Helpful Insight for Difficult Conversations at Work

Brain Science, an Assumption to Test, and a Classic 1980’s Film

News flash: Human beings want to have positive relationships with each other. Even the person you have the most difficult working relationship with longs for you to like and understand them!

Each of us are hard-wired to crave acceptance from and connectedness with the people we are most in contact with. Those of us who serve as Leader/Managers are not exempt. We are made in such a way that we desire positive relationships with the people we’re expected to hold accountable for their contributions to our team’s and organization’s success.

That’s because our brains release a powerful neurochemical cocktail into our system when we experience positive social interactions such as friendship, pleasant conversation, and social validation. The ingredients? Oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and beta-endorphins. We crave it because:

• Oxytocin creates that warm, secure feeling you get when hugging someone you trust - similar to the comfort you might feel curled up with a loved one on the couch.

• Dopamine produces that rush of excitement when someone you like texts you back or when a friend gives you unexpected praise - a "YES!" sensation of reward and anticipation.

• Serotonin creates a feeling of contentment and peace as you might experience during a satisfying dinner with close friends – a sense that all is well with the world. I call it the “joy” chemical.

• Beta-endorphins produce a light, bubbly feeling that comes with honest laughter; similar to a "runner's high" but triggered by social connection instead of exercise.

Sounds sensational! Who wouldn’t want all that! And our desire for it can interfere with our professional lives when we let it get in the way of initiating important conversations that we think may be difficult to have. Where does that reluctance come from? My experience in coaching Leader/Managers at every level, from the C-suite to the first-time supervisor, is the assumption that positive relationships will be jeopardized, or that relationships already perceived as challenging may become even more stressful because the other party will be unwelcoming, resistant, even resentful of accountability. Again, brain chemistry plays a role. Stressful conversations and potential disagreements can cause this “fight or flight” neurochemical response:

• Cortisol, the “stress hormone” is released as we think ahead to what we might perceive to be a difficult conversation.

• Adrenaline, the flight-or-fight hormone, kicks in during any perceived conflict. It causes increased heart rate, faster breathing, even trembling voices and shaky hands.

• Norepinephrine, which intensifies our emotions and focuses our awareness on threats – real or perceived – is released. That can make it more difficult to reason during a “hard” conversation.

• Testosterone levels increase in both men and women, pulling us toward assertiveness, dominance, a need to “win” the argument.

• Oxytocin drops. In other words, we feel less secure, less comfortable, more like something has to change. It makes us less patient.

Yuck! Who wouldn’t want to avoid all that! Anyone who’s experienced trying to have an important conversation with all that going on inside… you don’t have to be able to name the hormones and their effects to know you never want to experience that again.

There’s good news though… very good news for those of us whose role makes us responsible to provide accountability for people whose performance or behavior may be missing the mark.

Questioning A Key Assumption   

It’s a common belief or fear that people whose performance needs improvement don’t want to talk about it with their Leader/Manager. I’ve discovered that several of my clients who find it difficult to delegate tasks or to hold team members accountable for their job performance and team behaviors, assume that people will resist being given a task that may challenge them, or resent being asked to investigate what can be done to shore up a performance deficiency.

And then I thought of this darkly humorous scene from the 1985 film, “The Breakfast Club,” which centers on some high school students stuck together in detention. It’s two minutes long and if you find this blog post interesting, it may provide you with helpful insight for difficult conversations more eloquently than anything I can write.

Those of you who’ve seen the film may remember Allison’s extreme antisocial behavior and bizarre eating habits that (my guess) were aided and abetted by a lack of accountability. But watch the scene! How do you think she would have reacted to an honest conversation initiated by the people who were most responsible to provide her with feedback and direction?

Reframing the Conversation: Aid to a Struggling Individual  

In “The Breakfast Club,” Allison’s transformation was triggered not by the isolation she seemed to crave in the beginning, but by meaningful and honest interactions with the people around her – interactions she had presumably spent years defending herself from while secretly craving them. Our interactions with the people we lead and manage need not necessarily be of cinematic quality to be effective. In most cases, we merely need to show we care. Avoiding an issue is not a way to do that. Engagement can be.

In my coaching, I often help clients design small experiments – things they can try out in the workplace that won’t have much negative impact if they don’t go well - to help them test the assumptions that seem to be holding them back from fulfilling their leadership and management responsibilities. One experiment my clients and I sometimes design together is to schedule a 10 or 15 minute check in with a person whose performance or work-related behavior is not what it should be. We might decide that my client will ask just two or three questions from a list like this:

• How’s it been going for you lately on the job?

• How have you been feeling about the results you’ve been getting at work?

• I’m wondering what you wish was different about your work or the way we work together?

• What’s been hard for you at work lately?

• I’ve been noticing (state the issue) about your performance lately. What do you think is causing this?

• What kind of help do you wish you had?

• Is there anything going on you wish I knew more about?

None of these questions commit you as a Leader/Manager to any specific action. Instead, they provide a way for you to understand the problem – and the person – more completely so that your decisions on how to respond are better informed and therefore, more effective and beneficial to all concerned.

You may be surprised by the answers you’ll get, and the conversations that might be started by these kinds of probing, yet gentle questions. Give your person time to think before they answer and remain patient and curious. You might learn things from them you’re truly grateful for!

Conversations around questions like these may make it easier for you to adopt a completely different mental framework for the entire process of holding people accountable for their work. Instead of “difficult conversations” I’ve had clients relabel them as “learning conversations,” “key opportunity conversations" and “difference-making conversations.”

Some have reported that little experiments like these actually resulted in kicking off the kind of relationship that produces the sublime neurochemical cocktail which we all crave.