Grounding Communication

This is episode 239 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Hello empowered people. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. My name is Kari Schneider and today we are going to talk about grounding communication. So welcome back and welcome to my podcast. I've been doing this for a while and the reason that I do this now is to provide leaders with the tools that you need as leaders to do what needs to be done in your leadership in career and business, in home life, in community, in whatever you are leading. And today's topic is here because this is what we are talking about in our group coaching program. This whole month we're talking about communication. However, the nuance of today's topic is deep communication with deep grounding communication. And I'm bringing this up because it's easy to think about communication in terms of having a conversation with someone who also wants to communicate with you. However, where we run into the greatest problems is when we're communicating with someone who may not really want to communicate well with you. So instead of trying all of the best communication tips that aren't working because the other person doesn't want to communicate with you, then we need to try some different techniques. So today I'm going to give you four steps in order to communicate in a way that is really going to help diffuse a situation, is really going to help support a calmer state in both parties, especially the other person if they are coming in hot. So before we get into it, why? Why is this important? Well, as leaders in life and career and business and sport and family, we want something out of our communication. Good communication, connected communication, excellent communication has incredible outcomes and their enhanced relationships, solving problems, increasing efficiency in getting things done. Because both parties are on the same page, it also develops leadership overall. When the communication can take both parties or one party to the next level, whatever that is, it improves self expression, it creates a better understanding of other people or the other party and it increases the likelihood of making a decision. As well as personal self esteem, it can also create advancement in a career because careers, businesses, job placements, they're looking for humans who can communicate and communicate well. They're not looking for robots that's easy to find nowadays, they're looking for humans who have these skills and emotional health. Communication skills lead to a better emotional state for those who have those skills. So these are all kinds of great reasons to have great communication. However, what happens when the other person is not communicating well? They might be in an angered state, they might be attacking you, they might be doing all sorts of things that make anything, any attempt, any skill that you are trying to put forth on your behalf, Best step forward for communication fail. And it's failing hard. And you don't know what to do. And nothing that you're trying is working. So the next steps that I'll give you will serve you in this because they really help defuse the situation. And I remember years ago when I was working with the rcmp. The RCMP is the, the higher level of the police force in Canada. If you are listening from abroad. And in, in working with the rcmp, I was helping them with their physical performance, their physical training. And as I got to know some of the RCMP officers, I started to ask some curious questions because I was really interested in, in what they were doing. And they would tell me about a recent chase, meaning on foot chase, having to chase a criminal. They would tell me about different interrogations, they would tell me just what was going on in their day to day life. And I was so interested in it, I thought it was so neat. And then later, years later, I was working with people who were inspectors and people who were homicide inspectors. And I was also hearing some of the stories behind the scenes and, and the skill set that these officers had to have was really remarkable. And eventually there was a criminal in my backyard, in our property in northwestern Ontario. And this person had stolen someone's four wheeler. And then they were hiding on someone else's property, my neighbor's property, and then they had taken someone else's boat and taken off into the lake. And the boat police had come to apprehend them. And I remember just watching and witnessing all of the ways that the police were being around this criminal. And this was a long time criminal. And I recall thinking just how steady they had to be all of the time. No matter how the person was acting out, they were being apprehended, they were being basically dragged off of the lake and hauled into the police vehicle. And no matter how that person acted, they had to hold this steady state. They didn't react, they didn't respond. Now I can't say this is the case for every police officer across the world. There's certainly been all kinds of challenges that way. However, the ones I got to interact with had specific training in order to hold that steady state. And then I got to experience something a while back, several months ago, where I was Being accused of something and I was being called a liar and I was being accused of stealing something. And the person accusing me came back day after day. This went on for a week. And in the first day I think I ended up getting very angry and yelling back at this person. How could they think this? And they're mistaken. But I started to yell and eventually told them to get off my property and it didn't go well. Then the next day they came back and they accused and. And all of the things. And this time I got fairly angry, but I wasn't yelling. I just with a stern face and a pointed finger basically told them to leave my property. And another day goes by and the same types of thing and another day goes by and I spent time defending myself, I spent time explaining, I spent time getting angry, I spent time telling them to go away. And eventually it was all