Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

  What may help is to tell him about the impact his drinking has on you, and, further, to try to understand his story. What is keeping him in denial? What would it mean to him to admit he has a problem? What gets in the way? Until you understand his story, and share yours with him, you can’t help him find a way to rewrite the next chapter for the better. In this case, you may be right and your friend may be wrong, but merely being right doesn’t do you much good.

  Giving Bad News

  What if you have to fire someone, end a relationship, or let a supplier know you’re cutting back on orders by 80 percent? In many difficult conversations, you don’t have the power to impose an outcome unilaterally. When firing someone or breaking up or reducing orders, you do. In such situations, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the other person’s story is still relevant.

  Most of the difficulty in firing someone or in breaking up takes place in the Feelings and Identity Conversations, which we’ll explore later. But the question of differing perspectives is also important. Remember, understanding the other person’s story doesn’t mean you have to agree with it, nor does it require you to give up your own. And the fact that you are willing to try to understand their view doesn’t diminish the power you have to implement your decision, and to be clear that your decision is final.

  In fact, the And Stance is probably the most powerful place to stand when engaging in a difficult conversation that requires you to deliver or enforce bad news. If you are breaking up with someone, it allows you to say “I’m breaking up with you because it’s the right thing for me [here’s why], and I understand how hurt you are, and that you think we should try again, and I’m not changing my mind, and I understand that you think I should have been more clear about my confusion earlier, and I don’t think that makes me a bad person, and I understand that I’ve done things that have hurt you, and I know you’ve done things that have hurt me, and I know I might regret this decision, and I’m still making it. . . . And, and, and.”

  “And” helps you to be curious and clear.

  To Move Forward, First Understand Where You Are

  As you head down the path of improving how you deal with difficult conversations, you will notice that the question of how we each make sense of our worlds follows you like the moon in the night sky. It’s a beacon you can return to no matter where you are or with what difficult problem you are grappling.

  Coming to understand the other person, and yourself, more deeply doesn’t mean that differences will disappear or that you won’t have to solve real problems and make real choices. It doesn’t mean that all views are equally valid or that it’s wrong to have strongly held beliefs. It will, however, help you evaluate whether your strong views make sense in light of new information and different interpretations, and it will help you help others to appreciate the power of those views.

  Wherever you want to go, understanding — imagining yourself into the other person’s story — has got to be your first step. Before you can figure out how to move forward, you need to understand where you are.

  The next two chapters delve more deeply into two problematic aspects of our story — our tendency to misunderstand their intentions, and our tendency to focus on blame.

  3

  Don’t Assume They Meant It: Disentangle Intent from Impact

  The question of who intended what is central to our story about what’s happening in a difficult situation. Intentions strongly influence our judgments of others: If someone intended to hurt us, we judge them more harshly than if they hurt us by mistake. We’re willing to be inconvenienced by someone if they have a good reason; we’re irritated if we think they just don’t care about the impact of their actions on us. Though either blocks our way just as surely, we react differently to an ambulance double-parked on a narrow street than we do to a BMW.

  The Battle Over Intentions

  Consider the story of Lori and Leo, who have been in a relationship for two years and have a recurring fight that is painful to both of them. The couple was at a party thrown by some friends, and Lori was about to reach for another scoop of ice cream, when Leo said, “Lori, why don’t you lay off the ice cream?” Lori, who struggles with her weight, shot Leo a nasty look, and the two avoided each other for a while. Later that evening things went from bad to worse:

  LORI: I really resented it at the party, the way you treated me in front of our friends.

  LEO: The way I treated you? What are you talking about?

  LORI: About the ice cream. You act like you’re my father or something. You have this need to control me or put me down.

  LEO: Lori, I wasn’t trying to hurt you. You said you were on a diet, and I’m just trying to help you stick to it. You’re so defensive. You hear everything as an attack on you, even when I’m trying to help.

  LORI: Help!? Humiliating me in front of my friends is your idea of helping?

  LEO: You know, I just can’t win with you. If I say something, you think I’m trying humiliate you, and if I don’t, you ask me why I let you overeat. I am so sick of this. Sometimes I wonder whether you don’t start these fights on purpose.

  This conversation left both Lori and Leo feeling angry, hurt, and misunderstood. What’s worse, it’s a conversation they have over and over again. They are engaged in a classic battle over intentions: Lori accuses Leo of hurting her on purpose, and Leo denies it. They are caught in a cycle they don’t understand and don’t know how to break.

  Two Key Mistakes

  There is a way out. Two crucial mistakes in this conversation make it infinitely more difficult than it needs to be — one by Lori and one by Leo. When Lori says “You have this need to control me or put me down,” she is talking about Leo’s intentions. Her mistake is to assume she knows what Leo’s intentions are, when in fact she doesn’t. It’s an easy — and debilitating — mistake to make. And we do it all the time.

