How to Help People Talk About Hard Things

I was invited to guest lecture at the Harvard Divinity School course, “Preaching as Public Leadership,” taught by my own Unitarian Universalist Congregation Leader, Reverend Claire Feingold-Thoryn. And I decided I wanted to offer some hard-won advice from my experience giving hundreds of talks about mental health and neurodivergence to audiences all over the world. I’ve gotten so much wrong over the years. I only recently got my talk to a place I’m happy with. Helping people talk about hard things is a skill, and when done well, is a gift to your audience.

A couple of weeks ago I was giving a workshop on leadership anxiety for about 200 leaders at a large company. I asked them if they could recall a time when anxiety had helped in their career. After a moment, one woman in the audience raised her hand and said: “I grew up poor, and I never wanted to be poor again. The worry about being poor made me anxious but that anxiety made me work harder than anyone else. It got me here today.” 

That was so brave. It was such a perfect audience answer it was like I planted this woman in the audience! And it instantly dissolved the shame people might feel about talking about difficult emotions in the room. All of a sudden it wasn’t 200 people listening to a person on a stage talking about an uncomfortable topic… It was a community of people whose shared experiences created common ground.

It’s taken me a long time to learn how to bring an audience of strangers who did not necessarily know what they were signing up for to a place where they could be open like that. Here are my ingredients for leading a conversation that helps people talk about hard things.

Create “The Story Of Us.”

Nobody wants to feel alone with hard things and yet almost all of us do. When we realize we’re not alone, we feel community and then we can create positive action and change! Harvard’s Marshall Ganz famously teaches a class on organizing through building new public narratives. His model of storytelling is made up of three components: a Story of Self, a Story of Us, and a Story of Now. I like to think this way when we’re exploring hard things. 

After they read my books, listen to my podcast, or hear me talk, many people tell me, “I thought I was the only one.” That’s a terrible feeling. When people feel seen and understood and not alone, it’s so powerful. So I find if I share my story, a couple of others will feel inspired to share theirs. My story will be different than theirs, but we find common themes. Narratives start to emerge and piggy back on each other. There’s the sense of “Me too.” You can go from feeling “I thought I was the only one” to seeing the patterns. That’s the story of us.

You can always add data or academic research to support the sense of shared narrative. People tell me their stories of mental illness and hard times and I can say- “Absolutely, I hear that all the time and in fact, the data supports this by x, y, z.” I often cite the similar experiences of people I’ve interviewed as well to affirm an audience’s observations. 

Every audience is full of different personalities and temperaments, life experiences and levels of status and privilege. Some people will leap up to talk, others will engage visibly, and others will stay quiet. And some people will look like they’d rather be somewhere else. But if you can create enough community in the room for half of the people to be actively engaged, most people will pay attention, and the story of us builds. 

Make it clear you are just as vulnerable as they are… but you’re also competent, trustworthy, and strong.

When asked for what they want in a leader, most people will say they want someone warm and open, but also competent and strong. It may feel counterintuitive but when you’re leading conversations about hard things, this equally applies. 

Reverend Claire Feingold-Thoryn advises “preaching from your scars and not your wounds.” This is such powerful advice for leaders who want to share vulnerability and model strength simultaneously. You’re not sharing raw, unresolved pain but rather the learning and resiliency build from healing the wounds.

It may be tempting to go in boldly and share your naked truth right up top. But this can feel alarming to the audience. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s better to bring people in slowly, to build your own credibility as their guide through the experience, and then share personal narrative. A wise person once said about public speaking, “Let them see what’s in it for them first. Then let them get to know you.”

But sharing some of your own vulnerability, it seems to me, is essential in helping people talk about hard things.  And so you’re aiming to create a balance between being a model of vulnerability while retaining your authority as their speaker or facilitator. Practice telling your story. Know just how vulnerable to be- not a puddle on the floor they feel they need to help clean up, but a healthy model of real human life.

If public speaking makes you anxious, that’s great. Being anxious doesn't mean you’re not strong! Use the motivational edge of anxiety to bring energy. Open your talk with confidence and once they trust you, let them know this is as big a deal for you as it is for them. 

