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A guide to difficult conversations

medium.dave-bailey.com

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Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#111

Post by tome »

icelancer wrote: post #96
motohagiography wrote: post #7

This is a valuable post. I have not taken an NVC course before, but I have done a lot of work in negotiations, writing, and was brought up to use this style of communication. One thing I would be interested in either from the OP or someone with experience with NVC, is how you recognize when you are being patronizing. Much of this communication style is the artifact of an implied power relationship, where the speaker…

Constantly relying on "observations" is incredibly patronizing and I've gotten away from it outside of very formal reporting / performance improvement plans / firing someone. In my current line of work (and previous one, finance), if you cite observations as the main way of communicating, the other person is just going to cut you off and tell you to hurry the fuck up and tell them what they did wrong.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. If someone says to me "Three of the numbers in the report were inaccurate" (an observation) that's a lot more helpful to me than "Your work is sloppy" (an evaluation). Did you have something else in mind?

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#112

Post by mercutio2 »

sidlls wrote: post #102

Some of the things in there are incredibly condescending and foster ambiguity. For example, the observation "three of the numbers in your report were inaccurate" is an observation of a mistake made, which people do. It only means "you are sloppy" if it's a regular occurrence without signs of improvement. Using that as a stand in for "you are sloppy" is itself sloppy, and also lazy and unhelpful.

Is it possible you’re misreading that section?

The point is to deliver the observation, not the evaluation.

You seem to be saying that those evaluation statements are lazy/unhelpful. And NVC advocates agree! That’s why they recommend observations, not evaluations!

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#113

Post by waylandsmithers »

tyingq wrote: post #79
motohagiography wrote: post #7

This is a valuable post. I have not taken an NVC course before, but I have done a lot of work in negotiations, writing, and was brought up to use this style of communication. One thing I would be interested in either from the OP or someone with experience with NVC, is how you recognize when you are being patronizing. Much of this communication style is the artifact of an implied power relationship, where the speaker…

"how you recognize when you are being patronizing" That's a good point. I'm fairly adept at recognizing when someone is trying to negotiate with me based on some kind of taught methodology. Because most of what's taught is counter to how you would do it naturally...thus it stands out. Once you recognize it, the natural reaction is to feel like you're being manipulated with some technique.

I think part of it is that the observation needs to be genuinely objective rather than veiled evaluation.

For example, when I did tech support I would occasionally get chat messages from my supervisor along the lines of:

"Hey, I see that you closed out Ticket #XYZ without any resolution or response sent to the requester."

(waits for response)

(waits for response)

(waits for response)

...and it would make me furious, regardless of whatever the situation was.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#114

Post by ericmcer »

motohagiography wrote: post #7

This is a valuable post. I have not taken an NVC course before, but I have done a lot of work in negotiations, writing, and was brought up to use this style of communication. One thing I would be interested in either from the OP or someone with experience with NVC, is how you recognize when you are being patronizing. Much of this communication style is the artifact of an implied power relationship, where the speaker…

Great point. Growing up my mom must have read some book about how to comfort kids. She would always say “It sounds like you ...”. For example: “I hate my teacher.” Would receive a response of “It sounds like you are upset with your teacher.”

As soon as I was old enough to recognize the pattern it became an infuriatingly depersonal way to be talked to. Sometimes the lack of “umm, like, just, kind of, etc.” will reveal speech as inorganic and make the whole thing seem false. After awhile it’s hard to even relate to someone who speaks to you like that as a person.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#115

Post by tome »

everdrive wrote: post #104
tome wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can think of plenty of situations where I don't care if someone tramples my emotions, but I'd be pretty distraught if they adopted a flawed idea, or couldn't understand why one idea was superior and another was inferior. Could you share some examples?

Almost any situation where we're trying to design a functional solution to a technical problem. I actually used to have a phrase for this: "You can't build a rocket ship with emotions." If my goal were really to successfully build a rocket ship (as noted in the maxim) then I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. Every correction would get us closer to our goal. Alternately, if someone were interested in empathizing with…

That's an interesting maxim. Do you think NASA ran the Apollo program by ignoring the emotions of everyone on the project? If it didn't, should it have?

