The Reframe that Makes Difficult Conversations Easier

Equipping people to have effective conversations about things that matter is a red thread running through all our work with leaders, senior teams, and salespeople.

While I know that our approach makes people better at this vital capability and ensures they effectively apply it to solve important problems, I confess that I am not 100% sure why it works.

Saying this to myself out loud and to you is a little humbling. After all, I have been doing this for decades, and somehow, I have managed to train other people to do the same. Why do I not know the answer to this seemingly simple question?

Instead of dwelling on it, I decided to use our recent post-program analyses to go beyond measuring the impact on people and the business and ask the people we have been developing to teach us what actually helped them.

What helped both the "Avoiders" and "Aggressors" get better at having honest, open, and effective conversations about things that matter?

There are several insights I would like to share with you, but I will focus on just one for now: the importance of reframing the purpose of conversations.

Most of us are driven by one of two impulses in conversations. We either strive to:

• Achieve something we see as good or 
• Avoid something we see as bad

The former drives overly competitive behavior, which triggers defensive dynamics that make it hard to have productive conversations.

The latter drives overly cautious behavior, which prevents us from being taken as seriously as the quality of our thinking says we should.

The big reframe that seemed to help the Avoiders & Aggressors alike was this:

View each conversation as a collaborative search for the Truth.

 This seemingly simple mental adjustment helped the:

• Avoiders courageously express their honest views
• Aggressors be more curious and compassionate about others' views

In the words of a UK leader at one of our pharma clients:

"I realized that it's fine to have difficult conversations and that they don't have to be a huge confrontation or fight. What helped me was when I STOPPED seeing them as a battle for who's right and STARTED seeing them as a common search for the truth. This is really important for someone like me who's super-competitive by nature."

Maybe it is not the truth itself that sets us free, but the genuine pursuit of it that enables us to transcend our fears and egos so that we can, together, face the real issues and opportunities to make our lives and the world a bit better.

Thanks for reading and look out for another article next week. But, in the meantime…

Be Candid. Be Collaborative. Be Compassionate. But Most of All…Be Curious!

Todd Holzman, founder of Holzman Leadership has spent decades developing leaders, senior teams, and salesforces. He has taught world leaders at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, developed doctoral students at Columbia University, trained tens of thousands of leaders globally, and certified hundreds of consultants and trainers in his Real Work Process. 

Todd's background includes work as an Executive Coach to IBM's senior leaders, Head of Organization Development at Honeywell, Managing Director of Cambridge Leadership Group, and a fellow with McKinsey & Company's Change Center. 

No matter whom he is working with or the problem he is solving, Todd's driving passion is to develop the difference-makers to be a force for good in the world.