Can I Drive This Truck Over That Bridge? Pt 3 of 3 - Relational Capital & Energy

In the last two posts on this topic (Part 1 and Part 2), I talked about deciding when to deal with conflict by asking the question: Can I drive this truck over that bridge? The truck is the conversation--and the more difficult the issue the heavier the load. This post deals with the last 2 of 4 sub-questions that help me decide when to press the gas pedal and launch into a confrontation.

MAKE IT UP THE BRIDGE

3. Do I have the relational capital to issue this challenge?

Compare the "weight" of the challenge and the "strength" of the relationship. The stronger your relationships, the heavier the load you can carry on your truck.

 

One way that helps me is to think about my relationship like a bank account. The more I do to encourage, help, and serve the other person, the more I have in the account. But when I criticize, correct, or hurt the other person, I make a withdrawal. Make sure that you have enough in your account to cover the cost of the conversation. If you attempt too much, your check can bounce, so to speak, and not only do they not change and grow, but they usually charge your relationship an extra fee for reaching too far.

Or, to return to our main metaphor, not only does the truck not get there, it breaks the bridge and crashes into the water. You're worse off than when you started.

 

MAKE IT DOWN THE BRIDGE

4. Does my client have the energy to implement this change?

Change requires energy. Have you ever started working on a new habit, only to quit 3-4 weeks later? It's likely that you didn't change your mind--you still wanted to make the change. But you ran out of the energy to keep working on it.

For years, I tried to implement morning exercise habits and never made it past 2-3 weeks. I wanted to do it, but among my mistakes, I didn't pay attention to the energy required.

This is one of the reasons that I'd recommend tackling one issue at a time. It is possible to convince someone who trusts you to attempt to change far more than they have the energy to actually pull off. You'll get the truck up the bridge, but crash with success almost in your grasp.

  

CONCLUSION

In the end, like a real truck driver, you don't get paid for driving almost the whole way and losing your cargo in the river. You drive the truck so you can get to your destination, not just to see what happens. How often in your confrontations have you driven a truck into the river? Which of the four supporting questions is the one you most often forget?

What's the one change you can make to increase your chances of truly helping others grow when you offer challenging feedback?

Can I Drive This Truck Over That Bridge? Pt 2 - Heavy Loads & Permission

Confrontations don't have to be so risky. In my last post, I challenged you to think about when you confront, not just whether you're right. And I revealed the question that has made a huge difference to the confrontation conversations in my life:

Can I drive this truck over that bridge?

In the last post, I offered some principles that change how you think about hard conversations. In this post, I'm going to dive deeper into the diagram and help make it very clear how to when it's the right time to confront.

Specifically, there are four questions I ask. Their answers add up to the final answer to the big question above:

LOAD THE TRUCK

1. How challenging to the other person is the issue I'm bringing up?

 

The more emotionally difficult the issue is, the "heavier" the load in your truck and the stronger your bridge (relationship) needs to be.

 

In general, start with the easiest issues and as you experience success your relationships and their maturity grows. You can then work your way up to the heaviest issues.

 

Also, I strongly recommend taking one load at a time (dealing with only one issue). We all have multiple areas of our lives that need improvement and change. But the best people developers I know accept us before we fix all our issues AND therefore have the freedom to challenge us to work on only one or two substantial changes at a time.

 

CHECK WITH THE BRIDGE GUARD

2. Do you have permission to proceed?

Just because you see an issue doesn't mean you are allowed to address it. And just because you have permission in one area of life, doesn't mean you have it in another. Correction without permission feels like an attack. Ask permission and respect their answer. (Note roles like being a boss or a parent have built in permissions--even obligations--to offer challenges. The other 3 questions need to be addressed, but this one should be clear for them.)

 

Note: Sometimes you have to proceed anyway. There is a place for major life interventions, when someone is about to ruin their life long-term. It's like trying to jump the truck over the bridge. Oh, and it's about as easy to do successfully as it would be to really jump a huge 18-wheeler over a bridge. Do it only when you really believe there is no other choice and the rest of their life hangs in the balance.

In my next (and final post on this diagram/metaphor), I'll cover the last two sub-questions.

 

Can I Drive This Truck Over That Bridge? Confrontations- Part 1

Confrontation conversations are hard. They rarely go well and most people don't like them. But what if you could dramatically increase your success rate?

Most advice on this focuses on what to say. This is important, but not the whole picture. I used to believe that the truth was sufficient all by itself. If I shared truth in love, then the confrontation should be successful. But it didn't always work. In fact, it often didn't work. Something beyond the content of my correction made a big difference. (Of course, that's assuming I was always right--which would be bad assumption.)

This post is about a part of the confrontation that most people don't think enough about. Not only do you need to think about what to say, you need to be mindful about when you say it. Even the most carefully crafted conversation can go wrong if you do it at the wrong time.

 

I use this question to decide when to confront: Can I drive this truck over that bridge? 

There are some special relationships that I think have special rules, such as marriages or your boss--and yes, those are supposed to be two different relationship categories. :) But for the vast majority of relationships, I think about a truck on a bridge.

