This letter was received in response to a question Joseph Grenny answered in the May 16, 2011 Crucial Skills Newsletter titled, “Don’t Pass the Buck.”

Dear Joseph,

Your response to my question was very helpful because of your comments on the kind of culture I would create if I intervened every time someone came running to me with a concern. I was not trying to avoid a “confrontation” with an issue, but in this case I would be enabling a person who likes to manipulate others through my authority. Furthermore, I knew that this person’s version of the story was almost always quite different from that of others.

I have taken an opportunity to talk to my direct reports about the importance of talking to each other when issues arise. I know that they often worry about these conversations, but most of the time, these conversations are about relatively small things that will make our company run better. Still, having the conversations can be stressful for some people. We have been emphasizing that as we use Crucial Conversations techniques, the atmosphere is conducive to both parties reaching understanding.

The individual who I am most concerned about has not changed her basic tactics. She still wants to work behind the scenes. For example, there was a dispute while I was on vacation, and when I returned, she wanted to have a meeting to tell me all about it. In this case, I decided it was best to get both parties in the room at the same time and ask them to explain the chronology of events and what they were thinking as events took place in a factual way. This took out the part of the conversation where Party A tells how Party B did something because they wanted to undermine them (stories made up in their mind).

In this case, the relationship was already strained, and they needed a referee to make sure it was a clean conversation. The individual I have a problem with did not like this one bit. I am now stuck with the problem of dealing with a person who does a great job 90 to 95 percent of the time but causes relationship issues with her fellow managers. As a manager, I have to keep working through the situations—trying to teach your art! I must say that your book is the most helpful management tool I have ever come across. Management and leadership are about relationships, and Crucial Conversations is so practical and earthy. It is easier to apply than anything I have ever read.

Signed,
Carry Your Own Water

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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Dear Crucial Skills,

I am a recently divorced Dad. I have been trying to restore a civil and respectful relationship with my ex-wife, especially for our four wonderful children. However, she seems to respond to every effort with bitterness, sometimes in front of our young children. We both seem to be struggling to establish safety and mutual respect. How can I begin to rebuild safety and mutual respect with my ex-wife, when it is so hard to find and establish?

Divorced and Distressed Dad

 Dear Dad,

When I read your question, I did what I sometimes do when I get a question (like yours) that requires some specialized knowledge. I panicked.

Then I called my dear friends Elaine and Michael Shimberg, co-authors of The Complete Single Father—a terrific book that I highly recommend. Here’s their advice:

“It’s normal in the first months and years after a divorce for former spouses to react fearfully to each other as they try to establish a new sense of safety and mutual respect in the new arrangement. One of the best ways to begin building trust is to do all you can to gain agreement to one ground rule: ‘We will not disagree or show disrespect to the other in front of our children. We will protect them. Just as I am their father, you are their mother. We will respect those positions.’

“It seems his ex is still very angry. Whatever the situation was that caused his divorce, if he wants to have a better relationship he needs to apologize that things didn’t work (whether it was his fault or not), tell her their kids deserve a mother and father who can get along amicably, and that every time either criticizes the other in front of the kids, the kids take it as a criticism against half of them—whether consciously or unconsciously.

“Most divorcees don’t realize the direct effect criticizing their ex-spouse has on their kids. If he makes an agreement to her that he will not talk poorly about her in front of the kids (a concern that is probably fueling her fear) and communicate either by e-mail or in person about anything going on in their lives, it may help rebuild that trust and respect. However, if it doesn’t happen right off the bat, he needs to keep trying as it may take time to get her on board.”

I think this advice is right on target. For many, a divorce feels like a loud and clear message that, “I don’t respect you.” So it shouldn’t be a surprise that both parties can feel self-protective and defensive in the raw months after the traumatic separation—especially if they’re concerned their former partner is saying things to damage their children’s respect for them.

The physics of building—or rebuilding—trust is simple: Trust grows as we generate data that demonstrates trustworthiness. Trust will never exceed the cumulative data to date.

