SKILLS FOR MASTERING OUR STORIES

What’s the most effective way to come up with different stories? The best at dialogue find a way to first slow down and then take charge of their Path to Action. Here’s how.

Retrace Your Path

To slow down the lightning-quick storytelling process and the subsequent flow of adrenaline, retrace your Path to Action—one element at a time. This calls for a bit of mental gymnastics. First you have to stop what you’re currently doing. Then you have to get in touch with why you’re doing it. Here’s how to retrace your path:

• [Act] Notice your behavior. Ask:

Am I in some form of silence or violence?

• [Feel] Get in touch with your feelings.

What emotions are encouraging me to act this way?

• [Tell story] Analyze your stories.

What story is creating these emotions?

• [See/hear] Get back to the facts.

What evidence do I have to support this story?

By retracing your path one element at a time, you put yourself in a position to think about, question, and change any one or more of the elements.

Notice Your Behavior

Why would you stop and retrace your Path to Action in the first place? Certainly if you’re constantly stopping what you’re doing and looking for your underlying motive and thoughts, you won’t even be able to put on your shoes without thinking about it for who knows how long. You’ll die of analysis paralysis.

Actually, you shouldn’t constantly stop and question your actions. If you Learn to Look (as we suggested in Chapter 4) and note that you yourself are slipping into silence or violence, you have good reason to stop and take stock.

But looking isn’t enough. You must take an honest look at what you’re doing. If you tell yourself a story that your violent behavior is a “necessary tactic,” you won’t see the need to reconsider your actions. If you immediately jump in with “they started it,” or otherwise find yourself rationalizing your behavior, you also won’t feel compelled to change. Rather than stop and review what you’re doing, you’ll devote your time to justifying your actions to yourself and others.

When an unhelpful story is driving you to silence or violence, stop and consider how others would see your actions. For example, if the 60 Minutes camera crew replayed this scene on national television, how would you look? What would they tell about your behavior?

Not only do those who are best at crucial conversations notice when they’re slipping into silence or violence, but they’re also able to admit it. They don’t wallow in self-doubt, of course, but they do recognize the problem and begin to take corrective action. The moment they realize that they’re killing dialogue, they review their own Path to Action.

Get In Touch with Your Feelings

As skilled individuals begin to retrace their own Path to Action, they immediately move from examining their own unhealthy behavior to exploring their feelings or emotions. At first glance this task sounds easy. “I’m angry!” you think to yourself. What could be easier?

Actually, identifying your emotions is more difficult than you might imagine. In fact, many people are emotionally illiterate. When asked to describe how they’re feeling, they use words such as “bad” or “angry” or “frightened”—which would be okay if these were accurate descriptors, but often they’re not. Individuals say they’re angry when, in fact, they’re feeling a mix of embarrassment and surprise. Or they suggest they’re unhappy when they’re feeling violated. Perhaps they suggest they’re upset when they’re really feeling humiliated and cheated.

Since life doesn’t consist of a series of vocabulary tests, you might wonder what difference words can make. But words do matter. Knowing what you’re really feeling helps you take a more accurate look at what is going on and why. For instance, you’re far more likely to take an honest look at the story you’re telling yourself if you admit you’re feeling both embarrassed and surprised rather than simply angry.

How about you? When experiencing strong emotions, do you stop and think about your feelings? If so, do you use a rich vocabulary, or do you mostly draw from terms such as “bummed out” and “furious”? Second, do you talk openly with others about how you feel? Do you willingly talk with loved ones about what’s going on inside of you? Third, in so doing, is your vocabulary robust and accurate?

It’s important to get in touch with your feelings, and to do so, you may want to expand your emotional vocabulary.

Analyze Your Stories

Question your feelings and stories. Once you’ve identified what you’re feeling, you have to stop and ask, given the circumstances, is it the right feeling? Meaning, of course, are you telling the right story? After all, feelings come from stories, and stories are our own invention.