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#117

Post by Nemi »

weeksie wrote: post #14

It's funny because few things make me seethe like someone talking to me in this way during a high stress moment. The artifice is transparent and if the conversation is tense the tone is quite easy to read as condescension. I'm hardly dismissing NVC as a tactic, just that when done poorly it's worse than simply being direct.

I think the one underlying thing that differentiates whether a person sees this as "fake" and ineffective or profound and valuable is one underlying attitude: whether you believe that the other person does or does not genuinely want to help you and whether you genuinely want to help them.

I like to think of NVC a little differently than most people. It is not a tactic or a strategy, it is a reframing of the problem in your own mind. Instead of the thinking "how can I get this person to do what I want" you should instead be thinking "I need something and can this person help me?". One is manipulative, the other is collaborative.

What I have found is that the person you are enlisting for help may actually have a better idea than you on how to solve the problem than you do. But for this to work, you genuinely need to believe that the person on the other side of the table wants to be a good person. If you don't believe that then you tend to see this as a way to manipulate them and it comes across in your words and actions.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#118

Post by mercutio2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #98
weeksie wrote: post #14

It's funny because few things make me seethe like someone talking to me in this way during a high stress moment. The artifice is transparent and if the conversation is tense the tone is quite easy to read as condescension. I'm hardly dismissing NVC as a tactic, just that when done poorly it's worse than simply being direct.

> I'm hardly dismissing NVC as a tactic, But...you should be. The entire problem you relate is about NVC as an insincere, indirect tactic (most likely, to avoid an ultimatum in a situation where the speaker isn't seeking mutual understanding and accommodation but submissive compliance.) NVC as a tactic relied on an implicit lie about the relationship which forms the context of the communication. As a honest tool in a…

You know, I was about to write a retort that disagreed vehemently, but I re-read and I think you’ve changed my mind.

In the presence of a power imbalance, combined with a lack of mutual respect, I think you’re absolutely right that NVC style observations are worse than a direct command. If there’s no explanation that would lead me, the more powerful person, to change my mind about the behavior, then offering conversational space for it is disingenuous.

I personally try to avoid situations where my direct managers, or my direct reports, don’t feel mutual respect, so I don’t think a power-imbalance is enough in and of itself to invalidate observation-request style discussions.

As it happens, if there’s no power imbalance, but also no mutual respect, I still tend to prefer NVC style communication; but I’ll admit that’s just a personal choice, it’s just a tool in the toolbox, and I tend to reach for it first, because I like the outcomes better. If my counterparty obviously hates it, “let’s get real” is next in the list.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#119

Post by rsweeney21 »

The formative years of my career were spent as a software engineer at Microsoft where communication was direct and sometimes harsh. Code reviews could be particularly harsh with comments like "this code is bad because..." or "this is unreadable." At first it was really hard, but eventually my skin got pretty think. I even came to love the efficiency of direct communication in programming.

When I became a founder, the communication style I had developed as an engineer DID NOT work for communicating with other disciplines like sales, marketing or customer success. At first I thought it was the people I hired just being overly sensitive. After some time I realized that it wasn't them, it was me. I needed to unlearn many of my engineering communication habits and adopt a different style.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#120

Post by rejschaap »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #68
treis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These three examples: >To a co-founder: ‘When you said, “I’m not happy with your work,” to me in front of the team, I felt embarrassed because it didn’t meet my need for trust and recognition. Please, could we set up a weekly one-on-one session to share feedback in private?’ >To an investor: ‘I haven’t received any responses from the last three monthly updates. I’m feeling concerned because I need input. Please, woul…

> >To a teammate: ‘You arrived 10 minutes late to the last three team meetings. I am frustrated because, as a team, we have a need for efficiency. Please, could you help me understand what’s happening?’ > This one is super passive aggressive. Your intention is to communicate a problem but instead of just doing that this is asking a question. I think this example shows the problem most clearly. These should be stateme…

Depends on how you deliver the lines. I can easily imagine saying this with sincerity and without anger. It sticks to facts, it doesn't make any judgments about them or their intent, it invites them to share their side of the story.

It is also pretty direct and far from passive-aggressive behavior in my opinion.

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