Lose The Debate E-Book

Dr. Summer Allen

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 292

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Over the last few years, how many uncomfortable conversations have you had – or avoided – about politics, religion, social issues, or even how to raise the kids? After all, these are the types of conversations that can quickly evoke a visceral response. Your body becomes tense; you feel a knot in your stomach and a lump in your throat. Anxiety builds, and everything from your conversation partner’s perspective causes you to feel enraged. It’s at that moment that you’ve discovered that your opinions are polar opposite, and you can’t – or aren’t willing to - understand their position. As your anxiety rises, you fear that anything you say will turn a simple discussion into a contentious debate that ends in frustration and division.
This doesn’t have to happen.
Utilizing her proprietary, research-based five-point framework called the ACTER model, Dr. Summer Allen’s methodology enables you to remain calm and open to learning no matter how challenging your conversation partner may be. ACTER teaches readers a set of skills centered around the acronym:
A—Appreciating diversity of opinions
C—Curiosity
T—Triggers
E—Emotional regulation
R—Respectful listening
When properly applied, the steps in the ACTER model help take the stress out of engaging in courageous conversations and allow readers to hear and better understand their conversation partner’s point of view objectively, as well as how to effectively express their own. The ACTER model skills are straightforward, and readers are encouraged to take small steps and apply each of the practices to achieve mastery while recognizing that conversations can be unpredictable.
The release of Lose the Debateis right on time. The existing ideological tensions within our society are inflaming conversations between family members, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Yet, living in an echo chamber creates silos that can damage relationships and prevent us from learning and engaging in meaningful dialogue.
Drawing on her experience and extensive research, Dr. Allen explains that one uncomfortable conversation at a time is actually the only way to heal our divides. The book Lose the Debategives readers the skills and confidence to have those conversations and, in the process, learn more about themselves and others.
As the founder and leader of a management consulting firm whose purpose is to help people become more emotionally intelligent in every aspect of life, Dr. Summer Allen’s business is built on training others to engage in courageous conversations and increase their emotional intelligence. Such discussions are often centered around starkly differing opinions and beliefs. In her book,InLose the Debate: A Practical Guide to Emotional Intelligence and Successful Dialogue, Dr. Allen applies her fifteen years of experience training Fortune 500 leaders, entertainers, and politicians and shares how to navigate conversations on tough topics and unfamiliar territory and reach positive outcomes that are based on understanding and respect.

Leseprobe

Summer Allen Losing the Debate ISBN: 9798862018028

Copyright © 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Introduction

“Why does everything have to be about race?”

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

“I think all lives matter—not just black lives.

Saying that isn’t fair to everyone else.”

“I’m not going to call a person ‘them.’ That’s not

even grammatically correct. People just need to live

based on the gender they were born with.”

“Global warming isn’t real.”

“Hiring people based on diversity lowers the bar.”

Wow! Those are some powerful statements. Whether we agree with them or not, they are related to some of today’s most significant societal topics. How often have you gotten into an uncomfortable conversation that started with statements like these over the past few years? These are the types of conversations that, thirty seconds in, create an awkward visceral response. Your body tenses up, you feel a knot in your stomach and a lump in your throat. Your anxiety builds, and everything from your conversation partner’s perspective to their tone makes you boil. At that moment, you discover that your opinions are vastly different. You cannot understand how they can think the way they do. As your anxiety continues to rise, you are afraid that anything you say will transform a friendly dialogue into a full-blown argument. Some of us take an avoidant approach where we either end the conversation or get to a point where we wish for something—anything—to end the conversation in its tracks. It could be a phone ringing or an extinction-level asteroid strike; it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t have to utter another word about this topic. On the other hand, some of us get a rush of emotion and feel a sense of obligation to tackle this topic head-on and change the other person’s “twisted” views of the topic in an attempt to save them from themselves and make the world a better place. While both scenarios may seem a bit dramatic, the truth is these types of conversations happen every day, whether they are planned discussions or come out of nowhere.

While most of our conversations are not about major world issues, that doesn’t mean that even our everyday conversations are easy. Discovering that we have divergent opinions and perspectives from someone we interact with regularly is challenging. These difficult conversations are part of life—like talking with your siblings about how to best care for an aging parent, setting boundaries with a friend who doesn’t respect your time, or providing an employee constructive feedback on their work products. It could look like conversing with your ex-spouse about disciplining your child or telling a partner you want a divorce. These are just a few tough conversations that are often difficult to navigate.

I wish that the contents of this book could make tough conversations simpler, but the truth is difficult conversations are always going to be difficult. I can promise you that I’ve made a career out of studying how people interact and communicate. As a result, I have developed strategies that will help you to navigate through and benefit from even the most uncomfortable talks. This book will provide practical tools and methods to enable you and your conversation partner to leave a tough conversation feeling whole and understood.

As the owner of a diversity and inclusion firm, my business is built on difficult conversations. Every day, I work to bring out commonalities while enabling people to appreciate the unique differences that we all have. This ranges from our individual identities and our unique life experiences to our diverse perspectives. I’ve identified that much of the divisiveness happening in our world is due to a lack of open dialogue and willingness to have courageous conversations in order to better understand one another and reach a solution.

I began to dig into how to tackle difficult conversations while receiving my doctorate from the University of Southern California, my dissertation was titled The Moderating Effects of Leader Behavior on Employee Turnover. The paper aimed to understand top leaders’ behaviors that drove employees to make one of the most significant decisions of their lives—to quit their jobs. We have all heard the quote, “People don’t leave jobs. They leave their leaders.” My research validated that claim. A leader’s lack of emotional intelligence (EI) is the number-one leadership behavior that drives employees to quit. Though I specialize in leadership development, my niche is EI. My dissertation’s approach was to take the leaders step-by-step through this challenging process.

Before we go further, let’s understand what EI means. EI is one’s ability to effectively acknowledge, identify, and communicate their emotions as well as understand the emotions of others. After starting my diversity and inclusion practice, I realized emotional intelligence is not just a challenge in leadership that impacted behaviors and relationships—it is a challenge for everyone. EI is a key component to having courageous conversations. It has been the driving force behind my work ever since.

One of the main components of EI is self-awareness: having a deep understanding of self, who you are, and why you are the way you are. When working with leaders to enhance their leadership performance through EI, I first help leaders understand the importance of acknowledging their past experiences and how those experiences shape who they are as a person and a leader. To have true self-awareness, we must understand how our past experiences, or historical context, influence and shape our present perspective. Once our historical context has been explored and mapped out, I challenge leaders to recognize how those experiences influence how they show up, make decisions, and connect with people. The same level of self-awareness is required in a courageous conversation.

The Power of Perspective

Our perspective is powerful. It is how we define the world. It is the lens through which we see the world, and it dictates how we show up in it. Our perspective is our mental blueprint. However, we often neglect to reflect or deeply understand our perspective. We form our perspective based on our individual life experiences. What was your family like growing up? Who did you grow up around? Who didn’t you grow up around? Where did you live when you were younger? What religion were your parents, and did they pass those traditions on to you? Did you experience any childhood traumas? Everything you experienced from birth until now has developed the road map that is your perspective. Your perspective defines how you see the world. How you see the world then drives your behaviors, opinions, and views. It influences what you gravitate to and what you avoid, your likes and dislikes, your parenting style, your value system, whom you choose to date, your communication style, and much more. Neglecting to understand how our perspective is formed and how it influences our current behaviors limits our ability to understand ourselves and grow.

The truth is we are never without influence from our historical context. Even as an adult, parent, or leader in a workplace, you are still influenced by your parents, childhood neighborhood, and even the playground bully from third grade. Once you intentionally reflect on your historical context and understand the significant impact specific experiences have on your subconscious, you can understand yourself better, keep what serves you, and remove thoughts and perspectives that hinder growth. When you are more self-aware, you can perform at a higher leadership and interpersonal capacity, communicate more effectively, and engage and lead more successfully in diverse cultures.

