Nolan Martin :
When difficult conversations need to happen on a team, that can be a frightening or awkward thing to do. Preparation is needed to show up and have the most productive discussion possible in these situations.
Preparing for Hard Conversations: Clarity, Role Play, and Relaxation [00:10]
Don Rossmoore :
Well, there’s words. You have to be clear about what you wanna say. You have to write the words down.
So somebody else can say, those are the right words or those are the wrong words. Then you have to role play so you get the voice right. It’s really interesting because the first level of resistance to saying something that needs to be said is getting the words right. And the normal defensive response to getting the words right is to be ambiguous.
And then when you go to role play, usually we come to the situation with too much tension and stress. So the voice emits from the listener anxiety. It’s my practice. The harder the thing I have to say, the softer the voice I use, but preparing is imagining what you need to say. Writing it down, imagining what things the other person’s gonna say that could trigger your defensiveness, and then figure out how you wanna respond to that and make sure that you’re aware of the body that you were in when you imagined receiving the thing you didn’t wanna hear, and then relaxing out of that. We wanna be as relaxed as we can possibly be for these difficult conversations.
Aram Donigian :
I really appreciate this kind of two-sided approach taking. So much of it starts with how I show up my own breathing, my own practice, my own self-awareness. And then you also just talked about this creating kind of a, whether it’s a kind of a safe place, but a reducing anxiety for our listeners, right? For our audience.
As you think about team communication and how do you improve it, how important is it to build trust and demonstrate compassion? And how does one actually do that effectively?
Building Trust Through Compassionate Communication: Shifting Mindset to Empathy [01:59]
DR :
To act compassionately, there’s an American Buddhist named Sharon Salzberg, who has this fabulous definition of compassion, and it’s in a book called Loving Kindness. And the definition, her definition of compassion is to take right action with all necessary effort while responding to suffering and injustice with empathy.
So what I have my clients do, as part of the preparation of giving critical feedback, is once they are clear about what they have to say to the person, that’s critical. They put themselves in the other person’s place and imagine receiving those words and it’s in the body that you imagine receiving those words in that you wanna take to the conversation itself. That’s the empathic body.
AD :
I just love that definition. I’m gonna have to look this book up, love and kindness, and I love how you, to put myself in their shoes. What does it sound like to hear me? Bit of a mindset shift.
NM :
Don. Virtual teams and meetings are gonna be here to stay. So what advice do you offer to organizations to remain successful and practice the concepts you’ve been discussing even in the virtual world?
Staying Present and Connected in Virtual Teams: Focus, Posture, and Real Human Interaction [03:07]
DR :
You know, I’ve worked with more than 10 virtual companies at this point. One key is you have to get together regularly, at least once a quarter, and you have to spend work time and social time together. Everybody needs to get their smell on each other. So that’s one thing. The other is, follow the instructions in my book.
And a key is for each individual to remove all distractions. Have no other screens available. Have nothing else you’re looking at. Turn your phone off and focus and part of focusing is to attend to your body. And as soon as you’re feeling uncomfortable, change your posture. And you need to stretch every so often.
Thinking emotions, the musculoskeletal structure and the autonomic nervous system are tightly coupled. You change any one of them and it changes all of them. And as soon as we have stress in our body and we put up with it and it builds more stress, we’re turning up the volume of the voices inside our head. It makes it harder to be present and pay attention.
AD :
Don. It’s amazing to me how many companies that Nolan and I do virtual programs with where there seems to be an accepted culture of we don’t turn on the video and we’ll be the only two with video on. We’ll invite them to join us there. Occasionally they will, somebody might come off mute, turn video on or something and sometimes they’ll go, they’ll turn it on when they get into a breakout room or something.
What are your thoughts about that as a kind of a cultural practice, and what does it indicate about, about that team.
The Culture of Cameras Off: What Video Practices Reveal About Team Engagement [04:39]
DR :
At one level, I don’t know. It would be useful to ask. People, why they weren’t turning on their video, what they were concerned would happen if they did turn on their video.
As you were talking, I thought to myself, I wouldn’t work under those conditions. When I started my career, I was compromising with my own values and principles all the time just to get work and to keep it. So it’s a hard place to be. I have never encountered that. But the context under which I work is I’m always working with a team and I’m working in their meetings.
I’m not calling extra meetings for myself. I’m in their staff meetings. I’m in their planning meetings. I’m in their project meetings. I would do a bunch of inquiry with people who are not turning on their video, and I’d really explore what bad things would happen if they turned it on. It could be that they’re doing other things and they don’t wanna be seen doing other things.
AD :
I often get the feel, the feeling that they’re not fully engaged. So it goes back to the listening piece. And I think, and it probably goes back to multiple screens and other things. So, it’s taken really well.
NM :
Don, as we get ready to wrap up. What final thoughts would you like to leave with listeners who are truly committed to becoming master communicators?
Owning Defensiveness: Walking Through Discomfort to Become a Master Communicator [05:51]
DR :
Before I do that, I would, I wanna challenge the two of you to figure out how to be sufficiently compelling in these trainings that you do, that people would want to turn their screens on.
We’re all defensive. It’s normal. It’s painful to discover how we’re defensive. There is enormous payback in sticking with the discomfort so you can see yourself until you own your defensiveness. I think of that as walking all the way through the fire. Once you own your defensiveness, you’ll find the motivation to replace it with something. Replacing it brings enormous self-satisfaction and brings an increasing satisfaction and gratification in terms of relationships.
AD :
Don, that’s beautiful and I wanna say thank you for how you turned that was what, the way I phrased the initial question, certainly indicated or suggested some blame without ownership on my part. Thank you for the challenge and again a second challenge accepted from this episode. So thank you.
DR :
Yeah. You’re welcome. You guys are great. It’s really nice doing this with you.
NM :
Thank you, Don, for joining us today. I’d like to turn it over to Aram for any final thoughts in closing comments?
Turning Insight Into Habit: Using Practice to Overcome Defensiveness [07:10]
AD :
Yeah, I’ll echo Nolan. I’ll just echo Nolan’s appreciation. Don, thanks for taking the time. Very insightful. I really do suggest people pick up your book. Find it as a handbook. I like that you say, hey, listen. It’s not a book you read all the way through. It’s a guidebook. It’s a handbook. Go where you’re, you need help.
It really aligns well with the advice you’ve given us and a few challenges that we’re gonna take and put into practice. But practicing things to make them a habit is really the way we overcome defensiveness, or at least keep it in check. Thanks. We’re gonna walk away more effective because of this conversation today.
NM :
Well, that is it for us on today’s episode. If you could please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast and we’ll see you in the next episode.
