Communication as Skill: a Critique and Alternative Proposal

Abstract

This article was written to challenge behavioral skill approaches to com munication training that teach people "how to communicate" by prescribing specific behaviors. I suggest that it is preferable to encourage people who wish to improve personal communication to devise their own new or deepened ways of communicating by helping them to enhance their understanding of themselves, others, and the various meanings that underlie human inter action. This deepened understanding would increase the resources peo ple bring to their relationships without telling them how to behave, an at tempt to reverse the current tendency to displace the interpersonal with the technological.