Travis Bradberry* says successful people do not necessarily avoid conflict at work, they just know how to better handle it.
TalentSmart has 50 years of experience on what makes people successful at work.
A persistent finding in our research is that your ability to handle moments of conflict has a massive impact on your success.
Conflict typically boils down to crucial conversations — moments when the stakes are high, emotions run strong and opinions differ.
You cannot master crucial conversations without a high degree of emotional intelligence (EQ).
Among the million-plus people that TalentSmart has tested, more than 90 per cent of top performers have high EQs.
So how can you use emotional intelligence to master crucial conversations?
There are five mistakes you must avoid, and five strategies you can follow that will take you down the right path.
Mistake 1: Being Brutally Honest.
Your colleague continues to park so close to your car that you have to enter through the passenger door.
You’ve asked her before to stop, and after a dozen violations of your request you decide you’ve suffered long enough.
You let her have it. You get right in her face and tell her what an inconsiderate jerk she is.
With emotional intelligence, you can speak the truth without burning a bridge.
Have you noticed how some conversations — even ones about very risky subjects — go very well?
Others, even about trivial things, can degenerate into combat?
The antidote to conflict is not diluting your message. It’s creating safety.
Many people think the content of the conversation is what makes people defensive, so they assume it’s best to just go for it and be brutally honest. It isn’t.
People don’t get defensive because of the content — they get defensive because of the intent they perceive behind it.
It isn’t the truth that hurts, it’s the malice used to deliver the truth.
Mistake 2: Robotically Sharing Your Feelings.
Some well-intentioned ‘communication’ professionals suggest that when it’s time to speak up, the diplomatic way to do so is to start by sharing your feelings.
For example, you tell your parking-impaired colleague: “I feel rage and disgust.”
It doesn’t help. People don’t work this way.
Robotically sharing your feeling only alienates, annoys and confuses them.
In order to maximise cognitive efficiency, our minds store feelings and conclusions, but not the facts that created them.
That’s why, when you give your colleague negative feedback and he asks for an example, you often hem and haw.
You repeat your feelings or conclusions, but offer few helpful facts.
Gathering the facts beforehand is the homework required to master crucial conversations.
Mistake 3: Defending Your Position.
When someone takes an opposing view on a topic you care deeply about, the natural human response is defence.
Our brains are hard-wired to assess for threats, but when we let feelings of being threatened hijack our behaviour, things never end well.
A great way to inoculate yourself against defensiveness is to develop a healthy doubt about your own certainty.
Then, enter the conversation with intense curiosity about the other person’s world.
Give yourself a detective’s task of discovering why a reasonable, rational and decent person would think the way he or she does.
When others feel deeply understood, they become far more open to hearing you.
Mistake 4: Blaming Others for Your Situation.
Your boss tells you she’ll go to bat for you for a promotion.
You hear later that in the HR review she advocated for your colleague instead.
Your boss is the one responsible for your pain — right? Truth is, she’s not the only one.
When we feel threatened, we amplify our negative emotions by blaming other people for our problems.
You cannot master conflict until you recognise the role you’ve played in creating your circumstances.
Half your pain is the result of her betrayal; the other half is due to your disappointment over not performing well enough to win the promotion.
Mistake 5: Worrying About the Risks of Speaking Up.
It’s easy for crucial conversations to fill you with dread.
Under the influence of such stress, your negative self-talk takes over and you obsess over all the bad things that might happen if you speak up.
The fastest way to motivate yourself to step up to difficult conversations is to simply articulate the costs of not speaking up.
Research shows that those who consistently speak up aren’t necessarily more courageous; they’re simply more accurate.
First, they scrupulously review what is likely to happen if they fail to speak up.
Second, they ponder what might happen if they speak up and things go well.
Finally they consider what may happen if the conversation goes poorly.
Once they have an accurate understanding of the possibilities, saying something is their typical choice.
The only way to win an argument is to never have one in the first place.
Successful people know this — they don’t avoid conflict because they can do something productive with it before things get out of hand.
*Travis Bradberry is the co-founder of TalentSmart, a provider of emotional intelligence tests, training, and certification. He can be contacted at TalentSmart.com.
This article first appeared on the TalentSmart website.
