Thomas Gordon Quotes & Sayings

We know that when people learn to communicate effectively with each other, their lives and their relationships can be truly transformed. This book gives people both a way of expressing their needs congruently and non-blamefully and a way of listening so others feel not just heard, but understood. — Thomas Gordon

You acquire more influence with young people when you give up using your power to control them ... and the more you use your power to try to control people the less influence you'll have on their lives. — Thomas Gordon

Readers who have owned animals will appreciate how difficult it would be to train a dog to play exclusively in his own yard, to fetch his sweater whenever he sees it is raining outside, or to be generous in sharing his dog biscuits with other dogs. Yet these same people would not even question the feasibility of trying to use reward and punishment to teach their children the same behaviors. — Thomas Gordon

Power suppresses creativity and productivity; it is hazardous to the health and well-being of both the controller and the controllee. Power generates the forces that will inevitably destroy or replace it; power bites its own tail; it stifles creative dissent; it extinguishes trust, fellowship, intimacy, and love; power entraps the controller as it enslaves the controllee. — Thomas Gordon

Competition and rivalry between the members of a group are the antithesis of the cooperation and team play needed in an effective management group. This is why team building is an empty abstraction for a group whose leader controls with power. — Thomas Gordon

It is one of those simple but beautiful paradoxes of life: When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how we wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being. — Thomas Gordon

True honour is an attachment to honest and beneficent principles, and a good reputation; and prompts a man to do good to others, and indeed to all men, at his own cost, pains, or peril. False honour is a pretence to this character, but does things that destroy it: And the abuse of honour is called honour, by those who from that good word borrow credit to act basely, rashly, or foolishly. — Thomas Gordon

Active Listening provides parents with a way of moving in and offering to help the child define the problem for herself, and starting up the process of problem-solving within the child. — Thomas Gordon

But what if your kid runs into the street in front of a car? Don't you have to use Method I? ... If a child develops a habit of running into the street, a parent might first try to talk to the child about the dangers of cars, walk her around the edge of the yard, and tell her that anything beyond is not safe, show her a picture of a child hit by a car, build a fence around the yard, or watch her when she is playing in the front yard for a couple of days, reminding her each time she goes beyond the limits. Even if I took the punishment approach, I would never risk my child's life on the assumption that punishment alone would keep her from going into the street. I would want to employ more certain methods in any event. — Thomas Gordon

An adolescent does not rebel against his parents. He rebels against their power. If parents would rely less on power and more on non-power methods to influence their children from infancy on, there would be little for children to rebel against when they become adolescents ... parents inevitably run out of power, and sooner than they think. — Thomas Gordon

When leaders acquire the skills that enable them to release the productive potential and tap the collective capabilities of the group, who knows what positive results will be achieved? Some of them may move mountains. — Thomas Gordon

Most parents hate to experience conflict, are deeply troubled when it occurs, and are quite confused about how to handle it constructively. Actually, it would be a rare relationship if over a period of time one person's needs did not conflict with the other's. When any two people (or groups) coexist, conflict is bound to occur just because people are different, think differently, have different needs and wants that sometimes do not match. — Thomas Gordon