Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

If you feel the focus is somehow on you alone, you can say so: “It’s not okay to look only at my contribution. That’s not reality as I see it. I feel like I’m trying to look at both of us. Is there anything I’m doing to make it hard for you to look at yourself?”

In addition to taking responsibility for what you contributed, there are things you can do to help them locate their contribution. Make Your Observations and Reasoning Explicit.

Clarify What You Would Have Them Do Differently. In addition to explaining what triggered your reaction, you should be prepared to say what you would have them do differently in the future, and explain how this would help you behave differently as well.

For better or worse, this conversation will not go well unless these feelings are surfaced. Why? Because you can’t have an effective conversation without talking about the primary issues at stake, and in this conversation feelings are at the heart of what’s wrong.

Rather than share her feelings, Emma provokes an argument about the rules of professional communication. At no point does Emma say “I feel hurt” or “I feel angry” or “I’m terrified that you might be right,” yet these feelings have a significant effect on the conversation.

Unspoken feelings can color the conversation in a number of ways. They alter your affect and tone of voice. They express themselves through your body language or facial expression. They may take the form of long pauses or an odd and unexplained detachment. You may become sarcastic, aggressive, impatient, unpredictable, or defensive.

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.

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.

Recognize That Good People Can Have Bad Feelings.

If you are a good person, we’ve got good news: everyone feels anger, everyone experiences the urge to cry, everyone fails, and everyone needs other people.

By suggesting that Brad felt more than just anger, Brad’s friend offered him a powerful insight. Where he had originally seen only one emotion, Brad was able to find an entire spectrum of emotions.

As we have seen, one danger of making attributions about the intentions of others is that it can lead to defensiveness and misunderstandings. A second danger is that the attributions themselves are so consuming that we fail to see the real feelings that are motivating them.

Notice what Emily has communicated. She said, “You are self-absorbed. You are thoughtless.” Both of these are judgments about Roz.

Judgments feel like feelings when we are saying them. They are motivated by anger or frustration or hurt, and the person on the receiving end understands very clearly that we are feeling something. Unfortunately, that person probably isn’t sure what we are feeling, and more important, is focused on the fact that we are judging, attributing, and blaming.

Use the Urge to Blame as a Clue to Find Important Feelings.

colleague of ours has two rules for expressing feelings. He begins by explaining rule number two: try to get everything you are feeling into the conversation.

Which brings our friend to rule number one: before saying what you are feeling, negotiate with your feelings.

Most of us assume that our feelings are static and nonnegotiable, and that if they are to be shared authentically, they must be shared “as is.” In fact, our feelings are based on our perceptions, and our perceptions (as we have seen in the preceding three chapters) are negotiable.

Now imagine that your marine biology training enables you to identify it as a Reef Shark, which you know doesn’t prey on anything as large as you. Your anxiety disappears. Instead you feel excited and curious to observe the shark’s behavior. It isn’t the shark that’s changed; it’s the story you tell yourself about what’s happening.

First, we need to examine our own story. What is the story we are telling ourselves that is giving rise to how we feel? What is our story missing? What might the other person’s story be? Almost

Next, we need to explore our assumptions about the other person’s intentions. To what extent are our feelings based on an untested assumption about their intentions? Might the other person have acted unintentionally, or from multiple and conflicting intentions? How does our view of their intentions affect how we feel? And what about our own intentions? What was motivating us? How might our actions have impacted them? Does that change how we feel?

Finally, we should consider the contribution system. Are we able to see our own contribution to the problem? Are we able to describe the other person’s contribution without blaming? Are we aware of the ways that each of our contributions forms a reinforcing pattern that magnifies the problem? In what way does this shift how we feel?

Too often we confuse being emotional with expressing emotions clearly. They are different. You can express emotion well without being emotional, and you can be extremely emotional without expressing much of anything at all. Sharing feelings well and clearly requires thoughtfulness.

Frame Feelings Back into the Problem Step one in expressing feelings well involves simply remembering that they’re important. Almost every difficult conversation will involve strong feelings.