  Leo’s mistake is to assume that once he clarifies that his intentions were good, Lori is no longer justified in being upset. He explains that he “wasn’t trying to hurt” Lori, that in fact he was trying to help. And having explained this, he thinks that should be the end of it. As a result, he doesn’t take the time to learn what Lori is really feeling or why. This mistake, too, is as common as it is crippling.

  Fortunately, with some awareness, both mistakes can be avoided.

  The First Mistake: Our Assumptions About Intentions Are Often Wrong

  Exploring “Lori’s mistake” requires us to understand how our minds work when devising stories about what others intend, and to learn to recognize the set of questionable assumptions upon which these stories are built. Here’s the problem: While we care deeply about other people’s intentions toward us, we don’t actually know what their intentions are. We can’t. Other people’s intentions exist only in their hearts and minds. They are invisible to us. However real and right our assumptions about other people’s intentions may seem to us, they are often incomplete or just plain wrong.

  We Assume Intentions from the Impact on Us

  Much of the first mistake can be traced to one basic error: we make an attribution about another person’s intentions based on the impact of their actions on us. We feel hurt; therefore they intended to hurt us. We feel slighted; therefore they intended to slight us. Our thinking is so automatic that we aren’t even aware that our conclusion is only an assumption. We are so taken in by our story about what they intended that we can’t imagine how they could have intended anything else.

  We Assume the Worst. The conclusions we draw about intentions based on the impact of others’ actions on us are rarely charitable. When a friend shows up late to the movie, we don’t think, “Gee, I’ll bet he ran into someone in need.” More likely we think, “Jerk. He doesn’t care about making me miss the beginning of the movie.” When we’ve been hurt by someone else’s behavior, we assume the worst.

  Margaret fell into this pattern. She had had her hip operated on by a prominent surgeon, a man she found gruff a
nd hard to talk to. When Margaret hobbled in for her first appointment after surgery, the receptionist told her that the doctor had unexpectedly extended his vacation. Angry, Margaret imagined her wealthy doctor cavorting in the Caribbean with his wife or girlfriend, too self-important and inconsiderate to return on schedule. The picture compounded her anger.

  When Margaret finally saw the doctor a week later, she asked curtly how his vacation had been. He responded that it had been wonderful. “I’ll bet,” she said, wondering whether to raise her concerns. But the doctor went on: “It was a working vacation. I was helping set up a hospital in Bosnia. The conditions there are just horrendous.”

  Learning what the doctor was really doing didn’t erase the inconvenience Margaret had endured. Yet knowing that he was not acting out of selfishness, but from an unrelated and generous motivation, left Margaret feeling substantially better about having to wait the extra week.

  We attribute intentions to others all the time. With business and even personal relationships increasingly conducted via e-mail, voice mail, faxes, and conference calls, we often have to read between the lines to figure out what people really mean. When a customer writes “I don’t suppose you’ve gotten to my order yet . . . ,” is he being sarcastic? Is he angry? Or is he trying to tell you that he knows you’re busy? Without tone of voice to guide us, it is easy to assume the worst.

  We Treat Ourselves More Charitably. What’s ironic — and all too human — about our tendency to attribute bad intentions to others is how differently we treat ourselves. When your husband forgets to pick up the dry cleaning, he’s irresponsible. When you forget to book the airline tickets, it’s because you’re overworked and stressed out. When a coworker criticizes your work in front of department colleagues, she is trying to put you down. When you offer suggestions to others in the same meeting, you are trying to be helpful.

  When we’re the ones acting, we know that much of the time we don’t intend to annoy, offend, or upstage others. We’re wrapped up in our own worries, and are often unaware that we’re having any negative impact on others. When we’re the ones acted upon, however, our story too easily slides into one about bad intentions and bad character.

  Are There Never Bad Intentions? Of course, sometimes we get hurt because someone meant to hurt us. The person we are dealing with is nasty or inconsiderate, out to make us look bad or steal our best friend. But these situations are rarer than we imagine, and without hearing from the other person, we can’t really know their intentions.

  Getting Their Intentions Wrong Is Costly

  Intentions matter, and guessing wrong is hazardous to your relationships.

  We Assume Bad Intentions Mean Bad Character. Perhaps the biggest danger of assuming the other person had bad intentions is that we easily jump from “they had bad intentions” to “they are a bad person.” We settle into judgments about their character that color our view of them and, indeed, affect not only any conversation we might have, but the entire relationship. Once we think we have someone figured out, we see all of their actions through that lens, and the stakes rise. Even if we don’t share our view with them, the impact remains. The worse our view of the other person’s character, the easier it is to justify avoiding them or saying nasty things behind their back.

  When you find yourself thinking “That traffic cop is a control freak” or “My boss is manipulative” or “My neighbor is impossible,” ask yourself why this is your view. What is it based on? If it’s based on feeling powerless, fearing manipulation, or being frustrated, notice that your conclusion is based solely on the impact of their behavior on you — which is not a sufficient basis to be sure of someone else’s intentions or character.

