EXPLORE OTHERS’ PATHS

In Chapter 5, we recommended that whenever you notice safety is at risk, you should step out of the conversation and restore it. When you have offended others through a thoughtless act, apologize. Or if someone has misunderstood your intent, use Contrasting. Explain what you do and don’t intend. Finally, if you’re simply at odds, find a Mutual Purpose.

Now we add one more skill: Explore Others’ Paths. Since we’ve added a model of what’s going on inside another person’s head (the Path to Action), we now have a whole new tool for helping others feel safe. If we can find a way to let others know that it’s okay to share their Path to Action—their facts and, yes, even their nasty stories and ugly feelings—then they’ll be more likely to open up.

But what does it take?

Start with Heart—Get Ready to Listen

Be sincere. To get others’ facts and stories into the pool of meaning, we have to invite them to share what’s on their minds. We’ll look at how to do this in a minute. For now, let’s highlight the point that when you do invite people to share their views, you must mean it. For example, consider the following incident. A patient is exiting a health care facility. The desk attendant can tell that she is a bit uneasy, maybe even dissatisfied.

“Did everything go all right with the procedure?” the clerk asks.

“Mostly,” the patient replies. (If ever there was a hint that something was wrong, the term “mostly” has to be it.)

“Good,” the clerk abruptly responds and then follows with a resounding, “Next!”

This is a classic case of pretending to be interested. It falls under the “How are you today?” category of inquiries. Meaning: “Please don’t say anything of substance. I’m really just making small talk.” When you ask people to open up, be prepared to listen.

Be curious. When you do want to hear from others (and you should because it adds to the pool of meaning), the best way to get at the truth is by making it safe for them to express the stories that are moving them to either silence or violence. This means that at the very moment when most people become furious, we need to become curious. Rather than respond in kind, we need to wonder what’s behind the ruckus.

But how? How can we possibly act curious when others are either attacking us or heading for cover? People who routinely seek to find out why others are feeling unsafe do so because they have learned that getting at the source of fear and discomfort is the best way to return to dialogue. Either they’ve seen others do it or they’ve stumbled on the formula themselves. Either way, they realize that the cure to silence or violence isn’t to respond in kind, but to get at the underlying source. This calls for genuine curiosity—at a time when you’re likely to be feeling frustrated or angry.

To help turn your visceral tendency to respond in kind into genuine curiosity, look for opportunities to be curious. Start with a situation where you observe someone becoming emotional and you’re still under control—such as a meeting (when you’re not personally under attack and are less likely to get hooked). Do your best to get at the person’s source of fear or anger. Look for chances to turn on your curiosity rather than kick-start your adrenaline.

To illustrate what can happen as we exercise our curiosity, let’s return to our nervous patient.

CLERK: Did everything go all right with the procedure?

PATIENT: Mostly.

CLERK: It sounds like you had a problem of some kind. Is that right?

PATIENT: I’ll say. It hurt quite a bit. And besides, isn’t the doctor, like, uh, way too old?

In this case, the patient is reluctant to speak up. Perhaps if she shares her honest opinion, she will insult the doctor, or maybe the loyal staff members will become offended. To deal with the problem, the desk attendant lets the patient know (as much with his tone as with his words) that it’s safe to talk, and she opens up.

Stay curious. When people begin to share their volatile stories and feelings, we now face the risk of pulling out our own Victim, Villain, and Helpless Stories to help us explain why they’re saying what they’re saying. Unfortunately, since it’s rarely fun to hear other people’s unflattering stories, we begin to assign negative motives to them for telling the stories. For example:

CLERK: Well aren’t you the ungrateful one! The kind doctor devotes his whole life to helping people and now that he’s a little gray around the edges, you want to send him out to pasture!

To avoid overreacting to others’ stories, stay curious. Give your brain a problem to stay focused on. Ask: “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person say this?” This question keeps you retracing the other person’s Path to Action until you see how it all fits together. And in most cases, you end up seeing that under the circumstances, the individual in question drew a fairly reasonable conclusion.

Be patient. When others are acting out their feelings and opinions through silence or violence, it’s a good bet they’re starting to feel the effects of adrenaline. Even if we do our best to safely and effectively respond to the other person’s verbal attack, we still have to face up to the fact that it’s going to take a little while for him or her to settle down. Say, for example, that a friend dumps out an ugly story and you treat it with respect and continue on with the conversation. Even if the two of you now share a similar view, it may seem like your friend is still pushing too hard. While it’s natural to move quickly from one thought to the next, strong emotions take a while to subside. Once the chemicals that fuel emotions are released, they hang around in the bloodstream for a time—in some cases, long after thoughts have changed.

So be patient when exploring how others think and feel. Encourage them to share their path and then wait for their emotions to catch up with the safety that you’ve created.

Encourage Others to Retrace Their Path

Once you’ve decided to maintain a curious approach, it’s time to help the other person retrace his or her Path to Action. Unfortunately, most of us fail to do so. That’s because when others start playing silence or violence games, we’re joining the conversation at the end of their Path to Action. They’ve seen and heard things, told themselves a story or two, generated a feeling (possibly a mix of fear and anger or disappointment), and now they’re starting to act out their story. That’s where we come in. Now, even though we may be hearing their first words, we’re coming in somewhere near the end of their path. On the Path to Action model, we’re seeing the action at the end of the path—as shown in Figure 8-1.

