Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A guide to difficult conversations

medium.dave-bailey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 415 posts

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#281

Post by vfinn »

funfunfun wrote: post #254
vfinn wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True about the rarity of Krishnamurti. Not sure how Krishnamurti would feel about Rosenberg, though, since he seems to be offering template solutions. What comes to your asterisk issue, the help says: "Text surrounded by asterisks is italicized, if the character after the first asterisk isn't whitespace."

I think this summary offers template solutions. They are an approximation of the insights of the book. The book is more about relating a human experience to a conversation,

Ah, silly me. I forgot to mention that I was referring to his 3 hour Youtube workshop (link was in the summary), not the summary itself. Hard to imagine the book would be that different. Still, I appreciated the applied Krishnamurti :).

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#283

Post by dang »

nanny wrote: post #89
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…

It sounds like you're missing the point entirely. I think you have a lot to learn from this style of communication. >I'd say something like: ‘When you said, “I’m not happy with your work,” to me in front of the team, it undermines my authority and the way it's phrased is inappropriate. I want us to be able to give each other feedback, but it's important that it happens at the appropriate time and respectfully. Okay,…

Can you please not cross into personal swipes in HN comments? Your comment would be fine without those bits.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#284

Post by tashian »

darkpuma wrote: post #267
tashian wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. I agree that you can't pull it out of a hat or learn it from reading a blog post. But, I believe it is learnable. I've gone from being a person who had no words for my emotions because I literally could not feel them most of the time, to being able to really bring heart and mind together and really speak from that place. I didn't learn it from a self-help book though, I learned it through practice and a lot…

> So true. [...] But, [I disagree] Help me out here, is this the power of NVC?

Hmmm... I may have been better off with "and" instead of "but" here, because I was agreeing with the parent comment and adding my own encouragement. scruple took no clear stance in the original comment on whether empathy is learnable or not. I believe it is.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#285

Post by dang »

MadWombat wrote: post #99
kodz4 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes time. It's only after you have a few big unrecoverable screwups in life, will some of this stuff make more sense. You are better off being aware and not understanding its value, than not being aware at all of NVC. Once you hit an issue where you find yourself automatically avoiding things, attacking someone or defending yourself and producing all kinds of misery, just remind yourself that there is another to…

I am not sure whether you are using NVC well or not, but this comment makes you sound like a pompous ass. I suppose thats what you learn by picking up the book you mentioned.

Whoa. Please don't take HN threads further in the direction of personal attack or name-calling, regardless of how bad another comment was or you feel it was. That makes this place worse, both obviously and subtly: obviously because it increases ill will and steers toward flamewar; subtly because it deprives readers of information you might have been able to convey.

If you want to post something like this, the thing to do is not stop with the initial version of the comment but iterate further: take out the personal swipes and replace them with detailed, neutral information about what you noticed. Then we all can learn something. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but in that case it would be better not to post anything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#286

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#287

Post by Loughla »

soheil wrote: post #210

At the risk of getting a lot of heat for this, I find this type of thinking more of a plague that has cast its ugly web on tech as a whole. An analogy would be anti-something drugs to damp down people who are hyper, might have ADHD and have so much energy and short attention span. As a society if we try to normalize all things and people we're only left with the mediocrity almost by definition and boring middle of th…

It seems like your line of reasoning implies that threats are a necessary part of being an adult in the working world. And that's just not the case. That should never be the case.

This style of communication isn't angled at 'normalizing' anything. It's meant to give you a framework to identify what the real problem is, to communicate it clearly and efficiently, and to work with the other person to move past the problem. If you don't say exactly what you're trying to say, and someone later 'found out what you "really meant to tell them' - you 100% did it wrong.

It's not a way to get out of having a difficult conversation. It's a framework to help you remove your personal beliefs, remove values judgments, and instead rely on the facts of the situation.

Your whole post comes across as you believe, genuinely believe, that being awful to other people via threats is a natural human state of being.

It isn't.

If my boss ever told me "don't do 'x' or else", it would be the last day I ever worked for that a-hole.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#288

Post by johnchristopher »

elhudy wrote: post #239
jacobolus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is speculatively projecting a lot of thoughts and feelings on the brother-in-law, which is quite patronizing. It also awkwardly uses overcomplicated words and overcomplicated passive grammar. Try reading the linked blog post again, and hold up your proposed question against each of Dave Bailey’s suggestions.

>This is speculatively projecting a lot of thoughts and feelings on the brother-in-law, which is quite patronizing. Isn't that what negotiation is about, when dealing with someone who won't effectively communicate their thoughts? Speculating the wants/needs of that person and addressing them directly? This isn't something I'm making up, I've just read it in "Never Split the Difference". The book was written to addres…

> "We understand that we need you to be the man of the family, and appreciate that you have stepped up to be strong for all of us. We would like to support you in doing so and feel that our greatest assistance would be in helping to facilitate communications for you. Is this something you're able to allow?"

That's corpo-marketing style. The angle is to coerce the other in a corner and he'll see it coming from a thousand mile and react badly to it.

> "We understand that we need you to be the man of the family,

That's exactly the problem and what OP don't want/need. They want to communicate with the medical and legal staff. They don't need him to be the man of the family, they need him to approach this as a family. They need him to let them be family and they need him to be family.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#289

Post by balabaster »

leesalminen wrote: post #126

I’m generally a good conversation participant, but this week has made me second guess myself. My father-in-law is currently hospitalized after his heart stopped this weekend. He’s currently in an induced coma. Brain damage is a foregone conclusion at this point and they’re unsure if he will ever regain consciousness. My wife and I happened to be on vacation in Costa Rica when this happened. We hopped on the next avai…

Firstly, in my experience with the medical system, which is sadly a great deal more than I hoped for my life, it's hard having multiple people communicating with medical experts. Information gets lost, doesn't get recorded, gets misinterpreted, misfiled, forgotten. Having multiple people asking questions at different times means someone never has the full picture of what's going on or is getting relayed or potentially misinterpreted information. It is absolutely better if one person is always present for conversations with doctors and nurses, even if his sister or you are also present. This way someone is guaranteed to have all the information and nothing gets lost or forgotten. You can all make decisions together, but only if you all understand all of the information at hand.

In my experience with grieving people, which is also extensive, don't try and take over, often people try to manage their grief by managing the situation. Taking that away from him takes away his coping mechanism. I don't know your family and I can't speak for your situation, but if it were me, I wouldn't try and inject myself. I would keep this absolutely as simple as possible:

"Hey, we're here for you. Thank you for stepping up and managing all this, I know it's almost impossible to keep track of what's going on with doctors coming and going constantly. What can we do to help?"

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#290

Post by johnchristopher »

leesalminen wrote: post #195
PakG1 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the situation, I would not be so hard on yourself. It seems like there's a lot of history and emotional trauma that would need to be resolved before any progress would be feasible. If this is indeed the situation, getting your wife involved in the process could make it worse, not better. Imagine all the fights they'd have with so much on the line, when they'd have so many fights before when there wasn't mu…

You’re right. I will call today without any agenda or goals. I really do want to be there for him. Nobody should have to take this on alone.

> The family (not my wife) asked me to talk to my brother-in-law about this because nobody else could get through to him.

I am a stranger on the net but your first priority is your wife and your relationship with her. Be very cautious with demands from the family even if well meaning. Protect yourself and your relationship with your wife.

Post reply on HN