Up front framing

The next time you need to have a difficult conversation with one of your direct reports, you can help get in a better place to hear you by addressing their fears upfront.

For example, you can open with something like, “We need to talk. Nobody is going to lose their job today, but this is going to be an uncomfortable conversation.”

By addressing the elephant in the room in your setup, all their mental energy that would have been spent trying to figure out what’s really going on could be focused on the real issue.

In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg talks about the three conversations that are going on beneath the surface: the practical (What’s this really about), the emotional (How do I feel about this/you/myself?), and the social (Who am I to you?).

What’s heard is rarely in the words, but in the meaning of the words…and that meaning is not created by you.