Talking about a behavior, not a person

Today: how to talk about something someone did without turning it into a verdict about who they are.

The situation

It is a Tuesday afternoon, and a client meeting has just ended. Two colleagues walk back to their desks in silence. During the meeting, the client asked one of them a question about the timeline, and before she had finished her answer, the other one jumped in and answered it for her. The client nodded, turned to him, and addressed the rest of his questions to him.

She sits down, opens her laptop, and types a message she will not send: "You undermined me in front of the client. You always do this. You don't respect me."

Now it's Saturday night, in a different house. A father is sitting in the kitchen at two in the morning. His sixteen-year-old son was supposed to be home at midnight. Three messages, no answer. When the front door finally opens, the father is standing in the hallway, and the sentence comes out before he can stop it: "You're so irresponsible. You never think about anyone but yourself."

Two very different scenes, and the same shape. Something happened, something specific that could be described. And the sentence that came out was not about what happened. It was about who the other person is. Disrespectful. Irresponsible. Selfish.

Listen to what those sentences leave the other person. When you say "you're irresponsible," there is only one way to answer, and it is to defend who they are. "I'm not irresponsible. I got good grades this semester. I always text you." The teenager is not going to say "you're right, I'm irresponsible, I'll change my personality by next weekend." Nobody can answer that sentence with a yes.

Compare it with a different sentence: "You got home at two, and we had agreed on midnight." There is nothing in it to defend. It happened. And once it's on the table, something different can happen next time.

This episode is about the difference between those two sentences, and about a simple model built to help people stay on the right side of it.

What the research says

It is worth being honest about where this tool comes from. It was born in leadership training, as a way of giving feedback at work, and it is taught widely by the institution that created it. The sources we check do not include a large trial of this specific model, and this episode will not pretend they do.

What the research does describe is the cost of the other kind of sentence. When John Gottman and Robert Levenson followed couples over 14 years, recording how they handled conflict, negative emotion during conflict predicted the divorces that came early. Their earlier work had found that the couples at higher risk of separating showed more defensiveness, more stubbornness and more withdrawal in their conversations. Those studies were about couples, and a father and a teenager, or two colleagues, are not a married couple. But the mechanism is familiar to almost everyone: when a sentence attacks who we are, we defend, and when we defend, we stop listening.

A sentence about a behavior removes the attack. It doesn't remove the problem. The problem is still there, named clearly. But now it is something the two of you can look at together, instead of something one of you has to fight off.

There is one more reason this matters, and it is the one the model's authors care about most. What someone intended and what their action caused are almost never the same thing. The colleague who jumped in may have been trying to help. The teenager may have had a phone with no battery. Sentences about who someone is leave no room for that. Sentences about what happened do.

The tool

The tool is called SBI, and it was created by the Center for Creative Leadership, an American institution dedicated to developing leaders. The three letters are the three parts of the model: situation, behavior and impact. The center teaches it with one more concern, which we'll come to in a moment: the gap between intent and impact.

The first part is the situation. When and where. One specific moment, not "always." "In Tuesday's meeting with the client." "On Saturday, when you came back from the party." "At Sunday dinner, at your mother's house." The situation does two important things. It shows that you are talking about something real, that actually happened, and it keeps the conversation anchored to that moment. That alone lowers the feeling of being judged as a whole person.

The second part is the behavior. What the person did, described the way a camera would record it. What they said, what they did, or what they didn't do. No interpretation. "You answered his question before I finished." "You got home at two, and we had agreed on midnight." "You commented on my weight in front of the kids." If you notice an adjective sneaking in, like "rude," "careless," "selfish," it's not a behavior yet. Keep looking for what the camera would have seen.

The third part is the impact. What it caused, in you, in the work, or in the relationship. "I lost my train of thought, and the client was left not knowing who decides the timeline." "I stayed up afraid something had happened to you." "I was embarrassed, and I spent the rest of dinner in silence." The impact is where you say why it matters, without exaggerating and without making the other person responsible for everything you felt.

Put together, it sounds like this: "In Tuesday's meeting with the client, you answered his question before I finished. I lost my train of thought, and he was left not knowing who decides the timeline."

Notice what's missing. There is no adjective about the person, and there is no theory about why they did it. That's where the fourth part comes in, the one the center came to recommend: the question about intent.

After the impact, you ask. "What did you have in mind when you answered?" Not as a trap, and not as a rhetorical question. You ask because you really don't know. Maybe he wanted to help. Maybe he didn't even notice she was still talking. Maybe he really was running over her.

The question does something an accusation never does: it gives the other person a chance to tell their side before you conclude. And when the intent was good and the impact was bad, which is surprisingly common, it opens the easiest path there is in a hard conversation. "Oh no, I thought I was helping. I'm sorry. Next time I'll wait for you to finish." That sentence is almost impossible to reach from "you always undermine me."

