Handling Difficult Conversations

How many times have you found yourself having to handle that “Difficult Conversation” whether it is with a client, staff member, peer group or other business stakeholders?

The way you handle those difficult conversations will have a major impact on your relationships with those people and on your results.

Do you plan effectively for any of these meetings, not just data and information, but around the HOW you are going to handle the meeting and the people attending it?
There are a number of ways improvements can be made in the way we handle our difficult and challenging conversations to make them more effective, improving individual and team productivity and our business relationships.

Essentials for Handling Difficult Conversations:

• Preparation
• Self Awareness of our emotional state and our assumptions
• Knowing your Goal for the meeting
• Understanding the other parties goal for the meeting
• Clarity
• Rapport
• Engagement
• Empathy
• Listening
• Authenticity

Being prepared for the meeting is not just about the data and facts; it is also about understanding the other people in the meeting. Are you clear what their preferred method of communication is: face to face, telephone, email so you can establish a two way communication channel that is effective both pre and post meeting. Being aware of someone else’s communication preference is important and we need to be able to flex our own style whilst ensuring we maintain our authenticity.

Be self aware of both your emotional state and any assumptions that you may be carrying about either the person you are meeting or the situation. Your state and your assumptions will seep out into the meeting unless you are aware of them and keep them in check. This seepage may happen either verbally or through your body language so self awareness prior to and during the meeting is critical to having a beneficial meeting.
Having a joint agenda for both parties at the meeting is very important so you and they know the aims and goals of the meeting. How will you know that you have achieved your meeting goal, what are the criteria that you will measure?

Rapport between individuals at a meeting is not built just by talking about the football or weather etc. It is built because you are interested in the other party, asking questions, probing and most critically listening so you can reply with pertinent facts and relevant questions, demonstrating your engagement.

Empathy is a big part of rapport and relationship building, putting you in the other party’s shoes and acknowledging the issues they may have and how that may affect them will build your credibility and trust.

Many Organisations have systems, procedures and methodologies that will need to be followed in order for the business decisions to be made. Sometimes these processes overtake the need to be able to communicate effectively with people in the organisation which then can lead to the difficult conversation.

Being able to handle difficult conversations benefits the organisation as people are dealing with each other in much more collaborative ways. Increasing productivity and moving the culture towards becoming less confrontational, more collaborative and focussing on the issues rather than defending their position or themselves.

Next time you go into a meeting or conversation make sure you give consideration to the above points and come out of the meeting with a win win solution for you, the other parties and the organisation.

Patrick Bird
Managing Director
InterActive Performance Management Ltd.

We have a super DVD by Patrick on our site - check it out!

Conflict and Psychology

The Underlying Relationship Between Conflict Modes and Psychological Types

by Ralph Kilmann, CEO and Senior Consultant at Kilmann Diagnostics

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (also known as the TKI) assesses your tendency to use one or more of five modes of behavior—competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating—in a conflict situation. After taking the TKI assessment, most people become aware they’ve been using, out of habit, one or more of the modes too much—choosing to use one they are comfortable with when another might have resulted in more satisfying outcomes. At the same time, people usually discover they’ve also been using one or more modes too little, not realizing that an underutilized mode could have saved the day.

Since people naturally wonder if they overuse and underuse certain conflict modes because of their personality, organizational trainers and consultants continue to ask me about the relationship between the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (which measures personality preferences in assimilating information and making decisions) and the TKI (which assesses modes of behavior in conflict situations). Here is a research-based answer to that enduring question:

Many years ago (1975), I published a research study with Ken Thomas, wherein we correlated the MBTI with the TKI. We found that people who are extraverted are more likely to use collaborating, while people who are introverted are more inclined to use avoiding (as a statistically significant correlation, not as a one-to-one relationship). It seems that collaborating requires a little extra energy in interacting with others (sharing ideas and discussing concerns), while avoiding naturally involves an element of shyness or aloofness in an interpersonal situation.

In addition, we found that the thinking preference is related to competing, while the feeling function is related to accommodating (again, as a statistically significant correlation). Perhaps the thinking preference allows a person to keep an emotional distance from the other person: to pursue his own needs at the expense of the other. Meanwhile, the feeling person's empathy for the other person might compel her to satisfy the other's needs more than her own.

For decades, I’ve been making use of both assessment tools in training and consulting projects, so people can become more aware of their proclivities for using certain conflict modes too much and others too little -- based on their MBTI preferences. With that awareness, people can then consciously compensate with their conflict-handling behavior: For example, an introvert can knowingly put out some extra effort in order to engage another in a collaborative discussion (when the necessary conditions for collaborating are evident). Similarly, a person who prefers feeling can knowingly assert her needs (when competing is called for), when her natural tendency would be to automatically accommodate the other person’s needs.

For the original article that reported the correlations between the MBTI and the TKI, including a figure that visually summarizes their relationships, see:
http://kilmanndiagnostics.com/interpersonal.html

Please note: If you or your clients are interested in receiving advanced training for the TKI and conflict management, Kilmann Diagnostics offers an eight-hour, live, online course to do just that. You can get more information about our online course by visiting http://kilmanndiagnostics.com