I work at a church, and sometimes the members cause drama. Recently we received from a parent two angry emails about our children’s ministry. This parent has a reputation for getting angry, but she’s rooted in the church so probably isn’t going away. For a long time, I deliberated whether it was worth asking her to offer feedback in less emotionally charged ways, then I scheduled a meeting. I explained that I am open to feedback but asked that she give it more constructively. She didn’t respond as I’d hoped, saying, “I needed you to know how angry I was,” and “I’m sorry if I offended you, but I was just being real.” The conversation ended without resolution, but I want to make progress to prevent future blowups. What should I do?

Sincerely,
Confused Clergy

Dear Confused,

Let me share just a few tips that can help you get a fruitful conversation going.

Look Behind the Curtain of Action

When someone lashes out, it’s often because fear is lurking behind the curtain of their actions. Consider what your church member might be afraid of and how you might address her concern before it appears on stage.

You can encourage her to open up by sharing your good intentions at the beginning of your next conversation. This “good intention” shouldn’t be to change her (so she can give feedback more constructively), but to find mutual purpose and get results.

So, consider the ultimate result you are looking for. “I’d like to find a way for us to operate more as a team to create the best children’s ministry.” Or “I’d like to explore ways we can express feedback and disagreement—in a way where you feel heard and in a way the recipient can hear it—so we can continue to improve our children’s ministry.”

My favorite quote in Crucial Conversations captures this idea: “People don’t get defensive about what you’re saying. They get defensive because of why they think you are saying it.”

If you don’t share your good intentions up front, the other person is left to guess. Don’t give them the opportunity to guess wrong.

Build Team Trust

Given that this member gets angry with other members (and I’m guessing they in turn get angry with her), you may want to address trust and respect with your whole team.

Quaker peace activist Gene Knudson Hoffman said, “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.” While you may not be enemies, the point is the more we know about someone, the harder it is to dislike them—or send them angry emails.

Consider holding a meeting with several key members that work together. Acknowledge where trust could be stronger. Then, actively create space to build trust. Consider having each person share something personal—a challenge they overcame in their youth, for example. Such challenges often reveal windows into who people are as adults. Go first and model vulnerability. If the first person shares something surfacy, others will likely follow their lead.

To recap, look behind others’ actions to identify and remove potential fear. Stay focused on the ultimate goal and communicate it. And continue to build trust with your entire team. As we say in Crucial Conversations: “People can’t hear your content unless they trust your intent.” Address fear and build trust and you’ll have much less drama when new issues arise.

May your efforts going forward yield a new result.
Candace

The post What To Do When a Conversation Fails appeared first on Crucial Learning.

How do you deliver feedback that seems to relate less to behavior and more to personality? I oversee an Employee Resource Group (ERG). The leader of this group, like the members of it, volunteers his time and energy to the ERG. We all want the members to thrive and progress, both personally and professionally. However, sometimes this leader gets in his own way. How do you tell a volunteer leader with a heart of gold that the way he processes information and interacts with members frustrates members to the point where they stop participating? It is important that I not alienate volunteers. I am struggling to provide feedback that will enhance this individual’s performance without sounding like I’m critiquing who he is.

Signed,
Personality is The Problem

Dear Personality,

We also want you to deliver feedback that will enhance your volunteer’s performance. You came to the right place.

To start, let’s make a distinction between personality and behavior: roughly, personality is who you are and behavior is what you do.

Walter Mischel, a groundbreaking psychologist, argued that behavior is not fixed by our personality, but is changeable and driven by situation. Different situations generate different behaviors. For example, I may have an analytical personality—tending to process information at length before making decisions. But if someone is chasing me or a deadline is looming, I’ll make very quick decisions. My behavior can change.

For your situation, what behaviors are necessary for an effective ERG leader? Identify a few high-leverage behaviors that your volunteer needs to excel in his role. Think about his strengths—the extent to which his behaviors match the behavioral demands of the work and role, the more likely he’ll succeed.

Pro-tip: when determining these essential behaviors, ensure they are actual actions and not character traits or outcomes. For example, “send out an agenda, including what decisions need to be made at the meeting and any supportive material, 48 hours before each meeting” is a behavior. “Be more organized” is not.

