What do you do when you have a communication impasse with someone you care about?

Jim* is a friend and colleague whom I hadn’t seen for a year. It’s been a hard year for Jim and I called him frequently as he navigated his business through tough times.

When I last saw him, Jim asked me to meet with a client of his, Ed, for a few minutes as a favor. I agreed. But when I arrived at Ed’s office a few days later, the receptionist told me he was out of the country. He had been expecting me a day earlier, she said, and was disappointed when I hadn’t shown up. I apologized and left.

I immediately called Jim, who checked his email and discovered that he had given Ed the wrong day. I told him I was embarrassed and asked him to send a handwritten note to the client apologizing and explaining the error. He promised he would.

We hadn’t talked about the missed meeting since it happened. Jim’s troubled business had been the focus of our conversations. But I was speaking at a conference in a week and I expected Ed to be there; I wanted to know how things had resolved.

So, recently, when I saw Jim, I asked him whether he had written the letter. He got angry and snapped at me. “I didn’t write the letter. Peter, I’m broke. I haven’t had a minute to do anything. Can’t you understand that?”

I was taken aback, hurt. I mumbled something and walked away. But I couldn’t get it out of my head. Why was he snapping at me?

I’ve always believed that if I simply talk things through with someone I can resolve any issue. So I walked back to him.

“Jim,” I said, “I know it’s been a hard year, but why are you lashing out at me? I asked about the letter because I might see Ed at a conference. The letter isn’t such a big deal to me, but your response really bothers me.”

“Well,” he answered, “I’m sorry my response bothers you.”

Sorry my response bothers you. He didn’t apologize for asking me for a favor and then putting me in an embarrassing situation. He didn’t apologize for not writing the letter. He didn’t even apologize for his response. All he did was acknowledge that his response bothered me. Which bothered me even more.

Intellectually, I understand what was going on. Having a business crash is highly emotional, very strained, and extremely difficult. In that light, my question about the letter seemed trivial and out of place. Add to that his own shame about not having followed through on his commitment and the result was misplaced anger towards me. I get it.

But emotionally it felt like a betrayal of all I had done to support him over the past year. And it left me wondering: Now what?

I could try to talk with him about it again. But I was pretty sure it would go the same way and I would leave feeling more hurt.

I could go around talking to other people about him, getting their perspective, complaining. But that’s not who I want to be.

I could write him off completely. But we travel in the same circles and it’s unlikely we could avoid each other. I didn’t want to get that rush of negative adrenaline every time we were in the same room. And anyway, do I really want to write off everyone whose actions hurt me? I’m sensitive; I might end up alone. Finally, and perhaps most important, I really like Jim. He’s been a good friend for 20 years and I enjoy his company. He’s funny, interesting, and often warm. I don’t want the friendship to end.

The rest of the party was awkward and I left with a bad feeling, not knowing what to do. Eventually, I called my smartest advisor.

My mother is surrounded by people who love her. Recently she told me she was going out with someone who had, quite literally, betrayed her; he went behind her back to buy a rare item that had been promised to her. The seller maintained his commitment to my mother and my mother maintained her relationship with both the seller and the betrayer. How was she able to get over it?

“I know what to expect from him,” she told me of her betrayer. “That’s the kind of person he is.”

“Did you ever talk to him about it?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, “Why should I? It wouldn’t make a difference. I’m not going to change him. And talking about it won’t change the situation.”

“But how can you still spend time with him? Don’t you get angry when you see him?”

“I’m too tired to be angry every time someone does something I don’t like. And I don’t want to be alienated from everyone. I enjoy him for his other attributes. But I know what to expect from him.”

My mother’s insight is profound. Her advice?

Live with it.

Jim’s response isn’t about me, it’s about Jim, and I’m living in the space between never speaking to him again and trying to fix things by speaking to him. That space is called accepting people as they are.

Jim’s response informs me about Jim. He has a reputation for snapping at people and for using anger to intimidate and avoid. It’s just that he never directed it towards me before. It’s a part of his character. He may change but I’m not counting on it. My interaction with him offered me data. Data that tells me more about what I should expect from Jim in the future.

But snapping at me isn’t all I should expect from him. And knowing that lets me appreciate the parts of Jim I like without becoming distracted by the parts I don’t. It lets me accept him fully for who he is, without illusion. And it keeps me safe in our relationship when he acts in ways I don’t like.

