You’re not alone if you avoid conversations with employees about…
❌ Performance
❌ Attitude or behavior
❌ Boundary-crossing
❌ Attendance
These conversations are some of the most commonly avoided by leaders everywhere.
Why?
Leaders who are otherwise strong communicators can even find themselves procrastinating addressing these issues for fear of a potential confrontation, worry that it’ll damage their popularity with their team, or concerns about not knowing where to start because no one ever trained them on this particular issue.
I often hear leaders explain these issues away, like “It’s not that bad.” or “I’m sure it’ll work itself out eventually.”
But, what commonly happens is that the issues never go away and instead snowball into larger issues.
I don’t want this to happen to you!
I recently hosted the webinar, Transform Tough Talks: Turning Challenges into Opportunities, because I’m so passionate about making sure every leader has the tools they need to handle these tough conversations and understand how to turn these challenges into opportunities!
3 Steps to Success
Tough talks can be easy to avoid, but once you have a structure for handling these conversations, you’ll easily be able to address these common issues and transform them into opportunities.
Transforming tough talks can be effectively handled in three steps
1. Recognize When and How to Initiate a Difficult Conversation
When you need to have a tough talk or difficult conversation, there will be signs. Get to know them so that you can understand when you need to step in and have that conversation.
These are common signs to look for:
- Behavior is impacting the team, work or culture
- The issue has recurred after being addressed
- You are feeling tension, resentment or discomfort – a sign that something is unresolved
- You are repeating the information to others, like you’re talking about it at home, with your friends, anyone who will listen to you vent
Once you’ve noticed a sign that you need to have a tough conversation, schedule time to talk with that person one-on-one, eye-to-eye, promptly.
Do NOT address it in passing or over email or text or teams. If you want to address and resolve the issue effectively while building trust with your employee, this conversation needs to happen in-person or at minimum virtually.
Then, once you’re in that meeting, you can start with a simple sentence (and you can modify this anyway you need!):
“I’d like to check in about something I’ve noticed that may be getting in the way of our work.”
Is it possible that the person you’re addressing might have a moment of shock or defensiveness? Of course, that might happen!
This isn’t a sign that you’re taking the wrong action. The important factor here is that you are approaching this with openness, with kindness, with dignity, with respect by starting the conversation in this way. There’s no finger-pointing in that opening sentence.
2. Apply a Framework for Clarity, Respect and Accountability
Once you’ve opened the conversation in a respectful way, your next step is to follow a structure that will lead to an optimal outcome.
I provide this easily repeatable structure for tough conversations that is easy to remember to all my leadership coaching clients because it’s that effective.
CARE
Context: Describe the situation and the behavior you observed – fact based and nonjudgement
Awareness: Share the impact of the behavior on the team, goals or culture.
Response: Invite their perspective by asking an open-ended question. It’s important that you’re ready to listen to them and possibly change your mind after hearing their perspective.
Expectation: Define clear next steps or changes, and confirm accountability (Who does what by when)
What does this look like practically?
“Over the past two weeks, I’ve noticed that deadlines have been missed for the weekly outcome report without communication. That’s created a delay in team deliverables.
Can you share what’s been going on?
[LISTEN, DISCUSS, SEE IF THERE ARE ANY UNKNOWN CHALLENGES]
Moving forward, I need updates no later than 24 hours in advance of the due date, so that we can make any adjustments. The ultimate goal is that the report is delivered on time. Do you have any questions about that? Are you in agreement as far as the plan going forward?”
Before you end the conversation, make sure that they are in agreement with the plan. I use that word specifically because if we can’t get an agreement or there is any sort of hesitancy, we’ve got to go back and figure out where we’re not connecting. Getting a verbal agreement is key.
Now, after this you might think your job is over. This is the most important and one way to stand out because most leaders will pass over this step:
Follow-up
After you have this really important conversation, you need to determine a regular interval for check-ins.
Think: If this was important enough for me to sit down and have a tough conversation with you, I’m not going to just never talk about it with you again. I am going to check back in with you in no more than 2 weeks from today because it’s important to their success and the team’s that I do.
How to properly follow up after tough talks:
- Determine regular intervals for check-ins
- Recognize improvements
- Provide further adjustments if necessary
- Document follow-up
- If there isn’t ongoing improvement, next steps may be necessary.
How often you meet with your employee will depend on the seriousness of the issue or how long it’s been going on for.
I always recommend that leaders check in with their employees at least 2 times after one of these conversations.
It’s common for the employee to show great improvement after the first follow up and “Great job!” from their leader, but then their behavior starts to decline again if the leader doesn’t check in again that second time.
Follow ups should continue as long as necessary – you’re looking for continuous improvement.
3. Shift the Mindset from Confrontation to Collaboration
This is possibly one of the most challenging parts of handling difficult conversations for leaders. It is so important that you make a mindset shift.
I heard someone say the other day, “Be curious, not furious.” It made me laugh. I loved it because it’s true and so easy to remember before tough talks!
Before you schedule that eye-to-eye meeting, a mindset shift is required. Remember:
- It is not a battle – it is a partnership to solve a problem.
- Focus on going forward – not finding fault or staying stuck.
- Be curious – assume positive intent until proven otherwise.
- You are having the difficult conversation to help the employee be successful.
Your mindset going into tough talks should be: I’m here to help solve the problem and try to provide solutions, but also help them take ownership of the solution and make the improvement.
After this conversation will they still be an employee at your organization? That remains to be seen, depending on what they do with the information you gave them. But whether they choose to depart on their own or you help them to their next opportunity, you will know that you did everything you could to help them be successful.
That’s what great leaders do.
Looking to grow as a leader? Check out our Leadership Coaching services where Anne Laguzza provides one-on-one leadership coaching where leaders drive their learning and achieve lasting results.