Introduction and Episode Question

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

[00:00:09] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:12] Paul: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, what skills are we talking about? 

[00:00:19] Karen: So over the last two weeks, we talked about the dilemma that we sometimes have of, do we address the issue at hand or the conflict at hand first. Or do we first sort of go back and build the skills that might've helped us not get to as much of a crisis point to begin with? And Paul brought up the question.

[00:00:41] Karen: We talked about the skills and the skills and the skills throughout those episodes, but we didn't really define them very specifically. So the question that we're gonna tackle today is, what skills are we talking about?

Defining the Skills

[00:00:53] Paul: We've talked on the show before about, and the nature of this show is such that there really are these kind of multiple different frames that we get into. And we've talked a lot, for example, about facilitation skills and group process skills and how you work with those kinds of things.

[00:01:06] Paul: But what we're really, you know, have been talking about in the last couple of episodes. Is this more relational? The one-to-one, the skills about how do I relate to another person? How do I relate to myself? How do we, particularly when we're in conflict, but also like how do we relate well together so that we don't get into to as deep a conflict?

[00:01:26] Paul: Although even that is whether or not something is a conflict is a question of judgment, on both of your parts. I had a situation recently where someone said, I, I think we had a really good fight. And I was like, I didn't even realize we had a fight. Maybe it was a disagreement. 

Relational Skills Overview

[00:01:40] Paul: So what we're really talking about and wanting to dig into is like, when Karen and I teach, you know, and we're teaching groups and we're teaching individuals about these kinds of skills, what are we teaching?

[00:01:51] Paul: Now the fun part about this is Karen and I have never taught this stuff together. We've each taught it separately in our own practices to our own clients and groups and things like that. So part of the question that I had to Karen was like, what would we even teach around it? Well, you teach around this.

[00:02:07] Paul: Here's what I teach about it. And we kind of started to hash some of that out and we realized we had more to talk about than we thought. 

[00:02:13] Karen: Yeah, I'm astonished actually at the amount of overlap. And kind of the broad categories, although I think as we work through them we'll find, we have different takes and sort of different priorities or different emphasis within it. And we talked some about, so what goes on the list, we're talking about the skills.

[00:02:30] Karen: So we decided pretty quickly not to include the sort of group management, group leadership facilitation type skills. We've talked a lot about those. We think they're important. And there are many episodes that address those. 

Criteria for Individual Skills

[00:02:44] Karen: But what we wanted to talk about in this set of skills is really the skills that each individual would we think be wise to build within themselves, to grow, to learn about, to practice, to become better relationally.

[00:02:59] Karen: And while it's often super helpful for a group to study each of these skills as a group, develop shared language around that skill, all that kind of thing. To go on this list, one of our criteria was, it has to be a skill that is an individual. This is how I relate to people. This is how I engage with people. This is perhaps how I engage with conflict, that kind of space.

[00:03:22] Paul: And it needs to be something that you can actually do. Like, part of the thing for us, in order for it to be a skill, right, is that there's some action, there's some practice associated with it.

[00:03:33] Paul: Usually for us skills are kind of these buckets that we put a number of different things under and they're this type of skill. So it's not just like a belief or a mindset, right? It's a thing you can actually do. And importantly, for our purposes, it's a thing you can get better at. That we think that these are things that you can learn how to do and that you can improve over time by doing them, by practicing them, by getting better at them.

[00:03:57] Paul: Like that for us, that's sort of what makes it a skill, right? That it's teachable and learnable, and that you can get better at it. 

Six Broad Buckets of Skills

[00:04:04] Paul: What we discovered as we kinda went through this is. We had a lot and we decided what we actually wanna do is in the rest of this episode, we're gonna talk about sort of what's on our list and a high level, like what those things are, and then we're gonna actually devote a whole series of episodes.

[00:04:20] Paul: The next several episodes are gonna be one per episode about each of those buckets and going deeper into, well, what is that, what are the skills that fit into that? What do those really look like? You know, when we are teaching, when we're learning what is that really all about? So that's our plan is, we're gonna give you the overview here, and then we're gonna go into a deeper dive into these over the coming episodes.

[00:04:42] Karen: So today we have six broad buckets and they are broad. And I wanna say the buckets also overlap. So I think we're gonna find ourselves talking about pieces, there will be pieces that show up in multiple buckets and that interact with each other in those kinds of ways. And we reserve the right to add more as we pick a topic and see where it takes us.

[00:05:05] Karen: The question that we're having at the moment is what are the skills? And that may take us in lots of directions, but we wanted to kind of go through today the six that we're imagining will be the list and with, as Paul said, the commitment that over the next six weeks we will tackle one of these each week.

[00:05:22] Karen: It really in depth and so you can actually learn how to do them as opposed to this week we're really just letting you know what they are. So Paul, you wanna start with the first one?

Listening and Speaking

[00:05:30] Paul: Sure. This is the one that both of us started with. Because when we came into prep to this episode, we had no idea. And I knew I was gonna ask Karen, you know, what's on your list? And this is the one that both of us started with, and this is listening. Listening is the broad bucket. There's a whole bunch of things that fall into that. But these are things you can do that help you to understand what another person is saying and thinking, and also help them to know that you understand what they're saying and thinking. 

[00:06:01] Karen: And the partner to that is broadly what we'll call speaking, when to speak, how much to say, how to say it clearly, how to say it with the likelihood of getting the emotional impact you want to get, which is often less than you might get if you weren't thoughtful. But ways to speak that make you hearable.

