Interpersonal gap

In these writings, Wallen focuses on the process of communication, not the underlying motives, drives, traits, attitudes, or personality characteristics of the individual.

He had also been president of the Oregon Psychological Association and fellow of the National Training Laboratories (NTL) Institute for Applied Behavioral Science in Washington, D.C.

According to Chinmaya and Vargo, "Wallen...integrated the work of many scholars including Allport (1949), Hayakawa (1964), Heider (1958), Korzybski (1958), Lewin (1926, 1948, 1951), and Rank (1941, 1968) into a systematic theory of communication.

While this unorthodox approach allowed educators to freely distribute his mimeographed works, it also hampered the spread of his theories outside of the circle of his immediate colleagues in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

Wallen's work was also spread through the extensive publications of another Lippitt student, Richard Schmuck, of the Center for the Advanced Study of Educational Administration at the University of Oregon.

The interpersonal gap also became a core theory in the T-group and organization development methods of Robert P. Crosby, who worked closely with Wallen from 1968 to 1975.

During Crosby's career in organization development, he used the interpersonal gap model in numerous culture change and performance improvement initiatives, most famously during the PECO nuclear turnaround following the shutdown of the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station for human performance issues by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1987.

Chinmaya and Vargo conclude their paper thusly: "One of the leaders in the study of the nature and process of communication is John Wallen.

As part of the model, Wallen identified four key skills (behavioral specifics, feeling description, perception check and paraphrase)[10] that became the cornerstone of the T-group-based experiential training developed by Crosby.

According to Wallen's interpersonal gap paper,[12] "The most basic and recurring problems in social life stem from what you intend and the actual effect of your actions on others."

As described in the self-improvement book Fight, Flight, Freeze, "Wallen's theory is that each of us has intentions in every interaction (we intend a certain impact), we translate (or encode) our intentions into words and actions, the people we are interacting with translate (decode) our words and actions, and the decoding determines the initial emotional impact on them,"[13] as illustrated in the following graph: In Wallen's model there is ample potential for misunderstanding at any step in the process, beginning with understanding oneself - that is, with having clarity about what impact one really wants in any given interaction.