Our emotional reaction to the behaviors of others can either bring us closer or drive us further apart. Listen to learn more about where our perspective or viewpoint comes from and how it influences our behavior and effectively ask others to change it.
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Adam Salgat:
Welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast, where we strengthen relationships and build stronger communities through listening, leadership, care, and service. Learn and partner with us as we imagine a society in which people care about each other first. Explore more at ourcommunitylistens.org.
I’m Adam Salgat, and today’s topic is behavior. Our emotional reaction to the behaviors of others can either bring us closer or push us apart. Today we’re going to learn about where our perspective comes from, and how that influences our behavior. If you want to learn a little more about this topic, consider joining one of our connect sessions held every third Thursday and fourth Tuesday of the month. We will dig deeper into this podcast topic, engage in conversation, and identify areas we can improve and grow. Joining me today as she does every other podcast, Sarah Weisbarth, Leader of Curriculum Improvement and Development. She’s here to help us understand this topic a little more.
So, let’s start talking about content a bit, Sarah. But, actually, before we get there, how are you today?
Sarah Weisbarth:
I’m doing well, except I was late today coming to our podcast recording. And I’m throwing that out there as an example, because being late is a behavior.
Adam Salgat:
Well, I know that the reason you were late was to help us with our podcast, so I graciously understand, and no problem here at all. So let’s get into this a little bit. Let’s talk content, and tell me about behavior.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Okay, so the reason I think this is so important to really be able to help people identify is when we look at the behaviors of others, it can be very easy to judge that behavior. And as we were talking before we were ready to record, there is so much judgment and opinion that we’re seeing out in the world today about a variety of things. And this can impact family relationships, organizational relationships, just the way that we interact with others. We form judgment based on other people’s behaviors, and that has a hard time with relationships.
Adam Salgat:
It certainly does. And as you mentioned in our kind of pre-talk, we like to try to keep this timeless, but next week is our presidential election. It’s a very easy time for people to pass judgment on other people, depending on who they know they’re going to vote for, who they even think they might vote for, and it’s a difficult time. But this extends past presidential elections or even politics. I mean, like you just mentioned, interpersonal relationships, sitting down at Thanksgiving tables, Christmas time, just everyday conversations of why someone chooses to do what they do. So, let’s talk a little bit about what happens when someone passes that judgment, and what does that look like?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. I’m going to start right with the judgment, and then we’ll get to the behavior. I don’t think people like the word judgment, right? Even for me to go throughout my day and realize that I have put a judgment word on the situation, it’s hard for me to recognize that and admit that. And when we start to be able to identify that the way that we see the world, our perspective, our opinion, our viewpoint, is the way that we judge things, it’s the way that we assess things. It doesn’t mean that I’m a judgmental person, actually judgmental is a judgment, little irony there. It doesn’t mean that I’m a judgmental person, it’s just that we naturally go through our everyday life, and we assess things. We label them, we have opinions about things, and all of that comes from our own needs and our own values.
Adam Salgat:
And it’s interesting when I think sometimes about passing judgment and trying not to, but passing judgment in certain times in certain situations is almost a necessity to keep us safe or to keep our children safe, but there are times where that judgment can go too far.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, it’s intriguing that you say that, because the information that you’re taking in when you’re determining whether or not a situation is safe or not, are all behaviors.
Adam Salgat:
That’s a good point.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Is it dark out? Is it a difficult part of town? Is it, I mean, it could be any situation.
Adam Salgat:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Sarah Weisbarth:
Am I alone? Am I a woman? Am I alone with my kids? I mean, all of those things are factual pieces of information, factual behaviors that then we take in and then assess and then create a judgment around. So yes, absolutely. And that’s the relationship between judgment and behavior, I think, is what I really want to get to. So if I go to first, the sense of the way I see the world, my perspective, my opinions, are first based on my values and my needs, the things that are important to me, we’ll use this political example as a prime example. If you look at people on either side of an issue, we call it the left and the right, their opinion, their value, their need, are going to be completely different than the other one. And so if my value is based on either having a more conservative or a more liberal viewpoint, my attitude, my belief system, my opinions are going to generate off of that.
