How to Prepare for Each Stage of the Conversation Let's look at some questions Emma should be asking herself at each stage of an upcoming important conversation with Alex. What should she be doing to prepare for her next critical conversation with Alex? It starts with thinking about both the personal AND the practical needs of her daily interactions with Alex. Each discussion requires much more careful consideration so that people receive the care and attention they need to be productive. Today’s pivot to work from home, along with COVID-19 worries, has certainly made workplace communication more difficult, and more tense. And doing this in every critical conversation. Not focusing only on the practical needs of the business but also on the Key Principles to driving continued engagement: ensuring people feel valued, respected, listened to and understood, and supported. In every Emma and Alex situation, what is lacking is willingness to stare down challenges and address the personal needs of each other. Best Practices for Having Critical Conversations at Work However, I've heard variations of this example many times over the past few months. I wish I could say above is an extreme example. Likewise, it's easy for a feeling of helplessness to start to bubble up from both the leader and direct report. Keep moving the business forward.ĭo you know an Emma? Or an Alex? Or maybe you can empathize with one of them? We've all experienced changes in our roles which we didn't see coming. But I just don't have the bandwidth to get feedback from him on things that can't be helped right now. If senior management did explain the changes in detail, Emma thinks, then it would just be opening a can of worms, right? I have a one-on-one meeting with Alex this Friday. She knows her team "gets it," even though senior management hasn’t really offered up a rationale for a lot of the cutbacks. But these changes are necessary to keep the business afloat. And Emma can see herself drifting further from her team. Still, these critical conversations deal with the stark reality of the suffering business. But Emma and other leaders take some small comfort in knowing this is the norm for many organizations. And this is all happening while work resources are stretched to their limit. Yes, keeping people connected and having those inevitable critical conversations is even harder now in the “new normal.”įor Emma, the past few months have been dominated by discussions on staff turnover, budget reductions, and shifting strategic and cultural priorities. No longer do they have the luxury of face-to-face interactions or lunchtime table tennis competitions to make genuine connections and check in with what they need. Working from London, in the midst of a second lockdown and with no clear end in sight, leaders across the company feel their “leadership toolkit” has been significantly reduced. The Pandemic Turned Leadership Upside Down ![]() But the pandemic has challenged the company’s employees to work together in different ways. ![]() Why? Because before 2020, the company relied heavily on face-to-face interactions to build connections and trust within their teams. The hard truth is that Alex's leader, Emma, is also in a spin. Everything is starting to get a little too much. But the team is without the necessary resources-human and financial-and the team can see their workload piling up. Not to mention, as the company’s sales continue to plummet, targets for lead generation are higher than ever. They all know that just getting through the next quarter is going to be tough. And massive third-party spending restrictions have the team already working with the bare minimum. However, no one on the team is sure of upcoming customer behavior. And it has just been announced there are more changes coming.Įven with this uncertainty, the marketing team was still asked to submit a budget for the new fiscal year. But the marketing department has been hit by wave after wave of layoffs. He is a skilled and experienced marketer at a medium-sized manufacturing company. Alex's engagement stands on an absolute knife edge.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |