Leading Difficult Conversations at Work
Master the art of leading difficult conversations at work with strategies to ensure productive outcomes. Learn how to prepare, communicate clearly, and follow up effectively to foster a respectful and growth-oriented environment. Perfect for leaders aiming to handle tough discussions with confidence.
Leading Difficult Conversations at Work
Jens delves into one of the most challenging aspects of leadership: leading difficult conversations. Whether it’s addressing underperformance or delivering the tough news of a termination, Jens outlines a clear, three-step process to guide managers through these critical moments.
Key Takeaways:
Preparation is Crucial: Before initiating a difficult conversation, it’s essential to gather evidence and fully understand the issues at hand. Jens emphasizes the importance of being clear on the facts, potential reasons for the issue, and the ultimate goal of the conversation. This groundwork ensures that the discussion remains focused and constructive.
Conducting the Conversation: Jens shares practical advice on how to steer the conversation with empathy while maintaining clarity. He advocates for open-ended questions that encourage dialogue and understanding, rather than placing blame. The goal is to listen actively, uncover underlying issues, and collaboratively create a plan to move forward.
Effective Follow-Up: The conversation doesn’t end when the meeting is over. Jens underscores the importance of follow-up to ensure commitments are met and to provide ongoing support. This step is key in fostering accountability and reinforcing trust within the team.
Navigating Terminations: When the situation calls for it, Jens provides a structured approach to handle terminations with professionalism and sensitivity. He highlights the necessity of thorough preparation, legal considerations, and clear communication. Jens also stresses the importance of supporting the remaining team members during transitions to maintain morale and productivity.
Reflect and Improve: After the conversation, Jens advises leaders to reflect on the process. What went well? What could have been handled differently? This reflection not only helps in personal growth but also contributes to the ongoing improvement of team dynamics and leadership skills.
Jens equips managers with the tools they need to navigate tough conversations effectively, turning potentially difficult moments into opportunities for growth and development. Whether you’re dealing with performance issues or more severe scenarios, these insights will help you lead with confidence and integrity.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Leading Difficult Conversations
00:57 Scenario 1: Addressing Underperformance
01:30 Preparation for the Conversation
03:18 Conducting the Conversation
07:24 Building a Plan and Follow-Up
12:50 Scenario 2: Terminating an Employee
13:24 Preparation for Termination
14:27 Conducting the Termination Conversation
19:00 Post-Termination Steps and Team Communication
21:01 Reflecting and Learning from the Process
Ready to Accelerate Your Career with Personal Branding?
Book a free 15-minute discovery call today to explore how we can help you unlock new opportunities and achieve your professional goals.
Let’s get started— book your session now.
Book here.
Transcript:
Leading Difficult Conversations
It's really, and I zoom into you as a manager, it doesn't matter what manager you are, because there will be always a different, different, difficult conversation. But to make it easy, I built two scenarios, one very difficult and one kind of difficult. So scenario one, we go into someone, someone of your team members.
performing low, like it's not performing according to what, what you agreed on. And this scenario two is to, take this to the extreme and you need to fire that person. So how, how would you prepare and how would you do this to difficult conversation? I took this too because there will be of course, hundreds of different scenarios, which you can use, but I think the flow and the system I've built are.
will always help you to kind of get yourself through these conversations. So scenario one, the employee is not performing like your team member. If you're the manager, if you're the leader, it's not performing. So the system, as usual, has three steps. First, how do you prepare? Then second, how do you do the conversation?
And then the third one in this case is follow-up. Like, how do you follow up? And then after I will go through it and then we do a break for questions on this topic. And then we go to the next one. So for the preparation, it's always important for you to ask yourself, What does the person do not perform well on?
Because when you go into the conversation, you need to have the evidence. You need to have the proof. I have worked in a lot of big companies, as some of you know, sometimes someone else is saying this person is not performing and you have no evidence of this. So how do you want to talk to a person where you don't have evidence?
So it very, very important that you prepare yourself and you know it's true, because sometimes they're just political setups, as the bigger the organization is, as more that can happen. So you need to know exactly what the person is not performing on. You need to go deeper into that so that you know the exact topics because you need to be able to explain that to the person, which you will see in the conversation itself.
Then, of course, what could be the reason for that person not performing? It's always good for you to dig a little bit deeper, to be prepared, because, in these conversations, I don't want to create fear, at least the way I believe we should be leading people. You should not create fear. It's about having a conversation.
That means you need to have an open dialogue and find out what it is. And then, of course, be very clear for yourself what is the goal of this conversation. So these are the minimum topics you should be preparing yourself for. And then you go into the conversation prepared. You know exactly what are the topics, you know what could be reasons, and that can be a guess.
You will then figure that out. And then as well, what is the goal of the conversation? Because when we look into the conversation itself, we go from left to right. So first of all, you, of course, you meet each other, you have a little bit chit chat, but I try to go as quickly as possible to the state of, Hey, this conversation is about this topic and it's, this is the goal of this conversation.
So that the person that is in front of you knows exactly why you have this conversation. In the best case, you explain that to before to them already so that they're kind of prepared, but it's super important that you say in this case, the goal of this. Conversation is understanding why you're not performing in this way.
And I would, I would maybe not formulate it then in that way, but that's the key part. So you need to explain that this conversation is about the performance of the other person. And then you go into what you have observed. So you need to state the facts. So that the other person sees the evidence. And it's not necessarily that you show emails or whatever, but you need to have them ready where it's going to be shown.
As better you are prepared, as better you can lay out the facts. And if, if you are in a working relationship, let's say you are the direct manager of that person, then you have all of that. You talk to that person. Hey, we agreed that you would be there on Thursday and you did not show up. As an example, we agreed that you deliver this report or the presentation on Monday and you didn't send it.
And then you go into how did, how, how did this, did this happen? I always Avoid asking why questions. Why is it directly something that pushed the other person in the corner? I always ask open-ended questions. And how did this happen? It's, it's, it's, it's kind of a why question, but it's not asking why. So it's not pushing them into a corner.
And then they have the possibility to explain how it came to that position. That's a very, very important stage for you. Where you are not arguing against it, where you, you just listen, you let the other person explain and, you ask questions that go deeper, but always ask questions that are clarifying questions that open up the other person.
Because what you want to get to, and that's the goal of this, this, this conversation as well, is we want to build a plan that we don't come up in, in this situation again. So, get them the possibility to explain, that's ask and listen and then go deeper into what's the reason. Because the key part is understanding what's the reason.
And sometimes there's a bad situation at home, which you maybe don't see in the work relationship, but that's why the person is not performing. I've had this a couple of times. In my career, a person was not performing and because this person was not willing to share it openly, it came only up in a conversation like this where I then asked, so what's going on?
And then this person opened up and shared about their personal life and that things are not well right now. And so I knew exactly why this person was not performing. So it's very, very easy then to understand where this comes from. Most of the time, at least in my experience over the last 20 years, it's not that they do this Like, in a way that they try to not perform.
There are always reasons for things. And sometimes that has also happened to me. People explain to you, Hey, I didn't understand what you want from me. So it's your fault as the manager that you didn't explain properly, that you didn't give the task properly, whatever it was. Because it's a fine-tuning mechanism as well.
So you go into asking, listening, and then you transition to, okay, understand, how do we make sure that this is not going to happen again? So you build a plan going forward too, let's say, if this still needs to be delivered, how do we get this delivered? Maybe the task is not appropriate for this person. You find another person.
Maybe this person needs a longer time, needs more resources, needs a new computer, whatever it is. So it's really. Helping the other person through questions. So what the goal of this is that the other person, your team member, comes up with the solution. Because if you get the team members to come up with the solution, they will be more inclined to solve them.
If you give them the A to Z, version, of what they should be doing, they will most probably not follow that because they always will blame you that you have told them what exactly to do. So through questions, get them on a path to what are the things we need to be doing from now on to solve this. And then the last part of this is to agree on a detailed steps plan is really go into okay, so we need to have this.
Let's go back to the presentation. We need to have this presentation. Excuse me. We need to have this presentation by Friday. How do you get this done? And then the person may come up. I will do the draft slides on Monday. I will share the slides with you on Monday afternoon. I will give you feedback and on Tuesday I will do the next version of it.
So it's really on that detailed steps and you need to guide the other person to build that. And then it's, it's really important to have it. clear timelines as part of that as well. And what I always do, that's why I put it as the last point, is put the accountability on the other person. Because the other person feels that you need to come to me to get feedback.
I'm not following up. Because my whole leadership style and what, uh, what, what I always teach is you empower the other person as much as possible to be responsible for the task and what, what they're doing. And as well wider in the organization, the whole empowerment is really how do you keep yourself accountable and what you're doing.
So you, you enable them to take the responsibility and accountability in what they're doing. And come to you to confirm this. So inside of the timeline is as well detailed, and defined. Let's say it's the week that on Thursday at four o'clock, I will book a meeting with you. And then we go through this because then it's always the, the, the task and the, the ways of working are on them.
So that's the basic conversation. And of course, that can go in all directions. So for you, it's just a guiding principle to go from left to right. And the, I think the biggest part is really on understanding where they come from and what's happening with them to truly listen and give them the possibility to share how they feel about what's going on in their life.
Because you will get a lot of cues when they start talking and the first time there may be Still a little bit of an offensive or defensive situation where they say no, no, it's all your fault I haven't done this or they blame someone else, but you need to take them out of that and say Tell me more. So you, you give them the possibility to talk through whatever comes up to their mind until they reach a level where you, you understand, okay, that's where we're now we're talking to.
And that's the whole, uh, open-ended question topics, which is what is, in one of the classrooms already. And we will do another masterclass on a workshop on that as well. So that's, that's the flow. And then we go, of course, into the follow-up with this, because Like I already said, the other person needs to do the follow-up.
What I like is having this scheduled and you don't need to do anything. I know there are a lot of, and I've had those managers, there are a lot of micromanagers there then pushing harder, pushing harder, pushing harder to get the person doing things. I do the opposite. And that has worked very well with the teams I have worked with over the last 20 years.
I step back and say, you follow up. What I do is then I put that into my calendar that I know if this person doesn't come on Monday, I will ask them on Tuesday, but only on Tuesday, not on Monday to say, Hey, you told me we agreed that we are going to meet on Monday and we talked through your draft. And then, of course, asking questions as to how is it going when you're meeting with this person, whatever is going on?
Is there anything you need from me just to keep the ball rolling? And that's as simple as that to have a difficult conversation. It's just being prepared, going into the conversation, be very clear about what the goal of this conversation is. In this case, we want to have a plan that this is not going to happen again, and we need to deliver the keynote, let's say, or the presentation.
And that needs to be ready on Friday. Let's figure it out.
Questions to this conversation.
Let's go to scenario number two. An employee has to be fired. Let's take the scenario number one. This person has not performed now for a certain amount of time and you had documented that it did not perform. This person did not perform and you now have to fire this person.
So the decision is taken by the company that This person needs to be fired. So that's the next conversation. And again, we have a flow, which is to prepare for the conversation, do the conversation, and then post the conversation. So after the conversation prepare, obviously with this one, you need to have It's super important to have exact proof and as well show that you have had all these discussions before.
So you need to have done your homework before. And of course, it's extremely important depending on where you are in the world. You need to have a legal understanding of what are the requirements you need to have to be able to fire that person. You need to have HR input depending on how big your organization or company is.
And, and that all comes together. So you need to be extremely prepared before you go into that. You may need to talk to a lawyer if that's a difficult situation, but it's really be prepared on what are all the different topics when it comes to documentation of their non-performance. So the topic is still this person has not performed and we need to fire this person from a flow.
So, the number one thing that is. In my belief, the thing you should say first is that the decision is taken, so it's not a negotiation anymore. So this person is fired. And you can say that in other words, but telling this person that, hey, We have come to a decision that we are not going to work anymore with each other from today on, or from whatever next month on, depending on what the legal frames are.
That's the starting point. Because then the other person understands, okay, there's no way back. And then you explain the reasons. And then of course you back that up with facts. We have talked on 15th of March about this. Do you remember this is the protocol of what we have talked about and you don't need to show the protocol, but it's more, we have talked about the keynote, we have talked about this, we have talked about this project and you have not delivered this and that's why.
We don't want, uh, why we don't see any opportunity to work anymore with you because it's not going to work and it's harming the team and it's harming the organization. However, you want to explain that. Of course, the way how you explain this needs to be aligned with the legal terms, depending on where you are in the world.
