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Reconciling Differences: Keep Relationships Clean to Avoid Resentment, with Angie McArthur, CEO, Professional Thinking Partners and Co-author, Reconcilable Differences
Use the CIA Process
There’s a very simple tool that I use all the time, and I‘ve used this with family members, with coworkers, with people I don’t even know well, and it’s one of the most powerful tools I can offer anyone. It’s called the CIA Process. Check it out.
The first piece of this is to notice the data. So check out the data. The data is you looked at me funny, or what I would consider funny. That’s just the data, it’s the observable data. The second is, notice your imagination about that data. My imagination is spinning that story, and maybe it’s a negative story. She looked at me funny, so now I’m imagining all of these things that that could possibly mean. And the third is ask, the “A”, ask the other person. So, “You just kind of looked at me a little bit funny. I’m imagining it’s because I’m not doing a very good job. Is that true?” It’s a very simple way of keeping relationships clean.
I can offer a personal story of this that is one that literally changed the path of my career. I was flying back from Europe after delivering a program with a co-author–at the time she was my coworker–and she had forgotten to introduce me in the program in front of 3,000 people. And I was devastated by that, it completely shut me down. So on the plane ride back, she’s like, “Angie, what’s wrong? You seem really out of sorts. I’d like to check out this story with you. I’m imagining you’re upset with me.” And so I gave her the data. I said, “At the event you forgot to introduce me, so by the time it was my piece it felt awkward, and so therefore I imagined that I’m not important to you, I don’t add value to the work you do.” I created this whole narrative around all these reasons why she forgot to introduce me. I asked her, “Is that true?” She was embarrassed, and she said, “Absolutely not. I’d forgotten to bring out my reading glasses up onto the stage, so I was having trouble reading my notes. I was so focused on what I was supposed to say next, I literally forgot everything around me.” So each of us checked out our imagination, the story we’d created about the very simple data that she’d forgotten to introduce me. And in fact, it helped us bridge to one another instead of me carrying around resentment for years after that. And that’s probably one of the most important moments I remember of trusting that you can constantly check out your imaginings with another person to remain clean and clear with them, and it’s a highly effective tool.
Turn rut stories into river stories
One of the ways we can use this tool is to really be aware of when we’re telling ourselves stories, and what kind of stories we’re telling between rut stories, stories of impossibility, and stories of possibility, a river story. So for example, let’s say you’ve spent a long time sending out someone a very long email explaining a situation, and you get a one or two-word email back. One part of you may look at that and feel very discounted, very devalued, and you start telling yourself a rut story. You starting telling yourself, “That means I’m not important to them. That means they didn’t take time to read their email.” There’s many different things. The data is you received a very short email back, that’s it. So how you would turn that into a river story is you would actually have no idea what’s going on for the other person. Maybe they were super busy. Maybe they’re on a flight. There’s all sorts of reasons that perhaps caused them to send such a short email. But turning it into a river story means, “Oh, that means next time I’m going to pick up the phone and call them. Maybe email wasn’t the best way in which I should communicate to them.“ So turning anything like that, instead of spinning into stories of impossibility, or that you’re not a valued person, taking the opportunity to be aware of it and say, “Oh, next time I’ll try a different approach with them,” or, “When I see them I’m going to say, ‘You know, here’s what happened, I’m wondering if you could add more to your email next time’.” So we’re always looking for ways in which we can create a river story, and this isn’t about being pie-in-the-sky, glass half-full, being overly positive and not wanting to look at the negative. This is just being really aware of the stories you’re telling yourself and checking them out with other people, so again, you can build trust between you instead of having these breakdowns, which lead to resentment.