Communicating bad news at work or at homeIT WANTS YOU TO TALK WITHOUT A PLAN
In a memorable passage from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire cat what direction she should take in the woods. The cat asks Alice where she wants to go, and when Alice replies that she doesn’t really care, the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
The cat put his paw on a lesson about communication: if we don’t care how an interaction turns out, it doesn’t matter how we approach it. But when conversations matter, it helps to have a destination in mind.
Casual conversations don’t need an underlying goal or even a direction. Work—and life—wouldn’t be much fun without the opportunity for friendly chitchat and informal banter. Jim in accounting shares your love of dogs, Sarah always has something nice to say, Bill knows the company history and folklore, and Jane never runs out of funny stories. Impromptu, casual conversations make our workplaces more enjoyable and our relationships more fun. We don’t need to prepare for these moments. All we need to do is safeguard enough of our time and attention to let them happen and to keep the exchange civilized so that a casual conversation doesn’t escalate into a damaging one.
But many of our conversations are purposeful. Sometimes, you need to talk to Jim about next week’s board meeting. You need to find out from Sarah why her report is late, again. You need to learn from Bill why a competitor keeps taking your leads or to discuss an employee’s erratic behavior with Jane. These conversations are strategic because you are trying to accomplish something, and all strategic conversations require higher-order communication skills to accomplish your underlying objective.
Strategic conversations benefit from preparation, but it’s hard to imagine something more anachronistic in the informal, always-on, I-need-an-answer-now digital age than preparing to communicate. Instead, we careen through conversational intersections without considering where we’re trying to go, leaving the Cheshire cat and his perceptive response as little more than a blurry fuzzball in our rearview mirror.
Andrea ran into some trouble at work. She’d missed a few deadlines and lost a client as a result. The financial impact hadn’t hit her monthly revenue numbers yet, but she knew that when it did, Thomas, her boss, would want to talk to her. The conversation felt imminent, and the more Andrea contemplated it, the more agitated she became. The damage had already been done, she thought, and she just wanted to get past it.
So instead of waiting for Thomas to bring up the conversation, Andrea decided to be preemptive. She knocked on his office door and asked to talk. Still staring at his computer screen, he motioned for her to come in, and even before she sat down, Andrea was talking.
Her only “preparation” for the conversation had been listening to her own anxiety and wanting to share her side of the story. If she could talk to Thomas, she knew she could assure him that there was nothing to worry about.
Andrea started to describe the impact of losing the client and slipped in a few comments about how troublesome the company had been to work with. She was sure he’d see it her way. But within seconds, it was apparent that instead of winning Thomas to her side, her tangled and defensive words were thoroughly confusing him. He hadn’t been thinking about the client before this, and now was trying to figure out exactly what the conversation was about.
That’s funny, Andrea thought as Thomas’s curious expression turned to a frown, I pictured it going so much smoother. As she tried to circle back to the missed deadlines and explain herself better, Andrea somehow managed to confuse even herself. Feeling increasingly desperate, she kept talking—even though it was talking that got her into trouble in the first place.
The conversation that Andrea started confidently ended in disheartening failure. Thomas didn’t understand her side of the story, and after the conversation, the loss of the client—not a major account—loomed larger than it probably should have. As she walked back to her desk, knowing that she’d made things worse, Andrea knew that it was actually all her fault.
She should have paid more attention to the talking cat.
Strategic conversations like Andrea’s vary in how consequential they are and in whether they are expected or unexpected. All strategic conversations (including the unexpected ones, which we address later in the chapter) benefit from preparation.1
Unhelpfully, the more important a conversation feels, the less we want to delay it. We charge unprepared into important interactions, ignoring early warning signs that things aren’t going well as we continue to pile on more counterproductive talking.
