Whether you are a lawyer practicing family law or a party going through a family law case, one seemingly straightforward word you will encounter time and time again is “communication.” Communication is a factor in deciding major decision-making authority (or legal custody). Communication is the measuring stick by which the court may assess whether your case will go to trial or be resolved by agreement. Communication is a standard by which a lawyer’s competence is assessed. Communication permeates the findings of fact which the court must make when determining custody. Past communications can come back to haunt a lawyer, a spouse, a parent. Present communications determine the likelihood of success in a case. Future communications loom ahead, beckoning with the possibility of modifying an unfavorable outcome.
Communication – how to make it better and more effective – is a cottage industry, a cause celebre, and recurring new year’s resolution. Tomes have been written about it, customized to different professions, situations, age groups. So, when I came upon a thin book titled, How to Say Anything to Anyone, by Shari Harley, I was impressed by but also skeptical of its ambition.
How to Say Anything to Anyone is oriented toward professionals. Its advice and examples are geared toward managers and employees who harbor an ambition to rise through the ranks to a position of leadership, responsibility, and oversight of others. The chapters track different professional scenarios while also following a larger arc of the author’s career growth in management and business consulting. The complexity of hypotheticals increases as the book progresses. So, what utility does this book have in the context of family law?
Here are the lessons I drew from How to Say Anything to Anyone, which I intend to use to become a better practitioner, and to help my clients communicate better with their spouses and/or coparents. But first, a caveat: I recognize that these tips do not work for victims of violence and abuse. Rather, these communication tools presuppose that both sides are capable and have a track record of seeing and treating each other as equals.
- Don’t Assume – The initial period of coparenting after separation or after a newly imposed custody schedule is when parents need extra training wheels in their communication. When is “after school”, if school lets out at different times, and aftercare is also at the school? When is “bedtime” if it falls within a range? What is a convenient halfway point between the homes? What is “homework” if some days, the child does homework only for the next day, and on other days for the week ahead? Where do dayslong projects fit in? A lawyer can fashion an agreement. A judge can write an order. But interstitial spaces remain.
Do not rely on shorthand and what you consider obvious. Take the time and spell it out. Do not assume the other parent knows what you are talking about, even if he/she has seen or done the exact thing you are describing. Spelling out processes and steps in detail will not only avoid miscommunication, but it will spare you having to pay your attorney to argue over where your child’s violin should be kept in-between lessons, or whether Nutella violates the classroom’s prohibition on tree nuts.
- Ask Permission – When broaching an emotionally fraught topic, it is easy to dial up your former spouse/co-parent and let loose. One of the hardest things to do is, in a moment of anger and high emotion, is to recognize that addressing this topic may also be difficult for your spouse and/or coparent. Starting a conversation by asking permission to broach a difficult issue recognizes the difficulty for both side and creates a common ground. Logistically, it may also keep you from yelling at your co-parent while they are scheduling their annual physical and trying to remember the name of their first pet or high school mascot.
- To be clear: being asked permission does not necessarily invite the other side to play a game of hot potato with an unsavory topic. A discussion will ultimately need to happen. But starting out from a place of respect and recognition will be more likely to result in an accepted invitation instead of “New phone, who this?”
- Don’t Gossip – Simply put within the family law context, do not malign/complain about/undermine your co-parent in front of your child. Do not carry on a conversation with your best friend about “that jerk” when your child is within earshot. And children are almost always within earshot, especially when you think they are not. Do not speculate about your ex’s new relationship if what you said can come back to your child. Parent groups within your child’s school are not safe spaces to discuss your spouse/coparent. Before you open your mouth, play a mental game of “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, except your child is Kevin Bacon. Odds are, whomever you are choosing to confide in (professionals and members of the clergy excluded) will be at most three degrees removed from your child. Proceed with caution.
- Ask for Tough Feedback – It is inevitable that, as you learn to communicate in a new capacity as ex-spouses and/or co-parents, some topics will be your own personal landmines. Avoiding those topics is not an option. Similarly, one spouse’s or co-parent’s method of communication may be ineffective or, worse, counterproductive.
