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January 21, 2025
Others notice their emotions before they notice signs in their body.
Some people’s first cue is behavioral.
If you don’t fear that you’re being attacked or humiliated, you yourself can hear almost anything and not become defensive.
When others begin to feel unsafe, they start acting in annoying ways. They may make fun of you, insult you, or steamroll you with their arguments. In such moments, you should be thinking to yourself: “Hey, they’re feeling unsafe. I need to do something—maybe make it safer.”
The three most common forms of silence are masking, avoiding, and withdrawing.
Masking consists of understating or selectively showing our true opinions. Sarcasm, sugarcoating, and couching are some of the more popular forms:
Avoiding involves steering completely away from sensitive subjects. We talk, but without addressing the real issues:
Withdrawing means pulling out of a conversation altogether. We either exit the conversation or exit the room:
Violence consists of any verbal strategy that attempts to convince or control others or compel them to your point of view.
Controlling consists of coercing others to your way of thinking. It’s done through either forcing your views on others or dominating the conversation by interrupting, overstating your facts, speaking in absolutes, changing subjects, or using directive questions, among other strategies:
Remember, human beings are wired to look for threats. When people feel threatened, they move to silence or verbal violence or to flight or fight—none of which are great for problem solving.
It’s not enough for you to have good intentions; the other person must know that this is the case.
In order for people to feel safe with you, they need to know two things about your intent. They need to know that:
• You care about their concerns (Mutual Purpose). • You care about them (Mutual Respect).
This is the first condition of safety—Mutual Purpose. Mutual Purpose means that others perceive that you’re working toward a common outcome in the conversation, that you care about their goals, interests, and values.
Here are four skills that the best at dialogue routinely use to build safety up front in a conversation and rebuild safety when it’s been lost: • Share your good intent. • Apologize when appropriate. • Contrast to fix misunderstandings. • Create a Mutual Purpose.
if people aren’t sure of your intent, they will assume the worst.
When you start the conversation by sharing your good intent, you lay the foundation for safety.
When you’ve made a mistake that has hurt others, start with an apology.
when you give up something you value, you’re rewarded with something even more valuable—healthy dialogue and better results.
When people misunderstand and you start arguing over the misunderstanding, stop. Use Contrasting. Explain what you don’t mean until you’ve restored safety. Then return to the conversation. Safety first.
Sometimes when you recognize the purposes behind another person’s strategies, you discover that you actually have compatible goals.
