9

Big (Naked, Obese) Sue and the High School Principal

How to See and Share Hard Truths

 

WE’VE COVERED THE tenets of good communication for day-to-day situations, but what about when we need to communicate but we really don’t want to—when we’re confronting the difficult or stressful, the unsavory or even taboo, the things that make us inherently uncomfortable? As much as we want to, we cannot ignore them. If it’s real and concrete and factual and happened and is in front of us, we have to deal with it.

For centuries philosophers and psychologists have debated why humans, as Scottish skeptic David Hume put it, “avoid uncomfortable truths.” Is it egoism, hedonism, or an attempt to maximize self-survival? No one has a definitive answer. However, as we’ve learned in honing our observation skills, just because we don’t know why doesn’t mean we can’t deal with our conscious ability to turn away from things we don’t like. And turn we do. We deny and deflect, pretend and pass the buck, but none of those evasive actions will erase our having been presented with something and not dealing with it.

To avoid leaving information behind, we have to be able to describe things accurately no matter what the situation. That need, however, is even more pressing when it comes to troubling information because refusing to acknowledge the information—let alone observe, analyze, or articulate it—can make it worse. Ignoring things that trouble us will not make those things go away. Like a spark that becomes a forest fire, they may even escalate or even explode. And we may be held accountable for turning away from the problem when it was smaller and more easily solved or contained.

To avoid being the captain of the Titanic who ignored the warnings of ice, we have to face even the seemingly unfaceable head on. We have to, as the Navy SEALs say, get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Combat veteran turned digital marketing agency manager Brent Gleeson explains, “There have been many times as a business owner that I have been in very uncomfortable situations. That could be a difficult conversation with a team member, a lawsuit, or dealing with a demanding board member. Discomfort comes in many forms. But the more you embrace that as a reality, the wider your comfort zone becomes.”

The more we confront and communicate about what makes us uncomfortable, the better we’ll be at it. Let’s start by dealing with two paintings. We’re just going to catalog their similarities and differences. (Don’t feel bad if you’re thinking, “Before marriage and after” or “Wife and mother-in-law.” I’ve heard them all. Just don’t say them out loud!)

 

Goya, The Naked Maja, c. 1795–1800.

 

Lucian Freud, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995.

 

Both paintings show women reclining on a couch, although in opposite directions. The woman in the first painting has her eyes open, head lifted, and is looking straight ahead. The woman in the second painting has her eyes closed, her face slack and collapsed into the couch. Both women have brown hair. It appears that the woman in the second painting has uncombed hair.

What about the couches? Don’t say one is “fancy” and one is “trashy”; those are judgment words. Fancy and trashy mean different things to different people. Instead, be specific. Talk about satin and velvet versus missing cushions and stains. The couch in the first painting is technically a dark green, one-armed chaise longue with ivory sheets and two pillows edged in lace. The second painting shows a traditional two-armed, floral-patterned couch without any cushions and dirty, ripped upholstery.

The first painting features a brown and amber background; we cannot see the floor. The second painting has a wrinkled, gray sheet of fabric in the background; the floor is wood-grained.

Anything else? I show these two images all over the country to thousands of professionals and leaders every day, and one of the very last observations ever uttered is that both women are naked. You can say “naked”; it’s a fact. They are both turned in an almost full-frontal position with nary a scrap of clothing or clever camouflage to hide their nudity. The first woman has her hands behind her head; the second woman has her left hand on top of the couch and is cupping her right breast with the other.

What about their weight? No one ever wants to mention that either. “Isn’t it a social thing to say one is slender and one isn’t?” a participant asked me recently. No, there is a major objective difference in their weight. To be more specific, the second woman is more than just overweight, she is obese.

Obese is a clinical term defined by the Centers for Disease Control to describe the weight of an individual with a body mass index (BMI) of over 30. For a five-foot-nine-inch woman, that would be 203 pounds or more. It’s safe to say that the woman in the second painting is obese. At the time of this painting, the model, Sue Tilley, was 280 pounds. You’re not casting judgment or making fun to say so, you are simply saying what you see.

I did have a doctor raise his hand and tell me that one woman was “perfectly healthy” while the other was “morbidly obese.” I objected to his description, but not for the reason you might think. “Morbidly obese” is the medical terminology for anyone with a BMI of over 40, or over 35 with obesity-related health conditions. And it’s not even the highest obesity rating; a BMI over 45 is referred to as “super obesity.” The physician didn’t say “disgustingly” obese; he gave a clinical definition. It’s his word choice for the woman in the first painting that was an inference. Perfectly healthy? How could he tell? Maybe she had schizophrenia! (He subsequently apologized for his incorrect inference.) The comparison of the two works of art is as much about choice of words as it is about tackling sensitive subjects.

