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In This Episode:
Dr. John Gottman’s research on marriage found that the first three minutes of a conversation can predict how it ends, and even predict divorce years later. This episode applies that finding to leadership: how to start hard conversations well, how to separate facts from the stories we tell ourselves, and how to recover when a conversation starts badly.
What You’ll Learn
- Why Gottman’s marriage research on “harsh startups” applies directly to leadership conversations, and how tone and body language can undercut even the right words
- How to get yourself right before a hard conversation: checking your motive, calming down, and approaching with curiosity instead of certainty
- How to separate facts from the stories we tell ourselves about someone’s intentions, using the Actions, Impact, Assumption framework
- A specific way to open a tough conversation: state the facts first, then offer your interpretation tentatively rather than as settled truth
- Paul Falcone’s “perception problem” framing as an alternative to attacking someone’s character
- What to do if you started a conversation poorly, and how to de-escalate when someone else starts one poorly with you
Resources Mentioned
Carrère & Gottman, “Predicting Divorce among Newlyweds from the First Three Minutes of a Marital Conflict Discussion” (1999): https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-research-predicting-divorce-among-newlyweds-from-the-first-three-minutes-of-a-marital-conflict-discussion/
Crucial Conversations and Crucial Accountability by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees by Paul Falcone
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
Transcript
There’s one factor, one action that you can take as a leader that can determine how your conversations end—whether they end well or whether they end poorly. And it’s this: how you start the conversation.
If you start it well, it’s more likely to turn out well; but if you start it poorly, start it harshly, accusatory, it’s more likely to result negatively.
How You Start Determines How It Ends
Dr. Gottman in his research on marriage found that depending how the conversation started with a couple determined how it ended. If it started poorly, harshly, then it usually—almost always—ended hostile or negative.
And in fact, sadly, he and some of his research found that they could determine or predict divorce for newlyweds based on the first three minutes of their conversations. How they started those first three minutes in their conversations those couples had had a huge impact on that whole conversation, but also their relationship.
Why This Matters More for Leaders
How we start matters. As leaders, and especially if you’re in a management-type position, a position of authority, it can in ways be worse in the sense that there’s a difference between a boss responding harshly to you than a peer.
So as a manager with authority, sometimes the impact you can have may be worse or may be harder, if that makes sense. And it also affects psychological safety, because if they know you’re going to respond poorly or if they’ve experienced you responding poorly and defensively or just criticizing or attacking them when they bring up stuff or disagree, then that destroys the psychological safety.
So those things that you want to come up and hear are less likely to happen because of it.
Words, Tone, and Body Language
Now, when it comes to words, what you say matters and how you say it. If you come across as just criticizing other people or attacking, belittling, judging, generalizing, making assumptions, blaming—all of those things put people on the defensive.
And when they get on the defensive, they’re more likely to not listen to what you’re trying to say, but also can make that whole conversation worse because it can just build. They get defensive, they may attack, you get defensive, and so on.
So by starting with those kind of words—attacking, criticizing, blaming, all of those things: “It’s your fault,” “You never,” “You always,” “You don’t care,” “You’re lazy,” “You’re just doing this because”—all those things start the conversation negatively, and it puts it in a downward spiral as just as you’re starting the conversation.
But those are just words, and words are important, obviously. But your tone and body language matter too, of course.
Because if you have a very negative tone, if you have the contempt in your voice, if you have that anger that you’re holding onto in your voice—all of those things can make the conversation turn negatively even if you have nice, quote-unquote, words. Just your tone makes a big deal.
But your body language does too, because you can start a conversation badly and not say a single harsh word. Crossing the arms, the way your face looks—all of that stuff matters.
And the thing is, our thoughts often come out in our body language. If you are—feel—disgust towards someone or you’re just really showing them contempt or feel contempt towards someone, you may try to hide it, but more than likely that’s going to show in your body language towards them.
Even if you may say a nice word or say it nicely, that contempt is likely to show in your tone and in your body language, and it’s going to hurt that conversation.
Start With Yourself
So if how we start matters, right, we’ve got to make sure we start our conversations—whether we’re giving feedback to people, we’re dealing with underperformance, we’re doing a meeting with people, some kind of discussion, dealing with tense issues, whatever it may be—whenever we’re talking to someone about something, we need to make sure we start well.
Or even when it comes to receiving, because if someone’s bringing us bad news or giving us feedback and we respond poorly, it also has a negative effect, right?
Get Your Mindset Right
So the first thing that we need to do—that you need to do—when it comes to making sure you respond or start well is that you start with yourself. You’ve got to make sure that yourself is right, that you have the right mindset and that you’re calm.
