Difficult Conversations: How to Say What You Mean Without Sounding Mean with Sarita Maybin
Have you ever been asked to participate in a project, attend a meeting, an event, or heck, even attend a birthday party but just couldn't say no without feeling guilty? Perhaps you've had to provide constructive feedback or share concerns but just couldn't articulate the right words to say without destroying the relationship. Maybe you've received feedback and found yourself on defense. The importance of communication in our everyday lives and in our relationships cannot be overstated. We've been told if you can't say something nice, don't say it at all. In today's episode, our guest provides practical approaches and positive phrases for those times when you need to say something NOT so nice… without destroying the relationship.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
Setting boundaries; say "no" nicely and a guilt-free "yes"
Give feedback without destroying the relationship
Receive criticism without getting defensive
FREE Career Accelerator Workbook: https://bit.ly/3xXy8U
FREE Business Building Workbook: https://bit.ly/3xXy8U
Schedule your Career Discovery Call Today: https://bit.ly/3OnuLLO
Let's Connect!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MsDanielleCobo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanielleCobo
Website: www.DanielleCobo.com
Book Recommendations: https://www.amazon.com/shop/influencer-de49157c/list/2W8I8NWS6N4CJ
About our guest:
Sarita Maybin who has made it her mission to inspire others to embrace positivity, even amid the challenges of our ever-changing high-tech times. In her 20+ years as an international speaker and communication expert, Sarita is a TEDx speaker and published author with her book “If You Can’t Say Something Nice, What DO You Say?” and her newest book “Say What You Mean in a Nice Way.”
Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts
"Danielle is so Uplifting." <-- If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more women -- just like you -- accelerate their careers. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dream-job-with-danielle-cobo/id1571797640
Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. I’m adding a bunch of special release episodes and, if you’re not following, there’s a chance you may miss out. Follow now!
Becoming a Communication Expert
Many of my stories came from my stories working in higher education as a supervisor and working with staff and students. Then, somewhere along the way, of course, I ended up getting the degrees—the psychology undergrad, the master's degree in counseling. I really feel like that's just the backdrop. The real good stuff comes from real-life stories.
So most of us have been in a situation where we've wanted to say something, but that guilt has led us to say ‘yes’ anyways. Maybe we've been asked to go to an event or be involved in a special project, and we want to say no. We know our plates are already full, but that guilt eats us inside. And so we say yes anyways. How can we set boundaries and say ‘no’ nicely without that guilty feeling?
How to Say ‘No’ Nicely
I know. Isn't that the worst thing you're kicking yourself? Why did I say it? I think we've all been there where we're just like, “What was I thinking when I agreed to this and said yes?” And then of course we get overrun because we've got so much to do, and we really are regretting it. But I always think there are three words or three phrases that we can learn to use. When, if, and as soon as. So in other words, we can say ‘yes’ but set some boundaries.
I'd be happy to get that for you IF you're willing to wait until the morning. I'd be happy to do that WHEN I get the paperwork and information from you. Or AS SOON AS I'm finished with this project, I'll be, I'll be happy to get started on yours.
So I always feel like if, when, and as soon as are three phrases that we can use to set those boundaries so we don't just get trampled from all the things we agree to. A way of saying yes while also setting those boundaries so that we're not overextending ourselves—which happens a lot.
How to Communicate Constructively
Now, we've also talked a little bit about constructive feedback, and there are times when you are leading people or whether it's a peer-to-peer interaction, or even maybe in our own personal relationships where there have been times when we've needed to provide some constructive feedback. Maybe we've had to share something a little bit negative, but what happens is the spiral interning in our brain of going, “Well, what if I say the wrong thing? What if I hurt their feelings? What do I do?” How do you have those difficult conversations while still maintaining a good working relationship?
I have a three-step process I always recommend, and the acronym is AIR. A is awareness—to realize maybe they don't mean to be bothering us or annoying us. Sometimes people don't even know that they're part of the problem. Have you ever noticed that sometimes the people who drive us crazy and get on our nerves have no idea they're doing that? I think just letting people know, “Hey, maybe you're not aware that this is what I'm seeing.” So to point it out, and I think giving them the benefit of the doubt, is really part of that. Assuming that their intentions aren't negative, I think that helps with that awareness piece. And then the big one is, what is the impact of their behavior?
So we're not saying you're a bad, mean person. But when you come late, the class customers have to wait. Or when you yell and scream, it makes people defensive. Or when you don't show up, we're left in the lurch. So whatever the impact is, the negative impact, that's the I. And then of course the request is what do you want?
I have to juggle with that one cuz, often, when I do my keynotes, I'll ask people to think about a situation that they wanna work on and I'll have them write down a situation. And then I'll have them look at that R, which is the request. And I always say, “Think about what you want in your heart of hearts that person to do differently.”
And I had one gentleman say, “Well if I was honest, I would want them to never show up at work again.” So I say, short of the person, never darken your doorway again, “What is your request? What do you want in your heart of hearts for them to do differently?” So I think having that structure of making them aware, letting them know the impact, and then making a request—not a demand or dictating, but a request, I feel like those three steps help us reign in that anxiety about confronting.
There are so many times when either the person lacks the self-awareness of how their actions are impacting others, or it's our own internal triggers that have either been created by somebody else or from our past that sometimes spark up emotions where we get irritated by something. But it may not even be related specifically to them. It just might be a trigger for us. So, what I'm hearing you say is assume the positive intent, the benefit of the doubt that maybe they don't even know, and then request. I just went through this conversation with my husband where my husband's very analytical. He has a very analytical type personality. And we often have conflicting schedules. Sometimes, we're balancing things. And then there are times when I have night events and weekend events, just like he does with his, with his duties. And there's been times where I'll ask him like, “Hey, can I have this event coming up? Can you watch the kids these nights?” And his analytical personality is, “Well, what time? Why is it going on? Why are you doing a night event?” That's obviously the questions he asked, and it took me a second to realize I get kind of triggered by that because I feel like every time he asked me, I say things like, “Absolutely no problem. Go do what you need to do. I'll take care of the boys, no problem.” But his approach was more analytical. So as you said, it's not that his intentions were bad, it's his personality and my request to him. “Hey, could you respond by saying, ‘No problem?’ Can you give me the details? I would feel more supported.”
I think a lot of people kind of want to know, “Well, why should I help? What's the reason for this?” And I always love sharing phrases. I'm a big fan of phrases and my favorite phrases in those kinds of situations are “So that” and “because.” For me, it would be like, “Would you be willing to keep an eye on the kids SO THAT I can go do this important meeting?” Or, “I need you to do this BECAUSE it's important that I'd be in such and such a place.”
It's kind of back to the old acronym we all heard, WIIFM. People wanna know what's in it for me. And I always love that acronym. It sounds like a radio station, WII, but really it's what makes the world go around. People always wanna know why is this important or why should I do this. And I'm one of those people. I'm a ‘why’ person. Why do I need to do this? Or why is this important, or why does it matter? And my husband, much like your husband, sometimes will push back with a need for an explanation. Not a long drawn-out explanation, but just for me to explain, “It's so bad I can do this, or it's because of that.” So that's a helpful one for those who wanna know what is the backstory.
I actually saw some research somewhere that when you send an email to someone, if you say, “I need you to do da, da, da,” and you put because, just because you put ‘because’ in the email, they perk up and say, “Oh, maybe I need to pay more attention.” And I thought that was fascinating. I think as women we sometimes go into the whole tap dance and tell the whole long drawn-out story. No, not that. It's just, “I need your help because it will allow us to meet your deadline,” or “I need to get this information because it will expedite your payment.”
So really, in the end, it's also going back to them saying, “Well, why do I care? So you know why should I do this?” So, ‘because’ and ‘so that’—those are the two phrases that highlight why this is important for you to wanna cooperate with me. People wanna know why. What's in it for them? Why are they being asked to do that? What's the importance of me prioritizing this particular request versus another that's on their plate as well?
Receiving Feedback Without Getting Defensive
So, we've talked about how to say ‘yes’ while setting boundaries. We've talked a little bit about how to provide some kind of constructive feedback. Now, what happens when you are on the receiving end of feedback? And I know that sometimes our initial reaction is that flight or fight. I want to either flee the situation cuz it's completely uncomfortable, or I'm ready to fight and my defense mechanism comes up, which is pretty common sometimes, depending on the feedback. How can we receive feedback without getting defensive?
I love that question. I love that. I got some advice years ago when I was a grad student. One of my first mentors gave me this piece of advice, which has served me well. She says, when you get feedback, ask for more. And I was thinking to myself, that's the last thing I wanna do. But what are my favorite signature stories that I tell when I'm doing my keynotes? And I'm not gonna go into the full-blown story, but I literally have like a five-minute signature story all about receiving feedback and how I learned to apply the ask-for-more strategy.
But I talk about a time when I gave some feedback to, or I ask a colleague, an employee actually, in a staff meeting. I ask him: “What do you think we can do to improve the department?” And he says, “Well, you could be a better supervisor.” And I remember getting really defensive. And then I remember that advice and asked for more. So when he said [that], I said, “How do you mean? Can you be a little more specific?” So that's an example of asking for more. And then, he gave me some great suggestions that I would not have come up with if I had just shut him down and said how dare he say I could be a better supervisor?
So, ask for more. It can look like:
Can you be more specific?
Can you gimme an example?
Can you elaborate?
So any, instead of going into the, “Well, what happened was…” we wanna go into the explanation tap dance. I actually read something—a book on negotiation. Boss, it's his last name, a former hostage negotiator. He's got a book about negotiation. But anyway, in his book, he said something that was rather startling. He says, “Explaining is just a fancy word for argument.”
So, we start saying, when someone says, “Well, you don't do this or you do that,” and then we start trying to explain, “See, the reason I do this is… and because…” And what happened was all of that really does not help. So I love that advice that I received all those years ago from my mentor where someone says something instead of starting to explain AKA arguing, just say:
Oh, tell me more.
Can you elaborate?
How do you mean?
Can you be more specific?
All of those phrases are ways of asking for more, which seems like the last thing we wanna do, but in the end, it actually illuminates the situation. I have a whole long story about how that served me well initially, and how it has served me going forward to respond to things that we don't wanna hear.
Well, his comment about how he’d like for you to be a better supervisor, that's a very vague comment, and the only way for us to improve in what we're doing is to have specific examples of what we are doing wrong, what they would like to see differently. A lot of the times, I'll respond and say, “Okay, what would that look?”
I love that. That's a perfect way of asking for more. What would that look like exactly? I had a woman tell me one time she was in a performance review and the boss said, “Well, you're not a team player.” And that is about as vague as it gets. What exactly does that mean? And then, of course, she asked for more feedback and found out—in fact, what she found out was he said, “You sit in the staff meetings with closed body posture, the arms folded.” And she says, “I'm cold. The meeting rooms are cold, and that's why I sit like that.” So, she got really unmerited negative feedback because he was perceiving her negatively, but in reality, she didn't have that negative intention at all. It was just cold. But you never find out those things if you don't ask for more. And I think if we get defensive when we get feedback, we won't ever get, as you say, that valuable input, the valuable information.
And one way that he could have shifted his approach to that conversation was, “When we're in team meetings and your arms are folded and crossed, the perception of the team is that you're not a team player, that you're not being involved.” And that would've opened up the conversation for her to then respond, “I can understand maybe why, that's the perception. I'm just cold, so now I just know to bring a jacket, but that is not my intention.” It goes into perception versus intention.
Exactly. And you know, and in and in real life, we wish people would say things so eloquently, but in real life, they just say, “You're not a team player,” or “You're so mean,” or “You're nosy,” or, “You're overbearing.” Pick a long list of accusations. People will just throw it out in a harsh way. And so we have to separate that harsh approach from, “Okay, let me get to the bottom of what are they trying to tell me? What is the real nugget of useful feedback?”
Pearls of Wisdom to Improve Communication
I have a few little clips that I love to share in my keynotes and one is that ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are still the magic words. Anytime we wanna make a request, instead of saying, “Do this or you better,” instead say, “I need you to do this, please.” And ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are wonderful. Even in emails as well, when we're making requests, a lot of times we're emailing, so a ‘please’ and ‘thank you’—I call that the kindness check. My mantra in life is what you mean means what you say, but don't say it mean. And I think, ask for more, which would be the last thought, which is when we get that feedback that just asks for more when we're on that receiving.