I am a happy communication trainer and coach since more than 20 years. And I am happily married for more than 30 years. And sometimes the two parts of my happy life benefit from each other!
Here some quotes of communication in married life:
If I am right, this means you are wrong!
Why should I listen to you, if I already know, that I am right? (or that you are wrong!)
Well, if it does not matter who is right and who is wrong, why don’t I be right and you be wrong?
Maybe you had a similar experience?
As a husband I can live with this kind of conversations, since my wife and me still love each other.
But in a professional context love is rare or even not really welcome, and that is why the “right or wrong concept” does not satisfy me as a communication trainer.
Maybe there are options beyond right and wrong? How do you get there?
It’s very simple: Try not to negotiate about positions but instead about intensions. Very often it turns out, that you can find common grounds in the intensions and the discussion about right or wrong is not needed, because it’s all about implementing the common intensions.
Recently we were discussing with my wife where to go on our next holydays. I want to go to the mountains, she wants to go to the sea. I hate lying on the beach and she hates climbing mountains.
I tried to apply my new concept and asked her, what were her intensions going to holydays.
She said: I want to relax!
I said happily: So do I!
I thought already that my new approach works even in married life, until she said:
“Wonderful, you can relax in the hotel, while I am lying on the beach.”
Well, I still love her…