Jeff Terrell: Okay, so I forgot the whole first section forgot to record for the whole first section, but here we go.
Jeff Terrell: Second section at least
Jeff Terrell: I hate when I do that. Okay, anyway.
Jeff Terrell: So let's talk about dialectical behavior therapy.
Jeff Terrell: This is rooted in an old Greek idea called the dialectic
Jeff Terrell: So if you have, if you studied any, you know, ancient Greek, you know, culture and society in philosophy, you might have come across this term, there's some Greek for you. I'm not going to pretend that I know how to pronounce that.
Jeff Terrell: I can make guesses. But anyway, we'll just call it a dialectic, that's the English word for us here.
Jeff Terrell: Is the idea of the dialectic is that we start with two different positions and a desire to arrive at the truth, through dialogue.
Jeff Terrell: Now this is more of a philosophical idea. So this movie is rooted in more of an idea of of at least this particular idea.
Jeff Terrell: Perhaps an objective idea of arriving at the truth through dialogue so
Jeff Terrell: Maybe that's a little different from what I said a minute ago about starting with respecting people's the fact that people might have different beliefs and being effective in light of that.
Jeff Terrell: But nevertheless, the idea that you would have to well intentioned people working together to arrive at the truth, or in the case of interpersonal effectiveness, perhaps arrive at a consensus or an agreement or a decision together through dialogue to a very similar idea.
Jeff Terrell: This is similar to debate, but there are some important differences. One is that there's there's not an emphasis on rhetoric or trying to present things in
Jeff Terrell: A dramatic or artful or persuasive way if there's not there's no need for emotional appeals. That's that doesn't really make as much sense in a dialectic
Jeff Terrell: You're not just trying to appeal to your base as though you're like representing some tribe or some faction and you're trying to say things that you think are going to be popular with them to
Jeff Terrell: Make them more loyal to you that's that's more of like a debate or politics or something like that, the dialectic is actually trying to get somewhere with somebody
Jeff Terrell: Trying to get additive decision or get at some consensus, so you're willing to move. You're willing to grow. You're willing to be flexible and change if you're presented with
Jeff Terrell: You know, an important argument or something.
Jeff Terrell: That could move you.
Jeff Terrell: To give a little bit more philosophical def to this that I actually think it's just interesting Hegel has this this idea called angels. Try it. And I'm not as rooted in some of these things as some of my friends are but
Jeff Terrell: It turns out it apparently this this idea originally comes from 50
Jeff Terrell: But this idea of thesis, antithesis and synthesis and this is a model for how things actually change and grow and evolve in time.
Jeff Terrell: The idea is that there is a thesis or some sort of a statement for something to be true or this being the way to do things, or whatever it is. And then once that thesis is stated, there's a natural antithesis that arises in reaction to that that says no, it's not like that.
Jeff Terrell: And they're usually it with any sort of complex idea. There are reasons to believe either one of those things are in there are good reasons to
Jeff Terrell: To agree with the thesis or and also good reasons to agree with the antithesis. So it's not as something as simple as, like, the sky is blue.
Jeff Terrell: Yes or no. But it's more of a complex idea, for example, which programming languages. The best or what is the best way to approach Dr engineering or something like that. These are complex ideas.
Jeff Terrell: That you can have well reasoned arguments for either side. So you've got the thesis, you've got the antithesis. And then what happened what tends to happen over time is that these two things.
Jeff Terrell: This is a, I don't know how to break this process down very well. But the idea is that a synthesis emerges of these two ideas that combines the best aspects of both of these things into this synthesis idea.
Jeff Terrell: And this synthesis actually becomes the new thesis, then there's an antithesis. And then there's a new synthesis and it would kind of grow and change and evolve from there.
Jeff Terrell: So it's a really interesting idea. This is very abstract and maybe you've seen some of this and a philosophy course that you've taken
Jeff Terrell: Once I learned about this. I started seeing it places I started seeing this pattern. And it's kind of interesting. So I thought I'd share that with you just to plant the seed and see if this is something you might notice, including and technology and programming.
Jeff Terrell: So an example of this would be related to software engineering the thesis back in. Maybe the 70s or 80s was do all your design up front before you even start implementing anything
Jeff Terrell: This is classically known as the waterfall method of software engineering. And if you have seen that term, you probably are familiar with the pushback that we are now experiencing connected to that where the the understanding now is that that's outdated. That's a bad way to do things.
Jeff Terrell: And that's not necessarily true. It's not quite so black and white is that, but we definitely live in an age where that's considered a bad idea.
Jeff Terrell: The antithesis for that was knows you need to start coding immediately you need to
Jeff Terrell: Start getting the code actually written and then you'll discover some of the features, some of the questions that arise from that.
Jeff Terrell: So that would be the antithesis, don't, don't do any design to start coding and showing people things the synthesis for that and I'm kind of just making this up here, but
Jeff Terrell: I would say this emphasis for that is to do ongoing design as needed. So, let it be kind of a leisurely driven thing where you do it when it's needed, but you don't do it all up front and advanced trying to nail everything down.
Jeff Terrell: you iterate based on feedback and you respond to change as it comes
Jeff Terrell: That's more the idea of the Agile software methodology that we have. But maybe that's a synthesis that arose from this thesis and antithesis.
Jeff Terrell: Alright, another example. Some people would say this is coming from maybe a lot of work in the 80s and programming languages.
Jeff Terrell: That objects are essential to programming and should be considered essential. This is you should program with objects object oriented programming is the way to do it.
Jeff Terrell: The antithesis, for that is that objects are evil, and you should never use them.
