Goal: Let them know what they did was wrong.
A Learning Conversation
Assumption: I know what I intended, and the impact their actions had on me. I don’t and can’t know what’s in their head.
Goal: Share the impact on me, and find out what they were thinking. Also find out what impact I’m having on them.
* * *
A Battle of Messages
Assumption: It’s all their fault. (Or it’s all my fault.)
Goal: Get them to admit blame and take responsibility for making amends.
A Learning Conversation
Assumption: We have probably both contributed to this mess.
Goal: Understand the contribution system: how our actions interact to produce this result.
* * *
* * *
The Feelings Conversation
Challenge: The situation is emotionally charged.
* * *
A Battle of Messages
Assumption: Feelings are irrelevant and wouldn’t be helpful to share. (Or, my feelings are their fault and they need to hear about them.)
Goal: Avoid talking about feelings. (Or, let ’em have it!)
A Learning Conversation
Assumption: Feelings are the heart of the situation. Feelings are usually complex. I may have to dig a bit to understand my feelings.
Goal: Address feelings (mine and theirs) without judgments or attributions. Acknowledge feelings before problem-solving.
* * *
The Identity Conversation
Challenge: The situation threatens our identity.
* * *
A Battle of Messages
Assumption: I’m competent or incompetent, good or bad, lovable or unlovable. There is no in-between.
Goal: Protect my all-or-nothing self-image.
A Learning Conversation
Assumption: There may be a lot at stake psychologically for both of us. Each of us is complex, neither of us is perfect.
Goal: Understand the identity issues on the line for each of us. Build a more complex self-image to maintain my balance better.
* * *
This book will help you turn difficult conversations into learning conversations by helping you handle each of the Three Conversations more productively and improving your ability to handle all three at once.
The next five chapters explore in depth the mistakes people commonly make in each of the Three Conversations. This will help you shift to a learning stance when it’s your difficult conversation and you aren’t feeling very open. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 investigate the three assumptions in the “What Happened?” Conversation. Chapter 5 shifts to the Feelings Conversation, and Chapter 6 takes up the Identity Conversation. These chapters will help you sort out your thoughts and feelings. This preparation is essential before you step into any difficult conversation.
In the final six chapters we turn to the conversation itself, beginning with when to raise an issue and when to let go, and if you’re going to raise it, what you can hope to achieve and what you can’t — what purposes make sense. Then we turn to the mechanics of how to talk productively about the issues that matter to you: finding the best ways to begin, inquiring and listening to learn, expressing yourself with power and clarity, and solving problems jointly, including how to get the conversation back on track when the going gets rough. Finally, we return to how Jack might have a follow-up conversation with Michael to illustrate how this all might look in practice.
Shift to a Learning Stance
• • • • •
The “What Happened?” Conversation
• • • • •
2
Stop Arguing About Who’s Right: Explore Each Other’s Stories
Michael’s version of the story is different from Jack’s:
In the past couple of years I’ve really gone out of my way to try to help Jack out, and it seems one thing or another has always gone wrong. And instead of assuming that the client is always right, he argues with me! I just don’t know how I can keep using him.
But what really made me angry was the way Jack was making excuses about the chart instead of just fixing it. He knew it wasn’t up to professional standards. And the revenue graphs were the critical part of the financial presentation.
One of the hallmarks of the “What Happened?” Conversation is that people disagree. What’s the best way to save for retirement? How much money should we put into advertising? Should the neighborhood boys let your daughter play stick ball? Is the brochure up to professional standards?
Disagreement is not a bad thing, nor does it necessarily lead to a difficult conversation. We disagree with people all the time, and often no one cares very much.
But other times, we care a lot. The disagreement seems at the heart of what is going wrong between us. They won’t agree with what we want them to agree with and they won’t do what we need them to do. Whether or not we end up getting our way, we are left feeling frustrated, hurt, or misunderstood. And often the disagreement continues into the future, wreaking havoc whenever it raises its head.
When disagreement occurs, arguing may seem natural, even reasonable. But it’s not helpful.
Why We Argue, and Why It Doesn’t Help
Think about your own difficult conversations in which there are important disagreements over what is really going on or what should be done. What’s your explanation for what’s causing the problem?
We Think They Are the Problem
In a charitable mood, you may think, “Well, everyone has their opinion,” or, “There are two sides to every story.” But most of us don’t really buy that. Deep down, we believe that the problem, put simply, is them.
They’re selfish. “My girlfriend won’t go to a couples’ counselor with me. She says it’s a waste of money. I say it’s important to me, but she doesn’t care.”
They’re naive. “My daughter’s got these big ideas about going to New York and ‘making it’ in the theater. She just doesn’t understand what she’s up against.”
They’re controlling. “We always do everything my boss’s way. It drives me crazy, because he acts like his ideas are better than anyone else’s, even when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
They’re irrational. “My Great Aunt Bertha sleeps on this sagging old mattress. She’s got terrible back problems, but no matter what I say, she refuses to let me buy her a new mattress. Everyone in the family tells me, ‘Rory, Aunt Bertha is just crazy. You can’t reason with her.’ I guess it’s true.”
If this is what we’re thinking, then it’s not surprising that we end up arguing. Rory, for example, cares about her Aunt Bertha. She wants to help, and she has the capacity to help. So Rory does what we all do: If the other person is stubborn, we assert harder in an attempt to break through whatever is keeping them from seeing what is sensible. (“If you would just try a new mattress, you’d see how much more comfortable it is!”)
If the other person is naive, we try to educate them about how life really is, and if they are being selfish or manipulative, we may try to be forthright and call them on it. We persist in the hope that what we say will eventually make a difference.
But instead, our persistence leads to arguments. And these arguments lead nowhere. Nothing gets settled. We each feel unheard or poorly treated. We’re frustrated not only because the other person is being so unreasonable, but also because we feel powerless to do anything about it. And the constant arguing isn’t doing the relationship any good.
Yet we’re not sure what to do instead. We can’t just pretend there is no disagreement, that it doesn’t matter, or that it’s all the same to us. It does matter, it’s not all the same to us. That’s why we feel so strongly about it in the first place. But if arguing leads us nowhere, what else can we do?
The first thing we should do is hear from Aunt Bertha.
They Think We Are the Problem
Aunt Bertha would be the first to agree that her mattress is indeed old and b
attered. “It’s the one I shared with my husband for forty years, and it makes me feel safe,” she says. “There are so many other changes in my life, it’s nice to have a little haven that stays the same.” Keeping it also provides Bertha with a sense of control over her life. When she complains, it’s not because she wants answers, it’s because she likes the connection she feels when she keeps people current on her daily comings and goings.
About Rory, Aunt Bertha has this to say: “I love her, but Rory can be a difficult person. She doesn’t listen or care much about what other people think, and when I tell her that, she gets very angry and unpleasant.” Rory thinks the problem is Aunt Bertha. Aunt Bertha, it seems, thinks the problem is Rory.
This raises an interesting question: Why is it always the other person who is naive or selfish or irrational or controlling? Why is it that we never think we are the problem? If you are having a difficult conversation, and someone asks why you disagree, how come you never say, “Because what I’m saying makes absolutely no sense”?
We Each Make Sense in Our Story of What Happened
We don’t see ourselves as the problem because, in fact, we aren’t. What we are saying does make sense. What’s often hard to see is that what the other person is saying also makes sense. Like Rory and Aunt Bertha, we each have different stories about what is going on in the world. In Rory’s story, Rory’s thoughts and actions are perfectly sensible. In Aunt Bertha’s story, Aunt Bertha’s thoughts and actions are equally sensible. But Rory is not just a character in her own story, she is also a visiting character in Aunt Bertha’s story. And in Aunt Bertha’s story, what Rory says seems pushy and insensitive. In Rory’s story, what Aunt Bertha says sounds irrational.
In the normal course of things, we don’t notice the ways in which our story of the world is different from other people’s. But difficult conversations arise at precisely those points where important parts of our story collide with another person’s story. We assume the collision is because of how the other person is; they assume it’s because of how we are. But really the collision is a result of our stories simply being different, with neither of us realizing it. It’s as if Princess Leia were trying to talk to Huck Finn. No wonder we end up arguing.
Arguing Blocks Us from Exploring Each Other’s Stories
But arguing is not only a result of our failure to see that we and the other person are in different stories — it is also part of the cause. Arguing inhibits our ability to learn how the other person sees the world. When we argue, we tend to trade conclusions — the “bottom line” of what we think: “Get a new mattress” versus “Stop trying to control me.” “I’m going to New York to make it big” versus “You’re naive.” “Couples counseling is helpful” versus “Couples counseling is a waste of time.”
But neither conclusion makes sense in the other person’s story. So we each dismiss the other’s argument. Rather than helping us understand our different views, arguing results in a battle of messages. Rather than drawing us together, arguing pulls us apart.
Arguing Without Understanding Is Unpersuasive
Arguing creates another problem in difficult conversations: it inhibits change. Telling someone to change makes it less rather than more likely that they will. This is because people almost never change without first feeling understood.
Consider Trevor’s conversation with Karen. Trevor is the financial administrator for the state Department of Social Services. Karen is a social worker with the department. “I cannot get Karen to turn in her paperwork on time,” explains Trevor. “I’ve told her over and over that she’s missing the deadlines, but it doesn’t help. And when I bring it up, she gets annoyed.”
