Approaching difficult conversations as a speaker

- There are few things more challenging at work than having to initiate a difficult conversation. As the speaker, your tone from the moment the listener walks into the room is going to lay the foundation for the kind of conversation that's about to transpire. So the way you prepare for and approach a typical conversation is going to be imperative and the first thing that you have to do to approach the conversation from a place of empathy is to keep your emotions in check. So when we're angry, it's incredibly easy and convenient to forget that the person that we're upset with is a person. We often don't realize that the actions that we view as completely benign can come off as incredibly hurtful to others. You, as the speaker, should take stock of what this person is doing and then remind yourself that they probably won't even know that their performance is lagging or that their actions are kind of hurting people. Once you've checked your emotions and you're ready to plan out what to say, don't use a script. When you're giving someone bad news, the last thing that you want to do is come off as rehearsed and detached and this is what generally happens when we're over-planning for the difficult conversations. So instead of scripting, you're going to want to write down the major points that you want to cover and then use empathy to communicate those points to your listener. Speak to them in the way that they have to be spoken to in order to receive your message and when you're talking to them, you're going to want to focus on the why. As you're going through your points, keep in mind that you're talking to them and not at them and this is important because this conversation is an awesome opportunity to really help them improve, not to belittle them. Finally and probably the most importantly here is that you really just need to listen. We all process things a little bit differently especially when we're on the receiving end of some bad news. So you want to give the listener a chance to process the information before you offer up a solution. If they need to talk through things for a couple of minutes, you definitely want to give them the space to do so. If they have a tendency to yell, give them a chance to calm down by reminding them that you are there to help them and if that doesn't work, tell them that yelling isn't constructive and that you'll need to reschedule the meeting for when they're a little bit calmer. If they have a tendency to cry, you want to be sure to have the meeting towards the end of the day and have some tissues on hand. This is also another situation where you should absolutely remind them that you are there to indeed help them be better and not to tear them down. If they aren't able to compose themselves, reassure them that you totally understand how very difficult this is and then set a time to resume the conversation for when they have calmed down. The key to having difficult conversations is to be comfortable, remain confident and to remember that it's a conversation and all successful conversations begin and end with empathy.