In other articles I have talked about the importance of starting crucial conversations with the facts. What can you observe? Tell the other person what you saw or heard in a specific situation.

Now I would add that we also need to avoid making up stories about these facts. In our stories, we tend to add on evaluations and judgments as to why someone did something.

For example, your colleague is reluctant to explain why they did something. You make up a story that he/she is reluctant because they don’t want you to know about something because that would add to your prestige. They are competitive. But if you could initiate a conversation and learn what is really going on within them, you might learn that it is not what you thought. Perhaps, they are just embarrassed that they did not do their best in this case. They believe it would be painful to expose this defective skill or action.

I suggest you pause now and remember a time when you added a story to the facts. Then ask yourself, “What did I see or hear?” Get clear on the facts vs what judgments you added by making up a story. Clarifying this will do wonders for your communication skills. Then if appropriate, go to the person and ask them what their motives were. Often you will see your story disproved.

Emotional intelligence includes our ability to invite others to disprove our stories and punch holes in our beliefs and perceptions. We tend to discount information that disturbs our beliefs and assumptions. We like to hang on to them and to our stories about why someone did something.

This tendency to hang on to our stories and beliefs can have tragic consequences. One huge example was during the Vietnam War. For 15 years different administrations hung on to the belief that North Vietnam wanted to include South Vietnam so that it could then move on to force communism on all the rest of Southeast Asia. This was called the domino effect. If South Vietnam fell to communism so would the rest of Southeast Asia. Therefore, we had to keep fighting to stop North Vietnam from annexing South Vietnam.

The fact was that North Vietnam wanted to include South Vietnam. Several administrations added the story that North Vietnam also wanted to annex all of Southeast Asia. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense for many of these years, has said that never once in any cabinet meeting was the assumption of the domino effect challenged. This story was just assumed to be true for 15 years without discussion. Many people outside government administrations challenged this assumption, but their ideas were never discussed during cabinet meetings.

The actual outcome disproved their belief in the domino effect. South Vietnam was annexed but no other countries were.

Several administrations refused to consider viewpoints that would force them to abandon their belief. Unfortunately, we all tend to discount non-confirming information.

What can we do about this? Keep perfecting your ability to stick to the facts and avoid adding on stories with judgments about why someone is doing something. Then you can better initiate those crucial conversations to learn what is going on inside others and to resolve issues. Finally, we need the skill of staying open to different views.