Catalytic Conversations
Class # 1: How to Listen and Speak to Connect and Direct
A Catalytic Conversation is one that changes people, for the better.
- helps the speaker(s) FEEL seen and heard, understood and appreciated as they are
- encourages the speaker towards self-awareness, self-reflection, self-responsibility and empowerment
- stimulates neural integration in the brain
What a Catalytic Conversation contains:
- silence ….. giving the speaker time to think,
- reflection …to let the speaker know they are being heard
- question asking to drive understanding of the speaker’s experience, feelings and thoughts …in that order
What it does not contain:
- unsolicited advice (you should or shouldn’t ….),
- hijacking and taking over to talk about yourself (I know how you feel …let me tell you about me),
- psychoanalyzing (here’s why I you think you feel the way you do),
- fixing the other person’s problem for them
Four Components of a Catalytic Conversation
1 – Reflect
2 – Empathize
3 – Validate
4 – Redirect
The Brain
The three-part brain
- I – Brain Stem / Reptilian Center – Fight, Flight, Fall Asleep – concerned with survival.
- II – Limbic Brain: Amygdala, Hippocampus, hypothalamus – primarily involved with emotion and memory
- III – Cortex – mapping reality, thinking, creative problem solving
- Mirror Neurons – are found throughout the cortex. They allow us to learn through imitation, enabling us to reflect body language, facial expressions and emotions. They make us wince when we see someone else wince. They make us cry in sad movies. They are what make yawns contagious. They allow us to feel what others are feeling.
The Pre-frontal Cortex: 9 functions:
- Body regulation / impulse control
- Emotional balance
- Attunement to others & communication
- Insight / knowing who you were and are in the past, present and future
- Fear modulation
- Flexibility – pause before acting
- Empathy
- Morality
- Intuition
Amygdula Hijack – Aka: Flipping the Lid
Vital Ingredient: an Integrated and Skillful Listener
The responsibilities of the listener:
- Be authentic
- Self-regulate
- Stay curious
EXERCISE – Listen to Listen
Three things you can do to self-regulate:
1. Use your breath
2. Use your body
3. Use your words
Class #2: Reflection
Here is the link to Class #2’s recording. Audio onlyT
Feedback on homework, communication experiences – positive or negative, questions
What makes staying calm and present difficult?
- Boredom, judgment, defensiveness, other priorities ………………………
How Values Systems affect our listening
Values: definition The THINGS and EXPERIENCES that you VALUE enough to dedicate yourself to achieving or attaining. You actions show your Values
How to Identify them: STEM
Space ……………………………………………………………………………………….
Time …………………………………………………………………………………………….
Energy……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Money………………………………………………………………………………………….
Catalytic Conversations – 4 Steps
Step 1. Reflect:
Intention 1: To give the speaker a chance to tell you what’s going on for them, to let them know that you’re listening and to make sure that you are accurately hearing their words. To show the speaker that you are trying to perceive the world as they see it and that you are doing your best to understand their messages.
Intention 2: to make sure that the speaker has actually told you what’s bothering them. It also causes them to self-reflect and think (frontal cortex) about what they’re experiencing. To allow the speaker to ‘hear’ their own thoughts and to focus on what they say and feel.
Intention 3: To encourage the speaker to continue talking.
How to:
The first thing do is to repeat what you’ve heard, exactly as you’ve heard it. As much as possible use their words verbatim. This has a two-fold effect: it calms your brain and it will start to calm theirs. Your key practice: repeat their words VERBATIM
Example: Speaker: “Yesterday I heard that my company is going to be laying people off!
Listener, repeating it back: “so, what I hear you say is that you heard yesterday that your company is going to be laying people off!
Next, to make sure that you got it right, ASK:
- Did I get that?
- Is that correct?
- Did I hear that right?
If the speaker doesn’t feel that you heard him/her accurately they should use this opportunity to restate what they said. Reflect their words to them again and ask if you got it. If the speaker says yes, you got it, lean in and encourage them to say more.
ASK: Tell me more about that.
What else do you want to say about that?
Help me really understand your experience … tell me more ….
