Here’s How to Plan for Difficult Conversations

The Anxious Achiever

Morra Aarons-Mele

Careers, Management, Mental Health, Business, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 600 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It might be a confrontation with a colleague who is constantly late to meetings. You might need to finally ask for that raise. Or it could be approaching a coworker to disclose a mental health issue you’ve been struggling with. We all face difficult conversations - and difficult people - in our careers. Amy Gallo is a conflict expert, a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, and author of the book Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People). She speaks with host Morra Aarons-Mele about how to keep perspective and prepare for difficult conversations at work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn Presents.
0:10.8	I'm Maura Aaron Smiley, and this is The Anxious Achiever, the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and work and how we can all do both better.
0:32.8	Whether it's at work or in the rest of our lives, there are some conversations we just put off,
0:40.0	conversations we don't want to have because they're uncomfortable or painful for us or for the person we're talking to. This can get worse, of course, if you have anxiety, or even if you're just
0:47.3	an empath and you take in everyone else's feelings. I know for me, the most difficult work conversations are when I'm anxious that I'm not
0:57.3	meeting someone else's expectations. Luckily, today's guest has some great advice for how to
1:03.9	prepare and get through difficult and awkward conversations. Amy Gallo joins us once again.
1:13.7	She's an expert in conflict resolution,
1:19.0	a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, and the author of the book Getting Along,
1:26.3	How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People. Amy and I started by zooming out, thinking about the power of perspective taking as the first step
1:30.8	you can take when you're tackling a difficult person or a difficult conversation.
1:36.6	I asked her about one of the most important things we can do first to go into these situations
1:41.9	with a clear mind.
1:49.4	Music first to go into these situations with a clear mind. Letting go of the idea that you know what is appropriate behavior.
1:55.4	You have to remember you're seeing a very limited slice of their life and their behavior, and you are seeing it
2:05.6	through your lens. And it's very easy to presume that someone has shown up late five
2:12.1	times to a meeting because they're disorganized and rude when there's probably something else going on.
2:18.3	Totally. And it's so easy when someone is causing you a lot of frustration, tension,
2:23.2	to say like, this person's a jerk, right? Yes. And that's sort of like a coping mechanism that a lot of us use, right?
2:30.4	But it's so much easier to write someone off than to have empathy for them. Yes. Well, and it's our brain's
2:35.8	natural instinct, right? Because our brain wants to take shortcuts. So I don't, my brain doesn't want to
2:41.1	think about all the reasons that person is being laid or sent that email that I think is rude or
	...

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