Jeff Terrell: And the synthesis would be, I think, is well captured by a language that I like a lot closure, which is that you can use aspects of object oriented programming, where they make sense. Use them all a cart use them in a way that is decoupled from
Jeff Terrell: The entirety of object oriented programming, but let you use some of the benefits of that as needed. Now, that's my own personal synthesis
Jeff Terrell: Very people would very much disagree with that, depending on if they still believe after joining programming is the way to go. Or maybe they
Jeff Terrell: Have reacted to that and say that you should never do anything like object oriented programming. So obviously this is, you know, relative to my opinions, but just to give you a sense of this dialectic and Hegel's triad.
Jeff Terrell: Okay.
Jeff Terrell: Moving on, probably spent too long on the philosophy, but let's move on. Alright dialectical behavior therapy. Let's get into DVD itself. Alright, so again we're it's rooted honest idea of the dialectic is coming from Greek philosophy.
Jeff Terrell: This was developed in the late 80s by Marcia in Lima hand Linehan I'm actually quite sure how to pronounce that. I think it's live in
Jeff Terrell: Psychology researcher at the University of Washington.
Jeff Terrell: As it tie mentions or ask a question about this is related to cognitive behavior therapy CVT, which is more of the classic way of doing
Jeff Terrell: Like psychological therapy. The classic thing where you know the caricature is you lay down on a couch and that your psychologist is asking you questions about your experience and whatever.
Jeff Terrell: That's a bit of a caricature, but anyway DPT is kind of an alternative to that newer it's it adapts various things in different ways.
Jeff Terrell: There are four core modules to it, mindfulness
Jeff Terrell: distress tolerance.
Jeff Terrell: Emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness, we're only going to focus on the fourth one of these things today. Although we will spend a little bit of time talking about mindfulness, because this is kind of the foundation of all of those three other three modules.
Jeff Terrell: And you can find more information about this. This is not, I wish there were a better resource for this I are there probably is. And I just don't know it, but
Jeff Terrell: There's this skills training manual DVD skills training manual second edition from 2014 which is more intended for
Jeff Terrell: Like practitioners in the field like actually people offering appointments for
Jeff Terrell: For therapy for mental therapy.
Jeff Terrell: And so it's not exactly targeted at you and me trying to understand what this stuff is. But there's still a lot of useful information that
Jeff Terrell: You could also see the Wikipedia page for DVD for some more information as well. I'm taking a lot of the content of this course or of this lecture from this skills training manual so credit where credit's due
Jeff Terrell: Okay, um, the DVD worldview here this is these are some of the foundational beliefs that underlie DDT as a practice and as an idea.
Jeff Terrell: First of all, core belief, number one, everything is connected part of the whole of reality. So it doesn't really make sense to talk about things in complete isolation from other things, but it does make sense to talk about things in
Jeff Terrell: Recognition that they are connected to other things, and that there's usually a broader context or maybe there's always a broader context and maybe there's even a broader context beyond that. So understanding the context of things is pretty important.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe behaviors that makes sense in one context, don't make sense and another
Jeff Terrell: Part of the work of DB T, by the way, is
Jeff Terrell: Sort of playing with contexts. So you can look at a particular behavior and you could have a judgmental reaction at and say that's bad.
Jeff Terrell: Or you could realize like, well, if I actually substituted out a different context. Let me see if I can find a context in which that behavior actually makes a lot of sense. And it's a completely reasonable way to go about things.
Jeff Terrell: So that's part of this idea that everything is connected
Jeff Terrell: So second foundational belief here is that reality consists of internal opposing forces.
Jeff Terrell: And this is something I resonate with. Now obviously if you don't believe these things. That's fine. I'm not trying to force these these beliefs on you, but I wanted to show you specifically what
Jeff Terrell: What the underlying beliefs are so that you could understand where these things are coming from.
Jeff Terrell: But so this resonates with me. I, I realized, some years ago that trade offs are super fundamental to all of engineering. So you can try to optimize for example in a program you can optimize for the time it takes to for your program to execute
Jeff Terrell: And the trade off. There might be that you end up using more memory. So there's that old time space trade off that you probably have seen and programming courses.
Jeff Terrell: And there's there's trade offs everywhere. Any choice that you make, there's a benefit to doing it that way. And there's also a cost of doing it that way.
Jeff Terrell: And a lot of what we do as engineers, and as designers is thinking about how do we navigate that space of trade offs to within the constraints that are imposed on us to find a solution that delivers value to our client.
Jeff Terrell: So this second worldview piece here reality consists of internal opposing forces.
Jeff Terrell: I is broadening that out beyond the scope of just engineering but but putting it in the scope of all of reality, which I think is really interesting, I think,
Jeff Terrell: Honestly, I think it's probably true. I think there's a lot of internal opposing forces and there's a lot of things that are intention with each other and a lot of things happen because of that tension well
Jeff Terrell: I think I'll stop there. I could say more.
Jeff Terrell: Let's keep moving third piece of the world view for DVD is that the nature of reality is change.
Jeff Terrell: This is one that I kind of struggle with. I like for things to stay the same. And a lot of ways. I mean, I, there are ways in which I like things to change. But sometimes when I have a routine. I want that routine to stay the same. I don't want things to change if I'm
Jeff Terrell: Let's say I'm working with my, my children, and I'm trying to help them grow into the best people that they can be
Jeff Terrell: I kind of want to like figure out how to work with them on one problem and then they just get that problem solved and move on. I guess that would imply change.