I see breakthroughs in self-awareness in almost every one of my seminars. In one class, I took a senior executive through a self-awareness exercise. The executive grew up in a strict religious family and community. After the training, he realized that being taught certain ideals by his parents created stereotypes, biases, and judgments that did not lend themselves to a mindset of inclusion. He could see that this mindset kept him from authentically connecting with specific team and organization members. This story is just one of many examples of how your past experiences influence how you see the world and connect with others. However, these experiences are often pushed into our subconscious, never to be unpacked and understood. Ultimately, you move into a leadership position or a team environment unaware of how your past influences every aspect of your professional life: whom you associate with, whom you hire, whom you promote, and whom you offer training opportunities to.

I’ve coached leaders at every level, from the C-suite to first-time managers and I have facilitated over four thousand leadership workshops, executive coaching sessions, and training sessions. I’ve listened to participants’ concerns and problems and I found that 99 percent of my clients’ issues stem from a gap in EI and communication. This book focuses on communication as a process while also providing insights into EI. The goal is that you will use this book as a resource to assist you in increasing your self-awareness so that you can create clarity around who you are and why, how you show up, and why you think the way you do. I am sure all this talk about self-awareness and perspective sounds odd, considering the book is about courageous conversations. However, understanding who you are and why you think the way you do is the courageous part of the conversation. With a deep sense of self-awareness, you are more grounded in the purpose of your conversation. You are better able to regulate your emotions and navigate through emotional triggers. You are capable and remain focused on your values and goals of the conversation. This approach allows you to own your portion of the dialogue and focus on outcomes and solutions versus getting caught in an emotional spiral.

Effective Communication Is Key

What is communication? Since it is something we do every day, it seems like an absurd question. But communication is a skill that we often take for granted. We seem to automatically identify those times when we have to slow down and engage in a real conversation. You know the times when you have to think through what you will say and how you will say it. That is when we are aware that it will require more effort to have this conversation. Communication is easy. Effective communication is the challenge. Effective communication is both a skill and an art. Effective communication is the process of exchanging ideas, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and data so that the message is received and understood with clarity and purpose. When we communicate effectively, both the sender and receiver feel satisfied.1

Effective communication is a dynamic and complex art because of the unique perspectives we bring into the conversation. The challenges come into play when we interact with people who are different from us and have contrasting experiences, perspectives, and beliefs. Most often, everyone will have disparate opinions. Think of the earlier story about the gentleman who grew up in a strict religious family. Without knowing his background, you might think some of his perspectives, views and opinions were absurd. Everyone comes to the conversation table with their backpacks full of everything they were taught and, unfortunately, only equipped with the things they have experienced or seen. These experiences that shape our perspective simultaneously make communication tricky.

During my research, I realized that there were tons of buzz phrases to describe communicating with someone with a different opinion than your own. Yet, there was little understanding of how to overcome those difficulties. Divergent opinions and courageous conversations topped those lists of hard-to-pin-down descriptors. I quickly ascertained that there are no textbook definitions or frameworks with practical solutions for having effective, courageous conversations when divergent opinions exist that considered EI. I consulted everything from research articles to my doctoral program notes to the world wide web, all the way down to Twitter, but could not find a single definitive explanation or framework of how to have these courageous conversations through the lens of EI. Since necessity is the mother of invention, I decided it was time to redefine those terms and provide a framework for my practice. As a result, I compiled a myriad of research and simplified it into one palatable framework.

For our purposes, a divergence is any difference between two or more people’s attitudes, opinions, or world views. Political party affiliations, immigration, climate change, religion, human rights, women’s rights, gun control, how we raise our kids, who’s responsible for what in a marriage, and who should clean the house is a small sampling of common divergent topics. Somewhere along the way and with certain topics, the term divergent has become synonymous with divisive. Today, more than ever, expressing your opinion can be so unpopular that it can lead to verbal altercations, ruined relationships, family divides, and even physical violence. As a result, we often choose avoidance as a strategy because of the anxiety we feel over addressing our differences, and the high risk we have associated. We then choose the “safe path” and decide that there can be no argument if there’s no conversation in the first place. The challenging part of an avoidant approach is that we find no solutions. There are a lot of significant social issues that we all need to address. The point where we decide to engage and have a conversation or not is where the concept of courageous conversations comes into action.

