Unlocking potential: The way to better tough talks

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Ever avoided a tough conversation?

Had an employee that wasn’t performing?

Maybe a manager that had missed a deadline or forgot about an agreement?

Not fun, right?

What can be worse than the stress and that feeling in your gut when procrastinating these tough topics? Continuing to ignore them and letting it just get…worse.

I’m not immune to these types of conversations and they pop up everywhere - since it definitely impacts our productivity and well being, let’s talk about this for a minute and see a couple ways to avoid digging that hole any deeper.

Why Change?

If you’re continuing to read, it’s likely that you find yourself in these situations and want to improve your response so that things are smoother for yourself and others.

I’m the same - and it’s a lifelong improvement - there is no magic moment when “all tough conversations are now done!”.

I had to learn the hard way that having these conversations in a well thought out manner, and enduring the stress and discomfort from that, vastly outweighed the outcome from ignoring them and letting things spiral.

Basically, you can improve your life and others you interact with by being more up front about issues and discussing them in a reasonable manner…not a huge surprise, right?

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What We Owe Each Other

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a seriously delayed conversation about something you were doing (or not doing) then you know how hard it can be…and how frustrating it can be that you didn’t hear anything sooner.

We often assume that people can read our minds in some way, so one of the first steps I took was to try and be more literal about what I was seeing/perceiving/finding.

Combining this with a conversation where instead of slinging accusations you share what you feel is happening and actively asking for their feedback on the situation can be a huge pivot to better discussions, and actually helpful disagreements.

How about an example?

I do quarterly check-ins (loosely based on Radical Candor) with my team.

When I started, it was a time to check in and give constructive feedback.

A few times, there were some pretty big issues that I noticed and wanted changed. Not a problem in itself.

However, approaching that conversation with “here’s what you’re doing wrong, fix it” didn’t get the result I was looking for.

Yes, they fixed the issue, but they were also scared because that’s the only thing I communicated and I didn’t get feedback on how the process was also part of the problem - that was only figured out later.

If I had instead asked, “here’s what I’m seeing and we need to change it so that X happens instead. Does that make sense? What are you seeing from your end?”, I would have gotten much better feedback and a complete solution that didn’t take another round of fixes.

That’s a pretty simple example, but you can extrapolate this into relationships, business partnerships, and much more.

Just remember that you need two ingredients to make this work well:

• Timely conversations

• Calm and thought out discussion where you honestly ask for their input and feedback

You’re not only asking for their feedback to make them “feel” better, you should be doing this so that you get their honest point of view and get access to any information or ideas that might have escaped your attention.

It isn’t always easy but it is always the better option.

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Extra Extra

• On the work end of things, the Harvard Business Review had a good list of benefits to having conflict and tough conversations in a healthy manner.

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P.S. Looking for resources to improve your productivity? Check out the tools I use right here.