The first step to regaining emotional control is to challenge the illusion that what you’re feeling is the only right emotion under the circumstances. This may be the hardest step, but it’s also the most important one. By questioning our feelings, we open ourselves up to question our stories. We challenge the comfortable conclusion that our story is right and true. We willingly question whether our emotions (very real), and the story behind them (only one of many possible explanations), are accurate.

For instance, what were the facts in Maria’s story? She saw Louis give the whole presentation. She heard the boss talk about meeting with Louis to discuss the project when she wasn’t present. That was the beginning of Maria’s Path to Action.

Don’t confuse stories with facts. Sometimes you fail to question your stories because you see them as immutable facts. When you generate stories in the blink of an eye, you can get so caught up in the moment that you begin to believe your stories are facts. They feel like facts. You confuse subjective conclusions with steel-hard data points. For example, in trying to ferret out facts from story, Maria might say, “He’s a male chauvinist pig—that’s a fact! Ask anyone who has seen how he treats me!”

“He’s a male chauvinist pig” is not a fact. It’s the story that Maria created to give meaning to the facts. The facts could mean just about anything. As we said earlier, others could watch Maria’s interactions with Louis and walk away with different stories.

Get Back to the Facts

Separate fact from story by focusing on behavior. To separate fact from story, get back to the genuine source of your feelings. Test your ideas against a simple criterion: Can you see or hear this thing you’re calling a fact? Was it an actual behavior?

For example, it is a fact that Louis “gave 95 percent of the presentation and answered all but one question.” This is specific, objective, and verifiable. Any two people watching the meeting would make the same observation. However, the statement “He doesn’t trust me” is a conclusion. It explains what you think, not what the other person did. Conclusions are subjective.

Spot the story by watching for “hot” words. Here’s another tip. To avoid confusing story with fact, watch for “hot” terms. For example, when assessing the facts, you might say, “She scowled at me” or “He made a sarcastic comment.” Words such as “scowl” and “sarcastic” are hot terms. They express judgments and attributions that, in turn, create strong emotions. They are story, not fact. Notice how much different it is when you say, “Her eyes pinched shut and her lips tightened,” as opposed to, “She scowled at me.” In Maria’s case, she suggested that Louis was controlling and didn’t respect her. Had she focused on his behavior (he talked a lot and met with the boss one-on-one), this less volatile description would have allowed for any number of interpretations. For example, perhaps Louis was nervous, concerned, or unsure of himself.

Watch for Three “Clever” Stories

As we begin to piece together why people are doing what they’re doing (or equally important, why we’re doing what we’re doing), with time and experience we become quite good at coming up with explanations that serve us well. Either our stories are completely accurate and propel us in healthy directions, or they’re quite inaccurate but justify our current behavior—making us feel good about ourselves and calling for no need to change.

It’s the second kind of story that routinely gets us into trouble. For example, we move to silence or violence, and then we come up with a perfectly plausible reason for why it’s okay. “Of course I yelled at him. Did you see what he did? He deserved it.” “Hey, don’t be giving me the evil eye. I had no other choice.” We call these imaginative and self-serving concoctions “clever stories.” They’re clever because they allow us to feel good about behaving badly. Better yet, they allow us to feel good about behaving badly even while achieving abysmal results.

When we feel a need to justify our ineffective behavior or disconnect ourselves from our bad results, we tend to tell our stories in three very predictable ways. Learn what the three are and how to counteract them, and you can take control of your emotional life. Fail to do so and you’ll be a victim to the emotions you’re predisposed to have wash over you at crucial times.

Victim Stories—“It’s Not My Fault”

The first of the clever stories is a Victim Story. Victim Stories, as you might imagine, make us out to be innocent sufferers. The theme is always the same. The other person is bad, wrong, or dumb, and we are good, right, or brilliant. Other people do bad or stupid things, and we suffer as a result.

In truth, there is such a thing as an innocent victim. You’re stopped in the street and held up at gunpoint. When an event such as this occurs, it’s a sad fact, not a story. You are a victim.

But all tales of victimization are not so clear-cut and one-sided. Within most crucial conversations, when you tell a Victim Story, you intentionally ignore the role you have played in the problem. You tell your story in a way that judiciously avoids whatever you have done (or neglected to do) that might have contributed to the problem.

