How To Have Difficult Conversations With Confidence

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There's probably a conversation somewhere in your life that you already know you need to have.
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You may been having it in your head for a few weeks.
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You know roughly what you want to say, you've imagined it, what the other person might say, and you've probably had several excellent versions of the whole exchange whilst driving, walking a dog, lying in bed, or standing in the shimmer.
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There's only one person who hasn't heard any of it, them.
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And avoiding a conversation rarely makes a problem disappear.
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Usually it gets larger.
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You think about it more, you notice the behavior more.
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You become more irritated, more anxious, or even more resentful.
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And eventually you can find yourself reacting to something the other person may not even know is wrong.
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Welcome to Let's Talk About Confidence.
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I'm John M.
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Walsh.
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I want to look at something most of us do from time to time.
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We put off conversations.
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They're not necessarily enormous, life-changing conversations.
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Often they're surprisingly ordinary.
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Telling somebody they've upset you, asking for something you need, saying you're unhappy with what's happening, or admitting you've changed your mind or telling someone their behavior isn't acceptable, talking about money, saying no when someone's expecting a yes, or even asking an awkward question at work and telling somebody you're worried about them.
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Sometimes it's simply saying something you know might change the atmosphere between you.
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We can be remarkably inventive when we don't want to have one of these conversations.
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The timing isn't quite right.
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Oh, they're just under a lot of pressure at the moment.
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There's no point in raising it now.
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Perhaps I'm making too much of it.
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We'll see what happens.
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Maybe they'll realize themselves.
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If it happens again, then I'll say something.
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And occasionally one of those reasons is perfectly sensible.
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Not every irritation needs turning into a major discussion.
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And sometimes waiting genuinely is the right thing to do.
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But there's a fairly reliable sign that waiting has become avoidance.
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The conversation keeps returning.
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You think about it when the person isn't there.
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You know, here's what you'd like to say.
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You start collecting examples, you notice the behavior more than you used to, you talk about it to someone else.
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You may even become extremely articulate about the problem.
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Just not with the person who can actually do anything about it.
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That's the part I find interesting.
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Why can it sometimes feel easier to live with a problem for months than to have a 10-minute conversation about it?
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And I've seen this countless times at work.
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A manager tells somebody in their team that performance isn't going particularly well.
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They can describe the problem in detail, they've got examples, they know what should be happening, they know what isn't happening, and sometimes they've been frustrated by it for months.
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So I'll say to them, what have you said to them?
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And that's when the pause comes.
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Well they know.
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Do they?
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Well they they should know.
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That's different.
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Or somebody tells me their boss constantly overrules them, they feel undermined, they dread certain meetings because they know a decision they've already made may be reopened in front of everybody.
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And they're becoming genuinely angry about it.
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So I'll ask them, what have you said to your boss?
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Oh nothing yet.
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I'm trying to work out the best way of approaching it.
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And sometimes they've been trying to work that out for m for months.
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Usually the problem isn't a lack of vocabulary.
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Most adults could form the sentences if they really had to.
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And that's what we're often avoiding.
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Not the words, the response.
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If I tell you I'm unhappy, you may become defensive.
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If I challenge you, you may challenge me back.
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If I say no, you may think differently about me.
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If I ask for more money, you might refuse.
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Or if I tell you something isn't working, you may ask what I intend to do about it.
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And if I tell you that you've hurt me, you may tell you may tell me I've hurt you as well.
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Once conversation is begun, I don't control where it goes.
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In my head I get to write both sides of the script.
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But in reality, the other person gets a script too, and they haven't shown it to me.
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I think that loss of control sits underneath an awful lot of conversations with Delay.
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When somebody tells me they dislike confrontation, that phrase could cover several very different fears.
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Some people are particularly uncomfortable with anger.
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Perhaps they grew up around it, perhaps they've had enough experience of aggressive people that even fairly mild disagreement makes them tense.
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For someone else it's rejection.
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They worry that if they say what they really think, the other person will withdraw, dislike them, or decide they're difficult.
