Ever asked yourself these questions about difficult conversations?
- How do you be honest in a professional way when there are hard things to say?
- Should you be squishy and evasive in a conversation to not hurt someone’s feelings? What happens when things get worse and then when you are honest it doesn’t go well?
- Is your observation fair to share? Can people be honest, real, and genuine? Will people get upset or will we get in trouble if we are honest?
- Can they handle the truth, and will it make a difference anyway?
- What is the difference between annoying and unhelpful or hurtful criticism and constructive criticism?
- Do we say we want honesty but struggle to make hard decisions and have hard conversations ourselves?
Real talk can be hard for leaders as they wrestle with how much to share, what is the ramifications of what they share, will the team understand, is it too much, etc. Feedback can be hard to take as a leader and leaders can accidentally shut it down.
I love the story Patrick Lencioni tells about facilitating a team retreat where the owner had asked for feedback in a recent survey. The survey revealed that the owner did not listen or take feedback well. When Patrick brings this up to the owner, he says, “Who said that?” The team sunk under fear of their honesty and jumped to rescue and backpaddle. As leaders, we can shut feedback down.
In other challenges, our team can sometimes be immature and unskilled in how to give feedback, so comments come out in a critically negative and entitled sounding way. Giving feedback is a learned skill. Take time to help the team learn it!
A book that can help is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. She does a nice job explaining how people can care personally while challenging directly. This is relevant for the leader learning to give better feedback and for helping a team learn how to give feedback. (Radical Candor six-minute summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLBDkz0TwLM)