Can you actually enhance your relationships by calling in the F.B.I.?
In this episode of the Listen First Podcast, Kat Edmondson and I delve deep into the intricacies of handling anxiety and confrontation within personal relationships. Through this insightful discussion, we stress the significance of addressing these challenges constructively to foster healthier and more fulfilling connections.
To do so, we revisit the Our Community Listens concept of utilizing the FBI formula to write prepared statements to turn confrontation into conversation. This innovative approach centered around crafting initial messages that clearly express our feelings, pinpoint specific behaviors, and resonate with the psychological needs of those receiving the message can foster deeper connections in your life.
We explore the intricacies of effectively delivering the FBI message, including considerations like body language and timing. Additionally, we discuss utilizing the method to recognize and celebrate someone’s positive actions in the workplace or at home.
Join us on this enlightening journey as we share valuable insights, actionable strategies, and real-life examples to empower you to overcome relationship obstacles.
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Please note that this transcription was completed using AI software. Occasionally, unanticipated grammatical, syntax, homophones, and other interpretive errors are inadvertently transcribed by the software. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
Adam Salgat 0:01
Yeah, so I’m just imagining like if there was like I think of like little cartoon animations popping up next to your head, and there’s like an anxious meter, like just you know, like just it’s kind of filling and filling and filling and filling.
Narrator 0:20
On the Listen First podcast, you’ll join us as we connect with an array of fascinating guests from varied backgrounds and perspectives to explore how we can build and become leaders that transform their families, workplaces, and communities. Tune in for insight on mastering skills like active listening, verbal and nonverbal communication, understanding behavioral tendencies, and appreciating individuality.
Adam Salgat 0:57
Hello, and welcome to the Listen First podcast. I’m your host, Adam Salgat. Can you actually enhance your relationship by utilizing the FBI? Stay tuned to find out. In this episode, Kat Edmondson and I delve deep into the intricacies of handling anxiety and confrontation within personal relationships. Through this insightful discussion, we stress the significance of handling these challenges constructively to foster healthier and more fulfilling connections. To do so, we revisit the Our Community Listens concept of utilizing the FBI formula to write prepared statements to turn confrontation into conversation. This innovative approach, centered around crafting initial messages that clearly express our feelings, pinpoint specific behaviors, and resonate with the psychological needs of those receiving the messages can foster deeper connections in your life. We explore all of the details of effectively delivering the FBI message, including considerations like body language and timing. Additionally, we discuss utilizing the method to recognize and celebrate someone’s positive actions in the workplace or at home, join us on this enlightening journey as we share valuable insights, actionable strategies, and real-life examples to empower you to overcome relationship obstacles. I’d like to welcome in Kat Edson back to the podcast. CFCC’s director of content and systems and a seasoned facilitator. Kat, thank you so much for being part of the podcast again.
Kat Edmondson 2:50
Hi, thanks, Adam. Thanks for inviting me back after the last one. Seems like things are going all right for me to come back for another.
Adam Salgat 2:57
Yeah, yeah, we got some good listens on that, and and I know someone actually who listened, and they contacted you about about the story we were telling there, and they were kind of looking for a conclusion. Is that right?
Kat Edmondson 3:09
Yes. Yep. I got a text a couple days ago from someone I know who listens to the podcast asking, “Cat, I’m dying to know like what happened next. Yeah.
Adam Salgat 3:18
Well, let’s pick up from that podcast. So what we’re referencing is podcast 101, all aboard. Know your three stops on bothered Boulevard. Cat, let’s recap first of all, just in general, the story that we were using as our thread to move through the three moves when we’re bothered.
Kat Edmondson 3:36
Yes. So Adam so eloquently stated that I was on bothered Boulevard. I was. This was about a couple months ago now. At this point, but heading to a weekend in New York with some friends, and I was traveling with two with two friends. And I am a planner who was ready to get to this train station with a good chunk of time before, so that we could map out our seats. I had my snacks and met up with my friend, who right as we were about to get on the platform, threw a little curveball into my plan and went into CVS to get a snack, which was fine. You know, don’t want her to be hungry on the train. But then my internal timer started going, and I was starting to get fairly anxious about missing the train, and you know, every second that passed while she was in the store, and I was waiting, kind of made me a little bit more anxious as we continued on. So that’s kind of the background of what got us to this point where I was feeling some type of way going into that weekend.
