1. Career and Leadership Development Coach
How to Have a
“Difficult Conversation”:
Relational Communication
6/9/17
Janet Bickel
Career and Leadership Development Coach

2. What combination of Support and Challenge would help this person grow?
high
C H A L E N G
Growth
Anxiety
Stasis
Confirmation
SUPPORT
high
low

3. Seeks to resolve or create Questions assumptions
Judger Mindset
Knows-it-already
Debates
Defends/attacks
Defends assumptions
Sense of separation
Learner Mindset
Curious
Dialogues
Seeks to resolve or create
Questions assumptions
Sense of connection

4. Relational Communication Skills
Self-monitoring
--Notice visceral clues
--When you’re over-reacting, PAUSE and ask “what hooked me?”
* Inquiry and Listening
--Explore, ie ask before telling (eg “is it ok if we discuss this now?”)
--Ask questions that encourage the other to go deeper
--Generative listening (vs “agree/disagree”)
Advocacy: Explain your reasoning and intent [eg “This is why I’m raising this and how I arrived at this conclusion”]

5. Self-monitoring
*Accurate self-assessment depends on understanding our emotions
*What can you learn from visceral clues?
*Notice inaccurate maladaptive self-talk
*Pause, take a deep breath and ask “what’s constricting me here?” or “why am I reacting so strongly?”
Goal: to stay calm and focused in the face of devaluing or challenging situations.

7. Examples of clarifying, nonjudgmental questions to elicit others' assumptions, perspectives, feelings and goals
--Please give an example of what you mean and how you came to that decision.
--Can you walk me through how you came to that conclusion?
--What is your interpretation of.....?
--What are you concluding at this point?
--What needs of yours does this solution not address? What would represent a solution that works for you?
--What do you see that I don’t?

8. Listening to diagnose or fix the problem or the person
Automatic Listening
Right/Wrong
Win/Lose
Agree/Disagree
Good/Bad
Either/Or
Listening to diagnose or fix the problem or the person
Listening to my own agenda
Generative Listening
What could make that possible?
What could that allow us to do?
What goals could that idea advance?
What do you see that I don’t?
Say more… 8

9. Combining Inquiry and Advocacy
high A D V O C Y
Mutual Learning
Explain/
Teach
Observing
Interviewing
INQUIRY
high
low

10. Relational Communication Skills
Self-monitoring
--Notice visceral clues
--When you’re over-reacting, PAUSE and ask “what hooked me?”
* Inquiry and Listening
--Explore, ie ask before telling (eg “is it ok if we discuss this now?”)
--Ask questions that encourage the other to go deeper
--Generative listening (vs “agree/disagree”)
Advocacy: Explain your reasoning and intent [eg “This is why I’m raising this and how I arrived at this conclusion”]

11. Reminders about Differences
*We respond automatically to each other's visible characteristics
*We tend to rank which differences are “better” and to then mistake our categories for reality
*The more similar someone is to us, the more accurate our guesses about them
*What is vital to me may be trivial to you

12. Cognitive shortcuts are built into the brain
-Our mindset largely determines what we notice; we ignore evidence contradicting our assumptions and “cherry pick” data that confirms our opinions.
-We over-estimate what we know about others and the extent to which others agree with us.
-Confirmation bias: we sort what we perceive into categories then mistake our categories for reality
-Saliency bias: memorable events exercise undue influence
-Anchoring: we weigh one piece of information too heavily
See D Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow 12

13. Disadvantages Many Women and Minorities Experience
*relationships occur most naturally between “like” individuals
*face higher hurdles to prove selves to potential mentors
*internalize negative cultural messages
*under-estimate career and leadership potentials
*the accents of some ethnic minorities interfere with communication
*allowed a narrower band of assertive behavior

14. He’s confident He’s analytic He’s authoritative He’s good at details
He’s open
He follows through
He’s passionate
They’re networking
They’re debating
She’s conceited
She’s cold
She’s bossy
She’s picky
She’s unsure
She doesn’t know when to quit
She’s a control freak
They’re chitchatting
They’re catfighting

