We’ve all done it.
Standing in the shower, running the conversation in your head. Exactly what you’re going to say, how she’s going to respond, how you’ll handle it. It goes perfectly. You’re calm, articulate, reasonable. She gets it. Problem solved.
And then you actually have the conversation, and it goes nothing like that.
The gap between the rehearsed version and the real one is where most peer conversations fall apart. Not because the person didn’t have something valid to say, but because they only prepared the opening - and then improvised everything that came after.
When the other person gets defensive or shuts down, which they often do, there’s no plan for what happens next. So the conversation either escalates or collapses, and the underlying problem stays exactly where it was.
I wrote last week about how every team argues, and gave an idea for starting that difficult conversation when an issue with a team-mate spills over from being a hockey problem to a personal one. Today, I want to take it a few steps further.
Before you open your mouth
There’s a step most people skip, and it’s probably the most important one.
Before you have the conversation, think through how you’re going to respond if it goes badly. Not just what you want to say, but what you’ll do if she stonewalls you, gets defensive, or comes back at you hard.
Because if you go in without a plan for that, your natural response in the moment is going to be to get annoyed and uppity back at her, which doesn’t help. So just having a simple strategy ready changes the whole dynamic.
If she says she doesn’t want to talk about it, one option is to take a breath and say something like this:
