6 tips for holding difficult conversations
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There is a whole cottage industry around helping managers to have “difficult conversations”. Lots of people, and lots of L&D managers in particular, end up pre-occupied with helping managers get better at holding difficult conversations – but not many stop to consider why they’re difficult in the first place.
In some instances, conversations are difficult because you’ve got uncomfortable evidence, and need to tell your team member something you know they’re not going to like hearing. But the truth is, if there are hard facts to share, most managers will do it, even if they don’t look forward to it.
The difficult conversations that people delay (and sometimes never have) are the ones where they’re giving someone a considered opinion – not a fact. For example, that you don’t see them as the fast-track high potential that they assume they are, or that they’ve damaged their reputation with a key stakeholder, or that they are in the wrong job.
Managers feel uncomfortable because they feel that these judgments are subjective – that they don’t have any black and white evidence to prove it, and there’s scope for disagreement.
Here are six quick ideas to help you address this:-
- Make sure it’s not just gut feeling. If you notice or believe something, think carefully about why you think that. Take the time to think through what evidence has formed this opinion, and whether there is a way of collecting evidence to test whether what you’re thinking is true.
- Distinguish between fact and opinion. The worst thing you can do is put your subjective opinion across as a definitive fact. Make it a little less definite, and instead offer it as “I’ve noticed that…” or “I’m wondering whether…” to take some of the definite nature out of it.
- Don’t make it a big thing. Some people will wait for an “occasion” before they have a difficult conversation – but you often end up building it up and becoming apprehensive. It’s much better to take the sting out of it by drip-feeding something through that’s bad news rather than sitting down to deal with it all in one go. And keep it informal. If you pull someone into your office, or set up a meeting, any bad news becomes a big thing. Try to think of ways you can make it more informal – for example can you do it alongside something else you’re doing with them?
- Deal with more issues on the spot. Difficult conversations often become difficult because they’ve been left. It’s much easier to deal with little things as you go along than to let them snowball into one big thing – don’t let small issues hang around.
- Make it less about you, and more about them. When you’re thinking about the issue you’re trying to get across to them, find out if they are aware of the problem. Take the classic coach’s approach and ask them to evaluate their performance before commenting on it. If they are aware of the problem, it’s a lot easier to start a joint problem-solving discussion. You can also ask whether they can think of solutions, or how they could have tackled something better. If you allow them to share their thinking, and you treat it as a shared journey where they’re offering their own perspective, it brings a different dynamic to a conversation. But what if your question reveals that they are not aware of the problem? Don’t try to draw it out of them by asking more and more questions to give them a clue, while they wonder “What is s/he trying to tell me?” Instead, give a very short personal view “From my perspective I was a bit worried about…”, and immediately ask “What’s your thinking about that?”
- Know how to handle disagreement. The key to this is to remember your objective. Your objective is to get the individual to take action to change, not to prove yourself right. Perhaps you tell your team member that you’re worried about the relationship they are building with another department, but your team member says they disagree, the relationship is fine. Don’t insist that you are right – instead, give the person an opportunity to test out this view and prove it right or wrong. They will work very hard to improve, and gather data to prove that they are building a great relationship with the other department. Isn’t this what you want? It’s a small price to pay, 2 weeks down the track, to say “I’ve been really impressed with the commitment you’ve shown to testing this out; it certainly looks like you are building the right kind of relationship – I’m delighted by the results you’ve achieved.”
What are you not saying to someone, because you fear it will be a difficult conversation? Use this as a learning opportunity – and try out a different approach.