Adam Salgat 4:34
Yeah. So I’m just imagining like if there was like I think of like little cartoon animations popping up next to your head, and there’s like an anxious meter, like just you know, like just it’s kind of filling and filling and filling and filling, and eventually she came out, and I’m sure that anxiousness came down once you got on the train. But as we talk about, there’s always you know the chance that some of that lingers, right? So when you’re when you’re not. To let it go, which is one of our moves. That’s what we’re going to start covering today. But I don’t want to go too far without refreshing what those full three moves are. So let’s talk about those. Give me what those three moves are when you’re bothered.
Kat Edmondson 5:14
Yeah. So when we notice that we are bothered that something is bugging us, and we’re kind of filled with emotion by, as a result of someone’s behavior, we always have three moves. The first is to accept the behavior, right? Ask yourself, bothering me. This is bugging me. But can I truly accept what’s going on, right? Can I understand why and kind of move on from there? Our second move is to adjust the circumstances. You might remove the behavior or the situation that’s causing you to be bugged, right? You might remove it or kind of change things, so you don’t really have to deal with that specific behavior anymore. The third move, which we get to talk about today, is when you decide to ask for change and actually confront the person, right? Have a conversation with them to let them know what it is that’s bothering you, so that you can kind of move towards a solution together.
Adam Salgat 6:04
Yeah, and you said the scary word in there: confrontation or confront. You know, we talked about this in the last podcast, but again, let’s remind people: what are some of the biggest reasons that people choose not to confront someone?
Kat Edmondson 6:18
So many. I know one of the reasons, especially that I really resonate with, you don’t want to upset the other person, right? Telling someone, “Hey, you’ve been doing this, and it’s making me feel sad, upset, whatever it might be, isn’t a very pleasant conversation to have. We sometimes we don’t know how they’re going to react, right? Will you get in trouble for confronting someone, especially in a work environment, yeah, we might not know. You know, if I confront someone and then they come up with a solution and move on, they may not even need me anymore. All sorts of reasons that people are hesitant to confront.
Adam Salgat 6:53
Yep, I I’ve always been the one that’s kind of like not wanting to upset the apple cart, right? Like it’ll be fine, it’ll go away. So you you just give it extra time, and I think you mentioned that as well that you you can you can end up in that same boat.
Kat Edmondson 7:07
Oh yeah, if I give it time, it’ll just go away. The problem will solve itself on its own, and I don’t have to worry about it.
Speaker 1 7:13
Right,
Adam Salgat 7:13
which is not always the key. Right, I’m done. Sometimes it works, and in smaller cases, um, you know, it’s it’s just fine, but all of those reasons cause people to kind of have this anxiety of confronting, right? I know that that we we like to try and you know educate people and say confrontation is really just a conversation, and so maybe that mental reframing can really can really help someone decide that okay, I don’t have to be so fearful, and we can just have a conversation. What do you think about that?
Kat Edmondson 7:50
Making that shift in my mind has helped a lot and made me more comfortable with the idea of confronting, right? Because if I care about someone, and I want to continue to build our relationship and keep it strong, starting a conversation with them seems much less daunting than confronting them. Yeah, yeah.
Adam Salgat 8:09
So today’s skill is going to be focused around how to start that conversation, right?
Kat Edmondson 8:16
Yeah. We
Adam Salgat 8:17
are going to work on FBI statements. So we’ve decided to confront that skill as FBI. Tell me a little bit about working through that skill set in the Our Community Lessons course and what that is.
Kat Edmondson 8:31
Yeah. So Adam Sun Lego here for us. We got FBI, which is going to stand for our feelings, behaviors, and impact. And it’s almost you can almost think of it like a little formula for crafting your initial message to get the conversation rolling, kind of get the get the ball started around what’s bothering you, and so our F is for our feelings. We’re going to tell them this is exactly how we feel in this moment. Our B is for the specific behavior, and our I is for the impact that is having.
Adam Salgat 9:02
Okay, so you we we say those in that acronym of FBI typically because I think it’s really easy for us as in our culture because that correlates with you know a government agency. But does it need to go in that order? Do we need to write this statement, this sentence, or potential sentences? I suppose, in that order. Does it have to start with feelings, move into behavior, and then the impact? Like, what’s your thought there?