Give thought to these behaviors ahead of time, and also leave room for his ideas. You might be surprised by the insights from his vantage point—especially when you create a safe space for candor.

Unite through your shared mission of your ERG. Focus on what you really want long-term for yourself, for him, for your relationship, and your group. Share your healthy motive up front so he understands that your intention isn’t to focus on his shortcomings, but for him and your group to be successful.

That doesn’t mean you gloss over his actions that aren’t serving the group. Instead, use facts without judgment to help him identify behaviors that need to be replaced. For example, instead of “you are hard to work with,” share the behavior you witness: “I noticed at the last two meetings there was no agenda. Both meetings ended with three decisions unmade.”

Just because someone has certain personality traits doesn’t mean they understand how those affect other people. Consider sharing facts that reveal the hidden consequences of their repeated actions. For example, “I’m not sure if you are aware, but after you spoke at the meeting, no one else spoke,” or, “after you spoke, two people were in tears,” or, “I notice you spoke for about 50 of the 60 minutes of our meeting, yet your agenda item was one of seven. Five items didn’t get addressed because we ran out of time after the first two. One of the members drove two hours to be at our meeting and his item didn’t get discussed.”

In summary, determine two to three high-leverage behaviors that would help him excel in his role; get clear on your shared intentions and use that as an entry point for discussion; and share facts about your observations of his behavior to safely identify the behavior (and not personality!) that will help him change.

Good Luck,
Candace

Want to master these crucial skills? Attend one of our public training workshops in a city near you. Learn more at www.vitalsmarts.com/events.

The post How to Deliver Feedback without Insulting Someone appeared first on Crucial Learning.

What should I do when my coworker complains about my performance to my superiors before or without addressing the concern with me? I wish I had the opportunity to talk with her, but she always goes over my head.

Signed,
No Opportunity to Address My Performance

Dear No Opportunity,

It does seem unfair to not have the opportunity to address an issue before it gets escalated.

As you consider how to effectively confront this situation, here are a few tips:

Start with Yourself. What Can You Own?

Is there something you can own about your behavior in this situation? To be clear, I’m not suggesting you are the bad guy here. I am suggesting that we all play some role in how our situation is turning out. Owning your part in it—even if it’s small—can set a tenor of humility and candor that invites reciprocity. Have you been sitting on your frustration and could have brought up your concerns sooner? Have you given her reason to not feel safe delivering feedback (perhaps getting defensive or being resistant or dismissive of suggestions)? Have you had a conversation agreeing on a process for addressing concerns in how you work together? Consider your role in how the situation got to this point and own that. The more humility you bring to the table, the more likely she’ll feel comfortable to hear your message.

Identify and Remove the Fear

Your co-worker repeatedly avoids talking with you. What could be her fear? Think about what she might be afraid of when choosing to not speak with you directly. Perhaps she is afraid of your reaction or your perception of her—or perhaps she’s afraid to confront and reveal her own lack of communication skills. Consider ways you can address and remove those fears when you talk with her: “I get that it can be awkward to address performance issues when we aren’t each other’s supervisor. Please know I welcome the opportunity to address performance concerns—particularly when they first appear. I want to do my best work and if it appears I’m not, I’d honestly like to know.”

Be Honest with Your Intentions and Consider Her Feedback

Do you really want to hear your coworker’s criticisms and what she sees as your shortcomings? Or do you just want a chance to defend yourself and dismiss her concerns? If you’re inviting her to do something that seems risky, prepare to really hear what she might say, sincerely consider her feedback, and keep your reactions in a healthy zone of response. You don’t want to punish her for her honesty. If you ask someone to open up the expired tuna that’s been in the fridge, you have to be ready for the potential smell.

Solve the Problem Long-Term

It could be tempting to have her share some concerns about your performance, address that, and quickly move on. The concerns in your scenario seem to go deeper. It sounds like you want a process in place where both of you can bring up concerns quickly and count on each other to sincerely consider the concern(s). For that process to be sustainable, you must have a working relationship of trust and respect.

Feedback Fridays

You don’t want to feel like every interaction holds a potential performance smackdown, and yet you want to have a candid working relationship. Create some boundaries and make it easy to have these conversations regularly. Consider meeting with your coworker for “Feedback Fridays” every other Friday. The time can be brief, and you can even make it fun (Feedback Fridays with French fries!), but it serves as a trusted placeholder for you both to check in on how you are working together.

I hope these tips help.

Best of luck,
Candace

The post How to Approach a Coworker Who Goes Over Your Head appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Sometimes we use personality type to justify our extreme Style Under Stress (silence or violence). We might say things like, “Of course I treated him that way. I’m an INTJ. That’s just who I am.” Or, “Yes, I said that. But it’s because I’m a ‘yellow’.” I sometimes use these as examples of helpless stories in the introduction of Master My Stories. Specifically, I bring it up on the slide that says “When it matters most, we often do our worst—and we feel like we are doing the right thing.” We behave badly when the stakes are high, then we justify the behavior with our personality type, without realizing we have other options that will help us return to healthy dialogue. This is a quick example that participants might not have thought of, and pointing it out usually gets a good laugh.

The post Does our Style Under Stress have any connection to our personality profiles? appeared first on Crucial Learning.

This is a great question. Let me share a few tips that may be helpful to think about.

1. If you have the opportunity to work with this group in their intact work team, I recommend engaging them in the activity on page 165 of the toolkit (page 139 of the trainer guide)—the optional Team Application for Master My Stories in Module 7. It’s probably one that they didn’t do in the Crucial Conversations class—so it will be new to them. The key for you is to make it safe for them to fully engage and use their skills to speak honestly, openly, and with respect.

2. Get them to acknowledge the costs of the status quo. What’s the cost of doing nothing? What’s the cost if they aren’t open and honest with one another?

3. Have them share success stories. While it can be daunting to take on a huge entrenched problem (like an angry, bitter culture that’s resistant to change), it can be helpful, motivating, and even inspiring to hear how others’ small steps have yielded results. Seek out opinion leaders and encourage them to share where they’ve been successful.

4. Finally, remind them that even if they try and just do a “pretty good” job of using the skills (vs. a perfect job), they can still get better results. Sometimes simply changing a few words, or the intent of an approach can dramatically alter how the other person reacts.

Good Luck!
Candace

The post What should I do if I have an entire group that is very bitter and resistant to change? appeared first on Crucial Learning.

This article was originally published March 3, 2009.

Is it ever appropriate to move to silence?

The first question to ask yourself is, “Is this conversation crucial?” If the stakes aren’t high (someone was rude, but you’ll never see them again), emotions aren’t strong (sure you disagree, but you’re not upset or that passionate about it), or there are no opposing opinions (it may be a touchy issue, but you’re all in agreement), then silence may be an appropriate course of action. That said, know that your silence communicates something, and by not speaking up, you inherently give other people the power to determine your meaning rather than stating it clearly yourself.

If the conversation is crucial, then what?

If you find that your motive for speaking up is not healthy, your negative emotions are controlling you, you lack respect for someone, and/or you don’t feel safe, it may be appropriate to move to silence—but only temporarily while you take a quick step back. Be careful not to use this “pause” as an excuse to sweep the problem under the rug or venture down a road of paralyzing analysis and unending preparation. Taking an hour or two to collect your thoughts, connecting to a healthy motive, finding a way to respect the other person’s dignity, and/or finding a private space to talk can make a big difference. Your opinion that someone else is an idiot is better left unsaid. Starting a dialogue about working better together with that same person in a private, safe space is essential.

The post Trainer Q&A: Is it ever appropriate to move to silence? appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Sometimes participants say they have no problems to work on. They like everyone and everyone likes them. Not a problem in the world. How can I help them get something out of the training?

If someone claims not to have any conversations to work on, I’ll go speak with that person one-on-one while others are working and give him or her some ideas. Here are a few questions to trigger some ideas for them:

• Any relatives that annoy you (siblings, in-laws, kids, cousins, etc.)? Any touchy issues at home? Do you volunteer or belong to a church—if so, any tough issues there? Any issues ever come up with your neighbors that you wish you handled differently? Any relationship that you wish was closer?
• Have you ever had a conversation that you know could have gone better? It didn’t have to be extreme, but you know there was room for improvement. Use that example and come up with how you could have handled it differently.
• If you were to go have dinner with your colleagues after work, what would you complain about?