I love Elaine and Michael’s suggestion that you focus on one simple ground rule in your crucial conversation: We will never, never, never do anything that would undermine a child’s respect or loyalty to a parent. If you make that commitment unilaterally, then do your best to intentionally generate data that shows you are acting consistently with the agreement. Doing so will begin to help your ex-wife feel she does not need to go on a preemptive strike against you with the children.

For example, you may want to praise your wife in front of your children for any accommodating action she takes. If your children mention fun things they have done with your ex-wife, go out of your way to encourage them to show appreciation to her. These private actions will likely bubble up publicly at some point in a natural way and will help her know you are keeping your promise. Trust will grow. And she may feel safer laying down her sword and shield.

In addition, you need a remediation ground rule. Given the emotional sensitivity of these months and the increased physical and psychological distance between you and her, it is inevitable that some ambiguous event will occur that she will interpret as you criticizing her in front of the kids. The kids will say something or she’ll hear something from a mutual friend and conclude you’ve violated the agreement—even if you haven’t. Create an easy way to clear the air with her when this occurs or it will inevitably fester and obliterate the fragile trust you’re working so hard to establish.

I salute you for putting your children first and for being willing to take a first step in creating a livable and respectful situation for all.

Best wishes,
Joseph

We recently completed a study which reveals the most difficult issue for women in the workplace to discuss and successfully resolve is negotiating limits on their workload—it’s also one of the main issues that cause 1 in 5 women to leave their job.

We partnered with the top women’s business website, Little PINK Book, on this study which also found that women struggle most to hold high-stakes discussions with other women rather than with men. What happens when a crucial conversation goes awry? Nearly half admitted a failed high-stakes discussion caused their productivity and/or engagement to drop, and 1 in 5 women said they’ve had a crucial conversation go so poorly they left their job.

Here are six tips from Crucial Conversations for navigating the most difficult issue at work, negotiating workload limits:

• Earn the right. Asking for fairness in work limits is easier when you have a reputation as a hard worker. Before raising concerns, evaluate if you are truly doing more than your share.
• Clarify intent. Don’t start the conversation with complaints—start by establishing mutual purpose with your boss. Begin with, “I have a concern about my workload, but I want to be clear that I care about helping our team succeed. I don’t want to request changes that will make your life harder or put our goals at risk.”
• Focus on facts. Don’t start with broad conclusions or generalizations that put others on the defensive. Build the case for the point you want to make by sharing objective facts. For example, “I’ve observed that those who do their work get rewarded with more work.”
• Clarify boundaries. Be clear about any hard and fast limits you have on your workload. If, for example, you have family commitments or personal time values you won’t compromise, lay those out clearly and stick with them.
• Propose solutions. Don’t just come with complaints—come with recommendations for how to make this work for your boss. If you just dump the problem on your boss, he or she may help you solve it, but you’ll strain the relationship.
• Invite dialogue. Finally, invite your boss to share his or her viewpoint. People are willing to listen to even challenging views as long as they believe you are also open to theirs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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Last week while talking with (and trying to impress) my two seventeen-year-old nieces, I mentioned that I had run into Robert Redford at his restaurant just up the hill from our home. The two stared at me with a gaze teenagers typically reserve for a lecture on the history of floor wax. After politely listening to me gush about Bob, one of the twins asked, “Who’s Robert Redhead?”

What?! They hadn’t seen The Sting?! They hadn’t watched Mr. Redford as the delightful Sundance Kid? Had the world gone mad? As I probed further, I learned Mr. Redford wasn’t the only older celebrity unknown to my nieces. In fact, the two were virtually unfamiliar with any stars, celebrities, or politicians of my generation. At first, I figured they didn’t watch TV or movies, but I quickly learned they could tell me the shade of Taylor Swift’s blush, write an entire book on Justin Bieber, and quote whole segments from Miley Cyrus’ latest movie.

How is it these two knew so much about their own times but virtually nothing of the movies, TV, or life experiences of anyone old enough to shave? When I was their age, even younger, I knew a great deal about my parents’ world—including their politicians, luminaries, and movie stars—because I watched dozens of films from the thirties and forties. In fact, I watched them with my parents.

