Simple Tips To Improve Your Communication And Relationship Skills

Have you ever found yourself unable to make new friends? Do you want your current relationships to go further and deeper, but you find yourself struggling to get the intimacy that you'd like?

Understanding the levels of communication can help you to make new friends and build on your current relationships.

We can break down communication into four levels: ‘Small talk’, ‘fact disclosure’, ‘share viewpoints and opinions’ and ‘share personal feelings’.

• Small Talk

In new relationships and when you meet new people, the safest place to start is to talk about surface issues. For example, making a comment about the weather, current events or the surroundings you’re in.

This is called “small talk”, and is used to ‘size up’ the other person to determine the comfort zone between the two of you. There is no need to disclose any personal information with the other person at this stage, as this initial interaction helps you to determine how ‘safe’ they are on your first meeting.

If you’re comfortable with each other at a surface level you can easily slip into the next level of communication: fact disclosure.

• Fact Disclosure

Fact disclosure is slightly deeper than small talk in that you disclose facts about yourself without triggering topics of emotional interest.

The purpose of fact disclosure is to find out if you have something in common. You can use these common areas to build a friendship. You may want to talk about your career, occupation, hobbies, or where you live.

It’s best to avoid topics like marriage, divorce, politics, sex and religion in this second level of communication. If you find a topic of mutual interest you may want to progress to the next level of communication: share viewpoints and opinions.

• Share Viewpoints and Opinions

Once you’ve established that the other person is ‘safe’ through small talk, and have found areas of common interest, you can build rapport by sharing your opinions and viewpoints.

By sharing your opinions and viewpoints you allow yourself to become vulnerable to the scrutiny and objections of the other person. Enter this level of communication once you are comfortable that you both share positive feelings through the first two levels.

Be prepared to listen, and be open, to the opinions of your new friend. This will enable your friendship to first survive, and then thrive.

Make sure you don’t use your opinions as a form of ‘character assassination’ of other people. You may be thought of as a negative person and this may cause your new friend to distance themselves from you.

Once you’ve built rapport and established a solid relationship, you can go to the fourth level of communication, where you start sharing personal feelings.

• Share Personal Feelings

After building up the trust, finding things in common and listening to their viewpoints and opinions, you may feel comfortable enough to share your personal feelings with your new acquaintance. This level is when the acquaintance becomes a genuine friend.

Things of deep value to you can be shared without feeling threatened. You listen closely to each other without the need to ‘solve’ your friend’s problem. You are happy to reflect their feelings back to them – forming a bond of empathy and compassion between the two of you.

If you know how to handle your own feelings, attitudes and behaviours whilst maintaining your friendship at this level, you’ll build a successful friendship that can last a lifetime.