Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

Shifting your stance away from assessing blame and toward exploring contribution doesn’t happen overnight. It takes hard work and persistence.

If we deny that the emotions are there, then maybe we can avoid the consequences of feeling them.

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.

you can’t have an effective conversation without talking about the primary issues at stake,

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.

We don’t cry or lose our temper because we express our feelings too often, but because we express them too rarely.

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

Because good listening requires an open and honest curiosity about the other person, and a willingness and ability to keep the spotlight on them.

When important feelings remain unexpressed, you may experience a loss of self-esteem, wondering why you don’t stick up for yourself. You deprive your colleagues, friends, and family members of the opportunity to learn and to change in response to your feelings. And, perhaps most damagingly, you hurt the relationship. By keeping your feelings out of the relationship you are keeping an important part of yourself out of the relationship.

Most of us assume that knowing how we feel is no more complicated than knowing whether we are hot or cold. We just know. But in fact, we often don’t know how we feel.

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.

Learn That Your Feelings Are as Important as Theirs. Some of us can’t see our own feelings because we have learned somewhere along the way that other people’s feelings are more important than ours.

There are several reasons why you may choose to honor others’ feelings even when it means dishonoring your own. The implicit rule you are following is that you should put other people’s happiness before your own.

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.

Finding the feelings that are lurking around and under angry attributions and judgments is a key step in bringing feelings into a conversation effectively.

Don’t Treat Feelings as Gospel: Negotiate with Them

rule number two: try to get everything you are feeling into the conversation.

we think to ourselves, there are plenty of feelings that are better left unexpressed. Which brings our friend to rule number one: before saying what you are feeling, negotiate with your feelings.

our feelings are based on our perceptions, and our perceptions (as we have seen in the preceding three chapters) are negotiable.

the route to changing your feelings is through altering your thinking.

Almost always, an increased awareness of the other person’s story changes how we feel.

Don’t Vent: Describe Feelings Carefully

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.

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.

Describing feelings is an important first step along the road toward getting things resolved, but you can’t leap from there directly into problem-solving. Each side must have their feelings acknowledged before you can even start down that road. Acknowledgment is a step that simply cannot be skipped. What does it mean to acknowledge someone’s feelings? It means letting the other person know that what they have said has made an impression on you, that their feelings matter to you, and that you are working to understand them.

Sometimes, however, feelings aren’t all that matter. Sometimes they are difficult and troubling, and you still have a job to do together or kids to raise. The process of working on your relationship, or solving the problem you face, can be a long and hard one. Even so, it’s one where being able to communicate effectively with the other person – about your feelings and about the problem – will be critical.

Our anxiety results not just from having to face the other person, but from having to face ourselves. The conversation has the potential to disrupt our sense of who we are in the world, or to highlight what we hope we are but fear we are not.

You can’t “quake-proof ” your sense of self. Grappling with identity issues is what life and growth are all about, and no amount of love or accomplishment or skill can insulate you from these challenges.

And the bigger the gap between what we hope is true and what we fear is true, the easier it is for us to lose our balance.

1. You Will Make Mistakes. If you can’t admit to yourself that you sometimes make mistakes, you’ll find it more difficult to understand and accept the legitimate aspects of the other person’s story about what is going on.

One reason people are reluctant to admit mistakes is that they fear being seen as weak or incompetent.

After observing O Sensei, the founder of Aikido, sparring with an accomplished fighter, a young student said to the master, “You never lose your balance. What is your secret?” “You are wrong,” O Sensei replied. “I am constantly losing my balance. My skill lies in my ability to regain it.”

When you fire someone, that person will likely be upset, and possibly upset at you. Don’t measure the success of the conversation by whether or not they get upset. It’s their right to be upset, and it’s a reasonable response. Better instead to go in with the purposes of giving them the news, of taking responsibility for your part in this outcome (but not more), of showing that you care about how they feel, and of trying to be helpful going forward.

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

There is no way to know in advance how things will really turn out. So don’t spend your time looking for the one right answer about what to do. It’s not only a useless standard, it’s crippling. 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.

Do You Have Purposes That Make Sense?

Imagine asking the head of NASA about the purpose of a particular space mission, and getting the answer: “Um, I don’t know. We thought we’d launch someone into space and figure things out from there.”

The problem is, we can’t make these things happen. We can’t change someone else’s mind or force them to change their behavior. If we could, many difficult conversations would simply vanish. We’d say, “Here are the reasons you should love me more,” and they’d say, “Now that I know those reasons, I do.”

The paradox is that trying to change someone rarely results in change. On the other hand, engaging someone in a conversation where mutual learning is the goal often results in change.

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. You have to plan a time to talk. You have to be explicit about wanting ten minutes or an hour to discuss something that is important to you. You can’t have a real conversation in thirty seconds, and anything less than a real conversation isn’t going to help. If hit-and-run is all you can muster, it’s better not to raise the issue at all.

What we do know is that letting go usually takes time, and that it is rarely a simple journey. It’s not easy to find a place where you can set free the pain, or shame, you carry from your experiences.

If someone tells you that you should have gotten over something or someone by now, don’t believe it. Believing there’s some appropriate time frame for getting over something is just one more way to keep yourself stuck.

It’s Not My Responsibility to Make Things Better; It’s My Responsibility to Do My Best.

They Have Limitations Too.

This Conflict Is Not Who I Am. An important barrier to letting go occurs when we integrate the conflict into our sense of who we are.

Letting Go Doesn’t Mean I No Longer Care.

two powerful guidelines for starting the conversation off in the right direction: (1) begin the conversation from the “Third Story,” and (2) offer an invitation to explore the issues jointly.

In addition to your story and the other person’s story, every difficult conversation includes an invisible Third Story. The Third Story is the one a keen observer would tell, someone with no stake in your particular problem.

Think Like a Mediator