ISPEAQ: How to Speak Up for Yourself and Have Difficult Conversations

By Kristen Carter

Have you ever wished you could say what you were really thinking, without jeopardizing an important relationship?

Is there a bully at work, school or in your personal life that you'd love to stand up to, but you aren't sure what to say?

Do you get uncomfortable, emotional or nervous at the idea of talking to a certain person?

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• Language: English
• Publisher: KJCarter, LLC
• Release date: Sep 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735699011

Book preview

To my wonderful family, Charles, Max and Sarah,

who never stop encouraging me

and with whom I feel free to talk about anything.

Contents

Introduction

Why It’s Hard to Speak Up for Yourself and Why You Should Do It Anyway

I: Identify the Individual, Set Intentions, Use I Language

S: Suitable Setting

P: Positivity and Praise

E: Explicit Example

A: Adversely Affected

Q: reQuirements and Questions

Putting it All Together

How to Be a Great Listener

It Won’t Always Work, Despite Your Best Intentions

A Few Last Words and My Hope for You

An ISPEAQ Worksheet

Sample Scripts

A Note On Conducting Performance Reviews

Resources

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

You deserve to be heard. Your thoughts and feelings matter.

I didn’t know this for a very long time. Instead, this is what I learned growing up:

Your unhappy and angry feelings upset other people. Keep them to yourself.

The silent treatment is a more effective way to communicate your feelings. Other acceptable tactics include sulking, sighing, crying silently, slamming drawers, sticking your tongue out at someone behind their back, and spending most of your waking hours at work.

Other people should be able to figure out why you’re upset, without you having to tell them.

If someone gets upset with you, they are the bad guy and you are the victim.

No matter what’s bothering you, present yourself to the world as if all is well.

My conflict-avoidant parents hadn’t learned how to work things out when they felt sad, mad or bad. They had lots of good times, but when conflict arose, my mom would usually withdraw, which frustrated my dad, and over time, he said, he stopped trying. They eventually divorced, and I believe their inability to have difficult conversations was one reason why. To be fair to both of them, they hadn’t learned how to do this from their own parents, who hadn’t learned from theirs, and so on.

I didn’t realize when I was young how dysfunctional this was. But as I grew older, being unable to speak up for myself calmly and confidently became problematic in my marriage, at work and with friends. My husband, to my initial frustration, didn’t try to rescue me when I played the victim. My employers preferred straight talk and the higher I rose in management, the more I was expected to be able to handle difficult conversations with staff, peers and my own bosses. And I once destroyed a friendship by building up such a head of steam about something that when I finally spewed my hurt feelings all over the place, we just couldn’t recover from it. I immediately regretted the way I handled that conversation, but the damage was done.

I wanted to find a better way to communicate: to speak up for myself confidently and calmly, even – or especially – when the subject was tricky or emotional or the other person was difficult to talk to. I had been a professional writer and communications consultant for more than 20 years, but even that didn’t teach me the art of talking to another person when I felt unhappy about something that involved them. That was the beginning of the journey that led to ISPEAQ. I researched effective communication and mediation strategies. I trained with some of the best coaches in positive psychology and interpersonal communications. I read books and attended seminars and courses. And eventually, I crafted the process I describe in this book.

Meanwhile, I migrated from management to coaching and started seeing conflict avoidance showing up in everyone from teachers to athletic coaches, teenagers, CEOs and friends. Over the past twelve years I’ve taught ISPEAQ in businesses, schools and a church; to almost every individual client I’ve ever had and to my own children. In fact, it was my son, Max, who encouraged me to share it more broadly by writing this book. My daughter Sarah, a