Thank you. Well it's nice to be here with you today. I'm glad that we have the opportunity
to talk about a really important skill set. We're going to be talking about crucial confrontations
and first of all, I just want to describe what we mean by crucial confrontations. Now
I know that many of you have had an experience whether at home at work at school where you
had a certain set of expectations - that you believed that somebody else was going to come
through on a commitment that they've made to you - that they said that they would be
at a certain place at a certain time and that they would be there. True? Now, this skill
set is for specifically when you had those expectations and they weren’t realized.
That people aren’t behaving as they said they were. They aren’t keeping their commitments.
Poor behavior. They missed the mark. You had certain expectations and there's opened up
a gap in those expectations between what you thought was going to be the performance and
what the actual performance was.
Now I was working in an organization not too long ago where they were experiencing this
kind of gap. They said “We have people here who are really difficult to get along with”
- Performance Issues. So well how do you handle it? “Well we figure that eventually they're
going to retire. So we just kind of stick it out.”
I said “well how long till this person retires?” They said “well it’ll be about ten years”.
What happens in an organization when these gaps aren't addressed? What's the cost? That's
what we want to take a look at this morning - because when faced with these gaps, when
faced with a mis-commitment someone fails to deliver - We have two choices.
The first one is that we talk it out. The second one is that we act it out. So many
times we find that people are choosing this second choice - that they act out rather than
talk out their concerns. In another organization that I was working with just recently said
“we had a similar kind of problem. We have this behavior here called passing the trash.”
Passing the trash - What's that? “So well we have someone who's underperforming. We
give him kind of a mediocre performance review and then first chance we get, we transfer
him to another department.”
Now imagine what's that costing this organization? As they started to look at this they found
it was costing them more than they thought. They realized that there would be an impact
on morale - that people wouldn't be as satisfied as they could be but they didn't realize what
effect it would have on productivity. They found that they had a certain number of people
who became the go-to people and they got the majority of the work - they got about eighty
percent of the tasks because we could trust them to get it done. What about the other
eighty percent? They're kind of coasting - letting it slide. Well what message does that send
to the organization? It's OK to do that kind of thing. And so you started to see more and
more people neglect commitments that they had made because that's just part of our culture
until it was pretty regular a current event that people would only deliver about eighty
five percent on a project or be you know two to three weeks late on the good side.
This became habitual in the organization. About a year ago they had some tough financial
times and they had another cost that was incurred that wasn’t anticipated. They had a lot
of under-performers in their organization and it cost them about three point five million
dollars in packages to get these lower performers out of the organization to start over. They
stood around and talked. “I can't believe how much dead wood we have here.” So I asked
him I said “did you just hire dead wood?”
“No”, he said. How did it get there? How did this situation come to pass? And so often
it's because we are acting out rather than talking out our concerns around these performance
gaps.
So if you are able to talk through these high stakes disappointments you'll see productivity
increase. In one organization that work in, manufacturing, when they were able to address
this issue it led to a fifty percent increase in productivity and a high tech firm where
they develop software codes. They found that when they were able to catch these problems
and address them early early on talk them through that they were able to improve quality
by thirty percent. In their industry they have something called a Sev One. A Sev One
is a fatal error in code. It means it's going to grind your program to a stop so they reduce
the number of Sev one problems, errors that were being created in the code, therefore
improving quality about thirty percent. We also look beyond industry and find that if
you're able to confront other people about disappointments that it can improve your relationship.
It's been a number of scholars some of which you may be familiar with - Markman out of
the University of Denver, Gottman out of the University of Washington - who have studied
how those couples who are most successful who report most satisfaction in their relationships
get to that point. We often think of it is how much we have in common or how much mutual
love we feel. Those things are important but the predictor of success of happiness is how
we handle the negative emotions - the gaps in our expectations. What Markman found - one
of those researchers - was if he could help people deal with these situations he could
reduce the number of people who would get divorced by about fifty percent. Amazing.
Find that these skills will help you improve your relationships at home at work - improve
your ability to influence to get to results while actually building and fostering relationships.
So what are we talking about here?
We're talking about a powerful process - crucial confrontation derives its power from the process.
It gives you steps to think about what to do before, during, and then after a confrontation.
Today we're going to look at one of those before skills and we're going to be looking
at the top of that model says what to do before we go into a crucial confrontation. I need
to pause for a moment and to preface this next little section. Share with you a proverb
that I recently learned. My sister in law is Japanese and she grew up in Hokkaido and
the other day she shared this proverb with me - a Japanese proverb says that they have
a saying that goes like this - It’s better to have the wrong solution to the right problem
than the right solution to the wrong problem. Let me repeat that one more time it's better
to have the wrong solution to the right problem then the right solution to the wrong problem.
