Tough Talk

How much truth can another person handle?

I once had an executive coaching client who got nervous when I showed up to our meetings wearing black. We had a tough conversation once, and I was in black – as I often am – and she associated those two things. I made a point of wearing bright, bold patterns when I met with her after that, to allay her concerns that I was about to say difficult things. Even if I was.

Recently, I realized how many difficult conversations my work requires. But this isn’t about giving feedback. There are too many articles about giving feedback well and too few about understanding your audience’s capacity to hear the information. How do you know how tough to be and understand the person you are speaking to, so you give them the information they need without overwhelming them or sending them into a shame spiral?

Whether you are a boss, manager, co-worker, or someone outside the organization brought in to offer advice, it’s good to know how to assess another person’s capacity to hear feedback.

I say this in full recognition of the fact that there are people, perhaps some of you reading this, who have heard tough talk from me and felt I have not accurately assessed your own personal capacity. They are out there, and they’re not wrong. It’s a hard skill to master.

Where to begin

Did they ask for your feedback or opinion? If not, most of you don’t need to say anything. The obvious exception is for managers or other leaders who need to address inappropriate or unethical behavior.

I am explicitly asked and paid for my opinion, so I’ve checked that box.

Do you understand what kind of feedback they are seeking?

My executive coaching clients are, technically, open to feedback, but generally want me to listen and ask questions. I might ask them if they want my opinion, or they might ask for it, but executive coaching in and of itself isn’t an opinion-giving situation. That is usually the case in most work situations. Ask for permission to give feedback and make sure you understand what is wanted.

If I’m brought in to critique a sales plan or a pitch team’s presentation skills, I am explicitly engaged to tell them what I think, based on my experience, they need to do to reach their goals. This is where most of the tough talks happen.

The advantage of bringing in a consultant is that you can get an outside perspective. The disadvantage is that you or your team might not really want to hear the answers to the questions you are asking. So, if you are asking for feedback, understand the feedback you get may be challenging to hear.

What to consider as you are forming an opinion.

Know yourself. I hope that if you are being paid to give an opinion, you have invested the time and energy into understanding and accounting for your own biases and challenges, even as a supervisor or manager.

I’ve been sexually harassed so often in my career that I am always alert to gendered dynamics at work. I am politically progressive and can assume things about people who I sense voted for someone I did not. It’s not that my assumptions or awareness are incorrect. It just means I need to take another beat to make sure that I’m not altering my perceptions to reflect my experience. I can’t always separate them, but I should be aware enough to try.

Ask yourself what kind of glasses you are wearing when you look at a person or situation where you are being asked to offer feedback or advice. If you are an anxious person, are you wearing fear goggles? If you have trouble with authority, how are you going to do with a CEO or other person with authority?

Know what you are good at and stick to it. I have opinions on design, but I’m not a designer and have no basis for my opinions beyond a set of entirely subjective criteria, so I don’t say anything about design. I know sales, money, growth, how people and teams interact, and how conflict arises and can be skillfully used. I know words and how to put them together. I know people. I don’t know UX or employment law. Know what you don’t know.

Get the facts

Try to understand as much of the situation as possible. Do you have data or an anecdote? Are you being swayed at all by someone’s big emotions and missing what actually happened? Have you asked smart questions?

Then what?

Once I know what I think, and what needs to be communicated, and I’ve answered the questions above, then I do a kind of triage of the situation.

Let’s say I’ve been asked to give my thoughts on a specific business situation, and I believe there is a significant problem that requires immediate, difficult changes in the person or the org. Here’s what I consider:

1. What is my relationship with the person I’m telling this to? Is it new? Do I know them well? Is there trust? Do they have confidence in me?

2. What is their capacity for direct feedback? Do I think they will go into a shame spiral? Do I think they will become overwhelmed and unable to act? Do I think they will get so defensive they will verbally attack me or shut down?

3. Does this person, or this organization, have the desire for and capacity to change? If not, then I may tailor what I say to what I think they could realistically accomplish.

If I have a person I know well, we trust each other, and they have the capacity not only to receive tough talk but to act on it, I will lay it out. Pull no punches. I will always try to do this 1:1, and I will try to give them space to process as they need.

Some people need to see it in writing; others need to hear it. Some want to talk about it right then, and others want a couple of days to process. Some metabolize any discomfort in the room, and others need to take a long walk or connect with friends to work through tough information. Most need facts: they want the data, the verbatim, the specifics, to take tough information on board, which is why I have the data handy whenever I can.

With people I don’t know as well, I will send up a trial balloon. Put out a small, slightly difficult thing to hear. See their reaction. Explore it. Then try something a bit more challenging.

I’ve been in situations where the other person surprised me by knowing the tough topic and welcoming it gracefully. I’ve also seen people shut down or become hostile. Most of us are deeply defended around our competence and identity. The toughest talks are with people who have unexamined privilege and are being called to account for the unskillful ways they show up. Because this taps into competence, identity, and political and cultural turbulence it is a particularly challenging blend.

Three things

I always try to find something positive to say, something real. I will often acknowledge how skillfully a person is receiving tough feedback.

I also clearly acknowledge what I don’t know. I might be wrong. I don’t work day to day with you in a team setting. I’m not sure what economic forces will come up in this new year.

I am ready and open for any reaction that isn’t dangerous to me or them. That readiness keeps me calm and, by extension, lowers the temperature in the room. Getting defensive, arguing, crying, walking around, I’ve seen them all and am able to sit with those reactions and be ok with them.

Not about you

Sometimes the awkwardness in a tough conversation is because we can’t regulate ourselves. The other person’s reactions may be aimed at you, but are rarely about you. I always tell people who are doing their first lay-offs or firings to never make it about yourself. Don’t be the boss who tries to get the person they just fired to make them feel ok about firing them. “I was up all night worrying about this! I’m distraught.” Yeah, dude, but you still have a job and health insurance so fuck off.

Don’t do this

I often worry I’ll get fired if I give tough feedback. Even when I’ve gone through all of the above, and I know I’m right, and I’m telling someone critical information they need to act on, I know that this may be the last job I do for them. Because it has happened.

But I’ve seen plenty of pusillanimous consultants and “experts” who tell the boss just what he wants to hear to keep the money coming. I understand if it’s your job and you can’t risk telling the truth to a boss who probably won’t listen to you anyway. But if you’re going to take money to tell the truth, then you need to fucking tell the truth.

Ignored Superpower

Often, I am brought into companies to tell them a truth that one or more people at the company already knows and has tried to communicate. In fact, I can’t think of a time when I’ve had a tough talk about a topic or subject that no one had ever brought up. Maybe they weren’t as direct. Maybe they didn’t use words. But it was there.

If you’re a boss, you may have people who already know what you need to know and you’re just not listening to them. You could pay me or someone like me to come in and tell you the thing. Or you could listen to the people who are already there and have the superpower to see what’s broken and, often, how to fix it.

Many times, people who tell the truth are labelled as difficult, recalcitrant, a problem. And they may be. But they still have a superpower and valuable information.

Take feedback well yourself

Recently, a client had a tough talk with me on some feedback I delivered. It was uncomfortable to hear. But it was useful. If I want clients to hear tough talk, I want to be able to model how to receive tough talk.

It helps me to not think of it in terms of binaries – one of us is right, one is wrong, as if we are arguing facts. That’s a recipe for defensiveness.

Instead, I try to think of it as relational information.

It is a risk, especially in professional relationships, to be vulnerable enough to say something hurt, the relationship was damaged. And it is a gift. The person who says ouch is, by saying it, signaling that the relationship is important enough to them to risk being vulnerable to build a bridge to repair.

If I can see feedback as invitation to repair, it changes the emotional math for me entirely.

Then my acknowledgment of the hurt I caused and my lack of skill in causing it is repair which also signals that I value the relationship. Don’t get me wrong – I did not say the bad apology of “I’m sorry what I said hurt your feelings.” What I acknowledged was that I chose language unskillfully, was not fully aware of my own baggage, and in the process caused emotional hurt to the other person. Which, I won’t lie, was hard to say. But it was the right thing to do.

It is difficult to hear tough feedback. But it is also very difficult to deliver tough feedback skillfully: not pulling punches, making space for the person hearing the feedback’s reaction, offering enough facts to make it real, but not overwhelming or shaming anyone. If you’re a manager at any level and you can do that, it really is a superpower.