Boundaries Matter

Your job as the speaker is to create a holding environment. You want to make it feel safe for folks to explore new things. You do this in part by setting good boundaries.

I was once invited by a huge financial services company to address their employees and talk about mental health at work. During the Q&A period of my talk, an audience member stood up, shared her very powerful personal story of managing mental illness and parenting a special needs child and then proceeded to blame her employer and accuse them of hypocrisy and lies when it came to work life balance, and benefits.  I could tell that my clients were deeply uncomfortable and probably blamed me for her outburst. I didn’t really know how to deal with this, and so I sort of mumbled ‘Thank you for sharing. Could you please talk to your HR department?’ and then I tried to change the subject. It definitely didn’t work and upset everyone. We all left feeling bad about the event. After this experience, I learned I needed to work harder to establish good boundaries and have a plan to manage such questions.

There’s a difference between open conversation and trauma dumping. Brene Brown coined the term ”vulnerability hangover,” which is what happens when you share too much personal information and regret it after. When you feel uncomfortable from things we’ve shared, or from things others have shared, it means a boundary was crossed. 

Boundaries are a big deal. Your physical boundaries control your safety by establishing your level of comfort with touching and interaction, and your emotional boundaries protect you from unhealthy experiences. When you’re talking about hard things, boundaries matter, and it’s your job as speaker to set them. 

You can do this by setting some ground rules up front. You can model boundaries in your own sharing of story. You can set guidelines for the Q&A. If an audience member pours out trauma or says something that makes the audience uncomfortable, have a plan to deal with it. How can you acknowledge the speaker while also bringing the audience back to equilibrium? Rehearse different scenarios and have a game plan ahead of time. 

Also, pace the conversation so the level of vulnerability is appropriate to the situation and audience. I’ll go a lot deeper and let people get more raw in a small environment where we’re all aligned in our expectations for the conversation. When I’m addressing a large audience who may only be there because someone told them they should be, I’m lighter and more high-level.

I have very clear boundaries about what I share. What I share feels very open to people, but it's really strategic. You don’t have to air your dirty laundry to be vulnerable. Your job is just to open the door, just open the window; you don't have to give them everything. In fact, you don't want to. Identify the nuggets of your story that inspire others to look into their own lives and spark their own stories. That's enough for people to get excited and inspired.

When it comes to addressing how people should share in a work setting, Dr. Emily Anhalt suggests using “boundaried vulnerability”: sharing enough with others to invite connection, without sharing so much that anyone has an emotional hangover.

The idea, Anhalt says, is that “There’s a spectrum from too tight to too leaky. Too tight is when we don’t let ourselves show up as humans. When we’re going through a really tough time and someone asks how we’re doing and we say ‘I’m good, everything’s fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’” This doesn’t work well because people are perceptive and may feel like we’re shutting off possibilities for authentic connection. Too leaky is when people “evacuate so much of their emotional stuff that it puts other people in a position of being their therapist or fixing something they don’t have the responsibility to fix.”

The key to setting healthy boundaries is knowing your own, and setting limits. Do you know your own triggers and can you handle them while facilitating a conversation? Are you taking care of yourself? Are you well-resourced?  Do you have someone to confide in and bring your troubles to?

Create spaciousness

People need time to process hard things. They react differently. It’s tempting to fill your talk up with so many great nuggets of information and stories -- because you want people to feel seen, and not feel alone, and learn things! And you have so much to say! This is a trap I fell into during almost every talk until a few months ago. And then the very wise Chris West said, “You're keeping them in their heads… let them explore their hearts.” I cut my slides in half and focused much more on creating moments of silence, time for reflection, and time for people to just… talk.

Your job is to give your audience a path, and maybe even a strategy that helps them express their feelings, fears, and stories. You open up a door for them, and they may choose to go through at their own pace.  Creating space in a conversation helps people feel regulated and unhurried. It’s a gift.

Use humor … even if the topic is dead serious

When we laugh, we release tension. And especially when you’re talking about hard things, you need to give your audience a break. They’re working hard!

The magic of inserting humor into your talk is that it helps people understand that talking about hard things isn’t dangerous and it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It brings down the temperature in the room. 

And if you can laugh at yourself, even better. After all, we’re all in this together.