MARIA’S STORY
Consider Maria, a copywriter who is currently being held hostage to some pretty strong emotions. She and her colleague Louis just reviewed the latest draft of a proposal with their boss. During the meeting, they were supposed to be jointly presenting their latest ideas. But when Maria paused to take a breath, Louis took over the presentation, making almost all the points they had come up with together. When the boss turned to Maria for input, there was nothing left for her to say.
Maria has been feeling humiliated and angry throughout this project. First, Louis took their suggestions to the boss and discussed them behind her back. Second, he completely monopolized the presentation. Consequently, Maria believes that Louis is downplaying her contribution because she’s the only woman on the team.
She’s getting fed up with his “boys’ club” mentality. So what does she do? She doesn’t want to appear “oversensitive,” so most of the time she says nothing and just does her job. However, she does manage to assert herself by occasionally getting in sarcastic jabs about the way she’s being treated.
“Sure I can get that printout for you. Should I just get your coffee and whip up a bundt cake while I’m at it?” she mutters, and rolls her eyes as she exits the room.
Louis, in turn, finds Maria’s cheap shots and sarcasm puzzling. He’s not sure what has Maria upset but is beginning to despise her smug attitude and hostile reaction to most everything he does. As a result, when the two work together, you could cut the tension with a knife.
What’s Making Maria Mad?
The worst at dialogue fall into the trap Maria has fallen into. Maria is completely unaware of a dangerous assumption she’s making. She’s upset at being overlooked and is keeping a “professional silence.” She’s assuming that her emotions and behavior are the only right and reasonable reactions under the circumstances. She’s convinced that anyone in her place would feel the same way.
Here’s the problem. Maria is treating her emotions as if they are the only valid response. Since, in her mind, they are both justified and accurate, she makes no effort to change or even question them. Besides, in her view, Louis caused them. Ultimately, her actions (saying nothing and taking cheap shots) are being driven by these very emotions. Since she’s not acting on her emotions, her emotions are acting on her—controlling her behavior and fueling her deteriorating relationship with Louis. The worst at dialogue fall hostage to their emotions, and they don’t even know it.
The good at dialogue realize that if they don’t control their emotions, matters will get worse. So they try something else. They fake it. They choke down reactions and then do their best to get back to dialogue. At least, they give it a shot.
Unfortunately, once these emotionally choked folks hit a rough spot in a crucial conversation, their suppressed emotions come out of hiding. They show up as tightened jaws or sarcastic comments. Dialogue takes a hit. Or maybe their paralyzing fear causes them to avoid saying what they really think. Meaning is kept out of the pool because it’s cut off at the source. In any case, their emotions sneak out of the cubbyhole they’ve been crammed into and find a way to creep into the conversation. It’s never pretty, and it always kills dialogue.
The best at dialogue do something completely different. They aren’t held hostage by their emotions, nor do they try to hide or suppress them. Instead, they act on their emotions. That is, when they have strong feelings, they influence (and often change) their emotions by thinking them out. As a result, they choose their emotions, and by so doing, make it possible to choose behaviors that create better results.
This, of course, is easier said than done. It’s not easy to rethink yourself from an emotional and dangerous state into one that puts you back in control. But it can be done. It should be done.
Where should Maria start? To help rethink or gain control of our emotions, let’s see where our feelings come from in the first place. Let’s look at a model that helps us first examine and then gain control of our own emotions.
Consider Maria. She’s feeling hurt but is worried that if she says something to Louis, she’ll look too emotional, so she alternates between holding her feelings inside (avoiding) and taking cheap shots (masking).
As Figure 6-1 demonstrates, Maria’s actions stem from her feelings. First she feels and then she acts. That’s easy enough, but it begs the question: What’s causing Maria’s feelings in the first place?
Figure 6-1. How Feelings Drive Actions
Is it Louis’s behavior? As was the case with the nacho-mother-in-law, did Louis make Maria feel insulted and hurt? Maria heard and saw Louis do something, she generated an emotion, and then she acted out her feelings—using forms of masking and avoiding.
So here’s the big question: What happens between Louis acting and Maria feeling? Is there an intermediate step that turns someone else’s actions into our feelings? If not, then it has to be true that others make us feel the way we do.
Stories Create Feelings
As it turns out, there is an intermediate step between what others do and how we feel. There’s always an intermediate step because actions themselves can’t and don’t cause emotional reactions. That’s why, when faced with the exact same circumstances, ten people may have ten different emotional responses. For instance, with a coworker like Louis, some might feel insulted whereas others merely feel curious. Some become angry and others feel concern or even sympathy.
What is this intermediate step? Just after we observe what others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell ourselves a story. We add meaning to the action we observed. We make a guess at the motive driving the behavior. Why were they doing that? We also add judgment—is that good or bad? And then, based on these thoughts or stories, our body responds with an emotion.
Pictorially it looks like the model in Figure 6-2. We call this model our Path to Action because it explains how emotions, thoughts, and experiences lead to our actions.
You’ll note that we’ve added telling a story to our model. We observe, we tell a story, and then we feel. Although this addition complicates the model a bit, it also gives us hope. Since we and only we are telling the story, we can take back control of our own emotions by telling a different story. We now have a point of leverage or control. If we can find a way to control the stories we tell, by rethinking or retelling them, we can master our emotions and, therefore, master our crucial conversations.
