The Savvy Approach to Difficult Conversations

The Savvy Approach to Difficult Conversations

According to the media we live in an increasingly nasty world. Social media has given everyone with access to the internet the opportunity to express their opinion, regardless of how negative those opinions might be. The sad consequences of this have been all too well reported.

The increase in this negative behaviour is perhaps the because of a perception that the internet offers anonymity to users of social media, which emboldens people to say publicly things that would only previously have been shared in private with family and friends.

This perception does undoubtedly play a role in the current situation but is the issue much wider. I was brought up, as I am sure many of people reading this were, with the simple rule that if you can’t say something nice then you should not say anything at all. Does that, however, mean we never really learn how to talk about what annoys us?

Over my career I have seen many HR colleagues and line managers, including myself put off having a difficult conversation. There is, after all, always something else that is infinitely more important that must be done.

We accept unprofessional behaviour, by convincing ourselves that it is the downside of all those other great attributes that the difficult person has. Or we use one of the other excuses for putting it off. It’s an endless list.

When we do get around to dealing with the issue it’s often reached the point when we just can’t bear it anymore. So, instead of dealing with the issue by following the approach we learnt in our CIPD studies we are often so wound up that our approach becomes very emotional.

Things are said by everyone that no one wanted to say, or they were said in the wrong way. Everyone’s day is disrupted, and the emotional wounds often take days, weeks or longer to heal.

If the only approach you can take is an emotional one you have to be ready for the negative and potentially long-term damage that it will do to employee productivity and employee engagement.

Hindsight is a great but knowing that you could have handled the situation better won’t change the new problems that you have created.

We need a different approach to dealing with difficult people, that makes it easier to deal with the issues before they become problems.

Which is what I think is contained in a new book I have just finished reading. Savvy Conversations, a practical framework for effective workplace conversations by Sarah Harvey.

The premise of the book is that the traditional command and control approach to management and managing difficult conversations in particular does not work in the modern-day workplace. Neither does it work for the new generations of workers. The millennials who are more aware than their managers that if they don’t like the way they are treated there are many other employment opportunities available elsewhere.

The solution offered by Sarah is that we need to restructure the cultural context and purpose of conversations, and then work out the conversational style that we want to adopt in order to achieve the best result from any conversation, whether it is one that might be described as difficult or otherwise.

There is a good business case around the loss in individual and team productivity and the reduction in employee engagement from the poor management of difficult people and situations to justify establishing the sort of changes that Sarah discusses in her book and in the WPLC pod cast available at this link.

Achieving cultural change on any level is far easier said than done. The key to success is changing the way people perceive the problem. As Sarah says it is important to change the way in which conversations are perceived before you can have any chance to change the way in which conversations are used.

Sarah provides a new way of looking at the culture of conversations that is easy to understand. So much so that some colleagues and I were soon using the language provided by Sarah to discuss past difficult conversations and how they might have been made easier if we had used the Savvy Approach.

I first met Sarah when she was first bringing her savvy conversations idea to an audience beyond the companies where she had worked. Since then she has written this excellent book. Sarah has captured in her book the passion for her subject that she eloquently showed in the podcast.

Sarah has also done something else very special. Some business writers give the impression that they have written their book to demonstrate they know more that their reader. Listen to the podcast and you will be struck by how Sarah evidently enjoyed sharing her knowledge and helping yours truly understand the different aspects of her approach. The way in which Sarah has written Savvy Conversations captures this enthusiasm and her down to earth approach to sharing her experience.

You can hear Sarah explain her savvy conversations approach in the podcast available from the Work Place Learning Centre

 

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During a career as a human resources and employee development professional that started in 1981 Michael Millward has worked around the world in a wide range of businesses from start-ups to major conglomerates. His industry experience includes, local and national government, manufacturing, financial services, retail, distribution, hi-tech, e-commerce.

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