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Another person may be more worried about humiliation, they're frightened, they'll explain themselves badly, lose their train of thought, and become emotional or maybe somehow just look foolish.
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And at work, consequences can become part of it as well.
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Having an awkward conversation with a colleague is one thing.
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Challenging somebody who influences your salary, promotion, or future is rather different.
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And sometimes the fear is just simpler than that.
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You may discover something you don't particularly want to know.
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If I don't ask whether I'm getting the promotion, I can still imagine that perhaps I am.
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If I don't ask what's really happening in the relationship, I don't have to hear an answer I may not like.
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And if I don't challenge an arrangement that isn't working, I can continue telling myself that perhaps it'll improve.
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Sometimes not knowing is easier than finding out.
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Even though not known is uncomfortable too.
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So we leave it alone.
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And this is where confidence begins to matter.
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Confidence in a difficult conversation isn't the belief that the conversation is going to go well.
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There's no way known that.
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It isn't confidence that the other person will agree with you, because they may not.
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And it certainly isn't confidence that you'll say everything perfectly.
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The useful version of confidence is knowing that you can stay in the conversation even if it becomes uncomfortable.
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That changes the standard completely.
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One reason conversations get delayed is that we keep trying to solve them before they've happened.
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We want to find exactly the right opening, the right argument, the perfect example.
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Somewhere in our imagination there's a sentence that will make the other person understand immediately.
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Stay completely calm, recognize our point, and respond exactly as we hoped.
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To be truthful, I've never found that sentence.
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I have, though, seen people prepare for difficult conversations so thoroughly that by the time they finally have them, they've almost built a court case.
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They've got dates, emails, six examples, and every possible objection anticipated.
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I mean you can understand why.
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Evidence feels safe.
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If I had enough of it, perhaps you won't be able to disagree with me.
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Except human beings don't just respond to evidence.
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They respond to what they think the evidence means.
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You criticizing me, do you think I'm incompetent?
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Are you trying to push me out?
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Are you angry with me?
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Is our relationship in trouble?
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Am I about to lose something?
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The meaning can take over the conversation remarkably quickly.
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One person goes in determined to prove they're right, the other senses criticism and starts defending themselves.
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Within a few minutes, the original problem is buried underneath an argument neither of them intended to have.
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Imagine you've a colleague who repeatedly sends you things late, nothing disastrous happens, the work still gets done.
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But every time they're late, it creates pressure for you.
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You have to compensate, you have to move something else.
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Sometimes you stay later at work, or you rush some of your own stuff.
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The first time you let it go, the second time you know they're under pressure.
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So you let that one go as well.
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By the third time you start to become irritated, by the sixth time you're probably annoyed, but you still haven't said anything.
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Now something quite interesting has happened.
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They've experienced six occasions on which the arrangement apparently worked.
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You've experienced six occasions in which they let you down.
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It's the same six events, but completely different experience of them.
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From their point of view, they may not even have a problem.
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Things keep arriving, you keep coping, the work gets finished.
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From your point of view, there's now a pattern.
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The longer that gap remains between what you're experiencing and what they experience, the more difficult the eventual conversation becomes.
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By the time you finally say this keeps happening, they may genuinely think what keeps happening.
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That's one reason an early conversation can be much easier.
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There's simply less attached to it.
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You can talk about what happened rather than everything that's happened.
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This came through later than we agreed, and it put quite a bit of pressure on me.
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Can we work out what needs to change next time?
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That conversation is very different from the one you have six months later.
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You always do this, I've had enough.
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By then you're not really talking about Thursday's late report.
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You're talking about Thursday, the previous five Thursdays, and everything you've been thinking about in between.
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Resentment often starts to grow when we repeatedly accept something that internally we don't accept at all.
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We say yes whilst wishing we'd said no.
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We keep helping when we no longer want to, and we tolerate behavior that both bothers us.
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We don't even explain what we need, and then gradually we become irritated that the other person hasn't somehow discovered the boundary we haven't communicated.
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That's not always comfortable to recognise.
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The other person may genuinely be behaving badly.
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None of this excuses that.
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And that tells me something useful, because it means there may be something I can influence.
