[00:00:00] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:10] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:11] Karen: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, what was my impact? 

[00:00:19] Paul: This is a question that we find is very useful to be able to ask in as calm and as grounded a way as we can when we're discovering that we were surprised by the response we're getting from people to a thing that we did, to something that we said, to something that we have suggested that we've put out there. 

[00:00:40] Paul: We've done a thing. We had some great intentions for this thing that we did. And suddenly we're getting this pushback from people that we've hurt them in some way, or we've done something that is insensitive or things like that.

[00:00:53] Paul: And so we want to explore here today is sort of one of these, what we think is a really important skill in terms of working in relationship, particularly when we're working in cases of difference. Which is what we're talking about here on the show of being able to sort of really step back and go, what was the impact that I actually had rather than the impact I intended to have?

[00:01:15] Karen: Yeah. And this is one that shows up all the time because first round, what happens between people when we're not being thoughtful about this is I'm going about my day doing reasonable things that have worked for me all of my life and most of the places that I've been in the groups that I've been in.

[00:01:34] Karen: And then somehow somebody is not happy with me. I can't understand why taking the minutes the way that I've always taken the minutes, or leading a meeting the way I've always led a meeting, or making the coffee the way I've always made the coffee, that kind of thing. It didn't seem to me that I was doing anything objectionable.

[00:01:52] Karen: I certainly didn't set out to hurt anybody's feelings. I didn't have any data to suggest that I was gonna hurt anybody's feelings. But somebody's not happy about it. And they, of course, were going along through their day and got hit with something that made them uncomfortable. Whatever that was, right?

[00:02:08] Karen: And the tendency is for us just to get into a debate that actually comes down to who is the terrible person, who's at blame, and where does the judgment land, and who should be in trouble now. And it's the wrong question because the blame and judgment question, I mean, maybe you can figure it out. And boy, I had a lot of 3rd graders when I taught 3rd grade who wanted me to just answer that question for them and hand out a penalty and that would be the end of it.

[00:02:33] Karen: But it didn't serve them well, and it doesn't serve us well to look for a verdict. That's actually not what builds the relationship. What builds with the relationship is to look for understanding. And we talked in episode 192 about what to do if you're on the hurt end of this. If I'm the one who was going through my day and all of a sudden, bam, I got hit with something that I just can't figure out why they behaved that way.

[00:02:57] Karen: It really bothered me. That we did in 192 and kind of how that goes badly. What we want to do here is look at, I'm going through my day having done reasonable things and I'm hit with, somebody's upset with something that I did and I have no idea why. And so when in that moment, I become aware somebody's not happy with me and my instinct is to go, but I wasn't doing anything wrong and everything that I did was reasonable and you must be the one who's wrong.

[00:03:24] Karen: And it must be your view of this that's wrong. And if we can just sort of pause that and instead this question of what was my impact. So, as we say, get curious. In this case, it's going to be a ton of vulnerability. I will say. Because I didn't think I did anything wrong, and I now have to be willing to say, maybe I did, or maybe I had a different impact than I wanted to have, or maybe I should do it different the next time.

[00:03:49] Karen: That's all vulnerable territory, and I'll just say up front, we're totally opening all that up. 

[00:03:55] Paul: Back in 192, we talked about one of these really common human tendencies to ascribe intention to people based on the impact that they had on us, right? So it's like, if you step on my foot, it's because you meant to step on my foot.

[00:04:07] Paul: If you said this hurtful thing to me, it's because you meant to hurt me. And we pointed out in that episode that we do that all the time. It's not necessarily likely to be correct and doing. It's not necessarily and very unlikely to be hopeful in terms of maintaining the relationship. This episode is really about the other side of that, which is the other mistake that we often make as humans is going I had good intentions.

[00:04:31] Paul: Therefore, I couldn't possibly have had a bad impact, and this idea that sometimes are good intent erases bad impact and that if I had a bad impact on you, that's your fault, right? Getting into this place of you even said like did I do something wrong, right? And there's not necessarily right or wrong in here.