Your feelings, at least for the moment, are an important aspect of the relationship. You can preface their expression with an admission that you are uncomfortable with these feelings, or that you aren’t sure they make sense, but follow that preface by expressing them. Your purpose here is simply to get them out.

Don’t Evaluate — Just Share Getting everyone’s feelings on the table, heard and acknowledged, is essential before you can begin to sort through them.

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.

Express Your Feelings Without Judging, Attributing, or Blaming.

An Easy Reminder: Say “I Feel . . . .” It is surprising how many people would prefer to have a cavity filled without novocaine than to utter the simple words “I feel.” Yet these words can have a powerful effect on your listener.

“I’m not saying you intended to hurt me. I don’t know whether you did or not. What’s important to me is that you understand how I felt when you criticized my work in front of the department.”

Your supervisor is explaining why you’re not being promoted; you’re busy having your own private identity quake.

Step One: Become Aware of Your Identity Issues Often during a difficult conversation we are not even aware that our identity is implicated.

What triggers an identity quake for you may not trigger one in someone else. We each have our own particular sensitivities. To become more familiar with yours, observe whether there are patterns to what tends to knock you off balance during difficult conversations, and then ask yourself why. What about your identity feels at risk? What does this mean to you? How would it feel if what you fear were true?

Step Two: Complexify Your Identity (Adopt the And Stance) Once you’ve identified which aspects of your identity are most important to you or seem most vulnerable, you can begin to complexify your self-image.

The more easily you can admit to your own mistakes, your own mixed intentions, and your own contributions to the problem, the more balanced you will feel during the conversation, and the higher the chances it will go well.

One reason people are reluctant to admit mistakes is that they fear being seen as weak or incompetent. Yet often, generally competent people who take the possibility of mistakes in stride are seen as confident, secure, and “big enough” not to have to be perfect, whereas those who resist acknowledging even the possibility of a mistake are seen as insecure and lacking confidence.

When delivering bad news – indeed, in any difficult conversation – rather than trying to control the other person’s reaction, adopt the And Stance. You can come in with the purpose of letting your children know about the divorce, letting them know how much you love and care about them, letting them know that you honestly believe things will be okay, and giving them space to feel however they are feeling and letting them know their feelings make sense and are okay to feel.

Learning that you can’t control the other person’s reaction, and that it can be destructive to try, can be incredibly liberating.

Instead of trying to control the other person’s reaction, prepare for it. Take time in advance to imagine the conversation. Instead of focusing on how badly it will go – which may be your tendency when you are fretting late at night over whether to raise it – focus on what you can learn about how the other person might respond.

Some people find asking for a break embarrassing. But postponing the conversation until you’ve regained your balance may save you from worse things than embarrassment down the road.

You can’t have every difficult conversation you come across. Life is too short, the list too long. So how do you decide when to have a conversation, for the first time or the fifteenth? And how do you let go of the issues you decide not to raise?

Instead, hold as your goal to think clearly as you take on the task of making a considered choice. That is as good as any of us can do.

Think clearly about what you do know (your own feelings, your own experiences and story, your identity issues), and what you don’t know (their intentions, their perspective, or feelings).

Sometimes what’s difficult about the situation has a whole lot more to do with what’s going on inside you than what’s going on between you and the other person.

Yet we often launch into our conversations in much the same way. We find ourselves in the middle of the conversation, and neither person is quite sure what the point is or what a good outcome would look like.

A good rule to follow is: If you’re going to talk, talk. Really talk. And if you’re really going to talk, you can’t do it on the fly.

Difficult conversations operate at the core of our being — where the people and the principles we care about most intersect with our self-image and self-esteem. Letting go, at heart, is about how to handle with skill and grace not having a difficult conversation.

One of the most helpful tools a mediator has is the ability to identify this invisible Third Story. This means describing the problem between the parties in a way that rings true for both sides simultaneously.

You can begin from the Third Story by saying, “My sense is that you and I see this situation differently. I’d like to share how I’m seeing it, and learn more about how you’re seeing it.”

“It sounds like you’re pretty unhappy with how I handle the dishes. I have trouble with how you deal with the dishes too, so I think we each have different preferences and assumptions around that. It seems like that would be a good thing for us to talk about. . . .”