The Art of Having Difficult Conversations at Work - Focus on the Behaviour not the Person

If you're a manager who feels that they spend 80% of their time dealing with 20% of their team members then you’re not alone. Often manager and supervisors can feel a little overwhelmed in how to deal with this effectively.

In our workshop Managing The Unmanageable, we offer the B.E.E.F. model that you can use to structure your conversation. In the first of four consecutive articles, lets begin by looking at behaviour.

Behaviour: Tell them exactly what the problem behaviour is. Remember that this may be the first time that anyone has pointed out to them that this behaviour is inappropriate. Or they may have fooled themselves into thinking that it is appropriate because no one has called them on it. It may take time for this new information to sink in. To help them out:

     

      - Introduce the problem with a clear statement

            - Be specific on what the issue is

-     - Select the most important issue and deal with that first

Remember also that, in order to avoid triggering a flight or fight response, it is key to keep the conversation focused on the problem and not to inadvertently stray into making the conversation about them as the individuals. This is harder than it sounds and requires discipline from you.

           - Avoid charged phrases such as “you are not measuring up” or “this is unacceptable”;

- Avoid shortcuts like “you’re slacking off” and continue to paint he full picture: for example, “when you left the work unfinished it left the project in jeopardy because …”

- Avoiding a reference to emotion at this stage, especially the emotions of others who are not present. For example “you offended Dianne when you made that comment” can allow the employee to debate the impact of the comment and Dianne’s reaction. This kind of comment is likely to be met with “well, she never said anything to me about it.”

       To check out more on the Managing the Unmanageable program click the link Managing the Unmanageable

Can Managers be “fixed”?

Author Peter Drucker wrote extensively on the subject of management and yet he remained skeptical of management – “So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.”

“He head-butted an employee – ‘because he was annoying’.”

“She stood over an employee for two hours until she agreed to sign an appraisal she disagreed with.”

“He kept kissing people on top of their heads.”

Just some of the submissions to a People Management survey earlier this year, looking at what HR thought of managers in their respective organizations.

Managers often get a bad reputation, somewhat driven by the type of comments highlighted above and a feeling in some quarters that managers don’t add value.

But are we being totally fair if we subscribe to this view?

In most instances a manager’s role is pretty diverse; managers are asked to communicate vision, act as a coach, mediate in disputes and assume accountability for business results - often with the background of being promoted into a managerial role having been a technical expert in their previous role, rather than necessarily having demonstrated leadership and management capability.

Is it any wonder that a number of managers then underperform.

So what can we do to help managers in the workplace?

Organizational Culture – culture and values are intrinsically linked to management behaviours, do the priorities set at the C-suite level encourage the type of behaviours you want from your managers or the opposite? There is not necessarily a right or wrong in terms of your organization’s management culture, however there should be synergy across the organization. It is also worth remembering that in tough economic times the need for “good” management is probably more important than in times of plenty.

Good management can turn organizations from good to great, help drive change and engage and empower employees.

Management Capability – consider some form of management training, ideally as people come into the job – don’t wait 20 years to enroll someone on their first management program, you wouldn’t allow a bus driver to drive a city bus without passing their driving test! At Bluegem Learning we have worked with managers from a wide range of businesses internationally to help build management capability on a range of subjects from what motivates people, performance management, coaching, how to have difficult conversations and personal resilience to name but a few. And the results ….

By using the techniques learned on one of our programs, one participant reduced absenteeism in her team by 15%, saving her organization $18,000 over 3 months.

A second participant improved production by 10% during a production run and brought the project in ahead of time and under budget after using the coaching techniques practiced on another program.

http://www.bluegem.ca/featured_programs.htm

Self Awareness – look at increasing managers self awareness of how they behave in the workplace and how they can interact even better with others. There are a range of useful tools on the market, one I particularly like is the MiRo behavioural assessment - managers gain insights into behaviour, motivations, communication and relationships, make better decisions, deal with change and personnel more effectively. So what do people say …

“Using MiRo in our team building activity has allowed us to understand ourselves, our colleagues and the dynamic that drives our team. Everyone found the results both accurate and enlightening, and together we have created strong strategies for moving forward as a high performing team.”

http://www.bluegem.ca/miro_behavioural_assessment.htm

Proper Incentives – ensure that the rewards and compensation system you have in place rewards the behaviours you want displayed by your managers and isn’t puling people in the opposite direction. People will only demonstrate particular behaviours if there is a good reason. If a Sales Manager simply receives a target-related bonus where is the incentive to focus on motivating and developing their team, however if the latter is built into their bonus package, how much more of an incentive does it become to demonstrate those behaviours?

Are HR Business Partners a Dying Breed?

Two decades ago David Ulrich published his book Human Resource Champions outlining his ideas on how Human Resources could realign itself to meet the needs of the business it supported.

In it's core the HR Business Partner model is pretty straight forward, a centralized or out sourced HR Services function focusses on the transactional stuff, subject matter experts e.g. benefits, policy etc provide the knowledge and business minded HR partners embeded into business units, add bottom line value.

To what degree this has actually happened is up for debate and to be fair the three dimensional approach to HR wasn't necessarily Ulrich's design, he was concerned with framing HR in a way that would free the more business savvy, strategically minded to focus on adding value to the customer.

One prominent view is that despite a change of title the reality is that many HR business partners remain part of a function that is reactive rather than proactive, focussed on procedure and transaction orientated. From my experience the HR business partner approach has worked better in larger organizations where transactional work can be outsourced (not always popular in itself) or undertaken by shared services, elsewhere where HR either can't articulate its transformation to operational units or where line managers are unwilling or unable to take on additional responsibilities that were the work of HR the idea can become a non-starter.