Mistakes we often make:
- We paraphrase or interpret using our own words
- We jump too quickly into wanting to address what we think we’ve heard without making sure it’s the real issue.
- We say we understand what they’re talking about before we’ve actually checked
Class #3: Empathy
My apologies for forgetting to turn on the recording.
Empathy is all about connecting with the feelings or emotions that the speaker is expressing
E-Motion = Energy in Motion
Emotions are messengers. They are the bridge between our outer and inner worlds. They give us information about our outside circumstances and our internal interpretation of them, and then they generate energy to make us move in the direction of our highest values. Our emotions exist to keep us moving. Why? Movement = life.
When we learn to decipher their messages we can use them to move ourselves in the direction of wisdom, love and fulfillment.
Values Systems: our highest Values are driven by our deepest Voids plus the Pain we associate with the void. When someone is emoting they are, at some level, expressing a void. Your listening, reflecting, empathizing presence can help them hear the void that is calling to be filled. You can help them identify something that is high value to them. (we don’t cry or get upset over things that are low value to us). Stay curious.
Empathy
“Empathy fuels connection; Sympathy drives separation ….Empathy is feeling with someone” Brenè Brown
4 characteristics of Empathy:
- Perspective taking – ability to take the perspective of another person, or recognize their perspective as their truth
- Staying out of judgement
- Recognizing emotion
- Being able to communicate that
“Rarely does a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.” Brenè Brown
Exercise:
Think of a time that was emotionally challenging ….Please be kind to your listener ….this is a practice exercise – probably not the place to lay bare your deepest darkest secret or wound ……
Each person gets 10 minutes to talk about this. The listen’s role is to:
- Hold space (tell me more; or what else do you think or feel about that?)
- Reflect – so you .. (repeat/reflect what you heard)…. Did I get that?
- Empathize – how did that make you feel?
Or: I can hear that was …(insert emotion …eg difficult, frustrating, upsetting, hard) for you
Or: I hear your …..(insert emotion ….eg anger, sadness, frustration, disappointment etc)
TIP: use their emotive words when reflecting and empathizing.
Mistakes we often make:
We assume we know what they’re feeling and then respond to that without checking. This makes the speaker feel misunderstood and even anxious. Our words or description are not congruent with the speaker’s experience. Incongruence triggers confusion and anxiety in the brain. It registers as a threat and activates the amygdala.
Class # 4: Validation
Reflecting can in some ways be about clarifying ‘just the facts, ma’am’
Empathizing is tapping in to the emotion…acknowledging it and naming it
Validating is about showing that it makes sense to you that the speaker feels whatever they feel.
It’s not enough to just empathize without validating ….eg … “so you crashed your car and you’re really upset … uh huh”
We have to go a step further: “of course you’re upset ….it’s a big and scary thing to be in a car accident’ or “I’d be upset to!” or “it’s understandable that you’re upset. It sucks to have crashed your car.”
Why it’s so important
Psychologist John Gottman, has spent the past 4 decades studying couple to find out what makes relationships work.
He noticed that in every conversation people make ‘bids’ for connection.
For example, a husband would look out the window and say, “Wow, check out that car!” He wasn’t just commenting on the car, though; he was looking for his wife to respond with shared interest or appreciation.
The wife could then choose to respond positively (“Wow, that is nice!”), negatively (“Ugh, that’s hideous”), or passively (“Mmm, that’s nice, dear”). Gottman refers to positive and engaging responses as “turning toward” the bidder, and negative and passive responses as “turning away.” As it turned out, the way couples responded to these bids had a profound effect on their marital well-being.
Gottman found that couples who had divorced during the six-year follow-up period had “turn-toward bids” just 33 percent of the time—meaning only three in ten of their requests for connection were met with interest and compassion.
In contrast, couples who remained together after the six-year period had “turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nearly nine times out of ten, the healthy couples were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.
How to do it
Effective validation has two main components:
- It identifies a specific emotion
- It offers justification for feeling that emotion
Tip: use their emotional words
hold off on advice or cheering up
Other example of validating statements
- “Wow, that would be confusing.”
- “He really said that? I’d be angry too!”
- “Ah, that is so sad.”