rectified. But I think of that exchange often because it was so stressful for me and it was so agitated, agitating for my day the rest of the week, it really rattled me. And I thought about it in the terms of I have all of these skills. Why was this so rattling for me? And why were the skills, these skills that I use on a day to day basis in the workplace I use with my family, these communication skills that have been so effective for me, why in that instance were they not working because I had tried to use them, why weren't they working and why did it degrade so that I wasn't using those skills? And I started falling into the tactics that that person was using, which was yelling or accusing or, or elevating the voice, becoming angry. So my emotional state ended up matching theirs. And there's a number of reasons for that. However, one of them was that I kept trying to assume that they were going to be reasonable and they just weren't. I kept trying to ask them to be reasonable and they weren't. And the more that I wasn't having, having any success with reasonable skills and reasonable tools, the more I got upset. And the fact that they were already upset and the fact that they were accusing me and the fact that I was innocent, all of these things then escalated my state. So it was not a pretty picture. And this is something very rare. This. I would think this wouldn't happen to most people very often. However, we are in instances where someone really just gets on our nerves or we are in a situation where the other party is not being reasonable, they are extremely upset. I've had clients report this to me in people getting Fired and going ballistic, losing their mind. I've had people tell me about family arguments that simply go off the rails and there's no reasoning with the other party. I've had friends share with me scenarios that where they've tried so hard and nothing makes a difference. Divorce scenarios with relationships where it becomes a war between two parties. So there are all kinds of scenarios where you really want the other party to be reasonable and you want the best communication skills to be working for the best outcome. Come. And the other party is uncooperative. The other party simply wants nothing to do with it. And that's where we come in today. And the acronym, since I am simply adoring acronyms lately because they help me remember the things. They help me. They help me find something that's simple instead of the longest diversion. And the acronym today is deep, D, E, E, P. So we're going to keep it really simple, deep. And this acronym works especially for people who are in an angered state. It works especially when people are narcissistic or have narcissistic tendencies. And I want to be really careful with that term because I'm certainly not in a position to diagnose anybody with something like that. And I think the term is thrown around so, so much. And I also think that a lot of us have narcissistic tendencies at some time or another. So that it's. It's probably not a definitive thing, but rather a spectrum. So that is, it's a scenario that's highly likely that we're going to be exposed to someone who's unagreeable, who's got some personality traits that are really inflamed, that may be in an awful or an angered state. And if that's the case, we want to use this acronym. And the reason that I like it so much is because it is easy to remember. And it's for deep grounding. D, E, E, P grounding. And I say grounding because we want to take the inflamed situation and we want to earth it, put some water on it, cool it down, whatever we need to do to ground this situation. And that's going to be your responsibility if the other person is so aggravated. So D is for making sure that you do not defend. So D is for defender. When we start defending and become defensive, the other party tends to dig in more and go for you more because you are basically telling them that whatever they're saying isn't right. So don't defend. No matter how tempting it is, don't defend. And that was the situation for me. I was wrongly accused of stealing something. I was being called a liar that the first thing I wanted to do was defend myself because it was so unfair, it felt so hurtful, and I was so upset by being called a liar and being accused of something. However, if from the very beginning I just let it go, didn't defend, realized the state that the other person was in would not allow for any reasoning. It didn't matter if I was innocent, I couldn't defend because even if I did defend, even if I was innocent, their state was so inflamed, it wouldn't make a difference. In fact, that defending was simply going to make it worse for them and for me. E E is next, and it's for explain, don't explain, don't explain. All the reasons why this goes quite tightly with defend. However, oftentimes when we're trying to use logical communicating, we don't get a defensive mode, but we just start to explain our position, which would be a logical thing to do if we're practicing communication skills. But when the other party is so inflamed, it. It doesn't matter what we explain, they will not be able to hear it. They will not be able to hear anything that we say on our own behalf because they are so focused on telling us their truth. So there's no explaining. And of course, in my scenario that I'm sharing with you, I explained, I explained all the reasons why it was impossible for me to have stolen the thing. I. I tried to point things out. I tried to calmly express how I would never do that. I would. I tried to explain that, that I wasn't lying. And none of it worked. Again, simply because the other party was so agitated, angry, triggered, inflamed, and they couldn't hear anything I had to say. There was no reasoning with this person. All right, so we've got a D, we've got an E. Now we're onto the next E. The next E is emotional. Don't get emotional. And when I say emotional, it's not breaking down, it's not getting angry. It's all of the above. All of the above. Don't get emotional. The best thing to do in this type of scenario is to stay calm, take breaths, stay calm. And in the