Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

  Often we go through an entire conversation — or indeed an entire relationship — without ever realizing that each of us is paying attention to different things, that our views are based on different information.

  We Each Know Ourselves Better Than Anyone Else Can. In addition to choosing different information, we each have access to different information. For example, others have access to information about themselves that we don’t. They know the constraints they are under; we don’t. They know their hopes, dreams, and fears; we don’t. We act as if we’ve got access to all the important information there is to know about them, but we don’t. Their internal experience is far more complex than we imagine.

  Let’s return to the example of Jack and Michael. When Michael describes what happened, he doesn’t mention anything about Jack’s staying up all night. He might not know that Jack stayed up all night, and even if he does, his “knowledge” would be quite limited compared to what Jack knows about it. Jack was there. Jack knows what it felt like as he struggled to stay awake. He knows how uncomfortable it was when the heat was turned off at midnight. He knows how angry his wife was that he had to cancel their dinner together. He knows about the anxiety he felt putting aside other important work to do Michael’s project. Jack also knows how happy he felt to be doing a favor for a friend.

  And there is plenty that Jack is not aware of. Jack doesn’t know that Michael’s client blew up just that morning over the choice of photograph in another brochure Michael had prepared. Jack doesn’t know that the revenue figures are a particularly hot topic because of questions about some of the client’s recent business decisions. Jack doesn’t know that Michael’s graphic designer has taken an unscheduled personal leave in the midst of their busiest season, affecting not just this project but others as well. Jack doesn’t know that Michael has been dissatisfied with some of Jack’s work in the past. And Jack doesn’t know how happy Michael felt to be doing a favor for a friend.

  Of course, in advance, we don’t know what we don’t know. But rather than assuming we already know everything we need to, we should assume that there is important information we don’t have access to. It’s a good bet to be true.

  2. We Have Different Interpretations

  “We never have sex,” Alvie Singer complains in the movie Annie Hall. “We’re constantly having sex,” says his girlfriend. “How often do you have sex?” asks their therapist. “Three times a week!” they reply in unison.

  A second reason we tell different stories about the world is that, even when we have the same information, we interpret it differently — we give it different meaning. I see the cup as half empty; you see it as a metaphor for the fragility of humankind. I’m thirsty; you’re a poet. Two especially important factors in how we interpret what we see are (1) our past experiences and (2) the implicit rules we’ve learned about how things should and should not be done.

  We Are Influenced by Past Experiences. The past gives meaning to the present. Often, it is only in the context of someone’s past experience that we can understand why what they are saying or doing makes any kind of sense.

  To celebrate the end of a long project, Bonnie and her co-workers scraped together the money to treat their supervisor, Caroline, to dinner at a nice restaurant. Throughout the meal, Caroline did little but complain: “Everything is overpriced,” “How can they get away with this?” and “You’ve got to be kidding. Five dollars for dessert!” Bonnie went home embarrassed and frustrated, thinking, “We knew she was cheap, but this is ridiculous. We paid so she wouldn’t have to worry about the money, and still she complained about the cost. She ruined the evening.”

  Though the story in Bonnie’s head was that Caroline was simply a cheapskate or wet blanket, Bonnie eventually decided to ask Caroline why she had such a strong reaction to the expense of eating out. Upon reflection, Caroline explained:

  I suppose it has to do with growing up during the Depression. I can still hear my mother’s voice from when I was little, getting ready to go off to school in the morning. “Carrie, there’s a nickel on the counter for your lunch!” she’d call. She was so proud to be able to buy my lunch every day. Once I got to be eight or nine, a nickel wasn’t enough to buy lunch anymore. But I never had the heart to tell her.

  Years later, even a moderately priced meal can feel like an extravagance to Caroline when filtered through the images and feelings of this experience.

  Every strong view you have is profoundly influenced by your past experiences. Where to vacation, whether to spank your kids, how much to budget for advertising — all are influenced by what you’ve observed in your own family and learned throughout your life. Often we aren’t even aware of how these experiences affect our interpretation of the world. We simply believe that this is the way things are.

  We Apply Different Implicit Rules. Our past experiences often develop into “rules” by which we live our lives. Whether we are aware of them or not, we all follow such rules. They tell us how the world works, how people should act, or how things are supposed to be. And they have a significant influence on the story we tell about what is happening between us in a difficult conversation.

  We get into trouble when our rules collide.

  Ollie and Thelma, for example, are stuck in a tangle of conflicting rules. As sales representatives, they spend a lot of time together on the road. One evening, they agreed to meet at 7:00 the next morning in the hotel lobby to finish preparing a presentation. Thelma, as usual, arrived at 7:00 sharp. Ollie showed up at 7:10. This was not the first time Ollie had arrived late, and Thelma was so frustrated that she had trouble focusing for the first twenty minutes of their meeting. Ollie was frustrated that Thelma was frustrated.

