The International Association for Contract and Commercial Management issued an interesting interview with Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Confrontations.
I can’t find the newsletter on the IACCM site anywhere, so I’ll quote liberally here (sorry, IACCM), because the interview provided some practical fodder on the topics of confrontation and negotiation, two worthy subjects for people involved in outsourcing.
IACCM: Our members work in the world of contracts and negotiations. They are supporting or leading major bids, negotiating terms, managing issues that arise from non-performance. Conflict is an everyday component of their work — whether it is with trading partners, or internal stakeholders who don't like the rules. If you are in a job of this type, is confrontation inevitable — and is it in fact a good thing?
JG:
When the stakes are high and people’s points of view vary, conflict is inevitable. And those who are best at negotiation are those who embrace it quickly and confront the problems effectively. Everyone who has been in negotiation more than a week understands that what drives the ultimate outcome is as much the human issues involved in the principles of the discussion as the objective issues involved. When people begin not to trust each other, suspect others are playing games, or in other ways damage respect, the entire process bogs down. Those who are best at negotiation recognize these issues and concerns and, rather than allowing them to drag the process down, they confront, discuss and resolve others in healthy ways that strengthen the relationship and ensure a better outcome.IACCM: You have a self-assessment survey in your book that consists of statements like these:
- To avoid argument, I put off certain discussions.
- I find myself bringing up the same issue over and over.
- I sometimes assume others cause me problems on purpose.
- I sometimes wonder if I’m too quick to anger.
- I bring up problems in a way that makes others defensive.
- I do too much talking and not enough listening.
- There are people I deal with that can’t be motivated.
- Sometimes I rely on guilt or threats to get people to act.
- When someone misses a commitment, I generally let him or her off the hook.
Can you walk us through these statements and explain to us what works and what doesn’t?
JG:
If we combine “to avoid argument, I put off certain discussions” and “when someone misses a commitment, I let him/her off the hook,” we’re describing a persistent weakness within organizations in confronting problems. It is the primary problem we face in improving our organizations. Regarding the second bullet point, if you ever find yourself confronting the same problem over and over again with the same individual, it’s because you are holding the wrong conversation. What we learned from our study of 10,000 hours with those who are brilliant in confrontations is that they tend to find a way to help resolve the issue or they know when they have to escalate to the next level. That skill of picking the right issue to confront is key to success.“I sometimes assume that people cause me problems” and “I am quick to anger” — both of these are related. One of the biggest problems we face in crucial confrontations is our emotion. We are out of control, angry, frustrated or scared. These emotions come across in how we confront a problem. One of the central skills sets in crucial confrontations is what we learned by people who managed to remain civil and respectful even when confronting risky topics.
Regarding “I bring up problems in a way that makes others defensive,” one of the skills that I’ve found particularly helpful is a three-part skill set that we’ve found for handling the hazardous half-minute, the first 30 seconds of a crucial confrontation. How do I start” Often times what we do is start in a way that is designed to create problems. We unintentionally provoke defensiveness. The skills to handle the hazardous half-minute are a real lifesaver when you come to this part of it.
Finally, “there are people I deal with that can’t be motivated” and “sometimes I rely on guilt or threats to get people to do what I want them to do.” How do you motivate people who don’t seem to care about the issue that has been raised? One of the most revolutionary things we found in our research into crucial confrontations is that those who do best, more often than not, had less power than the person they were confronting and yet they were still able to illicit attention and support from these people who initially didn’t care.
IACCM: What are some key mistakes we typically make in our interaction with others?
