Welcome to the Clarity for People podcast, where we talk about everything personal development, getting coached and becoming a coach in the pursuit of growth and greatness. Here is your host, Martina Magnery.

Well, hello folks. How are you doing? I have been enjoying this long weekend. Just had a swim, just been meditating on my sun lounge and thinking about what I wanted to talk to you today about. And what came to mind in a little meditation was the power of words.  I am a huge advocate for choosing one’s words very carefully.

Because words have energy and words have impact.  We’ll look at some studies that have been done.  That prove the power of words. That prove the power of positive interactions.  And how important our dialogue is.  So this podcast is all about the power and magic of the spoken word.  Dr. John Gottman studied couples for 40 years and in his studies he found that a lot of couples  fell into what they called negative sentiment override, I call it a relationship depression,  and that’s when the dialogue gets really negative to the point where the relationship is on the rocks.

It can usually be recognized by the nature of their words and the quality of their dialogue. Dr. Gottman, he was a mathematician before he became a psychologist. So all his work is broken down into ratios and percentages. And what he found was that a couple could only withstand One negative piece of feedback for every five pieces of positive feedback.

So one negative interaction for five positive interactions. Whereas in the workplace, the ratio was three to one. So you can actually withstand more negative feedback from your colleagues, from your boss, than you can from your relationships. And one of the first things I do with my couples is detox their dialogue from all negativity,  dangerous words, threats, name calling, shaming, blaming, all of that stuff,  because all of that is polluting their relationship.

and they’re going to slip into that relationship depression.  Now the work of Harville Hendricks, who is also a couple therapist, and I believe he’s as good as Dr. Gottman. Him and his wife, Helen Lakelly Hunt, came up with this amazing dialogue, and I use it with my couples. I use it with just about every single couple,  unless they’re really excellent at communication and The conflict is good conflict because, you know, there are two types of conflict.

There is good conflict and bad conflict. With good conflict, nobody gets hurt.  And with bad conflict, there’s defensiveness, criticism, name calling, shaming, blaming, stonewalling, and contempt, eye rolling, that kind of thing. So we want to eliminate all of those negative behaviors and start with a clean slate and do conflict in a healthy way.

Harville Hendricks and Helen Le Kelly Hunt came up with this fantastic way to do dialogue.  It’s like a script and once you use this script and you master it, you can talk about any issue in your relationship without harming the other person  and they’re more likely to listen to you when it’s your go.

And you can use this framework to discuss any issues with your children and in the workplace.  It is my go to way to do communication, to do conflict, and I use it on a daily basis. It is hands down the best way to communicate about any issue that I have come across as a coach in the whole history of my career.

It is a full game changer. I’m not kidding. And my couples absolutely love it.  I laminate it. I give it to my clients to take home so they can stick it on the fridge and then they can pull it out every time they’ve got an issue.  Being mindful that really, when you think about the five to one ratio, you can only have one conflict.

Maximum two conflicts a week to stay in that healthy range, that 5 to 1 ratio, not the other way around. When my high conflict couples come in, most of them have that ratio flipped around the other way.  It’ll be one positive interaction for five negative interactions,  or worse, no positive interactions.

Now, Harville Hendricks is a very funny man and he tells his story about how him and his wife Helen were about to get a divorce. It was his second divorce he was about to get. And as a couple of therapists, he had a lot of shame about this.  So they put their heads down and came up with a way to save their relationship.

And what they did was they decided not to say one negative thing to each other for three months.  And he jokingly says that they had absolutely nothing to say to each other for three months, and that’s how they saved the relationship. They didn’t talk for three months.  They managed to clean up their dialogue and delete all negative words, insults, criticisms, and miraculously,  They came back from the brink of divorce and saved their marriage.

And this is another principle that I use. If I find my couples who are in a deep relationship depression, I advocate zero negativity until they can learn to at least be civil to each other.  This principle applies to both personal relationships and professional ones. And in fact, there was this really interesting study done at Harvard Business School where they administered questionnaires, ran experiments, led workshops, and engaged in conversations with professionals across various fields, including doctors, lawyers.

Judges, law enforcement officers, architects, engineers, consultants and coaches to understand how they have faced and handled incivility.  Incivility being the opposite of civility,  rudeness in other words.  They also collected data from over 14, 000 individuals throughout the United States and Canada to meticulously track the prevalence, types, causes, and costs and potential remedies of incivility within the workplace.

From their extensive research, it is abundantly clear that incivility carries significant financial implications.  Yet remarkably few organizations acknowledge or take proactive measures to mitigate its detrimental effects. Rudeness at work is not only prevalent, but it is also on the rise. According to extensive research conducted over the past 14 years, a staggering 98 percent of workers have reported experiencing uncivil behavior in the workplace.

