Reflection On Reading “Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most”
This reading discusses the underlying structure and the methods to overcome and control one’s feelings, the other important thing that this reading target is how to abandon the blame game and instead be focused on our own contributions. Secondly, this reading also discusses about the nuances of friendship and how friends listen better than family.
It turns out that blame is a prominent issue in many difficult conversations, whether on the surface or below, the conversation the revolves around who is to blame. According to my perspective, focusing just on who is to blame is a bad idea because it inhibits a person’s ability to look for the actual reason of what is causing the problem and do anything effectively meaningful about it, it prevents understanding, problem-solving and discovering the systems that need to be changed. Secondly, the system of blaming often serves as a bad proxy for talking directly about hurt feelings. This cannot just be prevented by just saying “Don’t blame others”, the authors suggest we must learn to distinguish blame from contribution and understand the fundamental aspects of what blame is, I think this essential to improving our ability to handle difficult conversations well. Moreover, at heart, blame is about judging (looking in the past) and contribution is about understanding (moving towards the future). In every conflict, a contribution system is present; in other words, both the parties somehow contributed to the present situation. I think that both the parties should work together and discover how each of them contributed to the end.
The authors share four common and hard-to-spot contributions: a) avoiding difficult conversations, b) being unapproachable, c) intersections (failing to understand how different and complex we are based on our past experiences, present sensitivities and goals), d) Problematic role assumptions. In addition, talking to the person and making a request that can help you both understand what is going wrong and how it can be stopped Moving further, the second conversation that needs untangling is the one about feelings.
The author says, “Feelings matter: they are often the heart of difficult conversations”. I think that if we don’t control our feelings and come to terms with them with a direct and honest approach, they will leak out and contaminate all our communications (maybe even unconsciously), in a way that make the conversations difficult and toxic for people and even more difficult for us to listen to people. And, by withholding your feelings- a decision that will eventually erode our self-esteem and slowly start affecting our relationships. The authors suggest that when you find yourself blaming another person, they suggest that you should take a step back and look inside yourself and search for your own hidden feelings. We all should realize that we all have deep, personal feelings present underneath all of our façade and work towards self-improvement. So, finally, in a difficult conversation don’t vent and judge but, be willing to describe how you feel, why you feel and all the other spectrums of your feelings because your feelings matter as much as the other persons. In some difficult conversations, you’ll discover that all that was at stake was hurt feelings.
Lastly, I think that our close friends and colleagues can be the best listeners because they usually don’t have high stakes in us that our families do. We can talk about almost anything with friends whereas there some subjects within family relationships that are not safe to broach. But sometimes there are things that can come in between friendships, such as lack of time or conflicts. Some conflicts are less likely to be resolved and can greatly affect friendship because there is no imperative to remain in relationship and secondly, we are afraid to express our true feelings because of the fear that they might abandon us.
I think that to sustain a friendship over a long period of time we should account the change in life patterns, behaviors and choices and also includes continuing to listen when it gets difficult. The same idea also applies to colleagues and work place. For example, a good manager is also a good and proactive listener and one who takes an active role in finding out what employees and co-workers think and feel, this demonstrates great care and respect which is very positive to maintain an effective workplace.
