Here goes…

When you and your partner find yourselves in a position where the discussion is getting heated and you are heading for that place where you will regret the next thing you say for a long time, call a halt.

That’s right. STOP when it looks like things are getting out of hand.  Then each one take a pen and paper,  go to your respective ‘corners’ and don’t come back until you have AT LEAST TEN reasons on that piece of paper of how YOU might have contributed to the situation!

Wow! Powerful! If you do this and pull it off, you will be amazed at the results you get.

Make no mistake. This is hard. You have to look at yourself OBJECTIVELY, like a fly on the wall, get HONEST with yourself and ADMIT all those little and not so little things YOU thought, said and did that contributed to propelling you to a point where you could so easily have lost it.

Several years ago I was preparing to deliver Crucial Conversations training. I was working through the training material on this very topic:  ‘How am I contributing to the problem’, when I had to break off to attend a meeting to review project proposals. My proposals were last in the queue and not the usual project. I expected to work hard to have them accepted. I did not expect to get mauled… but I am telling myself a story.  Let’s just say that afterwards the other meeting attendees offered condolences for the way the proposals were trashed and I was treated!

It took me all afternoon to get the irony. There I was feeling bruised and battered from that encounter, raging “How dare he!”, “What a jerk” whilst preparing a section on Master My Stories, one part of which  looks at “How am I contributing to the problem?” and “What am I pretending not to know?”

Let me tell you, I was suddenly not interested! But then I calmed down, got honest with myself and asked myself the question.

How DID I contribute?  

For a long time, nothing happened, nothing came to mind. Then slowly it dawned on me:
•    I resisted filling in a form to do with budgets.
•    When I did do it, I did it half-heartedly.
•    I could have asked for help, I did not.
•    I did not ‘warm him up’ for the projects. He did not know what these projects were about, why we had them, what problems they would solve, what benefits they would deliver. Yes it was all in the proposal, but I did not talk to him about it before hand.  He had no idea, came to it cold. I never ‘got my ducks in a row’ before the meeting.

It hurt – having to admit that! Frankly, it’s hurting to admit it here!

So yes, I know how hard it can be to ask yourself that question and come up with an answer. What comes up is often not pretty, in fact very much the opposite. I urge you to go with it. The sooner you bring it to the light, the sooner it will release its hold on you.

It’s a great tip:  STOP! Go to your respective ‘corners’ with pen and paper and come up with ten reasons how you contributed to the situation.

Here’s another tip:  It’s what you do before you do what you do that makes the difference.

I’ll say that again:  It’s WHAT you do, BEFORE you do what you do, that makes the difference.

What I mean by this is BEFORE you shout STOP in the middle of an argument, shove pen and paper in the hands of the other person and send them off to go write up ten reasons, take time to set this up as an alternative way of handling heated discussions. When all is calm and peaceful between you, propose this as an option. Then give it a go next time you have an opportunity.  See what happens. And if you like the result, do it again and again.

Go on, give it a go! Then come back here and tell us what happened.