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A guide to difficult conversations

medium.dave-bailey.com

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Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#101

Post by mercutio2 »

hopler wrote: post #27
weeksie wrote: post #14

It's funny because few things make me seethe like someone talking to me in this way during a high stress moment. The artifice is transparent and if the conversation is tense the tone is quite easy to read as condescension. I'm hardly dismissing NVC as a tactic, just that when done poorly it's worse than simply being direct.

I suspect sampling bias. When you're upset, direct confrontation can be upsetting too! NVC isn't a perfect magic trick that always works, but that's not enough reason to dismiss it.

I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted, this is my reading, as well.

People hate being called to task. In many ways it makes it harder for me, in my distress, when the person pointing out my flaws does so in a way that doesn’t leave a lot of room for me to blame others for my failures, or to blame others for my distress.

So the actual experience of NVC (regardless of whether it’s wielded as a subtle tool of manipulation) is often very frustrating.

The only way the recipient of an NVC confrontation will perceive the experience as positive is if the recipient legitimately cares about the person calling them to task, AND also cares about doing better next time.

In the absence of these prerequisites, the recipient will just be annoyed that they weren’t able to get away with whatever they did.

But the recipient’s annoyance doesn’t seem to me like an indictment of the conversational tactic. The point of NVC is to hold people’s feet to the fire; people complaining that having their feet held to the fire is uncomfortable doesn’t seem like a reasonable critique.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#102

Post by sidlls »

Some of the things in there are incredibly condescending and foster ambiguity. For example, the observation "three of the numbers in your report were inaccurate" is an observation of a mistake made, which people do. It only means "you are sloppy" if it's a regular occurrence without signs of improvement. Using that as a stand in for "you are sloppy" is itself sloppy, and also lazy and unhelpful.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#103

Post by grok2 »

weeksie wrote: post #14

It's funny because few things make me seethe like someone talking to me in this way during a high stress moment. The artifice is transparent and if the conversation is tense the tone is quite easy to read as condescension. I'm hardly dismissing NVC as a tactic, just that when done poorly it's worse than simply being direct.

I think some of that internal seething is because of previous experience where you might have ended up losing control or power and you are able to see through to what might happen if the other party is not truly empathetic (i.e. trying to get towards a common shared goal vs using this tactic as yet another way to get what they want). Unfortunately the conclusion is that it only will work if the other party then handles the subsequent resulting behavior nicely (whatever that "nicely" might mean -- you shouldn't end up feeling having given up or lost something).

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#104

Post by everdrive »

tome wrote: post #90
everdrive wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to do NVC well, and it's possible to do it poorly. It makes me wonder if this means that NVC is not inherently more useful. (ie, other methods may of communication may also be useful, and so NVC can't be called an inherent good.) Someone using NVC can still be forceful and rude. I'm struggling with how to describe this. I suppose all it does it remove unrestrained emotion and moral blame from the intera…

> I can think of plenty of situations where I don't care if someone tramples my emotions, but I'd be pretty distraught if they adopted a flawed idea, or couldn't understand why one idea was superior and another was inferior. Could you share some examples?

Almost any situation where we're trying to design a functional solution to a technical problem. I actually used to have a phrase for this: "You can't build a rocket ship with emotions." If my goal were really to successfully build a rocket ship (as noted in the maxim) then I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. Every correction would get us closer to our goal.

Alternately, if someone were interested in empathizing with the team and protecting egos, we might navigate towards a worse solution. One which took into account everyone's feelings, instead of a cold calculation of method and results.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#105

Post by tome »

sidlls wrote: post #102

Some of the things in there are incredibly condescending and foster ambiguity. For example, the observation "three of the numbers in your report were inaccurate" is an observation of a mistake made, which people do. It only means "you are sloppy" if it's a regular occurrence without signs of improvement. Using that as a stand in for "you are sloppy" is itself sloppy, and also lazy and unhelpful.

