4. Conversation techniques for difficult behaviour

Knowing what is going on is one thing. Doing something useful with it in the conversation itself is another matter entirely. Two movements form the basis: asking questions until you understand the other person, and naming what you see happening.

Listening, summarising, probing

LSD is not a trick for calming someone down, but a way of finding out what the other person really means before you form your own view. With difficult behaviour that is a real gain: someone who feels understood has no need to push harder.

Listening means more here than keeping quiet while you prepare your answer. You direct your attention fully to the other person and hold back your own judgement for a moment. You pay attention to all three channels: the words, the tone and the posture. What is someone literally saying, how does it sound, and what is their body doing alongside it? In practice you can recognise good listening by a few things. You don't interrupt, you allow silences of two or three seconds, you nod or say "hm" to show that you are there, and you put your phone away and close your laptop. Half a channel of attention is read by the other person as no attention at all.

Summarising is a brief rendering of what the other person said, in your own words, followed by a check. "So if I understand you correctly, your main concern is next week's planning and not so much the report itself. Is that right?" That does three things at once: it proves that you have listened, it gives the other person the chance to correct you, and it slows the conversation down, which brings the temperature down. Do note the difference with a conclusion. "So you don't feel like doing this project" is not a summary, that is your interpretation dressed up as one.

Asking follow-up questions is the step most people skip, because after the summary they think they know. With an open question you go one layer deeper, to the behaviour, the situation or the interest underneath. Four questions do almost all the work. "What makes that important to you?" looks for the interest behind the objection. "What would that look like?" forces vagueness towards concrete behaviour. "Which situation exactly are you thinking of?" brings a label back to a single moment. And "what do you need in order to be able to support this?" is an invitation to think along rather than to grumble.

Why-questions are best left alone. "Why didn't you report that?" almost always sounds like a reproach, however kindly you say it. "What made you not report it at the time?" asks the same thing and produces an answer instead of a defence.

NIVEA: do not fill in the blanks for someone else

Listening and asking follow-up questions will take you a long way, but not indefinitely far. At some point something of yours has to go on the table: this is going too far, this is where I stop, this is not how I want it. A boundary you only draw internally is never noticed by the other person. And the first condition for such a boundary is that you set it without filling anything in.

NIVEA stands for niet invullen voor een ander: don't fill in the blanks for someone else. It is a reminder for the moment you notice that you have already come up with an explanation in your head for the other person's behaviour, and then discuss that explanation out loud as if it were a fact. As soon as you fill in the blanks, you say something like: "You simply don't feel like doing this project." That is a conclusion about someone's motives, and there is only one possible answer to it: denial. From that moment on, the conversation is about whether your interpretation is correct, and no longer about the behaviour that was bothering you.

NIVEA works in two directions. You do not fill in what the other person thinks, feels or means. And you also do not fill in what the other person can or cannot handle: "I'd better not say it, because it will only make her feel insecure" is just as much an assumption about an inside you cannot see.

A boundary in four steps

A boundary that works consists of four parts, and you can see them in the bottom row of the diagram above.

• Behaviour. What you observe, in camera language: "You interrupted me three times this morning during my explanation."
• Effect. What that did, without filling in motives: "As a result I couldn't get my point across to the group, and that annoyed me."
• Wish. What you want instead: "I want to finish my point before you respond."
• Consequence. What you will do if the behaviour continues: "If it happens again, I'll interrupt the meeting and come back to it."

That fourth step is the one most often skipped, and that is precisely where the difference lies between a wish and a boundary. A wish can be ignored, a boundary cannot. And a consequence is not a threat: it is an announcement of your own behaviour, and therefore something you decide on yourself. That also contains the test of whether it is a workable consequence. If you cannot carry it out yourself, it is not a consequence but a hope.

Responding to criticism

Criticism rarely comes in a tidy form. Usually you get it in the corridor, in passing, or downright harshly during a meeting. Your first move determines how the rest of the conversation goes, and that first move is almost always to defend yourself. There is one question that governs everything before you say anything: is there something in it that is true? As long as you don't know that, you can't respond sensibly.

Asking further questions is not a delaying tactic here. "Where did you see that?" and "which situation are you thinking of?" break a label down until only behaviour remains. Only then can you judge whether there is any truth in it. If there is, even in part, acknowledgement is the quickest and strongest response: "You're right that that email should have gone out on Tuesday. I let that slip." You leave out the explanatory sentence that follows, because every "but" immediately undoes the acknowledgement.

Sometimes the criticism is simply wrong, or it is so vague and so often repeated that engaging with the substance no longer serves any purpose. For those situations there is the fogging technique. You behave like a fog bank: the other person can throw anything into it, but nothing comes back. No counterattack and no defence, so no material for another round either. You do this in three ways. You acknowledge what is true, and nothing else: "That's right, that report wasn't finished on Tuesday." You acknowledge that it could be the case, without adopting the conclusion: "It may well come across that way to you." Or you acknowledge in general terms: "There's probably something in what you say." Then you calmly repeat your own position, in the same words, no louder and no more elaborately. Someone who meets no resistance has nothing to push against.

Summary

• Listening, summarising and asking follow-up questions bring out the information you need before you form a view of your own.
• A summary stays close to what was said and ends with a check. A conclusion about someone's motives is not a summary.
• You ask follow-up questions using what and how. Why questions sound like an accusation and produce a defence.
• NIVEA keeps you from making assumptions about the other person's motives and feelings, and about what they can or cannot handle.
• A boundary consists of behaviour, effect, wish and consequence. The consequence concerns your own actions and is therefore not a threat.
• A consequence you do not carry out turns your boundary into a suggestion.
• If the criticism is justified, you acknowledge it without explaining. If it is not, you use the fogging technique to take away the resistance and calmly repeat your position.