Written by: Trevor Manning, Consultant, Author, Trainer, and Instructor, UW–Madison
John leaned forward for effect and repeated his point, “Sally, I am just stating the facts. Bill is not pulling his weight and you tend to overlook his behavior to avoid conflict. If you stop looking at this emotionally, you’ll see I’m right.“
John is a smart and competent engineer. Like many expert professionals, he believes he is good at communicating because he ‘leaves emotions out of it.’
John’s blind spot is that in trying to remove emotion, he unintentionally creates it. His approach is likely to trigger confusion, defensiveness, and resistance to the clarity he is seeking.
His conversations blur four distinct elements:
- Facts
- Feelings
- Opinions
- Desired outcomes
Each plays a different role, and mixing them creates confusion.
Great communication comes from combining empathy with structure.
Three common mistakes derail critical conversations:
- Jumbled conversations
- Subjective facts
- Combative communication
Jumbled communication happens when we mix facts, feelings, opinions, and wants.
Differentiation is important because each component carries a different level of emotional meaning.
Objective facts have less emotional meaning than opinions, which can inadvertently offend someone.
When emotions are triggered, it can hamper rational thinking.
The solution is to navigate the conversation in a structured way.
- Establish emotional safety first
- Next, share relevant facts
- Then share why you care about those facts. More importantly, why do you care about how this affects the other person?
The principle is not to tell someone what you think, until you have told them why you care.
Delivering good communication requires careful planning and categorizing of the message.
Subjective facts
Objective facts should have no emotional meaning, yet people still attach meaning to them.
For example, a horse is a horse, but each person adds emotional meaning to what a horse is based on their own experiences.
When I ran a telecommunications Network Operating Centre (NOC), and there was a major outage, it was difficult to find out what happened because people were afraid that mistakes had been made and they would be blamed.
To reduce defensiveness, we would start with a no-blame analysis of the facts of what happened. ‘What time did the network go down? What time was it reestablished?’ these are objective facts that a computer program could deduce. No human judgment is necessary.
By starting with facts, you can verify that ‘my facts are your facts’ to get the communication off to a good start.
Combative communication provokes an attacking or defensive response, rather than a curious, exploratory response.
In a good discovery-based conversation, each person shares their opinions rationally. This sharing of information increases our common understanding, resulting in better business outcomes.
When emotions are triggered, our amygdalas become overstimulated, activating a flight or flight response. Once people move into attacking or defending, discovery is inhibited because emotions override our logical, rational thinking.
Sharing what you think is a crucial part of business communication. The important principle is to share it as one version of the truth, not the truth.
Opinions are not facts. When we share our opinions as ‘one way of looking at things’ and then invite the other person to share their perspective, we have a constructive, discovery-based conversation.
Here is one way to implement the principles using the conversation between John and Sally.
“Sally, I want to reassure you, I value Bill as a team member. I have noticed a few occasions over the last two weeks when Bill has not contributed to team activities. I want to understand your perspective on this. I am wondering if you are ignoring his behavior to avoid conflict.”
Written communication and presentations also benefit from good planning and structure. Emotional responses are harder to control in real-time than conversations, so focus on the order of the message.
Start by creating emotional safety, then establish relevant objective facts, then share your feelings about those facts, and only then share your opinion. Applied well, this will improve all forms of communication.
Want to learn more about the importance of communication in engineering, technical, and leadership roles? Join Trevor Manning for Critical Conversations: Results-based Communication.