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So far, no book has taught me more vivid lessons about managing conflict than Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High. This business book, which my husband requested on his last birthday (every birthday he asks for a book), has positively changed the way I view and approach conflicts. It reminds me of Dr. Sue Johnson’s Hold Me Tight, which I speak about in Women Want Reassurance and Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence, which I mention in The Feelings We Try to Hide: Managing the Emotional Stress of Parenthood. But this book is so eminently practical that I find I have been able to retain more—and put to better use—the lessons the VitalSmarts authors have taught me.

The book is short but dense. In a nutshell, here’s what the authors have to say:

“Twenty years of research involving more than 100, 000 people reveals that the key skill of effective leaders, teammates, parents, and loved ones is the capacity to skillfully address emotionally and politically risky issues.”

Let me put it in plainer terms:

“…helping couples learn to hold crucial conversations more effectively reduced the chance of unhappiness or breakup by more than half!”

So what is a crucial conversation?

The other night Gerhard and I were chatting, and he was telling me how he transferred some money and then ordered himself a camera. Immediately I tensed up, “But those are really expensive. Do we have the budget for that?”

He tensed up too, “Of course I checked our budget first, we’re okay.”

“But—” And I started to list off the reasons why we should not be spending.

He answered by accusing me of not trusting him.

We just entered a crucial conversation, something that seemed innocent at first but quickly escalated because of our opposing opinions (save vs. spend), strong emotions about these opinions, and because of the high stakes behind our opinions (the issue of trust for both of us).

What is a crucial conversation?

Here is the definition:

“Crucial Conversation: A discussion between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary, and (3) emotions run strong.”

As the authors explain, sometimes the more crucial the conversation, the less likely we are to engage in dialogue for fear of messing up and making things worse. For example, Sandra wants to address an issue in her marriage, but every time the opportunity comes up, she finds a reason not to talk about it, “It’s getting late, he’s had a busy day...” All too often, we refuse to talk about what matters to us for fear of creating greater conflict or even division. But when we refuse to have crucial conversations, we jeopardize not only our relationships but we can even compromise our personal health.

There is good news in all this. There are learnable skills that can help us become successful at having crucial conversations.

Skills for Mastering Crucial Conversations

-Remember the only person you can control is yourself

-Focus on what you really want and make it clear to the other person

-Believe that there is a win-win outcome to the dialogue

-Notice when people no longer feel safe in a conversation

-Learn your own cues for stress

-Maintain mutual respect

-Apologize when appropriate

-Fix misunderstandings with the use of contrast phrases

-Focus on creating a mutual purpose

-Take charge of your emotions by mastering your stories

-When stating your point of view, be persuasive, not abrasive

-Show you care about others’ points of view by demonstrating curiosity and patience

-Meet others’ expectations after the conversation and follow-up on the promised actions

The authors do a great job explaining and providing anecdotes of these skills to the reader. The book also includes a quiz for learning what your conversation skills look like under stress. In this blog post, I will focus on the skill of taking charge of your emotions by master your stories.

I chose this skill in particular because it made me call into question the way I was reacting to conflicts the way I do in my relationships. I also find that in this current climate of Covid-19, emotions, stakes, and opinions are tearing some relationships apart and I firmly believe mastering stories is a critical skill that can help us all get along better.

I highly recommend reading the book because I won’t do justice to the depth of the content that the VitalSmarts authors provide. You can also check out their website here and their fascinating blog.

crucial conversations.jpg — Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high

Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler are co-founders of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance.
www.vitalsmarts.com
This book offers the tools to:
-Prepare for high-stakes situations
-Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue
-Make it safe to talk about almost anything
-Be persuasive, not ebrasive
See on Amazon, here.
(Affiliate link).

Mastering Our Stories

It’s not a coincidence that after a pandemic was declared at the beginning of 2020, conspiracy theories found a hey-day. This is because human beings love to tell stories. In fact, we need to tell stories in order to make meaning of anything that surprises us or that we don’t understand. But problems can happen when we assume all our stories are facts and then base our actions and relationships on them.

Here’s an example from home life. Mary is a newlywed. She’s seven months pregnant and feels ambivalent about her added weight and how she might look to her husband. When she asks her husband Geoff one night if he would like to be intimate, Geoff answers that he is too tired. After this scenario happens a couple of times, Maria’s insecurities deepen and she begins to think, It’s because of the way I look. He’s no longer attracted to me.

The next time Mary and Geoff are intimate, Geoff seems distant. Mary becomes concerned and calls her friends, crying about Geoff and fearing that their marriage is going to the pits. Her friends, only hearing her side of the story, agree with her that all is not well.

Stories and Emotions

Mastering stories is all about mastering our emotions. There are two things that Mary should not do:

Assume her emotions are telling her the whole story.
Disregard her emotions completely and tell herself that she is being silly for thinking as she is.

So what is the third option?

He Made Me So Mad!

