Lead On with Greg & Mark (LOwGaM)
We invite you to join us as we talk about the world of leadership during times of complexity.
Lead On with Greg & Mark (LOwGaM)
S5: E6 Preparing for Difficult Conversations: Transforming Tough Dialogues into Growth Opportunities
Can you transform a challenging conversation into a meaningful opportunity for growth?
This episode will equip you with the skills to handle even the toughest dialogues with grace and confidence.
Join us as we share practical strategies for approaching workplace conversations with empathy and understanding, transforming potential conflict into collaboration.
By framing discussions as growth opportunities rather than reprimands, we aim to foster a more harmonious organizational environment. Discover Amy Gallo’s eight essential tips for mastering these interactions, and learn the importance of timing and emotional readiness in achieving successful outcomes. We encourage you to adopt a positive mindset and remind you that preparation is key to effective communication.
Make it a great day and Lead On!
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You're listening to Lead On with Greg and Mark, brought to you by the Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate Units. Join us this season as we engage in conversations on leading on through times of complexity. Now for your hosts, Greg and Mark.
Speaker 2:I've been meaning to have a difficult conversation with you. I figured we'd save it for the air.
Speaker 3:Difficult conversation. Yeah, we have a lot of difficult conversations. Yeah, are you ready?
Speaker 2:I'm ready. Yeah, how's that suspense? Is that killing you? Let's talk about you clapping and snapping into the microphones. You don't like that now. I don't think the listeners like it either.
Speaker 3:I think it hurts their ears. Oh, but listen. I had to give up beatboxing. I had to do something.
Speaker 2:But I think people want to listen to the song. I don't think they want to listen to you clapping in their ear. I'm a DJ by heart. I got to entertain.
Speaker 3:So this difficult conversation is going nowhere, right?
Speaker 2:It really still gonna do what I want to do. So, um, we've got a couple of documents. It's my life, it's now or never.
Speaker 3:It's now, I'm gonna live forever. Yeah, I'm gonna. I ain't gonna live forever who is that?
Speaker 2:it's bon jovi bon jovi, yeah little uh, richie sambora on the talk box.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, shout out to new jersey.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, wow all right, hey, listen. So um, we recently did some trainings here for administrative staff on how to facilitate difficult conversations. Cause when you're excellent listen when you're working, when you're in a family, when you're in a group. It's inevitable.
Speaker 3:You're going to have difficult conversations and, what's interesting too, it depends on the when you say conversations the conversation with one people, small group, large group, yeah, of course, Group dynamics really change these things Right and the difficult conversation could be any number of contexts.
Speaker 2:You might be letting somebody go, you might be providing corrective feedback, you might be breaking really bad news. I mean if you're in the healthcare industry. You're having difficult conversations all the time, and how.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And when you're, you know, when you live with people, your children, your spouse, your parents. Difficult conversations are inevitable.
Speaker 3:I never have difficult conversations with my wife, never Does she have difficult conversations with my wife. Never Does she have difficult conversations with you. Yes, yes, that's the way it goes. You're on the receiving end. That's the way it goes, mark.
Speaker 2:That sounds right, Gregory. So we did a little research here and there's like eight things that Amy Gallo says that you should do to get ready for a difficult conversation, and I like this. Amy Gallo did this on a Harvard Business Review guide, so you can Google this. We use them a lot, by the way.
Speaker 3:HBR yes.
Speaker 2:The reason why I like this is because the difficult conversation in and of itself is difficult. I hate to sound redundant there. It's really hard to have these conversations, hence it being a difficult conversation.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry to interrupt you. You have to weigh your words carefully.
Speaker 2:You have to weigh your words carefully and, more importantly, you have to accept the fact that the difficult part isn't just the content you're delivering Right. The difficult part is actually getting ready to deliver the difficult part. Yes, you don't just walk into it, and if you do, you're probably destined for a less than desirable result, which is what she's got here. She's got eight tips for getting ready for a difficult conversation.
Speaker 3:I love that, because timing is everything with these kinds of things too, because you can't let this hang out there for days and days. Yeah, so she says number one, greg, you got to check your mindset.