  It helps to clarify the implicit rules that each is unconsciously applying. Thelma’s rule is “It is unprofessional and inconsiderate to be late.” Ollie’s rule is “It is unprofessional to obsess about small things so much that you can’t focus on what’s important.” Because Thelma and Ollie both interpret the situation through the lens of their own implicit rule, they each see the other person as acting inappropriately.

  Our implicit rules often take the form of things people “should” or “shouldn’t” do: “You should spend money on education, but not on clothes.” “You should never criticize a colleague in front of others.” “You should never leave the toilet seat up, squeeze the toothpaste in the middle, or let the kids watch more than two hours of TV.” The list is endless.

  There’s nothing wrong with having these rules. In fact, we need them to order our lives. But when you find yourself in conflict, it helps to make your rules explicit and to encourage the other person to do the same. This greatly reduces the chance that you will be caught in an accidental duel of conflicting rules.

  3. Our Conclusions Reflect Self-Interest

  Finally, when we think about why we each tell our own stories about the world, there is no getting around the fact that our conclusions are partisan, that they often reflect our self-interest. We look for information to support our view and give that information the most favorable interpretation. Then we feel even more certain that our view is right.

  Professor Howard Raiffa of the Harvard Business School demonstrated this phenomenon when he gave teams of people a set of facts about a company. He told some of the teams they would be negotiating to buy the company, and others that they would be selling the company. He then asked each team to value the company as objectively as possible (not the price at which they would offer to buy or sell, but what they believed it was actually worth). Raiffa found that sellers, in their heart of hearts, believed the company to be worth on average 30 percent more than the independently assessed fair market value. Buyers, in turn, valued it at 30 percent less.

  Each team developed a self-serving perception without realizing they were doing so. They focused more on things that were consistent with what they wanted to believe and tended to ignore, explain away, and soon forget those that weren’t. Our colleague Roger Fis
her captured this phenomenon in a wry reflection on his days as a litigator: “I sometimes failed to persuade the court that I was right, but I never failed to persuade myself!”

  This tendency to develop unconsciously biased perceptions is very human, and can be dangerous. It calls for a dose of humility about the “rightness” of our story, especially when we have something important at stake.

  Move from Certainty to Curiosity

  There’s only one way to come to understand the other person’s story, and that’s by being curious. Instead of asking yourself, “How can they think that?!” ask yourself, “I wonder what information they have that I don’t?” Instead of asking, “How can they be so irrational?” ask, “How might they see the world such that their view makes sense?” Certainty locks us out of their story; curiosity lets us in.

  Curiosity: The Way into Their Story

  Consider the disagreement between Tony and his wife, Keiko. Tony’s sister has just given birth to her first child. The next day Keiko is getting ready to visit the hospital. To her shock, Tony says he’s not going with her to visit his sister, but instead is going to watch the football game on TV. When Keiko asks why, Tony mumbles something about this being a “big game,” and adds, “I’ll stop by the hospital tomorrow.”

  Keiko is deeply troubled by this. She thinks to herself, “What kind of person thinks football is more important than family? That’s the most selfish, shallow, ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” But she catches herself in her own certainty, and instead of saying, “How could you do such a thing?” she negotiates herself to a place of curiosity. She wonders what Tony knows that she doesn’t, how he’s seeing the world such that his decision seems to make sense.

  The story Tony tells is different from what Keiko had imagined. From the outside, Tony is watching a game on TV. But to Tony it’s a matter of his mental health. Throughout the week, he works ten hours a day under extremely stressful conditions, then comes home and plays with his two boys, doing whatever they want. After the struggle of getting them to bed, he spends time with Keiko, talking mostly about her day. Finally, he collapses into bed. For Tony, watching the game is the one time during the week when he can truly relax. His stress level goes down, almost as if he’s meditating, and this three hours to himself has a significant impact on his ability to take on the week ahead. Since Tony believes that his sister won’t care whether he comes today or tomorrow, he chooses in favor of his mental health.

  Of course, that’s not the end of the issue. Keiko needs to share her story with Tony, and then, once everything is on the table, together they can figure out what to do. But that will never happen if Keiko simply assumes she knows Tony’s story, no matter how certain she is at the outset that she does.

  What’s Your Story?

  One way to shift your stance from the easy certainty of feeling that you’ve thought about this from every possible angle is to get curious about what you don’t know about yourself. This may sound like an odd thing to worry about. After all, you’re with yourself all the time; wouldn’t you be pretty familiar with your own perspective?

  In a word, no. The process by which we construct our stories about the world often happens so fast, and so automatically, that we are not even aware of all that influences our views. For example, when we saw what Jack was really thinking and feeling during his conversation with Michael, there was nothing about the heat being turned off, or about his wife’s anger at canceling their dinner plans. Even Jack wasn’t fully aware of all the information behind his reactions.

