After a career involving the need to negotiate with hostile people and then two decades of executive coaching, I can attest that mastering difficult conversations is a high priority for anyone in a leadership or management position, and anyone wanting to manage their private relationships better.
Here’s a list of difficult conversations that we are most likely to encounter at work and in our life.
Scenario 1 – The conversation to have for improving the mediocre performance of a long-term employee.
Scenario 2 – The conversation to have with a person who has become noticed as a chronic poor performer.
Scenario 3 – The conversation to have to correct a values breach by a valuable employee (high performer or holder of key IP) e.g. deliberate safety breach; confidentiality breach; disrespectful behaviour; angry response to difficult customer.
Scenario 4 – The conversation to have to begin to re-earn trust when you are the cause.
Scenario 5 – The conversation to have when the other person can choose to either re-earn trust or leave.
Scenario 6 – The conversation to have to deliver negative consequences when a person fails to deliver on their accountabilities.
Scenario 7 – The conversation to have when firing a person. Hint: It’s much longer than “You’re Fired!’
Scenario 8 – The conversation to have when there is a professional disagreement that has the risk of becoming heated and personal.
Scenario 9 – The conversation to have with your supervisor who has breached an agreement, or is treating you unfairly, or inappropriately, or is incorrect yet insisting correctness.
Scenario 10 – The conversation to have with a peer who has breached an agreement.
Scenario 11 – The conversation you’ll have when building or deepening your relationship with a new team member.
Scenario 12 – The conversation to have with a non-confrontational passive aggressive poor performer – non-compliant, blames others, takes no responsibility, or feigns bad treatment and or sulks or becomes tearful.
Scenario 13 – The conversation to have with a proactive passive aggressive – malicious, manipulative, argumentative, denier, liar.
Scenario 14 – The conversation to have with someone who stubbornly insists upon being right/correct despite evidence to the contrary, when it is imperative that the matter be corrected.
Scenario 15 – The conversation to have with a person who doesn’t want to converse with you.
You may have experienced other scenarios as well; however, these are the most likely.
How to deal with them, when everyone has their own unique behaviour pattern, is the skill that we could choose to acquire.
If we did, how much more effective could we be, as well as much less stressed?
Here’s a workshop you could attend to get that skill.