In retrospect, I would still ask Jim if he had written the letter. But when he snapped at me, I would have said, “I know this year has been hard for you and I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that. I understand you didn’t write the note. That’s good to know in case I see Ed at the conference next week.” And leave it at that. No hurt. No anger. No avoidance. No passive-aggressive comeback. Just acceptance of the situation and of Jim.

Will my relationship with Jim be more superficial from now on? At first, I was sure it would. But I’m going to try hard not to let it. People are imperfect. That includes my mother’s betrayer, it includes Jim, and it also includes me.

Which makes it all the more important not to write off Jim. If I did, then I’d end up writing myself off too. Accepting Jim’s imperfection and limitations enables me to accept my own.

Which now includes the realization that no matter how good I think I am at communicating, there are some situations I can’t resolve with more communication.

*Names and some details changed

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

I know how to handle stress. I know that each day I need to get seven or eight hours of sleep and an hour or so of exercise. I know I need to meditate for a few minutes and eat normal sized, well-balanced meals. I know I need to take deep, calming breaths throughout the day.

I know all this and, for the most part — disregarding the second bowl of chocolate chips mixed with peanut butter and Rice Krispies I just devoured — I do those things.

And yet, even knowing — and doing — the right things to manage stress effectively, I’m still stressed. Almost overwhelmingly.

The work-related things that are stressing me this week are on top of the normal demands of life — raising three children, each with their unique set of blessings and challenges; making time for an amazing wife who has stresses of her own; and growing my own business. These are all good stresses to have. I’m healthy, my family is healthy, my business is healthy, and our finances are healthy.

But stress doesn’t discriminate between good and bad. It comes, unbidden, anytime we are in a situation in which we are worried about an outcome we feel is beyond our control. So we complain. We gossip. We get snarky. Which quickly infects those around us. And then they complain, gossip, and snark. Pretty soon we’re competing for who’s most stressed. Who’s got the most work. Who’s got the most ungrateful, unreasonable boss. Which, of course, just makes us all more stressed. What is the best way to cope with feeling overwhelmed while also managing the complaining, gossiping, snarky colleague? How should we respond without becoming that person ourselves?

Offer to do some of their work for them

I know it sounds crazy because you’re already so busy. Probably busier than then they are. Even if you did have the time and energy to help them, you might not be feeling so generous towards them because all of their complaining is annoying. On top of that, if you’re competing for who’s the busiest, how will it look to offer to do their work? You’ll lose that battle for sure. But you’ll win the war on stress.

We complain because we feel alone and disconnected in our stress. So we gossip to create camaraderie with our fellow gossiper. We get snarky about our boss to align ourselves with our colleague.

But complaining and gossiping are like my chocolate chip peanut butter Rice Krispies mixture — they make us feel good while we’re doing it, but we feel worse immediately afterward. Complaining breeds distrust with our colleagues, it infuses the office with negativity, it wastes time, and it solidifies our sense of isolation. Offering to take some of their work, on the other hand, achieves the opposite; it creates connection, which, ultimately, is what we’re after.

If someone we’re really in serious trouble — think of the people in Japan after the tsunami — we wouldn’t hesitate to reach out and help. Think of this as that same, generous, human response only on a much smaller, less critical scale.

The unexpected offer will immediately change the dynamic. Who would continue to complain in the face of an offer to share the burden? It builds trust, creates a positive work atmosphere, and gets things done.

It also helps you get your own work done. Reaching out in an act of generosity makes you feel better and moves you away from your stress and toward your productivity. By acting as if you have the capacity to help someone out, you actually gain that capacity.

So how should you do it?

1. Listen without contributing or competing

Empathize with the other person’s challenge. Resist the temptation to join in, add your own juicy piece of gossip, or talk about how much work you have and how hard it is for you, too. Just listen.

2. Acknowledge the challenge she is facing

In one or two short sentences, let them know that you understand they’re in a tough, stressful spot. Don’t patronize; don’t add on. This might be hard if you feel like you’re in a tough spot, too, but you don’t need to agree with what they’re saying. You just need to convey that you hear what they’re saying.

3. Offer to help in a specific way

Maybe they’re dreading a conversation with someone and you can offer to intervene on their behalf. Maybe you can help them out in a personal way like grabbing lunch for them when you get your own, saving them the trip. Don’t worry that they might become dependent on your doing their work for them. Sure there’s a risk they might take you for granted. But, more likely, they’ll be appreciative, stop complaining, and you’ll both get to work with renewed energy. Next time, they might even do the same for you. Which is how a great, productive team operates.

