Are you shying away from initiating those tough conversations? This episode is filled with practical wisdom and guidance that will empower you to start tough conversations with anyone. Hosts Patrice Brymner and Jen Hawthorne dive into the nuances of understanding your own motives and goals, identifying the right people to participate in the conversation, and whether you might want to consider professional assistance . Sometimes, it's not just about finding a resolution, but creating a healthier environment for future communication.
Jen and Patrice also delve into the art of effective problem-solving conversations, emphasizing the power of using "I" statements, validating the other person's viewpoint, and setting the stage for a solution-oriented dialogue. It's crucial to acknowledge the value of timing, preparation, and the humility to accept a 'no' answer. In the end, Patrice and Jen want to help you create a space of peaceful communication and coexistence. They share insightful tips on ensuring that your conversations are productive, solely focused on creating solutions, and most importantly, help improve your relationships and daily encounters.
Are you shying away from initiating those tough conversations? This episode is filled with practical wisdom and guidance that will empower you to start tough conversations with anyone. Hosts Patrice Brymner and Jen Hawthorne dive into the nuances of understanding your own motives and goals, identifying the right people to participate in the conversation, and whether you might want to consider professional assistance . Sometimes, it's not just about finding a resolution, but creating a healthier environment for future communication.
Jen and Patrice also delve into the art of effective problem-solving conversations, emphasizing the power of using "I" statements, validating the other person's viewpoint, and setting the stage for a solution-oriented dialogue. It's crucial to acknowledge the value of timing, preparation, and the humility to accept a 'no' answer. In the end, Patrice and Jen want to help you create a space of peaceful communication and coexistence. They share insightful tips on ensuring that your conversations are productive, solely focused on creating solutions, and most importantly, help improve your relationships and daily encounters.
Welcome to Mending Fences, a podcast about effective ways to communicate and live with differences. I'm Patrice Bremener.
Speaker 2:And I'm Jen Hawthorne. We're both family law mediators and collaborative law attorneys, but our conversations go well beyond family law. We explore the personal, interpersonal, legal and cultural impact of conflict.
Speaker 1:Hi and welcome back to Mending Fences. I'm Patrice Bremener and I'm here today with Jen Hawthorne. Hi, jen, hi Patrice. We're going to talk today about how to start a difficult conversation with anyone and we're really going to keep it focused on the very early considerations and planning for a hard conversation. And you know, and just the decision, like the initial decision, do I want to have this conversation and we'll reference things we've talked about before.
Speaker 1:So there are other episodes about effective communication. You'll hear us reference some of those skills, but we would refer people back to that for ongoing communication tips, right? Yep, yeah, we've made tips along the way about how we use our conflict resolution skills in our real lives and how to prepare for this kind of stuff. But today we're really talking about how to start a difficult conversation and I think, jen, maybe we can frame this because this could be anything right. So this could be. It could be really anything Right. It could be within your family, it could be I think we're going to use an example of a neighbor dispute but it could be a coworker, it could be someone at your kid's school, it could be anything.
Speaker 2:It can be really anyone that you have any sort of ongoing relationship with and people hear the word relationship sometimes and think of a deep personal connection, but really what we mean here is anybody that you have continued interactions with. That you have to, by the nature of the defined relationship, have continued interactions with.
Speaker 1:Right, and so you're invested in improving either resolving the conflict or improving circumstances around the conflict and you can't just walk away. Right, this isn't a parking lot, a parking space dispute, or yeah these are conversations meant to foster an ongoing relationship of some sort. So we're going to use an example of a neighbor. So a neighbor dispute around dogs. So I don't even know what the underlying facts should be but I mean there could be a ton of them, right?
Speaker 2:Lots of people. Dogs are very personal to people, so people care very deeply about their dog's situation. Maybe dogs are wandering, maybe dogs are barking, maybe both people have dogs and they're fighting. Any of these situations could happen, and I think anybody who has either had a dog or lived near a dog before can probably picture that particularly as a male.