Jeff Terrell: But I don't want. It's hard when things like people change and there. There's this new challenge or obstacle that comes up, like I want a problem to be solved and done with. Once it's solved.
Jeff Terrell: So I struggle with this a little bit, just on kind of an emotional level. But I do think it's pretty accurate that things seem to be changing all the time and we need to embrace that and roll with it.
Jeff Terrell: Rather than trying to expect things to stay put and stay static. This is also part of the dialectic right we are two sides are engaging in dialogue in order to change in order to grow together and maybe come together like The Beatles song says
Jeff Terrell: So that they can make a decision or achieve some consensus or understanding so that involves change and the dialectic itself requires change.
Jeff Terrell: All right, questions about the beauty so far.
Jeff Terrell: Okay.
Jeff Terrell: The sort of foundational module for DVD is mindfulness. This is the core practice.
Jeff Terrell: The definition here that the book uses is mindfulness is the act of consciously focusing the mind in the present moment without judgment and without attachment to the moment. So those are the two things that you're trying to avoid is judgment and attachments to the moment
Jeff Terrell: And you want to try to stay in the present in the here and now.
Jeff Terrell: Kevin counter example would be habitual or automatic behavior.
Jeff Terrell: So when you're doing that and you're just on autopilot. That's not mindful and that's okay. You don't have to be mindful all the time. But this is something that you can try to engage in. And you can actually get better at in time with practice.
Jeff Terrell: One of the things that can really impede your mindfulness is when you have
Jeff Terrell: A judgmental reaction to things. Maybe you have a core belief about something that causes you to judge things and that can really impede your ability to understand what's going on inside you and understand what's happening in the here and now.
Jeff Terrell: And that can hinder your interpersonal effectiveness actually
Jeff Terrell: So as an example.
Jeff Terrell: I used to have a core belief that anger is just inappropriate anger is never an okay emotion, a half, you should sort of be more docile and meek and
Jeff Terrell: Getting angry is is is wrong.
Jeff Terrell: Well, guess what I would get angry sometimes. And it was really hard for me to notice.
Jeff Terrell: When I got angry because I had this judgment about anger that said this is bad. This is wrong and I shouldn't do that. So if I actually did feel angry.
Jeff Terrell: I had to. It took a while for me to understand that there is a sort of mental block there that was limiting my perception, even of what was going on inside me.
Jeff Terrell: So it's tricky to see those things in yourself, but this is part of what if you're if you're practicing mindfulness, you try to observe, even the judgments that come up and you say, Oh, that's a judgment. Okay.
Jeff Terrell: Can I see this thing without automatically having a judgment that comes attached to it.
Jeff Terrell: If you don't learn to sort of separate your judgment out, then it'll really hinder what you see like it did with me and anger.
Jeff Terrell: Now that said judgment is useful it is helpful. It's a valuable thing.
Jeff Terrell: Being able to
Jeff Terrell: Determine and decide what you think is good or right or or valuable. That's good. That's a good thing. But I think there's a there's a time and a place for it. And if you're practicing mindfulness to understand what's happening and you
Jeff Terrell: Gesture can get in the way you should save that for later. Later step.
Jeff Terrell: And I, by the way, I said should
Jeff Terrell: I've learned that I need to be aware of when I say, show it, or when I think should that's kind of a judgment, so I don't mean to put that judgment on you. What it maybe should have said is
Jeff Terrell: If you want to be effective in her personally, then you should
Jeff Terrell: Be aware of when you're judging and try to avoid doing that when you're being mindful and so that's more of a contextual thing that you know if you want to be effective. This way, then do this.
Jeff Terrell: Okay, anyway.
Jeff Terrell: The two pieces of this are to observe and describe those are the two steps of mindfulness
Jeff Terrell: just observing is just observing like you can actually think through a variety of things and put your attention here, put your attention there. You can even walk down from head to toe and just observe everything in your body.
Jeff Terrell: And realize that there are signals that are coming into your brain that you have haven't really paid attention to in a long time.
Jeff Terrell: And the describing is useful. Also, just to bring it into surgery. Your conscious rational mind and be able to understand it. Usually you you understand something better if you engage and tried to describe it.
Jeff Terrell: Okay, I think I need to move a little bit faster here. Questions about dialectical behavior therapy.
Jeff Terrell: Okay.
Jeff Terrell: All right. There are three goals of interpersonal effectiveness. This again is coming from DB t and from the book.
Jeff Terrell: And these three goals are actually intention with one another. So we talked about one of the core beliefs is that there are there are these tensions, there are these these competing goals. That's
Jeff Terrell: Our intention which with each other. I forgot how the police actually stated that, but that was I think believe number two. And this is an example of that as we're trying to be effective in her personally. There are three different goals that we can pursue
Jeff Terrell: And we can't necessarily get all three of these goals at the same time, sometimes there's a there's a trade offs associated with choosing one goal. You have to let go of another one.
Jeff Terrell: So the first goal is the objective goal.
Jeff Terrell: This is basically just getting what you want or not getting what you don't want. Maybe refusing a request.
Jeff Terrell: So if somebody comes to you and tries to get you to do something and you say, No, that would be an example of
Jeff Terrell: pursuing your objective goal.
Jeff Terrell: The relationship goal is to get maintain or improve our relationship or end and unwanted one
Jeff Terrell: So this would be about relationship. How much do you care about this person liking you or caring what you think or respecting you
Jeff Terrell: And if that's your goal. Sometimes maybe your objective goal is not to do the thing they asked, but you have a higher relational goal and so
Jeff Terrell: You'll do it even though you don't necessarily want to and that would be an example of the relationship goal being prioritized above the object objective goal.
