Speaking the Unspeakable – Part 1            

By Kim Sawyer

What is the one particular method of handling difficult conversations that managers throughout the business world have employed more than any other?  They avoid them.  People avoid difficult conversations because most of us, from an early age, have experienced any kind of confrontation as unpleasant.  They have typically involved angry emotions, hurt feelings, defensiveness, or tenseness and often resulted in a state of affairs worse than before the conversation started.

At other times, some people, in order to get past their resistance to these conversations, approach them with excessive forcefulness.  Then the confrontation comes across as an attack, a conflict which is the very fear that got us in this place to start with.

Words get spoken but, when it happens this way, the receiver gets defensive and defensive people are not listening.  If they are listening, they are not hearing (important distinction). If they are hearing, they are only hearing certain bits and filtering out other bits through their defensiveness.  Emotions are overruling their ability to take in and process the information in a useful way and certainly short-circuiting any willingness to act on the information.

This is not rocket science, but it's also not something most people think about when they do this (if they do).  The typical thought process goes something like this:  "I am going to have this conversation and I am going to say what I have to say as clearly as I can (or in whatever way has become my natural default in these situations). There; I'm done."  But did the message get across?  What difference did it make?  Are things going to be any different now because of the conversation, except, of course, for the newly disturbed relationships and often additional costly consequences when misunderstanding leads to misbehavior?

There is a powerful dictum that is pivotal to what we are up to here:  "The meaning of a communication is its meaning to the receiver."  Stop a moment; reread this proposition and consider it.

The fact is, it doesn't matter what it is I intend to say because I am not communicating to myself.  Communication is about information passing correctly from one person to another person; so whatever I may want to think, the understanding that person walks away with is what that communication has been.  And what's more, whose responsibility is it to make sure that occurs correctly?

Yes, mine!  The burden is wholly upon the initiator of the communication to see to it that the person with whom they have an objective for speaking gets the full and accurate content of their intended message.

I refer to this method I have developed as a form of "Leadership Communication". When I talk about leadership, I mean a way of interacting with people that attracts them to follow my lead.  It's not about making people do anything; it's about behaving in a way that people want to emulate or join me in.  In this communication tool, each step is about handling the next piece of the conversation so that it is likely to encourage you to respond in a positive way in the same spirit as the way I just communicated to you.

So I want to offer you an approach that will allow these conversations to happen collaboratively.  Next month, in Part 2, I am going to show you a method that I call “Clearing”.  It is a simple, powerful process I call “5 Step Communication”.  If you approach your difficult conversations using the method, the chances are good that the conversation will go as well as possible; oftentimes, surprisingly well.

Based in Houston, Texas, Kim Sawyer is a highly respected veteran, executive coach who serves clients internationally.  Kim can be reached by email at kim.sawyer@theWealthSource.com or by phone at 832-298-0143.  To find out more about Kim’s firm, theWeathSource, visit their website at www.theWealthSource.com.