You will take away:
- A reminder of the Three Moves from Our Community Listens
- Practical application through shared experiences
In a discussion rich with personal anecdotes and refreshers from Our Community Listens, Adam Salgat and Kat Edmondson, explore the nuanced dynamics of managing emotions in confrontations. They delve into individual experiences of frustration, anxiety, and passive-aggressiveness, highlighting the importance of the “Three Moves” to enhance communication and strengthen relationships. Their conversation sheds light on confronting issues with empathy and strategic techniques, including the FBI formula for effective communication.
AI-generated dictation of the podcast audio
Please note that this transcription was completed using AI software. Occasionally, unanticipated grammatical, syntax, homophones, and other interpretive errors are inadvertently transcribed by the software. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
Adam Salgat 0:00
I’m good. I’m glad to have you on the podcast. And I’m curious. Did that opening scenario sound familiar to you?
Kat Edmondson 0:07
A little bit? Yes. Thank you for reliving that for me.
Speaker 1 0:21
On the listen first podcast, you’ll join us as we connect with an array of fascinating guests from varied backgrounds and perspectives to explore how we can build and become leaders that transform their families, workplaces and communities. Tune in for insight on mastering skills like active listening, verbal and nonverbal communication, understanding behavioral tendencies and appreciating individuality.
Adam Salgat 0:57
Hello, and welcome to the lesson first podcast. I’m your host, Adam Salgat. What happens when your travel buddy doesn’t chart every step of the journey the way that you do? Will there be harmony or havoc? Tune in to find out
Adam Salgat 1:18
picture this, you’re heading into a train station with your friend to catch a four hour train ride for fun weekend away, your traveler who likes to be prepared. So you’ve intentionally planned to arrive at the station 10 minutes before the train departs the halftime to choose your seat, get settled, get your bags ready, get your snacks ready, and ease any travel concerns. You get to the station. And as you go to the track, your friend says she wants to go into CBS to buy a snack. You say Okay, I’ll wait for you out here. Because you want to get on the train at the same time because you don’t have assigned seats. And you want to make sure that you sit together, she goes into the store and you immediately get anxious. A minute passes, then three, you keep checking your watch six minutes until the train leaves, your mind starts to spiral. She’s been gone for ages, you’ll be so annoyed if you miss this train, because she went in to get a snack from the store. You check again. And you know the train is going to leave in five minutes, five minutes. Finally, you see her emerge from the store and she tells you there were so many options. I just couldn’t decide which one to pick. Thankfully, you made the train, and you use the first 20 minutes of the ride to bring your heart rate back down. In this episode today, we’re going to discuss our three moves when someone or something is bothering you.
Adam Salgat 2:58
Welcome to the podcast. I’d like to welcome Ian Edmondson Chapman Foundation director of content and systems and also a facilitator. How have you been cat?
Kat Edmondson 3:07
Hi, Adam. I’ve been doing well. Happy to be here. How are you? I’m
Adam Salgat 3:12
good. I’m glad to have you on the podcast. And I’m curious. Did that opening scenario sound familiar to you owe?
Kat Edmondson 3:18
A little bit? Yes. Thank you for reliving that. For me. That opening scenario was from one of my most recent blog posts about mastering the art of confrontation. And yes, was very much a recent experience that I’ve had.
Adam Salgat 3:35
Yeah, I could tell when I read through it that there was a lot of emotion. You know, I tried to bring that out. But what what were you going through?
Kat Edmondson 3:42
You definitely brought it out? Yeah, I was I remember feeling a little anxious, and a little frustrated in that moment, because I was so ready to get on the train and had planned and prepared and then things didn’t necessarily go exactly according to my plan. So I was definitely a little a little nervous in that situation.
