Elevate Tough Conversations into Company Growth
A Leader’s Approach: 3 C’s to Effective Communication
by Jennifer Martin, Founder Leadership Well Done
Even at the best run companies, there is no avoiding difficult conversations.
Whether it’s a lack of performance, a bad attitude, or failing to deliver core values, your team has already witnessed that member’s inadequate actions and behavior. Any delay, or ineffectiveness, in confronting the situation may not only risk your credibility as a leader but also jeopardize company results.
Timeliness isn’t enough. To be an effective leader, you need to effectively lean into these conversations, understanding tough talks present a unique opportunity to curate growth.
Not only do they provide a chance to reinforce company standards but, depending on how you handle them, can also show you value your people and are dedicated to helping them achieve more.
These 3 Cs will help guide you in turning your tough talks into effective communication:
1. Care
How good is your relationship with the greatest asset in your business -- its people? This first principle focuses on the individual as a person and the success of this conversation lies in their ability to answer YES to each of these three questions: Does this leader care about me? Can I trust them? Can they help me reach my goals?
This also makes sure you’re in the right mindset when having these conversations. The focus is really on recognizing their value as a person and caring about their growth as an individual. Otherwise, it can come across as you just wanting to win, proving you’re right, or trying to put someone in their place.
As John Maxwell says, “People won’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care”.
Consider care and trust as the currency of leadership, which means you have extensive work in building the relational foundation long before any difficult conversation is needed. If you haven’t already, consistently invest time and energy getting to know your people and connecting over both their professional and personal goals.
If you have an established personal relationship and they can trust you, then they will know your heart as a leader and genuinely want to give their best efforts to help accomplish common goals.
2. Candor
Unless you want to carry the whole load yourself, you need to continuously develop great leaders. Whereas care values the person, candor values their potential.
It’s understandable if providing candid feedback feels uncomfortable; many of us were taught to equate feedback with criticism. But remember, even if the feedback is negative, you can’t afford to postpone.
People need clear objectives and honest feedback to achieve anything of value. Think of feedback instead, first and foremost, as a catalyst for growth.
As part of your culture, challenge your teams to confront failures with a growth mindset. Work together to figure out what went wrong, both collectively and individually. Then hold each other accountable and come up with an agreed upon plan on how everyone can increasingly improve.
Also don’t hesitate in giving your team permission to point out, with care and candor, your blind spots so they can help raise the bar both personally and professionally for you.
3. Common Ground
The only win is an organizational win. In times of conflict, or in the presence of difficult conversations, finding common ground is critical to your success in uniting people back together to accomplish a common goal.
Assuming you’ve been an effective leader, establishing this kind of common ground should be simple. Everyone within the organization should already be connected and committed to the company’s mission and understand the importance of their contributing role.
Your company mission should direct every action and therefore guide the need for any growth related discussion. If you can keep the mission central to your communication, you’ll have the power to clarify purpose, offer direction, refocus attention, and engage people in the meaning of their work.
At the end of the conversation, it’s not enough to simply think it went well. Just because you have the talkdoesn’t mean it was received, believed, or if they will follow through. The right question to ask yourself is – was it effective? The goal of effective communication is not to correct behavior, but instead produce cohesive best efforts so together you can help more people leading to sustainable company growth.
The added benefit in this type of communication is it will also help distinguish between people who can vs people who won’t. Focus on keeping people on the team who have great attitudes, can help the organization, embrace core values, and are interested in growth. Moreover, be bold, honest, and care enough about the organization and its people, to let the other ones go.