| Have you ever been to a training session called ‘How to Have Difficult Conversations?’ I have and I have great difficulty with that. The difficulty is that we use the word ‘difficult’. Oh……….and all of a sudden guess what they become? Difficult and almost certainly conflictual and confrontational. What if we called them conversations? The Mirriam Webster definitions of difficult are interesting in the context of the use of the ‘d’ word: 1: hard to do, make, or carry out 2: hard to deal with, manage, or 3: hard to understand Let me delve into the third one a little here and add the other two as ingredients for conflict and confrontation. It’s certainly hard to understand why we continue to preface the word conversation with difficult, in fact it somewhat puzzles me!! Are we trying to make them hard to do, deal with or manage? Have we got some kind of moronic wish for this to be the case? What drives a species looking usually for the easier or neutral pathway on most pursuits decide to create a level of negativity and a rocky road when set with the task of conversing with another human. What if it was a conversation? The next time you’re offered a spot at a training program about difficult conversations simply get curious and ask if you could instead attend a course on having a conversation. There doesn’t need to be a preface to the ‘c’ word. I talk about this in more detail in my latest solo, self-indulgent, short and sharp podcast out last Friday 4th March. Conflict, Confrontation or Conversation – What’s Your Choice? |
