4 Tips for Better Conversations
Practical advice for navigating tough talks
Fight or flight. It’s the classic human response to threatening (or potentially threatening) situations. The blood starts pumping faster, the adrenaline kicks in, and you get ready to stand your ground and fight or turn around and run.
This reflex can be incredibly valuable to alert us to physically dangerous encounters. Unfortunately, it isn’t very well equipped to tell the difference between a physical run-in and a verbal one.
Our defense mechanisms get triggered just as easily in verbal confrontations as physical brawls. For anyone trying to create space for healthy dialogue, this is a problem.
How many times have you imagined a conversation going smoothly, only to get hijacked by someone’s amygdala halfway through? How many times have you reflected back on a conversation, trying to figure out where things went off the rails? It happens to all of us.
Despite our best intentions, tough conversations can very easily devolve into verbal combat or complete withdrawal. Neither scenario accomplishes your goals for the conversation.
It requires a cool head and some intentionality on your part, but if you follow a few steps, you can set your conversations up for success. Fight or flight isn’t the only choice. You can collaborate.
Judith Glaser, in her book Conversational Intelligence, offers 4 tips to help us improve the quality and outcomes of our conversations.
Move from fear to transparency
Fear is at the heart of fight or flight. Too many of our conversations end poorly because of fear. It makes us defensive, it clouds our judgment, and it makes us assume the worst from the other person.
Showing vulnerability is a quick way to disarm that fear. When you express vulnerability from the beginning and make it a point to name your own fears, you set the conversation up for success.
This is especially true if a power imbalance is present. Sharing your fears starts the conversation off on more equal footing, such as, “I’m afraid this conversation is going to get heated. I’d really like to avoid that,” or, “I’m afraid something I say might get misinterpreted. Let’s keep checking to make sure we’re on the same page.”
When you begin a conversation with transparency, you move away from the fear of the unknown.
Move from power to relationship building
Before you start the conversation, check your mindset. Are you more concerned about winning and getting your way, or about the health of the relationship moving forward? When you refocus on your relationship with the other person, you change the dynamics of the conversation.
When you enter with the intention of building the relationship, your goals change. The conversation shifts away from demonstrations of power and moves toward unifying collaboration.
Entering conversations with humility helps achieve this goal. When you enter with the notion that you already have the solution, the conversation becomes a one-way exchange of information rather than genuine dialogue. These encounters display power, not collaboration.
Before you begin the conversation, tell yourself, “My relationship with this person is more important than the outcome of the conversation.” If need be, keep reminding yourself of that throughout the dialogue.
Move from uncertainty to understanding
Do everything you can to minimize uncertainty. Uncertainty is the fulcrum between trust and distrust. As uncertainty increases, so does distrust, which increases fear.
Increasing clarity, however, increases understanding which in turn builds trust. Whether you pause mid-conversation or do a check at the end, make sure what you meant is the same thing the other person heard.
If you know the other person is feeling uncertain, clarify that at the beginning of the conversation. If they think you might be upset with them, make it clear that you aren’t (unless you actually are, in which case, just jump right into that). If they think their job is on the line, make it clear that their position is safe.
Move from a need to be right to shared success
Before you enter the conversation, check your mindset. What is your top priority? Are you more concerned with being right or with moving forward together?
If you enter a conversation already convinced you know the right path forward, you won’t be engaging in a genuine dialogue. If you enter with humility, however, you open up the possibility of collaboration.
Too often, we enter difficult conversations with different ideas of success. A successful outcome might look drastically different between two people. Take the time in your conversation to define success together. This combines tips two and three. You create a shared definition of success (which prioritizes the relationship over the power dynamics) and you ensure clarity.
Try this at the beginning of your next tough conversation. Take out a piece of paper for each person and in the middle write the word, “success.” Spend the next few minutes writing your ideas and definitions of success in this instance.
Are you launching a new program? Define your idea of success for that. Are you determining the strategy for the next season? Define a successful outcome for that strategy.
Taking the time to write out your definitions of success helps you better understand the mindset of the others in the conversation. When you share those definitions with each other, emphasize the commonality. This becomes the foundation upon which you build.
Defining success together starts the process with collaboration and removes some of the fear that can result from uncertainty.
Remember to breathe
All of these tips require intentionality before the conversation begins. In a tough talk, there’s too much at stake to jump right into it. But even with the best preparation, things can go sideways. Your amygdala (or the other person’s) can quickly hijack the conversation. When you feel this starting to happen, remember to breathe.
Pausing to take a deep breath can frequently calm down your amygdala and get the conversation back on track. It gives you a chance to remember that the relationship is more important than winning the debate. It’s a chance to remember the importance of collaborating toward success rather than dictating terms to someone else.
Next time you head into a conversation that has the potential to deteriorate, take a few minutes to prepare yourself beforehand. The conversation will be smoother, the relationship will be stronger, and you’ll be on the road to success together.
