Surviving Dreaded Conversations: Talk Through Any Difficult Situation at Work - Softcover

Flagg, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0071630252 ISBN 13: 9780071630252

Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

The essential guide for managers andprofessionals dealing with difficultworkplace conversations

Surviving Dreaded Conversations gives managers all theyneed to get through those difficult, face-to-face conversationswe all encounter in our office. Whether it'sfiring an employee, asking for a raise or delivering badfinancial news to a client or staff, expert author DonnaFlagg shows readers how to stop putting off theseuncomfortable conversations and start successfully facingthem head-on. Filled with tips, strategies, exercises,and easy-to-memorize scripts for effective preparation,Surviving Dreaded Conversations is packed with practicaladvice to help professionals get through the roughspots in the workplace.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Donna Flagg is a business consultant, and visiting instructor and speaker at NYU and speaks at various conferences conducted by The Business Leadership Network and The Conference Board. She is a blogger on The Huffington Post and Psychology Today and is frequently quoted in the press for her workplace expertise.

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Surviving DREADED Conversations

Talk Through Any Difficult Situation at WorkBy DONNA FLAGG

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-163025-2

Contents

Chapter One

From Dread to Said

There are, and always will be, things that we have to do whether we want to or not. For many, going to work is one of those things. Yet while liking work may be debatable for some and even unthinkable for others, not everyone hates his or her job. However, for most people in most workplaces, there are things that no one enjoys, such as having to have difficult conversations, communicate negative messages, and deliver bad news. These are the tête-à-têtes that come with the territory of working in today's workforce that we've learned to dread with every fiber of our being. They keep us up at night worrying because we know we need to have them. We have no choice. Meanwhile, we put them off for as long as we can. We cringe at the thought of having to utter the words that we know must be said and wonder how we will ever muster up the courage to look someone in the eye and "tell 'em like it is." We do not want to do it. But there is no way out.

It could be a manager who has to inform an employee that he no longer has a job or a sales executive who has to deliver the news to senior management that she angered a client and, as a result, lost the company its biggest account. But it could also be something much smaller in magnitude, for there are plenty of less significant and more mundane conversations that happen every day which are capable of creating as much dread as "the big ones." For example, I recently had someone tell me that he would rather die than tell his coworkers that their lunches were rotting in the refrigerator. It was so simple—he just wanted them to toss out their moldy sandwiches. But he remained silent because he froze somewhere in between not knowing what to say and not knowing how to say it.

If you think about it, though, this makes perfect sense. Lots of people struggle with how to assemble words in a way that make negative sounding messages sound, well ... not so negative. So, naturally, if people are afraid to say what they think and feel because they don't know how in the first place, then of course it stands to reason that they would shy away from the awkwardness that comes from trying something new and unfamiliar. But the problem with choosing silence over words is that you deprive yourself of an opportunity to learn. So then the question becomes "How will you learn if you don't practice, and how will you practice if you are paralyzed by fear?" Particularly within work environments where individuals are measured, rewarded, and potentially penalized for every little thing they do, it is understandable that employees would be less apt to take the risk and try merely in the name of honing their skills. So the cycle just goes round and round, while we go nowhere.

The bigger problem, however, is that long before we get into the workforce, life simply has not provided us with sufficient opportunities to practice telling people the things that they do not want to hear. Well, actually, it does, but for some reason our society dictates that those opportunities should be ignored because somewhere along the line someone decided that the truth hurts more than a lie. It's beyond ridiculous, but it stuck. And now, like it or not, we're left to deal with dodging, procrastinating, sugarcoating, eschewing, soft-pedaling, and, yes, dreading conversations that should otherwise be straightforward and easy to have.

The point is that by holding back what we have to say, we hold ourselves, our relationships, and our organizations back, too. Words need to move. Words need to flow. If we allow ourselves to be verbally constipated by a belief that speaking the truth is bad, then bad is what we will indeed get. But it doesn't have to be.

Learning a New Language

Learning to wrap words around difficult messages is no harder than learning a new language. In fact, it's easier because you don't have to start from scratch. Rather, you just need to adapt the language you already know and use it differently. Think of it this way. Your brain and your mouth are your hardware. These are the operational components that must work together in order to code and generate language. Then you have your thoughts and words that make up the software, or application, which converts the language into a process of communication. And lastly is the inclusion of the human voice and heart, which together bring emotion into the discussion. This is perhaps the hardest and most complex part about carrying out a difficult conversation successfully, because emotions running high are what most often deteriorate the integrity of a conversation. However, emotion is also the only thing that separates us as humans from machines. So having no emotion doesn't work either because a lack of feelings and a robotic, mechanical attitude will come across as cold, heartless, and uncaring.

All told, like muscles that get stronger and bodies that become more agile when they are "activated," verbal dexterity and mastery with words can be cultivated when individual hardware is coordinated, software is exercised, and emotions are balanced. In a way, it is similar to attaining physical fitness, but instead, here it is about training yourself to be healthy in conversations so the dread doesn't get the best of you and the chances for a positive outcome are greatly increased.

This assumes, however, that your perception of what qualifies as positive is in perspective. If, for example, you are afraid of what another person's reaction will be, or are vested in the outcome ahead of time, chances are that you will experience higher levels of anxiety than those who aren't afraid or vested in anything when it comes to having to broach an unpleasant subject with a coworker. Why? Because fear of something outside yourself that you cannot control creates the kind of stress that will paralyze you and the conversation.

Frankly, I think that an excessive amount of focus has been placed on the "other person" in dealing with difficult conversations, which has turned the topic into one that is almost exclusively limited to conflict and confrontation. But that's wrong. To assume that disagreement is what makes a conversation difficult is to speak only to those people who fear clashing with another and want to avoid a dispute at any cost. Yet in truth, there are plenty of people who not only like conflict, but thrive on it. So it is not sufficient to link dread with conflict because while conflict stimulates some and argument intrigues others, dread is dread for everyone. In other words, it doesn't matter how another person reacts because these conversations are not dependent on the behavior of someone else. Rather, the success or failure depends on you.

The reality is that the really tough and most dreaded conversations have more to do with the inherent intrapersonal challenges that come with having to say something that is awkward, uncomfortable, unpleasant, potentially hurtful, and just plain yucky than they do with interpersonal discord. So, while conflict in difficult conversations is typically positioned as a game in resolution and the ability to influence another person, surviving dreaded conversations, for the purpose of this book, is about resolving and influencing yourself.

Trial by Fire

It's been the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071630252
• ISBN 13: 9780071630252
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland