Conversations with leaders
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9 min read
Key findings
Managers delay difficult conversations for one of three reasons: skill, fear or missing evidence.
Preparation needs a purpose, three dated examples, the manager's own contribution, a decision and a written opening.
Bad news goes in the first minute, without a praise sandwich, a warm-up or a guessing question.
HR attends formal or high-risk meetings and otherwise prepares the manager to hold the conversation alone.
A partner who holds the conversation on the manager's behalf takes over a relationship the manager will still have to run the following Monday.
Difficult conversations at work are the ones where the news, the working relationship or the manager's own competence is at stake, which is why managers delay them.
To prepare, state the purpose in a sentence and collect dated examples.
Then name the manager's own part in the problem, decide what happens whatever the reply, and raise the subject in the first minute.
Most of the difficult conversations an HR business partner sees arrive late.
A manager books half an hour and describes a performance problem that has run for most of a year.
The request is for a form, a policy line or someone else to hold the meeting.
By then the delay has usually cost more than the conversation will.
The partner's job is to find out why the conversation has not happened, fix that cause, and send the manager in ready.
Why Managers Delay
Managers postpone difficult conversations for one of three reasons, and each needs a different response from HR.
Skill. The manager does not know how to open or what to say next
Fear. The manager expects anger, tears, a grievance or a damaged relationship
Evidence. The manager has an impression and nothing dated to support it
Three questions separate them in the first ten minutes of the meeting with the manager.
What exactly will you say in your first two sentences?
What is the worst reply you expect, and what will you do then?
Which three dated examples will you use?
A manager who cannot answer the first has a skill gap, and rehearsal fixes it.
A manager who answers the first fluently and stalls on the second is afraid, and the preparation has to cover the reaction as well as the message.
A manager who cannot answer the third is not ready, and the right advice is to spend two weeks observing and recording before any meeting takes place.
Evidence is the cause HR misses most often, because the manager presents it as a request for wording.
Examples Of Difficult Conversations
The conversations managers delay most often fall into six groups.
Performance below the standard for the role
Behaviour that affects colleagues or customers
A refused request for pay, promotion or flexible working
Conflict between two members of the same team
Personal matters such as hygiene, health or attendance
Organisational news such as a restructure or a role at risk
The last group has its own rules and is covered in preparing a leader for a redundancy conversation.
The first five share a structure, and the preparation below applies to all of them.
Three Conversations At Once
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, working from the Harvard Negotiation Project, describe every difficult conversation as three conversations running together.
What happened. The argument about facts, intentions and blame
Feelings. Present whether or not anyone names them
Identity. What the situation says about each person
Managers prepare for the first and are thrown by the other two.
Stone and his colleagues name three identity questions that sit under most difficult conversations. Am I competent, am I a good person, and am I worthy of love?
The manager has identity at stake as well as the employee.
A manager delivering unwelcome news often softens it under pressure, for example by hinting that a decision might be reconsidered when there is no reason to think it will be.
Stone, Patton and Heen describe exactly that slip, and it creates a second conversation a month later that is harder than the first.
On what happened, they make a point every HR partner can use.
Intentions are invisible, so people infer them from behaviour, and when they are unsure they too often assume the intention was bad.
A manager who says "you did not care about the deadline" has made a claim about intent that the employee will spend the whole meeting denying.
A manager who says "the report reached the board two days late, and the finance director had to present without it" has described an impact nobody can dispute.
The Preparation Brief
Managers ask HR for wording, and wording is the smallest part of the preparation.
Five things matter more, and the partner should have all five on one page before the meeting is booked.
The purpose. One sentence naming the change the manager wants
The evidence. Three dated instances, each with its effect on the work
The manager's contribution. What the manager did or failed to do that let the problem continue
The decision. What happens next whatever the employee says
The opening. The first two sentences, written out and said aloud once
Take a finance team leader whose month-end pack has reached the finance director late in four of the last six months.
The purpose is to agree what has to change for the pack to arrive by the fifth working day.
The evidence is the four dates, the two board meetings that went ahead without current figures, and the overtime the team worked in March to recover.
The manager's contribution is that nobody raised the lateness until the fourth month, and that two of the team's analysts were moved to a systems project in January.
The decision is that the manager and the team leader will review the close timetable weekly for the next eight weeks.
Stone, Patton and Heen list avoiding the problem until now as one of the most common contributions to it, and one of the easiest to overlook.
Their example is a store manager who deserves a warning while his file holds years of satisfactory reviews, which leaves the company with little on record to act on.
Naming that history early changes the opening minute, because the employee hears the manager admit a share of the problem before being asked to change.
The satisfactory reviews written during the delay become the employee's strongest evidence if the case later becomes formal.
The Opening Minute
Stone, Patton and Heen advise putting bad news at the front, and warn against trying to get the other person to say it first.
Three openings fail reliably.
The praise sandwich. The employee learns to discount every compliment that follows
The warm-up. Ten minutes of small talk raise the anxiety on both sides
The guessing question. "How do you think things are going?" asks the employee to guess the verdict
A workable opening names the subject, the purpose and the time available.
For the finance team leader, the manager might say it like this:
"I want to talk about the month-end pack. It has reached Priya late in four of the last six months, and I did not raise it early enough. I want us to leave today with a plan for getting it out by the fifth working day. We have forty minutes."
