This was a shorter read, but very concise. I liked how this chapter was laid out. It may have been that interpersonal communications is pretty straight forward. The chapter was broken down into interpersonal communication, distance, and interpersonal responsibility. The book defined interpersonal communication as protecting and promoting the good of the relationship. At one point the book overlaps distance and interpersonal communication which was a bit confusing. In the book there was an example about a father son relationship. The situation was about the son asking the father, "Dad are you my friend?" The book defined distance as the thing that nourishes and keeps people together. Based on that definition the distance between a father and son really makes the relationship, so its obvious why the father tells the son,"yes."
The Father then corrected himself by stating, "Son, I love you. You can count on me as your friend unless I must choose between friendship and being your dad, I will do so without a blink." The book justified this based on the fact that in this interpersonal exchange between father and son, the father has a responsibility to maintain the interpersonal communication and keep it healthy. From this I came to the conclusion that the father had a interpersonal responsibility to protect the relationship. The books definition of interpersonal responsibility is attending to responsibility appropriate for a given relationship.
I also found the section about demand interesting. In a lot of interpersonal relationships, people are demanding or have requirements especially when it comes to relationships. The book says that, "one cannot impose a particular type of relationship on another, nor can one demand a relationship from another." The book goes on to say that imposing a demand violates the spirit of interpersonal communication. I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that making demands or making requirements may play a role in why many relationships fail. But this is just my opinion.
The part where the book talked about the father and the son really stood out to me as well. It made me consider how important it is to establish a given relationship in order to understand the responsibilities at hand. A father cannot fulfill all of his duties as such if he only acts as a friend, so by naming the relationship he seems to be saying that he knows what is being demanded of him and how to act responsibly.
ReplyDeleteI saw this very notion play out in the past two years as a baseball coach. For two years I coached a traveling baseball team in which the players were only four years younger than me. I also had known many of them fairly personally prior to coaching them because a lot of them knew my brother. Some of them, I would have even called my friends, and at times this hurt the player-coach relationship. There were days where it was difficult to bench someone, discipline them, or make some of the necessary coaching decisions because of these previous relationships, and I did not always establish myself as a coaching figure. These two roles bled into each other, and made it clear to me how important it actually is to name or define a relationship in order to ensure that it will be effective.