Kat Edmondson 9:27
No, such a good question. Yeah, like you said, FBI easy to remember. It’s going to stick in your brain, and it’s a little catchy way to think about this confrontation message after class. No, but the order doesn’t matter, right? And you want the message, and at least when I write it, I want it to be something that sounds very natural coming from me, right? And so it might not be that FBI order; it can be any.
Adam Salgat 9:49
Right. So it could be fib, it could be biffy, biffy, it could be any any industry. Yeah, yeah. We can roll with it, though. Congregations, we will not try to pronounce those anymore. So, if we go back to your situation with your traveling partner, your traveling companion, what is what is an FBI statement that you could form in that whole situation? She she went into the store, she needed a snack, made you anxious. Let’s let’s kind of talk about it. Go from there.
Kat Edmondson 10:23
Yes. Oh, and Adam, you you helped me write the message just there in the way that you recapped that, right? Because she went to the store, right? That’s that specific behavior. She walked on CVS to get a snack. It made me anxious. That was my feeling. Okay. I could feel like you, like you said, when you that meter of anxiousness of anxiety rising absolutely, and then the impact. I was concerned that we were going to miss the train or that we weren’t going to be able to have our weekend with friends, and so when we deliver this FBI message, it’s kind of bringing all of those elements together. So it might look something like, “Hey, when you went into the store to get a snack five minutes before the train, I got really anxious and became concerned that we were going to miss our weekend with friends.
Adam Salgat 11:07
Pretty, pretty clear and concise. Opens the floor for her to respond and and and say you know her feelings back. What I what I want to point out that I didn’t hear in there is anything all along lines of like, I can’t believe you were so careless to go into the store so late, or you must be lazy. Why didn’t you plan out your snacks ahead of time? Like, it sounds like you’re staying away from statements like that, right?
Kat Edmondson 11:31
Yeah, absolutely, right. Because how many times have someone confronted you and said something like that, and then you’re like, “Fuck, no, not like I wasn’t being careless. I just didn’t think about it, or I didn’t know I was going to be hungry until right now. Right, they’re not helpful, and those statements are much more packed with judgment and kind of added emotion to the statement. When really, we don’t know why this happened. All we know is a specific behavior. All I know is that she went into the store five minutes before we were hopping on the train.
Adam Salgat 12:00
So trying to keep, especially when it comes to behavior, right? Trying to keep that as specific as possible.
Kat Edmondson 12:06
Yes. Yeah.
Adam Salgat 12:08
So that brings me to kind of our next point here about crafting an FBI statement. Let’s talk about those nuances, right? We want to stay judgment free. We want to identify genuine feelings, and for the impact explanation, and you know, with a friend situation, it might not be quite as you know a person pretty well. But when you’re thinking about that impact explanation, especially thinking about it in a work setting, sometimes I think, what does this person really connect with? Are they a little bit more of a bottom line kind of connect the way, like they might be dollars and cents, or are they a people person? Where that impact? So let’s talk about the nuances of all of those. Let’s start with we already touched on it a bit, but staying judgment free and looking at behavior. Can you touch on that a little more?
Kat Edmondson 12:54
Absolutely, yes. So just like you said, when we’re crafting that FBI message and we’re talking about the behavior of the other person, we really want to make sure that we’re talking to the specific behavior and not the sticky judgment. You can know that you’re in that kind of sticky judgment place if you’re saying something that the other person can argue with. I always kind of keep that in the back of my mind. If I say, “Oh, you were being lazy, right? If you didn’t come back at me and say, “No, I wasn’t, then I’m probably stepping into the space of judgment, right? And what judgment does? It really is a barrier to the conversation. It makes it much less likely for the other person to truly hear what you’re saying because you can get really caught up in that feeling of being judged by someone else.
Adam Salgat 13:34
Yeah, I would say so. And I and I am, when it comes to working with my children, for example, I’ll try and be careful in that space because I know if I call my eight-year-old who I’ve asked to do something a few times, if I call her lazy, she’s going to shut down even like immediately, right? Like so. But if I talk to her about I asked you to do this, but you did not move, she can’t really say much to that because it’s fact she did not move to take care of whatever it is I wanted to be taken care of.
Kat Edmondson 14:08
And if she does have something to say to that, right, it might give you more reason as to why she didn’t do those things, which is going to help you get deeper into the root of the problem.
