CCHPO 4th Change Conference

Charleston SC

March 4, 2004

Session 9a

Handling Difficult Leadership Conversations

Gerald S. Brokaw

Philip D. Harnden

Special Guests

Outcome:

So, how do you have those difficult leadership conversations around creating the demand for helping to improve performance in that "adult to adult" manner we always hear about? Experience a variety of methods for having those difficult conversations and setting the right expectations. Interactive sessions will focus on creating the right expectation without letting people off the hook.

  1. Summarize your observations about the scenarios you just observed.
  • What went well?
  • What didn’t go so well?
  • What would you have done differently?
  • How important is the language used? How important is the process that occurs prior to the conversation?

OrderWhy autocratic?

  • “You have to….” ______
  • “You must….”______
  • “I want….”______
  • “They said….”______
  • “I need…”______
  • Others??

Arrange the above openings from most to least autocratic and explain why.

  1. What are the levels at which feedback may operate?

  1. Discussion of “demand function”
  1. Process: Describe as objectively as possible; situation creates the demand; I’m the conduit to make sure you understand it and the high-level consequences for not doing (you and me and high level); it’s a we not a you; you can’t not help me improve this place
  • Changes in the environment (external)
  • customers expectations
  • new competition
  • boss or political process says
  • Gap between performance and potential (internal) [requires performance data]
  • Some managers sometimes perceive the “autocratic paradox”- “Doesn’t setting the expectation or demand just mean I’m being autocratic?”
  • Response: consult, decide, EXPLAIN WHY consistently—System 3+ all over again
  • Individually think about some examples you’ve faced or encountered:
  • ______
  • ______
  • ______
  • ______
  • ______
  1. At your tables, discuss the difficult leadership discussions you have had in your organization. Select one that the table would like to see role-played for feedback from the group. Describe the situation and your perception of why the conversation is so difficult.
  1. At your table, pick three of the basic models around handling difficult conversations and see what your table mates know about them:
  1. Krisco- past, present, future
  2. Johari- blind spots
  3. Covey- Stimulus, Response, Consequence
  4. Covey- Habit 5- Seek first to understand, Then to be Understood
  1. Use of “I messages”
  2. Franklin Covey’s “Will this meet your needs over the long term”
  1. STEP- Systematic Training for Effective Parenting
  1. CORE--Change, Objective, Reason, Effect on Employee
  2. Others:
  1. Relationship between “blame” and “accountability”:
  • Blame: “to find fault with, to censure, revile, reproach”
  • Emotional process to discredit the blamed
  • Qualities are judgment, anger, fear, punishment, and self-righteousness
  • Accountability: “to be counted on or reckoned on”
  • Emphasizes keeping agreements
  • Qualities are respect, trust, inquiry, moderation, curiosity and mutuality

Moving to Accountability

Individuals must be willing to change their own thinking and behavior.

Become skillful at making contracts with one another and holding each other accountable for the results

Promote responsible and constructive conversations—developing norms for conflict resolution between individuals

Individual Level

Remember: others are acting rationally from their own perspective.

Realize you probably have a role in the situation.

Remind yourself that judgment and criticism make it very difficult to see clearly.

Use a systems thinking perspective to explore the pressures on the players involved.

Be willing to be held accountable.

Work constructively with your anger.

Interpersonal level

Improve initial contracting

Conduct accountability conversations

Reestablish agreements

Take action together

Group Level

Bring complaints to a third person “coach” to help understand how to raise the issue

Raise your concerns directly with the other person

Let the coach know what happened

Avoid negative comments about people

Avoid listening to negative comments about people

“I’d like to help if you want to create a constructive situation. Otherwise, I’d prefer not to listen.”

Extracted from Paul, Marilyn. “Moving from Blame to Accountability.” Systems Thinker, Vol 8, No 1, February, 1997.