First, take a good look at this diagram--which not only has a truck and a bridge, but a cute bird. (It's a picture with something for everyone.)

 

BASIC DEFINITIONS

• The truck: the issue/problem you need to talk to the other person about
• The bridge: the strength of your relationship with the other person
• Driving the truck successfully across the bridge: the other person receives your challenge and growth happens (enter the cute birds singing)
• Driving onto the bridge, the bridge breaking, and the truck crashing into the river: the other person rejects your correction--no positive change and a good bit of frustration on both sides

Big Idea 1: Having a hard conversation is about helping the other person grow.

It's not about venting your emotions so you feel better. Success--getting to the other side of the bridge--is helping them change and grow, not you feeling better. Usually, the better job you do blowing off steam and feeling vindicated, the worse job you've done helping the other person grow.

Big Idea 2: Readiness is defined by the other person, not yourself.

You've prepped your content and are eager to correct--but it's not about your readiness. Yes, get that ready. But then pay attention to their state of mind and your current relationship with them.

Confrontations are much more successful when they are about helping the other person, not making life easier for you. 

Big Idea 3: You can never MAKE someone change.

No matter how well you prepare for confrontations, you will not achieve 100% success. You do have the responsibility to do your part well. But perfection on your part does not remove their part--personal choice. Even Jesus, the perfect man in my faith, had one of his hand picked disciples (Judas) choose not to reconcile in the end. Allow others the same right you want for yourself. Don't try to choose for them. And don't make other's choices your measure of success. Take responsibility for handling your part well--their response is between them and God.

In the next post, I'll show you some "sub-questions" I use to really decide whether I can drive the truck over the bridge (and I'll talk more about the details of the diagram, like the pillars on the bridge).

 

You Can Change Your Brain Dramatically

We've been seriously misinformed. We thought that kids brains could learn very fast, but adult brains don't change very much. We thought that your personality shaped young, but didn't change when you were older. We thought that talent was something that emerged in a child and adults could only work with the fixed set of talents they were born with.

It is true that kids learn fast and personality develops very early and that kids display differing levels of talent. But it's not true that adults can experience the same brain changes--if they were willing to do the work.

It's possible to rewire your brain in dramatic ways.

Some neuroscience breakthroughs in the last decade have allowed us to see the brain in detailed action for the first time. And scientists have discovered the brain doing things we always thought were impossible.

A couple of awesome examples:

There are programs right now that use devices to help people were born blind to see--without fixing their eyes. They help them re-purpose sections of their skin as visual receptors by attaching a black & white camera to their head, then putting a plate with pins on the same spot of skin for a few weeks in a row. The pins act like pixels (i.e. pins press down for dark spots of the image, lightly touch for gray, stay up for white). As long as you use the same section of skin, the brain rewires that section to become a visual center. When they're fully integrated, if you throw a ball at them, they'll instantly flinch. They're literally seeing the world, just in black & white.

(This isn't a theory, this is happening today.)

Also, there was a group of senior citizens who were experiencing some decline in brain function. Age was blamed by most, but they wanted to test is brain exercise could help. So they split them into a test group and a control group. The test group got a bunch of brain activities (word puzzles, art, math problems, etc)--control group just hung out and did normal life. They were hoping for less brain decline--or maybe even to see some more activity in certain sections. Not only did they get both of those results, they also found that the size of their brain--the mass of cells--increased. They literally grew new brain cells.

Remember when you were told that if you get drunk or high you kill a brain cell you'll never get back? Yeah, they were wrong. Not about the drunk or high killing brain cells, just the growing cells back part. I'm not advocating abusing substances--it's still smarter to never have killed any cells--but society way underestimated what the brain is capable of.

I could go story after story, but the bottom line is this: our brains are the most flexible, adjustable brains in all of creation. It's our great gift and comes with a price. We're born lacking the innate ability of just about every other species on the planet, but we can learn just about anything we choose.

Adults brains--until the aging-to-death phase begins--have basically the same ability to learn and reshape themselves as kids. The forty year old man's brain has the same growth potential as a four year boy.

So why do we observe something so very different? Why are four year olds learning and changing so much and forty years old generally getting set in their ways?

Answer: They brain doesn't automatically grow and change. You have to put it in a certain environment, with particular kinds of activities. Leave us alone and we'll just do what we've always done. Even worse, our learning ability will atrophy--literally the same way a muscle in a cast withers when you don't use it.

[I'll do another post on those learning conditions later.]

But just like your muscle that atrophied, with proper use it can regain it's strength. No matter your age, your brain can reengage as a learning marvel and you can change anything about your life that's brain-related.

Seriously, from music to coordination to analytical details to your personality traits--if you want to do the hard work you can change your brain. There are validated reports of change in personality, IQ, learning disabilities, artistic ability, and coordination. It's still a small percentage of people so far, but it's increasing exponentially every year.

Be warned though. Most of the world is caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Adults can't change (they believe) so they don't try to change, resulting in no change, "proving" to themselves that they can't change.

The first step in making major breakthrough is believing it's possible and trying.

What would you change about your brain (either learn or unlearn) if you could? Are you ready to change it?