Posted January 29, 2008 to Moving Forward | Section Home | Print

How Often Have You Faced Situations Like These But Were Scared To Speak Up?

By Maureen Collins

* Asking for a raise

* Giving critical feedback to an employee

* Confronting a colleague who has spoken to you disrespectfully

* Speaking to a loved one whose behaviour has been hurtful

* Saying no to a request from someone who really needs help

* Speaking up when you have made a mistake

* Putting your case when you have been wrongly accused

* Disagreeing about something when you feel emotional

You try to avoid these conversations. If you speak up your emotions might get the better of you. You’re scared you’ll say something that you can never take back. You’ll look stupid. You’ll get embarrassed. You may face a counter attack. You might damage the relationship for ever.

But the problem does not go away. You bite your lip and hold your tongue, convinced that if you speak out, you will do more harm than good. You become more frustrated, more hurt and more stressed. You try to avoid the person, but the situation becomes worse as they carry on with their behaviour, unaware of the impact it is having on you.

One day it all becomes too much. You cannot contain your emotions any longer and you burst out with anger and accusation. Afterwards you have only a dim memory of exactly what you said, but the emotion of the conversation continues to burn deep.

The relationship may not be quite the same … for a while

Behaviours may change … for a while

Everything eventually settles back into the pattern it had before your outburst. Then the emotions start to build up again. Some of our relationships follow a pattern in which problems are never resolved and recurring emotional outbursts take the place of conversation. In others, there are no outbursts, and virtually no emotion. Issues are swept under the carpet, sometimes for lifetimes.

When we don’t speak up about things that concern us, results and relationships both suffer. At work, poor performers continue to perform poorly; productivity drops; the good performers are punished with more and more responsibility; relationships become strained. In our personal lives, we blame each other for our lack of communication and tacitly agree to live in what we call companionable silence. Neighbors don’t speak; friendships disintegrate; children are distanced from parents; marriages become cold and unsatisfying.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Stepping up to difficult, emotionally charged conversations, saying what is on your mind, and managing your emotions, involves a specific set of skills. You can learn them! You can try them out first in safe conversations where the risks are not great, then in situations where there is greater disagreement or emotional tension until you are confident that you can step up to almost any confrontation with a plan for how you will handle it constructively.

You can learn how to engage with others in ways that help you develop open, trusting, satisfying relationships. You can have relationships in which you speak up with what is on your mind, in which your feelings are known and considered and in which you are able to agree on solutions to problems. You can learn how to

* Open a difficult conversation by setting a tone that makes it safe for the conversation to proceed

* Put the facts on the table with clarity and precision

* Say how you feel and what is on your mind without blame or accusation

* Make it safe for others to speak to you about how they see a situation

* Negotiate a solution to a problem, knowing that you are both committed to the outcome.

You will always choose your battles. Sometimes it is wiser not to have a conversation. The stakes are just too high, or the situation is too emotional; your career, a relationship, or the results you currently achieve may be too much at risk. However, making a conscious decision not to confront someone is a very different situation from one in which you avoid a confrontation because you are scared of it.