Communication Skills for Editors: Navigating Difficult Conversations
Presenter: Sura Hart
Host: Cynthia White
Day of Meeting: May 11, 2015
Sura Hart is a communication coach and facilitator; certified trainer with the global Center for Nonviolent Communication; co-author of three books and co-creator of The No-Fault Zone® Game. She offers communication workshops, mediation, and individual coaching. (She is also the mother of Guild member Kyra Freestar.)
Cynthia White is a Northwest Independent Editors Guild board member, editor, and theatre artist. She will act out scenarios with Sura tonight.
Note-taker: Jill Walters
Announcements:
Jennifer Hager:
Next meeting is July 13, featuring a member of the advisory group from the UW Certificate in E-learning Design and Development. He and a colleague will speak about instructional design and the various career entry points it offers to editors.
Andie Ptak and Rich Isaac:
Registration is now open for the Beyond the Red Pencil conference on October 10 at the Center for Urban Horticulture. Members should have received an email with a member code for registration. For members who did not receive the email, contact the administrator (info@edsguild.org) and let her know you didn’t get the message. She will verify your membership and send the code. The discount code for guild members saves $30 per ticket. Early-bird registration runs through July 31. The full program should be ready soon.
Registration website: http://www.beyondtheredpencil.brownpapertickets.com
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Introduction from Sura:
I hope by the end of the evening you’ll have some insight into some of your habits that haven’t worked, and perhaps some new insight into how you can handle things better in the future. And, of course, having satisfying connections with your clients—that’s my aim here tonight.
Presentation Notes
I believe we have a lot in common in that you are all lovers of words—or at least respecters of words—and you appreciate the power of words and language to be able to convey clarity, meaning, understanding, and connection—or not… A lot of people don’t know the power of language in the way that we know it. And because of that, and I’ve observed it with Kyra over the years, you do a lot of educating to tell people what you are able and do for them. You spend so much time explaining yourself and what you can do. And that’s a big piece of it.
I have similar work. For the last 20 years I’ve been studying language, particularly interpersonal language, and how we can shape our words and language to create connection with whomever we want to talk with. I got excited to come and share some of the pieces of the language process that I’ve been working with that will help you with your challenging situations.
How many of you are familiar with nonviolent communication? (Most of crowd raises hands.) Wow. Lots. Didn’t expect that, but being in Seattle, that doesn’t surprise me. The founder and my teacher, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, has come to Seattle many times, and there are a lot of practitioners around.
[Nonviolent communication is] not like the Chicago Manual of Style. It doesn’t take a thousand pages to tell you about this. In fact, I could put it up on one flip chart if we had just a little more time. But there are many books that have been written (I’ve written three), and there is a lot you can say about it—it’s got some pretty simple concepts and principles, and that is what I want to share with you tonight, then we will get into some role-play and apply them to real situations.
In this culture we learn how to say things to one another, but often in an adversarial way. (“I think it should be like this.” “I think this is the right way.” “No, no, I have the right way.”) We go back and forth with this kind of dialogue, lobbing thoughts and judgments that don’t help us connect with one another or understand each other better, but instead create disconnection. (Talk including moralistic judgments, labels, hard-and-fast opinions, wanting to be right, who deserves what, and comparisons.)
In our work, we call this violent language—it is disconnecting. We call this “Jackal language.” Dr. Rosenberg likes to play with learning, and with puppets. We do dialogues in this Jackal language. We’ve learned it from TV, our families, in school, on the playground. We’ve gotten very good at jackal language in our culture.
Rosenberg developed a “Giraffe language,” and we role-play with puppets to hear the difference between this jackal with disconnecting language, and a giraffe language that is connected to our hearts, and connected to what’s really important to us.
(Sura brings out her “assistants,” a jackal puppet and a giraffe puppet, and headbands with jackal ears and giraffe ears.) See if you can hear the difference. We use these ears to help.
When I have jackal ears on, which is what most of us are conditioned to, we hear judgments, analysis, complaints. For instance, pretend I’m a waitress at a restaurant and we’ve had a really busy night. I come to a table to serve customers and the person at the table says, “What’s the matter with the service here? It’s so slow. I’m never coming here again!”
