Stop Avoiding Critical Conversations
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Here's the tea: In a lot of organizations, in a lot of teams, there is a potentially very messy conversation that needs to happen.
Stop avoiding that conversation for the health of the team and the organization as a whole.
You need to step in and just take care of it.
There's an analogy here that I love that I think is perfect that I use a lot when I talk to teams:
Stop scooping water out of the bottom of a leaking boat.
This dynamic is just like spending all your time on a leaky boat. There's water coming in from the bottom, so you're spending a percentage of your time (and your team’s time) scooping it out instead of making progress toward your destination.
The hole in the bottom of the boat is the conversation that you're not addressing.
“The hole in the bottom of the boat is the conversation that you’re not addressing.”
Your options are to either continue to spend a portion of your time scooping water out of the boat and not addressing the actual problem, or to stop, park the boat, fix the hole, and then move on.
Even though that feels like a lot of work, we have to stop and deal with fixing this problem, it is worth it in the long run.
The most common example of this inside teams and organizations is you have somebody who is a problem, maybe they have a bad attitude, bad performance, they're toxic, they hate their job, they cause other people to quit, any number of issues. It has to be talked about.
“There’s a messy conversation between now and getting to a place where you have a healthy team.”
There's a messy conversation between now and getting to a place where you have a healthy team. But you have to have that conversation, you can't avoid it forever.
And for the most part, it's up to leadership alone to have these conversations, to park the boat, to deal with fixing the hole.
How do we deal with this?
Let’s go over some tips for dealing with this.
First of all, a mindset that I want you to adopt is that there is no problem or situation that cannot be corrected.
“There’s nothing that exists that can’t be healed or repaired.”
There's nothing that exists that can't be healed or repaired, and sometimes that means that person leaves the organization but still, that is a fix.
A lot of the time we're afraid of these conversations because we think this person is going to quit, or freak out. Let’s say worst case scenario, the conversation goes poorly and they do quit or you end up having to let them go. The organization is not going to come to a halt and fail because of this person. I promise this conversation is not going to sink your company. It is not the worst thing in the world.
Worse than having that person leave is actually keeping a person on your team who's so toxic to the point that you've got great people quitting their jobs or hating coming to work. That's a much bigger problem than somebody left and you have to replace them.
But, as a leader you also need to have the skills and capacity to have these kinds of conversations and if you don't, which most leaders don't, take it upon yourself to skill up for the sake of your team.
There are a number of conversation guides and tools:
Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott
How they respond shows you their level of accountability.
What you're looking for in that person when you sit down to address this thing is their receptiveness:
If somebody is receptive and open to feedback and willing to hear, “Hey, I know this is hard to hear but these things are a problem, this behavior, this performance has to change. This is specifically what I'm seeing, this is the impact of it, it needs to look this or else your job is at stake.”
Once you have done your own work to effectively and skillfully deliver feedback, you can gauge the level of accountability on your team by how they respond to these conversations.
“Somebody who is highly accountable is also willing to hear those things, even if it’s tough feedback.”
Somebody who is highly accountable is also willing to hear those things, even if it's tough feedback. They're willing to own the problem and respond with, “Yes I'll make changes, what can I do,” and if somebody is not accountable and they deflect responsibility, you don't want that person on your team.
I know it's hard but the worst case scenario is that they freak out, they blow up, they quit, it's okay. A lot of the time, that's a gift.
That person can go and be successful somewhere else with a new start, parting ways is not the worst thing in the world. You can bring somebody else in who's happy to be there and lovely in their job.
But, if you do it right and you have the skills, you can also turn that person around, address the behavior, correct it and make it better for everybody.
I know these things are tough, I know this is the most challenging part of being a leader but this is also the responsibility that comes with the role.
You alone as the leadership team are the only ones with the authority to be able to address these things and fix the hole in the boat so you no longer have to worry about people spending their time scooping water.
And it may not be a person, it could be any conversation as a team that everyone has been walking on eggshells around.
Get into it, dive into it, have the conversation, fix that thing so you can clear those barriers and just move forward as a team.
Go be awesome.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
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