Head On Page 5
“I am not a helicopter parent,” I repeated to myself as I went back to the house, collected the forgotten items and delivered them to their respective schools. I stopped briefly to refill my gas tank and just as I came up to speed on the highway, in my rearview mirror I saw my gas cap bounce across the pavement and land in the ditch. Ughh.
I arrived at the office and my first order of business was to have a conversation with one of my direct reports about his working style (gregarious and outgoing, collaborative to an extreme) and how disruptive it was to those on the team who needed a quieter working environment to be able to concentrate and get their work completed on time. Needless to say, my head was not in a space to hold a productive conversation on a potentially difficult topic!
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We are not always in the best frame of mind to have a difficult conversation with someone when the need arises. Sometimes we are emotionally distracted or upset and it has nothing to do with the person we need to speak to. Other times we are emotionally distracted or upset and it has everything to do with the person we need to talk to.
This chapter is about emotional readiness. It includes an explanation of the value of creating an emotional clearing for the conversation. It also includes techniques for creating that clearing as well as techniques for managing defensive feelings that may emerge within yourself.
Why is this important? Foremost, it would not be fair to my employee if I brought all the frustration and angst from my early morning hours into the conversation with him. Any agitation or distraction that I harbored from those earlier moments have no place in that conversation and would serve as a distraction. In times like these, it is easy to enter into a conversation while you are still in a frustrated, angry, and anxious emotional state that has nothing to do with the person you are talking to.
In other cases, you might be frustrated, angry, and anxious and it has everything to do with the person you are about to talk with. If this were the sixth, seventh, or eighth time I’d had this discussion about respecting the working styles of others with my employee, rather than the first or second, I quite likely would be experiencing angst and agitation toward him because of our past failure to resolve the issue.
In either case, a distracted emotional state has a bearing on the conversation. When you are experiencing angst and distress and you bring it along to a conversation, especially a challenging one, you are not creating an open and empty “container” in which to have that conversation. You are doing a disservice to both the conversation and the other person.
When you start with a messy head space, you may still get the work of the conversation done, but it will take considerably more time than if you began from a clear head space. I liken it to an artist painting a picture on a canvas. If the artist were given a canvas that already had a picture on it, and you asked her to paint a different picture on top of it, could she do it? Yes, she most likely could. It would take significantly more paint, time, and effort, however, than if you’d given her a blank canvas. Likewise, when we come to a conversation as a blank canvas, we can accomplish that which we set out to do more efficiently and more effectively.
When you enter into a conversation (on a difficult subject or otherwise) in an emotionally clear place, you are no longer tied to the outcomes of the past and you create new possibility in that conversation. Possibility for a new outcome. Possibility for new understanding. Possibility to deepen the relationship. Possibility to hear the other person’s side of the story and have them hear yours. Possibility to resolve the situation and reach agreement.
On the other hand, if you are distracted emotionally, you will have a harder time connecting with the other person. If your emotional distraction is caused by a difficult topic of discussion or a challenging relationship with the other person, you are most likely to get a similar result to what you got in the past: a difficult conversation and no resolution.
If your emotional distraction has nothing to do with the other person, you are still doomed to suboptimal results. At best, you will not be fully present with the other person and at worst they will interpret your anger, angst, or anxiety as directed toward them. The solution in either case is to prepare for the conversation by clearing your emotions.
CLEAR YOUR EMOTIONS
The standard practice to prepare for a difficult conversation is to think about what you are going to say and clarify your overall goal for the talk. While this is indeed necessary, it is not sufficient to create the ideal conditions for reliable resolution, understanding, and agreement. Adding the step of clearing your emotions creates a set of conditions that enable you to speak about the challenging topic, address your aims and goals, and do so without distraction. It can also help you create a meaningful connection with the other person. This ups your odds of achieving a deep focus on the issue and fully resolving it so you won’t have to revisit it in the future. It also serves to strengthen the relationship.
Imagine that you were going to set up camp in the midst of a dense woods. You would need to clear away brush, dry grasses, and perhaps even trees to create a space in which to camp. Emotional clearing is similar in that it creates a clear, open space, emotionally speaking, in which to have your conversation.
Clearing your emotions enables you to come to the conversation centered on the other person and the topic at hand and to exclude all unrelated matters. Unencumbered by emotional distractions-whether or not they relate your conversational partner – you can be fully present with the person and the situation.
Next we will discuss techniques for creating an emotional clearing and techniques for remaining in that clearing should you begin to feel defensive.
CLEARING TECHNIQUES
There are myriad ways to clear your emotions and create a clear head space. Of the ones discussed here, one or two of them may resonate for you. Or they may prompt you to think of techniques that may be an even better fit for you.