15. Compared to men, women mentees are:
--More likely to lose their mentor's support
--Less likely to see mentor as a role model
--Less likely to attract a career sponsor or to be viewed as ready for “coat tails” advocacy
--Less likely to feel welcome in ”boys club”
--Have less “social capital”
See: Bickel J. How men can excel as mentors of women. Acad Med. 2014; 89:

16. How would you respond to this mentee?
The med student showed up to our 1st meeting 15 minutes late with a Starbucks cup in hand and didn't apologize.
* This fellow's first question was “do you know what counts as a vacation day?”
She dresses like she's going to a cocktail party—it's unprofessional.
* She's asking for help with feedback she's gotten that she's both cold and too emotional. ??

17. Feels “Undiscussable” to Mentees
I don’t see my mentor as a role model--all he does is work.
He believes that unless I’m willing to be just as focused as he was, I’ll not succeed.
My division chief is from a culture where women are expected to obey the men. Sometimes he like ‘commands’ me to do something-- it makes me want to scream.
My mentor says that sometimes I come across as over- confident. But all his men proteges are way more aggressive than I am.
When my star really started rising, my mentor started shutting me out.

18. Your Brilliant Career Trajectory?

19. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
5. Self-Actualization
4. Esteem
3. Belonging
2. Safety
1. Physiological

20. Creating Safety
*Because positional power skews dynamics, mentors must take steps to diminish hierarchical differences
*Might it be helpful to share difficult learnings from your own mistakes?
*Recognize when your assumptions may be interfering, and ask more questions

21. Reflective Questions for Mentees
Looking at last year: What are you proudest of accomplishing?
What skills do you want to improve in the next few years? What measures of success will you use?
What relationships do you want to build?
What if anything is holding you back from reaching your potential?
What areas of personal and professional growth do you think I can help you develop now?

22. Good Coaching Questions
*How will you develop the necessary expertise?
*Tell me more about your understanding of this choice/dilemma/situation.
*What was the lesson? How can you lock in the learning?
*What concerns you the most about…?
*Where are you being too hard [or easy] on yourself?
*What are your back-up plans?

23. Why do we avoid difficult issues?
*Time pressures
*Risk of being misinterpreted
*Preference for “harmony” or to be “liked”
*“It's not really my problem”
*Not good at “difficult conversations” 23

24. Three Conversations • the “what happened” conversation:
We only know OUR version of what happened
• the “feelings” conversation:
Deal with emotions or nothing will be satisfactorily resolved
• the “identity” conversation:
What does the situation imply about their competency, integrity etc?
Source: Douglas Stone, et al. Difficult Conversations: How to discuss what matters most. 24

25. Raising difficult issues
In preparation ask yourself:
*What are my goals for this conversation?
*What would I most like to communicate?
*What strategy seems likely to prevent defensiveness?
Possible opener:
--“Because our relationship is important, I need to raise what feels like a difficult issue … How do you see this?” 25

26. --What do you want to get better at?
--What's a first step?

27. Johari Window OPEN Blind Hidden Unknown Known to self
Not known to self
OPEN
Blind
Known to others
Hidden
Unknown
Not known to others
Johari Window

28. Ask for feedback then listen for themes
*Any areas in which I'm over-functioning?
under-functioning?
Any observations on how well I listen?
Do I present ideas in an effective manner and invite discussion?
*Do I communicate about problems in ways that facilitate discussion?
*How well do I surface and bridge differences?

29. Your Brilliant Career Trajectory?

30. APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY *What we pay attention to grows
*We tend to find what we look for
Appreciative Inquiry taps into issues people care most about and surfaces possibilities
So ask:
*what’s going well?
*what is working and how can we do/have more of it?

31. Organizations are Conversations
--Our words create worlds: by changing how we participate in conversations, we influence whether we get somewhere new together.
--Organizations are filled with contradictions; if we fail to deal with them in a relational way, they will shut us down
--We can't solve problems we don't talk about