Are there certain questions that automatically trigger you? For me it is my older brother asking the question, “Do you understand?”. I’ve always interpreted this as a question on my level of intelligence and not on how clear he was about what he was explaining. “What is your basic level of stupid?” would be synonymous.
Early in our marriage, my husband asked me that question with a very innocent way to basically find out if he explained something clearly to me. And I exploded. Of course, I understood! Did he think I was an idiot!?! He only asked that question one other time before understanding that there was a trigger there…
We must understand that when we talk to someone that they are filtering what you are saying through their own perceptions and experiences. We may unintentionally step on someone else’s nerve or trigger without intending it. Messy isn’t it.
That’s why it’s important to have the idea of pre-forgiveness built into your team. That we all understand that people make mistakes and often times it is unintentionally. They are generally never thinking about you and they are almost always thinking about themselves. How they can get this done faster, how they can get out sooner, how they can pay their bills… When we make mistakes, we expect people to understand out intentions. However, often times when others make mistakes we can’t look past their action to their intentions. I think that we must understand the levity of our actions as well as others’ actions and as well as take the time to understand the other person’s intentions or reasons just as much as our own.
Figuring out and understanding an individual’s triggers takes time but there are something to think about when talking to others. This is a big tip that I learned from Chris Voss’s “Never Split the Difference”.
“Why” questions are naturally inflammatory to the individual. “Why did you do that?” “Why did you wear those shoes?” If someone asks you that question, your natural response is “What is wrong with my shoes?” We are automatically defensive!
How and What questions are perceived as being less irritating. “How am I supposed to do that?” “How can we fix this?” It naturally lends itself to something less irritating because sometimes unintentionally frames the question into more of a servant-leadership light.
Are we actively thinking about this when we talk to team members? How they hear what we are saying versus what we think we are saying? Can we put ourselves in their shoes successfully or does our relationship and the forgiveness we built into it withstand all the unintentional damage that we do?
Some additional interviews with Chris Voss! I highly recommend reading the book!
Pigs and People 