High-consequence conversations don’t happen often. You may only have conversations like this a couple of times per month, but the relational stakes are serious each time. Examples of high-consequence conversations include:
Communicating bad news at work or at home
Asking for a raise or a new work assignment
Seeking resolution of a longstanding dispute with a colleague
Resolving a disagreement with an important client
Initiating a conversation that leads to dissolution of a personal or professional relationship
Seeking a consensus with siblings about how to care for an elderly parent
Reaching out to a family member in a time of dire need
Trying to reestablish a connection with a difficult family member
Most of us have less consequential, but still strategic, conversations almost daily. These low-consequence situations include:
Convincing a colleague to attend a meeting in your place
Asking your boss to extend a report deadline
Persuading a coworker to edit a report one more time
Convincing a spouse that a vacation in Hawaii is preferable to visiting the in-laws
Coaxing a friend to take you to the airport
Encouraging a relative to visit for the weekend
All strategic conversations—from low to high consequence—benefit from preparation.
Here’s how to prepare for conversations that matter.
There are three questions to consider when you prepare for an important conversation: What’s your conversational goal? How will you approach your goal? And how will you start the conversation? Your goal directs your effort, focuses your attention, and helps you cut through a haze of distractions. Your approach helps you consider and select the appropriate tactics for goal attainment. And your start gets you off on the right foot. Together, they give you the easy-to-remember GAS preparation sequence.2
To illustrate how to use the GAS sequence, let’s use an example from my consulting work, when a 30-year-old apartment manager was preparing for a conversation with a resident who had a history of verbally berating and insulting the manager and her staff.
Your goal for any strategic conversation should be optimistic, but realistic, and stated simply. The goal is your orientation point throughout the conversation, the idea you keep at the front of your mind and where you can refocus the conversation if tangents, escalations, or other detours cause a drift.
The apartment manager decided that her goal was to get the resident to stop verbally abusing her and her staff. She also wanted to protect the underlying relationship, which was under strain because of his behavior, and she wanted to prevent further deterioration. She knew not to make the mistake of believing that things were so bad that they couldn’t possibly get worse. Bad communication makes everything worse.
Whenever possible, resist the urge to have more than one goal for a single conversation. There’s only so much a person can realistically accomplish in a single conversation, and multiple goals dilute everyone’s focus. If you must have more than one goal, designate which is primary to help maintain your strategic focus.
When formulating your goal, consider what other, less favorable outcomes you could live with.
The apartment manager identified two possible alternatives if she couldn’t meet her ultimate goal for the resident to stop verbally abusing her and her staff. The alternatives were:
The resident could immediately break his lease and move out.
The resident could keep his lease but would have to deal exclusively with a different manager in the future. (Note: This alternative assumed that the resident would be better behaved with a different manager. If this wasn’t the case, the alternative wasn’t viable.)
There are typically no more than two or three alternatives to any single goal, and there may not be any alternatives. If you continually find that there are no acceptable alternatives for your goal, it could be a signal that you aren’t making a serious effort to develop other options. Also be alert for new options that may emerge during the conversation.
Remember, if you can’t identify a conversational goal, you aren’t having a strategic conversation. Important conversations that lack a clear focus are easily hijacked by potent emotions and unhelpful tangents. Without a clearly identifiable goal, not only are you likely to leave potential successes on the table, but you also increase the likelihood of compounding your problems as your conversation drifts from tangents to hazards.
The approach is the plan for how you will attain your goal; it represents the different ways to achieve your conversational purpose.
Many communication methods can help you achieve a goal, including using direct and indirect approaches; making analytical and emotional appeals; proposing choices; and reasoning. In a conversation, you might use a number of tactics together. For example, you might choose a direct approach, using facts and examples to buttress your point, and emphasizing the emotional angle of your case with a compelling story.
As she developed her approach plan, the manager considered several options:
She could offer the resident a choice: he could modify his behavior and stay, or he could be allowed to break his lease and leave. People like choices, and tension can often be reduced when people feel like they selected the outcome.