The term courageous conversation is not new or groundbreaking. It became more popular after the death of George Floyd, when organizations wanted to create “space spaces” for their employees to have courageous conversations about race and other social issues. Collectively, we identified that these issues were having a profound impact on employees’ mental health and well-being. And these conversations don’t just sit in organizational spaces. Over the past few years, I have seen these issues destroy relationships and tear families apart. So I thought it was time to identify a way for society to have a different dialogue.

What Is a Courageous Conversation?

I define a courageous conversation as any conversation you don’t want to have. Scott Buxton of the Physiospot website adds more depth to my thoughts and describes it this way:

A courageous conversation is a discussion that is often difficult and uncomfortable. There are often emotions on both sides of the conversation and can be awkward, stressful, or challenging situations.2

I intrinsically knew that both definitions of courageous conversation were correct, but I felt something was missing . I remembered something I was told long ago: “Courage is only necessary where fear exists.” In other words, you do not need courage when no fear exists. The missing piece was understanding the “fear factor” in a courageous conversation. Fear is an emotion that creates an instinctual pause or retreat response—flight, fight, or freeze. However, the goal is to go against your natural instincts and feel the fear. Not only feel it, but push through it with courage to have the tough conversations. As humans, it is always recommended to have reference points to help us understand our true capabilities. If I just tell you, “You got this,” or “You can do this,” that is not enough. Self-reflectio and identifying moments where you have chosen courage over fear is important.

When the brain is triggered, and fear is the response, it tells the body to retreat. When we get uncomfortable with a conversation, we tend to avoid the conversation altogether. It’s important to understand that this is the point of choice. We can choose fear and retreat from discomfort, or we can choose courage and engage in a thoughtful way. During my training sessions, I tell people to get “comfortable with being uncomfortable”. This is essential because we are learning to intentionally go against our instinct to choose safety. Choosing to stay in comfort, unfortunately, doesn’t allow us much room to grow. Anything new will be uncomfortable. Intentionally moving into those spaces with courage is where we grow. When we feel discomfort, it is often because something is unfamiliar or uncertain to us.

I frequently give an example to help people understand how fear and courage work mentally and physiologically. (Please forgive me if this example triggers you in any way.) Imagine you are at a pool party with your child. As a kid, you had a traumatic experience while swimming in the ocean during a family vacation. Since then, you have not been in a body of water. While at the pool party, you are keeping a watchful eye on your child as they swim and play with their friends. However, while talking to another parent, you hear the distressed voice of your child. You quickly turn around and see your child struggling to keep their head above water. What do you do?

I’ve asked this question in training classes thousands of times. Every session, every audience member answers, “I would jump in.” Of course you would! You would because the “why” moves you beyond your fear. This instinct tells us that we can move beyond our fear and do anything if we are moved strongly enough by the “why” that sits on the other side. We want to apply that same premise to courageous conversations. I implore you to push through your fear of having difficult conversations and make the conscious choice to engage because courageous conversations are necessary. When it comes to social issues, courageous conversations are vital for our society to identify solutions to big challenges. In our personal lives, courageous conversations are beneficial and necessary because they create more authentic and trusting relationships grounded in mutual understanding and clarity.

Since fear is the basis for avoiding difficult conversations, the question becomes, what are you afraid of? What makes you not want to have the conversation? In the previous example, a child’s life was a powerful reason to move beyond fear. So now the question you must ask is: What is important about courageous conversations with people with divergent opinions and perspectives around important topics? The payoff for having a courageous conversation about divergent opinions is growth.