Adam Salgat:
It makes sense. Yes. And I think about the differences that I have with certain people and what they see, I don’t necessarily have those values. And it could be very simple ones such as gun control and just whether or not… I personally don’t feel the need to have one, but other people say, “Well, yeah, I don’t need a AK 47, but I want my guns. I want my other guns.” And I’m ,for the most part, I’m like, yep, that should be fine.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. So there’s a range, even-
Adam Salgat:
Yeah.
Sarah Weisbarth:
… there’s a spectrum of opinion of those values and how we see what’s important to us and what’s important to others.
Adam Salgat:
When we’re talking about judgment and passing judgment, I know an example was just mentioned in a skill snippet that we posted from Jill in South Carolina, where she talked about, instead of just calling her sons lazy because of their behavior and leaving it at that, just saying, why are you so lazy? She thought about what is the action that’s happening? Because lazy is not truly an action, is it?
Sarah Weisbarth:
No, it’s not. You can’t behave lazy. I can behave, and I think Jill’s example was leaving my clothes on the floor.
Adam Salgat:
Right.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Me being late today, you could have judged that as inconsiderate. You know me, I hope you don’t think I’m an inconsiderate person-
Adam Salgat:
No.
Sarah Weisbarth:
… but from the behavior of being late, it’s so easy for us to wrap a judgment statement around the actual behavior. All we can see from others is their behavior, right? A behavior can be seen, felt or heard. Seen, felt, or heard. It is a fact. It’s not something that can be argued, it’s not an opinion. We joke about putting the teenager test to it, like if a teenager could be like, “Well, I didn’t do that.” Well, then chances are, it’s a judgment.
Adam Salgat:
Tell me a little bit about the common judgments that are out there that we often hear people say or use maybe out of distress or just maybe they’re exasperated with the situation, and they start throwing judgements on people.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, so some of the ones that we often hear about in class, and we’ll actually work through as a activity, are things like inconsiderate, disrespectful, unprofessional. Those are the key ones that always pop up.
Adam Salgat:
What about “They don’t care about me”?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think when we, it’s easy to have a word that we apply to a judgment, but when you say things like, “They don’t care about me,” that’s a sense, right? That’s almost like a, wow, what is that coming from? Where is that feeling? I actually saw this image, and maybe we can figure out how to link it to the podcast, I saw this image today from a architect here in Midland, Michigan, [Alan 00:08:42] B. Dow, and it was an artistic image where on one side of it, it was demonstrating feeling, and it had different colors, and the colors were all swirled together. And then on the other side of this image, it had those very same colors and similar shapes, but they were more orderly. And it was then talking about fact.
When we look at judgment, it’s the swirl of the feeling, how we feel about a particular behavior.
Adam Salgat:
Yeah.
Sarah Weisbarth:
When we look at the fact, it’s the behavior. I was late.
Adam Salgat:
Right.
Sarah Weisbarth:
So being able to sort through and identify specific behaviors to inconsiderate, disrespectful, unprofessional, doesn’t care about me, helps us be able to sort through the swirly feeling and say, well, okay, well, what’s the behavior. What’s the actual thing that is bugging me?
Adam Salgat:
Listeners, I want to let you know that there is a upcoming interactive webinar that you can join others across the whole country and world. It’s called What Is Really Bugging Me, where we work on identifying specific behaviors and avoiding judgment and learn why that is crucial if we want to create connection and understanding. These webinars will always take place on the second Thursday, third Tuesday, and fourth Saturday of each month. Be sure to look for more information on our website at ourcommunitylistens.org.
Sarah, as we continue our discussion here, my next question is why is identifying behavior so important?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, the thing is, the only thing I can actually change, me personally, is my behavior. Told you, some of our judgements come from our own values and our needs, well, that’s actually where our behaviors come from as well. It’s very unlikely that I’m going to change a value. It’s unlikely that my need is going to change. So if the only thing I can actually change is my behavior, if I’m asking someone else to change, the only thing I can ask them to change is their behavior as well.
