Communication Skills Training: How to Talk to Anyone, Speak with Clarity, & Handle Any Situation

Chapter 1. The Basics Are Not So Basic

Communication is everything. No matter who you are or what you are trying to achieve in your life, improving your communication skills is a must. It’s a strange fact that human beings are expected to just know how to communicate—despite so many of us finding it challenging or unpleasant! The truth is that good communication takes time, effort, and know-how. It follows known principles and laws. Luckily, being a charismatic speaker, empathetic listener, and skillful negotiator and mediator is not something reserved for the select few—it’s something that anyone can do if only you understand these laws.

There is certainly not enough space in just one book to cover all the multifaceted ways that communication can be finetuned and tweaked. But in the following chapters, we’re going to explore some of the most popular concepts and principles so you feel empowered to start making positive changes right now. One idea that we will return to frequently is the overall purpose of communication. We reach out to one another to connect, to meet our needs, to express ourselves, and to solve problems. Therefore, the best mindset to adopt on our mission to become better communicators is the one that will best allow us to do just that: connect.

Identify Your Communication Style

When learning how to communicate better, it’s important to understand your exact starting point, i.e., how good is your communication ability currently? If you’ve picked up this book, chances are there are some aspects of the way you communicate that you’ve identified as needing improvement.

But communication is not just one skill, but a complex mix of many. On top of that, there are different styles of communication. Even if you don’t consider yourself a good communicator currently, you have a unique and characteristic type of communication whether you’re conscious of it or not. As we move through the chapters of this book, we’ll be looking at concrete ways to consciously choose the best and most effective styles of communication rather than default to unconscious patterns that may not really be working for us.

When you can communicate well, your relationships take on an extra dimension of quality and intimacy, you find yourself in conflict far less often, and you give yourself the gift of being seen and understood so that other people have the best possible chance of meeting your needs. But without good communication, everything—relationships, work, conflict resolution—becomes much, much harder, if not impossible.

Before we learn the best ways to communicate, let’s ask ourselves: how do we communicate right now? Take a look at the following communication style profiles and see if you can recognize yourself in one (or more!) of them:

The Passive Communicator

For this kind of communicator, it’s all about what isn’t said. Passive communication avoids expressing needs and wants, avoids conflict, and doesn’t directly and obviously convey thoughts or feelings. Imagine two friends going out for a drink. The first asks the second where he’d like to go, the second says, Oh, I don’t mind. You choose somewhere.

The first does choose somewhere, and the second doesn’t actually like it . . . but doesn’t say so. Instead, he gets quietly annoyed and resentful. When the first friend asks what’s wrong, the second says, Oh, nothing, I’m fine, while very obviously not being fine!

At the end of the evening, things come to a head and the passive friend has an emotional outburst, snapping rudely. Immediately, he apologizes and acts submissive and guilty. He goes home wondering how he keeps ending up in such emotionally fraught situations when he works so hard to avoid confrontation. Sound familiar? You might have a passive communication style. Here are some other clues:

You apologize for expressing yourself or sharing your wants and needs

You find it difficult to make decisions, lead, or take responsibility

You sometimes feel like a victim

You often prefer to opt out or let others take control

You sometimes don’t know what you really think or feel

You tend to blame others for bad things that happen

You don’t generally feel in control of situations, or your life generally

Nonverbally, passive communicators tend to speak quietly and adopt a small, submissive posture, or else fidget nervously or avoid eye contact. The irony is that a passive communicator does not achieve the result they want with this behavior. Other people can feel frustrated, guilty, exasperated, or annoyed with you, or else they may see the passivity as an invitation to take advantage. On the other hand, a passive communicator can leave others feeling unwilling to help anymore since their efforts are often met with a passive, defeatist attitude that lacks energy and autonomy.

The Aggressive Communicator

Where the passive communicator expresses too little of their needs and wants, the aggressive communicator goes too far in the other direction. They know what they want, and they will be as demanding, intimidating, and even hostile as they need to be to get it.

From this point of view, communication is a war, and the aggressive communicator is one who intends to win and beat down their opponent. This can be that office bully who is always loud, threatening, and abrasive, but it doesn’t always have to be as blatant as this. Sometimes, the one person in a family or friend group whom everyone is most afraid of is the one who is simply ruthless and unpredictable.

