According to a study by Bravely, 70% of employees avoid difficult conversations at work and fully 95% of employees struggle to speak up about a concern.
That’s a lot of conversations about meaningful topics that are not happening – a whole lot of bottlenecking going on!
Imagine how many conversations we are not having that we should be having. Some of them can have dire consequences, though may start out innocuous and can include:
- asking for a change important to you, at work or on your team
- giving feedback to a boss who might be “micro-managing”
- talking with a colleague who did something that didn’t sit well with you
- discussing household tasks with a roommate
- expressing intimacy or communication needs with a partner.
Why do we avoid, or give up on, the important conversations that could be tricky to have?
The authors of Crucial Conversations give us a big clue when they define crucial conversations as a discussion between two or more people with these attributes:
- High Stakes – The outcome of the conversation has a significant impact on work or life.
- Opposing Opinions – There are differing opinions among the participants.
- Strong Emotions – The conversation can be intensely heated or cause hurt feelings.
When the stakes are high, we care – a lot. So, our threat response (a natural built-in biology for all us mammals) is bound to be more sensitive.
Add the possibility of opposing opinions. Most of us have not been taught how to allow and accept different opinions, to see them as new information and learning. Instead, we reject an opposing opinion as wrong or evidence that someone is not listening – threat response again.
Then there are strong emotions. We can have a marked physiologically response like our heart rate speeding up, palms sweating, our thinking narrowing in a nanosecond (the amygdala high-jack). This can be threatening because we might lose control of our compassionate, more “civilized” side.
Our Emotional Brains Are Key
Really, of the three, it’s strong emotions that are at the root. High stakes simply mean this is important so we can feel strongly about that. Opposing opinions create a defensive reaction – emotions again.
It’s when we get activated, when we feel strongly about something, that problems seem to arise. Strong emotions are viewed as problem at work where emotional expressions are seen as “unprofessional.” Strong emotions are a problem at home, where most tend to think it’s okay to treat our loved ones badly, in a way we’d never act at work.
Yet, education on how to work with our emotional brains is only now starting to emerge with new advances in neuroscience. Most of us have not been taught how to self-regulate in the face of bodily reactions. It is a learnable skill.
Strong emotions combined with high stakes and opposing opinions create the tension.
The 5 As to the Rescue!
Even with the barriers described above, it is possible to have high stakes conversations in a way that can can be emotionally harmonious. The authors of Crucial Conversations discovered that the most outstanding leaders they studied were able to influence the outcomes of difficult but vital conversations – without offending others.
That’s been my experience over the years as well. Time and again, I’ve seen how there is a third way – that we don’t have to default to avoidance or battle.
Here are 3 tips to help you find the courage to have those high stake conversations.
These particular tips are informed by the 5 As concept from David Richo’s book How to Be an Adult in Relationships. Richo is a psychotherapist whose work combines Jungian, Buddhist, and mythic perspectives. He offers these 5 words, from the depth of his experience, as a mindful guide in the building of healthy relationships:
- Allow
- Accept
- Attention
- Appreciation
- Affection.
Richo’s 5 As can be applied to high stakes conversations. Notice how these words can inspire and guide your important conversations.
1. Allow & Accept – These two words can help transform opposing opinions into vital information and learning. We’ve been taught to believe that for every problem there is only one correct response. Yet there are a multitude of solutions to any challenge. It starts with allowing the other person to have their perspective and accept it as something that can help us understand more and open more possibility. It’s not that everyone is right. It’s that each of us has only one part of the truth and cannot know all of the truth without understanding more. This is the stance of “perspectivism.” Tell your truth from your own point of view, not like it is the only truth, but your story, without the larger perspectives shared yet to inform you of more. That allows for the other person to come forward with their perspective too – which might be opposing.
2. Attention – Use attention to be more self-aware in high-stake conversations so you can modulate your emotional reactions. Attention requires holding on to yourself and noticing the other as well. Attention can be given to emotional cues because when stressed, we lose our compassion and empathy, expressing thoughts and feelings in a way that can damage relationship. Work out agreements ahead of time about how you want to navigate difficult conversations and emotions as a team or unit. Do you know each other’s signs that a stress reaction is starting up? What might help in those moments? Also normalize that it’s okay to take a pause break to self-regulate if starting to go into unproductive territory. It can just be a minute of deep breathing and paying attention to our connection with self. Having these understandings provide emotional limits that make it easier to bring up important conversations.
3. Appreciation & Affection – There is substantial research on the power of appreciation. After watching happily married couples, researchers John & Julie Gottman coined the term the “magic ratio” of 5 to 1. For every negative interaction during conflict, they discovered happy relationships had 5 (or more) positive interactions. There is also a team ratio identified as 3 to 1 (Losada ratio). Barbara Fredrickson is a positivity researcher who’s found a similar ratio. Frequent appreciation starts to create a culture of appreciation where trust becomes the currency and feedback flows gracefully. With deliberate appreciation, affection for our teammates can grow and we can collectively relax into more innovative collaborations.
I hope you can take these 5 As into your teams and relationships in a way that gives you all strength to go into the territory you really want to go, but may not as yet found the courage or capacity or energy to do so.
Because each of you matters, and what you do matters!
