The only thing you get to change is yourself, and in the prerequisites to this course we’ve given you real tools to do that. Now, use those tools to influence the course of your future, your team's future, and your organization's future. Make a plan for yourself that will help you help others, and learn skills to make it happen. Listening and being sure of your values underpins everything that comes with professional influencer and leadership soft skills. We’ll go on to look at self-assessment and leadership planning, negotiation, addressing and resolving conflict, and successfully identifying and promoting circumstances you want. After this course, you will be able to: - state your own mission and plan with confidence - negotiate and persuade - deal with difficult people - contribute to crafting a working environment you want to work in The prerequisites for this course are Courses One and Two of the Specialization "Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work".
3.3.4 Preparing for Difficult Conversations
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Из курса от партнера University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Leadership and Influence
17 оценок
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
17 оценок
Курс 3 из 4 — Specialization Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work
Из урока
Week 3: Difficult Conversations as a Leader
Develop skills for tackling difficult conversations, including giving and getting feedback and handling complaints.
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C. K. GunsalusDirector of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE), Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory
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As you begin to have difficult conversations and you've prepared yourself,
then comes the specific preparation for specific conversations.
And there are some things that a number of our experts are
going to share about how they go about doing that,
because these are hard conversations to have and they
make us worry and they make the other people worry.
Practice can help our part.
One of the concepts that I find particularly useful to know about comes
out of a book called Difficult Conversations by Stone, Patton and Heen.
They all work at the Harvard Project in
Negotiation and this came out of their work in that project.
The book is primarily aimed at difficult conversations in your personal life,
and there's a concept out of it that I find particularly helpful for
understanding some of the really difficult conversations at work.
They teach that in any difficult conversation there
are actually three levels of conversation going on.
One is the What Happened conversation,
did too, did not.
One is the Feelings conversation,
I feel like an idiot when he says that.
And then there's the underlying Identity conversation,
maybe I am an idiot, maybe I'm.
So sometimes when you're having a conversation at the what happened level,
gosh you did this, you did that,
what's happening is that the other person's feelings and identity may be triggered.
And so you may get a disproportionate reaction,
one that you perhaps weren't prepared for.
I find that pretty helpful in thinking about
these conversations and in preparing for them.
Let's hear how some of our experts prepare for difficult conversations.
Anything worth doing is worth practicing.
And so whether it's with the little voice in the back of your head that
you practice this tough conversation or whether you say,
Hey Professor Gonzalez, can I have a few minutes of your time,
I've got a real challenge coming up,
can I run through how I'm going to start a conversation with one of my bosses?
I think practicing can really help.
I believe in practice for almost everything,
but especially in these situations where you practice that ability
to take a difficult idea and clarify it and articulate it,
where you practice keeping your emotions under control,
where you do all those communication skills that Professor Gonzalez teaches to
young professionals in terms of how to make a serious point in a conversation.
So I think communication skills,
I think practicing what you're going to say so that it makes sense to you,
you believe it, you're enthusiastic about
it even in a tough conversation going into that.
I think those are some of the things that I talk to
people about before going into these conversations.
I think the idea of moving into a tough conversation,
believing that you can manipulate it,
is almost a surefire formula for failure.
That the ability to react with respect and
integrity and with a sense of optimism in the situation,
those should be the kinds of skills that people should be developing
before a tough conversation and not that sense of manipulation.
It takes practice, it's not a comfortable conversation when you're first starting.
And I encourage a lot of the teams that I
work with that if they're stuck in a situation like that,
where they have to have a difficult conversation,
whether it's a coaching conversation or something along that line,
persuasion comes into coaching conversations all the time,
that they can practice with me, right.
They can practice in a safe spot with
somebody before they go in and actually have the conversation.
So there's always a place that you have support,
there's always a place that you have help from people that have more experience,
and the more you do this,
you get comfortable being uncomfortable,
and that's the goal.
I think the first key to approaching
tough conversations is to prepare for them and anticipate for them.
This is absolutely not the place to shoot from the hip.
One needs to plan, one needs to understand the context of how we got into this situation,
one needs to be sensitive to the viewpoint of the other person and try to
understand what is it that happened that got us into this situation.
One needs to be clear that one has
a good understanding and knowledge of how did we get here,
and in particular have some ideas for options for moving forward.
You know, we got into this difficult situation,
here's how I think we got into this difficult situation,
here are some options for how we're going to get out of
this difficult situation or here are the decisions that I'm going to have
to take and I'm going to explain them to you in a calm and quiet and sensitive manner.
And I understand that these may be difficult for you,
this may be a hard conversation but calm, quiet,
understanding, and above all understanding broadly the context.
One of the first steps that I also believe in handling
tough conversations is being
clear about why we're even getting together in the first place.
So for me to be able to say,
the reason that we're having this meeting is because of this performance issue,
or I would like to talk to you about the number of times that you've been tardy,
states a very clear expectation for the reason that we're meeting in the first place.
And then there's not an opportunity for
an I gotcha moment with the types of questions that I might ask.
So by stating the reason for the meeting in
the first place and then moving into some of those questions,
helps you understand what my end result is,
as in finding out what are some ways that I can understand why this is happening,
but also how do I support you to be able to help develop you out of this.
I think that having difficult conversations is a critical skill for people,
in particular in leadership positions.
You have to be able to confront it,
in some ways embrace difficult conversations.
It really gets to the core of what you do,
and facing a difficult conversation,
like most other things,
doing it well has a lot to do with preparation and how you
think about and anticipate what that conversation will be like.
You have to do enough due diligence ahead of time to be
100% confident in your decision and you can't
allow yourself to be swayed by the emotions in the moment.
And that can be very difficult because if someone is in a very delicate spot and
you realize that the decision that you're talking about with
them has pretty dark implications for them,
you need to be committed to your position and you can't allow it to be
influenced by what can become an emotional moment.
Now that said, you also have to be able and willing to listen and if
there are things that are brought up that bear some consideration,
then you have to be able to do both.
And it's hard to do that but the way you do it is through
preparing for those moments and thinking through the scenarios,
and I've always found that doing
that with other people is the most effective way to do it.
I can sit in a room and think about these things myself,
but if you're able to enlist the help of a colleague or
an associate and someone who understands what
the situation is and is able to be
the devil's advocate and almost role-play the conversations,
I've always found that to be a very helpful tool.
As you anticipate difficult conversations,
you have to prepare yourself and you have to prepare your mindset,
and then you have to know your interests and your goals for
the conversation and prepare for the turns it might take.
Prepare for how the other person might react
and how you might react if that person reacts that way.
And a lot of that is involved in preparation and practice.
It doesn't ever get easier,
it does sometimes get a little bit less daunting.
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