Building Your Fitness with Yes-Buts

In our last few posts, we've talked a lot about Yes-Buts — the problems they can cause in conversations, when and why people use them, all the different forms they can take, and even how not to deal with them effectively. Now it's time to start looking at strategies that can actually work well. 

Yes-Buts are so common, at least in American culture, that they affect all of us in one way or another. You may not use this type of communication very often, but the odds are you do it at least some of the time. (If you’re convinced that you don’t, try checking that out with a few people who know you well. You may be surprised!) Plus, even if you never Yes-Butted anyone yourself, you’d still have to face plenty of other people doing it to you, which can be extremely challenging.

To avoid getting caught up in polite fights, you need to know both how to change your own Yes-Buts and how to respond effectively when someone Yes-Buts you. We’ll teach you how to do that, and also how you can effectively intervene in other people’s conversations — for instance, what you can do when you’re leading a meeting and the discussion starts turning into a Yes-But debate. For each skill, we’ll follow a basic three-step program for behavior change: first building awareness, then learning new actions to take, and finally using repeated practice to turn those actions into a habit.

Transformation Skill: Controlling Your Own Yes-Butting
If you’re someone who tends to Yes-But a lot, learning how to do it less can make a huge difference in your communication. We’ve seen many people successfully kick the habit using the process that you’re about to learn.

Step 1: Self-awareness
The first step is to build your awareness of what it is that you’re doing. This takes practice. Remember that you can Yes-But without ever saying Yes or But. You may have a more subtle Yes-Butting style. (Be sure to read about “stealth-butting” in our earlier post.) See if you can notice what happens to you when someone gives an opinion or suggestion that you disagree with. Do you start to feel tense or agitated? Do you have trouble fully listening to the other person because your mind is so busy coming up with counter-arguments?

When you’re just starting out, you might not realize that you Yes-Butted someone until a few hours or days after the conversation is over. Over time, you’ll find yourself noticing your Yes-But thinking in the middle of a conversation. Eventually, if all goes well, you’ll be able to prevent a Yes-But argument before the first But comes out of your mouth.

As you develop this awareness, it can be helpful to keep track of the situations where you tend to get triggered. When do you Yes-But the most? Is it when your daughter asks to stay out past her curfew? When you’re talking with your friends about politics? Or when a colleague presents a new proposal that you think is too ambitious? Once you know that, you can make an effort to be particularly attentive in those situations. You might even ask a few people you trust to speak up when they catch you Yes-Butting (so long as they can do it graciously, without being too critical — maybe giving you a subtle nonverbal cue like touching the tip of their nose or some other hand signal). One man we remember had that happen accidentally. After going through a communications training he decided to teach his two sons about Yes-Buts, thinking that this might help them to stop arguing so much with each other. What he didn’t expect was that they’d start noticing how often he Yes-Butted them, which he soon learned was many times per day!

Step 2: Action — Join and Explore
Suppose you notice that you’re about to Yes-But and you manage to catch yourself in time. Now what do you do? Let’s take an example. Your spouse suggests taking a two-week vacation, and you stop yourself from automatically saying, “That would be nice, but my work schedule won’t allow it.” What do you say instead? You could just change the subject or try a noncommittal Uh-huh, but then the important information you have would never get into the conversation. Every Yes-But contains two important messages: 1) an agreement (you think a two-week vacation sounds great) and 2) a new, different or competing idea (you can’t imagine taking that much time off from work). The challenge is finding a way to communicate these ideas that makes it easier for the other person to hear them. The most effective method we’ve found is a strategy we call Join and Explore.

Join
Think of the Join as the Yes part of your Yes-But with more meat on the bones. Instead of saying a superficial, token “Yes” or “Sure” or “That would be nice,” you mention three specific things that you genuinely like or agree with in what you just heard. In our vacation example, you might say, “I’d love to spend two weeks away with you. One week often doesn’t feel like enough time to fully relax. And that way we’d be able to go someplace farther away, without worrying so much about the long flight or jet lag.” 

Once you’ve sincerely joined with someone’s idea, the person is much more likely to be receptive to what you say next. In general, people are more relaxed and open with others who seem to be similar to them or on their side; anyone who comes across as being too different or too antagonistic will tend to provoke a defensive reaction. This is why we recommend joining three times, rather than one or two — it often takes three for people to feel that you honestly hear them, understand them, and can relate to what they’re saying. Just remember that your joins need to be genuine. When people try to fake this strategy, they usually come across as insincere.

Explore
So far, so good. You’ve fleshed out your Yes with three sincere, specific joins. Now comes the tricky part: expressing your concern — in this case, your worry about taking so much time off from work — without phrasing it as a “But.” In our experience, the best way to do that is to incorporate your concern into an open-ended question. In this case, you might ask, “Do you have any ideas about how I could fit a two-week trip around my work schedule?” 

