In their book “Influencer”, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny and David Maxfield wrote that if we determine only a few VITAL behaviours and change those, problems will topple like a house of cards. For example: relationship scholar Howard Markman demonstrated with over 90% accuracy, which married couples will stay married 5 years after the test. He simply looked at how the couple handled conflicts. The vital behaviours he looked at were patterns for destructive arguing: Escalation, Invalidation, Withdrawal, and Negative interpretation.
- Escalation occurs when you say or do something negative and your partner responds with something negative.
- Invalidation occurs when you subtly or directly put down thoughts, feelings, actions or worth of your partner. Invalidation includes an element of belittling or disregarding what is important to your partner, either out of insensitivity or outright contempt.
- Withdrawal can be as obvious as getting up and leaving the room, or as subtle as tuning out or shutting down during an argument. Avoidance reflects the same attitude or reluctance toward certain discussions, but with emphasis on the attempt to not let the conversation happen in the first place.
- Negative interpretation occurs when you interpret the behaviour of your spouse much more negatively than he/she intends the action.
If your discussions and practice sessions often end up in fights, it is very likely that you, probably unconsciously, have adopted one of these behaviours.
Here is how Katja (my wife, dance partner and business partner) and I, are intending to establish new behaviours to better practice together:
- If one of us notices something, he or she will try to first find out if it was an isolated occurrence or a real pattern and only address it when it is a persistent pattern.
Critiquing a single occurrence is unjust to your partner, who might have done it right 99 times while you pick out the one time he or she missed something. - We will film our training sessions so that whenever one of us wants to point out good or bad habits, we can point it out on the tape instead of trying to re-create the situation.
When attempting to prove a point, it is very tempting to exaggerate a little bit to make the lead or movement you demonstrate more visible. The problem is, that even a small exaggeration can easily be interpreted as an insult, as your partner surely doesn’t want to associate him- or herself with the exaggeration. This is also true when teaching to students… avoid exaggerations to prove your point. Instead film and point it out, or offer alternatives that could be picked up as new habits. - We will follow the rule of improvisation: Always say “YES”, when your partner suggests to try something. Experience it couple of times, then rule it in/out.
This links in to the “no discussion” policy I mentioned in my last article. Trying things out instead of discussing them can make your training time much more effective. - As suggested in the previous article: Be more purposeful when practicing, so that both partners are working towards the same goal.
We decided that we will pick a topic for our training sessions before we start. The topic can be either something she wants to train or I want to train or something we both need to work on. If I want to work on something, she will try her best to make it happen and the same for things she wants me to lead in a certain way.
Even when talking about our vital behaviours it was very difficult for Katja and me not to fall into the escalation, invalidation, withdrawal or negative interpretation. I believe that one reason is that no one ever teaches you how to work together with someone else on a single topic. During most of our life and career steps, we perhaps learn how to teach, or to be a student. In university, we even learn how to work in teams. But even that is mostly about breaking the project down into small pieces, then delegating each piece to a team member. It’s rare that people actually get trained to work together with two or more people at the same time on the same task.
Practicing dancing can be an excellent way to actually work on how to discuss and work together with another person.
Here are the methods experts propose:
- Find the few vital behaviours that you want to change
- Use positive deviance: find out how others solved similar problems, or look at occasions where you did not have those problems. What was different?
- Experiment: do more of what works, and change what did not work. It’s trial and error!
What’s interesting with vital behaviours, is that – since they are vital – more people than just me and you do them. That means, if you find something that works for you, please share it with us! Your contribution can help save more relationships!
Cheers,
Ali
