How to Redirect a Conversation Without Destroying It

Show Notes

Knowing the meta conversation is happening and knowing how to interrupt it are two different skills. Brian Mattocks works through a three-stage approach for redirecting group conversations that have drifted from action into complaint, ordered from least disruptive to most. The framework is practical and sequenced deliberately because the cost of intervening is not always obvious. Even a conversation going nowhere is doing something, and the way you intervene matters as much as whether you do.

The first move is to name the feeling someone is expressing. Acknowledgment alone often shifts the conversation because people frequently complain in order to feel heard, and once they feel heard, they become available for something else. The second move is to drive toward a specific, immediate, behavioral action: not a plan, not a vision, but one thing someone could do in the next hour. This relocates the locus of control back inside the room. The third move, when the first two are not enough, is to call out the conversation itself rather than any individual in it. You flag that the group has moved from solving to describing, and you ask whether more description is actually going to help anyone change their behavior.

Withdrawal is addressed as a legitimate last resort, not a failure, and the episode is explicit about when private conversation is more appropriate than public redirection.

• Why the meta conversation is moving even when it appears to be stuck
• Naming feelings as a tool for shifting conversational mode
• Driving to immediate, specific, behavioral action rather than general solutions
• Calling out the conversation rather than the individuals in it
• When withdrawal is the right and honest response
• How social capital affects which interventions are available to you

These are not communication tricks. They are ways of taking responsibility for the environment you are part of creating.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] So yesterday I said we'd talk about how to interrupt the meta conversation without kind
[00:05] of blowing up the room or damaging relationships.
[00:08] And that's today.
[00:10] So before we get into the techniques and the ways we might solve this problem or address
[00:18] the challenge, because it's not really a problem, it's not a problem until it becomes one, is
[00:24] again, I want to reiterate that the cost of interrupting here isn't always obvious.
[00:29] In the moment, the meta conversation feels like it's going nowhere and it usually is,
[00:37] but that doesn't mean it's not doing something.
[00:41] The meta conversation is not static, it's moving.
[00:45] And every time you take a statement of the way the world should be, if only things were
[00:51] different, every time that sort of makes it through the conversational dialogue, that
[00:59] feeling begins to fester into fact.
[01:05] It's this soft, squishy perspective that begins to edify into this thick fog for the conversation.
[01:17] And then that fog turns into a mire and that mire turns into an implied assumption about
[01:26] the way the world works that everyone in the conversation collectively absorbs.
[01:32] It's, it becomes a fact.
[01:36] It becomes a felt fact.
[01:39] And this is where stuff gets very difficult because you can't then address it when it has hit that
[01:47] level of communal sort of reality.
[01:51] Change at that point becomes much more difficult to move through.
[01:56] So when it comes time to do this, to make the changes in the conversation that don't turn into
[02:06] violence or madness, the way you have to do that, um, is, is kind of one of three approaches.
[02:17] I'm going to put them in order, but your situation may vary.
[02:21] Um, the order, the first order is this, uh, one, you know, first things first, whenever somebody's
[02:30] expressing a feeling, uh, it's really productive to name that feeling.
[02:35] It seems like you're really frustrated.
[02:38] You sound upset.
[02:41] This seems really important to you.
[02:44] Any of those kinds of sentiments express and acknowledge their felt reality of the moment
[02:49] that someone may be having, you'll find that that alone oftentimes moves the conversation
[02:57] to a different level because sometimes people complain because they just want to felt heard.
[03:03] When, uh, you move past the acknowledgement of feelings and into the next part of the solution,
[03:12] you want to, to then immediately try and drive to an exact in the moment behavior that could help solve
[03:23] the problem.
[03:24] Wow.
[03:25] You sound really frustrated.
[03:27] What's the thing that I can do in the next hour that might help alleviate that frustration?
[03:33] What's the one thing you could do to prevent you from having this feeling again, next time we talk,
[03:42] if we were all to take one step forward towards the objectives we're talking about,
[03:49] what would that look like?
[03:51] And in doing that, we move from the language of these projected systems and projected realities to
[04:00] back to internalizing the locus of control.
[04:04] You always want to do this as a first resort.
[04:08] Uh, if you can, sometimes it doesn't work.
[04:16] Sometimes the lift is simply too great.
[04:20] The grievance is too entrenched.
[04:22] The room is too invested in the commiseration.
[04:25] Uh, and, and I think the next phase of this is naming where the conversation is in the grand
[04:38] scheme of conflict resolution.
[04:41] Say something like, Hey, I want to flag something right now.
[04:45] I think we've moved from solving this problem to describing it.
[04:48] And I'm not sure that any additional description is going to help me change my behavior.
[04:55] Can we talk about ways that we might do that?
[04:59] It's a softer drive to action.
[05:01] It's, uh, a calling out the communal, um, sort of vibe you're creating with the people in the room.
[05:09] And that in and of itself as well allows you to essentially hold the conversation accountable
[05:18] and not the people in it.
[05:21] There's not a ton of benefit to pointing to a specific individual in the room and saying,
[05:28] you keep talking trash.
[05:32] Why do you hate what we're trying to do?
[05:35] All right.
[05:35] Like that's never going to help.
[05:38] Uh, so when we talk about the conversational status or the situation that you're experiencing,
[05:45] you always want to be mindful, uh, particularly in group settings of calling out the conversation
[05:54] as the thing that is having a bad behavior, as opposed to the individuals in the conversation.
[06:00] If you need to talk to somebody privately about how they're contributing to the collective narrative,
[06:07] that's a great use of a private conversation.
[06:11] Your last step is the step taken by the fellow craft masons in the third degree.
[06:18] And that is to withdraw.
[06:19] You can recant and say, this is a conversation that I don't feel is productive.
[06:27] And for my health and for what I think is the best course of action, I'm going to have
[06:32] to take a step back.
[06:34] This is an okay response.
[06:36] It's not the first line of defense.
[06:39] It's not the place I would go immediately.
[06:41] Uh, it does have some consequences associated with it.
[06:46] However, you can always control how much you contribute to it.
[06:51] And if you can't change it, if you don't have the social capital to venture in a conversation,
[07:00] to, to say these things or to take these actions, withdrawal is entirely appropriate.
[07:07] And sometimes you don't even have to explain that and you can just stop contributing.
[07:13] And that's okay.
[07:16] As you go through this process of trying to change the narrative from the meta conversation
[07:22] to something that's action driven and helps move your environment forward, your lodge,
[07:29] your home life, your, you know, conversations with your sick of living, other kids, every conversation
[07:35] you're ever going to get involved in has this sort of meta risk.
[07:38] And these processes are great ways to start mitigating that meta conversation and moving
[07:45] your collective environment forward.
[07:48] We'll talk a little bit more over the next couple of days about other ways that you can
[07:53] take this and run with it and move that forward to create better outcomes for your family and
[07:58] the people around you.