A simple question to keep a conversation on track

There’s an unfortunate habit present in many of our conversations these days that I see derail opportunities to know and understand each other better.

Before I describe it, let me preface it by stating something that might be a bit obvious: We humans are emotional creatures.

When we feel uncomfortable, our fight, flight, or freeze response kicks into high gear. When this happens, it becomes easy to hijack our emotions, especially during conflict, by diverting our attention away from the actual argument and instead focusing more on how we feel.

This is largely how the popular conflict entrepreneurs of social media and the national new media operate these days — preying on our tendency to get our emotional hackles all riles up.

So, what is it about our emotions that derail conversations?

It happens when we respond not to what is being said, but to what we assume the other person meant by their words based on how they struck us emotionally.

When this happens, the conversation stops being about the issue at hand and instead becomes a defense of our emotions. And that is a messy, murky place to be, especially considering that rarely enough trust has been built to allow for honest, vulnerable dialogue about our emotions.

So what can you do about it?

You can ask a very simple question: What did you mean by that?

When you hear something that causes your pulse to quicken and your emotional hackles to rise, and all you want to do is let loose with a firestorm of rebuttals, take a moment to pause, gather yourself, and ask the person across from you, “What did you mean by that?”

Then, give the other person the space (don’t interrupt) to explain themselves more thoroughly.

We often argue for very similar things, but our definitions are misaligned. How I define empathy and fairness, for example, might differ from how you would define it.

And if we never take the time to align with each other, that’s when emotions and assumptions rule the day.

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