How to Get Better Results Through Better Conversations
By David Lee
The “moral” of this article is: Every better business result requires a better conversation.” Every business result you want from your team involves engaging them in a conversation…actually an ongoing conversation. Whether it is a more gracious, welcoming guest experience; better teamwork; or employees showing more ownership and initiative, if you want better results than what you’ve been getting, you will need to engage them in better, more effective, more productive conversations. In this article, you will learn a six-step protocol that sets the stage for a productive conversation; a conversation that leads to commitment rather than compliance, a conversation that brings you the better results you desire. What better results do you want from your team? Is it for them to make decisions without always having to come to you? Do you want them to embody Ritz Carlton’s credo of “Radar On/Antenna Up” and tune more fully into your guests’ unexpressed needs and responding creatively? Maybe you would like your team to act more like a team, where they have each other’s back and cheerfully pitch in to help each other. Whatever better results you need from your team will require a better conversation. The conversations you’ve had in the past have yielded your current results. To get different results will require different—and more effective—conversations. That’s because, to paraphrase an old saying, “Insanity is having the same kinds of conversations with people and expecting different results.” **Conversation as Weakest Link** Over the years in my work with managers at all levels, I’ve found that for most managers—including the brightest, most people-centric individuals—the weakest link between the outcomes they want and the outcomes they get is the conversations they have. More specifically, the words they choose and the approach they take often end up slamming the door on the results they were seeking. Some of the more common conversations that often do not yield the results wished for, include: 1. Giving feedback. 2. Conducting performance reviews. 3. Bringing up difficult issues. 4. Addressing major changes. 5. Discussing morale issues. **So How Do You Get It Right?** In this article, we will explore a simple, yet powerful, six-step system for getting “better results through better conversations”. While we obviously cannot include all the principles and techniques we could in a seminar, you will get a solid foundation for how to clarify your message, deliver it in an inviting way, and engage others in productive, honest conversations that lead to commitment, not compliance or hidden resistance. **The Better Results Through Better Conversations Process** **Step One: Get Clear About the Problem** One of the major obstacles to getting the results we want is that others don’t understand what it is that we want. Research analyzing employee surveys, as well as my own experience, reveals that a majority of employees don’t understand the goals of their employer nor how they can best contribute to their employer’s success. A high percentage of employees also report not being clear about their boss’s expectations or knowing specifically what their boss sees as “excellence.” In my work with managers on how to give feedback more effectively, I am frequently struck by how unclear their feedback is. Sometimes it is just a “find the right words thing”, other times they really haven’t thought through what the problem is or what they would like as an outcome. To appreciate the importance of this and the next step, consider this: If you aren’t clear about what’s wrong and what outcome you want, how can you expect the receiver of your message to be? Clearly defining the problem lays the foundation for clear thinking about how to best address it and what needs to be said. By getting clear ahead of time, you also reduce the chances of THEM getting confused. Confusion is not only a problem because it prevents you from getting the results you want, it also triggers anxiety and frustration. When people get confused, they feel helpless, which triggers fear, which triggers fear-based responses, such as defensiveness, shutting down, or combativeness. Thus, achieving clarity first is extremely important. Here are some questions to help you get clear: 1. How would you describe the issue or problem in one or two sentences? 2. What issues might be influencing this problem, whether theirs, yours, or the relationship’s? 3. Are ongoing patterns and dynamics influencing or causing the issue?--For instance, the person repeatedly gets defensive when you try to give coaching feedback. 4. What aspects of the current environment or context might be influencing this issue or will affect your approach?—For instance, if a new employee comes from a workplace culture that tolerated sarcasm and “just kidding” attack humor, that will have influenced their perspective about what’s appropriate in your workplace. 5. What are the consequences of this problem or issue? 6. What are the probably consequences if you choose not to address it? 7. What are the possible positive consequences if you do successfully address it? 8. What is the potential downside if you address it and it goes poorly? Speaking from both personal and professional experience, I highly recommend you consult with a trusted colleague, friend, or advisor as you work with this and each subsequent step. We often can’t see things that others can, because we are in the middle of the drama and/or because we have one of many possible different perspectives. Enlisting someone who is wise to share their perspective and to help us explore our perspective, makes a huge difference in the quality of our thought process and resulting strategy. Once you have clearly defined the problem and its accompanying issues—i.e. the Problem State--you’re ready to move onto what you want to happen instead—i.e. the Desired State or your Desired Outcome. **Step Two: Identify Your Desired Outcome** Clearly identifying your desired outcome doesn’t only lay the foundation for a successful strategy. It also helps you reality-test whether Desired Outcome is within your Circle of Influence. By Circle of Influence, I mean “Is the outcome you want something that you can actually influence?” So for instance, as part of Step Two, you think “I want to get Darin to stop being such a control freak”. Since that outcome involves changing someone’s basic nature, their core personality—that is an outcome you are unlikely to influence. Instead, you might state as your outcome: “I want Darin to give me more decision-making latitude in these three areas ________. More specifically, I want him to….” Getting clear about your desired outcome ahead of time also will make a huge difference in whether the other person understands what it is that you want, and therefore makes a huge difference in their ability to deliver that result. I find it useful to consider ahead of time what outcomes you want both for the conversation and as a result of the conversation. Considering both will help you identify what you need to do to make them happen. So for instance, let’s say your ultimate outcome of a conversation with your manager is for him to embrace your new idea related to your hotel restaurant. One of the issues that affects this is his tendency towards being over-confident about his rightness in all things. If you were less charitable, you might call him a Know-It-All. Given this factor, one of your conversational outcomes is for him to respond to your idea in a more open-minded way than usual. Having that as part of your conversational outcome will shape your approach and word choice. To help you clarify your desired outcome, here are three questions: 1. How would you fill in the blank? - “Related to this issue, I want _________ to happen.”? If you use abstract terms like “work better as a team” or “be more attentive to our guests” follow it up with “so for instance…” and give some examples. This will make a huge difference later when you create your message, because the more concrete and specific you are, the greater the other person’s ability to envision what you want. 2. How would you fill in the blank? - “When we have this conversation, I would like them to describe the response(s) you want from them.” So for instance, you might say “I want Jerold to hear my feedback without getting defensive and explore with me what he needs to do, to provide a more welcoming experience to our guests.” 3. The results that you want, both in the end and in the conversation, how can you influence those results happening? - For everything that is in our Circle of Influence, there are things in our Circle of Control that we can do—and make sure we do NOT do—that will increase our ability to influence the outcome we want. So, for instance, for the scenario mentioned above where you want to influence how open-minded your boss is, you would consider what actions in your Circle of Control would help you influence that happening. So for instance, sharing with your trusted advisor how you are considering bringing up the issue is something you can do that will influence how well the conversation goes. Making a conscious effort to acknowledge his authority to make the final decision will help reduce his need to “win.” These are actions that are in your Circle of Control. You can control whether you do them or not. When engaging employees in performance improvement conversations, it is in your Circle of Control to ask them: “How can I help you be successful around this?” That will make a big difference in your ability to influence the outcome you desire. Involving your team member in brainstorming solutions will also make a huge difference in their commitment level and their feeling respected. These are examples of things that are in your Circle of Control that will influence your ability to get the outcomes you desire. **Step Three: Get Curious About Their Perspective** When we want a particular outcome, or someone to do something differently, or when we are upset with someone, we tend to focus on our perspective, our needs, and our agenda. If we want the conversation to go well, we need to also focus on the other person’s perspective. We need to get curious about their side of the issue. Even if your outcome is nonnegotiable, it still can be useful for you to understand the other person’s perspective, if for no other reason than doing so gives them a chance to be heard. It also can be a very useful learning experience to add to your “constructive conversation insights database.” In this step, think about what would be helpful for you to understand about the other person, related to this issue. Think about what questions you might ask them, so you can get a better understanding. So for instance, if you find your team does not demonstrate the “Radar On-Antenna Up” sensitivity you keep reminding them about, it would be very helpful to find out why, rather than assume it’s because they don’t care. Is it because, while you think you’ve been clear what that looks and sounds like in real life, they don’t understand? To find out, you would want to ask them if they believe they are acting with “Radar On-Antenna Up.” You would want to find out what that means to them in different scenarios. You would also want to find out what obstacles might be keeping them from performing in this way. By getting curious about their perspective and asking “What would be useful for me to know? What would be useful for me to hear from them about…?”, you will come up with useful questions that can help you get clearer about what’s contributing to you not getting the outcome you’ve been wanting. Finding out their perspective on the problem will make a huge difference in how you end up framing the problem and the solution. Going into into the conversation with the sole focus on your agenda and your perspective—and no interest in theirs—will not only trigger resistance, it will also preclude you from getting valuable information. Sometimes, getting curious about the other person’s perspective can be challenging. When we feel angry, certain of our correctness, and self-righteous, we have little interest in their point of view. They are just so clearly wrong and we are just so clearly right, why should we care about learning more about their wrongness? Even if we believe we are right and totally justified in our anger and outrage, we will still benefit from “seeking to understand” for the reasons already stated. One way to get into the frame of mind is to say this mantra to yourself: “Get curious; not furious.” I first heard this phrase years ago from Mel Silberman. I have found this mantra to be incredibly useful