TOP 3 TIPS FOR DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

Years ago, I mediated a conflict between two partners in a law firm. Peter was ten years senior to Jim. They had worked together as partners for five years and over that period, it had become extremely difficult for them to have a civil conversation about anything.  Once they looked back at their history working together, they identified a root of their conflict. 

The root was anchored in Peter’s exertion of seniority to block Jim’s desire to fire his assistant immediately. Both had good reasons for wanting what they wanted. The assistant had been gone from the firm for at least three years.  It seemed like a disagreement of three years earlier, over how best to manage a subordinate, was still alive and affecting the ability of Peter and Jim to work together. Over the years, Jim’s resentment grew as did Peter’s certainty in his decision and exercise of power. They avoided talking about their feelings and instead empowered them.

Why is it easier for professionals to give clear direction and bad news in the midst of of a time-sensitive, critical emergency than have an open and honest conversation about feelings? The words for conversations to resolve a conflict or misunderstanding between two lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, and consultants, making sense of an uncomfortable situation or finding the right words to say and knowing what do are blocked by emotions.

While some emotions, like excitement and anger can feel energizing and bring clarity, others, like humiliation, embarrassment, guilt and shame can be paralyzing. The latter feel so uncomfortable that they block, what Daniel Kahneman calls System 2 thinking – deliberate, logical, and analytical thinking. Instead, they nudge into play the easily accessible options - acting too quickly and paralysis in an attempt to escape these feelings. The end point is the same - unintended consequences.  

The triggers for difficult conversations that trigger System 2 thinking often involve the readjustment of roles and responsibilities or the resolution of conflicting values.  Succession planning, compensation, or the business model are often a source of agitation.  Conflict and misunderstanding are often consequences.

If you are facing a difficult conversation arising out of conflict or misunderstanding, keep these three tips in mind.

1.     Acknowledge emotions and thoughts.

It’s a mistake to ignore emotions.  Doing so, empowers emotions to cause blocks and missteps and impairs good decision-making. Instead of ignoring emotions, notice the signs – the knots in your stomach, a headache, a racing heartbeat, or an increase or decrease of sensation within your torso or limbs. Then ask yourself questions about what you are feeling. Name the emotion if you can. If not, google emotions to expand your vocabulary and your ability to name emotions. You may have heard the phrase with regard to emotions, “name them to tame them.” The power of emotions over thought processes and decision-making lessens with acknowledgement. Emotions are easier to spot than the hidden narratives and thoughts, but know that unconscious thinking also affects emotions.

What are you telling yourself about the difficult situation and conversation? Expand your self-awareness and expand your options for managing a difficult conversation effectively.

Why do you expect an upcoming difficult conversation to be difficult? What are you expecting to happen during the conversation? What emotions do you expect others to experience? What do you imagine they expect? 

After acknowledging your emotions and thoughts, consider the overall message and specific information you really want to convey and how best to do it, so that it will be heard and processed as you intend. Focus on your main message and a good outcome for the conversation so that collaboration for a solution becomes possible. Be clear about what you want, don’t want, need, expect, or prefer. Know your mind and then you’ll be better able to help others, who can’t read your mind, understand where you need help.  

Noticing isn’t just personal.  It’s about noticing the emotions of others and adjusting what you say and how you say it, to keep the conversation flowing productively. Emotions, just like the content of a conversation, provide important information.

2.     Listen.

When your stress level is too high, you may overlook important information and limit the meaning of what you notice and hidden opportunities.  Instead, slow down.  Take a breath. Do nothing other than listen carefully. Listen for content and emotion. What’s being said and how? It’s easy to assume that you understand another person’s position; however, conflict is often not about different positions as much as it is about emotions, interests, needs, and wants that go unnoticed and unacknowledged. The only way to understand another person is to listen to understand. Asking good, open-ended questions will give you content worth your time and effort to listen carefully.

It’s often easier to engage in a targeted listening.  Listening for information that supports or undermines an existing position is easier than listening to understand what matters most to the person communicating an idea or emotion. Instead, if your goal is to resolve a conflict productively, listen without judgment.  Listen to understand. Assume whatever you hear is true for the person saying it instead of trying to correct what you believe is a misunderstanding. 

If you listen to better understand the other person’s interests and concerns, you may find options to resolve a conflict without damaging relationships.  One of my clients put it this way, “R before T.” Relationship before task.  The team and organization falls apart if relationships are not built and solidified at every opportunities. Without relationships, the tasks that can be completed are extremely limited.

3.     Demonstrate that you care.

Even the best listener and the most astute observer and analyst conveys unintended messages by skipping over the opportunity to demonstrate understanding and compassion.   Digest what you hear and observe and share back your summary. Then, ask if you captured everything the other person wanted you to notice and understand. Include emotional tenor and not just content.

