, set the ground for a conversation, ask for the best possible outcome and, if rejected, ask for the remaining outcomes, is probably one of the better ways of teaching people how to negotiate for their needs. It's weird to see what the kink community has been teaching its members for the past twenty years starting to show up in other places and with such parallels.
I was oddly jarred to discover that this communication style I'd been practicing was suddenly dysfunctional. It seemed to work pretty much everywhere else. But a service professional is there to anticipate your needs and respond to them even before you get to the "being polite" part of the conversation.
One of my kids had a fascinating class last year, the FLASH (Family Life And Sexual Health) program offered by King County, and incorporated into not a few schools. Needless to say, my kid aced the class; that's sorta unavoidable given who her parents are. But one of the best things they had in the class was a series of lessons entitled The Consensual Communication Style.
The CCS is basically described as a way of setting the ground for a conversation about getting what you want. It basically consists of a two-sentence mechanism: (1) express a fact or an emotion, and (2) request a change. Of the eight examples, only one was positive: "I like when you hold my hand. Can we hold hands more often in public?" All the rest were negatives: "It makes me uncomfortable when you put your arm around me like that. Can you not do that?" But the basic premise of the material, that you silently formulate a set of possible outcomes, set the ground for a conversation, ask for the best possible outcome and, if rejected, ask for the remaining outcomes, is probably one of the better ways of teaching people how to negotiate for their needs. It's weird to see what the kink community has been teaching its members for the past twenty years starting to show up in other places and with such parallels.
I was oddly jarred to discover that this communication style I'd been practicing was suddenly dysfunctional. It seemed to work pretty much everywhere else. But a service professional is there to anticipate your needs and respond to them even before you get to the "being polite" part of the conversation.
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