An aggressive communicator might literally yell and scream, saying Don’t be stupid! or scoffing loudly at what you say, but they can also be aggressive in their body language or actions:

Sharp, sudden, or big gestures

Hogging space

Towering over others

Scowling, glaring, frowning

Invading people’s personal space

Again, the result is ironic: Most people might comply with an aggressive communicator, at least at first, but they quickly can grow defensive, uncooperative, and resentful. Nobody likes to be humiliated or hurt, and so the result is often less respect but more defensiveness and pushback—the last thing an aggressive communicator actually wants.

The Passive-Aggressive Communicator

We all know someone like this! This style of communication is as aggressive as the previous one, only it’s covert, i.e., hidden and indirect. Things are not what they seem on the surface. Someone who communicates this way may feel angry but powerless to act in direct or ordinary ways—so they attempt to meet their needs and make themselves known passively instead. They may use heaps of sarcasm, they may complain bitterly and make a nuisance of themselves (without doing a thing to help themselves), or they may sulk until someone is forced to do something about it.

Otherwise, they may gossip, issue false apologies, or give compliments that are actually insults in disguise. They may engage in malicious compliance (I will give the appearance of cooperation but actually not be compliant at all) or be difficult or unreliable instead of saying outright that they don’t want to do something. There is a devious, almost two-faced feeling to this type of communication that leaves other people feeling manipulated, exhausted, or confused.

Imagine our two friends are out for a drink, and the passive one says, Oh, you can choose a place. I don’t mind. Let’s say the other one has a passive-aggressive communication style, and although they resent being forced to make decisions all the time, they don’t feel able to come out and say that directly.

So instead, they say, Oh no, I understand. How could I forget that it’s always my job to sort these things out, right? As they deliver with a sugary-sweet smile, there is plausible deniability in this, and when the other friend responds to the hidden aggression in it, the first one can act hurt and confused: Calm down . . . It was just a joke! If pushed, the passive-aggressive friend may then apologize, but it will be an apology with a sting in the tail: Sheesh, I said I’m sorry. Forgive me for not being perfect all the time . . .

The Manipulative Communicator

The above style has some overlap with one more style, that of the manipulative communicator. This is the person who uses cunning and fakery to get what they want. Manipulation is essentially an attempt to control other people and have them do, say, and think as you’d like them to. While the passive-aggressive communicator can hurt others indirectly in an attempt to express their needs without really expressing them, the manipulator is characterized by their ability to see others as tools, i.e., a means to an end.

So, a manipulative communication will cry crocodile tears in order to make the other person feel sorry for them (instead of, for comparison, simply sharing their genuine experience and the other person responding with genuine, uncoerced empathy!). They may ask without asking or use emotional levers such as guilt and obligation to position people in ways that suit them.

A manipulative communicator might see someone enjoying their lunch at work and say, seemingly to no one in particular in a high-pitched, condescending voice, "Oh, that looks delicious. Aren’t you lucky? I wish I could eat such fancy stuff like that for lunch every day. Oh well. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of someone fishing for compliments," then know that this is another form of trying to control others—in these examples trying to force someone to give you a compliment.

Manipulative communication can sometimes work, but more often than not it is rightly perceived by others as artificial, condescending, and untrustworthy. If outright tricks and lies are used, the communication style can fail badly and the person not only fails to get what they want, but they shut off potential genuine avenues of connection and understanding—shooting themselves in the foot, basically.

Now, in reading about these four communication styles, you can probably see that you’ve been guilty of all of them at least at some point in your life. You can also probably see that they overlap one another and that the tactics in each style can vary in intensity. Few people use any single type exclusively in their communication, but it is worth asking honestly about patterns that you observe in yourself. There are countless shades and nuances possible when we think about how not to communicate. Ultimately, though, there’s one thing to keep in mind: None of them really WORK.

In other words, the above four communication styles are bad not because they use lies, passivity, or force, but rather because they don’t achieve the main goal of communication. Why do people communicate? There are only a few primary reasons:

To get our needs met

To share our experience and express who we are

To solve problems

To connect with another human being

The above communication styles are actually attempts to meet some or all of these goals. Usually, however, they achieve the exact opposite result. While it can be fun to identify annoying communication patterns in others, there is more to be gained by honestly asking where we ourselves fall short of ideal communication patterns.

Do we have a tendency to be aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, or manipulative? Or even all four?

It helps to be aware of maladaptive communication strategies, but let’s also look at how we can best communicate, i.e., how we can meet our needs, express ourselves, and solve problems in a way that actually works.

The Assertive Communicator

This is a healthy, balanced, and conscious way of communicating. It’s the ability to express