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Effective communication

These articles explore word choice, questions, good listening skills and habits, body language, and the kind of careful attention to others that together shape effective communication for preventing and responding to conflict.

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Behind every criticism is a wish

28 July 2020 by Tammy Lenski

It’s possible to turn criticism into a positive conversation, whether you’re the recipient of someone’s criticism or you’ve gotten feedback about being too critical. The key is to find the hidden message the criticism is trying to convey. Here’s how to do that.

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The other day I heard myself hiss at my husband, “Why don’t you listen!” Even in that self-righteous moment when I felt totally justified in saying it, my better self shook her head in disgust at me. Even when we know better, our lesser selves sometimes manage to seize the moment.

We’re not very appealing at the moment we’re criticizing and sitting in judgment, and that makes us less persuasive. As business and personal strategist Tony Robbins perfectly pointed out,

You can’t influence somebody when you’re judging them.

Like anger, criticism has a message that’s struggling to be heard, but the message gets lost in the delivery. Whether you’re the recipient of someone’s criticism or wish to reform your own critical words or ways, here’s a nearly magical way to turn criticism into a positive conversation.

What is criticism?

A movie or literary critic typically critiques the quality of a work, rendering their opinion about its merits. A complaint expresses dissatisfaction with a specific event or behavior. Criticism, as I mean it in this article, is distinct from complaint or critique. Criticism expresses disapproval of a person or entity (as in, an organization, department, or family); it’s a generalized judgment about their merits as humans or as a group of humans.

Because of its personal nature, criticism hurts, even when hurt isn’t intended. Criticism attacks our identity, how we see ourselves in the world and want others to see us. It insults our images of ourselves as competent, reliable, worthy of others’ fellowship, self-reliant, and so on. It goes straight to our core.

It’s no wonder, then, that frequent criticism not only fails to persuade, but leaves debris in ongoing personal and professional relationships, little splinters of hurt that pile up over time. It’s not their job to toughen up, to have to drag personal armor into every exchange with us; it’s our job to be better communicators if we want something to change.

Criticism is born of something. It’s prompted by something that’s bothering us. To get our needs met without bruising someone’s identity, even unintentionally, we need to look beyond the criticism and beyond even the complaint.

We need to find our wish.

Behind every criticism is a wish

Memorize that phrase from psychotherapist Esther Perel; it’s a keeper. Perel, looking at criticism through a therapist’s lens, believes that criticism is an oblique way to avoid rejection:

If I say “I wish,” I have to put myself out there. It means I want something and I can be refused. I can be rejected. I can be not heard. And in a relationship that is not secure, I will defend against that. I don’t want to show you that side of me. So instead of saying what I want, I’ll say what you didn’t do. That’s the criticism. What you didn’t do and what’s wrong with you is safer, in some bizarre way, than to tell you what is special about me and what I would’ve wanted.

Esther perel

Whether or not you agree with Perel that criticism springs from fear of rejection or is a mechanism for self-protection, I hope you’ll consider the very powerful idea that expressing a wish is more effective than expressing a criticism when we want someone to change.

Expressing a wish is more effective than expressing a criticism when we want someone to change.

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Replace your criticism with your wish

When you need or want something to change, and wish to practice a habit other than criticism or repeated complaints, figure out the wish behind your criticism. As you practice this new habit, you may initially have to peel back several layers of the criticism onion to illuminate your wish.

Here are some examples of possible wishes for common criticisms. They may not be the wish you’d have if you uttered that criticism, of course. I offer them to illustrate a path that takes us from criticism to wish:

  • Criticism: You’re such a slacker.
  • Complaint: You’re not pulling your share of the load.
  • Fear: I will bear the burden of doing it all. Or, I will fail to do it all well.
  • Wish: I would like help getting this project done well.
  • Criticism: You never listen!
  • Complaint: It’s frustrating when you ask me a question and then don’t listen to my answer.
  • Fear: My opinion doesn’t matter. Or, You’re not really interested in what I have to say.
  • Wish: I’d like what I say to matter to you.
  • Criticism: He’s so passive-aggressive.
  • Complaint: He commits to a task and then doesn’t do it.
  • Fear: He thinks I’m a pushover. Or, I’ll have to take on his task at the last minute.
  • Wish: I want to trust his promises.

Imagine the conversation that’s possible when a criticism is translated into a wish: I want this project to go well and reflect positively on me. I’d like what I say to matter to you. I want to trust your promises without hesitation. I want not to doubt my understanding of what we agreed on. I want to come to work each day energized by the prospect of working with you on this project. I want to look forward, even feel excited by, team meetings. I want to come home at the end of the day looking forward to quiet time with you.