Because if you go into it with anger—and you more than likely have done this before, I know I have—is you’re angry about something and in that moment you just want to deal with it, you want to say something, and it’s easy to say stuff that we regret when we do it in anger. And often when we’re angry, we don’t have the right motive.
Check Your Motive
And that’s kind of the second part of it. We’ve got to make sure that we have the right motive about why we are having this conversation.
If you’re doing it to “get” the person, to attack them, to hurt them, to punish them, to show them, to prove you’re right, don’t have the conversation because that’s the wrong motive. Your purpose should be to fix the issue, to help the relationship, to help the person overcome whatever issue or performance they’re having, or to get the results that should happen—whatever it is, it needs to be the right kind of purpose.
Make sure when you’re going to that conversation that you’ve taken the time to step back and clear your thoughts. Make sure you’re not coming in angry, but also that your motive is the right motive.
Assume the Best, But Know the Facts Are the Facts
You also want to have the mindset of curiosity and learning, and give people the benefit of the doubt. Because truth is, we don’t know the full story of what happened.
We often think we do, but we generally don’t. We know what happened, but we often put and create assumptions about people’s intentions.
We don’t know the full story. So what we need to do is give people the benefit of the doubt, come with a curious mind trying to learn.
Of course, a lot of this depends on the situation. Obviously, depending on if it’s a behavior issue, whatever it is, sometimes the facts are the facts and it doesn’t matter what their intentions were.
If someone stole money from your company, they stole money from your company. Those are the facts, you know, you have to deal with it.
Separate Facts from Stories
But so, obviously, some of this stuff depends on the situation that we’re going to talk about. But you know, we all come through different viewpoints, we have different experiences.
So often when we go into a situation, we don’t really understand the 100% of what’s happening. We don’t understand someone else’s perspective, the “why” behind things.
We just see what happened, and then we assume it. So that kind of leads to our next part is: you want to sort through facts and stories.
So you have your mindset right, you get yourself right, you make sure you’re calm—right—have the right motive, separate facts from stories. Kind of just what we talked about.
Patterson and the other authors in Crucial Conversations—they also wrote Crucial Accountability—they talk about the Path to Action. And they talk about tracing your path, because this is how it works: a situation happens, and based on that situation we tell a story, and based on the story we tell, we react with emotions.
For example, an easy example is someone cuts you off. You tell a story about that person, why they cut you off, and you respond to that story, and you get upset based on the story you told about that person.
Someone didn’t turn in their report, someone didn’t do whatever they were supposed to do, and you tell a story about that person in your head and you react to that story you tell. So again, it’s good to give the benefit of the doubt, asking “why would a good, reasonable person be doing this?”
But you want to separate, “These are the facts I know,” and “These are the assumptions, these are what I’m assuming the intentions are, this is my story based on those facts.” You want to make sure you separate those, because when you talk about it, you start with the facts and then, depending on the conversation, you go into the assumptions—the intentions.
Actions, Impact, and Assumptions
One way to think about it too—Stone and the others in the book Difficult Conversations talk about three things: actions, assumptions, and impact. Action: what did the person actually do, what are the facts, what happened?
Impact: how does it affect you as a person, how does it affect the situation, how does it affect others, what are the emotions caused by it? And then the assumption: based on the impact, based on what happened, what are you assuming about the other person’s intentions for this action?
So, you’ve done the hard work of making yourself right. And you’ve separated the facts from the story.
So you want to prepare your message—again, depending on—a lot of this depends on the situation, depending on the feedback you’re given, depending on whatever. But it’s good when you can, especially if it’s a harder conversation, to prepare beforehand.
You prepare, you separate facts from story. And then when you talk to them, you start with facts first.
“This is what happened.” You know, “John, in the last meeting, you interrupted three different people when they were trying to give their viewpoint.” “Suzy, over the past two weeks, you’ve been late five times.” Those are just facts. Those aren’t your assumptions; it’s just what happened.
And then you can state your thoughts or you can state your story tentatively. “You know, it comes across to me that,” “It seems that,” and so on.
You kind of say, “It comes across when you do this that this happens.” Of course, you can use “I” messages as well.
Framing It as a Perception Problem
Another method you can use—I like it from the book 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees by Paul Falcone. He’s written a couple books, and I love the way he does a lot of his conversations or suggestions for conversations with employees.
He, first of all, talks about like the foundation of all is that you always treat people with dignity and respect. That’s like bottom line always.
But what he often goes is to people is that you have a perception problem. He doesn’t attack them, he doesn’t say, “You’re being lazy,” he doesn’t say, “You don’t care about people’s opinions,” he says, “You’re giving a perception about this. You have a perception problem because of these actions and I need you to commit to fix that perception problem.”
And the way he does it is really cool. So that’s—that’s another way you could do that.