Jeff Terrell: Finally, there's the self respectable and this is liking yourself and your words and actions at the end of the day.
Jeff Terrell: You know, do you have
Jeff Terrell: regrets about how you handled that.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe you went along with something that you weren't really comfortable with that with doing maybe somebody asked you to bend the truth a little bit and it violated your conscience and
Jeff Terrell: You realize later that violated yourself respectful and that your self respect is actually more important to you than your then your actions necessarily showed in that in that scenario.
Jeff Terrell: Or maybe, you know, on the other side of things. Maybe you
Jeff Terrell: Had an objective goal, but you were kind of a jerk about the way that you went about doing it and you realize that you don't really like the way you handled that.
Jeff Terrell: And next time maybe you'll prioritize yourself respectable, a little bit more
Jeff Terrell: Along with your objective goal so that you can try to get what you want, but not not be a jerk or not be mean to somebody and doing that.
Jeff Terrell: All three goals are present in all interactions and all scenarios to, to varying degrees.
Jeff Terrell: If they're not, you might be a sociopath.
Jeff Terrell: I don't know, like if you if your relationship goal is like zero. All right. You might be kind of unusual.
Jeff Terrell: That would be a good thing to be mindful about I joke I joked about a sociopath. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe that's judgmental. So maybe I wasn't allowing
Jeff Terrell: Me to be mindful enough to respect me. Anyhow, there might be a legitimate reason why your relationship goal is zero. So,
Jeff Terrell: There we go. I'm still learning about this stuff too.
Jeff Terrell: And then just speaking of mindfulness. The idea here is if you can be mindful of all three of these goals you can figure out how important each one of them is to you and that will help you prioritize what thing to pursue
Jeff Terrell: This is a process. This is a hard thing to do. I mean, maybe some of you will find it very easy. Maybe you've been doing this sort of natively your whole life. It just comes naturally to you.
Jeff Terrell: It didn't. For me, this has been a challenge for me to understand, Okay, what is my goal in this scenario, a lot of times it's like I have to reflect after something happened after I just reacted to something I'll come back and say,
Jeff Terrell: What are my goals there. And this is where I should mention, I've been a lot of what I've been learning about this stuff is just working on relationships myself with my wife with my kids with friends and things like that, colleagues, but also I meet with a personal therapist mental therapist.
Jeff Terrell: I've been meeting with him for a while now several years pretty regularly maybe once every other week, or every third week or so.
Jeff Terrell: So just to kind of break down potentially some of the shame that might be associated with that. That's a very valuable resource for me.
Jeff Terrell: And I find that very valuable, valuable in my life and
Jeff Terrell: I don't
Jeff Terrell: Anyway, that can be worthwhile. So if you're if you're feeling embarrassed about that or whatever, just use me in the zoom enemies as an example of somebody who is unashamed about doing this and finds a lot of value there.
Jeff Terrell: But anyway, my, my therapist has been very helpful to me as we talk about maybe some conflict. I'm having or something like that. He'll ask me, what is your goal here.
Jeff Terrell: You know, do you are you valuing the objective goal, the relationship goal or the self respectful more and that'll help me understand myself and be mindful.
Jeff Terrell: But it is work alright so to do this work, you can ask yourself some questions to clarify your own goals in a given scenario.
Jeff Terrell: Alright related to the objective goal, you can ask yourself, what specific results or changes, do I want from this interaction.
Jeff Terrell: What do we have to do to get the results and what will work. Again, the goal is effectiveness and so you're asking what's actually going to work.
Jeff Terrell: Really relationships, you can ask yourself, how do I want the other person to feel about me after this interaction is over.
Jeff Terrell: What do I have to do to get this relationship or keep this relationship or on the other side of things. What do I have to do to to ends this relationship if that's where you're at. That's still a relationship goal.
Jeff Terrell: And with self respect you can ask yourself, how do I want to feel about myself after this interaction is over. What do we have to do to feel that way about myself and what will work.
Jeff Terrell: Yeah.
Jeff Terrell: Okay, I think I've said enough about that. Let's move on. Let's do one more exercise here.
Jeff Terrell: Let me activate this okay it's active
Jeff Terrell: This is kind of a exercise. Think about this, and short answers are totally fine. But just think about what the objectives are so think about what the different goals of Diego might be
Jeff Terrell: Okay. Um, I think most of you are done at this point, feel free to finish up.
Jeff Terrell: If you aren't finished yet.
Jeff Terrell: But I'll go ahead and talk about this. All right. So yeah, with Diego his landlord is keeping his apartment deposit unfairly
Jeff Terrell: He left the apartment in good condition, but he's not getting his deposit back. So the objective goal would be I think most of you got this just getting the deposit back
Jeff Terrell: The relational goal might be to have his
Jeff Terrell: Landlord perspective.
Jeff Terrell: Or maybe to not burn a bridge.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe it might matter like later for his landlord to give him a reference for another apartment. It could be a factor, potentially, so the relational goal might be might be something that's important.
Jeff Terrell: The self respectable could be i i could see it kind of on either side of a spectrum of
Jeff Terrell: I guess confidence or something like, on the one hand, there might be an important self respectful of I want to stand up for myself and I don't
Jeff Terrell: I don't like conflict, it's uncomfortable uncomfortable to me. So I'm tempted to just run away, but this is important to me and I want to practice being more assertive.