[00:04:50] Paul: For me, this is not an ethical question. This is a question of sort of, am I doing things that are actually helping the relationship to grow and develop and continue forward? And this is where feedback. I mean, ultimately, this is a conversation kind of about feedback. I recall a one of the first times I was working with a co facilitator a number of years ago, and we were this is inside of a company.

[00:05:11] Paul: We both worked there. She and I were working together on this thing. We were doing this event for a small number of people, leadership team sort of thing. And afterwards, she said, Can I give you some feedback and I was like, yeah, I thought that went really well. And she said, I noticed that at several points during the session where there would be kind of a pause or a thing, a rough moment or something, you would jump in to take over, right?

[00:05:37] Paul: To move the thing along. And I said, yeah, I really wanted to be able to help there. And she said that was not helpful. In fact, it made me look bad in front of the whole rest of the group. And I had, I, I shriveled in horror. Because that was not at all what I intended to do. I was hoping to support her.

[00:05:53] Paul: I was trying to do this thing. And then, of course, like looking back on it, I also recognized that, oh, she was younger than me. She was a woman in technology. The group that we were working with was largely men, and I sort of went, Oh, there was probably more going on here than even just the behavior in the room.

[00:06:13] Paul: There's all sorts of other baggage that's going on here. I really have very different impact that I had intended. And wow, is it hard for me to hear that. But 15 years later, I still remember that because of some of the lessons that I was able to learn from it, from being able to sit in that place of discomfort and being able to go, ooh, okay, let me really be able to examine what I did here. 

[00:06:40] Karen: And I think that's the core thing that we want to talk about is, first, we have to start from an understanding that all the good intentions in the world do not eliminate the possibility of a bad impact. That somebody else got hurt that somebody else didn't like it even that somebody else was uncomfortable.

[00:06:59] Karen: And so if we're gonna keep the relational space, if we want to be in the space between, what's in the space between is yes, my intention has a place there, but I already know my intention. The thing I don't know is my impact and the impact is also hanging out in the space between. So if I want to bridge that, the first thing that I have to do is get interested in what the impact was, and I have to be willing to acknowledge it. 

[00:07:27] Karen: So if I had been that co facilitator, it would have been really important for you to say to me. I did that, I did step in. I saw that you weren't or I saw that you left some space and I totally did step into that. And I can absolutely understand why it disempowered you why it made you look bad.

[00:07:50] Karen: Or why you would feel like it did if I mean, like, if I didn't think it had disempowered you that whatever, but I would have needed you to say all that to me. And I suspect you did say that to her in that moment. But so often we don't because we're afraid that if I say, yep, I did leave my towel on the floor, then that also means and I'm a slob and a pig and you hate living with me forever, right? 

[00:08:14] Karen: Which is not what it means, right? We throw all this other stuff in together. And especially if it came at us as an accusation, you always leave your towels on the floor because you're such a pig and you don't care about a clean house.

[00:08:24] Karen: And then my feelings don't matter to you. Like the story goes on and on. Right. And so I'm terrified to say, well, yes, I left my towels on the floor and yes, you have told me five times that you hate that. And yes, it does make the house look messier. All of that is true, and this is in the space that in the imago practice that I talk about.

[00:08:43] Karen: Sometimes we call this validation. It is not agreement, but it is saying, yep, you have reason to feel and think what you think. And the reasons like the things you're saying that I did, I did those things. And that's that I did the thing and you felt this way about it. And I see that you felt this way about it.

[00:09:01] Karen: And I am not dismissing you. I am hanging out with you in a world in which the thing that I did can be annoying, can be hurtful, can be ignorant, can be on thinking, can be clumsy, can be like, we all have those moments, right? We all make those mistakes and we especially make them around stuff that we don't know about.

