RAW Conversations: What Difficult Conversations Taste Like
By Pam Reynell
No matter who you are or where you happen to be are on Planet Earth
The heart of communication
The art of communication among humans has always been about more than what we say. What is at the heart of every conversation, fleeting or lengthy is the chance to exchange. This may be an exchange of thoughts, feelings, opinions, worries, fears, dreams and desires, to name a few. We use our minds our bodies our actions and inactions in these communications, much of it without words. One of my favourite methods of nonverbal communication can be found in my country of birth, Uganda, where pointing with our lips or saying yes with our eyebrows goes without saying – pun intended.
A community rich with unfolding interaction
Our daily life provides us with a wealth of opportunity and my life specifically as a centre manager of a lively and bustling community centre is a positive feast rich with flavours and fragrance. Difficult conversations are one of the many dishes on offer at this feast each day and I have become familiar with the variety of ingredients that may bring a spicy seasoning, a comforting warmth or both in succession to the experience.
Both consciously and unconsciously I will bring lots of factors into consideration as I do my best to navigate what is unfolding. A few of these include the colour and texture of voices (mine included) eyes making contact and eyes shying away from contact, proximity levels of comfort and safety, body movement, language and gestures, and of course facial expressions, in my bid to, in some cases, quickly understand and be of service.
Cultures, perspectives, bias and the intersection of generations
Being at the centre of this community has given me rich food for thought and reflection on the impact of the nuances of multiple cultures at play with intermingled perspectives and biases on how life works or doesn’t in some cases.
Here I would like to include as a final ingredient, the intersection of generations, these conversations can span 130 years of life and more (but not less than 53 if I am a part of the conversation,) if we add our ages together that provides a complex back drop of lived experience and an ever expanding cornucopia of delights. Now we can see the banquet before us flowing through the building as the community comes and goes, sometimes together and sometimes on their own from 9am to 9pm six days a week.
A tasting menu for conversation
Does this whet your appetite? Might I suggest a tasting menu to sample and begin a deeper exploration of the flavours of a cross cultural multigenerational difficult conversation?
A starter of we all need to be seen and heard - this sets us up nicely providing a grounding and possibility of a small satisfaction for all parties
A second course of welcoming all contributions with kindness and respect - choosing to listen fully with ‘minds eyes’ and ‘hearts ears’ and taking the opportunity to see from another perspective.
A main course of finding solutions - what outcomes are we looking for, are there ways to collaborate or agree, even if we also need to disagree.
A dessert of wisdom, reflection and learning - delicately balanced with the deepening of shared experience in our cherished safe space of community.
Working Together Across Difference
Another example may be in the intricate collaborations that are the staff and volunteers relationships which are the backbone of our community. Here the passions and enthusiasm need careful mixing to allow for the inflexible to open, for fixed ideas and beliefs about self to be seen through another’s eyes… Can we step in hold hands and form a circle, inviting in collaboration. By reassuring and celebrating each other’s contributions we go on a quest for coherence and cohesion. Yes in our day things were, are and will be different. After all, change is our only constant and life is a terminal disease but at the end of today we must produce a poster and social media posts, newsletters, and zines, websites and chalkboards that are inviting and informative. Providing our community with what they need to know and the safe space to simply ask for more help if its needed, whoever they are and how ever they come. That way perhaps we can find ways to ease the difficult and draw out the conversation.
Key takeaways for enabling cross-cultural and cross-generational conversations
We all need to feel seen, heard and valued as a starting point
Communication goes far beyond words - nonverbal awareness matters deeply
Curiosity and respect create the conditions for meaningful dialogue
Cross-cultural and cross-generational spaces are rich but complex
Misunderstandings are natural - they need space, patience and openness
Courage is often required - but only for a moment to begin the conversation
Difficult conversations can deepen care, connection and community
Collaboration grows when we honour differences while working toward shared purpose
These conversations are an ongoing practice, not a one-off skill
Our RAW (Resilience, Adaptability and Wellbeing) Team offer practical ways to turn awareness into lasting change - from workshops and coaching to organisation-wide wellbeing strategies. Learn more about our approach
The ease of misunderstanding
It’s so much easier not to understand, to feel the differences in who we are, where we come from and how old we are. In any one moment at the centre we pass by one another as those who remember our lifetimes many times over and those who are just beginning, those whose life stories and myriad of adventures both in the mundane detail of everyday and in the magical realities of creativity, cannot be perceived in their appearance or face value. Similarly the distress and complexities of what makes a conversation difficult for one party cannot be assumed.
Without pause and allowing the space to open and include the perplexing - like technology, a favourite for much frustration across the board, or perspectives on anxiety and vulnerability – which is impacted greatly with age, circumstance, language and experiential bias, in a matter of moments, confusion and misunderstandings bubble over and spill into a soup of difficulty.
Courage in Difficult Conversations
In a context where there is such a constant ebb and flow of diverse interaction across race, gender, age and circumstance, there is so much to be gained by engaging with courage into what may well be a difficult conversation.
Invariably these arise at first as problems and disputes, conflicting needs or delicate topics. How to address the challenge of letting a regular know their personal hygiene and self-care needs some attention is a good example. We care for this person, we see this person almost every day, we need to do our best to take care of this member of our community.
It’s difficult, to be frank, it’s a smelly situation, we feel awkward we don’t want to hurt feelings or give rise to embarrassment. Within that discomfort we are also recognising our desire to take collective ability to respond. The courage is only needed for a moment, to point out the smelly elephant in the room, then comes the opportunity to let them know they are loved, to reach out to their loved ones, and let the love ripple out further by discreetly letting, family carers or friends know about the smelly part but also that we love their family member or friend as one of us. Then together we look for solutions and continue to keep a look out in the days to come.