For instance, last week your boss took you off a big project, and it hurt your feelings. You complained to everyone about how bad you felt. Of course, you failed to let your boss know that you were behind on an important project, leaving him high and dry— which is why he removed you in the first place. This part of the story you leave out because, hey, he made you feel bad.

To help support your Victim Stories you speak of nothing but your noble motives. “I took longer because I was trying to beat the standard specs.” Then you tell yourself that you’re being punished for your virtues, not your vices. “He just doesn’t appreciate a person with my superb attention to detail.” (This added twist turns you from victim into martyr. What a bonus!)

Villain Stories—“It’s All Your Fault”

We create these nasty little tales by turning normal, decent human beings into villains. We impute bad motive, and then we tell everyone about the evils of the other party as if somehow we’re doing the world a huge favor.

For example, we describe a boss who is zealous about quality as a control freak. When our spouse is upset that we didn’t keep a commitment, we see him or her as inflexible and stubborn.

In Victim Stories we exaggerate our own innocence. In Villain Stories we overemphasize the other person’s guilt or stupidity. We automatically assume the worst possible motives or grossest incompetence while ignoring any possible good or neutral intentions or skills a person may have. Labeling is a common device in Villain Stories. For example, “I can’t believe that bonehead gave me bad materials again.” By employing the handy label, we are now dealing not with a complex human being, but with a bonehead.

Not only do Villain Stories help us blame others for bad results, but they also set us up to then do whatever we want to the “villains.” After all, we can feel okay insulting or abusing a bonehead—whereas we might have to be more careful with a living, breathing person. Then when we fail to get the results we really want, we stay stuck in our ineffective behavior because, after all, look who we’re dealing with!

Watch for the double standard. When you pay attention to Victim and Villain Stories and catch them for what they are— unfair caricatures—you begin to see the terrible double standard we use when our emotions are out of control. When we make mistakes, we tell a Victim Story by claiming our intentions were innocent and pure. “Sure I was late getting home and didn’t call you, but I couldn’t let the team down!” On the other hand, when others do things that hurt or inconvenience us, we tell Villain Stories in which we invent terrible motives or exaggerate flaws for others based on how their actions affected us. “You are so thoughtless! You could have called me and told me you were going to be late.”

Helpless Stories—“There’s Nothing Else I Can Do”

Finally come Helpless Stories. In these fabrications we make ourselves out to be powerless to do anything healthy or helpful. We convince ourselves that there are no healthy alternatives for dealing with our predicament, which justifies the action we’re about to take. A Helpless Story might suggest, “If I didn’t yell at my son, he wouldn’t listen.” Or on the flip side, “If I told the boss this, he would just be defensive—so of course I say nothing!” While Villian and Victim Stories look back to explain why we’re in the situation we’re in, Helpless Stories look forward to explain why we can’t do anything to change our situation.

It’s particularly easy to act helpless when we turn others’ behavior into fixed and unchangeable traits. For example, when we decide our colleague is a “control freak” (Villain Story), we are less inclined to give her feedback because, after all, control freaks like her don’t accept feedback (Helpless Story). Nothing we can do will change that fact.

As you can see, Helpless Stories often stem from Villain Stories and typically offer us nothing more than Fool’s Choices— we can either be honest and ruin the relationship or stay silent and suffer.

Why We Tell Clever Stories

Of course, there’s a story behind our stories. They don’t just randomly roll out of our mouths. They serve four important masters.

Clever stories match reality. Sometimes the stories we tell are accurate. The other person is trying to cause us harm, we are innocent victims, or maybe we really can’t do much about the problem. It can happen. It’s not common, but it can happen.

Clever stories get us off the hook. More often than not, our conclusions transform from reasonable explanations to clever stories when they conveniently excuse us from any responsibility—when, in reality, we have been partially responsible. The other person isn’t bad and wrong, and we aren’t right and good. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. However, if we can make others out as wrong and ourselves out as right, we’re off the hook. Better yet, once we’ve demonized others, we can even insult and abuse them if we want.

Clever stories keep us from acknowledging our own sellouts. By now it should be clear that clever stories cause us problems. A reasonable question at this point is, “If they’re so terribly hurtful, why do we ever tell clever stories?”

Our need to tell clever stories often starts with our own sellouts. Like it or not, we usually don’t begin telling stories that justify our actions until we have done something that we feel a need to justify.¹

We sell out when we consciously act against our own sense of what’s right. And after we’ve sold out, we have only two choices: own up to our sellout, or try to justify it. And if we don’t admit to our errors, we inevitably look for ways to justify them. That’s when we begin to tell clever stories.

Let’s look at an example of a sellout: You’re driving in heavy traffic. You begin to pass cars that are attempting to merge into your lane. A car very near you has accelerated and is entering your lane. A thought strikes you that you should let him in. It’s the nice thing to do, and you’d want someone to let you in. But you don’t. You accelerate forward and close the gap. What happens next? You begin to have thoughts like these: “He can’t just crowd in on me. What a jerk! I’ve been fighting this traffic a long time. Besides, I’ve got an important appointment to get to.” And so on.

This story makes you the innocent victim and the other person the nasty villain. Under the influence of this story you now feel justified in not doing what you originally thought you should have done. You also ignore what you would think of others who did the same thing—“That jerk didn’t let me in!”

Consider an example more related to crucial conversations. Your spouse has an annoying habit. It’s not a big deal, but you feel you should mention it. But you don’t. Instead, you just huff or roll your eyes, hoping that will send the message. Unfortunately, your spouse doesn’t pick up the hint and continues the habit. Your annoyance turns to resentment. You feel disgusted that your spouse is so thick that he or she can’t pick up an obvious hint. And besides, you shouldn’t have to mention this anyway—any reasonable person should notice this on his or her own! Do you have to point out everything? From this point forward you begin to make insulting wisecracks about the issue until it escalates into an ugly confrontation.

Notice the order of the events in both of these examples. What came first, the story or the sellout? Did you convince yourself of the other driver’s selfishness and then not let him in? Of course not. You had no reason to think he was selfish until you needed an excuse for your own selfish behavior. You didn’t start telling clever stories until after you failed to do something you knew you should have done. Your spouse’s annoying habit didn’t become a source of resentment until you became part of the problem. You got upset because you sold out. And the clever story helped you feel good about being rude.

Sellouts are often not big events. In fact, they can be so small that they’re easy for us to overlook when we’re crafting our clever stories. Here are some common ones:

• You believe you should help someone, but don’t.

• You believe you should apologize, but don’t.

• You believe you should stay late to finish up on a commitment, but go home instead.

• You say yes when you know you should say no, then hope no one follows up to see if you keep your commitment.

• You believe you should talk to someone about concerns you have with him or her, but don’t.

• You do less than your share and think you should acknowledge it, but say nothing knowing no one else will bring it up either.

• You believe you should listen respectfully to feedback, but become defensive instead.

• You see problems with a plan someone presents and think you should speak up, but don’t.

• You fail to complete an assignment on time and believe you should let others know, but don’t.

• You know you have information a coworker could use, but keep it to yourself.

Even small sellouts like these get us started telling clever stories. When we don’t admit to our own mistakes, we obsess about others’ faults, our innocence, and our powerlessness to do anything other than what we’re already doing. We tell a clever story when we want self-justification more than results. Of course, self-justification is not what we really want, but we certainly act as if it is.

With that sad fact in mind, let’s focus on what we really want. Let’s look at the final Master My Stories skill.

Tell the Rest of the Story

Once we’ve learned to recognize the clever stories we tell ourselves, we can move to the final Master My Stories skill. The dialogue-smart recognize that they’re telling clever stories, stop, and then do what it takes to tell a useful story. A useful story, by definition, creates emotions that lead to healthy action—such as dialogue.

And what transforms a clever story into a useful one? The rest of the story. That’s because clever stories have one characteristic in common: They’re incomplete. Clever stories omit crucial information about us, about others, and about our options. Only by including all of these essential details can clever stories be transformed into useful ones.

