The key is to communicate your feelings in a way that invites and encourages the recipient to consider new ways of behaving, rather than suggesting they’re a schmuck and it’s too bad there’s nothing they can do about it.
Help Them Understand You
It’s not easy to step into someone else’s story. It’s especially hard when the issues are emotionally charged or when your views are rooted in a different generation or radically dissimilar corporate culture. You’ll need their help in understanding them. And they’ll need your help in understanding you.
If you feel overwhelmed with anxiety when leaving your children with a babysitter, and your husband says that you should “just learn to relax,” you can express your anxiety in terms he might understand: “It’s like your fear of flying. You know how when I try to tell you to relax during take-off it has no impact, and in fact it makes it worse? Well this is the same sort of thing.”
And recognize that different people take in information at different speeds and in different ways. For example, some people are visually oriented. For them, you may want to use visual metaphors and refer to pictures or, in a business setting, charts. Some people prefer to get their arms around the whole problem first, and can’t listen to anything else you say until they do. Others like all the details up front. Pay attention to these differences.
Ask Them to Paraphrase Back
Paraphrasing the other person helps you check your understanding and helps them know you’ve heard. You can ask them to do the same thing for you: “Let me check to see if I’m being clear. Would you mind just playing back what you’ve heard me say so far?”
Ask How They See It Differently — and Why
Explaining your story clearly is a first step toward being understood. But don’t expect instant success. Real understanding may take some back and forth. If the other person seems puzzled or unpersuaded by your story, rather than putting it more forcefully or trying to tell it in a different way, ask how they see it. In particular, ask how they see it differently.
A common tendency is to ask for agreement, perhaps because it’s reassuring: “Does that make sense?” “Wouldn’t you agree?” But asking the other person how they see it differently is more helpful. If you ask for agreement, people may be reluctant to share their doubts and reservations. They aren’t sure whether you really want to hear them. They say, “Yes, I suppose so,” but you don’t know whether they’re actually thinking, “Yes, in a limited, warped kind of way that’s just like you.” If you ask explicitly for how they see it differently, you are more likely to discover their true reaction. Then you can begin to have a real conversation.
The secret of powerful expression is recognizing that you are the ultimate authority on you. You are an expert on what you think, how you feel, and why you’ve come to this place. If you think it or feel it, you are entitled to say it, and no one can legitimately contradict you. You only get in trouble if you try to assert what you are not the final authority on — who is right, who intended what, what happened. Speak fully the range of your experience and you will be clear. Speak for yourself and you can speak with power.
11
Problem-Solving: Take the Lead
It may be that the person you’re talking to has read this book and understands how to engage in a learning conversation. But don’t count on it.
More likely, you’ll talk about understanding, and they’ll talk about who’s right. You’ll talk about contribution, while they’re stuck in blame. You’ll bend over backwards to listen and acknowledge their feelings, and in return you’ll be attacked, interrupted, and judged. You’re doing your best to improve the way the two of you communicate; they’re doing their best to ensure that no constructive communication ever occurs between you. It may be that they are still worried about being blamed, or don’t understand the terminology you’re using. Perhaps they don’t yet trust you and your new behavior, which after all is different from the last time you had this conversation.
What to do?
Skills for Leading the Conversation
If your conversations are going to get anywhere, you’re going to have to take the lead. There are a set of powerful “moves” you can make during the conversation — reframing, listening, and naming the dynamic — that can help keep the conversation on track, whether the other person is being cooperative or not.
When the other person heads in a destructive direction, reframing puts the conversation back on course. It allows you to translate unhelpful statements into helpful ones. Listening is not only the skill that lets you into the other person’s world; it is also the single most powerful move you can make to keep the conversation constructive. And naming the dynamic is useful when you want to address a troubling aspect of the conversation. It is a particularly good strategy if the other person is dominating the conversation and seems unwilling to follow your lead.
Reframe, Reframe, Reframe
Reframing means taking the essence of what the other person says and “translating it” into concepts that are more helpful — specifically, concepts from the Three Conversations framework. You are walking down a new path and inviting the other person to join you. You’re illuminating the way.
Let’s return to the situation between Miguel and Sydney from Chapter 4. Recall that Sydney is leading a team of engineers on a project in Brazil. After initially resisting her leadership, Miguel has become Sydney’s most ardent supporter. Unfortunately for Sydney, Miguel’s enthusiasm has apparently progressed to romantic interest as well. He has taken to following her around, expressing how much he likes spending time with her, and inviting her for quiet walks alone on the beach.
