Contracting conversations

There are certain conscious conversations that enable us to build and sustain strong, effective, collaborative relationships with others, giving us a chance to transcend our egos and create a cornerstone for navigating change.

Like many important conversations, how we conduct ourselves and a degree of preparation and thoughtfulness in our approach will make a difference.

This is not so we can prepare a script and make sure we have the right words, but to gauge how we are reacting.

We can then increase our awareness of what we want from the conversation and focus on how we need to be during it.

For example, being upset with one of my team members and judging them, will impact my ability to address them in a reasonable adult way.

I need to be conscious of my judgement and manage myself to talk to my team member in a manner that supports a constructive way forward that they are engaged with.

Start the beginning

A really important conversation to have, both at the beginning and throughout our working relationships, is a contracting conversation.

If you have ever been coached, you may well have experienced a contracting conversation where the coach discussed with you how you want to work together.

This will include raising and addressing assumptions you and the coach may have about the context for coaching, the relationship and each other’s responsibilities.

The intention of this conversation is to create a foundation of psychological safety, where the coachee feels free to be themselves and do their best thinking, and the coach is free to challenge and support their coachee’s needs as appropriate.

Where there are two or more people in the workplace who rely on each other for support and/or delivery of a result, this type of conversation is absolutely valid.

Think about how relationships work.

Let’s start by considering how we create relationships on a one-to-one basis.

In the context of work, we meet the people in our network, be it our team reports, manager, peers or other stakeholders, and the conversation is all about the job there is to do.

Generally, we pay little attention to how we need to be in the doing of that job, so we have one-dimensional conversations about something that is multi-dimensional.

The term ‘contract’ may make you think of something legal and binding. Although this type of conversation doesn’t involve lawyers, it does create clarity and agreement on how the relationship will be conducted and helps both parties understand each other’s needs and expectations, and more importantly, feel safe.

Contracting can help create effective relationships through using an adult-to-adult conversation where both parties have the opportunity to contribute their thoughts, feelings, needs and expectations of each other to make the implicit explicit.

The benefits include surfacing otherwise unspoken assumptions and expectations, and creating a safe and secure basis from which to conduct a relationship.

The latter is particularly important for establishing trust and the space for people to engage and bring themselves and their full potential to work.

The different levels a contracting conversation addresses

Contracting in relation to work takes place at different levels:

1. Administrative – the logistics and processes, eg work from home or office

2. Role specific – objectives, roles and responsibilities of each party

3. Psychological – unspoken beliefs and expectations of each party over and above those in the first two points, eg a team member expecting to be noticed for their efforts, or a divisional director expecting their team to be flexible

Lets look at these levels in more detail:-

Administrative

When we take a job, we sign a legal contract which spells out the organisation’s expectations of us and what we will receive from the organisation in return.

It is all about the logistics and practicalities that support the working relationship.

Role specific

The intended result is for both parties in the relationship to be clear of what is required and agree how they will work together.

Professional contracting addresses these expectations and needs and creates agreement for how they will be met.

For example, a manager expects they will be kept updated on a monthly basis on the progress of the project they’ve delegated to their team member, while the team member needs to know that they can go to their manager whenever they need support in relation to the project.

Making something like this explicit is an important part of effective working relationships.

It not only establishes clarity for both parties, but also creates agreement. If those agreements are at risk of getting broken, the fact it is an agreement makes it easier to address.

When something is stated clearly in the first place, if it doesn’t happen, it becomes a piece of factual data to discuss on an adult-to-adult basis, rather than an emotive issue that could risk reactive adapted child or controlling parent responses.

If the manager in the previous example finds their team member is cancelling monthly meetings and not seeking any support, then they can refer to the fact this was an explicit agreement around how they would work together.

This makes it easier to raise and enquire into the subject than if no agreement had been put in place.

We can create even greater clarity by following up any contracting conversation in writing, specifying our understanding of what has been agreed.

Psychological

The psychological element of a contract is often the most challenging to make explicit because it involves the underlying and often unconscious beliefs and assumptions we hold about ourselves and the other person.

For the most part, when a relationship is working and there is a good alliance, we may not need to delve into the psychological contract, but if there are unmet needs, confusion, differences that we don’t understand, it is helpful to explore our assumptions and beliefs, along with those of the other party, and how they impact the way we work together.

What are your thoughts on this?

A contracting conversation is not a one-off. The contract will change as the relationship develops and the demands of the organisation shift, so it is an organic way to check, develop and understand the relationship, with the contract being amended through re-contracting conversations. A contracting conversation can also take place at specific events and with groups of people. They are useful conversations whenever there is a need to create clarity around expectations and agreements and are a basic foundation in creating psychological safety.

I delve into this topic in more detail in my book 'Ego: Get over yourself and lead' and you can purchase a copy here.

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