Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR

R 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

Green = Sarah Green Weeks = Holly Weeks Green: Welcome to today's Harvard Business Review Webinar - Mastering Tough Conversations. I am Sarah Green, Senior Associate Editor of Harvard Business Review, and host of the HBR Idea Cast, and I want to thank you all for joining us today. I also want to thank Citrix GoTo Webinar for making this discussion possible. We would like this to be as interactive a session as possible, so if you've questions or comments at anytime, please send those in. We also have a conversation going on at Twitter. You could find us there at HBR Exchange, or you could use the #HBRWebinar. Managers must inevitably engage in difficult workplace conversations. These might include firing under-performing subordinates, or dealing with verbal attacks from colleagues, and I'm sure you could bring them here as examples of tough conversations at work. These conversations are often emotionally-charged, loaded with anger, confusion, and other derailing emotions. How you handle these difficult conversations can affect your reputation, your relationship, your company, even your career. Mishandling these conversations, as too many of us often do, can have a very high price. But how do you improve your comfort, your skills, your mastery at having these tough talks. With us today, with some answers, is communication expert Holly Weeks. Holly publishes, teaches, and consults on these issues. She is Adjunct Lecturer in Management Leadership and Decision Sciences at the Harvard Kennedy School, and she's an Adjunct Lecturer in Communication at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As principal of Holly Weeks Communication, she consults and coaches on negotiation, presentation, and written and conversational communications issues, with a special emphasis on sensitive and difficult problems. Her book, which I highly recommend, is Failure to Communicate: How Conversations Go Wrong and What You Can Do to Right Them . Holly, thanks so much for joining us today. Weeks: And thank you so much. I think I am the happiest person on this webinar to be here. I feel very strongly about helping people get better at a skill that scares us all to death, with good reasons, since our history with it is not very good. Just before you kick things off, I want to just mention that Holly is going to refer to some case studies, and those case studies, and I believe the slides as well, are available for download if you look for the resources area at the lower left hand side of the screen. And with that, Holly, take it away! Thank you so much. Many of all of you here have read very good material on how to prevent difficult conversations. But, in fact, today, I want to look at the dark side of these communications when you have not prevented the difficult conversations. Whether it is with a peer or a boss or a subordinate, someone outside the group, your friends, your family, whoever it may be -- or if you are in a situation in which we have no power to compel people to do what you want, or if you could, the price of compelling people to change is too high. So essentially what I am holding aside is when you can make something happen, despite a failed conversation or when you cannot prevent it. So we are really in a swamp here of difficult conversations. That is where I like to spend my time and I am glad you're here with me. I find that most of us suffer difficult communications a lot more than we master them. We do not focus on getting better at difficult conversations. We are difficult conversation-averse. We focus on the bright side. We focus on hope, and we focus on avoidance, and I understand why. Too often these conversations really do feel like battles. They are loaded with negative emotions when they are full of misunderstanding with people who remain in our lives. I mean, it would not matter to me so much if these were one-off occasions, if we did not have to face people again, but we do. I also find that dealing with, actually dealing with, the dark side of tough conversations is not seen as an acquirable skill, but I believe it is. There are harder complications, especially in the workplace, working on difficult conversation skills goes against the grain. Most professional people have a strong, rational suit, and prefer to check your emotions at the door, and difficult conversations don't seem to spin out rationally.

Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

Even optimism is a complication. We have the optimism of good intentions -- if we mean well, everything will work out well; and if it does not, it's not our fault, because we were well-intentioned. That is not a skill. And we have an optimistic idea that we can resolve difficult conversation with a base of mutual respect, trust, and goodwill. If we have that base, we're in a soft difficult conversation. Because realistically, any more daunting conversations, those qualities are in short supply. As much as anyone, I would prefer that I have any difficult conversations in an atmosphere of mutual respect, but I can t depend on it upfront, because I can't control the mutual part. This is actually worrying me, and it is kind of depressing. Avoidance starts to make more and more sense to me when I talk about it this way. But over and over, I have seen the problems that could have and should have worked out but did not. Because important conversations broke down or turned toxic. The tough problems that were the subject of the conversations were not themselves beyond repair, but resulting damaging judgments, hurt reputations and broken relationships sometimes have been beyond repair. And studies show that the two most common traits of people in leadership positions who derail are brittle relationships and inflexibility. They alienate the people they work with, and they can't adjust their style. Handling difficult conversations poorly carries a huge price tag. Handling them well, matters enormously. So, I want to take the lid off tough conversations in our time together, and look at what makes them go wrong so we can fix them. Let's get concrete and realistic right away, and let's change unilaterally. I do not care what your counterpart is doing. Unilaterally -- what we are trying to do. I'll be clear. I want to do this in part because I have a stake in it. Everyone's life, including mine, would be easier if we were all better at this. So, are you ready? To begin, many of you have seen a case of -- the little, mini case -- Jackie and Ross, and those of you who have not yet seen it can find it following the webinar. But I'll give you a snapshot of the Jackie and Ross case that makes it a good example for many of the points that we want to look at. Here we go. A conversation between Jackie and Ross failed at several points for several reasons. If we were to read through the conversation and then go back and try to prevent this confrontation from happening in the first place, we could point the obvious problems and ways to avoid them. But in our live conversation, the characteristics that make the conversation fail, and what to do about them are not obvious. Our situation with Jackie and Ross is that Jackie is a new manager at a bank. She is new because the bank has recently merged with another bank, and she is going to review Ross who is one of her new reports. Now, Jackie has heard through the grapevine that Ross is a skilled auditor, but he tends to talk down to other people, and that way bothers the managers in the departments he audits. But they never say anything to him about it. He is also quick to challenge feedback that does not go well with the high opinion he has of himself. So nobody, they prefer to avoid the confrontation. Here comes Jackie, who prefers to avoid confrontations, too. But she takes very seriously her responsibility to develop her employees. So, if Ross wants to move up, he needed to be able to communicate more tactfully and positively with his colleagues. Jackie was going to give him a solid salary increase, but he would receive fewer excellent ratings on his review form than he had before. And Jackie also did want the review to be fair. This is how she begins: "Ross, I'm impressed with your auditing skills. This is our first review, but you have a good track record. Your previous managers spoke very highly of you."

