In this video, leadership expert Dennis McIntee shares 3 questions to ask yourself before stepping into hard conversations. These questions help you get centered so you can navigate the situation with clarity and care.
As a professional, you will inevitably have to have hard conversations.
It could be with a colleague who isn’t pulling their weight or someone on your staff whose propensity for gossip is polluting the team culture.
Or maybe you have to give difficult feedback, address a conflict, or talk with someone who struggles to take responsibility.
Before looking up tips on how to have hard conversations, you first need to examine yourself.
The only person you can control during a hard conversation is you. So when you step in with a clear understanding of the issue and your ideal outcome, you can lead the conversation more effectively.
Because the reality is that you’ll never change what you’re unwilling to confront. And you’ll never confront what you’re afraid of.
The three questions we encourage all leaders to ask before hard conversations help you get to the root of your fears.
Once you’ve confronted your own fears, frustrations, or insecurities, you can show up as a calm, centered leader who can navigate hard conversations well.
Confrontation doesn’t come naturally to everyone. And hard conversations tend to bring up a lot of emotion for everyone involved.
For that reason, many professionals would prefer to ignore the issues altogether. But dismissing recurring issues, team conflict, or unacceptable behaviors rarely ends with resolution.
Instead, it causes deeper issues to develop over time that can risk retention of high performers, the reputation of your business, and overall results.
Fears and insecurities may be driving your avoidance. That’s why the first step in any hard conversation is to ask yourself what you hope to accomplish.
Our research shows that asking the following three questions helps you prepare yourself for navigating a healthy, hard conversation:
Start with yourself. What do you personally hope to achieve with the conversation?
Maybe you want:
When you know your personal desire for the conversation, you can minimize your own defensiveness as you work toward a solution.
Next, ask what you want for the other person.
This question helps keep you focused on specific behaviors rather than the whole person with whom you are having the hard conversation.
You may want the other person to:
You can’t control how the person responds during or after the conversation, but having their best interests in mind can help you maintain a calm demeanor and caring tone throughout the interaction.
After all, your body language and tone communicates far more to the other person than your words do. Start there and you’ll have a greater chance of success.
Finally, ask what you want for the working relationship.
Here’s where you can bring it all together.
Maybe you want:
Plenty of professionals approach hard conversations without considering how they want the working relationship to feel afterward. As a result, they might unintentionally create rifts in the relationship that require even more hard conversations to repair.
So start by understanding what you want the relationship to feel like following the conversation, and consider sharing this with the other person during your conversation.
Clarifying that you have hopes for an ongoing, healthy working relationship with the other person can lower their defenses and help them see that you have a desire to work through the issue rather than pointing fingers or cutting ties.
Imagine you have someone on your team who is complaining with others about issues on the team without addressing it directly with you.
Here’s how this process might look before you have a hard conversation:
What do I want…
Notice that none of these answers are about controlling the other person. You only have control over yourself. But answering these three questions before confronting anyone helps ensure you create an atmosphere where they are more likely to be receptive to your feedback and your ideas for moving forward.
Or perhaps you have someone on your staff who has become increasingly short with clients and coworkers.
You might initially feel frustrated or angry with the staff member. (And imagine how a conversation fueled by those emotions would go… probably not very well!)
Instead of immediately stepping into a conversation with those emotions, see what happens when you ask these three questions:
Now, the conversation is an opportunity to provide clear, specific, honest feedback about someone’s behavior rather than just venting your own frustration.
It’s not easy to have hard conversations. But asking these three questions before getting started helps you step in with the right mindset and attitude.
These questions prompt you to:
Hard conversations are rarely about the words. Start by looking at yourself, clarifying your goals for the conversation, and getting centered as a calm leader who is in control of themself.
You can do it!
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