Adam Salgat 4:03
Well, I’m not gonna say I’m glad that that happened to you. But I am happy that we get to analyze it on this podcast. So hopefully, everyone has an opportunity to go through and learn relearn these three moves when we are booked. So it sounds like this was a great opportunity for you to practice your skills that you learned in the our community lessons course. Yes,
Kat Edmondson 4:28
absolutely. And I love that you kind of said that we get to go back and analyze because I did a lot of kind of analyzing posts the moment about the different ways that I could have responded to that situation. But you’re absolutely right. I was grateful that I had these three minutes to kind of think through and as we talked about in our community lessons. We know that when someone does something that bothers us that bugs us. We always have three moves. We have three kind of choices on how we can respond. And those three moves are accepting The behavior, right, I can choose to accept it, adjusting your circumstances, or leaning into effective confrontation and delivering a confrontation message. When we think about that first one of accepting the behavior, right kind of thinking about what is it that this person is doing? And can I fully accept it? Can I understand why they’re doing it? What their perspective might be kind of what’s driving that behavior. But we have to be wary of false acceptance or thinking about accepting someone’s behavior. What do you think about having experienced false acceptance before Adam?
Adam Salgat 5:30
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about what false acceptance general thought on that for you? Hmm,
Kat Edmondson 5:37
I know that I am falsely accepting something when I tell myself Okay, yep, I got it. I can understand can accept why they’re behaving this way. And then I’m still tempted after to call my sister and say, I cannot believe that this happened. Or will you listen to this? Can you believe this, right. So if I’m still bothered by something, after I’ve said that I can accept it or not, it’s fine. Pretty good indicator that it’s some false acceptance.
Adam Salgat 6:02
I appreciate you sharing that I’m learning that way. Very, really quick story, that if I had a friend who I loan some money to one time, and we went out to eat about a week or two after and I hadn’t seen any of that money, come back, and it wasn’t idle to get it back at a certain timeframe for me. But I had told him at that time, it was totally fine. When he when he has it pay me back? Well, we went out to eat. And then I see him spending what I consider things that are inside my values. So like extra, an extra drink, extra dessert, and then lotto tickets, which is just so far from like, my natch my behavior of where I would spend money. And so for me, I did not accept this behavior well, and I became passive aggressive. So I know, like you mentioned, you might call your sister because it’s still on your mind. I know that if I start getting passive aggressive, even with someone who I really care about, I know that there’s something still bothering me in the back of my head, that there’s still an issue that I’m not directly either confronting with myself maybe first, or directly confronting with that person. So those are kind of my, my, my traits that I know, come out.
Kat Edmondson 7:25
That’s a great example, Adam. And it’s great that you’re kind of aware of that. These are the emotions that I’m still feeling.
Adam Salgat 7:33
It can still happen. Oh, for sure.
Kat Edmondson 7:36
Oh, yeah, you can, you can have all the artists in the world, but you’re still gonna have those emotions, right. And they’re gonna manifest and show themselves in free in your case, passive aggressiveness. Yeah, even having that awareness of those emotions is something that I can struggle with sometimes. And it’s something we talk about in our community serves our second foundational course, from the Chapman Foundation. And I’ll never forget going through the activity where we have to list out all the emotions that we’ve felt and then kind of do some digging deeper, and realizing just how difficult it can be sometimes for me to even identify what those emotions are. And I definitely realized that I was doing some false accepting in this situation, because I still have lingering emotions and was still kind of bothered by the behavior.
Adam Salgat 8:23
Yeah, I think you mentioned in your blog that even a week later, you were a little annoyed by it. So I’m curious, you know, why do you think that is, is this a friend that you’d like to travel with often is as something that’s, you know, someone you’d like to spend time with, but there’s really kind of stole? Or, I guess, irking you, as time has gone on? Yeah,
Kat Edmondson 8:41
yeah. And we don’t even necessarily travel often together, I still would like to, but she’s one of my closest friends who I spend a lot of time with. And I love her. I love her dearly. And so as I was continuing to spend time with her, I can notice that I was still in the back of my head, kind of replaying that scenario, or that other things would still, like you said, kind of irked me. And so it kind of indicated to me, all right, we did some false accepting here. And we might need to consider one of the other moves, because I’m still bugged. And I still have those three choices or those three moves.
Adam Salgat 9:13
So what would be like a second move that’s still within your control?