She could point out how the resident’s behavior is making her and her staff feel, noting that while this is probably not what the resident intends, it is what’s happening. This addresses the behavior but allows for some face-saving for the resident.
She could briefly describe the most recent or most visible instance of the unwanted behavior, stating the ramifications of the behavior for her and her staff and making a direct request to stop the unwanted behavior.
The best conversational approach, however, is identifying overlapping interests. There will usually—somewhere—be an intersection between your interest and the other party’s interest. As a quip widely attributed to Italian diplomat Daniele Vare states: “Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.”
Smart communicators are conversational diplomats, lubricating the gears of human interaction to facilitate agreement, understanding, and harmony. Unfortunately, most people in conversations are more like plundering Vikings instead. They pillage their goals by responding to resistance with increasing force and intensity, which causes the other party’s resistance to stiffen. Or they take an opposite approach and beg and grovel, behaviors that are equally ineffective because people tend to dislike and avoid perceived desperation.
Overlapping interests, on the other hand, encourage collaboration and offer better ways to achieve conversational goals. Ask yourself: How does your proposal make the other person’s life easier? How does your proposal solve a problem the other person is having? What’s the benefit to the other party for supporting your idea?
Don’t mince words in showing your conversational partner the benefits—can you offer more time, money, freedom, and opportunity? Or less heartache, hassle, and paperwork? Clearly connect the benefits to the other person’s life; it’s even better when the other party gets in the spirit and points out shared interests you hadn’t uncovered. For the apartment manager, there was an overlapping interest: the resident didn’t want to move, and the apartment complex preferred to retain him as a tenant. Both parties would have had to take on additional costs if the resident left, which provided a shared incentive to resolve the issue.
In the small number of cases where there truly aren’t any overlapping interests and where you want someone to take an action that won’t benefit the person at all, don’t make things up. It will quickly become obvious that you’re trying to manipulate the interaction, and it will be self-defeating. When your proposal will bring the other party nothing but more work, extra hassles, and some new headaches, address the downsides directly but without fanfare. Be honest (but bland).
Good conversational openings put the other party at ease and prevent an immediate, negative reaction. Examples of possible openings include making a positive (but true) comment, giving a brief overview (to reduce conversational uncertainty), encouraging the other person’s participation to develop a potential solution, or simply but gently stating the issue directly.
Openings matter because they can reduce the likelihood that the other person will reflexively resist your goal. Too many strategic conversations fail from the very first sentence because the other party assumes a defensive posture and prepares to resist before the issue is even addressed.
The apartment manager could have started the conversation by directly sharing her overlapping interest with the tenant that it would be better for both of them to work out an agreement that keeps the resident in his lease. Or she could have tried to draw the resident into participating in a solution by asking for his ideas about how to solve the issue (such a collaborative approach, although risky, can sometimes work).
In real life, when the apartment manager talked with the resident, she realized that he had no idea his words were causing such distress. After she gave him the space and time to say a few face-saving things (“I’ve been under a lot of pressure at work; I’m feeling stressed out and not entirely myself”), he apologized, and there were no additional problems with the resident for the remainder of his lease.
It’s critical to know how to start a conversation, but at some point you’ll also need to know how to head for the exits. In strategic conversations, bring the interaction to a close when you have achieved your conversational goal or an alternative (success), run into entrenched resistance or clear rejection (surrender), or feel that you’ve gone as far as you can go in the current conversation (stalemate).
Let’s return to the apartment example: the apartment manager planned to exit the conversation in success, surrender, or stalemate.
Exit in success. She would conclude and exit a successful conversation when:
The resident expressed remorse and promised to change his behavior.
The resident agreed to one of her two alternatives or came up with a third alternative during the conversation that was mutually acceptable.
Exit in surrender or stalemate. She would exit a failing conversation when:
The conversation escalated to yelling, profanity, or insults (surrender).
