Managing Attitudes in Difficult Conversations

When we hold work conversations, there may think we there is just one subject and therefore just one topic to manage, but there are always two conversations in progress – the one about the topic, and the one about the relationships and attitudes held by the people in the conversation.


When I watch someone walk away from a conversation I judge how they appear and whether they appear upset or happy, I often ask them why (because I am a student of such things). Nearly always, the person will tell me the about:

• The way they had imagined the conversation going and how different it was from the way it ACTUALLY went, or

• The other person’s behavior, or

• The other person’s manner of speaking and attitude, or

• The other person’s listening skills (or lack thereof), or

… you get the idea.

We walk into the conversation and if we prepare at all, we prepare to talk about the topic. We evaluate what we know about it, we may research a little if we need to more before we can have a meaningful conversation, and then we consider what questions the other person may be able to answer in order to help shed some light on the topic for us. Seldom, if ever, do we prepare ourselves regarding the person to whom we are going to talk. This week, I want to talk about how to prepare for a conversation in which we anticipate some kind of controversy.


First, let me state that having this kind of conversation is REALLY good for us – we can’t master conflict by avoiding them, and mastering these kinds of conversations moves us from the 85% of leaders that DON’T know how to the 15% of leaders that DO. I suggest that the two most important activities that you seek to master are:

• Asking questions so that you understand just what your counterpart’s perspective, and

• Listening


Other things like understanding their non-verbal cues or learning logical fallacies or cognitive biases are all helpful, but listening and asking questions are foundational.

Some things you will need to ask questions about:

• Why is the topic important to you?

• What impact does the current situation have on you?

• What consequences do those impacts carry? That is, if things don’t change what is the likely outcome?

These are simple questions, and the answers are critical in being able to decide the weight and priority of the issue at hand. We don’t want to spend too little time on important issues nor too much time on trivial ones. This also helps “anchor” us to a given priority for an issue, so that later on we can refer back to the priority we first set and not leave to early nor hang on too long.

Also, it takes some skill to ask them effectively. We have lots of bad habits surrounding asking questions, mostly around the subject of listening.

• We begin to compare their answer with how WE feel about the topic, or

• We stop listening shortly after we ask the question and begin thinking about what we want to say next, or

• We start to judge or evaluate the “rightness” of their position

These habits just take time and effort to break. I started by trying to silence the “voice in my head” that was all that talking that makes it difficult to concentrate on the other person’s words, and found that very difficult. I found that if I guided that voice to be curious about what the other person was saying, it was far easier. That way, it was easy for me to keep my focus on learning the other party’s perspective as well as they do and not be distracted. So I learned to keep the voice curious and asking questions like ”that’s a very different way of looking at this. I wonder how they intend to handle keeping the customer in the loop?” Thinking like that INSTEAD of silently comparing my idea to theirs keeps me very focused on their perspective.

My students sometimes express concerns that following along with their counterpart’s idea, that is considering it so fully while not mentioning their own, makes them feel as if they are falsely leading their counterpart to expect that at the end of the conversation, the idea will just be accepted because no opposing idea has been offered. The best way I have found to deal with that is to be explicit about stating that you have your own ideas on the subject, but would be interested to hear theirs. That way, it’s CLEAR that you each have perspectives, and that you are trying to understand theirs. MANY times, I have found that the other person’s ideas are very good just as they are, and find that I buy in to them completely. So, if the goal is that we end up with an idea that we both buy into, it does no harm to listen to their perspective first.

Even if our ideas are very different, the other person will find you to be a good communicator because you listened to them (people that DON'T listen are the ones most frequently labeled poor communicators). Also, you will find that IF you listen carefully to others and are genuinely interested and curious, your counterpart will usually extend that same courtesy to you. I you find this NOT to be true, write me. I can help you with that.

As far as what questions to ask, there is a model used forformulating questions depending on what it is you want to know about the topic. Here is a link to an article I wrote 3 years ago for that information.


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Understanding the Expressions of Defensiveness

Last time, we talked about the basic actions taken when one is defending oneself in a perceived attack. These actions drive us away from addressing the issue constructively, and towards escaping relevant discussion about it.


These actions are taken by us all, and our expressed in our own personal way. The graphic below shows how we express these actions on a continuum. In the middle is the “ideal” expression. Honest, adult, explicit, and empathetic so that our counterpart knows just how we feel AND that we don’t harm our relationship with them. This is sometimes difficult to do, especially if one feels fear about how the other party may take it and hasn’t developed the skill to express themselves using THE SCORE. If we fail to express ourselves (and keep others on track to express themselves) in the “ideal” zone, we will find ourselves in a conversation that is not targeted on collaboratively finding our best ideas. Instead, we are engaged in a “face-saving” activity.

The continuum ranges from very passive ways to act and react to very aggressive ways (from “silence to violence”).