Adam Salgat 14:17
That’s a good point. Yeah, could come down to the fact that she might she might have injured something like if I just got home from work and she’s sitting and you know those kinds of things I don’t know she might have twisted her ankle at school or anything along those lines yeah so let’s talk about identifying genuine feelings or or how we can best get to the root of what we’re feeling in situations,
Kat Edmondson 14:43
and this is probably the hardest thing for me. Out of many of the skills that we talk about in our community lessons, identifying the actual feeling that I’m having is so difficult. One of the tools that we’ve started to use is the feelings list because it’s really easy to live in the space of. Secondary feelings, right? Like I am angry or I’m sad about this.
Adam Salgat 15:04
No,
Kat Edmondson 15:05
but to take it deeper and to really make sure that you’re tapping into what is the feeling, right? What need do I have that’s drawing out this very specific feeling allows you to send a really clear message to the person you’re communicating with, so that you can know kind of what do I need from this? What is this this primary feeling that I have? That’s hard to identify a lot of the time.
Adam Salgat 15:27
I love you mentioning in there, like what is this need that I have? You know, and getting back, you know, getting into the idea of you know needs and values, right? Like so, those those start to come into play in certain situations, right?
Kat Edmondson 15:40
Oh, absolutely. And if I think about this train example, I was feeling anxious. Why, right? What need do I have? Preparation, like the need to be prepared and have time, and kind of ease around travel, all was kind of at jeopardy, and made me anxious.
Adam Salgat 15:57
Yep, I completely understand that. And and in a sense of travel or doing things around in public, like personally, the ability for me to know that I’m going to have enough time because I move physically slower than some others matters. So it matters to me to know that I’m going to have enough time. So that would be a big need of mine if I felt like someone was eating up time that I did not have, so I think that’s why I appreciate this train story so much because I identify with your preparation of it. But that’s maybe a little separate. Okay, so let’s let’s move back into discussing the impact part of an FBI statement, and I made reference to this a little bit thinking about DISC profiles. Can you talk about how we can use our disk profiles to potentially help us create the impact part of this statement?
Kat Edmondson 16:46
Yeah, absolutely. We talk about again in our community, listen to the disc tendencies, and I think when you’re crafting your FBI message, considering the tendency of the person that you’re crafting it for, it can be a really helpful way to make sure that that impact really lands with them, right? And so when we consider impact, we might think about time. We might think about money that was impacted by this. Kind of those more task-focused pieces of impact.
Adam Salgat 17:14
Okay.
Kat Edmondson 17:15
And so when we think about disc, right? We know that the C tendency and the D tendency are very driven by task. They’re generally going to be more task first, and so if we can align the impact that we’re talking to with those psychological needs and kind of where those tendencies go first, we have a better chance of having it land for that person. Kind of on the opposite then, right? Our INRS tendencies are those people first tendencies, and so if we deliver an impact message around fulfillment or relationship or energy with another person, again, we might be able to have it land a little bit more easily for that person, and then lead into some good conversation.
Adam Salgat 17:54
I think about those types of impact statements and how they identify or could identify with different people a lot when I think about work situations, and how you might ask someone to get something done by a certain deadline, and if you say to them because it’s going to save the organization, you know, a certain amount of money, or it’s going to save, or you could state it as it’s going to save the organization and the people a whole lot of time. Now, when you start bringing in the people, I start not surprising. I start identifying with that a little bit more. So it is interesting how the way we phrase things can really have an impact on it on the way it connects with someone.
Kat Edmondson 18:38
Absolutely. And if you don’t know the discrepancy of the other person. You can. We we try to keep our FBI message pretty simple, but there’s sometimes cause to have two different impacts in your FBI message: one more task, one more people oriented.
Adam Salgat 18:53
Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. So, we have talked about some of those nuances when it comes to actually crafting the FBI statement, let’s say we’ve sat down, we’ve put all of our thought into it, we’ve we’ve worked through a lot of those little pieces, made sure we stayed out of judgment, we identified our true feelings, and figured out what our need was. We tried to potentially, you know, cater the impact statement to someone, the person we’re going to deliver this to. We have it written and we’re ready to go. What are some other things to keep in mind before we actually deliver
Kat Edmondson 19:30
it? That’s a really great question, and I think one that we might overlook a lot of the time, right? Because all right, I’ve got my message ready to go, but we have to consider kind of the other person too, because this is not just a one-way conversation that we’re about to have. There’s going to be two people involved, and do we know what else is happening in their day? Right? Are we setting ourselves up to have a conversation with them at a time when they’re ready to receive this message and be able to engage with us? Right. If I’m trying to confront you, Adam, let’s say right before you go into a very stressful meeting, that might not be the best time to deliver a confrontation message to you. Right. So, considering the kind of the time and place is going to be really helpful.
