Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

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.

What makes these situations so hard to face? It’s our fear of the consequences – whether we raise the issue or try to avoid it.

Delivering a difficult message is like throwing a hand grenade. Coated with sugar, thrown hard or soft, a hand grenade is still going to do damage.

Of course, changing how you deal with difficult conversations takes work. Like changing your golf swing, adapting to drive on the other side of the road, or learning a new language, the change can feel awkward at first.

dealing constructively with tough topics and awkward situations strengthens a relationship.

At heart, the problem isn’t in your actions, it’s in your thinking.

Difficult Conversations Are a Normal Part of Life

Eliminating fear and anxiety is an unrealistic goal. Reducing fear and anxiety and learning how to manage that which remains are more obtainable.

Surprisingly, despite what appear to be infinite variations, all difficult conversations share a common structure. When you’re caught up in the details and anxiety of a particular difficult conversation, this structure is hard to see. But understanding that structure is essential to improving how you handle your most challenging conversations.

The point is this: difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values.

Interpretations and judgments are important to explore. In contrast, the quest to determine who is right and who is wrong is a dead end.

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

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.

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.

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

Understanding feelings, talking about feelings, managing feelings – these are among the greatest challenges of being human. There is nothing that will make dealing with feelings easy and risk-free.

If the other person is stubborn, we assert harder in an attempt to break through whatever is keeping them from seeing what is sensible.

When she complains, it’s not because she wants answers, it’s because she likes the connection she feels when she keeps people current on her daily comings and goings.

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?

Arguing inhibits our ability to learn how the other person sees the world.

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.

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.

Every strong view you have is profoundly influenced by your past experiences.

when you find yourself in conflict, it helps to make your rules explicit and to encourage the other person to do the same.

There’s only one way to come to understand the other person’s story, and that’s by being curious.

The mere act of understanding someone else’s story doesn’t require you to give up your own.

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?”

Remember, understanding the other person’s story doesn’t mean you have to agree with it, nor does it require you to give up your own.

Before you can figure out how to move forward, you need to understand where you are.

The First Mistake: Our Assumptions About Intentions Are Often Wrong

While we care deeply about other people’s intentions toward us, we don’t actually know what their intentions are.

we make an attribution about another person’s intentions based on the impact of their actions on us. We feel hurt; therefore they intended to hurt us. We feel slighted; therefore they intended to slight us. Our thinking is so automatic that we aren’t even aware that our conclusion is only an assumption.

When we’ve been hurt by someone else’s behavior, we assume the worst.

We Assume Bad Intentions Mean Bad Character.

Once we think we have someone figured out, we see all of their actions through that lens, and the stakes rise.

Those are the two classic characteristics of the cycle: both parties think they are the victim, and both think they are acting only to defend themselves.

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.

The Second Mistake: Good Intentions Don’t Sanitize Bad Impact

The problem with focusing only on clarifying our intentions is that we end up missing significant pieces of what the other person is trying to say.

We Ignore the Complexity of Human Motivations

Avoiding the First Mistake: Disentangle Impact and Intent

Some Defensiveness Is Inevitable. Of course, no matter how skillfully you handle things, you are likely to encounter some defensiveness. The matter of intentions and impacts is complex, and sometimes the distinctions are fine. So it’s best to anticipate a certain amount of defensiveness, and to be prepared to clarify what you are trying to communicate, and what you are not.

The more you can relieve the other person of the need to defend themselves, the easier it becomes for them to take in what you are saying and to reflect on the complexity of their motivations.

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.

At heart, blame is about judging and contribution is about understanding.

Recognizing that everyone involved in a situation has contributed to the problem doesn’t mean that everyone has contributed equally. You can be 5 percent responsible or 95 percent responsible — there is still joint contribution.

One of the most common contributions to a problem, and one of the easiest to overlook, is the simple act of avoiding.

When a relationship begins, infatuation may keep each partner from noticing any flaws in the other. Later, as the relationship deepens, each notices some minor annoyances in how the other does things, but the tendency is not to worry. We assume that in time, watching us, the other will learn to show more affection, be more spontaneous, or demonstrate more concern for living within a budget.

The problem is that things don’t change, because each is waiting for the other to change.