260: Fraught Conversations

A common issue my clients face is getting stuck in frustrating conflicts that hinder their business progress.

Disagreements can arise for many reasons. When it comes to disagreements with strangers or those we don't interact with often, we can simply walk away or use some kind of pressure or leverage to get our way.

However, in disagreements with people we work closely with, like a co-founder or key partner, neither walking away or using force are real options.

Sometimes, these disputes are straightforward: one person wants option A, another wants option B. You can discuss the pros and cons, consider how each option fits into your strategy, and reach a decision. We can call these fluent conversations—we know how to talk to one another and reach an agreement or at least a path forward.

But often, disagreements become tangled with comfortable emotions. Someone criticizes your idea, and you start to question your competence or their perception of you. Or you delay responding to a coworker, and they might think you don't respect them or that you don’t care about the project. These misunderstandings are common, and if not addressed, they can lead to resentment, tension, and deeper issues down the road. So today, I want to share three tools for resolving these more emotionally fraught disagreements.

The story I’m making up

The first tool is from Brené Brown an can help you express your feelings while recognizing your interpretation might be inaccurate. For instance, if your co-founder cuts you off while you're presenting an idea, and all of a sudden you’re feeling a great deal hurt and anger because they don’t care about your ideas or they think you’re not creative.

The first thing you have to recognize is that your immediate conclusion might not be right. By using the phrase “the story I’m making up”, you can acknowledge this interpretation of the situation without deciding it’s 100% true. It’s just something you made up.

Blayne Smith, a West Point graduate and former Special Forces officer, is the executive director of Team RWB. He shared this with me about his experience of rumbling with “the story we make up.

“The ability to say 'the story that I’m making up' is extremely helpful in a couple of ways. First, it creates the opportunity for some inner dialogue. It gives me a chance to pause and evaluate what I’m thinking and feeling before I even bring it up with another person. In some cases, that is all I need to do. At times when I need to communicate a frustration or issue, 'the story that I’m making up' gives me permission to speak honestly and candidly without the fear of generating a defensive response. It is also very disarming and almost always results in a productive conversation, rather than a heated back-and-forth."

— Brené Brown, Rising Strong

When you share your feelings using “the story I’m making up”, your partner understand why you feel the way you feel in a safe way—not feeling attacked themselves in the process. And as Smith in the quote explains, it's likely to lead to a more productive conversation where your feelings are acknowledged and you can get to the heart of the issue.

The Ladder of Inference

The Ladder of Inference was first developed by organizational psychologist Chris Argyris in the 70's and 80's. It provides a model to show how people draw conclusions and make decisions based on selected data.

There are a number of versions of the ladder that floating around the internet these days (more history here) but for the purposes of today, we can go with this model:

This ladder is simple in concept but powerful when you remember to bring it to mind. I once showed this to a client and he immediately felt less frustrated by his most recent conflict.

By using this ladder, you can trace the pathway of your own thought process and invite your partner to share how they reached their conclusion. It also reminds us to avoid jumping too far up the ladder and to revisit the lower rungs to get a more complete picture of the situation.

Going down the ladder of inference is like debugging a piece of software–you have to go into the source code to understand the root of the issue. Often what we see as a fundamental disagreement is actually two people who are looking at very different pools of information, selecting relevant-but-different data points, and making different forms of meaning from them.

“You’re Right” vs “That’s Right”

The last tool comes from Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference. Voss emphasizes that most people need to feel understood before they can be persuaded or reasoned with. When someone says, "You're right" they might just be trying to end the conversation without truly agreeing. and they're probably not totally bought in.

Even if you bludgeon someone with facts and logic, they might just say "you're right" to get you off their back while not changing their position. We've all been here—most of us on both sides.

Voss illustrates this with a story about how he was able to break through a stalled negotiation by getting to "that's right". By listening, asking questions, and accurately describing their grievances and sense of injustice the hostage taker in question actually said “Yes! That’s right!” This moment according to Voss was a turning point in the negotiation.

This isn't about condoning harmful behavior but recognizing that everyone believes their actions and thoughts are justified. No one, even a hostage taker, is the villain of their own story.

When you get to "that's right", you're establishing a point of agreement on how they feel while the other party hasn't felt like they've caved. Their sense of autonomy feels intact—which isn't the case when you pressure them into saying "you're right". You also now understand their motivations which you can use to reach an agreement you both can support.

This kind of mindful listening and reflecting of feelings and perspectives isn’t easy to do. Despite being a coach, and knowing all this, sometimes when my wife watches into around about something, she’s frustrated with I jump to problem-solving—"why don't you just..."—which is rarely well received.

What mindful listening and reflection sounds like:

“You worked really hard on this and they basically wrote it off. And this reminds you of that other project which ended poorly and now you’re scared this will happen again.”

Only after I do that does she start to feel like I’m in her team, that I really get it, and becomes more open to my thoughts on how she reframe her perspective or address the issue. While getting to “that’s right” might not resolve the issue entirely, it fosters mutual understanding, often leading to better outcomes.