September 2, 2010PowerPhrase: Mom, are you aware you’re dying? Are you ready?
You don’t know until you’ve been there, but other people’s experiences can help. how do you talk to people in their final days? How do you tell someone they’re dying?
I was deeply grateful when Deepak Chopra cut through the pervasive denial in 1986 and asked me,
- Are you aware that your husband has a terminal disease?
A Salon.com article has a post from a woman who posed a similar question to her mother.
- Are you aware you are dying?
The first time her mother wasn’t. The second time she was, and was able to respond yes, when the woman asked,
- Are you ready?
To me, idle small talk is painful when we are going through a major life transition. When death is too painful to talk about, it might even be more painful not to talk about.
August 31, 2010PowerPhrase: read it to me again. It makes me happy.
One friend in particular always leaves me feeling loved and supported. Today, the particular comment that warmed my heart came when I read him the introduction my editor wrote to another editor telling her how great I am. It touched my heart to read, but touched my heart even more when I shared it with this dear friend who replied by saying,
- Read it again. It makes me happy to hear it.
Which I gladly did. About as perfect a response as I could imagine. Can you imagine a world when we all responded to each other so tenderly?
August 19, 2010PowerPhrase: Can I help? Flight attendant takes baby from mother after slapping
Is she a hero, or intrusive? A flight attendant took a 7 month old baby from her mother when the mother slapped the baby for kicking her.
The father joined the flight attendant at the back of the plane and they soothed the infant to sleep.
This article talks about how helpless many people feel when faced with aggression toward children in public.
My guess from the article is the intervention is likely to lead to this mother to develop new parenting skills. I hope so.
One person is quoted in the article as suggesting that simply asking
- Can I help?
Often reduces the tension before it reaches that level.
I’m in the camp that applauds the flight attendant, but like everything else, it’s not black and white. If I felt a need to right every parenting wrong I see when I fly, I’d be very busy indeed. And intrusive. But there is a point where we know we can’t stay silent. We can start by offering help. I find myself playing a game of peek-a-boo with a restless child on just about every flight.
I can think of a few times in the past where I wish I had spoken up for a child. How about you?
August 18, 2010PowerPhrase: How about instead of being the older sister you be the bigger one too? Sally Forth
In today’s Sally Forth comic, Sally struggles with the fact that despite her warnings of certain failure, her sister’s new relationship with Sally’s nemesis coworker seems to be working. The new couple stays silent about their relationship, which Sally’s husband Ted suggests is due to the likelihood that Sally would respond self-righteously. He suggests,
- How about instead of being the older sister you be the bigger one too?
Good on Ted for inviting Sally to operate at a higher level.
Family members can often take self-righteousness to new perfected arts. I have a particularly tough time with self-righteous communication. What makes self-righteousness communication so challenging is the aggressive way it summarily dismisses any alternative perspectives.
Being the bigger person isn’t just mature- it’s also a big relief. It’s hard work to have to be right all the time. It’s also hard work for others to be declared wrong all the time – or to hold oneself in to avoid accusation. As a result, self-righteousness can isolate.
I love the wisdom from today’s Sally Forth. Whether we’re a parent that needs to let our kids find their own way or an older sister who needs to be a bigger person, everyone benefits when we get down from our pedestal and lose our preachiness.
Read more about the topic here; Losing My Preachiness: An Empowered New Communication
August 17, 2010AMC’s Mad Men almost a PowerPhrase: “I would appreciate it for the future if you did not say sh**y things about me behind my back.”
Well, he didn’t use a phrase I can quote verbatim here, but I loved the fact that Mad Men’scharacter Ken Cosgrove addressed his displeasure at discovering that the Pete was gossiping about him. He said,
- I would appreciate it for the future if you did not say sh***y things about me behind my back.
Pete danced and deflected, but then apologized sincerely, and the two men enjoyed honest interaction after that. In fact, Ken gave Pete an idea that turned out to be extremely lucrative. In this case, humility paid off. It usually does.
In true Speak Strong fashion, Ken said what he meant and meant what he said without being mean when he said it. He:
1) Stated what he wanted, (said what he meant)
2) Didn’t let Pete get away with deflection attempts, (meant what he said) and,
3) Was not unnecessarily shaming or harsh. Once he accomplished his mission, he let it go. He wasn’t mean when he said it.