[00:06:23] Paul: And curiously enough, both listening and speaking involve talking, right? Because part of listening is how are you communicating back, you know? And the part of speaking is, as you say, like how do you become hearable? How do you say things in such a way that the person can really understand you, right? And get where you're coming from. And those two make a lot of people's lists, right?

[00:06:41] Paul: That's kind of the ones where it's like, if we didn't have those, I'd kind of be wondering what we're doing, and which is of course then where we started to get a little weirder. 

Curiosity and Introspection

[00:06:48] Paul: The next thing that Karen and I also both agree is a skill is curiosity. So curiosity is a set of practices that you can engage in that help you learn about things that you don't know, and that oftentimes is about what's going on with the other person, right?

[00:07:07] Paul: To just even wonder about what's happening or about wondering about what the impact of what you're doing is happening. Curiosity to me is not just a mindset. It is a thing that you do. And in fact, one of my, I'd forgotten until we were just talking about this in my office. I have a set of values that are on my wall here, that are things that I, you know, sort of use as guiding compass points for me.

[00:07:30] Paul: And one of them is get curious. This is a phrase that I use a lot where we talk about getting curious is a set of things that you do that both engages and demonstrates your curiosity. So, we're gonna dig into that as well. 

[00:07:42] Karen: Yeah, I'll just add a tidbit about that, which is, I think one of the biggest enemies of curiosity is judgment. So if you feel like you are a person who either struggles with others' judgment or jumps to judgment too quickly, yourselves, the skill of curiosity is the one that's gonna mitigate that.

[00:08:02] Karen: The fourth skill we're calling introspection. This is the thing, you know, Paul said, skills are things you can do and this is a thing you can do, but this is a thing you're gonna do mostly in your own head. This is the exploration of self and what's going on with me. So that if I know what's going on with me, that gives me space to engage with others. And we're gonna include in this bucket, emotional literacy.

[00:08:28] Paul: Yeah. And you know, sometimes that introspection is a little externalized. For example, journaling. Journaling is a practice for introspection that leads to a thing that's not just in your head, but you're right. You know, when we talk about behavior, most of the time when I'm working with folks on behavior, we're talking about stuff that's externally visible, right?

[00:08:45] Paul: That other people could observe. Behavior can also be things like mantras and self-talk and things like that. And particularly when we get to introspection there are parts of that that are gonna be much more internal than they are external. But there's still things you do. There's still skills that you can build.

[00:09:02] Paul: There's still things you can learn how to do, even if most of it's going on inside your head. The next thing we want to talk about and now we start to get into the really fun stuff in some ways. 

Calibrating Vulnerability and Intentional Choice

[00:09:12] Paul: This is one that Karen brought to the fore, but I really liked, sort of exploring it and we're calling it for at least now, calibrating vulnerability.

[00:09:21] Paul: So we've talked a lot about the show, about taking risks, you know, in relational space. Do I speak up and say something? Do I bring this topic up? Do I want to engage in this particular way? You have to be vulnerable in order to be in relationship. And just the nature of being in any sort of relationship has a degree of vulnerability and risk taking to it.

[00:09:43] Paul: But that doesn't mean that you want to be risking absolutely everything, every time. We've talked before about sort of the difference between comfort and safety. There are places where we can be usefully uncomfortable when we still know that we're safe. And so part of what goes into this skill is about judging in the environment and in the situation and where I'm at right now, what's the appropriate degree of risk taking for me?

[00:10:09] Paul: And when am I maybe not taking risks that I should, when am I considering risks that I maybe shouldn't? 

[00:10:16] Karen: And lastly, we wanna talk about intentional choice. I'd say the opposite of this is reactivity. So this is about pausing to think about in this relational space that I'm in, maybe somebody just did something that I'm going to answer in some way. Maybe there's a situation that I'm in, whatever it is, that I have choices of what I say, what I do, how I respond.

[00:10:40] Karen: And that I'm intentional about making that choice, that I don't just reactively do the first thing that comes to mind or the thing that was typical in the house I grew up in, or that even is the norm for the culture that I'm in necessarily, but that I actually pause when it's appropriate to say, what are my options?

[00:11:01] Karen: How's that gonna go for me? And which of them is gonna serve me best. So that's that intentional part that we, a lot of times I think we don't realize we are even making a choice. And we wanna point out that we make choices all day long, and the more that we are intentional and aware of those choices, the more likely we are to support the relationships that we wanna have.

[00:11:21] Paul: So one of the things about sort of digging into these is that, I find myself occasionally, you know, somebody will say, you know that, well, I, I need to do this. And I'm just like, well, you just need to, you know, get curious about that. And they look at me and they go, well, how do I do that?

[00:11:36] Paul: And it's just something that in a lot of ways has become unconscious for me, right? That's a thing that I do. And I know that both of us kind of elide over things like that on the show, periodically. And we really wanna unpack what are the things that we really are doing when we're doing some of these things?

[00:11:52] Paul: What are the things that we teach when we teach people? What are the things that we think people can really get better at? And that will make a difference in your ability to relate with other people. That if you get better at those things, we think in general, the quality of those interactions and those relationships will improve even if the other people you're interacting with never encounter any of these skills.

[00:12:16] Karen: So that's gonna do it for us today. Stay tuned over the next six weeks and perhaps more. And until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:12:24] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis and this has been Employing Differences.