Starting & Staying in Dialogue
If you have been following along with recent posts, you’ll know that I believe that there are three basic steps involved in mastering difficult dialogue – Be READY, Get SET, GO. I believe these steps are quite simple but they are not necessarily easy. In this post, we will look at step 3:
GO!
Once you have made it through Be READY, Get SET, you are ready to GO into a difficult dialogue. A key part of staying in dialogue is reducing feelings of vulnerability – for both parties. This means that you want to focus on building and maintaining a “WARM CLIMATE”. Begin by thinking about where you are when you start the dialogue. Are you in an open space where others can see the interaction (vulnerable – cold climate) or are you in a private place (not so vulnerable – warm climate). Is the place more your domain, their domain or neutral. This impacts their (and your) comfort. The more comfortable people are, the more open the conversation.
When you get going – using the great start that you thought through in advance – watch for signs that the climate is changing. If the other person begins to feel vulnerable, you will know by their reactions – particularly their non-verbal reactions. If the climate begins to grow cold, you need to bring back some warmth to stay in dialogue.
You may have experienced a difficult dialogue where you were actually glad that the “elephant in the room” was finally getting out in the open, only to find that the conversation shut down because of a climate change. What was it that caused the conversation to close down? Did one of the parties feel vulnerable? If so, was there an attempt to reduce the fear/anxiety? Did the other person even see that there was fear/anxiety? Was there respect for the relationship? How could things have been handled differently. ?
I’d love your feedback. For you bloggers out there, when you leave a comment, you will have the opportunity to provide a link back to your own blog but you don’t have to be a blogger to leave your comments! You can also find more information about me by clicking here to get to my website. I look forward to hearing from you.
Dave
