How to say what you’re thinking, when you really need to

I walked away from that meeting, and going through my mind were 5 different responses, questions and arguments to that one thing they said. I didn’t have the perfect response right then, the facts didn’t quite clear up in my mind in time. It made me angry that I didn’t say what I needed too. I replayed that conversation in my mind a few times, turning it over and trying to work out when the right time would have been to state my point. I realised that I’d missed my chance, and that the meeting wasn’t as good as it could have been because of it. I also felt like I had somehow ‘lost out’.

What I needed were some words that allowed me to talk through the messy stuff in my head. To be able to open a dialogue with them on the issues I had with what they were saying, without being confrontational. To use a term borrowed from Brene Brown, I needed some rumble words…

Rumble words are something I have introduced into my language; the concept of rumble words is from Brene’s work “Dare to Lead”(there is an attached extract from the Dare to Lead workbook at the bottom of the document, this book is worth your time) and identifies that you need a way to navigate the difficult conversations. The most challenging part to navigating a difficult conversation is the start, and then ensuring that you do not uncontrollably escalate it. You…