We’ve become so afraid to say anything, we forget what facts are. Facts are proven truths, not opinions. A good way to quickly sort through the difference? Say what you see, not what you think.

 

SAY WHAT YOU SEE, NOT WHAT YOU THINK

 

It bears repeating not only because you need to stick to objective facts, but also because you need to say what you see, even when you don’t like what you see. Effective communication means being able to talk about any pertinent subject, even that which is uncomfortable, unusual, or unsettling. You may not like something, you may have a personal aversion to it, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore it.

As I mentioned, I show these two paintings to every group, even religious organizations. One time I was presenting to educational leaders from at-risk high schools when a principal raised his hand and told me, “I don’t want to look at those pictures. They disgust me!”

I explained that while it is never my intention to offend anyone, whether he liked the pictures or not was irrelevant. We cannot turn away from things we don’t like. The fact is, the women are naked. You have to deal with that. You don’t have to like it. I can only imagine the difficult and even distasteful things a principal at an inner-city high school is faced with. Turning away from them is never an option.

Art, like life, isn’t always pretty. The images on the preceding pages aren’t private pieces of pornography; they are iconic paintings that took the art world by storm for different reasons. The first one, Francisco de Goya’s Naked Maja, is said to be one of the first instances in Western art of an artist painting a nude woman who wasn’t a mythological, historical, or allegorical figure. For his crimes of “depravity” in painting it, the artist was brought in front of the Inquisition. Painted around 1800, it has hung in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1901. The second painting, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, is a 1995 work by Lucian Freud. It’s often colloquially referred to as Big Sue in honor of the real-life model, Sue Tilley, a social services worker who spent three years posing for the portrait. When Big Sue sold at auction for $33.6 million in 2008, it broke the record for the most ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist.

Art is the perfect vehicle for learning how to communicate when we’re uncomfortable. Of course the subject matter of art can be controversial or unpopular, but more important, art is what it is to each and every viewer. It doesn’t move, it doesn’t talk back, it won’t follow you home. It is static, timeless, and does not judge you for how you interpret it. And therein lies its power. Installation artist and photographer JR explains that art is about “raising questions, and giving space to interpretation and dialogue. The fact that art cannot change things makes it a neutral place for exchanges and discussions, and then enables it to change the world.”

In 2013 I took a group at the Met through a temporary exhibit in an interactive gallery called The Refusal of Time by William Kentridge. I gave them no warning, we didn’t stop and read the labels, we just walked through a doorway into a darkened room featuring a five-channel video installation with sound, megaphones, and an “elephant” breathing machine. It was extremely dark and very loud. Darkened screens filled the walls playing flickering, mostly black-and-white movies of shapes being blown around, silhouettes of people dancing, and scribbles. A booming, lumbering soundtrack of music and spoken word played, while a moving sculpture resembling an Industrial Revolution–era factory machine with exposed gears and a giant head endlessly and noisily pumped its bellows in the center of the room.

We walked straight through the exhibit, and when we got out I turned and asked the class what they had observed. It was a good test of short-term situational awareness, as even though they were in the middle of a class about honing their observation and perception skills, more than half the class was completely tuned out, since I hadn’t given them explicit instructions to tune in.

One participant offered that it felt like being trapped in an old Silly Symphony black-and-white cartoon where the giant flowers bend their knees and dance in a disturbing rhythm. Creative, yes, but I didn’t want to know how the artwork made them feel, I wanted to know what they saw. In the absence of a wealth of observational data, other students filled in the gaps with their opinions. “Uncomfortable,” said one. “I have no idea what that was,” said another. Another participant got claustrophobic and “couldn’t wait to get out.” Another simply declared, “I hated it.”

Yes, it was an assault on the senses. It could easily make anyone uncomfortable. That’s true for a lot of things in this world. But we can’t let our discomfort override our need to observe and be aware.

Let’s look at a painting that could be described as overwhelming. Five hundred years before Where’s Waldo?, Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch painted The Garden of Earthly Delights, a massive triptych painted on three oak panels almost 22 feet across and 13 feet high symbolically depicting the garden of Eden, the fall of man, and hell. (It’s in the permanent collection at the Museo del Prado, and well worth seeing in person if you can.)

 

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1500–1505.

 

Since the painting is so large, we’re going to zoom in on the detail in the very bottom right corner:

 

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), c. 1500–1505.

 

It does not matter how we feel about this depiction. It is definitely strange. But rather than talk about what we think, let’s talk about what we see.

