This sounds a little hippie-woo-woo, sure, but when you think about it, what could be more obvious than the fact that emotionally-difficult conversations are difficult because of the emotions at their core. This doesn't mean both are equally right it just means that if you want to communicate, you've gotta get clear about what you're saying and what the other person's saying.īecause at bottom, difficult conversations are about feelings. For example, an undocumented migrant laborer and a member of the Romney clan will have very different life-experiences to inform their views on, say, the police. To get past this, it's important to be clear about "what happened" according to you, including the assumptions, values, and past experiences which inform your story and of course it's just as important to clearly understand the other person's "what happened" story, and where they're coming from. Stone et al urge readers to keep in mind that facts fit into a story, and disagreements usually stem from different stories rather than conflicting facts. The What Happened conversation consists of the concrete matter of dispute, such as a friend's drug abuse or a boss' bullying. Pointing out something that's both obvious and easy to miss, Stone et al point out that difficult conversations are rarely about what's true so much as they're about what's important, and a lot of trouble can be saved when participants are careful to distinguish between factual claims and value claims. Per the authors, there are three dimensions to a difficult conversation: practical substance ("the What Happened conversation"), emotional (or inter-personal) subtext, and identity (or inner-personal) subtext. Anytime we feel vulnerable or our self-esteem is implicated, when issues at stake are important and the outcome uncertain, when we care deeply about what is being discussed or about the people with whom we are discussing it, there is potential for us to experience the conversation as difficult. But discomfort and awkwardness are not limited to topics on the editorial page. Sexuality, race, gender, politics, and religion come quickly to mind as difficult topics to discuss, and for many of us they are. Authored by members of the Harvard Negotiation Project (which sounds awfully prestigious), the book is lucid and accessible.Ī "difficult conversation," according to Stone et al, is "anything you find it hard to talk about": Difficult Conversations is a how-to self-help book on negotiating conflict in emotionally-loaded discussions between two people.
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