What’s the best way to fill in the missing details? Quite simply, it’s done by turning victims into actors, villains into humans, and the helpless into the able. Here’s how.

Turn victims into actors. If you notice that you’re talking about yourself as an innocent victim (and you weren’t held up at gunpoint), ask:

• Am I pretending not to notice my role in the problem?

This question jars you into facing up to the fact that maybe, just maybe, you did something to help cause the problem. Instead of being a victim, you were an actor. This doesn’t necessarily mean you had malicious motives. Perhaps your contribution was merely a thoughtless omission. Nonetheless, you contributed.

For example, a coworker constantly leaves the harder or noxious tasks for you to complete. You’ve frequently complained to friends and loved ones about being exploited. The parts you leave out of the story are that you smile broadly when your boss compliments you for your willingness to take on challenging jobs, and you’ve never said anything to your coworker. You’ve hinted, but that’s about it.

The first step in telling the rest of this story would be to add these important facts to your account. By asking what role you’ve played, you begin to realize how selective your perception has been. You become aware of how you’ve minimized your own mistakes while you’ve exaggerated the role of others.

Turn villains into humans. When you find yourself labeling or otherwise vilifying others, stop and ask:

• Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?

This particular question humanizes others. As we search for plausible answers to it, our emotions soften. Empathy often replaces judgment, and depending upon how we’ve treated others, personal accountability replaces self-justification.

For instance, that coworker who seems to conveniently miss out on the tough jobs told you recently that she could see you were struggling with an important assignment, and yesterday (while you were tied up on a pressing task) she pitched in and completed the job for you. You were instantly suspicious. She was trying to make you look bad by completing a high-profile job. How dare she pretend to be helpful when her real goal was to discredit you while tooting her own horn! Well, that’s the story you’ve told yourself.

But what if she really were a reasonable, rational, and decent person? What if she had no motive other than to give you a hand? Isn’t it a bit early to be vilifying her? And if you do, don’t you run the risk of ruining a relationship? Might you go off half-cocked, accuse her, and then learn you were wrong?

Our purpose for asking why a reasonable, rational, and decent person might be acting a certain way is not to excuse others for any bad things they may be doing. If they are, indeed, guilty, we’ll have time to deal with that later. The purpose of the humanizing question is to deal with our own stories and emotions. It provides us with still another tool for working on ourselves first by providing a variety of possible reasons for the other person’s behavior.

In fact, with experience and maturity we learn to worry less about others’ intent and more about the effect others’ actions are having on us. No longer are we in the game of rooting out unhealthy motives. And here’s the good news. When we reflect on alternative motives, not only do we soften our emotions, but equally important, we relax our absolute certainty long enough to allow for dialogue— the only reliable way of discovering others’ genuine motives.

Turn the helpless into the able. Finally, when you catch yourself bemoaning your own helplessness, you can tell the complete story by returning to your original motive. To do so, stop and ask:

• What do I really want? For me? For others? For the relationship?

Then, kill the Fool’s Choice that’s made you feel helpless to choose anything other than silence or violence. Do this by asking:

• What would I do right now if I really wanted these results?

For example, you now find yourself insulting your coworker for not pitching in with a tough job. Your coworker seems surprised at your strong and “out of the blue” reaction. In fact, she’s staring at you as if you’ve slipped a cog. You, of course, have told yourself that she is purposefully avoiding noxious tasks and that, despite your helpful hints, she has made no changes.

“I have to get brutal,” you tell yourself. “I don’t like it, but if I don’t offend her, I’ll be stuck You’ve strayed from what you really want—to share work equally and to have a good relationship. You’ve given up on half of your goals by making a Fool’s Choice. “Oh well, better to offend her than to be made a fool.”

What should you be doing instead? Openly, honestly, and effectively discussing the problem—not taking potshots and then justifying yourself. When you refuse to make yourself helpless, you’re forced to hold yourself accountable for using your dialogue skills rather than bemoaning your weakness.