Assess the facts—and your assumptions
Address the emotions
Acknowledge that you’re part of the problem
Identify a range of positive outcomes
Develop a strategy, not a script
Acknowledge the other person
Frame the problem
Ask questions and listen
Look for common ground
Adapt and rebalance
Establish commitments
How did you do?
Jot down your impressions
Follow up in writing
Keep your commitments
Reflect before you speak
Connect with others
Before you talk, listen
Make your words count
Establish a feedback loop
Address problems head-on
Difficult Conversations
What Makes a Conversation Difficult?
What Makes a Conversation Difficult?
You know the feeling: that knot in the pit of your stomach; the fog that descends on your mind. You’re avoiding a difficult conversation. Maybe you fear the public confrontation if you ask a colleague to stop interrupting you in meetings. Perhaps you don’t know how to tell a fellow team member that she’s not pulling her weight. Or you want to ask your boss for a promotion, but you don’t know how to begin the discussion. Maybe you tried to bring up what you thought was a straightforward matter, but it fell flat. When you have a problem, people tell you to “talk about it,” but no one tells you how. This book will help you move from paralysis to productive action and find the right words and the right methods to express yourself.
At work we tend to focus on work: knocking off tasks, meeting our performance goals, getting a raise. But our inner lives—our personal goals, needs, aspirations, and fears—inform and influence everything we do. Both our functional agendas (“I need that production schedule by tomorrow!”) and our emotional agendas (“The production manager’s stonewalling made me look weak in the status meeting!”) will sometimes collide with those of our coworkers. Misunderstandings, even conflicts, arise. Whether those disagreements throw us off balance and disrupt our work or lead to conversations that yield valuable insights and creative solutions is up to us.
A difficult conversation is one in which the other person has a viewpoint that differs from yours, one or both of you feel insecure in some way, and the stakes seem high. Whether you have tough feedback to deliver to an employee or colleague or whether you feel wronged, thwarted, or misunderstood by the other person, these situations can be unsettling, even if you’re a pretty good communicator.
Understanding what’s at the heart of your situation helps you conduct a more productive discussion. Let’s look at some of the reasons why conversations are difficult.
Conflicting interests
Your role in the organization influences what you want to achieve in a situation. If, for example, you’re a marketing manager on a major product update, your priority is probably hitting every rollout deadline. Your colleague in production, however, is focused on meeting design requirements. Of course, successfully delivering an important product requires meeting both quality and schedule specifications. But those differing interests will naturally cause conflict at times. You may find it tough to talk about them because each person quickly gets entrenched in their position (“We’ve got to improve call quality” versus “We have to cut costs by 5%”). Sometimes interests also become misaligned when outside-the-office needs, such as family commitments or health issues, conflict with those at work. Developing an awareness of the factors that affect each person’s approach to the project in question allows us to find ways to accommodate them.
Different personal styles
You think of yourself as a doer—a no-nonsense person who just gets the job done. No intrigue, no drama. Your teammate is a talker. He asks lots of questions, thinks things through aloud, considers the unintended consequences. Usually your different styles are able to coexist—but there’s a deadline looming, and the project feels bogged down. How do you get him to move from exploring possibilities to picking an approach and closing the deal?
Working closely with someone whose communication or work style, personality, values, or life experiences differ greatly from yours has the potential to spark creativity and innovation, but it can also lead to misunderstanding and tension. What seems like a self-evident conclusion to one person may not have even occurred to another.
The more you understand about your own personal style, the more you will become aware of how your counterpart’s habits differ. Table 1, “Example of different work styles,” shows how understanding your own and your colleague’s traits helps you work together effectively despite your differences.
Later we’ll look at how to use your understanding about personal style to decide whether to initiate a conversation and, if you do, to prepare and successfully conduct one. We’re not suggesting that you’ll be able to change your natural preferences or those of your counterpart. But if, say, you recognize that your extroverted colleague loves lively group discussions while you prefer to work independently, suggest that you take notes at a brainstorming session or send him a preliminary list of ideas to seed the conversation as a way for both of you to participate productively.
TABLE 1 Example of different work styles
Lack of trust
Addressing a sensitive issue or working with someone on a contentious project is difficult, and it’s likely to be even harder if you don’t have a trusting relationship.
People’s work styles often have an effect on their ability to build trust. If one person wants