Introduction to Employing Differences

[00:00:03] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:09] 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: How Do I React To Their Reactions?

[00:00:14] Karen: This week's question is, how do I react to their reaction?

[00:00:20] Paul: Karen and I love a good meta question, which is kind of what this one is. But this actually I don't think is as unusual as it sounds. 

The Fear of Tough Conversations

[00:00:28] Paul: One of the things that's really common that I run into a lot, both personally and with the clients that I work with, is about, you know, they need to have a conversation with somebody.

[00:00:38] Paul: They need to talk about something, and it's likely to be what they would phrase as a difficult or a tough conversation, right? Maybe telling them something that they don't want to hear. That either is about them or about the situation or anything that's going on, right? 

Avoidance and Its Pitfalls

[00:00:51] Paul: And oftentimes I find that either myself or the people that I'm coaching to do this would rather avoid that conversation.

[00:00:59] Paul: And when we dig into it and we start to think about, well, why is it that you wanna avoid that? Right? They say, well, I'm worried about the other person feeling this way. 

Understanding the Real Concern

[00:01:10] Paul: And the more and more that I've come to realize as I've worked with this, is that it's not actually about how the other person feels, how the other person reacts to what it is that we say to them.

[00:01:20] Paul: What we're really worried about is how we are going to react to their reaction? That might be, oh, I've said this thing, and now they feel ashamed. And I didn't set out to shame them. I didn't mean to do that. And now I feel terrible and I don't wanna feel that way, so I'm just not gonna bring it up.

[00:01:38] Paul: Or it could be, I'm gonna need to tell them this thing and they're gonna react in this way. They're gonna get loud, they're gonna get big, they're gonna argue, right? And I know that in response, I'm likely to get big and loud and argue with them, and I don't wanna do that. That's really the thing that Karen and I wanna deconstruct a little bit here is like recognizing so often it's not actually about how the other person reacts, that we're worried about, we're worried about how we react to it.

[00:02:03] Paul: What can we do about that? 

The Importance of Thoughtful Communication

[00:02:06] Karen: And I wanna be careful here that we're not saying that we don't have to be thoughtful about how we say a thing or whether it's a good idea to say it. That's probably another episode. But the case that I think, Paul, you're talking about and I see a ton, is that there are things that are true, useful, and even necessary to be said that don't get said because we expect the reaction to them to be unpleasant.

[00:02:32] Karen: And we don't know what to do when it is. And so the first thing I wanna say is avoidance is not a great idea. Like that's not actually an answer to the problem. There's information that it would be useful for everybody to have out in the group or for that person to have, or it would be useful for the space between us for it to be shared and I'm not sharing it, because if I do, they're going to react badly.

[00:02:58] Karen: I think is not a great choice. It's also not a great choice to say, well, I'm supposed to say it, so I'm just gonna say it, and you're supposed to be nice. So that doesn't work either. I think it's wise to go into those conversations knowing they're gonna have a reaction. I think it's wise to be thoughtful about, I'm gonna say it in the way that maybe makes it easiest to hear or that best serves the purpose I have in mind in saying it.

[00:03:24] Karen: I think that's all good. And even if I say it as well as I can possibly say it, there's a good chance that they're gonna have a reaction and I still have choices. And I think that's my key thing for today, is that knowing that they're gonna have a reaction, I can still walk into that space and make a choice about how I want to react or respond to their reaction.

[00:03:50] Paul: And in fact, that's really all we've got. Right? We can't control and we shouldn't try to control. We can try to influence. But we can't control how other people feel. We also can't control how they react. To your point, like we don't wanna be blase about these sorts of things.

[00:04:10] Paul: Like we do wanna do this in a thoughtful manner, but no matter how thoughtful we are about how we present things, we can't control how they're gonna react. 

Avoiding the Trap of Perfection

[00:04:19] Paul: And in fact, that's one of the things that leads to avoidance, right, is we, if we think to ourselves, if I just find exactly the right way to say this at exactly the right time, then they won't react in the way that I don't want them to.

[00:04:31] Paul: And so we put it off and put it off and put it off. For me, like that procrastination and avoidance right, is a sign that we're trying to do it perfectly. And there is no perfect, right? There are no magic words. We can't control the other person's feeling, control of other person's reaction. But our leverage is the thing that we do actually have control over, the far more than we have control over the other person is how we react to their reaction, how, what our response is to whatever it is that comes up.

Recognizing and Planning for Reactions

[00:04:58] Paul: And I think that when we start to notice that we're avoiding, having this conversation, we start to get worried about it. We don't wanna just ignore that. There's actually a lot of good information packed into it, and I think if we can get curious and ask ourselves, what is it that I'm worried about is gonna happen? Now we can start to go, oh, I'm worried that this might happen. I'm worried they might get angry. I'm worried they might shout. I'm worried that they might accuse me of this thing.