But off in that direction Ross goes talking about his strengths, all of his successes. Jackie realizes they are off on the wrong track. So she tries, she jumps in, and she says, "There's one other thing I'd like to mention, but Ross kept right on with his monologue about how strong he was. So, then, Jackie dropped her nice guy routine, and hit the point head on. "Some people," she said, "are unhappy with the way you come across when you are making your recommendations. They

Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

describe you as cocky and superior. You need to work on your interpersonal skills. That's going to be one of my 'going forward' recommendations in the evaluation." Now, Ross, you can tell by looking at his face, Jackie said he really took this badly. He denied having an attitude problem. He pushed back and he actually said to her, "You review me, but you do not see me work day to day." Which, by the way, was true -- they were so new. And then he went on the attack. "They had a lot more direct reports since the merger. Are you feeling a little overwhelmed Jackie - in over your head? Jackie was starting to defend herself, because she was so taken back by Ross's accusations. And then she tried to meet him halfway. "Look, we're getting lost track. Let's see if we can come up with recommendations which would work for both of us. But now, Ross thought, okay, this is great. Jackie is backing down. He pushed even harder and harder. "Why should I take recommendations from you? You do not even know the first thing about my work." Now Ross is attacking Jackie's authority. She takes the gloves off, "I need to tell you that it is unacceptable for you to bully people in their own department, and this very conversation is giving me the evidence I need." "Bully people?" Ross shot back. "The way you're doing now to me?" That's a really depressing case. I'd like to look at part; I want to start imposing some shape to this. So here are six basic types of difficult conversations. It's not the talking about money. The subject of the conversation is not a basic type. People do struggle with difficult subjects, but I think you'll see it's more useful to think about types of conversations because that is where you want to improve. Difficult conversations don't often fit neatly into single categories. They go all over the place, and Jackie and Ross cover five or the six. The first: I have bad news for you. Clearly that was going on with Jackie and Ross. Jackie wanted to handle it well, but she had to try to choose between being direct and being diplomatic. She was worried about over-planning on one hand, under-planning on the other it did not go well. Second - You are challenging my power. Someone worries about tackling a tough issue, usually with a boss, because there's more, you pay a higher price if you screw up the boss -- although, someone should explain that to Ross -because they realized there could be significant fallouts. The third is: You win, I lose. No matter how cooperative one person tries to be, her counterpart always tries to come out on top at her expense. You saw that at Jackie and Ross. What is going on here? A conversation unexpectedly becomes intensely charged and extremely confusing. And I am sure that happened to Ross. And I know it happened to Jackie, Jackie is the person I talked to about this. I am pretty sure it happened to Ross or he would not have been so thrown, "I'm hearing this news as the first time." This one you will recognize: I'm being attacked. One side or both finds himself in stuff for something he never intended. Certainly, this stuff that Ross threw at Jackie was very far from what she meant to have happened. This one didn't come up so much: I can't go there. Conflict-averse people, even powerful professionals, try to avoid difficult conversations altogether. Even as they watch a situation at a relationship degenerate. So, in many cases, I can't go there. Which is the definition of conflict avoidance -- means that there is no conversation until things get a lot worse. However this spins out, these types of difficult conversations don't come one at a time. They usually come in barrages. If we can get a clearer view of what happens at tough conversations, and begin to see them unfolding in recognizable and manageable ways, we will find that the best way to improve your situation going in is to have strategies for difficult conversations, not for preventing them. I mean there might be a strategy for that too, but if it doesn't work, you are

Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

empty-handed. With that in mind I would like to look very directly at strategy. Does this introduction give any of you thoughts or questions before we dive into this strategy question? Green: Well, hi, I think that you preemptively answered one set of questions, which is, how do you know which one of these difficult conversations you are in? It sounds like you may actually be facing all of them at the same time, at a worst case scenario. Weeks: One of the things I find is that we may not all be vulnerable to the same thing. So, something I might struggle with terribly, you are a passmasteras[unaudio]. So, in the end, I have derived these six basic types because they are generally the ones that people struggle with the most. But if you're invulnerable on one point, don't worry about it too much. You're probably handling it very well, unless something gives you feedback that actually you are not, but these are the ones that generally, however they come together, people get screwed up. The reason I think it's worth separating out what they are is because that could influence both your strategies and your tactics. Something that Jackie could not do was, I don't know if she could or not, but it certainly didn't come up in the conversation. Green: Great. Thank you. With that in mind I would love to know what the strategy is for handling that. Weeks: Well me too. If we look forward, basically, I pretty much want to rethink what we try to do in strategies for difficult conversations, and I will continue to look at Jackie and Ross as our example. Thinking strategically, lets see how we could move, it lets us think how our counterpart could move, and even how our counterpart is likely to move. I'm very interested in that, because I find that most people most of the time are reacting as soon as conversations get tough. They don't have any forward motions. Imagine that you are in a conversation with me, and I have the strategy for going forward and you don't. Well, who is going to direct this conversation? It is not going to be you. Jackie, of course, thought she would be directing the conversations, but Ross was the one with-, I don't know if he had any strategies, but rebuttaltype techniques completely threw her off. But working from strategy, first, we are going to assume there will be problems had, and we're going to anticipate how to handle them. At the same time, assume we're going to be taken by surprise. Now, in Jackie's case, she had no strategy for difficult conversations. She had prepared the topics she wanted to cover in the performance review. She had a grasp of the problem with Ross's attitude. She had some supporting information there. She had a scoring plan for the review, with a figure in mind for Ross's salary increase, which, by the way, was more than what she had gotten herself at his level, and she had a commitment to fairness. She had what she thought was a constructive opening, although I'd certainly argue to the end with that. But Jackie put her head in the sand as to how the conversation itself was likely to go. She didn't have any strategy for a conversation that was not going to be congenial. One in which Ross would refuse to accept her points or conclusions. She floundered. She found herself reacting to Ross's ploys. She found herself trying to make a bargain with him and failing, but she never found herself implementing a strategy to deal with what was happening in the conversation herself, and yet she had perfectly good reasons ahead of time to think that this would not be easy. For example, Jackie, well-intentioned as she was, spoke dismissively about Ross's attitude as, these are her words, one thing I would like to mention. Even though it was the significant problem to be faced. Tough personal feedback will always be hard to hear and by minimizing it, Jackie practically set Ross up not to hear it at all. But when Ross did ignore the topic, Jackie swapped minimizing for hit the point head on. The conversation began to deteriorate really fast at that point, but not just because the attitude issue was a sensitive one. In fact, the topic had barely been raised before it was snuffed out by distortion, belligerence, confusion, and accusations from both sides. Now concretely, Jackie needs a pair of strategy devices to correct the faults in the conversation. So, we want to think through a preferred outcome and preferred working relationship, plus interferences. Let me get this as clear here as I possibly can. Preferred outcome is where we want to get where we think we can get, where we're trying to get in the conversation itself. Once we hear our counterpart's concerns, we might adjust our preferred outcome. That's fine, but we should have one going in. That means that before you even get into the conversation, in many cases, we hope before you get into it,

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you're trying to think what the preferred outcome is for you, much as you might be influenced by what your counterpart says. Preferred working relationships: it is not what is wrong between the two counterparts, but what's wrong between us and our own preferences, our own preferred outcome. Hang in here for a sec. In a difficult conversation, it is much easier and more effective to talk about a good thing we want and what is interfering with it now, than to talk about what's wrong with our counterpart. Jackie, of course, used a lot of strategy. She wanted to talk about what was wrong with Ross, and how he could fix it, instead of talking about something that she wanted, and why they didn't have it now. But, isn't that the very kind of soft, the kind of over-positive idea that got Jackie into trouble with her opening. No, because its companion part was interfering with the relationship we want, builts in balance, which Jackie didn't have and couldn't find. Plus, in planning strategy, interference is the companion category to a preferred working relationship. We know what our preferred relationship is, but why don't we have it in this conversation with this counterpart? What's interfering with the relationship we want? What's conflicting with our own ideal? Some of these we may know and some we may not, but every question will change every time. To me this is the kind of preparation that influences the strategy you go into with your counterpart. As a side benefit, it's also part of the conversation itself, but it'll be much better stuff to say than most people use. Now what would this kind of strategy look like for Jackie? To begin, this one we do know about Jackie's preferred working relationship with Ross: we know that Jackie wanted to be helpful to Ross because he reported to her, and she took the advancement of her reports seriously, and she favored constructive conversations and solutions that appear fair to both sides. Now, looking at the interference, we remember that Jackie knew from the information she got before the review, three things that would probably interfere with her preferred relationship with Ross during the review. First, Ross would be likely to challenge her suggestions if they didn't contribute to his advancement. Second, he was defensive about criticism. And third, he was likely to be surprised and resistant to comments about his personal skills and unlikely to agree with her, in part because he has never heard any of these before. In the review itself, when they hit the roughest patch -- Ross's attitude with clients how would Jackie's plan to use preferred working relationship and interference as a strategy have played out? First, preferred outcome. I want Ross to recognize that he has an attitude problem and agree to my recommendations that he work on his interpersonal skills. Jackie told me, when we tried to pick up the pieces of this disastrous conversation, but I'll tell you this: it would've been much better if Jackie had scrutinized a preferred outcome like that and said to herself, "I don't think that is going to happen." Given what she knew about Ross, given what anyone knows about how hard it is to hear about interpersonal problems with the people from audit, or whatever one's work is, during a review, I must say Jackie suggested, if you recall was, "You will want to work on that" It's not going to be well-received. So, I don't think Jackie can get the outcome she wants given the approach that she used. So, I'd like her to think about that ahead of the conversations, and probably in that particular case work to try something better. Preferred working relationship and interferences. Again, in a difficult conversation, it is much easier and more effective to talk about a good thing you want and what is interfering with it now, than to talk about what's wrong with your counterpart. I mean, this is a strategy issue. So, what I would look for and do for Jackie is that she try a new opening. That is about as far as we will go on this example. She might have said to Ross, "We have not worked together long, but I want you to know how important it is to me professionally to help my reports advance. I want this to be a constructive review that looks fair to both of us. That gives me a problem because I want to talk about a tough issue that I do not think you have heard about before. I think it's going to be hard for you to hear." Think for a second about how Ross is set-up by this opening, compared for the following conversations, compared to the way he was set-up in Jackie's actual first attempt, in which case, he was praised for the work he was doing. Ross is far likelier to be able to hear feedback from Jackie, part because he knows it is coming and because it doesn't sound so embarrassing, and it's not destructive to his own sense of reputation as what she chose to say.

Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

Now, I'll tell you that Jackie herself came up with this language, but it took a while. And one of the reasons that it was slow-going is that good strategy in a difficult conversation is often an act of courage. It's a lot easier to start soft. But given how that tends to play out, I can't recommend it, and I know this goes better. To be clear, having a good strategy doesn't mean we're not going to have bad moments. It just helps us think well when we do. Getting through a bad moment is an act of courage. Any questions about strategy? Thoughts, counterviews, arguments about strategy? Green: Well, there is one interesting question that has come up in particular. What if you are talking with someone who won't let you talk, either because of a power differential, they have the power; or because they are one of those "I can't go there" people. If you are trying to have this productive conversation and someone won't let you get a word in, then how do you use any of your strategies? Weeks: Yeah, getting from dialogue to monologue -- that's a bit of a challenge. Before you get in there, experiment with a friend -- you know, pay them if you need to -- to play that role, and ask them to give you feedback on what combination of body language, for example, and words you can use. We're in a pickle here because interrupting is not well regarded in our culture. So, if I'm the monologist and you just want to jump in, and I feel like you're interrupting me, you've made at least a faux pas in terms of social interactions. And that is not what you want, but often, if I use-, if I'm saying "uhum-uhum," and supporting what they're saying, then people would feel like you're talking about what they're talking about and that relieves them a bit and they will then pause. I am an expert in making use of any inhalation. Anytime anybody is trying to take a breath man I'm in there. I do often begin by granting them what they're saying, even if I'm going to argue from there. If I'm just granting them what they're saying we're not in a difficult conversation, but if I'm trying to move it from what they are arguing, then it is. So, it's a combination of signaling with your body and essentially that you're not a threat. But you do want to take turns here in this conversation. And that counts to at least give you that little pause. Slip in, slip in. Host: Thank you. We have a second question, and which actually you may be about to answer it, and that is, what if you are really kind of fearful of these kinds of conversations, that it's hard to even think about it as a proactive thing to do. How do you get over that hurdle? And you may be going there next. I will. But I want to touch on this now because that's, you're very patient, this is good ahead of time. Look at this, to be perfectly honest with you, this is what I assume: I assume that we are conflict conversation-averse. It just, the cause is so high of practicing avoidance as our preferred approach to difficult conversations. So, I am assuming that this is a struggle for all of us. That's partly why I look at this as an act of courage. I certainly would not go into; I wouldn't go talk to the UN as my first exercise in handling a difficult conversations. I would work on skills in more protective environments. I can't make it feel good upfront, but I do know that if you have successes, it will start to feel better from then on. It's kind of an iterative process here, but I want to give you the tools. And then, you know, take a drink, have a beer, and maybe that will make it easier for you. Somehow solve yourself and go from skill. Great, hi, thank you. I would like to change horses now and look at tactics. If strategy gives us what we want to say, tactics are how we're going to say it. We tend mistakenly to think that the trick with the conversations is a knack for tactics alone- nope. I love this image of the two physicists and one of them is writing on a blackboard and in the middle of an equation. Then a miracle occurs, and the other thinks that he might want to be more exclusive here in this particular step. We tend to operate on the premise that we'll go into this conversation, and when things get tough, a miracle will occur and we'll back on track. It's not going to happen. In part because we tend to see what we want is to say the usual things that are hard for people to hear, but we want to say them in a way that will get the reactions they usually get. That's asking tactics to do more than they can do. The truth is that saying-, trying to say bad things better so we get a better response, is much harder than having better things to say. So, good tactics depends on good strategy.

