by Aaron Levy
“Here’s what I heard as next steps from the conversation. Please review and let me know if you heard the same. When we come to a disagreement, one that is heated, that ends up with us ending the meeting:
• “I agree to allow you space to think and remind myself that you are frustrated with the situation, not with me.
• “You agree to come back to me within twenty-four hours to meet again and determine the best next steps together.
“Is this what you heard too? If not, let’s reconnect and realign on our actions.”
As you can see from my example above, the actions we each took in the end were different from the request I’d initially made, yet they still achieved my desired outcome of planning for how we can better communicate with each other. Taking this extra step helps give you both assurance that you’ve properly heard each other and are aligned on where to go next. It also gives you something to reference when holding the other person accountable to their behaviors and actions.
You’re now done. From this point on, it’s about what you do next, how you follow up and hold up your end of the bargain; otherwise this conversation won’t have the impact you’d hoped for. The conversation won’t mean anything if you don’t follow through on your agreed-upon actions and hold the other person accountable to theirs. People will do what you do, not what you say. By deeming this conversation critical, there is something at stake, so make sure you continue the work you’ve put in by being open, honest, and direct in your follow-up and follow-through.
SCRIPT FOR HOLDING A CRITICAL CONVERSATION
STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE PURPOSE
What are you hoping will be different as a result of having the conversation?
• I want us to be better at communicating disagreements with each other.
STEP 2: FOCUS ON THE FACTS
What would the hidden camera see or hear?
• Kevin raised his voice and asked me if I cared about the business and then left the room.
STEP 3: OWN YOUR REACTIONS
Go back to your situation, replay the inciting incident in your mind, and notice how it felt.
What thought crossed your mind?
• I thought he was being shortsighted and didn’t respect or value my opinion.
What emotions came over you?
• Anger, fear, and doubt.
How did it feel in your body? Did the muscles in your neck tense, or was it a pain in your stomach?
• I clenched my fists and felt the muscles in my neck stiffen.
STEP 4: STAND IN YOUR COMMITMENT
What is your commitment as a leader? Are you upholding that commitment in this conversation?
• I want to help us unlock the potential of our business and thus of our working together.
STEP 5: GIVE A HEADS-UP
• “Kevin, I wanted to sit down because I’m concerned about how we communicate disagreements with each other. I’d like to share my perspective, hear yours, and have a conversation about how we can improve the way we communicate.”
STEP 6: SHARE WHAT DIDN’T WORK AND ITS IMPACT ON YOU
• “During our account review meeting last week, after I shared an idea for how to solve ABC Corp.’s complaint, I noticed you ended the conversation by leaving the room.”
• “It stopped our meeting in its tracks. We weren’t able to come to a solution for how to approach ABC Corp. I fear our inability to communicate disagreements with each other will hold us back from serving our clients’ needs and succeeding as a business.”
STEP 7: MAKE A REQUEST
• “When we come to a disagreement, I’d like you to ask me for the reasoning behind my opinion.”
STEP 8: CREATE AN OPENING FOR POSSIBILITY
• “I had to shut up and listen to Kevin’s side of the story.”
STEP 9: ALIGN ON THE NEXT STEPS
Get clear on your next steps in the meeting and follow up with an email.
Kevin, thank you for taking the time to sit down and talk about how we can improve the way we communicate with each other.
Here’s what I heard as next steps from the conversation; please review and let me know if you heard the same. When we come to a disagreement, one that is heated, that ends up with us ending the meeting, this is what I understand:
• I agree to allow you space to think and remind myself that you are frustrated with the situation, not with me.
• You agree to come back to me within twenty-four hours to meet again and determine the best next steps together.
Is this what you heard too? If not, let’s reconnect and realign on our actions.
Cheers,
Aaron
WHAT’S THE POINT?
There is an art to holding a critical conversation in a way the other person feels heard, and you both move forward together. It won’t be comfortable the first time around, and you likely won’t be great at it, either. Like all of the other skills we’ve been working on together, they take practice. The more you hold these conversations, the better you’ll get at delivering the feedback. I can’t say they will get easier. They are conversations with people. Giving critical feedback will continue to be hard until you realize that feedback is a gift and that by not giving this feedback, you are robbing people of an opportunity to grow.
In providing you with these steps, my goal is to make it easier for you to prepare yourself to hold a productive critical conversation, and yet the feedback I receive most often from leaders when reflecting on this process is the importance of having the conversation sooner rather than later. It’s natural to want to put off the conversation, to tell yourself it’s not that important or you’re too busy. It’s natural to want to avoid the pain and discomfort of confronting a person. In assessing the critical nature of the conversation through the critical conversation checklist, realize there is something more important than your discomfort, that there’s a better outcome on the other end. Holding a critical conversation can mean embracing the short-term discomfort while knowing there is something more important on the other side of the conversation.
Go out, be courageous, and give the gift of feedback to your team. It will make you and everyone around you better.
TOP TAKEAWAYS
• The more you hold back on sharing feedback and the more protection you give your employee, the more you rob them of their growth. Whether they acknowledge your honesty in the moment or five years later or never, by sharing the harsh truths, you allow someone else the opportunity to learn and to grow.
• A critical conversation requires a critique or change to a behavior that is crucial to the way you work and the success of your team or business.
• We rarely notice the impact of not having a critical conversation immediately, although the repercussions of avoiding it can haunt us for weeks, months, or years.
• Although you can’t guarantee the outcome of a conversation, you can set yourself up to achieve the best possible outcome.
• We each have our filter through which we see the world. Our filters are made up of our values, our beliefs of right and wrong, what we expect from others, and all of our past experiences. Your filter impacts the way you see and experience the world around you.
• Humans have two desires that can explain most human behaviors: the desire to avoid pain and the desire to seek pleasure.
• The nine-step process is designed to bring an awareness of yourself, your needs, and the situation to the forefront so you can focus on having critical conversations more often, more efficiently, and more effectively.
• Part 1 is all about you. It’s about assessing the situation, focusing your awareness, and preparing yourself to have the conversation.
• Part 2 is much more tactical, prompting you to get clear on how you want to communicate this issue to another person.
• Your critical conversation shouldn’t end once the conversation ends. It should live on in the actions you and the other person take as a result of the conversation.
> • Most of all, don’t forget: Feedback is a gift!
ACTION ITEMS
• Pick one critical conversation you need to have, walk through all nine steps of the process to prepare, and then hold one critical conversation with an employee, colleague, or boss.
REFLECTION
• What was the outcome of your critical conversation? What worked? What didn’t?
• What did you learn that you can apply going forward?
• What will you do differently in holding your next critical conversation?
PART 3
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
In Part 3, we’re going to take everything we’ve learned so far and begin to piece it all together into a road map for bringing open, honest, and direct leadership to your team. We’ll outline ways to make sure you’re getting the most out of each meeting with your team and walk through the steps so you can get started today by organizing and scheduling leadership into your current routine.
As you dive into this last section, I want to share again my goal in writing this book: for you to be able to put one idea into consistent action. Small changes taken consistently over time lead to profound impact. Let’s put the plan together to make the small changes happen.
Chapter 8
STEPS TO MOVE FORWARD
“At every step and every juncture in life, there is the opportunity to learn.”
—Ryan Holiday, author, entrepreneur
Intention: Being open, honest, and direct makes you and your team stronger.
Before founding Raise The Bar, I served as the head of operations and education for a health and well-being startup. An essential trait of our leadership team was holding information about our financial status close to our chest. At the time, the rationale made sense: We didn’t want our coaches and team members to worry about their jobs. Yes, we were a startup, but we wanted to give our team a sense of stability so they could keep excelling and not have to worry about the business aspect.
Then one day, we had to let go of 15% of our team. It wasn’t out of the blue, though. A year prior, we’d made a bet. We bet our sales would continue to grow, and extra team members would not only help us deliver our increased demand for coaching in the short term but also provide the capacity to expand to future clients. I convinced our founders of this need based on my analysis, and I was wrong. My forecasting failure is one of the toughest lessons I’ve experienced, because being wrong directly impacted people’s lives.
We knew once we made the layoffs official that we couldn’t go back to business as usual. We had to give our team an explanation. Even writing this, I can still feel the tightness in my stomach from the fear and anxiety I held leading up to this meeting. Our COO encouraged all of us to stop making excuses and simply be open, honest, and direct.
So that’s what we did. We laid out the entire financial situation for the team. We told them for the first time in four years that we didn’t know if we’d make it through the year. We shared how we had a narrow runway, and if we executed on a few key initiatives, we could be successful. I gave in to my vulnerability, let go of the tightness, and I won’t forget that day and the energy in the room. The people I was afraid would run for the hills at the uncertainty stood up and said they were all in. The energy shifted from fear to possibility. The team was ready to make this business work and step up in any way they could.
In the subsequent months, our people asked me what else they could do, how they could help secure new business or give a free coaching session to a prospective client. I noticed team members from other departments coming together to work on projects and do the extra work that was needed.
In sharing our vulnerability with the team, we not only showed them we were fallible but also allowed them to truly feel like owners of the company, not just employees. The lesson from this experience was clear to me: Being open, honest, and direct— something we thought would scare our team away — brought us together.
Many founders and CEOs I work with are afraid of being this exposed. It’s scary. You’re vulnerable. You’re admitting you don’t have all the answers. Being open, honest, and direct is about saying, “I don’t know the right answer, and I don’t know if everything is going to be all right.”
In a study, Elliot Aronson, Ben Willerman, and Joanne Floyd tested the impact making a mistake had on a leader’s likeability.1 It turns out that highly competent people who made a mistake ended up being more likeable than before. This is better known in social psychology as the pratfall effect. It flies in the face of the picture of a traditional stoic leader who has all the answers, never makes mistakes, and always knows which way to go. No one has all the answers, though; no one person is always right. When you allow yourself to let go of control, you give your people the chance to opt in, as well as show them that you, too, make mistakes and are human. When they see this, they dive all in because they feel more connected to your company and its purpose and to you as their leader. There is a perspective shift: They go from seeing it as a job to being deeply committed to the company’s vision.
Instead of shielding your team from the responsibility of making the company a success, be honest with them, and allow them to see and feel what that means. Allow them to be a part of the success alongside you.
Before your next all-hands meeting, ask yourself these three questions:
• What am I trying to protect my team from?
• What am I not sharing as a result?
• What’s the impact of withholding this information on me, the team, and the company?
Instead of withholding information, allow yourself to be open, honest, and direct about your biggest concerns and struggles. It will help your people feel more connected to you and more invested in the company. If you want your people to go all in—if you want to get the most out of them—start sharing what all in really means by doing it yourself. Start by being authentic, by sharing your wins and losses, and by sharing your company with them.
SCHEDULING YOUR LEADERSHIP
Depending on how many direct reports you have, roughly 30% of the time will be spent on leading your people, whether it’s through one-on-one meetings, team meetings, dealing with fires, training, or assessing your people. That’s almost two full days a week!
You might be saying to yourself that you don’t take that amount of time or don’t need that amount of time with your people. Or you might think your business structure doesn’t support spending that amount of time on management. But it’s not really a choice. This time will be spent, regardless of whether you want to or not.
The question becomes how and when you want to spend that time. If you decide to not plan time to hold one-on-one meetings with your people, if you don’t take the time to listen to them and help them evaluate their work, you will save time up front; but time won’t be saved in the long run. The time saved not engaging with your employees will show up later when you’ll have to drop everything because your employee didn’t understand the expectations of the project. It might come when an employee hands you her two-week’s notice and you have to put everything on hold to create a role description, interview candidates, and get someone new up to speed.
The alternative is much preferable in my mind. You can choose to schedule the time you’re going to spend leading. You can be proactive and strategic about it. Here are a few suggested meetings to put on your calendar now to get ahead of these issues and lead with intention.
The one-on-one meeting
Also known as a check-in meeting, the one-on-one is most effective when done consistently with each employee. It might be every week for some who need more attention or every two weeks for others. The recommendation here is to have some sort of consistent touchpoint with your employee every few weeks. The one-on-one is your chance to help your employee troubleshoot weekly tasks while also realigning priorities. The purpose is to hold her accountable and give any insights needed to do her best.
Conversations like this give insight
into the progress of your team and help you recalibrate among the busyness of the week. It affords your employees the opportunity to get help on specific issues while also making sure their energies are spent on the most pressing business needs.
Use the agenda outline below as a launching point.
• Updates: Here is a chance for both of you to share any relevant updates, to review goals and actions taken from the last check-in.
• Working items: This is the time to help her with issues from the past week.
• Action items: End the meeting aligning on next steps for each of you; recapping this in an email is an effective way to hold both of you accountable.
The one-on-one meeting can happen anywhere—in person, over the phone—but plan for fifteen to thirty minutes. It shouldn’t take much longer, since you’re meeting regularly. Before meeting, spend a few minutes reviewing last week’s action items, add relevant notes for the current meeting, and ask your employee to do the same.
The stay interview
Scheduling your leadership also means you consistently hold stay interviews with each of your employees. These are quarterly conversations with your employee about how they want to grow, how they want to develop, and how you can help them get there. The purpose of this conversation is to connect with your employee, show them you care, and learn how you can support their development. Remember, stay interviews should happen outside of a typical meeting—maybe over lunch or coffee or on a walk. Taking this time with your employees shows them you care about their future while creating an opportunity for you to be a coach in their growth.