[00:05:29] Paul: That gives us information from which we can start to plan. Well, imagine that they did. Then what would I do? If I actually wanted to approach this conversation in a reasonable way, discovering what it is that I'm avoiding can help me plan and prepare for what the reaction that I don't want is gonna be. 

[00:05:47] Karen: Yeah. And I think that preparation really helps with remembering in the moment that I have a choice. Because the thing about reactivity is it tends to spur more reactivity, right? 

The Role of Emotional Responses

[00:06:00] Karen: When someone has a reaction and I'm gonna say a reaction is they have an emotional response and they express that emotion in some way.

[00:06:07] Karen: They're more in the emotional part of their brain than the cognitive part of their brain. They're not problem solving. They're not particularly relating. They are reacting, and there's a really good chance that when someone reacts at me, whether that's by distancing themselves or getting bing and loud or laughing at me, I mean, there are a lot of things, but there's a really good chance that when they react at me that I am going to react back.

[00:06:33] Karen: That I am going to respond with the emotional part of my brain rather than a fully integrated, emotional and cognitive working together part of my brain. Because of just the way our nervous system works, their reaction feels threatening. I go defensive and I don't have my full capacity with me. 

Maintaining Full Capacity in Conversations

[00:06:53] Karen: And what I'm really pointing to, I think in this episode is I wanna have my full capacity so that I can make choices.

[00:07:03] Karen: The beginning of that, I think is to say, okay, they're having a reaction. It might actually be about me. It might not be. And even if what they're saying is about me, even if what they're saying is, you're a terrible person and you make horrible decisions and you're an idiot, and I don't know why you'd ever think that.

[00:07:20] Karen: Even if it's all about me in the content, it's still likely not actually all about me. Right? There's probably a shooting the messenger thing going on or something else, right? So if I can hold that separately enough to both feel my feelings and think my think thoughts and hold those together, then I will know that I can choose to engage in an argument if that seems like it's gonna be useful to me.

[00:07:48] Karen: That's not usually the one I pick by the way, but it could be. I can choose to let my emotional self take over and express that if that feels like the thing that needs to be present in the room. I can choose to walk away. I can choose to calmly respond. I can choose to mirror and take in and help them feel heard for a while before I decide to say whatever else I wanna say.

[00:08:12] Karen: I have options and I can choose the thing that's gonna serve me best if I can remember that I have options.

Exploring Choices in Reactions

[00:08:19] Paul: The recognizing where your choice is actually lie, I think is absolutely the core of this. Because when I talk through this idea with people, you know, they often don't recognize that they have a choice, right? And, and anytime I'm playing through like with someone about, for example, how these things have gone badly in the past.

[00:08:37] Paul: And they said, well, Yeah, and then they did this. And, they said, well, why did you decide to do that? Well, I didn't decide to do it. I just did it. You're like, okay, this is a useful, what might you have done instead? You know, or the next time this happens, what choice would you like to make? And this is being able to identify, oh, wait a minute.

[00:08:54] Paul: There actually is something, you know, that I in theory, could do differently. Because the other thing about this is that those choices you don't realize you have, we're taking in that moment of reactivity. We're taking the well trod path in our brains. We're reacting with our patterns with the easy thing for us to do.

[00:09:13] Paul: We do it without thinking. And so if we wanted to do something else, we do actually have to work a lot harder at it. 

Pre-Reminding and Preparation

[00:09:20] Paul: And sort of pre reminding ourselves ahead of time that we have that choice that this thing might happen. And if it does, here's what I wanna try to do. And I always frame that with people this way.

[00:09:33] Paul: What do you wanna try to do? You may not be successful the first time. In fact, I can guarantee you won't be a hundred percent successful. But what could you do that, you know, where do you wanna try to go? I wanna remember to take three breaths before I respond. Okay, great. Right, and I think that your guidance around, you know, what are the things that we wanna do that allow us to show up in an integrated way when reactivity starts to come up as a really great compass for sort of thinking about what are gonna be useful for us.

[00:10:02] Paul: I also, sometimes, when I'm coaching people through this, I just go the other direction. I'm like, so what do you not wanna do? Right. What would make the situation worse? Right. And that usually sort of frees them up to realize like, oh, okay, well then, then the other choices that I have are things like that.

[00:10:18] Paul: But yeah, they're like, how do I want to react to their reaction? Or to how do I wanna respond, right? If we think about reactivity as being that sort of unconscious, I'm carried away with it. If they react in a certain way, how do I put space between stimulus and response so that I can help sort of deescalate the situation?