When Sydney steps away from her own focus on blame, she begins to see the mixed signals she may be sending to Miguel. She realizes that by not expressing her discomfort directly, she is contributing to the situation. Sydney decides to raise the issue with Miguel. She knows that for the conversation to be successful, she’s going to have to be persistent in reframing the conversation from blame to contribution. We pick up the dialogue partway in:
SYDNEY: I should have brought this up with you earlier, which is why it’s really important to me that we talk about it now. . . .
MIGUEL: Of course you should bring it up with me if you feel uncomfortable! This is the reason you are uncomfortable. A team leader should know how to handle this better.
SYDNEY: Whether I should or shouldn’t, I guess I didn’t. It makes sense to me that by not bringing it up, I probably exacerbated the problem. Rather than focus on which one of us is to blame, I’m trying to figure out how we got into this spot in the first place. I think we each did — or didn’t do — some things that made the situation worse.
MIGUEL: Well, I think this whole thing is because you are American. American women are oversensitive to these issues and create problems where there aren’t any.
SYDNEY: You and I could probably argue all day about whether or not American women are oversensitive. What’s important is perhaps that you and I are coming at this from very different cultural perspectives. So I experienced your comments as suggestive and uncomfortable, and you seemed to see our interaction as not out of place in a working relationship. Is that right?
MIGUEL: That is true. For me, what I did was normal and not a big deal.
SYDNEY: When you say “normal,” do you mean normal for two people in just a professional relationship? Or do you mean normal that two people in a professional relationship might choose to pursue something further?
MIGUEL: Either one. We can tease each other. I can tell you how much I like you. If you are not interested, you can ignore it. If you are, you can respond in kind. The problem here is that you are overreacting, and you should have brought this up sooner.
SYDNEY: As I said at the beginning, I agree with you that if I had brought it up, we might have avoided some of this. I think I felt frustrated that I was trying to ignore it, and you persisted. Like when I kept turning down your invitations to have
a drink in the bar or take a walk on the beach.
MIGUEL: You know, there were times I could tell something was wrong. I suppose I could have also asked you if things were okay, or if I had offended you for some reason. And maybe we should have just talked about our expectations of each other up front. . . .
With this last statement Miguel is finally starting to sense the difference between contribution and blame, and is starting to feel comfortable enough to begin to acknowledge his own contribution. But to get to this point, Sydney had to be persistent in redirecting him away from blame.
You Can Reframe Anything
Reframing works on all fronts; you can reframe anything the other person says to move toward a learning conversation. Consider these examples:
THEY SAY: I’m right, and there are no two ways about it!
YOU REFRAME: I want to make sure I understand your perspective. You obviously feel very strongly about it. I’d also like to share my perspective on the situation.
THEY SAY: You hurt me on purpose!
YOU REFRAME: I can see that you’re feeling really angry about what I did, which is upsetting to me. It wasn’t my intention. Can you say more about how you felt?
THEY SAY: This is all your fault!
YOU REFRAME: I’m sure I’ve contributed to the problem; I think we both have. Rather than focus on whose fault this is, I’d like just to look at how we got here — at what we each contributed to the situation.
THEY SAY: You are the nastiest person I’ve ever met.
YOU REFRAME: It sounds like you’re feeling really badly.
THEY SAY: I am not a bad neighbor!
YOU REFRAME: Heavens, I don’t think you are either. And I certainly hope you don’t think I’m a lousy neighbor. I do think that we disagree about how this should be handled, and I think that’s pretty normal between good neighbors. The question is whether we can work together to figure out how to address both of our concerns.
Of course, one sentence alone is unlikely to do the trick, but these examples give you a sense of where to start. Like Sydney, you’ll need to be persistent, and you should expect to be constantly reframing the conversation to help keep it on a productive track.
The “You-Me” And
A second reframing move you can make is from “either/or” to “and.” If the other person is setting up a choice between what you think and what they think, between how you feel and how they feel, you can reject that choice by moving to the And Stance.
In the previous chapter, we took a look at the Me-Me And. In terms of managing the interactive conversation, it is the You-Me And that is crucial. This is not the “and” within us, but between us. It’s the one that says, “I can listen and understand what you have to say, and you can listen and understand what I have to say.”
Stacy found the You-Me And helpful in her quest to find her birth mother. Stacy’s adoptive mother, Joyce, argued that Stacy’s search was sure to be fruitless and painful. Stacy avoided engaging in an argument over whether or not that was true by using “and” to embrace both stories: “You might be right. It may be that all my efforts won’t turn up anything, and even if I do find her, I might be disappointed. She might not want to see me at all. And it’s still important to me to try. Here’s why. . . .”