Crucial confrontations are interesting because they're often complex and we believe that
just because we're talking, we're solving the problem. We want to make sure that first
of all we're wrestling with the right problem. Make sure we have our arms around the right
issue and sometimes that can be difficult. So I want to teach you two skills here to
help you before you get into this confrontation to get to the right problem.
So here's the first one. It's called C P R. Now a lot of you are familiar with CPR. Ever
heard of C.P.R. before? This is different. Usually you think of this as cardiac pulmonary
resuscitation right? To resuscitate a person. Well in some ways it's the same. It's how
do we resuscitate a relationship that's kind of broken because of patterns of missed commitments.
C.P.R. in this context stands for Content, Pattern and Relationship. Content, Pattern
and Relationship. Let me describe each one of those for you. Content. Content tend to
be issues that we experience the first time. I've made agreement with someone and they
didn't follow through. I deal with that issue - content. Most of the chronic problems that
we experience in organizations are not I repeat not content in nature. They're more pattern
or relationship in nature. So let me describe that middle one - patterned conversation to
you.
I’ve given a presentation and after the presentation there was a woman who approached
me. She was a home health care nurse worked with a number of others who serve people actually
here in Salt Lake City. And she was really excited about the content. She said- “This
was great and it would never work with my group. I really loved what you said but I've
tried it. I've held a conversation and nothing changes.” So I asked her to describe a little
bit about what she was dealing with.
She says “well as whole healthcare nurses we go out and we make visits to people's homes
and then we come back and we're required by law within a certain time frame to fill out
a report - condition of the patient medications administered and so forth. I am in charge
of receiving those reports and I typically get those reports two to three days later
than what's required by law. When I noticed this, I went in to solve the problem. We got
into our next team meeting. I sat down when it was my turn to talk, I held up the report
and I said these reports are really important and I need you to turn them in on time. Reasonable
request right? Then everyone nodded their heads and said yes yes yes we know - we’ll
do it. Well next week rolls around what happens? Reports are late again. Next week rolls around.
Reports are late again.” And so she goes back into the meeting and she has a new strategy
now. She sits down and she says “these reports are really really really important.”
Right? She whips out that triple ‘really’ there's a change. Now alright, they're all
nodding their heads and saying yes yes yes we agree. “Yes we'll do that next week rolls
around.” Nothing happens. So she starts to get very upset. And any time she can she
directs them towards the reports and make subtle comments until one day she can take
it no longer. She comes in with a new strategy. She sits down and as soon as the meeting starts
she whipped out that report she said “these reports are really important!”
You notice how her strategy’s changed - slower and louder right? That'll solve the problem-
does it? No! Think about this for a moment. Why does she remain stuck. Is she wrestling
with the right problem. I'd submit to you - No - that she's dealing with this as if
reports are really important is the problem. What's the real problem? The real problem
is that week after week they say they'll turn him in on time and then they don't until she
gets to that issue she remains stuck. So often we only deal with that surface issue. Reports
are important - and we don't get down to the pattern that is really at the root of lack
of results of missed opportunities - of all the types of problems we've been talking about
today.
Now there's another type of conversation that we can also hold and we talked about content.
Talked a little bit about patterns. But there's also this relationship kind of conversation.
Patterns left unchecked eventually spill into the relationship. I was working in another
organization at one point - corporate H.R. They had to coordinate at times with the university
in the organization. They said “depending whose top will determine who gets power below.
So you have one leader and the H.R. departments more empowered - you have another leader and
corporate universities have more power.”
Well this fellow from H.R. he has to coordinate with schedules and planning and and so forth
for the next year with his counterpart from the university. He says “I will not have
a conversation with him about anything. So why is that.? Because I don't trust them.
Any information that I provide will be used against me. So why should I have a conversation?”
Where’s he stuck. This is a pattern over time that's starting to affect the relationship.
It starts to affect trust. That's the issue. Until they resolve that they remain stuck.
It's not about “they're going to use the information against me” as much as it is
“I can't trust that the information that you're giving me is going to be accurate that
you're going to live up to your word.”
Different kind of conversation.
Now what makes all of these issues, situations and circumstances so tough is that sometimes
we have all three. A content - the latest infraction of a pattern that's been going
on that's starting to affect my relationship. For one of the things that will be super important
as you go to address your situations is first ask yourself ‘what kind of issue in my dealing?’
With content, pattern and relationship? And little trick that's been helpful for me is
to be able to distill it down into one sentence so that I know with clarity what the gap is.
If you can do this you'll find that many of the problems that seemed unsolvable are more
likely to be solved because you're getting your arms around the right problem. So thank
you very much and good luck as you step out to the crucial confrontations.