I am reading "Difficult Conversations" by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. Most of us struggle with conversations that need to be said whether it's on difficult performance feedback, addressing dysfunctional behavior, taking teams to their greatness, etc. The biggest lesson I gleaned from the book is that our assumptions about other people's intentions can also have a significant impact on our conversations. The other person can judge our intentions, feel falsely accused and have to be defend themselves.
The lessons around disentangling the impact and your intention is to ask yourself three questions:
1. What did the other person actually say or do?
2. What was the impact of this on me?
3. Based on this impact, what assumption am I making about what the other person intended?
From these thoughts, practice sharing the impact on you with the other person and ask them what their intention was the comment or action. If you can create a way to take a moment to think about your reactions and respond in a different way, you may find these difficult conversations become easier. Please remember that you only have control over yourself - your reactions, your actions and your thoughts. The same is true for all of us as each of us is wired as individuals with our own histories, our own life experiences, education , life lessons and culture exposure.
Read the book, hire a coach, practice and be mindful of where these conversations show up and try to handle them a little differently.
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