Navigating Difficult Conversations

Summary

In this insightful transcript, Patti Douglass explores the nuances of navigating difficult conversations, whether in the workplace or personal settings. The conversation delves into techniques for managing emotional responses, setting goals, and understanding both sides of the discussion. Practical tips are given on negotiating salaries and benefits, highlighting their long-term financial significance. The importance of maintaining confidentiality and conducting performance evaluations to foster personal growth is also emphasized. Overall, the piece offers a comprehensive guide to effectively handling challenging dialogues with professionalism and empathy.

Highlights

• Don't procrastinate on tough conversations; they only get harder if you delay ⏰.
• Listen actively and acknowledge the other person's feelings to foster understanding ❤️.
• Set a professional tone in difficult discussions to pave the way for effective communication 🎤.
• When negotiating, understand your value and communicate it clearly for better outcomes 💰.
• Explore all compensation options, from salary to benefits, to fully understand your worth 📊.
• Regular performance evaluations can help align personal and company goals for success 📈.

Key Takeaways

• Embrace, don't avoid! Face difficult conversations head-on for peace of mind and better outcomes 🤝.
• Leave emotions at the door; facts and empathy are your best friends in tough talks 💡.
• Preparation is key! Know your goals and the potential reactions of the other party 🎯.
• Negotiation isn't just about money—consider benefits, flexibility, and work-life balance 🤝.
• Confidentiality is crucial. Respect privacy during and after the conversation 🤫.
• Practice makes perfect! Rehearse negotiations and tough conversations to boost confidence 💪.

Overview

Diving into the world of difficult conversations, we often encounter scenarios that make our palms sweat and minds race. But fear not! This transcript highlights the art of tackling such discussions with poise and precision. It's all about knowing your goals, preparing for potential reactions, and approaching each talk with a solution-oriented mindset. Whether you're the bearer of tough news or the receiver, handling these talks skillfully can transform workplace dynamics and personal relationships alike!

Ever faced the daunting process of salary negotiation and found yourself stumped? You're not alone! This transcript sheds light on the power of negotiation, from salary numbers to benefits and beyond. With examples illustrating the long-term financial differences, it emphasizes the importance of walking into negotiations informed and ready. Remember, negotiations are more than just about the money—consider your benefits, work-life balance, and flexibility. Practice your pitch, know your strengths, and aim for a win-win!

From performance evaluations to setting long-term goals, the transcript dives into the benefits of self-assessment and manager check-ins. These conversations offer opportunities for growth, aligning personal achievements with organizational goals. Whether it's handling feedback or outlining objectives, it's crucial to view these talks as stepping stones rather than hurdles. Embrace them as chances to refine your skills, enhance your contributions, and bolster your career trajectory!

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Overview of Difficult Conversations This chapter introduces the concept of difficult conversations, particularly in the workplace. It acknowledges the challenges involved and explains why they are termed 'difficult.' The text hints at guidance on managing these interactions, whether you are initiating or on the receiving end, particularly when summoned by an authority figure.
• 01:30 - 04:00: Tips for Handling Difficult Conversations This chapter provides strategies for effectively handling difficult conversations. It emphasizes the importance of knowing your concerns and goals before initiating the conversation. Additionally, it advises on anticipating the other person's reactions and being prepared for them.
• 04:00 - 12:00: Salary Negotiations The chapter focuses on the importance of not delaying or avoiding conversations regarding salary negotiations. It emphasizes that procrastination in dealing with such discussions can negatively impact one's emotional state. Instead, it advises tackling the issue head-on. The key is to actively listen to the other person's perspective and acknowledge their feelings to handle the negotiation effectively.
• 12:00 - 21:00: Performance Evaluation The chapter discusses the importance of putting facts before emotions in professional evaluations. It acknowledges that both parties involved in the evaluation should leave emotions aside. It praises young professionals who handle such conversations maturely, attributing their skill to strong emotional intelligence and good training.

