In the first of a series of blogs from Sharon Young – Director of Pearlcatchers and creator of the award winning Fusion Learning and POW! Conversations – Sharon shares 7 Pearls of Wisdom for tackling critical and challenging conversations with confidence and purpose.
Every day, most people communicate easily with lots of people. But every so often we are faced with a difficult conversation where it is essential to ‘get it right’. This might be dealing with an under-performing member of staff, telling a colleague that you can’t deliver on time or calling back an angry customer. In everyday life it can damage relationships. In business it can mean the end of a contract or customer loyalty. Although most of us recognise the value of tackling potential conflict, we often shy away from this for a variety of reasons:
After many years as an operational manager and then running management and personal development programmes for a myriad of clients, I identified that i) conversations are the life blood of any organisation and ii) how to handle ‘difficult people / conversations’ is a common theme through many topics, such as change, performance management, customer service and conflict.
To deal with the first point, I created our POW! Conversations range to enable employees at all levels to get better results from all their business conversations. POW! Courageous Conversations was specifically created to help you maintain effective working relationships by tackling those ‘difficult’ conversations promptly and confidently.
In this blog, I highlight a few of the key tips from each of the 7 Pearls of Wisdom. Use these to maximise the impact of your next difficult conversation – in fact, think about a real life situation and work through it as I introduce each of the pearls.
Pearl 1: Ready Set GO
The first pearl is all about preparation: firstly, identifying the courageous conversations you need to have (and why) and secondly managing ‘what you bring to a conflict’ that may hinder you in tackling the issue successfully. Your attitude affects your behaviour, which affects the other persons’ attitude and then their behaviour and so on.
So it is important to take time to examine and understand the unconscious factors that drive your behaviour (thoughts, beliefs, emotions, mind talk, preconceptions, attitude etc) and what triggers these responses.
As detailed above, one of the main reasons we avoid difficult conversations is our own state of mind, so first you need to create a SUCCESS mindset. Take a moment to think about all the negative head tapes / self talk you have about the situation. Now turn these into positive affirmations – the opposite of what you are worrying about and say this over and over until your unconscious brain starts to believe it. Another great tip is to use your physiology to affect your psychology. When you were thinking about all the negative self talk just now, how did this affect your body? You may have slouched, sighed, looked down. Well, now try standing up and putting a big smile on your face and then think about the problem again. It probably feels less insurmountable. Combining positive physicality with positive self talk are the two foundations of creating your SUCCESS mindset.
We often spend so long thinking about what the problem is that we forget about getting clarity on ‘what we want instead’.
So you now need to set a well formed outcome that is:
Positive – what you want, not what you don’t want
Own-Part – that you can influence
Specific – backed up by …
Evidence – you can clearly define how you will know when you have achieved your goal
Ecology – you have checked what the impact of achieving the goal will be on other aspects of your life
I can’t emphasise enough how important it is that the outcome is positive – because what you focus on is what you get. Our unconscious mind filters out the words ‘not’, ‘don’t’ etc. So if you say ‘I don’t want Sarah to dump all her boring jobs on me’, your mind filters out the ‘don’t’ and guess what you get! Far better to have an outcome such as ‘I want to be able to say no to Sarah / create a fair way to distribute work.’
This is where you need to describe your positive future, describe the problem specifically, state why it is a problem and ask for their input. Firstly you need to state positively that you believe the problem can be worked out. Then describe not the negative present, but the positive future you hope for as a result of the confrontation, e.g. “I’d like us to have a better relationship and feel more comfortable working together.” Ask for the other party’s help in achieving this
The second two points are, in essence, about giving constructive feedback and the AID model is great for this:
A: What is the action / situation that is a problem
I: What is the impact / why is it a problem
D: How would you like things to develop / what is your positive future
It is all very well stating your point clearly, but there are two sides to every story. Therefore you need to move from feedback to conversation by asking questions to understand what is important for the other person. Ensure at this stage that you stay focused on them and their needs here and don’t instantly disagree or add your own views. Make the communication about them, not you. Even if you don’t agree with their point of view, you need to acknowledge that it is true for them. Ideally you want to find common interests / objectives that you can build on.