I’ll start with the most important: in the upper left-hand corner, there’s what appears to be a man, who looks like he could possibly be deceased, being attacked by two rodent creatures. On the far right we have an anthropomorphic pig wearing a veil resembling a nun’s habit. The pig is sitting upright and leaning its snout against the ear of an adult human male, also sitting, who has his right hand on its cheek. The man has what appears to be a piece of paper with writing on it draped over his left thigh but otherwise doesn’t appear to be wearing any clothes. In front of the man and the pig is a creature with the beak of a bird, thighs like a human, and reptile feet wearing a large closed helmet favored by medieval knights that covers most of its body. The creature has the end of a feathered arrow sticking out of its right thigh and a severed foot hanging from a curved spike protruding from the top of its helmet. An inkwell hangs from the creature’s beak, which protrudes from the helmet’s visor, into which the pig is dipping a quill held in its left front foot.

See, it’s not so bad if we just stick to the facts. Let’s try another painting. What do you see?

 

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Dante and Virgil in Hell, 1850.

 

This is generally the point where the people who were okay with the nude women and the pig dressed like a nun begin to squirm a little. It doesn’t matter if the painting makes you uncomfortable or brings up things you’d rather not think about. It’s especially when we don’t like something or wish to avert our eyes from it that it becomes essential that we’re able to describe it objectively, putting aside both assumptions and emotions.

Really look at the painting. What’s going on? Does your perception of the facts change the more intently you look? While at a cursory glance it might seem that two nude men are wrestling out of playfulness, a show of strength, or attraction, when we look more closely we instead see signs of aggression: a knee in the back, fingers clawing at flesh, an open mouth at another’s neck. The 1850 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau is titled Dante and Virgil in Hell, and it depicts a passage in Dante’s Inferno where Dante and Virgil are touring the eighth circle of hell and witness a heretic fighting a con artist:

 

They smote each other not alone with hands,

But with the head and with the breast and feet,

Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth.

 

It’s fine to be uncomfortable looking at this painting. It’s fine to not like it. It’s not fine to ignore it, because it exists. It’s in front of you. It’s when we ignore the facts or choose not to believe what we see that bad things happen.

 

BELIEVE WHAT YOU SEE

 

Sometimes the facts that are presented to us are so uncomfortable or unbelievable, we block them out, to disastrous results. Psychologists have borrowed the legal phrase “willful blindness”—in which someone tries to avoid liability for a wrongful act by purposefully being unaware of the details—to denote the things we purposefully choose, even unconsciously, not to see. Like our other cognitive blindnesses, it can be overcome with conscious awareness. Unlike the case with our other cognitive blindnesses, failing to overcome it can have far-reaching consequences, as seen in the case that rocked Coventry.

In England, the idiom “sent to Coventry” refers to someone whom you can’t talk to anymore because that person deserves complete isolation. Sadly, this proved to be true for four-year-old local resident Daniel Pelka. In March 2012 the little blond boy was found starved and beaten to death by his parents—despite authorities having been called to his home twenty-six times.

School officials had noted that on separate occasions Daniel showed up with a broken arm, two black eyes, and “four dot-shaped bruises” around his neck. He winced when a teaching assistant playfully ruffled his hair. Teachers noticed that he was “wasting away,” all skin and bones with sunken eyes, his clothes “hanging off him.” They documented that he was stealing food from other children’s lunch boxes and eating scraps covered in dirt from the school’s garbage cans and sandpit.

His stepfather claimed that the boy had broken his arm when he jumped off a couch. It was determined that he had an “obsession with food.” His seemingly caring mother claimed he had a medical condition that made him so skinny. His pediatrician explained his poor growth and weight loss as symptoms of a medical condition. Although the police frequently visited his house to deal with violent domestic disputes, they never talked to Daniel or considered child abuse (a perfect example of what happens when we don’t ask questions, as we learned in the last chapter).

The official review of the case found, “The practitioners involved were not prepared to ‘think the unthinkable’ and tried to rationalize the evidence in front of them that it did not relate to abuse [sic].”

Daniel didn’t die because people failed to notice his condition. They did notice. They did document. They did care. But they didn’t want to believe what they saw in the aggregate. They didn’t want to confront the distressing reality of abuse when analyzing the facts in front of them.

We need to believe what we see even when it means we might have to think the unthinkable and say the unspeakable. We cannot ignore warning signs because they seem to portend the impossible. The belief that she couldn’t sink contributed to the Titanic’s tragedy. The belief that Lehman Brothers was too big to fail contributed to its collapse. We can’t gloss over facts that we find distasteful, distressing, or disturbing because the unimaginable happens every day. We need to be able to communicate when it’s business-as-usual but also prepare our business for the unforeseen, for the emergency, for the impossible.

To practice objectively analyzing both the “impossible” and the uncomfortable, let’s move a bit closer to Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and analyze this detail:

 

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), c. 1500–1505.

 

It doesn’t have to make sense or relate to our lives for us to assess and analyze it thoroughly. What’s going on in this picture? Write down a few sentences to describe it.

