Difficult conversations Archives

How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race, Kwame Christian. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2022.

Summary: Makes the case for the importance and unavoidability of workplace conversations about race, how we may overcome our fears, and offers a framework of practical skills in engaging these conversations.

Kwame Christian is the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Trained as a lawyer, he works as a mediator in legal negotiations and teaches negotiation skills. He’s also a Black man who actually avoided race conversations because they were so emotionally taxing, until his wife confronted him with the inconsistency of telling people they needed to have difficult conversations in negotiations but avoiding difficult conversations about race. When he first presented these ideas, he took a different approach. He told people that he was not going to tell them how to think about race but was going to show them how to talk about race. Those first presentations eventually led to this book.

The book is organized around three straightforward parts: the problem, the solution, and taking action. In the first part he addresses our resistance to and need for having difficult conversations about race. He proposes that we do so because we care about our colleagues and our relationships with colleagues, we care about fairness, and we care about progress in our organization. One of Christian’s key observations is that progress only happens when people are persuaded to implement changes. For this, a winning mindset is critical, in which people are convinced that difficult conversations can lead to progress and not trauma. It means accepting that if one party thinks race is at issue in the conversation, then it is. It means a willingness to make mistakes. He offers help in identifying our underlying fears that lead to negative thought patterns that undercut our efforts. He also discusses the psychological barriers of implicit, attribution, and confirmation bias and other barriers and antidotes, often the key aspect of which is awareness and ways we can flip the script.

Christian then turns to solution. It begins with a focus on strategy, clarity on how we hope to move a conversation toward our goal that includes what we do, say, and how we say it. He argues that negotiation is never about compromising core values or accepting mistreatment. We start with building trust. He differentiates between level one and level two communication. Level one is about understanding to strengthen the relationship. Level two is about persuasion to change behaviors and beliefs, which can only happen on a foundation of level one. The goal is a collaborative rather than combative conversation. He talks about how to begin by outlining situation plus impact plus invitation., focusing on one person at a time and one topic and calling in rather than calling out. Then he comes to the essential part of having effective conversations which is to mobilize compassionate curiosity which focuses on acknowledging and validating emotions, getting curious with compassion about our feelings and why these bother us, and then using joint problem solving to care for each other. He addresses the mistakes we can make and how to avoid them–for example speaking different languages (e.g. what we mean by “privilege”).

The final part of the book focuses on how we take action to advocate for positive change. One of the most sensible observations here is that the perfect is unrealistic and that we should focus on better. He then concludes with the role of difficult conversations in equity discussions. This involves collaborating rather than competing and how we become and recruit good allies. An appendix applies the principles of the book to practical workplace scenarios.

There is so much to appreciate about this book. It is realistic, focusing on the necessity of difficult conversations. Avoiding them often leads to worse outcomes. It is positive, focusing on collaborative problem solving rather than blame or shame. It is focused on identifying barriers to progress rather than trying to change how the world feels about race. It values relationships and what we may learn from one another with its key practice of compassionate curiosity. The book is filled with examples that most in the workplace can identify with. Finally, it offers both the grace to make mistakes and learn, and the hope that difficult conversations can lead to change and deeper understanding–that these conversations are an opportunity. This is a resource that ought to be on the shelf or desk of any workplace leader–within easy access until the “playbook” becomes ingrained.

I Beg to Differ, Tim Muehlhoff. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: Building on an understanding of the dynamics of communication, this book develops a strategy for navigating difficult conversations through asking four key questions of those with whom we differ.

Difference is a given of life. Difference can make life delightful…or disturbing. What can be tough is when two people in some form of significant relationship differ and have to figure out how to make life with each other work. It happens between spouses, parents and children, business partners, and political leaders.

Tim Muehlhoff, a professor of communications, knows all about this. He begins his book with a married couple who come to him with manila folders stuffed full of documentation of the grievances they had with each other. In various settings, he has worked on communication issues with families, men and women, college students, faculty and others in the public and private sectors.

He begins the book laying out some basic truths about communication. He explores how powerful words actually are. He outlines the various causes of conflict including poor communication climate, differing views of reality, lack of credibility, relational transgressions, lack of small talk, and latent conflict. He discusses the necessity of managing and expressing emotions in conflict. And he considers the role and importance of our spiritual disciplines in helping us with our self-control and self-talk.

All this lays the groundwork for four basic questions to ask in difficult conversations:

What does this person believe?
Why does this person hold this belief?
Where do we agree?
Based on all I’ve learned, how should I proceed.

He argues that these questions work to promote understanding in difficult situations because of the rule of reciprocity. When I make a sincere effort to understand another person on their own terms and look for the things we hold in common, it often creates a climate where the other sees themselves as obliged to do the same.

The final question is important. He elaborates it in the chapter as follows: “With this person, at this time, under these circumstances, what is the next thing I should say?” It takes all we’ve learned about the person through the first three questions under consideration. It considers timing–is this a good time to have this conversation? It considers circumstances–are they conducive to a good conversation? And it focuses on a very specific goal, a manageable agenda–not everything I would ever want to discuss with this person.

The book concludes with three “case studies” of applying this strategy: a disagreement between spouses about finances, a disagreement between work colleagues about religion, and a difference between parent and teen about video games and grades. The dialogues are believable and illustrate a deliberate effort to walk through the four questions.

I found this one of the most helpful books on communication I’ve read because, while rooted in theory, it didn’t become lost in it, but provided very practical steps and illustrations that helped this reader think about how I could actually practice this in the next difficult conversation I face.

He concludes the book with a quote from The Miracle of Dialogue by Reuel Howe:

Dialogue is to love, what blood is to the body. When the flow of blood stops, the body dies. When dialogue stops, love dies and resentment and hate are born. But dialogue can restore a dead relationship. Indeed this is the miracle of dialogue: it can bring relationship into being, and it can bring into being once again a relationship that had died.

Powerful words that seem so crucial for our time. What Muehlhoff does is point us away from the death-dealing discord of our culture to this life-giving dialogue.