When Joyce said, “After all we’ve done to love you and raise you, what could you possibly need that your birth mother could provide?” Stacy responded with some Me-Me Ands and You-Me Ands. If this sounds complex, it is. And that’s why Stacy’s response was so constructive and effective: “It sounds like my search is really hard for you. You’re the best mother in the world, and the only mother I’ll ever have. That’s not going to change. This is hard for me too, because it’s hard for me to see you feeling hurt like this — sometimes I think I’m just being selfish or ungrateful. At the same time, I have questions that I really want to answer. I hope we can keep talking about what this means to each of us as I begin to pursue this.” Stacy was able to assert herself without invalidating the power and importance of her mother’s concerns.
It’s Always the Right Time to Listen
No matter how good you get at reframing, the single most important rule about managing the interaction is this: You can’t move the conversation in a more positive direction until the other person feels heard and understood. And they won’t feel heard and understood until you’ve listened. When the other person becomes highly emotional, listen and acknowledge. When they say their version of the story is the only version that makes sense, paraphrase what you’re hearing and ask them some questions about why they think this. If they level accusations against you, before defending yourself, try to understand their view.
Whenever you feel overwhelmed or unsure how to proceed, remember that it is always a good time to listen.
Be Persistent About Listening
We often assume that the listener is playing a passive role in the conversation, but that’s not necessarily true. You can use listening to direct the conversation.
Consider this telephone conversation between Harpreet and his wife, Monisha. Monisha is a sales representative for a large pharmaceutical company and spends a significant amount of time on the road. The distance highlights what has been a tense issue throughout their relationship.
MONISHA: Okay, well, I better get some sleep. I’ve got a big presentation first thing in the morning.
HARPREET: So I’ll see you on Thursday?
MONISHA: Yeah, Thursday night. I should be home around seven.
HARPREET: Okay, sleep tight. . . . [silence] I love you.
MONISHA: Good night. See you Thursday.
Harpreet hangs up hurt and frustrated. “She never tells me that she loves me,” he complains. “Whenever I bring it up, she’ll say something like, ‘You know I love you, so why do I need to say it all the time?’ ”
This issue is obviously important to Harpreet. And for that reason, it makes sense that he should be persistent in raising it with Monisha. Many people think that being persistent means asserting your view — in other words, that Harpreet should just repeat himself. But that doesn’t work.
You have to find a way to be persistent, while remembering that you are in a two-way conversation. Persistence in a difficult conversation means remaining as stubbornly interested in hearing the other person’s views as you are in asserting your own.
In thinking through the Three Conversations, Harpreet began to be curious about why Monisha reacted the way she did. In the next conversation, Harpreet decided that his purpose was mainly to listen, ask questions, and try to understand how Monisha experienced this issue.
HARPREET: When I say that I love you, what are you thinking?
MONISHA: I’m thinking, “Okay, he’s waiting for me to say it back to him.” So it makes me not want to say it then, because I feel pressured into it. Besides, you know I love you.
HARPREET: Sometimes I do feel confident that you love me. But sometimes I feel less sure. When you say that I know, how are you thinking I would know?
MONISHA: Well, I’m still with you, right?
HARPREET: That’s a pretty low standard! Besides, my parents stayed together for years after they stopped loving each other. Maybe that’s why I sometimes feel nervous about this. . . .
MONISHA: Hmm. I guess I have the opposite experience. My parents were crazy about each other, and were always saying these sappy things in front of us. I thought it was embarrassing. It just seems like if you really love each other you don’t have to say it all the time. You can just show it.
HARPREET: Show it how?
MONISHA: I don’t know, like by being kind to each other. Like when I dropped everything and flew to Phoenix that weekend your mom was sick. I did it because I knew how hard it was for you, and I wanted to be there to help. . . .
Harpreet and Monisha have some distance to go. But simply by listening through the retorts and arguments for the feelings and stories, Harpreet is helping them have a much more interesting and constr
uctive conversation on a topic that is hard for both of them.
Name the Dynamic: Make the Trouble Explicit
Reframing and listening involve leading the conversation in the direction you want it to go. These tools are powerful, and most of your conversations will call on both. Sometimes, though, they are not enough. No matter how well you listen, no matter how many times you reframe, the other person will continue to interrupt, attack, or dismiss you. Every time you begin to get somewhere, they have another reason why the problem isn’t a problem after all. Or perhaps they’re acting upset, but each time you ask about it, they say, “No, no, I’m fine. I’m not upset at all.”
At times like these, naming the dynamic can help. You put on the table as a topic for discussion what you see happening in the conversation itself. In a sense, you are acting as your own “conversation doctor,” diagnosing the problem and prescribing a way back to health. These kind of diagnoses, and suggestions, sound like this:
I’ve noticed that we keep running out of time whenever we start talking about this. Maybe we should designate an hour when we can both really focus on this and address it then.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most Page 21