When you’re the recipient of someone else’s criticism

If you’re the recipient of someone else’s criticism, particularly if it’s the kind of constant criticism that can become habitual in some relationships, you can get some relief for yourself by helping them figure out the wish behind their criticism.

Is it your “job” to have to do this? Maybe not. But as management consultant Peter Block bluntly put it, “Do you want an A or do you want something to change?“

To help them illuminate the wish behind their criticism, try questions like these:

  • I’ve read that behind every criticism is a wish. What’s the wish behind your criticism of me?
  • Instead of what’s wrong with me, can you tell me what you’re wishing for?
  • If I were/weren’t (fill in the label or criticism), what would that mean to you? (Example: If I were a good listener, what would that mean to you?)

As always, time, place, and tone make the difference between questions that are effective and questions that fall flat or escalate.

In the conversation with my husband, I had to wrestle Bad Tammy into a mental corner and instruct her to shut up. Otherwise, we would have ended up in the kind of hamster wheel debate that achieves nothing but self-righteous anger: Why don’t you listen? I do listen! No you don’t! Yes, I do! Blah blah blah.

Then I tried this: “I need to take back that comment about you not listening and replace it with this: I want to feel confident I’ve been heard when I speak to you.” What followed was a useful conversation about how I tend to give information faster than he can absorb it and I need to slow down, and how it’s helpful for him to stop doing two things at once when we’re talking about something important.

Behind every criticism is a wish.

Here are a few more examples of criticisms reframed into wishes, pulled from my occasional Twitter series about reframing messages to make them more hearable:

Reframe: "Why can't you ever take responsibility?" –> "I'd like us each to acknowledge how we contributed to this." #DisagreeBetter pic.twitter.com/lz20ijS0we

— Tammy Lenski (@tammylenski) July 28, 2020

Reframe: "Grow a spine already" –> "I want us to feel we can discuss anything with each other" #ChangeTheConversation pic.twitter.com/NyK4XsoZey

— Tammy Lenski (@tammylenski) October 27, 2017

Reframe: "There's just no reasoning with you, is there." –> "I'd like us to have a thoughtful conversation about this sometime soon. Let's figure out when we might do that." #DisagreeBetter pic.twitter.com/W6KnCgbPKZ

— Tammy Lenski (@tammylenski) July 28, 2020

Reframe: "You're being disrespectful again" –> "Please stop interrupting me repeatedly" #ChangeTheConversation pic.twitter.com/8oroOtSbO1

— Tammy Lenski (@tammylenski) September 12, 2017

Reframe: "What a pigsty" –> "It would help me a lot if you'd keep your room tidier" #ChangeTheConversation pic.twitter.com/RQfcRPBIY8

— Tammy Lenski (@tammylenski) September 7, 2017

Reframe: "You're about as selfish as they come." –> "It's important to me that you take my needs into account too." #DisagreeBetter pic.twitter.com/ZRP0YPnqPj

— Tammy Lenski (@tammylenski) July 28, 2020

Suggested reading

The overflowing teacup

This traditional zen koan, or story, beautifully illustrates the reason that it’s so hard to change someone’s mind when they’re certain they’re right.

Read the article
Disclosure: One or more links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means I receive a few dimes from Amazon if you buy the book (at no extra cost to you). And, of course, I just turn around and spend those dimes on…more books. Which then inform my writing here, for you. It’s a beautiful cycle.

Filed Under: Effective communication, The space between Tagged With: Instagram

Break down listening barriers with these 4 questions

26 June 2020 by Tammy Lenski

Conflict is very good at creating listening barriers. When they’re talking we’re only half listening while we wait to talk, formulate our comeback, struggle to keep calm, and fall into other habits that get in the way of good listening. If you’re in a position to help someone come back into good listening, try these four questions to prompt the return (you can use them with yourself, too).

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It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.

It’s really hard to listen well in the middle of conflict, even when we know the importance of good listening. Distractions, preoccupations, misunderstanding, the other person’s long-windedness, strong emotions, and “going inside our heads” to formulate our response — listening barriers like these interfere with good problem solving.

Good questions and good listening are the rockstar duo of effective conflict resolution and good problem solving. They’ll get you 80% of the way there in most situations.

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They’re also the rockstar duo because we can use one to help us do the other better. When we listen well, the questions we ask get better because we’re hearing and understanding more deeply. And good questions trigger better engagement — and better listening.

It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens.

– CARL ROGERS

Here are some of my favorite questions to help someone back into good listening.

1. What’s holding your attention?

Design thinking champion Ideo recommends using this question as a check-in at the beginning of a meeting to help participants release distractions and burdens they carry in with them.

But this question deserves a place at the table well beyond the start of a conversation. It’s one of my very favorite questions and I find it invaluable in moments like these:

  • When I want to understand why someone seems to have checked out of the conversation.
  • When I want to understand why the temperature of a conversation has gotten hotter.
  • When I think something important is on someone’s mind but they haven’t shared it yet.
  • When I want to interrupt a tirade and understand what triggered it.

I prefer this question to, What’s going on for you right now? because it feels less therapeutic and yields information without encouraging rumination.

2. What will working this out mean for you?

Conflict has this way of blocking our long view. There we are, our eyes on our destination, and conflict comes up and grabs us by the collar. We don’t even notice that it’s blocking our way because now our attention is on our collar.

This question helps us get out of collar-grab moments that aren’t really taking us anywhere. It helps us redirect attention away from the minor nuisance or distraction and refocus us on what’s important. Our listening can improve again because we’re no longer distracted by the tussle over our collar.

A similar question with equal merit is, How is this situation affecting you?

3. What is the problem we’re trying to solve here?

A repetitive argument is a sure sign there’s little listening going on. One reason arguments get repetitive, stuck in a cycle of the same positions, arguments, and even words, is that people are actually solving different problems. We become like two train tracks running parallel but never meeting, though we may not be conscious of it.

This question brings the hamster wheel debate to a standstill, and makes those distinctly separate train tracks visible. It also re-engages our interest in listening because we want to know what problem the others think we’re solving.

When we’re helping others in a conflict in which we have no part, the better version of this question is, What is the problem you’re trying to solve here? This may sound like splitting hairs. When I’m mediating, I try not to entangle myself in their conflict; the job’s hard enough as it is and by being clear with my language, I’m clearer in my mind, too.

4. I know you can’t…but if you could…?

Sometimes we stop listening because no solution seems to work and the situation feels hopelessly deadlocked. Can’t can’t can’t and won’t won’t won’t reverberate in our heads and the sense of impotence can make us withdraw.

Here’s what the question sounds like in practice:

  • I know you can’t agree to that idea, but if you could, what would make it possible?
  • I know you can’t agree to a solution that increases your expenses right now, but if you could agree, how could that happen?

This is a strange question but its weird power is indisputable. First, because it’s so weird, people re-engage and start listening again. Second, it acknowledges you’ve heard them say no to something, even though you’re about to question that very no. Finally, it invites them to think beyond the no.

Even after two decades of using this question to inspire both deeper listening and deeper problem-solving, it seems on the surface that it can’t possibly work. And sometimes it isn’t helpful. No question is a guaranteed slam dunk. But often, after triggering an odd look, it prompts really useful fodder for discussion and problem solving. And it brings them back into listening.

Suggested reading

5 impactful questions for handling difficult moments

Most difficult conversations ebb and flow between good progress and difficult moments, those times it’s a challenge to access our best selves and skills. Here are five common difficult moments and five powerful questions to help you through them.

Read the article

Filed Under: Effective communication, The space between

Five uncomplicated ways couples can turn arguments into discussions

13 May 2020 by Tammy Lenski

There’s a new book out, Living Together, Separating, Divorcing: Surviving During a Pandemic, released yesterday on Amazon. The brainchild of Michael Lang and Peter Nicholson, the book features conflict resolution advice for couples and families from over 70 mediators and related professionals from 10 countries. Here’s my contribution and more details about the collective wisdom in the book.

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Couples can have big fights, frequent conflict, and bicker, yet still have healthy, fulfilling relationships. We know that conflict can damage a relationship, so why do some relationships with frequent conflict nevertheless weather the storms, survive — and even thrive?

Research suggests that these three conditions help protect couples from the negative effects of conflict:

  1. How well you think your partner understands your thoughts, feelings, and point of view, even if they don’t agree with you. This “perceived understanding” seems to buffer a relationship from the downsides of conflict, helping couples recover better from arguments and view conflict as a healthy part of a normal relationship.
  2. Being able to “psychologically distance” yourself in the heat of an argument. Psychological distancing is just a trick of the mind to help you look at the argument from the outside in. Psychological distancing has been shown to help with self-control and problem solving, key factors for conflict resolution.
  3. Avoiding rumination. Rumination is dwelling on hurt and angry feelings. This kind of “self-immersive” behavior after a fight can fuel ongoing anger and cause displaced aggression (such as lashing out at your child, who innocently wanders into the room at the wrong time).
turn arguments into discussions - Tammy's chapter in the book

You can use this information if you’re still together and want to keep your relationship healthy, and you can use this information if you’re separated and want to minimize the frustration of conflict. Here are five ways to use it:

Agree in advance on a “pause” word or phrase. Anyone in the conversation may use the pause word to signal they believe the argument is escalating and they want to call a timeout. When one of you uses the pause phrase, the discussion ends for now; even a few minutes’ break can help. A pause word or phrase might be, “I’m calling pause” or, more humorously, “Ok, let’s fight about it!”

