Fierce Conversations Principles 6 & 7

We’re starting the new year fresh with a video series on the book Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. Each video will dive into one or two of the seven principles Scott outlines in her writing on how to have difficult conversations.

Today are principles 6 & 7.
Principle 6: Take responsibility for your emotional wake.
Principle 7: Let silence do the heavy lifting.

Transcript:

Hi, I am Amy with Iluma Learning, and we are going to continue and talk about fierce conversations. And we have two principles to go. We have been talking about this for the last few blog posts. I really love this book, fierce Conversations. It is so worth a read and if you read it a long time ago, when it came out, reread it. It’s still, it’s just a terrific text around how to get real in your conversations to get change.

So the first principles we’ve talked about so far are master the courage to interrogate reality, come out from behind yourself into the conversation and make it real, be here, prepare to be nowhere else, tackle your toughest challenge today, and the fifth one is obey your instincts. So really paying attention to that gut knowing and what you’re feeling while you’re in conversation.

So the sixth principle is take responsibility for your emotional wake. So the author goes on to say, the conversation is not about the relationship. The conversation is the relationship. Learning to deliver the message without the load allows you to speak with clarity, conviction, and compassion. So again, she uses that word load. And in the another principle she said, travel light, agenda free, communicate without the load. And in here she’s saying that emotional load. And so that emotional load that, we often find at home, and if we’re close to the people at work, we’ll talk about it there. The words that we use where “you always”, “you never”, bringing up past behaviors that you have forgiven and moved on from. Again, doing these things that really let us be present to the reality in that moment with the conversation instead of the emotional load. The emotional wake of unresolved hurts, things from our childhood that we haven’t really recovered from or that we’re triggered about in that conversation. So that really requires a lot of self-awareness. And a way to get there is to do the other principles where we start to really try to be present.

A friend told me the other day that she got from another book, “we are either ministering to people or we are manipulating people. That’s the only two things we can do”. And whether you are religious or not, ministering is really about being present and being real and really accepting in that moment who that person is. And being with them from that place to resolve a conflict doesn’t mean that we’re all sweet and doing group hugs and there’s no conflict. This is, we want this when there’s conflict because this is where people will feel safe to change. So it’s a powerful idea.

And the seventh, I love this one, the seventh principle is let silence do the heavy lifting. I’m really having to learn this one. When there is a whole lot of talking going on conversations can be so empty of meaning, they crackle. Slow down the conversation so the insight can occur in the space between words and you can discover what the conversation really wants and needs to be about. I am so capable of absolutely feeling up every morsel of the silence when I’m talking to my husband, or if I am feeling anxious, or I’m feeling defensive. I am absolutely not going to let there be space because I’m afraid I’m going to lose. Whoever is speaking feels they have the power in the conversation. So when you feel powerful enough that you can sit back and let silence work for you to let what people are feeling, giving each other time to go, how do I really feel about this before I speak? What a powerful tool.

So if you’re like me and you’re a consultant, and you’re speaking to groups, I’ve really tried to make this part of my practice in front of a group is to, stop, and let there be some silence instead of feeling fearful that I’m going to somehow lose their attention. Or the con, in fact, you gain it. So in conversations that really matter, taking time to just slow it down helps us be present. And when we are present, we can see reality. And when we are present and seeing reality, we can really choose to be there with a lot less ego and a lot less need to defend. And at the end of this, you end up in some kind of transformative experience with that other person.

So I really like these principles. I think if you could implement just one of them, you could change the quality of conversation at work and at home. So thanks for watching.