{"id":4308,"date":"2024-03-26T13:17:04","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T13:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/what-conversation-are-you-having\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T21:29:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T21:29:45","slug":"what-conversation-are-you-having","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/what-conversation-are-you-having\/","title":{"rendered":"What conversation are you having?<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"

What conversation are you having? <\/p>\n

One concept I found helpful from the book Difficult Conversations by Stone, Patton and Heen, is that such conversations often intermingle three different conversations:
\nFacts: What happened?
\nFeelings: How do I feel about what happened?
\nIdentity: How is my identity impacted by what happened? <\/p>\n

Mixing those conversations can get confusing, so I find it helpful to separate these conversations when I can. <\/p>\n

Personal example:
\nFacts: I forgot to pick up the milk.
\nFeelings: Shame – my wife says “How could you forget to pick up the milk?”
\nIdentity: The shame of not picking up the milk threatens my ability to identify as a good husband and father. <\/p>\n

If I focus on my feelings of shame, or my anxiety about my identity, then I get defensive and start playing the “what about you?” game (e.g. “You forgot to take out the trash!”), which never ends well as the conversation becomes about placing blame and creates separation.<\/p>\n

If I focus on the facts and don’t let my feelings take over, then it’s easy to say “Yes, I forgot to pick up the milk. My bad. What can I do to make it right?” <\/p>\n

While this example is about personal relationships, it’s also applicable to much bigger societal and structural issues. If you notice yourself getting spun up about a topic, take a moment to check in with your feelings and ask yourself what aspect of your identity (“I’m a good person!”) might be threatened by the topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What conversation are you having? One concept I found helpful from the book Difficult Conversations by Stone, Patton and Heen, is that such conversations often intermingle three different conversations: Facts: What happened? Feelings: How do I feel about what happened? Identity: How is my identity impacted by what happened? Mixing those conversations can get confusing,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4308"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4401,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions\/4401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}