Mentally distance yourself in time. Use the pause to picture yourself a year from now, looking back on this argument. Silently describe to yourself how you feel about the argument, as you look back at it. This quick mental trick, called “prospection,” is helpful for regaining emotional self-control, improving relationship well-being, and boosting insight.

Acknowledge even when you don’t agree. Acknowledging doesn’t mean you agree, just that you understand. When you acknowledge their point and feelings, you help build the kind of “perceived understanding” that makes relationships more resilient during stressful times.

Give back the last word. Even if you’re separated or divorced, if you have children together, it’s better for everyone not to damage the relationship more. If you’ve got to have the last word, try to make it one that conveys you “get” your conversation partner.

Replace ruminating with this thought exercise. If you find yourself dwelling on hurt feelings and angry thoughts after an argument, redirect your mind to consider the argument from the perspective of an impartial observer who wants the best for you both. How would they describe what happened? What would they suggest you do differently next time? What positive aspect would they have noticed in the argument? It can be helpful to do this exercise in writing if you can.

About the book

Living Together, Separating, Divorcing: Surviving During a Pandemic offers guidance for couples in three types of situations:

Living Together, Separating, Divorcing: Surviving During a Pandemic
  • Couples who are living together, not contemplating separation or divorce, who find themselves increasingly stressed by 24/7 togetherness and/or financial uncertainty.
  • Couples who are sheltering in place together while one or both are thinking about or already in the process of separation and divorce.
  • Couples who are already divorced or separated, no longer living together, with shared parenting or ongoing financial ties, and trying to adjust to conditions caused by the pandemic.

The intentionally short essays in the book are meant as bite-sized, practical guidance for easing tension and managing life at home during these difficult times. I’ve had a chance to read the entire book and it’s just chock full of smart, do-able ideas and wisdom. Those of us who contributed — mediators, financial experts, mental health experts, child experts, lawyers, and more — are united in a commitment to use our knowledge and experience to help make life just a bit better for families during the pandemic.

The ebook is priced at $1.99 on Amazon to make it affordable and easily accessible. The book’s website is here: Pandemic Relationships.

Filed Under: Effective communication, The space between Tagged With: Instagram

How to disagree better

19 November 2019 by Tammy Lenski

Sound decisions, healthy team dynamics, and resilient personal and professional relationships don’t require or even particularly benefit from an absence of conflict. When there’s conflict and tension, the goal isn’t to abolish it, but to navigate it in ways that prevent damage and inspire deeper consideration of solutions. The goal is to disagree better.

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What does it mean to disagree better?

Healthy, resilient and fulfilling personal and professional relationships have conflict — sometimes a lot of it. How you navigate the conflict and what you do to nourish the relationship in general matter at least as much as, and perhaps more than, the amount or degree of conflict.

continue reading here

© 2020 Tammy Lenski

Filed Under: Effective communication, Good problem-solving process, Mental models in problem solving, Self-mastery, The space between Tagged With: Featured

How to influence the way people act during conflict

23 July 2019 by Tammy Lenski

If you believe someone is aggressive, could they behave more aggressively with you than with others? If someone believes you are a hostile person, are you likely to act more hostile when you interact with them? It’s called behavioral confirmation and if you’re interested in your own or others’ conflict behavior, it’s worth understanding.

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A man gets on an elevator with his dog. At the next floor, a second man gets on the elevator, scowls at the dog, and says angrily, “Dogs don’t belong in this building!” The dog growls at the man.

Several floors later, the annoyed man exits the elevator and a third man gets on. He smiles at the dog and says enthusiastically, “You are such a cute fellow!” The dog wags his tail happily at the man.

So where does the problem lie? Is the dog a “difficult dog”?

You cannot look at a person who seems difficult to you without also looking at yourself.


JEFFREY KOTTLER, PSYCHOLOGIST

We can easily see that the problem lies not with the dog alone, but also with the annoyed man.

And it’s no different with humans, it turns out.

