I am pleased and honored that Dr. Hugh Culbertson who is a much published scholar and expert in public relations has contributed this thoughtful essay on authentic communication. I hope it will both inspire better practice and spark thoughts on the connection between good public relations or organizational communication and good interpersonal communication. Maybe – as Hugh seems to points out – they are not so different in their needs, values, and keys to effectiveness. Please see his essay below. And I look forward to your comments.
Authentic Communication: Some Possible Dependent Variables
By
Hugh M. Culbertson
Professor Emeritus of Journalism
Ohio University
Professor Bojinka Bishop has proposed 10 attributes of what she calls authentic communication as guides for public relations practitioners in assessing the messages which they produce and receive. The attributes specify that a message or message set should be truthful, fundamental (dealing with core issues), comprehensive, consistent (within messages, and between messages and actions), relevant, timely, clear, accessible, responsive (to expressed receiver needs), and compassionate or caring.
Public relations, while often viewed as concerned primarily with persuasion (behavior and/or attitude change), also focuses heavily on maintaining and building what clients and various stakeholders regard as favorable relationships. This brief essay suggests some dependent variables useful in describing or bringing about satisfactory relationships that may be influenced by authenticity. We then discuss aspects of effective communication based largely on authenticity theory but also drawing on the literature of coorientation, public relations, interpersonal communication, communitarianism, and twelve-step programming. We hope this analysis might help stimulate future research on the implications of authentic communication. We will discuss examples in the realms of employer-employee relations and marriage-like (or, to use contemporary language, significant-other) relations.
Variable 1. Mutual trust. It is often said that a person loses most everything when people cease to trust him or her. An employee suspected of stealing from or cheating his or her boss surely has little prospect of getting raises, promotions, or long-term job guarantees. And one can scarcely imagine a happy marriage in which either party feels compelled to hire a private detective who keeps track of his or her partner. Furthermore, once a person loses trust by lying, cheating, stealing, failing to keep promises, etc., he or she usually must work hard, over time, to regain it.
Variable 2. Mutual understanding. Any important relationship requires that each party put him or herself in the partner’s shoes, predicting how that person may react under certain circumstances and “understanding where he or she is coming from. “ When a person does or says something, he or she must understand what consequences these statements or actions have for the other person. Such analysis seems essential for people to adapt to each other under changing circumstances – and to analyze the past in planning for the future. That, in turn, calls attention to a third variable.
Variable 3. Long-term commitment and loyalty. Many commentators today decry what they call the existence of a “throw-away culture” in which people get rid of an employee, spouse, or significant other with very little thought or concern. Children become confused and often develop in a dysfunctional way when they lack a stable home life. Also, without loyal stakeholders willing to weather storms, firms suffer in the face of economic downturns, crises caused by inevitable human error, and other negative developments.
Variable 4. Dedication. Absent loyalty and commitment, people may lose their motivation to work hard, to accept pay and benefit cuts, and to “go an extra mile” when circumstances demand it. Such dedication, in turn, seems apt to hinge in part on the next factor.
Variable 5. Sharing of goals. Employees and members of a household will likely fail to succeed, in the long run, unless they have a sense that they form a meaningful group that can succeed – and that they must sometimes subordinate personal interests at times to group goals.
Variable 6. Flexibility. Such group effort requires that individuals be willing to change. When both spouses work, one or both may have to take a more active part in doing housework and caring for children. And, when crises deplete earnings, a firm’s employees often have to settle for lesser benefits or lower pay – at least, until the problem subsides. They may even have to retrain for a new job or move to a new location.
Variable 7. Appropriate Level of Felt Vulnerability. When a person feels more anxiety about the future than is warranted, he or she may behave defensively, hunkering down in ways that preclude innovation and adaptation to changing circumstances. On the other hand, when a person conceals information that might be shared with stakeholders, he or she creates two problems instead of one. First, once embarrassing information is revealed, one surely will suffer embarrassment. And second, when that happens, she or he also is likely to be blamed for a cover-up. Researchers have found that liars and concealers often tend to under-estimate the likelihood of being found out.
We now turn to some elements of effective communication suggested by – but not limited to – authenticity principles.
