The critical difference between an average organisation and a great one, lies in how its people handle difficult conversations. When we choose to say nothing rather than speak up, it causes all manner of issues, from a lack of employee engagement and dropping staff retention rates, to projects falling behind, teams working in silos and unhealthy workplace cultures. Ultimately, we are creating a wide-spread culture of silence!
Unfortunately, we regularly fail to consider the true costs of not dealing with issues quickly and effectively. By choosing silence, we waste significant time and resources, damage relationships and increase stress by working around our problems. For example, when most managers are facing a challenge with a member of staff, they will call upon HR to intervene or ‘wait and see’ if the issue fixes itself, rather than hold, what we call, a Breakthrough Conversation.
In the eyes of their team, this inaction can make a manager appear weak, but it can also have other damaging implications, as silence can often be seen as acceptance. When leaders don’t challenge individuals who underperform or misbehave, others start to ask themselves "Why should I work hard while certain individuals get away with bad behaviour and underperformance?" This sense of unfairness and frustration can damage more than just a single relationship within a team.
Whether it’s peer-to-peer or involves speaking up to a more senior figure, many of us will feel helpless and internalise our concern, have an argument with the other person in our head or talk to everyone else about the issue except the person we really need to. Regardless of our job role, the primary reason we all avoid holding Breakthrough Conversations is a fear of conflict or fear of how the other person will react. We tell ourselves self-justifying stories or create limiting beliefs such as "Speaking up will only make matters worse", "The other person is bound to respond negatively and I won't know what to say" or "It won’t make any difference."
Where does this anxiety come from? In most cases, it’s previous experience. At some time in the past, we’ve probably all been burned by trying to hold a Breakthrough Conversation that didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. Here are 3 common reasons why we may not have performed at our best in the past:
1. Going Into the Conversation With the Wrong Mindset
Trying to 'win the argument' by being right, seeing the other person as a villain and not considering the other side of the story or wanting to put them in their place rather than create a two-way dialogue.
2. Using Unconsidered Language
Letting our emotions take over and responding in anger or with hyperbole rather than effectively preparing for the conversation and thoughtfully expressing our concerns.
3. Focusing On the Wrong Issue
Only addressing a surface level issue and not digging deeper into the bigger problems at hand or considering what we really want for ourselves and the relationship going forward.
But these conversations don't have to result in conflict and it is possible to prepare well for them. In fact, the whole purpose of a Breakthrough Conversation is to achieve the results (or breakthroughs) you're looking for through dialogue that upholds the dignity and credibility of all parties.
Here are 5 steps for managing a Breakthrough Conversation.
Step 1: Identify the Real Issue
Often we fail to address the real issues or barely scratch the surface of what's bothering us, leading only to short-term results or no results at all for our efforts. Does this person really know what’s going on for you? Have you raised this issue with them before? If you have, it's likely you didn't address the underlying problem. If you haven't, how would they know it's an issue or how their behaviour is affecting you?
More often than not, we are less upset about the behaviour itself and more so about what we think people's behaviour is telling us about how they feel about us. For example, are you bothered that they we're late for that important meeting last week or are you bothered that they are repeatedly late to meetings that you arrange and now you're starting to feel like they don't respect you? Understanding what it is about people's behaviour that's triggering us and why, enables us to talk openly about the real issues at hand and gives us the best chance of achieving sustainable behaviour change.
Step 2: Get In the Right Mindset
Often the reasons behind why people are doing what they're doing is not what we first think, but it's very easy to develop a negative mindset, especially over time, and paint the other person as the villain. By going into a Breakthrough Conversation with this unhealthy outlook, we set ourselves up for failure and allow room for anger, selfish motivations and bad intentions to creep in.
Instead, we need to be curious, not furious! How would it help the conversation if we looked at the situation from the other person's perspective? What impact would this have on how we act or behave? What impact would this have on the outcome of the conversation? Take the time to put yourself in the other person's shoes, consider the best-case reason why they're behaving the way they are. It's not about letting them off the hook, it's about changing our mindset to ensure that we’re able to have the conversation in a way that maintains dignity and credibility for everyone and achieves the outcomes we're looking for.
Step 3: Demonstrate Positive Intent
Acquiring the right mindset to raise important conversational issues is an important step. But, to achieve overall success, we also need to think thoughtfully about what we're going to say and how we're going to say it, and this all stems from how we start the conversation. We need to bare in mind that although we've had time to consider and prepare for what we want to say, the other person hasn’t. In fact, they may be completely unaware that there’s any problem to be discussed at all.
In order to mitigate a defensive or negative response, we need to do our best to make our intentions clear. Misunderstandings can come directly from our words. But more often than not, the root of misunderstandings come from a disconnect between our intent and the other person's perception of our intent. We’ve already put in the work to make sure that we have the correct mindset, so by making our positive intentions clear to the other person from the outset and telling them why we feel it’s important to talk to them, we grant them the ability to translate the rest of our message more effectively, preventing them from making ambiguous assumptions about our motives or developing feelings of fearfulness around how the conversation might play out.
Step 4: Use ACT to Thoughtfully Raise Your Issue
Having successfully invited the other person into the conversation in a way that doesn’t put them on the defence, we need to consider further ways we can reinforce our positive intent when it's come to raising our issue with them. To do this, we use ACT to help us form a structure for our conversation:
- Actuals: What actually happened i.e. the facts. By separating our actuals from our conclusions and sharing those first, we’re clearly outlining the reason why we’re having the conversation
without introducing any bias or embellishments and continuing to demonstrate our positive intent by
suspending any initial judgement. - Conclusions: What we've concluded based on the facts i.e. our assumptions or opinions. Whether these transpire to be true or not, we’re giving the other person a window into our thoughts and letting them know how their actions are affecting us and the issues being caused as a result. By sharing our best-case reasons for why we think they might be behaving the way they are and not just our worst, we’re also showing our desire to understand what's going on and not simply painting them as a villain.
- Test: Testing our conclusions with the other person i.e. inviting them into the conversation to add context and tell their side of the story. This opens up the dialogue, giving us a more complete understanding of the situation and hopefully setting us on a path towards a positive resolution.
Step 5: Establish Your Agreed Actions & Accountabilities
How we end the conversation is just as important as how we start it. Without clarifying the next steps and how things will change going forward, our Breakthrough Conversation becomes meaningless.
- Check that there is mutual understanding - make sure that what you’ve agreed to during the conversation is clear and that the other person sees things the same way you do
- Clarify how you will actively hold each other accountable to what you’ve agreed upon
- Outline what you will do if one or both of you were to fall short of your accountabilities
At the heart of all workplace challenges are Breakthrough Conversations that are either being avoided or not handled well. To hold these types of conversations effectively requires both skill and confidence, and these 5 steps can help you and others in your organisation to start to breakthrough into more effective communication and stronger working relationships.
Please contact us to find out more about how to hold Breakthrough Conversations more effectively in the workplace and improve the culture of your organisation through our difficult conversations training.