Consider what a difference this simple change can make in your communication. In a Yes-But conversation, there are two fixed sides. All your energy goes into arguing over which side is right: yes vs. no, two-week vacation vs. no two-week vacation. By asking an open question, you redirect that energy into constructive problem-solving. Instead of deciding “We can’t do that,” you start exploring, “How can we?” This helps both you and the other person to stay curious about new possibilities that you haven’t considered before. For example, you and your spouse might end up brainstorming some creative solution to your vacation dilemma. Maybe you’ll think of a way to combine leisure travel with a work-related trip; do some work remotely while you’re away; reassign one of your time-consuming projects; or fit in a few hours of overtime each week in the months before you leave. Not only will you avoid a fight, but you’ll also increase the chances of getting what you both want — a nice long vacation that doesn’t conflict with your work responsibilities.

Joining and Exploring on a Charged Political Issue
While many Yes-But arguments deal with practical decisions (planning a vacation, meeting, or party, hiring a new employee, or making budget cuts), some of the most heated debates involve larger legal or political issues. Topics such as abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and defense policy challenge people’s core beliefs and values. When you hear an opposing viewpoint on one of those issues, the temptation to argue can be almost irresistible. At a minimum these sorts of conflicts can be very frustrating. In worse cases they can seriously damage relationships, leaving colleagues, friends, or family members feeling alienated from one another.

The Join and Explore strategy gives us a more productive alternative. We’ll demonstrate this by applying it to a controversial issue that often gets discussed in polarized, black-and-white terms: the tension between national security and human rights. In the following dialogue, Ruth is in favor of prioritizing national security, and Charles is in favor of prioritizing human rights.

Ruth: National security concerns should take priority over individual human rights. (Opinion)

Charles: Yes, national security concerns are important, but that doesn’t make it okay to abandon our basic fundamental protections for individual human life and dignity. (Yes-But)

Ruth: Sure, those are great ideals. However, when we’re face-to-face with terrorist threats, that kind of idealism can put thousands or even millions of lives at risk. (Yes-But)

Charles: It’s easy to say that, but then you could use that argument to justify terrible human rights abuses! (Yes-But)


(And from here, the argument could continue on indefinitely.)

Now let’s back up to the start of the conversation and see how it could go a little differently. Imagine that as Ruth makes her first comment, Charles notices his reaction and realizes he is about to Yes-But. At that point he might be able to shift his focus from what he doesn’t like about Ruth’s opinion to what he can genuinely agree with (his joins):

Ruth: National security concerns should take precedence over individual human rights. (Opinion)

Charles: I agree that national security needs to be one of the country’s top priorities. (Join #1)
Attacks by terrorists can claim hundreds or thousands of lives. (Join #2)
Clearly, whatever security or intelligence measures were in place before the September 11th attacks weren’t sufficient to prevent those tragedies. (Join #3)

Charles’s next step would be to ask an open-ended question that addresses his concern, while still leaving room for Ruth to give her opinion freely. This is tricky. It would probably be much simpler for him to think of Leading questions that back Ruth into a corner, like: Don’t you think that sometimes the focus on security goes too far? Don’t we also have a responsibility to take human rights into account? Here are a few examples of genuine open questions Charles could ask:

Are there any cases where you think human rights need to come first? Or any particular human rights that you think should never be violated?

What are the limits? How would we know if we’d gone too far in infringing on individual rights?

Can you think of any ways in which protecting human rights might be compatible with promoting national security?

What steps can we take to promote national security that don’t infringe on individual rights — or that actually enhance those rights?

There’s no way to predict how will Ruth answer this type of question. Nothing Charles can do will guarantee a constructive response. But because he started out by joining with Ruth’s opinion, she’s more likely to be receptive and give his question some serious thought.

We wouldn’t expect that Ruth and Charles would end up in perfect agreement with each other. However, so long as neither person has radically extreme views — for instance, believing that anyone who disagrees with our government’s policies should be put in jail, or that there should be no security at airports because it violates the right to privacy — there will be some areas of common ground. Exploring those together will give them a good shot at developing a certain level of mutual understanding and respect. They may even discover that they can learn something from each other.

Step 3: Practice
Over the next few weeks, in between our regular posts, we’ll teach you a variety of different exercises you can try on your own to build your Yes-But fitness.

As for our regular posts, our next topic will be response skills — what to do when you get Yes-Butted by somebody else. Stay tuned!

A Non-SAVI Response to Yes-Buts

One of our readers just brought to our attention a great example of a non-SAVI response to Yes-Butting. (Thanks, Candace!)

Source:
"The Worst Words to Say at Work: 9 common words and phrases that will make you sound noncommittal, undependable, and untrustworthy"
by Linnda Durre, Forbes.com

7. "Yes, but . . ."
This is another excuse. You might give your team members suggestions or solutions, and they come back to you with "Yes, but . . ." as a response. They don't really want answers, help, or solutions. You need to call the "Yes, but . . ." people out on their avoidance tactic by saying something like "You know, Jackie, every time I offer you a suggestion you say, 'Yes, but . . . ,' which makes me think you don't really want to solve this problem. That's not going to work. If you want to play the victim, go right ahead, but I'm not going to allow you to keep this up." After a response like that, you can be assured that the next words you hear will not be "Yes, but . . ."!
________________


A few things to notice about this approach:

1. The emphasis is all on the people, not on the way they are communicating. Instead of addressing Yes-Buts, the author focuses on "'Yes-But' people." She shifts our attention from external behavior, which we can all objectively observe (the person is using Yes-Buts) to internal motivation (e.g., the person is trying to avoid the problem by making excuses), which we can only guess at. If we accept the claim "They don't really want answers, help, or solutions," we're presuming to know what's going on inside the head of anyone who says "Yes-But" — quite a bold claim! (Many of you will recognize this as a "mind-read," an assumption about other people's thoughts and feelings stated as if it were a fact.)

