Why Is It So Hard To Talk About The Elephant In The Room?

Why Is It So Hard To Talk About The Elephant In The Room?
By
Bill Cottringer

“Two cows were talking in a pasture. One says to the other, “Are you worried about catching mad cow disease?” “No” said the other, I am an elephant.” ~Bad joke.

A work colleague of mine, Bob Bennett, is quick to point out the suspect elephant in a room that people tend to not want to talk about for some reason or the other. For me these are the issues that obviously need to be talked about for any meeting or relationship to be productive and move forward. Avoiding talking about the elephant in the room just keeps everyone stuck in the No-where Zone. The elephants in the room can also be the questions that everybody thinks but no body has the guts to ask, like what is the real purpose of this meeting? Or what do you expect of me?

I think people don’t jump to talk about these elephants for several different reasons.

1. We fear opening a can of worms. Issues that have no clear and easy solutions are always going to be tough to address and then listen to, hear and respond to the ensuing confusion or differences of opinion. We like clear, simple explanations, not complex, complicated ones, and certainly not something we can’t wrap our arms around without getting 10-foot extensions.

2. These elephants are often heavily emotionally-laden. The hardest conflicts to approach and not want to avoid are the ones where there are strong, animated emotions hiding the issues. In fact, we often can’t even see the real issues until the emotions are peeled off, layer by layer. And sometimes the emotions aren’t clear enough to talk about openly. This takes time, patience, courage, openness, selflessness and non-defensive communication, of which we are all a little short of these days.

3. Everybody is assuming someone else, or time alone, will raise the issue. This is like having a power outage and assuming all your neighbors will report the problem or it will be picked up electronically and automatically be fixed. And then the next morning you wonder why you still don’t have power and everything is going bad in your freezer.

4. People fear talking about the elephant will expose a problem they made. Sometimes we avoid talking about a particularly large elephant because we suspect an in depth examination or discussion about it will reveal a serious mistake we made to help create it. That is possible, but nothing is ever going to get fixed that needs fixing, without bringing it out in the open no matter how embarrassing it may be. The fear of being blamed is one of the strongest negative motivators there is.

5. People don’t know how to communicate in elephant language. This is usually only true until we stand up, get counted and boldly start the conversation with reasonable caution and sensitivity. Then all the fears about the difficulty of talking elephant language disappear and before you know it you are reaching a consensus about turning the enormous elephant into a measily mouse.

So, in the meantime how can you start a needed conversation about the elephant in your room? Here are a few simple tips:

• Don’t assume it will never be brought up until it shows itself in the flesh. Then it might be too late to make it go away. Be the first to say it or ask it.

• You really can’t eliminate fear and worry about what may or may not happen when you identify an elephant. After just one time, though, it becomes almost too easy.

• Get ahead of the curve and practice assertive communication. Convey words that are more supportive, tentative, equal, accepting, spontaneous and honest rather than aggravating defensiveness with over-certainty, superiority, judgment, exclusionary or manipulative strategy. More than anything learn to listen to understand rather than to work in a proud one-up clever response.

• Learn to get in touch with your emotions, especially the negative ones. They are usually trying to warn you to back off slightly and re-think your approach to something.This is to help you be more effective.