A key point here is to ‘focus on interests not positions’. What people demand is not necessarily what they must have. The difference between the two lies in the distinction between “positions” taken in a dispute and “underlying needs. Don’t set up a ‘position’ as you’ll find it hard to climb down from it and to save face. Ask open questions to find out what is important to the other person and be prepared to share what is important to you.
One of the main reasons that challenging conversations get out of hand is when one or both parties start attacking the individuals concerned or their views or feelings.
As soon as you start apportioning blame or getting caught up in your thoughts about / feelings towards the other person, then you will quickly lose sight of the goal.
The common mistake to make during a difficult conversation is that there has to be a winner and a loser. This leads to conversations that are unproductive and damaging, they just make all parties look bad and in the end everyone loses. If the other party is seen as the enemy this is not productive, however if you change your way of thinking you will be able to use skill to influence and repair any situation.
So you need to focus on the problem not the person. It’s the problem that’s the issue, not the other person. Put yourself in their shoes and don’t deduce their intentions from your fears. Preserve the dignity of yourself and the other person – don’t put yourself or the other person down.
Even if you both enter the conversation feeling calm and objective, it is important to ensure this is maintained and neither of you engage the reptilian brain (fight or flight response). Whilst it is natural that we will feel emotions during a difficult conversation (on average we experience 27 emotional responses per hour), you need to ensure that you stay aware of how you are feeling and take action to deal with any unwelcome emotions.
It is also important to observe changes in the other person that might alert you to a change in their state. If they seem to be frustrated, worried or upset about something, acknowledge this and ask them what is going on for them / what is important for them at this time.
To be truly successful a difficult conversation needs to end with both parties being OK. A great way to do this is to invent options for mutual gain – look to first broaden the options on the table rather than look for a single answer – then see how well each option meets your shared interests. Offer positive solutions and invent ways of making their decision easy such as making your proposals consistent with their values. Remember, this is about both sides emerging satisfied: you are not trying to ‘beat’ them. Look for a Win/Win Solution, but remember that you have the right to say ‘no’ (and so do they!).
Once you have got the ‘difficult bit’ out of the way and reached some sort of agreement, many people make as quick an exit as possible. However, spending a little time ensuring that you both have the same understanding, confirming any actions and agreeing how you will measure success, can stop the situation slipping back into difficulty again. Don’t be satisfied with just a good talk. Move to action by ensuring everyone is crystal clear about how to get the issue resolved once and for all.
However difficult the conversation has been, end on a positive note – even if only “I am really glad we have had this conversation and I feel like I understand your position a lot better now. I am sure that we will now be able to ….”
But walking out the door is not the end of it. Firstly, you need to ensure that you deliver on any commitments you made and secondly take some time to reflect on what you can learn from the situation, so that it does not happen again (or is easier to handle if it does). One great technique for difficult conversations (or any difficult situation) is to identify 3 positive things that have come from the situation. It might seem hard to start with, but once you get into the flow of things you may find it harder to stop!
Of course, prevention works best – so work to build a good working relationship with the other person moving forward. This can help you to prevent future conflicts and / or help you to spot and tackle them before they become a major issue.
If you want to know about the range, we will be running 40 minute drama-based taster sessions at this year’s World of Learning Exhibition. We will also be launching our Blended Learning Facilitation Packs for both POW! Courageous Conversations and POW! Customer Conversations. The packs will enable you to create and deliver holistic in-house programmes incorporating video, webinars and downloadable resources with facilitator notes for face to face or remote workshops.
If you can’t wait until then, click here to visit our POW! Courageous Conversations webpage which includes a 30 minute webinar with Sharon Young and Mike Ponting introducing the 7 Pearls and a downloadable action planner to help you work through the process for your own difficult conversation. Alternatively contact us on 01753 670187.
Good luck and please let us know how you get on.
Pearlcatchers recent awards:
Winners of the Sector Innovator Award
Winners of Best Selected Exhibitor Award
Most Innovative Learning Programme
Pearlcatchers Director Sharon Young awarded Most Innovative CEO
Winners of Innovation & Excellence in Inspiring Learning – UK