Published on Apr 17, 2026
Many years ago, I had the pleasure and the privilege of meeting a man by the name of Dr Herbert Fensterheim. At that time, I was beginning my career as an independent management consultant specialising in Organisation Development and Management Development. I began to dabble in behavioural psychology methodologies. The branch of psychology in which I was interested focused on the pioneering work of people like Viktor Frankl who paved the way to CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). But it was Fensterheim who most attracted my attention because of his best selling book Don’t Say Yes When You Want To Say No, which he co-authored with his wife Jean Baer.
At that time, I was on an assignment in South Africa working as a consultant for a publishing company. The CEO commissioned me to find outstanding business personalities who’d written books and had established reputations in the international business world. This was when I met up with Fensterheim and Baer at their brownstone apartment in Manhattan. I was somewhat taken aback when Dr Fensterheim revealed to me that his wife had once been his patient. She had suffered from severe problems despite her outstanding ability as a bestselling author of self-help books.
I found Fensterheim’s work to be transformational. At that stage of my career, I had begun to develop my own series of successful workshops and seminars. I attribute much of the success to what I had learned from my mentors including Dr Fensterheim.
The workplace challenge
My initial role in the training business was to recruit speakers, interview them and research their material to fit the demands of different audiences. At a very early stage, I identified the need to create programmes which focused on behavioural aspects of management and leadership.
A high proportion of people in the workplace in those days reflected their struggle with “managing upwards and sideways.” It all boiled down to issues that hark back to the values and mores of a traditionalist society that was rooted in paternalism. In short, the vast majority of individuals in subordinate roles, including men and women, had been raised and educated in a way that left them lacking self-confidence.
Strangely enough, some 40 years later, the issue has not gone away despite the paradigm shifts of liberal socialisation in Western society. There are still some astonishing statistics in both the US and Europe that a high proportion of staff leave their jobs because of toxic work environments. In the US the figure stands at a staggering 60%. Employees frequently cite poor management and toxic relationships with bosses and supervisors.
This manifested itself during and after the COVID-19 pandemic when millions of people around the world were confined to working remotely, losing contact with their co-workers, customers and, of course, bosses. Challenging scenarios such as persuading and influencing others had to be distilled into limited amounts of virtual interaction. Non-verbal communication was restricted to a head-and-shoulders encounter on a small screen that eliminated important nuances that, in normal circumstances, could enhance and improve human relationships.
Instead, everything was reduced to the use of language, voice, tone and pace of speech. This was particularly challenging for those whose first language was not English. Today global business is conducted in the lingua franca of international English.
Behavioural frameworks
These issues were not new. Even before COVID, I found myself having to address the issues of toxic working relationships in the workplace. I had begun to incorporate many behavioural techniques in my programmes.
I had also discovered the work of Neil Rackham and Terry Morgan, who were influential researchers and developed the "Behaviour Analysis" (BA) method for studying verbal communication in professional settings during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They co-authored the 1977 book Behaviour Analysis in Training, which provided a framework for measuring, analysing, and improving workplace interaction.
Back in the day, they filmed over 800 hours of interaction in a business setting. They then analysed and codified the behaviours into 13 behaviours that are most commonly used in organisations around the world. They emphasised how some behaviours were positive and helpful in building relationships, and also specified behaviours which were counterproductive and potentially toxic.
At about the same time, I was introduced to the work of Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis (TA), based on psychoanalytic theory and psychotherapy, which he developed in the 1950s. This analyses social interactions through three ego states: Parent, Adult, and Child. It focuses on understanding communication patterns, or "transactions", to improve relationships, promote personal growth, and change "life scripts" or unconscious, negative repetitive behavioural patterns.
Assertiveness and communication
Berne’s theories and methodologies fitted well with Fensterheim, who focused on assertiveness skills and techniques in a very practical way. He talked about three states of behaviour: Aggressive, Passive and Assertive.
During my encounters and research with my clients, I noticed that the majority of adults in “untrained” environments flounder between aggressive and passive states of behaviour and consequently end up having to deal with situations that impede both their home and work life.
Fensterheim represented a school of thought which focused on the psychology of language. He taught that it was not what you say, but how you say it. His research indicated that there were five challenges that most people struggled with:
The fascinating aspect of dealing with these five scenarios is that they all involve learning how to express oneself when facing these challenges. It’s all about learning what to say — in other words selecting specific words in our vocabulary, assembling these as phrases or sentences which will allow us to reach the goal of achieving a workable compromise.
The methodology emphasises the importance of learning how to respond and not react. Reaction is a knee-jerk way of dealing with a threatening remark or comment. Instead, Fensterheim taught that we need to learn communication strategies involving the selection of thought-out statements and responses when faced with difficult people and scenarios.
Throughout my career I worked with people from over 35 countries, and what became fascinating to me was the fact that most of the communication techniques and behavioural skill sets were applicable in all languages in Western culture. An example of this is the word “but”, which has a negative trigger effect in conversations. In English, the word “but” can often be replaced with words like “however”, “though”, or “so”.
Emotional intelligence and non-verbal communication
In addition to learning how to communicate with words, I was introduced to the work of Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence, as well as NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) researched by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.
Emotional intelligence (EQ or EI) is the ability to recognise, understand, manage, and utilise emotions effectively in oneself and others to guide thinking, behaviour, and social interactions. It involves blending thinking and feeling to make optimal decisions, manage stress, and build stronger relationships. Key components include self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill.
I also discovered the importance and power of non-verbal communication and followed the work of Albert Mehrabian’s 7%-38%-55% rule, which states that in communication regarding feelings and attitudes, 55% of the message is conveyed through body language, 38% through tone of voice, and only 7% through spoken words.
Communication in a digital world
Now, of course, Mehrabian’s research has become less relevant in the workplace because so many people have shifted to working from home, using AI and digital platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Teams.
What is interesting is that new skill sets have emerged and need to be taught to those of us who spend the majority of our time interacting with people over virtual platforms. It is possible to enhance the effectiveness of virtual communication by applying technological features such as AI companions, chat functions, video clips, visual backgrounds, as well as learning how to adapt seated posture, eye contact, voice inflection, pace and intonation.
The use of words and language is still critical. When dealing with cross-cultural interaction, the use of the chat feature is a highly effective and powerful tool to improve comprehension and understanding.
The next phase in this comprehension augmentation is the use of new digital language translation technology such as Google Translate. All of these will help to improve self-projection and confidence during interactions.
One more fascinating psychological tool of communication is the phenomenon of the emoji. Emojis were invented by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999. These graphic symbols wield significant power by acting as non-verbal, emotional cues that enhance clarity, empathy, and engagement.
Final thoughts
While digital technology can enhance and, in given contexts, partially replicate one-to-one social interaction, it cannot entirely replace the psychological, emotional, and physical depth of in-person, face-to-face relationships.
Already we are seeing that too much dependence on digital communication has resulted in significant, long-term impacts on social skills, psychological development and mental health. Many organisations are now adapting their recruitment tactics, placing greater emphasis on what used to be called “soft skills”.
In other words, they have rediscovered the importance and power of communication and language as an essential armoury of skill sets and tools in the turbulent 21st century business world.
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Published on Apr 17, 2026 by Robert Hersowitz