Speaker 2:So are you ready for it? Right. Do a little self-analysis. If you've got to have your mindset Okay, so are you ready for it? Right. Do a little self analysis If you've got to have a difficult conversation with someone, right? How are you feeling? Are you angry, are you hungry, are you tired? Do you have an appointment in 15 minutes and you're going to miss it? Because, in other words, what are you feeling, what are you doing, and how is that going to influence, perhaps for the worse, the conversation? And then what can you do to control for it so that it's at least not inhibiting or hurting the conversation, but maybe it's not improving it, but at least it's not making it worse.
Speaker 3:I think that's great. I think that that advice in itself are you in the right state of mind to be delivering this message and working through this difficult conversation.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting. There was a news article I read recently that said that someone did a study, if you will, an analysis of sentencing of criminals. People have been found guilty or pled guilty by judges and they say that the judge's sentences assigned or issued to convicted criminals were more harsh in the late morning than they were in the early morning or in the how about or in the afternoon. They're hungry for lunch. The judge is hangry. Hangry, yeah right, because they're human, so their blood sugar's low. They've been sitting in that judge's box in that robe, whatever. They're hot, they're tired. They got to go to the bathroom. They want to check their email. They're grumpy, they're hangry.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And as a result, the convicted criminal suffers a consequence greater. So even for the same crime, the same conviction, the sentencing this study says is more harsh, more severe, if you go before the judge right before lunch.
Speaker 3:Wow. So check your mindset, that's right, I like it All right, and then are we going down.
Speaker 2:Go to the right.
Speaker 3:Go to the right, okay. The next is see the situation from your counterpart's perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay yeah, okay yeah. So so walk a mile in their shoes, think about what they're going through, what is their perspective coming into this, so that you could, you know what might be coming at, you can be prepared for that as well, right? Well, for sure.
Speaker 2:And it's important that you know, yeah, and do a little role playing in your mind, like what do you imagine the person's going to say? If you can project what you think the person's going to say, you could probably plan for it and maybe adjust your message. Yeah, you know, in the it's a killer mockingbird, right, they talk about that. Right, don't judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. Yes, don't have a difficult conversation with someone until you've walked an imaginary, you know theoretical mile hypothetical mile in their shoes.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before you get into that difficult conversation, consider the larger organizational context, right, so it's rarely just about one person, it's rarely just about one issue. It's rarely just about one difficult thing. It's usually wrapped up in a whole bunch of stuff. There's probably more than one person involved. There's probably historical context. There's probably inter divisional, interdepartmental issues at play. There's probably history and drama. Right, usually difficult conversations don't happen overnight, or the need for difficult conversation doesn't occur overnight, right, right, like, if you're getting ready to have a difficult conversation with someone, it's probably been brewing. So what is that larger organizational context? Because when you pull that person in, I think her point is they're going to bring up the larger organizational context in their defense. Yes, they will. And are you prepared? Have you thought about it? Are they right? They may be right.
Speaker 3:They might be right. Yeah, because you look at the history of what has happened in that organization, whatever it might be, decisions that have been made, decisions that you made Correct and that might be held against you, correct, but because you haven't seen the situation through their lens and you haven't considered the larger organizational context.
Speaker 2:Yep, I had a difficult conversation with someone the other day and it was that they had made a decision which was great. I love when people make a difficult decision, right, they've been empowered to do that and the difficult conversation wasn't a reprimand by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it was very collaborative. But the reason I had to provide some feedback was that their decisions were based in their silo. They hadn't considered the larger organizational context which I have to take into account to everything here. You sure?
Speaker 3:do Right and so and that is the lens that you're always looking at- Always, always, always.
Speaker 2:And so you want folks to go out and do things that are good for their departments and their, obviously, but have you considered the consequence of doing it in the larger organizational setting?
Speaker 3:So it was an aha moment. So it's definitely an aha moment and what I noticed, just with Mark and myself, is, you know, we have this on paper in front of us and we're looking at it as like a flow chart. Right, so we're automatically, because there's no arrows, we're both drawing arrows on this. But something I noticed is that a pain point for me when I'm looking at this and, like you said, from that perspective, what we're on right now the organizational context I have to go back to that previous one. See the situation from your counterpart's perspective.