Adam Salgat 20:14
I do think of this, and I want to give one quick example. I know at the end of the night, my wife is taxed from the day. I know, and it might be the very first time that we’ve had an opportunity to be solo and actually talk about things, and that might be 930 in the evening. But she’s been awake since six. She’s a long school day. We’ve had kids and activities and dinners and who knows. I know. Oftentimes, even though there might be something I want to bring up. That is not the time. Whether it’s an FBI statement or confrontation, or if it’s just, “Hey, what are we planning for tomorrow? I know that’s not necessarily the time. I might want to wait until the morning because she’s going to have capacity to hear what I’m saying.
Speaker 2 21:00
Absolutely.
Adam Salgat 21:02
So we take those things into consideration. We maybe give them a small warning. We we know that they you know they know that we want to bring something up, or we just know that this is a better time of day to approach them about something. So we’re going to do it then. What about tone and body language? Because even though we have a great FBI statement, if we’re not aligned, right, it might be an issue.
Kat Edmondson 21:24
Yep, yep. I’m so glad you brought that up because we can think about kind of the other person, right, in the setting that they’re in. But we also kind of have to do an internal check on ourselves before we deliver this message. And it’s very easy to be angry in a moment and deliver a message when we’re full of emotion, but we-it’s so helpful to be able to take that pause and make sure that we are in a space where we’re maybe calm, where our body language shows that we are having this conversation to drive connection with someone and not to kind of power up and be combative. So making sure that our tone and our nonverbals and kind of our inner state really are in a place where you’re ready to go to connection together, have this difficult conversation, so that you can yeah kind of strengthen the relationship and solve the problem, or at least explore it and begin the conversation around it.
Adam Salgat 22:18
I love this reminder a lot because I think it’s very easy to think, okay, I know what I want to say, but I’m still maybe heated, right? Or I just I’m not my tone is not bringing through what I really truly am trying to imply or work work through. So I think there’s always that that is a deep part of our communication that we don’t want to forget about.
Speaker 3 22:40
Yeah, the words are
Adam Salgat 22:41
important, but so so is that nonverbal.
Kat Edmondson 22:45
Yeah, and we talked about that in class too. Nonverbals are about 90% of our message. What emotions are heightened? 90%
Adam Salgat 22:52
Right.
Kat Edmondson 22:53
Huge. Yep.
Adam Salgat 22:54
It is huge. Absolutely. So okay, we sit down. We’re in. We’re all we’re in full alignment. We’ve got our FBI statement, our tone, our nonverbals are ready to go. We deliver our statement. Now what? We put on the proverbial boxing gloves and get ready for rebuttals. Like what? What are we thinking here? Like what’s what happens after we deliver that FBI?
Kat Edmondson 23:19
It’s going to be the opposite of putting on those boxing gloves. It is, and it’s going to-it’s such a shift that we deliver our message, the person hears it, and then we switch back into reflectively listening. Okay, whatever they say, right? We have potentially just shown them or told them something that they had no idea about, and it’s potentially kind of personal, right? The message that we’re delivering to them. Super common for the person that we’ve confronted to have a lot of emotion as a result of our statement, or to have a lot of questions, or just kind of need to process. And so our job as the confronter is to then go back into reflective listening, and you know, giving them those reflexive responses, sending empathy their way.
Adam Salgat 24:06
Yeah, yeah. Which is such like when you think about the idea of like I’m bringing forward something that has bothered me, but now I need to be able to turn around and understand that you might have a problem with that. You might have a problem with my problem.
Kat Edmondson 24:22
You you probably do. It’s very likely that you do have a problem with my problem. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So
Adam Salgat 24:28
let’s jump back. We’ve we’ve stepped through this. I’m you did some of this. I’m sure when you were thinking about whether or not you were going to confront your friend in your travel situation. Let’s talk about. Give me that example of what goes on when that happens for you, and you choose to confront with your statement.
