Tough Coversations: Assessing the Issue

When you work together with another person to assess an issue, you can explore a different point of view. Through listening and questioning, you will understand their perspective and collaborate to resolve it. When you prepared for this conversation, you would have already thought of some questions that you want to ask, this is where active listening really takes place.

So, how can you mutually assess the issue to move forward and create an action plan?

Firstly, use the questions that you have prepared. These will be open ended questions which explore the thoughts and feelings of the other person. As a result of this you will be asking for their point of view, which will enable them to be open and thus you get a full understanding of the root cause. Some examples:

• What has occurred from your perspective?
• What do you see as the cause of this issue?
• Let me see if I have understood you correctly…
• Given what we have discussed, this is what I understand to be the issue…

Be sure to listen to what they say without judgement. Active listening is defined by listening to others in order to understand their ideas, opinions and feelings. While it seems obvious to minimize external distractions (phone, email etc), you should also work to minimize internal distractions, i.e. your own thoughts. Internal thoughts could be:

• Anxiety – “This conversation isn’t going well. What should I do now??”
• Prejudice – “See, he is saying exactly what I thought he would say!”
• Disinterest – “I really don’t have the time or energy for this.”
• Emotion – “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! I’m so angry!”

When the other person is answering your questions, you should acknowledge their feelings and summarise considering what you have heard them say. For example, “Looks like we’ve come to agreement on some of the issues. Let me summarise what we’ve identified as the common issues and what we each see as other issues that need to be addressed...”. This will take you to the final stage of the process which will discuss next week, putting together the next steps and action plan moving forward.