It is always a great day when your son comes and asks for “help”. It is a sad day when you realise that just when you think you are helping, you are actually failing.
I could see my son shut down as I thought that I was answering his question and helping him. Here I am, thinking I am giving such good advice and something he really needs to hear, because, if he is asking for help, he must be willing to hear what wise counsel I have for him. But no, instead he is zoned out and then became quite withdrawn. I could see I wasn't helping.
No matter how I tried to backtrack, say it differently, it didn't matter, he was gone (in his mind anyway).
Suffice to say, the night didn't end well and we all went to bed feeling a little down.
The next morning I went into him to ask him how he was feeling, as I knew how I was feeling and it wasn’t too positive. I love my son and hate to think we are not on good terms.
I asked him "what was not helpful about last night" and he said, "well, I wanted your help and all you could do was yell at me”. This confounded me, as there was no yelling, not even a heated conversation or harsh words, from what I could I remember, unless I missed something or blocked it out. It is not that, that hasn't happened many times, regretfully, but I was certain that this wasn't the case last night.
As I have reflected later, there was definitely no yelling. Yet it made me think that communication is an interesting thing. Here I think I am talking and yet my son feels like I am yelling. It didn't matter if it was because he didn't want to hear what I had to say. It didn't matter if what I had to say was completely helpful. It didn't even matter if it was the truth. What matters is that all he heard was “yelling”.
When I thought I was trying to empower and challenge, Sam heard judgement and that he wasn't doing well enough.
When I thought he was asking for my help regarding “big picture thinking”, he was asking for some “little practical keys” to help him get started. When he asked for help I thought he wanted to talk about it, when all he wanted was for us to practically do it together.
So what could seem loving, even wise counsel to one person can simply sound like yelling to another. That is the scary part about communication.
Richard Rohr in his book “Falling Upward” talks about the fact that…..
“from your own level of development, you can only stretch yourself to comprehend people just a bit beyond yourself. Some theorists say you cannot stretch more than one step above your own level of consciousness, and that is on a good day." (2011)
The irony of our conversation was that the help Sam wanted was about an assignment he had to write, on “How to bring about change and what a leader must do well to help that process?”
Whoops……fail !!
If only I could have stepped back out of the conversation at the time and been able to do it so differently we may have had a different outcome. It takes good leadership to do that on the run, assessing as you go as to what someone needs to help them make changes, and that's of course when two people are actually on the same page. It is even harder when they are poles apart. Both Sam and I had the same desired outcome, we just missed each other completely.
We re-grouped in the morning and worked out a plan forward. And eventually I was able to help him.
But we both learned a little bit more about the kind of communication and listening that is required to actually help others and bring about change. Let’s hope he does better in his assignment than I did that night!
No comments:
Post a Comment