The Reactionary Tango
By Daniel Robin
Communication is like a dance … when it works, there’s a blending and cooperation that requires awareness and skill. Fortunately, only one partner needs to be skilled (though it takes lots less work when both are).
We all bring expertise at some of the “dance moves” of interpersonal relating. Some people hate chit-chat, while others can’t seem to get to the point. When does your personal communication style work, and when does it get you unintended results?
Unlike dancing, however, business communication always holds a purpose beyond the dance itself. Whether your partner is a communication klutz or happens to be a powerful negotiator, learning new steps allows you to realize that purpose smoothly, with minimal toe-tromping.
Waltzing with the ‘Enemy’
When the other person gets inflammatory with “If you don’t start putting in some effort here I’m going to …,” or “I’m sick and tired of you always …,” or “I told you …,” how do you react? Do you suddenly feel like they’re doing raggae while you’re trying to swing? Whose problem is it?
Even if you feel attacked, you can “release” your enemy stance by not getting caught up in the attack, by not getting hooked into a dance you’d rather not do. How? Don’t react, respond with a remarkable dance step borrowed from the martial art of Aikido.
It works like this: Notice at what point you are being attacked. Let’s say they’re out to make you wrong. Rather than struggling with the apparent focal point of the attack from defensiveness, polarity, or as their adversary (“I think I’m right …,” or “You don’t know what you’re talking about …”), move off the line of the attack and join shoulder-to-shoulder with the attacker. You might reply, “I don’t think so, but let me look at it from your point of view,” or “I’m interested to learn why you think so,” or even “What’s your intention here? And what would that do for you?”
A Modern-Day Hokey Pokey?
Metaphorically, if the attacker just grabbed your arm, rather than focusing on the arm (the issue or the point of attack, where moving your arm would cause a struggle), instead, leave the arm alone and pivot your entire body alongside the attacker’s arm. From this position, you are out of the way of the direction of the attack, and in an excellent position to use the attacker’s energy. You are literally seeing the attacker’s point of view from its source, and therefore in an ideal position to avoid escalation and resolve the conflict.
Even if you’re not being attacked per se, this approach can be used to leverage the other person’s interests, intention, motivation, anger or resistance to find a mutually satisfying outcome.
I’m Sorry, but I Wasn’t Listening
Doesn’t it seem like the world has become very noisy? Not just shrill ringtones, 911 sirens, and other signals that we live in a so-called civilization, but more the continual assault of daily information, spam and social media (if you find the benefits outweigh the BS) — it’s no wonder we often stop listening to ourselves and to each other. Even with the awareness that our health requires us to understand and be understood by the world around us, we sometimes forget how powerful it is to give someone our ear. AI is not going to be helpful in this regard — it is really just an echo chamber and illusory.
When your goal is to get your own point across, the first and most important move you can make is, ironically, to listen. Clients report that it “works like magic” to get on the other person’s “wavelength” by gently drawing them out. Just the intention of understanding them first creates an opening that Dr. Stephen Covey first popularized as “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
This interpersonal principle is an extension of “when you want something, give it.” Proactively make that first move. If you want a receptive ear on the part of your listener, be one first. If you want a new car …. well, that usually requires a different kind of resource.
So that explains why to listen, but listen for what? Listen how? In the book Getting to Yes, authors Fisher and Ury state “It is not enough to know that they see things differently. If you want to influence them, you also need to understand empathetically the power of their point of view and to feel the emotional force with which they believe in it.”
That powerful, disarming, catalytic. If you can get their “truth” out on the table, the psychology of negotiation says that they’ll have no better option than to listen to you, to reciprocate. Unless they are completely out to lunch, not operating on good faith at all, this is how you take the “dance” to a whole new level, disrupting push/pull patterns of the past, and set a new standard by demonstrating what mutual respect can accomplish. At least for that interaction.
Armed with the awareness that you don’t have to agree to understand, and you need not understand to accept their view, have your next interaction(s) bring out the martial artist that lives in each of us.