Phone-A-Friend
The first technique is what I call “Phone-A-Friend.” It operates something like the Phone-A-Friend “lifeline” did on the show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” but with one distinct difference. In the show, the contestant could make a 30 second call to a friend when they were stumped, hoping their friend knew the answer to the question. This Phone-A-Friend technique differs in one important regard: your friend’s job is NOT to give you the answer or help solve the problem. Instead, their role is first to listen attentively and really “get” what is bothering you and then to “hold” that problem, issue, or set of experiences while you have the difficult conversation with someone.
Recall the example I shared regarding a rough morning before going into the office where my first order of business was to have a sensitive conversation with one of my staff. I used Phone-A-Friend that morning. When I parked my car at the office and before I went into the building, I called my friend Pam. In that brief phone call, I shared all of the stressful, frustrating, and infuriating things that had happened that morning (it was still before 8:00 AM!). Furthermore, I shared that my first order of business for the workday was to have a conversation on a difficult topic with one of my employees. I told her I wanted to be free from the earlier part of the morning before speaking with my employee.
I shared this all into Pam’s voicemail. Then I went into the office and had the difficult conversation. Four hours later, I received a text from Pam that simply said, “Got it.” Pam and I have a long history of using the Phone-A-Friend technique to create an emotional clearing for one another. She and I have been on both sides of many similar conversations, creating a clearing for one another when the need arises. As a consequence, her listening in the future is so powerful it helps me in the present (she listened to the voicemail after I’d held the conversation)!
In choosing a Phone-A-Friend partner, there are several tips to keep in mind. First, it should be someone you trust. You don’t want this person gossiping to others about the frustrations you entrusted to them. Second,
it must be someone who does not have a strong desire to fix things in your life. For most of us that rules out a spouse or partner. Spouses and partners, generally speaking, don’t like to see you in distress and they want to fix and solve things for you. A Phone-A-Friend conversation is NOT about fixing and solving anything. It’s about listening and just “getting it.” Accordingly, your Phone-A-Friend partner must be able to embrace a bit of emotional distance or at least refrain from trying to solve your problems.
Note: It’s okay to tell someone how you want them to listen. Before you get into the substance of what you want to share with them, you can say something like this: “I want to tell you about something that’s bugging me-don’t worry, it’s not about you-before I call my client/mom/ex. I just need you to listen. There’s nothing to fix or solve. I just need to be heard by someone before I make that call. Does that make sense?”
Phone-A-Friend is great for verbal processors, those who like to talk things through out loud. We’re not all like that, however. The next technique works well for those who are not verbal processors.
Move Your Body
A second clearing technique is exercise or movement. For some, there is nothing like getting physically active and moving their bodies during a favorite sport or activity to help them put their troubles aside. (For others, this may be an anxiety-provoking suggestion that makes them sink deeper into the couch cushions and pull a blanket over their head.) If you do like to hit the gym, select an exercise class, a weight lifting session, or a running or cycling route that will get your blood pumping moderately.
The goal with exercise as a clearing technique is to oxygenate your blood and dissipate the stress hormones (adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine) that are coursing through your system. This will assist in creating some emotional distance between you and whatever has a grip on you before you hold that conversation. Aim for low impact exercise, like walking, especially if you are not very physically fit. If you are physically fit, a light jog will work just fine, but keep the intensity low. High intensity exercise is known to increase cortisol levels. The effects of low impact exercise will last several hours so if the conversation is in the morning, get your exercise before you go into the office. If it is in the afternoon, use your lunch break to get that workout in. Be sure to shower or otherwise freshen up before your conversation, otherwise you might find yourself on the receiving end of a difficult conversation about bodily hygiene.
Tidying Up
A third technique is to put something in order. This might mean cleaning the garage or straightening your desk. A key characteristic of this technique is that there must be disorder in that which you are putting order to. For example, if your desk is already reasonably tidy, putting things at right angles is not sufficient to feel like you’ve made much of a difference. If you are a neat-nik already and this technique appeals to you, you might need to clean someone else’s garage or straighten someone else’s desk (make sure you ask first!). When we bring order to chaos, it calms the mind and, like exercise, may allow us to put some emotional distance between ourselves and the situation. And for some people, cleaning the garage, our desk, or our childhood bedroom feels more terrifying than actually having the conversation. If that’s the case for you, select another technique.
STAYING CALM
If you’ve done your preparation, it will be easier to remain calm throughout a conversation on a difficult topic (or if you can’t remain calm, at least keep from saying things you might later regret). Speaking of staying calm, telling someone to “calm down” is one of the easiest ways to send them right up the arousal continuum. On the other hand, when you are able to manage your own emotions and remain calm, it helps the other person to do the same.