With the jackal ears out, I hear, “What’s wrong with that person? What a jerk. How rude.”
If I put the jackal ears facing inside, I’ll see what’s wrong with me, “I’m a terrible waitress. I think I’m over the hill. I can’t go as fast as I used to. Gosh, maybe I’m going to lose my job. How am I going to pay rent? What’s wrong with me?”
The jackal ears instinctively hear what’s wrong with them and what’s wrong with me. This is what we are conditioned to in our culture and that’s why we need to train in nonviolent communication.
With the giraffe ears we hear what’s going on inside of us.
With the giraffe ears facing inward, I’m checking in on how I’m feeling and what’s going on with me. No judgment. “Wow. I’m feeling frustrated and sad to hear them say this because I’d like to be seen for how hard I’m trying and how I’m doing the best I can under these circumstances.”
With the giraffe ears outward, I’m going to guess what’s going on with them. “I hear how frustrated and upset he is because he wanted to have a nice evening and it’s not panning out the way he wanted.” It’s nothing about me, I’m guessing what’s going on with him.
Usually only when I’ve done the giraffe ears inward, am I able to project and point them out.
Thoughts that would go in a “Jackal matrix” include thinking about who deserves what, comparisons, punishments and rewards, and criticisms. All the different ways we compare, contrast, and separate from one another. We could fill up the entire whiteboard with examples.
Looking at things through the “giraffe lens” I modeled with the ears, it is primarily made up of universal human needs—things that are universal to all ages, religions, all people all over the world. (See attached handout for a partial list.)
The giraffe lens shows:
1. Needs are universal.
2. Needs are the motivators for actions.
3. In every moment, we’re doing the best we can in the situation.
Before I learned this giraffe language, I honestly didn’t know that I had many choices. It wasn’t until I became aware of these other choices that I realized there are four ways to respond to what anyone says or does. That is what we will do here with your examples.
Role-play with Sura and Cynthia:
Scenario 1
I submitted a proposal and the potential client replied that she was going with a candidate who “was vastly more experienced and charging a significant amount less… (and able) to get the job completed faster.”
Cynthia (as client): “I’m going with someone else, because you have considerably less experience than the other person, you’re vastly more expensive, and she can do it a whole lot quicker than you can.”
Sura (as editor):
• Jackal ears out response: “She has no idea what she’s talking about. That’s preposterous. Who does she think she is to come up with that kind of summation?”
• Jackal ears in response: “Maybe I’m not a good editor. So many people are better, faster, and cheaper than me. I’m never going to survive in this field.”
This is where our most powerful work is, and the choices can make such a difference in whether we can maintain our self-esteem. If I’m miserable and having a hard time inside, [the jackal ears] are what I’ve got on. Sometimes it takes a while to figure it out and try a new way.
• Giraffe ears in response: (Takes a breath.) “I feel shocked and tender. I would like to be seen for what I can offer, rather than be compared with what she thinks is out there.”
With that moment of self-empathy, I am able to care about her. I don’t always get there. It might take a while. Even if I spend a lot of time with my self-connection, it’s a much sweeter place to be than the jackal ears. It isn’t until I have that sense of self-connection that I genuinely do care about the other person.
• Giraffe ears out response: I’m listening for feelings and needs, and making a respectful guess. “It sounds like you have found someone who has the qualifications you want.’”
Giraffe out can be hard, since you can’t always guess what the other person is thinking.
Scenario 2
I once had a client who hired me to edit her dissertation—something I do a lot of, and the feedback I get is usually highly appreciative. This woman was an awful writer. Of course I didn't say that, but I explained a lot of things to her in my comments and made a lot of edits, as I always do. When she got her edited dissertation back she wrote me an outraged letter, saying she had not asked me to tell her the things she was doing wrong. Then in payment she sent me a postdated check, but she didn't mention that it was postdated and I didn't notice and cashed it. She was REALLY mad then and insisted that I pay the fees for her bounced check. She raged at me about it, telling me she was a "healing leader" and did not deserve this treatment.
