The Big Two Hearted Conversation?
I promised this post a few days ago, and here it is!
I was saddened when Whitney Houston passed away. I was not a huge fan, but she was so young and talented. Yet even though she seemed to have it all, she just fell apart. And it is not the first time that a celebrity performer went in this direction. It seems like an occupational hazard! I wonder why.
Of course, performers are very good at pleasing their audiences. That is what they do. And they are highly sensitive to audience reaction. Fans give them an adrenalin rush. But apparently that is not enough to offer a great life. At the end of the day, it seems that performers are often less good less good at pleasing themselves than pleasing others.
When I was a lad, I thought that this came naturally. Wasn’t it automatically fun to be free of school and parental control? But as I grew older, I realized that people have widely different aptitudes for pleasing themselves. It came as a bit of a shock and the shock grew as it dawned on me that I could use some improvement in that area as well. “What! Me? Grumpy!?”
You might be wondering what this has to do with two hearted conversations. Well, conversations are the work horse for connecting. And connecting is a prerequisite for innovation. That means doing conversations well is an important skill.
Here comes the big point - getting conversations to work better means finding a balance in the exchange between pleasing (performing) and being pleased. That makes it sort of “two hearted”.
The same is true in a negotiation. There is the effect of what we say and do (and we must be performers to a certain extent) as well as the fun of testing a strategy. You have more fun when you grow more confident. And where does the confidence come from? Well coming to my negotiation course is a good starting point.