1: You’re angry. Lately, it feels like Phil keeps leaving the toughest or most unpleasant tasks for you to handle.
How do you respond?
You vent to your friends about always being the one who has to clean up the messes.
But what is it that you don’t mention?
“That you smile broadly when your boss compliments you for your willingness to take on challenging jobs,” Joseph Grenny and his co-authors write in their classic book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High.
And what about the fact that you’ve never actually talked to Phil about it?
“The problem has been going on for a while,” the authors observe, “and you have said . . . nothing. Your role is silence.”
2: The example above is what the Crucial Conversations authors call “a clever story.”
“They’re clever,” they explain, “because they allow you to feel good about behaving badly.”
So how do you get out of this trap?
You tell the rest of the story.
You ask yourself, “What am I pretending not to notice about my part in the problem?”
“This question,” the authors explain, “jars you into facing up to the fact that maybe, just maybe, you did something to help cause the problem.
“Instead of being a victim, you were an actor. This doesn’t necessarily mean you had malicious motives,” they add. “Perhaps your contribution was merely a thoughtless omission. Nonetheless, you contributed.”
When you ask yourself what role you’ve played in this drama, “you become aware of how you’ve minimized your own mistakes,” Joseph and his co-authors write, “while exaggerating the role of others.”
Awareness is the critical first step. Until you recognize the story you’re telling yourself, you’re unlikely to change either the story or your behavior.
Learning to tell “the rest of the story” is a skill you can learn and practice.
When you choose to tell the rest of the story, you also “turn villains into humans,” the authors note.
“The best at dialogue recognize that they’re telling clever stories, stop, and then do what it takes to tell a useful story,” they explain. “A useful story, by definition, creates emotions that lead to healthy action—such as dialogue. . .
“That’s because clever stories have one characteristic in common,” they write. “They’re incomplete. Clever stories omit crucial information about us, about others, and about our options.
“Only by including all these essential details can clever stories be transformed into useful ones.”
Another smart strategy: “When you find yourself labeling or otherwise vilifying others,” the authors suggest, “stop and ask: ‘Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?'”
The question forces you to consider another possibility: Maybe the other person isn’t a villain. Maybe they’re simply human.
“As we search for plausible answers, our emotions soften,” they write. “Empathy often replaces judgment, and depending upon how we’ve treated others, personal accountability replaces self-justification.”
Asking this question is “not an excuse to excuse others for any bad things they may be doing,” the authors note. “If they are, indeed, guilty, you’ll have time to deal with that later.”
Instead, the point of asking this question is to get you to think about your own stories and feelings.
“It provides you with still another tool for working on yourself, first by providing a variety of possible reasons for the other person’s behavior.”
Doing so then also prompts us to “relax our absolute certainty long enough to allow for dialogue—the only reliable way of discovering others’ genuine motives.”
3: Telling the rest of the story also helps you move from feeling helpless to feeling capable.
Imagine your frustration with Phil keeps growing. Eventually, you reach your limit and snap at him for not helping with a tough job.
“I have to get brutal,” you tell yourself. “I don’t like it, but if I don’t offend him, I’ll be stuck.”
Phil stands there “surprised at your strong and ‘out of the blue’ reaction,” the authors write. “In fact, he’s staring at you as if you’ve slipped a cog.”
Afterward, you realize you’ve “strayed from what you really want—to share work equally and to have a good relationship.
“You’ve given up on half your goals by making a Fool’s Choice: “Oh well, better to offend him than to be made a fool.”
There is another option.
“When you catch yourself bemoaning your own helplessness,” Joseph and his co-authors write, “stop and ask: ‘What do I really want? For me? For others? For the relationship?'”
Asking yourself this question usually gives you more choices than just staying quiet or lashing out.
Next, ask: “What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?”
“Openly, honestly, and effectively discussing the problem—not taking potshots and then justifying yourself,” Joseph and the co-authors recommend.
“When you refuse to make yourself helpless, you’re forced to hold yourself accountable for using your dialogue skills rather than bemoaning your weakness.”
That’s the power of telling the rest of the story.
You stop being the victim. The other person stops being the villain. And suddenly, you’re no longer helpless.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Think about a frustrating situation in your life right now. Are you casting yourself as the victim, someone else as the villain, or yourself as helpless?
Action: Tell the rest of the story. Ask yourself: What am I pretending not to notice about my role? Why might a reasonable person act this way? What do I really want, and what can I do right now to move toward it?
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