by Doug Stevens
To prepare for a difficult conversation …
Tune your heart with Grace and Truth, always seek to re/build Trust.
Assume the posture of Humility, unleash your capacity for Empathy.
Three Core Convictions:
Humility
Know who you are, secure yourself, be confident, be respectful, get ready to listen well and learn.
You are in the conversation not to win an argument, not to justify yourself.
Set aside judgment and hold your agenda lightly.
Don’t begin the conversation with your conclusion … invite dialogue.
Acknowledge your own mistakes, faults and uncertainty … practice vulnerability.
Empathy
The goal of our communication is a stronger connection, a deeper rapport, and better mutual understanding … not agreement on all points.
Try to put yourself in the place of the other person and resonate with their experience.
Continue to accumulate a sense of the other person’s life context.
Begin with their concerns and confusion, longings and fears.
Express genuine interest and care along the way.
Speaking the Truth in Love
Be honest yet tactful, expressing yourself in a way that the other person can hear you.
Seek clarity and pursue reality by asking questions that invite greater transparency.
Check in occasionally about whether this exchange is comfortable and helpful.
Be sensitive to experiences and influences that shape their world view.
Ten Terms of Engagement:
1. Pray! to avoid defensiveness and reactivity, to manage emotions, to advance in discernment, to represent Christ in this encounter
2. Create a Safe Environment and an Inviting Atmosphere, as much as possible … don’t have a tense exchange over email, on-line or over the phone
3. The Purpose of this Conversation is to Explore and Discover … in a partnership
4. Find Common Ground when you can … looking for intersecting interests, building and expanding from there
5. Engage in Constructive Conflict … enter a creative conflict over ideas, not a personal conflict that patronizes, insults, wounds and alienates
6. Affirm their experience, perceptions and feelings as their own and valid for them … you don’t have to agree or approve (or correct!) everything they say
7. Ask Open-Ended Questions … in search of more information and a greater perspective, keep asking questions until you get to the heart of the matter (don’t ask leading questions in an attempt to manipulate and coerce)
8. Restate/Paraphrase the other person’s positions to ensure understanding … ask them to confirm your interpretation, and proceed from there
9. Frame Disagreement as “another view, a different perspective”
10. How Can We Follow Up on the progress we’re making? What are the positive takeaways that encourage us to keep going? What are the outstanding issues we wish to further investigate? What are the next steps we are willing to take?
At one point in my 52.5years of marriage to Jane, she told me she was leaving me. We had counselling and reconnected. Then we were given the following tool to deflate hard conversations.
The tool was to begin each confrontational statement with the words, “It seems to me……… then the other person would respond. We soon discovered that the “it seems to me ….” takes ownership and is bathed in a humble conversational stance, We also noticed how we misperceived the situation most of the time.
The point I am making is that the analysis described in the meditation, it seems to me covers all the bases but makes me throw up my hands and say, “How do I remember all these details while in confronting conversation, I need a starting point.
Peter – apologies for being late to this discourse. All my years of work with teens at risk in a public HS, Boys & Girls Clubs Teen Director, church Youth Director, CMA biker ministry chaplain, and over 50 years of marriage to my best friend…I learned to listen to that”still, small voice,” The Holy Spirit. I admit that at times He had to shout and I learned to apologize and begin anew.. Blessings!