Adam Salgat:
So when we approach somebody, and we’re asking them to change their behavior, we’re kind of getting into the next step of a lot of our teachings and communication course, which is confrontation.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. That’s essentially what asking someone to change is.
Adam Salgat:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Sarah Weisbarth:
We’re just starting a conversation. We happen to call it confrontation, because we’re approaching someone and saying, “Hey, your behavior had this impact,” which we’ll talk about next month. If I really want that person to change, and I need them to change, I wouldn’t be having this conversation if I didn’t need them to change, I have to tell them what’s the behavior I want them to change. That’s the only way I have any opportunity of success, of creating an opportunity for them to actually change.
Adam Salgat:
Let’s get back to some of the judgment words that you brought up. Because I think, like we mentioned already, it’s really easy to fall into judgment, but let’s talk about those before we get into how to change our behavior.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. So this is why I love being able to tease out the behaviors that we tend to put a label of judgment upon. Because if I want someone to change being disrespectful, I actually have to say to them, what’s the behavior they want to change. And if I say you’re being disrespectful, they’re going to argue that that’s an opinion, that’s just going to cause greater divide.
What if I come in with, “Well, when you talk when I’m talking, I feel disrespected.” [inaudible 00:12:44]. Or, “When you,” well, it’s hard to confront the guy on the road, right? Like, “When you cut me off when I’m driving down the road.” That’s a behavior. I use disrespectful a lot in a youth environment. It’s really one of my trigger words, because I feel like we are often judging our youth as being disrespectful. And so when I work with youth, I really like to be able to identify when you’re talking, when I’m talking, when you didn’t raise your hand in the classroom-
Adam Salgat:
When you don’t give me eye contact, when you’re shuffling papers when I’m trying to tell you something, anything along those lines.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. All behaviors, remember, behaviors can be seen, felt or heard.
Adam Salgat:
Yep.
Sarah Weisbarth:
And so, on the flip side, when I see behaviors that are respectful, I acknowledge those too. “I appreciate you raising your hand. That was very respectful.” We can use the behavior, again, as a reinforcement of wanting to see more behaviors like that.
Adam Salgat:
There are times where, I mean, this could be its own little topic or my own little soap box, I feel like we don’t tell people when they’re doing things that we appreciate or that we like nearly, nearly enough, as opposed to when they bother us, or when they need to make a change or we see them needing to make a change. It’s something I try to do a little bit in my life. I think there’s a lot of people who definitely do. But if you’re out there listening to this, I implore you, take 10 seconds out of your day to tell somebody something that they’re doing well, just see how they react. Because you’re going to get a pretty deep reaction, and it’s not only going to make them feel good, I bet you any money it’s going to make you feel good.
Sarah Weisbarth:
No, absolutely, Adam. And we use the same formula in our webinar series. We’re in the midst of an effective confrontation series right now, and we talk about feeling, behavior, and impact. We use that same formula to do recognition messages.
Adam Salgat:
Yes.
Sarah Weisbarth:
And so being able to identify those behaviors that you want to see repeated is really crucial, and communicating that, exactly what you’re saying, communicating that to people. Some of the other judgment words we had were unprofessional, right? So you could look at behaviors of unprofessional to be showing up late for work, typos in a report. It could be a dress code issue. It could be a virtual environment issue, where your virtual background, whatever that’s conveying, and just trying to come up with some very specific things that you can point to that you would want someone to change their behavior.
Again, remembering that a behavior is seen, felt, or heard. You have to be able to act out the behavior. And when you put a judgment word out there, if you can’t act it out, that’s that moment of saying, “Okay, well, what’s the thing that they’re doing? What are the words that they use? What’s their tone of voice? What happened that is causing me to have this reaction, this feeling of ‘it’s unprofessional’ or ‘it’s disrespectful?'”
Adam Salgat:
Having the ability to self-check is interesting. Because it’s easy, even for me, who I feel like, oftentimes I try to do that self-check, I think to myself, okay, what’s bothering me right now? Is it just a headache, or is it something else that I can manage and take care of in a different way? Is it work? Is it family? Is it just too much noise at the current time? Having that ability to self-check is important, especially when we’re talking about judgment. Tell me a little bit more about how we can work on adjusting that judgment.
