Building Empathy
Dealing with Difficult
Conversations
Congratulations on completing your training on
Building Empathy Dealing With Conflict
To Begin your learning path Please see some working defintions below
Empathy: is the ability to understand other’s feelings from the perspective of the other
“What is it like for them to be in their shoes”
Active Listening: is a set of skills that helps the listener become empathetic
“We listen to become empathetic”
Conflict: Anything that can potential create a difference, usually in interests values or beliefs
Challenging Communications: Any form of communication capable of creating negative emotions.
Resilience: The capacity of an individual and/or organisation to respond effectively to challenge
How to prepare for a challenging Communication?
Self Awareness and Reflection: How you are is more important than what you say
1) Higher levels of resilience lead to greater self awareness
2) Self awareness and self reflection lead to greater empathy. How am I today and how might that impact on my communication ?
3) Using empathy: What might be particularly challenging for the other party/parties in this communication.
4) Calm people are naturally more empathetic. The corollary is stressed people are less empathetic. More calm, more relational,
and therefore more available for solution orientated conversations.
4) Practice techniques to develop your own resilience. See Resilience section below especially the 4 relaxation techniques
Managing the environment and logistics: Attention is more than presence
1) Make the time and place conducive to problem solving. The more remote the session the greater the rapport required to
make a challenging conversation conducive to problem solving.
Make sure you are not rushing and have allowed time and capacity for the meeting.
2) Avoid back to back difficult communications sessions especially with larger groups. They way the human brain is constructed
it is predictive so unconsciously you will be primed for a negative experience if you just walked out of one. In the video
with Tony Abbot he had just walked out of a challenging conference where he was subjected to a hard time.
The culmination of a second challenging communication was too much for him neurologically.
3) You are the vehicle for the challenging communication. How is your vehicle ? Tired? Rested? In good form ?
Laughter and crying are excellent ways of resetting your neurological and physiologist state but we provide some
resilience techniques in the resilience section that can be faster and less complicated than crying or laughing as they
might be less appropriate.
Research Fact and Scenario gathering: People follow perceived expertise
1) Have and maintain a good knowledge base. The confidence that you are prepared for volatile market conditions
and own a depth of knowledge about the lessons, that can be learned from history, instills confidence in you and your organisation.
2) In uncertainty the person who brings some certainty will bring confidence and that confidence creates some
safety for your partner. Use timeline to emphasise previous volatile periods and recovery periods.
Many people understand the wisdom of investing more in a downturn. Turn a negative into an opportunity.
By its nature volatility can’t last forever. Have the facts to back this up.
Plan and Rehearse: Fail to plan plan to…………..
1) Preparation needs to be well practiced. Your phrases and responses need to be at the tip of your tongue. Your skill is
making your responses relevant/personalised to the situation you are dealing with.
2) Ask some trusted colleagues to give you a challenging run through. This may take some time but “error recovery” is the
best way humans have to learn. Best to learn in a supportive environment rather than with a live partner. This could
be part of a peer support process that helps build team support and trust.
3) “Humans become what they practice” Skills become behaviours when practiced.
4) Regardless of level of expertise complex ideas translated into simple themes are the most convincing. “History clearly shows…..”
:
Understanding The Processes in Delivering and receiving challenging communications
We know from research, that with increasing amounts of pressure we eventually experience diminished or thwarted performance. This usually begins to impact individuals in the third decade but that thwarted performance is happening even younger. The shift from the left hand side of the curve to working at the right hand side of the curve causes increasing levels of stress anxiety and depression .
The Rules of the Performance Curve
On the left hand side (LHS) of the performance curve pressure increases performance (the command and control model of the military)
On the right hand side (RHS) of the performance curve the impact of the human stress response (HSR) accumulates causing an increase in the steroid hormones (Cortisol) involved leading to diminished neurological Performance.
