Avoiding Miscommunication In Financial Conversations
Sarah and John have been married for a few years. They are saving money to buy a house, when Sarah starts noticing that John is spending a lot of money while eating out at restaurants. As they struggle to stay within their budget, she starts thinking that John is being frivolous with their money and wonders if John no longer cares about buying a house. Eventually, Sarah concludes John is not truly invested in their marriage and that he doesn’t love her anymore. She starts avoiding spending time with him, and they begin to grow apart.
While a dramatic example, many of us have had financial experiences or conversations with a partner that ended very poorly. Like Sarah, these experiences  may lead to negative beliefs about our partner’s intentions, and these beliefs may create tensions and even fissures in your relationship.
So how do you avoid negative communication or miscommunication when it comes to discussing finances?
In the instance presented above, Sarah moved rapidly up the ladder of inference. The Ladder of Inference is a concept developed by the late Harvard Professor Chris Argyris, to help explain why people looking at the same set of evidence can draw very different conclusions.
Sarah started with the observable data– John was spending a lot of money at restaurants.
She then started to select data. She focused on the restaurant spending while ignoring other relevant information, such as that John had decided to cancel a trip with his friends in order to save money.
From there, Sarah decided that the data meant John was being frivolous, and thus she assumed John didn’t care about buying a house. Her conclusion was that John wasn’t invested in the marriage. This conclusion led to her belief that John didn’t love her, and her actions reflected this belief. In the future, the belief that John doesn’t love her could lead to a reflective loop where Sarah only focuses on data that confirms John’s negligence, thus strengthening her belief.
Sarah moved rapidly up this ladder without pausing to have a clarifying conversation with John or considering contradictory data. As a result, she’s developed a belief about her relationship that may not truly reflect how John feels about her and their partnership.
Instead, Sarah could work to better understand her and John’s assumptions and beliefs so they can find a way to strengthen, rather than weaken, their partnership. Here’s how Sarah and John could have avoided this miscommunication:
- Before talking to your partner about finances, start by reflecting on your beliefs and the reasoning behind those beliefs. What is the observable data behind this belief? Is their other data that I have ignored or neglected?
- When you start the conversation, explain your thinking and reasoning. Try to be clear and calm about your thought processes, and speak as if your beliefs are personal rather than universal. For example, “I thought you might not care as much about buying a house. I thought this because I noticed you were spending a lot at restaurants and not saving as much money.”
- Finally, ask your partner to explain their own thinking and reasoning. Ask them to explain the data behind their reasoning and the process by which they moved from data to conclusions. Ask clarifying questions along the way: “When you said ____, did you mean _______?”
In this way, you can avoid jumping along the ladder of inference and developing false or misguided assumptions about your partner. You will be able to work together to collect all available data in order to develop more comprehensive beliefs and action steps. Further, you will both be on the same page when it comes to your finances.
image source: https://pivotalthinking.wordpress.com/tag/ladder-of-inference/