Jeff Terrell: And standing up for myself. So there might be actually a high value put on a self respectful and, on the other hand, maybe
Jeff Terrell: Diego is more prone to angry outbursts and maybe his self respectful is I am going to confront my landlord about this, but I'm going to in order to respect myself at the end of the day, I'm going to try to do so in a calm and respectful manner.
Jeff Terrell: And that will help me respect myself.
Jeff Terrell: All right, I think most of you got that, as far as most important or least important. It really depends on Diego.
Jeff Terrell: You know, maybe the landlord is actually his father in law or something like that. Maybe the relational is actually the highest one. I don't know. Again, it depends on contexts that was that first
Jeff Terrell: core belief of DB t is that everything is connected. So it depends on the context and
Jeff Terrell: But I think probably the objective goal is, is the most important in, in most cases, probably, and probably relational goals least important
Jeff Terrell: Although, maybe you know maybe Diego is really working on his self esteem and his assertiveness and maybe the self respect is actually more important than the objective
Jeff Terrell: So anyway, hopefully you can see how think taking some time to think through these things in a given scenario and think through what are my goals. What are the three different goals and which ones is is the most important to me.
Jeff Terrell: That can really help clarify where you're coming from. And what's important to you.
Jeff Terrell: Okay, let's talk about actually questions about the exercise or anything before we move on.
Jeff Terrell: Okay.
Jeff Terrell: Talk about obstacles to interpersonal effectiveness.
Jeff Terrell: There are different things that can stand in the way of being effective with people.
Jeff Terrell: And there's a number of different sort of pitfalls that you can find and landmines that you can step on. So I wanted to list a few just so that you're aware
Jeff Terrell: And this might potentially help you see a blind spot in yourself or in potentially somebody else you can have a better appreciation for why they seem to be stuck or why they seem to be so difficult to work with.
Jeff Terrell: One is just a lack of interpersonal skills, maybe you haven't taken the time to learn these things and you're you haven't really put them into practice, maybe these things don't come naturally to you. And so you you have to be disciplined about trying to learn them and applying them.
Jeff Terrell: And you're just not good at it yet.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe it's really hard for you to actually make a decision and commit to one thing and say, no, I really want this.
Jeff Terrell: I'm going to stick with this. This is a thing. I'm pursuing maybe you're very persuadable, you don't really know what you want. It's hard to hard to actually decide and stick with it.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe you have strong emotions that interfere with your ability to be effective with people. Maybe you have kind of a temper, and you get angry easily. And so people just kind of steer clear of you and don't want to engage with you because you're a hard person to work with.
Jeff Terrell: Or maybe you're so worried about what people think about you that it's really hard to assert yourself.
Jeff Terrell: I relate a little bit more to the latter than the former. I, I have had to learn how to be more assertive than I, and I was natively. I'm kind of natively a peacemaker and don't like conflict don't like saying something that somebody might disagree with.
Jeff Terrell: So I've had to learn and practice actually speaking up and maybe disagreeing, or maybe saying something that somebody might disagree with.
Jeff Terrell: Or think badly of me for so that's been a practice and effort for me.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe you're prioritizing short term goals over long term ones.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe you don't have the, the bigger picture and view. And so you're trying to optimize for now. And sometimes that can hinder you long term if you're only ever looking for getting getting the thing you want now.
Jeff Terrell: This is one of my favorite obstacles, other people are getting in the way. This is a real thing. This is part of why interpersonal situations are a lot of times more challenging than other situations.
Jeff Terrell: And in fact, this is a reason why a lot of people, myself included, back in my college days, especially
Jeff Terrell: Would say that they prefer to work with things rather than with people, because people are hard. People are are difficult to work with people are emotional unpredictable. And people might get in your way. You know, you might want something and somebody says no.
Jeff Terrell: And that's frustrating, but that's a real thing that happens. And that can that can be an obstacle.
Jeff Terrell: They might have counterproductive beliefs, for example, kind of related to my former belief that all anger is bad. I believed that one should never rock the boat.
Jeff Terrell: And just go along. Go with the flow. Make friends, whatever. And that stood in the way of me actually being effective in a personally
Jeff Terrell: I couldn't speak out for my own you know opinions or desires or whatever. And so I just was kind of stuck at the mercy of somebody who maybe was more assertive or decisive.
Jeff Terrell: And it's not super effective. I mean, get the job done, I guess, but you could also find yourself resentful. If you're in that situation.
Jeff Terrell: Another example would be my way is always the best way and you need to understand that my way is better than your way, obviously, that's going to be a belief that's going to be counterproductive.
Jeff Terrell: Okay. Another example would be being unable or unwilling to look past one's own desires.
Jeff Terrell: So if it's just really hard for you to accept this. Somebody, somebody else's desires and needs are as important as yours. That's going to get in the way.
Jeff Terrell: And if somebody else has a really hard time accepting your desires and needs as as equally valuable and equally valid to your to theirs. That's also going to get the way
Jeff Terrell: Or obstacle would be trying to rush the process. This dialectic is is a dialogue and it takes time. There's a process of growing together and reaching consensus and if you try to rush it. A lot of times that can totally undermine the entire effort.
Jeff Terrell: And finally, just be aware that some media are more effective than others.
Jeff Terrell: So email versus face to face. You can use different media for different purposes but email and sort of is asynchronous written communication is considered more cold and face to face is more of a warm communication or interaction.
Jeff Terrell: And they're useful for different things. I mean, you've probably noticed that it's, it can be tricky to convey a certain emotional tone and an email.
Jeff Terrell: Whereas if you're just talking with somebody in your face to face, they can read your body language and your facial expression, they can hear your tone of voice, and it's a lot easier to convey a certain tone or a certain emotion.
