Here’s how it works. Say Tom, one of your direct reports, sat glumly in a meeting, said nothing, and looked discouraged. Normally Tom is upbeat and contributes a lot to meetings. As the meeting ends, you find yourself alone with Tom, and so you start with a simple probe: “Are you feeling okay?”
In truth, he’s not. He’s upset and a little embarrassed. Over the last year Tom has put on 30 pounds, and people have taken to calling him “big guy.” You started the meeting by praising the “big guy” for his recent accomplishments. Your praise, wrapped in the negative label, hurt Tom’s feelings. However, when you ask him, he’s reluctant to say anything. After all, you are the boss and it’s sort of embarrassing. So he comes back with “Well, uh, I’m, uh … I’m feeling just fine.”
Only he says it in a tone of voice and with a body posture that communicate exactly the opposite. To encourage Tom to open up, you hold a mirror up to him; that is, you describe the inconsistency between what he just said and how he just said it: “You know, the way you said that makes me wonder if you are okay. You seem kind of, I don’t know, low-energy, maybe a bit glum. Are you sure you’re okay?”
What you’re trying to do, of course, is make it safe for Tom to talk. By holding up a mirror, you’re letting him know that you’re concerned and that his brush-off wasn’t taken at face value. Once again, you’re trying to open up a conversation, not compel Tom to spill his guts.
Paraphrase for Understanding
Sometimes you catch a break. Say an employee is upset, walks in, and dumps out her entire Path to Action in one fell swoop: “Boy, am I miffed. You can be so controlling. It drives me crazy. Yesterday I got another one of your follow-up notes. Do you have to monitor me by the hour? I feel like I’m being baby-sat!”
She has shared her feeling (miffed), her story (you control me too much because you don’t trust me: the violated value), and the fact that her feeling is based on either the note you sent her or your history of sending notes to check on how things are going.
With this much information on the table, it’s best to check to see if you understand what she said. Paraphrase; that is, put in your own words what you think she stated. But don’t parrot. Restating exactly what the other person said can be annoying and often sounds phony. Simply take your best guess at what the person just expressed:
“You’re upset because you think I overmanage you? I’m too controlling and send you too many notes — is that it?”
Paraphrasing serves two functions. First, it shows that you are listening and that you care. This alone often calms the other person down enough to allow a rational conversation. Second, it helps you see what you do and don’t understand.
“No, I don’t care about the notes,” she says. “It bugs me that you give me more notes than anyone else. Do you really think I’m the least competent person here?”
Ah, so it’s an issue of equity or respect (different core values).
“You think I give you more notes than others, that I don’t respect you?”
“Well, yeah. Yesterday you talked to Ken and then let him go without so much as a single follow-up. But with me.…”
Prime to Make It Safe
Sometimes it takes quite a bit to encourage other people to talk openly. They figure that speaking their minds is a bad idea. If they express their feelings openly, they’re likely to get into trouble.
You’ve invited and mirrored, but so far the other person has remained emotionally charged and mute. What next? Our final tool takes us right into the other person’s story. We prime: we add words to the conversation (much like putting water in a pump to get it flowing), hoping the other person will do the same thing. We do this by guessing what the other person may be thinking: “Are you upset because I did something unfair? I gave the promotion to Margie, and maybe you think that you’re more qualified or that I didn’t do a good job of making a choice. Is that it?”
The second half of this skill lies in how you guess the story. You’re trying to make it safe for others to share their thoughts. That means you have to express your best guess in a way that says, “Don’t worry; I’ll be okay with this discussion. I won’t become defensive or angry.” You do this, of course, by stating the story calmly and matter-of-factly.
Fourth, Take Action
Openly talking about the other person’s path puts us in a position to deal calmly with the issues that have surfaced. If we willingly talk about people’s thoughts and feelings without mocking, squelching, or attacking them, they are much more likely to calm down enough to both express their thoughts and listen to ours. Once we’ve uncovered the story and the action that led to it, we’re in a position to deal with the problem itself, and this is what we should do. We’re not listening for the sake of listening. Once again, we’re learning about how to carry on an accountability discussion, in this case how to listen actively not as an intellectual exercise but as a way to get to results.
Create a Safety Valve
Before we bring this chapter to a close, let’s look at one final issue. You approach your boss with a problem that he is causing, and he immediately becomes aggressive. You silently seethe because you were hoping he would help you resolve the problem, not shoot the messenger. Despite your best efforts to stifle the fuming volcano of hate and loathing that is overtaking your “employee of the month” persona (which at the awards banquet just last month won you a free week’s dry cleaning), your boss picks up on your hostile tone and warns you that you’re starting to “step across the line.”
You find his remarks duplicitous because his tone is always snippy and insulting, but in a thinly veiled sarcastic kind of way that he thinks is clever and you think places him in the top five in the pantheon of hypocrites. You’re at a crossroads. To paraphrase Woody Allen, one path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other, to total extinction. You can only pray that you have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Actually, you have a third choice. You can step back and buy yourself time. You can and should take a strategic delay: “You know what; I need to think about this in more detail. I’ll get back to you later.”
And with that short comment, you hotfoot it back to your office. This is not a retreat. It’s a strategic delay. This is not silence; you plan on returning. Once you’re ensconced in the safety of your office, you take a deep breath, regain control of your emotions, think about a new and better strategy for talking about the problem, and return another hour or day.
If your emotions are in control but you’re having trouble coming up with the right words, take a strategic delay. Think about what you’d like to say privately, safely, and slowly and then return later.
Finally, if your emotions are in control but you’re about to lose your temper, also take a strategic delay. Your grandmother was wrong when she counseled you on the eve of your wedding never to go to bed angry. When you’re angry, going to bed may be exactly the thing you need to do to dissipate your adrenaline, regain your brainpower, and prepare to return to the conversation.
Stay Focused and Flexible
In this chapter we examined how to stay focused and flexible. If fear is the emergent problem, step out of the original infraction, make it safe, and if appropriate, revisit the original problem — returning to the place you left off. If a new issue or problem emerges, choose what and if. If you decide to deal with the new problem, work through it by following the skills. Then, to ensure that you don’t get sidetracked, revisit the original problem — returning to the place you left off.