And if you want more, again, the book titles 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees. And it’s just framing it as not attacking the person, but as a perception about the person that’s happening because of certain actions, and then they need to do something to fix that perception.
Don’t Waffle or Apologize for the Facts
Again, you know, a lot of times when it comes to having these conversations, sometimes it’s good to ask—say someone’s late: “Well, what’s been going on?” Other times it may not be a “Hey, tell me your viewpoint on it,” it may be, “Okay, these are the facts, this needs to change. This is the perception you’re creating, whatever it is, this needs to change. Do I have your commitment to change that? Great.”
Again, depends on the situation. And don’t apologize or waffle or belittle your comments.
Now sometimes we may get feel awkward talking to people, and so we may start waffling a little bit or like, “You know, I could be completely wrong, I may just be completely off-base, you know, so…” No, don’t. Just state it.
Now, if you need to apologize for something real, do so. Like, “Hey, I was wrong when I did this.” But don’t belittle the impact that you see, because that’s the perception you have. And but that’s why you tell the facts and then your story as tentatively.
Caring Builds Influence
Another point to make is that if you care about people, they’re more likely to listen if they know you care about them. Because if you think about it, if you have a leader—someone or a boss, I should say—that you know doesn’t care a rip about you, but maybe just the career, whatever, and they’re giving you feedback, telling you what to do, they don’t have much influence on you.
You probably don’t listen as well to them as much as someone that you know they care about you a lot. And they may—they may not even give the feedback the best way, but you know they really care about you as a person and want you to succeed, so you’re more likely to accept it because of it.
So caring—that—that really does matter.
If You Started the Conversation Poorly
So, what do you do if you started the conversation harshly? What can you do to fix it?
Well, you can take a step back and say, “Let me take a step back. I’m sorry. I started this poorly. I was wrong, I apologize. Can we start over on this?” And just kind of calm your voice, come from an even disposition.
“I was wrong, I’m sorry. Let’s start over.” That’s one thing you can do.
And it’s important to remember too, it’s—it’s okay to take pauses when you get upset. So in that case it’s like: “Hey, I’m sorry, I realize I started poorly. Let’s take a few minutes and come back and have this conversation and start over.” Something like that is okay.
Or even in the middle, if you start seeing yourself getting upset, them getting upset, you could say: “Hey, I see that we’re both getting really upset about this. Let’s take a pause and come back in a few minutes and talk about it.”
If Someone Comes to You Poorly
What about when people come to you and start poorly? Maybe they’re giving you feedback and they do it very poorly.
Maybe they’re attacking or criticizing you or just making assumptions that “You always do this.” Well, if you respond in the same way, again, it’s just going to get worse, right? So you have to be the one to step back.
Proverbs, I believe it’s 15:1, says that a gentle answer turns away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger. Just that stepping back and just being calm.
I like what Chris Voss talks about in his book Never Split the Difference. It’s a great book, if you’ve never read that book.
But one of the things he talks about that just makes me think about is like the DJ voice. And he calls it—what—you kind of have this deeper voice and you just kind of get a little bit lower and you just talk to them and it’s kind of this calming, soothing thing.
And I do that sometimes with kids, is there’s some issue and I’m just like, “Hey, what’s going on?” and I just kind of give this calmness. And then maybe the situation—maybe they did something wrong—but by me being more calm and talking like this—deeper voice, kind of soothing—can help bring the calmness into it.
So that’s something you can do. So you can just step back. You could say, you know, “Hey, whoa, hold on a second. It seems like we started poorly here. Can we start over?” You could try to something along that route.
Or you could help guide them through the conversation, through the path of the story. You can say something to paraphrase, to affirm what they’re saying even if they’re coming across poorly.
You could say: “Hey, it really sounds like you’re really upset about something. It seems like you feel like I don’t care about your opinion,” or whatever it may be. “What makes you think that?” And you help them go from the generalization to the specifics.
“So you think when I said this, that this happened.” Again, it depends on them and the situation and the way they’re coming across.
But something along those lines can help you if you can guide them through that path, help them feel heard about the frustration they have. They’re more likely to calm down—the whole paraphrasing, making sure you understand what they’re saying—and then more likely to listen.
And then you can guide them through the path of action, through that story of what story they’re telling and what are the facts they saw. And then you could explain the facts. “Oh, I’m sorry that—again—I gave you that impression when I said this. What I meant to do and what I was trying to say was this.”
Wrapping Up
So, how you start the conversation matters. I know we kind of covered a bit in that whole thing, but I hope that helps in your conversations and just that you think about before you have a conversation, that you think about how you start up because how you start really matters.
If you have any questions, feel free to message me, thoughts, comments, at Thomas@realtruthleadership.com. You can also go to realtruthleadership.com.
Got some no-cost training, comprehensive training that you can take on leadership. And see you next time.