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When you're in a tough conversation, counterparts don't shout or lie or threaten or stonewall or monologue or refuse to reason, because they're crazy or vicious. Although I know how much people prefer things that their terrible counterpart is crazy. You know people aren't that crazy. And it doesn't help you m uch to assume that they are so lets just drop that. They're not doing it because they're crazy. They're doing it because they are trying to stop a threat. I call these thwarting ploys. Bad choice of term because it is hard for me to pronounce, but I want to separate it from tactics. Tactics I want to use as good things to do. Thwarting ploys are generally not aimed at us personally, they tend to be strong, fixed patterns. Counterparts use them out of habit. Sometimes even unconsciously or because it had success with them in the past. I'll bet you anything that the reason that Ross came back so hard at Jackie is because it has worked for him before, not because he invented this specifically to suit her whom he had virtually never met. If we rethink what to do in terms of tactics, there are two things I'd like to focus on today. The first is to immunize our self against thwarting ploys. Here's the thing: we need to be vulnerable to a ploy for it to trigger a reaction from us. I tend to think of this as-, you know when scientists are studying how a pathogen deals with a cell and some of the scientists focus on getting rid of the pathogen, and some of the scientists work on making the cell more invulnerable to the pathogen. I'm looking at the ladder. The two had to link up for the pathogen to be a problem. I can't control the pathogen, but I can control myself, the cell. If we're not vulnerable to the thwarting ploy, we don't have to think about it. But don't worry about all of them. Just worry about the ones we're vulnerable to. We have three choices: react, again and again, make our counterparts stop using the ploy or immunize ourselves. Immunizing ourselves is far and away the best bet. You know, and I know, and I know from one of the last questions, is that we know what our own vulnerabilities in thwarting ploys are. We tend to be susceptible to the same ploys for decades. If we're not provoked by someone shouting at us, shouting has probably rolled off of us for a long time. If we are provoked by shouting, this is probably not the first time. Just as habit drives most thwarting ploys, habits drive our reaction to do them. We can't predict when a ploy will be thrown at us, but we can determine how we will handle ourselves when it is. We can break this viral lock of ploy invulnerability unilaterally, instead of hoping our counterparts would change. When we immunize ourselves against thwarting ploys, we stop simply reacting to what's thrown at us and learn to protect ourselves where we're vulnerable. We focus on ourselves. Part of the reason that this is my approach to improving the tactics aspect of difficult conversation is I didn't have luck changing my counterpart, but I could change myself. I do know where I'm vulnerable. This will make you think less of me I'm afraid. I'm not as vulnerable as most people are to counterparts lying to me in a difficult conversation in part because I've seen it before, and it sort of makes sense to me that people aren't telling the whole truth all the time in difficult conversations. But many people are very vulnerable to lying, and so they need ways to deal with that. And I want to leave you with an approach to solving that. But before I do that, I want to introduce this second approach. And I don't mean to tease you, but it'll work better this way, based on my experience, and that is: we need to find a middle ground between extremes. How do we go so far wrong when we're trying to handle the difficult conversation right. First, we tend to rely on an approach that insists that our counterparts either do not have a problem with what we're saying or change themselves. That means I'm putting my success in your hands even when the two of us are at loggerheads. And, you know, I don't have that much confidence.

Second, we see our range of tactics as simultaneously narrow and extreme. Although the tactic clearly was not working, Jackie didn't seem to have anything else to put in its place. She swung from the, what I call the hyper-nice opening. She was not even on track for the conversation she was going to have by praising Ross. She swung from that to what she calls "hitting it head on." And I'm thinking to myself what happened to

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the middle ground, between hyper-nice and "hitting head on." Well, from his side, Ross choices of tactics was only to polar extremes: defer to Jackie or challenge her. These are terrible choices, terrible choices, narrow and extreme. I'll tell you, here's a little pearl of wisdom. Inevitably, our problem counterpart's emotions rise in direct relation to the ineffectiveness of our own tactics. So you know where I'm going to come out on this. I want to change it on our side, not hope that things go differently for the counterpart. So to get really specific, we want to take two steps. To get balance is to find that point. There is no trick to handling a conversation well despite tough emotions, only skill. It's not a trick. We know very well how to speak neutrally. The skill is bringing it from our area of strength, which is ordinary conversations, to our area of weakness, which is difficult conversation. You commit to speaking from neutral even when you don't feel like it. No emergency room nurses, no police officers, say to themselves: next time I'm not going to feel my emotional reactions to what I see and hear. They know they will, but they have also mastered the skill of going to neutral and responding from there even in the face of a strong emotional reaction. We can learn it. Know which of your reactions are your own worst enemies in difficult conversations. Practice responding neutrally even when you don't feel neutral. Don't hope that in a moment you're going to make changes spontaneously. Now, let's look a lot more specifically at the foundation of a tactic for going to neutral. I call this the blueprint for speaking well at tough times, and I'm going to say it again and again I don't win until I'm in there to practice this. This is a blueprint that's simple to grasp: clear contents, neutral tone and temperate phrasing. But it can be hard to apply if your habit is to be tough or soft, blunt or circumvent, to attack or saying nothing, to be stubborn or give-in, to retaliate or take the punch. In tough conversations clarity, neutrality, and temperance take practice. I want to be very specific about what I mean here because there's a lot of ways to do this kind of in a mediocre fashion. Clarity means let your words do your work for you, say what you mean. So, in Jackie's revision, when she said to Ross, "I want to talk about tough issues that I don't think you've heard about before. I think it's going to be hard for you to hear." She was very clear with her words. There was no more of the hinting, the sidestepping that she used in the first version great clarity in her content. I find that many people think that a roundabout and misleading way of telling someone that he's not getting something that he wanted is brutal, but there is nothing inherently brutal about honesty. It's not the content, but the manner of delivering the news that makes it brutal or humane. If the content is clear, the listener can start to deal with the information, not guess at it or misunderstand it. In that way, clear content eases the burden for the counterpart, rather than increases it. But now, alright, there is a difference between brutality and humanity in being clear. Why do things go so badly wrong in these conversations? Well, that brings us to tone. Tone is all the non-verbal part of a message. It's your vocal inflections, you facial expression, your body language -- and they carry emotional weight. They are read by your counterpart as an emotional load on what you are saying. A neutral tone helps you be heard without distortion. Interestingly, when Ross said to Jackie -- I actually do not think it's interesting -- during his performance review: "Are you feeling a little overwhelmed, Jackie- in over your head?" It was his tone that made his question sarcastic, rather than sympathetic. It's hard to use neutral tone when emotions are running high, I know that. But it is familiar to hear it. Even in crises we're accustomed to classic neutrality of NASA communication, or else. We'll use Tom Hanks, "Houston, we have a problem." Rather than say it, "Houston, we have a problem." (different tone). It takes practice to acquire such neutrality in voice, face and body, but it is part of middle ground and it helps you both speak well and get heard without distortion. The key is that in ordinary conversations, you talk that way all the time. We want to bring that tactic from our area of strength to our area of weakness. Do you know what I am saying? I am saying there's a certain degree in difficult conversations to imitate your-self in a better moment. That leaves us with our last aspect of the blueprint: temperate phrasing. When you say to yourself, "I can't say that," you probably can say it; you just can't say it that way. Some phrasing is temperate, some disassembles, some provokes your counterpart with loaded language. If your counterpart dismisses, resists, or throws back your words, he's not likely to hold on to your content. That's my problem with prerogative phrasing, which is what Ross used with Jackie. Just as my

Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

problem with Jackie swinging from hyper-nice to completely not saying what she had to say and then really hitting well head on. Jackie said, "Ross I've heard that some department managers are unhappy with the way you come across when you're making your recommendations. They think you're kind of cocky and superior. You need to work on your interpersonal skills." Even we who are in this difficult conversations ourselves, we could pick on a loaded language. Of course for Ross, it was like a red flag infront of a bull. If Jackie had changed her language, not her content, but her language, she might have said, "The managers you audit tell me that your recommendations would go down better if they were delivered colleague to colleague not up-down. It's hard for them to hear about mistakes in their procedures, even when they know you're right. In this case, my voice is even more neutral, more uninflected than how I would ordinarily talk. But that can help people not try to read my emotions read a different take on the message, which Americans are super into. In the revisions, Jackie's goal was to advance the conversation, to hear and be heard accurately, and have a functional exchange between two people on a sensitive issue. Temperate phrasing will get her there and provocative phrasing will not, so we'll look at- it is important to me is that we separate out these three things. Yes, clear content, neutral tone, temperate phrasing are a package deal, but you won't get the same good results if you use temperate, but mix your message with a contradictory body language; nor will it work well if you think your content too blunt, so you soften the phrasing. That's a mix-up. Bluntness is a characteristic of intemperate phrasing, not of content, but softening your content to fix the problem of phrasing will not get you where you want to go. Keep the blueprint simple and stick with it. Practice all the time. Call me up- wait, alright, not everybody. But call somebody up, practice on the phone. Practice the difficult message that you want to give. See if you can get to this characteristic of tactics, and it will stand you in good stead. You'll notice here when I talk about tactics, I'm not trying to do the same old thing and get a different result. I can't control the result I'm going to get from my counterpart. I can't control my counterpart, so I'm going to change the stuff that I can control, and that's on my side. That's what I'm looking for, for you. I'd like to end here with a stand-back overview of my idea of the background to all of this, which is three-way respect, and we'll start with self-respect, balance within yourself. Self-respect is not self-justification or self-righteousness or self aggrandizement, although I think Ross would think it was. It's a balance stance that we take to brace against our own emotional reactions. Self-respect here is about us, and it's for us. But it isn't at our counterparts expense. That self-respect is a high standard that means to me "hold your own." but in what you do, please do not excuse -- I want to take off the please -- don't excuse yourself, your own bad behavior in difficult conversations. Respect yourself. Own what you do. It'll just be helpful if you have more skill. The second aspect of the three-way respect is respect for your counterpart and that's balance between the two of you. Respecting the counterpart means recognizing that they have interests and concerns they think are valid. It is not necessary for you to agree with them, and it is not desirable necessarily for you to defer to them. Respecting the counterpart is a working attitude. Even when we're provoked, our counterpart can't make us just a reaction machine. So, I'm using respect as a transitive verb. I'm way past how you feel at the moment I don't particularly care how you feel. Please don't count on reciprocity from your counterpart. Bring respect unilaterally. You bring this to the conversation that means you control it. Waiting until your counterpart brings it -- I don't think it's ever going come up at all, but I know that before I bring it it will. And perhaps somewhat oddly. The third leg of three-way respect is to respect the conversation itself; to bring balance to the conversation. Focusing on the landscape of the conversation, which is the way that I think of it, these parkour players are using their environment, they're using their landscape to practice their sport, even though it doesn't look like a landscape that can be used. Focusing on the landscape of your conversations where the problems are playing out. Take some of the pressure off the two players in the conversation. Like these parkour tracers players. They have, when they run into a problem or an impediment, they have a "what have we got here" kind of approach, as opposed to "Oh God, this is a horrible impediment! I probably should stop." What we do is think where we are now and could move. Where our counterpart is and is likely to move. Where we want to get and what's in the way of getting there. I so often hear in a debrief after a

Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

horrible disaster for conversations, that one party or the other could see where the counterpart was likely to move, but they didn't know what to do. All they could think of was stopping something, instead of working on their side to work through the problems that are in the conversation itself. It's kinda like chess. The problems are in the game. That's the nature of the game; it is not that your counterpart is a problem. Alright, maybe <muttering (44:23)> and in the time that we've had, I hope you found values here. I myself clearly feel very strongly about this. I thank you very much for joining the webinar, and let me say that the more of us who can set right a conversation that's going wrong, the better. So, spread the word. Thank you very much. Host: Okay, Holly. Thank you. That was enormously helpful and we have questions flooding in. So, I'm happy to have some time here at the end to get into some of that but before we get into some of the really tough emotional questions that people have, which I thank you all for sharing. We have a few really interesting kind of tactical questions. Things like, if it's going to be a hard conversation, should you have third party present as a witness? Should you go to the other person's office, or a neutral location? How does location play into this even time of the day? Do you want to do it the end of the day so that people can leave and get out of the office? How do you think about these kinds of tactical questions? Weeks: Whoever submitted that question is doing all the right work, because these are strategy decisions, right? You're not even in the conversation yet. There is no one single answer that those are the questions to ask, and in many cases, those are the questions to get advice on. If you, even in my own case, let's say, so part of the reason I work on this stuff is I'm not so pure, I struggle with a lot of this myself. And I, long ago, learned that I needed strategy buddies, because I would get, well, I couldn't get past my own point of reluctance, my own fears, my own concerns. I needed somebody a little more level-headed to say, "Here is the way to think about that question." So, I cannot answer the question in the abstract because there is no one answer, but it is the right kind of decision to make. For example, do you want to suggest by leaving the workplace and having the conversation elsewhere that this is a kind of a friend-to-friend conversation? And I might do that if I were trying to give a colleague of mine I'm not going to even say a friend although that might be the feeling that I might want to project -- if I wanted to say person-to-person, as opposed to employee-to-employee. On the other hand, if you ask me to step away from the workplace, and then you started talking about something that was suitable only to the workplace, I will be very suspicious about this conversation. So, it's a call depending on what you're trying to do, and your best judgment about how to make this work well. In terms of, do you want a witness, now we're in I think the same person is thinking about that I would, in my own case, I would have friends that are lawyer, so I would not do it personally. But, otherwise, I might do it anonymously and describe the kind of conversation I wanted to have and ask if my organization believes that this was the kind of thing that should not be done one-on-one, but you have verification of some kind. And of course, I wouldn't recommend that you wear a wire, because that's kind of an offense itself. So, that again, many other people are in a better position to judge the answer to that question than you are. And here I would also say that beware of your own biases. If you decide that you're brave and you're strong and you can handle these things -- alright, but that may make you turn away from a good option because you think it is going to work out the way you planned. So, if I'm feeling very brave and competent, and I go into a conversation that could have legal ramifications, I should step aside for my swallow my pride, go to my self-respect, hold my own, but own what I do, and get somebody in there with me and if that's the important thing. I wish I could say in the abstract but I can't. Host: Holly, thank you. I'm also seeing a number of questions coming in around it seems that the impulse to fix the other person is dying hard. So a lot of questions about well what if the other person is being too emotional or defensive or they lash out or they shut down and they won't talk to you at all. A lot of these questions about how to respond to different thwarting ploys, so maybe a bit more on that. Weeks: Yeah. I can tell there are a lot of parents on the webinar, because they're trying to fix the kids and teach them good ways to behave in conversations. Between adults, I am not sure fixing the kids is the approach that is going to be best received. Again, I applaud these questions, this is exactly the kind of thing that you want to master and have to admit that worried about in order to master. If I could leave you in the time that we have with one approach to this this

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Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

is a hard one. You may need to look at theory to communicate to get more on this, because I cannot exhaust the topic here, and that is make the ploy discussable. Speak to the ploy. As long as no one says to Ross, Ross the way you're talking to me now says that you're pretty vulnerable -- I wouldn't use that word -- the way that you're talking to me now says you have not heard this before and it is a hard thing to hear, which is the language that Jackie ended up with, although a little late in the day. What you're doing is, you are the word that comes to mind is you are calling Ross on his aggression, but I do not like the phase calling him on it because in fact that's pretty aggressive on your side, but you are seeking to what it is that Ross is doing, that is problematic. And again, this is an acquired skill, but I remind you that only what Ross is doing that is bothering Jackie is a problem. It's not inherently a problem. If Ross said to Jackie, feeling a little in over her head, Jackie, and it made Jackie laugh, she's not falling from there. And that thwarting ploy just rolled right off. His sarcasm just didn't hit home, it didn't work. Then you do not have to do anything. It's very hard to continue using a ploy once someone has spoken to it, because then you have to note to yourself what you're doing. You will find people wash their faces, and suddenly, they're kind of pulled up short and wondering what to do now, and much to my surprise, I will find people often, very quietly apologize for having done it, and try again to get back in the conversation. I am surprised by that, because I'm a kind of a hasty-tempered person. And usually if I am trying to cause offense I'm not going to fail, and I am not quick to that go off. But when somebody does, with the characteristic we talked about clearly, neutrally and temperately phrased, call me on what I have said, I recognize that this is not my first choice of approach. Host: Thank you, and that is actually a great segue-way into some other questions we've gotten from people, which is specifically about immunizing themselves from those kinds of thwarting ploys. How do you really do that? How do you really make it so the things that hook us, stop hooking us? Weeks: Yeah, boy, maybe I have mislead you a little bit because in fact, you're still going to feel what you feel. In many cases, you're just going to handle yourself differently. And so, in protective situations, please don't wait until you're talking to your boss to try this. Figure out -- oh, don't figure -- just record because you already know. Record the things that you struggle with the most, and then, in that moments of calm, with your strategy buddy, your tactical buddy, if you have one, think what you're going to do the next time. For example, one of the ways that the world breaks into two is people who are sympathetic when someone talking to them starts to cry. And people who are utterly freaked out when someone who is talking to them freaks out and starts to cry. And generally, in the latter case, people believe that the crying person must be the crying woman is being manipulative, but I can tell you now, having worked on this for a very long time, the women who cry in these situations are often horrified at what they have done. They are haunted by having broken down. Figuring out whether they're manipulating you or not, that should not be your line of work because you can't control your counterpart. But what we want is an approach that works in both cases, and those of you who are not triggered by this will be laughing at my suggestions in either case. Whatever you think is the cause of the tears, hand her a tissue. If she's trying to manipulate you, the word is: did not work, nothing is happening here. Carry on if you must. In fact if she broke down and is just devastated by what is happening, she does not have to face your anger or dismissiveness. You have literally just handed her something, given her a hand. I like these approaches that are not dependent on the motive of the counterpart, which in fact, you don't know and in difficult conversations you are probably not a good guesser. Host: You know Holly, that actually raises a great point, which I remember from the book and we didn't quite have time to get into it today, but it seems like an important thing to highlight which is that, we only have access to what the other person is going up for instance, over email, over the phone -- if some of these things are coming at you, you have even less to go on. It seems like it's just so hard to remember in these cases, but we're all probably communicating less than we actually think we are. Any advice on in the moment remembering that there is a lot going on below the surface that we can't see. Weeks: You are right, we didn't get that far today. Although it is sort of a third leg of handling this kind of conversation, which is that there is a great deal you don't know and that is just a fact. That's not a theory that you don't know a lot of stuff here. So, we need approaches that don't depend on in fact knowing stuff that we don't know. That is one of the reasons that I tried to make more things discussable in the conversations than most people do. Most people handle their