Last year I was working with a client, Jen. She was going through a difficult time in her marriage, and the stress from her home life was beginning to impact her job. She was used to a mindset of going along to get along, or “if I avoid it, it will go away.” However, in this situation, she realized that avoiding the courageous conversations she needed to have with her partner was not helping. In fact, it was negatively impacting her mental health and her effectiveness at work. After several weeks of sessions, as tough as it was, she found her why and reason to push through the fear and talked to her partner. She told me, “What I am realizing is when I feel the fear and hesitation, that is a signal that I need to have the conversation. That my fear of rejection, abandonment, or being alone cannot stop me from having the necessary conversations and facing whatever the outcome may be.” It was a powerful moment for Jen. Finding the why is like finding your North Star. It sparks your motivation and provides the boost of confidence necessary to have those difficult conversations.

Another aspect of fearing courageous conversation is past difficult conversation experiences. Ask yourself: In the past, when I have had a difficult conversation with someone with a divergent opinion, what happened? Why? What was the outcome or impact on the relationship? How have I seen others engage in difficult conversations? Asking yourself these three questions will help you understand the mental model you have created about courageous conversations and allow you to see where some of your fears and hesitations may stem from.

One day I was working with a client and walking her through the possibility of having a courageous conversation with her daughter. She looked at me and realized she had avoided many meaningful conversations because she feared how others would see her. She would rather be quiet than risk negatively impacting or losing the relationship. After some work and self-reflection, she realized how her past shaped her present. She used to be a talkative child. However, she grew up in a household where her parents constantly fought and yelled. She never saw constructive dialogue. Her parents divorced when she was ten. Over time, she lost her voice. As a result, she associated divergent opinions with conflict, and she deemed any divisive conversation as unsafe and avoided them at all costs.

As we see from these two examples, our past negative experiences can create fear and avoidance. They can also be used as learning opportunities. When it comes to courageous conversations around divergent opinions, my clients often describe the conversations as a conflict, argument, or debate. A courageous conversation should not be a debate or an argument. Instead, conversations with people who have divergent opinions and perspectives around important topics should end with expanded perspectives. The goal of a courageous conversation is never to try to change anyone’s mind or force our beliefs and opinion on them. Instead, the goal of a courageous conversation should be about collective curiosity and the expansion of perspectives on both sides. The goal is to make space for different perspectives while being able to walk away and still hold your opinion.

Divergent Opinions

Unlike divisiveness and its negative connotations, there’s nothing wrong with divergent perspectives. There is never any progress unless someone first says, “I think it would be better if we stopped doing X and tried doing Y instead.” Divergence should be about generating multiple creative solutions to problems or expanding everyone’s point of view on topics. A fluid, nonlinear, more creative, mental state is achieved when we dig into divergent thinking and courageous conversations. It is this curious that is common among children. Divergence leads to imagination and fresh new perspectives that enables growth and positive change.

Part of the equation to having courageous conversations is increasing our EI. Remember, EI is learning how to effectively acknowledge, identify (in ourselves and others), and communicate the emotions we bring into a conversation. Those emotional components include biases, past traumas, and a boatload of other factors we’ll discuss. We will learn techniques for self-awareness, self-regulation, and social skills to understand and connect with others. The result of learning these techniques is discovering how to respond based on your values, not in reaction to what your partner said or did.

As we review these concepts moving forward, it will be helpful to understand what your baseline is regarding divergent opinions and courageous conversations. I ask that you take a few minutes to take this self-awareness assessment. Rate yourself on a one-to-five-point scale for each of the statements below, one being low and five being high. The evaluation isn’t a pop-psychology magazine quiz that will tell you what type of person you are. The goal is to make you aware of how to best utilize the contents of this book to help you initiate courageous conversations. If you score low, read this book with a mind toward development—a growth mindset. If your score is high, you will have an eye to refining your techniques and adding additional tools for approaching difficult conversations.

1. I am comfortable and confident engaging with people who are different from me.

2. I have intentionally reflected on my past experiences and understand what my perspectives are and how they were formed.

3. I am mindful of my blind spots and understand where I may have limited perspective, and continually self-evaluate to ensure I am open to learning new things.

