Radical Humanity in Conversations That Matter

People will remember how you made them feel 

There were two occasions this week (before COVID-19 impacted all of my scheduled in-person coaching and training sessions) that got me thinking about the power of having a conversation that matters and being radically human with others in doing so. 

A few days ago, as I was getting ready to coach a team, I experienced the discomfort. In service of this team, I knew I had to open the conversation about what was going on and what could have been addressed differently in our work together so far. Facing that discomfort with the vulnerable conversation eventually enabled me to talk less and listen more, holding the space for their 4-hour long discussion about topics that deeply mattered to them. 

As they kept talking with each other in a respectful yet hard-loving truth manner, many times this conversation got very uncomfortable for them too. Staying with that discomfort helped them realise they are a courageous group of capable individuals who is starting to become a powerful team with a strong shared identity. 

Thinking back, I’m feeling deep respect for how they collectively showed up and made each other feel. Rather than trying to fix each other, they stayed open to explore the potential of their team through their conversation. In that process they heard each other, saw each other, experienced each other and accepted each other. 

This team gave itself a priceless gift: an open, spacious, and relationship-oriented conversation that was not so much about giving the right answers as it was about asking the important questions. They embraced the conversation that already changed them and had them set the context for their future transformation. 

Yesterday I had a coaching session with the client who needs to take a few important steps in their team. They need to lead the change and they’re not sure if they’ll do the task well enough with the little information they currently have. And that brings them huge discomfort. That makes them avoid the conversation for now until they are sure they can get it right. They are postponing the conversation to protect their team from what seems unknown and uncertain in the absence of all the right answers. Once they take a leap and open the conversation, I hope they get surprised by how much more there is about listening and connecting rather than informing.

One thing seems clear - change happens through conversations that matter. Many times, these are conversations we’ve never had before, and they are vulnerable, exposing and risky. And it made me think of what could help us embrace such conversations for which we hardly ever feel absolutely ready.

As a devoted Leadership Circle Profile practitioner, I’ve found the most resonant answer in a phenomenal book called Scaling Leadership by Bob Anderson and Bill Adams and this is my understanding of it: 

In order to embrace the uncomfortable conversations that matter, we need to make the nurturing of deep relationship more important than the illusion of knowing and the illusion of control. 

In other words, rather than making sure you’ve got all the right answers, be bold enough to just be radically human. 

““Choosing to be more radically human with one another (beautifully incomplete, imperfect, and vulnerable in our evolving)…. We do so with fierce humility and vulnerability to be a learner on a journey with other learners.””

So that at the end of the day – as Maya Angelou says – rather than remembering what you said or did, people would remember how you made them feel.