Pub. 4 2014-2015 Issue 1

23 members, principals, assistant principals, teachers, and parents, they reduce stress, create a better work environ- ment, and ultimately improve student learning. A Few Tips to Get Started These crucial conversations can be tricky to navigate. Sharing concerns with a school leader, confronting a poor performing board colleague, and dealing with an unsup- portive parent all require skill. We’ve spent thousands of hours watching what board members, school administra- tors, teachers and other professionals do to succeed in these dicey moments. Here are a few approaches that will reduce your stress and increase your chance of a good outcome. 1. Don’t wait till you’re angry. Less skillful people put off handling crucial issues until they are fit to be tied. For example, an administrator has been on your case about an important issue for weeks. Your patience is diminishing. You feel unappreciated, blamed, and defensive. Now is not the time to talk—but unfortu- nately, it’s in these emotionally charged moments that most people speak up. The time to talk is when you see the problem emerging and have not yet become emotionally vested. 2. Ask the humanizing question. When confronting a board colleague who’s not pulling his or her weight, don’t open your mouth until you’ve, opened your mind. When others let us down, we make matters worse by villainizing them in our minds. We may tell ourselves that they are selfish, egotistical and lazy, etc. Sometimes these judgments happen so quickly that we aren’t even conscious of them. If you find yourself losing patience with the person with whom you need to have a crucial conversation, this is a sign you need to change your view of them before start- ing to talk. Turn them from a villain into a human by asking yourself, “Why would a reasonable, rational and decent person do what they’re doing?” When you see them as a person with a flaw rather than a villain with no soul, you’ll approach them far more effectively. 3. Start with safety. Begin your crucial conversation by finding common ground. Demonstrate respect for the other person. Point out goals and interests the two of you share. When you do this before diving into a deep discussion of the problems, you create a condi- tion of safety that enables healthy dialogue. When you fail to do this, you commonly provoke defensive- ness. Creating safety is the key skill for succeeding at crucial conversations. People who do it best build healthy relationships they can draw on when under stress. 4. Eliminate excuses . In our study “Silence Kills,” we found that the most common reason nurses don’t hold crucial conversations is that they tell themselves, “It’s not my job.” The same trend can be applied to volunteer school board members. For example, a fellow board member appears incompetent at her duties. The person who sees a colleague’s problem most clearly is in the best position to give her helpful feedback. But he doesn’t. Why? Because “It’s not his job.” Interestingly, it isn’t just board members who tend to make this excuse for not speaking up. Administrators, teachers, parents, and just about everyone found a way to rationalize away their responsibility to speak up. Those who are best at holding crucial conversations don’t consider whether it’s in their job description to speak up, they consider whether it’s in their interest to voice their concerns. Con- sequently, they tend speak up far more frequently. 5. Dialogue, not monologue. Finally, the most skill- ful people we studied have a different goal in their crucial conversations. The less skillful come at the conversation as though it is a monologue. Their goal is to speak their minds and hope the other person is committed to hearing them. This egocentric approach to crucial conversations inevitably provokes defen- siveness and eventually convinces the other person it was a waste of time to even try. Board members and administrators who seek out dialogue experience the reverse. When they come to the conversation willing to share their views but are sincerely interested in the perspective of others—in fact, intensely curious about others’ realities—they frequently experience what they enact. Their openness invites openness in oth- ers. Their willingness to be wrong makes it safe for others to admit to shortcomings. When your goal is dialogue rather than monologue, your crucial conver- sations lead to mutual learning rather than dueling defenses. The environment in our schools and on our boards is not likely to become less stressful in the near future. In fact, we may see an increased level of stress. The good news is that those who fight the natural human tendency to respond to stress by retreating from action and relation- ships can do a lot to keep stress from building into burn- out. Regularly engaging in healthy crucial conversations that strengthen relationships, improve teamwork, and influence positive change can be enormously helpful in not only avoiding being consumed, but also in restoring much of the meaning and joy that attracted administrators and board members to their positions in the first place. David Maxfield is coauthor of New York Times bestsellers Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Crucial Accountability, and Change Anything. He is also a sought-after speaker and consultant, and leading researcher at Provo-based VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance. www. vitalsmarts.com