Feedback Notes—Adapted from “What did you say?” by Charles N. Seashore, Edith Whitfield Seashore and Gerald M. Weinberg, Douglas Charles Press: North Attleborough, MA. (out of print)

  1. Facts and Fantasies about Feedback
  2. Examples and Definitions
  3. Feedback can be defined as
  4. Information about past behavior
  5. Delivered in the present
  6. Which may influence future behavior
  7. Simple Feedback Diagram

Adapted from Figure 1-1 (Seashore, 1992, p. 6)

  1. Models
  2. Table Discussion Highlights
  1. Satir Interaction Model (Seashore, 1992. p. 19)

Message Sent? (Use of eyes, ears, skin, etc)

elicits

Meaning? (Here and Now)

triggers

Feelings About the Meaning? (Past or Present)

activates

Feelings About the Feelings? (Okay or Not)

evokes

Defenses? (Denying, Ignoring, Projecting, Distorting)

require

Rules for Commenting? (Compulsion or Choice)

direct

Response? (Congruent or Incongruent)

Satir’s Interaction Model reveals the internal part of the feedback process from receipt of message to sending the next message.

  1. Giving Feedback
  2. The Compulsion to Give Feedback
  3. First Giver’s Facts: Even when it’s given at the receiver’s request, feedback describes the giver more than the receiver.
  4. Giving feedback seems to be the second most essential ingredient of life itself—after air, and before water. Humans can live for about three minutes without air, three days without water and three months without food…most people cannot live more than three hours without offering someone else an observation about themselves—often in the form of advice.(Seashore, pp. 26-27)
  5. Nobility isn’t good enough:
  6. Fact: wanting to help people may be a more noble motive than some, but doesn’t make feedback any easier.
  7. They Have to Want It:
  8. Fact: If people don’t want your feedback, you’ll never succeed in reaching them, now matter how smart or wonderful you are.
  9. No invitation is forever:
  10. Fact: Even when people agree that they want your help, that agreement is not usually a lifetime contract.
  1. Giving Feedback When Invited Facts:
  2. Just because you’re a paid consultant, therapist, or workshop facilitator, you still can’t take the invitation to give feedback for granted.
  3. Feedback that’s not absolutely relevant to the task you’re paid for will not be accepted, and even worse, will interfere with that task.
  4. If you have to make a case for the task-relevance of your feedback, you probably don’t have a case, and you certainly won’t have any success.
  5. You don’t have to respond in the way they ask.
  6. You don’t even have to respond at all.
  7. Choice among feedback response empowers you.
  8. Choice among feedback responses empowers the person to whom you respond.
  9. The less you actually feed back, the more you get out of it.
  10. The Fear of Giving Feedback
  11. Why don’t you tell them?
  12. The cost of telling them
  13. Fact: You can’t effective give emotionally difficult feedback, unless you understand the source of your difficult emotions.
  14. Do You Want to Risk Finding Out How They Feel?
  15. Fact: If you want to tell them so they’ll like you, what keeps you from telling them is the same emotion, the fear of not being liked. That’s one reason you feel so paralyzed.
  16. Do You Want to Get Involved?
  17. Fact: You often won’t tell them because you fear getting involved.
  18. Do You Want to Get Information?
  19. Fact: “Telling them” can be a way to play, “If one of us is going to change, why don’t you go first?”
  20. Fact: You may avoid direct feedback because you fear learning the truth about yourself.
  21. Fact: You may avoid direct feedback because you fear change.
  22. What Are You Up To?
  23. Fact: The less investment you have in changing the other person, the greater likelihood that each of you may grow.
  24. Fact: You avoid telling them out of fear of being known.
  25. Lack of Experience Facts
  26. Nobody’s perfect.
  27. Feedback is a lot easier to give if you don’t have to be perfect.
  28. Feedbacks not so hard to give after all.
  1. Receiving Feedback
  2. Why Feedback is Mysterious
  3. It just came out
  4. Different perceptions
  5. Different time
  6. Different place
  7. Someone else (mixed people referred to)
  8. Inner feelings about myself
  9. The receivers task
  1. The Feedback Prevention Law
  2. Law of Conservation of Laws: When the data and their model don’t match, most people discard the data.
  3. Feedback Prevention Law: We structure our world so we will not receive feedback that threatens our worldview.
  4. Finding People to Give You Feedback
  5. Asking for Feedback
  6. What Aren’t They Saying
  1. Feedback as a Process of Interaction
  2. The Context of Feedback
  3. Assumption: I, the sender, can accurately predict what you will receive as a “positive message” or a “negative message” because the value is contained in the content of the feedback.
  4. Fact: The way that the receiver will evaluate feedback is determined by the life experiences, assumptions, and attitudes of the receiver, and may or may not correspond to the weighting put on the message by the sender.
  5. Elements of Feedback Messages
  6. Power imposed by sender
  7. Influence desire
  8. Emotional power in message
  9. Style of sender
  10. Substance of message
  11. Additional Sources of Difficulty
  12. Interpretations
  13. Resemblance (Transference)
  14. Why compliments bother us
  15. Abstracting (pigeonholing) and assuming (mind reading)
  16. Checking Out Interactive Feedback
  1. Facilitating Improved Interactions
  2. Clarity
  3. Clarity and Self-Worth
