Back in 1981, while an employee at Motorola, I had a chance to work with Neil Rackham and John Carlisle of the Huthwaite organization – of SPIN Selling fame and Win-Win Negotiations.

In both their Sales and Negotiations programs, that they had back then – the issue of getting caught up in a “Defend-Attack Spiral” was addressed.

I’ve posted and written articles about this before.

One thing I also learned in 1981

There is No Such Thing as Communications – Only Miscommunications – This 4 page PDF – was originally published in 2000 in my quarterly newsletter, but I had written it back in the mid-1990s.

It covered the 4 key Communications Behaviors that I had learned from Neil and John – that I near/far transferred for “communications, negotiations, and interviewing” in my own consulting practices – whether 1:1 or in my Facilitated Group Process – where – misunderstanding often took place.

And then ISPI asked me if they could republish it in their May-June 2000 edition of their newsletter: News & Notes: – and here is a 3-page PDF from that issue: There’s No Such Thing As Communications – News & Notes May-June 2000 Guy W Wallace

I’ve updated it since then – when I started my third consulting firm as I went solo in 2002…

If we only started every communications exchange with the premise that

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COMMUNICATIONS

we’d all be better off.

Because we’d almost always be entering into a series of Q&A in order to Seek Information, Summarize, and Test Understanding.

And getting closer to Nirvana, in our communications anyway.

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