How To Recover When you Feel Misunderstood
How to Recover when You Feel Misunderstood
Coaching Question: When was the last time you felt misunderstood? What was real and what was imagined?
One of my favorite take-aways from my master’s program in Adult Education/Human Resources Development was The Ladder of Inference, created by Harvard Professor Chris Argyris. It is a well laid out visual that shows what happens when you get hijacked into negative emotions that create misunderstandings.
We have explored in previous blogs, two questions to ask yourself when you are spun: Is this real or is this imagined? Is this mine or is this someone else’s. Jesus was a big fan of keeping watch on the mind as was the Apostle Paul: “Do not conform to this world BUT be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:1-2. When we don’t watch the stories, we are telling ourselves, we quickly spill into the back part of the brain which produces only 3 reactive choices: fight, flight or freeze. Cool thing is YOU DO HAVE A CHOICE as to how you want to respond to circumstances outside of you.
This ladder contains seven steps from what we see to what we do about it.
An inference is a conclusion reached based on evidence and reasoning. Too often when our emotions get caught between the observable data and our conclusions about that data, several unwelcome guests take up free rent between our two ears: filters, assumptions, conclusions and false beliefs.
These unwelcome tenants often create the reactive response of mindreading, fortune telling, catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization and/or selective attention. Take a moment and look at the above reactive responses: where do you go when you feel misunderstood? What unwelcome tenant frequents your mind? Do you have a go-to? Clarity of focus leads to accuracy of response.
Neuroscience refers to these reactive responses as bottom up thinking and produce only three choice points of response to a situation: fight, flight or freeze.
Can you imagine waking up tomorrow morning and miraculously during the night you were given the ability to separate observable data from the following steps that Professor Chris Argyris put into a ladder format?
Observable data is the first step on the Ladder of Inference, followed by:
- Filters: your knowledge, experience and values that influence how you listen think and communicate (Source: Sherpa Executive Coaching).
- Assign Meaning: based on the content you filtered out; you are left with the meaning you make from what is left.
- Assumptions: thoughts you come up with not based on the facts. You create the story.
- Conclusions: blurring the lines between fact and story based on your filters and assumptions. Some behaviors that often accompany conclusions may be: stone walling, blaming, complaining, justifying, defensiveness, ugly talk.
- Beliefs: based upon how you run up your ladder via your filters, assumptions and the conclusions you make based on that intel you create beliefs. A belief about yourself, a situation, person or outcome. The beliefs you hold can directly impact your filters (selected data).
- Actions: Last but not least, you take action based the other five steps. This is the top of your ladder. The actions you take can directly impact the observable data. In neurolinguistic programming (NLP) we refer to three possibilities that can occur at this point: distorting, deleting or generalizing the observable data to back up your view of reality.
One of the top qualities commonly associated with highly effective leaders (anytime you can influence another human being you are leading) is impulse control. The ability to pause, breathe and maintain executive thinking during undesirable situations before acting.
It’s the ability to stay at the bottom of the ladder without getting spun up to the top. It’s being centered and objective to see what’s really going on around you, listening to understand rather than to be understood.
Being able to separate fact from rumor, opinion or gossip, commonly referred to as the FROG effect.
What kind of leader are you when it comes to impulse control? Which step on the Ladder of Inference do you relate to the most? The least? What action step do you want to commit to today based on what you have learned? Perhaps it will be to observe what triggers in your life result in climbing the Ladder of Inference.
Our goal today is to up your game when it comes to your ability to reach conclusions based on evidence and reasoning rather than filters, assumptions and the conclusions made from those steps which end up resulting in action that fuels misunderstandings.
TAKE ACTION:
InSherpa Executive Coachingwe use a tool called Weakness Mountain that fits nicely with what you discover about yourself when it comes to the Ladder of Inference.
There are four phases to Weakness Mountain:
- Acknowledge: an aspect of your filters is an opinion which can quickly turn into a judgement and spill over into a negative behavior. Think about a behavior of yours that has a negative impact on your professional relationships.
- Observe: when this behavior is triggered
- Change: Offer a change behavior that will help you stay in observable data. Rather than mind-reading ask the person for clarity.
- Evaluate: Is the change behavior working for you? If not re-evaluate and choose another behavior. For example, you might list all of the observable data around a situation at hand. This will offer you a fuller model of reality when you feel misunderstood.
An excellentTedEd talkby Trevor Maber will give you the opportunity to see the Ladder of Inference in action.
Once you observe what happens in your mind, you can then become the boss of your ladder moving forward. You will begin to intentionally stay in the observable data knowing that all kinds of drama will occur when you start to climb the ladder.
This tool is a game changer when it comes to your ability to create clear conversations based upon different assumptions. Now moving forward, it will help you avoid misunderstandings.
Below is a summary of the five steps to short circuit your ladder referenced by Trevor in his TedEd talk:
- Breathe
- Ask yourself: What beliefs are at play?
- What data and observations did you filter out because of your beliefs and why?
- Are your assumptions supported by facts?
- Would a different set of assumptions create different feelings? Result in new and better conclusions and actions.
“Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come! but woe to that man by whom the offense comes.” Matthew 18:17
“Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:5
Support Resources to Help Give You Victory over Stress in Life:
- Now available: Edge God In Podcast:How to Handle Hard
- 99 Things You Want to Know Before Stressing Out!(book and audio available)
Take a 6 Week Journey and become the boss of your thoughts:Emotional Intelligence in Christ 6 Week Study Guide