JG:
At a high level there are two: avoidance, and compulsion and coercion. Ninety per cent of the time the problem is that we avoid. In the healthcare organizations in our study, we found that 84% of healthcare workers reported that they have colleagues they work with regularly who are dangerously incompetent. They do things that are dangerous to patients, and they cut corners. We asked what percentage had spoken up about it. The answer was one in ten or fewer. Only one in ten times did someone actually speak up even when lives were at risk. The second mistake we make is that when we do feel powerful, we tend to coerce. We come in and intimidate and abuse our authority and we provoke a whole host of negative consequences by doing that. If you ever think you don’t have enough power to hold a crucial confrontation, that very thought is the problem.IACCM: You say in your book that ineffective problem solving saps organizational performance by 20 to 50% and accounts for up to 90% of divorces. So, what is it that makes most of us so ineffective in dealing with conflict?
JG:
We did a study on this and asked that question. There was a pattern in the answers. When we asked people to identify the parties with whom they need to have confrontations and are dreading, 20% said their bosses, 20% said it was someone in senior management above their boss, 20% said it was a peer, and 20% said it was a direct report. The remaining 20% said it was someone from another team or department. There is no pattern to this. The reason we are so ineffective in crucial confrontations is because we are so unskilled and equally ineffective, regardless of the relationship to the other party. Usually, people tell us it’s because they can’t confront anyone who is above them in the organization because they’ll be punished or hold a grudge. That’s baloney. We are equally likely to avoid a crucial confrontation with a peer or direct report as we are with our boss. I’m not suggesting that there is not political fallout from the process; I am suggesting that the reason we are bad at these confrontations is because we are bad at them with everybody. We start with the assumption that it will be uncomfortable and then we back into it with reasons for not holding the confrontation. It comes down to skill. As we’ve intervened in organizations and taught them what we know after watching these people for 10,000 hours, we found that we can make dramatic improvements very quickly.IACCM: In your book, you walk through a process for skillful confrontation. Will you please provide us with a brief overview of what it looks like and give us some examples of what it might look like in action?
JG:
These skills came from people who really do it well. The skills break out into before, during and after skills. There are things that people who are really good at this do before they get into a crucial confrontation. They choose what and if. They select the right problem to deal with. I watched in a hospital as someone was trying to confront a co-worker. The co-worker, whenever she went into the neonatology unit where premature babies were, would clip the finger out of her glove. This colleague spoke to her colleague who had been doing it for about a year and a half and said that she had noticed that she had been clipping the finger out of her glove. The woman said she had scrubbed well and needed to use the finger to start an IV on a little baby. She walked away. The problem with that confrontation was the initiator raised the wrong problem. She raised a content problem, the fact that the woman had just clipped the finger out of her glove. The real problem that she needed to discuss was a pattern problem that the woman had been doing it for a year and a half. Very often, when we are not clear on the right conversation to hold, we go in and hold a content one. The other person drags us down to the details of the most recent incident and we don’t even realize that they just changed the topic. We walk away unresolved because our real issue wasn’t that it was done just now, but that it had been done for a year and a half. In our book we talk about three different levels of confrontation that you might need to hold and when you pick the right one you find yourself having the conversation once rather than repeatedly.Second “master my stories.” The problem is that when you come into these conversations you are often angry or fearful. This talks about how you get control of your own emotions. How do you influence and change your emotions so you feel civil and respectful towards that person? Having done these things in advance then you move into the “during” phase.
These skill sets include about how you describe the gap between what you expected and what you got. In crucial confrontations we are confronting gaps; gaps in performance, gaps in promises or expectations, gaps in behavior. The skills here are the ones used in handling the half-minute. It’s a really risky 30 seconds. If you’ve done that then you have two challenges to face. Is this a motivation problem or a mobility problem? Motivation ? how do you make it motivating to the other person in a healthy, lasting way? How do you make it easy to do? If you deal with both sets of these concerns, people will comply.
Finally, what do you do at the end? Follow-up skills are essential for putting this thing to bed. What do you do if you started it well, you prepared in advance well, and even ended it well and it blows up in your face? The “stay focused and flexible” skills are these recovery skills. These are the skills that people use to get it back on track. As you learn the components of this model it gives you a way of thinking about a crucial confrontation that may make you feel empowered to approach it more effectively.