Here’s what I saw: an anthropomorphic creature with the head of a small bird sits in a circular chair on stilts while eating what appears to be a nude human body. The creature has a cauldron on its head and its feet inside two urns and is holding the bottom half of the human body in its mouth with its right claw around both of the human’s thighs. Two more human forms appear to be in a bubble underneath the creature’s chair. And five black birds, seen only in silhouette, are flying out of the half-devoured human’s backside.

I don’t find it a particularly pleasant scene, but that doesn’t matter. Nor do I find it very realistic, but it is real—that is, it’s an image that actually exists in the world, so I can use it as visual data and describe it. And so can you.

More important, we can translate this skill of precisely assessing art that is out of our comfort zone into handling difficult communication, because while looking at paintings is most likely not part of your daily routine, managing sensitive information is. We all have to deal with difficult situations and discuss uncomfortable topics. Professionally, at some point we’re going to have to ask for a raise, challenge a new company policy, reprimand an employee, or resolve a dispute. Personally, at some point we’re going to have difficult talks with our partner, our child, or our parents. Once again, the problem with ignoring something is that it’s dangerous. Training surveillance agents in the intelligence community is a constant reminder that things you don’t talk about won’t go away. In fact, they may escalate, cause more damage, and increase your own exposure. In contrast, the willingness to tackle difficult subjects and situations can earn you the admiration of your boss, your customer, your potential donor, and even your loved ones.

Children in particular need direct, forthright communication, especially concerning troubling issues. Minimizing, sidestepping, or denying others’ concerns will not make the problem go away and can hurt the relationship we have with them.

I once coached the headmaster of an elite Manhattan private school who had the unenviable task of telling the parents of a teenage honors student that their beloved baby girl had been giving sexual favors in the boys’ bathroom. The conversation did not go well because the parents refused to have it.

“That is an outrageous accusation!” the mother fumed. “Our daughter would never!”

The headmaster explained that it wasn’t an accusation or an assumption. The girl had been caught by a trustworthy, tenured faculty member. The parents stormed out, refusing to continue a conversation that might ultimately help get their daughter the counsel or discipline she needed.

They were taken aback and possibly taken over by their emotions and disbelief. However, turning away from it didn’t make it go away; in fact, it possibly made the ordeal worse, especially if they swept the situation under the rug at home the same way they did in the headmaster’s office. According to family therapist Ron L. Deal, when caregivers turn away from an upsetting situation concerning a child, the child often interprets it as the adult turning away from her. This can lead to the child permanently turning inward, acting out with negative behavior, or losing long-term trust in the parent figure. Deal says, “Over time this goes a long way to increasing emotional distance in the parent-child relationship and diminishing the parent’s voice with the child.” To prevent this, the parents needed to rise above their discomfort with both their daughter and their daughter’s educators and have an objective conversation about the facts.

When we are emotionally overwhelmed and can’t seem to think straight, we can always fall back on the same investigative model we’ve learned to use to gather facts: who, what, where, and when. Instead of letting their emotions dictate their response, the student’s parents could have asked: “Who was involved in our daughter’s activities?” “What exactly did the incident entail?” “Where did this happen?” and “When did it occur?”

True leaders can handle an uncomfortable conversation as easily as a crisis. They know how to digest and deliver bad news without displaying subjectivity or emotion, even when they don’t like it. And in every course I teach, I can spot these people immediately. They’re the ones who when everyone else says, “I don’t like this,” or covers their mouth with their hands, or turns away, say with a definitive nod, “Interesting.” Their brains are engaged, overriding their guts and their body language.

Here’s how to be that person.

 

OUTSMART YOUR EMOTIONS

 

Just as with observation skills, the most important thing we can do to sharpen our communication skills, especially in times of stress or duress, is to separate the objective from the subjective. In assessing, we separate fact from fiction. In analyzing, we separate inference from opinion. In stressful communication, we must separate the message from any and all emotion.

Humans are emotional beings. Emotions are a natural part of who we are. As the psychologist and emotion researcher Paul Ekman explains, we developed emotions to deal with ancient threats such as saber-toothed tigers, and as a result we often experience them unconsciously. “They have to happen without thinking or you’d be dead,” Ekman says.

Emotions are also what we’re wired to pay attention to. If we didn’t have an instant fear of becoming a tiger treat, our legs wouldn’t move us out of harm’s way in time. Particularly in stressful situations, people will be emotionally sensitive. Communicating emotionally with them will make them answer in kind. Emotional volleying does not accomplish concrete work. Instead of focusing on the information or task at hand, emotions can cause us to stew over the personal.

When you convey information, especially to people who report to you, choose your words and requests with care. If you include even a hint of negative emotion—disappointment, disgust, disbelief, condescension, sarcasm, passive aggression, or veiled insults—that’s what your listeners will hear first and hang on to the longest.

