Hard Conversations

“Every business problem is a communication problem.”

During my early Google days, I asked a senior manager I admired for guidance on how to succeed at Google and my sales role. That was his answer. 

It took a while for this broad cliché-like statement to seem believable. As I tested it against multiple business problems I’ve spotted over the coming weeks, the answer became clear: Every business problem is a communication problem. 

If you look at the business books section of your local bookstore and the corporate training industry, you can find plenty of evidence that communication problems are in fact a big deal. 

In her book, We Need to Talk, author Celeste Headlee cites research that estimates the cost of “communications inefficiencies” cost United States hospitals about $12 billion every year.

There are many reasons why poor communication exists and is ever present our professional and personal lives. One reason that I’d like to focus on is people’s inability to have hard conversations. 

What do I mean by hard conversations? Think of someone right now who you want to give feedback to or you’ve been holding a grudge against. That’s a hard conversation. You feel it in your body.

I get why hard conversations are difficult. After all, I don’t see “hard conversations” in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Just the opposite–hard conversations can be a threat to our sense of security and our sense of worth. If either of those, or both, are at stake, what incentive is there to engage? 

Truth is that 90% of hard conversations are not an indictment on you as a human being and do not present an immediate threat to your security (although I would argue that in some instances your security is compromised which is why this number is 90% and not 100%). 

This is the first step to embrace hard conversations is to understand that you are not crossing two skyscrapers on a high wire. 

Secondly, we fear hard conversations because we simply don’t know how to have them. In many cases, the sample size of hard conversations we see growing up do not end well, so we grow up seeing hard conversations end badly (e.g. parental arguments). For many of us, we don’t grow up with the tools or examples of hard conversations that do not lead to bad outcomes. 

Fortunately, past experiences do not have to dictate future outcomes if we embrace the ability to have hard conversations like any skill: You will suck at first, but through consistent effort and feedback, you will get better. In the process, you will engage in more difficult conversations which triggers a virtuous cycle.

There are a few approaches/frameworks that have helped me have more difficult conversations and feel more confident ahead of them. 

Accusation audit

The accusation audit is an idea introduced by Chris Voss in his book Never Split the Difference. The accusation audit is a list of all possible objections, prejudices that you proactively present to another party in a negotiation (or conversation). 

A few months back, I had a difficult conversation with a customer regarding my response to a situation that had placed them in financial peril. I failed to demonstrate empathy in my initial response and came across as opportunistic. When I engaged my customer and sensed their frustration/anger, I immediately used the accusation audit: “You must think my response was tone-deaf,” “you must be pretty frustrated with how I’ve handled this so far,” “it seems like you felt my request was inappropriate given the circumstances.” By sprinkling these sentences in the beginning of the conversation, my customer felt their frustration validated, and allowed us to focus the conversation on the best way to address the current situation and lessons learned. I can happily say that after a tense few minutes, the end of the conversation was cordial and re-affirmed our mutual trust.

The value of accusation audits is that 1) they force you to get in the head space of the person you are going to have a difficult conversation with 2) help you craft counterarguments or provide more context to disarm those negative thoughts and 3) by establishing them early on in the conversation, you demonstrate empathy, which often de-escalates the conversation. 

The SBI Model

The SBI model is a framework for giving feedback that I’ve used and taught in workshops. It stands for Situation (S), Behavior (B), and Impact (I). This framework ensures that you provide feedback to another party in a way that is objective, gives them the benefit of the doubt, while also letting you express the impact of the other person’s actions. 

The key for using the SBI model is to focus on three components. First, outlining the situation in the most objective manner possible while giving enough context to drive clarity and/or reveal your underlying assumptions. Second, describing the behavior with the least amount of adjectives as possible (e.g. instead of saying “you rudely interrupted” you can say “colleague X had the floor and you started speaking mid-sentence”). Third, highlighting the impact the behavior, not the person, had on you and other stakeholders if they were involved (be wary of speaking on behalf of others if you do not know for certain they had the same reaction as you). 

A few months ago, I had a hard conversation with a colleague about a customer interaction that felt short of my expectations. I used the SBI model to share my perception of the events and its impact as objectively as possible. Unfortunately, while the preparation was solid, my tone came across as overly assertive, which caused the person to become defensive. I highlight this because a critical component in preparing for hard conversations is how you say what you prepare. If you are having this hard conversation in-person, then you also have to be very mindful of non-verbal language. Regardless, once this conversation was revisited a few weeks later with better awareness of tone, this framework was fundamental at getting us to a common place in our working relationship.

Attacking the problem, not the person

The last mindset/tool I use ahead of every hard conversation is to attack the problem and not the person. This separation sounds simple, but it’s very hard to do. What does this look like in practice? It looks like being inquisitive on the why behind people’s actions (especially if the actions are what triggered the hard conversation). 

It also looks like assuming people’s best intentions. We live in an era where social media has made ad hominem attacks fashionable, and conspiracy theories coherent. Yet, most of the time, people’s erratic behavior can be explained through Occam’s Razor. This philosophical razor suggests that the hypothesis that should be followed is the one that makes the least assumptions.

Attacking the problem and not the person is a way to hold the person accountable for the erratic behavior without indicting the individual entirely. Perhaps this is controversial, but I believe in reparations more than punishment, in mercy rather than grief. I believe that successful hard conversations will lead to positive outcomes when people don’t feel like their whole identity is at stake, and are given a chance to make amends. Perhaps it’s naive, but it’s been my experience for years now.

There are a multitude of frameworks or approaches to have hard conversations that were not listed here. I’ve focused on the three that I have intentionally used ahead of hard conversations and can personally validate as useful.  Take some time this week to see how many of the problems you see are communication problems, how many hard conversations you have pending, and commit to having at least one of them (using these frameworks and others as aids). 

Best of luck!