What can Yoga teach us about having Hard Conversations?

When I found myself needing to host hard conversations, I turned to what I had learned about yoga to help me approach them in an honest and compassionate way, which helped me relieve nerves and communicate effectively for everyone’s benefit. Doing this well with poise and respect is a key element of becoming and acting as a leader at work.

Hard conversations are…well, hard. Usually, we’re needing to communicate “sensitive” news, like a performance review, critical feedback, cease of employment, workplace disputes or violations like sexual misconduct, or verbal abuse.

Firstly, any conversation implies that there are at least two people or parties involved. Let’s first acknowledge that humans are complex, and that communication can be tough, even when it’s not “hard.” Secondly, in a hard conversation, there’s usually one party that is “confronting” and the other that is “receiving.” The party that is “confronting” is likely the person who has called the meeting and will be delivering the sensitive news. This post outlines confronting or delivering sensitive news. Stay tuned for an upcoming post focused on receiving feedback and responding to sensitive news, although we’ll cover it a little here.

There are three main Yogic teachings that I believe to be the most essential in helping us approach hard conversations with mental clarity and neutrality. They are outlined here -

TRUTH-TELLING (Satya): One of the observances of yoga is truthfulness or truth-telling. This means that we speak our own truth, and share the truth with others whenever possible. When we’re faced with having to share hard news, our tendency might be to “soften the blow,” not tell the whole truth or retract the message because it’s uncomfortable to knowingly enter territory where your news might hurt the receiving person’s feelings. If we’re responsible for having this conversation, it also means that we have responsibility to our team, others in the organization or our clients. Importantly, we also have responsibilities to ourselves. For example, let’s say you’re giving a performance review in a case where a lot of improvement needs to be made. If you’re not communicating the feedback with whole truthfulness and clarity, everyone, including the recipient of the feedback will continue to suffer more. When a teammate doesn’t have clarity on what to change, how and why, everyone who interacts with them has to overcompensate. Maybe eventually they will get tired and leave. This might cause the client to become unsatisfied with your work, and terminate your contract. The employee might end up getting fired for poor performance and have the same issue repeat itself at another job, continuing their own cycle of suffering somewhere else. Keep in mind the ways suffering will continue if you don’t tell the whole truth.

NON-ATTACHMENT (Aparigraha) - Many of us, including myself, have trouble disappointing others. I encourage you to check-in with yourself about making sure you are detaching delivering “bad” news from being “bad.” Remember that you are the one delivering the news, and not responsible for how the receiver receives the news, and that the two of those things don’t determine your inherent value. Similarly, for most of us, non-positive feedback can trigger us. And so, you have to be aware that what you tell the “receiver” in your conversation might trigger deeper feelings of un-worthiness or insecurity for them. If you’ve taken to heart the Yogic principle above of whole truthfulness, then you can be secure in knowing that if the “receiver’s” triggers come out appearing as anger or insults, you don’t need to take them personally or become defensive. It’s quite important to remain as neutral and calm as possible in the face of your receiver’s reaction or response. Non attachment and ego management is also important here because if and when you do take a response personally, it may cause you to be less truthful or unable to be truthful in a future encounter.

NONVIOLENCE (Ahimsa) - One watch-out that always needs to be paired with the practices of truthfulness and non attachment when addressing hard conversations is Nonviolence. Sometimes, when we get into the mindset of truthfulness and non-attachment, we have to work quite hard to embody them, and we forget about kindness. Nonviolence doesn’t just refer to killing a human or an animal, it also refers to killing the human spirit. Nonviolence is the very first of the Yoga Yamas, and according to Yoga texts and teachers, also makes it the most important. And so, non-violence is the one thing that should be prioritized over truth telling. In a hard conversation at work, there will likely be very few cases where you will have to be untruthful in order to prioritize non-violence. The main message here is that all hard conversations should be led with kindness even in the face of sensitive, difficult or bad news and circumstances. Let kindness lead your preparation, delivery, processing and reflection.

Here are some follow-up questions to ask yourself before you enter a hard conversation -

  • How can you be kind AND wholly truthful?

  • How can you be kind AND unattached?

  • How do you prepare for a hard conversation when leading with kindness as your priority?

  • In what ways can you be kind to yourself throughout the process? (i.e. blocking time before and after the meeting to prepare and reflect, who do you need help from?, who can appropriately be in the room to support you)

Lastly, stating that you are about to deliver sensitive news just before you deliver it can be a helpful way to put the other person or people in the room in a mindset where they’re prepared and reflective. We’re all most susceptible to become reactive when we’ve either had a lot of time to ruminate or are caught off guard/surprised. If we haven’t been prepped at all, it is more likely that our minds will immediately revert into their primitive modes when told something that threatens our acceptability or survival.

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