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Usually that begins with saying what hasn't yet been said.
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I also think we sometimes make these conversations more frightening by calling them confrontations.
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If I tell myself I'm going to confront somebody, my mind starts preparing for a fight before I've even walked into the room.
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I gather evidence, I anticipate resistance, my tone becomes harder, I become defensive before the other person's actually done anything.
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And people can usually feel that.
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Most difficult conversations don't need to begin that way.
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Often they could simply begin with information.
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Something isn't working for me.
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I think we've got different expectations here.
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I wanted to talk about what happened yesterday.
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I'm finding this arrangement is increasingly difficult.
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I don't think I've been clear enough about this.
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I see this differently.
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Those aren't particularly clever sentences, and that's probably why we work.
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The established issue without deciding the whole conversation in advance.
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Compare that with we need to talk about your attitude.
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You've barely sat down the other person's already defending themselves or you never listened to me.
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Most people who hear that sentence immediately search for their memory for an occasion in which they did listen.
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Thirty seconds later you're arguing about the word never rather than whatever caused the problem.
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There's a distinction here that I think is enormously useful.
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What actually happened and what did you conclude from it?
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They're often quite different.
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The report arrived at four o'clock rather than midday.
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Now that happened.
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You don't respect my time.
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That's what I've concluded it means.
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You interrupted me three times while I was explaining the proposal.
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It's observable.
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You always need to dominate the room.
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That's your interpretation.
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You cancelled our plans twice this month.
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Now that happened.
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I'm obviously not important to you.
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That's the meaning I've attached to it.
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The meaning may turn out to be right, but if you lead with a judgment about the other person, they have to defend their character before the two of you have even managed to discuss the behaviour, the thing that happened.
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It's usually easier to begin with something you both have a chance of recognising.
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That doesn't mean stripping emotion out of the conversation.
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If you're angry you're angry, if you're hurt, you're hurt.
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There's no reason to pretend that it didn't.
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But when that happened, I felt dismissed as a very different from your dismissive.
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One tells me about your experience, the other tells me who I am.
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Now that distinction matters.
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It also helps to know what you actually want from the conversation.
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People are sometimes remarkably clear about everything they want to say, and much less clear about what they want to happen afterwards.
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Perhaps you think you want a solution, but actually what matters most is hearing an apology.
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Or you believe you want to understand their position.
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But if you're being completely accurate, what you'd really like is for them to agree with yours.
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Sometimes we describe something as feedback even though we've already decided exactly what happened and what the other person needs to admit.
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And occasionally nothing needs to be changed at all.
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We simply need to be heard.
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Any of those may be legitimate.
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The difficulty comes when we haven't worked out which one it is.
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If I need a behavior to change, I need to be reasonably clear about the behaviour.
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If I genuinely want to understand what happened, then I have to leave some room for an explanation that may not have occurred to me.
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If I'm trying to repair a relationship, proving that I'm right may turn out to be less important than I thought.
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And if I need to say something because holding it in is changing how I feel about the other person, well that matters too.
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Knowing what you're hoping to get out of the conversation tends to simplify it.
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Don't focus on what you think will happen, focus on what you want to happen.
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Another thing I've noticed is that people sometimes prepare these conversations as though they're going to deliver a speech.
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They want to explain everything before the other person gets a chance to respond.
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But a conversation needs the other person fairly early.
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If you've been speaking uninterrupted for say seven minutes, you may think you've given a wonderfully clear explanation.
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There's a reasonable chance the person opposite spent the last six minutes preparing their defense.
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Say enough to establish what you want to discuss, then give them room to respond.
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Because that response is information.
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Perhaps they knew exactly what they were doing.
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Perhaps they genuinely no idea.
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Maybe something's been happening that you weren't aware of.
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They might see your behavior very differently from the way you see it yourself.
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You may have misunderstood part of what happened.
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Or their response may confirm the problem more clearly than anything else could.
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You don't know yet.
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That's partly why you're having the conversation.
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This is usually the point at which confidence matters most.
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You finally say what you've been meaning to say and the response isn't what you hoped for.
