| Addresses: | What is going on |
| Involves: | Assertions, Assessments and declarations to agree common understanding |
| Purpose: | Create context, understand breakdown and build robust story |
| Desired Outcome: | Shared and grounded understanding |
| Optimal Mood: | Acceptance |
When someone declares a breakdown identifying some concern they want addressed, they generally seek to open up a conversational process to address that concern. This declaration may be implicit or explicit, formal or informal.
Many breakdowns require a simple and habitual response. For instance, I hear a notification on my smart phone and automatically look to see what it is. However to effectively address many breakdowns requires more extensive conversations or a series of conversations. In these circumstances, we are well served by explicitly declaring a breakdown thereby creating a clear context for any ensuing conversations.
When faced with any breakdown, it is easy to jump to conclusions assuming we know what is happening and what we should do. Our predictive brain appears to be compelled to quickly find a way forward and resolve the prediction error (breakdown). However, this does not mean a quick resolution of the breakdown will serve us best. As I have emphasised elsewhere, we are constantly stepping into the future and uncertainty and that entails risk. Jumping to conclusions based on our prejudices, preferences and predispositions will often increase the risk of a poor decision even though we may feel a sense of certainty and comfort.
It is often better to engage in a descriptive conversation to explore and clarify the situation addressing questions such as: what is actually going on? what does it mean to us? what’s the impact on us? Sometimes the situation and meaning seems obvious, sometimes not. In a breakdown, we know there is some concern to be addressed; we may just not sure what it is. At other times we want to involve others in our breakdown, either to get their help to resolve our concern or simply to share it with them.
In theory, the purposes of a descriptive conversation are to:
- Create a clearer and better shared context in which to make sense of the breakdown;
- Better understand the concerns involved in the breakdown; and
- Build a richer story about what is going on.
The ultimate purpose of an effective descriptive conversation is to develop a well-grounded understanding of what is happening and, if it is a public conversation, a more fully shared understanding.
In dealing with breakdowns, effective descriptive conversations enable us to be clear about what is going on and our concerns providing us with a better footing on which to base future action. They are reflective conversations, referencing and orienting us to the past. As such, a descriptive conversation will only contain the linguistic acts of assertions and assessments. We may hear future references in a descriptive conversation such as a pending assertion such as “John will be accompanying me to the movies tomorrow.” However such a statement speaks to something that has already happened in that John has agreed to come along to the movie.
However, as they are past focused, a descriptive conversation does not include any action that will directly address a breakdown other than a possible reinterpretation of our breakdown such that we decide no future action is required. Just talking about how we feel about a situation is often not enough to change that situation. For that we need to move into speculative and action conversations.
Although descriptive conversations are critical in effectively resolving our significant breakdowns, most of the time we find ourselves in these types of conversations simply to share stories with others. We talk about what we did on the weekend, what we like and don’t like, what has happened to someone or to us. In doing so, we develop shared stories and connections with others which help build and maintain our relationships. To build healthy relationships, we can return to the principles of effective listening and the importance of openness, acceptance, curiosity and attention.
Descriptive conversations relate to how we observe the world and only contain the linguistic actions of assertions and assessments. Here it is important to appreciate the difference between an objective reality (phenomenon) in which we exist and our story of what we observe about that objective reality. It is vital to understand we can never describe reality itself rather we can only talk about our experience of it. This is so for everyone as we are each a unique observer of an objective reality. What we believe to be true does not make it so. What we assess to be good does not place goodness on something. Our assertions and assessments live within us. Ultimately our descriptive conversations are a means of sharing how we observe and interpret reality and finding ways to assimilate others’ observations and interpretations as they experience them.
Unfortunately we all too often fail to appreciate that our stories about something are not the phenomenon itself. We fall into a trap, collapsing our story onto the phenomena and believing it to be the truth rather than our interpretation of what we have observed. When this occurs, we generate a belief that we know exactly what has occurred and why. We claim access to the real ‘Truth’ and arrogantly put ourselves above others if they disagree. We know and they don’t.
Our potential to produce stories about any situation is endless. However, how well we live our lives involves taking action to address our breakdowns, not just understanding the breakdowns themselves. It is important to recognise the value of descriptive conversations, but equally, if not more significantly to recognise when to move into action to address our breakdowns. Appreciating the generative power of language is crucial here. It is easy to forget that language does not just describe what we observe, it also continually creates our perception of the world. If we can only see the descriptive nature of language, we can get trapped in stories that continue to perpetuate our situation and our emotional space around it.
