Peacemaking in the Church and Beyond - Lesson 15

So, then let's move to responsible speaking. I don't have as much to say about responsible speaking, but just a few things. First of all, responsible speaking is the flipside of responsible listening, as simply as ‘I accept responsibility for people understanding what I say no matter how poorly they listen.’ What do you think of that? That's just as hard as the first one, maybe more difficult. So, I just encourage you to take that on and think about that, because if we do take that kind of responsibility, it will increase the odds of our moving through conflict in a healthy way significantly. 

Why do people stop listening? Well, first of all, we speak too long. We all tend to speak too long. The second area is that we talk about features, not benefits. What do we mean by that? Whenever we're talking to someone, they are always looking; there's a radar that's on their heads, and that radar is tuned to what I refer to as WITMFM; what's in this message for me? They're looking for those signals, and they're looking for those early on. So, marketers would tell us that we don't talk about features, we talk about benefits, but in speaking responsibly, give people cues, clear cues, as to why this conversation might benefit them, rather than just talking about whatever, because we can take people out into the forest, but if they don't really see the crumb trail to get to the desired location, and that crumb trail is really about why should I take this journey with you? And it's really about understanding what is in this message for me. 

The reasons people stop listening, the major ones, are that we speak too long, we talk about features and benefits, and then thirdly, we provide solutions to their problems before they ask for it. My wife says, I didn't ask you to fix this; I just want you to listen. I'm sure that none of you other guys have ever heard that. But it's so classic, and what it really communicates is that I'm not listening and I'm not proving to her that I've heard what she’s said, at least not significantly. 

So, here are some strategies, and with these strategies we'll just wrap this up very, very quickly. Minimize the listener’s expenditure of energy. How do you do that? Well, you speak in short segments, number one, before stopping and seeking whether they're hearing you, and again, a simple device is ‘what have you heard me say?’ ‘Let me talk with you through that to make sure that I'm communicating well.’ Simple devices, but very, very powerful when it comes to conflict, particularly. 

Secondly, provide 30% of the information you know. One of the critical issues is that when we move into these kinds of personal encounters, we tend to want to come with our whole arsenal ready and cocked and loaded and ready to fire and just unload the whole gun. But the reality is, if we’ll dial that back and be very selective in what we share, so that's 30% -- has got to be the right 30% -- but to reduce the load that we place upon the other person, there's a higher likelihood that we're going to get a better reception to that. Does that make sense to you? Is that clear? It's amazing when I've begun to think in that way; I don't always succeed, but when I've begun to think in that way, about speaking in short segments and then providing 30%, it's absolutely amazing how that works with people, their capacity to grab it. 

So, the second is develop the listener’s motivation to respond truthfully to you, and the way to do that is check for your listener’s understanding continually, again -- it's back to what you just said, Sam -- and then secondly, acknowledge your listener’s differences. Allow them to think differently than you, and the reason this is in here is because we leaders tend to want to mold people into our likeness when we're in conflict. If they don't think the way that we think, somehow we want to somehow force them into that mold, and when we acknowledge that we're different people, that in itself can create a framework for healthy discussion. 

So, here's the final point: “If you want things to come out the way you think they should, you probably are the best person to improve the chances that they will. By taking responsibility, you gain the right to influence the outcome.” And that's why this responsibility issue is so important. I mean, we can talk all around that and say, well, people won't do this or people won't do that, but if we take the responsibility, we have a lot higher potential of things turning out the way that we hope they will.