Conditions for better conversations
Practicing these three principles in how you communicate — with others and yourself — will lead to healthier conflict and conversations that create connection and understanding.
There are three simple ideas that I practice in all my work (which includes being a dad, husband and member of my local community) that I try to teach every time I bring a group together.
These ‘Core Conditions’ are the work of Carl Rogers, Psychologist and founder of person-centered therapy.
These simple principles for how we show up in communication with others are built on one of the central ideas of Roger’s work, that:
“Human beings become increasingly trustworthy once they feel at a deep level that their subjective experience is both respected and progressively understood.
I’ve found this understanding to be utterly invaluable and almost always true.
But for me it’s not simply about building trust, I’ve found that in a work context (read: trying to get something done with other people) unless these conditions in place, we can’t actually be professional and pragmatic.
Try them out and find out why, for yourself.
[But do remember that this is a practice and that these are principles.
Practice means you have to try, get it wrong and try again. Then repeat until you die, progressively learning but not getting attached to some kind of perfect done state.
Principles means holding them as ideas or guides as we listen, think and speak. Not a set of rules that we can follow or break, or boxes we can tick and say ‘Done’.]
Respect
Short for Unconditional Positive Regard.
Put simply this means accepting everything that someone else says (or does) only as a reflection of their own experience.
Their words and actions might bring up strong feelings or lead us to judge them, so Respect is about separating our interpretations of them or our reactions to them, from what they actually say or do.
Put simply: “Taking nothing personally”.
This is critical because only when we can practice Respect can we start to learn about what’s going on for the other.
While we’re caught in our own judging experience, simply reacting to our feelings about it, we have no idea why they’re saying what they’re saying.
There’s a clear neurophysical explanation for why this is necessary.
The brain only uses about 20% of external information (visual, auditory, olfactory, pressure etc) to understand a given experience. The other 80% is inside our head — past experiences and memories, anchors and reference points (for this reference and so much more I recommend watching: What is Reality? From the series ‘The Brain’ by David Eagleman).
So we’re actually programmed not to really hear or see what’s really going on but to create a false impression of it based on our internal programming.
This isn’t just about how we experience others.
I’ve found that because we’re so habituated to judge our own experience and criticise ourselves, if we’re to have conversations that matter we have to learn to first hold the same level of respect for ourselves.
This is just as important as practicing Respect for others because if we’re caught in an internal conflict about our own reactions, we’re not in a clear enough space to have clear conversations.
Empathy
When we can see and hear what’s happening as it is, rather than muddling it up with our feelings about it, we’re able to start learning from it.
This is where empathy comes in.
I prefer to think of it as curiousity — or at least that’s the condition that leads to empathy.
Tuning into the other’s words and non-verbal cues we can ask ourselves:
- What’s behind those words?
- What are they thinking and feeling?
- What’s their need in all this?
Using active listening, clarifying our understanding with them and asking deepening questions, we can start to feel what they’re feeling.
People often ask what the difference is between empathy and sympathy.
My mother (a highly experienced therapist and psychology professional) has the best description:
Empathy is standing on the side of the pool while someone in it is struggling. We can see what’s happening to them, understand why and stay in a position to ‘help’ (if that’s the appropriate thing).
Sympathy is jumping into the pool, drowning with them screaming: “Oh yeah! This is awful! We’re going to die!”
Like Respect, Empathy is not a moral imperative or a ‘nice thing to do’. If we can’t practice empathy we have no way of truly understanding what the other person has to tell us — we miss their perspective and all the information held therein.
Congruence
I describe this as “How aligned is what I’m saying to what I’m thinking and feeling?”
Or put bluntly: “Am I being honest?”
Congruence gives the other person a fighting chance at understanding what you really want to say — to understand your feelings, perspectives and needs.
So often we tie ourselves in knots trying to carefully phrase something, or dance around the heart of it for fear of the consequences.
And most of the time, this is pretty unproductive. For the same reason we have to practice respect, others will interpret what you say based on their own past experiences.
Just like you, their brain will chew up your words and actions, put them back together in a way that confirms their worst fears or foregone conclusions about you and this is what they’ll react to.
By saying what you think, feel or need as clearly as possible, you massively reduce the barriers to understanding and gives them something to work with.
Even if it triggers them, at least you can come back to what you said and explore their reaction to it, or dig further into it, rather than have to retract or re-explain 50 times.