The diminished performance from being on the RHS is concentrated in the smartest part of the brain. These parts of the brain are the same as those required for high value communication, conflict negotiation, self care and most importantly self awareness and self reflection. They are the frontal and temporal lobes
The video of Tony Abbot shows the profound impact of rising cortisol levels leaving him incapacitated from a communication perspective
The image of the brain above shows the structures involved in memory (Hippocampus) and the structures involved in strategic communications negotiations and relationships (Prefrontal Cortex). These structures turn down under the impact of cortisol but the amygdala actually performs better under the impact of cortisol. This is why people become more emotional and negative when under more pressure.
To see how fast this can happen look at what happens to two intelligent academics who were completely unprepared for a documentary maker’s ambush and did not have the capacity to respond to the challenge facing them. Simple preparation or an appropriate response to stop the interviews could have saved them from a low performance state where they “blank out” or get emotional both symptoms of high cortisol states. On the right below Tony Abbott is ambushed by a TV crew after he walked out of a challenging conference. When cortisol levels climb bad things can happen.
What Happens when we are not calm and resourced
when dealing with difficult communications
Tony Abbot had been depleted before he engaged with the difficult challenging interview below and did not have the capacity to navigate the challenging nature of the conversation
The secret to effective communications and calm delivery
Personal Resilience
The tracks embedded below are evidence based techniques for creating deep states of calm building resilience and allowing deeper self awareness self reflection and empathy.
We are fast approaching 50 thousand listens
Find a comfortable place preferably lying down and listen to one of the 4 tracks below
These relaxation techniques have been proven to improve quality of sleep, reduce inflammatory disorders, energy metabolism, and impact on gene expression for oxidative stress (aging). They also reduce the production of cortisol.
If they work for you practice more and if they don’t send me the hatemail and I will find a technique that works for you. (ray@resilienceinternational.com)
Dr Mike Evans gives some evidence based benefits that can be achieved in 30 minutes and insights into how our thoughts affect our health
Delivery
The number one law of delivery is that the communications needs to be delivered to where the person is at.
This requires EMPATHY
EMPATHY requires LISTENING
LISTENING requires CALM ATTENTION
CALM ATTENTION requires PERSONAL RESILIENCE
Set up Prepare and Plan see earlier section
CRAP : A four step protocol for early stage challenging
communications
First protocol is CRAP for Control, Refocus, Acknowledge, and Problem Solve.
CONTROL: Set up the meeting/agenda. Use first names (yours and theirs).
Ask timeline questions. If a group meeting, try and have a slide with pictures
of all participants. This creates a sense of shared responsibility. A slide with pictures
of of your support team also helps show you are part of a team and helps separate
the person (you) from the problem.
REFOCUS : Separate the person from the problem. Be easy on the person and hard on the problem
Most people do not want to be in conflict with people but we can end up in conflict if
they conflate you with the problem. This is easier for them to do when under pressure.
The market is volatile but if you see from our team’s research this is not unusual
and should resolve it self in due course.
ACKNOWLEDGE:
Essential to acknowledge the experience of the other as this shows empathy.
Important to listen for emotions or changes in tone of voice as this helps
you catch issues of significance for the other person.
PROBLEM SOLVE:
Where to from here? Focus on Mutual Gain and use we/I statements.
When discussing difficult communications try not to use “you” statements
as they create a concept of Judgment.
TRUE : Getting to Potential resolution in Conflict communications
The second Protocol is TRUE for Timelines, Respond, Use PFC language, Evaluate
TIMELINE Questions such as “when,” “how long” and consequence questions
such as what will happen if we do nothing etc stimulate the Pre Frontal Cortex.
Explorative open questions rather than binary closed questions help engage
solution based thinking
RESPOND: Do not react. It is crucial to avoid binary positioning statements like
“ I completely disagree”. If you want a solution then a softer approach like “I’m not sure
if I agree completely”. One is positioned and the other allows a shared
negotiated solution. Hard positioning requires either capitulation or an
argument which will make a shared solution less available. Hard positioning
is a symptom of underlying vulnerability.
If faced with a hard position it is usually best to revert to listening and
let the vulnerability subside and possibly defer the conversation to a later time.