Figure 8-1. The Path to Action

Every sentence has a history. To get a feel for how complicated and unnerving this process is, remember how you felt the last time your favorite mystery show started late because a football game ran long. As the game wraps up, the screen cross-fades from a trio of announcers to a starlet standing over a murder victim. Along the bottom of the screen are the discomforting words, “We now join this program already in progress.”

You shake the remote in exasperation. You’ve missed the entire setup! For the rest of the program you end up guessing about key facts. What happened before you joined in?

Crucial conversations can be similarly mysterious and frustrating. When others are in either silence or violence, we’re actually joining their Path to Action already in progress. Consequently, we’ve already missed the foundation of the story and we’re confused. If we’re not careful, we can become defensive. After all, not only are we joining late, but we’re also joining at a time when the other person is starting to act offensively.

Break the cycle. And then guess what happens? When we’re on the receiving end of someone’s retributions, accusations, and cheap shots, rarely do we think: “My, what an interesting story he or she must have told. What do you suppose led to that?” Instead, we match this unhealthy behavior. Our genetically shaped, eons-old defense mechanisms kick in, and we create our own hasty and ugly Path to Action.

People who know better cut this dangerous cycle by stepping out of the interaction and making it safe for the other person to talk about his or her Path to Action. They perform this feat by encouraging him or her to move away from harsh feelings and knee-jerk reactions and toward the root cause. In essence, they retrace the other person’s Path to Action together. At their encouragement, the other person moves from his or her emotions, to what he or she concluded, to what he or she observed.

When we help others retrace their path to its origins, not only do we help curb our reaction, but we also return to the place where the feelings can be resolved—at the source, that is, the facts and the story behind the emotion.

Inquiry Skills

When? So far we’ve suggested that when other people appear to have a story to tell and facts to share, it’s our job to invite them to do so. Our cues are simple: Others are going to silence or violence. We can see that they’re feeling upset, fearful, or angry. We can see that if we don’t get at the source of their feelings, we’ll end up suffering the effects of the feelings. These external reactions are our cues to do whatever it takes to help others retrace their Paths to Action.

How? We’ve also suggested that whatever we do to invite the other person to open up and share his or her path, our invitation must be sincere. As hard as it sounds, we must be genuine in the face of hostility, fear, or even abuse—which leads us to the next question.

What? What are we supposed to actually do? What does it take to get others to share their path—stories and facts alike? In a word, it requires listening. In order for people to move from acting on their feelings to talking about their conclusions and observations, we must listen in a way that makes it safe for others to share their intimate thoughts. They must believe that when they share their thoughts, they won’t offend others or be punished for speaking frankly.

Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, or Prime (AMPP)

To encourage others to share their paths we’ll use four power listening tools that can help make it safe for other people to speak frankly. We call the four skills power listening tools because they are best remembered with the acronym AMPP—Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, and Prime. Luckily, the tools work for both silence and violence games.

Ask to Get Things Rolling

The easiest and most straightforward way to encourage others to share their Path to Action is simply to invite them to express themselves. For example, often all it takes to break an impasse is to seek to understand others’ views. When we show genuine interest, people feel less compelled to use silence or violence. For example: “Do you like my new dress, or are you going to call the modesty police?” Wendy smirks.

“What do you mean?” you ask. “I’d like to hear your concerns.” If you’re willing to stop filling the pool with your meaning and step back and invite the other person to talk about his or her view, it can go a long way toward breaking the downward spiral and getting to the source of the problem.

Common invitations include:

“What’s going on?”

“I’d really like to hear your opinion on this.”

“Please let me know if you see it differently.”

“Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I really want to hear your thoughts.”

Mirror to Confirm Feelings

If asking others to share their path doesn’t open things up, mirroring can help build more safety. In mirroring, we take the portion of the other person’s Path to Action we have access to and make it safe for him or her to discuss it. All we have so far are actions and some hints about the other person’s emotions, so we start there.

When we mirror, as the name suggests, we play the role of mirror by describing how they look or act. Although we may not understand others’ stories or facts, we can see their actions and reflect them back.

Mirroring is most useful when another person’s tone of voice or gestures (hints about the emotions behind them) are inconsistent with his or her words. For example: “Don’t worry. I’m fine.” (But the person in question is saying this with a look and tone that suggests he is actually quite upset. He’s frowning, looking around, and sort of kicking at the ground.)

“Really? From the way you’re saying that, it doesn’t sound like you are.”

We explain that while the person may be saying one thing, his or her tone of voice or body posture suggests something else. In doing so, by staying with the observed actions, we show both respect and concern for him or her.

When reflecting back your observations, take care to manage your tone of voice and delivery. It is not the fact that we are acknowledging others’ emotions that creates safety. We create safety when our tone of voice says we’re okay with them feeling the way they’re feeling. If we do this well, they may conclude that rather than acting out their emotions, they can confidently talk them out with us instead.