2. Since the Yes-But people are (presumably) the problem, the solution seems to be to shut them down, to teach them a lesson so they'll stop doing what they're doing. There's no sense of any larger context (e.g., what factors may be contributing to a lot of Yes-Butting) or larger goals (e.g., to help these people communicate in a more constructive way) — much less of any useful information the Yes-Butters might have. (Consider: "Yes, we want to meet the deadline, but the product hasn't passed the safety inspection yet." or "Yes, this is an exciting idea, but it violates our contract.")    

3. Let's look at the details of the proposed strategy. What type of behavior would the author use to respond to a Yes-But?

a. "You know, Jackie, every time I offer you a suggestion you say, 'Yes, but . . . ,'
--This statement has elements of fact in it (the person has Yes-Butted more than once), but the generalized "you do this *every* time" makes it more of an attack. And while it's possible you could say it in a non-hostile tone, it would be hard to do it with no edge at all. Therefore, we're pretty confident calling this an attack.

b. "...which makes me think you don't really want to solve this problem."
--Here's another mind-read. Because it's an accusatory one, we'd call this an attack as well.

c. "That's not going to work."
--In another context, this could be a discount (criticizing another person's ideas or intentions, rather than criticizing them personally), but here it comes across as blameful, if not threatening. (The implication being, your attempts to avoid solving this problem won't work.) Thus, another attack.

d. "If you want to play the victim, go right ahead, but I'm not going to allow you to keep this up."
--Hmm, what could this be? Ironically, it takes the form of a Yes-But, the very behavior the author is railing against, but again the hostility pushes it into attack -- with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure.

So there we have it -- one clear strategy for responding to a Yes-But: Attack the person who's Yes-Butting. The author is right that the next words you hear probably won't be "Yes, but." Attacks turn a conflict away from the subject matter being discussed, making it more personal. If the original Yes-Butter gives any response at all, it is likely to be self-defense or a counter-attack.

Happily, there are other, more promising options for dealing with Yes-Buts. We'll turn to them in our next posting.

Two Brief Notes on Butting

1. Stealth-Butting
Some of the worst Yes-But offenders are people who are convinced they never use them at all. Somewhere along the line they learned that “Yes, but” was a bad thing to say, so they eliminated the phrase from their vocabulary. However, their Yes-Buts never truly went away. They just went underground, to reemerge as what we call stealth-Buts. Stealth-Buts don’t contain the word but or even, in most cases, the word yes. The people using them generally have no idea that they’re secretly Yes-Butting. In fact, they often believe they’re communicating in a highly constructive and supportive way. But no matter how sophisticated the phrasing, this type of communication has the same problematic effects as a traditional Yes-But. Here are just a few examples:

Yes variations
I understand where you’re coming from…
I see your point…
That may be true…
I know that seems like the obvious solution…
You could say that…
While that’s one way to look at things…
You’re absolutely right…
Sure…

But variations
…however…
…nevertheless…
…on the other hand…
…still…
…only then…
…have you considered…
…it’s just that…
…and yet…

Even Yes-And can be a Yes-But in disguise — for instance, “Yes, I like your approach, and what we need now is something completely different.” If you’re arguing against what someone just said, simply changing but to and isn’t going to fool anybody.

2. The “But” Reflex
Nobody is a perfect communicator. We’ve all developed at least a few bad habits in the way we express ourselves. Often those habits are so automatic that we don’t even notice them. This became very clear in one team of top executives that we trained. We came in to observe one of their strategic meetings, and quickly noticed that whenever a particular person (call him Jim) spoke, he seemed to get resistance from others in the group.

We decided to start tracking Jim’s behavior. It turned out that he was one of the most vocal participants in the meeting, and every single time he made a comment, he started with the word “But.” This was true even when he was asking an otherwise open and neutral question (“[But] where do you think we can get this information?”) or building on what someone else had said (“[But] let’s see if we can get other departments on board with the idea.”). When we talked to Jim later, he said he had no idea he was doing that. It was only by gaining this awareness — making his unconscious habit conscious — that he could start to do something different.

The Polite Fight, Part 1

We’re excited to begin a new series of posts focused on one of the most common problematic communication patterns: the Polite Fight. Again, we’re drawing from the content of our book-in-progress. We hope you’ll enjoy it! And as always, we welcome your feedback, both positive and negative, to help us make this blog — and the book — the best they can be.
____________

“Rob and Amanda Parker* were very loving people,” psychologist Mark Johnson told us. “They weren’t at each other’s throats like many of the couples that I see. And yet they just couldn’t find a constructive way to discuss the problems that were tearing them apart.”

