Do political differences or strongly voiced opinions make you want to run for the hills? Are there people to be avoided? Can comments (yours or theirs) threaten composure or worse, harm the relationship? Do you ever return home wishing you had listened more and talked less?
Something motivates us to speak to another person. Think of this motivation as the goal. What are our conversational goals? What if we speculated about the other's goal in the conversation? Typical goals include desire to be friendly, to persuade, to impress, to inform, to make a request, to more deeply understand, and to strengthen the feeling of human connection.
Problems occur when these goals clash! She wants to connect, he wants to report. She wants to impress, he wants to fix. One wants to persuade, the other wants to be heard.
Our feelings about ourselves diminish when our unconscious goals don't match our own actions. We want to connect but we pass judgment. We want to impress and we forget to listen.
Imagine you are at the annual holiday gathering and someone makes a demeaning observation that insults your perspective.
- A certain fraction of people respond quickly with a repartee that can be much like sport if both are similarly adept. Sports have winners and losers. Being quick witted has its advantages and disadvantages. Is your conversational goal to be the winner, and thus the other a loser?
- Another portion of the population respond neutrally, not causing any ripples, yet move on to another conversation as soon as possible. These people often tell me that they feel a loss of authenticity if this is repeated too often.
- Finally, everyone has experienced "getting into it" at some point, "caught off guard" by a comment, responding in an escalated fashion and feeling uncomfortable later.
Want to try something different? Practice setting a goal in a non-threatening conversation. (Is your goal to welcome, to be playful, to persuade, to connect?) Does it impact your own contributions to the conversations? Does it impact the way you hear? Do you have a hunch about the goal of the other person? How do you feel after the conversation?
Try it again! Practicing a communication strategy increases the likelihood that it will be remembered when it is most needed.
