3 Tips For Successful High-Stakes Conversations

There is an ever-growing mountain of literature and research that shows how important emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and learning agility are for leaders and employees to succeed in today’s world of work. The primary way that we exhibit our abilities in these critical areas is how we communicate with others. For most of us, it isn’t the simple conversations that will define our failure or success in these areas.  Most of us have learned how to effectively engage in these basic every day conversations when we assign tasks, check on a status update, give directions, provide feedback around a task that has been completed, or add your opinion to someone else’s ideas. Simple and transactional conversations are easy.

Don’t confuse these everyday casual conversations with your high-stakes conversations. These harder conversations will define success or failure with your most important, challenging and complex situations. Success with these conversations requires a unique set of skills and rigor. When we successfully engage in high-stakes conversations, people walk away feeling that the time was well spent and as a result, they feel a deeper understanding of the intentions and perspectives of one another. This builds a foundation of trust that sets the stage for the possibility of creating new insights and shared action for progress.

All too often, we see how quickly these high-stakes conversations can deteriorate into unproductive, reactive and defensive conversations. Below are 3 Tips I have used with my clients to help them become more successful with their high-stakes conversations.

Tip #1- Generate Empathy

We have all heard the quote, “Before you judge a person, walk a mile in their shoes.” This saying acts as a reminder to practice empathy. Empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Research has shown over and over again that empathy is a critical element for your ability to exhibit emotional intelligence, build healthy relationships, and effectively engage others in high-stakes conversations.

Psychologists Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan developed Self-Determination Theory in the mid-1980s and since then it has been researched and refined by many scholars. This theory tells us that people have three innate psychological needs affecting well-being, motivation, and performance. These universal needs are Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence (ARC). 

We all experience these same foundational drivers for social motivation and when these drivers are negatively impacted, they also become our primary drivers for social threat. By taking the time to understand how your high-stakes conversation might generate potential threats to other's ARC, you can help increase your empathy and insight about how others may be feeling about the situation. This can be done by answering how you perceive the situation and conversation could negatively impact other’s:

Autonomy – Need to be in control of their behaviors and goals.

Relatedness – Sense of belonging and security in relationships.

Competence – Belief that they can succeed with challenging tasks.

WARNING: Assumptions created from assessing someone’s ARC should only be used to help guide what questions to ask (See Tip 3). One should never use ARC assumptions to tell people what, how, and why they are acting or feeling a certain way—as doing so would create additional threats. 

Tip #2 – Align Your Goals and Intentions

I am continually reminded in both my professional and personal life that our behaviors and actions are a direct reflection of the mindset that we bring into the situation. To be successful during our high-stakes conversations we must be aware of our mindset and, if needed, be able to reset our mindset to one that pushes us toward behaviors that highlight our best selves during these critical situations. In my coaching practice, I often have leaders go through an exercise where they identify an important, complex and challenging situation they are struggling with and where they need to engage others in a high-stakes conversation. I then ask them to take a couple of minutes to answer the following questions:

What are my long-term task and relationship goals for this person or group of people?

Based on my answer to question number one, what are my best task and relationship intentions for my high-stakes conversation with this person or group of people?

What do your best results and relationship intentions say about the behaviors you should exhibit during your high-stakes conversation?

By answering these questions you can deliberately choose your best mindset before entering your high-stakes conversations. By aligning your "in the moment" intentions to your highest-level task and relational goals, you will bring your best self to your high-stakes conversation. This exercise has the power to completely flip how you view your most difficult and charged conversations while allowing you to align your short-term behaviors with your long-term result and relationship goals.

Tip #3 - Lead with Questions

In his book “Trusted Advisor” written by David Maister he writes about research that shows us how our self-orientation is perceived by others is the single most important factor in either losing or building trust. Self-orientation refers to the focus you have when you engage with others. In particular, whether your focus is primarily on addressing your needs - or do people observe you balancing your needs with a desire to understand and advance their perspectives, goals and ideas. Research confirms that taking the time to ask questions, listen and demonstrate understanding of others’ perspectives and needs is the single most effective way to build trust with others.

Do the people you interact with during your high-stakes conversation believe that you understand and have their best interests at heart or do they feel you are doing trying to influence or leverage this conversation for selfish gain? If you are perceived to be focused only on only your interest and don’t seem interested in other’s perspective and needs you will not succeed in building trust with others. Using the ARC (Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence) model helps to increase your empathy and understanding to equip yourself with a set of starting questions that demonstrate that you care about understanding their perspectives, assumptions, goals, challenges and ideas. Below are some example questions.

• What would success look like for you?
• How do you believe this situation sets you or others up for failure? / How do you believe this situation sets you up for success?
• Can you give me an example of that?
• What constraints (time, resources, energy, focus, etc) does this situation present for you?
• How do you feel this situation impacts others?
• How do you think we should move forward?
• What do you think we should do next?

A sincere attempt to understand others within the context of your high-stakes conversation helps to build a foundation of trust that will move your conversation forward by creating a safe environment for sharing insights, solutions, and actions for progress.

You will never reach your full potential professionally or personally until you develop your ability to have effective high-stakes conversations. Given this fact, it is hard to understand why our workplaces invest significantly more time and resources developing technical skills and, by comparison, very few resources focused on developing skill sets for effective conversations. 

Tony Gambill is a principal consultant for CREO Inc., an innovative management consulting and advisory firm based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. Tony brings more than 20 years of executive experience in leadership and talent development within global for-profit, non-profit, technical, research, healthcare, government and higher educational industries. www.CreoInc.net