The following article was first published on August 31, 2005.

Dear Crucial Skills,

I suspect one of my direct reports (my assistant) has an issue with me that she is unwilling or unable to address. To my face she is pleasant and appears content. I have clearly expressed my desire for open communication and she has acknowledged that she feels comfortable coming to me with any concerns. However, in an exit interview, one of her coworkers told me that this employee “feels oppressed” by me. Another of her coworkers has referenced “communication problems” between us.

My gut tells me she is sharing her concerns with others, but not me, yet I have nothing tangible to reference with her. I don’t want to seem paranoid or have a conversation that is so vague it has no impact. I’d be more inclined to just let it go if it weren’t for the fact that I believe others are getting a negative perspective on me.

Thanks,
Wondering

Dear Wondering,
I’ve long believed the most useless employee idea is the one you never hear—and likewise, the most hurtful customer complaint is the one that’s never shared. If you’re not aware of the problem, it’s tough to solve it. Now, in your case, you’ve got some clues that there is a problem, yet you have been unable to get direct understanding from your assistant. Apparently, she’s gone silent with you on this issue.

I find it helpful to think of this as a safety problem; because your assistant doesn’t feel safe, she doesn’t want to share. It’s not content that keeps people from talking openly. It’s perceived lack of safety. With enough safety you can share almost anything with almost anyone. The way to solve this issue with your assistant is to make it safe enough for her to share how she views the situation. Here are a few ideas.

First of all, think about what it is you really want here. This is a relationship problem. The first conversation you need to hold is not about whatever topic she’s holding back, it’s about how you work together. You not only want to identify and solve a communication problem, you want to do it in a way that builds a safe, effective relationship going forward. You want a relationship that’s open, a relationship where you can both talk about what’s working and what’s not—and where you can work together on making things better. Keep these goals in mind as you move forward, and they will help you stay on track in creating safety.

In order to build safety into this conversation, begin by sharing your good intentions. You might explain your reason for having this conversation. For example, “I want to talk to you about our working relationship—how it’s going, and how it can be improved.”

I also think it would show respect and be a nice touch to ask your assistant’s permission to have this conversation–again adding to the safety. Ask by saying something like, “Would that be alright?” If she says yes, proceed. If she says no, ask why not.

Now you want to share the issue you’re concerned about–you want to get your meaning into the shared pool. Start with the facts you have collected: “In an exit interview, your coworker shared with me that you feel oppressed by me, and another coworker referenced communication problems between us.” Then you can tentatively tell your story: “I’m wondering if I’m doing something that makes it hard to work with me and that makes it hard to talk to me about it.” And finally, ask for her perspective: “What’s going on? Please help me understand.”

And then—really listen. Honestly invite her to share and sincerely show your interest in what she’s saying. You achieve this by staying calm and professional as she shares her concerns. Don’t be defensive—that would likely reinforce the story she’s already telling about why she can’t bring things up. Often, actively listening will create a strong sense of mutual purpose and respect, and people will feel safe enough to open up.

If your assistant still does not want to talk about it, exercise your best judgment as to when to stop the conversation. At some point, to continue pressing is to cross the line into disrespect. If you decide to disengage, leave her with an invitation: “I would like to better understand how you feel about our working relationship, and would like to hear any ideas you have about how I can be more effective. Would it be alright with you if we revisit this issue another time?”

Keep in mind that for some issues, you will have to work on mutual purpose and respect consistently over time before you can build enough safety for others to be willing to open up.

As an additional note, if you suspect that the problem is more widespread than a single direct report, you might consider a simple tool to gather feedback, such as an anonymous survey. Often, if people can give you feedback in writing anonymously, they will be honest and direct. Try a short paragraph describing the feedback you want, such as, “I would like to collect feedback on my leadership style. Will you help me? Please identify the things I am doing well that I should CONTINUE doing, the things I am not doing well that I should STOP doing, the things I am not doing that I should START doing, and the things I am doing but should MODIFY. Do not attach your name. All responses will be collected and compiled by [a third party, perhaps an administrative assistant].”

This becomes a quick and efficient way of ascertaining whether or not there is a widespread problem that needs your attention. Be sure to thank your team for their time and thoughts and share with them some of the things you’re going to do to improve. Ask them for their support in making these changes and make sure you do not try to identify individual comments or be punitive in any way. As you target the things you need to change and as they see you making improvements, you will be creating a safer social climate in your team—making it easier for people to be honest with you in the future.

I wish you all the best in your most crucial confrontations.

Ron

The following article was first published on August 2, 2006.

Dear Crucial Skills,

I have been noticing lately that nearly every conversation I have with my fifteen-year-old daughter turns crucial very quickly. Innocent suggestions, requests for help, questions about school—many, many topics are too close to the skin for my daughter. And despite my best efforts to “start with heart” and “make it safe,” I am finding it very difficult to keep things from escalating—for BOTH of us.

Right now, I am very concerned about her grades (which are slipping) and some of her new friends who are given a great deal more freedom than she is. Requiring basic information (reporting in, letting me know where she is and who she is with, and when to expect her home, etc.) are the latest “hot buttons.” I’m trying my best, but no matter how I say it I feel like we get nowhere.

Any suggestions?
Deteriorating Rapidly

Dear Deteriorating,
I come to your question materially qualified because I’ve struggled with four teenagers . . . and counting. So I’ll be a bit personal here as opposed to drawing from a broader database as we usually try to do in this column.

First, change your expectations. If your daughter seems like she’s warming up for a rocky teenage period, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. I’m personally convinced that some of our kids need to become quite bothersome to accomplish some important emotional growth. Becoming disagreeable, for example, may help them become independent. It’s a worthy goal and some kids just seem to need to achieve it in a pretty messy way. Teenage years may also be nature’s way of helping parents support their children in leaving home. If they were adorable forever they might stay with us until age forty or so. Seriously, though, I experienced enormous relief when through my reading and reflection I came to understand that my teenagers were right on track with their rebellion and that I needed to stop thinking if I dealt with it better it would go away in a week or two. Be patient.

Change your conversation. With all that said, you are perfectly within your rights to expect some basic ground rules. Research shows that boundaries and expectations are a good thing—even if your teenager bridles against them. What’s important is to have some dialogue about those boundaries—and not at a time when you are trying to enforce them. Let her know you’d like to talk about some basic ground rules and accountability. Let her get prepared with her point of view. Come prepared with yours. But come also with a willingness to negotiate. Give up some less important things in the interest of demonstrating your respect for her growing autonomy. But argue patiently and logically for the things you think are vital.

Agree on consequences in advance. It’s been said that the difference between discipline and punishment is that discipline is explained in advance and punishment is inflicted out of anger. Your track record with your daughter suggests she might test your resolve about the commitment she makes, so include some discussion of reasonable consequences should she fail to comply. Help her understand that the consequences need to be substantial enough to encourage compliance but that you don’t want them to be arbitrarily harsh.

Clarify how you’ll decide. Listen to her suggestions in this conversation. But be sure to let her know with both the discussion of boundaries and the discussion of consequences that you will make the ultimate decision if the two of you can’t agree. Don’t violate her expectations by suggesting you’re both voting on these decisions. This is not a democracy, it is a family. And in a family the parents are the ultimate decision makers—hopefully with generous input from and dialogue with the children.

Now, I want to acknowledge that I’ve stepped beyond communication advice and given you a generous dose of my own parenting beliefs. Feel free to cull out what you want and discard the rest. I’ll just conclude by suggesting once more that you are not “deteriorating rapidly.” You may be right on schedule. And to the degree that you continue to approach both the broader crucial conversations I’ve described and the more tactical crucial confrontations you’re already holding as lovingly as possible, you’ll in all likelihood get to the other side of this period overwhelmed with admiration at the lovely and independent young woman your teenager has become.

Best wishes,
Joseph

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This article was first published on April 19, 2006.

Over the years I’ve written several pieces on the need for more frequent, creative, and sincere recognition. No matter the time, place, or location, if you survey employees about what sits in their craw, people routinely point out that they aren’t given enough recognition for their performance. As far as the average person is concerned, their bosses, friends, and family members just don’t value them as much as they should.

The first piece I ever wrote about the need for an increased dose of praise highlighted the importance of knowing what the other person values. After all, if you spot an exceptional performance and then reward it with something you value but others don’t—well, you miss the mark. Not only do you fail at a chance to give praise, but you can appear insensitive and uncaring. I’ve learned this valuable lesson the hard way. For instance, once I gave my wife a nice stereo for her birthday. I really wanted the stereo, she didn’t, and she called me on it. “So, this is your gift; where’s mine?” Uh-oh.

But the very first time I learned the lesson deserves special attention. I discovered the importance of knowing what the other person values the summer of 1963—on my very first date.

Most of us can recall our first date as if it were yesterday—some with fond memories, others with slightly tainted recollections, and still others with sheer horror. Mine fell into the horror category. It actually started out okay. I had a date with a nonrelative. This was a plus. We went to a party at a friend’s house. My date seemed amused with my nervous chatter. We even danced and talked—just like I knew what I was doing.

Then came the games. Some of the couples were starting to dance too close for the parents’ taste. A few even began to seek out dark places. And then, as if on cue, my friend’s father jumped in and shouted, “Let’s turn the lights on and play some good old-fashioned games!” I hardly knew the girl I was with, so the prospect of competing in a coeducational arena appealed to me. I liked to compete. I figured that my date would be impressed if I won an event or two. I would be. My friends would be. It only stood to reason that she would be. Guess again.

The first competition was a game of the “bobbing for apples” genre. Only instead of apples, we used marshmallows; and instead of floating in water, they hung by string from the ceiling. Each boy was asked to put his hands behind his back and then eat, unassisted, six marshmallows that had been spaced a few inches apart on two feet of string.

Now here was an event tailored to my unique skills. It involved eating sugar—and I had been in training since birth. When the whistle blew, I chomped into the marshmallows like a jackal on a fallen wildebeest. My competitors gingerly nibbled away. What a rout! I grazed straight up the string, swallowing all six marshmallows in about thirty seconds. The other guys hadn’t even finished one. They simply stood by, dabbing their cheeks with the corners of their napkins.

When I announced my victory, all eyes turned to me in shock. Nobody in the crowd could believe I had finished already. Then, within three ticks of the clock, looks turned from surprise to admiration to disgust. Not only had I eaten the marshmallows, I had swallowed the string as well. Hanging out of the corner of my mouth was six inches of unswallowed evidence.

As people looked on in revulsion, I was faced with a puzzling question. Do I swallow the rest of the string and run the risk of it getting tangled in my intestinal tract? Or do I pull back the two feet I had swallowed and chance whatever happens when you retrieve something from your stomach?

In retrospect, swallowing may have been the more prudent tactic. Or perhaps retrieving the string in the privacy of the bathroom would have worked. Yanking back the string in the midst of the crowd was a definite mistake. But what did I know? I was sixteen. To be truthful, in the heat of the moment I actually thought it might be “cool” to pull a string out of my stomach. Surely that would impress my date.

What I hadn’t counted on was the marshmallows. They came back with the string—slimy and dripping with the orange soda I had swallowed as a pre-competition pick-me-up.

As I awkwardly jerked the string out of my gullet, I retched on each marshmallow.

The overall effect was not good. I yanked on the string—choking and spitting. The crowd looked on in horror. Well, not everybody. The guys cheered raucously, counting each marshmallow as it emerged—as if each were a touchdown or an extra point. The girls, on the other hand, covered their eyes, backed off in horror, and raced to the bathroom.

I didn’t get a good-night kiss when the party came to an end that evening. After all, this was the early 1960s, a first date—and my companion had gone home with a girlfriend. All things considered, things could have gone better.

As I lay awake that night trying to figure out where I had gone wrong, it came to me in a flash of insight. The fact that I choked on the string was not the problem. Although gagging on the marshmallows probably detracted from my mystique, what really had gone wrong was my assumption. I had assumed my date cared about what I cared about. I actually believed that she would be impressed with my ability to gobble marshmallows and then retrieve them. The guys were impressed. My date, on the other hand, marched to the beat of a different drummer. She wasn’t interested in dating freako-marshmallow boy. She had been mortified by my performance.

