|
Joseph Grenny
Every camp director has been there. In fact, if you’re like most
camp leaders, you’re there right now. If asked, you could immediately
name two or three people with whom you should have a crucial conversation
about some topic, but you haven’t. Perhaps you’ve even brought
it up, but you danced around the real issue and never laid all your cards
on the table. When you think about facing it again, your mouth gets dry,
your head aches, and your muscles start to twitch.
The Universal Dread
If you haven’t been camping alone in a cave, you’ve probably
faced situations like these:
- You sent a camper home who was repeatedly harassing other campers.
His/her parents are on the phone demanding an explanation — and
a refund.
- You’ve got a handful of counselors who do as little as they
can get away with — without being fired. They seem to think summer
vacation includes them. Your track record shows that if you come down
on them they’ll more than pay you back with attitude — and
you can’t afford to lose them in the middle of the season.
- A child was given the wrong medication during a camp stay. It was
a fairly innocuous mistake — but the parents, who are now demanding
an explanation — don’t seem to think so.
- Another homesick child. That you can manage. What’s tough is
that the parents keep calling and making matters even worse —
almost ensuring night after night of withdrawal pains for the child.
The parents are adamant that “they know what their child needs
better than you.”
- It’s the end of the season. Whew. You’re facing a staffer
who is gung ho about returning next year. Only you’d rather hire
Gomer Pyle than bring back this guy.
- You’ve got a cook whose vocabulary doesn’t seem to include
the word “quality.” It does, however, include words like,
“I’ve been here since you were wearing diapers.” Translation:
Don’t pressure me; I’ve got more clout here than you do.
And if that’s not enough, there’s your spouse or life partner
who is constantly after you to spend more time with him or her. The conflict
between you is rarely handled through candid and effective conversation,
so instead it surfaces in sarcastic comments, petty games, and the "silent
treatment."
We all know these conversations are uncomfortable. But do they represent
a critical factor in the success or failure of a business?
Crucial Conversations Can Be Sticky Business
Our research with over 20,000 employees in companies around the world
has revealed that conversations like these are far more than just emotionally
uncomfortable events. They literally determine the success or failure
of any group or organization. We called them Crucial Conversations because
how you and others in your camp habitually handle these conversations
has a profound influence on:
- quality of your products and service;
- productivity of your staff;
- loyalty of your customers;
- level of commitment and happiness in your family; and
- quality and length of your life.
For example, our research has shown that the productivity of your staff
can double if you and others in your camp learn to deal immediately, directly,
and respectfully with unmet expectations and poor performance. In fact,
in the best camps, while leaders play a key role in giving feedback, most
feedback is given by fellow staffers who are most affected by the behavior
of their colleagues.
In summary, we've found that often the most effective people in both
personal and professional pursuits are those who are most skilled at handling
the crucial conversations that either lead to or keep us from the best
results.
Tips for Succeeding at Crucial Conversations
If your idea of staff training is to read The Giving Tree or The Lorax,
the following tips may dramatically improve your results next season.
After twenty years of watching hundreds of people succeed — and
fail — at crucial conversations, we’ve found that success
can be achievable and predictable if you use a few powerful principles.
- Recognize when you're facinga crucial conversation. Whenever you're
stuck in achieving some important result in your business or personal
life, look for the crucial conversation you're either not holding or
not holding well. Clarify who it's with and what your concern is.
- Hold the right conversation. Sometimes we're talking, but not about
the right thing. If you have an employee who fails to show up on time,
and you keep nagging and nagging her about it, you're not holding the
right conversation. The first time the employee is late, you should
discuss her lateness and ask for a commitment to punctuality. The second
or third time she’s late, the issue is no longer tardiness, it
is integrity. When a pattern of missed commitments becomes apparent,
you should be talking with your employee about her willingness or ability
to keep commitments — a much more serious issue than tardiness.
If you trap yourself into repeated conversations about the issue and
fail to escalate to discussing the pattern, you are holding the wrong
conversation. Think about this when approaching counselors who never
return equipment they’ve used, chronically fail to turn lights
out on time, or persistently enforce low standards of cleanliness in
their cabins. The conversations you hold should not be about the most
recent violation, but about commitment, integrity, or honesty.
- Start with your intent, not your content. When we hold crucial conversations,
we usually start at the wrong place. We dive into the content of the
issue. The other person then becomes defensive, and we conclude that
this is a topic we just can’t discuss without a blowup. This conclusion
is completely wrong. Others do not become defensive because of the content
you are sharing — no matter how sensitive it might seem. People
become defensive because of the intent they assign to you for raising
it. Those who are skilled at crucial conversations begin by sharing
their positive intentions for raising the issue. They do not proceed
with the specifics of the conversation until they are confident the
other person trusts their intentions. For example, let’s say you
approach a co-worker who is persistently lax on safety policies. This
is your third conversation about the issue. As you begin, she becomes
very defensive and says, “Some of the rules here are just stupid.