  4. Increasing the Amount and Quality of Feedback
  5. Timing Your Feedback
  6. Congruent Response
  7. “Don’t concentrate on giving feedback; concentrate on being congruent—responding to the other person, to yourself, and to the here-and-now situation. Don’t go around hunting for opportunities to give feedback, because feedback is effective only when the need arises naturally out of congruent interactions. We’ve also made clear that you cannot help giving feedback, because not giving feedback is also a form of feedback. Its seems we have you in a pardons, but you can resolve it by concentrating on congruent interaction, rather than on “giving feedback.” Congruent interaction includes giving feedback, but it is not dominated by it.” (Seashore, 1992, p. 179)
  8. Fact: People respond better to you if you devote attention to their problems, but one way of devoting attention to their problems is by being candid about your problems.
  9. Fact: The only place you can get the gift of accurate internal information is from the other person.
  10. Fact: If you don’t have accurate internal information about the other person, you probably won’t get it from them unless you give some first about yourself.
  11. Technique of Giving Internal Information
  12. First, tell them what you perceive.
  13. Second, tell them what meanings you give to that perception.
  14. Third, tell them how you feel about what you perceive.
  15. Fourth, if possible, tell them how you feel about that feeling.
  16. Examples:
  17. Because I see them whispering to each other, it looks to me as if John and Sarah are not participating in this discussion, even though I’m trying every Technique I know to get them involved. This feeling of failure makes me afraid that you’ll see me as an inadequate meeting facilitator.
  18. The way I interpret your last question seems to me that you’re asking me to give you confidential information. I feel angry with you because it seems to discount my personal moral feelings, yet I feel that I have no right to be angry with you.
  19. When I find myself asking you three times when you will finish this late assignment, I feel ashamed about acting like a dilator and not trusting you, yet I don’t know how else to deal with my anxiety over the project schedule.
  20. Fact: It’s very easy to confuse interpretations with observations.
  21. Fantasy: There is such a thing as “innocent feedback.”
  22. Fact: The fact that you offered feedback at all is always significant.
  23. Fact: The fact that you offered feedback at all is often the only significant part of the feedback.
  24. Fantasy: You can control all your non-verbal actions.
  25. Fact: It’s not true risk that triggers survival rules, but the perceived risk.
  1. Feedback Artistry
  2. The Art of Giving Feedback
  3. I must take care of myself, because if I’m off center, my feedback will be contaminated.
  4. I must feel in control of me in the situation, because otherwise my feedback will be trying to get me in control. “Being in control of me in the situation” does not mean being in control of you. Being in control of me means that I am not under compulsion—I know I have the choice of giving or not giving feedback.
  5. I must be devoid of judging, because judging will never be well received.
  6. I must be observant, so that my feedback follows verifiable observations, not speculations.
  7. I must be clear, and not contribute to the many potential sources of misunderstanding.
  8. I must be flexible; able to reframe my feedback into a form that you can understand and accept, rather than always using the same approach.
  9. I must practice, and learn from my mistakes. That is, I must use feedback about my feedback.
  10. I must become an artist at receiving feedback; because otherwise I cannot appreciate the difficulties my receiver is experiencing when trying to understand me.
  1. The Art of Receiving Feedback
  2. I must take care of myself, because if I’m off center, my feedback will be contaminated.
  3. I must feel in control of me in the situation, because otherwise my energy will be trying to get me in control, rather than understanding your feedback. “Being in control of me in the situation” does not mean being in control of you. Being in control of me means that I am not under compulsion—I know I have the choice of giving or not giving feedback.
  4. I must be devoid of judging, because judging will contaminate my ability to accept or reject feedback on the basis of it’s information content.
  5. I must be observant, so that my feedback follows verifiable observations, not fantasies.
  6. I must seek clarification, rather than internally amplify the many potential sources of misunderstanding.
  7. I must be flexible; able to reframe my requests for clarification into a form that you can understand and accept, and able to consider different possibilities for interpretation.
  8. I must practice, and learn from my mistakes. That is, I must use feedback about my ability to receive feedback.
  9. I must become a feedback artist, because I cannot be a good receiver of feedback if I have no understanding of the source.
  1. The Art of Congruence
  2. Notice how similar the lists are (differences underlined in receiving feedback).
  3. Perhaps one item summarizes all the others:
  4. Whether giving or receiving feedback, the most important thing is congruence, acknowledging, understanding, and accepting what’s going on inside of me.
  5. Remember:
  6. First Giver’s Facts: Even when it’s given at the receiver’s request, feedback describes the giver more than the receiver.

