Reflective entry week 6_Mastering the practice of suspension          

Chi Phuong NGUYEN

All our coaching sessions have been conducted in the same manner so far, we met face-to-face in the meeting room.

We are not the expert in our field, and we cannot offer advice to others all the time. However, throughout the coaching sessions, we listened to other’s stories or situations, putting ourselves into the shoes of others and mirroring our situation and we found the optimal solution together. Our roles weren’t not distinguished clearly but we contributed actively to the coaching. Sometimes, when coach questioned coachee, the coachee could find out the solution by himself/herself. Certainly, the coaching sessions helped us to discover our blind spots as all of us were involved into the situation, working together to propose and complete the optimal solution. All of us benefited from improving our coaching skills.

This week’s coaching assignment was more challenging but seemed to be practical to us. Indeed, we have to manage different and complex relationship in our daily lives and in our social context. At work, we cannot choose to work or talk only with those whom we find comfortable. Even with those whom we maintain good relationships, there are moments when we have to discuss the tough, likely conflictual subjects. Therefore, the practice of suspension might have been an useful tool for us to manage the conversation and relationship without sacrificing our goal or power.

Noora and Muriel brought two different stories in two contexts. For Noora, it was about a relationship with a person that she was close in the past but no longer at present. Muriel led a conversation with her roommate about one controversial topic with different points of view.  Both Noora and Muriel managed well the practice of suspension, calming down and passing the cool down phrase to listen to their body and inner thoughts. They didn’t react immediately to express their points of view but take time to listen to others to understand their perspectives. One interesting question that Muriel raised during our session of coaching was: We discussed and used the practice of suspension when we cared about the relationship and the issue really mattered us. Thus, for those with whom we find it difficult to talk with and we don’t want to improve the relationship, should we invest time and effort to practice the suspension or let the relationship die as mentioned in the book Divide or conquer of Diana M. Smith? I linked to my situation and asked myself what would have happened if I hadn’t had the willing to improve the relationship with my teammate.

Practicing the suspension, listening to our body and our thoughts really helped us to resolve the problems. Experiencing the calm down, telling our real thoughts and emotions to others are just like waiting for our turn. People show the respect to those who listen actively to them. We aren’t in a gunfight in the Wild West in the 1800s, having to shot the first to survive.

Week 6 Coaching Assignment - Reflective Entry: Mastering the Practice of Suspension

by Muriel Guillod

It was really interesting to share the experience where we practiced suspension, as every situation was very different to one another. One story was about a very close relationship, another one about a relationship with a colleague, and the last one with a good relationship, but less close. Therefore, we explored issues in very varied contexts. One thing we all practiced was the phase of cooling down, in order to avoid escalating in the conflict. To achieve that, a very useful step is to become aware of the reactions happening in your body and control them, e.g. by taking deep breaths and trying to relax your muscles. Furthermore, we all worked on developing our empathy skills, by trying to understand the point of view of the other party and put ourselves in their shoes. We also tried to analyse the underlying informal relationship pattern when possible, especially when the relationship has been lasting for a longer period of time. By discussing together and sharing our experiences, we learnt that sometimes we unconsciously create barriers to protect our ideas, and even strengthen them when we feel under attack, which most of the time is just a creation of our own mind and not a reality in itself. Something I personally found really hard to do is to differentiate my point of view and my beliefs from who I fundamentally am, when the topic is one that deeply matters to me. In the story I shared with my two teammates, I was debating with my flatmate about a subject that is so important to me that it is anchored inside me, in my roots and in my values. I explained them how I couldn’t separate it from my own personality and how this was a huge challenge to me. Still now, I feel it is really hard not to fight for your ideas, when you strongly believe in them. However, still, rephrasing what I was experiencing and explaining it to the person I was talking to, first helped me to be conscious of how the matter at hand was important to me, why I was experiencing so much tensions in my body and then calm down, but also really helped the other to understand what was upsetting me. As a result, the conversation happened to be much smoother and softer than expected. Even though we couldn’t reconcile our standpoint, we could accept and understand the perspective of the other. Another of my learnings for the future is never to let a situation fester. We should be proactive and take responsibility for our relationships straight ahead. It’s too easy to “wait and see”, but also very pernicious, as we let ourselves be trapped in a relationship we didn’t intend to create in the first place. Finally, most of the time, we enter a discussion with pre-assumptions, either about the other person or the way the discussion will turn up. This process acts a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is the reason why we should avoid as much as possible to have such assumption beforehand.