- “You have every right to be proud; that was a major accomplishment!”
- “I’m so happy for you! You’ve worked incredibly hard on this. It must feel amazing.”
Notice again how each of these responses refers to a specific emotion and shows some justification for or acceptance of it. Including both elements of validation shows the other person that you not only hear them, you understand them.
What it’s not
“You’ll be fine.”
“It could be worse!”
“At least it’s not [fill in the blank].”
“Just put a smile on your face and tough it out.”
“Don’t worry; things will work out.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
What do you do if you don’t understand or agree with the other person’s feelings.
Validating does not mean agreeing with their story or perspective.
It’s about saying: if I were on your shoes/ knowing only what you know/ looking through your eyes ….it make sense to me that you would feel that way.
It’s about saying you have a right to have feelings ….
What if you still can’t really validate them?
ASK more questions to help you see the situation from their side, get more details about what they think happened, get more information to help you make sense of why they are feeling what they’re feeling.
Validation gives the other person permission to feel what they’re feeling. It shows that you’re not judging them for reacting the way they are. You’re saying—in complete honesty—that it does make sense to react the way they have, given their perspective and experience.
How long should you validate them? Do you ever get to give your advice?
It’s not about the Nail – Video
Class # 5: Redirect
In this step you are asking questions that can redirect the speaker from remembering the past to creating the future.
Intention 1: To encourage the speaker to take responsibility for what they want to experience in the future.
Intention 2: To empower them by giving them a chance to come up with their own action steps and experience themselves as capable, thinking, creative human beings.
Think of the speaker as a person on a raft, trying to get to the island. Your job as the listener is to facilitate their quest, not row them all the way there.
ASK:
- What do you need right now?
- What would be helpful to you?
- What’s one thing you can do for yourself to move forward?
- What have you done in the past that has helped you?
- How do you want to feel instead? ………
- What can you do to help yourself feel that way?
- What would you have to believe to feel that way?
Mistakes we often make
We try to fix the problem for them. We offer solutions before they’ve had a chance to come up with their own. In this way we deny them the chance to become self-responsible and accountable, and to feel empowered. Brainstorming is fine. Taking over is not wise.
Class # 6: Recap
4 components of Catalytic Listening:
- Reflect
- Empathize
- Validate
- Redirect
The intention of this form of listening is to:
- help the other person feel seen and heard, understood and appreciated
- feel FELT
- feel empowered to find their own solutions to their challenges
The sequence of our listening feedback follows the path which information takes through the brain
- information comes in through the body and travels first to the brain-stem. This primitive part of the brain is only concerned with safety – should I fight, flee, freeze or feint?
- Info then travels to the limbic part of the brain (primarily the amygdala and hypothalamus, which are involved in emotion and memory)
- Next it travels to the cortex – the thinking, problem solving, language using part of the brain.
If we do not acknowledge – empathize with and validate – the speaker’s emotions and jump too quickly to problem solving or redirecting, the speaker may shut down, feeling ‘not felt’ by you.
The redirect is about asking questions that help the speaker find their own solutions to their challenge.
These steps can be used in all conversations (personal and business) but not all conversations require them (for example fact gathering convos do not need empathizing and validating).
Not all conversations require redirecting.
Through the course we have also talked about:
- Values Systems
- Three types of relationships
- Two types of conflict
- Self-regulation – the importance of and how to do it
- Guilt and Shame
Up next: Boundaries
Boundaries are simply statements that delineate what works for you and what doesn’t.
Think of them like fences with gates: they keep at bay the things that threaten you and they allow in what supports you.
They are essential to every relationship and every conversation.
They are not always easy to express or defend.
The things that get in the way:
- Fear of the other person’s reaction
- Guilt about saying ‘no’ and disappointing, upsetting, burdening etc the other person
- Not knowing how to set a boundary / what words to use
- Not knowing when to set a boundary
- Not knowing why to set a boundary
- Expectations that your boundary will be ignored, so what’s the point of trying
- Having no plan regarding consequences to people who disregard your boundaries
Drawbacks of not setting boundaries:
- To your brain
- To your relationships
- To your sense of self