Employing Differences, Episode 63: Can I say the thing I don't want them to know?

Paul: 0:09

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: 0:15

I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:16

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:18

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Can I say the thing I don't want them to know?"

Paul: 0:30

I had an experience this week of disclosing in a collaborative relationship, that I was struggling with some stuff. Some things were not going the way that I hoped that they were going. And it was actually hard for me to say that. And I also recognized that it was probably useful for me to say it. And as it turns out, it was useful for me to say it, but what it started me thinking about sort of in the process of

that was: 0:59

Why was it hard for me to say that? Why was this a thing that I didn't want somebody else to know?And so Karen and I wanted to explore this idea a little bit here today of those things that we are aware of, that other people might not be aware of, and whether or not and when we are able to actually talk about those things, and to bring those things up and talk about the things that we don't want other people to know.

Karen: 1:27

Yeah, I might even start a step further back from the things I'm aware of, to point out that frequently, we don't even tell them to ourselves. So that even that my own awareness of and mostly we're talking about "not good enough" kinds of messages in one way or another. That I was late getting that thing done, or I you know, I'm not... One of the things I have trained myself to say to clients is, "You know, like that, that remembering to follow up with you want exactly that date. That's the thing I'm not very good at. So I'm going to try to do that. But please feel free to come back and pester me, I would so much rather be pestered, then you feel bad that I forgot it later." But that that thing that I'm not good at, and I somehow feel like I should be. I may not even be willing to admit to myself that I'm not good at that, or that I'm not going to be good at that this week, for some reason, or wherever it is. But our unconscious has this tricky little way of bringing it up and putting it in front of us and making us somewhat aware of it. And so we ended up kind of getting stressed or we get tension or you know, I've got that spot in my shoulders that I just know I'm yeah. And so I think even the first step is just being able to say, "Where is my stress coming from? Where is this tension? What is this thing that has me procrastinating or feeling defensive or getting angry with my collaborator?" All of these things can come out of it. And so if we can learn it and we just kind of have our own ways of distracting ourselves from the thing we'd rather ourselves not know, and certainly rather hide from others so if we can get good at first even getting our own awareness of, "Okay, I know, I don't feel quite right. And the reason I'm not feeling quite right is this thing. And I'd really rather it wasn't true to begin with. And if it wasn't gonna be true, I'd rather nobody ever had to know about it." So given that I'd be way more comfortable if it was just this nicely held secret, and nobody ever noticed it, can I just say it in that collaborative space?

Paul: 3:54

There is a sort of a trifecta in the middle there of things that you said that I think tie to the core of this. Often it's a thing we're not good at. So there's a there's a lack of skill, there's a whatever it is. We're just not good at a thing. And then the second part is that we tell ourselves that we should be good at it. So there's that self-judgment there of, "I should be better at this." And there's a whole thing to unpack around that. And I think then that's why we willingly or unknowingly overlook it. Why it's hard to admit to ourselves. Because it's hard to admit to ourselves that we're not good at a thing that we think we should be good at. And so of course, we're not going to want to talk about to anybody else. But that was actually the interesting thing for me in this experience was in the process of admitting that I was not doing well with this and I felt like it wasn't going very well, I recognized the reason why I needed to bring it up was because that might not have been obvious from the outside. It might or it might have been that this was some for some client stuff so the client might not have cared. And they're like, "Oh, this is fine. This is great." But I that's not how I wanted to have done it. And my collaboration partner might not have noticed or cared. They might have said, "Okay, that's great." But again, it really wasn't necessarily really meeting my standards or how I wanted it to be going. And so as soon as I was sort of able to say that to him, like "I'm struggling with this. I feel like this is not going the way that I want it to." And then I sort of backed up like a bit. And I was like, yeah, and there's totally a story and the judgment that I'm rendering unto myself around this. And then I was able to let go of it. I didn't need him to then come and say, "Oh, no, everything is fine. I think everything is great." It was in the admitting it in the in the saying it to him that I was able to sort of admit it to myself, and kind of at that point, I was able to go,"Oh, now I know how to work with this." And I could do my own work on it. So it was a little weird, because I didn't need him to do anything. I just needed to say it. And that's, that's maybe the way I work with a bunch of these things. But it did allow me to see that where a lot of that stress that thing in my shoulder where that all was coming from was the way that I was judging myself. And once I noticed that, then I could go do something about that.

