Hi, folks. So today I'm going to go over the GIVE skills. So these are the skills that help you to build or maintain a relationship, even while you're asking for something or setting a boundary around something.
So if the dear man skills that we've covered last week are the cake layers, this is the icing that goes between them that you're going to layer on top of the of the dear man. So that while you are making your request, you are still having a strong stable relationship.
So the first one of these is gentle, and being gentle here means a few very specific things. This means being nice and respectful or at least kind and respectful in your approach, which involves four different aspects.
First of all, no attacks, it turns out that your relationship will take a hit. If you make threats, attack people call names, or express too much anger directly, some anger directly, absolutely fine boatloads of just like Fiori, people generally don't respond super well to that and get pretty defensive.
The next thing up is no threats. So these can be obvious threats. Like if you do that I'm leaving, or more hidden threats, where there are these sort of covert ways in which the relationship will suffer if a person doesn't agree to the thing that you want.
We want you to work on being able to respect knows when they're given and stay in the discussion. Even if it gets painful, you want to be sort of graceful in your approach here. attacks and threats do work to get what you want, often, otherwise, you wouldn't do that, right? And yet they have a limited effectiveness.
Whenever you tend to focus on punishment, threats or aggression to get the things that you want or need. People might do what you're asking for while you're there. However, as soon as you're not present anymore, they're going to go right back to doing the thing that they want, and your relationships going to suffer over time.
A big one here is not judging. So no name calling no shoulds, no implied put downs. And this goes for not just the words that you're saying, but also how you say it, because we have all been on the receiving end of someone who makes a backhanded compliment or who says kind words, when the meaning behind it is not not so kind. I give you the southern the southern idiom of bless your heart. And this particular occasion, right?
So no guilt trips here is what we're going for. I want you when when you think about this, I want you to think about what it feels like to be on the receiving end, as a as a way of motivating yourself not to do this to others. So, last but not least, no disrespect if you're going to have a gentle approach. So no smearing no scorn, no walking out on conversations, no put downs, okay? We want you to convey respect for the other person's humanity, in your approach to things and by doing that, you will be gentle. Okay.
So the next step is the I. This stands for act interested. And I want to point out to you that people generally respond well to interest.
Think back to like making a new friend or meeting someone, if that person is asking you questions, seems really engaged, is nodding along and really seems like they're all in paying attention, you will generally like them more than the person who's sort of on their phone ignoring you giving you half answers.
Now, the key here is not that you have to be interested, it's that you have to act interested and we generally do that with our body language. But we can also do that with our words. example that I often use here relates to my godson, Aiden, so he adores Minecraft. I don't know if you all are familiar with Minecraft, but he adores it. I know very little about Minecraft. And to be honest, I don't particularly care for it. However, I noticed that the more I was able to act interested with him about this, the more that we had a common place of bonding where he felt really heard and understood and honestly loved and that helped our relationship grow.
That's what you're trying to do here, act interested. That is going to make the conversation more positive no matter what else happens.
The third step is validate. And as a heads up, I'm going to send out another video that goes through all different kinds of ways that you can validate from small kids to grown adults. However, I first just wanted to find what this is here.
So to validate means to communicate that something about the other person's feelings, actions, thoughts perspective, that it's understandable to you that it makes sense, given what's going on for that person.
We do not validate the invalid. So even though you can understand why a person might be thinking, feeling or reacting and given away, you don't have to agree with what it is that they are thinking, feeling or doing.
So for example, if your kid is having a full out, temper tantrum, and throws your expensive item across the room, you're not going to sit and say to them, oh, buddy, absolutely, you're so angry that you should totally throw that thing, right, that's validating the invalid. Now, you could say, Hey, I can see that you are really angry right now. And we're not going to add on any kind of validation about behaviors that actually don't make sense or aren't acceptable. Okay. Now, there's a couple of different ways that you can validate. And again, I'm going to go into more details of this in the next video, but you can validate with words.
So just talking about what makes sense about that person's feelings, desires difficulties. In a given situation, you want to be really careful to keep a non judgmental tone of voice here, because people believe actions more than they believe words. And so if your tone is mocking or invalidating in some way, they're going to believe that over the words that you are saying, okay, you can also validate other people's nonverbal signals.
Validation often requires you to do some educated guesswork about how another person is thinking or feeling. And so we call this reading minds where you might take a guess. So if a person in front of you is like, shut down and tearful, you could absolutely say something like, wow, you're really upset right now, as a way of making a guess about what's going on for that person.
And actions again, speak louder than words, right? So if a person tells you verbally, Oh, you are so important to me, absolutely. I love you, I do anything for you. But every time you reach out for help, they ignore you, or don't answer the phone, that's going to tell you more than their words do. Okay? And it's going to be the same for you.
What you actually do in a given situation is going to matter more than what you say. Alright. So, validation, core fundamental skill, for improving relationships. You can use this anytime, anywhere.
Last but not least, we have use an easy manner. So this is all about taking a soft, sometimes humorous approach to a situation. I want you to think about a time when you've been in a just a really tense situation with somebody, you and the other person were on edge. You could cut the tension with a knife. You felt like any word that you said could be the wrong word, right?
In that situation, if somebody says something to break the ice makes a small joke about what's going on. Or lets it know that lets you know that it's or pay whatever it is that you say here, like we're just going to work through this. Chances are that you breathed a sigh of relief in that moment.
And that is what having an easy manner is all about. It's about defusing tough situations.
And whenever possible whenever you can use the softer approach this more humorous approach at times, people are going to feel more comfortable having even tough conversations with you.
Okay, so those are your four core skills for relationship effectiveness and we will practice some of these in group today. Stay tuned for video number two, that goes into more detail on validation.
