This month, we’re going to shift a bit and ask a challenging question: “How reliable is your memory?” For many of us, we place a lot of confidence in how we remember events and situations. We can recall details of conversation, what was said, and maybe even the reactions of the individual during the conversation.
Now, think back to an emotionally charged or difficult conversation you’ve had recently, and ask yourself the same question: “How reliable is my memory of this event?” While we may believe it’s accurate, more and more studies are showing that our memory capability decreases in heightened emotional states, and our ability to correctly recall the events is flawed.
Let me tell you a story about Tommy. Tommy was my VP of sales who reported directly to me. I had some concerns that I spoke with Tommy about after learning from a member of his team that the productivity of his sales team had decreased. I was aware that the sales team was going through a rough patch, but I did not realize the magnitude of this internal struggle.
When I approached Tommy about what was happening, the conversation got heated very quickly. While I wanted to resolve this and get the team back on track, my reaction to his reaction created a spiral. To be fair, there were a lot of dynamics at play here, and I think it’s worth going through them to fully understand the layers of emotional difficulty in the situation.
First, if we’re in an emotionally charged state, our brains don’t think as clearly as they need to. I know we’ve mentioned that in a number of blogs already, but it bears repeating. When we’re in heightened emotional states, we’re not using the best part of our brain to make decisions.
As a natural response to feeling attacked or threatened, we immediately default to fight, flight, or freeze. This was where Tommy and I got to during our conversation. Let’s pretend I took time to step back and do the right thing thinking through what Tommy may have been feeling in that moment.
Since a member of Tommy’s team came to me instead of going to Tommy, it triggered a lot of heavy emotions for him. Emotions like disloyalty, mistrust, or even betrayal. How could his team member not trust him to take care of his team? These, by themselves, are heavy emotions to deal with.
To further complicate things, Tommy was also feeling afraid of consequences for not only himself but his team. Add on that his boss is asking questions about what’s happening in a department that has been having issues, and you’ve got a recipe for defensiveness, fear, and possibly emotional overwhelm. I wonder how most of us would fare in our response to the same situation.
For me, Tommy was my sales leader and should be giving his team the most opportunities to be productive. Instead, he was filling their time with work that, while necessary, should not have been given the amount of focus it had been, and it was costing his team time to actually go out and sell. My highest frustration came in the fact that he didn’t share with me the extent of how much he was struggling.
We both came into the discussion with emotions and it clouded everything. We eventually stepped back and chose to let cooler heads prevail and have the discussion another day. I needed to get out of my irrational thinking mind and focus on what needed to be accomplished in the discussion as well as give Tommy a chance to talk through everything more calmly.
As I was prepping for the discussion with Tommy, I had to look at what the facts were. I had my facts; Tommy had his facts.
What I came to realize is that our facts weren’t really fact, and in the end really didn’t matter. In order for us to resolve this, we needed to be able to see each other’s perspective and understand each other’s negative emotions in order to move forward. Neither one of us would care about the “facts” until we had both been given an opportunity to speak about the perspective we were seeing the situation from.
Tommy and I revisited the conversation a couple days later and were able to resolve everything to help get the team back on the same page. In approaching that conversation I want to share with you the three important things that needed to happen so we could move forward
- The facts don’t matter as much as the perspective of the person. If Tommy felt betrayed by his team member or that I wasn’t giving him the space necessary to handle the situation, that needs to be addressed first. All of the “facts” we both come to the table with won’t matter if we can’t see the other person’s perspective. Repair the relationship first.
- The success of the organization is what matters. We both work for and are striving to make the best decisions for the organization. Once we are able to understand the other’s perspective, we could then focus on what we can do to help both the organization and the team be successful.
- Find the win-win solution. Once you’ve worked through to understand the other person’s perspective and we’ve agreed that our goal is the success of the organization and the team, we can then work together to craft a win-win solution that benefits everyone. This step is all about refocusing on the common goal that helps everyone do better and win.
Our discussion took a little over an hour, but the outcome was more impressive. Not only did Tommy and I work things out, Tommy also did the same exercise and talked through things with the member of his team who came to me.
While not every situation will work out like this, the three steps here are an excellent way to get away from relying on your memory and truly making sure the relationship between you and the other person remains intact. Next time you’re trying to remember the details of a heated discussion, don’t rely on your memory.