If none of these questions help, I find that sometimes the idea of speaking up—or having a problem-free life—can be a strong part of someone’s identity. Thus, for a participant to admit the need for improvement in an area is to imply some crack in his or her identity. I try to let these participants off the hook a bit and say, “I’m sure you speak your mind and it sounds like you do it often and effectively. Consider this course as an opportunity for you to become even better at it—to take your already great skills up a notch.” Invite them to consider one place in their life where they could get even better results.

The post What if a participant claims they don’t have a conversation to work on for their acid test? appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Is it ever appropriate to move to silence?

The first question to ask yourself is, “Is this conversation crucial?” If the stakes aren’t high (someone was rude, but you’ll never see them again), emotions aren’t strong (sure you disagree, but you’re not upset or that passionate about it), or there are no opposing opinions (it may be a touchy issue, but you’re all in agreement), then silence may be an appropriate course of action. That said, know that your silence communicates something, and by not speaking up, you inherently give other people the power to determine your meaning rather than stating it clearly yourself.

If the conversation is crucial, then what?

If you find that your motive for speaking up is not healthy, your negative emotions are controlling you, you lack respect for someone, and/or you don’t feel safe, it may be appropriate to move to silence—but only temporarily while you take a quick step back. Be careful not to use this “pause” as an excuse to sweep the problem under the rug or venture down a road of paralyzing analysis and unending preparation. Taking an hour or two to collect your thoughts, connecting to a healthy motive, finding a way to respect the other person’s dignity, and/or finding a private space to talk can make a big difference. Your opinion that someone else is an idiot is better left unsaid. Starting a dialogue about working better together with that same person in a private, safe space is essential.

The post Is it ever appropriate to move to silence? appeared first on Crucial Learning.

There have been occasions when participants have reacted strongly to the use of the term “violence” in the training as they perceive that term as having the meaning of physical force or intense emotional abuse. How would you address this when it comes up?

I address this one right in the beginning—in the debriefing of the “How Did You Get Your Way?” quick-start activity. I say that one of the claims that the training makes is that there is a continuum of communication. On one end is what we call “silence”—where you’re not speaking up and saying what you need to be effective. On the other end is something we call “violence”—and I quickly make this disclaimer: I don’t personally like this word. But what helped me, was to realize that we don’t mean physical violence here. What we mean is verbal aggression—this is the opposite end of the continuum from silence. And it rhymes with silence—silence and violence, so it makes a nice package for us to remember. If I need to I might even say “violence in this context doesn’t mean throwing a punch—it just means the extreme opposite of silence.”

Then after I show the first example of a “violence” video (Brittany and Rick or Jackie and Rick—the third video in the series), I ask them when the video is over, “If you could put a name to Brittany’s/Jackie’s strategy, what would you call it?”—People answer with things like “aggression,” “overly assertive,” “lose-your-job-fast”—and then I say “we call this “violence.” If you’d like to call it something else, go right ahead, but for this training, this is an example of what I’ll be referring to as violence.” I find that if you admit the word is extreme (and it is—it’s the opposite end of the continuum) and allow participants to call it something else if they want—that negates potential push-backs.

The post What if participants don’t like the term “violence” being used in the training? appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Is it ever appropriate to move to silence?

The first question to ask yourself is, “Is this conversation crucial?” If the stakes aren’t high (someone was rude, but we’ll never see them again), emotions aren’t strong (sure you disagree, but you’re not upset or that passionate about it), or there’s no opposing opinions (it may be a touchy issue, but you’re all in agreement), then silence may be an appropriate course of action. That said, know that your silence communicates something, and by not speaking up, you inherently give other people the power to determine your meaning rather than get it from you stating it clearly yourself.

If the conversation is crucial, then what?

If you find that your motive for speaking up is not healthy, your negative emotions are controlling you, you lack respect for someone, and/or you don’t feel safe, it may be appropriate to move to silence—but only temporarily while you take a quick step back. Be careful not to use this “pause” as an excuse to sweep the problem under the rug or venture down a road of paralyzing analysis and unending preparation. Taking an hour or two to collect your thoughts, connect to a healthy motive, find a way to respect the other person’s dignity, and/or find a private space to talk can make a big difference. Your opinion that someone else is an idiot is better left unsaid. Starting a dialogue with that same person in a private, safe space about working better together is essential.

The post Is it ever appropriate to move to silence? appeared first on Crucial Learning.