Have you ever worked with or met someone whose regular answer to anything they are asked to do is usually “No!” Or perhaps every time you offer an idea, they say, “Yeah, but....”
Recently one of my trainees went through her annual performance review. She received an unsatisfactory rating in one area because her manager told her that she was too argumentative. When she asked what that meant, she was told that she asked too many questions.
I recently had a VP tell me that she had assigned one of her directors the task of doing a comparability study of their company’s compensation and benefits vis-à-vis other companies in their industry. After the director had completed the study, the VP grilled the director on his findings. The director had a difficult time answering the questions that she asked and came across as lacking in confidence. The VP was then faced with a dilemma: should she make the presentation to the Board of Trustees herself or should she run the risk of allowing the director to make the...
Q: Sometimes difficult situations arise unexpectedly and there doesn’t seem to be time to think through how to use the DialogueWORKS framework. In other words, when I am “outside” the conversation I have time to prepare what I want to say and how I want to say it, but when I am “inside” the conversation, things seem to happen too quickly. How can I become more effective at holding a difficult or emotional conversation when I am “inside” the conversation? A: What a great question! Taking the time to prepare for a difficult conversation vastly increases the likelihood that the outcome...
During the Thanksgiving holiday, I had the opportunity to spend time with a number of family members. One of them was very frustrated by a situation that occurred where they were unduly wronged by another person. In short, they had every right to be angry and extremely disappointed with the way in which the situation unfolded. However, as the weekend wore on, this individual continued to tell the same story over and over and to complain about the same issue.
Sometimes I just can’t pass up a good story. Here is one that my financial planner told me this week. It seems that he was out to lunch with one of his clients. While eating, his client was approached by a police officer who asked him to identify himself. The client gave his name, and then the officer passed him a set of papers. The client chuckled and said, “This is obviously a joke given that it is my 50th birthday tomorrow?” The officer replied, “No sir, I am an officer of the law,
Having traveled and spoken a lot this year, it is always interesting to see what learning lessons will emerge from the people that I address. I recently conducted a session with a large group with one person who seemed to be more interested in challenging me than in listening and learning about something that she hadn’t heard before. She seemed bent on contesting a lot of what I was saying with a constant barrage of, “Yeah, buts.”
Not long ago I was reflecting on a conversation that I had with my spouse. I thought that I had not been a very good listener in a conversation that we had about an hour earlier. Knowing that she was in the next room, I called out to her, “Stephanie, I was thinking about that conversation we just had, and I was thinking I need to apologize for not listening or giving you my full attention when you were talking. Will you forgive me?” She responded, “For which time?”
Any conversation that has the potential for conflict is a conversation that people generally avoid. Conflict can occur any time there is a disagreement over a course of action.
In the last several weeks, several leaders have reached out and asked me how to hold conversations about racial relations that will deepen understanding without creating offense.
Years ago I started to notice that the way I spoke to my children did not produce the desired results. I remember one day when my oldest brought home a B- in math, and I said something like, “You got a B- in math? What happened?” Immediately my spouse responded with, “Some kind of a communication expert you are!”
I was recently stuck in Phoenix on the way to El Paso because of a malfunction on our aircraft. You know the drill. Everyone is on the plane and then they announce that something isn’t working.
What makes difficult conversations so difficult? People are often afraid to talk about tough topics when they aren’t certain of the outcome.
Negativity in our speech and attitudes seems to be running rampant in our culture at the present time. There is more mention in the media about injustice, instability, or inequality than there is mention of opportunity, integrity, and virtue.
I was recently facilitating a class for executives teaching them how to hold potentially difficult conversations. One of the attendees asked me, “With all that we already have to do, is this really all that important?” I walked to the whiteboard and drew a picture
