DIRECT COMMUNICATION

In the Context of Conflict

To communicate directly when in a conflict is to engage with others in a way that is clear, explicit, unambiguous and honest AND maintains connection with the other person.  It is to demonstrate care about the impact of your words on the other person, while at the same time speaking your truth.

Direct communication in a conflict is NOT dumping on the other person, being aggressive, blaming or judging.  It is also not softening your words with caveats, prefaces and disclaimers to avoid hurting or offending the other person.

To be direct is to say what you mean, with care, and then be interested in how your words land on the other person.

Direct communication is easiest when conveying instructions. The focus here is to make sure you are clear and that the other person understands and isn’t confused.

It’s harder to be direct when you’re in a conflict and sharing what you think and especially what you feel.  It is most challenging when you care about the other person/s, or what you need to convey is challenging.

Guidelines for Direct Communication in a Conflict

When the stakes are high - when there is conflict, a challenging situation or emotional triggers - it is optimal to have a conversation, rather than convey your message in writing. This could be in person or virtual, in private, where there is space for back-and-forth. It is important to prepare for the conversation, both in what you will say and in how you will engage with the other person.

Preparing to Speak

1. Get clear internally about your intent.  What is your goal in delivering this message?  Is it clean (ie not blame, judgment, getting it off your chest)?
2. Is your message data-based?  To avoid blame and judgment is hard when feelings are involved, and it is important to be clear and specific.  For example, this could be seen as direct:  “You kept badgering K & L in the meeting.  You clearly don’t trust their expertise and that’s racist”.  It is forthright but not direct.  While it relays the speaker’s true feelings about the situation, it is blaming and shaming.  It also doesn’t provide useful information that lets the other person know what specific behavior was problematic, from the speaker’s perspective. 

This is direct and data-based:

“You asked a lot of questions of K & L in the meeting, after their presentation.  After 10 minutes, L said they would like to move on, and you said you were still unclear.  You asked another question, and then K said, with some anger in her voice, that it was starting to feel like an interrogation.  I was glad she said something because I was feeling really uncomfortable and didn’t know whether to intervene.  We moved on at that point, but I wanted you to know that your persistent questioning created the impression - for me - that you didn’t trust the expertise of K & L as Black women.  I’m sure that was not your intent, but that was the impact on me.”

Preparing to Listen

1. Get ready internally to hear how your words land on the other person.  You will need to demonstrate interest in their response, and in what was happening for them.
2. People don’t always respond with openness and gratitude to our direct communication, even when we do it well.  You will need to manage your own internal emotional response to stay open, curious and engaged.

Skills Needed for Direct Communication

Self Awareness:  Know your own triggers.  Notice your emotions and pay attention to how those feelings (especially if they’re unexpressed) may be affecting your behavior

Self Management: Develop an internal strategy to pull back on emotional triggers so that you can stay calm and clear and connected to the other person

Curiosity:Stay interested in others’ perspectives and experience

Balance compassion and clarity:  Express thoughts and feelings without blame or judgment

The most challenging form of direct communication is communicating expressing feelings - which underlie much challenging communication. Below is some guidance on direct expression of emotions.

Managing Feelings

In an external environment that is ambiguous and unpredictable, and in coalition groups that are new or forming, it is natural to feel a range of uncomfortable emotions: frustration, anxiety, sadness, etc.  The challenge is to manage these emotions effectively, both as individuals and as a group.

Emotions are neither bad nor good.  They just are.

Suppressing emotion often ends up being counterproductive because:

Unexpressed emotions “leak out”.

Unexpressed emotions show up in facial expressions, body language, or tone of voice.   They also “leak out” in other ways.  For example, unexpressed emotions can lead someone to ask questions excessively, or to get “hooked” in an argument about an issue that would otherwise seem tangential.  Others can usually tell when someone is “leaking,” even when they themselves are unaware of doing so.

Unexpressed emotions result in less flexibility and adaptivity.

Strong emotions take up a lot of energy and keep the focus on internal experience.  This makes it difficult to listen.  This also results in less responsiveness to new insights or ideas – which, in turn, reduces capacity for the kind of creative and generative thinking that will help us thrive in a period of rapid change.

Unexpressed emotions can explode.

When emotions are not expressed, they sometimes build up until they explode.  One way that this happens is by becoming upset or argumentative about unrelated issues with an intensity that is out of proportion to their importance.

The alternative to suppressing emotions is to express them in a healthy way.  The ability to do this will enhance capacity for responding to challenging circumstances by improving the quality of thinking and dialogue with others.  That’s because the emotions are not tangential to the challenge—they’re part of what the challenge is really about.

Tackling difficult issues without expressing emotions is like watching a movie without the sound:  you’ll see the action, but miss the point.

Expressing emotion is not the same thing as “being emotional”.  “Being emotional” means giving in to the intensity of one’s feelings and believing fully in one’s individual emotional perspective.  Expressing emotions from this vantage point is self-serving – the intention is to “get it off our chests,” or to “get others to come to their senses,” etc.  This focus usually prevents us from being open to hearing other perspectives.

It is possible to express emotion with a different intention.  Expressing emotion can be a way for an individual to share their “full truth” while inviting others to do the same.  The underlying belief in doing so is that our collective capacity to respond to challenges will be enhanced rather than diminished if we understand both the facts and the feelings involved.   

Direct Communication of Feeling

The decision to express emotion in a given context is a personal one.  Individuals differ in terms of their comfort level with emotional expression.  Furthermore, this comfort level tends to vary depending on the context.  A good rule of thumb for deciding whether or not to share emotions at a particular time and in a particular context is: what would I gain, and what would I lose?

If the decision is made to share emotions, the next step is to do so clearly and directly.  Here are some examples:

• “I feel anxious about this decision.”
  

• “I’m feeling frustrated that we don’t have an answer.”
  

• “I feel sad about the fact that we lost this opportunity.”
  

• “I feel confused about these directions.”
  

Such clear and direct expression of emotion is deceptively simple— the “formula” for what to say is easy enough, but it takes both self-awareness and a certain amount of courage to use it.  Perhaps for this reason, the “formula” is often not followed in practice.  Very frequently, people set out with the intention to express emotion, but end up doing something entirely different.

For example, people frequently use the “I feel” formula to express opinions or judgments instead of emotions:

• “I feel like this decision was made without thinking about the consequences.”
  

• “I feel like someone should have given us an answer by now.”
  

People also frequently change the formula from “I” to “you” (or some other pronoun).  This shifts the focus away from the speaker’s emotions and towards the intentions or actions of others (in order to assign blame):

• “You really should have spoken with them—everything blew up because you didn’t.”
  

When emotions are expressed in these less-than-direct ways, two things tend to happen:

1. The speaker loses the opportunity to openly acknowledge what  they are really feeling—and this leaves the speaker vulnerable to all the dangers of suppressed emotions (“leaking,” etc, see below.)
2. The subsequent conversation tends to focus on the factual accuracy of what the speaker said—and this frequently results in being stuck.  Here’s an example:

“You really should have given me clearer directions.”

“I did give you clear directions.”

“They’re not clear at all.”

This conversation is going nowhere because both parties are focused on defending their point of view and proving that they are right.  If the first speaker had simply expressed the emotion that he or she was feeling —“I feel confused about these directions”— the resulting conversation would likely have been very different.