The authors make a key but controversial point about emotions: our emotions don’t just happen to us, they happen because of us. Nobody makes you mad, you make you mad.

It took me a while to wrap my head around this idea. I thought, for example, if someone cuts me off in traffic, I can’t help it—I’ll feel upset. Or if someone says a rude comment to me, I’ll feel angry or annoyed. But, they argue, every action doesn’t cause any specific emotion. We could respond with any emotion. So therefore, we choose our emotions.

How is that possible? Well, something happens between an experience and our reaction: we tell a story. Sometimes we tell the story so quickly that we don’t even know that we told it.

When someone cuts us off in traffic, I’m tempted to think, “He/she’s such a jerk!” because I am already primed to think that everyone who cuts people off in traffic is a jerk. I could have a different response, though. My husband, for example, when he gets cut off, says, “They drive like they’re from Toronto.” And he easily shrugs it off because he knows that in Toronto that’s what they do.

Here’s another example. Once when I was at church, a fellow-parishioner made a rude comment to me about how my kids were being too loud. It made me feel so upset that I stopped going to that church. Later, a similar experience happened to me again, but instead of getting upset and leaving the church, I decided to find out this person’s email and confront him about it, giving him a chance to explain his side of the story. I discovered that he hadn’t really been upset about my children, but concerned about them. With this new information, I was able to reconcile with him because I understood now the context of what he had been trying to tell me. In other words, with more information, I was able to make a more accurate story.

“The best at dialogue (…) aren’t held hostage by their emotions, nor do they try to hide or suppress them. Instead, they act on their emotions. That is, when they have strong feelings, they influence (and often change) their emotions by thinking them out. As a result, they choose their emotions, and by so doing, make it possible to choose behaviours that create better results.”

— Crucial Conversations

Stories Create Feelings

Back to Mary and Geoff. Mary’s insecurities about her looks, and the evidence she has amassed, tell her that Geoff is no longer finding her attractive. Consequently, she feels upset, more insecure, and in a low mood. The situation causes her to recall the times in her past when she didn’t look her best and others might have made fun of her. She begins to imagine what a loveless marriage might look like. Her behaviour towards Geoff changes. She is no longer quick to give him a kiss or a hug. She doesn’t talk much at the dinner table. She goes to bed instead of staying up to watch a movie with her husband. Geoff begins to think, Mary is distancing herself from me. Maybe I should give her some space. Now when Mary notices Geoff’s new avoidance of her, she also begins to feel angry, thinking, and he is too caught up in his own problems to care about mine.

Stories create feelings by adding meaning to an action that we have observed. They tell us “why” someone might have acted so inexplicably, strangely, or out of character. We use these stories to judge people’s actions and to inform how we should respond.

But the problem is, we are often telling ourselves the wrong stories.

Fine-Tuning Our Inner Storyteller

Earlier I mentioned that there is a third option besides giving in to our emotions or disregarding them completely. This third option is to tell a better story that leads to healthier action—such as dialogue.

but How do we tell a better story?

Notice your behaviour. Am I clamming up or wanting to pick a fight?

Mary decides to take an honest look at her behaviour. She realizes that she is emotionally withdrawing.

2. Get in touch with your feelings. Which emotions did I begin to feel after I had that experience?

Mary needs to use a rich vocabulary when describing her experience. Other than saying, “I felt awful when he turned me down” and other vague phrases, she begins to think more specifically—"I felt insecure,” “I felt self-conscious about my looks,” “I felt vulnerable to others’ opinions.”

3. Analyze. What is the story that I began to tell myself before I felt these emotions?

The story she began to tell herself before she began to feel this way was that Geoff no longer wanted to be intimate with her because of the way she looked.

4. See/hear. What is the evidence to support this story? Do I have all the facts?

Geoff used to be always so keen to be intimate. Now that her body was changing he had refused her more than once and even when they were intimate he “no longer seemed into it” and even tried avoiding her.

After her analysis, Mary opens herself up to the possibility that her evidence might lead to the conclusion “he’s no longer into me” but now she has some doubts that this story is absolutely true. She remembers that in the past she has been prone to feeling insecure about her looks, especially as a kid. She acknowledges that her insecurities were being triggered rather than caused by her husband. When she stops blaming Geoff for causing her feelings, she begins to take ownership of her own vulnerabilities.

This new conclusion leads her to have a conversation with Geoff about her feelings. In the conversation, she does not feel like she needs to accuse Geoff of bad behaviour towards her. She’s able to say— “You don’t seem interested in being intimate, I’m concerned that it’s because you are no longer attracted to me.” Now Geoff can tell his story. And Mary is ready to listen to him.

Notice that she doesn’t give in to her emotions and so begin her story with an accusation about Geoff’s intentions, she only mentions his behaviour and sets up her story as a possibility, not fact. On the other hand, she also doesn’t dismiss her emotions saying something like, “I’m being really silly, but I keep feeling like...” She allows herself to be honest but opens herself to being told a different story.