The second move is what Stone and his colleagues call the third story, a description of the problem that a neutral observer would give and that both sides could accept.
"I think we see the workload differently, and I would like to understand how it looks from your side before we agree anything."
That sentence invites an explanation without conceding the dates.
During The Conversation
People repeat their point until they believe it has been heard.
A manager who paraphrases the employee's position accurately, including the parts the manager disagrees with, usually finds the argument shortens.
Three moves do most of the work.
Ask a question you do not know the answer to
Paraphrase, then check you have it right
Acknowledge the feeling without conceding the point
Managers who fear that listening concedes the argument need to rehearse the third move with HR before the meeting.
Kerry Patterson and his co-authors add a diagnostic question for the moment the employee explains the gap.
Either the person is not motivated to do what was agreed, or the person is not able to, and the two need opposite responses.
In the finance example, an explanation that the team lost two analysts in January is an ability problem, and a warning will not fix it.
Patterson's group also separate three levels of problem, which they call content, pattern and relationship.
The first late pack is a content problem, and the fourth is a pattern.
A promise to fix it that was broken twice is a problem of trust between the two people.
A manager who raises only the latest instance of a pattern will have the same conversation again next month.
HR In The Meeting
HR attends a difficult conversation when the meeting is part of a formal process, when an allegation or a legal claim is likely, or when either party needs a witness.
In most other cases HR prepares the manager and stays out.
A partner who holds the conversation on the manager's behalf takes over a relationship the manager will still have to run the following Monday.
Stone, Patton and Heen describe the same trap from the other side.
A third party who hears only one version can neither speak for the complainant nor stay silent without carrying a partial story.
When a manager asks HR to deliver the message, offer to prepare the manager the same week.
Agree a date for the meeting before the call ends.
If HR does attend, agree the roles beforehand.
The manager leads and delivers the message, HR explains process and support, and HR does not rescue the manager when the conversation turns uncomfortable.
The Cost Of Delay
A delayed conversation turns a performance problem into a dismissal case with no record behind it.
The satisfactory reviews written during the delay become the employee's strongest evidence if the case later becomes formal.
The team notices the delay too.
In polling reported by Patterson and colleagues, 93 per cent of people worked every day with someone hard to work with.
Nobody held that person to account, because colleagues judged it too risky.
Their research on cross-functional project teams put the chance that someone would raise a broken commitment honestly at under 20 per cent.
For the HR partner, the business case for acting is the cost to the team of carrying the problem for another quarter.
The Record Afterwards
If a case later becomes formal, the written note carries more weight than the conversation did.
A usable note has four lines.
What was discussed, in plain terms
What was agreed, with dates
What support the manager offered
When the two will review progress
The manager sends it the same day and invites the employee to correct it.
A note written only after the situation has worsened reads as retaliation, even when it is accurate.
The review date then becomes the next conversation, and feedback that changes behaviour covers how to tell at that point whether anything has changed.
Conversations Better Not Held
Some conversations should not happen in the form the manager has in mind.
Stone, Patton and Heen warn against going in with the purpose of making the other person change, because only that person can decide to.
The purposes they recommend are learning the other person's view, stating one's own clearly, and solving the problem together.
Three questions test a manager's purpose before the meeting is booked.
Is there a specific change the employee is able to make?
Is the manager ready to hear that part of the problem is theirs?
Would the manager accept a fix that does not prove them right?
A no to any of them means the conversation is about something else, and the partner prepares that conversation instead.
The same preparation applies when the difficult conversation is the partner's own, for instance advising a leader you disagree with about a decision already announced.
Where The Tools Sit
Trusted Talent Advisor includes a conversation preparation canvas with the five fields above and a same-day follow-up record.
Its stakeholder conversation component covers the harder version, where the person being challenged is the leader who sponsors the partner's work.
Related reading: when coaching is not appropriate.
Sources
1. Stone, D., Patton, B. and Heen, S. Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. Penguin.
2. Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R. and Switzler, A. Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior. McGraw-Hill.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
Why do managers avoid difficult conversations?
For one of three reasons. They do not know how to open, they fear the reaction, or they have an impression with no dated evidence behind it. Each cause needs different help, so HR should find out which applies before offering wording.
How do you prepare for a difficult conversation with an employee?
Write down the change you want in one sentence, three dated examples with their effect on the work, your own part in letting the problem continue, what happens whatever the reply, and the first two sentences you will say.
How do you start a difficult conversation at work?
Name the subject, the purpose and the time available in the first minute. Avoid the praise sandwich, small talk and questions that ask the employee to guess the verdict. Then describe the difference between the two views in terms both could accept.
What are examples of difficult conversations at work?
Performance below the standard for the role, behaviour that affects colleagues, a refused request for pay or promotion, conflict inside a team, personal matters such as hygiene or attendance, and organisational news such as a role at risk.
Should HR attend a difficult conversation with an employee?
HR should attend when the meeting is part of a formal process, when an allegation or claim is likely, or when a witness is needed. Otherwise HR prepares the manager, because the manager owns the working relationship afterwards.
What happens when managers avoid difficult conversations?
The problem continues, the team sees that nothing happened, and satisfactory reviews written during the delay undermine any later formal case. A performance issue that one conversation could have fixed can become a dismissal case with no record behind it.
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