It's always slightly different. Um, and then, I mean, sometimes you need to have legal confirmation from internal or external or HR, depending, on the structure of the organization. You have, if you are a very small company, I would always advise you to take an external lawyer who checks what you should be doing, what should just to be sure when it comes to these things.
But if you're in a bigger organization, then most of the things are covered and you have internal team members who support that. And then, the next one is really listen and answer questions. Most of the time they have a lot of questions. I've had it a couple of times, but I really wanted to, okay, how much do I get paid?
When is my last day? When do I need to drop the laptop? Like they really wanted to have everything already laid out and you answer all the questions they might come up with. And then from that one, I always transitioned to, are you interested in receiving feedback for, because sometimes. It's a great opportunity for people to learn and I always try to offer it to them.
So hey, there's a possibility for you to get feedback. Do you want to get feedback? And I don't necessarily need to be in this conversation, can be afterwards as well. But some people really want to grow and want to understand more about what could I have done differently. So that's, that's that part. And then you talk about the next steps.
So the next steps are those. We, we, you, we need to sign this letter right now inside of the room, because most of the time it's a physical conversation, though these days digital works as well. You need to sign this both ways so that the person has something and then the next steps, whatever. You need to give up your laptop, depending on where you are in the conversations in which country, and what the legal requirements are.
And then the person is off from that day. Or. Whatever you agree on. So that's from a very simple throw. It's and it's, it's, it sounds bad from the way I'm explaining it, but you need to be very to the point. This is not a coaching conversation. This is a conversation that is very tough for both sides. I have been on both sides.
Not being fired, but being, being, uh, made redundant. And then you sit there and you get to be told that you are not having a job anymore. In my case, when I was 23, it was like, you know, you don't have a job anymore in four weeks. And that, for me, was a total shock. So I, I needed to be clear with, if you would do a coaching session out of that, it's not going to work.
So I really encourage you to be strict to the point and even if it is sometimes a little rougher than you are, try to be as nice as possible. To the point stick to the topics you have aligned with the lawyers and with the other people. So that is also helping you too. And then of course you need to document that in certain ways, depending on the company structure and company decisions and as well legal requirements as part of that.
And then post the conversation, obviously follow the steps as agreed, whatever you are. Some, people want to have like a written confirmation, they want to have something signed, whatever. So that this is. organized. And then of course, um, you need to align this first with HR and legal. But what I really encourage you to do is take care of the team members.
Let's say you have a team of five people and one person needs to go. The other team members will feel that already for a long time. And you need to tell them, You need to understand when you're allowed to tell them, but tell them and, and be there for them. Because that can affect the whole team or even the whole organization.
If that's not done well, I've seen this done not well. And the whole business area with a couple of hundreds of people is off for two days, like off from a mindset perspective. They're at work, but they're off because one big manager, What was not there anymore and there was no real explanation and nothing was organized in a proper way.
So, it doesn't matter how small or big the team is, it's your responsibility as the manager to inform the others and get, really take time. What I always do is put them in a room and say, Hey, this has happened. That's the reason, at least what you, can share. Not everything is allowed to share this, but in the end, say that we have decided to go different ways.
It's decided and that's going to happen. And then you just start listening. How do you feel about that? How, how, how are you with this? And then people come up. What I can often do is do this a couple of times over a period. Um, so like you do this, let's say you, you, you fired this person on Monday and this person is gone.
Let's assume this person has gone from the next day. Then you still do follow-ups with the teams over the next days because people are different. And some people need more time to digest this. Thanks. And then as the last point of this is really reflective. What could have you done differently as a manager?
It's always good to reflect as well. What could we as a team have done differently? Um, understanding all of that will then prevent you from doing these things again. So it's really trying to understand, try to listen to yourself, try to listen and talk to your team members. Hey, how, how could, could we prevent this from happening again?
What could we do? What are the other things? And sometimes it's obvious you can't do anything. And sometimes, Hey. Maybe we should have divided this work in different ways. Maybe this person was overworked, whatever, whatever it is. It's always good to reflect and then put things into action so that you understand, Hey, there are things that are going to happen.
And there are things that you can change differently going forward. And sometimes that means, Hey, we need to hire other people. We need to focus more on this. We need to focus more on that. It's always good to have that because you can play that back. If you're in a bigger organization, back to HR when they're hiring a person, or you build that into the job profile, whatever it is, depending on the setup.
Questions, scenario two.