When to use this, and when to use something else

If you listened to last week's episode, you may be wondering how this is different from the four-part sentence of Nonviolent Communication. The two tools look alike, and they complete each other.

SBI is for when the conversation is about something someone did, and you want it to change. It's shorter and more direct, and it works especially well at work, with teenagers, and in any relationship where talking about feelings still sounds strange.

Nonviolent Communication, the approach created by Marshall Rosenberg, is for when the conversation is about what you need from the relationship. It goes deeper into what you feel and what matters to you, and it ends with a request.

Many real conversations use both. SBI to open, with the moment, the behavior and the impact. And then the need and the request, from Rosenberg's approach, to close.

How to do it

Before the conversation, write four short lines.

First, the situation. One specific moment. If several moments come to mind, and they usually do, choose the most recent and the clearest one. Don't bring the list. We'll come back to why.

Second, the behavior. What the camera would record. A useful trick: swap every "you are" for "you did" or "you said."

Third, the impact. What happened in you, or in what the two of you are doing together. One or two sentences, no more.

Fourth, the question. An open question about intent, one whose answer you are genuinely ready to hear.

Choosing the moment

A well-built sentence can still land badly if it arrives at the wrong moment. Three small choices make a big difference.

Choose a moment close to what happened, but not in the middle of it. At two in the morning, in the hallway, with his heart still racing, the father was not going to build a four-part sentence, and his son was not going to hear one. The next morning, over coffee, both of them could. For most situations, the right moment is the same day or the next, once the strongest feelings have settled but while the details are still fresh for both of you.

Choose a place without an audience. A behavior described in private is information. The same behavior described in front of others, even with perfect words, becomes a public correction, and the other person will be busy protecting their image instead of listening. The colleague from the meeting asked for five minutes the next morning, at his desk, and not in the team chat.

And choose one conversation at a time. If there is a lot to say, it is tempting to save everything for one big talk. But a big talk is exactly where the list appears, and the list is where the other person stops listening. One situation, one conversation. If there is a second one, it can wait for another day.

The example

Let's go back to the father in the kitchen at two in the morning.

The sentence he said without thinking was: "You're so irresponsible. You never think about anyone but yourself." His son went to his room and closed the door. Neither of them slept well.

The next morning, over coffee, the father tries again, with the four parts.

The situation: "On Saturday, when you came back from the party."

The behavior: "You got home at two, and we had agreed on midnight. I sent you three messages and didn't get an answer."

The impact: "I stayed up, afraid something had happened. So did your mom."

And the question: "What happened?"

Now, there are several possible answers, and each one leads somewhere useful.

The answer might be "my phone died." Then the conversation becomes about an agreement for when a phone dies. Borrow a friend's phone and send one line. Ask the host to call. Something concrete, for next time.

The answer might be "I forgot what time it was." Then the conversation is about how to remember. An alarm on the phone at eleven thirty. A friend who keeps track.

The answer might be something harder: "I didn't want to come back yet. Everyone else could stay until two." And then the conversation is about the curfew itself, which may need to be renegotiated now that he is sixteen and not fourteen. Maybe the answer is still midnight, and the father explains why. Maybe it becomes one o'clock, with a message at midnight. Either way, it's a conversation about a rule, which a teenager can have.

In none of these cases is the conversation about the son being an irresponsible person. That is a conversation no teenager can have, because the only move available in it is to defend himself, or to give up and agree that he is.

The same model, at work

Now let's go back to the colleague from the client meeting, the one who typed a message she didn't send.

Instead of "you undermined me in front of the client," she asks him for five minutes the next morning, and she starts with the situation: "In yesterday's meeting with the client." Then the behavior: "When he asked about the timeline, you answered before I had finished my answer." Then the impact: "I lost my train of thought, and for the rest of the meeting he directed every question to you, including the ones about my part of the project." And then the question: "What did you have in mind when you jumped in?"

He is quiet for a second. Then he says: "Honestly? I thought he was getting impatient, and I wanted to help you close the point. I didn't realize he'd take it that way."

That answer could have been an excuse. Here, it wasn't. It told her something she didn't know: that he was reading the client's mood, and that he thought he was helping. And it gave the two of them something to fix together. They agree on a simple rule for the next meetings: whoever owns a topic answers the questions about it, and if the other one wants to add something, they wait for a pause and say "can I add one thing?"

A week later, in the next meeting, it works. It wasn't a transformation. It was one rule, born from one conversation about one behavior.

It works for good things too

The model is usually taught as a way to talk about problems, but it works just as well, maybe better, for things that went right. Most praise is vague: "great job," "you're amazing," "thanks for everything." It feels nice for a moment, and then it disappears, because the other person doesn't know exactly what they did that mattered.

