What is going on!?! - Teeing Up Hard Conversations

I was facilitating a three day leadership workshop when we got to the topic of “hard conversations” – conversations where leaders may need to confront behavior that is detrimental to the team/organization.?One male exec in the class made the comment that he “wouldn’t confront a female about anything without a 3rd person in the room.”?Part of me understood where he was coming from and part of me thought “What is going on!?!” “Can’t we have direct conversations between two adults without fear?”

With almost everyone being on edge these days, I can understand the tendency to just want to stay away from these uncomfortable kinds of conversations, and to clarify, I’m not talking about sexual harassment or blatantly racist or threatening kind of talk.?I’m talking about someone doing something or saying something that comes across dismissive, controlling or deceitful.?Often it can be very passive-aggressive which makes it even tougher to confront because it’s not overt.?Whatever the behavior, sometimes people are going to do and say things that have us thinking “What’s that all about!?!”.?When this happens, assuming we can manage our emotions and not be triggered in the moment, we have range of options:

1.???Ignore it/let it go

2.???Confront it tactfully

3.???Engage in passive/aggressively behaviort (e.g., throw that person “under the bus” in conversation with another colleague)

Each of these responses has consequences and leaders can increase their influence and credibility by learning to get better at option two.?I think we need to have more, not less frank conversations about behavior we think is not OK. Am I alone in seeing that there has been erosion of civility??Since when can’t we agree to disagree agreeably?

Where to begin…

I understand because of the power differentials inside organizations that these kind of frank discussions are fraught with fear and vulnerability but necessary just the same.?Over the years I have come to a simple structure for teeing up these kind of conversations to help them go productively and not turn into a parent/child kind of exchange (e.g., “you know you really disappointed me Ryan.” “Sorry boss (i.e. Dad) I won’t do it again”).?The structure is pretty straightforward.?Think of it as a four stage conversation with a pause after each part.

You start by 1) making an authentic appeal for their help – “help me with something…”?This is your way of saying I want to make sure I’m not overreacting and to establish a collaborative tone.?There is no judgement being made.?You are trying to convey, in the way you say it, that it may be just a misunderstanding of expectations.

2) State the thing you saw (behavior) that concerns you. “Remember in the meeting earlier when you….”?Here is where you need to be very specific about the behavior that concerns you and avoid making judgments about it.?There is a difference between “You were really rude to Sara in the meeting” (a judgement), and, “I don’t know if you noticed, but there were at least three times in the meeting today you interrupted Sara before she finished her thought (specific behavior).

3) Describe the impact of that behavior/how it came across to you.?“That was frustrating because I think Sara had some valid points to share and we never got to hear them.”?This is the point in the conversation where you want to make it clear why you think this is important and worth discussing.

4) Check your story. It always helps if you end your piece with a question like, “Is that fair?” or “Does that make sense?”?This helps reduce defensiveness by you -acknowledging that there may be part of the story that you don’t know that explains their behavior.?

At this point you just need to pause and see how they react.?This is the part that we fear most.?How will they respond??The answer – we don’t know.?That’s what scares us about starting these conversations, but if you use the process outlined above, you increase the chance that they’ll respond with something like “Yeah, I can see that.”?If they step in and agree there’s something here that we should discuss, then you can move onto the problem-solving or the “where do we go from here?” part of the conversation.?If they don’t step in and instead become combative, defensive, etc. then you may have to go back to the beginning and start over.?This should not be a scripted conversation but if you were to graph the way this conversation might unfold, it would look like below.

One last caveat for those in leadership positions when having these kind of conversations.?Remember, you have institutional power on your side so when confronting a direct report or anyone lower in the organization than you, don’t do it in your office.?You are trying to have a collaborative, adult to adult conversation.?Having it in your office does not feel like a level playing field for the other person.?Good luck and lean in!?