Speaker 1:And so I think these tips would be really relevant, if you have. So you've had a relationship with your neighbor. Maybe you know them well, maybe you don't, but you want a good relationship and you become aware that you see the situation differently.
Speaker 2:Right and just to back up one quick step like even if you don't see yourself as in a relationship with this person by virtue of sharing a property line you're thinking about, do you want to have tension and hostility when you're in your own space, or do you want to make sure you've created a comfortable space for both?
Speaker 1:of you, and that can translate easily into a workplace or other situations where you just know, for your sake and for everybody's sake, you want to improve things, and I keep wanting to come back to this point that you may be able, maybe the. So one of the first things we're going to ask you to think about is just what's your goal Like, what's your goal in having this conversation, before you ever reach out to someone to do a little self-check-in about what your goals are and what your motives are Right?
Speaker 2:Right, and I'm going to ask you, coming into this conversation and asking for this conversation because you want to feel validated, because you want to unload your anger on them, because you want to feel like you're getting some sort of positive outcome for just you, or have you done the work for yourself to say okay, I recognize that I have anger, hostility, tension around this issue, but my goal in having this conversation is to get rid of this frustration and this anger, and not in a way that makes them feel like it's all their fault, but rather I'm ready to be open, to hear what they have to say. I would make a distinction.
Speaker 1:I don't know if this is a valid distinction, but I would almost want to distinguish between understanding what your motives are like doing that check a motive check, like you said, am I trying to get validation or am I trying to get them to comply with my way? Blah blah, blah, blah blah. What my motives are might be different than the goal, because the goal, right and where I was going to go was like the goal might be to resolve the conflict, or it might just be to improve conditions around the conflict, because the conflict might. You might not change anybody's mind, you might not come to an eye-to-eye place, but you can at least make communication better around the conflict.
Speaker 2:Right agreed that that in and of itself is a good outcome from a difficult conversation. It's just making future conversations easier.
Speaker 1:Right, If we have to keep talking about this, how are we going to do it? We see that with like just co-parents yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I think we talked about earlier, Jen was in this initial stage of checking in with yourself to also before you, so that I'm going to call that like step one. Just be honest with yourself about what your motives are and what your goals are, and I think part of it is be willing to have the goals be something other than complete resolution.
Speaker 2:Right, and certainly something other than complete resolution in the form you want to see complete resolution happen, right.
Speaker 1:So that goes back to things we've talked about before, like being curious about what the possibilities are. Right.
Speaker 2:And being open to brainstorming and yeah, next.
Speaker 1:So, and I think the second step in this very directed kind of thinking is to think about who to invite to the conversation.
Speaker 2:Yes, so you want to be thinking about who are the folks involved in this situation? Like, let's go back to our neighbor dispute. Are there multiple neighbors impacted by something going on with the dogs? Are there other people other than just yourself and the other person that you initially thought of having a conversation with that might have valuable input, might have valuable perspective, might have a stake in the outcome that you should be including in the conversation to make sure that it is as productive and useful as possible.
Speaker 1:Right, and then wrap that back into as you're thinking about who to invite. Keep doing that self-check, like what's your motive? And you don't want to invite people unnecessarily, so you don't want to invite people who don't need to be there, and you want to be honest with yourself about, like am I inviting this person because I think they'll agree with me, right? Like, do they really need to be there? There may be multiple people who need to be there, but there may not be.
Speaker 2:Right. And if you have going again back to the neighbor dispute, you've had conversations with other neighbors and you know that their interests are 100% aligned with yours. Think about the fact that it might be counterproductive to invite a whole bunch of people who have the same perspective and then one person who might have a different perspective, because that person's natural defenses are going to go way up. They're very likely to feel attacked and ganged up on and the chances of getting to productive conversation are slim. So if you know you have a group or groups of people whose interests are aligned, maybe think about do you invite one representative for each group so that you are having a meaningful conversation, getting all of the information that you need, but you're not creating a situation where any one person feels attacked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, as a general rule of thumb, my advice might be to keep it limited to only people who really need to be there, like to really be careful about not overextending the group, but also making sure that you're not leaving someone out who really is going to be impacted by the conversation and might have important information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and at this step and any later step, always keep in mind, would it be helpful to have a neutral present, someone who has no stake in the outcome?