Jeff Terrell: In that medium. On the other hand, maybe somebody. Maybe you are maybe somebody you're working with tends to be pretty hot and making get angry quickly and get frustrated quickly.
Jeff Terrell: And maybe in cases like that it can be useful just to take it offline move a sink to an email thread or something like that and let you know cooler heads prevail.
Jeff Terrell: Let therapy or room to just think about a response. Before you respond that can be useful to so pick the medium for what you need.
Jeff Terrell: Right. Questions about interpersonal goals or obstacles.
Jeff Terrell: Okay.
Jeff Terrell: All right, let's move on to your interpersonal skills.
Jeff Terrell: So this is
Jeff Terrell: The author DPT Marsha Linehan has hopefully made some mnemonics for these things. But there are these acronyms for each of the different inner personal goals.
Jeff Terrell: So the set of mnemonics is you say, Dear man give fast.
Jeff Terrell: But let's let's break these down and talk about what each of these things are
Jeff Terrell: And actually, before I do, let me talk about assertiveness. So the objective skills which are captured by the mnemonic dear man.
Jeff Terrell: Are the same as assertiveness skills is really talking about the same thing as you might find in like an assertiveness training module or something like that. But some yeah that's that's what Dr. Man is for us is asserting yourself.
Jeff Terrell: I mentioned that assertiveness tends to be correlated with age as as we age, we tend to become more confident and we tend to be more comfortable in our own skin.
Jeff Terrell: We tend to just having lived for a while, we tend to be more resilient to
Jeff Terrell: People thinking poorly of us, or having bad opinions of us, or being angry with us. We maybe have experienced that enough times where it's just not that big a deal anymore. And so we don't
Jeff Terrell: worry as much about that. And so we can feel free to feel more assertive and so
Jeff Terrell: If you're on a team and there's I mean any team is going to probably have varying levels of assertiveness among the different people, but
Jeff Terrell: Especially if you're on a team that has widely varying ages, you might find that you have widely varying levels of assertiveness and comfort at being assertive.
Jeff Terrell: Another corollary of this is that at your age, you're relatively young and you probably are not as strong.
Jeff Terrell: In assertiveness, as you will be perhaps later in life, or perhaps as somebody who's older than you currently is. So this might be an area that you could could stand to grow in and might benefit from practicing and working on
Jeff Terrell: So as an example, you know, imagine that there's a confident 50 something member of your team that is
Jeff Terrell: constantly saying what they think. Should you know the team should do but you disagree or you at least maybe have a different preference or priority, how comfortable, would you be voicing disagreement.
Jeff Terrell: Publicly among the team and saying, actually I don't, I don't, I'm not so sure about that. I don't maybe think that's the best way to go.
Jeff Terrell: If that's easy for you. Okay, maybe you don't need to work on assertiveness, if it's harder to the demand skills might be really useful to you. I'll say for me. I've gotten a lot better at this over the years.
Jeff Terrell: But there are still situations where I have a hard time speaking up, including like in faculty meetings at, you know, in the among the CS faculty
Jeff Terrell: It can be hard sometimes for me to actually speak up and say, I disagree with that or to say here's what I think because somebody might disagree with me and it's a hard thing to do.
Jeff Terrell: A tie points out that disagreement can sometimes be in the form of a question instead of a statement which makes it less see seem less aggressive or confrontational.
Jeff Terrell: That's a good point. There are tactful ways of disagreeing that can make it easier to be assertive and to stand up for yourself. There is a there's sometimes can be more of a
Jeff Terrell: Core assertiveness, that you have to have to be direct about something occasionally get in situation where a question isn't enough and you actually need to say plainly what you think or plainly that you disagree.
Jeff Terrell: But you're totally right. A tie and and being tactful about these things can really help.
Jeff Terrell: As part of what this whole inner effective sorry interpersonal effectiveness is all about his ways of being
Jeff Terrell: tactful, this is one way to be more effective, I guess.
Jeff Terrell: So different situations, calling for assertiveness, just to give you an idea of this if you want to get others to do what you ask them to do.
Jeff Terrell: Then you might need to be assertive.
Jeff Terrell: And make it really clear what you want.
Jeff Terrell: If you want to say no to an unwanted request and make it stick you might need to be assertive.
Jeff Terrell: You know, if somebody asks you to do something and you say, I don't know. I don't know. I'll think about it. I don't know, they keep coming back and asking and asking and asking
Jeff Terrell: You know, you might need to get to the point where you're sick. You say, I am not going to do this. I'm not going to do it, please stop asking
Jeff Terrell: And
Jeff Terrell: Maybe that feels uncomfortable right to be that that plane and that direct about what you're wanting, but sometimes you need to be able to do that and to feel comfortable doing it.
Jeff Terrell: Another reason that you might need assertiveness, is if you are trying to resolve interpersonal conflict, you might need to be assertive about what you want or what you need.
Jeff Terrell: Or if you want to make changes in relationships and maybe you know you want to end a relationship and and say now and make it stick. Maybe you need to state say clearly what you want and stick by that be assertive.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe your rights are not really being respected and you want to get your rights more respected by somebody that you're working with.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe you want to get your opinion or point of view taken seriously, including among your team, right. Some of you have teams in which there's one loud voice, and it can be hard to speak up and say I really think we should do. It's a different way.
Jeff Terrell: And to have that that point of view taken seriously. So the deer band skills can help with that.
Jeff Terrell: Alright, so here's the doorman skills. It's an acronym each letter means something D means describe the facts.