4. I am comfortable engaging in conversations with others about diverse issues such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

5. I am aware of my emotions/feelings around major social issues and why I feel the way I feel.

No matter where you fall in the self-assessment, our goal is not to make you comfortable with having courageous conversations. Since the definition of a courageous conversation is a talk that you don’t want to have, you will always be a bit uncomfortable having these conversations. The goal is to help you get comfortable being uncomfortable. After reading this book, my hope is that you come away with techniques to elevate your competence and confidence when engaging in courageous conversations and practical tools to assist you in the process. I promise the reward of deeper understanding, increased perspective, and richer, more trusting relations will be worth the discomfort.

The ACTER Model

While I know that sounds like a tall order, I developed a model to take the sting out of courageous conversations about divergent opinions. I call it the ACTER model, and I’ve been teaching it for years as part of my diversity and inclusion training classes. ACTER stands for:

A—Appreciating diversity of opinions

C—Curiosity

T—Triggers

E—Emotional regulation

R—Respectful listening

Please note, although the acronym is ACTER, there is no expectation of you being false or inauthentic in any way. On the contrary, the model allows you such a heightened sense of self-awareness that you build the necessary tools and skills that allow you to show up more authentic and more true to yourself in any conversation.

Each step of the model builds on the prior and will give you a mental framework to help you engage in courageous conversations. ACTER is not a method to manage your conversation partner’s responses or help you “win” a debate. It is also not meant to be a step-by-step guide for every courageous conversation you have. After all, conversations don’t typically fit into tidy, manageable packages. Instead, the ACTER model is designed to take the stress out of your side of the conversation to objectively hear your conversation partner’s point of view. The model allows you to analyze yourself and manage your emotions. The more quickly you can clear away the emotional clutter surrounding conversations with divergent opinions, the easier it will be for you to develop the curious mindset necessary to conquer it. The world is clearer when you aren’t defensive about what someone else is saying and you take the approach that you can learn something from everyone. In curiosity, we grow, learn, expand our perspective, and ultimately find our true selves.

The rest of this book will examine each of the elements in the ACTER model. Each step of ACTER is based on sound psychological tenets that form the basis of each point. These citations and principles come from professionals who have put in hundreds or thousands of hours studying, experimenting, and participating in the peer review process in their fields. I would be remiss if I did not apply their expertise in the development of the ACTER model. But this isn’t solely a book based on theory, I also share real-world examples and conversation prompts to help you develop your skills in having any divergent-opinion conversation. As you continue to practice the ACTER model, you will find the framework is adaptable to your communication style. My goal is to teach you a methodology, not for you to be armed with canned responses. However, I’ve found that when learning any new skill, you have to master the basics before freestyling to meet your own needs.

Before you read any further, take a moment to review the self-assessment questions with a mind toward what you want to achieve with the ACTER model. Keeping those goals in mind when you read the next chapter, an overview of how to use this book, will assist you in personalizing the ACTER approach. Whatever your goals, I assure you that you’ll achieve those objectives and more with an open and change-oriented mind.

* * *

1 Coursera, 2023.

2 Buxton, 2022.

Chapter 1

How to Use This Book

I encourage you to use this book as a guide. When learning any skill set, it is important to first develop the vocabulary and mindset along with those new capabilities. Let’s say you want to learn how to play golf. You might familiarize yourself with golfing terms like par, bunker, or backswing to create a frame of reference for learning how to play the game. You also need to adjust your mindset to the scoring system in golf. Almost every other game you’ve played operates on a standard where the highest score wins. In golf, the game’s objective is to take the fewest strokes to get your ball in the hole. That means in golf, the lowest score wins. You could look at a scorecard and pronounce an incorrect winner if you’re not attuned to that mindset.

You’ve already started your journey to successfully conducting courageous conversations by learning some basic vocabulary in this book’s introduction. Other terms will be presented in their proper context throughout the rest of the book and I’ve included a short glossary at the end in case you need a refresher on a term or concept. It also might be helpful to keep a notebook close at hand. Many of my clients find it useful to make note of terms or concepts they want to explore further.

