Principles of Supportive Communication

Principles of Supportive Communication

When people communicate, they exchange their ideas, thoughts, and messages. As an act to transfer information, communication is the bridge between individuals or organizations. However, not all the communications are efficient. Some negative communication, such as person-oriented, incongruent and evaluative communication, will harm the relationship. On the contrary, the positive communication, such as the supportive communication, brings benefits to individuals and organizations, avoiding negative influence and enhancing the interpersonal relationship (Cole 1999).

Supportive communication skills were first emphasized in business field in 1990, when people began to realize that it can help build relationships and demonstrate sensitivity to their colleagues. At that time, companies' managers started to follow their own principles to communicate with others in an efficient way and some business books mentioned these skills as a part of business communication skills. In 1998, Carlopio and Andrewartha first selected the relevant skills and then summarized them into eight principles. Recently, their principles has been widely considered as the most precise version. In this essay, the principles of supportive communication, which is based on the study of Carlopio and Andrewartha (1998), will be first explained. Secondly, it will describe the applications of supportive communication in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) project. Finally, their contribution will be evaluated by using research results.

According to Carlopio and Andrewartha (1998), there are eight principles of supportive communication. First of all, supportive communication is problem-oriented rather than person-oriented. Problem-oriented communication focuses on the event, while Person-oriented communication is based on individuals. For example, for people who are facing a problem, it is more appropriate to ask whether this problem can be solved instead of criticizing them. Sometimes, even the positive person-oriented communication will not bring a harmonic relationship if it is not related to a positive behavior. For instance, when a manager give a positive assessment to the employers who did not complete their tasks, they might believe the manager is not honest.

The second principle is that supportive communication is based on congruence, not incongruence. Congruence means that individuals match their words to what they are thinking and feeling (Kapp and Vangelisti 1996). Carlopio and Andrewartha (1998, p.245) state: "When coaching and counselling, genuine, honest statements are always better than artificial of dishonest statements." For instance, when a person is talking to another person who really upset him, he should figure out the problem frankly instead of pretending to be satisfied with

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