Author: Robert Bacal

Site owner, author, management consultant, trainer, specializing in dealing with difficult, angry, and hostile people.

Why do the same words mean different things to different people?

People get perplexed because they may say something (a word, phrase or sentence) to one person and get one reaction and say the exact same thing to anther person, and get a completely different, or even opposite reaction. Don’t words…

What is cooperative communication?

Cooperative communication is a term coined by Robert Bacal in the 1990’s to describe communication techniques that tend to encourage people to work together, or cooperate (hence the name). The opposite of cooperative communication, he called confrontational communication. After working…

What is confrontational communication?

Confrontational communication is communication (the way we interact) that tends to anger, create unnecessary conflict, and damage relationships at home and at work. It was defined by Robert Bacal, along with it’s opposite, cooperative communication Confrontational communication involves a wide…

Why is it important that all parties in communication have the “same type of conversation?

Different Communication Purposes Breeds Misunderstanding People communicate for different reasons and in different ways. There are different kinds of conversations. When two people are communicating for different purposes, or having “different conversations”, there’s a good possibility that conflict and misunderstanding…

Why and how is email communication different from any other medium? And some communication theory to boot.

To understand how electronic mail is different than ANY other medium we need to look at a little bit of painless communication theory. Before we do, a comment on some models of communication you may have come across in the…

Why is most communication training misleading?

Unfortunately, much of what is taught in common communication training and seminars is based on an out-moded and out of date understanding about how human communication actually works. Many seminars teach that communication involves a sender and a receiver, and…