The past few years had been extremely stressful for the Parkers. Rob and Amanda had two healthy daughters (aged 5 and 7) but had always wanted a larger family, and their attempts to have a third child had ended in disappointment. Over the course of three years trying to conceive — including many aggressive and invasive fertility treatments — they had exhausted all possible options. Now, in addition to their grief, they were also struggling with the loss of romance in their marriage. Years of scheduling their sex life around temperature charts and surgical procedures had robbed them of any sense of spontaneity.

Ten months after their doctors had called an end to the fertility treatments, Rob and Amanda’s relationship was growing more and more strained. This was easy to see when Dr. Johnson had them recreate one of their typical tough conversations. They’d been having this same “polite fight” on a regular basis:

Rob: We used to make time to be together.
Amanda: But that was before we had kids and jobs and bills to pay.
Rob: Of course, I know that. I’m not expecting us to be acting like we’re dating.
Amanda: You say that, but you act like that’s how I’m supposed to feel.
Rob: Don’t you ever feel like you felt when we first got together?
Amanda: Of course, but you expect me to be ready for romance all the time, and that’s just not realistic.
Rob: I’m not trying to pressure you. It’s just that I’m feeling this distance between us that I don’t know how to handle.
Amanda: I feel distance too, but I don’t think you understand how I’m feeling about not having a third child.
Rob: Don’t you realize I’m upset by this too? We’ve been in this together all along.
Amanda: I know, but I don’t think you know how this affects me. You expect me just to be over it.
Rob: I don’t expect you to be over it, but that was almost a year ago.
Amanda: I know it was almost a year ago, but we don’t even talk about it anymore. You act like it’s all in the past, and I think about it every day…


Listening to this conversation, Dr. Johnson recognized a familiar set of issues that arise for many couples. He refers to conflicts over romance and intimacy — often connected with the process of building a family — as the “common cold” of his counseling practice. But he also understood that issues alone don’t cause conversations to fail. He knew enough to look beyond the issues and the personalities to see the specific communication behaviors that Rob and Amanda were using. From this perspective, it quickly became obvious why they were having so much trouble. They had fallen victim to one of the most common conversation killers: the Yes-But.

Communication Challenge #1: Yes-But — The Great Divider
Although Rob and Amanda were saying different things, they were saying them in the same, unconstructive way. Almost every statement either of them made was a Yes-But — a superficial, token agreement (“I know…” or “I don’t expect you to be over it” )followed immediately by a different idea (“but I don’t think you know how this affects me,” “but that was almost a year ago”). We’ve all experienced the frustrating effects of Yes-Buts — whether they come from a child (“But Mom said I could go!”), a friend (“The movies could be fun, but I’d rather see a play”), or a supervisor (“That’s a great idea, but it’s not in our budget”). People don’t necessarily notice when they’re being Yes-Butted; they often just get annoyed without knowing exactly why. When we look at what Yes-Buts do to a conversation, it’s no wonder they set us on edge and get arguments going.

The Problems with Yes-Buts:
1. Yes-Buts send a mixed message. Often people Yes-But with the best of intentions, hoping to be diplomatic or make unpleasant news easier to hear. Disagreeing with someone directly (saying “I see things differently” or “I’m not willing to do that”) may seem too harsh or too negative. It might sound more polite to say, “I can see how you’d feel that way, but…” The problem is that when they do this, they’re giving two conflicting messages at the same time. They’re saying both Yes and No, “It’s good” and “It’s bad,” or “I’m with you” and “I’m against you.” This doesn’t make their message nicer or more pleasant. It just makes it more complicated and harder for the other person’s brain to process. Whenever someone gives us a mixed message, it’s almost impossible to hear both sides equally. As a result, we end up focusing on one side or the other — which leads us to Problem #2.

2. People hear only the “But.” If only half of a Yes-But message gets through, which half do you think it will be? When Amanda Yes-Buts Rob, will he be struck by what they have in common (“I feel distance too…”) or what seems to divide them (“…but I don’t think you understand how I’m feeling about not having a third child”)? In almost every case, what grabs people’s attention is the disagreement: whatever comes after the But. It’s human nature to notice differences rather than similarities. As a result, the Yes part of the message — the part that shows some agreement, understanding, or common ground — simply gets lost.

3. Any difference can become a conflict. Yes-Buts don’t just heighten existing disagreements; they can actually create new ones. Consider what happened with Rob and Amanda. They were talking about two separate issues: 1) wanting more closeness and 2) grief over not being able to have another child. There’s no essential conflict there. You can want closeness and still feel grief, or at least acknowledge that both of these experiences are valid and important. However, as the couple kept Yes-Butting, it started to seem as though one of them had to be right while the other one was wrong. Since neither person wanted to be wrong (who does?), they naturally kept arguing and the conflict kept escalating.

