Be clear and trust that the other person can handle it

📖📖 My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose

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I remember hearing about how a senior doctor advised a new doctor – maybe even a medical student – on delivering the worst of news to a loved one.

(I actually can’t remember if this was fact or fiction – it could have been a doctor friend of mine telling me, or it could have been on Gray’s Anatomy, or anywhere in between… if you know, let me know!)

The guidance was essentially this: make it crystal clear, no room for doubt.

‘She is dead.’

Anything that is open to interpretation may feel better now, but will be worse in the long term.

There may be genuine misunderstanding.

Or the person’s deeper self may just be looking for any way to preserve the current reality where she’s alive, before slipping into the new paradigm where she’s dead.

‘She’s passed on where, to the ICU?’

‘If she’s no longer with you, who is she with? Did someone pick her up?’

I was reminded of this when thinking of a corporate client I work with, who I think isn’t going to be working with me again next year.

I’m 99% sure that – metaphorically – I’m dead.

But my contact at the client didn’t say the words.

I read the message several times, but I wasn’t missing anything. It’s just unclear.

Implied but unspecified.

Hinted at but not laid out in undeniable black and white.

That didn’t stop me feeling things, of course, and it added a layer of messiness.

And in the end what I noticed was: I’d rather have had it straight.

‘We aren’t going to be working with you again next year. And here’s why.’

The unclearness, the room for interpretation, left me floundering in uncertainty.

This happens everywhere.

It reminds me of what I learned about Impeccable Commitments from The Meaning Revolution (Kofman) and The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Dethmer, Chapman and Klemp).

The amount of energy wasted to unclear agreements and commitments is enormous.

So many times when no one takes action because it was easier for everyone to assume someone else would pick it up.

So many misunderstandings caused because things were skirted around rather than said clearly and directly.

All the energy of trying to guess and interpret what’s going on.

Underneath these tactics are parts of us trying to protect the people involved.

Like the newly qualified doctor trying to protect their patient from the harshness of ‘she’s dead’.

Like my client who doesn’t want to say the seemingly harsh words: ‘We aren’t going to work with you next year.’

These things are nice to do for others, but they are not necessarily kind.

Let’s be clear, and trust that the other person can handle it.  

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PS My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose

This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.