  Accusing Them of Bad Intentions Creates Defensiveness. Our assumptions about other people’s intentions can also have a significant impact on our conversations. The easiest and most common way of expressing these assumptions is with an accusatory question: “How come you wanted to hurt me?” “Why do you ignore me like this?” “What have I done that makes you feel it’s okay to step all over me?”

  We think we are sharing our hurt, frustration, anger, or confusion. We are trying to begin a conversation that will end in greater understanding, perhaps some improved behavior, and maybe an apology. What they think we are doing is trying to provoke, accuse, or malign them. (In other words, they make the same mistaken leap in judging our intentions.) And given how frequently our assumptions are incomplete or wrong, the other person often feels not just accused, but falsely accused. Few things are more aggravating.

  We should not be surprised, then, that they try to defend themselves, or attack back. From their point of view, they are defending themselves from false accusations. From our point of view, they are just being defensive — we’re right, they just aren’t big enough to admit it. The result is a mess. No one learns anything, no one apologizes, nothing changes.

  Lori and Leo fall right into this. Leo is defensive throughout, and at the end, when he says that he sometimes wonders if Lori “starts these fights on purpose,” he actually accuses Lori of bad intentions. And thus begins a cycle of accusation. If interviewed about their conversation afterward, both Lori and Leo would report that they were the victim of the other’s bad intentions. Each would claim that their own statements were made in self-defense. Those are the two classic characteristics of the cycle: both parties think they are the victim, and both think they are acting only to defend themselves. This is how well-intentioned people get themselves into trouble.

  Attributions Can Become Self-Fulfilling. Our assumptions about the other person’s intentions often come true, even when they aren’t true to begin with. You think your boss isn’t giving you enough responsibility. You assume that this is because she doesn’t trust you to do the work well. You feel demotivated by this state of affairs, figuring that nothing you do will change your boss’s mind. Your work suffers, and your boss, who hadn’t been concerned about your work before, is now quite worried. So she gives you even less responsibility than before.

  When we think others have bad intentions toward us, it affects our behavior. And, in turn, how we behave affects how they treat us. Before we know it, our assumption that they have bad intentions toward us has come true.

  The Second Mistake: Good Intentions Don’t Sanitize Bad Impact

  As we’ve seen, the mistake Lori makes of assuming she knows Leo’s intentions, though seemingly small, has big consequences. Now let’s come back to Leo, who makes an equally costly error in the conversation. He assumes that because he had good intentions, Lori should not feel hurt. The thinking goes like this: “You said I meant to hurt you. I have now clarified that I didn’t. So you should now feel fine, and if you don’t, that’s your problem.”

  We Don’t Hear What They Are Really Trying to Say

  The problem with focusing only on clarifying our intentions is that we end up missing significant pieces of what the other person is trying to say. When they say, “Why were you trying to hurt me?” they are really communicating two separate messages: first, “I know what you intended,” and, second, “I got hurt.” When we are the person accused, we focus only on the first message and ignore the second. Why? Because we feel the need to defend ourselves. Because Leo is so busy defending himself, he fails to hear that Lori is hurt. He doesn’t take in what this all means to her, how hurt she is, or why these issues are so painful.

  Working to understand what the other person is really saying is particularly important because when someone says “You intended to hurt me” that isn’t quite what they mean. A literal focus on intentions ends up clouding the conversation. Often we say “You intended to hurt me” when what we really mean is “You don’t care enough about me.” This is an important distinction.

  The father who is too busy at work to attend his son’s basketball game doesn’t intend to hurt his son. He would prefer not to hurt his son. But his desire not to hurt his son is not as strong as his desire or need to work. Most of us on t
he receiving end make little distinction between “He wanted to hurt me” and “He didn’t want to hurt me, but he didn’t make me a priority.” Either way, it hurts. If the father responds to his son’s complaint by saying “I didn’t intend to hurt you,” he’s not addressing his son’s real concern: “You may not have intended to hurt me, but you knew you were hurting me, and you did it anyway.”

  It is useful to attempt to clarify your intentions. The question is when. If you do it at the beginning of the conversation, you are likely doing it without fully understanding what the other person really means to express.

  We Ignore the Complexity of Human Motivations

  Another problem with assuming that good intentions sanitize a negative impact is that intentions are often more complex than just “good” or “bad.” Are Leo’s intentions purely angelic? Is he just trying to help Lori with her diet? Perhaps he himself is embarrassed by Lori’s tendency to overeat and felt compelled to say something. Or maybe he wants her to lose weight not so much for herself, but for him. If he really cares about her, as he says he does, shouldn’t he be more aware of how his words affect her?

  As is so often the case, Leo’s intentions are probably mixed. He may not even be fully aware of what is actually motivating him. But the answer to the question of what is truly motivating Leo is less important than his willingness to ask the question and look for an answer. If his first response to Lori is “No, I had good intentions,” then he is putting up a barrier to any learning he might get from the conversation. And he is sending a message to Lori that says, “I’m more interested in defending myself than I am in investigating the complexities of what might be going on for me in our relationship.”