As the conversation continues, Elena makes the following sarcastic comment and then goes quiet:
ELENA: I guess I can do all the sacrificing again.
Don’t Meander; Choose
Ricky recognizes the new issue and decides to discuss it. It would appear that Elena feels she’s being asked to do more than he is doing, and he wants to explore this point.
RICKY: You’re the one who had to make all the accommodations when we first moved here. I didn’t realize that was an issue for you. How about if we talk about that and then return to the other topic?
ELENA: I expected you to give up some of your ambitions too. It’s been disappointing that you could just let me do all the giving while you do all the taking.
Decide Who Does What by When and Follow Up
After talking for quite some time, working through some issues, and jointly exploring solutions, they agree on some changes they’ll make, clarifying exactly what each person will do and by when. Then Ricky suggests that they talk about it again at the end of the next week and see how things are working both with his worries and with her feelings of not being supported.
And so there you have it — all the skills applied to a single problem. And here’s the good news: it reflects how you and other accountability experts behave on your best days.
A rocket scientist contemplates talking to her boss about a potential safety problem with a new propellant but chooses not to say a word because she figures that it’ll just get her into trouble. For months on end she walks around in a funk, wondering if something horrible will happen. A nurse wonders about making a suggestion to a doctor that could affect a patient’s health but holds his tongue rather than incur the physician’s wrath. As this unspoken interaction continues, he too lives in a cocoon of worry and doubt. A husband chooses not to question his wife about her suspicious behavior and then lives with the haunting possibility that she may be having an affair.
And so we’re back where we started — living the tortured life of the silent majority. We routinely refuse to step up to bad behaviors — despite the fact that they’re causing us horrific pain — because we figure that it’s better to suffer in the current circumstances than run the risk of saying something dangerous or stupid. It’s the same old mental math problem. Here’s the formula: if we speak up, we could fail. We also might do nothing to solve the problem. In fact, we could create even worse problems for ourselves. We do the calculations, and the answer that pops into our head is “H-O-L-D Y-O-U-R T-O-N-G-U-E.”
But not forever. We suppress our gripes until one day our dark side shows itself. Our ugly stories create a brew that eventually fuels us with enough energy to take scary actions and dumbs us down enough so that we think that what we’re about to do is okay, even the right thing to do.
And so we alternate between silence and violence. First we think, “I can’t believe I just said that,” and so we shut down. Then we think, “I’m not taking this abuse any longer,” and so we fire up. This unhealthy cycle might be best described as the social version of quantum mechanics. We jump all the way from silence to violence without ever passing through the intervening space separating the two. We don’t pause in the land of crucial accountability, where we converse about violated expectations in a way that eventually solves the problem and improves on the relationship. To us, the lovely place where ideas flow freely and honesty rules doesn’t exist. Here’s the interesting part: neither silence nor violence serves us, our relationships, or our purposes, and yet we still toggle.
The solution to this reaction to violated promises lies in our ability to step up to high-stakes accountability discussions and handle them well. We see a problem and speak honestly and respectfully. But far more frequently than most of us are willing to admit (like the rocket scientist, the nurse, and the husband), we don’t say a word because we don’t know how to handle the conversation, or we fear that we don’t know how. We’re not bad people. We’re just frightened. And we’re not frightened because we are inherently skittish; we’re frightened because we believe failure looms on the horizon. Or so we think.
If only one message emerges from this book, it should be the following: you can step up to a broken promise and handle the conversation well. You already do that on your best days. And when you can take it no longer, you try to do it on your worst days. Now that you have a systematic way to think about accountability discussions and are armed with skills that really work, more days can be your best days.
Equally important, when it comes to holding big, sticky, complicated conversations, you don’t have to leap out of a plane without a parachute. Nobody’s asking you to take a terrible and irreversible risk. Here’s why. The first two skills, “choose if and what” and “master my stories,” take place in the confines (and safety) of your own head. By stepping up to problems that should be handled and picking the right one, you’re ensuring that your effort is worthwhile. By doing your best to keep your emotions under control, you’re taking an important step toward acting rationally and reducing resistance and defensiveness. Once again, this is all done before you say a single word. No risk there. Also, these actions alone keep you from charging in and ruining the conversation with your first sentence. This alone doubles your chances of success.
You then move from thinking to talking by discreetly and calmly describing the gap. This is the first time you’re exposing yourself to any risk whatsoever. But you’re doing your best to describe behaviors, not share ugly conclusions. You’re a scientist, not a critic or judge. This humanistic approach helps keep the conversation professional and objective.
Now, after sharing one sentence or possibly two, you end with a question, not an accusation. You’re not three sentences into the conversation, and you’ve paused to listen to the other person. This too minimizes the risk. You’ve observed some things, and you’re wondering what’s really going on. What’s the other person’s view?
What if the other person takes offense or maybe even becomes angry and abusive? You can stop and deal with the new problem, or if you’re feeling befuddled, you can always take a strategic delay. Back off and take time to rethink your approach. This is a conversation, not a gauntlet. It has exit points.
Let’s say the other person responds favorably. He or she doesn’t explode or become offended, but merely explains what’s happening. He or she is either unable or unmotivated to keep the broken commitment. Or maybe both. That’s it.
Consider motivation. This isn’t particularly dangerous either. You’re not trying to motivate others. You’re not trying to figure out how to generate enough power to force others to comply. Best of all, you’re not trying to change underlying, immutable personalities. Your job is simply to make it motivating.
To do this, you jointly explore the forces that cause the task to be motivating or not motivating. This requires you to do nothing more than share natural consequences and listen for the other person to share any additional consequences you may not be aware of. You don’t have to pummel people into submission. You may even choose to back off from your original request if it becomes clear that continuing on the original course doesn’t make sense. You too can be influenced. When it comes to motivation, you’re relying on dialogue, not diatribe.