Bomb
Difficult conversations in the workplace can give even the most experienced executives sleepless nights. Whether it's providing critical feedback or telling people about a tough decision you have made that will make their job more stressful, it's never easy to handle emotional situations. In Rotman Magazine, Douglas Stone, a consultant who lectures on negotiation at Harvard Law School, offers the following advice:
It's about identity - yours
Even if the substance of a conversation is about the person you are talking to, every difficult conversation is also about you. And difficult conversations can be threatening. If you're giving negative feedback to a subordinate, for example, this may challenge how you see yourself. You may consider yourself someone who doesn't hurt others. Or you may be struggling with the fact that if you were a better boss, this situation would have never arisen. That self-image may interfere with your ability to give effective feedback. Organizationally, it can produce what Mr. Stone calls a "culture of nice."
When to speak up
It's not essential that you raise every issue on your mind. "Life is too short, and some things are inconsequential," he observes. Consider whether the conversation takes you forward.
At the same time, it's easy to skirt an issue because you consider the pain that might be involved in raising the issue, and recognize that if you look the other way nothing bad will happen to you. In essence, you are choosing the benefits of not raising the issue - relief from stress - over the costs of raising it.
But you're not considering the opposite view - the benefits of raising the issue and the costs of avoiding it. "The costs of avoiding can really accumulate down the road," Mr. Stone warns.
Aim for a learning conversation
The goal in a difficult conversation should be to make it a learning conversation - a discussion in which both people learn about how the other person sees things and how the other party feels. This means staying curious and open-minded during the conversation. It also means adopting what Mr. Stone calls the "and stance" - you don't have to choose "either/or" between the stance you have and the one the other person has. Rather, you can embrace both.
Don't sugar coat
When we deliver a difficult message, we tend to want to sugar coat it. "But even when coated with sugar, a hand grenade is still going to do damage; and avoiding or choosing not to deliver a difficult message is like hanging on to a hand grenade once you've pulled the pin," Mr. Stone says.
He urges you to move away from thinking of the conversation as delivering a message and instead view it as a learning conversation.
Two tools to try
He offers two tools to help prepare for a difficult conversation. The first is role reversal, in which you go beyond considering the impact your comments will have on the other person to actually imagining you are that person.
You could also imagine you are a neutral party or independent mediator, who would frame the conversation not in terms of who is right or wrong, but in terms of the differences between the two parties and how best to manage that difference.
Harvey Schachter