Finding My Fighting Words: How I Learned to Have Uncomfortable Conversations

I’m sitting alone in a coffee shop in Manhattan and I’m about to become the most disliked person in the room. First, I’m going to interrupt the man reading quietly near the window and ask for a sip of his latte. Next, I’m going to ask the line of people waiting to pay if I can cut to the front of the queue. And before I do any of this, I am going to lie down on the dusty, coffee-stained floor — eyes open, slowly counting from one to 20 — as the rest of the room looks on in uncomfortable, visible disapproval. This is how I chose to spend my last vacation. Here’s why. Growing up, all I ever hea

rd about was “EQ.” It was the mid-’90s, and psychologist Daniel Goleman had just popularized the concept of emotional intelligence with his 1995 bestseller of the same name. Now emotional quotient, or EQ, was becoming the latest buzzword to describe this new form of smarts. Unlike IQ, which tracked conventional measures of intelligence like reasoning and recall, EQ measured the ability to understand other people — to listen, to empathize, to self-regulate, and to appreciate. My mother, an elementary school principal, prized brains and hard work, but she placed a special emphasis on Goleman’s n

ew idea. To her, EQ was what separated the good students from the great after they left the halls of her school. It was the elixir that transformed ideas and intellect into impact and influence. She w

as determined to send my sister and I into the adult world with as much of this elixir as possible, and she led regular dinner table conversations on the subjects of empathy, communication, and patience to do so. But when I finally began my first full-time job after graduation — an early employee at a fledgling tech startup — something was missing. Sure, EQ mattered: It was crucial in clinching the interview and integrating quickly into a small, tightly knit team. But before long, I began to notice a second elixir swirling around in the back pockets of some of my colleagues. It gave their opinions extra weight and their decisions added impact. It propelled them into positions of credibility and authority. Strangest of all, it seemed like the anti-EQ: Instead of knowing how to make others

feel good, this elixir gave people the courage to do the opposite — that is, to say things that others did not want to hear. This was assertiveness. Psychologists conventionally define assertiveness as the healthy middle ground between passivity and aggressiveness, but in practice, I found that it boiled down to the mastery of a single skill: the ability to have uncomfortable conversations. Assertive people — those with high “AQ” — can comfortably engage in the sorts of conversations that make many of us squirm. They ask for things they want, decline things they don’t, provide constructive feedback, and engage in direct confrontation and debate. While the top performers at our company varied widely in terms of personality, gender, and introversion/extroversion, they all excelled at these

types of tough talks. In fact, the more time I spent in the working world, the more I felt I could map everyone I interacted with according to their levels of EQ and AQ.