Human communication is highly reciprocal. Whether we say “Good morning” to someone while walking the dog or smile at a stranger in the grocery store, it is extremely likely that they will do the same in return. In difficult or challenging situations, it is even more important to remember this phenomenon. Perhaps you’ve been in a grocery store and seen a small child ask for a toy/sugary cereal/candy. “I want that!” It may start innocently enough, and if the child is persistent and not getting the answer she wants, things might escalate. As the child’s request turns to a demand, left unchecked, the parent will likely reciprocate the intensity of the child’s demand with something along the lines of “No! That will rot your teeth!” This will prompt the child to repeat her demand with greater intensity. It’s as if the two are in a poker game and with each go round, they are matching each other and raising the stakes.
This phenomenon occurs in conversations with grown-ups at work just as it does with kids and parents at the grocery store. The phenomenon is called emotional contagion and research demonstrates that we are likely to “catch” the emotional state of someone else. Research by Dr. Sigal Barsade at Yale University, one of the leading experts on emotional contagion, found that not only does the mood of an employee affect other employees, it can also unknowingly have a significant influence on their judgement and on business decisions.16 Our mood in a difficult situation may be that of anger, frustration, or exasperation (especially if this is the seventeenth time we are addressing this issue with the person!). If we bring frustration or anger into the conversation, the other person is likely to “catch” that mood and the conversation may negatively spiral out of control.
If you’re talking with a colleague about his regular habit of clipping his toenails at his desk, which disgusts you, and you enter into that conversation with disgust as your prevalent emotion, there is a good chance your counterpart will become disgusted with you, too. This is not a good place from which to start a conversation on a difficult topic, and things are bound to escalate. I see your disgust and raise you to anger.
Instead, if you can remain calm, there is a far better chance that you and your colleague can reach a new understanding about toenail clipping at the office (let’s hope you don’t work in a restaurant!). Our general tendency is to match, if not escalate, the emotional intensity of the other. Whether it is in a face-to-face conversation or an email or text exchange, we will tend to match and/or raise the other person’s emotional intensity if we are not intentional with our response.
It might happen like this: You receive an email from a colleague who is upset and blaming you for something that recently went wrong. You notice that your boss is copied on the email, as are several other highly respected colleagues. You are infuriated. In a flash, you hit Reply All and add your colleague’s boss and several other senior managers. You begin to fire off your response, equal parts defending your own behavior and blaming them for their part. Calm? Hardly.
Calm is easier said than done-especially when the stakes are high or when you or your counterpart are apt to respond with emotional intensity.
Recall the arousal continuum discussed in Chapter 2. Remaining on the calm end of the continuum will bode well for your conversation. Keep in mind that the goal is not to become an emotionless automaton, void of any emotional response whatsoever. When you are sharing with your supervisor the need for a more manageable workload (or your need to be transferred to another part of the building because of your colleague’s incessant toenail clipping), it would be inconsistent and perhaps unnerving if you were completely calm and emotionless. Rather, the goal is to keep your emotions in check (rather than erasing them or ignoring them) when starting the conversation and continue to regulate your emotions throughout the conversation.
Keeping emotional contagion in mind, you’ll want to regulate your own emotions. If you can keep yourself from escalating up the continuum to fear or terror, you’re likely to prevent your counterpart from escalating to that point, as well.
And, as you’ll recall from Chapter 2, not only do we lose our ability to regulate our emotions as we move up the continuum, we also lose our ability to regulate our thoughts and think critically. We’ll talk more about this in the next chapter, but for now, keep in mind t
hat the emotional state you bring to the conversation has everything to do with how the other person is likely to respond.
Additional Strategies
The strategies we’ve discussed earlier in this chapter for clearing your emotions will assist in getting calm before a difficult conversation, a critical step in setting the tone of the conversation. Here are several additional strategies for remaining calm during the conversation, whether you initiated the conversation or if the difficult conversation found you and perhaps caught you unawares.
One important strategy is to pay attention to your breath. When you remember to breathe deeply you will help to calm yourself down by getting oxygen to the brain, helping to dissipate the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine. This will allow you to wrangle back access to and control of the executive function of your brain.
Another technique is to connect with a physical object as a reminder to remain on the lower end of the arousal continuum, a method referred to as “anchoring.” To anchor, select an object you regularly wear: glasses, a wedding band, a watch, or some other item you are likely to have on your person during challenging situations. When you start to feel your mood escalating, center yourself by touching the object. Use it as an anchor or reminder to manage your emotions and remain calm. While you will know that the simple gesture of placing your hand on your watch is a strategic tool to maintain emotional control, others will not notice the maneuver. The key to using an anchor is to practice connecting with it in at regular intervals, ideally when you are not in a situation that provokes you, but rather when you are simply thinking about how you would respond in a stressful situation. Just as an athlete performs drills or a pilot engages in simulations, so too will your practice set you up for success when a high stakes situation comes along. Your practice sessions will have made a habit of anchoring to your object of choice and you will connect with it readily and use it to center your emotions and act intentionally.