Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

The First Mistake: Our Assumptions About Intentions Are Often Wrong

We Assume Bad Intentions Mean Bad Character.

Accusing Them of Bad Intentions Creates Defensiveness.

When we think others have bad intentions toward us, it affects our behavior. And, in turn, how we behave affects how they treat us. Before we know it, our assumption that they have bad intentions toward us has come true.

We Don’t Hear What They Are Really Trying to Say

Share the Impact on You; Inquire About Their Intentions.

recognize your assumptions for what they are – mere guesses subject to modification or disproof.

Listen for Feelings, and Reflect on Your Intentions

Understanding how we distort others’ intentions, making difficult conversations even more difficult, is crucial to untangling what happened between us.

Focusing on blame is a bad idea because it inhibits our ability to learn what’s really causing the problem and to do anything meaningful to correct it.

blame is about judging and contribution is about understanding.

When we blame someone, we are offering them the role of “the accused,” so they do what accused people do: they defend themselves any way they can. Given what’s at stake, it’s easy to see why the dance of mutual finger-pointing often turns nasty.

In the worlds of both business and personal relationships, too often we deal in blame when our real goals are understanding and change.

As a rule, when things go wrong in human relationships, everyone has contributed in some important way.

Other than in extreme cases, such as child abuse, almost every situation that gives rise to a conversation is the result of a joint contribution system. Focusing on only one or the other of the contributors obscures rather than illuminates that system.

If you find yourself mired in a continuing urge to blame, or with an unceasing desire for the other person to admit that they were wrong, you may find some relief by asking yourself: “What feelings am I failing to express?” and “Has the other person acknowledged my feelings?” As you explore this terrain, you may find yourself naturally shifting from a blame frame to a contribution frame. You may learn that what you really seek is understanding and acknowledgment.

You may not be able to change other people’s contributions, but you can often change your own.

By identifying what you are doing to perpetuate a situation, you learn where you have leverage to affect the system. Simply by changing your own behavior, you gain at least some influence over the problem.

In contrast, successful relationships, whether in our personal life or with our colleagues at work, are built on the knowledge that in intersections there is no one to blame. People are just different. If we

hope to stay together over the long haul, we will sometimes have to compromise our preferences and meet in the middle.

In an organization, this explains why people find it hard to change how they work together even when they see the limitations of common role assumptions, such as “Leaders set strategy; subordinates implement it.” To change how people interact, they need both an alternate model everyone thinks is better and the skills to make that model work at least as well as the current approach.

Seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes can help you understand what you’re doing to feed the system.

own. As “shifters” we tend to see ourselves as innocent victims – when something goes wrong, it’s always because of what someone else did.

Taking responsibility for your contribution up front prevents the other person from using it as a shield to avoid a discussion of their own contribution.

To make sure that you’re working from the same information and understand each other’s interpretations, share, as specifically as you can recall it what the other person did or said that triggered your reaction.

By jotting down the things that triggered you to react, you are starting to get a handle on the actions and reactions that make up the contribution system.

Making a specific request for how the other person can change their contribution in the service of helping you change yours can be a powerful way of helping them understand what they are doing to create and perpetuate the problem.

Whether you’re talking about your contrasting stories, your intentions, or your contributions, the goal isn’t to get an admission. The goal is to understand better what’s happened between you, so that you can start to talk constructively about where to go next.

Feelings are too powerful to remain peacefully bottled. They will be heard one way or another, whether in leaks or bursts. And if handled indirectly or without honesty, they contaminate communication.

Our failure to acknowledge and discuss feelings derails a startling number of difficult conversations. And the inability to deal openly and well with feelings can undermine the quality and health of our relationships.

This is a common pattern: we frame the problem exclusively as a substantive disagreement and believe that if only we were more skilled at problem-solving, we’d be able to lick the thing. Solving problems seems easier than talking about emotions.

The problem is that when feelings are at the heart of what’s going on, they are the business at hand and ignoring them is nearly impossible. In many difficult conversations, it is really only at the level of feelings that the problem can be addressed.

We don’t cry or lose our temper because we express our feelings too often, but because we express them too rarely. Like finally opening a carbonated drink that has been shaken, the results can be messy.

The two hardest (and most important) communication tasks in difficult conversations are expressing feelings and

listening.

It’s hard to hear someone else when we are feeling unheard, even if the reason we feel unheard is that we have chosen not to share. Our listening ability often increases remarkably once we have expressed our own strong feelings.

When important feelings remain unexpressed, you may experience a loss of self-esteem, wondering why you don’t stick up for yourself.

By keeping your feelings out of the relationship you are keeping an important part of yourself out of the relationship.

As we grow up, each of us develops a characteristic “emotional footprint” whose shape is determined by which feelings we believe are okay to have and express and which are not.

Exploring the contours of your footprint across a variety of relationships can be extremely helpful in raising your awareness of what you are feeling and why.

When you are more concerned about others’ feelings than your own, you teach others to ignore your feelings too. And beware: one of the reasons you haven’t raised the issue is that you don’t want to jeopardize the relationship. Yet by not raising it, the resentment you feel will grow and slowly erode the relationship anyway.

In many situations, we are blinded to the complexity of our feelings by one strong feeling that trumps all the others. In Brad’s case it was anger. In other situations, and for different people, it may be a different emotion.

Peanuts aren’t nuts. Whales aren’t fish. Tomatoes aren’t vegetables. And attributions, judgments, and accusations aren’t feelings.

While they may feel similar, there is a vast difference between “You are thoughtless and self-absorbed” and “I feel hurt, confused, and embarrassed.” Finding the feelings that are lurking around and under angry attributions and judgments is a key step in bringing feelings into a conversation effectively.

Once those feelings are expressed (“Here’s what I’ve contributed, here’s what I think you’ve contributed, and, more important, I ended up feeling abandoned”), the urge to blame recedes.

You can establish an evaluation-free zone by respecting the following guidelines: share pure feelings

(without judgments, attributions, or blame); save problem-solving until later; and don’t monopolize.