I don't think that the "observations vs evaluations" section was literally suggesting replacing the evaluation line with its corresponding observation line.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#106

Post by malvosenior »

It's funny, his very first paragraph hints at what I've found to be the most effective way to handle difficult conversations:

"All my biggest regrets as a founder are around not having difficult conversations sooner. I could have helped team members improve faster, fired people with the wrong fit earlier, had so many more productive meetings. I could have created a more open company culture."

"Sooner". Give difficult information out in small bit immediately. Waiting and letting things bottle up only makes it harder. You also build a relationship with the person receiving the bad news of honesty and openness from the get go.

If I'm managing a report that did something wrong, I address it immediately. They get used to me being honest and prompt with my feedback. Addressing a single issue immediately also mean things don't build up and you're not forced to "bundle" bad news together.

Of course you should also do this with positive feedback but I think you'll find that when you regularly and openly address negative issues, it becomes much easier on all parties involved.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#107

Post by wjn0 »

sidlls wrote: post #102

Some of the things in there are incredibly condescending and foster ambiguity. For example, the observation "three of the numbers in your report were inaccurate" is an observation of a mistake made, which people do. It only means "you are sloppy" if it's a regular occurrence without signs of improvement. Using that as a stand in for "you are sloppy" is itself sloppy, and also lazy and unhelpful.

OK, but that's not a problem with NVC. "You are sloppy" is an evaluation. An observation would be "the reports you produce consistently have errors" or something like that.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#108

Post by dragonwriter »

everdrive wrote: post #83
weeksie wrote: post #14

It's funny because few things make me seethe like someone talking to me in this way during a high stress moment. The artifice is transparent and if the conversation is tense the tone is quite easy to read as condescension. I'm hardly dismissing NVC as a tactic, just that when done poorly it's worse than simply being direct.

It's possible to do NVC well, and it's possible to do it poorly. It makes me wonder if this means that NVC is not inherently more useful. (ie, other methods may of communication may also be useful, and so NVC can't be called an inherent good.) Someone using NVC can still be forceful and rude. I'm struggling with how to describe this. I suppose all it does it remove unrestrained emotion and moral blame from the intera…

> I suppose all it does it remove unrestrained emotion and moral blame from the interaction.

That's not all it does, and is arguably opposed to something important it does. It keeps honest emotion in and displaces the injection of description of “thoughts” that are really rationalizations for emotional responses.

OTOH, in formalized transactional relationships, the assumption of mutual concern for the emotional state of the other that it rests on is not given.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#109

Post by sidlls »

tome wrote: post #105
sidlls wrote: post #102

Some of the things in there are incredibly condescending and foster ambiguity. For example, the observation "three of the numbers in your report were inaccurate" is an observation of a mistake made, which people do. It only means "you are sloppy" if it's a regular occurrence without signs of improvement. Using that as a stand in for "you are sloppy" is itself sloppy, and also lazy and unhelpful.

I don't think that the "observations vs evaluations" section was literally suggesting replacing the evaluation line with its corresponding observation line.

He does exactly that further down in the article, although those examples further down are a little better than the one I highlighted.

Re: A guide to difficult conversations

#110

Post by thanatos_dem »

sidlls wrote: post #102

Some of the things in there are incredibly condescending and foster ambiguity. For example, the observation "three of the numbers in your report were inaccurate" is an observation of a mistake made, which people do. It only means "you are sloppy" if it's a regular occurrence without signs of improvement. Using that as a stand in for "you are sloppy" is itself sloppy, and also lazy and unhelpful.

Isn’t that the point tho? It’s very confrontational and generalizing to say “your numbers are always wrong”. Instead, even if it’s a recurring pattern, stick to hard facts and actual examples you can point to. If there has been a history of issues, the person will identify that pattern themselves, unless they’re a complete idiot. And if they fail to identify that, the next hard conversation to have is “you aren’t excelling here and it’s time for a change”.
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