Active listening, empathic listening, or reflective listening all suggest the importance of being aware of the inadvertent messages you send by what you do and say during and after the other communicates. During any conversation, especially one with an element of conflict, the opportunity to convey intentional messages to improve relationships exists. If your goal is to strengthen the bonds of a business or personal relationship, take advantage of all such opportunities.

Demonstrate that you care about the other person by asking open-ended questions. Then, acknowledge their feelings, demonstrate concern, and summarize and paraphrase what you hear and then asking if you understood their meaning.

Contact Us Now!

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUR MIND WANDERS?

There are many reasons our minds wander. Maybe we are feeling stressed, tired, or bored or perhaps it’s a consequence of ADHD. The scientific explanations for the wandering mind are expanding and deepening with results from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research that provides visual data of the measure brain activity in a particular neural network.

Eva Botkin-Kowacki, in a recent edition of News at Northeastern, reported on research by Aaron Kucyi, a neuroscientist at the University. Using fMRI to measure brain activity when the mind wanders, It turns out that many more parts of the brain are involved in this “dynamic and fundamental function of our psychology.”

When subjects were not focused on the assigned task of pushing or not pushing a button, depending on the image they were shown, expected brain activity occurred in areas called the “default mode network,” an area of the brain previously noted as “activated when someone’s thoughts were drifting away from their immediate surroundings and deactivated when they were focused.” Additional activity appeared in networks related to controlling or maintaining a train of thought, while systems associated with sensory input quieted. It seemed as though the default mode network was communicating with the network related to controlling a train a thought, while shutting off the external world.

The fMRI brain patterns were similar for ADHD diagnosed people. ADHD symptoms include difficulty concentrating and also hyperfocus under whatever might constitute favorable conditions for the particular person. The study’s co-author, John Gabrieli, added that the greater the mind-wandering for ADHD patients the more daily difficulties they experience.

Also mind-wandering is not good or bad per se. The upside is that ADHD often means having a broad focus and seeing patterns, making creativity more likely. That said, when performance suffers too much, this new research suggests which neural systems to target for ADHD interventions.

Contact Us Now!

INCREASE YOUR CLIENTS AND REVENUE: MAKE IT RAIN!

Not everyone who needs a lawyer, accountant, consultant, or coach wants one. Not every prospective client, who wants professional services, can afford to pay your fees. The three steps to increasing your firm clients and revenue are: (1) define your target prospect; (2) tailor your marketing messages to what your target prospects want; and (3) master the sales-cycle conversation.

1.     Define your target prospects

Too many lawyers and other professional service providers fish in the wrong pond or use the wrong bait.  They do not know whether there are sufficient prospects who want the solutions they offer at the price they need to generate sufficient revenue for their business model. This may be a consequence of a practice area already supersaturated with other lawyers or productized services that are too similar or aiming at the wrong geographic or demographic target market. Alternatively, your price point may be too high, but could be reduced with the introduction of process efficiencies.

The first step is to research your target prospects to better understand what they want, what they are willing to pay, and where they are likely to notice you and what you are offering. Understand them demographically and psychologically.

2.     Tailor your marketing messages to what you target prospects want.

 Not all prospective clients, people who want the solutions you are selling, will develop an interest in your brand of solution.  Your value proposition is your solution combined with the experience of working with you. It is the client’s point of view on what they want and what they think will make them feel better, less anxious, happier.  It is how close you get to giving them what they want, not just what they need.

 There are three categories of value that lawyer’s offer clients. You can create new value, protect existing value, or restore value lost. If you what you offer leads to ways for your clients to do what they want to do, then you create value.  If it leads to ways to help your clients preserve what matters to them most, then you maintain value.  If it leads to ways to make your client whole after being physically, emotionally, or financially harmed, then you restore value.

 A good value proposition quickly tells clients why working with you will make their lives easier and better. That spikes curiosity and interest in your brand of solutions, rather than that of your competition.

 3.     Master the sales-cycle conversation

 When a prospective client is curious about you and your firm because they want what you are offering, the next step is to have a conversation. Instead of thinking of this conversation as an opportunity to tell the prospect what you will do and how you will help, think of it as an opportunity to develop a relationship and demonstrate that you understand what they want.

 The key to converting a prospect into a client is communicating in way that first engages the prospect. Different people are more receptive to different communication behaviors – the “how” of communication.   Once engaged, influencing a person to become a client is a matter of saying the right things at the right times. Our Rainmakers Incubator Workshop is where you’ll have an opportunity to learn and practice these techniques.

Contact Us Now!

5 Tips to Notice More Business Opportunities

Are you a good noticer? You won’t notice business opportunities if you aren’t good at noticing. If you spend more time noticing what’s happening in the external world or if you spend more time with the thoughts rattling around in your brain, you are probably missing a lot. We need to develop the discipline to do both. Maybe you study your surroundings like you were taught in college to study a painting. That puts you ahead of many people, and yet, you likely miss a lot that could help you notice more business opportunities.