Karen: 6:32

Yeah. So I think there are kind of two layers of what you're talking about. So the way I would frame what you're saying is that, once you said it, once you revealed it, once you expressed it, all of the energy that you were putting towards hiding it, towards shielding it from yourself, from your partner, from whomever But all of the energy that's going into the shame, and to use some Brene Brown language, "shame thrives in the darkness." So if you can get it out of the shadows and your reveal it then all of this shame association with it dissolves, or much of it, hopefully, all of it, a lot of it. And the energy around hiding it becomes available for other things. And so there's that piece of it. And then I think for me, the thing that happens with it is that as long as I'm holding it secret, it only belongs to me. And so I am 100% responsible for the thing that I'm doing badly. Whether everybody thinks I'm doing it badly, or I do, I'm the only one who can possibly do anything about it, because I'm keeping it secret from everybody else. And also, I'm not good at it. So I'm preventing others in the team who might be better at it from lending their expertise and helping with it, or compensating in some way or even saying, "Oh, heck, none of us are good at that, let's just not do that thing" or whatever it. When I share it in addition to dissolving the shame that's thriving in the darkness of my own little secret keeping also, it belongs then to the group. And it's far less important that I'm not good at it. It becomes okay that I'm not good at it, because there's the potential for someone else to be good at it or for some collaboration to happen or for some other problem solving to happen around it that was never going to be possible as long as I was preventing people from knowing about it.

Paul: 8:28

And that isn't guaranteed to fix it. But it at least admits the possibility of it. The door becomes open there. I mean certainly there's the possibility and I think the fear about being able to say,"Here's what's going on. I'm really stressed out about this. I'm not handling this well." the fear is that my partner is going to say, "Well, suck it up. Fix it. It's your problem, you need to deal with it." That's certainly a fear that would be keeping me from wanting to say that, to admit that. And that the story that I tell around that is, "Well, if he does say that, that gives me very important information about whether or not we would want to work together in the future." Is that the kind of relationship that I wanted to do more work in? And, of course, that wasn't the reaction. But those are the choices. That either the thing you're afraid of happening will happen. or it won't, in which case you now have other options. And so I think when we are willing to get to the point where we can talk about it, where we will say the thing that we don't want people to know, is when we're more afraid of the current situation than we are of what might happen, the thing that's been keeping it inside. But it's it's not guaranteed to work. It is a risk. It is absolutely a risk to p133ut it out there. That's not always a risk you should take.

Karen: 10:03

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly where I was thinking of next. A lot does depend on what is the relationship that we're in? There's certainly times I wouldn't tell a client how close I came to not having slides ready for the workshop I prepared for them. I probably wouldn't share that with everybody all the time. And some of it is, are they going to find out anyway? And so you're far better off to have revealed it upfront than to have them discover it. But a lot of it is about what is the relationship? So that we know what the safety is. So with someone that you I know your situation was with someone that you have a large, ongoing collaboration, long term relationship, lots of work, gone into negotiating that connection. That's pretty reliably safe. Can I say the thing I don't want him to know? Almost certainly. And, and we want to have those relationships around us. And those are also places where we can float the things. So should I reveal this to that client or this other person or this person that I've been at odds with for a while? How does that go? Can we play that out? So I think that's part of it. And then I think there's this other piece around, what is my objective and sharing it? Because sometimes we want to say to the client, "Well, you know, the reason you didn't get, what I would have offered is that the flight was late, and my computer crashed." Now, I'm just really defensive. Is the thing that I'm saying, like, yeah, I screwed up, or, you know, yeah, I'm not gonna get that thing, or whatever it is that I'm just sort of revealing. Or is the thing that I'm saying is, here are all my excuses, so that I'm telling you that actually, I really am good enough and you shouldn't judge me about this. And those are pretty different outcomes. So if the outcome is, I just want to be upfront about it, so that it's out there, and I'm not hiding it in this dark, shame corner, and we can deal with it with all the resources that we have... I did this last night I was with a client. Literally, when I went to connect to the Zoom, my computer decided it was no longer going to participate in my life for a while, and I just said that to them. "So I'm on my laptop that's not as good. It's harder for me to put documents next to each other. If you can help me track some things that would really help me." In a way that I wouldn't normally have asked them to do, because I was asking them to have different expectations of me. I wasn't going to perform the way they were used to because I was missing a tool and was asking for a different relationship that's going to work. If at the end, I had missed an important thing. And then I was just like,"Well, that was because my computer crashed." Yeah, it's not gonna land, right. So being thoughtful. When you say it may not work, at the very least think about what working means. Why am I saying the thing? And if I'm just saying it to be defensive and sort of escape judgment, there's far less odds of that working. Whereas if I'm saying it to be collaborative, to be problem solving, and to get out of my shame story, and I'm with people with whom there's enough relationship to have some safety and doing that, almost certainly, I can say the thing.

