Having difficult conversations
Practical, concrete methods to help you learn how to talk about the tough stuff
What could be more dreadful than a difficult conversation? And yet we face potential difficult conversations all the time. Telling the boss that your project is late, proposing a budget increase to a sceptical finance team, or informing your subordinate that her work isn’t meeting expectations—all can be both threatening and consequential. Putting off these conversations is tempting but solves nothing and leaves others in the dark, unable to act to correct problems. On the other hand, diving in without the right preparation can be just as dangerous, leading to misunderstandings, anger, and an even worse mess than you started with.
Google’s recent research on effective teams found that having the “psychological safety” to have difficult conversations is the core attribute of high-performing teams. Although we are often blinded to how we contribute to the problem of difficult conversations, whether through cognitive biases or unhelpful cultural training, the good news is that we have more influence over them than we realize. In return for accepting partial responsibility for when conversations go badly, we open up new opportunities for better outcomes.
In this hands-on course, experts Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick draw on tools and theories from action science to teach you specific, easy-to-apply techniques, such as looking for “triggers” and “tells” in a conversation, that will help you understand how your conversations go wrong and prepare you for more successful results. It really is possible to approach a difficult conversation with calmness and curiosity; join Douglas and Jeffrey to find out how.
What you'll learn-and how you can apply it
- The common types of difficult conversations and how to recognize them
- Why mutual learning from a difficult conversation usually benefits all participants and the organization as a whole
And you’ll be able to:
- Prepare for a difficult conversation to increase the chances that there will be mutual learning and internal commitment to the outcome
- Define personal “triggers” and “tells” that help you recognize and sidestep common errors in difficult conversations
This training course is for you because...
- You're a manager who has to give negative feedback to a person you manage.
- You're a team member at any level who needs to share bad news, for example that you or your team have not completed a project on time.
- You're a senior manager responsible for firing a subordinate or telling a manager who works for you to do so.
- Experience in a role that requires difficult conversations (i.e., almost any role besides hermit)
- Have had at least one recent difficult conversation (useful but not required)