How to reframe difficult conversations into learning conversations
This week I found out how to reframe difficult conversations into learning conversations with the guidance of Sheila Heen.
I’ve been brought up as a people pleaser. So having difficult conversations has been an ongoing challenge I’ve been working on to get better at.
My search for understanding and solutions brought me to this book, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Sheila Heen, Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton. It helpfully breaks down what makes some conversations difficult, why people tend avoid them and how to better manage them.
We find conversations difficult when we fear the consequences of what might happen if we start them. So, for the most part, we do our best avoid them because they make us feel vulnerable.
The authors show that underlying difficult conversations there are three deeper conversations.
The "What happened?" conversation – which usually involves disagreement over what happened, what should happen, and who is to blame.
The Feelings conversation – which is about the parties' emotions, and their validity.
The Identity conversation – which is an internal conversation that each party has with themselves, over what the situation tells them about who they are.
To reduce our reluctance to have difficult conversations it helps to reframe them into learning conversations and avoid the common mistakes we make when having them.
So how to do this?
Turn the “What Happened” Conversation into a Learning Conversation by focusing on curiosity, impact and contribution. How you interpret what you see as the facts is just your perspective. The mistake is to think this is the only perspective. Instead ask the other party what they see and how they interpret it. Stare at the facts and interpretations together and see where the common ground and differences are and ask why.
Improve the Feelings Conversation by exploring, negotiating and sharing your feelings. To do this without emotional escalation – first find gratitude in what the other person has shared and then let them know how the situation or actions have made you feel. Listen to what the other party shares and acknowledge it.
Focus on the nuances of the Identity Conversation and refrain from controlling others’ reactions. We tend to judge ourselves in absolute terms: competent or useless, mean or kind. And this limits our willingness to have hard conversations that we perceive will make us feel we are not who we think we are. Instead see yourself as a work in progress and always open to learning and improvement. Abandon the need to predict and control other’s reactions. If what we say is done with respect and in an act of service, how people react to this is then their choice. And that’s OK.
Tell a neutral story to start. No one loves having someone else saying “hey what you did sucked and you need to stop it.” That’s how the other party interprets the start of a difficult conversation, and it leads to defensive barriers being put up. Start by saying “I think our definitions of cleanliness and our preferences for doing dishes differ, can we talk about this?”Instead of saying “I do all the cleaning and your partner then says “You’re so anal about the dishes”.
It’s not a battle over who’s right and who’s wrong, its quest to seek greater understanding that makes it less scary to have difficult conversations and more productive when you do.
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