As a conclusion, I’d say that this week’s topic was, to some extent, more challenging that the ones we had until then. However, I think what we are doing is like a journey, and it requires several steps, like a path, or going up a ladder. We have to do the first step, before being able to do the second, and so on. So we have to learn incrementally, as we did so far. Thus, at each stage, we are able to work on our abilities and implement what we learnt earlier while practicing new skills. To sum up, this exercise made me learn a lot, and by continuing to practice suspension I will improve many of my soft skills, like active listening, empathy, cooling down, reflect and reframe, controlling my emotions and body, become aware of my reactions, and understand how relationships work. I feel that I’m learning more and more every week and that I’m growing as a person.

Week 6 Reflective Entry

By Noora Haraholma

While telling my story to Phuong I started to feel that I almost overreacted during my conversation. The things that made me annoyed were not big deals at all but they still made me feel irritated for some reason. I think people are close with each other (or have been in the past) they get more easily under your skin. I’m really happy that I cooled down and reflected on my reactions before acting on them because otherwise the whole conservation may have escalated without a good reason. Using suspension is a really good thing to do in the heat of the moment so that we do not say or do something that we could regret later.

Both while being coached myself and listening to Phuong and Muriel to tell about their suspension experiences I realized the importance of paying attention to your body. Disputing on something makes you feel tense and impacts your whole body and I think this reinforces the negative feelings and thoughts about the situation that again makes you even more tense. Being aware of your body and trying to relax can make a huge difference since it enables you to cool down and observe also the other points of view.

I also found based on our stories that sharing what we are experiencing with the other person can make a big difference. It makes it easier for them to understand why react in a certain way and it also helps us to explain our on views. In my own suspension conversation I tried to use I-I statements to explain how I feel about the situation but now thinking the whole situation in retrospect I feel like I failed to actually tell the other person what I was truly experiencing and why I got annoyed. On the other hand I think Muriel and Phuong were able to use this second stage of suspension really well and use it as a tool to build their relationship with the other person.

Reflecting my own situation and the situations that Muriel and Phuong talked about made me think about the assumptions that we bring in the conversation already beforehand. In my case I was already predicting that he might say something that would piss me off or that I would not approve. Because of this I probably became more prone to get annoyed and I also paid more attention on the things that I did not like in our conversation and which confirmed my assumptions on him going to say something that would annoy me. During our coaching session I also asked Muriel whether the assumptions she had beforehand affected her conversation. She told that she felt really tense already at the beginning of the conversation because she was able to predict that there would be a huge disagreement. This made me realize also the importance of being aware of the assumptions that we have because these can affect how we feel about the conversation and they can make the cooling down harder. I think noticing these assumptions should be as important as noticing our emotions and thoughts in the first part of the suspension process.

Week 6 Coaching Assignment - Reflective Analysis: Mastering the Practice of Suspension

By Muriel Guillod

In order to complete this assignment, I thought about a situation where I’ve been disagreeing with someone. For a start, I couldn’t imagine having a discussion with a person I had deep relationship troubles with, as this might represent an Herculean task for a first try. Therefore, I asked one of my flatmate, which whom I generally have a good relationship, to come back on the only one topic we once disagreed about.

As we entered the discussion, I must admit I was a bit tensed, as I knew we had totally opposing point of views and that the last time we talked about it, it really created tensions between us, which in no occasion happened before. Therefore, this time I tried to introduce the topic smoothly, by making a general statement about it and asking how she saw the situation. Then, I let her speak and really entered into active listening. While she was speaking, I tried to understand her point of view, even though I knew I was totally disagreeing with her. The problem is that the subject at hand is something I really care about, something deeply rooted in my values and personal beliefs. I started to notice my body becoming more tense, and I wanted to react to what she was telling me. I couldn’t let her speak like that, it sounded so crazy, almost impossible to sustain such a point of view. Still, I tried to calm down, first by bringing attention to my breath. I know I was partially in the process of reloading, as I have had similar conversations before that one. However, it was mainly with people sharing my point of view. As a result, my behavioural repertoire was also influencing the course of the interaction taking place. I had some previous knowledge on the topic, I knew the issues at hand, and I’ve been discussing it so many times, especially over the last 6 months, that being confronted to someone whose opinion was contrasting so strongly with mine for the first time was a real challenge in itself for me. The point she was supporting was so paradoxical to me, so extreme, that I couldn’t relate to it. Willing to fully commit to this exercise and develop my suspension abilities, I put into practice what I learnt about it. As showed above, my first step was to start noticing my thoughts, my emotions, my body, my gestures, which is all part of the inward process. My second step was to share what I was noticing and how I was feeling at that moment. I told her that I heard her, that I took her point of view into account, but still that I was experiencing all these feelings in my body which were showing me that I wanted to react strongly and wasn’t agreeing with her. I told her that my reactions were so strong because this topic mattered so much to me, because it was an entire part of my personal values. Luckily, probably because we both know each other and usually get along pretty well together, she also listened to me and understood my feelings. Another point maybe is that we both care about our relationship, as we are living together and don’t want to be in a situation of permanent conflict. I wonder if the situation would have been the same with a person with whom I originally have deeper and stronger arguments, and with whom I wouldn’t mind breaking my relationship…

