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Leadership Conversations – The art of effective challenging conversations

This is the first in a series of Leadership conversations that is aimed at supporting your thinking and awareness around key leadership topics. In this first conversation I want to address a key leadership competency, the ability to engage in honest and challenging conversations, specifically connected with poor behaviours and attitudes. To begin, I will outline what I believe are some of the top reasons managers and leaders have difficulties with effective execution of this important skill.

Throughout my 18 years as a senior leadership coach and facilitator, this is one of the core skills I see that is inconsistent, poorly executed and in lots of cases, almost completely absent.

Whilst business and organisational leaders of teams are good at challenging others around performance, project and programme management and failure to deliver agreed results, there is a distinct and noticeable distaste for tackling people about poor behaviours, attitudes, habits, and interactions.

A typical scenario is that when a person’s poor or maladaptive behaviour begins to be noticed, is having an impact on people, those affected often complain, not to the person concerned but to their line manager or leader. The line manager then becomes the recipient and collator of these complaints. At some point he or she decides about what to do about these. Some leaders go straight in, are very direct in their approach and tell it like it is. Whilst effective in terms of a “Shock and awe” impact, it offers the person, subject of the complaints no way of understanding why they are engaging in this behaviour or addressing it in a meaningful way. The effects of this type of approach are often short-lived. The individual concerned can slip back into their old habit, as “old habits die hard” as the saying goes. At worst, the individual becomes resentful and defensive and this adds another layer of potential toxicity into the team environment which is unhealthy and damaging.

Other managers and leaders effectively sit on the complaints, hoping the situation will resolve itself, without interference. Essentially it is a mixture of both procrastination and avoidance. This is the very worst response. In the vacuum of real managerial or leadership intervention, the poor and often damaging behaviours are enabled to continue. Other team members and relationship stakeholders become silent bystanders, in effect becoming complicit in the continuance of the behaviour. The behaviour will continue and usually gets worse this until such time as it reaches an cataclysmic resolution either through a HR instigated procedure or that individual, and/or other key team members leaving. Whatever the eventual outcome, whilst it is not being addressed effectively, an untold amount of damage can be done to both the entire team environment, it’s cohesion, emotional equilibrium and ultimately bottom-line team performance and results.

To get to the root cause of why leaders and managers are generally poor at this skill, we need to address the following question:

What are the top reasons leaders and managers refrain from engaging in challenging conversations about unwanted behaviours, attitudes, and habits?

I believe there are several complex reasons, but here are my top three: –

1. Culturally, in the British Isles people are brought up to be civil, courteous, and polite to other people. They equate challenging conversations with conflict and generally try to avoid this at all costs. In my experience, most British people would rather make their very first public speech to a large audience, than tackle someone they know and work with about maladaptive and damaging behaviours! And public speaking as we know is a top fear for most people!
2. There is also a strong reluctance because highly charged emotions might well be ignited. Again, culturally a lot of leaders and managers are not equipped sufficiently to handle emotional responses in others effectively. There are still a lot of un-written rules and unhelpful myths about emotions and feelings not being acceptable in working situations.   Because of these unhelpful myths and attitudes, most managers and leaders people dislike having vulnerable and emotional charged conversations.  It can raise uncomfortable feelings and emotions both for themselves and the individuals they need to have the honest and difficult conversation with.
3. Finally, some leaders and managers are concerned about the possibilities of potential reprisal and un-wanted escalation of the situation. They fear that if they approach it directly and handle it ineffectively, it will in effect add “fuel to the fire” and the person concerned might start to either engage in passive/aggressive communication or other added misbehaviour and actions in reprisal to the initial challenge.

Given the three reasons above, which are all valid fears, what choices do they have in starting to engage more comfortably and effectively in learning this important skill?  This is what I will be discussing in Part two of the series, out same time next week.

Do join me and have your say. Join in the conversation. What is your personal experience of either engaging in challenging conversations or being the recipient of such conversations?

If this is a skill deficit, either for you personally, within the team you lead or is a systemic organisational deficit, do get in contact with emintell to start a conversation about how we can support you address this.

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