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The other person becomes defensive, upset, or maybe even angry.
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Perhaps they simply disagree with you, and there's a little moment when you think, I knew this was a bad idea.
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Except an uncomfortable response doesn't automatically mean the conversation was a mistake.
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Some conversations are uncomfortable because the subject itself is uncomfortable.
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If I'm telling somebody their performance isn't good enough, they may not enjoy hearing it.
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If I'm ending the relationship, I'm not going to find a form of words that makes the experience painless.
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And if I tell you something you did that hurt me, you may feel ashamed or angry or even just misunderstood.
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And if I refuse something you wanted from me, you may be disappointed.
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Good communication can stop us making an already difficult situation unnecessarily worse.
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I can't make every difficult subject painless.
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That expectation causes problems because we begin judging the quality of the conversation by whether everybody remained comfortable.
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And sometimes they won't.
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Imagine you say to a colleague, I wanted to talk to you about yesterday's meeting.
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I was halfway through explaining the proposal.
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He interrupted me several times and eventually answered the question on my behalf.
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I found that difficult.
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Then we and they reply, I was trying to help you.
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You were going round in circles.
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Now you're at an interesting bit.
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You can immediately fight the accusation, I was not going round in circles, or you can retreat.
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Maybe you're right.
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Forget it.
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Or you can stay with it.
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What you were trying to discuss, understand you were there trying to help.
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From my side, the effect was that I felt undermined.
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Next time I'd rather finish what I'm saying, and then you can add anything if you think I've missed it.
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You haven't forced them to agree with your interpretation of events.
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You've simply remained clear while somebody disagreed with you.
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I think that's a much more useful picture of confidence than being able to dominate the conversation.
00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:05.039
Notice one thing though.
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I said this from my side, the effect was that I felt undermined.
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I didn't say you undermined me, I said I felt.
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Again, I'm explaining my experience, not my judgment of you.
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The word feel is incredibly personal.
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It tells people what's happening inside of us.
00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:27.920
And it helps them to realize that we're not accusing them, we're just explaining what's happening here.
00:18:28.079 --> 00:18:32.720
So should someone say to you, No, I wasn't trying to dominate you, you say, No, no, no, I'm not saying you were.
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I'm saying that's how I felt about it.
00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:37.920
There's another uncomfortable possibility.
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You may raise something about their behaviour and hear something in yours.
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Perhaps you tell someone, you've been quite abrupt with me recently, and they say, Yeah, because every time I try to talk to you, you're looking at your phone.
00:18:51.039 --> 00:18:53.440
That wasn't in your planned conversation.
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Sometimes that sort of response is deflection.
00:18:56.799 --> 00:19:01.519
People do try to escape uncomfortable subjects by turning the accusation back.
00:19:01.759 --> 00:19:06.720
But sometimes they have a point, maybe you were looking at your phone and not giving them your full attention.
00:19:07.279 --> 00:19:16.319
And if you go into the conversation needing to be entirely innocent before you're allowed to raise anything, you're going to find it difficult conversations.
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Very, very difficult indeed.
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You can listen to what they're saying without abandoning what you raised.
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I want to come back to what you've spoken to me about.
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So I think that still matters.
00:19:28.559 --> 00:19:31.440
But I'm also hearing what you're saying about me being distracted.
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If I'm doing that, then yeah, we should talk about that as well.
00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:39.359
That's a fair stronger position than simply trying to win.
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Or trying to explain, well, no, I was looking at my my my daughters at school, and you know, listen, we can wait those 30 seconds until they finish their point and give them our full attention.
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Instead, we're trying to defend it.
00:19:54.559 --> 00:20:00.640
There's also situations where the conversation is less about understanding and more about what happens next.
00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:06.160
You may have explained several times that you find something unacceptable, for example, and the shouting continues.
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At that point, you may not be able to control whether the other person raises their voice.
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You can decide what you'll do if they do.
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If this turns into shouting, I I mean let's leave the conversation.
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We can go back to it later.
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The useful part of that is that it deals with your behaviour rather than pretending you've control over theirs.
