By getting rid of garbage, you can turn a tough conversation into a productive, useful talk and help put the problem in the rearview mirror where it belongs.
Norm LeMay and Steven Kaufman
Whether you’re hauling trash, building waste equipment, or providing valuable services, running a company in the waste industry isn’t easy. To maintain your edge, you need a highly motivated workforce that can ace tough issues head-on—including the ability to have difficult conversations. That’s what this article is about: how to tackle those really tough talks that we don’t like to have, but are crucial to keeping your team productive and inspired. You’re going to learn that when you think like a garbageman, sitting down and working it out can be a whole lot easier.
Introduction to Difficult Conversations
When we use the term garbage, we mean the thoughts, beliefs, and opinions—or TBOs—that are floating around your head that have no value anymore; thoughts like, “I can’t get along with anybody” or “That person thinks I’m a jerk.” Thoughts like this won’t do you any good if the goal is get through a difficult conversation.
There are different reasons why you may need to have a difficult conversation. For example, you’re a manager and you have to find a way to stop two employees from constantly antagonizing each other. You may need to speak to one of your employees about their performance or you’re working on a task force and you keep butting heads with another colleague. While there are other types of difficult conversations, in this article, we’re going to focus on the ones that involve conflict between you and someone else or between two people and you have to mediate.
In any difficult conversation, there are two factors at play. The first is feelings. Conflict is full of emotion. If you’re going to resolve it, you have to be sensitive to the fact that the people involved have strong feelings about what’s going on. To resolve a conflict, people want to know that those feelings are going to be taken seriously and not dismissed as irrelevant.
The other factor is outcome: a goal like hitting the quarterly sales numbers. Outcomes are very important. They help the business grow and expand. They bring focus and direction and provide a larger backdrop against which we can measure our behavior.
When facing a difficult conversation, it’s critical to find a balance between feelings and outcome. If the conversation focuses solely on the person’s feelings, they may feel better after the conversation, but there’s no action plan, no specific way to make things better. At the same time, if the focus is solely on outcome, there’s a risk of coming across as unfeeling and bossy. That continues of cycle of creating anxiety, which hampers productivity, brings in unnecessary drama, and drains the energy and motivation from your team. You want everyone bring his or her best self to the conversation. Spotting the trash that creates anxiety and clearing it out of the way helps everyone get through these difficult conversations with the least amount of discomfort.
Getting rid of the trash that can cause conflict can be accomplished when you ACT, which stands for “Aware, Choose, and Toss.” To pick out the thoughts in your mind that are garbage, start by paying attention to what you’re thinking. That’s when you begin to realize, “Hey! That belief or opinion about myself or the other person has absolutely no value if the goal is to resolve this situation.”
Once you start spotting your own garbage, it will become easier to see if the other person brings it into the conversation. Keep in mind that a lot of the garbage associated with conflict is rooted in ego. Ego puts us in a defensive mode. It kicks in our “fight-or-flight” mechanism. It generates mental trash mostly in an attempt to protect us from getting hurt or trapped. If there’s a difficult conversation, there’s a good chance that everyone’s ego is going to be in full gear.
ACT can help you keep egos in check by quickly spotting trash and getting it out of the way. Remember: the goal is to get through the discussion and find a resolution. The more you can get rid of anything that could derail it—including garbage—the higher the chances that you’ll resolve the conflict and the conversation won’t be as bad as you might fear (see Figure 1).
Sometimes we are afraid to have a difficult conversation because we focus on the worst-case scenario: the conversation will completely blow up and the relationship, which is already on shaky ground, is going to get even worse. We play these scenarios out in our minds until our emotions boil and our stomach is in a knot.
It’s helpful to think of those scenarios as trash by asking yourself how much value there is emotionally and physically reacting to something that hasn’t even happened yet. Is it worth all that time and energy? If not, get rid of it and focus on preparing for the conversation, not dreading it. With that as an introduction, here’s a straightforward, practical plan to have a difficult conversation with someone.
Step 1: Detach
Detach means looking at the conversation, and the entire situation surrounding it, as objectively as possible. To begin, try to look beyond the immediate conflict and see if there’s anything going on in the other person’s life that may be contributing to the problem. Financial pressures or health issues may be driving their behavior—and have nothing to do with the conflict at all.
The second way to detach is to watch out for excuses. Let’s say you’re a manager having a difficult conversation with an employee who’s late for work all the time. The person always has an excuse: his car broke down or his child was sick or there was bad traffic. Acknowledge the reasons he’s late and find ways within the limits of your role in the company to help; for example, see if you can adjust his schedule so he can arrive later.
If that doesn’t work, however, you’ll need to shift the balance between feelings and outcome. It may be appropriate to say “Look, I understand those are difficult things and they’re creating a lot of trouble for you. However, our customers rely on our reliability. That’s a core value for our company and each of our employees needs to have the ability to get to work on time.” Be respectful and understanding of the other person’s feelings while, at the same time, maintain your responsibility and commitment to the outcome. Balancing these two factors lets you detach so you can stay focused on the issue and its resolution.
Step 2: Diffuse
The next step in having a difficult conversation is called Diffuse. The goal here is to remove as much energy and emotion from the conversation as you can. To begin, remember that everyone has his or her point of view about what’s happening. No one is right or wrong, so telling another person that they shouldn’t feel a certain way is guaranteed to make a difficult conversation even tougher. Also, don’t plug into the reasons why they feel angry or upset. Sometimes, it’s enough just to say, “I really see that you’re mad.” A sincere and genuine tone can be all it takes to reduce the level of tension and create a constructive environment for the conversation.