[00:09:21] Karen: So you mentioned she was a woman in a field that's largely male dominated, and she was younger at, right? So there's some serious privilege going on there. When we have privilege it's especially easy for us not to notice. That's just the human condition. It doesn't mean people with privilege are bad people.

[00:09:38] Karen: It just is. When you have the advantage when you have the comfort, it's hard to see that other people don't. And what that difference is. So for all of those reasons, that willingness to set aside the meaning that we're attaching to it and simply connect for a bit with, yep, that is the impact that I had, and I am very willing to acknowledge it.

[00:10:02] Karen: And if I don't understand it yet, I may even say, I'm not connecting. I don't see how in your example, jumping in, in that moment, disempowered you. I believe you, but I don't see it. Can you help me? Can you put the dots together for me? I want to know more about this, that kind of thing, because if we aren't willing to acknowledge our impact, the likelihood of building the bridge that keeps this relationship working, it's really small.

[00:10:30] Karen: It's tough to do it if we aren't willing to acknowledge the other side. 

[00:10:33] Paul: Exactly. And I think that the key practice there, at least in my experience of this has been it's, it took to keep the defensiveness at bay, right? Because it's very easy when you're telling me that I had this impact that is not aligned with my intention.

[00:10:50] Paul: It's probably very threatening to my sense of identity, right? It's like, well, I'm not a bad person. I'm not a racist. I'm not a misogynist. I care about people like those stories start to pop up into my head unbidden right away. And I think the key practice is to be able to go hold on, don't let that come out of your mouth.

[00:11:11] Paul: Because now I'm going to get into an argument about you're going to be trying to tell me about my impact and I'm going to be trying to defend myself by talking about my intentions. We actually need to talk about the same thing at the same time.

[00:11:24] Paul: If you're telling me about impact, I need to get curious about impact. We need to have a conversation at the impact level. We may talk about intentions later, right? But if I try to deflect, if I try to go somewhere else, if I get defensive, which is understandable because I'm trying to fend off some sort of shame spiral.

[00:11:40] Paul: I'm trying to stay out of all this. If I can just hold with that and go, okay, Paul, this is uncomfortable. But this is okay, right? This person is giving me this feedback because they think that it's useful to do so, like it's a stretch for them to say this, like it's hard to point out to people whom we have some sort of relationship with that they've done a thing that's hurt us in some way, or that has been hurtful.

[00:12:04] Paul: If they're doing that, I need to reciprocate and go, okay, um, oh, you know, sometimes I can go, yeah, I see it. And sometimes it's as you said, I believe you, I do not dismiss it because that's another defensive reaction and stay with it. Then when I get to the point where I can acknowledge that, yeah, I had that impact.

[00:12:23] Paul: That often calms the other person down enough, it rebuilds that relational bridge that they might be willing to talk about intention, right? Because if I can acknowledge, okay, wow, I see that now. That makes sense to me, I can see how the thing that I did would have landed that way that I may sense that they are now at a point where I might be able to ask, I'm curious, do you think I intended to do that?

[00:12:52] Paul: And it will certainly they go, no. And I go, okay, cool. Now I can release that. Okay. Right. But I don't open with that, right? Don't open with the well, that's not what I intended to. Or do you think that I meant to, there's too much heat in that conversation in that moment to go to that place. I want to reassure the other person that I understand what they're saying before asking for reassurance for myself.

[00:13:17] Karen: And this is one of those cases where, when there's a disagreement between two people, which happens every day, all the time, it happens when there's privilege at play, it happens when there's not, it happens between members of a family, it happens between co workers, it happens on the street with strangers, and on the street with strangers, there's probably not enough relationship to do something about it, but in most cases when there's relationship and we want to maintain that relationship, it really helps if both people can be at their very best, probably not going to happen, but we hope for that. And so if you're sitting there going, but what if I say my impact and they don't care about my intention.

[00:13:58] Karen: Yeah, that might happen, but that's not in your control and it's actually none of your business. Like, really, my business is what I can do. So if I have done something that landed badly, what I can do is get really curious about my impact. If I am the person for whom something landed badly, we're going to refer you to 192.