Kat Edmondson 9:18
So we talked about the acceptance, right, that doesn’t work. The next move that we can consider that I considered was maybe adjusting the circumstances. And so kind of when we talk about adjusting the circumstances, removing the thing, that behavior, the situation that bothers us,
Adam Salgat 9:38
what’s an example of like a behavior or something? You know, let’s take a step away from your traveling with your friends scenario. Yeah. And just talk about an example where maybe that choice works to change the situation you have control over something or something like that.
Kat Edmondson 9:56
One thing I think about often, when I’m glad Writing with somebody at work if I’m emailing with them, and we’re just not kind of on the same page, or it seems like we’re kind of disconnecting, or I’m maybe assigning tone to email, and it’s just not flowing the way that I want to. One easy way to adjust that circumstance is just to pick up the phone and call them. Right, let me adjust the way that we’re communicating right now. message them on team, see if they’re free, hey, can we can we chat for a minute, right and almost nine times out of 10, that simple adjustment is enough to be able to kind of change the way that that conversation was going and kind of lead us in a more productive direction.
Adam Salgat 10:36
Really, really love that reminder. And my favorite part of it is talking about adjustment of how you’re communicating. So you’re choosing to step out of the email space, and into a more personal space, where we’re able to deliver our nonverbals more so Right, yeah. And, you know, in past podcast with Leann, just recently, we talked a lot about how nonverbals are a large part of our communication and a large part of our message, be the opportunity to start incorporating some of those, like, so you made the choice in that case, to adjust the way you’re communicating the behavior of which you’re utilizing even the even the tool you’re utilizing to communicate? From just written text, email to video, and maybe even in person if possible. Yep.
Kat Edmondson 11:25
Oh, absolutely. Yes, nine times out of 10. I feel like even that, in person, communication will be better. But you’re exactly right, kind of being able to loop in the town, the nonverbals, all of those things just makes the communication flow a lot more easily. What
Adam Salgat 11:39
about changing something physically, for example, like maybe a situation where you physically can change the situation?
Kat Edmondson 11:49
Oh, yeah. I think about sometimes when I go to the movies or something, and I’m sitting next to someone, or someone sits down next to me, or close to me, and they like, have really loud popcorn, or a really loud snack, or they just keep talking to the person that they’re sitting next to, I know, that’s a big pet peeve of mine. And so that physical of just getting up and moving and changing seats so that I’m not close to them, right. Because in that moment, I know that I can’t accept it, I’ll be sitting there throughout the entire movie annoying with the noise that I hear. But it might not be something that I need to directly confront on. So could just adjust the circumstances by changing where I am. Right?
Adam Salgat 12:27
On, you know, m&ms in the back of their head, and
Kat Edmondson 12:32
why I love for you to try that. And let me know how it goes.
Adam Salgat 12:36
That might lead to something that we’re going to talk about here. And just maybe that’s not the best piece. As you know, you look at those options. And we go back to your story of being with your friend, and wanting to continue to spend time with them. So if you know that at this point, it’s something you’ve struggled to accept truly accept potential move one. Now he talked about a potential second move the two things that are kind of in your control, you know, changing behavior. So maybe it’s you spend less time with this person. But you know, in the end, you truly don’t want to, right, yeah, there are plenty of things that still continue to bring you joy about this person. Absolutely. So what happens if those two moves are not quite the right answer? What are we looking at them? Hmm.
Kat Edmondson 13:23
Then we look at the third move, which is to confront, right to lean into effective confrontation and to actually confront that person. Confront
Adam Salgat 13:31
confrontation. Yeah. Trying to go big, scary word for a lot of us out there. I’m more than one to be honest. marches. I think I can talk to somebody when maybe I’m being bothered. It still is difficult, because my natural behavioral tendency is to not disrupt the applecart and to kind of keep peace and keep joy and just have have fun and have a good time. Right. Yeah. So I’m one even that, you know, struggles with that. What, what are some reasons like when we go through the class, I know we talk a little bit about this. But yeah, I will seem to avoid confrontation.
