Crucial Conversations

Giving Feedback (Don’t Do It)

Crucial Conversations, Feedback, Internal State, Psychological Safety and Candor, Vulnerability

I’ve been noticing lately how we tend to be pretty bad at giving feedback. In fact, we are so bad that the people around us are flying blind. As are we.

We all have blind spots. One of the gifts you can give me is to help me see into mine. I can give you the same gift. That’s where feedback comes in. Or does it?

Do we know what “feedback” is? I don’t think so. Who has taught us? What did they know of it? Why do we avoid it? Our misunderstandings and misfires lead me to question if we really know what feedback is.

Should we even give it? I don’t think so. Does it surprise you that I don’t think I should give you feedback and that I don’t want yours? It shouldn’t be a surprise — given that we tend to do more harm than good. But!

Lyin’ Eyes

Compassion & Self-Compassion, Crucial Conversations, Personal Development

I see it frequently, sadly, but for some reason, it has hit me harder this week. As I was thinking about writing to you about the topic I want to get into now, lyrics from one of the Eagles’ songs came to mind.

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes

And your smile is a thin disguise

I thought by now you’d realize

There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes.”

I see people suffering this week because others have withheld feedback from them, the feedback they desperately needed. The feedback they could have considered, acted upon, and used to change for the better.

Why was the feedback withheld? [Read more…] about Lyin’ Eyes

Facing the Failure of Being Nice

Crucial Conversations, Radical Candor, Vulnerability

There is a silent and mounting price to being “nice”. I’m talking about the version of being nice that is at the expense of being fully, straightforwardly, breathtakingly honest.

The price compounds over time. It taxes us, silently reducing our belief in ourselves. It injects and then maintains (or even nurtures) dysfunction in our relationships. As time goes by, it calcifies. It becomes more difficult to remove. The failure of dishonesty begets more and more failure. The dishonesty becomes concretized. Embedded. And it becomes increasingly harder for us to face.

And yet that is what we have and what we must work with. There’s no amnesty. No ctrl-alt-delete. No reformatting the hard drive. And so we must work with what we already have. If we are to evolve, grow, heal, and integrate, anyways.

It is a movement so simple and yet so anxiety-provoking. The movement? Turn into the places that scare you. Face the failure. Your feelings of failure. Face the fear of the implications of addressing what has not been addressed for so long.

Why is this on my mind? I saw this just this week. In Lauren and in myself.

Nice vs Kind

Crucial Conversations, Psychological Safety and Candor

Do you think of yourself as a “nice” person? If so, you may have a problem. I don’t know, of course. But you just might. Hold that thought, and answer these two questions…

Do you think of yourself as a “kind” person?
Do you think “nice” and “kind” are one and the same?

I’m asking you these questions because it is like the theme of the week this week. It is the theme I’m seeing in my clients and family: well-intentioned people who have values like “compassion” and “honesty” and “service to others”… and who see themselves as “nice” people are tripping themselves up left, right, and center.

And I get it: “nice” (for most of us) is our social conditioning. But it is often doing us and others more harm than good. So what do I do when this comes up in conversation with others?

I have them think through the potential differences between “nice” and “kind”. When I share the way I define those two words, they seem to have a “light bulb” moment. A flicker of recognition. A glimmer of hope. Want that light bulb? I’ll give it my best shot. Here goes…

[Read more…] about Nice vs Kind

Locating Yourself

Crucial Conversations, Internal State, Psychological Safety and Candor

Yesterday morning, walking up the gravel driveway under the 200-year-old Oregon White Oak, something in me shifted. I woke up feeling pretty low. Sara and I had an argument the night before, and it was one of those rare ones that have a disproportionately strong impact on me. As I was passing under this majestic tree in my early morning walk to my little office up on the hill, I was actively working with my internal state.

Increasingly, I’m realizing the power of internal state and how it really is the crux of personal development. It really defines our life experience, and whether we react unconsciously or respond intelligently to situations we find ourselves in. Two people — in the exact same situation — with different internal states may have two very different experiences. They will react or respond, do more good or more harm, learn or learn nothing, do or do not… in very different ways.

It isn’t the situation that matters most. It is our internal state. And we totally lose sight of this in the very moments where we most need to remember it. This was where I was at with regards to this conflict with Sara. And fortunately, as I passed under the fresh new oak leaves of the summer, I knew it.

[Read more…] about Locating Yourself