One area of my practice is coaching clients to have difficult conversations with those who work with them. These conversations could be with their superiors, peers, employees, or customers. Of course, there is no single approach to having such conversations, but the reason for a need to have such interactions is often the same: Relationship breakdown.
You perceive that someone has—or is about to—do you harm and you need a way to deal with it, so you can find ways to recover your position. This includes any erosion you may have had in your relationship with that person or any harm their witting or unwitting actions may have caused you in your job, career, or image. Of course, such conversations are not limited only to your professional life; they pervade your everyday existence, too.
Let us take a recent work example: My client—an individual contributor—was offered a job at a fast-growing company with a promise of a line-manager role with many technical experts reporting to him. During the interviews he was given a clear mission and a timeline, including onboarding new hires and associated responsibilities.
Within a week of his joining he realized that the place was even more chaotic than what he gleaned from the interview discussions. One of his peers—also a manager—had on boarded a few months prior and had cased out the place to figure out who the key players were and the opportunities. A politically savvy person, he was not that technically astute, but knew his way around enough to bamboozle others, especially his superiors. My client, on the other hand, was his opposite.
So, within a few weeks after my client on boarded he extracted all the key information from my client and went up the chain to stake a claim for a broader role by presenting my client’s ideas as his own and persuading his superiors to have my client and his team now reporting to him. Because of the chaos, this was soon approved and my client was at the short end of the straw.
Not knowing how to deal with this surprise, my client called me to get some guidance. Here is what we decided to do and here is how it played out:
Developing Strategy:
- My client being politically obtuse, but technically very strong, I first asked him to find allies within the organization with whom he should quickly build strong relationships. I suggested reconnecting with those with whom he did exceptionally well during the interviews and who were placed high in the food chain.
- Next he started meeting with these leaders to show them his insights and to share his ideas about how to build the organization to pursue the mission that was discussed throughout the interviews. Within a week or two he was able to build credible relationships with a few key people.
Socializing Ideas:
- Even within this group my client found a smaller group of people with whom he was able to build trusted relationships before sharing his predicament about the developing situation that he wanted to remedy.
- Once he had a good handle on how he was positioned with key allies within his immediate ecosystem he decided to meet with his peer, who had just become his new manager, with a well-rehearsed script.
Confronting the Adversary:
- The main thrust of his argument with his new “boss” was that his shenanigans had not gone unnoticed and that he had hijacked my client’s ideas to pursue his own welfare. My client proposed a plan that he could not refuse (if my client did not technically support what was promised his new “boss” was doomed). If my client had not shown the courage to hold this conversation he would have been doomed to deal with the continued shenanigans of his new “boss” and those of others like him.
- This was a difficult decision for my client because his DNA did not prepare him to have this confrontation.
Meeting Objectives:
- Keeping the overall organization’s objectives above the fray my client agreed to support the existing plan, but told his “boss” that he needed a timeline and a plan before he could continue to support what his “boss” had concocted for his benefit.
- Because my client now had the support of key players (not all of them in his chain of command) he felt comfortable taking the risk without compromising the current mission that his “boss” had already committed to.
Finessing the Adversary:
- Once the key deliverables were achieved, which took a few months because of my client’s diligence, and once the higher-ups saw who the real hero was, there was yet another re-org where my client was able to regain what was originally promised to him, with his “boss” now being sidelined.
- With this approach within about four months my client was able to regain his footing, learn a new skill in overcoming political shenanigans, and put the miscreant in his place.
One thing my client realized during this episode was that politically savvy players can hijack in a day or less what technically savvy players take months to create. It took my client about four months to overcome what his peer had done to undermine him (it took him less than a day to do it early in the game; and now he is paying the price). Having a strategy to conduct difficult conversations is key to overcoming such setbacks.
Good luck!
Photo: Compfight.com