Ron wants to tell his partner that he’s just not happy in the relationship anymore. Annie wishes her partner could know his weight gain is the reason for her lack of interest in intimacy. Melanie wants a team member to know his incessant competitiveness with other team members is tiresome and destructive to collaboration.
Not one of them is having the conversation.
Having tough conversations is hard.
Avoiding conversations and having difficulties persisting is also hard. But sometimes we get the opportunity to do something hard that makes tomorrow easier. That’s the hard it’s worth stepping up to.
Conversation anxiety is on the rise because we have become so used to carefully crafting a text or email that conversation feels like a 10000 ft freefall without a parachute. People speak as if conversation has the same mortality rate.
Ask people why they find conversations difficult and the reasons will vary but they can be stripped down to a common theme. It might get worse, not better. What if I mess it up, or I hurt them or they get upset.
Good points.
Chances are we won’t do it perfectly, and chances are they might get upset or hurt feelings. But then what? Hurt feelings or discomfort are rarely end states, they are a moment in time. The excellence that comes from it though, is not. Truth is in most cases if you think about human beings going through difficulties with each other, we usually get stronger for it. We stare down the purgatory of discomfort like a wave about to crash on us, only to find that what is on the other side of it is entirely more tolerable than we imagined in our ‘death by a thousand cuts’ tossing it over.
What we do in moments of discomfort is what ultimately defines us. They are the moment we can pay the toll fee and keep driving or sign the form and get charged interest further down the road.
We’ve added some concrete tips and strategies for having challenging conversations - including trouble shooting, dealing with high emotion and figuring out what it is you want from the conversation.
Do a favour to your future self and trust that not only can you can do hard things, but sometimes not doing them is even harder.
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