Of course we know there’s another side to this story. Unfortunately, Trevor doesn’t know what it is. Trevor is telling Karen what she is supposed to do, but has not yet engaged her in a two-way conversation about the issue. When Trevor shifts his purposes from trying to change Karen’s behavior — arguing why being late is wrong — to trying first to understand Karen, and then to be understood by her, the situation improves dramatically:
Karen described how overwhelmed and overworked she is. She puts all of her energy into her clients, who are very needy. She was feeling like I didn’t appreciate that, which actually, I really didn’t. On my end, I explained to her how I have to go through all kinds of extra work when she submits her paperwork late, and I explained the extra work in detail to her. She felt badly about that, and it was clear that she just hadn’t thought about it from my perspective. She promised to put a higher priority on getting her work in on time, and so far she has.
Finally, each has learned something, and the stage for meaningful change is set.
To get anywhere in a disagreement, we need to understand the other person’s story well enough to see how their conclusions make sense within it. And we need to help them understand the story in which our conclusions make sense. Understanding each other’s stories from the inside won’t necessarily “solve” the problem, but as with Karen and Trevor, it’s an essential first step.
Different Stories: Why We Each See the World Differently
As we move away from arguing and toward trying to understand the other person’s story, it helps to know why people have different stories in the first place. Our stories don’t come out of nowhere. They aren’t random. Our stories are built in often unconscious but systematic ways. First, we take in information. We experience the world — sights, sounds, and feelings. Second, we interpret what we see, hear, and feel; we give it all meaning. Then we drawconclusions about what’s happening. And at each step, there is an opportunity for different people’s stories to diverge.
Where Our Stories Come From
Put simply, we all have different stories about the world because we each take in different information and then interpret this information in our own unique ways.
In difficult conversations, too often we trade only conclusions back and forth, without stepping down to where most of the real action is: the information and interpretations that lead each of us to see the world as we do.
1. We Have Different Information
There are two reasons we all have different information about the world. First, as each of us proceeds through life — and through any difficult situation — the information available to us is overwhelming. We simply can’t take in all of the sights, sounds, facts, and feelings involved in even a single encounter. Inevitably, we end up noticing some things and ignoring others. And what we each choose to notice and ignore will be different. Second, we each have access to different information.
We Notice Different Things. Doug took his four-year-old nephew, Andrew, to watch a homecoming parade. Sitting on his uncle’s shoulders, Andrew shouted with delight as football players, cheerleaders, and the school band rolled by on lavish floats. Afterward Andrew exclaimed, “That was the best truck parade I’ve ever seen!”
Each float, it seems, was pulled by a truck. Andrew, truck obsessed as he was, saw nothing else. His Uncle Doug, truck indifferent, hadn’t noticed a single truck. In a sense, Andrew and his uncle watched completely different parades.
Like Doug and Andrew, what we notice has to do with who we are and what we care about. Some of us pay more attention to feelings and relationships. Others to status and power, or to facts and logic. Some of us are artists, others are scientists, others pragmatists. Some of us want to prove we’re right; others want to avoid conflict or smooth it over. Some of us tend to see ourselves as victims, others as heroes, observers, or survivors. The information we attend to varies accordingly.
Of course, neither Doug nor Andrew walked away from the parade thinking, “I enjoyed my particular perspective on the parade based on the information I paid attention to.” Each walked away thinking, “I enjoyed the parade.” Each assumes that what he paid attention to was what was significant about the experience. Each assumes he has “the facts.”
In a more serious setting, Randy and Daniel, coworkers on an
assembly line, experience the same dynamic. They’ve had a number of tense conversations about racial issues. Randy, who is white, believes that the company they work for has a generally good record on minority recruitment and promotion. He notices that of the seven people on his assembly team, two are African Americans and one is Latino, and that the head of the union is Latino. He has also learned that his supervisor is originally from the Philippines. Randy believes in the merits of a diverse workplace and has noticed approvingly that several people of color have recently been promoted.
Daniel, who is Korean American, has a different view. He has been on the receiving end of unusual questions about his qualifications. He has experienced several racial slurs from coworkers and one from a foreman. These experiences are prominent in his mind. He also knows of several minority coworkers who were overlooked for promotion, and notices that a disproportionate number of the top executives at the company are white. And Daniel has listened repeatedly to executives who talk as if the only two racial categories that mattered were white and African American.
While Randy and Daniel have some information that is shared, they have quite a bit of information that’s not. Yet each assumes that the facts are plain, and his view is reality. In an important sense, it’s as if Randy and Daniel work at different companies.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most Page 4