With the arrival of summer, the heat inevitably gets turned up. This can be great if you enjoy sitting by the pool or the beach. It’s not necessarily that great when it comes to conversations.
Think about the last heated conversation you had? What exactly was said that made your temperature rise or your blood boil?
What tools did you reach for in that moment as a leader, whether in your business or your life, to help you successfully navigate?
Or, was the heat so intense that it made you forget that you were a leader?
Words create worlds ~ Judith E. Glaser
In my coaching and consulting trainings, I’ve learned how a heated conversation often comes about as a result of the energy behind the words.
This energy has the power to trigger a memory within us and in turn, unleashes dormant uncomfortable emotions that we’d prefer to keep buried. Typically, we aren’t aware that this is what’s happening. What we are aware of is the feeling of being triggered as though this other person was intentionally doing something to us.
As a result, this often leaves us ill-equipped to turn these heated conversations into productive ones with a healthy impact.
One of the more common strategies of choice that I’ve observed in the last two decades coaching leaders in these situations is where we dig our heals in, stand our ground, and fall into the trap of addicted to being right .
Many of us have unknowingly used this brilliant strategy as a means to avoid feeling those uncomfortable emotions (energy) from our past.
In doing so, we create a world where I win and you loose. Add to this the fact that addicted to being right releases dopamine which makes us feel good, providing a false sense of power so we want to keep doing it.
We can no longer afford to continue using this type of strategy. It’s a divisive strategy of power over versus power with.
Instead, we can choose to set the intent for our conversations to be win win, while we continue to do the inner work necessary to create a more inclusive and unified world.