Kat Edmondson 24:47
Yeah. Yep. So in this example, I’m with my friend probably a little bit later because I’m filled with emotion in the moment, and I’m not ready to confront her right then and there. But maybe a couple hours later. Into the train ride. It’s just the two of us. We never want to confront really with other people around because it’s a very personal thing. So just the two of us talking, and I might say, “Hey, I was pretty anxious when you went into the store 10 minutes before our train, and it made me concerned that we were going to miss the weekend with our friends. Right in that moment, I deliver the message, totally tuned in. Right, my nonverbals are aligned. I’m listening to what she has to say, and knowing my friend, she would take that very personally, and might not even have a lot to say in the moment because she’s a processor, and thinks through it. And my job after delivering that message is to listen, to support whatever questions she has, let her know. I’m telling you this because I care about our relationship, right? And I want to make sure that we’re strong here. But really shifting back into that listening with empathy space.
Adam Salgat 25:52
Gotcha, gotcha. Any tips on how to wrap up a conversation, potentially, especially in work situations, when maybe their conversation does not go well.
Kat Edmondson 26:04
And I have a couple different. When you say doesn’t go well, a couple things come to mind. Maybe the person is filled with emotion and kind of comes back at me with things, and that might raise me. Right, that might make me emotional and want to raise up. Even if I’m really intentional going into the conversation, in balance and like ready to listen, I might be filled with emotion too. And when this happens, can tell them, hey, I can tell that we’re both really emotional about this right now. Let’s come back to it when we’ve had time to think, right? When we’ve had time to kind of think through a process and have a more collaborative conversation. So you could always circle back, and often these are not one-time conversations.
Speaker 4 26:48
Right.
Kat Edmondson 26:48
The other thing that happens sometimes that might make it a little bit difficult is if the person that you’ve confronted just completely shuts down and doesn’t give you anything. I don’t know if you’ve had that happen before, but I’ve confronted, and in this situation, like my friend doesn’t have a lot to say. Just says, “Oh, okay, and then right,
Adam Salgat 27:10
right. So the opportunity that we’ve talked about, where it’s a conversation starter, a conversation doesn’t really happen.
Kat Edmondson 27:16
Yeah, and so you have kind of a similar approach then to if they kind of came back with a lot of emotion, and you’re raised with emotion in those moments. And this is something I’ve been trying to do more often. Just telling them, I imagine that you might be needing time to process, or might be filled with emotion right now. I’m gonna circle back to this with you later today or tomorrow, just to check back in and see if you have any other questions or if any other thoughts have come to mind.
Adam Salgat 27:41
Gotcha. So yes, in certain situations, you’re going to have someone who doesn’t necessarily say much in the moment. You might have to come back, and hopefully, that conversation does come around. And if they have more questions, you guys can work through your feelings and work through the conflict that there was. Let’s do a quick review of everything that we’ve talked about here. So start from not the very top of the three moves, but at the FBI statement. If you could do that for us, Cal.
Kat Edmondson 28:11
Sure. Yep. So you’ve decided to confront. You’re going to deliver your FBI message. The FBI message is going to be composed of your specific feeling, the behavior of the other person, with no judgment and an impact, and it doesn’t have to be in that order necessarily. But all three of those elements should be included when you deliver your FBI message, and when you go to deliver it, considering what’s the state of the other person, what’s the time, what’s the location, is it just the two of us? Am I in a space where I’m ready to reflectively listen after, because once we deliver our message, that’s when we switch back into reflectively listening, right? Aligning our nonverbals, our tone, showing that empathy to the person that we’ve just confronted, and then potentially kind of doing it over and over until we’ve kind of moved into the space together where we’re able to move forward from here.
Adam Salgat 29:01
Sounds wonderful, and it gives to me. It really gives a great tool to allow people to work through things that they maybe were afraid to bring up with others in the past.
Kat Edmondson 29:12
Yes, yes, and that’s the hope, right? That you it allows people to talk about what they need, what’s been bothering them, but then strengthen the relationship and move into connection even more with the with the people that they care about.
Adam Salgat 29:24
Isn’t that that that is such the truth to me? Like you know, after you’ve been through things with people, you always feel closer. You know, like they’ve had opportunity to share, you’ve had opportunity to share. You know, you come together and really just be a closer unit. One of my favorite things, though, about FBI statements is that they are not necessarily a tool that only gets used when we need to confront. They’re a tool when we also want to recognize somebody and the work that they have done, or the way that they made us feel, or. Anything that they’ve you know had that’s had an impact on our lives, so we call those recognition messages. So, Kat, tell me about recognition messages.
