Disputations: a powerful relationship saving skill

Rather than drowning in your negative unproductive thoughts, learn how to deploy the three types of disputations. This skill will save relationships. Learn how to apply it using the steps outlined below. Consider participating in my system to become familiar with how this skill builds resilience in your life and career.

This week’s podcast episode defines disputation and walks you through the steps to apply a disputation. Additionally, I share a story of how a friend, not knowing the technique, used it beautifully to address a puzzling experience with a collaborator. In the Instagram video (December 19), I share how I’ve had to use disputations to manage a recent conflict. Expanding on the Instagram story, I offer more detail in this week’s newsletter.

Disputations Defined and Described

Disputations are essentially evidence-based disputes or debates. In the context of your career, this skill helps you be more resilient. A well considered disputation focuses you on the source of the disturbance or on how to get underneath an assumption.

You’re able to gather a lot of information, assimilate it, and build certain assumptions that help you navigate the day efficiently. Assumptions keep the world moving. Think about all the assumptions you act on simply when navigating around your own city every single day. Whether you’re assuming people will follow the simple traffic laws, or abide by the norms of how to move through a crowd, you make assumptions all the time to keep your life together, ordered and smooth.

You land on many assumptions, based on life experiences, that cause pain and disharmony in relationships. Because assumptions are such valuable time savers, you neglect to see when they create more problems. It’s in these moments that a disputation is useful.

What Precedes a Disputation?

A good disputation reduces your level of anxiety and a great disputation eliminates the mental energy or rumination in which you’re investing. Below are the three elements to examine before applying a disputation. It’s as easy as the ABC’s.

1. A – Activating event or you could refer to this as the adversity. This is simply the experience that started the spiral or thoughts or emotions.
2. B – The Beliefs you have about the experience. It’s important to remember that how you think about an experience determines the amount of emotional space it takes up in your mind. This is when you consider your thoughts. Simply ask your self a few questions. What am I thinking about this situation? What conclusions am I forming? While describing it in neutral terms in “A”, here you express your judgments.
3. C – The Consequences that spiral from your thinking. In this step you recognize and acknowledge the feelings you have about the experience. This is the step where most people get stuck.

When you’re able to break down a potentially energy sucking experience and move to develop a reasonable disputation using these steps, you’ll become a more productive and constructive team member or leader.

The Three Choices for Disputations

Once you’ve learned to recognize when a disputation will help you get unstuck, you have another choice to make. Three related and distinct styles of disputation are outlined below.

1. Evidence-based – Your brain is trained, as suggested above, to automate your thinking as a means to reduce the required effort. As a result, you benefit from questioning automatic thoughts by marshaling your ability to consider alternative ways of seeing the same situation. The better the evidence supporting another perspective, the more likely you are to move past a painful or debilitating experience productively. Even if you simply use this technique to buy time, it will ensure you waste less emotional capital.
2. Re-attribution – The human brain is a meaning-making machine so use it to find another way to explain the situation. Why ruminate endlessly, when your brain is equipped with the ability to explain it away.
3. Dismiss – Learning how to simply set problematic experiences aside so you can focus on a task at hand, is a very mature and helpful skill to develop. It may require a bit of compartmentalizing. Provided you eventually deal with the underlying issue, this is a useful initial response in such situations. The ability to do this may simply be ‘mind over matter’. My father would regularly remind me that anxiety was all in my head. I didn’t appreciate hearing this. In fact, I thought he was diminishing my feelings, never the less, he was right.

Disputations at Work

The ability to be skilled at calling up a great disputation in the workplace is a huge asset. Every day so much time and energy is wasted on the human anxiety created by feeling slighted or disrespected. Often it’s an erroneous conclusion that slows down teams and organizations. I’m all for collaboration and consultations that may periodically slow down decisions, and yet, there’s never a time when emotional upheaval is a constructive reason for slowing down progress.

When every leader, collaborator or individual contributor in a workplace learns this useful skill, efficiency and productivity will expand exponentially.

The Steps – An Example

1. A – Co-worker, we’ll call Jane, interrupts a colleague (Alan) to express a different perspective on a challenge the team is trying to trouble-shoot.
2. B –  Alan sits back in his chair and thinks to himself: that was rude. She just disrespected me by not listening completely to my idea. My perspective is not being considered seriously. How can I add value when my thoughts aren’t being heard? She’s always undermining me.
3. C – Alan is angry. Refusing to engage further with the team, he uses the silent treatment to convey his displeasure. Sending glaring looks at Jane for the remainder of the meeting, his anger expands. As the meeting is wrapping up, Jane reaches over to see if he concurs with how the team decides to proceed. Alan snaps at her in a sarcastic and shocking manner, leaving everyone stunned.

Heading back to his office, Alan recalls working with his coach on disputations. He takes a moment to think through what just happened in the meeting. Not wanting to ruminate about the situation OR live with the potential consequences of what he just did in snapping at Jane, he chooses to take 10 minutes to work through the situation and his options.