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The same applies at work.
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If somebody routinely sends non-urgent messages all weekend, you could spend a great deal of energy trying to make them stop.
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Or you can make it clear that you won't normally respond to the routine work messages until Monday.
00:20:41.839 --> 00:20:46.319
Of course, once you've said what you intend to do, you need to prepare to do it.
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Otherwise the same issue simply returns later.
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There are perfectly good reasons for delaying a conversation.
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If you're absolutely furious, giving yourself time to settle down may improve things considerably.
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If the other person is dealing with something genuinely serious, timing matters.
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If you don't yet understand what happened, getting some facts before you start may save everybody a great deal of unnecessary trouble.
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So I'm not suggesting that every uncomfortable feeling needs to be raised immediately.
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The difference is what happens during the delay.
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If you're waiting for a useful reason, you generally become clearer.
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You get information, think about what you actually want from the conversation, perhaps choose a better time to allow the emotional temperature to come down.
00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:37.440
But avoidance tends to look different.
00:21:37.680 --> 00:21:48.799
You keep rehearsing the conversation, you think about it repeatedly, you build your case, you imagine the worst possible response, talk about the person to someone else, and become steadily more frustrated.
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Weeks pass, nothing really changes except how strongly you feel about it.
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And what if the conversation goes badly?
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It might.
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I think we need to be straightforward about that.
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You can prepare carefully, speak respectfully, listen properly, and still have a conversation that goes badly.
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The other person might deny everything, they can become angry and refuse to discuss it.
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They may dislike what you've said.
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A working relationship may change, a personal relationship may change, and you may find something out that you would rather not have known.
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There isn't a communication technique that removes these possibilities.
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But the conversation you avoid also has consequences possibly deeper than having the conversation.
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The working relationship can continue deteriorating.
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The resentment can keep growing.
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The behavior continues, a decision stays unmade, something important remains unsaid.
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:53.599
We sometimes compare the risk of speaking with an imaginary version of silence, in which nothing happens, but things are already happening.
00:22:53.839 --> 00:22:59.119
That's why one of the useful questions isn't only what might happen if I say something.
00:22:59.359 --> 00:23:03.599
It's also worth looking at what's happening because you haven't.
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If I knew I had one of these conversations coming, I wouldn't try to write the exchange in advance.
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I'd want to be clear about four things.
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What actually happened?
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What effect is it having?
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What needs to be different?
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And am I genuinely prepared to hear something from the other person that I haven't already considered?
00:23:23.119 --> 00:23:25.279
Those are the four things I'd be after.
00:23:25.519 --> 00:23:29.599
Now that gives you enough structure without pretending you can control the whole conversation.
00:23:29.839 --> 00:23:34.240
So in a work example, the last three deadlines have moved by several days.
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That's what happened.
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When that happens, I end up moving other work and the team is working late to recover it.
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That's the effect.
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I need us either to meet the date we've agreed or flag much earlier when it isn't going to happen.
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That's what needs to change.
00:23:50.400 --> 00:23:59.279
Then there's still room to ask, if there's something happening on your side that I'm not seeing, now there's somewhere for the conversation to go.
00:24:00.079 --> 00:24:04.160
Personal conversations can be more difficult because the stakes are less tidy.
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At work we can sometimes hide behind our roles.
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There are responsibilities, objectives, deadlines, and procedures, and relationships don't come with much of that.
00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:18.079
And often the fear is greater precisely because the relationship matters.
00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:26.160
You may spend months not telling somebody close to you that something is bothering you because you're frightened that bringing it up will damage your relationship.
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But while you're withholding it, something else begins to happen.
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Your tone changes, you withdraw slightly, you become less generous.
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Things that wouldn't normally bother you start getting on your nerves.
00:24:39.839 --> 00:24:42.880
Eventually the other person asks, What's wrong?
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And you say nothing.
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Even though both of you know there is.
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The conversation is already affecting the relationship, it just it's happening without words.
00:24:55.119 --> 00:24:58.240
And I think that's one of the stranger features of avoidance.
