In the workshops I run for managers and leaders, each participant works on an upcoming ‘high stakes’ conversation. You can probably guess the common focus areas: Meetings with under-performing team members, interactions with aggressive or micro-managing bosses, and peer conversations that have long been silently sabotaged by undeclared tensions.
Deep down, we all know the best way to resolve a problem in the workplace is openly, and the best time to do it is now. And yet, hardwired to avoid conflict, we make excuses and defer – until the little problem has become a big problem that cannot be ignored. Bad feelings, sleepless nights, low morale, even heightened WorkCover premiums can follow.
But like any other facet of communication, the ability to have difficult conversations can be learned.
Adar Cohen, a US academic and co-founder of the Civic Leadership Foundation in Chicago, has led extraordinary conversations between warring factions in places synonymous with conflict – the Middle East, Belfast, inside one of the United States’ most notorious prisons.
In that more commonly visited battlefield, the workplace, Cohen observes that within and between teams we are often held back from achieving what we want to achieve by something that we allow to remain unspoken. To help us fix this he offers three rules, developed and road tested in situations from the extreme to the mundane, for transforming difficult interactions into powerful conversations.
Rule one: Move toward the conflict. In other words, talk about the issue. Not only is conflict perfectly normal and healthy, Cohen reminds us, but it is also important information without which problems would remain hidden. We should therefore see difficult conversations as an opportunity to progress.
Rule two: Assume you know nothing. Ask lots and lots of questions. Ask about others’ experiences and opinions and listen to their responses. That is where the resolution is likely to be found.
Rule three: Stop talking. Be silent, to give the other party or parties space to say what they need to say. It is not your job to direct the conversation or fill the void. “If you’re jumpy about pauses,” Cohen says, “they’ll lose confidence in the conversation”.
Remember also that a difficult conversation does not need to be squeezed into a single encounter; a series of two or three conversations may be easier to negotiate emotionally, for everyone involved, and the thinking time between interactions can yield valuable insights.
Cohen reflects that the way in which we speak and listen to each other, particularly when the topic is difficult, creates our future. That’s a beautiful way to frame the primacy of human communication, any day of the week – and an inspiring reminder, next time we identify the need for a ‘difficult’ conversation, that what is on offer could in fact be the chance for a powerful connection.