(I stopped answering her emails. At first I worried that she would wreck my reputation at the university, but I had a lot of pleased customers there and my business didn't fall off at all.)
Cynthia (as client): “How dare you write me and tell me what I did wrong!”
Sura (as editor):
• Jackal ears out: “She’s nuts. This woman is really wacky!”
• Jackal ears in: “How did I get this client? How did I get this woman who doesn’t even know what an editor is? Did I not explain my process well enough? What’s wrong with me?”
• Giraffe ears in: “I’m feeling confounded, because I recollect telling her what I do as an editor. I’m shocked, puzzled how it got to this point. I’m wondering what I want to do about it.”
• Giraffe ears out: “It sounds like you were really shocked. You were expecting a different response from me.”
Cynthia (as client): “Everyone says I’m a really good writer, and that I didn’t need an editor to begin with. So for you to hit me with all these bad things is insulting.”
Sura (as editor):
• Jackal ears out: “She is really wacky!”
• Jackal ears in: “It would be me who gets stuck with someone like this.”
• Giraffe ears in: “I feel shocked.”
• Giraffe ears out: “I’m hearing that this was really surprising, and you weren’t clear on what I was prepared to offer you in my feedback.”
Cynthia (as client): “I thought you were going to give me a stamp of approval and tell me I was ready to go!”
Audience member: What about the fear of losing more clients if the angry woman said something?
Sura (as editor):
• Giraffe ears in: “I’m scared when I hear you say that. I rely on word of mouth, and I want people to acknowledge and see me for the work I do well.”
Cynthia: Would you say anything?
Sura: That would be the next choice. In the process of nonviolent communication there is the empathy or listening, which is what we’re playing out today—my choices in how I hear. Then there are choices in how I respond, and there’s an expression side of it that we aren’t really going into. There are choices there too—do I even want to respond? Once I identify what my need is for understanding, then that takes me into action. What can I do to meet that need for myself? I might say something like, “Because my intention to connect with this client is going to have a lot to do with what that client is going to do next, in terms of whether they will still be upset and want to go tell people about it.”
• Giraffe ears out: “I’m confused when you tell me this, Cynthia, because I thought I had explained some of what I do as an editor. I appreciate that you haven’t experienced that before, but I’m wondering if you could tell me what I could have said differently or explained more at the start that would have made my feedback more familiar to you. I see you were not prepared to get the feedback I gave you and I want to know how to make that clear upfront with you.”
Cynthia (as client): “At first it seemed like we were on the same page and you were going to correct certain things for me. But then you came back with pages and pages of red markings. Some of them were ok, but some were re-writing sections that were perfectly fine. You didn’t help me get there, you just threw this at me.”
Sura (as editor):
• Giraffe ears out: “So you really were shocked. Thank you for telling me that because I’m always learning and developing my craft, and I really want to say upfront more clearly what you can expect.”
I am in this moment, after meeting my need for understanding and simultaneously looking to connect with this client, appreciating because I asked and she gave it to me.
I’m remembering what my favorite editor saying to me when I submitted the first draft of my book. My co-author and I had done a fair amount of writing, and thought we were pretty good writers. So when Kyra sent back the first edits, she prefaced with, “I want you to know that you’re great writers, and that you do a great job. Please don’t be shocked by all the red marks.”
I’m wondering, Cynthia, how you feel right now about the kind of communication we’re having?
Cynthia (as client): “I’m feeling much better about it. My anger came out of the repetition of so many tweaks that you wanted to make to my writing. If there were a way for me to get hit with them in clusters instead of all at once, to be guided through it more? Maybe that’s what the comments were for? But it seemed like it was “do it this way,” or “either way, your choice,” well I don’t know how to choose. Obviously you thought one way was better than the other!”
Sura (as editor):
• Giraffe ears out: “It was overwhelming, so maybe pacing yourself through the process might have softened the blow. Thank you for sharing.”
Scenario 3
I edited a very ungrammatical novel that also needed a better opening paragraph. The client accepted all my grammatical edits, paid on time, then wrote a new opening paragraph and self-published—without ever having me edit the new opener.
