Humans 101
How to Speak Honestly, Even When It’s Hard
A guide to saying the quiet part loud
“Never be afraid of the conversations you’re having. Be afraid of the conversations you’re not having.” — Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations
Have you ever struggled with saying what’s really on your mind? We all do. When we’re not being fully honest with others, it’s often because we:
- Don’t want to be rejected.
- Don’t want to upset the other person or damage our relationship with them.
- Don’t want the conversation to get out of control.
- Don’t know how to raise a difficult issue skillfully.
However, problems occur when you don’t speak honestly:
- You suffer because you bottle up unexpressed thoughts and feelings, which tend to accumulate and then at some point come pouring out in angry outbursts, like “You always do that” or “You never clean up after yourself.”
- People wonder what’s going on. They sense you’ve got something to say, but you’re not saying it.
- If you’re working on a team and holding back what you think are good ideas only because they run counter to the groupthink, you may be unintentionally holding back the team’s success.
The hardest part of speaking honestly is often the entry point — what to say and how to say it. A conversation is likely to go better if it starts well. Here are four strategies that can help you begin those honest conversations, even when you’re unsure how.
1. Recognize when you have a “left-hand column.”
The human brain processes information faster than people speak. We’re thinking a lot, even when we are listening. Most of us have relatively good filters, so we monitor and manage a stream of thoughts and feelings during any conversation.
What’s problematic is when we censor ourselves to the degree where we say one thing but think and feel something entirely different. When we say, “Great, I look forward to speaking with you again soon,” but our inside voice is saying, “I have no interest at all in speaking with you, ever.”