I once worked with a woman who was particularly skilled at demeaning her subordinates with corrections wrapped in insults. Unfortunately, while her criticisms may have been valid, her reproachful tone and the wounded reaction of the recipient made it very difficult for them to register. One person on the receiving end of a red-lined rampage wasted days wading through and fixating on the unnecessary censure before she could get back on track and fix the factual issues.

Comments such as “Work on tone!” came across as in-print yelling. “You need to do better” was taken as an insult. The writer obsessed over the reprimand “This isn’t the way to do this. Google and Wikipedia are not valid sources.” As a corporate communications specialist with a degree in journalism, the writer knew Google and Wikipedia weren’t credible references, and she didn’t use them. Did her boss think she did? Or was it just a derogatory censure? Instead of bolstering her research, as the writer agreed she needed to do, she spent hours prepping a defense of her skills. She was defensive and angry and eventually reluctant to change anything.

Both the writer and her boss had the same goal: a well-written, well-researched report done in a timely manner. Miscommunication that threatened to undermine that was ultimately detrimental to both parties. It wouldn’t have taken the boss any extra time to construct more helpful edits such as swapping “That’s not what ‘ambivalent’ means!” with “‘Ambivalent’ means having mixed feelings about something, no?” Doing so would have saved the entire team from the resulting wasted time and interoffice drama.

That’s not to say that we can’t ever express emotion. If you need to convey a feeling—I love you—use emotion. When you need to convey a fact—your performance is below par—eliminate emotion unless that’s all you want in return.

Since our own emotions can seemingly come out of nowhere and take us by surprise—“You might not even know it until someone says to you, ‘What are you getting so upset about?’” Ekman notes—the first step to mastering them is getting to know them. Just as with our subconscious perceptual filters, introducing a conscious awareness of our emotions into the communication process will help us overcome them.

To start, Ekman recommends being aware of our facial expressions, our body language, and any tension we might be carrying. If you catch yourself clenching your jaw or tightening your shoulders, use it as a sign that you might be emoting unwittingly. If you find that to be the case, do the same thing we do when looking at art: step back, assess, and evaluate. Ask yourself, “Why am I emotional? What could have triggered it? Did I misunderstand something?”

We must be aware of our own emotional triggers and signals because other people around us can see them, sometimes before we do. Patients can tell when we can’t wait to get out of their room. Kids can tell if we hate helping them with their homework. That client can tell if we secretly think he’s ignorant. And the minute they see it, we’ve compromised the quality of our relationship, the care or advice or instruction that we can provide, and possibly even our professional or personal integrity.

Pretending our emotions don’t exist isn’t a solution. Trying to suppress them might be not only futile—researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Australia found that people who attempted to suppress negative thoughts in fact spawned more of them—but harmful to our health. A 2012 experiment at Florida State University recorded stronger stress responses based on heart rate from people who tried to restrain their negative thoughts than from those who didn’t.

When it comes to negative emotions or thoughts, experts advise: let them flow to let them go.

When you first approach a situation, before you communicate anything, give yourself a few moments to work through your emotional response. In a session with medical students at The Frick Collection, I split up the group into pairs and assigned each pair a work of art to observe, study, and then present to the class. I could tell from their body language that two young men—first-year medical students—didn’t appreciate the portrait of a woman, Jacques-Louis David’s Comtesse Daru, I asked them to assess. They stared blankly. They shifted their weight. I finally said to them, “If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Just be able to tell me why.”

Suddenly they found their tongues. They told me they thought the subject was unattractive; she was cross-eyed, her hat looked like a shower cap, and her dress was ugly.

 

Jacques-Louis David, Comtesse Daru, 1810.

 

“Great,” I replied. “Now tell me what you see objectively.”

Acknowledging and getting their subjective thoughts out allowed them to break free of their reluctance and reticence and do what they needed to do. They could then state that the woman’s gaze didn’t quite meet theirs, her cheeks appeared overly puffy, her necklace of large green gemstones was prominently featured; that she had horizontal creases in the flesh of her neck that contrasted with the vertical earrings she was wearing; that she wore a white dress with an empire waist and ornately patterned sleeves; and that her right arm was draped in a patterned fabric and the viewer could see the suggestion of a folded fan in her right hand.

In life as in art, we’re not going to like everything or everyone. When you meet somebody you have to work with, a coworker or witness, a student or supplier, and you instinctively just don’t like him, step back and ask yourself why. Why don’t you like him? Specifically what don’t you like? You might discover it’s because he looks like an ex-boyfriend or the teacher who humiliated you in second grade. But once you recognize that, you’ll be able to see how subjective and unimportant it is and move on.

