3 Steps To Make Difficult Conversations Less Difficult

What if difficult conversations didn't feel so difficult?

Your stress would go down and results would go up.

And as Daniel Coyle says in The Culture Playbook: 

“The best things in life are on the other side of a difficult conversation.”

So, let's make difficult conversations less difficult, shall we?

Here's where we're going today:

1. Master your mindset

2. Clarity of challenge

3. Outcome identification

(Also…I'm sharing a free resource, a handy conversation planner, so keep reading!)

Here we go…

Master Your Mindset

If you feel you're walking on eggshells, you're going to sound like it.

If you're assuming the worst, you're going to temper your message.  

Two powerful tips to help:

1. Would you want to know?

If you were in their shoes, would you want someone to tell you?  If the answer is yes, you've just removed your first hurdle.

2. Consider the best case scenario

Our mind anchors to the worst case scenario.  But what's the best case?  When you consciously think about each of these, you'll realize neither the best nor the worst tends to happen.  It's the middle case that's most likely.  That looks like some initial discomfort/frustration/annoyance, and then understanding or gratitude as you've now given them the awareness to do something about it.

When the clutter and fear is cleared from your mind, you're now in a stronger position to begin considering your approach.

Clarity Of Challenge (x2)

Next, get clear on the challenge at hand.

This has 2 components:

1. Your real challenge

2. The challenge/issue you're addressing

You've got to start with your real challenge.

Faced with scenarios outside of our comfort zone, our safety instinct kicks in.  It tries to tell us things like:

• Nothing is going to change, so don't bother.

• They're going to hate you if you bring this up.

By asking yourself these next two questions, you can begin to identify a more clear path into this conversation:

• What's the real challenge for me here?

• And, what within that is particularly challenging?

Get to the root of your conversational challenge and you'll be better equipped to clearly name the challenge/issue at hand.

These's questions can help:

Outcome Identification

We often get sucked into thinking about what we don't want to happen, so flip this around.

Get clear on what you want out of this conversation.

• What will success look and feel like?

• What action will result from this conversation?

• What can I do to create this desired outcome?

You'll notice everything I've shared is about you and your mindset.

That's because your inner game drives your outer game.  

Next week, we'll get into formulating talking points effectively (while also preserving the relationship).

To get you started, here's the Conversation Planner I mentioned earlier.  

I'd love to hear from you…what's a difficult conversation you're facing?  Let me help you make it a little less difficult…email katie@enduranceboss.com