Mastering Difficult Conversations
Just about every day, we attempt (or avoid) difficult conversations. Two experts on the topic provide some coaching.
Some conversations are way more difficult than others, and there are three good reasons for that. Two experts explain.
How do you define a difficult conversation? Douglas Stone:
A difficult conversation is anything that is hard for someone to talk about. It can range from asking your boss for a raise to providing negative feedback to a subordinate to complaining to your neighbour about his dog barking. These conversations are particularly tricky because there is often a gap between what people are really thinking and what they say.
Of course, whether something is difficult to discuss (or not) is subjective, but these conversations tend to share some key characteristics. One is that there is usually something important at stake. As a result, we might be concerned that engaging in the conversation will negatively impact the relationship. In addition, there are often questions of identity on the line. We all view ourselves in certain way: ‘I am a nice person’ or ‘I am a hard worker’. When we engage in a difficult conversation, there is the potential to receive feedback about how someone else sees us — which sometimes clashes with how we see ourselves. The conversations that feel the most difficult tend to be the ones that threaten our self-image.
You have said that very difficult conversation is actually three conversations. Please explain.
DS:
We have studied hundreds of these conversations, and it turns out that no matter what the subject, our thoughts and feelings fall into the same three categories or ‘conversations’. The first is the ‘what happened?’ conversation. Most difficult conversations involve disagreement about what has happened or what should happen. This is where we spend the most time in a difficult conversation, trying to figure out who is right, who meant what and who is to blame.
The second conversation is the feelings conversation. Should you acknowledge your feelings or deny them? And what about the other person’s feelings? What if they are angry or hurt? The third aspect of this is the identity conversation. This is the conversation we have with ourselves about what this situation means to us. Does it mean we are competent or incompetent? A good person or bad? What impact might it have on our self-image and selfesteem? Engaging successfully in difficult conversations requires learning to operate effectively in each of these three realms.
When faced with a difficult issue, how should we decide whether or not to bring it up?
Elaine Hering:
Our clients often think that we always advise people to raise difficult issues — but we don’t. The first step is figuring out whether or not you can address the issue without having a conversation. Is there an internal negotiation that you can have with yourself? In some cases, a difficult conversation with yourself can get you to an outcome that works for you. But in many cases, that is not possible.
One of the pitfalls we often see when people are deciding whether or not to raise an issue is that they are shortsighted about it. People tend to focus on the short-term or immediate cost of bringing the issue up. ‘I will have to take an hour out of my day to have this conversation with him. It’s probably not going to go well; and then I still have to interact with this person’. This often leads to a decision not to raise the issue.
What is legitimate but limited about that analysis is that it doesn’t take into account the long-term costs of not raising the issue. In particular, if you don’t address it, things could get much worse. It could lead to the same relational damage that you’re concerned about anyways, because concerns tend to fester over time. We encourage people to analyze both the short and longterm risks — and the possible rewards — of raising the issue to get a better sense of what is truly at stake, and whether or not it is worth it.
This raises the next question, which is, how to raise difficult issues. Can you touch on some of the tried and true ways of doing that?
EH:
One approach is to separate intention and impact. So often people feel like someone did something wrong, and they focus on the impact that the other person has had on them. Because we conflate someone’s intention with the impact that they have on us, we can quickly get defensive.
One of the tried-and-true ways of effectively raising an issue is to speak to the impact that you are concerned about, and to be curious as to whether the other party is aware of it at all. Show authentic curiosity as to what they were intending when, say, they copied the boss on that email, or when they raised that probing question in the meeting, so you can distinguish their intention from the resulting impact.
You believe it is important to proactively attempt to turn difficult conversations into ‘learning conversations’. Please explain how to do this.
DS:
The big shift required to achieve a learning conversation is to move away from viewing it as your big chance to prove your point or to give the other party a piece of your mind. Difficult conversations often arrive in the form of a message: You decide to tell someone that their work output is not adequate, or that they’re not disciplining the children in the right way. We tend to think
If you don’t address the issue at hand, things could get much worse.
of the other party’s role as ‘hearing what we have to say’. This is a very limited way to think about it, and it doesn’t leave much potential for things to end well.
A better way to think about these conversations is to view them as two-way conversations, even when you do believe you have an important message to deliver. If someone’s work is not up to par, it’s not that you should pretend that they’re doing great work; it’s that you should say, ‘Here is how I perceive your work output and here is why I see it this way. Let’s have a conversation about it. I want to learn how you see it, and I want to understand why we might see it differently. I’m curious to know what questions you have going forward, and I’d like us to think together about how things might work differently going forward’, etc. A learning conversation is a far cry from just delivering a message. Instead of seeking to persuade and get your way, you want to understand the other person’s point of view, explain your point of view, understand feelings and impact, and work together to figure out a way forward.
Why do so many difficult conversations not end well? DS:
They fail when people begin by describing the problem from their own perspective — which implies a judgment about the other person and provokes a defensive response. Instead, we suggest starting the conversation from the perspective of a ‘third story’ that describes — or at least acknowledges — the difference between the parties’ views in neutral terms.
