A MOMENT OF TRUTH

To see how the desires of our hearts can affect our ability to stay in dialogue, let’s take a look at a real-life example.

Greta, the CEO of a midsized corporation, is two hours into a rather tense meeting with her top leaders. For the past six months, she has been on a personal campaign to reduce costs. Little has been accomplished to date, so Greta calls the meeting. Surely people will tell her why they haven’t started cutting costs. After all, she has taken great pains to foster candor.

Greta has just opened the meeting to questions when a manager haltingly rises to his feet, fidgets, stares at the floor, and then nervously asks if he can ask a very tough question. The way the fellow emphasizes the word very makes it sound as if he’s about to accuse Greta of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.

The frightened manager continues.

“Greta, you’ve been at us for six months to find ways to cut costs. I’d be lying if I said that we’ve given you much more than a lukewarm response. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you about one thing that’s making it tough for us to push for cost cuts.”

“Great. Fire away,” Greta says as she smiles in response.

“Well, while you’ve been asking us to use both sides of our paper and forgo improvements, you’re having a second office built.”

Greta freezes and turns bright red. Everyone looks to see what will happen next. The manager plunges on ahead.

“The rumor is that the furniture alone will cost $150,000. Is that right?”

So there we have it. The conversation has just turned crucial. Someone has just poured a rather ugly tidbit into the pool of meaning. Will Greta continue to encourage honest feedback, or will she shut the fellow down?

We call this a crucial conversation because how Greta acts during the next few moments will not only set people’s attitudes toward the proposed cost-cutting initiative, but will also have a huge impact on what the other leaders think about her. Does she walk the talk of openness and honesty? Or is she a raging hypocrite—like so many of the senior executives who came before her?

What Is She Acting Like She Wants?

As we watch Greta, something quite subtle and yet very important takes place. It is lost on most of the people in the room—but with our front-row seat, it is practically palpable. Greta’s jaw tightens. She leans forward and grips the left side of the rostrum hard enough that her knuckles turn white. She lifts her right hand, with the finger pointing at the questioner like a loaded weapon. She hasn’t said anything yet, but it is clear where Greta is heading. Her motive has clearly changed from making the right choice to something far less noble.

Like most of us in similar circumstances, Greta is no longer focused on cost-cutting. Her attention is now turned to staff-cutting—beginning with one particular staff member.

When under attack, our heart can take a similarly sudden and unconscious turn. When faced with pressure and strong opinions, we often stop worrying about the goal of adding to the pool of meaning and start looking for ways to win, punish, or keep the peace.

Winning. This particular dialogue killer sits at the top of many of our lists. Heaven only knows that we come by this deadly passion naturally enough. Half of the TV programs we watch make heroes out of people who win at sports or game shows. Ten minutes into kindergarten we learn that if we want to get the teacher’s attention, we have to spout the right answer. That means we have to beat our fellow students at the same game. This desire to win is built into our very fiber before we’re old enough to know what’s going on.

Unfortunately, as we grow older, most of us don’t realize that this desire to win is continually driving us away from healthy dialogue. We start out with the goal of resolving a problem, but as soon as someone raises the red flag of inaccuracy or challenges our correctness, we switch purposes in a heartbeat.

First, we correct the facts. We quibble over details and point out flaws in the other person’s arguments.

“You’re wrong! We’re not spending anywhere near $150,000 on the furniture. It’s the redesign of the office that’s costing so much, not the furniture.”

Of course, as others push back, trying to prove their points, it’s not long until we change our goal from correcting mistakes to winning.

If you doubt this simple allegation, think of the two antsy young girls as they stared each other down in the cramped bathroom. Their original goal was simple enough—relief. But soon, caught up in their own painful game, the two set their jaws and committed to doing whatever it took to win—even if it brought them a fair amount of personal discomfort.

Punishing. Sometimes, as our anger increases, we move from wanting to win the point to wanting to harm the other person. Just ask Greta. “To heck with honest communication!” she thinks to herself. “I’ll teach the moron not to attack me in public.” Eventually, as emotions reach their peak, our goal becomes completely perverted. We move so far away from adding meaning to the pool that now all we want is to see others suffer.

“I can’t believe that you’re accusing me of squandering good money on a perfectly fine office. Now, if nobody else has any intelligent questions, let’s move on!”

Everyone immediately clams up and looks at the floor. The silence is deafening.

Keeping the peace. Of course, we don’t always fix mistakes, aggressively discredit others, or heartlessly try to make them suffer. Sometimes we choose personal safety over dialogue. Rather than add to the pool of meaning, and possibly make waves along the way, we go to silence. We’re so uncomfortable with the immediate conflict that we accept the certainty of bad results to avoid the possibility of uncomfortable conversation. We choose (at least in our minds) peace over conflict. Had this happened in Greta’s case, nobody would have raised concerns over the new office, Greta never would have learned the real issue, and people would have continued to drag their feet.