As I congratulated myself on my own sense of history, it struck me that I had no reason to gloat. When I was growing up, my childhood world was perfectly organized to create an environment in which I not only associated with adults and adult things, but spent time learning and discussing life as it unfolded in front of us in our living rooms. We only had four TV channels and they were so lacking in programming that the stations gladly showed material from decades earlier—just to fill the airtime. And since we, like most families of the 50s, only had one TV set and most programs were family friendly, every evening we sat down together and watched a combination of old movies and primetime TV shows.

Why does any of this even matter? Realizing that my nieces were almost completely unaware of anything aged longer than, say, a can of Cheez Whiz got me to thinking. I began to mourn the loss of a simpler time when everyone—adults and children alike—could quote the same movies (“Badges! We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”) and discuss the same current events. A time when entertainment wasn’t so enormously segmented so as to appeal to only fourteen-year-old boys who own a video game system or twenty-one-year-old single women looking for love . . . or a wedding dress.

What is cultural entertainment actually doing for our culture? If it’s not bringing us together, there’s a good chance it’s driving us apart. I fear we’ll eventually become so segmented that members in a specific niche of the population will have little, if anything, to discuss with people outside their very specific demographic. By becoming increasingly diverse in our tastes and interests, I fear we are limiting our ability to relate to diverse populations—including our own nieces and nephews.

I was discussing this issue with my partner Ron, when he knocked me off my “old fogey” soapbox with a message of hope. He and his twelve-year-old son Ben were talking with a neighbor when his neighbor asked Ben, “So young man, what do you think was George Washington’s greatest contribution to the country?” (Apparently this neighbor wasn’t into small talk). After thinking for a second, Ben responded, “Resigning his commission as general before accepting the presidency.” Ben then went on to explain that disconnecting himself from the military had helped Washington shape the nation into a republic rather than into a military state.

As you might guess, Ron was proud of his son’s insightful remarks. He was also rather astonished. How had his twelve-year-old son developed such an informed opinion about such a weighty topic? It turns out Ben routinely watched and loved the History Channel where he had seen several episodes on Washington’s life.

So, there is hope. In the “good old days” we created a common culture by watching (and reading) old-fashioned stories, enthusiastically discussing current issues and events from the past, and jointly building values that were shaped and conveniently portrayed in their widely shared entertainment venues.

Today we can do the same, not in spite of but with the help of the latest resources. But, in my opinion, only if we use the tools wisely. We may have to switch off a few video games and skip past a dozen or so TV exposés covering celebrity shenanigans, but if we’re willing to search, there’s a great deal of terrific scientific, artistic, and historical material out there that we can and should experience with our friends, relatives, and loved ones.

Of course, it’ll take effort. It’s time we stopped retiring to separate rooms and engaging in separate electronic activities. Instead, pick a program (or a book) of substance, sit down, experience it with your children, friends, and family members, and then discuss the themes and concepts. Watch it at home where you can talk freely as the show unrolls. Pause and discuss issues and ideas. Revel in new scientific and historical discoveries. Roll back the clock and learn from the masters. Tell your own stories while giving people of all ages a chance to talk—each teaching the other.

In short, don’t be mauled by modernity. Master it. Use electronic tools that could easily fractionate and alienate to unite and illuminate. Make the language of your home the language of ideas steeped in history, vivified by art, and supported by science. Create a common culture. Better yet, couple the wisdom of ages with the efficiency of modern methods to create an uncommon common culture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 

David Maxfield is coauthor of two bestselling books, Change Anything and Influencer.

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Dear Crucial Skills,

When I tell my colleagues it’s time to improve our effectiveness, they get uptight about being told why they’re wrong and what to fix. It seems like they’re content to let standards slacken and inefficiencies run wild as long as they don’t have to hear about how much better we could be doing. How can I make improvement sound “cool” so my colleagues don’t feel like I’m forcing them to change?