Jeff Terrell: It's important here, as you describe the facts to try to say things without judgment.
Jeff Terrell: Try not to use the words like should or too much or not enough or always or never. All of those things apply some amount of judgment as but especially can describe just the cold hard facts that nobody can really dispute or disagree with.
Jeff Terrell: So an example of this would be
Jeff Terrell: I've been working here for two years and I have not. I have not gotten a raise. Even though my performance reviews have been very positive.
Jeff Terrell: All right, I'll say that again, because I think it's really well crafted, but notice that there's no there's no controversial statement in here. These are all just the facts, you know, assuming this is actually true of somebody. And there's in a situation
Jeff Terrell: I've been working here for two years and have not gotten a raise. Even though my performance reviews have been very positive.
Jeff Terrell: That's it. That's a it's hard to dispute right that sets the stage for the conversation. Hopefully, it actually brings you closer to consensus your person that you're talking with
Jeff Terrell: Can see, hopefully that you're being reasonable that you're not coloring everything with your point of view and your emotions and your desires.
Jeff Terrell: But the you have an ability to be objective about this and just described the facts neutrally, you know, without any particular connotation attached. You know, sometimes your word choice can can can notice certain thing like this is terrible. So be careful about connotations as well.
Jeff Terrell: He express your feelings and opinions.
Jeff Terrell: So this is where
Jeff Terrell: You can you start to bring it more into the subjective around more into what is going on inside of your head.
Jeff Terrell: And you can't assume that somebody's going to know what you're thinking about something, right. So in the example carrying on with a raise example that I started out with, you could say.
Jeff Terrell: I believe I deserve a raise.
Jeff Terrell: And that's where, you know, maybe this is a controversial opinion, maybe this is something that the person you're talking with would disagree with, but it's important that they understand where you're coming from.
Jeff Terrell: And you should not assume that they can read minds, you should not assume that they know what you think they they know what you want. You have to say that say it out loud so that they can know where you're coming from.
Jeff Terrell: A assert yourself by asking for what you want or saying no clearly
Jeff Terrell: Alright, so make it, make it direct make it a point
Jeff Terrell: This can be a difficult thing if you're not used to it.
Jeff Terrell: And you can say this as a question not as a demand. Right. You don't want to assert yourself by demanding. Somebody give you what you want.
Jeff Terrell: I mean, maybe there are some cases in which that's reasonable. But for the most part you want to say, Will you do this. Will you give this to me, will you respect. You know what I want here.
Jeff Terrell: Because you're respecting the fact that it's up to them to decide their own actions they can say no. And part of asserting yourself effectively is maybe kind of like a tie was saying earlier, being able to say
Jeff Terrell: Give people a way to say no without feeling like you're going to judge them without feeling like they're a bad guy. If they don't
Jeff Terrell: So, for example, continuing with this example of a race.
Jeff Terrell: You could say,
Jeff Terrell: I would like a race. Can you give me a race. Can you give it to me.
Jeff Terrell: So you have that question and that
Jeff Terrell: That should prompt a response right that's sometimes if you don't ask the question.
Jeff Terrell: Somebody who doesn't actually want to do that might be able to distract you from that topic and move away because you haven't pointedly asked them a question. Sometimes you gotta ask the question, even though it's hard to to get over
Jeff Terrell: Maybe a lack of confidence in yourself.
Jeff Terrell: Right, R is for reinforce by explaining positive effects for the other person. So you've made your ask and then you can say, here are some nice things that would happen if you gave me this thing that I'm asking for
Jeff Terrell: So an example would be, whoops.
Jeff Terrell: Hang on just a second. Alright.
Jeff Terrell: Are it might be. I, you could say, I won't be a lot happier and probably more productive to the company if I get a salary that reflects my value to the company.
Jeff Terrell: So this is kind of like, what's in it for for them. And you're connecting this to like understanding maybe where they're coming from, or trying to express some understanding of that.
Jeff Terrell: And saying how this might actually benefit them. This can be a little bit tricky. Like, you don't want to feel manipulative and so as you practice this, you can maybe observe it and other people you can get a feel for what feels like manipulation and what doesn't. But you can do
Jeff Terrell: You can do the are in an effective way to connect it back to to them and why they would want to choose what you're asking them to do.
Jeff Terrell: Usually it's it feels a lot less manipulative if you cast this in a positive light and say what the benefit of them doing what you want would be
Jeff Terrell: But occasionally it might be appropriate to have some sort of negative reinforcement.
Jeff Terrell: So for example, if, if you're really struggling with making ends meet with the current salary level or something like that. It might be worthwhile to let them know and say look I'm
Jeff Terrell: I'm really struggling and I'm trying to make ends meet. I'm trying to support my family or whatever. And it's hard on my current salary level and I really need a raise.
Jeff Terrell: And if if I can't get it you know i i don't want to look elsewhere, but am I have to because this is something I really do need
Jeff Terrell: And there are ways of saying that right that don't sound manipulative, it'll sound like an ultimatum or threat.
Jeff Terrell: Okay, so let's move on to em is stay mindful. The M is for mindful and that's to the ideas to stay focused on your goals. You're the one initiating the conversation and you want to stick with the point of the conversation that you brought up.
Jeff Terrell: Maybe this person you're having a conversation with is trying to distract it and move to something else by saying, well, let's talk about your performance review, actually. And you can say,
Jeff Terrell: Let's do, but I want to try to resolve this issue first and it's really important to me that we talked about this and that, you know, I, I make it clear what I want here. And so, bring the conversation back to the reason that you brought it up. This is being assertive, it can be uncomfortable.