 

MOVING ON

 

We can prepare and practice and do our best to be objective, but there will still come occasions when we find ourselves in the thick of a heated, emotional discussion. How did we get there? The possibilities are endless: a misperception, a misunderstanding, a few poorly chosen words taken the wrong way. But whatever the reason, we’re there. We’re staring at the uncomfortable painting of the bird creature eating the man with more birds coming out of his backside. And we need to get out. But how? By using the same techniques we learned in the previous chapter: repeating, renaming, and reframing.

 

Repeat It

Just as we seek confirmation that our message has been received by having the other person repeat it back to us, we can use the same strategy to turn the tide of a heated debate. To do this, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett advises, “you should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, ‘Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.’” Dennett suggests then stating any points of agreement and anything you have learned from the other person.

Charles Richards and his wife, Caroline, put this advice into practice and found it kept them out of countless circular and painful arguments. They told me how one day, Charles heard Caroline call his name from the bottom of the stairs. There was no mistaking the tone: she was upset. He rushed out of their bedroom and stood on the landing above her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she said.

“What?”

“This,” she replied, pointing to a pair of socks and a book on the first step.

“What?” he repeated, slightly confused. He saw the items, but he didn’t see the problem.

“These are yours, yes?” She sighed. “You left your socks by the back door when you got home from the gym, and your book was in the living room. I picked them up when I was cleaning and put them here for you to take upstairs.”

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t see them there.”

“But you walked right by them,” Caroline insisted. “Why do you always do this?”

“Do what?” he said. “Not take my stuff upstairs?”

“Yes!” she answered. “You never do. You just leave it there for me every time.”

“I do?” he said doubtfully. “You put stuff on the stairs purposefully for me to take up?”

“Not specifically you,” she answered. “Whoever’s going up next. But you walked right by it.”

“I honestly didn’t see it,” he said.

“How could you not see it when you had to step over it?” she replied.

Charles and Caroline admitted that they were both getting increasingly agitated. To defuse the situation, Charles decided that instead of defending himself or telling his wife how wrong she was, he would try to simply repeat her concern.

“So you leave stuff on the steps for the next person going up to save you from having to always run up and down them,” he said, “and when I walk right by it without picking it up, it aggravates you, yes?”

“Yes,” she said. “A lot.”

“I really don’t notice it. It might as well be invisible to me,” he said. Then he dug deeper into her concern. “But it’s not to you, is it? It’s the opposite. You not only see it, you see it as an insult or something I’m doing on purpose?”

Caroline hesitated because he was right—that was how she saw it. For further clarification, she then repeated his words.

“You really don’t see things on the stairs?” she asked. “Like it’s invisible? That’s crazy to me because the pile on the stairs is so obvious to me, it might as well be glowing. It practically shouts at me.”

“Really?” Charles answered. “It bothers you that much? It’s like visual pollution to you.”

“Yes,” she said, relieved that he understood. In fact, he explained it better than she had. It was like visual pollution to her. And he didn’t see it at all. “I had no idea you didn’t see it,” she continued. “The stairs are your blind spot, then?”

Now it was Charles’s turn to be relieved. Piles of socks on the floor really didn’t register in his field of vision, and he was glad his wife understood.

Instead of allowing the conversation to degenerate, Charles and Caroline consciously chose to communicate better by repeating each other’s concerns. In doing so, they not only avoided having a fight, they came to better understand each other and learned something new about the way the other saw the world.

 

Rename It

Another way we can try to extricate ourselves from the entanglements of a he said, she said, what-did-they-really-mean debate is to rename it. Instead of slogging through what exactly happened to get you there and whose fault it was, wrap everything—all comments and feelings and innuendo and assumptions—into a single package and give it a new name. Call a time-out, and then sum up the entire messy situation for what it is and label it accordingly. Instead of referring to the problem as a mess or disaster or even a problem, rename it a miscommunication.

I’ve been on the receiving end of bungled plans, missed connections, and confusion probably as often as I’ve caused them. We aren’t perfect. Sometimes we forget or screw up or just say the wrong thing. In one of my latest calamities, a new client flew all the way to New York City from Los Angeles to attend one of my sessions for a future business opportunity, and no one showed up to my presentation. No one. As if I hadn’t even been scheduled. I had been thorough—booked and confirmed! This nice woman from California came all the way across the country to see me in action, and instead she got to watch me show up in an empty room. I was many things: embarrassed, upset, disappointed, even a little angry, and I believe she was as well. But none of those subjective emotions were going to change reality. The Art of Perception wasn’t going to happen that day. And the client was leaving town the next. Screaming at the scheduler wasn’t going to fix that. Nothing was.

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t wish the situation away or pretend it never happened. It had. And I was worried about the resulting damage: would she think I was unorganized or unprofessional? I could have made a big deal about how it wasn’t my fault and tried to pinpoint whose it was, but that would risk my relationship with the company that had hired me. To leave the situation unaddressed could invite further confusion or stoke unspoken animosity. I had to face the issue and put it to rest in a way that didn’t compromise anyone’s reputation. To do so, I quickly labeled the entire event a miscommunication.