For instance, depending on the severity of the threat we are feeling, we may choose to express our feelings using sarcasm. This is just to the “passive” side of ideal, a form of “masking” in which we don’t directly say what we mean but instead say the opposite of that we mean, but in a way that conveys our feeling. This is how we avoid confronting a perceived threat.

Let’s say coworker presents an idea that we feel isn’t practical. If we are timid about telling them the idea isn’t very good (for instance, we are afraid they will react badly) we may use sarcasm to avoid saying that the idea is bad. We might say “Oh …that’s a GREAT idea” in such a way that it is clear that we think it is a bad idea, but without really SAYING it. Sarcasm is a way of “masking” what we really mean, but in such a way as we are still expressing it.

Slightly more passive is “avoidance” in which we say something, but don’t even hint they we don’t agree. This often takes the form of wordplay. From the example above, instead of being sarcastic we might say “Very interesting idea…I wouldn’t have thought of it”. Here we have used ambiguity to avoid letting our coworker know our true feelings. Finally, the most passive position is “withdrawal” in which we simply don’t say anything, or we just “go along”.

Moving the other way on the continuum from ideal, we travel down increasingly more aggressive methods of defensiveness. “Controlling” is one in which we may ask a question in a loaded way (“You aren’t going to believe THAT, are you?”) in order to create uncertainty in another’s mind and encourage them to change without using reasons. This is what controlling is about.

Next stop is labeling, in which we affix labels usually emotionally charged labels, as a substitute for reason (“I can’t believe that you listen to NPR and all their socialist nonsense!” OR “I can’t believe that you listen to Fox News and all their fascist nonsense!”). The labeling is more aggressive than controlling because the labels are SUBSTITUTES for reasons; the emotional charge of the labels are intended to be enough to cause the counterpart to react as the speaker intends. Last stop is attack, in which there accusations made that do not address the topic, but perhaps the person making the suggestion. Google “ad hominem” attacks for lots of data on this.

The best way to deal with departure from the ideal is to ask questions about the topic; specificly about how your counterpart sees things, and to avoid becoming defensive yourself. Both take more skill as your counterpart moves down the continuum towards withdrawl or attack. We have recently talked about, and will talk next time about, the questions that one can askto draw the counterpart back to the ideal state in the continuum.

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Collaborate More, Defend Yourself Less

I have written a lot about moving from an Advocacy (also known as adversarial) type of discussion to a Collaborative type for a long time. Advocacy discussions are the kind we see most often, in which we make claims and defend them, and attack the claims made by the other side. This style is not as productive for many reasons (search on “collaboration” in this blog), and has two key weaknesses:


1. It sets up a “winners and losers” situation that leads to obvious negative impact on teamwork, integrity, listening, and “buy-in” do to the emphasis on winning. People will do surprising things to “win”.

2. It drives us into defenses that tend to drive us away from the reality of the situation and towards a distortion of that reality in order to reduce our anxiety regarding the potential of “losing face” associated with being wrong. It can cause a disconnection in relationships as well, and that makes it useless as a long-term strategy for solution generation.



The defenses to which I refer are classic positions that we all tend to choose from in cases where “winning” is at risk, and disconnect us from the reality of the situation. They protect us from changing our opinion publicly, which is often falsely seen as “unacceptable”. There are seven and they are:

1. Denial – The act of refusing to admit that an opinion that differs from ours is relevant, or conceding its relevance but expressing that the consequences can be postponed until they are moot.

2. Avoidance – Refusing to face a weakness in our argument. We may ignore it, change the subject, or refuse to discuss it.

3. Rationalization – Easily our favorite! Making excuses and explaining away any opinion that threatens to expose our weaknesses.

4. Intellectualization – View this as “rationalization for the well-educated”. The excuses and explanations are just more complex. They still serve the sole purpose of distancing the speaker from any perceived weakness of opinion or of character.

5. Displacement – Redirecting our reaction to being threatened away from a more formidable party to a less formidable one. Instead of standing up to the boss, we go home and yell at the kids.

6. Projection – Rather than deal with our negative emotions, we blame them on other people. Even more common, we simply blame others for our problems.

7. Regression – This is a specific behavior, and may be a pattern for some, in which we revert to childlike behaviors when facing stressful or unhappy situations. “I don’t want to talk about money problems tonight – let’s go out and party!”



These tactics from facing weaknesses in our own positions only postpone our having to deal with the underlying issue. Therefore, they promote wasting time and are only useful in the short-term if at all. Learning to find ways to use a collaborative model as often as possible will help us to neutralize these defenses and move us more quickly into finding solutions that improve teamwork and “buy-in” across stakeholders.


