Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

In the “What Happened?” Conversation, moving away from the truth assumption frees us to shift our purpose from proving we are right to understanding the perceptions, interpretations, and values of both sides. It allows us to move away from delivering messages and toward asking questions, exploring how each person is making sense of the world. And to offer our views as perceptions, interpretations, and values – not as “the truth.”

The Intention Invention The second argument in the “What Happened?” Conversation is over i...

The error we make in the realm of intentions is simple but profound : we assume we know the intentions of others when we don’t. Worse still, when we are unsure about someone’s intentions, we too often decide they are bad. The truth is, intentions are invisible. We assume them from other people’s behavior. In other words, we make them up, we invent them. But our invented stories about other people’s intentions are accurate much less often than we think. Why? Because people’s intentions, like so much else in difficult conversations, are complex. Sometimes people act with mixed intentions. Sometimes they act with no intention, or at least none related to us.

And sometimes they act on good intentions that nonetheless hurt us. 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.

The Blame Frame The third error we make in the “What Happened?” Conversation has to do with blame. Most difficult conversations focus significant attenti...

But talking about fault is similar to talking about truth — it produces disagreement, denial, and little learning. It evokes fears of punishment and insists on an either/or answer. Nobody wants to be blamed, especially unfairly, so our energy goes into defending ourselves.

Parents of small children know this well. When the twins act up in the back seat of the car, we know that trying to affix blame will always yield an outcry: “But she hit me first!” or “I hit her because she called me a baby.” Each child denies blame not just to avoid losing her dessert, but also from a sense of justice. Neither feels like the problem is solely her fault, because it isn’t.

in situations that give rise to difficult conversations, it is almost always true that what happened is the result of things both people did — or failed to do.

When competent, sensible people do something stupid, the smartest move is to try to figure out, first, what kept them from seeing it coming and, second, how to prevent the problem from happening again. Talking about blame distracts us from exploring why things went wrong and how we might correct them going forward. Focusing instead on understanding the contribution system allows us to learn about the real causes of the problem, and to work on correcting them.

The distinction between blame and...

will make a significant difference in your ability to handle diff...

The Feelings Conversation: What Should We Do with Our Emotions? Difficult conversations are not just about what happened; they also involve emotion. The question is not whether strong feeli...

In the presence of strong feelings, many of us work hard to stay rational. Getting too deep into feelings is messy, clouds good judgment, and in some contexts — for example, at work — can seem just plain inappropriate. Bringing up feelings can also be scary or uncomfortable, and can make us feel vulnerable. After all, what if the other person dismisses our feelings or responds without real understanding? Or takes our feelings to heart in a way that wounds them or irrevocably damages the relationship? And once we’ve gotten our feelings off our chest, it’s their turn. Are we up to hearing all about their anger and pain? This line of reasoning suggests that we stay out of the Feelings Conversation altogether —

Or is it? An Opera Without Music The problem with this reasoning is that it fails to take account of one simple fact: difficult conversations do not just involve feelings, they are at their very core about feelings. Feelings are not some noisy byproduct of engaging in difficult talk, they are an integral part of the conflict. Engaging in a difficult conversation without talking about feelings is like staging an opera without the music. You’ll get the plot but miss the point.

In the short term, engaging in a difficult conversation without talking about feelings may save you time and reduce your anxiety. It may also seem like a way to avoid certain serious risks – to you, to others, and to the relationship. But the question remains: if feelings are the issue, what have you accomplished if you don’t address them? Understanding feelings, talking about feelings, managing feelings – these are among the greatest challenges of being human.

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.

The Identity Conversation: What Does This Say About Me? Of the Three Conversations, the Identity Conversation may be the most subtle and the most challenging. But it offers us significant leverage in managing our anxiety and improving our skills in the other two conversations. The Identity Conversation looks inward: it’s all about who we are and how we see ourselves. How does what happened affect my self-esteem, my self-image, my sense of who I am in the world?

before, during, and after the difficult conversation, the Identity Conversation is about what I a...

anytime a conversation feels difficult, it is in part precisely because it is about You, with a capital Y. Something beyond the apparent substance of the conversation is at stake for you.

Even when you are the one delivering bad news, the Identity Conversation is in play.

Keeping Your Balance As you begin to sense the implications of the conversation for your self-image, you may begin to lose your balance.

In its mildest form, losing our balance may cause us to lose confidence in ourselves, to lose concentration, or to forget what we were going to say.

In more extreme cases, it can feel earth-shattering. We may feel paralyzed, overcome by panic, stricken with an urge to flee, or even have trouble breathing. Just knowing that the Identity Conversation is a component of difficult conversations can help.

once you find your footing in the Identity Conversation, you can turn what is often a source of anxiety into a source of strength. Moving Toward a Learning Conversation Despite what we sometimes pretend, 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. Once you understand the challenges inherent in the Three Conversations and the mistakes we make in each, you are likely to find that your purpose for having a particular conversation begins to shift. You come to appreciate the complexity of the perceptions and intentions involved, the reality of joint contribution to the problem, the central role feelings have to play, and what the issues mean to each person’s self-esteem and identity. And you find that a message delivery stance no longer makes sense. In fact, you may find that you no longer have a message to deliver, but rather some information to share and some questions to ask. 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.

In so doing, you make it more likely that the other person will be open to being persuaded, and that you will learn something that significantly changes the way you understand the problem. Changing our stance means inviting the other per...

We need to have a learning conversation. The differences between a typical battle of messages and a learning conversation are summarized in the chart on the following pages.

Shift to a Learning Stance The “What Happened?” Conversation

Stop Arguing About Who’s Right: Explore Each Other’s Stories

One of the hallmarks of the “What Happened?” Conversation is that people disagree.

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

We Think They Are the Problem

Deep down, we believe that the problem, put simply, is them.

They’re selfish.

They’re naive.

They’re controlling.

They’re irrational.

If this is what we’re thinking, then it’s not surprising that we end up arguing.

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

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?

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.

we each have different stories about what is going on in the world.

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

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:

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.