Whether you are the one not getting through or the one who keeps hearing the same thing over and over, seemingly to no end, sit down and figure out what does not work in your communications. Engage in information-gathering. What about the way you talk and engage does not work for the other side? The purpose of this process is not to recreate the bad old days by holding a screaming match with your ex, but rather to figure out how you can make future interactions more productive and, best of all, briefer.
Don’t just ask your ex. Ask those with whom you interact frequently how they think you could be a better listener and communicator. Do not ask those who are invested in building you up or tearing you down. Solicit input with the goal of finding in yourself what needs improvement.
The advice I got from my father when I was 8 and the advice that I am getting now from a couple’s counselor, when I am … much older than 8 … is annoyingly similar. Pause for 5 seconds before you answer any question. I tend to shoot from the hip. Which is, apparently, as bad a habit for shooting as it is for communication.
Identify what you can easily control to make for a more productive conversation. Do you know when, during the day or week, you are more receptive/less stressed? Are you a morning or evening person? Delve into more difficult and nebulous factors. Do you start coming up with a pithy repartee long before the other person has stopped talking to you? Do you tend to take descriptions of problems as criticisms of you personally? If you look, you will find how you can make yourself a better listener and communicator.
With the new parenting plan tool (read more here), Courts are casually asking parties about splitting decision-making power as though they were dividing a box of donuts. Now is the time to see what you can do to improve your communications with your spouse and/or co-parent. Each of you looking at your own flaws will be more constructive – not to mention cheaper – than undertaking an in-depth study of all that is wrong with the other person.
- Eight Steps for Problem-Solving an Issue – the most useful and straightforward tool offered by How to Say Anything to Anyone is an eight-step process to have a difficult conversation. Here it is, paraphrased an adapted for the family law context.
- Introduce the Conversation – Reach out to your spouse and/or co-parent and say what topic you wish to discuss: school enrollment, the child’s sleepiness after visits, switching up Thanksgiving plans. Reality and all its crazy permutations are your limit.
- State your Motive – Explain why you wish to have this conversation. No, “Because the Order says so” is not a motive. Why do you want to have this conversation? Are you finalizing your plans, and do they have to be finalized now? Is the child too tired to do homework after he gets home? Are you considering switching residences or has your child been admitted into a specialized program?
- Describe the Observed Behavior – Describe what specific action is concerning/what plan you are proposing/what options you are contemplating.
- Sharing the Impact or Result – Describe the effect of the status quo and why it needs to be changed.
- Have Dialogue – Listen. Don’t shoot down. Count your Mississippis. Validate. Listen some more. Hear what the other side says, and why.
- Make a Suggestion or Request – The purpose of this step is to reflect how an initial position can be modified by dialogue. Consider adjusting, then re-state, your position. Steps 5 and 6 can repeat cyclically, before you move on to Step 7.
- Build an Agreement on Next Steps – Make sure you both walk away with something. Have an agreement on what will happen next. If you do not have a fixed decision, discuss what information you will gather and where, when you will have a follow-up, or whom you may consult.
- Say “Thank You” – Because this is how you were raised. In all seriousness, respect and validation are a theme that permeates How to Say Anything to Anyone. Saying “Thank you”, even when you have not necessarily achieved what you had hoped for, shows recognition of the effort made on both sides.
Before dismissing this algorithm, consider this: it asks permission to engage in a difficult conversation by giving the other side an opportunity not to be cornered or caught off-guard; it requires the person who initiates the conversation not only to state their motive but to describe the impact of a problematic behavior, i.e. not to rant but to problem-solve; it requires the initiating party to walk away with a solution for next time; and it builds in dialogue. Following these steps will force the initiating party to think through steps and solutions instead of being driven by feelings and frustrations. The algorithm is designed to make problem-solving a mutual process in which both sides are invested, rather than an adversarial process where one side is on the offensive and the other on the defensive.
Shari Harley’s How to Say Anything to Anyone is small but mighty. It is straightforward and concise. It forces the reader to confront his/her own problems as a listener and a communicator because, to be an effective and productive communicator, you need to be invested in an outcome greater than persuasion. Getting someone to do exactly what you want is glorious, no doubt. Glorious but rare. But even more glorious is working out a solution that both you and your spouse/co-parent can live with. For us mortals, this is the best-case scenario. But to achieve it, we need to learn how to communicate and engage, how to discuss difficult topics with difficult people, or, in other words, how to say anything to anyone.