3 Tips for Having Difficult Conversations
One part of being a leader that almost never feels comfortable is having difficult conversations. In fact, there’s only one thing worse than having a difficult conversation, and that’s avoiding one!
People tell me they fear difficult conversations because they worry about upsetting the other person, and others say they worry about what people will think and say about them afterwards. This can feel especially difficult if you were previously a co-worker and friend before stepping up into a leadership role.
The thing is, in leadership often the most important work you do happens in the least comfortable situations and so getting comfortable with discomfort needs to be top of your list of priorities.
The secret to getting good at something is nothing fun or sexy – it’s repetition. Each time you have a difficult conversation you are learning through experience, you’re developing your toolbox, and strengthening that muscle.
In the meantime, there are things you can do help you prepare for difficult conversations. Here are my top tips:
- Reframe: How you feel about something impacts how you think about it, and how you think about something impacts how you show up. One way to change how you feel about something is to change the meaning of it. If you think about difficult conversations as a nuisance or feel they are something to fear, you’re naturally going to show up with that mindset, and your actions will be through the lens of ‘nuisance’ or ‘fear’. You can change the meaning from ‘nuisance’ to ‘resource’, a way of building trust, to serve your people powerfully, to help your people grow, and to take the whole practice to the next level.
- Start with the end in mind: It’s easy to get caught up in planning the ‘how’ of a difficult conversation but sometimes strategy doesn’t need to be your main priority. Often the ‘how’ emerges on its own in the conversation. Take a step back and think about the outcome you have in mind. What do you want to achieve? How do you want to FEEL at the end of the conversation. How do you want the other person to feel? What does a successful conversation look like? How will you know the conversation has been successful? What will you see, hear, and feel to know you have achieved your outcome? Having a well-defined outcome will help you shape the conversation, and to stay focused and on track during the meeting. Please always seek advice from a HR professional to cover your back, at the same time you don’t always have to have every part of it planned to a T.
- Schedule it: What gets scheduled gets done. It’s easy to find reasons not to have a difficult conversation, just like it’s easy to justify not going to the gym. Leaders can easily fall into the “When I then I” trap and prioritise the wrong things. “When I have more time, then I will {do the task}.” Make it real by scheduling the event in your diary and committing to doing it, no matter what.
And remember, what’s in the way is the way. Life has its way of bringing you challenges that are uniquely designed for you. If difficult conversations feel uncomfortable for you right now, you are being signposted to your greatest source of growth and strength.
“Easy Conversations, Hard Life. Difficult Conversations, Easy Life.” – Rachael Paul, Simply Veterinary Coaching
