Instead of reading, you could also just listen:
Every message contains four sides.
This might sound surprising, but it reveals one way, how miscommunication can happen.
Friedeman Schultz von Thun, a German psychologist, developed a model, that unravels the hidden meanings in every statement. These levels are:
- Factual information
- Self-revelation
- Relationship
- Appeal
Let’s take a closer at them in turns.
Side 1: Factual information
Factual information is related to the world we live in. Anything we can measure objectively. This is the world without emotions.
When I say, “Oh, there is a dog.” this is a factual statement. But this is not the whole story.
Side 2: Self revelation
At the same moment, when I say: “Oh, there is a dog.”, I make a statement about my feelings, and I might reveal that I am afraid of dogs.
This might become evident with the phrase “Oh, …”. What I am sharing is not only what I see, but also what I feel about the situation. I reveal a bit of myself in my statement. I share information about my emotions, my personal response to the facts.
Side 3: Relationship
Imagine that I communicate my sentence, “Oh, there is a dog” to you.
I am linking myself to you because there is a relationship between me, you and the dog. Furthermore, I know that I can talk to you, that you will understand, what I am talking about.
You and I am together in this situation.
Side 4: Appeal
This is, what I need you to do. Often enough, I am not communicating my needs directly, but expect you to read between the lines. An appeal in this situation might be, “I need you to control the dog, of which I am afraid.”
Why do we “hide” the appeal this way?
We do this because we don’t like to hear a “No”. We rather blame the other person for a lack of sensitivity, then to take responsibility about our requests.
How to apply this in practice
Every message contains four aspects
By consciously tuning in on all four sides of the statement, we can reduce the risk of miscommunications.
- Clarifying facts: “Did I hear this correctly that … ?”
- Clarifying your self-revelation: “Are you worried that …?” or “Do I understand correctly, that your main idea is …?”
- Clarifying our relationship: “Do I get this right, that you see my role to …?”
- Clarifying your appeal to me: “Am I correct that you want me to …?”
All these clarifying questions are meant, to feed back to the patient/ parent, what I just took on board from their description. This is a moment to summarize, but not yet to judge.
The conscious listening to all four sides, helps to establish a shared concept of the problem at hand.
In a nutshell:
Every message contains four aspects, and we need to hear them all!
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