I’d like to declare a holiday and shoot off some fireworks to celebrate one of communication’s major contributions to our life: We can change how people interact with us by changing our communication with them.

This is a contribution worth commemorating because it offers us a way around the stark reality that people seldom (if ever) change on demand. So it’s incredibly good news that we don’t need to change anyone to change the way they interact with us. All we have to do is alter our communication.

The only catch is that this contribution cuts both ways. Our communication can be a force for positive change, shaping our interactions for the good, but communication can also be a force for negative change, attracting and amplifying the conflict and drama in our lives.

Five actions are required to help our communication be a force for positive change.

  1. Give yourself a promotion. Our communication can’t change our life for the better until we have control of our tongues, so we have to step into the job of Chief Executive Officer of our tongue. As CEO, we can no longer justify harmful or unproductive words by saying that someone “pushed our buttons” or that “we couldn’t help it.” Without tongue control, we’re too likely to make things worse, not better.
  2. Stop getting baited into obviously unproductive conversations. Most of us can list a handful of people who routinely bring up topics that upset us, and an equally small number of people who often goad us into unwanted conversations. We hate it when Aunt Suzy wants to talk about politics, when Jim from accounting wants to gossip, and when our colleague Bill wants us to trade war stories about the boss. The outcome of these conversations is entirely predictable. Obviously hazardous or unproductive conversations are self-defeating, and they curtail the impact of our communication as a force for positive change.
  3. Don’t ambush your conversational partner. Most of us have one or two things we’d really like to say to the people in our life. Perhaps we don’t think that our spouse fully appreciates all the housework we do, or maybe we don’t believe our coworkers properly value the extra work we do, or maybe we don’t think the boss realizes all of our sacrifices to make her look good. Stop laying in wait for the perfect moment to deliver a zinger from the moral high ground. Ambushes usually trigger a counterproductive flurry of damaging retaliation.
  4. Be the one to decide “it ends here.” Most, but not all, of the conflict and drama in our lives is there by our choice. That’s not a typo. While we can’t completely prevent people from saying and doing damaging things, we can dramatically reduce the magnitude of almost any conflict or interpersonal drama by refusing to contribute anything unproductive, harmful, or negative. Whenever a conversation is getting dangerously off track, or when someone is escalating an issue to the point that it threatens important underlying relationships, be the one to say “it ends here.” One person, steadfastly committed to preventing additional damage, can help other people reclaim their best intentions. This is, perhaps, the most striking example of how your communication can change the the way that people interact with you in a way that can bring about significant positive change.
  5. Never forget that you can’t change someone directly. The very second we forget that people don’t change at our behest and we try to change their mind, teach them a lesson, or give them some “friendly advice,” communication’s ability to act as an agent of positive change vanishes as they dig in to resist. Don’t worry about changing someone else. Changing your communication will do plenty to unlock the forces of change in your most important relationships.
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