Noticing clearly and communicating effectively seem like obvious, straightforward skills, yet our psychology seems to suggest that we’re prone to make a lot of mistakes. Why is that? Let’s start with an experiment.

Choose a colleague, client, friend, spouse, person-in-case-of, or neighbor. Close your eyes and try to recall the last time you saw that person. What were they were wearing? What was their emotional tenor? Can you recall their tone of voice, body language, and what they said and did? Perhaps you “saw” them on Zoom.  What was hidden from view?

If you aren’t good a noticing what is in front of you, you’re going to miss the next, best opportunity that comes your way. It probably will not appear like an opportunity at first glance. It may seem like too much effort, not right for you, or not interesting. If you want to notice more, you’ll need to change your habits and learn new behaviors.  Changing old habits and forming new ones is never easy. Put these 5 tips on a Post-It or Smartphone Note, in your calendar, or do this with a buddy for mutual accountability “check ins” until they become new habits.

1. Stop and Notice.

Notice, using every sense available. See, hear, feel, smell, taste, and the others.  What others? We have a sense of space and time, movement and position. How about noticing how awake and alert you feel or how tense or relaxed your muscles are? Add in expanding your awareness of emotions in yourself and others. There’s a lot to notice and most of us notice little.

Practice expanding your perception of what “is.” Maybe start with the room you are in. List what you notice and what you remember noticing with your eyes closed.  Practice regularly, until you notice more.

One of my trainings is problem-solving for leaders. It starts with noticing one’s internal context.  I ask people to notice feelings in their body and expand awareness of emotions. It takes practice and an expanding vocabulary for your emotions.  If the only words for emotions you know are anger, happiness, joy, love, and sadness, you may not feel contentment, pride, excitement, peace, satisfaction, or compassion.  If you don’t know what compassion feels like, you may miss out on a business opportunity to empathize with a prospective client. Also, it’s easy to have your cognitive, analytical thinking skills hijacked if you aren’t noticing when you’re feeling anxious.

2. Notice the “big picture” in addition to the details.

The patterns, relationships, concepts, and connections that we call the “big picture” in contrast the details are less noticeable to some people than to others. Perception tendencies or preferences, like communication defaults and preferences are part of being human. Maybe you pay attention to the strength and style of a handshake, the tenor of a voice, the scent of a person and a room. But, do you also look for patterns and relationships? The connections between people, people and resources, or people and power? Culture and power dynamics show up in patterns of behavior, not in the employee handbook. Do you notice who gets attention and who seems invisible in a group? Maybe there’s a business opportunity hidden there.

3. Be curious.

Think like a journalist, psychologist, anthropologist, artist and so on. Our ability to be curious, depends on our history of experiences and what we know. Everyone has binoculars and microscopes in addition to blindspots. Leadership of oneself and others requires a big dose of curiosity – the desire to be open and keep learning. Experts in innovation point to the combination of curiosity and hard work as the catalyst for experimentation, innovation, and intentional change. Changing up routines, acting spontaneously, shaking up your thinking is how to find new connections and opportunities. It’s how to notice gaps to fill with your expertise and effort. It’s how to notice the human side of problems. These are the ingredients for finding new business opportunities.

4. Avoid assumptions.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you know the answer or have collected all the data that matter. Innovation intelligence and noticing more means testing your assumptions and reaching conclusions much more slowly. It doesn’t mean hesitating to reach a decision when the data is incomplete or ambiguous. The nature of complexity is that systems often have incomplete and ambiguous information. Living with a lot of complexity should not stop us from making decisions and experimenting to find solutions to problems. It does mean developing a heightened awareness of your unconscious assumptions. Everyone has them. It does mean knowing the difference between perception and data on the one hand and judgments, assumptions, and conclusions on the other. Suspend your judgment until the time is right to make a decision.

5. Change intentionally.

If you are stuck and not finding more business opportunities, it’s time to change what you are doing, how you are doing it, and when you are doing whatever you are doing. Let’s say you are right-hand dominant. In that case, you prefer to write with your right hand. With practice, you could learn to use your left hand, but it would take time, more concentration, and the early results wouldn’t be as good as with your right hand. It’s the same situation with intentional change. Do you prefer to notice and collect data or reach conclusions? Do you prefer to notice the details or the big picture? Do you prefer curiosity or making decisions?  If you have ever explored your personality using the MBTI, then you know that expanding what you notice, how you make sense of what you notice, and the way you decide and act are preferences that have become habits.  We can change our habits, expand into new habits, or replace old ones with new and better habits. If you are not getting the business opportunities you want, it’s time to change.

Contact Us Now!