Even though I was open to listen to her point of view, and tried to understand her perspective, I knew I could not totally change my mind. I could agree on some smaller issues, but for the general topic, I kept my standpoint. So in a way, I would only say that I half succeeded in my suspension process. By being open and listening to what she way saying I could, to some extent, understand her perspective and see why she would support it. However, I could not let go to the point of totally being influenced by her words.

My personal learnings out of this conversation and of this whole exercise is to willingly try to open up and develop my empathy, even though the topic is somehow sensitive and very close to my heart. The most important thing which prevented me from escalating in a conflict and reach a dead-end in the conversation – or worse in the relationship – was the ability to become aware of my body and control my emotions in order to calm me down. In this regards, the outcome of the conversation was different than the first time we talked about it. During our first conversation, we had to stop it abruptly in order to avoid a huge fight and we kind of tacitly agreed not to come back on the topic to avoid such situation in the future and not to risk to definitely break our relationship. This time, the conversation went much more smoothly and ended up still on a friendly tone, even though both of us kept our initial standpoints. We could really discuss calmly, openly and we now know there is no topic to avoid; it’s just how you approach it which matters. Finally, a next step would be to try suspension with someone I found it really hard, on a regular basis, to talk with, i.e. someone with whom I find it hard to agree. That would be a really huge challenge, but I think I could also learn a lot and improve my suspension skills much more.

Week 6 Coaching Assignment

By Noora Haraholma

The theme of this week’s coaching assignment is suspension which includes inward and outward parts of the process. The first part concentrates on noticing our emotions and thoughts and the second part involves presenting our view and sharing what we are noticing. In order to practice suspension we were assigned to call somebody who we find difficult to talk with. I decided to talk with a person who I used to be very close with in the past but with whom we grew apart. Since we are nowhere as close as we used to be I often find it hard to talk with him and understand his points of view.

Since we haven’t seen each other or talked with each other for a long time, our conversation mainly focused on updating what is going on in our lives. For the most of time I really liked talking with him and hearing what he has been up to because we have lived on different continents for the past six months and thus, our lives are rather different from each other. Everything went quite well at the beginning. He made some assumptions about my life that were nowhere near correct and made me rather pissed off. However, every time he did that I tried to take a deep breath and let it go. Once in a while he could probably see that I was not too happy about him making assumptions on things that he knows nothing about and I am pretty sure he understood why I seemed annoyed when I corrected his assumptions. Luckily he learned to listen to me more and make fewer assumptions so the conversation got a bit easier while we were talking.

Despite him making stupid assumptions everything else went pretty well until he showed some really bad judgment. He told me that he was going to a party in that evening which would have been a fun thing if he hadn’t mentioned that he was supposed to have this one important meeting next morning. The meeting was scheduled with corporate partner that he wanted to sponsor this one event and thus, I think it would have been more than necessary to be in his best shape in that meeting. Because of the meeting I told him that it would be smart to go home early from the party but he told me that he was just planning to party the all night and go to the meeting without sleeping at all. I really wanted to tell him that he was being stupid and immature. Instead I tried to cool down and I think about how I would explain him that why that was not a good idea. I know that he usually likes good manners and thus, I told him that I felt that was not something he should do because it would be really disrespectful and he would not be able to give his best arguments in order to seal the sponsorship deal. He just responded to me that he had done something like that already before without anyone noticing and therefore he could do that also this time. I said to him that it is his own decision but in my opinion he should not do that. We ended the conversation quickly after that because he had to leave to the party. However, I was happy to find out the next day that he actually listened to me and went home early so expressing my thoughts in a calm way actually paid off.

Based on this conversation and its outcomes I learned that even though I would be pissed off I should try to calm down and try to express my thoughts in a well-structured way rather than just saying something in the heat of the moment. I should try to understand more why people think in a certain way (here he thought that it would be ok since he had gone away with acting like that before) and trying to articulate my thoughts so that they can understand why I think differently. Usually in similar situations I have just gotten really annoyed and said something really harsh which exactly has not helped the situation in any way.