‘Managing Conflict and Difficult Conversations’ Transcript

00:00:06:23   One of the biggest issues I see when working on improvement programmes

00:00:10:17   is people’s inability to gain consensus and move forward with the improvement.

00:00:16:02   Conflict is one of the biggest barriers to landing an improvement in an

00:00:20:13    organisation whether it’s your idea being in conflict with compliance or IT or even

00:00:27:17   within your own team, it’s conflict that grinds the pace of improvement to a halt

00:00:33:01   and the issue is that we’re not that we’re not great at having difficult

00:00:37:06   conversations. I don’t think we were ever good at it and nowadays we’re even worse.

00:00:42:05   With all the different ways of communicating these days with via email

00:00:48:06   or text message or social media and Facebook. All sorts of ways we can

00:00:53:10   communicate, we got even worse at managing conflict. And all those different

00:01:00:13   channels of communication they rarely resolve conflict. They just either avoid it

00:01:05:10   or in many cases compound it. I’ve watched teams argue back and forth about

00:01:10:20   the best solution to a problem and see nothing happens for two and three and

00:01:14:16   six months and it’s not just limited to Improvement projects. These days people

00:01:21:20   will break up over text, they’ll resign or give critical feedback over email.

00:01:28:03   People even get fired through Facebook. We’re terrible at having difficult

00:01:35:16.  conversations and managing conflict. We’re moving offices in a couple

00:01:41:14   of months and we currently service offices and we’re moving into our own offices

00:01:45:21   which is totally the right call for our business but it means I have to go and tell

00:01:50:04   our current Office Manager that we won’t be renewing our lease and that we will be

00:01:55:17   leaving and she’s great and I felt really bad about having to have this conversation.

00:02:00:24   But I could have easily done it via email but I thought it was an opportunity to go

00:02:07:13   and have a difficult conversation and practice that skill. I’ve also had to give

00:02:13:07   difficult feedback to clients in the past and every time that that has happened our

00:02:18:13   relationship has gotten better because of it and the programme of workers delivered

00:02:22:10.  more as well. I’ve seen experts on LinkedIn talk about the importance of giving

00:02:28:01   feedback and managing conflict but when they’re faced with those very same

00:02:32:10   situations, you know, they run a mile a just do it via email. So, the next time

00:02:38:04.  that you have to have a difficult conversation with someone or give some feedback,

00:02:42:08   or manage some conflict, try to do it face to face. It’s not going to be easy, but if you

00:02:50:17   can’t do it face to face, then pick up the phone. Use that experience to learn about

00:02:56:11.  how you could have approached it differently What went well? Or didn’t go well?

00:03:00:10.  How they’ve approached it? And what you could have done differently to get a

00:03:04:24   different outcome. Practice is the absolute best way to develop this skill.