This post is courtesy of our friend Maria Simpson, Ph.D. You can check out more from Maria at http://www.mariasimpson.com/

The title of this piece is the title of a book that I think is valuable and can help make our most difficult conversations a bit easier. Written by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, it is a product of the Harvard Negotiation Project, the folks who brought you Getting to Yes. It’s in paperback, and I found it browsing the shelves of the bookstore. It’s worth the time to check it out.

The authors suggest that difficult conversations are difficult because they are “ . . . not about what is true, they are about what is important.”

To understand the complexity of a difficult conversation, they divide it into three distinct conversations that occur at the same time: the truth or accuracy of what happened; the feelings that drive both the conversation and how we feel about what we are saying; and personal identity, how what we are saying impacts our concepts of who we are.

The first part, what happened, should be easy to determine, but we have all been in conversations that were made more difficult because no one could agree on the basic events or the order in which they occurred. In a recent mediation, the basic facts were so completely in dispute that the parties were suing each other over the same situation. They’re on their way to court. In an organizational setting, a staff member was placed on a performance plan and argued strenuously against it because even the dates on which meetings were supposed to have occurred were disputed. How could a performance plan be fair if no one agreed on what happened?

An important component of difficult conversations, then, is that we each have our own truths, and those truths clash to make the conversation more difficult than if basic facts were agreed on and only their interpretation was in dispute.

Second, the feelings conversation is made complicated because important feelings are often not expressed or even avoided. The feelings conversation is silent; it goes on in our heads and is never openly expressed.

There are two reasons for why people are reluctant to express feelings. First, people anticipate the drama of strong feelings and don’t want to deal it. Feelings don’t have to be stated dramatically. Feelings can be stated simply and honestly, and they can be acknowledged and addressed equally simply and honestly.

Second, people are afraid to state their feelings because they are afraid they will be ridiculed. “Simply and honestly” doesn’t mean superficially or dismissively; it means seriously and respectfully.

The issue will never be resolved until the feelings are addressed, but people must be convinced that they will be taken seriously and their feelings treated respectfully before they will be honest about them.

Third, the identity part of the conversation occurs as people worry about what others will think of them if they admit to a mistake, even a small one, so they get defensive to protect their core identities. For example, part of my identity is the perfectionist who finds and corrects her own mistakes. (Or is that just OCD? Don’t know.) If a mistake gets past me, that challenges my identity as someone who does not give mistake-ridden work to clients. An over-reaction? All perfectionists over-react, but none of us, perfectionist or not, want our work to be considered mediocre.

An important part of a difficult conversation, then, is protecting people from thinking they will be considered “bad” as a result of what happened. It may sound like a contradiction to the previous emphasis on feelings, but focusing on how everyone contributed to allow room for the mistake, taking the conversation from the personal to the process, will mitigate the negative effect on identity. That means acknowledging some joint responsibility for what happened and assigning less individual blame, but it doesn’t mean that individuals shouldn’t explore their own part in the mistake and work to eliminate it in the future.

To address all three parts of a difficult conversation the authors advise moving from a battle conversation to a learning conversation, from fighting to exploring. I have talked before about exploring instead of reacting, of taking the time to understand the other person’s point of view before making decisions or assigning blame, and the authors are suggesting the same thing. The end result will be much more positive than the reprimand inherent in most difficult conversations will be.