I recently finished a book that I would recommend. It’s called “Difficult Conversations,” written by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. It’s about how to have difficult conversations in a way that is effective, that leads to understanding, rather than more frustration.
Before I go on, I’d like to ask everyone here, children and adults - to think of a conversation that you are in the middle of, or one that you realize you need to have but haven’t started yet, that’s a difficult conversation.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your child about a difficulty he or she is having socially in school.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your parent about feeling anxious or depressed or, if your parent is older, about issues around independence.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with a partner about something the other person does that bothers you, or about emotional or physical intimacy in your relationship.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with someone you supervise at work about how their performance has been problematic, or perhaps you need to talk to your supervisor about receiving greater responsibility and compensation.
Take a minute to think about a difficult conversation in your own life.
First things first. We tend to avoid difficult conversations. We tell ourselves it’s not the right time. How can I bring it up when he/she is so stressed out, when her father isn’t well, when we are planning the bar mitzvah? We tell ourselves it won’t do any good. She is too stubborn, he’ll never say yes, it’s too complicated, I’ve tried before and it’s a lost cause.
The authors of the book point out that when we have a conversation that’s at all charged, there are three things going on and they’re going on for both parties in different ways.
There’s the actual “what happened/what should happen” part. You think I leave my socks all over the place and should stop. I think I’m neater now than I was 30 years ago. I’ve made great progress and can’t go any further.
Then there’s the feelings part - what are you feeling, what am I feeling? You’re feeling hurt. Why don’t you care about my feelings? If you cared, you’d pick up your socks. I’m frustrated thinking, how come nothing I do is good enough?
Then there’s the identity party. How we see ourselves. You think you’re a patient person, you don’t consider yourself a nag, and yet I make you feel like one because you need to keep asking the same thing over and over. I think I’m a decent person and each time we talk about this, it makes me question how I come across.
All of this is in play in a conversation about socks. If you think about the difficult issue that I asked you to consider, you can probably begin to identity how all the layers work.
What do I think is happening or should be happening? What feelings in me and in you are aroused when we have the conversation? What issues are raised regarding my identity and yours - how we see ourselves in the family, in the company, in the community?
For the remainder of my comments, I want us to focus on how we prepare for a difficult conversation, specifically on how we should try to understand ourselves better before we proceed to have a difficult conversation with someone else.
The Torah describes how Jacob prepared to meet up with his brother after 20 years. I don’t want to focus right now on the gifts he sends and on the the precautions he takes, all of which is important. I want to focus on the struggle with an ish - a man, a figure - that lasted all night.
Jacob has his family cross over a brook and he stays by himself and struggles with this figure עד עלות השחר ad alot hashahar - until dawn.
The figure touches a part of Jacob’s thigh, as a result of which Jacob limps.
Who was this figure? Various midrashim identify it as some sort of angel and there is some consensus that it a specific angel - Sama’el - who is the guardian angel of Esau. In other words - Esau’s protective angel comes to struggle with Jacob, perhaps to rough him up a bit, before Jacob meets Esau.
Rashbam says that God sends an angel to wound Jacob just enough so he can’t run away, so he has to go on to meet up with Esau and see that Esau will not hurt him.
All of this is Midrash, subsequent interpretation. The text itself in Genesis doesn’t say who it is, just that Jacob struggled, that the figure wouldn’t let go until Jacob gave a blessing, that Jacob limped, and that he got the new name Yisra’el - because he struggled with God and with humanity and prevailed.
Understood this way, the wrestling episode suggests that Jacob is confronting his feelings and his sense of identity before he actually approaches his brother.
Suppose that before we continue or start the difficult conversation, the difficult encounter - we make a strong effort to self-reflect.
Suppose we take the opportunity - by ourselves, or with professional guidance, or in conversation with a confidant who won’t let us get away with self-delusion - to confront what’s going on inside.
How does the conversation we are having, or have yet to have, make us feel? What are we afraid of? What are we hoping for? What do we feel about the other person? What might the other person be feeling? What’s at stake for us and possibly for the other?
I choose to interpret Jacob’s limping, in part, as an imposed slowing down, a humbling, that allows for a different kind of self-reflection and ultimate engagement than he otherwise would have had.
After we have done some reflection, we face the other person - to discuss the job, the relationship, the shortcoming, the disappointment - less certain that we have the right information that the other just needs to hear and more willing to listen.
We will have a very different conversation if we do a little of our own reflection than if we just go headlong into the discussion assuming the other person will simply be won over by the simple unavoidability of our truth.
So I’m going to ask you to think about the difficult conversation that you identified when I started talking.
What are your feelings about it? What does this issue mean for your identity, for how you view yourself in the world?
What can you do to consider carefully what you bring to this conversation, what it means to you, how it threatens you, what you hope to convey?
And are you ready, not just to talk, but to listen, and to be prepared, if necessary, to have some of your perceptions challenged in small and large ways?
Can we learn from the instinctive example of our father Jacob to take some time to reflect, to struggle if necessary, to slow down if necessary, before we continue, or begin, our difficult conversation?
