Raising the bar to improve outcomes of problem-solving conversations

How much would you score the quality of your problem-solving conversations, be it with your spouse, friend, colleague or manager? Do you manage to have the problem clarified and potential solutions identified, or do your conversations often go down rabbit holes of blame and defensiveness, leaving you feeling worse than before you had the conversation?

The truth is none of us always have fruitful conversations. Today let’s look at insights that I have found useful in improving the outcomes of our daily problem-solving conversations. They are contained in two phrases: the famous catchphrase by Michelle Obama - “when they go low, we go high” and “raise the bar”, which was shared in a Ted Talk by the relationship counsellor Susan L. Adler, as one of three key ways to make relationships happier.

Michelle Obama contends that handling cruelty or unkindness requires the ability to go high when the people you are dealing with go low. She shared this in the context of dealing with various forms of confrontations when you are a public figure.

She has also spoken about this in the context of raising her children to help them navigate the unusual life of constantly being in the spotlight. Raising the bar was shared in the context of building happy relationships. From this perspective, raising the bar means striving to inspire the other person to become better by how you respond to frustrating situations yourself.

That is, when the other person spins out of control, you don’t catch their crazy ball and go into the rabbit hole of throwing it to each other, instead, you take the high road. For example, can you be helpful? Patient? Caring?

I find that regardless of the context, these two insights can be very helpful in our conversations in general, especially in conversations to address a problem. Say you have been confronted by your manager or spouse about an issue that happened and you are being accused of causing it.

Maybe you don’t understand how you caused the issue. Maybe you are certain that you did not cause it. Maybe you are not happy with the approach taken in confronting you.  Bottom line? You aren’t happy. What do you do? Here is where we can either raise the bar, that is go high, or we can enter the rabbit hole of defending or attacking.

But how do we go high or raise the bar? Going high simply means responding in a way that reflects solutions, rather than from a place of anger or vengefulness. But going high does not mean that we cannot feel or express emotions such as anger or hurt, no.

Emotions are actually key to our optimal functioning as human beings. By going high, we express our emotions, but not just for the sake of expressing them. It means trying to identify the cause of those emotions and seeking to communicate in a way that will enable solution finding. This is not easy of course. Going low is easy.

It is very easy to exchange an attack for an attack, offense for an offense. We can easily instill fear in the other person and perhaps get them to shut up. This may feel like a win, but it is only temporary. When we go low like that; we are simply taking care of our own little egos and not solving anything.

Michelle Obama summed it nicely, if your words are not fixing a problem or at least moving the needle in the right direction, you are not going high enough.

Going high means exercising restraint in the face of frustration while trying to understand the other person and exploring ways to help them understand us. So, next time someone calls you a cow, and you feel outraged, stop and ask: “why am I angry?’ Clearly, I don’t have a tail and I do not moo. So, I am not a cow. Do I feel disrespected? Probably yes. Again, why would they disrespect me? Pausing to ask why several times, rather than immediately responding to frustration is the greatest show of strength.

It can help us discover solutions to the problem, but also understand ourselves more deeply. And there is no better place to start from in dealing with a problem than a high place of self-knowledge, which can come from continuously striving to raise the bar.