First of all, we express what we are requesting rather than what we are not requesting. “How do you do a don’t?” goes a line of a children’s song by my colleague Ruth Bebermeyer: “All I know is I feel won’t when I’m told to do a don’t.” These lyrics reveal two problems commonly encountered when requests are worded in the negative. People are often confused as to what is actually being requested, and furthermore, negative requests are likely to provoke resistance.
A woman at a workshop, frustrated that her husband was spending so much time at work, described how her request had backfired: “I asked him not to spend so much time at work. Three weeks later, he responded by announcing that he’d signed up for a golf tournament!” She had successfully communicated to him what she did not want—his spending so much time at work—but had failed to request what she did want. Encouraged to reword her request, she thought a minute and said, “I wish I had told him that I would like him to spend at least one evening a week at home with the children and me.”
During the Vietnam War, I was asked to debate the war issue on television with a man whose position differed from mine. The show was videotaped, so I was able to watch it at home that evening. When I saw myself on the screen communicating in ways I didn’t want to be communicating, I felt very upset. “If I’m ever in another discussion,” I told myself, “I am determined not to do what I did on that program! I’m not going to be defensive. I’m not going to let them make a fool of me.” Notice how I spoke to myself in terms of what I didn’t want to do rather than in terms of what I did want to do.
A chance to redeem myself came the very next week when I was invited to continue the debate on the same program. All the way to the studio, I repeated to myself all the things I didn’t want to do. As soon as the program started, the man launched off in exactly the same way he had a week earlier. For about ten seconds after he’d finished talking, I managed not to communicate in the ways I had been reminding myself. In fact, I said nothing. I just sat there. As soon as I opened my mouth, however, I found words tumbling out in all the ways I had been so determined to avoid! It was a painful lesson about what can happen when I only identify what I don’t want to do, without clarifying what I do want to do.
I was once invited to work with some high school students who suffered a long litany of grievances against their principal. They regarded the principal as racist, and searched for ways to get even with him. A minister who worked closely with the young people became deeply concerned over the prospect of violence. Out of respect for the minister, the students agreed to meet with me.
They began by describing what they saw as discrimination on the part of the principal. After listening to several of their charges, I suggested that they proceed by clarifying what they wanted from the principal.
“What good would that do?” scoffed one student in disgust. “We already went to him to tell him what we wanted. His answer to us was, ‘Get out of here! I don’t need you people telling me what to do!’”
I asked the students what they had requested of the principal. They recalled saying to him that they didn’t want him telling them how to wear their hair. I suggested that they might have received a more cooperative response if they had expressed what they did, rather than what they did not, want. They had then informed the principal that they wanted to be treated with fairness, at which he had become defensive, vociferously denying ever having been unfair. I ventured to guess that the principal would have responded more favorably if they had asked for specific actions rather than vague behavior like “fair treatment.”
Working together, we found ways to express their requests in positive action language. At the end of the meeting, the students had clarified thirty-eight actions they wanted the principal to take, including “We’d like you to agree to black student representation on decisions made about dress code,” and “We’d like you to refer to us as ‘black students’ and not ‘you people.’” The following day, the students presented their requests to the principal using the positive action language we had practiced; that evening I received an elated phone call from them: their principal had agreed to all thirty-eight requests!
In addition to using positive language, we also want to word our requests in the form of concrete actions that others can undertake and to avoid vague, abstract, or ambiguous phrasing. A cartoon depicts a man who has fallen into a lake. As he struggles to swim, he shouts to his dog on shore, “Lassie, get help!” In the next frame, the dog is lying on a psychiatrist’s couch. We all know how opinions vary as to what constitutes “help”: some members of my family, when asked to help with the dishes, think “help” means supervision.
A couple in distress attending a workshop provides an additional illustration of how nonspecific language can hamper understanding and communication. “I want you to let me be me,” the woman declared to her husband. “I do!” he retorted. “No, you don’t!” she insisted. Asked to express herself in positive action language, the woman replied, “I want you to give me the freedom to grow and be myself.” Such a statement, however, is just as vague and likely to provoke a defensive response. She struggled to formulate her request clearly, and then admitted, “It’s kind of awkward, but if I were to be precise, I guess what I want is for you to smile and say that anything I do is okay.” Often, the use of vague and abstract language can mask oppressive interpersonal games.
A similar lack of clarity occurred between a father and his fifteen-year-old son when they came in for counseling. “All I want is for you to start showing a little responsibility,” claimed the father. “Is that asking too much?” I suggested that he specify what it would take for his son to demonstrate the responsibility he was seeking. After a discussion on how to clarify his request, the father responded sheepishly, “Well, it doesn’t sound so good, but when I say that I want responsibility, what I really mean is that I want him to do what I ask, without question—to jump when I say jump, and to smile while doing it.” He then agreed with me that if his son were to actually behave this way, it would demonstrate obedience rather than responsibility.
Like this father, we often use vague and abstract language to indicate how we want other people to feel or be without naming a concrete action they could take to reach that state. For example, an employer makes a genuine effort to invite feedback, telling the employees, “I want you to feel free to express yourself around me.” The statement communicates the employer’s desire for the employees to “feel free,” but not what they could do in order to feel this way. Instead, the employer could use positive action language to make a request: “I’d like you to tell me what I might do to make it easier for you to feel free to express yourselves around me.”
As a final illustration of how the use of vague language contributes to internal confusion, I would like to present the conversation that I would invariably have during my practice as a clinical psychologist with the many clients who came to me with complaints of depression. After I empathized with the depth of feeling that a client had just expressed, our exchanges would typically proceed in the following manner:
Very often, my clients were able to see how the lack of awareness of what they wanted from others had contributed significantly to their frustrations and depression.