Jeff Terrell: You're sort of making your stand and and taking a stand for yourself. And that might be something that the other person doesn't like or doesn't want or doesn't agree with and it can be hard to do something that you know somebody doesn't want or that you fear they might not want
Jeff Terrell: Tactics for this would include being a broken record.
Jeff Terrell: Don't hesitate to just repeat yourself straight up. Maybe you have a script that you've rehearsed, and it's a good one. And you could just repeat that same script.
Jeff Terrell: That might be annoying, but it's a way to bring the conversation back to where you want it to be. And make sure that you what you're asking is going to get addressed one way or another.
Jeff Terrell: Also ignore attacks if somebody is not doing well and isn't maybe very interpersonal effective, they might attack you to try to distract you from what you want.
Jeff Terrell: Ignore it.
Jeff Terrell: Try not to let it get under your skin just go right back to your broken record. Say what you want. Ignore the attack.
Jeff Terrell: A is appear confident
Jeff Terrell: This can be a challenge to be confident. But the core idea underlying this ability to appear confident is to remind yourself, even if you don't feel it, remind yourself mentally
Jeff Terrell: What I want does matter.
Jeff Terrell: I'm a real person to my my desires here are every bit as valid as somebody else's desires, so
Jeff Terrell: You can you can appear confident here.
Jeff Terrell: And negotiate. Be willing to give to get so there might be some ability in the spirit of dialectic, you might be willing to give this in order to get that. So that's okay you can negotiate to get what you want.
Jeff Terrell: Okay, I'm running short
Jeff Terrell: Yes I time
Jeff Terrell: Sadly, yes negotiation.
Jeff Terrell: I decide whether I want to try to breeze through the rest of this or just pick it up. Next time I think I'll probably pick it up next time. So I'll just go at a normal speed. This might be the last thing that we get to, and we'll pick up the give and fast skills. Later on Monday.
Jeff Terrell: Right negotiation.
Jeff Terrell: That was the end. Remember in the doorman skills.
Jeff Terrell: I wanted to mention an idea about negotiation that I think might be helpful.
Jeff Terrell: The sort of classic way that I've always thought about negotiation and that I think other people have as well as that you just try to meet in the middle. And you want x somebody else wants. See, and so you you decide on why
Jeff Terrell: And that's nice, in the sense that it's more fair than one side fully getting their way, but it's kind of sometimes frustrating because neither side actually got what they really wanted
Jeff Terrell: There's a better way. This is coming from a 1981 book called getting to yes it's a pretty famous book, especially in the business world. This is called negotiation of merits. It might also be called in some circles collaboration. It's actually what people mean, sometimes by collaboration.
Jeff Terrell: This is my summary of the book, actually, as well as the Wikipedia page gives a good some more depth in this, but the idea here is that you have to identify the underlying needs of both sides.
Jeff Terrell: And so the raise you know that could come from a number of different needs your core need underlying asking for a raise might be that you actually really need more money.
Jeff Terrell: Right. Or it might be that you actually just feel like you deserve a raise. And in order to to feel respected in your company. You want that race. It's not so much about the money. It's about feeling respected by your colleagues or maybe feeling respected by your, your supervisor.
Jeff Terrell: Both of those are totally valid.
Jeff Terrell: But understanding what those underlying needs means that you can approach the situation very differently.
Jeff Terrell: And then as you understand the needs of both sides. You can creatively find ways to meet as many underlying needs as possible.
Jeff Terrell: And this can take some creativity.
Jeff Terrell: Then you can iterate to refine your understanding of both sets of needs and whether the possible solutions that you might propose might meet those needs or not. Sometimes some one side will propose a particular solution. The other side will say,
Jeff Terrell: It makes sense that you said that I can see how that would address what I've said, but I'm realizing that I'm thinking about how I react to that idea.
Jeff Terrell: That there's this other thing going on in me that's a neat. I hadn't thought about until you said that and okay that could just be an underhanded tactics to avoid giving somebody something you don't want to give them. But if there is some trust there.
Jeff Terrell: And if both people in the spirit of the dialectic are working to you know get to a consensus, then that's a legitimate thing and iterating as a valuable part of that process.
Jeff Terrell: This approach requires self awareness to break down your own desires.
Jeff Terrell: See the five wise. So Wikipedia article about repeatedly asking why to get to the underlying causes it requires trust to share your deeper needs with the other party and flexibility to be willing for alternative ideas.
Jeff Terrell: So to finish this up quickly. As an example, let's say you came and asked for the rays, and it was about money.
Jeff Terrell: All right, but as you sort of revealed that your underlying need. Let's say that you have a good relationship with your boss your boss says, you know,
Jeff Terrell: That's important to me. I want to be able to do that, but I'm constraint on my budget, the higher ups that above me. I've only given me this much and I'm strapped as far as what my budget is for for this team.
Jeff Terrell: I can't give you a raise. But maybe there's some way that we can meet your need, and meet the constraint that I have, you know, what if
Jeff Terrell: You you've been working 50 hour weeks. What if you only work 40 hours a week, and I will defend you to your teammates, since you
Jeff Terrell: You know, a cover for you that I trust that you'll get your work done, but you're only gonna work 40 hours a week, maybe that will free up some time that you could do some side work.
Jeff Terrell: You know, thinking creatively about this might actually be really valuable. So that's negotiation that's effective, you can see a Wikipedia article on getting to yes. For more about that. All right. That's all I have time for today. Sorry, took you a minute over, I'll see you on Monday.