Difficult Conversations with Fred Kofman

0:00 [Music] it is precisely at those times that communication is most vital to achieve your goals that conversations break down most dramatically that's why difficult conversations are scary the stakes are high there's a high cost to fail and yet that's when failure is most likely

0:37 have you ever had a bad conversation yes yes yes yes are you afraid you might have a bad conversation tomorrow or this week okay we all have bad conversations and we're all worried that these bad conversations will continue so if we can step confidently into these conversations knowing that we can manage the process then a whole new world opens up if i push and i say you're wrong what do you want to do you're wrong and what do you think i

1:09 want to do push back exactly you're wrong no you're wrong okay so now we escalate everyone's spending a lot of energy and where are we going nowhere nowhere we're pushing with our hands and we're pushing with our words and each one was trying to push the other person out by saying i am right and you're wrong and if you follow the rule when someone pushes push back you're always going to end up stuck so we need to change this but now when

1:40 when you push i'm not going to push back and when you say you're wrong you're wrong i'm going to yield and say well show me what do you see that i don't you know i'm from argentina so what does this look like i'm going to turn this into a dance i mean she thinks she's right and she's saying something i don't because i think i'm right so the first step in this conversation is for me to look genuinely and say oh

2:07 that's what you're seeing i i couldn't see it because it was behind me now she's going to give me permission to say can i show you what i see that you haven't seen before so let me show you and here now i'm going to turn a little more you see this was behind you and you couldn't see it you want three things out of a conversation you want to feel good about yourself you want to relate to the other person

2:32 positively and you want to achieve your goals get something done solve a problem we're going to call these three domains the i the we and the it i is how i feel inside i want to be proud of myself i want to feel good we is how you and i relate openly respectfully kindly and it is well how are we going to solve our problems how are we going to get the results that we seek

3:03 i would like to be less sure of yourself when you walk in saying well i see part of the world but i don't know what they're seeing and from their perspective what they see is right and unless i recognize that they see something that makes sense to them we can't communicate if we're not in contact and the early contact is a clash we'll never get to the topic but normally i jump to content and i imagine you do

3:28 the same we just want to deal with the problem and we forget that how the person feels and how we relate is primary contact context and content don't jump into content before you make contact with the other person there's a saying i don't care how much you know until i know how much you care you have to show the other person you care before they will listen to what you know

3:59 when you do this well it just seems so natural so easy so common sense that the other person will say we just had a great conversation it was really sweet it was nice we solved the problem and they will never know you're using anything it's just being you but better there are things you can control and things you cannot control you cannot control the outcome but you can control the process so let's look at what tools you can use

4:26 to make sure you do your best in the eye that we and the it for our engineering team as we grow the first tool is listening listening well it's hard it requires listening to the other person fully which starts with not interrupting them you have to pay attention and be quiet this is especially hard when he's saying something that really irritates you your natural reaction will be to stop him well that's the moment of truth that's the moment when you stop yourself

4:57 you stay quiet and you pay attention because you're really trying to understand where he is coming from what would you like to have happen so i would love for her to actually the second tool is inquiry asking questions what do you think why do you think what you think and what would you like given that you think that after you listen you have to let the other person know that you heard what they said well let

5:27 me make sure i understand you're thinking about promoting her and she's thinking she's going to get fired exactly so there's this there's this so you summarize what he said and ask him did i get what you wanted to tell me and i've tried to reassure her it may be that by summarizing what he said he realizes now he didn't say something important to him so he'll add it this is a way for you to allow the other

5:54 person your counterpart to share his deepest truth with you that's a great thing to want and it's totally out of my control i can't help you the next step of the conversation is to validate you have to acknowledge that what they say is reasonable you might be screaming inside this is crazy and maybe it's crazy for you but i guarantee it's not crazy for him that's why he's saying it so let me try something i i'd like to now comes the crucial part

6:25 is to express your view safely there's safety in i when you speak in first person you're not imposing your view on the other person you're simply telling them what you think or what you feel notice the difference between you don't know what you're talking about and i don't understand what you're saying here's a suggestion what if we the next step of the conversation is to actually engage in a negotiation

6:55 you want to resolve the problem together see most people think of negotiation how do i get what i want i want to lower the price i'll push you and you know you'll sell it to me for less or i'm going to sell it to you for more but this is really a negotiation we're negotiating how can we make this safe for both of us right the last step of a constructive conversation is to formalize the agreement into a

7:18 series of commitments it's very different to agree than to promise another typical thing that happens in conversation is we're so happy we agreed and said great now we walk away and we yeah we agreed but but nobody knows what's going to happen next so the last step of every conversation is always what are we going to do next let's make a commitment and there's no commitment without time so i said by when can you prepare will we do this tomorrow

7:49 we'll meet in my office we'll make this plan so it's very clear but it's not just a next step it's a next step that we agreed and we both commit to at the end of the conversation you can do a process check to evaluate how did it go and is there anything you can learn to make it better next time the three areas to check are the i the we and they it do you feel good does your

8:13 counterpart feel good have you related positively have you gotten what you want has she gotten what you want so what conversation are you afraid to have and what can you do about it let me make a suggestion first connect with yourself ask yourself what do i really want what do i want to express what do i want to ask how do i want to relate to this other person then practice it so you can stay

8:43 connected to yourself when the conversation heats up and then step into it [Music] you