Shockingly, this figure has seen a significant increase over time.  These studies suggested that incivility led to less motivation in the workplace overall.  The costs associated with rudeness chip away at the bottom line of organizations. Studies have shown that nearly every individual who experiences workplace incivility responds in a negative manner, with some even resorting to overt retaliation.

Furthermore, employees who feel disrespected are found to be less creative and a significant portion ultimately become disenchanted and decide to leave their jobs. In fact, approximately half of affected employees deliberately decrease their effort or lower the quality of their work in response to rudeness.

Same thing happens in relationships, personal and professional.  Rudeness should not be tolerated. We should delete it from all our dialogue.  There are other ways to communicate, which are civil and respectful.  The psychology of words is very powerful. Magic words talk directly to the subconscious. And there are simple changes we can all make in our personal and professional life.

For example,  instead of saying you, if you use the word we, you’re more likely to engage your person or your people. It creates a feeling of unity. It creates a feeling of teamwork.  Instead of making a criticism,  it’s more beneficial to ask a question. Be curious about the knowledge and views of the person instead of criticizing them.

That is going to allow a more open conversation and you may learn something. It’s more beneficial to find out more about someone’s views and opinions because you may uncover some of your blind spots in the process.  Successful people  personally and professionally, know what to say, how to say it,  they persuade rather than give directions, they ask the right questions.

This means applying the principle of Socratic questioning. Socratic questioning, for those who don’t know, is all about Asking open ended questions, being curious, posing thought provoking questions that are going to lead to solutions and insights. And for anyone who ever watched that show Columbus in the 70s, love that show.

They will remember that Columbus, the investigator, would always ask appropriate questions that actually got the criminal to incriminate themselves. They fell into the trap of answering his clever questions that led to their demise. So it is possible to solve the puzzle, to remain empowered by asking the right questions  without being offensive.

and without being directive. Making incremental changes in the way you do dialogue can be really significant in terms of increasing trust and affiliation.  Turning a criticism into a request or just a general question is going to get your person on side, whoever it is, your colleague, your lover, your child.

If you ask them a question,  They’re more likely to be open to a discussion with you.  I notice when I give my children a couple of orders or directions, after two or three they start to tune out  and they are no longer listening, so it becomes pointless,  especially when they become teenagers. Kids and teenagers.

They fall under their own category when it comes to the power of words and the way you do dialogue with them.  For instance, you’ll find that some kids work on rewards and some kids work on punishment. But, ideally, it is always good to give children and teenagers choices. They like to feel like they’re making the decision, that they’re in the driver’s seat.

So, if you tell them.  You can do your homework now and then you’ll get ice cream,  or you can do it later and not get ice cream at all. Then they feel like they’re in the position to make the best decision for them. They are going to feel empowered by deciding to do their homework so they can get ice cream,  if they’re a normal kid.

Circling back to the guiding principle that your words are very powerful.  You can turn your words into questions  or you can make statements. It is more beneficial to turn your words into questions. It is more beneficial to give people options and choices and to be curious about their position, their opinions, listening, and really trying to understand what they’re saying.

your person or your people and finding a way to ask another question based on their answers. By the end of the day, you will transform the way you communicate. You will have more insight. You will be able to make better decisions and problem solve whatever needs to be problem solved.  It could be the difference between asking, do you have any more questions where you’re going to get a closed answer,  yes or no.

Or asking, what questions do you have? You’re going to get more information out of asking an open question and information is power. Assume you know nothing. Information is all about levelling up, learning more about your people, your person and human consciousness. Seeking to understand instead of seeking to be right.

That is what positive interactions are all about.  And that’s how we’re going to expand human consciousness.  That is how we’re going to heal the world by being curious, asking questions, instead of being confrontational, directive, and aggressive.  Sounds simple, but words start wars and I see it at a domestic level every day.

If we can’t get our relationships right at home and in the workplace, then we don’t have the mental fortitude, we don’t have the bandwidth to see what’s going on in the world at large.  I’m going to finish up by drawing our attention back to Gottman and his work, his 40 years of solid research. He has another ratio, it is 20 to 1.

That means 20 positive interactions to 1 negative interaction.  When I tell my couples about this, I often get a response that this is some outlandish proposition, 20 to 1.  However, if you delete the negatives in your dialogue, and you insert some positives, some gratitude, some compliments, some appreciation, some affirmations,  You will see, you’ll naturally find that ratio show up in your communication with your people, your person, your family, and your colleagues.

So hopefully you will take on this information today and weave it into your conversations, ask the right questions, be curious, stay open minded. On that note, I’m going to say ciao, have a fabulous day. It’s Martina Magnery signing out. Hope you’ll join us on the next podcast.