Kat Edmondson 30:11
Ah, they’re so great, and that’s that’s another thing I love about the FBI. Yep, is that it can be kind of multifaceted, and so when we want to recognize someone at work in our personal life. Just being able to tell them, “Hey, I noticed this very specific thing that you did. This is how it made me feel, and this is the impact it had on our relationship, on my day, on the team. It’s a great way to take that thank you or I appreciate you and make it really specific and meaningful to the person that you want to recognize,
Adam Salgat 30:42
I think that’s such a good reminder. Because man, it’s it’s great to get that message that says you’re awesome or you’re a rock star or such you did such a great job. But taking the extra, it could be an extra minute might take you five. But if you really kind of boil down to like when you finish that report and submitted it on time. It made sure that our team looked good, and it made sure that we were completing the process. That you know, we were getting our projects done on time, and that just made me so happy and thankful that you’re part of our team. I mean, that was a little jagged. It was off the top of my head, but like, it’s that kind of thing. That’s a little bit more. It comes through with a little bit more meaning than just simply that you’re a rock star. Now, every day of the week, I’ll take anybody telling me I’m a rock star. There’s no nothing wrong. I want to say from my perspective, there’s nothing wrong with those statements. And I think the more we do those kinds of things, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s better in the world, right? I’ve always kind of had this mindset that we can easily tell people sometimes when we’re being bothered, but we may not do it in the right way, or we may tell someone, you know, that what we don’t like about something, but how often do we tell people what we do like? And so I love the opportunity for people to do that more. This is a structure to do that, and I remember in SERS when I took our community serves, there was something in there that really hit home a bit about praising my kids. Can you tell me about the what we talk about in our community serves when it comes to praise?
Kat Edmondson 32:19
Well, I I love what you were saying, Adam, about how it just feels good, right? It feels good to be able to give someone a FBI recognition message or to receive it. So we know like there’s value in it just from the feeling that we have. But there’s also like research done that shows for every one kind of feedback message or confrontation message, anywhere from five to seven recognition type messages are going to kind of balance that or offset that. And so, in order to really deepen that relationship, to build that trust, and to make those confrontation messages received a little bit more easily, we we really need to lean into those recognition messages.
Adam Salgat 33:01
Yeah, and that’s exactly what I was getting to about talking about being a parent. Is I think I it’s very easy to sit in that parent spot of like you tell them what they should be doing because you’re the one who’s supposed to teach them, teaching them to not always need to be telling them what they’re doing wrong. So I need to make sure that I take time to praise the things that they are clearly doing right as well.
Kat Edmondson 33:24
Yeah, yeah. Well, and you know, recognizing them by thanking them for when they did their chores on time
Adam Salgat 33:32
is,
Kat Edmondson 33:32
in a way, teaching them, right? Because it’s reinforcing those things that they did that you wanted to see. It’s that celebrate what you want to see more of idea. Yep.
Adam Salgat 33:40
Yeah, I love that absolutely. Well, Kat, as we wrap up today’s podcast, what is your key takeaway for listeners today?
Kat Edmondson 33:49
Oh, confrontation is not scary, or it doesn’t have to be, right? And it can be that FBI message can allow us to start that conversation, get your own needs at least heard, or your feelings heard, and then hopefully after maybe multiple conversations and attempts at coming back to it, it allows you to kind of move into that place with the other person where you have been able to come to a to a solution and kind of deepen that relationship.
Adam Salgat 34:18
Awesome, thank you so much. Is there anything you would like to add about your train trip and your trip to New York, so we’re not leaving people wondering exactly how it went? I’m like,
Kat Edmondson 34:28
you don’t want to leave with another cliffhanger and I get another follow-up text about how it went. It was great. We had a great time. We were able to meet up with some other friends there. The friend and I are totally good. I’m not worried about the next time I travel with her. Yeah, the whole thing wrapped up really well, and we had a really great weekend.
Adam Salgat 34:48
Awesome, that’s good to hear. I’m glad, and I know our listeners will be happy to hear that you had a great time too. So, I look forward to the next time we get to have you on the podcast, Kat. Thank you so much for. For leading us through FBI statements.
Kat Edmondson 35:02
Yes, thank you for thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