So as we describe what we see, we have to do so calmly. If we act upset or as if we’re not going to like what others say, we don’t build safety. We confirm their suspicions that they need to remain silent.

Examples of mirroring include:

“You say you’re okay, but by the tone of your voice, you seem upset.”

“You seem angry at me.”

“You look nervous about confronting him. Are you sure

you’re willing to do it?”

Paraphrase to Acknowledge the Story

Asking and mirroring may help you get part of the other person’s story out into the open. When you get a clue about why the person is feeling as he or she does, you can build additional safety by paraphrasing what you’ve heard. Be careful not to simply parrot back what was said. Instead, put the message in your own words—usually in an abbreviated form.

“Let’s see if I’ve got this right. You’re upset because I’ve voiced my concern about some of the clothes you wear. And this seems controlling or old-fashioned to you.”

The key to paraphrasing, as with mirroring, is to remain calm and collected. Our goal is to make it safe, not to act horrified and suggest that the conversation is about to turn ugly. Stay focused on figuring out how a reasonable, rational, and decent person could have created this Path to Action. This will help you keep from becoming angry or defensive. Simply rephrase what the person has said, and do it in a way that suggests that it’s okay, you’re trying to understand, and it’s safe for him or her to talk candidly.

Don’t push too hard. Let’s see where we are. We can tell that another person has more to share than he or she is currently sharing. He or she is going to silence or violence, and we want to know why. We want to get back to the source (the facts) where we can solve the problem. To encourage the person to share, we’ve tried three listening tools. We’ve asked, mirrored, and paraphrased. The person is still upset, but isn’t explaining his or her stories or facts.

Now what? At this point, we may want to back off. After a while, our attempts to make it safe for others can start feeling as if we’re pestering or prying. If we push too hard, we violate both purpose and respect. Others may think our purpose is merely to extract what we want from them and conclude that we don’t care about them personally. So instead, we back off. Rather than trying to get to the source of the other person’s emotions, we either gracefully exit or ask what he or she wants to see happen. Asking people what they want helps them engage their brains in a way that moves to problem solving and away from either attacking or avoiding. It also helps reveal what they think the cause of the problem is.

Prime When You’re Getting Nowhere

On the other hand, there are times when you may conclude that others would like to open up, but still don’t feel safe. Or maybe they’re still in violence, haven’t come down from the adrenaline, and aren’t explaining why they’re angry. When this is the case, you might want to try priming. Prime when you believe that the other person still has something to share and might do so with a little more effort on your part.

The power-listening term “priming” comes from the expression “priming the pump.” If you’ve ever worked an old-fashioned hand pump, you understand the metaphor. With a pump, you often have to pour some water into it to get it running. Then it works just fine. When it comes to power listening, sometimes you have to offer your best guess at what the other person is thinking or feeling before you can expect him or her to do the same. You have to pour some meaning into the pool before the other person will respond in kind.

A few years back, one of the authors was working with an executive team that had decided to add an afternoon shift to one of the company’s work areas. The equipment wasn’t being fully utilized, and the company couldn’t afford to keep the area open without adding a three-to-midnight crew. This, of course, meant that the people currently working days would now have to rotate every two weeks to afternoons. It was a tortured but necessary choice.

As the execs held a meeting to announce the unpopular change, the existing employees went silent. They were obviously unhappy, but nobody would say anything. The operations manager was afraid that people would misinterpret the company’s actions as nothing more than a grab for more money. In truth, the area was losing money, but the decision was made with the current employees in mind. With no second shift, there would be no jobs. He also knew that asking people to rotate shifts and to be away from loved ones during the afternoon and evening would cause horrible burdens.

As people sat silently fuming, the executive did his best to get them to talk so that they wouldn’t walk away with unresolved feelings. He mirrored, “I can see you’re upset—who wouldn’t be? Is there anything we can do?” Nothing. Finally, he primed. That is, he took his best guess at what they might be thinking, said it in a way that showed it was okay to talk about it, and then went on from there. “Are you thinking that the only reason we’re doing this is to make money? That maybe we don’t care about your personal lives?”

After a brief pause, someone answered: “Well, it sure looks like that. Do you have any idea how much trouble this is going to cause?” Then someone else chimed in and the discussion was off and running.

Now, this is not the kind of thing you would do unless nothing else has worked. You really want to hear from others, and you have a very strong idea of what they’re probably thinking. Priming is an act of good faith, taking risks, becoming vulnerable, and building safety in hopes that others will share their meaning.

But What If They’re Wrong?

Sometimes it feels dangerous to sincerely explore the views of someone whose path is wildly different from your own. He or she could be completely wrong, and we’re acting calm and collected. This makes us nervous.

To keep ourselves from feeling nervous while exploring others’ paths—no matter how different or wrong they seem—remember we’re trying to understand their point of view, not necessarily agree with it or support it. Understanding doesn’t equate with agreement. Sensitivity does equate to acquiescence. By taking steps to understand another person’s Path to Action, we are promising that we’ll accept their point of view. There will be plenty of time later for us to share our path as well. For now, we’re merely trying to get at what others think in order to understand why they’re feeling the way they’re feeling and doing what they’re doing.