He wrote to thank me for my work, and added "Here's a link to the novel on Amazon! Check it out!" Once I saw it I could not bring myself to write him a congratulatory note: the book now began with several sentences' worth of glaring, grade-school-type errors.
I offered to edit the new opener, but he wrote back, "No, don't worry. It is only a few sentences. No one will notice.”
What should I have said?
Sura: In my view, there is no “should” about any of this. It is really choice. What I like to base my choices on is identifying what needs I’m after.
• Jackal ears out: “Oh my gosh, he’s crazy. Doesn’t he realize I’m a resource? Of course it matters!”
• Jackal ears in: “I don’t know how to tell you that. I guess I’m not very good at telling. I guess he doesn’t appreciate the work I do or he’d have asked for help in the end.”
• Giraffe ears in: “I’m feeling shocked and disappointed. What is my need? Maybe I need to sit with that. I’m feeling torn, because I’d like to be able to congratulate and celebrate, but I read it, and it’s not genuine for me to do that. I’m feeling awkward, uncomfortable. I’m not sure what to say. I might decide to do nothing. Maybe look at how I might have handled something differently? Or just let it be what it is.”
Cynthia (repeating audience question): “How am I going to respond? People will know I edited that book.”
I was thinking about adding, “then I looked at the acknowledgments and saw a thank you for being a wonderful editor.” Then I read the first few pages. What can I do?
Sura (as editor):
• Giraffe ears in: “I’m feeling embarrassed and scared and wondering if there is anything that I can do. I’m going to have to spend a lot of time with these ears in. I want to be acknowledged for the quality work I do.”
The best guide I know is to identify what my needs are and to see what I can do to take care of my own needs. My needs include things like community connection, caring, etc. My needs involve caring about the other person too, but I’m always referencing that in terms of taking care of my needs, not theirs.
Jennifer Hager (from audience): Since we have print-on-demand books, it could be beneficial to say to the client, for both of our sakes, that this work deserves to be showcased really well and if we just fix the first page, it will fly better.
Cynthia (as client): “And with print-on-demand, they’ve only printed the three or four that have sold so far…”
Jennifer: But it could still be fixed.
Cynthia: It might cost more to fix, but it sounds like the editor is already saying they’ll do three more pages for you for free.
Sura: That’s great.
• Giraffe ears out: “I’m feeling a lot more hopeful now. I really like the work we did together on the book, except for that last piece you did without showing me. Would you like to hear more about what I could do to improve that for future editions?”
Audience member: Is it wrong to say “I’m sorry?”
Sura: It is something I’ve trained myself out of saying, and one of the reasons is that there’s so much confusion about the meaning of the word “sorry.” Are you feeling guilty? Sad? I go to feelings instead. “I’m sad that you’re shocked.” I don’t find much value in feeling guilty, but I do recognize that my actions impact other people, and I find out later that I wish I had done differently. I’d like to stay in that realm of taking responsibility for my actions, acknowledging having regrets without taking on guilt. I think I can express my feelings more fully than if I say “sorry.”
Audience member: How do you differentiate between a client you want to maintain a relationship with and one where you should just cut and run?
Sura: I’m guided by needs. Sometimes I have a need for ease. Sometimes I go for something else like understanding. If I recognize that I do value the client or the relationship, then I’ll go for understanding. I’m guided by the predominant needs that are surrounding the situation. Cutting my losses, if that meets the predominant need for me and gives me peace of mind and ease. Dr. Rosenberg used to say you can always find connection with the other person or group of people. He worked in the Middle East with groups of Palestinians and Israelis who had killed each other’s families. But it takes time. I can look at a situation and go, “yeah, I’d like to have more connection with that person, but I don’t know if I’m willing to spend the hours that it might take, or am willing to do it on email” (which is really not a good medium for emotional things or things that aren’t pretty crisp and clear). They are judgment calls I make based on my own needs.
Cynthia: Here’s the flip side of that. I was told recently that I need to stand up for myself more, and make sure people appreciate how hard I work, how good I am, and what I do. I’d be more successful if I were more aggressive. It’s kind of the flipside of “when do you walk away from somebody?” My goal usually would be to avoid the confrontation and walk away.