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Project Name: HBR 10/14/2013 Mastering Tough Conversations with Holly Weeks Session Number: File Name: HBR 11-14-2013 Weeks Duration: 00:58:52 Pages: 12

tough spots with silence, hoping that nobody will notice that they're freaked out or whatever their reaction is, but I have trained myself to ask people what's going on with them. I'm not saying that's what you do, I'm saying have that in your repertoire of things to try and master it, not waiting until you get in there, but ahead of time. I find that I am making difficult conversations more like chess, more like a sport where you practice and you get ready, and you do have a counterpart but they're not necessarily bad people but you just got a tough game going on. That is how I think about it, partly because it's helpful to think of it that way. I'm as vulnerable as anyone else to my bad reactions but I don't have to act on them in the conversation itself, but I will leave this with something that Kathy just said, which is if things are getting tough, please pick up the phone. I cannot tell you how much damage you can do by leaving a written trail of bad correspondence or emails. It's not going to help that you ask me if I'm your counterpart to interpret your tone when it's written. And of course, I interpret it with my own ear, not your mouth. So, in many cases, and this would freeze your blood, the harder the job, the closer you want to get. Now I sound like the Godfather -- didn't he used to say that he liked to keep his enemies close. You want to talk and even better than that it's face-to-face. These days I don't think I can require face-to-face because of the cost of airfare, but talking is better than emailing, and I must say email feels safer. Doing this well is an act of courage it is not easy, but it's better. Host: Holly, thanks a lot. I think we have time for just one more question. Which a lot of people have asked, which is if you should have a conversation that is either in the process of going off the rail or maybe it was yesterday and youre just now or maybe you have just tuned in to the webinar because yesterday you had a terrible conversation. How do you ever recover in media-risk, in the moment or after the fact? Weeks: This is so you are fabulous people in this webinar. There is in "Failure to Communicate" a whole section on recovering from error, because I assume that I'm going to make mistakes. It's built in that I will, and my recommendation is, along with owning what you do, become good at taking responsibility for your mistakes. Learn how to apologize well. If you put owning what you do, which is part of self-respect, together with respecting your counterpart, and respecting the problem that has been created in this conversation. Part of self-respect is also doing things you don't necessarily want to do. That's on your side. I would become a good apologizer, and if you grew up in a family of girls, you all learn to like over-apologize. Let's see if we can bring some balance to that, so find neutrality there between extremes, but it is almost always well-received. If someone says "I was hasty-tempered yesterday, and I regret it today." You'd find your own words. I don't want to give you this language, because it's probably not the way you talked, but owning what you do is a big deal. And it doesn't have to be in the moment, it may be afterwards. No. It's going to be met with different kinds of responses from different kinds of people. Some people don't want to let go. Okay, you're still doing your side right, and all I know how to do is handle my unilateral tide of this not my counterpart's respect. And I will say that I have learned in many cases if I am taking responsibility for an error, and to be honest with you in negotiations, sometimes you look for something to take responsibility for so that you can change the center of the exchange by regretting some part of the conversations. I'll just repeat. Straight repetition from someone who doesn't want to let it go is probably better than following wherever they're going. It seems like kind of a light touch, a bitter hasty explanation, but put it in your repertoire. Owning what you do, do something about it. Host: Holly, thank you again so much for joining in today, and I'm afraid that we are out of time, and I hope today I got to most of your questions somewhere or another. You asked me fantastic questions today; I know that's what Holly said. Thanks again to Holly Weeks for sharing her insights today, and also thank you all for joining us and for asking such fantastic questions. With that, that concludes todays webinar. Of course we have to thank Citrix GoTo W ebinar for making this fantastic production possible. I hope you all have great day. Thanks again.

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