In the course of one morning this week I received three pieces of feedback from clients who have been through Straight Talk training.
Spot the pattern in their comments!
“I was always taught that showing emotion is a sign of weakness. so I have bottled up my emotions as long as I could, even with friends and family, but then of course one day it all comes spilling out and I look like an idiot. I’ve just discovered that if I think through how I feel and explain it without putting blame on the other person I can talk about things I could never raise before.”
“I’m nearly always critical. That’s how people have behaved toward me. I’ve never liked it but I suppose I’ve learned it from them. So today I tried praising someone that I’ve probably never praised before, and I can’t believe what a difference it made! She relaxed, smiled, and when we went on to talk about some operational issues that I thought we would have dificulty with, it was such an easy conversation.”
“I went to someone’s office for a meeting and he kept me waiting at the door for about ten minutes while he talked on the phone. He could see I was waiting! I was getting angry, wondered if he was being deliberately disrespectful and felt like going back to my office in a huff, but it was important that we speak so I waited. When I got into the office I could see he was stressed so I tried some empathy. I must have got it right because his manner changed immediately. He apologised for keeping me, explained about the phone call, we discussed the problem briefly, and then we had a really productive meeting. Do you think that using empathy made all that difference?”
It’s made me realise all over again that trying to keep emotion out of conversations and relationships at work is, as someone said, like trying to take the music out of opera. Without it, there wouldn’t be much left of any value!
The skill, that too few of us have, lies in bringing emotion into our relationships, in a positive and constructive way.