The Hardest Conversation

I want to share something that really clarified for me what makes difficult conversations difficult. It comes from the book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. In it they write that every difficult conversation is actually three conversations: The what happened conversation, the feelings conversation, and the identity conversation. Of the three, the identity conversation is the hardest, and often most important, to have.

Distinct from its usage in the term identity politics, the identity conversation is what the conversation is saying about me as an individual. Does it imply I’m a good person or bad person? Worthy of love or unworthy of love? In other words, the identity conversation gets to the core of our sense of self, which is why it’s so difficult.

All this gives us insight into why we live in such polarizing times: Our country is awash in identity conversations. Removing confederate statues in the south? That’s an identity conversation. Examining our country’s racist past and present legacy? That’s an identity conversation. Being asked to examine white privilege? That’s an identity conversation. All of them require us to reassess symbols, ideas, beliefs and values — many of them unconsciously held — core to our understanding of who we are.

To be clear, it’s not that we shouldn’t have identity conversations. We must! We just need to acknowledge that’s the kind of conversation we’re having, and that it requires a high level of emotional intelligence. Identity conversations are not for our reptilian brain, which only knows how to fight, flee or freeze. They require our whole brain, the one able to deal with complexity, and capable of compassion, intuition and deep wisdom. (If you’re wondering about this distinction between our reptilian brain and our whole brain, check out my short video on Dr. Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain.)

So what does all that mean at a practical level? If we acknowledge these are identity conversations, how might we approach them differently?

Let me take a real life example. A while ago there was an article in the New York Times about the town of Wausau, Wisconsin, whose county board had overwhelmingly voted down, in a charged racial atmosphere, a proclamation stating that Wausau was “a community for all.” To the town’s minorities and more liberal minded whites, this was an example of stunning ignorance at best, hateful racism at worst. Many others around the country who read the New York Times article seemed to think it was the latter. Of the more than 1600 comments, this one was typical and the one most recommended by readers:

“To put energy into opposing this [resolution] shows how deep the hatred is. Equality feels like persecution to these folks.” 1797 Recommend

The person who made that comment, and the nearly 1800 people who agreed with it, assumed that Wausau was having a racial conflict between whites and non-whites. It wasn’t that simple. Wausau was primarily dealing with an identity conflict within the white community itself, for which racial issues were the trigger. To hear fully what the minority community was trying to tell them, the white community had to be willing to re-examine long held and deeply entrenched beliefs about who they were as individuals and as a community — a difficult undertaking for any of us.

Looking at the Wausau conflict as an issue of white identity helps us get out of the simplistic “us vs. them” mentality that sabotages any chance of real communication. Rather than perceiving the “no” voters as hateful racists beyond redemption, we can see them as humans like ourselves, fearful of the implications of opening themselves to a more complicated and painful view of reality. This is an important distinction. Hate is very hard to work with; fear is easier. Once you know what triggers the fear, there are strategies to mitigate it.

So in the case of Wausau, what might those strategies have been? Here’s one scenario:

According to the New York Times article, neither side was happy with the final outcome. No one liked the idea of sending a message to the world that Wausau was not “a community for all.” Which, if you think about it, meant the people of Wausau had actually built a little bit of common ground: everyone was unhappy.

What if they then voted on a second, opposite resolution: “Wausau is a community only for some.” For the same reason no one liked how the first resolution turned out, it’s pretty clear this one would have gone down in defeat as well. But this time, unanimously.

Now there’s a little more common ground, and it’s feeling a bit more positive. A door seems to be opening, a possibility for a different conversation to emerge, one more exploratory and potentially less threatening:

“If Wausau is not a community for all, and not a community only for some, then what kind of community are we? What kind of community do we want to be?”

With defenses down, fear levels reduced, a little more goodwill generated, that could be a transformative conversation — one where people actually listen to and learn from each other. Relationships get built. Perceptions begin to shift. Progress is made.

Would it all have been that simple? Of course not. As I said, the identity conversation isn’t easy. There needs to be at least one person others listen to who’s able to recognize when the identity issue is getting triggered, and is able to help everyone navigate through it in creative, compassionate and constructive ways.

If you’d like to learn more about the identity conversation I highly recommend Patton and Heen’s book. While I’m at it, I also highly recommend Amanda Ripley’s High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. Brilliant story telling and extremely insightful.