The Communication Elevator: Communicate Better and Be More Effective in Life and Negotiations
If you want to communicate better, judge less and be more effective in life and negotiations, consider that it may not be about you or the other person per se.
It may be you were on the wrong floor when you tried to get an idea across or the deal done.
If excellence is the refinement of imperfect attempts, it can be quite challenging to get good at something if every time you make a failed attempt, you interpret it as a failing or shortcoming in yourself or someone else. This makes it pretty difficult to keep practicing.
In physical skills like bowling, archery, or juggling, failed attempts are more easily identified as part of the normal process of skill development. However, in developing the skill of communication or negotiation, failed attempts are often experienced on an emotional level.
Failed communication attempts are frequently misinterpreted as personal failings or judgments about someone else.
By zooming in on what is actually happening, particularly in communication failures that are common and frequent for most people, we can see that a shift in understanding helps us avoid judgment and focus on strengthening skills and strategies for improved performance.
Before we look at a typical scenario that comes up often, start by considering the the model of people as an iceberg. When individuals enter a situation, they are often revealing only the most surface level of their experience as they seek to ascertain safety, context, and other situational cues.
In some situations people may begin to share more of their thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
Take, for example, a couple who are often busy working and caring for children and find themselves on vacation or out at a quiet dinner. In such a setting, it may be possible, depending on the people involved, for more sharing to unfold in the context of quiet and peace than in the normal hubbub of daily life.
Similarly, imagine a person going to a quiet psychotherapy office with the purpose of sharing more of their internal experience, or friends hanging out on a relaxed weekend at the beach.
Certain circumstances and social contexts allow for different types of sharing to unfold.
This is important to notice because, just as we wouldn’t try to perform open-heart surgery on a kitchen table with a butter knife but understand that a sterile surgical suite with skilled technicians is a more appropriate setting, we often forget that different settings lend themselves to different outcomes in the realm of mental and emotional sharing.
Not only is the setting and the skill of the people involved important, but equally, if not more, important is to understand how the moment-to-moment mental and emotional shifts inside human beings impact all communication and negotiation situations.
Sometimes it’s helpful to simplify a complicated and intangible concept.
We all understand that it would be very hard to step off an elevator onto the second floor when the doors are opening on the first floor. Similarly, it’s difficult to step off onto the penthouse suite when the elevator is only on the third floor.
We intuitively understand that in order to go to a certain floor, the elevator must be on that floor and the doors must be open. Yet, with people, we often miss the fact that there’s an elevator constantly changing floors and attempt to exit or enter a floor that the elevator is not on.
While human beings don’t have floors, they do have mental and emotional states. These states are constantly shifting, the same way elevators are often in motion.
The thoughts, ideas, and energy states available to us in one emotional state aren’t necessarily available in another.
This shows up in communication when people begin to open up and share at a deeper level
When people are moving beyond the tip of the iceberg, they inevitably encounter a layer of emotion that comes from a place where there is less development, and about which they are less aware, or less certain about. .
You can compare this to stretching: at the beginning of a stretch, there’s very little movement, and a person is confident about their ability to stretch further. But as they continue to stretch and reach the end range of motion, they are more susceptible to injury because they are at the maximum level of development they currently have and less give is available if something goes wrong.
Similarly, as people begin to share emotionally and move into territory where they have less practice, development, and strength, they are more likely to be fearful of emotional injury unless they are certain of their capabilities.
In practical terms, when people have gone into a deeper level of sharing and entered into a more emotional state, their sensitivity is usually heightened.
And here’s that typical scenario:
Often when people are on this floor - or at this level of sharing - other people offer strategies or advice.
At the level of deep sensitivity the person may not be able to tolerate the logic, because what’s really needed in that moment is a feeling of safety, reassurance, understanding or empathy.
A person who is fully stretched doesn’t always need more stretch. Sometimes they need less stretch, or something to hold onto that stabilizes them in the position they are in.
Typically, when there’s a mismatch between someone’s level of vulnerability and the input they’re receiving, some type of conflict arises.
The person who has opened themselves up emotionally may feel: misunderstood, threatened, or agitated by the advice or strategy offered and may either withdraw or begin to express their displeasure.
Meanwhile, the person offering the advice or strategy often feels misunderstood or believes the other person is being overly emotional and not logical.
This would never happen in the elevator analogy.
No one would try to walk out onto the second floor while the elevator is on the first floor.
Unfortunately, instead of people recognizing that they are trying to get onto a floor that’s not accessible, people often rail against the setup of the elevator and how it’s constructed, which winds up being judgment about themselves or others.
The takeaway, however, is more global.
In certain emotional frames of mind, people can handle things easily and logically, but in different emotional states, they are unable to handle the same things.
We’ve all experienced this. Anytime you’ve been tired and unable to focus on something, but found it easy to understand the next day, you’ve felt this.
Emotional states and many other factors can change our ability to integrate emotion and information. .
Just like you have to get off on all the floors of the building to get a sense of the layout, you have to be able to integrate information with emotion (at a reasonable level of arousal) to be able to gain perspective, make decisions or think clearly.
When people have strong emotions engaged they may not be able to seamlessly move between all floors. Even your computer, which has no emotions, freezes at times and stops processing data.
Just as you wouldn’t try to plug a banana into a wall socket, but you might plug in your computer, it doesn’t make sense to try to process things with a human being in a way that they’re not built to handle.
It’s important to keep in mind that because mental and emotional states are not visible NO ONE can get it right all the time, anymore than anyone can always knock down every pin in bowling every time. Such expectations are unrealistic. However, one can practice and get much better.
Through a variety of strategies, you can improve communication and negotiation:
Become more observant of the emotions a person is having at a given moment.
Inquire whether the person would like advice or strategy or if they need reassurance and empathy.
Utilize more than one skilled facilitator or negotiator in the room to catch things one person alone might miss.
Separate emotional processing and practical steps into two different conversations to ensure people’s emotions are in a different place if they’ve become emotional.
It’s important to note that there is no one particular move that will always be right and that failures in communication can be handled in the same way as an athlete practices.
It helps to remember that if a goal is important to you, or you want to become highly skilled, repeated failure is expected. Repetition and refinement is the necessary process for moving towards better results. It’s a lot easier to practice pressing the right button and stepping off onto the right floor than it is to argue with how an elevator is built.
Much of our shared experience in communication involves turning natural mistakes into judgments of personal worth. By understanding the communication and negotiation elevator, we can transform judgment into skill building.