Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

You fly three thousand miles and drive two hours to visit your elderly widowed father, and the first words out of his mouth are “You’re late!”

We believe a major reason change efforts so often fail is that successful implementation eventually requires people to have difficult conversations – and they are not prepared to manage them skillfully.

With everyone taking for granted that their own view is right, and readily assuming that others’ opposition is self-interested, progress quickly grinds to a halt.

Ideally, conflict and differing perspectives, handled well and efficiently, should become a competitive asset – an engine for rapid learning and innovation.

But better the ache of muscles growing from an unaccustomed workout than the sting of wounds from an unnecessary fight.

To make the structure of a difficult conversation visible, we need to understand not only what is said, but also what is not said. We need to understand what the people involved are thinking and feeling but not saying to each other. In a difficult conversation, this is usually where the real action is.

In fact, the gap between what you’re really thinking and what you’re saying is part of what makes a conversation difficult.

You’re uncertain about what’s okay to share, and what’s better left unsaid.

Every difficult conversation involves grappling with these Three Conversations, so engaging successfully requires learning to operate effectively in each of the three realms.

Instead of working to manage our feelings constructively, we either try to hide them or let loose in ways that we later regret. Instead of exploring the identity issues that may be deeply at stake for us (or them), we proceed with the conversation as if it says nothing about us – and never come to grips with what is at the heart of our anxiety.

The “What Happened?” Conversation is where we spend much of our time in difficult conversations as we struggle with our different stories about who’s right, who meant what, and who’s to blame.

On each of these three fronts

– truth, intentions, and blame – we make a common but crippling assumption. Straightening out each of these assumptions is essential to improving our abil...

What I think about your intentions will affect how I think about you and, ultimately, how our conversation goes.

Because our view of others’ intentions (and their views of ours) are so important in difficult conversations, leaping to unfounded assumptions can be a disaster.

Most difficult conversations focus significant attention on who’s to blame

for the mess we’re in.

But talking about fault is similar to talking about truth — it produces disagreement, denial, and little learning.

Nobody wants to be blamed, especially unfairly, so our energy goes into defending ourselves.

It’s much more difficult to see how we’ve contributed to the problems in which we ourselves are involved.

Talking about blame distracts us from exploring why things went wrong and how we might correct them going forward.

The distinction between blame and contribution may seem

subtle.

difficult conversations do not just involve feelings, they are at their very core about

feelings.

Engaging in a difficult conversation without talking about feelings is like staging an opera without the music.

Understanding feelings, talking about feelings, managing feelings – these are among the greatest challenges of being human.

talking about feelings is a skill that can be learned.

a lack of skill in discussing feelings may cause you to avoid not only sleeping dogs, but all dogs – even those that won’t let you sleep.

our initial purpose for having a difficult conversation is often to prove a point, to give them a piece of our mind, or to get them to do or be what we want. In other words, to deliver a message.

Instead of wanting to persuade and get your way, you want to understand what has happened from the other person’s point of view, explain your point of view, share and understand feelings, and work together to figure out a way to manage the problem going forward.

When disagreement occurs, arguing may seem natural, even reasonable. But it’s not helpful.

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.

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.

Arguing Blocks Us from Exploring Each Other’s Stories

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Part of the stress of staying curious can be relieved by adopting what we call the “And Stance.”

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?”

the And Stance is probably the most powerful place to stand when engaging in a difficult conversation that requires you to deliver or enforce bad news.

Coming to understand the other person, and yourself, more deeply doesn’t mean that differences will disappear or that you won’t have to solve real problems and make real choices. It doesn’t mean that all views are equally valid or that it’s wrong to have strongly held beliefs. It will, however, help you evaluate whether your strong views make sense in light of new information and different interpretations, and it will help you help others to appreciate the power of those views.