Originally shared at Temple Israel of Great Neck on December 14, 2019
Delacroix, "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel"
Before I go on, I’d like to ask everyone here, children and adults - to think of a conversation that you are in the middle of, or one that you realize you need to have but haven’t started yet, that’s a difficult conversation.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your child about a difficulty he or she is having socially in school.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your parent about feeling anxious or depressed or, if your parent is older, about issues around independence.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with a partner about something the other person does that bothers you, or about emotional or physical intimacy in your relationship.
Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with someone you supervise at work about how their performance has been problematic, or perhaps you need to talk to your supervisor about receiving greater responsibility and compensation.
Take a minute to think about a difficult conversation in your own life.
First things first. We tend to avoid difficult conversations. We tell ourselves it’s not the right time. How can I bring it up when he/she is so stressed out, when her father isn’t well, when we are planning the bar mitzvah? We tell ourselves it won’t do any good. She is too stubborn, he’ll never say yes, it’s too complicated, I’ve tried before and it’s a lost cause.
The authors of the book point out that when we have a conversation that’s at all charged, there are three things going on and they’re going on for both parties in different ways.
There’s the actual “what happened/what should happen” part. You think I leave my socks all over the place and should stop. I think I’m neater now than I was 30 years ago. I’ve made great progress and can’t go any further.
Then there’s the feelings part - what are you feeling, what am I feeling? You’re feeling hurt. Why don’t you care about my feelings? If you cared, you’d pick up your socks. I’m frustrated thinking, how come nothing I do is good enough?
Then there’s the identity party. How we see ourselves. You think you’re a patient person, you don’t consider yourself a nag, and yet I make you feel like one because you need to keep asking the same thing over and over. I think I’m a decent person and each time we talk about this, it makes me question how I come across.
All of this is in play in a conversation about socks. If you think about the difficult issue that I asked you to consider, you can probably begin to identity how all the layers work.
What do I think is happening or should be happening? What feelings in me and in you are aroused when we have the conversation? What issues are raised regarding my identity and yours - how we see ourselves in the family, in the company, in the community?
For the remainder of my comments, I want us to focus on how we prepare for a difficult conversation, specifically on how we should try to understand ourselves better before we proceed to have a difficult conversation with someone else.
The Torah describes how Jacob prepared to meet up with his brother after 20 years. I don’t want to focus right now on the gifts he sends and on the the precautions he takes, all of which is important. I want to focus on the struggle with an ish - a man, a figure - that lasted all night.
Jacob has his family cross over a brook and he stays by himself and struggles with this figure עד עלות השחר ad alot hashahar - until dawn.
The figure touches a part of Jacob’s thigh, as a result of which Jacob limps.
Who was this figure? Various midrashim identify it as some sort of angel and there is some consensus that it a specific angel - Sama’el - who is the guardian angel of Esau. In other words - Esau’s protective angel comes to struggle with Jacob, perhaps to rough him up a bit, before Jacob meets Esau.
Rashbam says that God sends an angel to wound Jacob just enough so he can’t run away, so he has to go on to meet up with Esau and see that Esau will not hurt him.
All of this is Midrash, subsequent interpretation. The text itself in Genesis doesn’t say who it is, just that Jacob struggled, that the figure wouldn’t let go until Jacob gave a blessing, that Jacob limped, and that he got the new name Yisra’el - because he struggled with God and with humanity and prevailed.
Understood this way, the wrestling episode suggests that Jacob is confronting his feelings and his sense of identity before he actually approaches his brother.
Suppose that before we continue or start the difficult conversation, the difficult encounter - we make a strong effort to self-reflect.
Suppose we take the opportunity - by ourselves, or with professional guidance, or in conversation with a confidant who won’t let us get away with self-delusion - to confront what’s going on inside.
How does the conversation we are having, or have yet to have, make us feel? What are we afraid of? What are we hoping for? What do we feel about the other person? What might the other person be feeling? What’s at stake for us and possibly for the other?
I choose to interpret Jacob’s limping, in part, as an imposed slowing down, a humbling, that allows for a different kind of self-reflection and ultimate engagement than he otherwise would have had.
After we have done some reflection, we face the other person - to discuss the job, the relationship, the shortcoming, the disappointment - less certain that we have the right information that the other just needs to hear and more willing to listen.
We will have a very different conversation if we do a little of our own reflection than if we just go headlong into the discussion assuming the other person will simply be won over by the simple unavoidability of our truth.
So I’m going to ask you to think about the difficult conversation that you identified when I started talking.
What are your feelings about it? What does this issue mean for your identity, for how you view yourself in the world?
What can you do to consider carefully what you bring to this conversation, what it means to you, how it threatens you, what you hope to convey?
And are you ready, not just to talk, but to listen, and to be prepared, if necessary, to have some of your perceptions challenged in small and large ways?
Can we learn from the instinctive example of our father Jacob to take some time to reflect, to struggle if necessary, to slow down if necessary, before we continue, or begin, our difficult conversation?
Originally shared at Temple Israel of Great Neck on December 14, 2019
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