Different Strokes

In my last post I observed that people who came to me for assistance often said as their core presenting problem or issue was that they “don’t communicate anymore.”  In my experience, they were mistaken.  They did, in fact, continue to communicate.  Their communication may have been sour, subtle, unsatisfactory, critical, negative, etc. but continue it did.  Their communication continued to be both verbal and non-verbal; but they did continue to communicate.  They continued to communicate at the same rate as before.  The style, form or content of their communication might have morphed over time but they sure didn’t stop communicating.

An example may help.   One particular couple's transaction comes immediately to mind.  They had been coming to see me for a while and we were looking at some aspects of their relationship.  Each was sharing their perceptions of the form of the relationship, when it changed and so on.  They were sitting side by side on the loveseat in my office.  The husband had leaned forward to share a particular point that he found interesting about their relationship.  At that same time the wife leaned back out of the line of sight of her husband; sighed, shook her head and rolled her eyes.  Certainly, a non-verbal form of communication but eloquent non-the-less.  I asked the husband if he knew what his wife had just said and he replied that he didn’t hear her say anything.  I asked him if he knew what his wife had just done and he said, “I didn’t see her but I’ll bet she leaned back, rolled her eyes and shook her head no.”  This was one of the many couples who told me that they “didn’t communicate anymore.”   Clearly, that was a powerful round of communication and the husband got the message.  Thay were communicating, both verbally and non-verbally, as frequently as in the past when they perceived times as being better between them.  The big difference was clearly in the quality of the transactions in their communication.  In my business, I and my professional peers sometimes call these transactions strokes.

A working definition of Strokes  

In this post the word stroke refers to a unit or nugget of communication between one person and another.  Strokes also apply to the communications we have with ourselves. They can be seen as positive or negative. They can be seen as unconditional and conditional.

This notion of “strokes” is an interesting way to think about communication between people and others and between people and themselves. 

Several decades ago there was a school of thought about (among other things) communication and how to mark it and measure it.  They came up with this idea of a basic unit of communication that they called a stroke.  The school of thought was called Transactional Analysis.  It is a cool and useful way of analyzing and describing the way human beings communicate with others and with themselves.  Strokes convey information and have emotional valence or power. 

So, what is this stroke thing anyway?  As a way to convey thought or feeling it can be a word, a gesture, movement, a look or any of the other myriad ways people can and do communicate.

In the next post we’ll look more closely at this idea of strokes.  We’ll look at various types, their effect on relationships.

Today’s quote:

Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.

Gloria Steinem