Hard Lessons LQ2.0

The lessons on the climb - an easier kind of uncomfortable.

Learning something new can be exciting and fun, but it can also be uncomfortable.

Building your LQ (Learning Quotient) requires you to embrace discomfort occasionally.

• You may dive into a new sport enthusiastically and cope with stiff muscles or a bump from a fall – it’s part of the process.

• Your Spanish classes are progressing well, yet you find yourself frustrated and searching for words in a conversation – you push through more conversations if you want to learn to speak the language.

• The work world provides these uncomfortable learning experiences in various formats—enduring a bad boss, a brutal economic season, or an outright failure—painful but important lessons. 

The last few months provided me with an LQ-building opportunity of the uncomfortable variety.

 An unexpected conversation catalyzed this journey. Someone shared their opinion, supported by misinformation masquerading as fact. This wasn’t a clip on a news program but a conversation across a table. Responses to my initial “clarifying questions” confirmed that the opinions expressed were not ones I could say with sincerity—“I respect your point of view” or “We can agree to disagree “—and shift the topic.

It takes a lot to even briefly render me speechless. Decades of experience as an official spokesperson allow me to remain calm in the storm and reframe a question while formulating a response. Yet I was vacillating between the thoughts, “I’m at a loss for words,” and “this can’t be happening.”

The position shared was in opposition to my deepest-held values. The facts were inarguably incorrect, and my unease was exacerbated by the fact that I was having a conversation with a well-educated person I liked.

I coach and teach the art of “Managing Difficult Conversations,” including how to prepare for them and react when you unexpectedly find yourself in one. I called on everything I knew and every skill I felt I’d mastered. My mind could not recall an experience or a role-play as tricky as this scenario.  

I stayed patient, calm and present in the conversation far longer than I wanted to. I noted the feeling in my body often labelled as fight or flight. I wanted to do both.   

Successful leaders know the value of inviting and integrating diverse perspectives; it’s a skill to encourage dissenting opinions and create a safe environment to express them.  My comfort with challenging ideas, debating and encouraging others to challenge comes naturally to me. Understanding that others may not feel comfortable sharing a contrary opinion or even watching a heated debate took effort – something I remind people who share this trait. My job as an executive and a board member often required engaging effectively with politicians from different parties or facilitating agreements on teams with polarizing views. All this is context to underscore…It was physically uncomfortable and humbling to feel that despite experience and skills, I was at risk of failing in my attempt at “seeking first to understand.“  It took self-control not to shift to my comfort zone of trying to persuade.

This conversation felt like an exam in a coaching master class I didn’t sign up for - a simulation to test my skills and resolve. 

The other party was having a very different experience. They felt discomfort as we’d never had reason to disagree. I’m sure they sensed this topic didn’t hold the same weight for them. An expression of appreciation for feeling heard and respected was a consolation for me as I brought the evening to a close with the urgency and efficiency required in the office to ensure you’re on time if your next appointment is a board meeting.  

It’s good to know your limits – I’d reached mine. The adage about leaving before you say something you regret was top of mind.

Our friendships grow out of acquaintances we meet.  Work, school, parenting, sports, hobbies, and the dog park are where we meet them. You recognize the person at your tennis clinic at Starbucks reading the book you just finished. You mention this as you stand in line to hit your backhand.  That conversation leads to a walk to the coffee shop, where you run into a mutual friend, and it grows from there.

In the organic experience of making friends, our values emerge.  You may know they value health, education, community and family based on how and where you met. Discussions and observations uncover more of their interests and values. The more we have in common, the more likely we move along the continuum from an acquaintance –to a friend. And as friends we share experiences that strengthen the bond.

You can follow this path a long way, building on your common interests and natural “connection” before you find yourself in a conversation that leads to a value that is a deal-breaker.

It's deceptively easy to get comfortable with how we learn or narrow our aperture on what we learn, forming cognitive biases that we didn’t even know existed.  This, too, is part of developing your LQ.

The next day, with the commitment of an investigative journalist, I researched new sources of information to help me separate facts and fantasy, triple-check my bias and better understand the other side of the issue. After a week, – I started getting messages from Google noting that high volume and unusual traffic would require me to identify images of cars before I could proceed. Instagram had no clue what reels I might like. (I stepped off most social media as part of the exercise.)

I listened to speeches to ensure reports on the speech didn’t reflect the opinions of others who might reinforce my beliefs. I added podcasts to my playlist and YouTube content that I had no idea existed. I shifted to a higher speed to shorten the listening time if the length or rhetoric became too much. I fact-checked the fact-checkers.  My knowledge reached a level that felt like an obsession for someone who did not have a six-figure advance for a book deal on the subject.

Communication with the person casually and cautiously resumed – but I found myself weighing and measuring my words for fear we’d slip back into the discussion. A topic we had rarely discussed became an oversized elephant in the room. I didn’t share my learning quest.  

In response to the question, “What have you learned?”

I sharpened my research skills, exercised my EQ, gained more personal experience in difficult conversations, explored new sources of information, and confirmed that learning new things can be uncomfortable.

I will teach the Crucial/Difficult Conversation skills at a new level!

The biggie: Values play an outsize role in our deepest relationships. Values may be the superglue in relationships. IQ, proximity, common interests, and shared experiences bring us together, but values alignment makes our relationships stick.

Shared values may be why some of your work relationships – turn into lifelong deep friendships and others don’t. It may be why you are still friends with a neighbour decades after one of you moved across the country. It may determine why people get divorced but remain friends, connected, respectful, and kind, even if they don’t have kids.

My perspective on the original issue was reinforced. I have an impressive fact base to support it.  I have no desire to use it to prove my point.

Sometimes, people are not persuadable – you can let it go or walk away.

All learning is good - even the learning that’s really uncomfortable.