Awkward conversations training with Tobias Mayer

HackIT very kindly paid for me to go on this training course today. Tobias asked the participants to write openly about it afterwards so here’s my quick review.

Overall I definitely enjoyed the course and learned a lot. How much of it I will put into practice on a regular enough basis that it becomes second nature remains to be seen but I certainly left with plenty to think about.

My top takeaways were the following.

• If you intention is to change the mind of the other person or even to make them see things the way you do then you’re almost certainly setting yourself up to fail . The key to awkward conversations is to focus on improving the relationship between the participants. Think “I feel we haven’t had an opportunity to get to know each other” or “I’m very interested in knowing your views on…”
• The only thing you can do prior to the conversation is prepare your own mental attitude — there’s little value in trying to model what the other person might say
• We can only control our side of the conversation while it’s happening
• It can be automatically uncomfortable to talk to people outside of your tribe (this rings very true for me)
• Conversations are co-creation — let people get to the end of what they want to say otherwise they’ll never be in a state to hear you. If they reach the end and don’t ask you a question then they don’t really want to engage in the conversation.
• There’s value in owning the situation — “I’m going to find this conversation awkward but I feel it’s important to discuss…”

I took some more detailed notes.

• Tobias supplied three worksheets with course structure and references for people who want to follow-up further. He asked us not to share them online but that it was okay to do it on a 1:1 basis so if you know me and like to see them please contact me directly.
• First 3 key questions: “Does it have to be said?”, “Does it have to be said by me?” and “Does it have to be said by me, now?”
• The three parts of the conversation are preparation, immersion and reflection
• Your feelings want to tell you something (heard, held, healed)
• Awkwardness is dealing with uncertainty (which is probably why I’ve issues with it)
• Don’t rush to get past it — learn from it (explore the discomfort)
• Conversations can just become more awkward just by being too infrequent
• Compromise just leaves both people dissatisfied — so the other person is still unhappy with you — look for a way to build a better outcome together
• Think about physically where the conversation will take place — be wary of power imbalances due to location
• Consider the whole person (check your assumptions). Think about their potentially unmet needs, e.g. (from “Human Givens”) Security, Attention, Autonomy, Intimacy, Community, Privacy, Status, Competence and Meaning are very often the underlying factors driving people’s complaints
• Naikan is a self-reflection method that can help prepare for awkward conversations. It’s 3 key questions are “What have I given to (person x)?”, “What have I received from (person x)?” What troubles and difficulties have I caused to (person x)?”. NB Naikan deliberately doesn’t include “what difficulties (person x) has caused me” — the point is to introduce other perspectives (and focus on compassion).
• I did wonder if Naikan is missing a question about “what external factors have impacted your relationship to (person x)?” while remembering that the other person might not be influenced by the event(s) in the way that you imagine
• The further up you get in a hierarchical organisation the fewer people there are from each tribe so conversations can become more difficult, more formal (to avoid the difficulties) or both
• The majority of people who say they have “impostor syndrome” are people form minority groups. Tobias see the phrase as damaging “self blame” rather then enabling people to acknowledge that what people are often reacting to is an unhealthy environment
• Clean (assumption free) language is using the users language back to them to remove assumptions from discussions. It uses questions such as “What kind of…?” (often introducing metaphors), “Is there anything more about..?”, “What happened just before…?” (reduces emotional arousal) and “What would like to have happen…?”
• The Lyssa Adkins model of solving people-problems brought to you by others — “Are you okay to speak to that person about it?”, “Would you like me to come with you?” or “I will speak to the person — but I’m going to mention you by name”. If the person isn’t happy with any of those suggestions then define it as “not a problem” as they don’t really want to resolve it
• After a conversation an awkward conversation consider the following — “What did I do well?”, “What could I have done better/differently?”, “What will I focus on before my next troublesome conversation?”, “What will I commit to doing during the next conversation?” and “What did I learn? (about myself — not the other)”

While I recommended the course and and it’s definitely worth the money there’s a few things that I would mention to people who are thinking of taking it.

• It’s probably worth waiting till it can be in-person again. Some of the best value was in the role-playing and that works much better in person where more groups are able to do that in parallel giving more people a chance to explore situations specific to them.
• I was under the impression that it would be solely work focused but that was definitely not how it turned out on my course. Two people talked very openly about recent significant breakdowns in romantic relationships and another spoke about issues with a close family member. If that’s not something you are comfortable being around I’d think twice about the course.
• The session I attended was mostly made up of people who have already very much bought into the coaching ethos with many being professional coaches or scrum-masters. There was a lot of sharing related reference material. If you’re coming to this kind of thing for the first time it might be easy to feel out of place around so many experienced people. The kind of attendance may well be different in other session and even if not everyone today was very supportive so it wasn’t an issue for me.

My main issue, and the thing I really wish I’d asked more about during the course, is my struggle to understand how this fits in with my previous training courses on Influencing Skills. Those courses were very direct in terms of techniques directed to change the mind of the other person whereas this one starts by saying that you should never aim to do that. I do wonder if it’s an East vs. West philosophical outlook situation.

All in all I’m glad to have taken part and I look forward to trying out some of the techniques I learned today.