Difficult conversations...

Opportunity or avoidance?

Here are some guiding principles and five steps to begin creating a 'difficult conversations culture' so you can nurture and retain talent, navigate complexity and achieve lasting impact as a leader.

So, you have to have a difficult conversation. One with a boss, colleague, teammate or direct report. It involves giving or receiving feedback on something that is likely to cause discomfort. It could be a particular behaviour, result, incident or blindspot. It could be a personal issue. It could be a matter of principle or unpopular or important dissent from the dominant view. You know you have to do it or that it’s going to happen. But you’re struggling with ‘How’. You’ve been here before, and it hasn’t gone well. How do you avoid this happening again? 

Do you feel your chest tightening just thinking about the above scenario? 

If you do, you’re having a reaction to feeling vulnerable. And if you can recognise that and proceed regardless, well done. It means you are leaning into what is a difficult thing to do. It means that you’re prepared to be uncomfortable for the sake of another person or your own development or to protect your customers or organisation. And that, friends, is a sign of bravery, respect, maturity and courage as well as a learning mindset. 

As a leader or team member, what you do next is really important. 

Some will charge in, get it off their chest without preparation and deliver it as a one-sided conversation, then write a file note, satisfied the box has been ticked and never think of it again. Until it rears its head down the track…

Some of you will agonise for days, skilfully avoiding the interaction for fear that you’ll mess it up or someone might get upset/angry/defensive, thereby losing the moment and the opportunity to nurture a relationship or talent or, raise something that is critically important.

And some of you will take a step back and get some perspective as to why you are giving this feedback. What are your intentions? Are you making any judgements or assumptions? Have you checked your ego? Is your feedback genuinely motivated by CARE? Care for them as a human, care for their potential, care for their contribution, care for their impact, care for customers and community? 

If you’re the one receiving some difficult feedback, what do you do?  Do you blame someone else, point the finger at authority, find excuses, or do you sit with it, working through your uncomfortable emotions and then reflecting? Reflecting so you can engage constructively – so you can consider the fairness of the feedback and your part in the situation?

Whatever role you are playing in a difficult conversation, following are some guiding principles for creating a team culture that ‘does difficult conversations’ well. And by 'well' I mean that people understand and buy in to the need for them, and they feel safe with their own and others’ intentions which are in the context of maximising team performance - not for turf, not for ego, not from fear – but for the benefit of something greater than themselves. I use the CARE OF… acronym as it allows the user to follow the principles in different contexts, whether in CARE OF themselves, their team, their customers, their organisation or their community.

Curious and Connected

We know how important it is for humans to feel connected, to feel like they belong. Teams with strong feelings of connectedness outperform those that don’t. People with a sense of connection or belonging are less likely to experience mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. So how do we go about building those connections in teams? I think it can be summed up with one word: Curiosity. By being curious about those around you, you are saying, ‘I see you’, ‘I hear you’, ‘I’m interested in your life, your opinions, your feelings. And how you think we can do things better’. It says clearly that you don’t profess to have all the answers and you’re prepared to learn and build knowledge together. Connected and curious teams are less likely to be threatened by difficult conversations. 

Accountability of All for All

Accountability is often talked about in relation to the individual. It’s written into job descriptions, performance agreements and development plans. Mis-aligned individual accountabilities can cause interpersonal friction and conflict or people working at cross-purposes which can be incredibly costly and damaging. When teams create and agree their collective accountability, and make it plain for all to see, they hold each other to account. The agreement provides a framework for peer-to-peer conversations that reinforces constructive intentions, creating permission and safe space for anyone in a team to have a difficult conversation, not just the leader. 

Respect and Responsibility

Similar to accountability, I like to think of Respect and Responsibility as relevant to both team and self. Acts of respect and responsibility to self and team provide a motivation for difficult conversations that transcends discomfort. I respect you, therefore I am prepared to step out of my comfort zone and share something that I think will make us better as a team. As a team member I have that responsibility. As an individual I take responsibility for doing the work that moves us forward as a team. And because I respect myself, I want to participate in something worthwhile, something that creates meaning for myself and others. 