If someone expects you to be attractive, do you end up acting differently?

A classic social psychology experiment, replicated and expanded upon over the years, demonstrated that our expectations of others can cause them to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.

In the late 1970s University of Minnesota researchers had a hunch that people sense how others view them and start exhibiting the expected behaviors. To test their hunch, they decided to investigate the way stereotypes about appearance affect a person’s perceptions of sociability, intelligence, and the like.

The researchers arranged conversations between male and female university students. The pairs of students could not see each other, and before the conversation, researchers gave each male student two pieces of information: Biographical information and a photo of the woman they would be talking to. The bios were accurate, but the photos were fake.

Half the men were given the photo of a woman who had been rated as very attractive by others, the other half the photo of a woman rated as not very attractive.

The conversations were recorded. Later, university students who were not part of the conversations listened to the female portion of the recordings, assessing the voices on animation, enthusiasm, enjoyment, and so on.

You already suspect where this is going, don’t you?

In conversations with men who believed they were talking to an attractive woman, the women tended to exhibit more behaviors stereotypically attributed to attractiveness. They were viewed as more socially adept, humorous, and poised. In conversations with men who believed they were talking to an unattractive woman, the women tended to come off as more awkward, serious, and unsociable.

Remember: The photo the men had was not of the woman on the other end of the phone. And the women knew nothing about what was going on. Neither did the independent observers who listened to the women’s voices later.

Researchers concluded that the women had subconsciously picked up on the impressions the men had of them and inadvertently confirmed the stereotype projected on them.

Whoa.

The research has since been replicated using racial, gender, and weight stereotypes, loneliness, and even anticipation of hostility. In the latter study, when participants interacted with people who expected them to be hostile, they displayed greater hostility than those who were expected not to be hostile.

Behavioral confirmation

One of the original researchers, Mark Snyder, coined the term behavioral confirmation to describe the effect that behavioral expectations have on actual behavior.

It seems to happen in four stages:

  1. The perceiver adopts a belief about the “target” (the recipient of the belief).
  2. The perceiver then treats the target according to the belief, perhaps subconsciously.
  3. The target picks up on cues in the perceiver’s words and attitude, and subconsciously modifies their own behavior.
  4. The perceiver then uses the target’s behavior as confirmation of their belief.

From behavioral confirmation to emotional contagion to neural coupling, what’s beginning to emerge from research is a fuller picture of the ways we influence someone else’s behavior not just by what we do and say, but also by our beliefs and moods.

How can you use this?

A powerful takeaway from research like this is recognition that the conflict behavior we dislike in someone is not simply a matter of their own flaws.

We are a factor.

When we decide someone is difficult, our own belief about them may well be contributing to their difficult behavior.


CLICK TO TWEET

This is not just a mind-blowing truth about the complexity of human behavior. It’s also one that gives us greater agency, the sense that our own voluntary action can produce an effect.

Before we knew about behavioral confirmation, when we experienced someone’s conflict behavior as difficult, we had four general options:

  • Persuade them to change their behavior.
  • Wrangle them into different behavior.
  • Avoid interacting with them.
  • Ignore or learn to live with the behavior.

Now we have a fifth option and it might be the most powerful one of all: Adopt a different belief about them.

Two special notes for mediators

Mediator note 1

Fellow mediators are often surprised — and sometimes downright aghast — that I don’t set mediation ground rules at the start of my mediations. How on earth, they ask, do you get people to behave well?

Some don’t like my answer very much: I just expect them to.

Most of the time that’s enough. And behavioral confirmation explains why that’s the case.

Mediator note 2

If you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you know that I have very strong feelings about treating clients as somehow “less than” or “broken” (“high conflict,” for example).

When you find your thoughts turning to pet diagnoses when someone is acting in a way you find frustrating in the mediation room, remember: You may just be helping create some of the very conflict behavior you’re trying to address.

The way you see people
is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become. - Goethe

Suggested reading

How to deal with difficult people

How do you deal with difficult people? It’s one of the most frequent questions I’m asked in my workshops and by readers, friends, and grad students. Here’s my strategy for dealing with difficult people and why it so consistently works.

Read the article
An earlier version of this article was first published in April 2017. I updated and expanded on it in July 2019.

Filed Under: Effective communication, The space between

How to politely stop long-winded talkers

26 March 2019 by Tammy Lenski

When we listen well, sometimes others hog air time and just keep talking. It’s an inadvertent, and often unwelcome, side effect of good listening. Here’s a way I like to handle long-winded talkers that’s both effective and kind.

