Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash
What are you afraid of?
Is it heights? Needles? Snakes? Cocktail parties? Computer viruses? According to the Washington Post, public speaking ranks as #1 for many people. For me, a trip to the dentist can invoke a powerful feeling of dread. But lately, I’ve been considering another fear, one that I hear expressed time and again, over and over. The fear of conversation.
Now of course, I don’t mean just any conversation, the ones about the weather or the weekend, or even what’s in the news. I mean the tough ones, about the challenging stuff. The discussions we need to have with friends, family members or colleagues about the problems that arise between people. They’re usually the kind of conversations that quickly become charged and uncomfortable, leading us to avoid them and hope the issues will resolve themselves.
I hear stories about these issues frequently. This past year I’ve been speaking often on the topic of addressing unwanted workplace behaviour. This includes sexual harassment, bullying, microaggressions and even every day rudeness. Across a range of industries, from tech start-ups to engineering to law, I hear people describe all kinds of incidents they want to address: from a colleague’s chronic lateness, a boss’s tendency to bark orders, to calling out sexual harassment.
People speak of workplace dynamics that are so difficult that they impact their performance at work, and even affect their physical and mental health. But many hesitate to speak up. What gets in the way? The answer is always the same: fear. Fear of hurting feelings, of damaging the relationship, of escalation. Fear of emotional reactions, or worse, retaliation.
But does the looming conversation really elicit fear, or do we mean anxiety? The two are closely related, and often used interchangeably. Psychology Today describes fear as “a reaction to a specific, observable danger” and anxiety as rather “a diffuse, a kind of unfocused, objectless, future-oriented fear.” When it comes to workplace interactions, it’s important to distinguish the two. Is a workplace conversation, however difficult, actually dangerous?
When we’re talking about sexual harassment or bullying, and especially if the offending party is your boss, calling out the behaviour directly is not recommended. The fear can be legitimate. This is the time to seek help from someone more senior and/or HR.
But with less serious transgressions or conflicts, (for example, rudeness, microaggressions, offensive comments or jokes) sending a calm and clear message in the moment can both help establish that the behaviour was unwanted, and potentially nip the problem in the bud. But ‘fear’ often holds us back from initiating a conversation.
The fact that a conversation may be unpleasant, does not make it dangerous. Reframing a looming conversation as uncomfortable rather than frightening makes it considerably less daunting. Discomfort will not harm us. Discomfort is temporary, discomfort can be overcome. Most of us don’t like it. But it won’t hurt.
Discomfort is actually a good thing; it’s a sign that we’re growing, trying something new, building our muscles of resilience. And as we encourage ourselves to engage in these difficult conversations, we can mindfully notice that the experience has not killed us. We are becoming more comfortable with being uncomfortable.
This week in Forbes, Kim Elsesser, author of Sex and the Office, makes the point that speaking up is a learned skill that can really disrupt unwanted behaviour. I was asked to contribute some strategies on how to have challenging conversations in the workplace without making it personal.
After years of dreading the trip to the dentist, I encountered a gifted dental hygienist who used guided meditation techniques to help me relax. I realized that while my cleaning wasn’t exactly enjoyable, it didn’t hurt either. It was a discomfort I could breathe through. And so, uncomfortable conversations take practice, but, like a trip to the dentist, we can coach ourselves to move through them – and move on.
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