Poor Paraverbal Communication Leads to Office Referrals...so Let's Fix It!

The third unit of CPI’s Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Training is short, scheduled to be just 15 minutes. However, its focus is “Paraverbal Communication,” and if your organization requires humans to speak to other humans, then this unit is pretty important…so we need to make those 15 minutes count!

During my work as a school administrator, paraverbal communication mistakes were the cause of office referrals more than anything else. Often, students made mistakes not in what they said, but in how they spoke with adults. Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t always the students whose paraverbals were negative. Often, adults push students who are already anxious or defensive by not paying attention to how they say things. They don’t realize that how they speak can be a tool to calm an individual in-crisis rather than being a weapon that escalates that person. As a result, we have to make sure our staff members internalize the messages of Unit 3!

CPI defines paraverbal communication as the vocal part of speech, excluding words. So, it’s not what we say that matters, but how we say it! This unit identifies “tone,” “volume,” and “cadence” as three ways our paraverbals can be adjusted when supporting a person who is in-crisis. The CPI eLearning webinar, which can be found at crisisprevention.com, encourages instructors to share “realistic, work-related examples” of paraverbals affecting communication. I am fortunate to have helped a teacher with her paraverbals in the past, and as a result, I have a great example! This teacher was one who almost always got along well with students; however, one particular student was storming out of her classroom when she would deliver directives. She would say things like “I need you to sit up straight.” After making his way to the office, the student she offended would explain that he did, indeed, need to sit-up straight. On one occasion, he told me that he was actually lying across the row onto the desk across from him! However, he told me that he didn’t like the way she had been speaking with him. This student, I knew, did not receive a lot of respect at home.

When I went to this teacher to discuss my repeat visitor to the office (he had stormed from her classroom multiple times), she was at a loss. She tried to show me how she had delivered some of the different directives she had given. What we discovered was that it wasn’t her volume that affected her directives (she had given some directives at almost a whisper), and she didn’t think it was her tone. She knew that the student didn’t always receive respect at home and thought she was being cognizant of her tone, even when the student needed redirection. However, when we used the CPI model for paraverbal communication to break down her conversations with him, we discovered that she may have been speaking with a cadence that was much too slow. She may have been unconsciously condescending because of the pace with which she was delivering words.

“You. Need. To Sit Up. Straight.” Is how her words sounded to the student.

I like to share this story in my trainings because paraverbal communication is a complicated topic, and even the best communicators can sometimes deliver words – sometimes subconsciously – in a way that negatively affects another person. But having these three easy areas to look at when our words are escalating another person gives us three tools that we can use to fix a problem that may otherwise be hard to decipher.

If you are having trouble coming up with a real-life example of paraverbal communication to use in your training, I encourage you to take some time before your next training to consider your past experiences in two different ways. First, you might look at successes. Are there times you have managed to calm a person in-crisis? What words did you say? More importantly, how did you say those words? I bet the tone, volume, or cadence you used affected that other person. Perhaps this was not a client at your facility; it may have been a friend or a member of your family…perhaps it was one of your children. The second way you can find real-life examples is by considering some of the nightmarish ways others have communicated with you. When is the last time someone’s words upset you? Was it what they said, or was it how the person said it?

No matter how you go about finding your realistic examples, your time in brainstorming will be worth it. A change in the way others view paraverbal communication in your facility will lead to a noticeable change in culture.