The other night I fell into the trap of complaining to my wife Eleanor about how busy and stressed I was, even though I knew how busy and stressed she was. She didn’t compete. She listened, told me she could see how stressed I was, and then, even though the next day was my morning with the kids, she offered to wake up with them at 6 a.m. while I slept a little later.

It completely changed the dynamic. I stopped complaining and immediately realized how fortunate I am. Later that next day when she needed time to do some work, I offered to cover for her. Which made me feel even better than sleeping late.

Now you may be thinking, this is your wife, of course she should help you. You two are partners in life. The way we manage workloads with our colleagues is different. But does it need to be? Why can’t we take small steps at work to share an individual’s load in the interest of the well-being of the team?

I’m still super busy. I still have all these obligations that are hanging over me. Nothing material has changed. And yet everything has changed. Because even though I’m singularly responsible for achieving my obligations, somehow, I don’t feel alone in them.

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

“That was dreadful. Not only was I bored, everyone else was bored too. Disengaged. I’m terrible at facilitating these kinds of meetings. But they’re so important. I’ve got to get better at it. I need to find a better way.”

I wrote that in a journal entry about seven years ago. I still remember the meeting that finally drove me to change how I run meetings. There were about 10 people involved — the CEO and his direct reports — and we met for two days offsite, in a hotel, so we wouldn’t be distracted. The goal was to discuss and agree on our plans for the next year. A strategy offsite.

I had prepared meticulously. I met one on one with each person on the team and collected their thoughts about the strategy of the company and what might get in the way of its successful execution. Using their input, I designed the flow of the two days and asked each person to prepare a PowerPoint presentation of the strategy for their area.

The result? When each person stood up to present his strategy, everyone else did one of two things: tune out or poke holes.

Most presentations elicit those reactions because most presentations are polished and thorough and designed tosatisfy their audience, as well as to build confidence that the speaker knows what he’s talking about. People tune out because nothing is required of them. Or they poke holes because, if they don’t tune out, it’s the most interesting thing to do when someone is trying to prove there are no holes.

So over the following seven years, I experimented with designing offsites. I did team-building activities, I stayed at the front of the room throughout the meeting, I took myself out of the meeting completely, I taught skills critical to the meeting like communication and team dynamics, I had the CEO run the meeting, I took the CEO out of the meeting completely, and dozens of other tweaks.

Over time, I identified a single factor that makes the biggest difference between a great meeting and a poor one: PowerPoint. The best meetings don’t go near it.

PowerPoint presentations inevitably end up as monologues. They focus on answers, and everyone faces the screen. But meetings should be conversations. They should focus on questions, not answers, and people should face each other. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve found that even the hum of the projector discourages dialogue.

Meetings are exorbitantly expensive when you add up the number of highly paid people in the room at the same time. They should be used as a time to engage deeply in issues, not to update each other on progress.

Try this. Instead of having executives prepare clear, well-thought-out (and boring) PowerPoint presentations about their own businesses, try having them lead informal discussions about theircolleagues’ businesses, using flip charts to collect important points, draw conclusions, and agree on action plans with owners and timelines.

Before the meeting, assign each executive an issue to explore that is outside his or her silo. A problem related to manufacturing might be assigned to the head of sales. A problem in marketing might be assigned to the head of operations. The executive’s task is to investigate the issue and prepare some ideas and solutions for discussion.

This breaks people out of their silos (a challenge I wrote about in Solving Your Organization’s Open-Faced Sandwich), conveys their collective ownership of the company, and keeps people from getting too prideful or too defensive about their particular business. In other words, it keeps the meeting real.

Save at least an hour or two at the end of the meeting to develop communication plans to disseminate the decisions. I’m always a little surprised at how many inconsistencies and disagreements are surfaced only when it comes time to commit to precisely what is going to be communicated.

There is, of course, a lot more that goes into a successful meeting. But following the “no PowerPoint rule” has the greatest impact because it keeps the energy where it should be: solving problems together.

I always get a little nervous when I run an offsite because, if it’s run well, it’s unpredictable. Ideas, insights, and solutions arise that never would have come up without the collaboration of the people in the room. Arguments can break out at any time. But what makes offsites unpredictable is also what makes them exciting and valuable.