The conversation deteriorated to stonewalling or a shutdown of meaningful exchange (stalemate).
She felt like she couldn’t or shouldn’t go any further in the current conversation (stalemate).
It’s hard to forget anything that ends poorly, and conversations are no exception. Research shows that endings exert a disproportionate influence on our recollections, because our brains lean heavily on endings as markers for events in long-term memory.3
A good ending enables you to lock in your goal or an alternative in successful conversations, and it helps you get out of conversations in surrender or stalemate before too much damage is done to the underlying relationship. Watch for exit cues (Sounds like we have agreed to …; Good talking with you; Let’s pick this up later; See you next week; I think we’ve about covered it), and finish strong to help the conversation’s ending be the beginning of a positive memory.
We can usually prepare for important conversations, because we can see them coming. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to anticipate a discussion about our unspectacular performance after a series of work errors or to foresee a talk with our spouse after saying something less than charitable to the in-laws.
But sometimes an important conversation will surprise you. You learn that you’re being reassigned due to a restructuring. A coworker offers you important, but negative, feedback. A direct report presents a grievance you didn’t anticipate. In these cases, the best way for you to respond is to treat the initial interaction as an information-gathering phase, isolate it from any subsequent discussion, and ask to return to the conversation later, when you’ve had time to plan.
If you can’t delay an unexpected strategic conversation—like when your boss is bending your ear—you’ll have to think on your feet. In these situations, the most important thing for you to do is to gather the relevant information without escalating matters.
There are three guidelines to remember when you’re surprised by a serious conversation.
First, push your surprise off to the side and listen closely to gather as much information as you can. What’s this person trying to tell you? What’s the purpose of the conversation? Focus on understanding the key information and the big picture, and don’t let your mind wander.
Second, don’t feel an obligation to respond immediately. You can frequently ask for a conversational delay of minutes, hours, or days after you’ve learned the most important information. (“I appreciate your feedback. Can we continue the conversation after I’ve had some time to think about it?” or “This information is a bit surprising. May I have a few minutes [or hours or days] to get my thoughts together?”) When possible, pause an unexpected strategic conversation after you’ve gathered the relevant information, even if the delay is only a few minutes long, and use the time to prepare for the remainder of the discussion. Pick the conversation back up once you’ve had time to absorb the information and formulate a strategy.
Third, stifle your urge to immediately change the conversation’s trajectory. If the surprising news is negative, like performance feedback or a transfer you don’t want, you’ll only make things worse by trying to take control of the conversation. There is information asymmetry at play when you are surprised by a serious and negative conversation. Because most people hate delivering negative information, they have probably thought about the conversation a great deal. You’ll be trying to influence a conversation on the fly with someone who has been thinking about the subject for much longer. Push for a conversational delay once you have extracted the relevant information and come back when you can both be on more equal footing.
Talking is something we do all the time, so it’s easy to think that preparing to talk is a waste of time. I talk to Jane almost every day, we think, so why should I take the time to consider what I want to say before I start to say it? We usually don’t think through our social media posts either, even though it’s mass communication, because the audience is invisible. But put us in front of a roomful of people to deliver a speech or presentation, and we suddenly become ardent preparers.
Fear motivates us to prepare for public speaking, but comfort fools us into thinking we can launch into strategic interpersonal conversations without getting ready. We rush into the interpersonal conversations that can change the arc of a career or a relationship unprepared, trusting our instincts to give us immediate and correct answers to emotional and consequential situations, while we burn the midnight oil getting slides together for presentations that are forgotten before we’re even halfway through our deck. The problem with our logic is that the crucial moments in our lives typically happen one-on-one, not in front of an audience.
The consequence of winging it through important conversations is brutally simple: vital conversations don’t go our way as often as they should. But tendency doesn’t have to be destiny. Prepare for conversations that matter.
If all the talk about preparation has you worried about where you’re going to find the time, read on. We’re about to free up a bunch of space on your calendar.