Ten Top Tips For Courageous Conversations At Work

What Not to Do

Many people at some point in their working lives have to have a difficult conversation with someone. It might be about a performance issues or something more personal. It can be with a peer, a subordinate or indeed a boss. Very often people are highly anxious, understandably so, about having this conversation. They then either avoid it for so long that when they do tackle it it comes as a complete shock to the other party, or they rush at it like a bull in a china shop just to get it over with. Here are some tips to help produce a good result.

Being Courageous

1.Be clear what you are trying to achieve

You need to be clear in your own mind why you are putting yourself through the trauma of having this conversation and what you hope to achieve. Is it an apology, an agreement about something, a change in behaviour in the future, some sort of restorative action or maybe a resubmission of a piece of work? Be clear what the successful outcome is and be listening for it.

2.Be clear what you are listening for

Being highly anxious can make us deaf. We become so focused on saying everything we have planned to say that we fail to hear the other person quietly saying ‘you’re right’ or ‘I know’ or even ‘you might have a point.’ ‘You bet I have!’ we say and then return to our carefully prepared speech. You need to stay alert to the first signs that you have made your point and be prepared to switch modes to ‘Ok what next’ even if you haven’t said everything you intended. Otherwise you run the risk of producing a new source of conflict as your conversational partner feels unfairly berated when they’ve made a concession. This can sabotage the chances of recovery.

3.Be clear what gives you the right to initiate this conversation

It really helps us reduce our anxiety if we can understand how the conversational intent aligns with our values. For instance you may have to tell someone that they didn’t get the promotion they were after, and give some hard feedback as to why. The clearer you are that giving this feedback is, for example, helpful behaviour(and it is important to you to help and develop others) then the easier say what needs to be said about the current shortfall in their experience, manner, etc. if they are to succeed in the future. Fobbing them off softly is easier but less helpful to them in the long run.

4.Give thought to how you set up the meeting

There are pros and cons to giving advance notice of wanting to have a difficult conversation with someone. The downside is there may well be a drop in productivity as they become distracted wondering what it about. There is also the danger that their anxiety will drive them to push you to ‘just say it now, let’s get it over and done with’. On the other hand, springing it on them unexpectedly can lead them to feel ambushed or tricked in some way. It’s a judgement call and depends on the situation and circumstances.

5.Look for the positive in the situation

Sometimes bad outcomes are the result of good intentions. Was the behaviour caused by a strength in overdrive? For instance maybe ‘too pushy’ can be reframed as a strength of will, zest or tenacity being used with greater force than was appropriate, or where negotiation strengths were needed. Was there an honourable intention behind the behaviour? Many mistakes start out as good ideas or intentions. Be alert to any good consequences that occurred in the situation you want to address as well as the problematic outcome. All of these give you a way to approach the behaviour that make it more likely the other person can owe it, still feel good about themselves, and be open to making changes.

6.Listen first

It is often a good idea, once you have outlined the area, topic, incident that you want to discuss to give the person a chance to give their view on the situation. Many a manager taking this approach has found the other person only too aware that there is a problem, or an issue, or something didn’t go right and that they have been making themselves miserable over it. Of course you’ll also have people who take the opportunity to ‘get their defence in first’ but at least you have the lie of the land before you say your piece, and indeed you may not need to say much at all.

7.Offer reassurance

There is an art to building and maintaining the relationship bridge while trying to convey information or a perspective that the other person might find hard to hear. Think about an opener such as ‘I feel this conversation may be difficult, but I am confident it will be to the benefit of both of us.’  Or ‘my sincere hope is that we come out of this conversation with a shared understanding of what happened and how we can make things better.’

8. Be honest about the effect on you

The more able you are to be honest about your motivation for having the conversation, the more likely you are to be acting and talking with integrity. Authenticity and integrity tend to produce better responses in others. So say something like ‘to be honest I felt really embarrassed when... and I like to feel proud of my team when... that’s why I want to...’ This isn’t about trying to ‘guilt trip’ anyone; its about being honest about your investment in this as well as the favour you are hoping to do them.

9. Use descriptive not evaluative language

Try to stick to an account that articulates what you saw and the consequences in a way that is factual and could be verified by any other observers. Steer away from evaluators like ‘aggressive’ and say instead something like, ‘you were speaking in a louder than a normal speaking voice, leaning in very close to B. Your face was going red and your forehand bulged. I also noticed B leant backwards and raised her hands. She didn’t speak for the rest of the meeting. Later B came to me and said she felt intimidated by you in that meeting.’ Here you can add your concern, ‘My concern is that if B feels like that we will lose her input to the discussion. I know you are very passionate about this topic. I need both your inputs. Let’s see if we can find a way where you both feel able to make your points.’