The Disputations – An Example

1. Dispute with evidence – Alan considers his experience working with Jane. She’s a highly driven leader who’s always open to new perspectives. Jane has a tendency to move quickly through ideas and brings creative energy and thoughts to the table. She is always kind and responsive. At the same time, he recalls how, when first working with her, she was sometimes impatient and dismissive. After exploring this evidence, he decides to reflect on his own motivation going into the meeting. He admits to himself that he was annoyed at being asked to contribute to the meeting in the first place.
2. Re-attribution – As Alan considers his past experience with Jane he’s also reminded that solving the problem they were exploring is deeply impacting the outcomes in her department. In reflecting on how Jane must be struggling, he realizes how, what he may have interpreted as rudeness, may have been her own anxiety about finding a good outcome. It was likely not a rebuke of him at all. In fact, as he recalls how she reached out to him at the end to seek his support, he concludes she was genuinely seeking reassurance.
3. Dismissal – As Alan considers this third option he realizes he may have been better served by recognizing the activating event at the moment it happened. This would have allowed him to dismiss the reaction and choose to process it after the meeting. Now, realizing it will be imprudent to carry his annoyance into his next meeting, he’s grateful he took these few minutes. He also made a note in his calendar to stop by to see Jane at lunch to offer his support and apologize for his reaction in the meeting.

Having set aside the destructive emotions by walking through the review outlined above, Alan was not only able to regroup effectively for his next meeting, he found his creative juices were flowing again. Catching up with Jane at lunch, he offered a unique perspective that supported her efforts. Having completed the quick review of the situation and seeing it more clearly, he was able to extend a meaningful but adroit apology. Others, who had witnessed and cringed at the earlier exchange, observed the exchange from a far and were reassured that the conflict was handled effectively.

Disputations: Preserving Relationship

Did you see how Alan preserved his relationship with Jane as a result of simply breaking down his reaction to her using disputations. It also ensured he didn’t carry one problematic encounter into the rest of his day. You may use this same skill over the holidays, and beyond, to help manage your personal relationships.

Families Make Many Assumptions

1. A – The activating event happened when one sister was visiting from Vancouver. Curious about a point this sister made, I asked her to elaborate. Her answer didn’t satisfy my curiosity so I asked another way. She was impatient with me and I felt my mother and sisters’ eyes roll in response. Initially puzzled, I dropped my line of inquiry.
2. B- I went into my head to manage my annoyance. Finding no reason that my desire to better understand was rebuked, I had to think more broadly. Given my long experience with my sisters and my mother, I thought, “here we go again, my desire to understand something isn’t appreciated.” They always assume I’m trying to find a hole in their point rather than simply wanting to understand.
3. C – The consequence was forming as I shut down; I felt myself disengage. The old pattern was taking shape again. Very soon, everyone would feel my negative energy and it would reduce the initial joy of seeing each other. I had to quickly figure out what to do.

Reviewing My Disputations

1. Evidence – This is a pattern that frequently happened in the family. What was the evidence that could help me understand. I quickly realized they were not seeing my curiosity for what it really was. Based on our history, my sisters and mom were seeing my questions as a challenge. I knew this was not accurate.
2. Re-attribution – This is an opportunity to clarify a misunderstanding that has plagued my family relationships for a long time.
3. Dismissing – I’ve done this before, successfully using this approach to limit the residual effect on me personally. However, it hasn’t supported my relationships In this case I chose a different path.

Within minutes I realized what I needed to do. I got out of my head and applied the re-attribution. While the conversation had shifted while I was processing, I waited for a moment and asked to return to the earlier topic. I saw the negative reaction to my request but I persisted saying something like, “it seems to me you were all hearing my questions as a challenge to your point when, in fact, I really am curious to know how you landed on that conclusion because of how it fits with this other issue I’m dealing with in my life.” When they realized my curiosity was genuine, it shifted the reaction.

Assumptions are built based on life experience. Often they are helpful and very useful. There are times they’re NOT. Being angry about the assumptions people make may be normal. However, when you realize what’s happening as a result of erroneous assumptions and correct it quickly, it’s amazing how it will improve relationships.

Disputations and Your Inner Critic

Disputations help you talk back to your inner critic

The most difficult critic you have is inside of you. Your inner critic is with you always, making it impossible to avoid. Learning how to challenge this voice in your head is essential if you are to navigate self-doubt and remain resilient.

When your inner critic questions your abilities or your judgment, you must learn to apply a solid disputation. Many people think their inner critic is a source of protection. I suppose their conclusion is that it’s better to be hard on yourself than experience the judgment of others! Wrong. Your inner critic holds you small and keeps you from being who you are capable of being. It does this far more than any external critic will.

When your inner critic tells you that you’re not enough or you don’t deserve that promotion, tell it exactly why you are deserving. Use evidence and be clear about it. Make a case for yourself. As I said earlier, your brain is a meaning-making machine so use it to talk back to your inner critic. It’s this ability to make meaning that your inner critic is using against you; stop it! There’s an exercise I use with clients to help you speak back to your inner critic. I’m building it into an interactive exercise; I’ll post it in the new year for anyone who wants to download it.

How We Can Walk together…