Did you ever need to have a tough conversation, but you didn’t know how to start it? You’re not alone. Fortunately for CMC’s managers, the company provided two days of training to help get those talks started and a third day to help the company’s leaders “get things done.”
“This training was designed to give CMC’s managers the tools to help with challenging conversations,” said Rachelle DeHoratius, senior director, People Operations. “I’m always excited when CMC can provide crucial training such as this to our managers. It’s such a worthwhile investment in their development and can help CMC leaders communicate more effectively.”
As part of the training, CMC managers worked through a series of conversations and learned new skills to enable them to tackle tough talks, such as addressing work scope creep with our utility partners.
Here’s a few tips that might help when you conduct a crucial conversation:
- When you are struggling to start a conversation try to identify the content (or a single instance of a problem), a pattern (is the issue recurring) and the impact the issue is having on your work/home relationship.
- Once you’ve identified the issue, determine what you want for yourself, the other person, your relationship and your organization.
- Start every conversation with respect and honesty.
- Seek a mutual purpose or common ground that both parties can agree upon, which can help minimize emotional reactions to the conversation.
- Once the conversation is complete, document who is doing what by when. Also, establish when follow up from the conversation should occur.
With those tips, you should be able to have that crucial conversation you’ve been putting off. If you would like more information on having difficult conversations, talk with your manager. They have additional materials from the training that could help you.