Coaching practices for How to Explain Harm

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Explain Harm, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Something went wrong between us and everyone immediately jumps to whose fault it is
• They keep treating what they did as a rule they broke, an abstraction — and they have no real idea what it actually did to me day to day.
• I need to bring up how much something they did hurt me, but every time I rehearse it, it collapses into accusing them of meaning to
• We’re trying to settle this just between the two of us, but the truth is a whole group felt the fallout and their trust took a hit too
• They’re hurt by something I never meant to do, and I keep blurting "but I didn’t mean it like that"

Practices that may help

1. Ask the three restorative questions
   Start every harm conversation with: who was hurt, what do they need, and who is responsible for meeting those needs?
   Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr)
2. Make the harm visible through an impact statement
   The person who caused harm must hear — in detail — what the harm actually did to the person harmed.
   Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr)
3. Separate impact from intent
   Address what actually happened — the impact — without deciding you know why.
   Hanlon's Razor: Never Attribute to Malice What Stupidity Can Explain
4. Involve the affected community, not just the two parties
   Harm rarely affects only two people — include those affected by the ripple.
   Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr)
5. Separate intent from impact
   Your good intentions don’t erase the impact you had — and theirs don’t erase yours.
   Difficult Conversations, Made Practical
6. Separate your intent from your impact
   "I didn’t mean it that way" doesn’t change what the other person experienced — both things are true.
   Looping for Understanding (Difficult Conversations)
7. Plan repair for the harms the behavior caused
   After understanding the chain, make a concrete plan to address the damage it caused.
   Behavioral Chain Analysis: The DBT Method for Understanding Problem Behaviors
8. Identify the meaning violation
   Name specifically which of your beliefs or goals this event contradicts — that is the source of distress beyond ordinary pain.
   Meaning-Making Coping, Made Practical
9. Generate the charitable explanation
   Before reacting, ask what a reasonable, well-intentioned person could have meant by this.
   Generous Interpretation
10. Third-party explanation test
    Explain the concept to a person who knows nothing about it and let their questions expose your gaps.
    Illusion of Explanatory Depth: You Know Less Than You Think

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