Hello, David here. Look, I thought I’d share this idea with you.
Over the last 20 years as an executive coach, leadership consultant and trainer for my clients, I’ve realised that there’s one primary cause for all the persistent problems that these businesses that my clients have.
The problems I’m talking about are low morale, customer disengagement, customer dissatisfaction, employee disengagement, lower performance, lower productivity, and high stress for the owners and leaders about their sustainable profitability and growth.
Now they’re common problems that most businesses seem to be facing, and what I’ve seen, what I’ve realised is that all those persistent problems are occurring simply for one reason, and that one reason is this: That the owners or the leaders are unable to hold the difficult, confronting, sometimes crucial but always constructive conversations, in a timely manner. That’s what’s not happening.
What happens instead, is that when the problem becomes an emergency, they react. And often that reaction leaves everyone stressed and disengaged. Sometime really good people leave, criticisms are levelled at the owners, questions “Why haven’t you dealt with this before?” “If you’d dealt with it earlier on this wouldn’t have happened now!” All those sorts of problems occur.
So in order to overcome those problems for my clients, I have a component of what I do with them which is about having difficult confronting but constructive conversations.
I’ve identified around sixteen core issues, such as how do we deal with a mediocre performer, who’s been there for a long time; how do we deal with a person who was once a high performer, who has suddenly hit a…I don’t know, hit a problem, and his productivity and performance has gone down the tubes, how do we deal with that without turning them off?
How do we deal with the passive aggressive person who’s always complaining, pointing the finger, takes no responsibility; how do we deal with the person who is simply stubborn and refuses to change?
All of these problems are resolvable by being able to have these difficult, crucial, but constructive conversations.
On the other hand, how do we as leaders and owners deal when we’ve got an aggressive employee coming at us with a destructive conversation – how do we deal with that?
And also, how do we deal with our own thoughts? You know, those conversations that we have with ourselves? Those conversations that are largely a stream of statements about what’s happening, accusations that we make to people, just in our heads, and even about ourselves. Assumptions that we make and judgements that we make. None of which take us any further forward.
How do we convert that conversation to something that actually works for us?
Now if we can’t talk to ourselves in an effective way, that takes us forward, and resolves issues in sensible and a timely manner, how can we expect to have those conversations with our people?
So I’ve created a one day workshop that will actually help you to nail those difficult conversations, the ones you have with others, and the ones you have with yourself.
And it’s on the 24th October 2018, and I’m holding it at the Wollaston Conference Centre in Mt Claremont. The details are below, you’ll be able to see them.
I’ve spent a career in the military and law-enforcement, and commerce, before I engaged in this calling of mine as an executive coach. During those years, I’ve had some very difficult conversations with some very difficult people, and I had to master how to do that.
Whilst we are not going to be practicing how we interrogate a criminal, we are going be taking the useful components out of hostile negotiations, interrogation and also the inspirational conversations that we need to have with our people when we are sending them off into a very difficult and dangerous scenario.
Now, how we temper those, and adjust them for our normal business day-to-day activities, and also how we deal with change, how do we make those changes take place, is really what this is about.
The thing to remember: this is not just one conversation we are going to have and it’s all sorted. These conversations are a sequence of conversations that need to happen in a timely manner. And also in a manner that others can get, and that you are feeling very comfortable in dealing with.
There is no one conversation you can have that’s going to be the silver bullet. These conversations take place over a period of time, but they need to be timely.
The failure to have those conversations is the cause of the persistent problems that you’ve got inside your business, no mater what those problems are, I promise you that. And if you reflect upon it, I think you’ll agree with me.
So take some action about this. It’s very reasonable. The timing is perfect, I think, the 24th October, and if you’ve got something else on that’s not as important as having these conversations, rearrange it.
Have look at the link below and I look forward to seeing you there.