Last week I spent two days running a strategy offsite with the CEO and leadership team of a large technology company that is experiencing the good-but-very-real problems that accompany rapid growth. Each executive led a conversation about an issue in a colleague’s business. Each conversation ended with an agreed-upon action plan with owners and timelines. All this was accomplished without the background hum of a projector.

At the end of the meeting, after a two-hour conversation about communicating our decisions to the rest of the organization, the CFO — a true cynic when it comes to spending (wasting?) time in meetings — turned to me and said “that was a really useful way to spend a couple of days.”

Coming from him? That’s journal-worthy.

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

Eleanor and I were fast asleep at my parents’ house in upstate New York when my five-year-old daughter Sophia came running in.

“Look out the window!” she screamed, as she pulled on our shades. I looked at my watch: 6 a.m. Not bad.

Sophia was jumping with excitement as the shade opened, revealing about a foot of new powder.

“Let’s go skiing!”

A few hours later, I stood with Sophia and her eight-year-old sister, Isabelle, at the top of an intermediate slope we had all skied many times. But this time was different. Northeastern powder is not the light, fluffy stuff of the West. It’s heavy and hard to ski, especially when you weigh 45 pounds.

Isabelle struggled but managed to navigate the new conditions. Sophia, on the other hand, fell almost immediately. She laughed, got up, and started again. A few feet down the slope, she fell once more. Again, laughing, she got up. Now Isabelle started laughing too.

But not me. I was worried. This was too much for Sophia. She might get hurt. And her ski class started in 15 minutes. At this rate she would never make it.

I shouted a few words of encouragement and advice. But her laughter was making it hard for her to ski. Was she falling on purpose? Because it was fun?

I stayed behind her so I could help when she fell, but I was becoming increasingly frustrated. I yelled at her to stop playing around. But she kept falling and laughing.

I looked at the time. “Sophia!” I shouted. “Come on, stop fooling around. It’s not funny. We’re going to miss class.”

“I’m trying,” she yelled back.

I paused for a moment, looked up, and took a deep breath. The beauty of the snow-covered trees was incredible. And that’s when I finally realized: I’m an idiot.

Here was my awesome five-year-old having an outdoor experience I want to encourage. And even though it was hard and scary and challenging, she was handling it gracefully, having the time of her life. And how did I help? By yelling at her.

It seems obvious now. But at the time my response felt perfectly natural. Which is the point, actually. It felt natural because it reflected how I was feeling. My own fears and frustrations and goals.

My mistake? I forgot that the situation wasn’t about me. I forgot to focus on the needs of my audience, in this case a five-year-old skiing powder for the first time. That’s presentation and communication skills 101.

I would never make the same mistake if I were giving a speech or working with a client. In other words, if I were thinking.

In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to skip the thinking part. An employee comes to us with substandard work and we get angry. But is that really going to help the employee do better work next time? If the reason for the poor performance was that the employee didn’t care, and my anger frightened him into caring more, then maybe. But poor performance is rarely caused by lack of fear. It’s usually because of a misunderstanding or lack of capability. In which case asking questions would almost certainly be more helpful.

That’s hard to do because when we’re angry, we respond with anger. And when we’re frustrated, we respond with frustration. It makes perfect sense.

It’s just that it doesn’t work and it won’t help.

The solution is simple: When you have a strong reaction to something, take a deep breath and ask yourself a single question: what’s going on for the other person?

Then, based on your answer, ask yourself one more question: What can I do or say that will help them?

In other words, don’t start from where you are, start from where theyare. What do they need in that moment? Some advice? A story about what you did in a similar situation? Perhaps just an empathetic ear? Or maybe simply some patience.

Imagine your favorite employee — the one you spent all that time developing — told you she was thinking of leaving your team for another job offer. You might feel angry and betrayed, but would it help to get angry at her? No, you’d be better off asking questions about what’s working and what’s not.

Once I realized my mistake, I got angry at myself for almost stomping out Sophia’s enthusiasm.

But I didn’t beat myself up for long. I took a few deep breaths and just watched her. She skied a few feet, fell, laughed, got up, and started skiing again.

Watching her laughing at her mistakes reminded me not to take myself so seriously. It turns out that meeting people where they are doesn’t just help them. Sometimes it helps you too.

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

I stepped up to the counter and ordered a bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese. I asked for the sandwich to be open-faced, “with salmon on both sides of the bagel so my friend and I can share it.”

