Are You Silent About The Things That Matter?

Can You Have Uncomfortable Conversations With People?

You will have had moments in your life and career when you will need to have an important conversation.

You will know you are dealing with the type of conversation I am speaking about when you feel:

You know that you likely have a very different opinion from the person you will talk with
The conversation could go either way, and the consequences seem high
Emotions are potent on both sides

What is Your Difficult Conversation Style?

Your Myers-Briggs or Thomas-Kilman assessment may help you to identify your style. I suspect you don’t need them.

Perhaps you remember when your amygdala (that more primitive part of your brain) may have protected you in its typical fight-or-flight response. You either ran away from the conversation or barrelled in with a ‘damn the torpedoes’ style.

To protect you, your brain (during this amygdala hijack) diverts blood from activities it determines as nonessential to those high-priority tasks such as running or striking out. Hence the term fight or flight. When we need our brains to make smart decisions for us, our blood flow is hijacked by the large muscles in our body to prepare us to fight or run fast.

As a result, we tend to make poor choices.

We decide to use other forms of communication in these moments instead of the authentic face-to-face style we should. We send an email. We leave voicemail messages. We sometimes say nothing at all.

Do You Need To Have That Tough Conversation with Someone?

Are you a supervisor who needs to have a conversation with an employee who is sloughing off?
Do you manage a team and need to have a one on one with a supervisor?
Perhaps you need to have a conversation with a colleague about a technique for a procedure that they have been following incorrectly?
Do you experience the silent wall from your manager when you ask for more information or rationale in the latest instruction?

I believe that each of us would grow tremendously if we improved how we deal with these conversations.

Silence is not an Option

Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”

He was right.

We need to handle important conversations.

Winging it doesn’t work a lot of the time.

You may or may not have had a role model to demonstrate how to have important conversations successfully.

I play golf (although my two sons would likely disagree ), and I know that the professional golfer may have only fourteen clubs in their golf bag. That is more than twice as many as I have in my infrequently used golf bag.

Fourteen clubs provide the golfer with an option to choose the perfect tool (option) to solve a problem with where the ball landed and needs to go.

The same applies to our actual world experiences dealing with different people, personalities, values, etc.

The more we equip ourselves with different options (learning more about how to navigate important conversations successfully, the better we will move the relationship forward.

Not hitting the golf ball is not an option. Nor is hacking away with my favorite seven-iron when the situation calls for me finesse or energy or accuracy.