How to have hard conversations?

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

About 17.1 million people watched Oprah Winfrey's interview with Prince Harry and Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle on CBS, making it one of the most-watched events of the TV season (but still well behind the Super Bowl). 

Certain things were said, much left unsaid, other things insinuated and a lot has since gone viral.  

After all was said and done, I found myself wondering how long will that interview haunt them? Months, years, a lifetime? 

I am sure someone has said this truism before, but a lot of problems could be solved in this world if we talk to each other instead of talking about each other.

However, that said, from personal experience we know, hard conversations are not things we relish! In fact, statistically, the evidence is against their ever happening! A recent study of 750 global managers from the public and private sector said that they were unable or unwilling to have hard conversations to address poor staff performance. The 2 main reasons given were fear of having the conversation and  lack of understanding about how to go about it. 

How often we feel the same. The avoidance is rife. From the non-conversation with the flat mate who never cleans up, the boyfriend who never remembers, the colleague who doesn’t pull their weight, not to mention the things we worry about, eat away at us, steal our sleep. The myriad of things that need to be said but go unsaid because we are afraid we will lose more than we gain in the having of them.  

What a conversation is and is not

Conversation comes from the Latin con and versare “turning together”.  

Hard conversations don’t need to be negative. They can be game-changers.  The best conversations have the potential to build trust, comfort, air issues, inform our decisions, change how we think. Do we need to remind ourselves of the great power of conversations?

But having said that, we don’t know where a hard conversation will go. We cannot control what the other person will say and (to be honest) about what we will say in the moment! We like not only to be prepared but to control negative things. We don’t like being vulnerable.  Fear of the unknown, of getting hurt often lead us to avoid the zone of discomfort, excuses like;  “I can’t talk about it”, “I don’t know how to reach out”, “I can’t decide what to do”, “I don’t want to hurt her feelings” “I don’t know what to say” “I’m right she is wrong”  are the typical conversation stoppers. 

But how to get over, around and beyond them…

It’s not what we say it is the way we say it 

In theory, we know that we all see reality differently. But let’s face it in practice that can be hard to embrace.  Our thoughts create boundaries, but because we don’t see our thoughts we don’t see the boundaries we create. The simple acknowledgement that we don’t have the whole truth can be helpful. We only see and experience things from our side of the fence and there is an obvious deficit in that. This awareness can help us to let go of some of our story, for the simple reason that it is not the full story.  

Deep down we know we show love and trust in someone when we speak our deepest desires.  But how often we get emotional when we speak our own truth. It is important to detach from the drama. There is a difference between fact, feeling, belief, observation and judgement. We can cook up a lot of useless upset in ourselves because our “take” is based more on feeling, belief and judgement instead of the facts and observations.   It can be a useful exercise to take a look in the mirror and say your words out loud. How would you feel if someone said those to you?   What an art it is, to be honest without being hurtful!  Certainly knowing our own emotional triggers helps us to be ready to press pause when they come and neutralise our response. 

It has to be said that all of this is quite a tiring process. 

Sarah Rozenthuler in her book How to have Meaningful Conversations reminds us that it is important to stop sabotaging oneself and blaming oneself for things. What can help is to walk through one’s expectations (worst case scenario), Intentions (outcomes you are hoping for), Acceptance (things you cannot control so accept and don’t try to control). It helps one feel ready for whatever comes and at the same time talk about what’s important. 

Call up your courage  

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it” - Nelson Mandela.

To right a wrong, we need to be bold and not avoid tough subjects. How often we explain away a problem or a roadblock in a relationship out of fear.  

We all have our fears.  Is it rejection, or perhaps guilt or the simple fear of getting it wrong? Or the very convincing line - “Maybe it is just me who has the problem here”.  Fear won’t make the need to communicate goes away.   As Carl Jung once said,  “What we resist persists”.  Remembering when we were courageous before can help us to garnish the strength to face into a hard conversation.   

Weighing up the risks as against the benefits of speaking out can give us the courage to speak out.  We need to think about where we can meet the other person. Where can we “build a bridge” knowing not everything we can say is necessarily helpful.  It is always helpful to have someone to be a sounding board  - a family member or friend whose impartiality can be relied upon.  

I believe in you 

Ultimately we walk into hard conversations because we believe in someone enough to take the step. We need to let our hearts talk and this is what the other person will hear, “I really value this friendship”, “I care about you”, “I felt hurt when..” 

We have now stepped into a shared space with someone else and we need to negotiate this space, not colonise it with our words or perspectives as if they are dogma. 

It is not an all or nothing approach and this conversation is just a starting point for many good, meaningful conversations. 

This courage expresses more than we think and can heal so many wounds.