Aside from defining key terms, it is paramount to explore how to assess and recognize that you may have to change your mindset and then apply the ACTER model to courageous conversations. I often see my clients believe that the ACTER model only applies to societal issues like racism, sexism, politics, and other similar topics. While the ACTER model perfectly suits those discussions, I’ve designed ACTER to address any courageous conversation. Remember that courageous conversations are any discussion you don’t want to have: setting boundaries, providing feedback to employees, discussing a household budget with your partner are all examples of courageous conversations you have every day.

Practicing Skills and Starting Out Easy

Since courageous conversations are all around us, we must adjust our mindsets to recognize these commonplace discussions as opportunities. If you start practicing the ACTER model in lower-stakes situations, you’ll have a learning laboratory to practice your skills. It’s much easier to start using the ACTER model when faced with the question of “Where should we have dinner?” than “Who are you voting for in the next election?” Remember that when you find yourself rolling your eyes, getting annoyed, emotionally triggered, or simply not wanting to have a conversation, that is the perfect chance to practice ACTER.

Building your confidence in lower-pressure conversations will allow you to adapt the ACTER model to your needs. I refer to ACTER as a model or framework because it is a guide. The reality is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution or technique for every situation. To further complicate matters, divergent opinions will differ from person to person or community to community. Different social groups face various problems due to varying experiences, socioeconomic differences, mores, and even geography. You must be agile enough in your approach to courageous conversations to recognize and navigate these differences. I’ve designed the ACTER model to be general enough to apply to any conversation you might have, while providing specific enough strategies to allow you to communicate effectively when divergent opinions are present.

Practicing your newfound ACTER skills is a hollow gesture unless we set goals for those skills. Most of us are familiar with goal-setting relating to our personal lives and careers. Your boss probably sets performance expectations for your job role that are measured in some fashion—the number of sales calls you make daily, client satisfaction ratings, and the like. These goals are easy to wrap your mind around because they are tied to specific external outcomes. The goals you will set with ACTER might be a bit more challenging to pin down because these goals are internal and relate to how you conduct yourself during a courageous conversation.

Self Awareness

The first internal goal we touched on in the introduction is worth exploring further: how to manage yourself. In the Emotional Regulation chapter, we’ll go into more detail on handling yourself, but it’s important to plant some seeds early in the process. Before your next courageous conversation, you should examine how you acted during your last divergent-opinion conversation. Did you retreat? If you chose to engage, did you let your emotions get the best of you? Did you make statements you now regret? Were you more concerned with being right than understanding your conversation partner’s point of view? There are invisible psychological forces that live beneath the surface of your psyche that cause these reactions. Unless you have the fortitude to examine how and why you react as you do during a courageous conversation, it will be challenging to have fruitful discussions with people you don’t see eye-to-eye with.

It’s not easy to search for why we react in conversations the way we do, and unpacking the root causes may bring up painful memories. Taking a complete inventory of your biases, traumas, and beliefs is beyond the scope of this book. Still, I would strongly suggest making that “first conversation with yourself” as honest as possible. One of my participants approached me after a seminar and said he was generally combative when having conversations that resulted in unfavorable feedback or criticism of his work. We spoke for a moment, and I found out that his mother was highly critical while he grew up. One story he relayed was that his mother instructed him to vacuum the den while she went to the store. The young man dutifully did as his mother instructed. When his mother returned, she relentlessly chastised her son for not following her instructions and made him vacuum the floor again. Her rationale was that the tracks from the vacuum cleaner were not going in the same direction on the carpet, so he didn’t do the task correctly. This moment taught him that things must be done “perfectly”.

The carpet vacuuming example borders on therapeutic but speaks to the level of introspection and self-awareness one needs to hold a courageous conversation successfully. This reflection on his childhood showed him where and why he is more likely to become triggered. The aim is not to solve the root problems but to be aware of them and understand how they affect your conversation habits. The young man in the vacuum-cleaning example has more profound issues to resolve about criticism. Still, he now knows he will likely respond poorly to any negative feedback. Armed with that knowledge, he can work to rein in emotional responses to criticism.

Fixed and Growth Mindsets