Speaker 2:That's more difficult than you would think, of course, and you know, in this particular situation, like I said, it wasn't. It wasn't. No one was in trouble, if you will, in this conversation, right? But you know, I did consider it from their perspective and I understood why they made the decision, so I wasn't upset, it made perfect sense yeah so then, the conversation didn't become about the decision. The conversation wasn't about their decision. The conversation was about the larger organizational context of the decision. Right, right. So, other words, we were having a better conversation.
Speaker 3:All right, go ahead, okay. So the next is to plan your message. So you, you, you now have this organizational context. You're looking at it. How are you going to plan that message? And in my mind, I think I, I, you can look at this two ways. There's different ways of presenting this message. Some is to be very brief. You know to the point that this is, this is why we're here, this is what we're talking about, this is what we need to see happen. I think in many times we have, like that safe sandwich, we say something nice going into it and then we have the meat of the conversation and then you have the other bun, you know, and it's like yeah, it's called a feedback sandwich.
Speaker 2:The feedback. It doesn't work. People don't want to be complimented.
Speaker 3:No, because they said okay, here it comes, here it comes, and all they're hearing is the, the negative, the feedback in the middle of that sandwich.
Speaker 2:Yeah it doesn't work.
Speaker 3:I think people don't appreciate it right, and it happens all the time, of course, so listeners, just be mindful of that one.
Speaker 2:Greg, I'd like to pay you a compliment, yeah and also, yeah, and also with playing your message. In my opinion, I think it's also like like write down what you're going to say.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Rehearse it. Maybe rehearse it with another trusted colleague, that who's able to know what you're going to talk about a trusted colleague in human resources, or another division leader or another supervisor or another colleague. If you're going into a difficult conversation, don't go in cold Like a band doesn't play for the first time on stage in front of an audience. Right, they rehearse rehearse. Yeah, and so if this is new for you, you should rehearse, and this happens more than people would think.
Speaker 2:And have the other person role play yes, what they believe the difficult conversation partner is going to say or think. Have them see the situation from that person's perspective and play that role and get you ready. Again, not so that you get them, but so that you have a productive outcome. I think that's the point here. How do you increase the likelihood that the difficult conversation results in positive outcomes outcomes rather than negative discipline or negative consequence and I actually think that rehearsing piece with with somebody else can help you with this next piece.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is preparing for multiple scenarios. So the more you rehearse it, the more likely it is that your partner is going to think of different responses Pushback pushback Right, and their pushback might get you to think about the larger organizational context, because they're going to maybe call out things that you hadn't considered or didn't want to think about. Yeah, yeah, and so I like that. So, prepare for multiple scenarios. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3:This next one, pick the right time. Reminds me of the first one, but let's think about this so is a Friday afternoon, the right time Is a Monday morning? The right time Is the next morning after something very, very significant happened, the right time, and maybe in that person's personal life Picking the right time sounds simple, but this is also a very this is a delicate thing to think about too. Depending on the height of the conversation, picking the right time is important.
