First social gathering of “Ambassadors for Assertive Communication” 第一次的“平等溝通大使”聯誼會

First social gathering of “Ambassadors for Assertive Communication”

Since graduating last June, the participants of the 1st Assertive Communication Workshop have not had a chance to catch up with each other. Finally, we were able to meet for Chinese Yum-Cha lunch in Chinatown on Easter Saturday. There were 10 of us, just perfect for a round table.

After the initial greetings, I raised two questions:
1. Who would be interested to be part of a steering committee to help produce an ‘Assertive Communication’ DVD?
2. What format and how often would our future meetings be?

A couple of participants expressed their interests in producing the DVD and had given me their availabilities. We also discussed how often should this group meet and we came to the conclusion that it would be better to plan meeting monthly over a Sat lunch gathering. If someone missed a meeting, s/he didn’t have to wait too long for the next meeting. We have set the date of the next 3 meetings to be 22 May, 19th June, 17th July.

Having settled these 2 issues, I asked the participants to go around the table to share a little bit about how successful they had been practising assertiveness in the past 9 months. The male participant who brought along his ‘better half’ found the communication between them improved a lot. His wife also agreed and shared with us how her husband used to be a person of few words were expressing his thoughts and feelings to her much more. This was a very favourable outcome indeed!

A female participant, who works in the finance department of a very busy company, told us some extremely challenging situations she encountered at work. I started by refreshing everyone’s memory on the basic principle of assertive communication: express one’s feelings and thoughts, understand one’s own entitlements and responsibilities. Last but not least, respect the other person in the communication equation as an independent individual and show appreciation of what s/he has done to get to this point in time. After my briefing, a few participants took turns to share their own experiences: some successful stories!

To me, this was the perfect support group that I could hope for! Before everyone arrived, I chatted to one of the participants. She asked me whether I would consider running an advance Assertiveness course. I told her the core content and the skills taught at the last workshop were the ‘cherry picked’ skills that required lots of practice. I thought what the participants need was to share their experience in a group and refine their skills by doing a couple of role plays (like what we did in the classroom before). The important point is not to be afraid of failures, but have the gut to grasp the opportunity (i.e. at the right time) to practise assertive communication in everyday life. Sure, it has to be practised with the right person and at the right place. These were the 3 caveats we discussed before.

The discussion we had at this first gathering was the classic example of a dynamic group with inputs from everyone. I should claim some credits for facilitating the discussion. This is so encouraging for me personally. I could see the participants swang so smoothly back into their usual group dynamic that have been built up previously. When I was planning the Assertive Communication Workshop, I always hoped to built-in a maintenance phase, which meant continued work (unpaid) for me. However, after this first gathering, I am very confident that all my effort in persevering with this mental health education program was very worthwhile.

Oh no, I forgot to take a photo to document this triumph!

第一次的“平等溝通大使”聯誼會

第一期‘平等溝通’訓練課程的學員自從去年6月完滿結業之後，大家都各有各忙﹐一直都沒有機會相約聚舊。終於在復活節的週末相約到唐人街的‘大中國’酒樓飲茶兼午膳。大家都很踴躍參加﹐足足有10個人，坐滿一張大圓臺。

寒喧一番之後，我向大家提出兩個問題：
1。誰有興趣參與制作‘平等溝通’影碟的籌劃工作？
2。這個‘平等溝通大使’聚集將以什麼形句行?

有一兩位學員表示他們的有興趣參與制作影碟，他們並給了我他的空閑的時間。我們還討論了相隔多久聚會一次﹐最後我們的結論是，最好是每月舉辦一次"週六午餐聚會"。如果有人錯過了一次聚會，他並不需要等太久才有下一次的聚會。我們已定下未來 3次的聚會日期為5月22日，6月19日和7月17日。

解決這兩個問題之後，我請與會者輪流分享一下在過去 9個月來﹐如何在生活上應用‘平等溝通’? 有一位帶同他的賢內助來的男學員說他發覺兩夫婦之間的溝通和交流改善了很多。他的妻子也同意﹐並且跟我們分享她的丈夫以往是沒有幾句話說的﹐現在就很樂於多講幾句話﹐向她表達他的想法和感受。這真的是一個非常理想的結果，！

由一位在一個非常繁忙的公司的財務部工作的女學員﹐告訴我們一些她在工作中遇到的﹐極具挑戰的情況 。我簡單的重新講述了一些平等溝通的基本原則：表達自己的感情和想法，了解自己的權利和責任﹐最重要的是尊重對方作為一個有獨立思想判斷能力的個體，還要表達明瞭對方也有難處和已經盡了很大努力。在我的介紹後，我就邀請些與會者輪流分享自己的經驗：成功或失敗的故事都無拘！

對我來說，這是我心目中很理想的互助支持小組！大家還未到齊之前，我跟其中一個參與者聊天﹐她問我是否會考慮舉辦深造班。我告訴她第一期訓練班的核心內容和講授的技能是經過精挑細選在濃縮而成﹐七個星期的時間跟本是太匆促﹐ 學員最需要的是大量的實踐應用。所以我認為學員如果能夠繼續以小組的形式分享他們的經驗，改善自己的平等溝通技能﹐多練習角色扮演（一如我們自前在課堂上做的一樣）。值得一提的是不要害怕失敗，但把握機會（即在恰當的時間），以在日常生活中實踐平等溝通的精神。當然，也必須跟合適的人會在正確的地方應用這套技巧。這是我在課堂上時常提醒大家的。

剛才大家的分享和討論正是一個經典的例子: 大家都很投入﹐小組也很有動力﹐各人似乎都有所得著。我也要記上我的功勞 (一笑)! 我看到大家如此投入﹐一下子就回到往日上課的融洽氣氛﹐這對我個人來說也實在令人鼓舞。當我規劃這套平等溝通的課程，我一直希望能建立在一個 "維繫"階段 (maintenance phase) ，這意味著我要在七個星期的課程完成後還要持續的工作。然而，在這第一次會議上，我感到很有信心，我所有的努力，鍥而不捨地推廣這套"心理衛生教育課程"真是非常有意思的。