10. Look forward to solutions, not backwards to blame

The aim of the discussion, if possible, is to create a common agreement about the situation now without getting too lost in counter-arguments about blame in the past. It doesn’t have to be complete consensus, just enough to allow the conversation to move productively the next stage of finding ways forward that are acceptable to you both.

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques to boost engagement at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more 'How To' in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership and Culture change.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Performance management and appraisals - common pitfalls and how to do it successfully

The good news is performance management works

‘A hospital that appraises around 20% more staff and trains about 20% more appraisers is likely to have 1,090 fewer deaths per 100,000 admissions.’[i] Many other studies have also found this strong relationship between performance management, appraisals and organisational performance. How come then, it is a disliked process in so many organizations? It’s hard to do well

Performance Management is hard to do well. Some common difficulties identified in research include

Ø  Poor quality performance discussions between managers and staff members

Ø  Standardised, jargon filled, prescriptive and overly detailed paperwork

Ø  Line managers lacking competence and commitment to the process

Ø  Employees having a poor understanding of the goals or point of the process

Ø  Rating and pay agendas dominating the discussion, driving out time for performance feedback and development planning

Ø  Lack of follow up or practical action between formal reviews

Many of these problems arise because of a failure to recognise that it’s a social process.

Too often it is seen as a human resources owned and driven technical process. Understanding performance management as a social process helps us to realise that the important and key components are the quality of the relationship and the communication. From this perspective the paperwork trail becomes a supporting mechanism rather than the driving mechanism.

As one of the managers in the Institute for Employment Studies said ‘its about having communications and good one-to-one conversations.’[ii]

What does this mean for managers? What helps?

1. Recognize, and use, the power of positivity

Feeling good accesses many useful personal and organisational qualities – creativity, complex thinking, sociability, resilience and so on. Appraisal conversations are a good opportunity to create some positivity. To do this they need to contain a ratio of at least 3:1 positive to negative experiences for both parties. This means time should be spend genuinely seeking out and paying attention to things that have gone well, successes and achievements over the last time period. At the same time it’s an opportunity for employees to express their appreciation of their manager’s support and guidance over the period.

2. Use positive psychology based appraisal processes

Increasingly practitioners are creating positive appraisal processes for the regular review meetings. For example the enthusiasm story that asks a manager prior to the meeting to think about when they are most enthusiastic about this employee, when they have seen them at their best. The best self-reflection encourages the appraise to understand their strengths and attributes as seen by others. The feed-forward interview encourages the appraiser and the appraisee to focus on building forward from the best of the past.

3. Recognize performance appraisal as an ongoing activity

 In addition, managers should be praising good work as it happens, not waiting until the formal ‘appraisal event’. The diamond feedback process is effective here. In the same way, of course, they should be dealing with problems in performance as they arise. In this way the ‘formal’ appraisal becomes a punctuation point in an ongoing discussion that pulls everything together that has been happening over the last period, and links it to future activities. Formal appraisals really shouldn’t contain any surprises.

4.Learn about success from studying success

One way to help develop a more positive feel to appraisal activity is to spend at least some time focussing on learning from success. There is a common misconception that one can only learn from mistakes and failure. It is true they are important sources of learning – about how to avoid failure. They don’t necessarily teach about success. Studying success tells us about what success looks like and how it is achieved.

5. In building relationships it’s quality not quantity that counts.

Research shows that the quality of our connections and interactions with others vary enormously. What people really value are the high quality connections where they feel something important is happening in the moment of the conversation. In general these are two-way conversations where each is able to build on the other’s contributions to create something new (as opposed to experiencing a one way downloading of information for example). Each party is left feeling refreshed, energised, valued and recognised. They can be fleeting moments. Over time they build to a resilient relationship that can withstand strain, such as the strain of having to give feedback on poor performance. Use your micro-moments of interaction well.

6. It’s a culture not an event

Performance management needs to be seen as a cultural process. The organization needs to create a culture where reviewing group and individual performance after events becomes an unexceptional habit. As each meeting, project or presentation finishes quickly ask how it was for people and if there was anything different they would like to see next time. After a sales pitch review with colleagues how it went. As it becomes part of normal organisational life for everyone to review their own and, when invited, colleagues performance, so the ‘appraisal’ meeting will become less of a ‘dead’ event.

7. Link it to the mission

Make it clear to everyone how these conversations relate back to the organisational purpose so people can see performance management has a bigger purpose than just ‘improving’ them personally.

8. Use the three top tips

Keep it simple

Equip the managers

Avoid forced distribution curves

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more about how we can help you with this and other aspects of Leadership.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

[i] Songs of Appraisal Michael West http://www.bit.ly/West06

[ii] http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2011/08/performance-management-fine-intentions.htm