Speaker 2:Well, right, and if you have a busy afternoon and this is going to take an hour and you don't have an hour, then don't have the conversation. Yeah, you know, it's funny. You said like on a Friday afternoon, I once worked with an HR director and he had all the full moons scheduled on his desk calendar. They were circled in bright yellow. He would not have disciplinary meetings with staff on days that there was a full moon. He believed that there was a correlation to people's bad behavior in a difficult conversation like a disciplinary conversation with human resources. Wow, on any day that had a full moon, swear to god. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would do difficult conversations at the end of the day so that the person could just leave right, as opposed to then what do you do with this person? Or like? You know so, but yeah, I'll never forget that his desk blotter had all the full moon circled. Wow, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:Uh, choose the right place, okay right, my house, your house, you know my office, your office, human resource office right, if you're um meeting somebody in um your office, right? Does that have a certain connotation in your organization? If you go to their office, does it have a certain connotation? If you're asking to meet in a conference room or in a neutral space or in human resources, what are you communicating? All of those decisions based on the culture of your organization or based on the dynamics of your family, because it doesn't have to be work, right? You don't want to maybe have a difficult conversation in a restaurant with a family member. Maybe you want to do that at home, maybe you want to do it in the car while you're driving, or maybe you do want to do it in a restaurant, right? In other words, I don't think there's a right answer to any of these things. I think the point is you have to think about it. Where? Where do you want to have the difficult conversation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the place, the location is important. And then the last one. Last one is vent. Yeah, get it out of your system. Vent before the meeting Vent before the meeting If it's too fresh in your mind and you are already upset. We already talked about this, but you need to get that out of your system before then so you can have a clear mind and be very objective.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, be objective. Here's what. Here's what we're talking about, here's the crux of it and here's how we need to work through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I like this because you'll see a lot of advice on the content of a difficult conversation, right, and you're going to see bad advice, like the feedback sandwich that you mentioned. Positive, negative, positive right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you don't get a lot of advice on how to get ready for it. So you want to check your mindset. You want to see the situation from the other person's perspective. You want to consider the larger organizational context or, if this is about home, consider the larger familial context. You want to plan your message. You want to prepare for multiple scenarios. You want to pick the right time and the right place and you don't want to go in without having first vented to somebody else. Venting to somebody else, I should say.
Speaker 3:I love the advice. I think it's great. And again, listeners, this is all how you plan prior to the meeting. Planning prior to the meeting because there's so many other, there's so many variables here that you need to be very mindful of.
Speaker 2:Right, well, right, because, like, don't you want the difficult conversations um focused to be on the topic of the difficult conversation, not on any of these things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and and sometimes you might, you have to think about this too the person that you're talking to might like to sidetrack. Well, sure, and you got to keep it on point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean like if you do the basic one, someone comes to late late to work a half an hour every day like that's a basic leadership scenario.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, you know, maybe the first time we talk about it, maybe it's just a hey, I know it should be. Coming to work late Is everything okay. But if they keep doing it, right, out of concern, right. But then let's just say, let's stick with this cliched analogy, right, like, maybe it still happens for another week, right, and it's really starting to annoy your colleagues and you, right? But maybe you need to say all right, we're going to have a real difficult conversation with this person about the fact that one they continue to come to work late and the two that we've already had an initial chat or initial talk. We've had two chats, two talks. What are we going to do in this more formal conversation? What you don't want to do is go into that meeting angry. You don't want to go into that meeting without having first asked that person. From your perspective, is everything okay. You want to think about the larger organizational context. If you're not holding that person accountable, then what is everybody else that's showing up on time? Think, right, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3:Yeah and going through planning your message, you would say well, I know we've already met on this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then we're seeing that this is becoming habitual.
Speaker 2:Right, and then you want to role play for multiple scenarios, pick the right time and place, and then you don't want to go in angry.
Speaker 3:You've got to vent with someone else before you go in and hold somebody accountable, so it, and we come back to this all the time. But then you're, you put the person on the defensive, yeah, and it's not going to be a productive conversation and they may not even receive the message.
Speaker 2:Well right, because of the anger shining through to people respect the boss who loses their cool. Yeah, no, no, even the people who are, even the people who are happy that their colleagues getting in trouble for being late are not happy if the boss freaks out, because you know what they're thinking. Well, how long until he freaks out on me? Right, right, people want to be treated with respect, even when they're messing up, that's right. Even when they're not meeting expectations, they still want. They might want to be held accountable, but they want to be held accountable in a respectful way. I think, right, right, definitely, definitely, all right. So that is Amy Gallo's eight whatever tips for preparing or getting ready for a difficult conversation. Greg.
Speaker 3:Yeah, from the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict, from 2017.
Speaker 2:That's a good book, by the way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll have to check that out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good, you can get it as an e-book.
Speaker 3:All right, listeners, we appreciate you. In the meantime, what do you say? We'll make it a great day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's innovate the USA. All right, sounds good buddy, I'd like to have a conversation with you, do you want?
Speaker 3:to have a typical conversation. Uh-oh, uh-oh, have you vented already? Yeah, are you going to be in a good state of mind? I'm angry, not good. Let's get you some from me buddy, Bye-bye.