for shifting myself to a more productive emotional state and shifting my intentions away from wanting to set someone straight to having a productive dialogue be my goal. **Step Four: Clarify Your Message** Now that you’ve gotten clear on the problem and your desired outcomes, and what you could benefit from learning about the other person’s perspective, it’s time to put this into a message. - So what do you want them to understand? - What do you want to learn from them? - What do you want them to do—or stop doing—as a result of your conversation? Your answer to these questions will form the foundation of your message. To make your message digestible, you want to strip away language that communicates judgment about them as a person or blame. You also want to strip away language that indicates you know their intentions or motivations. You want to take this language out because, first, you don’t know. Whatever it is you think is their motivation or intention is just a guess…unless you have special psychic powers. Second, telling people what they are thinking or feeling or what is motivating them to do what they are doing is a great way to alienate them. An example of doing this would be “I know you want to make cleaning your rooms take as long as possible because you get paid by the hour, but…”. If you reflect on times someone has told you what your motivation is, or why you did something, you will instantly understand why this is something to avoid doing to others. Clarifying your message is definitely a place where seeking the perspective of a respected colleague, friend, or advisor will make a difference. Often when we think we’re clear—because we know what we mean—we are most definitely NOT clear to someone who does not have access to our inner thoughts and experiences. **Step Five: Translate Your Message Into the Declaration/Invitation Format** The Declaration/Invitation format is an easy way to formulate how you want to communicate your message. The Declaration is the part of your opening where you “declare” what it is that you want to talk about. The Invitation is the part where you “invite” them into a conversation. Using this format helps you bring up important and difficult issues in the simplest, most easy-to-hear manner. The invitation part of the message makes it clear that you want to hear the other person’s point of view, so you don’t come across as lecturing or preaching. You want to make your Declaration as brief as possible, using just enough words to get your point across, so you can invite them into a dialogue as quickly as possible. The sooner they are engaged in a dialogue, the less likely they are to feel like they are in a one-down position of being “talked at.” When people feel one-down, when they feel like they are being talked at, it triggers a primal feeling of helplessness, which triggers fear, which triggers defensiveness and aggression. Thus, you want to keep your Declaration as short as possible, while still providing enough context for the person to understand what you are talking about. So, for instance, here’s an example of a Declaration/Invitation: “I was looking at our guest satisfaction scores and noticed that we’re not close to our goal of 95% and wanted to get your take on what we need to do to turn that around…” While there are a number of Declaration/Invitation formats, here are three to get you started: 1. Your Goal + Request for Their Collaboration - “I’d like to talk with you about how we can state goal. What do you think we could do to make that happen?” 2. Issue + Request for Their Perspective - “I’d like to get your take on issue that you’re concerned about. What’s your take on this?” 3. Issue + Your Concern + Request for Their Perspective - “I’d like to get your take on issue that you’re concerned about. Here’s my concern (state concern). What’s your take on this?” **Step Six: Create Contingency Plans** To increase your effectiveness and confidence going into the conversation, consider the range of potential responses and how you might deal with them. So for instance, if you decide to talk with your boss about her lack of responsiveness to your email or voice mail communications and requests, you will want to consider how you will respond if she says “That’s just how I am. I’m busy and things fall through the cracks.” When you create your contingency plans, are essentially War Gaming the conversation. While you want to consider various scenarios, including potential worst case scenarios, beware of falling into the trap of Fortune Telling and Catastrophizing. Unfortunately, these extremely unhelpful thought processes come naturally to most of us when we think about upcoming challenging conversations. We engage in Fortune Telling and Catastrophizing when we tell ourselves “I know what she’ll say if I bring it up. She’ll say _______” and we fill the blank in with some total horror show of an outcome. Then we play it over and over in our minds, creating our own little Stephen King horror movie film festival, until we are outraged at their awful behavior and scared about the fallout…while all the while…it hasn’t even happened. To prevent yourself from going down that unpleasant path, remind yourself as you contingency plan that these are all hypotheticals and you don’t know what will happen. You can even repeat “I am NOT a Fortune Teller. I am NOT a Fortune Teller” to remind yourself. When you create contingency plans, you want to consider possible directions the conversation could go and how you will deal with those potential outcomes. Doing this not only will increase your effectiveness when you have the conversation, it also makes you more confident, because you have a game plan. **Closing Comments and Next Steps** Whatever better results you want from your team will require you having better conversations. To get started on making this happen: 1. Identify what “better outcomes” you want. 2. Identify who you need to talk with for these to happen. 3. Use the Better Results Through Better Conversations protocol to map out your strategy. That protocol is: - Get Clear About the Problem - Identify Your Desired Outcome - Get Curious About Their Perspective - Clarify Your Message - Translate Your Message Into the Declaration/Invitation Format - Create Contingency Plans By doing these things, you will make possible the better results you want from your team.