1

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT TECHNIQUE:
Create an idea-friendly climate by eliminating
"Killer Phrases" from the problem-solving environment.

2

K I L L E R P H R A S E S

( knee-jerk responses that squelch new ideas )

These top forty "Killer Phrases" are adopted from the book, What A Great Idea! by Chic Thompson.

1

Handling Difficult Leadership Conversations Session 9a

1."Yes, but ..."

2."We tried that before ..."

3."That's irrelevant."

4."We haven't got the manpower."

5."Obviously, you misread my request."

6."Don't rock the boat!"

7."The ___ will eat you alive!"

8."Don't waste your time thinking!"

9."Great idea, but not for us."

10."It'll never fly!"

11."Don't be ridiculous!"

12."People don't want change."

13."It's not in the budget."

14."Put it in writing."

15."It will be more trouble than it's worth."

16."It isn't your responsibility."

17."That's not in your job description."

18."You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

19."Let's stick with what works."

20."We've done alright so far."

Listen to ideas . . . give them a chance to grow .

21."The boss will never go for it."

22."It's too far ahead of it's time."

23.... laughter ...

24.... silence ...

25.... dirty looks ...

26.... condescending grin ...

27.... suppressed laughter ...

28."Don't fight city hall!"

29."I'm the one who gets paid to think."

30."What will people say?"

31."Get a committee to look into that!"

32."If it ain't broken, don't fix it!"

33."You have got to be kidding!"

34."That creates more problems than it solves."

35."We've always done it this way."

36."It's all right in theory ... but ..."

37."Be practical!"

38."Think of the paperwork it will create!"

39."Because I said so!"

40."NO!"

FEEDBACK AND EFFECTIVE TEAMS

Feedback is a critical skill in developing effective teams. The term is used to mean giving information to others or another about behavior and the effect of the behavior on you. It is important for both individuals and groups to develop a comfort level with giving and receiving feedback and an environment that is conducive to encouraging feedback. It is the single most important skill to have when working through group problems.

Effective teams:

 Recognize the importance of feedback as the means to "continuous improvement."

 Accept feedback (both individual and group) as a matter of course, not as public criticism.

 Follow guidelines for delivering feedback so that it is effective, non-threatening, and is the

least damaging.

 Check out individual reactions with the group.

 Build in a time at the end of each meeting to evaluate and allow for group feedback.

FEEDBACK IS:

A way of helping another person and/or the team to consider changing their behavior.