Changeable

Dear Changeable,

If we could solve this common problem, think of the benefits we’d share. Imagine a department, an organization, or a country where everyone shared a passion for improvement. We’d see immediate advances in creativity, productivity, and competitiveness and I bet we’d see huge gains in engagement and satisfaction as well. So, how do we get there?

It will take more than a carefully worded conversation to solve this problem. In fact, if we think better words are all we need, then we’ve failed before we’ve begun. This challenge is ideal for an Influencer approach.

What your workforce needs is a passion for making things better and the knowledge that they can get it done. Neither of these is advanced through verbal persuasion alone. Changing hearts and minds requires more than data dumps, lectures, sermons, and rants.

I’ll begin with some first steps you might take to get this process going and then I’ll share a few examples from organizations that have made continuous improvement a central value within their culture.

1.  Actions you can take in the short term.

As an individual contributor seeking to influence your colleagues, it’s important to not try and use authority you don’t have. Instead of telling people what they should do, create situations that allow them to discover what they should do. Here are a few ideas.

Social Motivation. Create direct experiences with customers. Your colleagues might not want to listen to you, but nothing is more motivating than getting direct feedback from your customers—either internal or external. Find a way for customers to visit. They will speak the truth to your colleagues in ways you can’t.
Structural Motivation. You think your group is full of slack and inefficiencies, but your colleagues may not see it. So, find a way to make performance more public. Focus on the two or three metrics everyone sees as important and post them where everyone can see. A chart on the wall is objective so it’s hard to deny.
Social Motivation. Ask your colleagues to set an improvement goal based on what their customers want and need. Don’t worry whether it’s higher or lower than the goal you would set. It’s more important that they have a goal they can all accept. Next, have your colleagues—not you—evaluate their progress. This gives your colleagues a chance to motivate each other.
Personal Ability. When individuals—or the entire group—fail to achieve their goal, steer them away from casting blame. Instead, encourage them to focus on solutions. Get them to brainstorm ideas for improvement.
Structural Ability. Set up mini experiments to test your colleagues’ ideas. These should be low-risk tests you can complete in a day or two. Make sure others are involved in the testing and evaluating process. Don’t let this become your project. Use it to make your colleagues look good.

These are tactics you can implement on your own, even if you’re not a manager. Below, I’ll suggest a more intensive approach that requires management support.

2.  Actions your organization can take in the long term.

We’ve worked with several organizations that put continuous improvement at the center of their culture. Each has taken its unique path, but the behaviors they nurture—the vital behaviors—are remarkably similar. For an excellent description of this change-oriented culture, see Steven Spear’s HBR article, Fixing Health Care from the Inside, Today.

Focus on Vital Behaviors

• Scientist and the subject. Employees become scientists as well as subjects. They design their work to be a series of ongoing experiments.
• Trial and error. People use frequent, brief, low-cost, trials—with data—to address both problems and opportunities.
• Hold each other accountable. People hold each other accountable for continuous improvement—trying new ideas every week or month.

Driving these vital behaviors into a culture requires a concerted effort across the organization. This approach should be guided by the Six Sources of Influence. I’ll suggest a few tactics.

Personal Motivation. Use direct and vicarious experience to create a passion for improvement. Make sure every employee has a line-of-sight relationship with his or her customers. For example, an insurance company took jobs that had been organized around forms: “I’m the specialist on form 35c.” and reorganized them around people: “I’m the resource person for all of our agents in Denver.”

Have employees visit best-in-class companies—both within their industry and beyond—to learn what’s possible and to gather ideas to test. A mining company takes front-line supervisors to a best-in-class steel mill to get ideas for improving workplace safety.

Look for positive deviants—groups within their own firm that have achieved extraordinary results without extraordinary resources—and either visit them or invite them to visit. Surgeons compare surgical outcomes and then travel to learn from the best.

Personal Ability. Use training, coaching, and deliberate practice to help everyone become a scientist at their job. Teach people how to lead brief, low-risk, short cycle time experiments. A pharmaceutical firm trains people in Lean Six Sigma, and has them design experiments that take no more than two days.