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The basics of Personal Excellence - part two

This is the final part of a two part article on the basics of Personal Excellence. Quite a lofty title, but I just mean that we are talking about starting from where we are today and getting better. Last week we covered the basics of Goal Setting and Mental Rehearsal, two very important elements. This week, we’ll cover Self-Talk and Arousal Control.


1) Self-Talk

I want to be careful here… ALL the elements I am mentioning here are fundamentally important and all of them need attention, but Self-Talk is the one element that will support the others when all else is going against you. For most of us, our self-talk is a parental voice, one that admonishes and reprimands, even scolds. Our self-talk usually doesn’t contain “attaboy’s” or “attagirl’s” and frequently contains such negatives as “idiot”, “moron”, “loser”, and other harsh terms that do little to encourage. There are two immediately dire consequences of this: a) we cause ourselves to think we can accomplish less than we actually could with a more generous perspective and b) at those times when others disappoint us, our immediate and primary urge is to use this kind of talk on them. We may or may not always be successful in censoring ourselves, but we FREQUENTLY transmit messages with our body, face, and tone that communicate our initial feeling very clearly. This causes a separation between us that we do not intend and that is not productive. Learning to conduct positive self-talk will cause us achieve more than we dreamed, not because “happy talk” makes us more productive, but because it replaces the destructive negative self-talk with which we have been punishing ourselves (and others).

2) Arousal Control

When I am teaching classes on conducting High-Performance Communication, one of the most common comments I hear is “I never can seem to remain calm in the ‘heat of the moment’ in an argument.” I usually ask what kind of thing the person would be talking about, and they reply with something about their dignity being impugned or their integrity being questioned. I then ask them to imagine they are talking to a judge with the option of giving them a year in jail, a boss that could and would fire them, or a 300 pound felon with a gun and ask them again what it would take for them to fly off the handle and be unable to control themselves. Those that answer honestly say, “Well, under THOSE circumstances, I could.” I point out to them that the judge’s presence is NOT what censors them – the censoring is done by a CHOICE. So the first thing to recognize is that you CAN control yourself if you CHOOSE to.

The second issue is what to do INSTEAD of losing control. That takes practice. In any kind of martial arts training, there is an activity called “sparring” in which combatants use their skills on each other in order to practice them AND to be in the flow of the activity. These are not fights, but they aren’t quite mock fights either. They are practice sessions in which we develop skills in “supervised combat” against an opponent that has the same goal – to improve their skills. As a martial artist gains skill, they gain confidence in their ability to apply the skills they have learned. They feel less panic and more confident that little can happen that will catch them off guard.

It is important to notice the moment we begin to feel threatened or concerned and study it; understand objectively what has happened, and determine what it is about the situation that threatened us. Usually, the threat comes from our fear of something that might happen. We need to learn skills that help us understand that while certain consequences are usually preceded by specific events, they do not necessarily follow with certainty and that we need to analyze the specifics to determine the fear of those consequences are warranted in this case.

For you and I, the idea of physically fighting someone may be very frightening, especially if we know that person is trained. But if we are also trained, does that change the way we look at it? If we have trained longer? If we have fought them before and won? All of these specifics alter the way we apply a general feeling about fighting.

In a communication situation, I generally recommend to students that they take a deep breath before they respond to something that immediately triggers a fear reaction and that their response should be aimed at trying to discover precisely the topic of the conversation. So if I were told “You know, others have lost their job over doing just what you have done”, I would take a deep breath (to try to center myself and suppress any kind of knee-jerk reaction) and ask “What is it that I am supposed to have done?” This could be followed with other questions aimed at trying to determine the extent and the quality of evidence, the impact of my actions, and the consequences.

The point is that controlling one’s arousal reaction and reacting in the best way automatically takes time and practice, and is critical in gaining self-awareness and executing self improvement.


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Personal Improvement

For some of my students, learning High Performance Communication is part of a larger objective. They express to me the desire to be more in many ways, not just to become better communicators, but to develop an advanced degree of competence on many levels. Call it “personal excellence”. And while they see improved communication, collaboration, and persuasive skills as a big part of the picture they know they need to develop more than those to be all they intend to be. I say good for them and I’d like to suggest some areas in which they can focus to get better. There are four areas I want to discuss – two this week and two more next week.

1) Goal Setting


Being able to select goals allows us to focus and prioritize. The most difficult part for most people is being willing to spend the amount of reflection required to truly “select” an end goal. It is certainly worth getting in touch with your desires and determining what really makes you happy. Volunteer work is a good way to do this. If you suspect you are a charitable type, you may volunteer to local organizations that expose you to lots of different experiences. I found that professional organizations were best for me (my goals centered on contributing to the success of people in a business setting). Your aspirations may differ, so find a way to volunteer and do something that you find satisfying and fulfilling. Volunteer organizations are frequently open to allowing people to develop experience in something they’ve not done before but would like to try.

