Navigating Difficult Conversations

Are conflicts causing strain in your relationships? Discover how the 3 Principles can transform the way you approach difficult conversations, fostering growth and understanding in your connections with ease.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the CalmCast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Clare Downam,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt-out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,

And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The CalmCast is a series of short explorations,

Gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music,

With an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today,

Navigating difficult relationships,

And I have a wry smile on my face because I'm probably not going to start this where you think I might start it,

Because there is no such thing as a difficult conversation.

There you go,

We're finished.

Not really.

But of course,

There's something we can make up to be a difficult conversation.

Have you noticed that?

Even because while you're actually in a conversation,

You're in a conversation,

Aren't you?

You're not making it up to be difficult or not.

You might go,

At the end,

That was a little bit tricky,

Or you might reflect during it.

But that's the first thing to know,

Is that there are hours and hours.

I wish I'd Googled it,

Actually.

I like to Google things.

I wish I'd Googled how to navigate difficult conversations,

And I think I would have found millions of hits,

As usual.

Hundreds of millions,

Probably,

Because that seems to be how it goes.

But the issue is,

With all that kind of training around difficult conversations,

And I think that probably comes up in business an awful lot,

Is how to have a difficult conversation,

Is that you have to make it up to be difficult first,

Don't you,

Before you've even gone into a conversation.

So can you imagine,

Let's say you've got to have a conversation with somebody you work with about their performance,

For example,

Somebody who you manage,

You're the boss of,

Perhaps,

One of your direct reports.

I think that's the official term,

Isn't it?

Anyway,

Let's say you've got to have that conversation,

And trust me,

In my career as a teacher,

I had to have a lot of these conversations,

And I probably,

At that time,

Got myself quite worked up about it,

Because that's the thing,

Isn't it?

So let's say we're going to have a difficult conversation.

We've decided that this is a difficult conversation.

It's about performance.

They're not the easiest ones,

Are they?

Let's be honest.

So you refer to your notes from the training that you did on how to have a difficult conversation,

And you go through it all,

And if it goes this way,

You have to do that,

And this is the technique for that,

And this is what to do before the meeting.

So already,

Before you've gone in to have this meeting with this person,

You're already,

Like,

Super wound up because you've been looking at the things that might happen in a difficult conversation and how you've got to try and remember how do I handle that and what's the thing about that and all of the different things.

Now,

I'm not saying that you shouldn't go in prepared.

So if you're going in to have a performance conversation with somebody,

Absolutely,

You know,

Have a note of what you want to tell this person about their performance or discuss with them.

That's a practical preparation.

But going in with,

Well,

If they do that,

I'll do this.

If they say that,

If they get in to this emotional state,

I'll do this to try and calm them down,

You know,

I'll kind of have all this in my head is going to start you off on a wrong footing with another person because the most important thing for you in a conversation with another person is listening,

Self-awareness and presence.

Listening,

Self-awareness and presence.

No tools,

No techniques,

No this is what I'll do if they do this.

No strategies,

No nothing.

Listening,

Awareness and presence.

Because you're going to tell them something,

You know,

And compassion probably too,

Which is really interesting because I'm currently writing an assignment about what are the skills,

Behaviours and knowledge of a great coach or mentor.

And they are the things.

Listening,

Self-awareness,

Presence,

Compassion.

And the thing to know about those things,

Your ability to listen,

Your levels of compassion,

Your self-awareness,

Your presence.

Can you hear something about those?

You'll hear something about those if you've listened to me before.

And even if you haven't,

They are things that are available when you are calm automatically.

You don't need to go and develop those because have you noticed that if you're calm,

You listen really well to another person.

When you're calm,

You're naturally self-aware.

You're naturally noticing your own emotional ups and downs.

When you're calm,

You're naturally more compassionate.

When you're calm,

You're just naturally more present.

So the idea of having all these tools and ideas and this is how to manage a difficult position and the idea it's going to be difficult anyway in your head and trying to predict the future,

Trying to predict what the other person is going to say and then what you'll say and what they'll do and what you'll do.

Can you hear how that is just noisy,

Noisy,

Noisy?

And it's understandable if you're going in to deliver something that's perhaps not what the other person wants to hear,

Generally speaking,

We don't want to hear some issues about our performance,

Do we?

Already you're going to have some tension because that's natural.

That's a natural.

Your body just letting you know that this is stirring up some thoughts about the situation.

So you're already probably a little bit busy-minded.

I'm not sure I would be so much these days,

But I definitely was back in the day when I was a headteacher.

I was in school leadership for 10 years,

Managing people.

And I remember feeling very stood up already.

Now,

If on top of that,

Luckily it wasn't such a thing,

Learning how to have a difficult conversation,

Or I hadn't done the training,

Thank God,

I would have had a whole load of other stuff in my head.

So I would have already had my own bits of predicting and trying to work out,

Plus all the tools and techniques somebody had told me about how to have a difficult conversation.