“The first step to regaining emotional control is to challenge the illusion that what you’re feeling is the only right emotion under the circumstances. This may be the hardest step, but it’s also the most important one. By questioning our feelings, we open ourselves up to question our stories. We challenge the comfortable conclusion that our story is right and true.”

— Crucial conversations

When We Tell Stories to Justify Our Bad Behaviour

There are three types of clever stories that we tell when we “sellout”—that is when we do something we regret and feel badly about it but don’t want to own up to it.

We Play the Victim

There are real victims, but oftentimes we use victimization to remove our sense of responsibility. A story may make us feel good about ourselves and not compel us to confront the problem or even change, “It’s their fault so they should fix it.”

Victimization can lead to pouting and retreat (silence), or it can give us the freedom to do real damage to the other person in an act of imagined self-defense (violence).

When Mary was upset with Geoff, she allowed herself to feel like a victim and this led her to emotionally withdraw from him. She may have alternatively started an argument with him, throwing sarcastic remarks, or purposefully treating him poorly as a way of “getting back” at him for not treating her the way that she wanted.

We Create Villains

In villain stories, we focus heavily on the other person’s guilt and refuse to acknowledge any good intentions they may have had. We refuse to give the benefit of the doubt and make conclusions about their character.

You might be familiar with the concept of labeling, which the authors note is a common device used in villain stories. For example, “My sister-in-law is such a bully when we’re planning family events.” This label creates a caricature of the other person and may lead us to treat them in a way that is impolite or rude because after all, we aren’t dealing with a complex individual but with a “bully” and bullies need to be put in their place.

We Feel Helpless

I was reading an article about how many women feel like their husbands don’t help them with the housework. The author concluded that this is a gendered problem. I thought this was a dangerous conclusion because it can shut off the potential for positive dialogue leading to mutual responsibility. If a wife were to believe that there is a systemic, societal issue that is stopping her husband from being able to do his fair share of the housework, then she has created an elaborate helpless story justifying why there is little she can do to change her husband’s behaviour.

Everyone can learn a task, whether a man or a woman. We can look at the facts and say that biologically and socially men and women tend to have acquired different strengths, but we cannot put people into boxes and conclude that therefore they are unwilling to try something. The helpless story makes assumptions about a person’s thoughts, desires, and wants. A healthy story acknowledges that while there might be some factors hindering a person’s behaviour, we don’t know (and cannot know until we ask) why someone acts the way they do. For example, this author cannot assume that her husband is not noticing the socks on the floor because he is lazy—that’s an assumption about intention. She can, however, notice the behaviour and address it. I believe it has less to do with societal constructs than it does with communication within the marriage and mutual trust.

questions to help us tell better stories that lead to more accurate reactions

Am I pretending not to notice my role in the problem?

Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do this?

What do I really want?

What would I do right now if I really wanted these results?

Telling the Rest of the Story

So back to Mary and Geoff. After Mary opened up to Geoff about her feelings, Geoff was able to open up to her about his. First, he reassured her that he found her attractive, even while pregnant. This first step towards safety allows Mary to relax and assures her that there is nothing wrong with the relationship. Once it’s established that there is no change in his affection, Geoff explains why he has been acting differently. He has been feeling pressure to get a better income since they found out that they were pregnant. So he had his hopes of being brought on to do a big project at work. But when the team members were named, he wasn’t one of them, and this left him feeling down and even insecure about his ability to provide. His insecurity was translated in the home, where he felt less confident around Mary and less inclined to be intimate. He started noticing that she was pulling away from him and withdrawing. This further exacerbated his low mood, thinking how much worse her actions would be when she discovered how truly incompetent he was.

The beautiful thing is that Mary did not begin with an accusation because Geoff would have been totally crushed, his spirits already low. Mary is now able to assure him that she has confidence in his abilities to provide and that she trusts him. She forgives his formally odd behaviour and promises to encourage him with small signs of affection throughout the day. She realizes that the pregnancy is stressful for both of them and they have more words of encouragement for each other.

Mary’s willingness to be honest with her feelings and her openness to being told another story led to a very intimate moment. They now both feel strengthened as they prepare to welcome a new little life into their family.

some of my thoughts

Maybe it’s because I love trying to figure out what the story is that this chapter stood out to me so much. Since I read it, I’ve been trying to notice more and more how stories influence the emotions that I feel. When I acknowledge my emotions and try to act on them healthily, dialogue does happen. But I find that as I dialogue and new information is given to me, I don’t have time to process the new emotions that I’m feeling. So a conversation that started well with many good intentions does sometimes turn to become heated. That being said, I acknowledge that I don’t have to solve all our relationship issues in one sit-down conversation!

I think as a choleric, I have to be careful not to force people into dialogue with me, to be more patient, and to work on another aspect of a crucial conversation—which is creating safety. But that’s a topic for another day!

Conflict in Marriage: Are the Stories We Tell Ourselves Making Things Worse?