Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues

by Carole Robin

I had no idea you were sitting on all this,

I admire your courage in telling me.

you’re carrying a lot over from that past experience. Be careful of that in dealing with Rick.

The day she told Sanjay about being fired, she took not just one move outside her comfort zone but several. It could have been because of an increase in trust, or because she really needed to talk with someone about Rick, or because she realized that if she wanted a closer work relationship, there was no better time. Whatever the reason, Elena again had choices. And she chose to be vulnerable.

there is vulnerability and there is vulnerability. Early

we were struck by the fact that some disclosures had more impact than others and wondered why.

“You do a good job of revealing things about yourself, but you are rarely vulnerable.”

What feels risky and most vulnerable is when you are especially uncertain about the impact of your disclosure. If you have disclosed something (even if it is very personal) multiple times in similar settings and you have a pretty good sense of how others are going to react, even if it’s negatively, you’ll feel far less vulnerable than if you are sharing something you have never said to anyone.

That was what made their self-disclosure truly vulnerable. And it was only when David understood that distinction and was able to make himself known in a much riskier way that he found others trusted him more fully.

One common concern people have about disclosure—especially when it involves revealing things that might appear as defects—is that others will see them as weak. We see it differently. It takes fortitude and internal strength to self-disclose.

The Costs of Silence Even safe or bland comments are not risk-free. In the absence of data, people will make stuff up. Everybody draws conclusions when interacting with others. The less we reveal, the more others will fill in the blanks in order to make sense of what they see. When we are too reserved with our feelings, we actually lose control over how we are seen.

François de La Rochefoucauld

“We’re so accustomed to disguising ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.”

once we’ve come to be known a certain way, we often feel bound to behave consistently, becoming less and less truly known. The co...

“the Creeping Constraint o...

As time went on, others came to know a smaller and smaller piece of who I am.”

It’s not until these students find themselves in the Interpersonal Dynamics group that they feel safe enough to share their values, their background, their fears, and their hopes and dreams. That’s often when they recognize the costs they have paid for not sharing more about who they really are.

while we can’t all be in a T-group, we all can learn to create a safer space to self-disclose and become more known.

What comes first, safety or disclosure?

risking a 15 percent disclosure is what builds safety. If each person waits for the other to take a risk, little progress is ever made.

taking the risk when you don’t know the outcome is central to building deep personal relationships. On this journey, you have to trust the process, believing that in the long run, by disclosing first, you are more likely to build trust, gain acceptance, and achieve the relationship you most want. This is what “having agency” is all about.

Being Known: More broadly, how easy is it for you to let others know what is important to you? What do you find most difficult to share? What are your concerns about sharing that?

Key Relationship: Take one of the key people whom you listed in the last chapter. Are there things about you that are relevant to that relationship that you haven’t fully shared? What are your concerns about disclosing these?

Disclosing Emotions: How easy/challenging is it for you to share your emotions? Look over the Vocabulary of Feelings in Appendix A. Are there some feelings that are ...

This chapter isn’t about coercion or manipulation. Rather, it’s about the process—which can sometimes be quite slow—of encouraging someone else to open up. Even if you can’t control whether someone will self-disclose, you can smooth the runway.

knowing when to disclose more about yourself, when to step back to give the other space, and when to ask the right kinds of questions. It also requires supporting the other in achieving what they want, not what you want for them.

predicament

Empathy is the act of conveying not only that you understand the other’s feelings but also that you can identify with them:

he asked a series of questions that were not useful because they were actually advice. When he did so, Liam closed down.

reticent.

At times like this, you first have to meet the other person where they are. Only then can both of you move into other, perhaps deeper, areas.

“Meeting someone where they are” has several dimensions. One is, Are you speaking to what they want as opposed to what you want? Another is, Are you responding at the same emotional level?

A third dimension is, Are you seeing the world as they see it?

company. A fourth dimension is, Are you not responding to what the other really wants?

For the other person to hear anything you have to say, much less tell you more about themselves, they have to know that you seek to understand them and their position. Once that connection is made, then it is possible to bring up other issues and delve into more questions.

Timing is yet another dimension of meeting somebody else where they are.

The best way to make sure your curiosity is authentic is to hold the mindset that, in spite of how perceptive you think you might be and how well you think you know another person, you don’t actually know what’s going on for them. That keeps you naïve in the best sense of the word. And with this naïve curiosity, you are more likely to use questions that encourage disclosure.

The most effective open-ended questions don’t begin with the word “why.” “Why” questions tend to drive people into their heads and out of their feelings. Such questions carry an implicit request that the other person justify themselves.

Often there’s more going on than can be revealed by a logical explanation.

Equally unproductive are “pseudo-questions” that are really statements in question form. If

Both closed-ended questions and pseudo-questions sound a whole lot like advice or hypothesis testing in question form. Advice is rarely useful,

even if the other person asks for it. Our eagerness to help often causes us to jump in with a solution that comes out of our own experience or doesn’t fit the situation. Rarely do we come up with an option the other person hasn’t already considered (and likely discarded).

another limitation of advice-giving. David’s solution may actually have been right—for David. But it could have been wrong for Jim. Everyone has their own objectives and ways to achieve them. When people give advice, they tend to respond in terms of what they would do rather than fully taking into account how the other best operates.

There is wisdom to the adage “It’s better to have the wrong solution to the right problem than the right solution to the wrong problem”—because you will discover it’s the wrong solution much sooner.

“Am I giving advice to meet my needs or because I really want to help?”

conditions. If you are going to provide someone with advice, you have to understand the situation fully, really know what the other wants, and take their style and approach into account. Most important, you have to set aside what you would do.

you might want to look for opportunities to support them in more fully expressing their emotions. How do you know if they have understated their feelings? In a sense, you don’t, but you can make a guess based on their tone, their nonverbal cues, and noticing when the intensity of the situation doesn’t match the feelings being expressed. Ben picked up on Liam’s agitation. Ben empathized by saying, “You really sound upset,” which encouraged Liam to more fully express the depth of his anger. Unfortunately, rather than continuing to listen for and reflect back Liam’s feelings, which might have encouraged more self-disclosure, Ben did the opposite. He asked a series of logical questions that pulled Liam out of his feelings and into rational responses

Not only is a question more accurate than a statement, but it creates less resistance than if you expressed the same idea as if you know. You can also make comments like, “That really sounds upsetting,” or “I would certainly be really annoyed if that happened to me,” because those reflect what is going on within you, which is what you do know. Those empathetic statements are likely to encourage the other to express their feelings more fully.

I don’t want to push for more than you want to share. I’ll do my best not to bludgeon you with questions even when I want to know more. I’ll let you take the lead.”

“But I also don’t want to be constantly second-guessing myself. If you start to feel I’m asking too much, tell me and I’ll back off.” “Will do,” said Liam. Then he added, “And hey, I’ll try to be a little more open.”