Communication Break-Down

Happy (late) New Year.

Many of us are still recovering from the holidays- the overspending, the overeating:

The time with family.

Don’t get me wrong, spending time with family can be great, but it can also be a pain in the neck. Especially with in-laws.

My friend and I were talking about in-law relationships recently when she asked, “Why are they so hard? What’s the deal with in-laws?”

It really comes down to permission.

I don’t mean the act of asking permission. I define permission as how receptive someone is to you or your message. The more receptive they are, the more permission you have, and vice versa.

The problem with in-law relationships is that in-laws often feel that they have more permission than they really do. Meaning, they feel we are more receptive to their influence than we actually are.

When you think about it it makes sense as to why: when we first meet our future spouses we are overly polite and bend over backwards to get our future in-laws to like us. Which means we let the small annoyances go and overlook the nosiness of our future mother-in-law or the pushiness of our future father-in-law and just figure it’s more important that everybody get along.

Which is fine until we actually get married and the little things we overlooked become big things. But because we overlooked them in the first place we’ve now sent the message that asking when we’re going to have children already or suggesting we have the Smiths over for dinner because, well, didn’t they have you over last month, and it is important you reciprocate- is just fine with us. Except that it’s not.

As I was working on writing this post I asked my husband Kevin for an example of in-law permission, figuring since we are temporarily living with my parents, he’d have plenty of examples.

“Your mom’s brutal honesty,” he said without even pausing to think. “She didn’t have permission with me to be so honest.” This is the woman who, when I said we were thinking about having children, said, “aren’t you too old to have kids?” Ouch. (In her defense she said it out of concern, not to be mean.) She’s equally honest with Kevin, not understanding that when he asks how she likes a meal he prepared (he’s a professional chef) a simple, “It’s great, thanks!” is appropriate. His feelings have been hurt more than once.

“What changed?” I asked, knowing that it bothers him much less than it used to. “Well,” he said, “I now know your mom a lot better and know that’s just her way. It’s also comforting to know that if I want the truth I can go to her and be sure to get it. There’s no bull with your mom, and I like that.” Which is the beauty about my mom. What you see is what you get, which, when you think about it, is so rare in today’s world.

The Permission Principle states: “The amount of permission we have is directly related to the strength and quality of our relationships.” When my mom and Kevin were first getting to know each other she didn’t have permission to be brutally honest. But as their relationship grew, so did the permission.

Lack of permission (read: boundary crossing) is detrimental to relationships, sure. But if we realize that the forced “instant intimacy” between the in-laws and the new spouse contributes to the false sense of permission, we might think about giving our in-laws a little more grace.

Now that the holidays are over and they’ve gone back home that is.

“I’m writing my Coach blog,” I told my sister when she asked what I was doing. “Oh good,” she said, “I have a coaching question I need to ask you.” “No,” I said, “not a coach blog, a Coach blog.” “I don’t get it,” she said. “The purses,” I said. “Coach purses.” “You’re writing a blog about purses?” she asked. “What does that have to do with nonverbal communication?” “Because of the unfriendly salesperson,” I said. But let me back up.

I have a Coach problem. I don’t have a problem coaching people, I have a problem -some might say addiction- with the designer handbags.

I’ve tried to explain this problem to my husband by pointing out the numerous benefits of a Coach purse. For example, they last forever. His reply? “If that’s true, then you only need one.”

Good point.

Last Christmas I received a Coach gift certificate for $100. If you’ve ever been inside a Coach store, you would know $100 buys half of a wallet, so I decided to save it and use it at a Coach Outlet.

My friend and I arrived at the outlet one afternoon and started shopping. By the time I made it around the entire store I had 15 purses slung over my shoulders, and Rachel even had a few.

I caught the eye of a bewildered-looking saleswoman and asked for help. She plucked a purse out of the pile and began describing its features -zipper vs. snap, two straps vs. one, adjustable straps vs. nonadjustable. This went on for the better part of 20 minutes, until we had finally weeded it down to three purses. At this point, I simply could not make a decision between the remaining three. I said, “What do YOU do when you need to decide on a purse?”

Without hesitation she turned, pointed to another saleswoman and said, “I ask HER.”

She said it with such reverence and finality you would have thought we’d overlooked the designated Coach oracle, whose advice we should have known to ask in the first place. I looked over to where she had pointed and saw a saleswoman standing in the middle of the store, arms crossed, eyes scanning the store and its occupants. She didn’t seem interested in helping anyone, so I assumed she was on the lookout for shoplifters. But I was obviously mistaken. She was THE ONE TO ASK.

She walked over to where we were standing, and I explained my dilemma. Unlike a typical salesperson, she never made eye contact, smiled, or engaged in conversation. She quietly looked over the purses on the countertop and then down at the purse I had come in with. She pointed to the one in the middle, said “that one,” and walked away.

“Ring it up,” I said.

I tell this story a lot, because we believe salespeople should be friendly. But that’s not always true. Salespeople, like all of us, need to understand permission.

Permission is how receptive someone is to you or your message. The unfriendly salesperson had my immediate permission. Why? I needed someone to make the decision for me, and she did. No muss no fuss. Add to that her credible body language and voice pattern, and it was a done deal. She positioned herself as the “expert” and -wouldn’t you know it?- that’s just what I was looking for.

We increase permission by understanding and accommodating the needs of others. Some people need us to be friendly, others will need us to get to the issue. Sometimes we need to be credible and other times we need to be approachable. But we don’t have to guess or rely on luck. We can increase our awareness of what other people are communicating nonverbally and adapt our approach based on that information. Everyone can learn to do this. If we have only one approach to people or situations, we are severely limited.

My assistant and I stopped in the Coach outlet recently. It had been over a year since I had been there last, and Val, who had heard the story many times, wanted to know if the legendary salesperson was still there. I wasn’t sure, since I couldn’t remember what she looked like. I tried on a pair of sunglasses and asked a salesperson if they could be adjusted. She looked up and said “no,” then went right back to what she was doing. There was no mistaking her. She hadn’t changed her approach.

Sometimes it pays to be unfriendly, but not always. I didn’t buy the sunglasses. Turns out I needed a friendly salesperson that day.