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Make Difficult Conversations Less Difficult By Stepping Off the Moral High Ground

I doubt whether you have ever opened a conversation with the words: I know that I am more to blame for this than you are; I know I do not have all the facts; and I know that what I am about to say makes no sense at all!

One of the hardest parts of planning for a difficult conversation is to think through how your own behaviour may have contributed to the problem. Think of some typical examples.

You are a manager and one of your employees is not making his target. Your manager is pushing you to achieve the target for your department. All it takes is that everyone pulls their weight, but this one person is letting you down. He is causing the problem.

But is he entirely to blame? Are you sure you have made the target clear? Has he ever reached the target? Did you give him positive feedback when he succeeded? Do you give him immediate feedback when he does not make target? Have you ensured he has all the resources he needs to get the job done? There is any number of ways that you, the manager, could be part of this problem.

Think of a family situation. Your teenage son, who now has a driving license and has been allowed to drive your car, comes home way after the times you agree. He started out by being only fifteen minutes late, then thirty, now it is often an hour or even more. You have spoken to him, said that you worry when he is late and he promised to be on time. But he comes in later and later.

Can you see that you are part of this problem by allowing the deadline to slip further and further out? You have allowed him to come home late without any effective sanction, so you have taught him that your standards are flexible. He has learned that he can stretch them, and can do so without consequence.

When you step into a conversation convinced that you are in the right and that the other person is wrong and is entirely the cause of the problem, you feel as if you own the moral high ground. Clearly, if the other person would just see things and do things your way, there would not be a problem. So when you raise the issue with them, you tell them what you see happening, you explain how strongly you feel about it, and then you tell them what you want them to do about it.

All you need is their agreement to your solution, and since you are pushing so hard for it, the easiest thing for them to do is to agree. And they do! You think you have obtained their commitment, and you expect that they will change their ways. Which they do not!

So you broach the subject again, only this time you explain the problem more forcibly, you say more strongly how you feel, and you threaten dire consequences if they do not do something about it.

At best, things will improve for a time, then relapse.

Going into conversations in the belief that the other person is entirely responsible for the problem, and with the intention of getting them to fix it by agreeing to do things your way, has little hope of obtaining the behaviour change that you want. In situations where you do not have any power or authority, this conversational style has no chance of success at all.

Think how ineffective it would be in a conversation with your mother-in-law over her interference in how you raise your children, with your boss when you think you have been unfairly treated, or in a conversation with a friend whom you feel has behaved inconsiderately.

In preparing for conversations on issues like these, you need to realize that feeling strongly about something does not mean that you are in the right about it! Maybe you had strong feelings but you did not speak up, and you have helped create the problem by giving tacit approval to things as they were. Perhaps there are many legitimate views of what happened and yours is just one. You might also be plain wrong!

Accepting that you may be part of a problem allows you to step off the moral high ground, and helps you hold back on telling others how you want them to change. It helps you go into a conversation without arrogance, and gives you a much better chance of hearing all sides and of finding a solution to which everyone can commit.

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