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A reader wrote, “I’ve been told I need to be a better listener. But when I do listen, sometimes people just go on and on. At what point do I get to be the one to talk when the other person doesn’t know when to shut up?”

That’s a fair question. Sometimes people do go on and on once they’ve got the floor. It can feel pretty overwhelming.

It looks like they’re being unaware or, worse, selfish. Maybe it’s tempting to conclude they can’t self-regulate. That’s probably true occasionally, but more often, the gift of good listening just has such a deep impact on people.

I see this in my work all the time. When a person finally feels like someone is really listening, it’s akin to the sluice gates of a dam being opened after a heavy rainfall. The things they’ve been waiting to say, wanting to say, but have not been fully given the chance to say, finally get their due. They come out in a flood after being held back for so long and it can take a while for everything to return to normal levels.

I try not to fault someone for this. Conflict has a way of bottling up people. Deep listening is a gift too few of us receive and when we do get it, we want never to let it go.

Not listening is the ultimate insult. It says that what they have to say is unimportant. - Michael Aloi, U.S. Magistrate Judge

I find that assuming the behavior has benign roots and taking harsh diagnosis out of it make me less frustrated by it. It is so much more soothing (not to mention effective) to notice the equal human in front of me than to sit in judgment.

So it’s useful to begin with the internal work of adjusting our thinking about the experience. Then, we turn to the external work — what we will say or do. I’m a big fan of transparency for situations like this.

Transparency is the non-judgmental sharing of one’s experience or thoughts, offered as an observation that may be helpful.

It might sound something like this: You’re sharing so much that I’m struggling to take it all in. I’m afraid I’m going to miss something important.

Or maybe like this: I’m having a tough time absorbing everything you’re saying. Can we do this in smaller chunks?

Of course, there’s helpful transparency and harmful transparency.

Harmful transparency makes the argument immediately worse by failing to weed out the judgmental noise: Sarcasm, biting words, pointing out their flaws and selfishness, diagnosis of their frailties, and so on. It’s damaging for relationships.

Helpful transparency is the sharing of one’s experience minus all that noise. It’s intention is to convey, Hey, here’s what I’m noticing right now, what do you think about that?

When I’m feeling overwhelmed by a flood of words that shows no sign of abating, I like to use transparency because it communicates that I care and am interested, signals that I need help if I’m going to continue listening, and invites them to play a role in getting their own interests met.

I’ve had good success with it.

Filed Under: Effective communication, The space between

5 bad listening habits and how to break them

30 October 2018 by Tammy Lenski

Conflict has a way of magnifying our bad listening habits. I frequently see the following listening habits get in the way of constructive and collaborative problem-solving during conflict and thought I’d flag them for attention.

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Good communication during conflict relies, to some extent, on our ability to use good communication habits in our everyday conversations. If we fall into bad listening habits in our everyday conversations, it’s going to be harder to be good listeners in times of tension and stress.

I’m as guilty of some of these bad listening habits as the next person and I strive to get better at them.

Bassett hound ears

1. Listening with our answer running

When we listen with our answer running, we’ve stopped listening. It may look like we’re listening, but really, we’re inside our head, preparing what we’ll say the moment they pause. Of course, while we’re doing this, they’re still talking, so we miss some of what they’re saying.

Listening is not just waiting to talk.

Scott Ginsburg

It would be a shame to miss a gem that might have changed the conversation for the better or led to a different outcome.

2. Listening only from our own frame of reference

Stephen Covey described a listening continuum that runs from “ignoring” on the left, to “pretend listening,” then “selective listening,” then “attentive listening,” and finally to “empathic listening” on the right. He proposed that the first four are the types of listening we do most often. They all take place from our own frame of reference.

The 5 types of listening

Of the five types of listening, Covey said that only empathic listening is an attempt to listen from the other person’s frame of reference. Only empathic listening comes from a desire and commitment to listen without agenda.

3. Stealing someone’s story

Enzo, canine narrator of the novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, describes stealing someone’s story this way:

I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another’s conversations constantly. It’s like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street.

Stealing someone’s story means to pull the conversation away from what they were talking about before they were done — maybe even before they really got started. Maybe they mention a frustrating lunch with a colleague. That reminds us of the stale croutons at the salad bar at lunch today, so we turn the conversation to croutons. This can be an exasperating experience for the original storyteller, who was in the midst of something else entirely.

In conflict, we may do this more than usual, because we really would like to change the direction they’re heading. They may then steal our story, and the conversation deteriorates into a series of stolen stories, none really heard or attended to by the other.

