In high stakes situations, it's really hard to say the right thing.
Unfortunately, it's really easy to say the wrong thing.
Many of us avoid these high stakes, difficult conversations because we're so afraid we're going to say the wrong thing, or we're afraid we won't be able to find the words to say the right thing.
I'm going to describe a simple technique for how not to say the wrong thing in a high stakes situation.
Ring Theory
In high stakes, difficult conversations, we're afraid to even enter into these situations for fear that we will say the wrong thing – something that will embarrass us, or more likely, something that will offend or hurt the feelings of or anger the person that we're talking to because the situation is so sensitive.
I recently came across a story in the Los Angeles Times called How Not to Say the Wrong Thing that included a simple technique to guide us through these difficult situations, help us say the right thing and avoid saying the wrong thing. It gives us some simple guidelines for increasing our chances of doing and saying the right thing.
The author of this article calls the technique Ring Theory, and here's how it works. You draw a circle, and inside the circle, you put the name of the person who's most affected by the crisis. In the example that they give in the article, this is a person who has just gotten diagnosed with breast cancer. But the person in the center of the circle could be whoever it is in the situation that's most affected, the person who's just had a bad breakup or has just lost their job, has just been the victim of a crime, has just had a friend or a relative die. Whoever it is, this is the person that the crisis is most immediately happening to. They're in the center ring.
Then as the rings grow outward, you have people who are less and less directly connected to the event. So in the center ring, we have that person who's most directly affected, the person who's the victim of the crime or the person who's gotten the bad diagnosis or has the friend or relative who's died, or the breakup or whatever. Then outside, maybe we have the parents and siblings and best friend of that person. And then outside that, we have maybe neighbors and old friends and work colleagues. Then outside that, we just have friends of friends, acquaintances, people we know from work but not very well. And then the circle gets wider and wider, until eventually it's just strangers.
Comfort In
In the very center you see the aggrieved or the afflicted person, the person who's most directly affected by the crisis. Then you get in these other circles of significant other, true friends, colleagues, and strangers who are interested in the bad thing that's happened. But the main principle of this theory that helps us do the right thing is that if you're talking to someone who's on a more inner circle than you are, you comfort them. You comfort in. Anyone who's closer to the center of the situation than you are, all you provide is comfort.
If you want to know how to comfort people, I've made many, many videos about empathy. I'll link to my empathy playlist here. There are videos in there about how to comfort a friend and so on. Check those out if you want to know what to say when you're talking to someone who's in a circle closer to the center than you are. Comfort in.
Often, the most effective thing you can do when you're comforting someone closer to the inner circle is listen to them, but you want to avoid giving advice. You want to avoid telling them how to feel. You want to avoid telling them your sob story or how you know exactly how they feel. Avoid minimizing their problem or telling them everything's going to be okay or telling them that the dead person is in a better place or telling them that everything happens for a reason. All of these are things you want to avoid saying. Instead, you want to provide comfort for them, and refer to those videos to figure out how to do that.
Dump Out
The first principle when you're talking to someone closer to the center of the circle is to provide comfort. Now, these situations which involve loss and duress and stress and strain often leave us with a desire to do more than comfort. We might want to actually complain or vent or express our own emotions.
The principle of Ring Theory is if we're talking to people on circles further from the center than us, that is, if we're inside them in this series of rings, we're closer to the afflicted person than they are, and we're talking out, then we can dump. We can vent, we can criticize, we can complain. We can tell our own story. We can talk about how we feel. We can give advice. All the things which we can't do when we're talking to someone who's closer to the center of the circle than we are.
Summary
I think this is a simple and elegant and mostly correct bit of advice that's encapsulated nicely in the idea of Ring Theory. My compliments to the author of this article, who I think is the author of this theory, as well.
So, what do you do in a time of crisis? Comfort people who are closer to the center of the crisis than you are. If you have other things to say, dump out, meaning say all those other things to people who are further from the center of the crisis than you are. If you follow this principle, you will increase your chances of saying the right thing and decrease your chances of saying the wrong thing.