  And what implicit rules are important to him? Jack thinks to himself, “I can’t believe the way Michael treated me,” but he is unaware that this is based on an implicit rule of how people “should” treat each other. Jack’s rule is something like “You should always show appreciation to others no matter what.” Many of us agree with this rule, but it is not a truth, just a rule. Michael’s rule might be “Good friends can get angry with each other and not take it personally.” The point isn’t whose rule is better; the point is that they are different. But Jack won’t know they’re different unless he first considers what rules underlie his own story about what happened.

  Recall the story of Andrew and his Uncle Doug at the parade. We referred to Andrew as “truck obsessed.” This description is from his uncle’s point of view. Uncle Doug is aware of “how Andrew is,” but he is less aware of how he himself “is.” Andrew is truck obsessed if we use as the baseline his Uncle Doug’s level of interest in trucks, which is zero. But from Andrew’s point of view, Uncle Doug might be considered “cheerleader obsessed.” Among the four-year-old crowd, Andrew’s view is more likely the norm.

  Embrace Both Stories: Adopt the “And Stance”

  It can be awfully hard to stay curious about another person’s story when you have your own story to tell, especially if you’re thinking that only one story can really be right. After all, your story is so different from theirs, and makes so much sense to you. Part of the stress of staying curious can be relieved by adopting what we call the “And Stance.”

  We usually assume that we must either accept or reject the other person’s story, and that if we accept theirs, we must abandon our own. But who’s right between Michael and Jack, Ollie and Thelma, or Bonnie and her boss, Caroline? Who’s right between a person who likes to sleep with the window open and another who prefers the window closed?

  The answer is that the question makes no sense. Don’t choose between the stories; embrace both. That’s the And Stance.

  The suggestion to embrace both stories can sound like double-talk. It can be heard as “Pretend both of your stories are right.” But in fact, it suggests something quite different. Don’t pretend anything. Don’t worry about accepting or rejecting the other person’s story. First work to understand it. The mere act of understanding someone else’s story doesn’t require you to give up your own. The And Stance allows you to recognize that how you each see things matters, that how you each feel matters. Regardless of what you end up doing, regardless of whether your story influences theirs or theirs yours, both stories matter.

  The And Stance is based on the assumption that the world is complex, that you can feel hurt, angry, and wronged, and they can feel just as hurt, angry, and wronged. They can be doing their best, and you can think that it’s not good enough. You may have done something stupid, and they will have contributed in important ways to the problem as well. You can feel furious with them, and you can also feel love and appreciation for them.

  The And Stance gives you a place from which to assert the full strength of your views and feelings without having to diminish the views and feelings of someone else. Likewise, you don’t need to give up anything to hear how someone else feels or sees things differently. Because you may have different information or different interpretations, both stories can make sense at the same time.

  It may be that as you share them, your stories change in response to new information or different perspectives. But they still may not end up the same, and that’s all right. Sometimes people have honest disagreements, but even so, the most useful question is not “Who’s right?” but “Now that we really understand each other, what’s a good way to manage this problem?”

  Two Exceptions That Aren’t

  You may be thinking that the advice to shift from certainty and arguing to curiosity and the And Stance generally makes sense, but that there must be exceptions. Let’s look at two important questions that may look like exceptions, but aren’t: (1) What about times when I absolutely know I’m right? and (2) Does the suggestion to “understand the other person’s story” always apply, even when, for example, I’m firing or breaking up with someone?

  I Really Am Right

  There’s an old story of two clerics arguing about how to do God’s work. In the spirit of conciliation, one finally says to the other, “You and I see things differently, and that’s okay. We don’t need to agree. You can do God’s work your way, and I’ll do God’
s work His way.”

  The tendency to think this way can be overwhelming. Even if you understand another person’s story with genuine insight and empathy, you may still stumble on the next step, thinking that however much their story makes sense to them, you are still “right” and they are still “wrong.”

  For example, what about the conversation you have with your daughter about her smoking? You know you are right that smoking is bad for her, that the sooner she stops the better.

  Fair enough. About each of those things, you are right. But here’s the rub: that’s not what the conversation is really about. It’s about how you each feel about your daughter’s smoking, what she should do about it, and what role you should play. It’s about the terrible fear and sadness you feel as you imagine her becoming sick, and your rage at feeling powerless to make her stop. It’s about her need to feel independent, to break out of the “good girl” mold that feels so suffocating. It’s about her own ambivalence doing something that makes her feel good and at the same time truly frightens her. The conversation is about many issues between the two of you that are complex and important to explore. It is not about the truth of whether smoking is bad for one’s health. Both of you already agree on that.

  Even when it seems the dispute is about what’s true, you may find that being the one who’s right doesn’t get you very far. Your friend may deny that he is an alcoholic and that his drinking is affecting his marriage. But even if the whole world agrees with your assessment, asserting that you are right and trying to get him to admit it probably won’t help you help your friend.