The point is that I sought to give her something she didn’t really want. I looked into her heart and saw my own wants and desires—and I was wrong.

So, what’s the takeaway here besides “Don’t try to retrieve a slimy string from your stomach”? Before you offer up a heart-felt reward, learn what others value. Reward them with what they want, not with what you want. Learn the true meaning of the Golden Rule. Do unto others as they would have you do unto them, not as you would do unto yourself. And trust me, if you don’t, you’ll be taking that stereo back.

  Dear Crucial Skills,
I can’t believe I’m asking this question, because it seems antithetical to everything you talk about in your books, but is it ever possible to have a crucial conversation over the phone? So many of us are working in “virtual” companies, where much of the day-to-day work is done in conference calls and over a long distance, and face-to-face time is hard to arrange—sometimes for months in a row. It seems like when things don’t go well with these telephone relationships, it is really hard to figure out what to do!

If it is possible to have a crucial conversation over the phone, are there any tips for how to make it work without the critical facial expression/body language components?

Signed,
Hung Up

Dear Hung Up,
You’re right in asking the question. You do indeed need to think twice before handling a crucial conversation over the phone. Routine conversations are full of information—both verbal and nonverbal. High-stakes conversations are even more likely to contain both unspoken and spoken messages. In fact, when it comes to high-stakes discussions, sometimes you can gather as much from people’s tone, delivery, and body language as you can from their words. This ability to divine a full battery of information can be particularly important if the person you’re talking with is intimidated by your position or expertise. You may have to see them in action to catch their reluctance to disagree or their unwillingness to complete an assignment.

Unfortunately, as you’re suggesting, phones don’t give you the visual data that you so sorely need. So what’s a person to do?

First, talk face-to-face whenever possible. Don’t use the phone and never use e-mail to conduct a crucial conversation. Far too many people use the computer or phone to save them from getting up from their work station and having a tête-à-tête with a direct report, boss, or coworker. Either they don’t believe that it’s important to conduct high-stakes and emotional discussions in person or they choose convenience over effectiveness. Either way, according to a recent study we conducted, more than 87 percent of those surveyed admit that using high-tech means to resolve a workplace confrontation has not been effective in their experience. And 89 percent say e-mail, text messaging, and voice mail can get in the way of good workplace relationships.

But we’re still left with your question: What do you do when all you have is the phone?

First, be aware that you’re operating without one of your senses. Since you can’t see the other person, pay particular attention to what you can hear. Listen for pauses that indicate the other person isn’t feeling safe. Pay attention to tone, pacing, and vocal tension for signs that the person is feeling stressed. Listen for words that indicate hedging or whitewashing.

If it does seem as if the other person is nervous or isn’t speaking frankly, remember your safety skills. Apologize when necessary. Contrast to fix misunderstandings. Seek mutual purpose and maintain mutual respect. Ask, “Does that make sense or am I missing something here?” Invite differing views.

To ensure that you yourself are not too tense and thus confounding the climate, relax your grip on the phone. Sit back and take in what the other person is saying. Breathe deeply, place a smile on your face, and seek to understand the truth in what the other person has to offer. This helps you move from debate mode to conversation mode.

Second, go public with the problem. Explain that you’d rather hold the conversation face-to-face but you can’t, so you want to take special care to ensure that both parties are heard. Emphasize that you desire to work through the problem in a way that satisfies both of you.

Third, continually check for understanding. It can be easy to assume that the other person has comprehended your point of view when you can’t see his or her look of confusion and all you’re getting is silence. Ask if your explanation made sense. Own your responsibility by asking: “Did I explain that well or should I take another pass at it?”

Fourth, summarize every few minutes. It’s easy to forget some of the content when you’re listening carefully to both the content and the delivery. Stop and summarize key points along the way or they may get lost.

Finally, check and see how the phone conversation is working. You explained at the beginning that it wouldn’t be as easy to hold the crucial conversation over the phone, so stop at least once and ask if it’s going alright. If it’s not, check to see what isn’t working.

Once again, if your only way of talking to the other person is over the phone, then be on your best phone behavior. Otherwise, walk, bike, drive, or fly over to the other person’s work site and talk face-to-face. It’s always the best option.

Best of Luck,
Kerry