Navigating Difficult Conversations: Strategies for Dealing with Venters and Explainers
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If your conversational counterpart is a screamer, your hardwired survival coping skill might to be tell them to calm down (which will only make them more upset), to shut down and get silent (which will only make them yell longer, because they will think you are not listening), or to try to point out how irrational venting is (which they will perceive as patronizing and belabouring).
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Instead, say to yourself, “Okay, here comes another temper tantrum. Just let them blow. Try not to take it between the eyes and imagine you are looking into the calm eye of a hurricane and the storm is going over your shoulder.” To do this, focus on their left eye. The left eye is connected to the right brain the emotional brain. Let them finish. Then say, “I can see you are really frustrated. To make sure I don’t add to that, and to make sure I don’t miss something, what was the most important thing I need to do in the long term, what’s the critical thing I need to do in the short term, and what do I need to get down ASAP?” reframing the conversation this way, after they have finished venting, will make sure that your “explainer” self knows what to do instead of ignoring the venting as another random outburst from “Conan the Barbarian” or ‘the Wicked Witch of the West.” Chances are, they do have something important they’re trying to tell you even though they’re not communicating it very well.
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If your conversational counterpart is an explainer, your hardwired survival coping skill might be to say to yourself, “here they go again”, make sure you smile politely even if you want to pull your hair out. Try not to let your impatience and annoyance show. The problem with this is that even though they may be oblivious to others as they go on and on, at some level they may be aware of your underlying impatience and …. That might actually make them talk longer. Realize that the reason they explain and belabour things is probably because their experience is that people don’t pay attention to what they say. They don’t realize that while that may be true of some truly distracted people, for others, the reason they don’t pay attention is that the speaker is belabouring something that the listener already heard and doesn’t want to hear over and over again. Another possibility is that these explainers may not be feeling listened to somewhere else in their life and is now relieved to have you as a captive audience.
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When the explainer goes into his explanation/lecture/filibuster, say to yourself, “Okay, this is going to take a while.” Then look them in their left eye with a look that say, “Okay, take our time, I’m fully listening.” Instead of feeling frustrated and reaching by becoming impatient and fidgety, remind yourself, “They need to do this. I can be patient.” Then when they finish then apply a similar response to the venter/screamer with the following minor edit;
“I can see that you really had a lot that you had to say. To make sure I don’t miss something, what was the most important thing I need to do in the long term, what ‘s the critical thing I need to do in the short term, and what do I need to get down ASAP?”
