Uncomfortable Conversations
is an essential ingredient to building integrity and reliability within your teams. Growing organizations come with a myriad of changes, an element that humans often instinctively reject, particularly when it feels that the rules have changed or the goalposts have moved.
Speaking of news ... delivering it requires uncomfortable conversations, another vital ingredient to growth, which it’s imperative you master navigating gracefully. One common area of discomfort is expectation setting. It’s a Day Zero duty, yet something many leaders struggle with, especially when hiring senior experts where it can feel that you ‘don’t need to tell them how to do their job’. Here’s the catch, expectations are different from role descriptions, they are about how you work together as a cohesive unit. And while it can be uncomfortable and time consuming to lay this groundwork, it sets people up for success. Failing to do so is likely to lead to even more discomfort when you inform people that they are not meeting the expectation that you never informed them of. Holding people accountable is another main feature of leadership that frequently requires uncomfortable conversations AND
The key is to face things head on with compassionate candor.
Humans respond well to guide rails and acclimatize rapidly with consistency. The more you can instil a culture of open communication and feedback, where everyone regularly shares in the interest of winning as a unit and weeds out fear and defensiveness, the faster your team will be able to iterate and improve (read: no waiting months for formal feedback and unknowingly continuing to operate suboptimally). Cultivating compassionate candour means saying the thing that needs to be said AND choosing a time, place, tone and level of discourse appropriate to
the situation and the impact on the person in front of you.
Next Up: Rising Tides, A-Players and Big Fish…
Alex is a keynote speaker, strategic advisor, and podcast host dedicated to helping impact-driven business leaders build world-class companies with best- in-category performance. Her expertise has been honed over 15 years of leading corporate strategy and M&A consulting around the globe as well as scaling and selling startups. Find at www.alexsnider.com and tales from mild to wild on BUILDERS with Alex Snider, the podcast for impact-driven leaders who want to build great companies. more insights
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