When to Start Hard Conversations with Your Point of View

We all have biases and opinions and it’s often helpful to just be up front about yours. You don’t have to do it like a jerk, and you can leave room for discovery and changing your mind. Doing that actually builds trust and can make it easier for you to change your mind, by being open about your thought process. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

After the article about asking questions to protect yourself in hard conversations was published I got an email from a reader. (FYI: you can hit reply to the newsletter email to send me an email or drop a comment on the web version. I love it when you do.) She said she was interested in learning more about questions because sometimes the questions she asked seemed to end up undermining the point she was trying to make.

I asked her for an example and she shared a conversation she had with an employee about a skill they needed to get promoted, something they wanted very much. It was an interesting case study because I actually think she handled it very well. She went into the conversation with a hypothesis that the employee wasn’t up to speed on a necessary skill. By asking several questions she learned that the employee thought they were demonstrating the skill and they interpreted the data she brought to validate her concern differently. She ended up doing some more research to see if the skill was indeed lacking. 

I don’t see this as a bad take at all. She might have preferred that the topic get dealt with in one conversation and now it’s going to take two. But I don’t think her questions or her data were wrong. The conversation led to a question she didn’t have the data to answer and so she set out to get it. That data will probably either validate her concern, or shed new light on the situation and perhaps show her she was mistaken. As a manager those are all useful things. 

Now, given she did have a point of view going in, another way she could have handled it would have been to state that up front. She could have said, “Hey, I know you want to be promoted and being promoted requires this skill. From what I’ve seen, you don’t have that skill, but I want to talk about so you know that's my perception and to see if I’m missing something.” The situation would have been different if she knew there was performance issue relevant to their current job. In that case she'd be in solid performance management territory and she'd need to be very direct and clear with her concerns.

So to generalize this, you can think of there being two levels of intensity when you lead with a point of view. The first is when something is non-negotiable. This could be telling a coworker, or a boss, that they have to stop yelling at you. It could be a performance issue with an employee that they need to tackle or they could lose their job. Something that is “I have to tell you this, and we need to have a conversation to move forward, but it’s doubtful that I’m going to change my mind.” 

The other situation is like the letter writer's: when you have a strong hypothesis, opinion, or bias going into a conversation. Maybe you’re talking about something subjective, like product names or design choices, and your gut has a strong opinion but you’re smart enough to know it might be wrong. Maybe someone wants to implement a process that has gone very poorly for you in the past. Maybe you've done things a certain way successfully for years and don't see a need for change. It’s OK to share an opinion right up front, and you can do it in a way that keeps the conversation going rather than shutting it down.

Sometimes it can be hard to share our point of view. It can feel vulnerable to state an opinion, because oh my God, what if I’m wrong? And, if I change my mind will I seem like weak? But when you share your opinion frankly and show that you’re open to change, you’ve made it OK to be wrong and demonstrate a different kind of strength.

Being honest in this second, and much more common type of conversation, has benefits! You build trust by being honest and a bit vulnerable. You also get your own head into a space that is more rational and less egotistical. You’re worried less about “being right” and more about GETTING to the right answer.

Some people only state their opinion when they are past changing their minds. So you may have seen a lot of bad examples of people being inflexible jerks when they have opinions. But you don’t have to be! You can be gracious, generous, and curious and still have an opinion. In fact you should.

Your Dot Release: Time to practice having an opinion without being a jerk OR apologizing. So, while getting ready for your next mild to medium hard conversations, identify one where you’re going in with a bias or opinion. Open the conversation with that - and then ask all those great questions. It’s not either/or—it’s both!

Release Notes: I’ll be taking a break for the rest of the year and will be back with new articles in January. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. 

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