A miscommunication is a fact. There is no blame or shame in a fact. When you find yourself in a highly charged situation, drop all of the drama and opinion and what-ifs—the “you didn’t tell me” or “we wouldn’t be here if”—and agree to call the entire scenario a miscommunication. Doing so gives everyone a way out and a reason to let go of the emotional attachment to any subjective points at the same time. Once we’re dealing with a fact, we can move forward.

The client and the company and I were all relieved once I stepped up and renamed the situation. The pressure was suddenly off. Miscommunications happen. To everyone. Thankfully, we can usually fix them and try to prevent new ones.

 

Reframe It

Finding a solution takes just one more step: reframing any outstanding concerns as questions rather than problems. Questions make communication a give-and-take; there’s a query and an answer. Questions give the person you’re communicating with options and an out. Questions also protect you, the asker, from the possibility that you have incorrect information or are working with an assumption.

Instead of saying, “X is wrong,” reframe it: “Is it true that . . . ?” or “Did you mean to . . . ?” Instead of asking someone, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” which immediately implies a conflict or problem, ask instead, “Can you help me with something?” Reframe the issue in the best possible terms, and the response will be more positive.

I did want to know what happened to my group so I could be better prepared should it happen again, so I asked the person who scheduled the session about it. Instead of saying, “They should have been here!” I reframed it as a question: “Where did everyone go?” And I learned that this company’s employees periodically get called out on department-wide emergencies that can’t be predicted. Knowing this didn’t help get my session back and wouldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again, but it will keep me from inviting guests to that venue next time.

I thanked the company representative and left, taking the client out for lunch. In the end we had a great day, we got to know each other better, and I flew out to Los Angeles the following month to conduct another session, which she was able to attend.

Once we’ve learned to recognize and then eliminate emotion in our information delivery, we can apply the good communication techniques we learned in the last chapter.

 

A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR

 

If repeating, renaming, and reframing doesn’t work and the person you’re communicating with still won’t let go until blame is assigned, go ahead and assign it—to the situation. Try “I’m sorry there was a miscommunication/misinterpretation/things weren’t clear.” Some people won’t quit until they hear “I’m sorry,” and while you’re not saying it was your fault, you are giving them a truthful concession, since chances are you’re more than sorry to be stuck in this situation with them.

Also keep in mind Mary Poppins’s famous advice: “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” Coating our words with sweetness can help the other person receive them more easily. While writing anything—a report, a press release, a book—has its fair share of challenges and deadline pressures, there is perhaps none so nerve-wracking as showing someone your first draft. Thankfully, unlike other people I’ve had the misfortune of working with, my editor, Eamon Dolan, is great at delivering difficult news with a liberal dose of kindness. Early in my first communication from him, he wrote, “My notes take a very matter-of-fact tone, but please imagine a ‘please’ in front of all of them. I use a very direct style in my marginal notes for the sake of clarity and efficiency, and I apologize in advance if any of them veer into brusqueness.” Those two sentences at the start of our professional relationship made months of otherwise hard-to-hear critiques not just bearable but many times delightful because he had dismissed any doubts I had about his intentions.

 

THE RECEIVING END

 

We’re on our way to becoming objective-communication experts. But it’s equally critical to address good communication when the tables are turned, when we are on the receiving end of an emotional tirade and need the perfect response to salvage an otherwise untenable situation.

First and foremost, no matter how upsetting the communication is, do not react emotionally, orally or in writing. Instead, do what you did when you were becoming emotionally self-aware: absorb, process, let the negative feelings flow, then let it go. It’s probably harder to put emotion aside when you’re the one who’s feeling insulted, especially if it’s coming from someone above you, but it’s the only way to get ahead and win respect.

If the people communicating with you haven’t taken the time to segregate their emotions, you have to do it for them. Ignore the subjective aspect of whatever they’re telling you, and focus on the facts. Defend yourself from any actual accusations, but forget the emotion they’re wrapped in. Letting the insult go unanswered does not make you a lesser person. It makes you the opposite.

If the emotional upheaval keeps coming from the same person, try assessing and analyzing that person objectively. Look for the facts. Ask yourself: Who is this person? Where is he from? Why would she do this? You might uncover an obscure fact—about his upbringing or home life or job history—that helps explain his actions. The person might not change, but at least you’ll have a new perspective to help inform your perception of him—which just might be enough to defuse any future emotional bombs.

Bruce Vincot, a sales manager at Unicore, a manufacturing company, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When he got the call that a major customer was canceling its contract, the rep in charge of the account didn’t handle the news well.

“It’s not my fault!” the salesman screamed at his boss. “I’m not taking the blame for this!” The young man then jumped out of his seat and left Vincot’s office, slamming the door behind him.