The same three parts make praise specific. The situation: "In yesterday's meeting." The behavior: "When you summarized the three options before the client even asked." The impact: "He relaxed, and we closed the decision in ten minutes."

With a teenager, it might sound like this: "On Saturday, when you texted me at midnight to say you'd be half an hour late, I went to sleep calm. Thank you." That sentence tells him exactly what to do again. "Good job for being responsible" doesn't.

Specific praise also changes the tone of the harder conversations. When the other person has heard you describe their good moments with the same care you use for the difficult ones, they are more likely to trust that your description of a problem is fair.

When they say it didn't happen that way

Sometimes you describe the behavior carefully, and the other person answers: "That's not what happened." Your colleague may remember that you had already finished your answer. Your son may insist he texted at midnight and the message didn't go through.

Resist the urge to prove you're right. Two people can see the same moment differently, and both can be honest about it. Instead, compare what each of you saw, with the same camera test: "What did you see happen, exactly?" Often the difference is smaller than it seemed, and the conversation can move on to the impact, which is harder to dispute, because it's yours.

When you are the one being judged

The model also works in the other direction, when the verdict is aimed at you. Someone says "you're so careless," and everything in you wants to defend who you are. There is another way out: ask for the situation and the behavior.

"When was that? What did I do, exactly?" Asked calmly, and not as a challenge, those two questions turn a verdict into something the two of you can look at. The other person may have one specific moment in mind, and once it's on the table, it's something you can talk about. "The email to the client on Friday. You sent it without the attachment."

Then ask about the impact, the way you would want to be asked. "What did that cause for you?" You may hear something you didn't know, and that's usually the part worth hearing.

None of this means accepting the verdict. You can agree with the behavior and still disagree with the adjective. "I did send it without the attachment. I don't think that makes me careless, but I understand why it was frustrating." Separating the two is exactly what this model teaches, and it works just as well when you're the one doing the separating.

And if the other person can't name a single moment, that tells you something too. Sometimes the verdict is carrying a feeling that has built up over time, and the conversation you need is a different one.

The traps

There are four traps worth knowing, and each one is very natural.

The first trap is bringing the list. "And last week you were late too, and last month, and that time at your grandmother's." The moment you bring the list, the other person stops listening to the situation and starts preparing a defense for each item. Keep it to one situation. If there really is a pattern, you can name the pattern after the first situation has been talked through: "This is the third time this month, and that's why it matters to me."

The second trap is hiding the judgment inside the behavior. "You were rude" is not a behavior. It's an evaluation, and the other person will argue with it. "You said 'that's obvious' while I was explaining" is a behavior. They can recognize it, and they can't really deny it.

The third trap is inflating the impact to win the point. "Because of you, the whole project is ruined." If the impact was small, say it was small. An inflated impact gives the other person an easy thing to dispute, and then the conversation becomes about the size of the impact instead of the behavior.

And the fourth trap is asking the question and not listening to the answer. If you have already decided what the intent was, don't ask. A question that isn't really a question is worse than no question at all, because the other person can hear that you're not listening, and they will stop explaining. The question only works if you are willing to change your mind.

Your exercise this week

Think of something someone did recently that bothered you. It could be at work, at home, with a friend. Then write five lines.

First, the situation: when and where, one time only.

Second, the behavior: what a camera would have recorded, with no adjectives.

Third, the impact: what it caused, without exaggerating.

Fourth, the question about intent.

And fifth, two possible endings: what you would say if the intent turns out to have been good, and what you would say if it turns out it wasn't.

That fifth line is the one most people skip, and it's the one that prepares you for the conversation that actually happens, instead of the one you rehearsed.

What to do with what you find

When you finish, look at the second line, the behavior. It often tells you whether you're ready for the conversation.

If the behavior came out clear and specific, something the other person would recognize, you're probably ready. The rest of the model will do its work.

If you found it hard to write the behavior without adjectives, that's worth noticing. Sometimes it means that what bothers you isn't one behavior, but a feeling that has built up over many small moments. In that case, it may help to go back to the ladder of inference, from our first episode, and separate what happened from what you concluded, before choosing which situation to bring.

And if, while writing the impact, you noticed that it was much bigger than the behavior seems to justify, pay attention to that too. Sometimes a small thing hurts a lot because it touches something older, a history with this person, or with someone else. That doesn't make your feeling wrong. It just means the conversation about the behavior may be the first of more than one.

Before you go

If you would like company for this exercise, Confidey has it, as an exercise called Talking about a behaviour, not a person. It walks through the parts with you, one at a time, about the situation you bring. You can find it at confidey dot com.

Next week: rehearsing both sides. Before a hard conversation, we rehearse our own lines many times, and almost never the other person's. We'll look at a technique from Gestalt therapy that changes that.

Thank you for listening. Take care of the conversations that matter.