Full-Exposure Communication

A week ago someone in my office came to me to talk about a project we were working on. Unfortunately, two dynamics were in conflict during part of our conversation. There was the topic being discussed, and then there was an unspoken agenda item. My colleague was asking me questions about how I wanted the project to proceed. What he wasnt telling me was that he had already engaged in contradictory dialogues with other members of our team. I wont bore you with the details, because this kind of game playing is rampant in business and Im sure you know all about it. However, what I do want to do is show you how full disclosure can help keep you and the other business types discussed in this book out of trouble.

But first lets look at partial disclosure communication. The problem with this approach is that it involves a communicator avoiding various truths, including the truths that generalizations are not rational and that things like blame are illusions. This style of covert thinking is antithetical to what we have been discussing throughout this book. For example:

Worriers who only partially disclose their fears to someone are only going to find their worry increasing.
When controllers engage in partial disclosure, they spark mistrust in their listeners; in turn this mistrust signals weakness to controllers and increases their sense that they need to control.
Fakes are partial communicators by definition. The more they participate in this form of communication, the worse their symptoms.
One thing attention-seekers do not want to draw attention to is their ulterior motives. This would reveal their insecurity. Partial disclosure communication only serves to drive them deeper into their behavior.
Partial disclosure is tailor-made for victims . By hiding their fear of being blamed, they are nourishing an illusion.
Prisoners need, more than anything else, to unlock the things that are bugging them. Partial disclosure keeps these things in.

In contrast, full exposure communication requires you to:

Expose your vulnerabilities.
Stay focused on the facts and avoid generalizations.
Realize that if its bugging you, its your problem.
State your hidden opinions .

Lets look at these one at a time.

Expose Your Vulnerabilities

When you go into a conversation feeling insecure , say so. What I wished my colleague had said to me last week was that he was disinclined to do a certain job because he was afraid of the effect it would have on him personally . Rather than exposing that to me, perhaps out of fear of how it might look to me, he kept it quiet. He just wanted to feel me out on how I might respond to his resistance without actually exposing the resistance.

His choosing to hide his true motivation had several regrettable effects. As I sensed he was holding something back, I began to mistrust him, the first step in what could have become a deteriorating relationship. A second was that by behaving as a fake, hiding things rather than just being honest, he was setting himself up for awkward feelings of guilt for not being open the stuff of sleepless nights. A third was that by making the circumstance so ˜˜political, he was making it difficult for us to get to the bottom of why we were finding it difficult to work together on this project.

As a matter of fact, we did get to the bottom of the problem. I exposed my sense of there being an unspoken undercurrent. He ultimately brought his previously covert mission to the surface. We sorted out a way to address his needs and the companys needs. By pursuing the truth and calling on our mutual respect, we reached a very comfortable plan. If we had not made this progress, then the culture of our team would have been damaged, more private, time-consuming dialogues would have been undertaken, and a bunch of undesirable interpersonal game playing would have been supported.

Its not easy for any of us to expose our vulnerability. Thats why we want to keep it hidden. It doesnt feel good. But I remind you that the fear is an artificial construct. It is something produced inside your brain, a real feeling but not a thing-in-the-world phenomenon . And the good news is that finding the courage to expose your fear will almost always work in your favor.

You have to watch that you dont use full-exposure communication as a tool for saying blunt things. The idea is that you are exposing your vulnerabilities as opposed to someone elses. I remember once introducing the concept to a team. For a few weeks afterward the team members walked around saying relatively unpleasant things to each other. ˜˜Full exposure, I think you did a sloppy job on that report, or ˜˜Full exposure, I think that was a dumb thing to say at the meeting this morning. Not quite what I had intended.

But when you are afraid to reveal a personal vulnerability, such as your own fear about some matter, you should look at taking the risk. The way you disclose is key, however.

For example, lets say you have a chance for a promotion. How you position yourself in your bosss eyes is critical to getting that promotion. You think you may not be ready for the job, but you cant be sure. You dont want to say, ˜˜Boss, I have a fear that in fact I am not ready for the job, but I am a great believer in the importance of exposing my fears, so there you go. What do you say? Can I have the job?

Disclosing your fear is still the way to go, but you may need to do it with some degree of diplomacy , which may well show your boss that you have humility and honesty. For example, you could say, ˜˜I do crave this promotion, and I know I would work like a dog in the role, but I cant help but have some concerns about certain aspects of the role. In fact, I would like to talk about some of them with you. Im sure we both want to do the right thing.