And can you hear how that's just more noise?

Now,

If we're saying that presence,

The ability to listen,

Compassion,

Self-awareness are all available to us in a calm place,

If we've got a head full of noisy thinking,

Can you hear how we're not going to be connected to that so much?

Because we're going to be caught up in this very noisy,

Noisy,

Noisy head.

So maybe we don't make up something to be difficult before we come to do it.

I think this is not just an aspect of conversations.

This is an aspect of life,

Isn't it?

That we don't need any more on our minds.

We don't need to have made something up to be difficult.

We don't need all that stuff in our heads.

We don't need any of that,

Really.

We can make up anything to be difficult,

Can't we?

Whether it's a conversation or a new job or a child starting high school or,

You know,

Jumping out of a plane.

I mean,

That's probably not difficult in any way physically.

I'm sure there's a bit of training to do,

But mostly it's difficult psychologically.

I would have thought to jump out of a plane.

Not something I'm keen to do right now.

Zip wire I'm good with,

All sorts of other things.

Both my children want to jump out of a plane at some point.

I think I'll just not be there to watch.

So,

You know,

We can make up things to be difficult and then we can go and find some tools and techniques to handle the thing that we made.

What if we didn't make it up to be difficult in the first place?

What if we just said,

You know,

I'm going to go have a conversation with this person and I'm going to share this information.

And we went in with a,

I'm going to do my best to just be with that person while I share this information with them.

I'm not going to make up a story about how they're going to react.

You know,

It's really interesting because I remember once having a performance conversation with a teacher of mine in my first headship.

And really his performance was,

And had been for a long time,

Very poor.

And I remember saying to him,

It just came to mind to say to him,

Are you happy here?

Do you like teaching at this school?

And is it,

Are you coping with it?

And he said,

No,

I'm not on any of those fronts.

I'm not really happy.

It is,

It's not,

It's not my,

I'm not happy here.

I don't like being here.

And,

You know,

He chose to reduce his part time anyway,

But he chose to reduce his hours.

And then he,

You know,

He eventually left.

And I didn't have to do very much.

I just had to be present with him.

And even back then that made sense to me to not overcomplicate it.

And that's it,

Isn't it?

That's what we're doing.

When we're working ourselves up to have a difficult,

We're overcomplicating it.

And like I've said before,

All the way through,

While I've been all,

If you've listened to any more of my sessions about relationships,

There's been a whole series of them.

It's all about where we're overcomplicating things.

We're making things difficult.

We're adding layers to them.

We're giving them extra labels.

We're doing the,

You know,

The search on the internet and find that there's a,

You know,

300 and something thousand hits on some aspect of relationships,

Which we then complicate things by looking at.

But the self-awareness piece is key in this,

Is to be really connected to yourself.

You're connected to another person,

But by being aware of yourself,

That connection with the other person is so much stronger anyway.

Is as you're navigating through a conversation,

That is perhaps becoming tense.

Perhaps it's coming,

Becoming upset.

Perhaps people are getting angry.

Is to be in touch with yourself,

To notice how you're doing.

Are you staying calm?

And when I say staying calm,

I just mean,

Are you calm?

You don't need to make yourself stay calm.

Are you aware of how stirred up you're becoming and what stories you've got around what the other person is saying?

And just notice that and notice when you need some time out or when you need to take a break or when they might need to take a break.

That's it really.

That's how to navigate it,

Is to be aware.

Whether you're okay in this conversation,

Whether you're getting stirred up,

Whether you're navigating it from a place of calm.

And when you're not,

It's okay to take a break.

You know,

Bruce and I were having a conversation the other morning and it got a little bit fractious.

And in the end I just said,

Let's just stop for a minute.

Let's just walk.

Just hold my hand.

Let's just walk for a bit.

Let's calm down a bit.

And then we tried again and it got fractious again.

In the end we decided that he needed some more information about what we were talking about,

Factual information,

And then we could carry on the conversation.

But there was this awareness.

I was aware that was becoming really wound up and that I needed to stop.

And that's it.

That's navigating difficult conversations.

It's just self-awareness.

Just noticing how you're doing.

Because your feelings,

Your emotional state is a guide as to how useful your thinking is.

And of course your thinking is what comes out of your mouth,

In your words,

Your speech behavior.

And often if we're wound up like that,

We're going to say something that's not going to be particularly helpful.

Whereas when we're calm,

We're more connected to the person anyway.

So there's no such thing as a difficult conversation.

Not beforehand anyway.

Some might feel a bit difficult when we're in them,

But we don't need the story of them being difficult beforehand.

I hope you found that helpful.

I'll be exploring this and,

As always,

These kinds of topics on my area,

On Insight Timer,

In my live sessions,

In my courses.

Please come and check them out.

There's lots for you to see here and it's so life-changing.

It's worth investigating.

Take care.

Lots of love.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been The Calm Cast with Claire Downer,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.