Yes-Butting is one of the most reliable ways to get an argument going, whether you’re speaking with just one other person or with a group. If the people you’re talking to are in the least bit competitive, they’re likely to respond with Yes-Buts of their own. Before you know it, you can find yourself caught up in an endless ping-pong match of competing ideas. Yes-But communication is one of the leading causes of unproductive business meetings. Instead of working collaboratively to make decisions or solve problems, people spend their time arguing:

“We need to invest in better technology.”
“Yes, but we don’t have the money for that.”
“Of course there will be short-term costs, but over the long run we’ll save money by being more efficient.”
“That may be true, but we can’t justify another expenditure right now.”
“I know, but if we wait for the perfect situation we’ll never move forward on this.”
…and so on and so on.

As the conversation continues, the two sides typically become more and more rigid and polarized, to the point where it seems like they have nothing in common.

While these sorts of “polite fights” are relatively civil compared to more heated arguments filled with insults, labeling, and accusations, they are equally ineffective for resolving conflicts. Furthermore, a polite fight can easily escalate into something more serious. Getting stuck in a back-and-forth debate that never gets resolved is extremely frustrating. If it goes on for long enough, at some point people will probably start venting that frustration at one another, raising their voices and blaming each other for the problems they’re facing.

In the next post, we’ll start teaching you strategies to deal more effectively with Yes-Buts in your own conversations. Stay tuned!

*Names and identifying details have been changed to protect anonymity.

Can This Conversation Be Saved? Part 3 (Conclusion)

This is the final piece in our series “Can This Conversation Be Saved?” If you missed the previous entries, view them here: Part 1, Part 2

How Bad Conversations Turn Good
We saw in the last post that our difficult hospital conversation included several specific types of challenging communication behaviors — from mind-reading to leading questions to yes-butting. Using the SAVI system, we can come up with strategies to combat the negative effects of each one of these. If Sarah or Dr. M had possessed those skills, their conversation probably would have gone in a much better direction. Here’s one possibility:

Sarah: It’s so upsetting to see my father in this condition. I know this is not how he wanted to spend the last days of his life.
Dr. M (with feeling): I’m really sorry. I hear how difficult this is for you.
Sarah: It is so hard. I’m starting to think it’s finally time to take him off the respirator.
Dr. M: Many people consider that option when several different treatments have failed, and they start to lose hope. Are you feeling that way?
Sarah: Yes, I am. I’m feeling totally hopeless and also feeling guilty — I don’t want to prolong his life just to save me from the grief of losing him.
Dr. M: I can see how hard it is to face all these decisions, not really knowing what’s going to be best for your father.
Sarah: I just don’t know what to do.
Dr. M: We do have a support group here to help family members deal with these types of issues. It sometimes helps people to know they’re not going through it alone. Is that something that would interest you?
Sarah: I’m not really comfortable in groups, but I could use someone to talk to.
Dr. M: Would you like me to set up an individual counseling session?
Sarah: I’d really appreciate that. Thank you.
Dr. M: Great. I’ll set up an appointment for you. And as you prepare to make a decision, I want to be sure you have accurate information about your father’s new medication and the types of effects it can have. Is now a good time to discuss that?
Sarah: Sure.
Dr. M: Okay, let me tell you what the studies show…

Can you tell what changed here? You may have noticed that Dr. M’s side of the conversation sounded quite different. Be careful how you think about that difference. Many communication frameworks focus on abstract principles: Consider multiple perspectives. Own your story. Be respectful. And so on. There’s no need to talk about principles here. If Dr. M comes across as more respectful or considerate, it’s because he changed his behavior — what he actually did. This is a key point to remember: Principles do not change conversations. Actions change conversations.

Dr. M did very specific things that helped Sarah feel heard and understood. For instance, instead of arguing with Yes-buts and leading questions, he mirrored her emotions (“I hear how difficult this is for you”) and asked questions (“Would you like me to set up an individual counseling session?”). Starting out in this way also left Sarah more receptive to hearing his ideas about the new medication.

Now, Dr. M is not the only one with the power to transform this conversation. Suppose Sarah had the skills to change her own behavior. The dialogue might have sounded something like this:

Sarah: It’s so upsetting to see my father in this condition. I know this is not how he wanted to spend the last days of his life.
Dr. M: I’m very sorry.
Sarah: I think it’s finally time to take him off the respirator.
Dr. M: I can see how you’d feel that way now, but this new medication may start to improve his quality of life.
Sarah: So you’re saying you think this new medication may make a difference for him. How big a difference?
Dr. M: If he responds well to the drug, it could extend his life for several months. It could also allow him to return home, as long as he had 24-hour care available.
Sarah: Oh God, that would make a huge difference to Dad — he hates hospitals. He always said he’d rather die at home. How long will it be before you know if it’s working?
Dr. M: Most people respond within a few days, but it could take up to two weeks to know for sure. I’ll check in with you every day to let you know what’s happening.
Sarah: Thank you! This is the first sign of hope we’ve had in a long time.