Learn by doing. Every week, each department should design and conduct a trial that tests an improvement idea. A hospital asks every unit to complete one experiment per week.

Build confidence. As teams make progress, they’ll discover they have far more control over their work process and work environment than they ever realized. When they reach this insight, their progress and morale will surge.

Social Motivation & Ability. Have employees present their experiments to others in the organization using poster sessions and twenty-minute presentations. A computer chip manufacturer has its entire organization, including senior leaders, attend these improvement fairs. Make sure everyone participates in designing, testing, and evaluating improvement experiments. Each experiment should be a team endeavor.

These are just a few examples from three of the six sources of influence. For the best results, brainstorm strategies in all six sources to bring about the change you desire. Some of these actions require more formal authority than you may have, but I hope they stimulate your thinking. Let me know how it goes.

David

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ABOUT THE EXPERT
Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts.
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You’re in a session doing your utmost to train some people up. You ask a question. A participant responds. He’s somewhat correct, but also somewhat wrong in his response. What would you do?

Would you. . .

A) Affirm the participant for responding, and fill in with the more accurate information.
B) Inform the participant he was inaccurate, and fill in with the more accurate information.
C) Ask another participant to respond.
D) Start answering your own questions to avoid future problems.

If you answered A or B, you’d be grouped in with the majority of the trainers I interact with. They use the “yes-and” approach (say something like, “yeah that’s right,” and proceed to correct the mistake) to address the gap. The problem here is that if you use this approach with a response that is inaccurate rather than incomplete, you send the participant away thinking he or she was correct, and set him or her up to experience difficulties later on during attempts to apply the flawed understanding.

And the correct answer is. . . E) none of the above. Drat that trick question!

During a recent meeting with one of my ultra-favorite, really-smart, rock-star heroes Dr. Ethna Reid (If you’d like to know more about Ethna, her research, and her results, click here), I found myself pondering the following comment: “The fewer errors students are allowed to make, the more discriminating they will be about correct usage.” The more I thought about it, the more it really resonated with me.

In many ways this flies in the face of what seems like the best response in the moment. A participant makes a flawed attempt to use a skill or makes a comment that falls short of the mark. You want to correct the point without making the participant look bad so you jump right in, bridge the inaccuracy with a “yes-and,” and transition to the next idea or concept. Old habits (and the bamboo plant gift in my office) die hard.

Instead of giving way to this urge, prepare your participants to be more effective by 1) pointing out the correct and incorrect portions of their responses, and 2) giving them an opportunity to correct it themselves. Do this and you’re sure to see your participants move beyond a surface understanding of training skills to discriminating usage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barbara Hauser is a Master Trainer.
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How do you balance discussion (i.e., answering questions, debriefing, taking stories from participants) with staying on track with material—especially if it is a really good discussion?

This is such a good question. I like to do two things. Right up front, when we establish the ground rules for participation in the program, I say that I’m going to assume the role of discussion leader—for the purpose of keeping us on track so that we can get to the practical, skill-building part of the program. I’ll add that there’s often a need for folks to process the content by talking it out. To honor that, we’ve built in several small group discussions where they will have the time and space to do a lot of sharing. We do want to hear from individuals in our large-group discussions too—and that’s where I’ll keep everyone mindful of the time constraints! When we hit a point where the discussion threatens to go on too long, I’ll interrupt, acknowledge the value of what the person’s saying (e.g., “The situation you’re describing is a great example of this principle”), and add, “As the ‘time warden/discussion leader,’ let me suggest that we move on so we can get some practice using our new tools.” (Or something like that.) I find that people really appreciate it when you take a firm stand to manage the time you have together wisely and when you set things up at the beginning so it’s safe to do so.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 

Al Switzler is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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Dear Crucial Skills,
My friend owns a catering company and has a large and valued client who doesn’t pay their bills for three to six months after an event. While the annual income from this client is excellent, my friend is unable to cover the expense of their events and often falls behind until he receives payment. He wants to have a crucial conversation with this client to let them know he cannot accept these payment terms, but he doesn’t want to damage the relationship or lose their business. Can you provide advice on this matter?