Kat Edmondson 14:09
Thank you for sharing that. Because I don’t think you’re alone in that. And that’s how I have been for a long time to like very hesitant to confront. One of the reasons being, not wanting to disrupt the peace, right? If we have harmony here, we kind of are used to people getting along, we don’t want to disrupt that. Sometimes we’re scared of what the outcome will be. And it might be a little bit unpredictable. And we don’t really know what’s going to happen if we do kind of battle, no ruffle some feathers by having a conversation or confronting. Like also, it can be a little bit scary when there’s not a lot of trust built within the organization, or within the person relationship that you’re confronting. One of the ones that I’m very guilty of, too. It’s just this belief that it’ll get better on its own and it’ll fix itself and it’ll just go away. Right if I don’t, I don’t have to do anything Time will heal. Right. So there are a bunch of different reasons why we might be scared to confront There
Adam Salgat 15:00
is one that is listed in our workbook about anticipation of reprisal. Can you explain that?
Kat Edmondson 15:07
I’m gonna get in trouble if I do this. Right? Or someone’s gonna come back at me and say you shouldn’t have done that you Why did you confront them?
Adam Salgat 15:19
As I said, you know, most people are worried about confrontation. Yeah. But tell me a little bit more about what confrontation truly is. Yeah. Going when we confront somebody. When we
Kat Edmondson 15:31
talk about confrontation in our community lessons, we’re really going to think about it as a conversation, right? Where it’s a chance for me who’s the person who’s bugged or bothered to give voice to that, that reason why that behavior that’s bugging me, simply by having a conversation with someone, not necessarily going into the solution, not going in and kind of like attacking the other person for the reason why we’re bugged. But simply starting off with with the conversation
Adam Salgat 16:01
sounds a little bit like then we need to maybe do some reframing, like mental reframing around what a confrontation is. confrontation is really just a conversation. You know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get to like an opportunity to start, how to start that conversation. But I want to talk a little bit about what we’ve covered thus far. Because if we can reframe that confrontation, then there’s a, there’s a really great stop that we’re going to talk about in upcoming podcasts. That’s next. But let’s recap everything. So when we’re in a situation, and someone or something is bugging us, bothering us, or making us any adjective, you want to drop it. We have three moves, two of those moves land in category of I can change. And can you remind us of what those are?
Kat Edmondson 16:52
Yeah, we can decide that, yes, we can fully accept the behavior. Or we might have to adjust the circumstances and kind of remove the thing that’s bothering us.
Adam Salgat 17:01
And then the other move for those of us that are still working on those, and maybe they’re just not quite hitting, we can’t find a solution for that it means we may need to confront. Right? Yeah.
Kat Edmondson 17:13
And the situation instead of being the one to change were the first to write you’re changing, you’re actually asking somebody else to change, right? You’re starting that conversation to ask them to change the behavior that they’ve been shelling.
Adam Salgat 17:26
Well, that’s, that’s a, that can be a big ask, like stepping into that. And it could be a big ask to ask someone to change your behavior, right? If we come back full circle to you traveling with your friend, as you stated, you know, you want to confront them, you know that you want to do it. But now what, right? So how do we confront in the most effective way possible?
Kat Edmondson 17:50
That’s where I got to lean on the FBI formula, which is kind of the elements that go into the effective confrontation message. And, Adam, I’m going to test your knowledge here from one class maybe many years ago, but do you remember what that FBI stands for, for the fact of confrontation? Message?
Adam Salgat 18:05
Federal Bureau?
Kat Edmondson 18:07
That’s exactly what we bring in the FBI.
Adam Salgat 18:12
Guys skills that I don’t have. It truly is feeling behavior and impact. So working on what those are. That’s gonna be our next podcast is a discussion around how to create an effective FBI statement. What do you think? Yeah, what do you think next? Next episode, we can continue to break this down. You continue to talk about your train trip. You come and
Kat Edmondson 18:38
go, that sounds good to me. Yep.
Adam Salgat 18:43
Thank you so much for going through the three moves that we have when someone or something is bothering us. I appreciate your time.
Kat Edmondson 18:49
Thank you so much, Adam. Thanks for having me.