“No problem,” Andrea*, the waitress behind the counter, told me. She punched a few buttons on the computer display of her cash register, electronically communicating our special order to the kitchen, and gave me a table stand with a number on it to identify us to the waiter responsible for serving the tables.

About ten minutes later, David, the waiter, brought out the bagel. It was open-faced but all the salmon was on one half of the bagel. The other half just had cream cheese.

No big deal. But the restaurant was nearly empty and I was curious. “Thanks,” I said, “but I had asked for salmon on both sides of the bagel.”

David apologized and took it back to the kitchen. A minute later, he came back. This time, the salmon was placed on half of each side of the bagel. The other half was plain cream cheese. Think salmon/cream cheese yin/yang symbol.

What’s most interesting is what David said when he gave me the bagel. “I know this isn’t what you wanted,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “The chef obviously didn’t get it.”

Again, just to be clear, this was, of course, no big deal. I thanked him and took the bagel. But questions ran through my head: If you knew, why didn’t you explain it to the chef? When he gave you the bagel and you saw it wasn’t what I wanted, why didn’t you tell him? Or fix it yourself before bringing it out? And, finally, once you decided to bring it out as is, why blame the chef?

There’s a one-word answer to all those questions: silos.

Andrea’s job was to take my order and transmit it to the chef. The chef’s job was to create the sandwich. And David’s job was to bring out the final dish. In fact, David did his job well. Only it wasn’t the right dish.

This obviously isn’t just an issue particular to a restaurant. It’s an issue that most team members in most organizations face every day.

Here’s the problem: Our jobs are complex and interdependent, but our goals, objectives, and, most importantly, mindsets, are often siloed.

We each have a job to do — sell a service, design a product, address a customer issue — and the underlying mindset is: if I do my job well, and you do your job well, we’ll achieve our organization’s goals.

But it rarely works that way. People in one silo often have information needed by — but never given to — people in another silo. And, as my experience in the restaurant showed, if there’s a problem anywhere in the organization, everyone fails. Who is responsible for my sandwich? Andrea? The chef? David? It’s a waste of time to parse that one out. And it’s damaging to try. The truth is, they’re all, collectively, responsible.

In other words — and this might be hard to swallow — we are responsible for each others’ work.

This is not a question of blame. It’s a practical reality of collaboration. And every organization of two or more is a collaborative effort.

After breakfast, I asked David (“for the sake of an article I’m writing”) to spend a few minutes with me exploring his decision-making.

“Frankly,” David told me, “I work with the chef every day and I didn’t want to be too pushy. I didn’t want to make him angry.”

In other words, telling the chef that he had gotten the sandwich wrong — that the chef had made a mistake — was threatening to their relationship. It wasn’t a risk David wanted to take.

“It was a split-second decision,” David continued, “Is it worth a confrontation with the chef or would you guys be OK with the sandwich delivered wrong? You guys seem mellow and so I chose not to face the chef.”

David decided it would be less painful to pass the mistake to the customer than to confront his colleague or superior about it. It would be easy to judge David for this if so many of us didn’t make that same decision all the time.

How do we escape the silo mentality?

It helps if leadership is explicit about the cross-silo outcomes that are most important in the organization. It helps if everyone who works at the restaurant is clear that satisfying customers is their number one priority and that everyone is collectively responsible for that outcome. It helps if each person is committed to a whole that is larger than their part and if leaders communicate, prioritize, and reward for that outcome.

It also helps if the organization’s structures and processes support collaboration. If people meet regularly to share what they are learning and are taught the skills to give and receive feedback. It helps if people are taught to communicate clearly, gently, and inoffensively with each other, avoiding blame and embarrassment, for the sake of cross-silo outcomes.

All that helps. But even with all that support, direction, and skill, it still takes one more critical ingredient. Perhaps the most critical.

Courage.

The courage of a single person willing to take personal risks for the sake of the organization’s success.

Because no matter how clearly leaders reward cross-silo outcomes, it takes great personal strength to identify and help correct a mistake in “someone else’s” silo and to overcome the fear of the consequences of taking responsibility for colleagues’ work.

When I spoke with David, he agreed that it would have been better if he had said something to the chef. Better for me, better for the restaurant, better for the chef, and even, over time, his relationship with the chef.

“So will you do it?” I asked.

David — a good guy, someone with enough courage to explore his decision-making with me honestly — looked over at the kitchen for a second, then back at me, and smiling, shrugged.
*Names and some details changed

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

Several hours into the first day of our paddle down the Grand Canyon, we came to our first significant rapid of the trip, House Rock Rapid. To give you an idea, here is a 25-second YouTube video of a kayaker running the rapid.

