TITLE : FACE TO FACE SKILLS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO INTERACTIVE SKILLS. 2ND ED.

Preface

This book is about behaviour in face to face encounters or interactions. It argues that behaviour is critical in human relationships precisely because it is the bit of us that is readily evident to other people. Their attitudes towards and, more importantly, their behaviour towards us are determined largely by our behaviour towards them. This interaction between people's behaviour is important because affects what is achieved or not achieved. This means that each of us has behavioural responsibilities; and interactive skills are concerned with meeting those responsibilities through being thoughtful and thus consciously employing certain behaviours in certain situations.

In many ways the interactive skills approach, in common with other approaches that seek to help people to modify their behaviour, makes unpalatable demands on us. It mands specificity rather than ambiguity, discipline rather an disorder, conscious control rather than spontaneity. It io assumes that interactive skills, unrelieved by gimmicks or golden rules, have to be learned and worked at continuously lest we fall into unthinking modes of behaviour. Initially, this may seem an unnatural struggle but, as with the acquisition of any skill, with practice the skills become absorbed as an unobtrusive part of us. When you are earning to ride a bicycle it is faster to walk: when you are karning to think about behaviour it is easier not to!

Any approach that acknowledges the influence of behaviour is bound to arouse ethical concerns. For the most part these concerns are healthy and help to safeguard us against manipulative practices. Often, however, these concerns lead to an ostrich-like refusal to recognize behaviour as an influential factor at all or to the absurd claim that all that matters is that your behaviour should be an accurate reflection of your underlying feelings. Is it unethical to admit to trying to control behaviour so that it is appropriate to the circumstances of a situation? It depends when and how it is done of course and this is precisely the line taken by an interactive skills approach: that there is a time and a place for every behaviour and that the crucial skill is deciding when and where. This book unashamedly encourages you to practise the skills involved in arranging your behaviour so that it is 'in step' with objectives and the circumstances of the situ- ation. It does so believing that we desperately need to learn to interact more competently in all our encounters whether at work or at home.

Interactive skills, and behavioural approaches in general, are often criticized as being manipulative. Naturally, this point is taken up at intervals throughout the text but suffice at this stage to say that manipulation involves being furtive, clandestine and ambiguous. Interactive skills, on the other hand, involve being open and explicit. Objectives, for example, cannot be shared between people unless they are in a form capable of articulation. Similarly, things cannot be fruitfully agreed, or disagreed for that matter, unless specific communication skills are employed: trust cannot grow unless there is sufficient match between what is said and what is done, and so on. Interactive skills, like any other skills, are amoral. They can be used for the forces of good or for the forces of evil. You can use your skills to sell a good product or an inadequate one, to persuade people to a proper or improper course of action, to help people subscribe to mutually advantageous objectives or to trick them into subscribing to selfish one-sided ones. One of the best safeguards against the misuse of interactive skills is to have as many people as possible actively employing the five basic skills described later. The more skilful and behaviourally competent we are, the less likely it is that we shall fall prey to manipulative practices either as a consumer or a purveyor. The preceding paragraphs appeared in the preface to the first edition of this book. In the ten years or so since then, interactive skills have become more widely accepted as a set of legitimate and learnable skills. My impression is that it is now easier to convince people that their behavioural style is more made than born, and that they can, if they wish, choose how to behave in their face to face dealings with people. The old pessimistic arguments that behaviour is instinctive and that a leopard cannot change its spots are heard less often.

Also I detect much more willingness tc acknowledge that the way people behave in their dealings with other people is often the deciding factor. This is especially true in customer dealings where many businesses have realized that the quality of the interface between them and their customers is as important as the quality of their products.

Ten years ago I was almost apologetic about using the word 'behaviour'. Now it can be used unashamedly without people bracing themselves for something 'odd' or accusing me of using jargon. This is not to suggest that interactive skills have 'arrived', in the sense that people are significantly more skilful than they were a decade ago. I do, however, maintain that the general level of behavioural awareness is much higher. Awareness is a prerequisite for change though not, alas, a sufficient condition to ensure it. Awareness plus skills is the recipe that does the trick. This book aims to help on both counts; to raise your awareness about behavioural matters and to show you how to further develop your interactive skills.

I have made a number of changes to the original text, the most important of which are some modifications to the behaviour categories introduced in Chapter 5; a complete update of Chapter 7 in the light of my research into the effects certain behaviours have on people's reactions; and the addition of a new chapter on non-verbal behaviour (Chapter 8).

Peter Honey