Canadian Finance Blog

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Seven Guidelines for Effective Money Conversations Posted: 12 Mar 2011 02:00 AM PST The following excerpt on effective money conversations is from The Secret Language of Money, written by David Krueger and published by McGraw-Hill. 1. Communicate from a base of empathy.   Each person has a distinct point of view. Communication is not the triumph of one viewpoint over another. It is the establishment of a common ground for understanding different points of view, in order to create a mutual, collaborative agreement or plan. Requiring that someone else respond to you in one particular way renders that person and their response inauthentic. Developing empathy with another is predicated on first doing so with yourself. If you are not genuinely aware of how you are experiencing the world, you cannot become similarly aware of another person's perspective. Empathy is a way of listening to yourself or to another person with resonance of an entire experience of feeling, thinking, perceiving, and behaving. Another term for this is rapport. Rapport derives from the old French word rapporter, meaning to bring back or carry back. Establishing rapport with another is to travel into that person's sphere, to step into their shoes, and bring back a sense of who they are and how they are experiencing the world. 2. Seek to understand—not to change. Much of the difficulty in relationships comes from our thinking we can change someone else's behavior or attitude. The only person you can change is you. The impulse to change another's behavior usually springs from some dissatisfaction in an aspect of ourselves. Seeking to have another person live an unexpressed part of yourself can be both unsatisfying and addictive. Attempting to change someone else's personality, attitude, style, or mode of processing won't work, and will only derail the process. What someone believes is more important than what they know. Learn your partner's belief system, because these assumptions drive behavior and filter what is heard. 3. Clarify with questions. A large corporation's executive team huddled around a tape recorder, listening to the most recent presentation by their company's CEO. They played the recording, rewound it, and played it again, and again, and yet again. A junior officer walked in and saw them all sitting around the machine, looks of bewilderment on their faces. She asked them what was going on. In his speech, they explained, the CEO had indicated that the organization should "embrace more color." They each had a different idea about what he had meant by this directive: a change in dress? Or in racial makeup? Perhaps, in office decor, in language, in marketing message, in their logo and letterhead? They were combing through the speech, parsing each word, looking for clues as to what the CEO had in mind. "Has any of you picked up the phone and asked him?" she asked. No one had thought of that. Socrates taught us that asking questions is a far more effective way to engage with others than providing answers. The detail may contain the feeling and the important aspects that otherwise would have to be assumed. 4. Reflect back what you hear. When discussing an emotionally charged subject such as money, reflect back to the other person what you hear them saying before responding with your own thoughts and feelings. This reflection insures that you correctly registered what was said, and more importantly, what was meant, and it also provides the other party the opportunity to clarify their own expression, if necessary. It also communicates your sense of respect and regard for the other person: It says that before launching into your point of view, you want to make sure that you have correctly grasped theirs. And by the way, this has the happy fringe benefit of better positioning your partner to then hear your point of view. 5. Listen between the lines. Yogi Berra once said, "You can see a lot by watching." You can also hear a lot by listening. The truth is always conspiring to assemble itself before us, if we will just get ourselves out of the way and pay attention. We are always communicating, and there are many languages; some even use words. Feeling invisible to another creates a unique sense of being eclipsed, the pain of not being seen by another. Eclipsing is when one body in the solar system passes in front of another, rendering it invisible, as if it disappears. People do this, too. While eclipsing may masquerade as rivalry or jealousy, it is significantly more powerful. Listen literally and closely to what someone says, and you will see constant clues about what is wanted and needed. Truth and reality are perception. 6. Acknowledge the different roles you each have adopted. No two people are alike, and no two halves of a relationship are identical. Be aware of the distinct roles you have each taken on within your relationship. These may reflect your gender, your differing income levels, your differing skills or native abilities around money (e.g., perhaps one of you is naturally better organized and more easily handles bills), differing roles in child rearing, and so on. Acknowledging these roles doesn't mean they are fixed or immutable; it simply means being clear about how you've agreed, implicitly or explicitly, to function together at this point. If you want to change that, you can discuss it; if you're happy with how it is, the "don't fix what ain't broke" principle may apply. In any case, it's impossible to genuinely assess how your distinct roles are work­ing when they live in the murky realm of the assumed and unex­plored. Talk about it. It's particularly important to acknowledge the income and work differences and potential of you and your spouse, and the impli­cations this has for the balance of power in your relationship. There are almost always differences; don't ignore them. Be aware too of the rules, stated or unstated, by which male and female roles are chosen and rewarded in the family, and of such jobs as who makes decisions, who handles financial matters, and who handles the daily matters of life, including household, children, and chores. Clarify how each of you is validated or invalidated, empow­ered or eroded in areas of work and money. 7. When communication breaks down, step up. Everyone fails to empathize with another at times. Despite our best intentions, we mess up. We're only human. Most important in a relationship is the repair of such an empathic rupture, because then true under ­standing can occur. At times the most important thing may not be what you have done, but what you do after what you have done. When an important relationship is derailed by communication lapse or unintended thoughtlessness, it's often useful to set aside an attachment to being "right." To forgive another is to free yourself. Related Posts: Six Guidelines for Making Grounded Money Decisions Gas Money Retirement Is About More Than Just Money Seven Guidelines for Effective Money Conversations originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on March 12, 2011.

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