How to begin a Crucial Conversation

The next stage of a crucial conversation is to prepare your opening
statement. When spoken it should take no longer than a minute or two. You want to be clear, concise and succinct.

Before we jump into the step-by-step process of building your opening statement, I want to briefly warn you of a couple of the most common
pitfalls.

There can be a tendency to try to start off on a gentle foot when
starting a confrontational talk. We may start off by simply asking how
things are going or if everything is all right.

People are not stupid. They can see what's coming from a kilometer
away. The recipient of the message will see through the pathetic
attempt at soft talk. This can result in a diminishing of respect for
the communicator because he or she is not professional enough to get
to the heart of the matter.

By trying to soften the blow of the message we also run the risk of
diluting the seriousness of the conversation. I've seen managers dance
around the issue masking the message in corporate-speak and vague
generalities. The employee walks out of the meeting with a quizzical
look. You can easily see that he is thinking something along the lines
of, "what the hell was that all about?"

Another common approach to starting a difficult conversation is to go
in with all guns blazing, where the entire message is coated in anger.
In many instances, not much thought or preparation is done before
holding the talk. The message is delivered raw and unrefined.

In most cases, this simply adds more fuel to a burning situation. This
approach has the tendency to complicate matters, because the recipient
feels he or she is under attack.

The usual reason for this brashness is due to some form of anger. Most
of us try our best to avoid conflict and so the anger is usually to
mask one type of fear or another. These fears may include:

• the loss of a relationship
• could be on the receiving end of irrational emotions
• might hurt another's feelings
• could worsen the problem etc.

An important part of coaching people in conducting difficult
conversations is tackling their assumptions about conflict. If you can
help your client or employee to rewire his/her typical
belief that conflict is negative to one where they can a the
advantages of conflict, than your client is half way there.

I can not emphasize enough the fact that conducting difficult
conversations is a key-skill for coaches and managers. It is crucial
to remember to keep such conversations in dialogue and not slip into
debate.

In my next post, I will explain the step-by-step approach to
constructing the all-important opening statement.

Challenging Conversations

The first step to approaching any type of crucial conversation is the preperation. I compare preparing for a difficult conversation to that of preparing for an important negotiation. In both cases it is highly recommended not to simply wing-it.

There are two fundamental questions you should ask yourself. The first: what is the purpose for having the dialogue? The second: what, exactly, is the problem I want to address?

The first question is important, because it focuses you to think about
the reason you need to have the conversation. That is, to become fully
aware of your intent.

You may discover that your intent is to punish, humiliate or blame.
These are natural feelings most of us initially feel if we believe the
others persons action or behavior was deliberate, spiteful or simply
mean-spirited.

The idea of a crucial conversation is to be constructive and not
destructive, which would be the result if the intent it to get back at
the other person.

The intent should be a genuine and sincere effort to help move the
person forward.

The second question: what, exactly, is the problem you want to
address? You should be able to specify the problem with only a few
sentences.

It is important to be specific, descriptive and concrete by keeping to
the facts. In addition, use a recent example to illustrate the problem
that you are bringing up. Remember it should be based on an observable
behavior. That is, something you can see or hear.

Before ending today's entry I would like to bring to your attention
the difference between dispositional and situational views on behavior.

We tend to view other people's behavior from a dispositional view
point. We tend to place blame on the personality flaws of the person
and tend to ignore any environmental influences. We tend to do this
because we see a person's actions much more readily than we so the
forces behind it.

We tend to see ourselves from a situational point of view. It is clear
to us what environmental forces contributed to our challenge.

When we are preparing for a crucial conversation it is necesarry for
us to be aware of the dispositional and situational factors.

Gaining Perspective - Part 2

Gaining Perspective is the most challenging of all the steps in
handling a difficult conversation. There are no specific steps to
follow as there are in preparing the Opening Statement. What is
important here is to be conscious of using self-management skills and this means managing resistance and emotional responses. This applies not only to the other party, but also to your own resistance and emotional responses.

From my experience, I've found it best to expect resistance from the
get go. As I've stated in an earlier entry, when a person is
confronted or expected to change there will be some form of
resistance. How you mange this resistance will determine the overall
success, or lack thereof, of the difficult conversation.

The main focus of Gaining Perspective is to understand the other
person's motivation and understanding of events. You want to get as
clear and concrete understanding of their view as possible.

As we have all experienced, people are usually very reluctant to share
their view in fear that we may use it against them and/or to
unneccesarily expose themselves to further attack or criticism.

How do we handle resistance and emotional responses? We do this
through using the communication skills of silence, paraphrasing and
reviewing perspectives.

Silence. Take a moment and reflect back to the last argument you had
with someone. If you are anything like me perhaps you could describe
it as a war of words.

What often happens is the conversation starts out as a dialogue with
the intent to be civil and find a way out of the conundrum. What
really happens is the so-called civilized dialogue does a 'Dr. Jeckyl
and Mr. Hyde' and turns into a debate.

Listening to each other becomes passé. Instead, the trend is to get
all your blows in before your opponent has time to defend and recover.
Of course, this is the exact same mind-frame that the other person is
in.