Go for it! The truth works.

Stay Focused on the Facts and Avoid Generalizations

Another aspect of full-exposure communication calls on a principle we have been discussing throughout this book. In conversation it is important to differentiate between object-level reality and meta-level meanderings. If you blend them, people may get turned off. For example, have a look at the statements below and notice what is real versus what is meta-level . The following statements are from a dialogue I overheard in a clients lunchroom:

˜˜Did you hear that our parent company is defending against a forced takeover by the monster XYZ company? Takeovers are scary. People lose their jobs. And XYZ is known for taking somebody over and mov ing people out. Bob would surely be done for then, wouldnt he? Hes so inefficient they would probably just eliminate his role and there would be no consequence. Gone and forgotten. He deserves it. Of course, it could happen to any of us, I guess. Only the strong survive, as they say. What I would hate is that we would have to start working at their location rather than our own. I bought my house with my work location in mind. It would really bug me if I had to start driving across town like that. I mean, what about my kids , for heavens sake! They are settled into school, and have their own friends . It would be terrible! You know, its all about greed.

Everything in this paragraph looks like it might be factual, but very little if anything in it is about the object-level. The speaker obviously has a lot going on in his head that is generated by meta-level activity. Full exposure does not mean to get out every mental event. It means to distinguish between whats real and whats not. The person above might have said something as simple as, ˜˜The possibility of a takeover sure does get my mind racing. This book is about the possibility of seeing those metamachinations for what they are.

Realize That If Its Bugging You, Its Your Problem

When we do talk to people about the things they do that bother us, we tend to focus on what they did rather than how our buttons have been pressed. Full-exposure communication calls for you to expose how you, and not the other person, are accountable for your feelings. ˜˜You hurt my feelings when you said I was lazy is something I heard one person say to another. Notice how the hurt person is blaming somebody else for her feelings. This, as we have already discussed, is diverting her attention away from her own unresolved feelings. Instead, we must own our anxieties. If it bothers you that youve been labeled ˜˜lazy, then apparently you have some unresolved feelings on such mattersafter all, some people wouldnt be bothered by it at all. They might implement some simple strategy, but they wouldnt feel particularly threatened.

State Your Hidden Opinions

Just under thirty years ago, I was in an ˜˜encounter group . Ten of us assembled weekly in the office of a therapist. The group met for over a year. We talked openly about our problems. I was there as part of the process of learning to become a therapist, but I was no less troubled by life than anyone else, including the leader. It was a great way to hear honest feedback from people and to learn about humanity.

In these sessions we engaged in true dialogue, and more often than not things got quite heated. I remember one meeting when I asked a woman whether she had really thought through an opinion she had expressed . The leader of the session, a very experienced therapist, stopped our momentum and gave a speech about ˜˜bullshit.

˜˜Art, she said, ˜˜I get the feeling that your innocent-sounding question is actually hiding an opinion. Why dont you state your opinion?

˜˜No its not! I countered. Everybody in the room looked at me. I felt like they were all pursing their lips and lowering and shaking their heads as they judged me to be partially exposing.

Feeling somewhat ashamed, I admitted, ˜˜Well, maybe Ive got an opinion in there, but I dont want to just spit it out until I hear more.

Everybody shook their heads. ˜˜Okay, Im afraid to give my opinion! ˜˜What is your opinion? the original speaker asked. ˜˜My honest opinion is that you rarely think things through, I said, facing the woman. ˜˜You are so impulsive. You are driving me crazy!

I went on for a while. I learned about my own tendency to judge. What I thought was about my scattered, impulsive friend was really about my tendency to judge certain people to be scattered and impulsive and therefore undesirable. What I learned from that little exchange is that my ˜˜bullshit was in having disclosed partially. I wasnt being open. I was blocking the momentum of the relationships in the room, of the dialogue in the room, of my own development as a communicator, and of my friends development.

This is not to say that business meetings need to be treated as therapeutic encounter groups. It is only to point out that for honest communication to take placeand honest communication is desirable if youre going to transcend the traditional meta-level merry-go-round of judgments and problematic , robotic thinkingthen you might work at fully exposing whats going on in your mind. It will keep you honest, in touch with the judgments you have made, and open to the possibility of sustained transcendence .