Difficult Conversations
How many times have you put off a difficult conversation with someone at work, only to see the problem get worse and worse until it finally explodes and you wish you had that conversation three months or six months ago? It's natural that most of us want to avoid those challenging, difficult, awkward conversations. They're painful. They're uncomfortable not only for us, but obviously for the other person as well.
However, if we don't have those conversations, if we don't find a way to get more comfortable having those conversations, what happens is the problem doesn't get better. It doesn't magically go away, we know that. It festers over time, it gets bigger and bigger. Eventually, it kills relationships. Even before it kills the relationship, you have to understand you're hurting the other person. If you have some difficult feedback for that other person, if there's something that person is doing that they need to know about, but you're uncomfortable telling them that, then frankly your weakness - your discomfort - is hurting their ability to improve. So not having that conversation is actually a selfish thing to do.
What I want to talk about is a very simple way to have those difficult conversations. There are books and books written on having difficult conversations, but one of the best methods that I found is from a book by a coaching colleague of mine named Kevin Lawrence. It's called Your Oxygen Mask First, and he talks about a four step process to have a difficult conversation that I love. It makes it easier to have those conversations, and they're productive conversations.
Step 1: Ask for permission. Simply go to the other person and say something like, "Hey, I need to talk to you about something uncomfortable, is now a good time?" or, "I need to talk to you about something that may be a little awkward. Are you free at one o'clock today for us to talk?" By doing that, what you're doing is you're easing your way into that conversation versus just hitting somebody with a sledge hammer. It's an easy way for you to open up the dialogue, and it's also a way for them to understand that this is going to be an important conversation. It's not just a throwaway conversation.
Step 2: State the facts. State the facts, and only the facts - not how it makes you feel, not that they disrespected you, it's more of "Hey, in that meeting an hour ago, you interrupted me three times." Not you showed me disrespect. That's a judgment. But in that meeting, you interrupted me three times. State the facts. When you state the facts, there's no argument, there's no defensiveness, very simply, this is what happened. It's not your interpretation of what happened.
Step 3: Talk about how it makes you feel. "And when you interrupted me three times in that meeting, it made me feel disrespected," or "when you interrupted me three times in that meeting, it made me feel like you don't value my opinion." Now, again, it's hard for someone to be defensive there, and that's what you're trying to do - make sure this is a more comfortable, productive conversation where no one is getting defensive. By you stating the facts and just saying how it made you feel or what you perceived, no one could argue that. They can't say you don't feel that way. They may not have meant to make you feel that way, but it's a way of making sure they listen.
Step 4: What's a suggested resolution? Now, ideally, you would come into that meeting with a suggested resolution or two, but if you don't have one, then that's a place for you to be collaborative and say, "Hey, what do you think? How might we resolve this moving forward?" And then you come together and resolve the problem.
I promise you that by having that conversation, using those four steps, problems are not going to fester, you're going to have a much greater chance of saving that relationship, and you're going to be helping the people around you. They're going to appreciate you having those conversations.
So who do you need to have a difficult conversation with today? Take step one - go and ask for permission.