All difficult conversations share a common structure. Understanding the structure is essential to improving how you handle your most challenging conversations.
We need to understand not only what is said, but what is not said. We must seek to understand what people are thinking and feeling but not saying to each other. The gap between what you are thinking and you are saying is part of what makes a conversation difficult.
Each Difficult Conversation Is Really Three Conversations
1. The “What Happened?” Conversation – disagreement about what happened. Difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values. They are not about what is true, but about what is
important.
2. The Feelings Conversation – each conversation asks and answers questions about feeling. Even if they are not addressed, they leak in. Difficult conversations do not just involve feelings, they are at their very core about feelings. They are an integral part of the conflict. Understanding feelings, talking about feelings and managing feelings are among the greatest challenges of being human.
3. The Identity Conversation – the conversation we each have with ourselves about what the situation means to us. The identity conversation is about what I am saying to myself about me. Something beyond the apparent substance of the conversation is at stake for you. This determines if we are off-center and anxious or if we feel “balanced."
What we can change is the way we respond to each of these challenges. We can explore what information the other person has, and explore our own identity issues.
Once you understand the challenges inherent in the Three Conversations and the mistakes we make in each, you are likely to find that your purpose for having a particular conversation will shift. You come to appreciate the complexity of the perceptions and intentions involved, the reality of joint contribution to the problem, the central role feelings play, and what the issues mean to each person's self-esteem and identity.
Source: "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most" by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen