The confrontation conversation: How to deliver tough feedback

Most people don’t enjoy having difficult conversations but in business, it’s unavoidable.

So how can you shape a world-class team culture, while also making sure you have the right processes in place to approach confrontational conversations and tough feedback when required?

Expert in leader communication Shane Hatton explores such things in his recently published book, Let’s Talk Culture, packed with research-based insights from leading workplaces and people leaders themselves.

In the extract below, Hatton breaks down a process leaders can follow before having a difficult conversation, during the conversation and after the conversation.

Just one third of people leaders feel empowered to speak up when they see a culture and values misalignment.

Have you ever had one of those arguments with a colleague in your mind? I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had, personally — you know, that mental back and forth in your mind when you’re staring down the barrel of a difficult conversation. I’m prone to imagining them through the worst possible scenario, one that almost never occurs.

It’s just one conversation. It’s not a big deal, right? The pit in your stomach when you cross paths with that person would suggest otherwise.

VitalSmarts, an organisation you may know for their work on ‘Crucial Conversations’, found that employees waste an average of $1500 and an eight-hour workday for every crucial conversation they avoid.

But who really enjoys having a difficult conversation?

The hard truth about cultural inconsistencies, though, is that if you won’t confront them, you can’t change them, and if you can’t change them, you’ll struggle to create the team you want. In our interviews with people leaders, one participant put it this way:

“I feel like people can have the perspective that culture just happens and that you can’t influence it, and I feel that those cultures often can end up toxic because bad habits start to get ingrained in the culture. People start accepting things that are unhealthy as the norm and that then becomes the culture. There’s really no framework for what we do and don’t tolerate.”

There’s an old proverb that says, ‘No news is good news’. As it turns out, no news is actually very bad news for employees.

According to Gallup, you’re about twice as likely to be actively disengaged at work when your manager ignores you compared to if they focus on your weaknesses or negative characteristics. They also found that employees who strongly agreed that they had received ‘meaningful feedback’ in the past week were almost four times more likely than other employees to be engaged at work.

Silence is a breeding ground for ambiguity. People need clarity. They want to know where they stand. Don’t carry the weight of a frustration that could be resolved by an effective conversation.

Liane Davey put it well when we she said, “Carrying an issue without resolution is like carrying debt. You’ll eventually have to pay the principal (by having the difficult conversation), but the longer you wait, the more interest you’ll pay in anxiety and dread”.

I have never found it easy to deliver tough feedback, but I’ve found that having a framework and some practice can make the conversation feel less difficult and more empowering. We’re going to break down the confrontation conversation into a practical step-by-step process you can follow to make these confronting conversations a little easier. You might find it helpful to think about this conversation in three parts: think through, talk through and follow through. Respectively, these parts link to the process you can follow leading up to the conversation, during the conversation and after the conversation.

Think through

Feedback conversations are less difficult when you take the time to intentionally think them through. One of the biggest mistakes we can make heading into a confronting conversation is to go in carelessly. Many people I talk to who have had a bad experience with a difficult conversation didn’t have an issue because the person they were talking to was malicious — although there are those examples — but rather because the person hadn’t fully thought through the situation.

Hanlon’s Razor states, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Many hard conversations I’ve experienced were not ill-intended, just poorly thought through. If you commit to thoroughly thinking, not only are you better prepared for the conversation, but you may find you don’t need to have the conversation at all. So, what should you think through?

Purpose

Why are you having this conversation? It’s important to consider whether this is a conversation that needs to happen at all. Is this an issue of performance or just a clash of preferences? Is this getting in the way of your collective success, or is it simply a difference in personality? Your shared expectations and behaviours are an invaluable tool to help you see the purpose of the conversation through the lens of the culture you are trying to create.

Outcome

Is this a problem or a complaint? What distinguishes a problem from a complaint is an outcome or solution. What would you like to look different by the end of this conversation? What is this person doing (or not doing) right now that you would like them to stop (or start) after the meeting? The answer to this question needs to be concrete, not abstract. A simple way to make this more specific is to think about what you might notice if this behaviour changes.

Support

What support might this person need to make the change you’re asking of them? Do you have the budget, resources or network to assist this person to follow through on what they have been asked to do? If the person asks for training or coaching, is this an option? Will this person need an additional support person during the conversation?

Temperature

Is this conversation hot or cold? This is a concept I was first introduced to by Mark Gerzon in his 2014 Harvard Business Review article, “To Resolve a Conflict, First Decide: Is It Hot or Cold?” He explained: “Hot conflict is when one or more parties are highly emotional…Cold conflict is when one or more parties seem to be suppressing emotions, or actually appear ‘unemotional’.”

When thinking through the conversation, you will need to consider how the person typically responds to conflict and think through how you might deal with conflict that gets hot or cold. If the conversation gets heated, you might like to press pause and take some time to let it cool down. If the conversation is cold, you might want to start more personally to warm things up.

Timing

When is the right time to have this conversation? Is this a conversation that can happen at the end of a meeting, or does it need a more formalised invitation? Be sure to address misaligned behaviours quickly. Don’t wait — gather evidence and build your case. By having the conversation early, you can pre-empt bigger conversations down the road and prevent small behaviours from becoming habits.

Considering the timing of the conversation will also determine where and how the conversation will take place. Is this going to be face to face or virtual? How does the environment affect your ability to communicate openly? A friend of mine shared an experience in her multi-level office building where the glass on the meeting rooms was not frosted and looked out onto open-plan working space. Whenever a difficult conversation needed to happen, people were taken to a different level to ensure nobody on their team could see the conversation taking place. However, people quickly learned that when a meeting was scheduled on a different floor, it was not likely to be a great conversation.

Plan

Once you have taken the time to think the conversation through, you should have a plan that outlines why the conversation is important, what the problem is, what needs to change and how you can support the person to make that change. Take a moment to write down your most accessible next step from there to set up the conversation.

Let’s Talk Culture is now available at Booktopia.