scenario, as I shared before, I became angry, I even yelled. I even told them to get off my property. And by the time they did and by the time they left, I was shaking. I felt so triggered, so agitated, almost traumatized. And when it happened, day after day, And I was trying different techniques, I was trying to stay calm, trying to do things. But ultimately as I kept trying some of the communication skills that I would ordinarily use with someone who's rational and it wasn't working, I would still end up becoming either angry or agitated or even tearful by the time they left. And getting emotional, typically, if they are in such an agitated state, is often going to just agitate them more. And your anger placed with their anger simply escalates instead of does anything good. So don't get emotional. And P the final part is don't get personal. P is for personal. When someone is either accusing you of something, angry at you, or maybe they're just plain wrong or you feel they're wrong, it's easy to go into blaming, it's easy to go into pointing fingers because you feel like they're doing that to you. And then it's almost a knee jerk reaction to do the same thing back. However, getting personal is again going to take the whole scenario and make it even worse. It's adding a match to the fuel, it will create a bomb. So pointing the fingers back, saying you did this or you're doing that or you're wrong, all of those things simply make everything worse. And that's the last thing we want. We want to diffuse the situation. So when we stay calm, we don't defend, we don't explain, we don't get emotional and we don't get personal. That is deep grounding. What that does is allows them to go and go and go and get it all out until they fizzle out. Because if you haven't added any gas to the fire, then eventually it's going to burn out. Eventually that person can't keep going because you haven't engaged, you haven't explained and defended and gotten personal in any way or another. And when that happens, they just keep going until they exhaust themselves. It's similar to a toddler having a tantrum. And I'm not trying to diminish anyone. However, that type of energy that's so intense simply is not sustainable. So the person is either going to get fed up when you're not responding and when you're not being triggered, then they just end up fizzling out and it saves you and them from the situation becoming worse. Worse. It also allows for some time and space for everything to calm down when it didn't become more aggravated or inflamed. So D E E P use this to ground a situation. Use this. When someone is unreasonable, it can be A angry customer, a family member, it can be a firing situation. I'm sure you've experienced experience something like this at some point because it's very memorable. It can even feel traumatic. So use D, E E P just to let the person fizzle out and not add any glass gas to that flame. And that will save both parties. And then in a best case scenario, perhaps the next day, perhaps in a week, a calm, reasonable conversation can be had where both parties can use incredible communicating skills that actually deepen the connection and deepen the trust. But in a situation where someone is so agitated or angry, there's really not much point in trying to communicate with someone who doesn't want to communicate. They want to vent, they want to tell you you're wrong, they want to be angry, let them do it. Support that by really diffusing things and not adding anything to the flame. What does this actually sound like? In my situation when somebody was accusing and yelling and telling me I'm a liar? It might sound something like, okay, I hear you. What's going on? It might sound something like saying nothing and nodding. It might sound something like, tell me more. And they may even become more agitated with those statements. And it's okay, let them keep going, Nod, don't get sarcastic, don't smile, don't do anything that can aggravate the situation further. Just let them keep going. And if you don't respond and they want you to respond, you might just have to shrug your shoulders and go, I'm at a loss. I don't know where this is coming from. So no explanation, no defending, just very, very neutral or agreeable. Okay, I can't explain how this happened, so keep it as simple, as neutral, as deep grounded as possible. Now, this is a very fun conversation. It's not a very fun topic, however, I think it's so needed because these are the things that we deal with. And in the last couple months, we've been dealing with difficult people, difficult conversations and communication. Going through this and having these skills and being fully prepared has us able to handle anything. And ultimately all we're really here for is connecting with other humans, loving, creating the life and the journey that we want, and expanding ourselves and helping others in a way that makes a difference. That's what typically most of us are up to. So being able to deal with these uncomfortable scenarios is a fantastic tool to be able to live our best lives. And that's what we're up to as our empowered team. So I hope this topic serves you, although it's not quite as as fun as some of our other topics. I hope it serves you in whatever you're facing in your amazing and challenging life. If you find this podcast helpful, please give us a rating and review. It really helps get a little more reach out there and we've worked hard on this podcast several years. So pop us that five star rating and pop us a review. We really would appreciate it. And by all means suggest some topics that are really meaningful for you because we will keep going in bringing you incredible interviews and topics that really make a difference for your leadership in life. Have a wonderful rest of your week and we will connect next week. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team is our group coaching and accountability program where we provide the tools, skills and community for you to grow your self mastery as a leader and optimize your results alongside other leaders. 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