Speaker 1:Right, Important right and really no stake, not just like the neighbor further down the street Right.
Speaker 2:Like really no stake at all like a community dispute resolution professional.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And I want to go back to the before we even start, before we even get to the invitation, when we're doing that initial check in, to be thinking about, like, how far into the dispute are we? Is it early enough in the dispute or conflict for this to be fruitful, or have we reached a point where we really do need that professional? Have we reached a point where we shouldn't be trying to do this without guidance, right, so? And my rule of thumb is going to be and there could be a different marker, you might have a different idea, but if things have become hostile, like you're actually engaged in retaliatory behavior towards this coworker or neighbor or whatever it is, then maybe you don't want to handle this on your own Right.
Speaker 2:I would fully agree with that, and that's where being really honest with yourself about where this dispute has gotten and taking responsibility for your part in how it escalated is critical Right.
Speaker 1:Right. So kind of check in, like how much has this escalated? Right, where are we? Are we? Is this going to be fruitful, or is this just I want to blow off steam? Right, yeah, all right. So that would be kind of a step one, step two. All along the way I would be asking myself that, right, and then, as a step three and we're only going to step three is how to make the actual invitation, how to initiate the conversation.
Speaker 2:Right. So I think that that word initiate or invite is really important. You're asking them to participate in a conversation, so you want to be really careful to make sure and this does relate back to things we've talked about before make sure that you're using I statements, that you're explaining to that person what their value is to you and why you feel like this conversation would be valuable. I think it might work best for most disputes if you frame it as a problem-solving conversation. You're inviting people to have this ongoing conversation with you to problem-solve around this issue that you are experiencing. That by inviting them to the conversation, you sense that they have some concerns and feel that it's an issue too. Yeah, so you're really inviting them. I think we don't always use that word when we're thinking about a difficult conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a perfect way to frame it, because I think you want to find a way whether you're writing an email, sending a text or even just calling somebody up but you want to find a way to honestly acknowledge and validate their perspective and invite I love going back to that word really Invite them to bring their perspective and see if you can find common interests.
Speaker 2:Right and so Jared interest. Along with that, I think, is a timing issue. You don't want to make someone feel cornered in this conversation either. So it's not marching over to your neighbor, banging on the door and saying, hey, we have to talk right now. I feel like your dogs are annoying. It's much more nuanced than that and it's reaching out to them and it might be an initial knock on their door if that's how you communicate, but it's saying hey, I think that there's this ongoing thing happening here Not right now, because I want to make sure you have time to think about it too. I'd like to really sit down and figure out how we can solve this problem. Here's what I'm experiencing. I do want to know what you're experiencing, but again, I want to make sure that we have a time and place to talk about it, where you feel like you have time to gather your thoughts too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such an important point, jen to let somebody know that this is going to be happening and not say the invitation isn't effective immediately.
Speaker 2:Right, right, I mean it could be if there are responses. Actually, I've been thinking about this and I have some thoughts too, but you have to really both be gauging Are you in a mental space where you can have that conversation and have it be productive?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think just by going through these steps, you're setting yourself up for a better conversation, no matter what the outcome is. I think you're setting yourself up for a better outcome if you can catch something earlier, before it becomes a very adversarial conflict and I'm going to go back to that step one again that they may say no, Right? So when you're doing your check-in, ask yourself if you're, don't put the invitation out if you're not willing for them to say no. That's true.
Speaker 2:Right, and so your next step, if they say no, is to go back to self-reflection, and if they're not willing to have this conversation, think about what do you need to do to either ask them again in a different way later, or to make peace for yourself with what the situation is. Yeah, that's it Right?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that's what all of this is Is the goal overall for all of this is just to have more peaceful communication and coexistence.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:This is a great conversation, Jen. I think those are three solid tips. Anything else you would add?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think right now, and we'll definitely keep talking we will.