Vincot’s emotions were instantly ignited. “The salesman is a punk,” he thought. “That’s not how we did things twenty years ago. The amount of disrespect . . .”

While Vincot’s initial reaction was to go after the rep and fire him on the spot, he knew he needed to give himself a few minutes to calm down. This wasn’t the sales rep’s first temperamental display, but he was the highest performer in the entire company. Firing him would be an emotional relief but a financial mistake. Vincot knew he would have a hard time explaining to his own bosses that he let the number one salesperson go because he’d thrown a tantrum.

As he pondered how to handle this situation, an image from his Art of Perception training came to mind: the two men fighting in Dante and Virgil in Hell. While he didn’t connect to the painting when he’d first seen it, he could suddenly relate. He felt his sales rep was attacking him while his bosses stood by, coolly detached and watching, which rendered him helpless.

To defuse his emotional response, Vincot got out a piece of paper and used the training; he would look at the exchange exactly as he would a painting and simply list the objective facts. He began with the ones that bothered him the most:

• The sales rep slammed my office door.

• The sales rep raised his voice and acted unprofessionally.

He caught himself. Was designating the yelling “unprofessional” objective or subjective? He was fairly sure it would be considered unprofessional by most professionals, but since it was not something he could prove, he crossed it off.

• The sales rep raised his voice.

That fact could speak for itself, and anyone who read his report could choose to label it unprofessional or immature or crazy. So, what had caused the outburst?

• Customer X canceled its contract.

• Customer X was the sales rep’s account.

Both true and objective. Now, what about why?

• Customer X felt our prices were too high.

Writing that fact down gave Vincot pause. It was a fact; he had spoken to the customer himself. The customer canceled the contract because of price, not because of the sales rep, not because the sales rep had yelled at him or slammed the door of his office. Was there a connection between the cancellation and any of the sales rep’s actions? Yes, there was. Vincot wrote it down:

• The sales rep did not present new pricing in person, sent via email instead.

He knew because the rep had told him when he asked—admittedly with disgust—“how in the hell” the contract was lost.

Writing down the objective facts did several things for Vincot. It gave him time to calm down and let his own emotions subside before he acted; indeed, the act of writing just the facts defused a lot of his own feelings. It highlighted his own part in the exchange—Had he yelled first? Had that triggered his sales rep’s explosion?—and systematically separating the objective from the subjective put everything in perspective. The facts weren’t that bad. The sales rep hadn’t assaulted him or yelled at him in front of a customer or his coworkers. He had raised his voice and slammed a door. Was it really such a big deal? Vincot himself had been in the trenches cold-calling for twenty-five years; he knew the stress of the sales rep’s job. He took a moment to remember the rash things he had done in his younger days when his emotions got the best of him.

Most important, the exercise made Vincot realize he’d been prioritizing the wrong things. He had listed the sales rep’s behavior first, when the more critical fact was that a major client had been lost. Focusing on that fact helped Vincot create a secondary list of steps needed to rectify the true problem and keep it from happening again. Was the company’s standard sales procedure of presenting price in person clearly communicated to his team? Did it need to be reviewed? Did they need more training?

By cataloging the objective, Vincot was able to eliminate emotion, find a new perspective, and prioritize what was really important for the success of his company, his team, and himself.

Approach the difficult in life the same way you approach the difficult in art. Take your time and gather the facts. Analyze them and prioritize them. Take a step back and consider things from alternative perspectives. Consider your body language and nonverbal communication and that of others. Be objective, accurate, and precise. And know that the result of learning how to separate the subjective emotions from objective communication is confidence.

I was having dinner with one of my former students recently, a manager at a pharmaceutical company, who revealed that she was no longer intimidated by difficult conversations.

“I used to dread it when I knew I had to have one,” she told me. “If I had to give a bad performance review or terminate someone, I would be sick for days beforehand, worrying about it. But what I learned from concentrating on the objective and leaving the subjective by the wayside is that facts give confidence. Facts are the truth. I found security and confidence knowing I was going to only have to deal with facts.”

If we can factually describe a pig in a nun’s habit kissing a naked man, a bird creature eating a human with more birds coming out of his backside, two nude men wrestling in front of the devil, and Big Sue cupping her own breast, we can likely navigate corporate downsizing, quarterly budgets, bad medical diagnoses, employee evaluations, and even talking to our teens about sex.

Now that we have mastered the tenets of good communication even in bad situations, in the next and final section, we’ll look at what unintentional behaviors we might need to reconsider and which we might need to change. We’ve learned how to assess, analyze, and articulate information. Now we must use those skills in the real world, a world that isn’t still or objective. To do this, we need to adapt. Adapt to our surroundings, adapt to less-than-ideal circumstances, by adapting our own thoughts and behaviors.