Element 1. Truthfulness. Called fact accuracy in some analyses, this element involves the avoidance of making statements which, based upon reasonable consideration and checking, appear to be untrue or of questionable truth value.
Element 2. Openness. Surely a couple develops a satisfying personal relationship primarily when both parties share their feelings, frustrations, plans, and beliefs fully over a broad range of topic areas. Such sharing seems needed to create mutual understanding and sympathy. Also, much employee communication is devoted to enhancement of shared meaning and beliefs about a firm’s mission, strategy, prospects, etc. This relates closely to comprehensiveness, communication about fundamental or core matters, caring, and relevance. Implied here is a concern for impression accuracy – making statements that people who are neutral – and those who support all sides on an issue – regard as fair and reasonable. Also, lack of timeliness in communication may contribute to suspicion that one or both parties in a relationship are untrustworthy.
Taken together, elements 1 and 2 suggest a third element.
Element 3. Candor. Undoubtedly, truthfulness and openness sometimes require expressing ideas or conveying information that may be embarrassing to both sender and receiver in the communication process. This can be difficult at times. But it also can contribute to mutual trust and understanding, loyalty, and other dependent variables mentioned earlier.
Attainment of the above elements seems unlikely in the absence of element 4.
Element 4. Willingness and ability to listen – even to positions quite different from one’s own. This author has emphasized the importance of breadth of perspective – working to understand those quite different from one’s self. Various observers have noted that university communication and English departments tend to emphasize writing and speaking. However, until recently, few schools have offered classes in listening. Listening takes patience. It is necessary if one is to understand what is relevant and what isn’t. It also surely contributes to responsiveness. Counselors appreciate that, when you listen carefully to another person, you really show respect and caring for that individual. You make understandings more clear in the process. And, when you listen patiently and carefully, you show you are accessible to that other person.
Listening also seems important because it contributes to element 5.
Element 5. Study of the client’s social, political, economic and cultural context. Comprehensiveness requires attention to context – a central focus in determining relevance and the fundamental character of messages. That, in turn, is necessary to listen intelligently, achieve clarity of thinking, be responsive, and show caring. Clearly one usually cannot behave compassionately or helpfully without understanding where the message recipient and other stakeholders are “coming from” when viewed in context.
The remaining five elements are highlighted in twelve-step programs.
Element 6. One must be non-judgmental in communication. When you convey to a partner or colleague that you disapprove of his or her background or behavior, he or she usually tends to become defensive. This, in turn, precludes candid two-way communication and two-way sharing of ideas, plans and meanings.
Element 7. One should not attempt to control others within a relationship. An alcoholic or drug-addicted partner often behaves in a chaotic, unpredictable way. A spouse or colleague may frequently be asked to bail this partner out of jail, pay bills that he or she does not handle responsibly, and so on. Since the addict’s partner is counted on to take control of situations, he or she tends to develop a rather domineering, controlling personality, reducing openness, truthfulness, and candor of communication. Al-Anon, a 12-step program for addicts’ family members, emphasizes the importance of reigning in such tendencies. One often must let his or her addicted loved ones suffer the consequences of what they do. Only then will they be forced to come to grips with the need to control their addictions. Al-Anon literature tells the family member, “You did not create the addiction. You cannot cure it. And you cannot control it.”
Element 8. Secrecy within a collectivity is sometimes needed to enhance openness, truthfulness and candor within it. Government officials often promote transparency, but with the caveat that they must be able to deliberate among themselves about certain things so as to insure candid, open, complete communication. Also, Al Anon demands that participants remain anonymous in dealings with the outside world so they can communicate openly among themselves. As is stated in a contemporary TV program, “What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.”
Element 9. Participants must, to a degree, feel love and caring for and about each other. Only then, it is suggested, will the openness, truthfulness, and candor mentioned above be likely.
Element 10. Dependability and predictability require consistency between words and actions — and among words stated by a given person. As noted under element 7 above, addicts are hard to deal with partly because they cannot focus well and think or behave in a logical, linear fashion. They often do not do what they say they will when they say they will do it. As the saying goes, “They may talk the talk very well, but they do not walk the walk.” Such people are difficult to trust and deal with. And their behavior clearly hampers authentic communication.
I hope these thoughts contribute in some small way to further research on and application of the principles of authentic communication.