Friend in Need

Dear Friend,

Here are a few ideas from Crucial Confrontations. The subtitle of the book—Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior—is clearly applicable to this issue.

Before I turn to your friend’s problem, let me say a word about confrontation. Many people would rather eat a nail sandwich than confront someone. They would rather bite their lip and suffer in silence than engage in a confrontation. And from your friend’s example, we learn that some people would rather fall behind financially—and potentially risk the success and stability of their business—than hold a valued customer accountable. Many probably think of a confrontation as a verbally or physically dangerous situation, but we do not use that definition. Our use of the word comes from its root—which can be summarized simply as a face-to-face conversation. Rather than accosting or remaining silent, a person confronts another person about his or her behavior directly and courteously.

Clarify expectations. With that sidebar out of the way, I begin with this point—excellent performance begins with clear expectations. It is simply a sound business practice and an effective relationship strategy to clarify what’s expected, but it doesn’t look like your friend has taken this important step. He should visit with his client and clarify payment terms. There are several possible outcomes of this conversation:

• Quick agreement. The most likely outcome is a quick agreement that the client will make payments in full by a certain date and that late payments will be assessed a fee. Starting such a dialogue should be as easy as saying, “Jim, I’ve come to visit you today because I noticed that we didn’t clarify payment terms in our contract.”
• Different opinions. If your friend and the client can’t agree quickly, then they should jointly explore the consequences. What does this payment schedule mean for the client; what does it mean for the vendor? I suggest that in this sort of dialogue, both parties should be candid about what it means for themselves and for the other person. Often the offending party may simply be unaware of the consequences of their actions. Letting them know candidly and factually may be enough to solve the problem.
• A diminished relationship. The forethought of a negative outcome causes many people to choose silence, and what they don’t talk out, they eventually act out in ways that could ruin the relationship like gossip, sarcasm, or avoidance. However, our experience and research supports the idea that this outcome is less likely if your friend chooses to speak up, goes into the conversation with good intentions, and brings up the issue in a way that encourages dialogue instead of debate.

Make sure your motives precede your message. Your friend needs to make sure he has his heart and head right before he opens his mouth. He should ask himself, “What do I want? What concerns might my client have? How am I viewing my client?”

Let me emphasize this point by sharing a story from Kerry Patterson. Several years ago, Kerry was working with an actor who was supposed to deliver the line: “You agreed to have the write-up to me by noon. It’s two o’clock. I’ve received nothing as of yet and I was wondering what happened.” When the actor delivered this line, he frowned and emphasized the words “AND I’VE RECEIVED NOTHING AS OF YET.” Because of this, it sounded like an accusation instead of an attempt to discover why the coworker had not met the deadline. After several failed attempts to remove the accusation from his delivery, Kerry told the actor the other person was a good friend who was normally quite reliable and that he was curious as to why he had failed to deliver on his promise. When given this background he delivered the lines perfectly.

Let’s say the actor is your friend and needs to deliver a line as simple as, “Jim, I’ve noticed we don’t have an agreement about a payment schedule in our contract. Could we talk?” On the first attempt, your friend might deliver the line with a certain iciness—the nonverbal actions and the tone of voice drip with the idea that the client is guilty of something hideous. So you encourage him to, “Try that line in a more curious way, like you are trying to find out what’s going on.” Your friend is better this time—the overt nonverbal actions are gone, but the subtle ones still hint of “gotcha!” You patiently take a new tack and suggest to your friend, “Think of this person as your best friend.” And your friend gives the line perfectly—a mix of courtesy and curiosity. There is no hint of prejudgment or disappointment or anger.

Your friend needs to make sure his motives are right before he meets with his client. If he does, he will engage in a healthy, face-to-face confrontation. And when he can talk about it in a safe way, he increases the possibility of a win-win outcome. If he doesn’t talk about it in an effective way, there is little possibility of the payment schedule getting better, but by his silence, he will almost guarantee that the relationship will get worse.

Best wishes in coaching your friend,
Al