Rehearsing Difficult Conversations

How can I have an honest confrontation that doesn't collapse within seconds into heated combat?  That is the primary question for most people with whom I work.  They may not even think of the question, but they come to a mediator, coach or counselor primarily because some relationship is not working.  There are problems, issues, and disagreements that make the conversations tense and the days long.

It's exhausting.

The risk, however, of an explosion is more than most people can tolerate.  We live in a hair-trigger society where the default response to confrontation is a meltdown--either into tears of pain or shouts of rage.  Even if those responses don't happen, we live with the anxiety that they will.

Every person who faces the prospect of confrontation should read the now-classic book, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.  Stone, Patton, Fisher and Heen have developed a comprehensive guide for preparing to carry out such conversations.  I will spend some time in the next several posts on that book.

Why does this topic matter?  The authors put it this way.  "We believe a major reason change efforts so often fail is that successful implementation eventually requires people to have difficult conversations--and they are not prepared to manage them skillfully."  All of us are agents of change at some point in our lives--whether the change is in our friendships, our marriages, our parenting, our work, our church or our business.

The techniques in Difficult Conversations will be well worth the time reviewing.  However, one of the  reasons we are not prepared for such conversations is that we rarely take the time to practice them in advance.  This is where a conflict coach can be invaluable.  Role-playing the conversation toward a productive conclusion is an indispensable tool for successful resolutions.  But rarely do people take the time or energy to engage in such practice.

I walked through a difficult conversation a boss anticipated with an employee.  We worked through the conversation several times as I pretended to be the hurt, upset, angry, threatening and acquiescent employee--not all at once, of course!  At the end of the practice, the boss was much calmer and had lived through in advance how things might turn out.  This is really a form of neurolinguistic programming that opens up new brain pathways and make the adjustment to difficult input easier.

In simple terms, the boss dealt with anxiety in advance.  If you want to try out difficult conversation rehearsals, just give me a call!