Another way to diffuse the situation is to bring in accountability; that is, to have all parties take more responsibility for their actions and their decisions. It means standing behind what we do and say, holding ourselves to a certain standard, and knowing there will be consequences if we don’t meet that standard. Here are some ways to bring in accountability in order to help tone down a conflict:
- Eliminate blame so we can’t push our actions onto other people.
- Maximize each person’s ability to make their own decisions. With responsibility comes growth and commitment.
- Enforce the rules evenly—on others and yourself—so everyone knows there are guidelines they have to follow and no one is exempt from following them.
- Discourage ego and winning as the pattern for getting things done.
Don’t forget: if you’re part of the conflict, don’t leave yourself out of this accountability piece. The goal is to have all parties walk away from this conversation feeling better and having received something of value. That may include you, too, so apply these accountability principals to the role you’re playing in the conflict. Bottom line: as you’re preparing for a difficult conversation and you need to bring the emotion and energy down a notch or two, try to find a way to bring in accountability—for everyone.
Step 3: Dissect
Dissect is built around a very basic concept: don’t reach for a solution until you first understand the problem. How many times have we gotten ourselves into trouble by thinking that we know what the issue is and we start hammering out a solution before we have all the facts? There we are, working away doing what we think is best, and wham! We run right into a brick wall because we’re fixing the wrong thing. It’s like repairing the transmission on a garbage truck when, with a little more investigation, the problem was actually in the electrical system. There you are, with the entire transmission in pieces in front of you, facing twice as much work: putting it back together, then trying to fix the actual problem.
As you prepare for a difficult conversation, ask lots of questions. What’s really going on? What are the issues or events that led you to this point? Why are things so rocky? Get as much information as you can. As you learn more about what’s actually going on, the real solution will start to show up. Then, start thinking about an action plan. Dissecting the true problem in this way is always time well spent.
Step 4: Drill
This is where you’re going to practice the conversation before you have it. The more you rehearse it, the easier it is to actually do it. To begin, enlist the help of a friend or a trusted colleague—someone who gives you good, honest feedback, whose opinion you respect, and someone you know won’t breach your privacy or feel awkward once you confide in them. Have them play the role of the other person with whom you’re having a conflict. Run through the conversation two or three times until you start to get comfortable with the way it’s going.
Then, have your friend get angry or upset or do something unexpected; in other words, have them throw some garbage right in the middle of the conversation, because you never know how the actual talk is going to go. Learning how to think on your feet and deal with different scenarios is a great way to help you prepare.
One tool you can use during the drill phase is Role and Goal. This is where you guide behavior by pointing out the roles each person plays in the company and to remind everyone of the goals you’re all striving for. For example, if an employee keeps questioning your decisions in front of the staff, you can remind him or her of their role to support decisions once they’re made, which supports the goal of having a cohesive, teamwork-oriented department.
Finally, as a busy professional, you won’t have time to drill every difficult conversation that’s facing you. Think of drilling as an extra layer of preparation that you can use when you’re facing an especially tough conversation and need some additional preparation.
Step 5: Deploy
The last step is called Deploy: the time when you have the actual conversation. To begin, remember that the conversation will never unfold in the same way as you drilled it. Just given the nature of tough talks, there is always an element of unpredictability and things rarely go the way you practiced. That’s when the preparation you put in really pays off because you’re not going into the conversation cold.
As you’re having the talk, try to get all the parties to agree on what the problem is, and then commit a solution to the conflict. This can’t be something that you impose because most people are resentful when they’re told what to do. However, if they feel like they’re part of the solution and that they’ve played a role in helping to resolve the conflict, there’s a much better chance that it’ll stick.
Be willing to admit to the things you’ve done that have contributed to the conflict. Sometimes, just saying, “Look, I’m sorry. I was upset and I took it out on you” can lead to the other person saying, “I’m sorry for reacting like I did.” It might be difficult for both of you to admit that, but that crack in the tension may be all you need to start throwing out the trash that’s causing the problem.
Finally, look for areas where you both can agree and be willing to come off your position, so long as you’re not compromising any principals that are important to you. As you work towards a solution, ask what you might do to avoid this from happening again—especially if this is a person that you’ve had other run-ins with the past. There may be a pattern where you both keep bringing garbage to your interactions. The difficult conversation could be a great way to settle the conflict, now and in the future (see Figure 2).
Final Thoughts
Coming into a difficult conversation with guns blazing pretty will likely mean the conversation is going nowhere. First, keep yourself in check. Listen carefully. Stay calm and collected. Remember: it takes two to have an argument. If you make the first overture to tone it down, many times, the other person will agree to do the same thing.
Second, make sure the other person is ready to talk. Both of you have to be willing to sit down and work it out, or it’s going to be a one-sided conversation and the other party is going to feel like they’re being dictated to—and that won’t resolve the conflict.
Third, as the other person is talking, use active listening skills. Don’t interrupt. Nod your head, make sure you’re posture is open and inviting, and say “Yes” and “uh huh” to encourage the other person to keep talking.
And finally, repeat back what you heard and ask, “Is this right?” That gives the other person a chance to say, “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” This keeps everyone on the same page and keeps trash like misunderstanding and jumping to conclusions out of the conversation.
By getting rid of garbage, you can turn a tough conversation into a productive, useful talk and help put the problem in the rearview mirror where it belongs.
Norm LeMay and Steven Kaufman are co-authors of the book The Garbageman’s Guide to Life: How to Get Out of the Dumps. If you’d like to see a video of this article, or if you’d like to download a free worksheet that can help you have a difficult conversation of your own, visit GG-TALK.com. For more information, contact Steven Kaufman at (503) 203-1200 or via e-mail at [email protected].