When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (31 page)

Setting of the dialogue: Sue had just asked me to criticize her talk up to that point to demonstrate FOGGING to the audience.

ME
: (Quite pompously) Sue, I’m glad you asked me
to give you a little feedback. I’m sure it will help you to improve your speaking ability in the future.

SUE
:
I’m sure it will
. [FOGGING]

ME
: It seems to me that you have difficulty in pronouncing some words. There were times when you mumbled a lot.

SUE
:
You’re probably right
. [FOGGING]

ME
: You should not use words that you really can’t pronounce. It makes things hard for the audience.

SUE
:
That’s true
. [FOGGING]

ME
: It makes you seem as if you are trying to impress them or intimidate them; it’s just kind of phony.

SUE
:
Sure. That does seem phony
. [FOGGING]

ME
: And when people can’t pronounce words right, it usually means that they really don’t understand what they mean.

SUE
:
That’s true, I probably do use words that I don’t fully understand the meaning of
. [FOGGING]

ME
: Also your accent. You sound as if you learned English on the streets of South Philadelphia.

SUE
: Elkins Park actually, but
I’m sure I do have an accent
. [FOGGING]

ME
: Which brings up another thing. The way you come across in speaking, you sound like you have a general lack of confidence in what you are saying.

SUE
:
I’m sure I do sound less confident than I should be. [FOGGING]

ME
: You give the impression that you really don’t know and understand all the implications and finer points of what you are presenting.

SUE
:
You’re probably right. It’s likely that I don’t understand all of the finer points
. [FOGGING]

ME
: If you really cared about your audience, all these nice people who came to hear you, you would be better prepared.

SUE
:
That’s true, I’m sure I could be better prepared
. [FOGGING]

ME
: After all, these are reasonable people. They don’t mind if you slip up and make a few mistakes.

SUE
:
I’m sure they don’t
. [FOGGING]

ME
: But the amount of sloppiness in your talk is irritating.
You ramble. You’re not well organized. You’re putting them off a very interesting subject.

SUE
:
I’m sure I do ramble and could be better organized and the audience may get irritated and bored
. [FOGGING]

ME
: If you really cared about what you are doing, you should have declined to speak at all and let people who are good speakers do the job.

SUE
:
That’s true. If I cared that much, I probably would have declined
. [FOGGING]

ME
: If you were a good speaker, you could have bluffed it and carried it off with the force of your personality.

SUE
:
If I were a good speaker, I’m sure I could
. [FOGGING]

ME
: Instead, you showed that you obviously were afraid of this audience.

SUE
:
That’s true, I was a bit nervous
. [FOGGING]

ME
: Sue, I say this as a friend. So I want you to take it to heart.

SUE
:
I’m sure you do
. [FOGGING]

ME
: In public speaking, you can get up on the dais and go through all the motions, but frankly, a Winston Churchill you’re not!

SUE
:
That’s true. I’m not a Winston Churchill
. I’m a Sue Levine. [FOGGING]

At this point, the FOGGING demonstration broke up in laughter and Sue sailed through the rest of her talk and the questions from the audience that followed. She was animated, excited, interesting to watch and listen to, and she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

In contrast to Sue’s in-vivo public speaking dialogue, the next one deals with the practice of several of the assertive skills in learning how to take charge of a group of people when leading a discussion or presenting a report while coping with comments from the audience.

Dialogue #22
Ron handles digressive, irrelevant,
pertinent, and critical
comments during the
presentation of a
report.

Ron is a young graduate student in business administration taking a course in economics. He has great difficulty in getting up in front of a group of people and organizing a discussion or giving a report. Ron’s major fear, a common one, is that people in the audience will know more than he about the subject or catch him in an error or say something stupid. Fear of public performance, even a minor one, is for many people quite debilitating and keeps them back in school and on the job, prevents them from expanding their careers, and even limits them socially in volunteer work, clubs, charity organizations, or recreational activities. Just prior to presenting an oral term paper in his economics class, Ron volunteered to have a dry run in his assertive group. To desensitize Ron to his fear of public speaking, the members of the group were coached to interrupt Ron’s talk with comments and questions that ranged from the sarcastic and irrelevant to those that were pertinent or insightful. These kinds of responses were selected from a variety that a speaker could expect from different audiences and Ron was coached in assertively coping with them. Although Ron received nowhere near the number of comments in the actual presentation from his classmates as he had to field in the assertive group, he was given as much coping exposure as possible in the practice session to comments that might unnerve him. The following dialogue is a condensation of a lengthy report of over twenty minutes with a sample of the audience comments and Ron’s responses which allowed him to take charge assertively and lead the discussion, giving him confidence in his ability to field comments during his actual class presentation.

Setting of the dialogue: Ron is in the middle of his presentation and is interrupted by group members asking questions and making comments.

RON
: The next major factor in economic growth is public confidence in the economic process. We can see … (interruption)

1
ST
MEMBER
: How about the influence of foreign speculation in European markets?

RON
:
Although I’m sure that factors outside the continental U.S. do influence our economy
, in this report I am limiting myself to a discussion of domestic factors. [FOGGING]

1
ST
MEMBER
: Doesn’t that leave out discussion of some very important things? This means your report is incomplete, with big holes in it.

RON
:
I’m sure it has large gaps in it that we could cover
, but
I’m limiting my discussion to domestic factors only
. [FOGGING and BROKEN RECORD] Now returning to public confidence as a major factor … (interruption)

2
ND
MEMBER
: What influence, if any, does Securities Exchange Commission policy have on the economy?

RON
: That’s a very interesting point. However,
I’d like to discuss that later
in context with other regulatory factors.
I’d appreciate it if you would ask your question again when we come to that area
. [SELF-DISCLOSURE] Any other questions before I continue?

