Hands down the worst part of my job and the thing most likely to keep me awake at night is having difficult conversations with colleagues about their performance or disciplinary issues. Sometimes these conversations relate to things that are potentially career ending, particularly when you work in safeguarding. These issues are always unpleasant and require a huge amount of care to get them right. However, I’ve recently discovered that there is something harder than actually having the conversation. That is, coaching someone else to do it. In this case you can’t even do it for them, you just have to guide, witness and hold space for the layers of discomfort. Both theirs and the person they are delivering the news to.
Though there are some frameworks out there (the Radical Candour approach being an excellent one). Most formal leadership development training leaves you woefully underprepared for this element. Much of what I have learnt has been picked up from observing and talking with skilful leaders. This piece from Ben Parnell is an incredibly helpful look at the granularity of managing performance, both in terms of considering how we might avoid getting into conversations about formal capabilities in the first place and practical steps for how to navigate it if you do get there.
Paying attention to how we have conversations really matters too. Isn’t it funny how things come in threes? This week I also came across this excellent blog from Body Talk on how to deliver bad news. What I find particularly interesting is how it draws attention to the felt experience of the person receiving the news. Referencing the medical profession, it refers to research that suggests that if a patient feels the conversation is ‘not done well’ it can lead to a refusal in treatment. It outlines how professionals are advised to give bad news (what they call ‘The Warning Shot’) plainly and then pause. They recommend waiting for a whole 10 seconds before moving on to setting out a clear course of action. Which they recommend doing in a tripartite structure (threes again).
I’m interested to explore how we might ‘hold ourselves’ in those ten agonising seconds. Resisting the urge to try and make it ‘all okay’- what they refer to in the Radical Candour approach as ‘ruinous empathy’- or to rush into ‘business’ and minimise the emotional weight of what has just been said. My hunch is our own attachment experiences play a role in which way we go under stress. Pre-empting your own direction is, I believe, key to holding steady.
For many of us, used to being nurturing and supportive, ‘ruinous empathy’ can come all to easily[1]. I find it helpful to make explicit the importance of desirable difficulties in conversations like this. If we make the other person feel too comfortable our point will not have landed. This requires us to get comfortable with others being uncomfortable.
It can be helpful to role play the conversation, noticing the moments where our urge to please or minimise comes in. This is not easy and requires a huge amount of self-awareness as well as awareness of the other. Much of what I have learnt about how to handle these kinds of conversations has come from my work with the charity OpenMind.Ed. Founded by an inimitable psychiatrist, and rooted in systemic practice. Working with them, first in my own supervision and later as an associate has helped me to pay attention to my felt experience, as much as the words I say. It has also led to increasing understanding of the neuro-biology behind why this is effective. In my book Leading Mindfully for Healthy and Successful Schools I explore this in more depth but in essence it is about understanding our physiological responses to threat (our alarm system) and cueing safety to our nervous system through a form of bodily awareness known as interoception.
When we are calm and comfortable, we signal physiologically that we are not a threat but we also don’t take on the feelings of other. This enables the best possible outcome in a difficult situation and keeps everyone more healthy.
As a final note, to anyone dreading or putting off (as too often happens) one of these conversations. What I do know is, when handled right, they become a bit of a Leadership Baptism. A baptism of fire, that is. Whilst you’ll never walk away from one of these conversations feeling good, if you know you’ve handled a conversation with candour and integrity, you complete a physiological stress cycle[2] and this will do wonders for your sense of confidence and purpose as a leader.
[1] There are implications of this for leaders’ wellbeing. See this blog where I reference the work of Dr Rachel Briggs on Compassion Stress Injury.
[2] More on this in an upcoming blog
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