Talking in Circles

Does talking about an upcoming vacation with your spouse sound different than when you talk about it with your kids? What about with your boss or your friends?

Chances are there are differences in the way you communicate within each of your relationships, and there are good reasons for that, experts say.

Roles and Functions

You play a different role in every relationship you are part of—protector and teacher to your kids, cooperative partner to your spouse, trusted confidant to your friends, “person who gets things done” to your coworkers—and those roles affect the way you communicate, says Diana Robertson, a communication skills trainer and former Toastmaster based in the United Kingdom.

“In business communication, we’re thinking more about the goals and purpose of what we say, but in personal relationships, you need to consider the needs both of the listener and the speaker,” she says. “For colleagues, the key need is to collaborate effectively, whereas with friends or spouses, the key need is often support.”

That might mean explaining rationally to your coworkers why a project is running late, for instance, and later venting to your spouse about a coworker who procrastinated or the inflexible deadline that got you into that predicament. And you’re likely using very different syntax and intonation in each case.

“We make all these choices when we speak—how fast or slow, how loud or soft, how direct or indirect,” says Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of the book That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships. “There’s the meaning of the words, but then there’s what you communicate in how you say those words.”

Those nonverbal elements can be just as important when building rapport or getting your meaning across, Tannen says. Leaving a long pause between exchanges could be perceived as disinterest or getting distracted, while a too-short pause could be seen as an interruption. To some people, personal questions are flattering and indicate interest, while others find them rude and intrusive. Does a louder volume indicate anger, or enthusiasm? These are all things to keep in mind when you’re looking to improve your communication skills within a specific relationship.

Relationships also come with power dynamics that affect the way we communicate. Coworkers communicate differently among themselves than with managers who determine their pay. The same goes for children, who may use a completely different vocabulary and vocal inflection with their friends than they do with their parents.

It’s a dynamic Tannen sees play out often among mothers and daughters, where there is a thin line between caring and constructive criticism. A mom might advise her daughter on what to wear or whom to spend time with out of genuine concern, but a daughter might take those suggestions as criticism of her or her friends.

“From the point of view of the mother, here’s the person you most want to help, where from the point of view of the daughter, here’s the person you most want to think you’re perfect, because she knows you so well,” Tannen says.

Check Your Filter

Ironically, it can be most difficult to communicate with the people you’re closest to. That’s because in conversation with friends and family, we tend to “filter” conversations according to what we expect to hear, says Alice Shikina, a professional mediator and negotiation/communication trainer based in Oakland, California.

“You wear filters for your children, your spouse—the filter makes it so that what you expect your spouse to say is what you hear,” she says. “You’re not necessarily hearing what they’re saying; you’re hearing what you expect them to say.”

For example, if your husband mostly talks about sports and his job, that may be all you subconsciously choose to hear. If he brings up a different topic, you may miss it altogether.

Filtering is made worse by distractions such as phones or television. When you’re splitting your focus, you’re even more likely to hear only what you expect to.

That’s why it’s more important than ever, experts say, to practice active listening—focusing solely and attentively on the person talking to you, eliminating distractions, and providing verbal feedback, such as paraphrasing or asking clarifying questions, to truly understand what’s being said.

“An important part of it is to have the genuine intention to understand the other person,” Robertson says. “Not just, ‘I hear you, but I have a different opinion,’ but trying to understand where the person is coming from before saying anything else.”

The good news is that active listening is a skill that can be practiced, Shikina says.

“A good exercise to do with your spouse or your kids is to set aside five minutes every day, and you let me talk for a minute, then you respond back to me what it was that you heard, then we switch,” she says. “There’s no interrupting, you don’t get to ask questions, you don’t take notes—it’s just listening and trying to process and remember everything that was said.”

Improve Your Skills

Another way to improve your communication skills is to take a close look at the relationships in which you communicate well, and look for aspects of those conversations that you can bring in to other relationships.

“You can absolutely have transferable skills,” Robertson says. “It starts with the intention that you want to speak better at home or at work. It takes awareness, where you step out of yourself and just observe. How do you talk? If you’re being supportive and listening actively, at what point do you stop? Are you triggered by something rude, or do you shut down?”

Once you’ve identified which relationships you communicate strongly in and why, look for concrete ways to bring those skills into other relationships. If you have an important meeting at work, think about how you would get your points across if you were speaking with your friends. Or explain to someone that you want to improve your communication skills with them. Ask if you can speak uninterrupted for a minute or two, then ask for feedback.

It’s also important to pay attention to the communication styles used by yourself and others, and to understand that they can be fluid depending on whom you’re speaking with. A direct communicator at work might be a more supportive communicator at home, for example. Knowing your style in a given relationship and how it meshes with the style of the person you’re communicating with can ease friction and keep the conversation flowing smoothly.

Just as important is knowing when not to communicate, Robertson says. Sometimes what you want to say isn’t what the other person wants to hear.

“People tell me I’m an amazing communicator at work—that I’m super-supportive, super-kind,” she says. “Then I come home, and my husband shares something that happened to him at work, and after we talk about it, I hear him say, ‘You are the most coldhearted person.’ It turned out that my natural way of approaching a conversation is that if people come to me with problems, I listen to them, I support them, and then I suggest a solution. In my husband’s case, he never wanted a solution. He just wanted me to listen.”

The Toastmasters Advantage

Of course, Toastmasters have a built-in advantage when it comes to communicating across relationships—the training and feedback they receive from their leaders and fellow members.

“In addition to the different modules we have access to in Pathways, the most beautiful part of Toastmasters is that we are constantly getting evaluated, and we are constantly getting that feedback,” says Monique Levesque-Pharoah, DTM, a longtime Toastmasters leader. “That feedback lets us know, how did our message land? Did we seem confident? How was our pacing? Did we hit the message that we wanted to hit? Once we get that feedback, we’re constantly working to become better communicators.”

Communication isn’t always easy but paying attention to how you communicate with people in different relationships—being sensitive to your various emotional roles—may help you become a better communicator overall.

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