Difficult Conversations
Book Review (Patton, Bruce; Stone, Douglas; Heen, Sheila)
(Shout-out to LB for getting me onto this book)
Earlier this year I read Thanks for the Feedback! which is by the same authors, but a much more recent book. Both these two books ultimately emerge from the Harvard Negotiation Project, which began way back in 1979, looking at conflict resolution and negotiation. The Feedback book deals explicitly with how to better receive and process feedback (and they mean not just explicit feedback in a business context, but literally any time of information flow directed towards you). It's a good read too.
Difficult Conversations was written earlier, and its focus is broader - how can we learn to do conversations, especially difficult ones (the ones that are liable to be arguments or conflicts), better? And what can we learn from a wealth of research and study in this area? (A lot)
The book begins by outlining how any difficult conversation actually involves three separate conversations, taking place at different levels. There's a conversation taking place at the level of "what" - facts and interpretations about events; another one at the level of "feelings", and a third one at the level of "identity". And different things are at stake, and can go wrong, in each of these facets, which is why explicitly identifying them and learning to negotiate them can lead to better outcomes.
So in terms of 'what', it recommends that instead of arguing at the level of conclusions, we see a conversation as an opportunity to understand the other person's story - how they see what happened, why they see it that way, what data they have access to, what interpretation they put on it. Reconfiguring our approach as one of learning and understanding helps us understand them and how they see things. This is important because by default we assume that we are right, not just about the facts, but about out interpretations of them. In making this shift to seeking to understand the other person’s narrative, we can learn to also express our story in a way that they might understand.
Then follows a very help chapter about Impact and Intention, and how we conflate these two and make assumptions. So, you do X and its impact on me is Y. But I feel impact Y and assume that your intention was Z. Simply disentangling X, Y, Z is helpful because I don't know your intention and I'm most likely to read you uncharitably. Also you don't necessarily know Y unless I explain how it impacted me. Then:
"While we care deeply about other people’s intentions toward us, we don’t actually know what their intentions are. We can’t. Other people’s intentions exist only in their hearts and minds.”
"Much of the first mistake can be traced to one basic error: we make an attribution about another person’s intentions based on the impact of their actions on us.”
"We assume the worst. The conclusions we draw about intentions based on the impact of others’ actions on us are rarely charitable.”1
When we get intentions and impact entangled, and intentions wrong, the costs are high. We tend to draw a straight line from the impact of their actions, to their intentions to their bad character, e.g. “I felt bad when you didn’t message on my birthday > you deliberately wanted me to feel neglected > you are a terrible person.”
The solution here, at least in part, is to parse out (i) what they actually did, (ii) the impact that had on you, (iii) the assumption you are making about their intent. Then to take this hypothesis and articulate to the other party (a) how it made you feel, while (b) inquiring about their intentions.
In the subsequent chapter, the authors are very big on refocusing from 'blame' to 'contribution'. I think there's a lot of good points in this part too, in that blame is backwards looking, evaluative or judging, and generally punitive. Whereas looking for both sides contribution recognises that almost always more than one party contributes to a situation, and if we set aside blame we can be forward looking and proactive about seeking to change. I do think that the general tone of the book is devoid of any objective evaluative stance, so there isn't really a place for actual blame, wrongdoing, judgment, and repentance and forgiveness. Everything becomes subjective, misunderstandings, cross-purposes, and I just wonder if you can't take the good parts of this book, while still having a place for those other things.
The two other conversations (feelings, identity) get an individual chapter each. The importance of feelings - of identifying them, sharing them, and acknowledging them. And the identity questions - what does this say about who I am, and why is that a problem. Identity issues typically come down to three core questions: “Am I competent? Am I a good person? Am I worthy of love?”2 What “knocks us off balance” is that we often have an all-or-nothing approach to these questions, which means that when something threatens them, we’re at risk of losing everything, and run aground on defensiveness, rejection, or despair:
Either we try to deny the information that is inconsistent with our self-image, or we do the opposite: we take in the information in a way that exaggerates its importance to a crippling degree.3
Their solution is to learn how to ground your identity, to deal with its complexity and multivalency, so that you can meaningfully engage things that threaten it, and take on board negative criticism when true, while not being forced to deny, defend, or despair.
The second half of the book turns to how to actually conduct these conversations well. Firstly, when you should have a conversation (and when you might choose not to). Then beginning from the 'third story' - pitching the conversation in the way a third party, an 'objective' mediator might. Inviting the other person into a conversation for learning and understanding. There's practical and useful advice on listening, and on expressing your side clearly, as well as problem solving. And all through the book there are examples, as well as a final chapter that is "what this might look like in a fully worked example".
I wouldn't say I'm known as a person of exceptional emotional intelligence, or of skilled pastoral insight and care. I've certainly never been accused of being an excellent conversationalist. So, actually I found this book really helpful. It hasn't helped me to have any particular difficult conversations (yet), but it did do something perhaps even more valuable. It helped me understand some of the ways I am dysfunctional and relate dysfunctionally to others. For example, I can see very clearly how I entangle intention and impact, and how I have read intentions of other people's actions, jumping from the impact of their actions on me, to the meaning of those actions. Having a clear language and framework to disentangle those two things helps me see this tendency in myself more clearly, and to separate the two. Similarly, I can see how some of my relationships have run aground on systems of interaction, where it's the combination of the two parties operating with different assumptions, implicit rules, etc., that has created problems. I can also see very much how certain problems trigger identity issues for myself, which is why they are so hard and so threatening. Those are all areas where I have room to grow.
So, I'll be putting this book to the side and revisiting my notes from time to time, to learn to put into practice some of these skills, both for my own self-processing, and for putting into practice in my conversations (easy and difficult!) with others.
Patton, Bruce; Stone, Douglas; Heen, Sheila. Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (p. 46). Penguin Books Ltd.
p. 112.
p. 114.