Last fall, we hosted a session about how people can navigate difficult conversations by connecting personally and listening in a deeper way to cultivate respect and bridge differences. In that session we shared a conversation guide called The Listening Challenge, which is based on social science research and our experience as professional facilitators. It has four elements that anyone can use for dialogue on controversial topics. We’ve used it ourselves to bridge political divides and with our own fathers and have hopeful conversations with them about the future of our country.
As we navigate through 2023, we will face more complex and difficult conversations with our family, friends, and colleagues. We’ll be challenged to truly listen, communicate with respect and empathy, and hold space for hard conversations.
Here is a summary of the tried and tested techniques from the Listening Challenge that our research and experience show can help strengthen relationships and generate creative solutions to stuck problems.
Prepare: Even if a conversation erupts spontaneously, you can always slow it down and say, “It looks like we have some challenging things to talk through– let's pause to first come up with some conversation agreements that will help us have a productive dialogue.” Taking time for this can help the conversation unfold more smoothly in more bounded and supportive ways.
Connect: Often we start by talking about our positions on issues and we get stuck defending them against someone else’s views. Start the conversation a different way—by talking about your personal connection to the issue. This helps you and your conversation partner understand why you feel passionate about your views and be more open-hearted with each other. A guiding question: “What personal experiences shaped your current perspective on this?”
Inspire: Once you and your conversation partner have stepped back a little from your positions you can now begin to think about identifying some common ground. Connect around a shared positive vision—what might you both agree to work toward? A starting question might be: “What does success look like for you around this issue?” If you each answer this question, you can look for what you have in common. You do not yet need a detailed solution, but something to unite you on your journey forward. It also helps tease out the places where you may have differences to discuss. Consider framing back the commonalities. “It sounds like we both care deeply about… and share a vision for…”
Reflect: Get space between you and your beliefs so you can then more objectively and control them instead of them “having” you and controlling you without your realizing it! Open space for seeing the upsides of other points of view and the potential downsides of your own. Questions here are: “What do others say are risks or potential downsides of your position? What part of your conversation partner’s beliefs or experiences can you empathize with, relate to or understand better?” Even though you may not change your position, you have demonstrated your understanding and opened yourself to other possibilities and other people’s lived experiences.
Create: Once you’ve had the opportunity to set a safe container for the conversation, build a shared vision, and deepen your understanding of the other person’s perspectives, you may have the opportunity to create a new solution. We have seen a three-step approach work well. Step one is to think with your partner about a threat or problem that you both agree needs to be tackled to achieve your positive vision (we used the growing polarization in the country as our shared threat). Next, develop some ideas that you pitch to each other to test for their acceptability. Finally, agree on those you want to present to an outside audience that has the power to make change (for example your company Board, or your local or state elected officials). These steps push you to create moderate solutions and begin to align around a collective path forward.
How can we elevate the voices of people of color within a workplace?
With these ideas as the backdrop of the LinkedIn Live event, many participants contributed excellent questions, ideas, and comments that inspired us and challenged our thinking. We specifically heard questions that focused on elevating the voices of people of color within a workplace. In this post, we want to dig more deeply into those questions and the feedback we received, and to bring another voice into the conversation.
Kate had initially responded that leaders in power needed to make room for minority voices and ask people what they needed to participate. She said it was important for minorities to keep bringing their voices in. Kara emphasized that allies are important in sharing the burden of changing systems. Some listeners pushed back, and challenged us asking, “So are you putting the burden back on underrepresented minorities?”
We reached out to Austin Ashe, an educator who has spent over 15 years in higher education always with a strong focus on issues related to DEI, counseling, and Hip-Hop culture. We shared the LinkedIn conversation and asked his advice on how we could have responded better to the question: “What would we say to underrepresented minorities who are finding it difficult to get their voices into a conversation?”
Austin pointed out that it’s true that leaders need to make space for the knowledge and voices of people from underrepresented minority (URM) communities. It is also important for people who belong to historically underrepresented groups to share their perspectives; otherwise, there is a risk that solutions or strategies will be constructed solely by groups not directly impacted by the problem. And, Austin said we could have acknowledged the importance of psychological safety in this dynamic. Here are his thoughts.
Two things are true:
1. Organizations historically had cultural systems that put the brunt of this work of change on those who are impacted by it. This is unfair and creates a dynamic where people of color and other marginalized groups tend to be invited to discussions when something “goes wrong” or during other token occasions. Leaders within organizations should take a step back and examine the racial/ethnic composition of people on their team with decision-making power across the different functions of their organizations. If a team is diverse and has a diverse representation of decision-makers, they will be more equipped to problem-solve challenges that are obvious as well as those that are more invisible and a byproduct of a strong organizational culture. With that said, there needs to be a group orientation toward collective learning and psychological safety.