Again, what made the difference here was not principles, but actions. After a person has been Yes-butted — in this case, hearing Dr. M say, “I can see how you’d feel that way now, but…” — the most natural response is to argue back. It takes skill to resist doing that and try something else instead. What Sarah did was to paraphrase Dr. M (“You think this new medication may make a difference for him”) and ask a question (“How big a difference?”). By using this approach, she not only avoided an argument, but also gained important information that helped ease her distress and give her new hope.

Part of our aim in our work is to give new hope to the people we train (including readers of our blog). Once you understand the factors that cause your conversations to succeed or fail, it is possible to dramatically improve them — even in cases where the people and issues you’re facing seem overwhelmingly difficult. We’ve seen it happen hundreds of times, in families, couples, and all sorts of organizations. Even after a discussion begins to go downhill (for instance, with Dr. M’s Yes-but), there’s almost always a way to turn things around. In fact, some of the most successful and transformative conversations start out with personal attacks, defensiveness, whining complaints, or sarcastic jabs. The key is that at some point, someone needs to take the initiative to start doing something different. That someone can always be you. At any point in a conversation, from any position in the conversation, you have the power to intervene and change the course of events. You just have to know how.

The Key to Change: Conversational Fitness
One point we keep emphasizing is that the way you understand what’s going wrong will determine the steps you can take to bring about change. If you blame your communication problems on irreconcilable differences, you may want to just go into hiding — or at least into denial. If you blame them on someone else’s emotions and personality, you may want them to go into therapy. But as soon as you shift your focus to behavior, it’s clear that you have a much more effective option: go into training.

Now, when we talk about training, we don’t mean the type of training where you sit passively in a seminar while a lecturer explains all the general rules and principles that good communicators ought to follow. The type of training we’re talking about is more like an athletic workout or sports practice than an academic class. Imagine trying to become skilled at basketball just by being told what to do and watching experienced players do it. You obviously wouldn’t get very far. To master the game, you need to get out on the court, get the ball in your hands, and try doing those things for yourself. In communication, too, what matters most is your level of hands-on skill: your conversational fitness. You need to be able to respond effectively right at the moment when something sets you off — when your boss yells at you, your colleague shoots down your great new idea, or your spouse starts rehashing the same old complaints you’ve heard hundreds of times before. This is no easy task. We all have at least one or two fixed habits that we’ve developed over the years, whether it’s a tendency to defend ourselves (“I couldn’t help it”), to catastrophize (“This will be a disaster!”), to use sarcasm (“Yeah, right, like that’s going to help”), or to Yes-But everyone else’s suggestions (“That’s nice, but we can’t afford it”). Changing those habits takes active, focused practice.

What type of practice works best? Thanks to recent research in neuropsychology, we can now answer that question with greater precision than ever before. Due to the way the human brain functions, it takes particular types of activities and experiences to change the way we communicate. (See our earlier post for a little more detail.) The book we’re now in the process of writing (from which these last three posts are drawn) will put those ideas into practice with an intensive training program for mastering all the most difficult conversations. As we go along, we’ll continue to adapt this new material into blog form. We hope you’ll enjoy it — we’re excited to share all these ideas with you!

Can This Conversation Be Saved? Part 2

In our last post, we started looking at the personal and professional costs of communication breakdowns, as well as the difficulty of avoiding them. We can’t solve a problem until we know what’s causing it, and the causes of these breakdowns are often hard to spot. Sometimes people think they know exactly why a conversation failed, but the explanations they come up with are usually way off-target. We looked at one common, unhelpful type of explanation — blaming the people — and showed how it would apply to a real-life dialogue (repeated below to refresh your memory). Here we’re going to explore a similar sort of explanation: blaming the topics. We’ll then reveal the true reason behind communication breakdowns, and show how it gives a much more satisfying account of why conversations fail and what we can do to turn them around.
__________

The hospital dialogue (repeated from our last post)
This is taken from an actual conversation that took place between the daughter of a patient (call her Sarah) and the patient’s physician (Dr. M) at a major Boston hospital.

Sarah began by saying, “It’s so upsetting to see my father in this condition. I know this is not how he wanted to spend the last days of his life.”
“I’m very sorry,” replied Dr. M, emotionless.
“I think it’s finally time to take him off the respirator.”
“I can see how you’d feel that way now,” said Dr. M, “but this new medication may start to improve his quality of life.”
“At this point, that’s just not enough. He’s never going to get to the point where life is worth living again.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait and be sure?”
“We’ve waited so long already,” said Sarah, whining now, “and nothing has helped!”
Still very calm, Dr. M said, “The morphine has helped to make him more comfortable, and his breathing seems a little easier today.”
“Look,” said Sarah, exasperated, “I just can’t talk to you about this anymore!”
__________________

Explanation #2. Blaming the Topics
If you don’t blame a communication breakdown on the people, you might be tempted to blame it on the topics being discussed. Perhaps some things are so hard to talk about that a certain amount of frustration — or even bitter fighting — is simply inevitable. From this perspective, nobody’s to blame because no better result was possible. The conversation was doomed from the outset.