[00:10:38] Paul: And sometimes that's just recognizing where we get emotionally hung up around stuff. Sometimes there's a piece of like, I just need a different skill. Like to recognize like, oh, I could say this, or I could do that, or I do the thing. But sometimes it really is like, you know, when I go in and I give this person this feedback as their boss, right?

[00:10:55] Paul: And then they start to fall into this, you know, but I tried really hard. I've disappointed you, right? And now I just feel like a jerk. Right. It may be that how I wanna react to that is I've got like a mantra where I'm reminding myself, you're not a terrible person. Right?

[00:11:10] Paul: What's the thing that's gonna calm me down so that I don't have that immediate downplay, like, oh no, that's not at all, I shouldn't have said that. Like, how do I stick to my talking points, right? So that I make sure the information gets through. How do I not crumble in the face of that, their emotional reaction?

Building Emotional Resilience

[00:11:29] Paul: How do I sort of have the emotional resilience and recognizing that's probably some deep seated patterns around things that's gonna take a while to work through. But every little bit of standing sort of in the eye of that hurricane helps you build up that resilience so you can respond better to future situations like that.

Avoiding Judgment in Reactivity

[00:11:51] Karen: Yeah, and I really do wanna point to this is one of the cases where we're pointing to a thing that is not a hundred percent achievable, and we really wanna keep judgment at bay here. So we're saying, Hey, instead of being reactive, try to be responsive. Instead of being all in your emotions, try to be in a more integrated space.

[00:12:12] Karen: And what I don't wanna say is that reactivity is a sign of poor character or a bad person. Like I really don't wanna attach the judgment to that. Although I do think it's a growth area to be less reactive, I also think that reactivity is part of the human condition. We all have it. We all do it.

[00:12:32] Karen: And the thing that gets us through in relationships is that one of us manages to break the pattern and break the cycle. It doesn't take both of us, and it's okay that we're all gonna have our reactive thing that we do. Like we're all gonna have moments of reactivity. We're not always gonna make it into response, and it doesn't help anybody for us to be judging each other on that.

[00:12:56] Paul: And for me, the piece around this is by expanding my own ability to be less reactive, right? And more integrated in a wider variety of situations. You know, with a larger set of people. For me, that's pragmatic. It just means that I can be more effective. In a wider variety of places and times and situations and things like that.

[00:13:16] Paul: That's not a moral judgment, right? This is more of a case of like, you know what, we're gonna be better off. I'm gonna be better off if I can learn to be less reactive around these sorts of things. And there are some things that are just always gonna push that button, right? That I'm never really gonna be able to be dispassionate about.

[00:13:34] Paul: And that is what it is, right? That's not a moral failing, as you say that judgment piece is not useful there. Either judging yourself or judging the other person because of course that itself is a bit of reactivity, right? When you get into the situation and you're like, look, I'm being reasonable and I'm trying to say this thing here.

[00:13:52] Paul: If you were just less reactive, we wouldn't have these problems. Oh look, now we're going exactly the situation we tried to avoid. 

[00:14:01] Karen: It's so true. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:14:02] Karen: So we're talking today about the somewhat meta question of how do I react to their reaction? And what we're saying is that we are gonna have hard conversations. We need to have, it's not a good idea to just avoid them, but boy do we tend to. Because we're afraid of how we're gonna respond, how we're gonna feel when someone else reacts to whatever that situation was.

[00:14:25] Karen: Whatever the thing is that we needed to say, or whatever situation we might be in. And what we wanna be aware of is we can see it coming. This is a good idea. It's a good idea to be thoughtful about how we say the thing. It's a good idea to be careful in how we set it up, all those things. But at the end of the day, what we wanna do is not avoid the conversation, but be prepared for the reactivity that may come as part of it.

[00:14:49] Karen: And the preparation is really about, okay, they might be really upset about this, or they might go quiet, or they might react in a number of ways. When they do that, how can I help myself not to join a cycle of escalating reactions, but instead stay present, stay thoughtful, keep my cognitive online with my emotions, not to shut them down, but to have both in this integrated way so that we can respond in the way that is useful.

[00:15:19] Karen: And this is a very pragmatic thing to do. It helps us be more effective in more places. But we wanna really stay away from a moral judgment. Anything that says being reactive is a moral wrong, or a way that we can put somebody else down or put ourselves up, that kind of thing. We really wanna avoid that because reactivity is just a very normal human thing.

[00:15:42] Karen: We're all gonna do it. Sometimes it's even useful, sometimes that's why we have it. And instead we just wanna sway the odds that someone in the group has the capacity to keep the space between safe enough that we can get reconnected, and that ultimately is about remembering that we have a choice.

[00:16:04] Karen: Their reactivity doesn't pin us into a corner where we don't have any option except to be reactive. Their reactivity just gives us the option to choose how we wanna respond to it.

[00:16:15] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:16:18] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.