Paul: 13:24

Yeah, the defensiveness piece is a big one in there. One of my good friends talks about the difference between reasons and excuses. Right, so in this situation you're talking about, it's like, "Things are going to be a little different today, because this thing happened." That's reasons. Excuses are,"Don't blame me for this. This is not my fault." Here's what happened, here's how the world is. Because when you're in that excuses place, you're actually still in the shame spot. You still have that. And so there's a piece of this conversation is great, because it's allowing me to recontextualize the whole conversation that I had. I was able to get to the point where I could take responsibility for what was going on. And that actually allowed me to be in a much greater place of control. When we're in the place of excuses, of justification, of blame, we're not actually in control. We have a greatly diminished sense of autonomy when we're in that space. Being able to get to that point where I could go, "This really isn't working the way that I would like it to and I can see how my actions have contributed to that. And I just need to say that so that I can move on from it. Okay, now, here's what we're gonna go do." That was me sort of stepping into that place of taking responsibility for the outcomes that I was creating, but further taking responsibility and saying, "So let's talk about what we might do about this so we look a little better in front of the client. What do we want to do about that?" And so I think those are two very different come-froms. And I think that's one of the ways that you can kind of feel, at least for me, when I know that I'm in a space where I can say the thing that I don't want them to know, versus when I'm in a space that I can't.

Karen: 15:27

Yeah, yeah, I think the other question you alluded to this earlier, is to ask myself,"Okay, so there's the thing I don't want to say." And once I've gotten aware of it myself, why don't I want to say? What is the thing holding me back from saying it? And is it serving the secret in some way? Or is it serving the relationship in some way? And I think that if we kind of get clear about where we are with that, and you know, almost always in revealing the secret, there's some vulnerability involved. Is it vulnerability within a safe enough space to be that vulnerable, however uncomfortable I might be? Or is it sort of something dressed up as vulnerability, trying to be something else? Excuses, or defensiveness, or that kind of thing. So I think that if we get good at the self-reflection piece that we'll discover that we can say the thing, and having given all of that context to it might work, it might not work, it may be a good idea, it may not be a good idea, I'm still gonna land on the side of when in doubt, go for the vulnerability and say the thing.

Paul: 16:45

Maybe not the biggest, scariest thing first. But I do think that there is that... I think that my experience has been is that in a lot of situations and you talked earlier, actually about sort of, I've got this really strong really worked out relationship with this person that I'm collaborating with, and so it's pretty safe for me to say just about anything in that space. And I think we have a sense of the order of safety of a lot of our relationships. And so one of the things that I think it could be useful to do to your point about default to doing it is kind of go, "Where do I where is it a little uncomfortable but I feel like it might be safe to admit something?" and sort of work down the line. Push all of them up a little bit more. Don't start with your least safe relationship and admit your biggest problem, your biggest secret. But if we can just get in that habit of going a little bit more towards the edge, like we can push that out a little bit more. And then fundamentally, the more that we are able to disclose about what's going on the smarter the collective gets, because now we're all working with with more information. Practicing that learning that skill of testing our assumptions about what horrible thing might happen or not, if I actually admit this thing, as we start to test that assumption that we have, can kind of loosen its grip over us. And it can become easier to do in a wider variety of situations.

Karen: 18:15

Yep, I'll add one more tag to this, which is, in those groups where we have different comfort levels where we're deciding, "yeah, it's not safe enough to share this," a follow up question might be, "Do we want to build the relationship so it would be safe?" Is this a place where it's worth investing to get that? And maybe it's even, you know, sort of after the fact, you come in and say,"Uou know, there was a thing that I would have liked to feel safe saying and I didn't at the time and can we talk through that?" But just noticing that, you may or may not have enough influence in that space to make that happened. But where you do, if it doesn't feel safe yet, what are the steps we can take to make it safer?

Paul: 19:01

Right? It's like what would need to be true in order for me to feel safe enough in order to say that here?

Karen: 19:09

So I think we're sort of saying, most of the time, the first step is to get aware of the discomfort and go, "Oh, there's some discomfort here. Where's that coming from?" So that we have that, "Okay, this is the thing I'd rather not anybody ever know about." And, and then thinking through, if I share that, what might happen? What might not happen? What would be my purpose in sharing it? And is that purpose going to be served here. But most of the time, probably erring on the side of revealing the thing to dissolve the shame, and to create the space in which the collaborative space can hold the thing and be part of problem solving the thing more often than not is going to be what's going to get you where you want to go.

Paul: 19:55

Yeah. Well, that's gonna do it for us for today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 20:01

And I'm Karen Gimnig and this has been Employing Differences.