I’m not going to enforce something that keeps the kids from having
fun. That is just dumb.” At this point, the worst thing you can
do is either force your point home again or back off your point. The
counselor is not becoming defensive because of what you are saying,
but because she feels disrespected or believes you don’t care
about her goal — letting the kids have reasonable fun.
Rather than take either of these ineffective routes, step out of the
issue, clarify your positive intentions, and then go back to the discussion.
For example, “The kids’ fun is absolutely important to me,
too. I’m glad it is to you. And I don’t want you to be limited
by rules that have no value. Please understand that I’m with you
100 percent. The only issue I want to resolve here is that I have to be
able to trust that you will come to me and propose changing a rule. We
cannot maintain safety here if counselors individually interpret safety
policies . . . .”
- Start with facts, not feelings. Some will tell you to start sharing
sensitive information by disclosing your feelings. Start with “I
messages,” they suggest. This is truly bad advice. When you begin
with your feelings, you are more likely to generate resistance and defensiveness
than interest and openness. The place to begin is with facts (you’ve
arrived late to work three times in the past week), not feelings (I’m
feeling disappointed). Share the experiences you’ve had or observations
you’ve made that caused you to think what you think and feel how
you feel. If you start with the facts, the other person is more likely
to understand your point of view rather than feeling attacked by it.
For example, “According to the duty manager’s log, your
cabin light went out late four out of five nights last week.”
- Learn to doubt your feelings. Strong emotions are dangerous during
crucial conversations. When discussing sensitive, high-stakes issues,
it’s not uncommon for one or both parties to feel angry, scared,
or hurt. These emotions can cause us to behave badly — making
matters even worse than when we started. Those who are best at crucial
conversations examine their emotions to see if they are legitimate.
They do so in a blatant attempt to open themselves to the possibility
that there are other ways of seeing the situation.
When you’re approaching an employee who might have stolen something,
you could ask yourself, “What other possible conclusions could I
draw from the information available?” or “Why would a reasonable,
rational, and decent person have done what he or she did?” Before
opening a conversation with a cook who produces terrible quality food,
you might ask yourself, “Could it be that I have set a poor example
of quality standards in some way? Or could our food budget be discouraging
him from aspiring to better standards?”
Gifted communicators don’t challenge their emotions in a weak
attempt to let others off the hook; they do so to prepare themselves for
a healthy, candid conversation where new information may yet come to light.
Then, if it doesn’t, they proceed according to the information they
already had.
- End with clarity. How you end a crucial conversation is as important
as how you start it. Too often, if we actually succeed in getting all
the issues out in the open, we heave a sigh of relief and just assume
others will change their behavior, or situations will remedy themselves.
Wrong!
Always end a crucial conversation with a clear understanding of who
will do what by when. Also, clarify when and how you will follow up. This
makes the difference between resolving issues and déjà vu
dialogues where you end up rehashing the same issues continually.
When concluding a crucial conversation with a counselor who has persistently
violated safety policies, you might summarize as follows, “It sounds
like you are committed to enforcing all of the safety policies from now
on. And if you find one that seems pointless, you will come and discuss
it with me to get it changed before backing off on it. Also, given that
this is the third discussion of this kind we are having, you have agreed
that if this problem happens again, it is reasonable for you to lose a
day’s pay. Finally, we will chat in a couple of weeks to talk about
whether this agreement is working for you and for me. Is that right?”
There’s Hope
So, what if you weren’t born with a silver tongue? What if you
are great at Native American lore and archery but dismal when it comes
to facing up to crucial conversations?
You can learn to make significant and rapid improvements in the way
you face the conversations that shape your world. It takes concentrated
effort. If you’re willing to work at it, you can make significant
gains in your ability to tackle tough conversations. You can’t do
it alone. Just as you can’t learn to play tennis by playing alone,
you can’t get better at crucial conversations sitting alone in an
office. You’ll need a curriculum from which to work from and a partner
with whom to practice. Get together with one or more friends, family members,
or camp colleagues who would like to get better at crucial conversations.
And, start by working on some conversations you’d really like to
improve. As you make progress, you’ll see the benefits in every
area of your life.
Available from the ACA Bookstore
|
.
Originally published in the 2003 September/October
issue of Camping Magazine.
|
