3 Bad Manners Damage Relationships
Relationship advice & interpersonal skills for relationship problems
Relationship advice to strengthen your relationships by avoiding three bad manners of conversation that demonstrate disrespect.
Good relationships help us to be healthier and happier. This relationship advice will help you to avoid the bad manners that damage the best of relationships; help is as close as minding your manners.
Though the idea of minding your manners might sound like charm school fluff, avoiding these three bad manners can be vitally important to your happiness and the success of your relationships. Sound relationship advice is simply to be conscious of avoiding all of these bad manners.
Bad Manner #1, Not Listening:
There is probably nothing more attractive about a person than the ability to fully concentrate on another person speaking. Listening fully and generously will endear you to the relationships important to you, whether in your business or personal life. The converse is also true; poor listening, such as interrupting, checking email, avoiding eye contact, and taking over the conversation at the first opportunity, are terribly unattractive.
Unfortunately, most people are very poor listeners. If you use the time another is speaking to formulate your response, you're not listening. You may think you hear everything she's saying about her tough day, but if you're formulating your own tough-day story, you're probably missing more than you're hearing. And she knows it.
These listening tactics suggested by Marshall Goldsmith in What Got You Here Won't Get You There will help you be a great listener.
- Don't interrupt.
- Don't finish the other person's sentences.
- Don't say "I knew that," or any other comment diminishing the speakers content.
- Don't use the words no, but, and however, as prefaces to launch your own conversation.
- Keep your eyes on the other person.
- Keep the dialogue going forward with questions showing you are hearing.
- Don't try to impress, it comes off as one-upmanship.
#2, Cutting Remarks and Sarcasm:
Sarcasm can be funny. Some comedians make a good living with a sharp tongue and biting wit. But your business partner won't appreciate being "roasted" and neither will your family and friends. Cutting remarks, demeaning comments, and sarcastic barbs are disrespectful. Though others may laugh at your cutting wit directed against someone not present, they'll be sure to wonder what you say about them in their absence.
Your Mother's advice, "If you don't have something good to say, don't say it," is good advice. Healthy relationships, whether at home or at work, are based on trust. Cutting, sarcastic remarks don't build trust.
Bad Manner #3, Speaking When Angry:
Words, once uttered, cannot be retrieved. When angry, we tend to lash out at the perceived cause of our anger and we'll likely say hurtful things that we'll later regret. This is as true at work as at home. Again, an old adage, "count to ten before you speak," is especially appropriate when angry.
Regret and apology may help to contain the damage, but hurtful, insensitive, and inappropriate words have a life of their own. It's better to avoid speaking when angry, at least until you can think clearly and responsibly, and can consider how your words may be received.
This article is inspired by the behavioral flaws described by Marshall Goldsmith in his book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There.
Related Article: 7 Steps to Good Relationships