Listening is a crucially important part of handling difficult conversations well. It helps us to understand the other person, and the sense of having been heard makes the other person more able to listen themselves. The key to being a good listener is to be truly curious and concerned about the other person. Techniques that can help you show that care and concern include asking open questions, asking for more concrete information, and giving the other person the option of not answering. We advise people to avoid questions that are actually statements, and not to cross-examine the other party.
Another useful technique is to paraphrase what the other person is saying to clarify and check on your own understanding. Expressing oneself is the next step. Once you have found the courage to speak, start by saying explicitly what is most important to you. Share the information, reasoning and experience behind your views, and avoid exaggerations such as ‘You always’ or ‘You never’. You can also help the other person to understand you by having them share what they are hearing from you, or asking them how they see things differently.
What are some of the most important difficult conversations that should be happening in today’s workplace?
EH:
We need to be having a lot more conversations around diversity and inclusion. I don’t mean diversity just in terms of race or
background, but diversity of perspective and experience. This is especially important because we are working in a global context; what you see on the ground in, say, Bangalore is very different from what you see on the ground in Toronto. Is there space for that perspective at the table, or are we, as global organizations, always going to be addressing issues in a headquarter-centric way that doesn’t necessarily serve our broader aims? Being able to talk about differences more skillfully — in a way that isn’t about condemnation, but is about curiosity — would be beneficial.
DS: I totally agree that these are some of the most important topics that we face both organizationally and interpersonally. The only thing I would add is that I think people are sort of afraid of these conversations. Partly, we’re afraid of what we might hear, and partly we’re just afraid that we’re going to get it wrong. What if we say something that is offensive, or seem like we’re complaining too much, or that we’re insensitive to others? The fear of ‘getting it wrong’ often keeps us from engaging in these conversations, and that is rational. If you think you’re going to have a conversation that will only make things worse, you will naturally try to avoid it.
The responsibility for having difficult conversations about diversity and inclusion is shared by everyone. The person who raises the topic has to have some courage to do so and some faith that others are going to receive it well. And others have to have some flexibility or capacity for people seeing things differently. We need to create incentives for people to have these important conversations — and give each other a little more latitude in how we have them, even if they’re not carried out in the most ideal way.
Strong feelings and emotions are involved in just about every difficult conversation. What is the best way to handle them?
EH: The best way to handle emotions is to actually acknowledge them. Oftentimes, the default is to suppress emotions and to try to be purely analytical and rational. But difficult conversations are difficult because they aren’t rational. If we can name and acknowledge that we are having strong feelings, we have at least highlighted one of the key issues at play — which is that we are human beings and we are having strong emotions and reactions. We need to give ourselves licence to feel what we feel, and try to articulate that in a constructive way by naming it. And then, we need to work through what is driving the the emotions. What’s behind them? Is it the identity issues that Doug mentioned earlier? Is it a sense of fairness? What is the root issue? Until we acknowledge the emotion piece, we’re often just tiptoeing around the real issue.
Can you touch on the role of self-awareness in all of this? DS:
I think of self-awareness as a lifelong learning journey. Some of it is just about introspection and acknowledging not only what we are feeling, but as Elaine was saying, why we are feeling that way. Self-awareness also comes from learning from others. For example, people who might be described as having a bad temper may not experience themselves in that way at all. They might just believe, ‘I work hard. I get things done’. If someone says, ‘Well, what about yesterday when you yelled at us?’ They might start by saying, ‘First of all, I didn’t yell. And second of all, I wasn’t angry; I was just reacting to the situation.’
In many cases people don’t experience themselves the way other people do. Typically, when we get feedback about our blind spots we just say, ‘Oh well, that’s just wrong, so I don’t have to take it seriously’. But if you get the same feedback two or three times, it’s time to wonder whether this might be a blind spot of yours. It’s up to you to sort it out, and to do that you’re going to have to enlist others in helping you see yourself more clearly.
The responsibility for having difficult conversations about diversity and inclusion is shared by everyone.
You have done some work on personality assessments—which promise to make us better leaders, friends, family members and human beings. Do they work?
EH:
Personality assessments, leadership assessments — whatever you want to call them — are part of the ecosystem of how people are evaluated and onboarded, and how teams work together. These assessments are part of the reality of organizational life, but as human beings we often have strong, triggered reactions to them. How can we make the most of the results to actually get at greater self-awareness and learning and growth for ourselves — even if at first blush we don’t agree with the results?
The fact is, the test itself isn’t going to change and the results aren’t going to change. So what could you learn from them? What might be right about them? Are there things that could help you catalyze conversations with people so you can see yourself more clearly?
I first spoke to you about this topic nearly a decade ago. Are people having more difficult conversations these days? DS:
My unscientific answer is Yes. Obviously, people have been having difficult conversations since the beginning of time, but they didn’t see them as being tied together in any particular way. I think people just sort of chalked it up to, ‘Well maybe I’m not that skilled at communicating’ or ‘I’m not good with people’s feelings’.they sort of blamed themselves for negative outcomes. One thing we’ve helped people see is that conversations that feel difficult have certain things in common across the board, as we have discussed. And as a result, it’s not that you have some deficit in your communication skills. There are reasons why these conversations are challenging for human beings. And there are systematic things that you can do to make them more or less likely to go well.
I said earlier that self-awareness is a lifelong project. So is getting better at difficult conversations. Hopefully our advice will help move people in the right direction — towards more learning conversations.