Mark 12:30-31
“Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength . . .
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no
commandment greater than these.”
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Love Focused Communication |
Self Focused Communication |
1 |
Understand within
other’s frame of reference; their unique reality, what is a deposit and
withdrawal to them. Value the differences.
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Attempt
to understand others from one’s own frame of reference and one’s own concept
of what is right. Treat the differences with contempt.
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2 |
Make and keep promises.
Build trust by being trustworthy; be more true to principles than to people.
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Make
promises in order to get an immediate positive response from others but not
keeping them. Avoid making promises that would be useful and possible. Follow
friends or peer groups in spite of principle related reservations.
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3 |
Treat people with simple
kindness and courtesy. Small considerations make big deposits. Treat
difficult people with equal respect and courtesy accorded easy people.
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Treat
people to small unkindness’s, discourtesy or lack of consideration for other’s
needs. Make love conditional.
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4 |
Establish, clarify and
fulfill expectations.
Define roles and goals
up front.
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Ambiguous,
confused or violated expectations lead to creating mountains out of molehills
and tremendous distrust.
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5 |
Be loyal to principles
and to people who are not present. Talk about people as though the other
person were present
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Act
with duplicity. Make judgments about other people’s motives. Put people down
behind their backs.
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6 |
Receive feedback. Give
feedback as ‘I’ messages. Recognize that feedback is a description of the
person providing the feedback. Solve issues.
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Refuse
to accept feedback or to provide feedback. Providing feedback as ‘you’
messages. Label other people. Focus on ‘fixing’ or disposing of people to
solve problems.
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7 |
Use patience,
persuasion, softness, kindness and love to help people get things done.
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Use
power and position to enforce actions.
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8 |
Apologize deeply and
sincerely when one has offended. Apologize that one was wrong and accept
responsibility for the impact of one’s own behaviour, unconditionally.
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Be
arrogant and prideful. Attempt to defend, explain, justify or cover up
hurtful behaviour. Provide an insincere, conditional or incomplete apology.
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9 |
Forgive when one has
been offended. If we have been offended, the initiative to fix the
relationship belongs to us. Give feedback as ‘I’ messages.
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Hold a
grudge and really let it fester inside allowing it to poison oneself.
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10 |
Empower people to
achieve their vision – even beyond their dreams provided they are true to
principles. Embrace empowerment.
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Keep power
for yourself or reject empowerment. Complain about circumstances and refuse
windows of opportunity. Refuse to work on dreams.
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Adapted from Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, 1995