3
RD
MEMBER
: Yes. So far you haven’t said anything about the preferential federal tax structure as a potent incentive for economic growth.

RON
:
That’s true, I haven’t mentioned it at all yet, but I feel that’s a subject worth several hours’ discussion. With the limited time we have, I don’t think I could do a good enough job to make it a worthwhile topic of discussion
. [FOGGING, SELF-DISCLOSURE, and NEGATIVE ASSERTION] Back to public confidence … (interruption)

4
TH
MEMBER
: What about the Keynesian doctrine as an influence in the past thirty years?

RON
:
That’s a subject my thinking isn’t at all clear on
yet. Perhaps one of the other speakers might care to comment upon it, or if there is enough time at the end of the papers, you might give us the benefit of your knowledge on the subject
. [NEGATIVE ASSERTION and WORKABLE COMPROMISE] Any other questions. No? Well, moving right along … (interruption)

5
TH
MEMBER
: In your opening statement you said your report would cover the period starting with FDR’s Administration in 1936 to the present. He took office in 1934 at the height of the depression. Why start in 1936?

RON
: Did I say 1936?
That’s an error on my part, of course
. The report covers 1934 to the present [NEGATIVE ASSERTION] Back to the point of discussion, public confidence … (interruption)

6
TH
MEMBER
: Are you still talking about public confidence?

RON
:
At this rate I’ll never get too far, will I? I’d appreciate it if you will limit your questions until after each section of the report. We might progress faster that way
. Now back to public confidence. [NEGATIVE ASSERTION, SELF-DISCLOSURE, and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

At the beginning of this mock presentation of his material to a bunch of hostile listeners, Ron was quite nervous. He had trouble both with his presentation of material and in responding to audience comments. Near the end of the practice session, the group began to find it more difficult to question and criticize Ron’s material and his presentation; particularly when he began to smile each time someone interrupted him. After he finished, this deliberately hostile bunch of critics gave him a round of enthusiastic applause for learning how to cope with them. After the practice, Ron’s report in class was anticlimactic He felt quite comfortable in delivering his paper on important factors in the national economy, as he saw them, and even enjoyed the mild interchange between himself and fellow class members on the subject. Ron specifically commented on his good
feelings on learning that he could assertively cope with the two types of manipulative questions which he received from his classmates. These questions are the classical “South of France” and “sandbagging” types. When a listener asks, “But how does that (what you have just said) apply in the South of France,” he is prompting the speaker to comment upon areas beyond his expertise. Novice speakers often feel that they must have the answer to any question. The “South of France” is often needlessly guilt-inducing and troublesome if you are not assertive enough to simply say: “I don’t know.” The “sandbagging” comment or question is put to the speaker by a member of the audience who already knows (or thinks he knows) the answer to it. This is usually a deliberate attempt to either deflate the speaker and/or puff up the questioner’s own ego. “Sandbagging” questions are usually preceded by an exceedingly long-winded monologue by the questioner that is intended to show his qualifications to ask the question. Most of the time, you won’t even know what the question is and will be in trouble if you, the speaker, hesitate to say: “I don’t understand your question. Would you repeat it?” or if you do understand it, to say, as Ron did in his dialogue: “My thinking on that subject isn’t at all clear yet. Perhaps you might want to give us the benefit of your own expertise later if we have the time?” If the “sandbagger” then panics and blurts out the answer to his own question immediately, you might simply respond as I did once, by saying: “Thank you. That seems like a good answer to your question,” and proceed.

Turning back to a different aspect of authority relationships, in the next set of dialogues, you may see how assertive parents and teachers cope with young children and teen-agers, a behavioral area that many of us have found troublesome.

Dialogue #23
Parents and teachers assertively
deal with the complaints of
small children.

In this common set of situations, a married couple, Bert and Sara, cope with the complaints of their children, and Barbara, an elementary school teacher, assertively directs her students to follow classroom routines she has set up.

Bert is a professor of drama at a local college, who has been married to Sara for fourteen years and has three children, all girls; one five, one a prepubescent nine, and the other a young teen-ager. I got to know Bert and Sara socially over a period of years. We usually got together for an evening of fun, sometimes just for talk over a bottle of wine. When this relaxed mood came about, our chat invariably turned to writing, and Bert and I would swap stories on the human happenings behind the scenes in Hollywood and in academic and clinical psychology. Both Bert and Sara became interested in what I was teaching people about being systematically assertive. One evening their children kept coming into the family room on one pretext after another. After the last stern look from Bert had banished them for the rest of the night to their rooms, he turned to me and commented: “These kids. They’re great, but sometimes they drive me bananas. They just love to show off when company is present. Does your assertion work on them too?” I asked Bert what it was he wanted them to stop, and he said: “Like now. All night they keep coming in to see what they are missing. They always come in with a complaint as an excuse for one thing or another. Tell them, ‘Go back to bed,’ and then they give you an argument. When I send one back to bed, another one comes out with something else to complain about. They are okay when we’re by ourselves, but when company arrives they act as lonely as three sailors on shore leave. They know I’m not going to yell at them in front of company. Until I know
they’re asleep, we don’t have any privacy. They cramp my style in telling a story or copping a feel from. Sara or just getting high on grass. You’re the expert. How would you handle them?” Still grinning after hearing Bert’s earthy way of characterizing his predicament and his daughters’ attention-getting behavior, I told him to try empathic FOGGING—to listen to their complaints, to say something like:
“I understand how you feel, that’s rough (unfair, uncomfortable, etc.) to have to be lonely (to be bored, to be wide awake, to listen to our noise, to go to the john, etc
.), but I want you to go back to bed and not come out with the adults again tonight.” That suggestion set off a discussion, which lasted all evening, about children, parents, and the sometime strange twists that the authority relationship between them takes.