Having difficult conversations - Monday Matters #1
Welcome to our first ever “Monday Matters” post. Each Monday we’ll share our thoughts and tips about the most pressing challenges that people face in their work and invite you all to contribute your own questions, experiences or solutions relating to the topic.
We’re diving straight into one of the problems that we are all too familiar with: having difficult conversations. I work with teams time and time again where their single biggest problem is the fact that they fail to talk honestly with one another about said problems. Whether it’s providing feedback to a colleague about their performance, telling a boss about a mistake you made, or confronting a friend about hurtful remarks they made, many of us are faced with situations on a daily basis where in the long run it would better to speak up but instead we brush things under the carpet.
However when you lean into having difficult conversations and practice the it on a regular basis eventually it just becomes plain old conversation. Here's 5 really practical ways that you can stop avoiding those conversations you've been needing to have.
Practice what you need to say with someone else beforehand.
Voicing your thoughts out loud will ensure that you've really understood what it is that you need to say. All to often if we’re not avoiding difficult conversations we’re charging head first into them without enough prior thought about what we want to achieve and convey during the talk. Running it through with someone else beforehand will mean they can provide you with feedback on your language and tone, the context and clarity you need to give and might also be able to reflect back to you how they think the actual person you are confronting is going to feel.
Share a concise summary of what you need to discuss. Then hold your tongue for as long as possible while you let the other person speak or reflect. It’s likely that other person may have felt the need to talk too, or will have had some sort of inclination that something was awry between you both. Giving them space to voice their reflections will help you to avoid descending into an unnecessary blame spiral. More often than not we dive into difficult conversations with a whole load of adrenaline driving us to speak more than we need to. If you allow space for them to talk you’ll often find that the other person already knows what you are referring to and reassure you that there was no need to fear the conversation.
Invite an impartial or trusted mediator.
In difficult conversations we can quickly become defensive without truly hearing what we need to hear. Or if we are feeling uncomfortable about the discussion we can often race to reach consensus without saying what we need to say. Inviting someone along who knows and respects you both to play the role mediator - ensuring that you both listen to one another and get equal space to talk - can be transformational for many challenging situations.
Be specific about how something makes you feel.
We’ve previously written about the importance of expressing emotions at work. Unfortunately many of us avoid naming our emotions and this can lead to confusion or defensiveness from the other person. Emotion gives that deeper context that can make all the difference. “I feel worried that we are going to lose our clients if we don’t work out a more efficient approach to running projects” sounds very different to “We’re going to lose our clients if we don’t change how we run projects”. Or “I felt really sad the other day when you didn’t acknowledge my contributions to that project” gives people context for why you want to talk about something and stops people making incorrect assumptions about what’s driving the conversation.
Be prepared to take time out and reconvene
Some people need a longer time to process information and feedback than others. If someone doesn’t know how to respond don’t assume that’s because they didn’t understand what you shared with them or that they disagree with it. Offer to give them space to think and then come back to it the next day. Or it might be that they say something which makes you defensive or angry. Rather than hitting the roof (and creating more fear around having difficult conversations in the future) ask for time to digest what they’ve said - even if it’s just 2 minutes right there in the moment.
Being able to handle difficult conversations respectfully, calmly and with integrity comes with practice. Unfortunately that means there will be times when things don’t go the way you’d hoped, but each experience is an opportunity to learn and grow. Depending on your relationship you might even consider being upfront and saying that you were nervous about having the conversation and would like feedback around how you could make these types of conversations better/easier for everyone in the future.
How do you prepare for a tough conversation? What do you fear most about having difficult conversations? What experiences have you had which have shaped the way you feel about being honest and open with colleagues about difficult topics?
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