What might be wrong with a topic? Possibilities include:

• It’s inherently contentious and divisive
  Liberals and conservatives have irreconcilable differences on this issue. Marketing and manufacturing will never see eye to eye on budgeting priorities. The management and union workers have such conflicting interests that they could never come to agreement.
  
• It’s highly charged emotionally
  Nothing would have made that bad news easier to hear. You can’t expect to give tough critical feedback to people and still have a friendly relationship with them. The decisions they’re making could put both of their jobs at risk — of course things got a little heated.
  
• It’s too complicated or boring
  With any issue this complex, there are bound to be misunderstandings. Nobody could lead an engaging discussion on tax policies. Staff meetings are always going to be dull.

Sarah’s conversation with Dr. M, evaluating whether or not her father’s life is worth living, certainly seems to fall into the “highly charged” category. Even when it involves a stranger, the question of taking a person off life support can stir up a lot of controversy and moral outrage. It’s easy to see how this contentious topic could be a big part of the problem.

Unfortunately, that explanation gets us no closer to finding a solution than the people-blaming approach. When you identify the subject matter as the source of your trouble, you’re basically admitting defeat. There may be some difficult conversations you can simply avoid — for instance, not mentioning the subject of religion when you’re around a particular colleague, or avoiding political debates with your parents. But most of the time avoidance is not an option. Whenever you have a real problem you need to resolve — your employee is making costly mistakes, your department is facing tough layoff decisions, your spouse is threatening to leave you, one of your kids has started doing drugs, or your dying father is suffering in the hospital — sidestepping the issue won’t make it go away.

The Real Reason Why Communications FailFocusing on difficult people or difficult issues doesn’t just leave us without solutions. It also distracts us from the true cause of our problems — not who’s talking or what they’re talking about, but how they’re talking to one another. We can understand why any conversation succeeds or fails just by looking at the particular combinations of words and voice tones that people are using: their communication behaviors.

No matter whom you’re talking to or what you’re talking about, the specific behaviors you use will have a strong impact on the way your ideas get received? Say you’d like to plan a vacation with your spouse or friend, but you’re not sure whether she will agree to go. There are many different communication behaviors you could use to express those thoughts:

“It’s been such a drag working so hard with no time away. We never have any fun.” (Complaint)
“I know you think we can’t afford to take a trip right now…” (Mind-read)
“…but there are some great deals available.” (Yes-But)
“Don’t you think we could both use a vacation?” (Leading question)
“I think it would be good for us to get away.” (Opinion)
“I’d really like to take a vacation this summer.” (Personal information)
“Can you think of any ways we could save up some money for a trip?” (Broad question)

It makes a big difference which of those statements or questions you use. While some may help get you to Aruba for a week, others are more likely to get you into an argument.

You can think of communication behaviors as the packages that carry our ideas out into the world. Often we’re so focused on the content of what we’re saying that we’re completely unaware of the package we’re sending it in. We fail to notice that our brilliant idea is wrapped up in the conversational equivalent of a stink bomb or a sign that says “kick me” — making it highly unlikely that our message is going to come across in the way we intended. Our failure to understand this sort of effect can also cause trouble on the receiving end; we may be so distracted by the packaging of somebody else’s message that we can’t see the valuable information it’s carrying. For instance, it’s extremely difficult to take in feedback that’s given in the form of a personal attack or sarcastic comment, even when that feedback could potentially be very useful.

Let’s return to our hospital scenario. When we stop looking at the people and the topic and instead focus on the actual behaviors that got used, we can see exactly how the conversation went downhill. There are eight patterns of behaviors that account for the majority of breakdowns in communication. Almost all of them occurred in this one short dialogue:

1. Yes-but: a token agreement followed by a different opinion
Dr. M: “I can see how you’d feel that way now, but this new medication may start to improve his quality of life.”

2. Mind-reading: assumptions about someone else’s thoughts or feelings, stated as a fact
Sarah: “I know this is not how he wanted to spend the last days of his life.”

3. Negative predictions: negative speculations about the future, stated as a fact
Sarah: “He’s never going to get to the point where life is worth living again.”

4. Leading questions: questions that make it obvious what the right answer is supposed to be
Dr. M: “Wouldn’t it be better to wait and be sure?”

5. Complaints: frustrated, whining, or resentful comments implying that people or circumstances are unfair
Sarah (whining): “We’ve waited so long already and nothing has helped!”

6. Fact/Feeling split: a pattern in which one person focuses only on feelings, while the other focuses only on facts 
We can see this throughout the dialogue. Sarah expresses feelings both directly (“It’s so upsetting to see my father in this condition”) and indirectly (whining and raising her voice). Dr. M’s responses show no emotion at all. He sticks to the facts (“This new medication may start to improve his quality of life”; “The morphine has helped to make him more comfortable”).

7. The blame game: a conflict escalates to the point of open hostility
Sarah: “Look, I just can’t talk to you about this anymore!”

With this perspective, we don’t have to know anything about Sarah or Dr. M to understand why they ran into problems. No matter who’s talking or what they’re talking about, this combination of behaviors spells trouble. What’s more, we can now see a clear path to making some improvements. There’s no need to avoid the topic or change people’s personalities. All that’s necessary is a shift in behavior — and either person can make that happen. We’ll show you how — stay tuned for our next post!

