Improve Communication in Stressful Talks with 4 Expert Tips

Have you ever been in a conversation that just is pure friction? There's frustration, there's high emotions in play, and it ends in just a negative place. If you have, I want to share with you some tips that I have to help to create a more positive outcome for those conversations. With that, let's get into this video and I'll show you what I mean. So there you are. Someone says something to you, you feel your body or blood start to rise up, and you just want to go and just emotionally start triggering each other, pulling up those old traumas, those old triggers, and it just makes the situation get worse and worse and worse. And eventually you end up in the conversation spiral of death, where it just ends in a horrible place. If that has happened to you, here's some ideas, here's some suggestions I have to help you to be able to bring that. The first one is that before we react to anything that they just said, we have to reflect, meaning we don't give any commentary on it. We don't give our thoughts, we don't give our side of the story, we don't give anything except for a reflection on what they said. And it starts like this. I heard you say, and is that correct? And then let them respond. Make sure you're capturing exactly what it's saying. Doesn't mean you have to agree with it. You're just understanding what they're saying. So you make sure you get their point of view okay, now that you have correctly reflected on what they said. Another option here is to ask questions. Ask questions to understand the situation better. There are two types of questions that I have seen in conversation. The first question is what I call leading the witness, meaning you're asking a question that you actually know the outcome to, and you just try to get them to admit the guilt. So it might be something like, are you sure that you didn't forget to file that paperwork on the day you were supposed to file it? Wink, wink. If you're leading the witness, by the way, if you're not sure, if you're asking a leading the witness question, here's a great way to know it. If you can end your sentence, your question, with a phrase, you idiot, that's usually a sign that you're leading the witness. For example, are you sure you didn't forget to file that paper on the day you were supposed to file it, you idiot? If you have done, that means you're leading the witness and you're not actually being curious about the outcome or what they want to say. And so instead we want to ask questions that we genuinely don't know the answer to. So where do you think the paper went? Or what happened that day? Or where were you? Those might be questions to help understand the situation better. The goal here is understand the situation better. And in those asking of those questions, it might be possible that after you've asked some questions, they go, oh, you know what, now that I think about it, I was in the wrong, my bad. And they apologize. Or you might go, oh, you know what? I was in the wrong, my bad, and might apologize, or. And I know that those are two magical unicorn type situations. But the third option is more likely, and this is the third option, is that we understand the situation better. We hear their side of the story, they hear our side of the story, and we end at this spot where we mutually agree to disagree. But, and here's the key, at least they were heard so often in conversation, people feel like they weren't heard in what they were trying to express. And so if you start off with the reflection before the reaction and you ask open ended questions that don't lead the witness, you'll get to a spot where they're going to say, at least I was hurt. They may not say it out loud, but internally they're going to feel like, okay, we don't agree, but at least he understands, or she understands my point of view. And lastly, the third and final tip I have is that out of everything that was said, is there any point in that conversation, any part of that conversation that you can find common ground, that you can find something that you both can latch onto and say yes to? So you may not agree with everything that person said, but is there something. And you might go, you know what? I can fully agree with you on the fact that we have a bad system for filing our paperwork because you know it and they know it now, even though it's a bad system and they're supposed to file that paperwork, that's the contentious point that you're agreeing to disagree. However, at least you can find that common ground. Once you can get them saying yes to something and you saying yes to something, and we move forward, there's going to be progress. So you got three tips to help you to reduce the friction in a conversation. I'm going to throw one more bonus tip in here, is that at some point someone gets triggered. Traumas show up, past experiences. You know, you may have heard that phrase, if it's hysterical, it's historical because you're just triggering something from the past. You might be the last domino of a series of events and you're the one that's getting the experience explosion in those moments. When those moments happen is it's usually a good idea to just either slow the conversation way down or take a break and commit to coming back to talking about it with each other. Because at that point we are what's called flooded. John Gottman from the Gottman Institute talks about being flooded. And when we're flooded, we're just firing from the emotional response. And rarely does something good come out of that situation. So if one or both of you are flooded, commit to pausing, go take a break and then come back. When you take that break, do something on that break that is not related to the conversation. Go physically move, go cook something, go create something, take a walk, do something that is different than thinking about that conversation. And by the way, men do statistically take longer to cool down when you are flooded than women. I believe it's about 20 to 30 minutes for us men to cool down, according to John Gottman's research. So now you have that bonus tip of reducing the flooding. So there you go. I gave you four ways to help reduce that friction. The first one is to reflect before we react. The second one is to ask open ended questions. The third one is try and find some sort of common ground. And the fourth one is to take a break if you feel that you or the other or both of you are flooded. If you like this tip and this helps you with your communication and your team and engaging your people around you, go and hit that subscribe button and you'll get notices of all of our future videos. My name is Tom. I'm here to help you to engage the people on your dance floor. I'll see you in the next video.