Verbal Dogpile: Avoiding the Downward Spiral of Negative Communication
Have you ever watched a team conversation, meeting, or learning session turn into a negative, verbal dogpile? You know the moment: when one person on the team starts sharing a pain point or barrier and others in the room pile on similar examples and stories?
I know I have. And, admittedly, I have been the person who eagerly awaits my turn to share my bad experience.
While shared venting might have its benefits, giving ourselves a hall pass to join in can also create a dangerous team communication pattern – a pattern where our downward spiral feeds negative emotions, cultures of complaining, and closed-mindsets.
The result? Teams spend more time ruminating on the pain points of the situation and less time considering potential solutions.
We all encounter moments when we hear someone vent, complain or share negative experiences. In these moments, we have a choice in how we respond. We can 1) join in; 2) combat the negativity; or 3) act with empathy. Let's explore the good and the bad of each.
Permission to Join
Giving ourselves permission to complain or vent can feel good. We might feel brave for speaking up or more authentic in our leadership. Plus, when we hear someone else talk about something we're struggling with, we experience a sense of relief and connection. Finally, I'm not alone! Someone else gets it.
While these points may have merits, allowing team members to overrun meetings with negative examples can sidetrack discussions pretty quickly. I see this happen nearly every time I facilitate a team session on feedback. Let me paint the scene:
I start an activity by asking managers to think of someone who needs feedback. I then pair two managers together to listen and challenge each other.
The discussion focuses on
Illuminating the 'facts' of the situation,
Challenging their personal assumptions
Creating a way forward.
Without fail, the partners typically begin with the facts. But as time goes by, the conversations get off track. Rather than hearing them challenge themselves and consider alternative solutions, I see half of the room feeding the fire. One person shares an example, the other nods in agreement and shares his example, while his partner assures her, and this back n' forth continues until I step in and redirect.
When team discussions become turn-taking opportunities to share barriers to action, we can feel heard.
But we can also miss the insights that can come from challenging our assumptions or considering alternatives.
Having detected this pattern, some team members jump in to stop the downward spiral, which brings us to our second option: combat the negativity.
The Communication Redirect
Redirecting the conversation can look quite different depending on the person. For some of us' helpers', it looks like well-intended advice. We listen for a few moments and then jump in with ways to fix it – ideas, examples, stories.
For others, redirecting the conversation looks rather Pollyannaish. We momentarily listen and then share all the positives that can come from the experience (i.e., think of the lessons we're learning; we're only given that which we can handle; it's not that bad, etc.).
And then, there's silence; pretending that nothing has been said. In these instances, we resolve to let the silence, rather than ourselves or the team, absorb the negativity. In other words, we hope it will just dissolve into thin air.
In all these examples, team members are typically well-intended. They may understand the impact of continually focusing on the negative or have already been exhausted by similar messages. So, they take proactive action to prevent the team from getting off track by steering the energy in a new direction.
That said, these are also examples of "disconfirming messages," which make others feel like you don't value their opinion or aren't listening to their concerns.
When we use too many disconfirming messages in our communication with others, people can begin to withdraw from the relationship by shutting down, building walls, or avoiding each other.
So what else could we do? Let's explore our third choice: acting with empathy.
I Hear You and …
When I speak with leaders and managers about "empathy", I often get pushback that empathy is too soft or takes too much time. And, in some instances, they are right. While we want to support those experiencing genuine obstacles, we don't have an endless supply of time to listen to, engage with, or solve all these concerns.
But acting with empathy doesn't have to look like this. In the book Crucial Conversations, the authors talk about how we need to create safety for dialogue to happen. We also need to share a mutual purpose. In other words, what is the outcome we are both looking to attain?
Stopping, listening, and asking questions to gain a deeper understanding of the situation and to identify a mutual purpose is an approach that can create safety while illuminating the mutual purpose.
In these moments, I often recommend asking:
What outcome are you looking for?
How can I best support you?
What do you think you need to move past this?
What's one thing you think you could do about this?
What part of this is within your control? What aspects aren't within your control, and you need to let go of?
The goal of asking these questions is to acknowledge and involve the person before shifting the conversation. It allows them to feel ‘heard’ without you needing to sympathize by adding in your examples. And ultimately, it stops the downward spiral from continuing to cycle and creates an upward energy towards momentum and progress.
What’s Your Team’s Pattern?
As you reflect on the different options, I encourage you to think about your team (the team you lead or the team you’re on).
What pattern do you find yourself falling into?
How might this pattern be contributing to or impeding the team’s performance?
How might the pattern give permission to behave in certain ways?
If you lead a team where your communication patterns are off, I encourage you to think about the new rules you might need to agree on in order to work towards your desired team culture and goals.
Otherwise, you may find yourself in one verbal dogpile after another.
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