Crucial Conversations ~ Part 2 ~ it’s all about safety!

This is all about safety.

What makes a crucial conversation sustainable is safety.

Spotting a Crucial Conversation

First you need to notice when a normal conversation switches into a crucial conversation. Remember that a crucial conversation is one where the stakes are high, emotions are strong and opinions differ.  You can pinpoint this moment by

Noticing Body Language & Feelings

• watching body language and physical signs  of others– people stop talking or start talking amongst themselves if you are in a group. They may look away, start folding their arms, shaking their heads from side-to-side, blushing or going pale, raise their voices, start pointing fingers or making stabbing motions, tapping.
• remaining aware of your own body signals – a tight feeling in your stomach, butterflies, tension in your shoulders, gritting teeth, pursing lips, looking away, clenching fists, tapping fingers on the table, blushing etc

Looking for Safety Problems

This requires dual processing. You are monitoring content and responses. How do you know if safety is at risk? Sometimes it’s really obvious. Emotions shoot through the roof. Arguments become personal or dogmatic. People talk over each other. You want to flee or you want to stand your ground.

Normally people take one or two paths when they feel unsafe. They either move to silence (withholding meaning from the pool) or violence (trying to force meaning in the pool).

1. Silence: this is any act to purposefully withhold information from the pool of meaning. It’s almost always done as a means of avoiding potential problems. It may manifest as verbal games or avoidance. The three most common forms of silence are masking, avoiding and withdrawing.
   • Masking: this comes out as understating or selectively showing our true opinions, sarcasm, sugar-coating, going blank and couching (being indirect or obscure).
   • Avoiding: the topic or the person. We steer away from the sensitive areas – changing the topic, putting off the conversation, diverting to just a small part of the whole issue.
   • Withdrawing: pulling out of the conversation altogether, leaving the room or stopping any reference to the issue at hand.
2. Violence: any verbal attempt to convince, control or compel. It may manifest as name calling, monologuing, making threats, and attacking.
   • Controlling behaviours include cutting others off mid-sentence, overstating your facts, speaking in absolutes, changing subjects, using directive questions.
   • Labelling happens when we dismiss people or ideas under a general stereotype or category.
   • Attacking means you’ve moved from winning the argument to making the person suffer. It includes belittling and threatening.

What is your style under stress? Curious? Try this survey. It’s in the left hand side bar and you need to join the VitalSmarts Mailing list to do it.

Otherwise ask yourself or, even better, watch yourself. Do you go towards silence or violence. Do you withdraw, avoid or mask? Or, do you attack, label or control? Or a combination of the above?

• Know your style so that you can do something different. This is a matter of personal choice.
• Take some time to feel how your body feels when you are doing “your personal style” – sense for a way to break the pattern. You might yawn, or stretch or take a deep breath. You might lean forward in order to re-engage.
• You might remind yourself of your real intentions and what you really want (see my last post).
• You might ask yourself “How can I do have this conversation and keep myself and others safe?”

My next post will explore how to make it safe to talk about almost anything using CRIB:

1. Commit to seek mutual purpose
2. Recognise the purpose behind the strategy
3. Invent a mutual purpose
4. Brainstorm new strategies

We will also look at how to apologise so that it can be heard, step out to create safety and step back into safety, contrasting to fix misunderstandings.