[00:14:19] Karen: And in the perfect world, those two come together. We've got one person on one side who did a thing and is saying, wow, I sure didn't mean that thing to be a bad thing for you, but I hear that it was a bad thing for you. And I want to understand that and I care about that. And then the person who's on the receiving end goes, I'm interested in why you did that thing and where that was coming from for you.

[00:14:42] Karen: And out of that, almost always, I mean, maybe there's a problem solving thing that needs to happen, or maybe just now we understand each other and we're okay. Right. Like it frames differently. But almost always we can have a relational space forward. Like what flows out of that turns out to be easier. And sometimes even if the behavior is not going to change for whatever reason, oh, okay, that's going to keep happening and I'm going to not like it, but I will get that they aren't meaning it to hurt me. 

[00:15:10] Karen: And I know where it's coming from now, or I am going to change my behavior. Even though I don't think there was anything wrong with it to begin with, but I'm not going to do it with you. Because I see that it bothers you, even though I don't think there's any reason I shouldn't do it with everybody else on the planet.

[00:15:25] Karen: I won't do it with you, right? There's tons of room once you have that understanding. But if you skip this step, And one person stays in my good intention and the other person stays in your bad impact. That we just keep clashing. And it's because we conflate the two. I think that if my intention was good, my impact must be good.

[00:15:46] Karen: I think that if your impact on me was bad, your intention toward me must have been bad. And what we're saying here is we got to tease those apart. And work with each of them separately. And ideally, we work with both of them. 

[00:16:00] Paul: I agree. The thing that I would add to this, since we really are talking about this, like, what happens when I'm on the receiving end of discovering that my, you know, hearing that my impact is not what I had intended.

[00:16:12] Paul: We want to be seen for our intentions, right? That is a thing. I get that. And so I can understand why it is so hard to hear that we had an impact that we didn't intend. Even when we can acknowledge that that can still be hard, but we want to be seen for that.

[00:16:26] Paul: And I think the best thing we can do if we want to be seen for our good intentions is to acknowledge our problematic impact and then change our behavior, right? To do something different next time. That's the best way for people to actually know that we have good intentions is to demonstrate it through acknowledgement and change, right?

[00:16:48] Paul: And working through that and moving forward with that. And that is the thing that continues to strengthen the relationship. And to strengthen that space between 

[00:16:57] Karen: And probably all of your other relationships too, because you learn a thing or two in this process, maybe. So, what we're saying here is that when we're in this situation where I've done a thing, somebody else isn't happy with me about it, it's super important to stop and ask, what was my impact? Ask myself, what can I figure out about what the impact was? Ask the other person, what impact did I have? And acknowledge it. I did the thing, it landed for you this way, what you're saying makes sense and is reasonable.

[00:17:26] Karen: Even if I disagree with it, it makes sense and it's reasonable. I can see why you think that. And if I can do that, I increase the odds that they can do the thing I hope they will do around being curious about what my intent was and being willing to understand that I wasn't trying to hurt them and all of that kind of thing.

[00:17:45] Karen: So hopefully it becomes a two way conversation. But our focus for today is really on how much learning we can get and how much relationship we can build by being willing to say my intention and my impact don't match. I had a different impact than I intended to, and I'm willing to hang out for a while in the space of my impact as much as I would really rather and feel better and it's safer and happier to hang out in my good intentions.

[00:18:12] Karen: In order to have a connection with you, a person who is different than me, I am going to set aside my attachment to my good intentions. And hang out in the negative impact that I had and understand it and be with it and sit with it and sit with you with it. And likely that changes how I behave at least around you.

[00:18:33] Karen: And very possibly it changes something about how I behave ongoing in life forever. And that whole process strengthens the space between and it strengthens our ability to have better relationships in the future. 

[00:18:47] Paul: That's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:18:51] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.