Concept
The three conversations
Stone, Patton and Heen found that under every difficult conversation run three at once: the what-happened conversation about who is right, the feelings conversation about what each person feels, and the identity conversation about what this says about me.
Most people fight only the first layer, who said what and who is to blame, and wonder why it goes nowhere; it goes nowhere because the other two layers are running unspoken and leaking into tone. The feelings layer is usually the one people think they are keeping out of a professional conversation, and cannot. The identity layer, am I competent, am I a good person, is the loudest and the least acknowledged, and it is what makes people go silent or sharp. Naming the three to yourself before the conversation changes what you say in it: the what-happened layer shifts from blame to contribution, the feelings layer gets named instead of leaked, and the identity layer loses its grip once it is seen.
A real-life example
Two colleagues discussing a wrong month-end close: what happened is the error; she feels embarrassed and he feels anxious about the auditor; she is hearing 'you are bad at your job' and he is hearing 'you let errors through'. Naming all three is what lets them fix the spreadsheet.
How to use it
- 1Before a hard conversation, write the three layers as three lines.
- 2Name the feelings out loud rather than letting them leak into tone.
- 3Ask yourself what you are afraid this says about you; naming it loosens it.