One of the things I hear quite often from Leaders and Managers at all levels: “I have to have a Crucial Conversation with someone, and I don’t know how…” This is understandable. Crucial conversations can be difficult. But they are key to helping your team improve performance.
As a leader, one of the most important and valuable tools you can develop is the ability to have effective Crucial Conversations with those you lead and manage. There’s a link below to a brief video by James Robbins on “How to Challenge an Employee”. This video talks about the “emotional science” behind a conversation with a person asking them to “up their game!” This is difficult for both people involved in the conversation. Both manager and employee have an emotional spike that is directly connected to FEAR and/or ANGER! Some of the emotional spikes/thoughts both parties may have:
Emotional Spike For the Manager/Leader:
- How do I start the conversation?
- What do I say?
- Will I hurt their feelings?
- How do I tell them they are not doing a great job, I need them to step up?
- Will they still want to work here?
- How do I ask them to increase their performance?
- Will they understand and see it from my point of view?
- Why do I have to even have this conversation? They should know!
- I hate having these types of conversations!
- I used to be their peer, now I am their manager; how do I do this?
- How do I hold them accountable?
- Will they still like me after this conversation?
- I feel terrible I have to have this conversation….
Emotional Spike for the Employee:
- My manager asked to talk with me; uh oh, what did I do wrong?
- Will I lose my job/position?
- Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?
- How can I do more; I am already stretched to the max?
- How dare they tell me I am not doing my job?
- Do they know how dedicated I am to my job?
- What will my co-workers think of me?
- Am I not smart enough or fast enough at my job?
- What skill set am I missing?
- What did I miss?
- I feel terrible about myself….
James Robbins talks about the emotional science of this type of difficult conversation. He suggests to the Leader/Manager the following process: (I have embellished a bit more!)
- Performance – What are you looking for? Where is this person currently performing? What is the gap? How can they close the gap?
- Clarity – Be specific: what are the goals and behaviors you want to see to close the gap identified? Write them down! Does the employee agree? If not, talk through performance again, go back to step 1.
- Follow up – Schedule a follow-up meeting during the initial conversation for a maximum of 2 weeks from date of original conversation. This is the place that a lot of managers/leaders fail – they don’t follow up. They think one conversation is enough. This will now be fixed. If accountability is not in place, you are setting your employee up to fail! Revisit/Review goals/agreements from first conversation.
- Praise Progress – Talk about the improvements you have seen. Be specific.
- Instill Belief – You have improved, you can do this, etc. Talk about the gap that still exists. Agree on specific new behaviors/goals. Repeat the steps!
Keys to success
- Be specific: the more specific you are with what you are looking for, the better chance the employee has at understanding and increasing their performance.
- Put your agreements/goals/behaviors in writing – this is so important!
- Follow up! Accountability is Key to performance improvement. Many times, the employee may be angry or sad or upset with you during the first conversation. Let’s face it, none of us want to hear we are not doing a fantastic job. However, once that difficult conversation is opened and the employee knows you have their best interest at heart and they feel safe, they shift from anger/sadness/being upset to focusing on the new behaviors. When you acknowledge them through praise on their progress, they will typically continue to improve their performance and then, amazingly, they will like you even more! We humans are so complex, aren’t we????