The table is everything

Nearly two years ago now, my therapist and I were exploring the world of difficult conversations and confrontations particularly in the context of professional relationships.

Although I didn’t think of myself as being someone who avoids difficult conversations, I had to admit that when I had some degree of responsibility or ongoing involvement in a situation, I would either avoid them like the plague, or become in turns aggressive or defensive, and sometimes both! I knew these were not productive behaviours but I didn’t seem able to interrupt the reaction long enough to change them. The damage was piling up. I was overwhelmed.

She told me this:

In every interaction with other people there is an imaginary table before you. When someone raises an issue, makes a demand, identifies a problem, offers you something, imagine this as an item they place on the table. Imagine the same for the things you raise, request, offer, or identify with others.

Someone may think they are passing responsibility for the issue to you but, like it or not, they have to place it on the table before you pick it up. If you don’t know the table is there, the tendency is for you to catch it to stop it from falling. But the table is there. Let things come to rest there a while and consider your choices: whether or not to pick them up, whether to examine them some more before deciding, whether to consider alternatives. There is always a choice.

It’s taken me a while to realise the value of the table. But it is everything! At first I thought it was just a way of temporarily stalling the inevitable. I realise I’ve been conditioned to see differences of opinion or perspective as battle-grounds. I was on a continuum of conflict – either fleeing for my life, digging in, or pressing the charge. The table transforms any encounter from a battle to a buffet. Now, rather than fighting an opponent for who has to take away the responsibility, you are conversing with a dinner companion, getting to pick from the items on the table, what you’re hungry for and what will be good for you, always acknowledging that some of the stuff you bring with you, you will be taking home again.

I’ve started mentally saying to myself: “there is a table” when I become aware of a potentially difficult conversation, or when one takes a turn for the difficult. I still forget about the table in these situations as many times as I remember it but the result, when I do remember, has been surprising to me.

It’s not the positive outcome of such encounters that surprises me. Sometimes the outcome is not a success in terms of what is agreed between parties. There are times when we leave the table with a problem still to solve. The surprising difference is in my attitude to the other parties. I have more space for empathy because they’re people offering a choice, not forcing a reaction. I have more space for finding a solution, finding the right words to communicate an idea, finding peace in my choices. I am free from the continuum of conflict for a time.

The table is everything!