When Talking Gets Tough

In 1999 my friends Doug Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen published their classic, New York Times best-seller Difficult Conversations. Last month they released a new edition, with significant updates and enhancements.?

The authors’ core wisdom is highly relevant in these polarized times. Their book offers practical advice on maintaining civil dialogue with others who strongly disagree with our values and beliefs. These may be neighbors whose cars are plastered with stickers for candidates we loathe, old college classmates who peddle conspiracy theories, or it might be a wacky uncle who buys basketball star Kyrie Irving’s notion that the earth is flat.?

In this new edition Doug, Bruce, and Sheila dig much deeper into the role of power in difficult conversations. Imagine, for example, someone in your company publicly insults you at a meeting. It surely matters whether that person is a colleague, a peer, if you will, or instead, somebody who reports to you. And what if it was your boss??

You’re the same person in each of those scenarios. And what is said may be exactly the same word-for-word, but what you should do is very different in each of those cases.?

If it was your boss, you might need to tread lightly rather than forcing him or her into a corner. You better set up a private appointment to discover what was behind that comment. And that surely will be a difficult conversation, but it’s far better to do that one-to-one, and not in front of an audience. If the insult came instead from a junior person, just sitting back and raising an eyebrow may be enough . . . for now, at least. If it was a peer, you might look across table and nod slightly to a friend who will know to advise the hot-head to be more polite.?

Doug, Bruce, and Sheila stress that deep listening and observation is essential for constructive conversations. Likewise, is recognizing the possibility that a person who sounded hostile, actually did not intend that. As in the example above, context matters and so does relative power.?

Fighting Fire with Fire?

My three friends here may well disagree, but once in a while when you’re challenged, you may have to go toe-to-toe. ?Here’s an example summarized from my book, The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World .

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had a complex relationship. They were rivals, of course, both in the marketplace and in the public spotlight. But their two companies did substantial business together even as they competed for customers and acclaim.?

Tension between the two men came to head when Microsoft was preparing to launch Windows. Jobs felt that the new product blatantly copied Apple’s graphic operating system. He was furious, even though both Microsoft and Apple had borrowed liberally from an operating system developed earlier at Xerox PARC.?

Jobs summoned Gates to a meeting. In front of Apple’s top management team, Jobs excoriated him, shouting, “You’re ripping us off! I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!”?

A difficult conversation to be sure, but Gates just sat there. Then he offered another way to look at it. “I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox, and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found that out you had already stolen it.”?

Perhaps Gates’s response was spontaneous. Or, knowing Jobs’s mercurial temperament, maybe Gates had it up his sleeve ready to play at the right moment. Rather than fall into the trap of defending himself, Gates cheerfully admitted to being a thief but differed on who it was that he had stolen from. He reminded Jobs that he had been in on the same heist, as well.?

Jobs’s anger abated somewhat. Later the two men met privately, and Gates demonstrated the new operating system. Jobs was scornful about its design but recognized that he had little legal standing to thwart its release. Gates’s composure earlier was just as important in preserving the business relationship. Gates says of himself, “I’m good at when people are emotional, I’m kind of less emotional.” Few of us will ever have to jostle with the colossal egos of those two guys. Still, their story exemplifies the importance of keeping your balance, whether the stakes are large or small.?

Learning more

To dig deeper into difficult conversations, here’s a video link to a recent Program on Negotiation book talk with Doug and Sheila. And here’s a link to the latest edition of their book . Do your friends and colleagues a favor. Let them know how the book and the video can help them at work and in their daily lives.?

Thanks!?

Mike

#negotiation, #conflict, #conversations, #collaboration, #insults

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