Empowerment, of self and others

Feelings of empowerment come when you achieve a deep sense of alignment within yourself, when you’re given trust and autonomy and you feel confident that you can deliver, or at least that you possess the critical thinking skills to work through any barriers along the way. Go about creating that feeling for others. Be there as a guide and mentor, offer support, but don’t rescue. It is undermining and makes people feel powerless. Empowering others in the context of nurturing talent and the team ensures you have a deliberately developmental culture, where difficult conversations are just a part of the journey to success. If you feel disempowered, or micromanaged, talk about it with your leader. It’s a difficult conversation but it’s in the interest of yourself, the broader team and them as a leader. 

Open mind. Open heart

Without an open mind, you cannot learn. Without an open heart you cannot connect. Ask yourself next time you see someone deflect or become defensive or indeed when you find yourself behaving this way – what emotions are they/you experiencing and why? Learn to unpack your emotions, recognise your triggers and the cause of them – don’t supress them… learn to understand them… get help with this if you don’t know where to begin… Enable yourself to make a conscious choice in how you respond to a situation. This will ensure you remain open to learning and connection and can collaborate on navigating the complexity of the business and societal landscapes and the complexity of difficult conversations.

Feedback is Fuel

Feedback… a trigger word for many people... Probably because there’s some sort of trauma or muscle memory from a time when someone said, ‘I have some feedback for you’ and then proceeded to undermine, denigrate, put you down or embarrass you. However, in a deliberately developmental culture, in teams with group accountability and psychological safety, feedback is the fuel that powers progress towards the common goal. Team members understand its power, and the intentions of the person initiating the conversation. Moreso, teams are trained in how to deliver feedback constructively. It is actively sought, and received, with a learning mindset. Without feedback there is no iteration, no improvement, no challenge, no intellectual friction – the ingredients that are required to innovate and thrive in difficult situations. Make feedback a hero word in your organisation.

Getting started…

Whether you are a leader or a member of a team, start a conversation about ‘difficult conversations’. Use it as an opportunity to move your team forwards using the guiding principles above and follow these steps…

1.    Introduce the idea in your one on ones, then get together as a team and lead a discussion around having difficult conversations… With everything going in the world right now there is plenty of data in the news to use as reference material to introduce the topic. These external examples may be less threatening than starting out with internal ones… they may also trigger personal opinions and strong feelings but this is ok if you adhere to respectful communication behaviours.

2.    In your team meeting, ask people what they think of when they hear the phrase ‘difficult conversations’. Bring in the examples of high performing teams where candour and feedback are valued as a tool to make progress. And examples of where people didn’t have them and what occurred… there are countless and sometimes tragic examples of when people didn’t feel able to speak up. 

The use of external examples to show what transpires when people step into their discomfort for the good of the team, and examples of the consequences when people don’t, is a powerful thought-starter for teams to consider their role in moving things forward, rather than waiting to be lead. 

3.    Ask the team to consider examples in your organisation where difficult conversations have been had or not had and have a discussion about the impact and consequences.

4.    Introduce the CARE OF guiding principles and discuss what these could mean for your team… How would the team rate itself against each of the principles? Ask them to agree as a group a score out of 5 (where 5 is for ‘absolutely’ and 1 is ‘not even close’ for each of the principles and have a discussion around how to improve these. Capture the team’s agreed actions and agree to meet to review progress. And repeat.

5.    Lastly consider your team purpose, values and accountability agreement and whether or not they are adequate to support an environment where difficult conversations can occur. It is possible you may need to augment your purpose and values to support a difficult conversations culture if it hasn’t been on your radar already.

In an environment of hybrid working models, with a mental health crisis on our hands, as well as the need for speed to constantly iterate and innovate, it is critical to empower yourself and your team to have the courage for difficult conversations if you want to achieve high performance and lasting impact. 

As a leader, impacting the lives of others, you have a responsibility to set an example. Be brave. The payoff will be enormous. And it's the right thing to do.

Copyright, Kammeron Cran, March 2021