With your goal set, you will be able to focus on finding the “small steps” required achieve the goal. This is the act of “bringing order out of chaos”. As we develop our goal, we can start to categorize our attitudes and behaviors as either “supportive to our goal” or “not supportive of our goal. We can then choose what to work on. It can be discouraging to try to achieve your goal in one leap. I have found it very helpful to talk with people that have done what I intend to do, and to watch how they go about it. I try to detect differences between how they do it and I do, and then try to “key in” on those things that I am not doing that seem to contribute to their success.

I also try to determine what they do to recover if they encounter the unexpected (recovery failures). It helps to recognize that unexpected results are where the most important learning opportunities come from. It is best NOT to ignore them or try to sweep them under the rug, but to examine them openly especially with others. Talking about one’s goals, failures, plans and such help to keep us motivated because by declaring our plans out loud to people we care about, we are less likely to want to give up (and lose face) and more likely to get encouragement.

2) Mental Rehearsal


In performing my “small steps” towards my goal, I visualize myself doing what it is I intend to do. In a deep state of concentration, your brain doesn’t fully distinguish between visualizing doing something and actually doing it. As you see yourself performing over and over, you become comfortable with the activity. OF course doing it is likely different than visualizing it, but as you start to do both you will find yourself developing mastery faster.

Next time I will talk about the next to components of learning new skills – Self Talk and Emotional Control.

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We Need to Express the "Inexpressible"

A few key points that I have made over the years:


1) We are often harder on ourselves that we are on others. This is in large part because the standards to which we hold ourselves are many times irrationally stringent, and the work of recalibrating them is often difficult.

2) Unresolved feelings are often communicated non-verbally (tone of voice, facial expression, body language). I have expressed this as “We either SPEAK up, or we ACT up”

3) The “Actor-Observer Bias” is the widespread tendency to think: "If others have trouble or make mistakes, it's due to their actions. If I have trouble or make mistakes, it's not my fault. It's due to the situation I'm in."

If we take these separately, they are interesting tidbits and we can use them to improve our communication. When we take them together, it becomes very clear that by working to notice when they are happening and learning to respond differently, we will view others in a different light. These simple aspects of communication interact powerfully.

We will begin to see that our standards are only ours and that if we hold others to them (“that guy never really does it as good as the way I would”), WE will developed unresolved feelings (“he is incompetent, but I won’t say anything”) and will transmit those feelings via non-verbal means. Those feelings will send a clear message of how we feel and who we blame (“it’s his fault of course”).

From our counterpart’s perspective, we will have “as much as said” these things to them because they are hardwired to interpret non-verbal communication. Of course, they are operating under the same rules as we are, and will begin to view US as lacking integrity or being “two faced” because we act one way and say another.

Our perspective will be something like “I really don’t want to push my own standards on the guy, but he never gets very good results because of his methods. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, though”.

Our counterpart will be thinking along the lines of “What is UP with that guy? I can tell he uncomfortable talking to me, but I can’t figure out why. It’s like he has a problem with me.”

This kind of misunderstanding is due to a lack of clarity between the two parties and it only takes one of them to become a bit more aware and change the experience for both. As we pratice our skill at expressing what we previously kept to ourselves, we will begin to move towards engaging our counterparts in the most productive way.


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Relationship for Results

The four elements for building productive relationships. Think of these as the "Four R's" of relationships.

1 - Rapport

• You build rapport by being:
• Competent (able to speak knowledgeably and be capable of doing)
• Trustworthy (Honest; acting with your counterpart's interests in mind)
• Engaged (interested)
• Accessible (available to talk)

2 - Reciprocation

• You develop confidence in each other by reciprocation; that is, doing for each other what the other needs to have done. This is an ESSENTIAL step and is the often left out because sometimes it has to be done with "blind faith". Do it anyway. You may not always be paid back by the one with whom you are trying to build the relationship, but you reputation as a "do-er" will drive many great returns for you. 

3 - Respect

• Respect for another person is shown in many ways. Three I would highlight are:
• Courtesy - People have different perspectives on how they like to be treated, so "Treat others as you would like to be treated" doesn't always apply. I would say "Treat others as THEY wish to be treated". It takes more listening to do, but we all need the practice with that AND it is really the best long-term strategy especially for an important relationship.
• Encouragement - Being a person that mentors others brings great rewards, and encouragement is a subset of that. Helping someone to see their own capability is critical to showing how you respect them for their competence.
• Empathy - Critically important to showing respect for your counterpart is demonstrating your understanding for their situation. Celebrating their successes and regrouping after a failure and everything in between is key to great relationships.

4 - Recognition

• Be free in giving credit to others whenever it is appropriate. Feeling appreciated is a big part of working in a team and few things raise more controversy than seeing the credit for an achievement go to someone that doesn't deserve it. One way to have "Important Friends in High Places" is to help them get there by ensuring that others know of their capabilities.

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