USE PRE FRONTAL LANGUAGE :
Use adult language (Active listening) see list. Use open statements (see list) which help
gather “others” perspectives. The benefit of stimulating the Prefrontal Cortex is
that it is the structure that down regulates emotional and
limbic(amygdala processing). Talk therapy and journaling both down regulate stress
and anxiety because they stimulate the pre frontal cortex and in turn this
down-regulates the activation of the stress response.
EVALUATE:
Is management possible? Sometimes emotions make a solution unavailable.
When people become too positioned and a solution becomes impossible in the
available timescale it is better to defer to a later time to allow a decrease in emotion.
Deflection or shifting attention in another direction is useful if there is
continuing escalation.
Referral: Sometimes if there is no hope of progress referring to a colleague may
help restart functional communications.
Reflection: If a solution does not look possible you can also offer to reflect and return
to the issue at a later date. Simple fact is that intense emotions are incredibly
expensive from an energetic perspective so usually subside with time. Try crying
for 5 hours and you would be completely fatigued and probably need to sleep.
More moderate emotional states also subside in time.
After your evaluation you can move directly to resolution or move to another protocol such as speaks
SPEAKS: A comprehensive protocol for dealing with conflict
and difficult news
This protocol is adapted from a model designed to reduce the impact of delivering difficult news on both the receiver and the person delivering difficult news. If you find yourself delivering difficult news on a regular basis it is strongly advised to begin a personal programme for building resilience as people under pressure are infectious. See Resilience resources
The only reason the baby on the left cries is because the baby on the right is crying. This is primary empathy and is happening to you when dealing with difficult conversations with others.
SPEAKS: A six Step Protocol for delivering difficult News
Set up the session:
Schedule well in advance, make time, don’t rush to the session. First responders never run to the scene of an accident because they need to be calm for themselves and the patient. Try to have few barriers to rapport. Face to face is the ideal but remote can sometimes be the only available method. Remember with the smaller view of your face, your facial expression and quality and tone of voice (Prosody) is more significant when remote. For facial expression look at the face of the journalist in the Tony Abbott video. He has the flat face of anger and helps create a poor performance state for the Australian Prime Minister.
Perception:
It is crucial to gauge the perception of the person(s) involved. Use open statements and active listening to develop some insights to be more empathic. Use open statements and active listening to deepen your understanding of where they are. PUSH THE BUTTONS BELOW
Emotions First
It is a fundamental law of functional communications to deal with emotions first. This is because the lower limbic brain actually controls the upper cognitive/intellectual brain. All you need to do is have pain or be angry or irritated to know it is next to impossible to function well cognitively when you are in an emotional state. This is why the statement “people want to be understood more than they want to be agreed with” is a truism. Challenging communications usually involve a level of vulnerability. Vulnerability is primarily an emotionally dominated state. Blame is often referred to as “internal pain and suffering externalised”. Engage with the vulnerability and you have a path to a problem solved. Engage with the anger you can expect an escalation. Brene Browne shares some insights regarding the power of vulnerability.
Acknowledge and inform
Acknowledge the experience of the other and use your experience of active listening to engage the other side with some of your information/expertise. This is how to set the the arena for solution. You may need to revert to earlier parts of the protocol if they stop engaging. One of the major warning signs of lack of engagement is when people begin to repeat themselves. People repeat themselves when they don’t feel heard. This does not mean that you have not heard them it simply means they don’t FEEL heard. You need to reinforce active listening to move beyond the feeling. You can begin to introduce a path forward.
Given the situation, what steps can we take together moving forward?
What support or resources would help you navigate this?
How can we turn this into an opportunity for growth?
What's the most immediate action we can take to address this?
Can we brainstorm some potential solutions?
Knowledge Sharing
Now it is time to use the information you have gathered to construct the path forward. You know their concerns and you know (have the information from them) what shared purpose will create a manageable solution. It is important not to be perfectionistic/absolute about solutions but rather collaborative as small wins build trust for a potential next phase to future challenge. This is where you are in your arena of expertise and this part of the process can be well prepared in advance and you can tailor your solutions depending on the previous steps in the protocol.
Strategy and Summary
This is the most important part of the process and you need to have clear shared agreements about what happens next. Make sure you have clarity about what has been agreed and the timescale in which any resolution will take place.