I don’t have a problem with the expletive in this case because it almost certainly was appropriate to this culture. In another culture, it could trigger a reaction that would sabotage the effort.
I address gossip with clients when I help them establish communication agreements. When teams decide what kind of communication dynamics they want to have, they become more conscious of existing dynamics. When a group commits to steps to create collaborative communication cultures, the negative dynamics, like gossip, often drop off naturally. (I can guide the process with your group in a webinar format as well as in person.)
Some groups are comfortable with the expletives, but I have yet to find one that opts for gossip.
Email This Post
Related posts which may interest you
- 6 steps for turning problems (like gossip) into opportunities
- A good way to handle gossip in the workplace and a great way
- Ask Meryl ~ Gossip in the ranks
- Gossip and Manipulation Webinar Slides and Archives are Available
- Communication challenges are opportunities. Gossip and manipulation webinar tomorrow is an opportunity to dynamize communication.
August 6, 2010PowerPhrase: If this project had a bumper sticker, what would it say?
Writing bumper sticker slogans is much like writing tweets. It teachers us to be succinct. Dynamize your communication about a project by asking,
- If this project had a bumper sticker, what would it say?
August 2, 2010PowerPhrase: When? Thinking fast to get a specific commitment.
Ash picked up the phone in the middle of a class and hurriedly asked if she could call me back. I almost let her off the phone without any commitment, but since we had spoken about meeting in a few hours and I needed to plan, I caught myself and asked,
- When?
Her response gave me the information I needed – that we wouldn’t be meeting today. Had I succumb to the urgency in her voice, I wouldn’t have been able to make my own arrangements.
Sure, she needed to get off the phone fast, but she’s the one who hadn’t called me back before class, and I’m the one who would have been inconvenienced if I hadn’t pinned her down. I’ve neglected to push past resistance often enough to know that there are times to move in, even when someone else is anxious to move away.
August 2, 2010What do you do when you get choked up during a critical conversation?
I love the Crucial Conversations team, and agree with most of their advice. Their recent response to a post from someone who gets choked up during important conversations was practical and useful. Phrases like
- Excuse me while I collect myself
are useful to have handy when emotion rises.
They add phrases such as,
- I’ve noticed that I’m getting a little emotional here. Could we take five minutes?
and
- I’ve noticed that we seem to be debating this issue. I’ve been putting my point forward—perhaps too strongly. I’d like to turn that around and ask more questions so that I can understand your points clearly. Would that be okay?
Where I differ from this particular advice is when they talk about controlling emotions. We get emotional because we have been controlling our emotion for far too long. There is power in emotion. Instead of letting the emotion control us or instead of pretending we don’t feel when we do, I recommend expressing emotion in balance with logic and will.
Here’s an article I wrote about making friends with our emotional nature so we can align and harness the power of our emotion instead of explode or suppress it. Emotional Map: How to Speak Strong when you are unsure of how you feel
July 31, 2010PowerPhrase: I know my obsessiveness can be tedious at times.
Joe can be obsessive. Debbie can be too casual. Often they balance each other out, but sometimes they collide.
That’s what happened when the internet went down. Debbie shifted her focus to activities the didn’t require internet. Joe checked the connections and called the company. He then went on a rant about unreliability.
Debbie listened for a while, and then made a few comments to get him to drop it that sounded dismissive to Joe. Joe was defensive at first, and then said,
- That’s okay. I know my obsessiveness can be tedious at times.
He was right, but his willingness to be vulnerable was far more endearing than his obsessiveness ever was.
July 30, 2010Doc’s office PowerPhrase: when informing becomes scolding.
Ann discussed the tests she needed before she scheduled her appointment, and felt blindsided after the tests when a technician aggressively challenged her decision not to have certain tests. She told the technician,
- I chose this clinic because I had a good experience here before. While I appreciate your need to inform me, this goes beyond informing into to scolding.
Ann wasn’t convinced the technician heard what she said, but by speaking on her own behalf, she avoided drinking the poison of the technician’s demeaning and hostile remarks.