4. Multi-tasking

I once was introduced to the new owner of a large sporting goods chain while at a business gathering. He asked me a question about my work and as I briefly answered it, I could see he wasn’t listening. He was looking over my shoulder and moving his head slightly from side to side. I finally stopped mid-sentence and looked behind me to see who he was looking at. It was a mirror. He was multitasking with himself.

Multi-tasking is bad for good listening. Our attention is divided by the “switch costs” of multi-tasking and we can’t help but miss part of their message.

Chronic bad listening habits are built on multi-tasking: Checking email or reading texts while in conversation. Continuing to work through the pile of paperwork on our desk while a colleague drops in to voice a concern. Opening today’s mail while our teenager tells us about something that happened at school.

5. Listening to confirm we’re right

Years ago my husband and I visited the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA. When I saw this quote from legendary coach John Wooden, I realized I wasn’t just visiting a mecca for hoops fans, I was visiting a tribute to some of the best coaching in the world:

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

John Wooden

Conflict often denies us the desire to learn. We may not listen to learn as much as we listen to confirm we’re right. That we’re right about their wrongness. Right about our interpretation. Right about their frailties and mistakes. We listen with the agenda to hear those hints and use them as weapons of defense and offense.

When we think we know what we need to know about them and the situation, maybe that’s the signal we should start listening more deeply.

Overcoming bad listening habits

All of these bad listening habits share a few characteristics that, in turn, create barriers to conflict resolution:

  • They serve our own agenda more than they serve a joint agenda.
  • They signal that we aren’t truly interested.
  • They’re sloppy ways to listen at a time we need to up our listening game.

Of course, because they’re habits, we may have none of those intentions and just stumble into bad listening because we’re used to it. Maybe most days it doesn’t matter that we listen half-heartedly and not very attentively. When conflict is in the air, though, we need to be able to catch ourselves and listen differently.

Here are four effective ways to break bad listening habits:

1. Enlist help. If we don’t notice right away when we’ve tripped into a bad listening habit, it’s helpful to enlist a trusted colleague, family member, or friend to alert us. We want them to alert us not in a judgmental way, but in a “just giving you a heads up” way. They can do this with a subtle kick under the table, a gesture we agree on ahead of time, or simply by saying, “You asked me to alert you when you stumble into that habit.”

2. Practice in low-stakes moments. It is very hard to listen well under the stress of conflict. To get good at it under pressure, we first need to be good at it when the going is easy. When we practice in everyday conversations, we develop our “muscle memory” for good listening and can build from there.

3. Make a commitment to “get into their movie.” The typical advice about listening well is to “be curious.” That’s good advice but hard to pull off during conflict and tension. It’s helpful to use the “get into their movie” listening device to help us be curious. “Get into their movie” means to temporarily suspend our disbelief in order to hear and learn something we otherwise might miss. It’s an easy phrase to remember.

4. Commit to eye contact. The simple act of making eye contact while someone is talking forces us to stop multi-tasking and pay attention. And it helps them feel attended to. When we practice this for small stretches in everyday conversations, we establish the kind of connection that will serve us well in times of tension.

Suggested reading

The surprising way to ask better questions

When we’re stuck in conflict, sometimes it’s the questions we’re asking ourselves or our sparring partner. To ask better questions in conflict, try this surprisingly useful trick.

Read the article
Disclosure: One or more links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means I receive a few dimes from Amazon if you buy the book (at no extra cost to you). And, of course, I just turn around and spend those dimes on…more books. Which then inform my writing here, for you. It’s a beautiful cycle.

Filed Under: Effective communication, The space between

How to express a concern without making things worse

3 August 2018 by Tammy Lenski

When I ask clients why they let a problem go on for so long before addressing it, a common reply is, “I was afraid I’d create more conflict by raising it.” It’s an understandable fear. Here are some tried-and-true ways to raise an issue for discussion without making matters worse.

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When we have a concern about someone else’s behavior, we weigh in our minds whether it’s worth the effort to raise it: Will they push back and things will get uncomfortable? Could a delicate peace with them get shattered? Will they think badly of me? Will they hold a grudge? Will it make any difference anyway?

These are reasonable questions to wonder about. They’re also the stuff of ruminating, chewing over our worries for so long we lure ourselves into inaction. For recurring or frustrating problems, inaction doesn’t work very well.

The soft start

A great alternative to endless rumination is raising a concern with a soft start.

A soft start is a way to introduce a concern without blame, judgment, or attack.

Here’s an example of a hard start: “Stop interrupting me.”

And an example of a soft start: “I’d really like to finish my thought before you respond. Thanks for hanging on just a moment more.”

Soft starts are usually described as gentler — though no less direct — word choice, as in the above example.

But another type of soft start is the strategic soft start, where you choose a specific a method for raising an issue in ways that reduce the chance of immediate defensiveness or out-of-hand dismissal.

A strategic soft start introduces a concern without blame, judgment, or attack by using a specific framework to start the conversation.

Here are three of my favorites strategic soft starts:

1. Say what you’re seeing and check it out

This soft start strategy uses a non-judgmental transparency about what you’re noticing. The following two-part phrase is very useful:

“Here’s what I’m noticing…and here’s what I’m wondering…”

“Here’s what I’m noticing” is a simple, straightforward, yet considerate way to be transparent about what’s on your mind. Done in an amiable tone, it doesn’t come across like a statement of fact or diagnosis, but instead as something you’re wondering out loud and willing to be disproved.

“Here’s what I’m wondering” is the natural extension of what you’re noticing. The best kind of wondering with this strategy is wondering what’s going on for them or wondering if you’ve missed (or misunderstood) something, or wondering how you can help.

Here’s an example: “I’m noticing that several deadlines have slipped by recently. I’m wondering if everything’s ok for you…?”

For more on this soft start strategy, see How to confront someone without being confrontational. And by the way, this strategic soft start will also help you avoid the traps of confirmation bias and reflexive loops.

2. Describe your experience instead of your interpretation.

When you lead with your conclusion about them, you set yourself up for push-back. If your conclusion is wrong, they will naturally push back to prove it. If your conclusion hits close to the mark, they may still push back to protect themselves.

When you lead with your experience, though, you speak only about yourself in relation to them, instead of about them. Public radio host Krista Tippett describes the benefit well:

I can disagree with your opinion, it turns out, but I can’t disagree with your experience. And once I have a sense of your experience, you and I are in relationship, acknowledging the complexity in each other’s position, listening less guardedly.
Krista Tippett

When you lead with your conclusion, it usually goes something like this: “You’re so critical all the time.”

When you lead with your experience, though, your strategic soft start is much more apparent: “I’ve been feeling criticized a lot lately and I’m afraid it’s making me pull away from you. I don’t want that.”

3. Communicate impact instead of intention

When you conflate impact and intention, the concern you’re trying to raise is likely to get tangled in their defensiveness.

Conflating impact and intention means to assume that one necessarily explains the other. Bad impact on you? Must have been bad intention on their part. Good intention on your part? Then let’s dismiss the bad impact on them.

When you conflate impact and intention, it usually sounds something like this: “You must really enjoy making me do two jobs while you drift in late every morning.”

When you communicate the impact only, as a strategic soft start, it sounds something like this: “It’s getting really difficult to do my job well when I’m also trying to pinch-hit for you.”

For more on impact and intention, see Benign intentions don’t cancel bad impact.

Helping others use strategic soft starts

If you’re a mediator or manager, you have the everyday task of helping others raise their concerns in productive, constructive ways. The three strategic soft starts I’ve just described are really helpful with this task if you employ them in a coaching capacity.

On the fly, you can coach your client or employee to reconstruct their sentence more effectively. For example, if someone says to someone else, “How many times have I asked you not to interrupt me?” you can step in with, “What’s the impact on you when they interrupt?”

In advance of sitting down with two more more conflicting clients or employees, you can speak with them and help them consider how to raise their concerns constructively. I might ask each client privately, “How will you raise this with them when we’re all together? Tell me how you’ll say it.” or “Pretend I’m them. Tell me what’s on your mind.” If I hear a very hard start, I will often describe the difference between a hard and soft start, the downsides of a hard start, and suggest a soft start strategy that makes sense for their particular concern. Then I’ll give them a chance to practice it. To be balanced, I will repeat this process with each person involved in the mediation.

Note for professional mediators: I recognize that not all professional mediators use pre-mediation in this way and may even practice in settings that prohibit it (too bad for you). But if you work in mediation arenas in which people will be in ongoing relationship once you’re done, this kind of advance coaching is powerful stuff for helping people bring their best to the table.

Suggested reading

Sh**ty first drafts of difficult conversations

What if we stopped expecting so much of ourselves (and others) when we’re frustrated, and started by assuming the first draft of our conversation is going to stink?

Read the article
Disclosure: One link in this post is an Amazon affiliate link, which means I receive a few dimes from Amazon if you buy the book (at no extra cost to you). And, of course, I just turn around and spend those dimes on…more books. Which then inform my writing here, for you. It’s a beautiful cycle.

Filed Under: Effective communication, The space between

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