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Understanding must precede advice
When beginning a conversation, the goal should be understanding, not problem solving. You should aim to make sure there's a mutual understanding of the situation before attempting to problem solve. Problem solving and advice should only begin when both people feel totally understood, and heard.
Skills
There are a few skills that can massively contribute to a healthy relationship. It takes work and practice to refine them.
Putting Your Feelings into Words
When people are able to find the right images, phrases, metaphors, and words to adequately describe our feelings, there's a kind of "resolution" that comes of it, an easing of tension. In conversation, focusing on finding the right way to explain your feelings can make the conversation more intimate, and more productive, because you can convey your feelings to the other person in a more impactful way.
Asking Open-Ended Questions
The ability to ask open ended questions can help the other person explore their feelings by asking open-ended questions. This can be done by asking targeted questions, looking to understand their feelings about something, and by making specific statements that encourage the other person to expand on a statement further.
Expressing Empathy
Empathy is not easy. In a difficult conversation, it's important to try to learn more about, explore, and learn more about another person's thoughts, feelings, and needs. Empathy communicates to the other person that their thoughts, feelings, and needs make sense to you, and that you understand them. It doesn't necessarily mean you agree, but it means showing them that their perception of the situation is valid. You can have your own perception of the situation that's different from theirs, but both of your perceptions can be valid.
Crucial Conversations
Below are my notes and thoughts from reading the book *Crucial Conversations.
The fundamental idea behind the book is that the "the root cause of many ... human problems lies in how people behave when we disagree about high-stakes, emotional issues."
You know you're getting into a crucial conversation as opposed to a normal conversation when:
- Opinions vary, people feel differently about things.
- The stakes are high, the outcome of the conversation matters.
- Emotions are high, people feel strongly about the outcome.
One important factor in problem resolution is the time that passes between when the problem emerges, and when resolution is attempted. The impact of the issues, and the difficulty of resolution grow when the issue is left unresolved. It can lead to gossiping, mistrust, and resentment.
It's important to try to resolve problems quickly after they are identified.
How do we handle crucial conversations?
There are 3 broad options:
- We can avoid them entirely.
- We can face them and handle it poorly.
- We can face them and handle it well.
While only one of these options reliably leads to an effective outcome, you'll often find that we often fall back to the first two because of the fear that engagement will make the issue worse, or