Jeff Faulkner

Communication Red Flags - Taking the Gloves Off
July 16, 2008

Communication is important for maintaining healthy relationships and is also a make-or-break ingredient among those involved in business, whether it is family owned or a business partnership. In my last post, Communication Red Flags - Avoidance of Conflict, I opened a discussion on destructive communication. We looked at conflict avoidance, its consequences, and what to do about it.

The second red flag is when the gloves come off. When routine discussions move from conflict avoidance to conflict engagement and subsequently erupt into a destructive argument, conflict is obviously not being handled well.

Identify the Indicators of Gloves Off
Here are some ways you can know that the gloves have come off: raising your voices at one another, yelling, throwing things, fist fights, abuse. These negative patterns, if not addressed, will eventually deteriorate into greater disorder in relationships. It leads to an attack/counter-attack pattern in the relationship where one family member says something negative and hurtful and another family member retaliates with the same.

Understand the Long-Term Impact and Decide if This is What You Want
This negative pattern can eventually lead to an abusive relationship that is characterized by an assumption that “If I cause a big enough stink, then you will meet my needs.”

Identify the Underlying Belief
In all negative patterns of communication, there is an underlying faulty belief. The faulty belief in taking the gloves off is that “The other person in the conflict is here to meet your emotional needs, and they are not doing a good job of it.” This faulty belief system must be attacked head-on with the truth.

Replace the Faulty Belief with Truth
The truth is that you are responsible for your own emotional needs. And when you figure this out, you’ll then be in a position to say “and I’ll help you be responsible for yours.” This leads to a very healthy relationship. Therefore, it is imperative that you understand what the emotional need is you are trying to get met – to be heard, listened to, needed, wanted, desired, regarded, important, respected, etc. Whatever it is, you need to identify it and own it.

Seek Out and Learn Healthy Ways to Meet Your Own Emotional Needs
We must realize that when we get into a “gloves-off” pattern, the argument taking place has shifted from the issue to being about our emotional needs. We must also accept that other people are not going to be very effective at meeting our intense emotional needs. They have their own needs to meet. So we have to take responsibility for ourselves.

Posted by Jeff Faulkner on July 16, 2008 | Comments (0)