Can This Conversation Be Saved?

What follows is a very special blog post. It’s the first of several drawn from a new project that we’re really excited about: what we hope will become the first published book based on SAVI. We’re starting off with text from the introduction, and after that we’ll move on to Chapter 2 (on Yes-Buts). Now, more than ever, we’re very eager to get your feedback. You, loyal blog readers, will be the first to read and review this material. Please let us know what you think — what you like, what you don’t like, and any edits or additions you’d like to see. As soon as we have these two chapters completed, we’re ready to go look for a publisher. Help us create a proposal that they can’t refuse!

Thanks in advance! We hope you’ll enjoy reading this as much as we’ve enjoyed writing it.

Introduction:
Can This Conversation Be Saved?
The Surprising Common Factor in all Communication Breakdowns

Communication breakdowns are bad news for our lives and work, and even our health. At best, they’re a source of irritation and frustration. At worst, they can threaten our jobs, families, and friendships — and in some cases, even our lives. Research shows that communication failures are the leading cause of serious medical errors.

How can we go about improving our conversations? First we need to get clear about exactly what’s going wrong. We can’t solve a problem if we don’t know what’s causing it. And when it comes to communication issues, the cause is often tricky to spot.

Consider the following dialogue, taken from an actual conversation that took place between the daughter of a patient (call her Sarah) and the patient’s physician (Dr. M) at a major Boston hospital. As you read it, see if you can figure out what’s causing the trouble in their communication:

Sarah began by saying, “It’s so upsetting to see my father in this condition. I know this is not how he wanted to spend the last days of his life.”
“I’m very sorry,” replied Dr. M, emotionless.
“I think it’s finally time to take him off the respirator.”
“I can see how you’d feel that way now,” said Dr. M, “but this new medication may start to improve his quality of life.”
“At this point, that’s just not enough. He’s never going to get to the point where life is worth living again.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait and be sure?”
“We’ve waited so long already,” said Sarah, whining now, “and nothing has helped!”
Still very calm, Dr. M said, “The morphine has helped to make him more comfortable, and his breathing seems a little easier today.”
“Look,” said Sarah, exasperated, “I just can’t talk to you about this anymore!”

What’s going on here? What made that conversation so difficult? When we present this dialogue in our communications trainings, people usually come up with two different types of explanations: blaming the people and blaming the issue. In fact, these are the most common reasons people give for any type of communication failure. Unfortunately, neither one is particularly useful.

Explanation #1. Blaming the People
If you blamed the problem on Dr. M or on Sarah, you’re using the people explanation. From this point of view, communications break down because of psychological factors, such as:

• Personality traits or attitudes
  Dave is too closed-minded. Rachel is defensive. The employees have a negative attitude. Andy and Karen are passive aggressive.
  
  
• Intentions or motivations
  Paul isn’t really interested in what we have to say. People have hidden agendas. Ann always spends the entire meeting trying to win people over to her side. Carlos is more concerned with making Jamie look bad than with finding a solution to the problem.
  
  
• Emotional state
  The customer gets way too emotional. Angela lets her anger get out of control. Matt is out of touch with his emotions; he says all the right things, but you can tell he doesn’t really feel it.

In the hospital case, we might decide there’s something wrong with Dr. M (he’s cold and insensitive; he just wants Sarah to agree with him and doesn’t care about her point of view) or with Sarah (maybe she’s too emotional, too stubborn, or too pessimistic).

The psychological perspective has a strong intuitive appeal. It may seem like basic common sense — of course people’s bad attitudes, hidden agendas, and raging emotions ruin conversations; you can probably think of a few examples off the top of your head. However, this type of thinking also leaves us in a bind, with no good way to solve our problems.

Suppose you decide that the real trouble with your communication is someone else’s defensiveness or overemotional reaction. That’s not something you have the power to control. In fact, if you try to control it and force the person to change, you’re likely to make things even worse. If you don’t believe us, ask anybody who’s tried to resolve an argument by saying things like, “Stop being so defensive,” “Calm down,” or “You need to relax.” (Imagine what would have happened if Dr. M told Sarah to be more rational, or if she told him to show some feeling.) Moreover, even if it were possible to make someone change — perhaps by convincing them to get some coaching or go into therapy — that’s a long-term process. It’s not an efficient or practical strategy for making your conversations work better.

Sometimes it may seem like the only solution is to get the difficult person out of your life — quit the job, fire the employee, seek a divorce, etc. If you haven’t gone through this type of thought process yourself, you certainly know people who have. You probably know more than one person who’s acted on that reasoning, only to end up having the exact same conflicts a few months later in their new relationship or job situation. And of course, it’s often just not possible to exclude someone from your life. In our example, so long as Dr. M is caring for Sarah’s father, they have no choice but to talk to one another.

In our next post, we’ll explore explanation #2 — blaming the issues — and then reveal the real reason behind communication breakdowns. Stay tuned!