We got out of our boats — we were 15 kayakers and three support rafts — and scouted the rapid from the right bank of the river. So far, I hadn’t been feeling myself on this trip. The water was bigger than anything I had paddled before, and now even small rapids — waves I could normally surf for fun — were rattling me. I felt uneasy, stiff, awkward, and scared.

I volunteered to go first, mostly to get it over with. While the other kayakers watched from land, I entered my kayak. My hands were shaking, and it took me a few tries to seal my sprayskirt around the cockpit.

Adrenaline coursed throughout my body as I slowly inched my way toward the rapid. I positioned myself carefully as I entered the whitewater. About thirty feet upstream from the big wave, I started to paddle hard, taking short strokes to power through it. 20 feet. Ten feet.

BAM

A wall of water that stood at least twice my height crashed, flattening me against the back of the boat. The size of the wave startled me; it was much bigger than it appeared from land.

The wave hit with such immense force that my boat flipped, not sideways, but end over end. I was instantaneously upside down, underwater. Before I could even think about doing an Eskimo roll, the current yanked me out of the cockpit and dragged me deep down. I didn’t even get a chance to take a good breath before going under. I tried to swim to the surface but I wasn’t sure which way was up.

Finally, about 50 feet downstream, the river spit me out. I gasped for air as a large bearded river guide reached for my life jacket and tugged me onto his raft.

“Welcome to the Canyon.” He laughed. I did my best to smile back as I lay on the floor of the raft, trying to catch my breath.

My pummeling was unexpected. But what happened next even more so.

When I got back into my kayak, I thought I’d be even more nervous, more hesitant, and even stiffer than before. But it was the exact opposite. I was loose, comfortable, relaxed. I did a few Eskimo rolls for the fun of it. No adrenaline. No shaking. It was a dramatic shift. My fear and uncertainty was gone. I felt refreshed.

I felt the relief of failure.

Before I was clobbered by that wave, I was terrified of being clobbered by a wave. After the clobbering, I was no longer afraid. Once I failed — and not just a misstep, but a grand, dramatic failure — I knew I could handle the other failures the river might throw at me. In fact, I didn’t just knowI could handle them, I felt I could.

We often hear about visualizing success, imagining yourself in a situation saying all the right things and making all the right moves. That tactic has its place. But I want to suggest an alternative.

Try visualizing failure.

If you have a difficult conversation you need to initiate, close your eyes and imagine it going horribly wrong. Visualize yourself saying the wrong thing. In your mind, see the other person responding callously. Watch the whole thing blow up. Don’t just think about it; try to feel it. Experience the adrenaline flow. Notice your heart beating. Sense the disappointment.

Okay. Now, open your eyes and realize that you’ve been through the worst of it. Chances are, the conversation won’t go as badly as you’ve just imagined. And if it does, you’ve just experienced what you’ll feel like, and you know what? You survived. It’s only uphill from here.

That’s what makes visualizing failure so helpful for perfectionists who often have a hard time starting things. If the failure we’ve just visualized is as bad as it can get, then why not try? It lowers the bar and takes the power of failure away.

It also allows you to have a conversation with your fear of failure. Mermer Blakeslee explores this beautifully in her book A Conversation with Fear. You can’t get rid of fear and you wouldn’t want to. But engaging with your fear helps you to see it for what it really is, which is rarely as bad as you imagine.

There’s another dynamic that happens when you visualize failure: you instinctively teach yourself what not to do. What not to say. How to recover if it goes badly. How to handle yourself in the worst case without losing control.

Here’s the irony: When you visualize failure, you’re actually visualizing success. You’re watching yourself navigate, survive, and move through failure. And that’s an art that doesn’t just help you succeed; it helps you live. Failure isn’t just an annoying step on the way to success, it’s as much a part of life as success. Best to get used to it.

After getting slammed by that wave, my feeling of confidence lasted the rest of the trip. Even when we got to the hardest rapid in the canyon — Lava Falls — I went through it with ease. So much so that I pulled my boat up the bank and ran it again. This second time, a wave hit me sideways and I flipped, losing my paddle.

But I had visualized that happening and it didn’t frighten me. I stayed in my boat and reached up with my hands to the surface of the water and flipped myself back over. A hands roll. In the biggest water the canyon had to offer.

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)