3 Steps for Empowered Dialogue (3SED)

• the problem: you want to convey your experience or model, but they won’t listen / they get defensive
• the underlying issue: they can’t take you in while they themselves don’t feel understood
• the solution: first listen to them thoroughly, so that they know they’re understood
• the problem with that: you can’t take them in because you don’t feel understood
• the paradox: they can’t hear you first, because they still don’t feel understood
• is there a way out of this trap?
  • one option that sometimes works is having a third party listen & understand (cf Carl Rogers)
• but suppose you don’t have a third party with sufficient presence, perspective, persistence, etc
• well, what what’s the root cause? why can’t people listen when they don’t feel understood?
  • what you’re saying seems to contradict what they know, so it doesn’t make sense to them
  • maybe…  they don’t trust that if they take in your view, they won’t lose touch with their own
  • it may not feel like it, because they may seem very aggressively confident
  • but if they were more grounded, they could more readily hold contrary views
  • …same goes for you!
• so if you could somehow build your own trust that you won’t lose touch with what you know, even in the face of something contrary, then you’d have another way out of the paradox!
• how would you do that?
• in short, you behold what it is that you know, about whatever’s at hand
  • and you reaffirm to yourself that whatever you know here, you really know
  • that all of that knowing is real, even if you’ve overgeneralized or misapplied it in some places
  • that you don’t have to let go of anything that’s real in order to take in something new
• you might find that you need to recurse, because you actually have multiple subsystems that are blocked with the same paradox, where it’s hard for something to listen because it doesn’t feel heard
  • you might also find part of you is bitter that the other person isn’t putting in this work proactively
    • fair! listening to yourself is a substitute for unblocking, but not for actual connecting
• but eventually, you’re ready to try another shot at listening to the other person’s view
  • and you give it a go!
  • and…  haaaa nope you’re still very defensive.
  • that’s okay! back up again: what are you defending?  how can you strengthen its clarity?
• eventually: wow.  you can listen to the other person
  • what they’re saying, it turns out, is of great interest to you, because it’s often something you’ve been unable to take in thus far, so it’s key information that you’re hungry for!
  • taking in their perspective may feel painful, but it also feels like a relief
  • it requires focused attention, but not force or effort
  • and maybe partway through you need to pause and breathe, to reaffirm that everything that you know is still real and part of your sense of things
  • eventually you’ve made sense of something that previously you weren’t able to make sense of
  • and you have something of an integrated sense of your view and theirs
• then…  you might foray into getting them to understand you
  • and if they once again get defensive, you go back to seeking to understand them
  • and if you once again get defensive, then you go back to reaffirming your own view
  • but as long as you both have the patience, you can reach mutual understanding
• in summary: 3 steps for empowered dialogue (3SED)
  • 1.  understand yourself so thoroughly that you have infinite space and curiosity to listen
  • 2.  understand the other so thoroughly that they have space to listen to you
  • 3.  get understood — what you wanted in the first place
• empowered, because you’re never a victim of their unwillingness to listen.  you always have a move.

(another ~20 minute onepager. read the other posts written in this style here. for a longer take on the 3SED process and how to DO each of the steps, read the secret to co-gnosis. for bullet-points specifically on step 1, read this one-pager on self-validation.)

If you found this thought-provoking, I invite you to subscribe:    

Leave this field empty if you're human: