Why changing our words is not always enough to change the conversation
Sometimes we really want a conversation to be different. Before the meeting we think carefully about our tone, we remind ourselves not to be defensive, we prepare a clearer explanation and a few thoughtful questions. Perhaps we even wait until we feel calmer before beginning.
Yet within a few minutes (or seconds!) we are back in the same familiar exchange. Explaining more than we intended, the other person defending themselves or going too quiet. We ask a question, but we already know the answer we hope to hear. Their responses confirm what we suspected about them, and our responses confirm what they suspected about us.
When this happens, we often conclude that we need better communications skills, which might be true. But there is a deeper layer: Our conversations are not being held in place by our words alone. They are being conserved by the way we are listening, the outcome we are trying to secure and by the actions available to us from our current embodied emotional being. And we ALL ALWAYS have an embodied emotional way of being. Whether we are aware of it or not.
A conversation is more than an exchange of words
In the previous blog on crisis and connection, I explored how prolonged pressure can alter the way we encounter each other. We could be so focused on resolving what is wrong, that we lose the openness and connection needed to face it in a connected way.
This does not only apply to crises. Conversations can remain organised around protection, control, appeasement or withdrawal long after the immediate pressure has passed. The original problem may change, but our relational dance with someone stays the same. Our responses make sense from our own experience, but keep producing the very same conversation.
A recurring conversation is not simply a topic we keep discussing. It is a pattern of participation we keep recreating.
The emotional ground of conversation
The Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana described human conversation as both languaging and emotioning. By languaging, he meant more than speaking. He was pointing to the way we coordinate life with one another through language. By emotioning, he meant our continual movement through embodied dispositions that make some actions possible and others difficult or unavailable. This is a fundamental part of what ontological coaching developed from.
In practice this might look like that from an emotioning of curiosity, I can ask a question that has an answer that really affects me. From fear, I may ask the same question while listening primarily from danger. From control, I may ask while waiting for you to arrive at the conclusion I have already reached (ouch!). From appeasement, I may appear to agree while remaining unable to express what I actually think.
Our words cannot be understood apart from the emotional and relational domain in which they are spoken. “Help me understand” can be an invitation, an accusation or a demand for a better defence for example. This is why a conversation could sound different without becoming different. We have changed the wording, but not what the words are being used to do.
Good intentions do not always change our availability
We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions. We wanted to listen, we tried to help, we didn’t mean to be controlling. Intentions matter, but it's only part of the story. I may sincerely want to listen, while listening only for reassurance. I may intend to remain calm while my emotional distance leaves the other person feeling abandoned. I may intend to help while repeatedly taking responsibility away from someone needing to discover their own response.
Instead of asking “What was my intention?” a more revealing question is “For what actions was I actually available?” Was I available to hear something I didn’t expect? To acknowledge the effect of my actions without defending my motives? To receive a no? To remain present with disappointment.
Once pressure or stress rise, these actions are no longer easily available to us. It is humbling and shows us that insight and intention alone do not necessarily transform the embodied pattern from which we participate in a conversation or interaction.
When communication skills serve the old conversation
Even good communication practices can be recruited into the pattern we are trying to change. An “I feel” statement can become an indictment, empathy can become a technique for calming someone so they cooperate, a boundary can become punishment said nicely and so we can go on and on with examples from our own lives.
The problem is not with empathy, boundaries or clear language. The question is rather; What emotional ground is the context within which this language or conversation take place?”
Am I opening space in which something new can happen, or am I using better language to secure the same old outcome due to the same emotional orientation?
What must become possible first?
Before a conversation can change, we do not need to become perfectly calm, completely healed or free from self-protection. But something small and real must become possible that the old pattern could not accommodate. Perhaps I become able to ask a question without controlling the answer, I acknowledge the impact of my behaviour without explaining my intention. I make a clear request instead of believing my preference as an inevitability. I allow another person’s disappointment without reversing the decision. This is the work of growing in emotional maturity.
A different conversation could begin when I respond differently because of a moment of reflection where I notice and name how I am participating. Where I recognise what is my part in this dance and also when I recognise how my emotioning, my emotional space limits what is possible in this conversation.
Making room for a legitimate other
As mentioned before, Maturana uses the word love in a way that describes an emotional disposition in which another can exist as a legitimate other in relationship with us. This is the opposite of enemy mode that was explored in the previous blog.
We do not have to diminish the legitimacy of another to define ourselves. We could oppose an idea or action by another without turning their personhood into the problem. Don’t we need this realisation in every sphere of society at the moment?
This is also at the heart of self-differentiation - remaining connected without surrendering our thinking and remaining clear without demanding the other person become an extension of ourselves. A conversation grounded in mutual legitimacy may still be painful, it may reveal that our commitments differ and that a relationship cannot continue in its present form. But the other person is no longer merely an obstacle to the ending we want.
Changing our participation, not controlling the outcome
We often evaluate a difficult conversation by its outcome. Did they understand or did they apologise or agree? Outcomes are important, but they are not entirely ours to produce.
A conversation can be more honest and mature without ending in agreement or the way we hoped. We cannot guarantee another person’s participation. We can only become aware and take responsibility for our part. What am I listening for? What am I emotionally available for? These questions shift the focus from finding the perfect words to examining our own way of being, our own languaging and emotioning as Maturana coined it.
Before the next conversation
Before entering into a difficult conversation, reflecting on these questions might help:
What conversation am I expecting and how is this already shaping my listening?
What response am I actually trying to secure or prevent?
For what am I presently unavailable- disagreement, disappointment, uncertainty or refusal?
What is one action the old pattern cannot hold that I could make possible this time?
The goal is NOT to achieve the correct emotional state. It’s about becoming more aware of the emotional ground from which we participate.
Until next time,
Carine
Sources:
The work of Humberto Maturana was synthesised in the Certified Ontological Coaching and Leadership program notes of Alan Sieler, author of Coaching to the Human Soul Volume 1-4.