2. It is really important for people (at all levels of leadership) to play a role in creating a psychologically safe environment. That work begins with finding some understanding of your organization, and how to responsibly center the voices of the marginalized as an ally. It’s also important for those within the dominant group to contribute to the conversation and share their experiences with their colleagues. It’s very important for white folks to be involved and stay involved so that we can all create change.
What I might have said when asked the question about underrepresented minorities is, ‘It’s really important that organizations adopt an orientation that knowledge comes from everyone and everywhere. By doing so, marginalized groups and the dominant groups will experience the necessary psychological safety to share their knowledge, versus having to calculate the personal risk of being a contributor. And while all ideas are not great ideas, an orientation to collective learning allows us to judge ideas sensibly and slowly. Diverse voices are critical. The thing that we need is psychological safety to include those voices. That starts in our community, and leadership at all levels.
Power, demographic differences, and status can detract from an organization’s ability to foster a diverse and inclusive culture. However, if leaders can take a collective learning approach grounded in shared goals, risk-taking/experimentation, and sharing knowledge. People who are marginalized and those who are not are more likely to be successful in creating an environment that is more psychologically safe and innovative.
How do you deal with a situation when someone does not think "rationally" or rather when the source of the disagreement is based around strongly entrenched belief systems?
We all fail at times to think “rationally” and speak or act from our emotions. Brain science tells us that when we feel threatened and fearful, we enter into a full-body “fight or flight” response in which our bodies are flooded by adrenaline and cortisol. We’ve all had encounters where we lose our cool. If you’re engaged with someone who isn’t thinking rationally, the best thing to do is take a pause so everyone can calm down, get a bigger perspective, and come back together later when everyone is (hopefully) calmer.
At the same time, we need to protect ourselves from emotional and physical harm. Most immediately that means keeping yourself safe by removing yourself physically or emotionally from a harmful situation. Leaders must be prepared to hold people accountable for abusive or inappropriate behavior and for violating agreed-on norms, rules, or laws. In our experience, these are often the hardest conversations to have, especially if the individual in question is a strong technical performer. Some teams and organizations embrace informal norms like a “no assholes” rule to reinforce a collective understanding that bad behavior won’t be tolerated.
As for strongly entrenched belief systems, the Listening Challenge is designed to harness the power of dialogue to create some space around those beliefs and help people see other perspectives. We have found that when people go through the steps, their hardened positions can soften, and they become more open to other points of view. This isn’t an instant shift or an easy one, but we believe it can best happen when people are engaged with each other directly in a conversation.
This won’t always work, and ultimately, we all need to make a judgment call about where to spend our time and energy. Perhaps we don’t want to spend our time trying to change the minds of hardened ideological extremists, and instead focus on the people in the middle who are willing to engage and try to open their minds and hearts. In summary, it’s important to be clear-eyed about the person you’re engaging with and draw a firm line against harmful behavior, while also inviting open-heartedness and new possibilities.
How do we apply or introduce this container in conversations when there is an imbalance of power (board level conversations, CEO, or others who have authority in the relationship)?
The Listening Challenge framework assumes that two people want to have a conversation with each other. But many real-life situations don’t look like that. A large percentage of the leaders we work with are trying to create change in a situation where they are not the most senior people. So, what does one do?
When we are in a situation where we don’t have formal power, many of us feel there’s not much we can do. In our work, we teach people that they always have power in every situation. At a minimum, we have the power to choose not to cooperate, or to remove ourselves from the situation. When we ask leaders who feel powerless to stop and reflect on the power they do have and how they can use it in a way that’s consistent with their values, they always generate a long list of possible moves to make.
Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro’s formulation of power is simply the “ability to influence another’s behavior.” In our courses at MIT, we teach people to build a “campaign for change” by mapping their stakeholder networks, identifying “positive energizers” (in the language of organizational change advocate Marcella Bremer) to build momentum for change, and hone their skills around storytelling and ambassadorship across divisions to make the case for change. As they do this, there will be opportunities to use the Listening Challenge skills we discussed—connecting, inspiring, reflecting, and creating.
Often, however, inspiration isn’t enough, and we need to be prepared to apply pressure in a way that is consistent with our values and aligned with the higher goal we are trying to accomplish. For instance, Kate is working with two senior executives right now who have run up against the limits of education and persuasion as they introduce a nimble/agile structure and culture changes in their company.
As we reflected together on their power to drive change, they realized they could try some new moves such as: calling a stop to work until team members are willing to drop their defensive routines and engage in a collaborative approach to risk management; bringing in outside perspectives to back up their change message; engaging additional powerful stakeholders across the organization in their change campaign; and creating a clear picture for the company CEO of the negative impacts and future risks of continuing with the status quo.
Ready to learn more and dive deeper into some of these leadership concepts? Join Kate Isaacs for the upcoming MIT Sloan Executive Education program, Distributed Leadership.