Hot Buttons at Target

After I got back from New York this afternoon, my roommate and I decided run some household errands. On the drive over to Target, she asked me about work and I tried to explain the coaching and skills training component of the Fellowship. I found that the best way to explain to her the kind of skills I was learning was to actually run one of the training exercises with her. I explained the inquiry/acknowledgement/advocacy division that is described in Difficult Conversations. The general premise is that in conversations and negotiations, most people spend the majority of the time simply advocating their thoughts and positions, without inquiring into or acknowledging the other party’s perspective. This is clearly an inefficient technique but it is our natural tendency. In order to counter it, we need to practice our inquiry skills (this sounds a lot easier that it actually is) and so the Hot Buttons exercise was born. During this exercise, one party advocates as usual and the other party can only use inquiry (by asking questions) or acknowledgement (by repeating or reframing the other person’s words to ensure that they are correctly understood). This exercise is most effective and provocative when the inquiring party feels very strongly about the subject of the conversation. For example, the inquiring party is firmly pro-choice so the advocating party must play the role of someone who is firmly pro-life. In my abridged coaching session with my roommate, we took the example of the recent controversy over Paris Hilton’s jail sentence. My roommate feels strongly that Paris Hilton should go to jail, so I adopted the stance that she should not go to jail. The debate was light-hearted and the conversation had little substance, but it was a great opportunity for me to try to explain these concepts and practice my coaching skills.