What did you learn? I asked.

My grad students’ answers were variations on a theme: That preparation made all the difference. That the right kind of preparation made a huge difference. That thinking about it in new ways helped it unfold far more successfully. That they’d been missing opportunities by not preparing before their most difficult conversations.

It’s the end of a term and my students have just completed their major assignment for the course: To step up to a difficult conversation they’ve been avoiding, using approaches and skills I taught for effective chats with someone important to them…family member, friend, client, colleague. In class a few weeks ago, they each presented on their difficult conversations and what they learned from the experience. They were giddy with the good outcomes they’d achieved, even in conversations they’d anticipated might be a lost cause.

One approach we discussed during the course was the importance of preparing before picking up the phone or walking into the room. The amount of preparation depends to some degree on the depth and complexity of the conflict, but often 15-20 minutes of focused thought can make a huge difference. I usually recommend that people actually write out their preparatory thinking, because the act of typing or writing an idea forces your brain to move beyond the kind of “passing thought” that achieves little.

But what to think about? It’s not uncommon to catastrophize, considering all that could go wrong with the conversation. It’s far better to put your brain to work on something else, because catastrophizing causes you to avoid, to fear, and to make the situation more overblown that it need be. Here are some things worth your energy:.

Focus. Set one major goal for the conversation and keep it front and center. Try not to accomplish everything with one conversation, but keep the big picture in mind and have several smaller conversation if needed.

Choose the right kind of goal. It’s tempting to enter a difficult conversation with a variation of this goal in mind: “To get my client to ___ (pay me, get better with deadlines, communicate better, get clearer on their wishes…you fill in the blank). When you enter a conflict conversation with this kind of goal, you automatically set up an offense-defense dynamic because you’re entering with the intention to convince, strong-arm, plead, or change the other person. Instead, focus your initial conversation on learning only. What can you learn from your client that will help the two of you get back on track? When you bring only your good, innate curiosity to the conversation, then you enable effective goals like “to understand the situation from their eyes,” “to re-establish good communication,” and “to figure out where the confusion is lurking.”

Leave your debate team self behind. One major mistake is to work hard at convincing or making your case. It’s not really possible to try to learn and understand, as described above, while also trying to demonstrate to the other person why you’re view is right, best, valid, or wise. Let it go for now and you may be surprised by how much lighter you feel.

Be really clear about your own contribution to the problem. Contribution is not the same as fault and it’s much more effective to discuss the former than the latter. Discussing fault just invites defensiveness. Most conflict situations have contributions from both sides and your ability to say, “Here’s what I think I contributed to this” can help break the tension. Your contributions may be things like, “I should just have picked up the phone when I first sensed a bit of tension and I’ll be sure to do that in the future” or “That clause in the contract was less clear than it could have been and I regret not realizing that before now” or “I’m burning the candle at both ends to get this project done well and my stress is showing.”

Hold on lightly to your solutions. You may have some ideas for resolving the problem with your client, and that can be a good thing if you don’t get wedded to your own brilliance. The benefits of having a few ideas is that they can serve as starting places for problem solving when the conversation gets to that point. The dangers are that you introduce them far too soon and buy into your own ideas before you really know they’ll work for everyone involved. Beware of problem-solving before you’ve had the curiosity and learning conversation described above. When you’ve properly set the foundation you may be surprised to find out that your initial solutions are no longer relevant and better ideas suddenly appear on the horizon.

I have a free worksheet that’s designed to help with preparation for almost any kind of difficult conversation. Drop on by my site to get your own copy of Talking It Out in Ten.

Keep the channels open,
Tammy

Dr. Tammy Lenski | Mediator, Executive Coach, Business Development Consultant
I Can’t Say That! | Lenski Strategic | BoDo Author | Creative Conversations

Do you have a client conflict or difficult situation question you’d like Tammy to address in a future post? Just drop her a line.