00:24:58.559 --> 00:25:03.759
We sometimes tell ourselves we're protecting a relationship by not talking about something.
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Well behaving a way that slowly damages the relationship.
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There's another version of all of this which doesn't involve another person at all.
00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:18.799
Sometimes the conversations we keep putting off is with ourselves.
00:25:19.119 --> 00:25:21.839
You know the job doesn't really fit you anymore.
00:25:22.079 --> 00:25:24.240
You know arrangement isn't working.
00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:26.160
You know you're exhausted.
00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:34.960
You know you've changed your mind about something, and perhaps you know you've made the wrong decision, or you've quietly realized that you no longer want something.
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:37.200
You spent years believing you wanted.
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:50.480
But saying it clearly to yourself creates a problem because once you say it, I don't want this anymore, or this isn't working, or I've stayed too long, you may eventually have to do something about it.
00:25:50.799 --> 00:26:04.000
So this thought the thought stays deliberately vague, you're not unhappy exactly, you're thinking about things, you're seeing outgoes, you're not making any decisions yet, and sometimes that can continue for years.
00:26:04.799 --> 00:26:10.240
The awkward thing about admitting something clearly to yourself is that clarity has consequences.
00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:16.319
But it's very difficult to make a useful decision while keeping yourself deliberately confused.
00:26:17.839 --> 00:26:20.880
So, what does confidence look like in those moments?
00:26:21.759 --> 00:26:25.680
I don't think confidence in any of this looks particularly impressive.
00:26:25.759 --> 00:26:32.480
It might be somebody sitting in the car for five minutes before walking into the house because they know they need to say something.
00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:37.920
It could be a manager looking at a couple of notes before calling someone into a room.
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:43.680
It may be someone saying, I need to raise something, and if I'm honest, I've left it longer than I should have.
00:26:43.839 --> 00:26:49.920
Or a partner saying, I don't want to have a row, but I also don't want to keep pretending this doesn't bother me.
00:26:50.160 --> 00:26:56.960
And sometimes it's simply being able to hear a response you don't like without immediately abandoning the thing you need to say.
00:26:57.759 --> 00:27:18.480
Confidence here is less about certainty and more about staying present, being able to explain what needs saying without unnecessarily attacking someone, being able to hear something you weren't expecting, being prepared to correct yourself if part of your understanding was wrong, and being able to remain clear if it wasn't.
00:27:18.799 --> 00:27:25.759
You can influence how you enter the conversation, how you behave during it, and what you do afterwards.
00:27:26.079 --> 00:27:28.640
You can't control the other half of it.
00:27:29.200 --> 00:27:33.359
Being able to live with that fairly sophisticated kind of confidence.
00:27:34.319 --> 00:27:41.839
It may not be a conversation like this sitting in your life at the moment, but most of us don't have to wait very long before one turns up.
00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:49.519
Usually it starts quite quiet, something happens, then perhaps again, you notice yourself thinking about it when the other person isn't there.
00:27:49.759 --> 00:27:51.920
You start composing what you would say.
00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:56.880
Maybe you tell somebody else about it, and that's probably the stage worth noticing.
00:27:57.119 --> 00:28:02.960
Once you verbalise it outside, not because every irritation needs discussing, it simply doesn't.
00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:13.440
But if you're repeatedly having a conversation in your head or with other people, there comes a point where the real version may be more useful than the one in your head.
00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:16.079
And it doesn't need a brilliant opening line.
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There's something I think we need to talk about.
00:28:18.319 --> 00:28:19.440
We'll often do.
00:28:19.759 --> 00:28:25.039
Then deal with what happened, what effect it's having, and what needs to be different.
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And leave enough space to discover what the other person has seen from their side.
00:28:30.480 --> 00:28:40.319
It may go smoothly, it may not, but at least you're now dealing with a conversation that's actually happening rather than the 20 versions you've been having alone.
00:28:41.359 --> 00:28:42.319
I'm John M.
00:28:42.400 --> 00:28:42.960
Walsh.
00:28:43.279 --> 00:28:47.519
This has been Let's Talk About Confidence, and I'll see you next time.