Sarah Weisbarth:
So, it is hard. I always feel, this is my message of hope for our listeners, right, we talk about stuff, and I’m like, “It’s great, it’s wonderful to improve relationships,” but guess what, it’s a lot of work.
Adam Salgat:
Well, people say, and I always believe, if anything’s worth it, it’s going to take work. Right?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Right. So you mentioned, I think, the first key thing is the self-awareness, and being aware of, “Well, what state am I in? What’s going on for me?” And I’m going to take it back to the values and the needs again. The moment I have some sort of emotional reaction, and we talked about feelings last month, the minute I have some sort of emotional reaction, I pause and be like, “Oh, well, that’s interesting. What’s that about? Is it because their behavior is a problem? And it has an impact that I can identify that then I want to talk to them about? Is it because their behavior is triggering some sort of value or need on my part that I’m like, ‘Ooh, I don’t agree with that. Well, okay. Well, that’s interesting. Let’s talk about that.’ Is it because I have a need that needs to be met and they’re not doing it, and so maybe it’s something I need to work on?”
It’s first pausing and recognizing that trigger, that moment, and starting to almost really have a really deep vocabulary of judgment words, the moment they come out of my mouth. And normally they have like A-L at the end of them. Disrespectful, inconsiderate. Those words, when we’re putting like the AFL or the ‘ful’, or the thing, the ‘y’ at the end of it, those are usually judgment words. So stopping and being like, “Oh, well, that’s interesting. That’s a judgment word. What behavior, what’s the thing that they’re doing?” Pausing and being like, “Seen, felt heard. If I had to talk to this person about this, what would I tell them I would ask them to change?”
Adam Salgat:
Right. And then in my mind, determining, do you need to?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah.
Adam Salgat:
Yeah.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, and that’s-
Adam Salgat:
Yeah.
Sarah Weisbarth:
… it’s going back to that self assessment. Is this my issue or is it their issue?
Adam Salgat:
Right.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Or do I need to make it an issue? And that goes back to our three moves. Right? Do I accept it, do I change the situation, or do I ask for change?
Adam Salgat:
Right.
As we wrap up the podcast today, what is your key takeaway for our listeners?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Adam, my key takeaway is that first, I really want our listeners to remember that a behavior is seen, felt, and heard. It’s a concrete thing, something that can be acted out. And then for me, it’s really about recognizing when one of my values or needs has been triggered and that I’m judging people because of that, and taking that pause like you mentioned, and being like, “Okay, is this about me and something I can work on, maybe I’m the one that needs to change? Or is this something I can go and ask for change around, and identify that behavior that I want to ask for change on?”
Adam Salgat:
Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and talk to our listeners. Tell me about next month’s topic.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, next month’s topic is going to be about impact. Remember, I mentioned the formula of feeling, behavior, impact, well we’re moving on to that next factor of a change message or a confrontation message of impact, which is essentially, why should someone care? Right? So if I’ve told you I feel this way about your behavior, what’s the impact, then, of that behavior? Why should I care to change? So we’re going to talk more in depth about impact next month.
Adam Salgat:
And why should I care? Well, honestly, I do.
Sarah Weisbarth:
No, that’s legit. Right? That’s, seriously, we can totally leave this in as an outtake because here’s the thing I feel, when people say, “When you, I feel,” it usually comes back like, “Well, I, sorry you feel that way.”
Adam Salgat:
Right. And we’ve stepped into this in the past, and obviously we’re wrapping up this podcast and we’ll touch on it more, but we’ve stepped into it before, where we’ve talked about, make it apply to them if you know you can.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Absolutely. We’re going to tie that all together next month.
Adam Salgat:
All right. Sounds good. If you have any suggestions about subjects for our podcast, feel free to reach out through our Facebook page. And if you’re interested in taking a class, visit ourcommunitylistens.org. Thank you again for listening to our podcast, and don’t forget, each word, each action, each silent moment of listening, sends a message. Therefore, you are the message.