So what can be done?

One consideration is to match the model for HR in a business with the structure of the company itself i.e. if the company is centralized and functional then HR should follow the same model, this would be a view shared by Ulrich who seems frustrated that the people have not evolved the idea rather than taking a cookie cutter approach.

Linked to this is being realistic, what does the company want & need from its HR function, in many cases, as mentioned earlier, line managers don't want or aren't able to take on the more transactional nature of the HR role. In my experience corporately in HR this would translate itself into line managers happy to take on the responsibilities they wanted, hiring and firing for example, but not wanting the rest i.e. payroll & benefits, complaints, trade union negotiations.

Some commentators have suggested that HR managers can be upskilled, re-tooled and rebadged, so that they are highly articulate influencers, with commercial and business savvy, an extensive knowledge of HR best practice, well qualified with a sound experience of both HR and Operations. No mention of these people having a "S" emblazoned on their chest! 

Are we being too unrealistic in our desire for the HR business partner? I'd love to hear from HR business partners and their Operations colleagues, how do you see it?

I am Canada’s “Champion of Great Leadership” I work with companies developing leaders to optimize the performance of their teams. 

Check out our range of Leadership Training programs at Bluegem Learning - Leadership Programs.

Is the conflict you need to resolve hot or cold?

Mark Gerzon drew on 20 years of experience of conflict management in his article in Harvard Business Review back in June 2014, in which he explored the concept that before you can start to resolve a conflict you need to first establish whether to conflict is Hot or Cold.

Mark defines "Hot" as "when one or more parties are highly emotional and doing one or more of the following: speaking loudly or shouting; being physically aggressive, wild or threatening; using language that is incendiary; appearing out of control and potentially explosive."

"Cold" he defines as "when one or more parties seem to be suppressing emotions, or actually appear “unemotional,” and are doing one or more of the following: muttering under their breath or pursing their lips; being physically withdrawn or controlled; turning away or otherwise deflecting contact; remaining silent or speaking in a tone that is passively aggressive; appearing shut down or somehow frozen."

He goes on to explore specific strategies for dealing effectively with each possibility. To read the full article visit:

https://hbr.org/2014/06/to-resolve-a-conflict-first-decide-is-it-hot-or-cold&cm_sp=Article-_-Links-_-Top%20of%20Page%20Recirculation

Stop! You're doing it all wrong!

In the second of his articles playwright, theatre producer and corporate coach, Ken Cameron describes the process of "Forum Theatre" that we utilize on the workshop "Managing the Unmanageable", a revolutionary approach to skills development.

"You wouldn’t think that a style of theatre developed by a Brazilian political activist would turn out to be a useful tool for business leaders around the world. But it is.

Managers who know that they are facing a difficult conversation with a challenging or unmanageable team member, have learned the value of role-playing. But Forum Theatre allows you to take role-playing to an extra level.

In Forum Theatre a scenario – in this case a difficult workplace conversation – is shown twice. During the replay, any member of the workshop is allowed to shout 'Stop!', step forward and take the place of the participant who is struggling. They then have to show how they would change the situation to enable a different outcome.

In our workshop we go one further, and use professional actors to make the role-play as close to the real situation as possible without having the real people in the room with you.

The strategy is the closest you can get to having the real conversation." 

Bluegem Learning will be partnering with Ken Cameron from Corporate CultureSHIFT in hosting "Managing the Unmanageable" - an introduction to the art of having difficult workplace conversations, on February 26, 2015 at the Kahanoff Centre in Downtown Calgary. 

This will be a highly interactive experience for managers & supervisors using Forum Theatre as an experience to build capability and confidence. For further details checkout 

www.managingtheunmanageable.ca

Does Your Team (Metaphorically) Run Away When You Start Speaking?

Stop Letting Fear & Discomfort Prevent You From Having Those "Difficult Conversations" at Work.

I'm delighted to announce that Bluegem Learning will be partnering with Ken Cameron from Corporate CultureSHIFT in hosting "Managing the Unmanageable" - an introduction to the art of having difficult workplace conversations, on February 26, 2015 at the Kahanoff Centre in Downtown Calgary. 

This will be a highly interactive experience for managers & supervisors using Forum Theatre as an experience to build capability and confidence. For further details checkout www.managingtheunmanageable.ca

Ken is a highly talented and successful playwright and theatre director, who uses his twenty years of creative and corporate experience to coach business leaders on how to access their creativity and increase their profitability.

In the first of a series of articles relating to this workshop Ken talks about having "The Conversation".

"People naturally fear change.

And as mammals whose brains were forged on the savanna in the company of large speedy predators, we are programmed to run away from what we fear.

The way the brain works is worth acknowledging when its time to have “That Conversation” with your Team.

There are many things we are programmed to fear.  We fear things that threaten our existing status. We fear ideas that demands new skills which leaves us feeling uncertain. Change might imply a new corporate structure, which has an impact our ability to make autonomous decisions. It may mean that new employees arrive while familiar faces depart, affecting our relatedness. And change is almost always perceived as being unfair to some and privileging others.

You can see that with so many triggers so close at hand, it’s easy to elicit a flight response and cause your employee to shut down just s your trying to being “That Conversation” about their performance.

Wouldn’t it be better to assuage those triggers: and make them work for you?

I’m pleased to be participating in a workshop with Russell Stratton of Bluegem Learning called “Managing the Unmanagebale” that gives leaders the tools to have “That Conversation” properly."