I need to put the jackal ears on and say, “Oh, I’m a horrible person.”
Sura: Here in this moment, I’m connecting with my curiosity and hearing how you did actually receive that and if it is something you agree with?
Cynthia: Well, it was after the situation, and I never really had a chance to do it. But it has to do with sales and marketing, with getting the work.
Sura: So you’re wondering if there is some truth in it and if you could stand up for yourself?
Audience member: Your first exchange with the waitress in the restaurant was very face-to-face, but some of these things sound like people are getting emails, and you just said email isn’t the best way. So if you have a situation like that, rather than starting this email thread, would you be better off picking up the phone?
Sura: I’d prefer to. There are so many ways to misunderstand emails. You don’t know when a person is going to read it, what kind of mood they’ll be in, what just happened in their day—all of that effects how they’ll read that email. You can’t see the face, you can’t hear the voice. I use email a lot, but I’m really trying to use it when I can be crystal clear about things and relay information. I might start that in an email and say, “Gosh, there’s enough here that we really want to explore. Are you willing to do a phone call?”
Cynthia: Any other different scenarios?
Jill Walters (from audience): I was copyediting an academic literary journal written by professors for professors. The university’s president submitted a piece and it had a lot of really basic errors, so I returned it with basic copyediting—nothing too bad, and his response is, “I’m the president of the university, I don’t need to be edited.”
Sura: But he asked you to edit it?
Jill: He submitted it to this journal and the editor-in-chief, who was another professor, had me copyedit all the entries.
Sura: Did you have any of this going on when you heard all that? (Holds up ears.) Do you want to tell us what it sounded like?
Jill: My jackal out was, “This guy is a pompous idiot.” I didn’t have as much of the internal with that because it was blatant errors. The professor who was ultimately the editor-in-chief, his response was, “You don’t want editing? I’m going to put a disclaimer at the top of your piece saying you refused editing, and print it as-is.”
Sura: So how were you with that solution?
Jill: I was OK with that. It didn’t really involve me. But if you were the editor-in-chief, how would you respond?
Sura: That is pretty scary.
• Jackal ears out: “That pompous guy, he would do that.”
• Jackal ears in: “I’m totally overpowered and surrounded by these pompous people. What’s wrong with me?“
• Giraffe ears in: “What to do with this? I’m really fed up. I wish there could be more ease with this, that there would be no special treatment, that there would be mutuality, and we’re all in this together. But it’s not that way. What is my need? I’d like to find a solution that has some ease to it.”
That sounds like that’s what he did.
Jill: Just for reference, the guy left within a year.
Sura: I knew it!
Sura: Any other challenging situations? It sounds like your profession is rife with them.
Julie Klein: I work in a probation office, and I asked one of the probation officers if I could use a paper they wrote on leadership for my practicum [for the UW Editing Certificate course], and she was very willing and happy to have me do that. And I did what I was supposed to do—I thought. I turned it in to her because that was part of the process, doing some back-and-forth, and she walked in to see me the next time she was in the same building and said, “I came to see if you still have your arm because it looks like you bled all over the page.”
I was totally caught off guard, and because I was very green, I said, “Oh, but you have so much energy you just kind of exploded all over the page,” which was not the right thing to say.
And she goes, “Well, I happen to think I’m a very good writer.”
So it’s very similar, and since then I’ve learned a lot about my techniques and interacting with people. But at the time, I really didn’t know how I could have responded because I was caught off-guard and I didn’t have a chance to go and think about it. How could I have responded to her better in the moment?
Sura: It does look like the previous one, and I hear you registered shock right away, and I think that’s often the case with these things—we’re surprised, shocked. To me, (and I wrote this in the five steps on your handout) you learn to notice when you get activated, when you have that reaction of shock or fear. A big part of this work, or any work where you’re changing habits—here we’re changing habits of thinking, which is no small matter—it takes practice over time.
But the first thing is to notice when you have your habitual reactions. I find it helpful to notice where in the body you find tension, or you get red in the face, or stop breathing—to notice that and then take a pause and breathe.
One of the things Dr. Rosenberg said is “take your time, it’s yours, you know.”
At this fast pace, we have to respond and we have these reactions, we can take the time we need to react from the place we want to come from. It often takes a new habit of stopping, pausing, and breathing. “I don’t quite know how to respond to this,” is the truth of it. “I’m shocked.”
What I’ve learned to do is to voice that unease. “Gosh, I’m feeing a little shocked at what you just said. It was unexpected, and I’m going to take a minute here to breathe and see how I want to respond to you. You’ve given me some information I want to take in, and I’m going to take a minute to see how I want to go from here.” I’ll find that I’m scared or nervous, and if I say that, people are relieved because they sense it anyway.
One of the reasons Dr. Rosenberg calls it “giraffe language” is that giraffes have the largest heart of any land animal. They have a 26-pound heart that pumps blood all the way up to that little brain. They have “perspective-taking,” metaphorically, with the long neck they can see at a distance how their actions will impact others and themselves. The jackal is low to the ground, it’s a heard animal, it just bumps around without that perspective. Another perspective of the giraffe is it’s like sticking your neck out to be vulnerable. I only learned recently that they also have something in their saliva that dissolves thorns, so they can eat thorny nuts from the trees to get nutrition. So again, wearing the giraffe ears is like dissolving the thorny-sounding words.
Cynthia (repeating question from Larry Nichols): That was a question about referrals, and when somebody refers a client to you and you find that client isn’t a good match. You want to end it gracefully without that person being upset and going back to complain to the person who referred you (and you would like more referrals from). It’s realizing the complexity of “whose needs are you dealing with?”
Sura: It is a complex situation, and bringing it up I think a lot of our interactions have some complexity like that that. I find that [needs] are my best guide, and when I started this work, I used to make lists, like you have, and I would basically sit down a couple times a day and write in my journal “what am I feeling right in this moment, and what need is there for me?” It’s very simple, a couple minutes a day, a couple times per day, to get that familiarity with that need vocabulary. If this is the motivator for our actions, it’s good to know why we’re acting. It takes inner reflection and time to come from a place where you’re more likely to meet your needs.
Beth (in audience): One way to address it goes back to client education. Some people don’t realize there is a good editor out there for them, that editors are very different, and, even though you weren’t the right one, you could tell them, “I’ll help you find someone better for you.” It’s turning it back on them, and not on yourself.
Sura: I’m sure more and more of you have learned the things to say upfront instead of encountering them in misunderstandings along the way, and I imagine you’d have to learn that the hard way. And yet, he could tell people, he could write it down and they read it—but it doesn’t mean that they completely take it in or remember. You still have to deal with the misunderstandings, but so much can be alleviated by frontloading.
Jennifer Hager: I realize that there are so many areas where we can misunderstand one another based on our privately-held assumptions, and people have all kinds of assumptions about what an editor is, what an editor does, “my book is going to be a bestseller if I work with you.” In most of my communications that I send out when I receive a query, I try to be as explicit as I can about very simple things so that at least we have a basis for understanding. One thing about the needs of our clients… I realize that the people who come to us, some of them are seasoned writers, some are very accustomed to getting feedback, some have never even showed their writing to another person in their life. So we often are dealing with people who have tremendous anxiety, and perhaps their self-esteem is strongly connected to what’s going to come back [edited]. I work on projects with people over a four to six-week period, and I’m accustomed to checking in, even if I have very little to say. Like, at least every five days. There’s this anxiety to manage, and if I’m connected it helps the person who’s going to receive the feedback to know I’m positive, we’re in this process.
Sura: I love that. Just check in to see how you are doing. That’s the magic question here. How am I in here? What’s important to me? What are the other person’s needs?
Resources
Sura Hart: surahart1@gmail.com, http://www.thenofaultzone.com, 805-698-3332
The Center for Nonviolent Communication/About Marshall Rosenberg: https://www.cnvc.org/about/marshall-rosenberg.html
Beyond the Red Pencil Conference Registration: http://www.beyondtheredpencil.brownpapertickets.com