We are creatures of habit.
For the most part, this is a good thing. Habit lets us avoid having to make a million tiny decisions every day, like the route you drive to work or in what sequence you wash your hair, face, and body in the shower.
But some of our habits don’t serve us well, and those are equally engrained. Maybe we continue to order the same lunch every day, even after we learn that our cholesterol is high and we’re pre-diabetic. Maybe we keep nagging our teenager to clean their room, even though the nagging doesn’t work and sours everyone’s mood.
It isn’t rational. We can look objectively at this behavior and think: well, this clearly doesn’t work. But the lunch order comes around again, or the room is messy again, and our immediate impulse is to respond the same way we have over and over in the past. It’s our go-to response…even though we know it isn’t going to lead to an outcome we want.
Spoiler: I don’t have an answer to this age-old dilemma. Behavior change is really hard. But I can share what can work in the area of communication skills.
As always, the first step is to identify what isn’t working. If you keep running into a dead-end with a colleague, start to pay close attention to what you bring to the encounter when you are speaking with them. Are you approaching the conversation with curiosity? Are you listening? Are you more focused on the task at hand or on your relationship with them? Do you feel intimidated or defensive around them? The answers to all those questions are important information.
Then, notice your default mode when you’re having this conversation. Are you trying to get it over with? To quell any questions? To fly under the radar? To assert your influence? Whatever your default mode is, it’s not working.
So now you shift into a deliberate, productive intention, ideally, something really different from how you would usually communicate with this person. It should be a noticeable change. If you are usually trying to keep them from asking questions, go into the conversation with the intention to elicit as many questions as possible. See how this shift changes your behavior and, hopefully, the outcome.
As we know, altering the behavior one time won’t effect a lasting change, even if it works. But if this matters to you, and you keep practicing, you can start to see your own awareness grow over time. You may definitely still fall back into your old patterns from time to time, but you’ll catch yourself more quickly, and you can course-correct.
