How do you start a difficult conversation?

Conflict Matters: How do you start a difficult conversation?

Last year we looked at “difficult conversations”; defined as any conversation someone doesn’t want to have – either you or the person you need to speak to. If you have got to the point where you just have to say something, it’s a safe bet you feel quite strongly about it. So it is perfectly natural to start with how you see the situation. Let’s say you have read the previous columns and know it is a bad idea to start with “You……” so you prepare carefully and dutifully start with “I”:

“I was very upset by what you said in front of ______”. Or “My concern is, if you contest Mom’s will, it will tear the family apart.” Or “I hate the fact that you don’t clean up after yourself.” Or “I have observed that your child can be quite disruptive in class.”

Any of these conversations might still go very badly, simply because you have started with your own story. By spending time beforehand thinking about the problem, we have made sense of it and we now want the other person to see what is so obvious to us. Beginning here almost guarantees disaster, simply because we are starting with what the other person already thinks is the problem – our perception or even more simply, us!

Leaving the other person’s story out of our opening sets us up for an either/or fight and we have all had those. Instead, start with the third story: neither yours, nor theirs. The skill here is in describing the problem in a way that captures the difference(s) without judgement, in a way everyone can accept. If you want to develop this skill, dishes are a great opportunity for practice. Wherever a few people live and eat together, there are dishes to be washed afterwards, and disputes are very common. The “third story” might go something like this:

“It is clear there are different preferences amongst us around when the dishes are done, and different standards for what constitutes appropriate levels of cleanliness. Each of us is unhappy with the other’s approach.” With a little effort and practice, you can do this with every problem: simply describe the difference. And you can also do it when you are on the receiving end of someone coming at you with their (doubtless biased) story: you can resist the instinct to react defensively and instead come up with the third story: an objective description of the difference(s).

Having got agreement on the difference(s), what next? Tune in next month for more…….

Previous ……….. Next