The following are some of tje indicators that you are in this mode of
thinking:

• thinking about your response while the other person is making their
point
• trying to out-talk the other person hoping that they'll fall silent
and drown in your stream of words
• searching for the smallest of holes in their logic in order to
eviscerate their argument
• feeling the strong desire to score points and 'win' the debate
• harping on the same point and going no where
• offering advice or suggestions without exploring and understanding
their perspective of events

It is the perfect storm for a no-holds-barred, give-no-quarter ask-no-
quarter quarrel that goes no where except backwards. If this is your
goal - read no further.

To avoid all this useless noise, I generally employ silence. It is a
simple and effective method to take a step back and refocus.
Especially, when the dialogue starts to become heated. It allows
reactivity and strong emotions to subside and for some semblence of
clear thinking to return.

Paraphrasing. This is the second communication skill, which is
important when trying to understand the other person's perspective and
motivation. In essence, you rephrase back to the other person what you
beleive they communicated to you. This indicates to him/her that you
are paying attention and that you understand his/her message.

For example, "So what you are saying is that I tend to ignore your
suggestions during key meetings."

He/she will generally respond in one of two ways. "Yes, that is
precisely what I'm saying" or "No, not exactly. What I said was..."
Regardless if you are right on target or off, paraphrasing is an
excellent way to ensure you are exploring their side of the story.

Reviewing Perspectives. This is the third communication technique that
I've found to be essential in the Gaining Perspectives stage. This
skill is ideal when you wish to get clarification on how they perceive
a particular situation.

We experience the world through the eyes of our own individual
experiences as does everyone else on this planet. This means, we have
our own unique set of filters. It let's some information into our
awareness while blocking other bits.

Imagine you were one of many witnesses to a car accident. When the
police ask you what you saw, it is inevitable that your view of events
is going to be different, if only very slightly, from another witness.
So even though you and every other witness saw the exact same car
accident, each viewpoint will be as distinct as the individuals giving
the statements.

This logic holds true when it comes to difficult conversations. You
want to discover how they interpreted the exact same event, but
through their own unique filters You want to be upfront and say that
you came to a different conclusion and want to understand how they
came to theirs.

For example, "I see what happened quite differently. I want to
understand how you came to this conclusion."

The main take-home message for this entry is to keep a level head and
to understand, as thouroufhly as possible, the other person's
interpretation of events. To do this you will want to employ the
communication skills of silence, paraphrasing and reviewing
perspectives.

In my next entry, I will wrap up this series on conducting difficult/
crucial conversations by writing about the resolution stage - the last
of the four-steps.

If you wish for a free white-paper on conducting difficult
conversations, please contact me.

For other excellent resources, please check out the following links.

http://www.fastcompany.com/
http://www.managementtools.com/
http://www.bnet.com/

Cordially,

Jason W Liem
MINDtalk@email.com
http://www.mindtalk.no/

Gaining Perspective - Part 1

Gaining Perspective is the third step in having a difficult
conversation. From my experience, it is the most challenging of the four steps, because this is where the bulk of the dialogue happens. I will write about this step over two entries.

Most difficult conversations are about some sort of change. When we confront someone with change there is going to be resistance.

The resistance could be rather mild in the form of excuses. On the
other end of the scale, the resistance could be extreme in the form of
anger and complete disagreement. Regardless of amount of resistance,
the number one skill needed in this step is the ability to manage
resistance and emotional reactions.

One need is to use these skills for the person you are dealing with,
but even more importantly is dealing with your own resistance and
reactions.

It is rather difficult for you or I to give up our well-thought-
through perception of what happened. We've invested much time and
effort that to even begin to question our perception of events is
unthinkable. This most likely means, that we are not going to be open
to hearing another version of events.

It is at this point, the idea of changing our ideas about something
that we are so damn sure of, where our resistance will creep in. This
can take the form of anger, defensiveness, impatience or any number of
other beahviors.

It is important to be able to take a mental step back and check
yourself. You need to tell youself to stay in dialogue and not move
into debate. This requires self-management skills in the here and now.
An intergral part of this is the ability to be aware of what feelings
are being triggered and controlling them.

An emotional explosion is simply unprofessional. It puts up obstacles
and mires the difficult conversation in thick molasses. It will make a
difficult conversation even more challenging.

A few years back I was a witness to a minor car collision. The owner
of one of the vehicles was super irate and spewed a steady stream of
colourful metaphors at the other driver. When a police officer arrived
on the scene he directed his hissy-fit on her.

The officer maintained her composure under the assault of raw emotions
and insults. Her on-the-site self-management skills kept her own
emotions in check and her professional demeanor intact.

Eventually, through her skill and tact with communication skills she
got the irate driver to calm down and tell his version of events. You
can probably imagine what would have transpired if she had fired off
her emotional volley in responce.

The officer understood clearly that if she was to move the
conversation forward, it was essential for her to be open to hearing
the other side's story.

The idea here is to get the other side to speak and keep them
speaking. The more detail you can get them to be the more you will
understand how he/she perceives the situation.

In my next entry, I'll get more specific about the communication
skills needed to manage resistance and emotional reponces to Gaining
Perspective.

A great source for more information can be found at http://www.bnet.com/.

Cordially

Jason W Liem
MINDtalk@email.com
http://www.mindtalk.no/