Imagine you are working at your dream job. You love your internship because you have the opportunity to give back to your community, but you have a boss who talks over you or says that he disagrees with all the ideas you pose. It feels hurtful because you feel that doesn’t validate your opinions. At the same time, you try to achieve a deeper understanding as to why your boss in talking to you in this manner. Perhaps he doesn’t have prior leadership experience or maybe something bad is going on at home. Instead of getting frustrated at him, you try to achieve a deeper understanding of his communication with you. By trying to gain sympathy towards your boss, you are able to approach the situation with more compassion. That is what we call the power of compassionate conversation.
“I” Statements:
Compassion means a “feeling of deep sympathy.” Incorporating the idea of sympathy towards another in communication allows your communication to blossom into productive conversation. Instead of complaining to all your coworkers, your friends, and your mom about how your boss has been communicating with you, you can confront him through a private meeting. By using skills such as “I” Statements about how his communication with you has been hurtful, providing him with an action plan on how to better conversation, and giving him space to speak, you have the potential to produce a better work environment.
Mindfulness Meditation:
According to David Desteno’s (2015) article, “The Kindness Cure,” mindfulness meditation is a great way to achieve compassion. People can do meditation for as little as five minutes or even an hour and spend time healing their brains and souls. Sometimes if we immediately confront someone when we are upset, we might communicate with anger instead of productive thoughts. With that said, it is vital we take time to process our thoughts and try to understand our peers.
Take a Risk:
Marriage and Family Therapist, Marty Babits (Psychology Today), suggests that there are five steps of healthy vulnerability that lead to compassionate conversation. By taking time to understand your peer’s underlying feelings and perhaps ask your peer, “what else is on your mind that can be bothering you,” can make your conversation better.
Compassionate conversation is also vital to use when we are talking with our peers and educators about hot topics: politics, religion, and other topics that are new and exciting in the media. Learning to look at a discussion with someone in a productive positive lens can heal friendships instead of break them.
Whether we are talking with our boss, coworkers, friends, family or significant other, it is vital that we take a moment to step back and look at the situation with a bird’s eye view.