Navigating Difficult Conversations Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 we've all been in difficult conversations and they are really hard to have that's why they're called difficult they're really hard in the workplace sometimes but there are tips for how you handle them on either end of that conversation when you are told that you're needed in someone's office usually an authority figure your boss or someone think about what it could be and
• 00:30 - 01:00 what your concerns are about this difficult conversation but if you are the person calling for the difficult conversation something you need to address you also want to think about your concerns about it then also know what your goal is in that conversation and figure out how the other person might react and be ready for it some tips for handling these conversations
• 01:00 - 01:30 are not to delay or avoid the conversation we've all done that we procrastinate on these types of con conversations and they just really kind of wreck our emotional state the longer we wait so just don't delay you're going to have to handle it just go handle it listen to the other person that can be really hard and acknowledge their side of the story and the way that they're feeling about it the the most important
• 01:30 - 02:00 thing you can do is to put facts before feelings just leave those emotions at the door and that's if you're on either side of them I've been very impressed by some very young people who handle some of these conversations really professionally when they certainly could do otherwise that means that they have emotional intelligence someone has trained them well taught them well but it is really a
• 02:00 - 02:30 good skill to have to remember just keep your emotions out of it and then if you are in charge of calling this conversation together set the tone for the meeting don't joke around first don't laugh nervously just get to the point now you can carry that too far I worked somewhere where my boss fired someone who was entry level at the time and I don't remember why I don't remember why
• 02:30 - 03:00 she was working not working out but I saw her right after and she said that she had been let go but she said her bottom had not hit the chair by the time he said we've got to let you go have some compassion if you're having that difficult a conversation set the tone means get them ready to have a difficult
• 03:00 - 03:30 conversation don't necessarily just break really bad news but you want to discuss it briefly and then and then say what you need to say and then listen in a firing situation you really do need to get through it quickly you can still listen a bit and say I am sorry we have to do this but this has been decided and here's what we can do
• 03:30 - 04:00 to help you leave but usually these difficult conversations aren't as difficult as that real remember that confidentiality is key if you have to hold a difficult conversation you're going to be nervous about it don't leave there and relieve your anxiety by going and telling people in the office what you just talked to an employee about don't talk about it beforehand either unless you're getting counsel from someone higher up
• 04:00 - 04:30 but don't gossip about it remember that person's feelings and follow up if you have asked someone to provide you with action plans every week because you're not getting enough action out of them follow up with them say how is that going do you need any help figuring out how to do these I can help you with that I really do need them every Friday now let's talk about salary negoti iations in transparency this is
• 04:30 - 05:00 not my strong suit but it is important and I'm hoping that your generation is better at it than my generation because my generation has always just been grateful to work we like to have jobs we work a lot we'll work for not much sometimes but negotiating is important it's a really good skill to have I mean you know people who negotiate every time they buy a car and they end up with more
• 05:00 - 05:30 money than people who don't negotiate same works for salary negotiations so consider this two new graduates were offered a job with a starting salary of $70,000 Scott just accepted the offer and assuming a 2% a modest 2% annual raise over five years his salary is now at7 $
• 05:30 - 06:00 7,285 66 Danielle negotiated her salary to $80,000 and after five years her annual salary is now 888,246 now I added up how much you would make over five years including that first year where you're making that first base salary and there was a difference of $52,000 in the amount the two of them had earned over five years
• 06:00 - 06:30 years that's a significant amount of money all of which for Danielle could have gone into Investments or savings something like that she could you know easily have a down payment on a house at that point out of making that much of a difference if she kept this the if she kept Scout Scott's total salary for herself and invested the rest that's a lot of extra money
• 06:30 - 07:00 so how do you negotiate well first you need to know what is reasonable for you to ask for you need to do your homework maybe you can ask other people who work at that company what was your starting salary what would be reasonable to ask for you don't want to ask them their salary now their whole package and all that but maybe you know what what would be reasonable for me to ask for and know why you would be deserving of more than their base off offer maybe you have some
• 07:00 - 07:30 sort of experience maybe you have worked in this industry all through high school and college for your parents who own this type of business maybe you've had two solid internships maybe you have been doing event planning for many years and you really know what you're doing you know some strengths that you have that most people don't have and try to make those as tangible as possible
• 07:30 - 08:00 remember in resumés you want your achievements to be as quantifiable as possible so if you can say look in this position I I've already done this for organizations and increased their followers by 200% you know know what strengths you bring and then you have to look at everything and we're going to go into some detail on your benefits package and all the other things that are offered sometimes you negot iate those things
• 08:00 - 08:30 but look at what they already offer and maybe it makes the salary that they're offering worth it or maybe it makes it to where you're going to need more money to pay for the things that they're not paying for you can negotiate for extra vacation days I can tell you that from experience that people who have just graduated from college often use every day of vacation just attending weddings that they are in
• 08:30 - 09:00 or that they are just attending the ones you're in you have to usually nowadays go on a trip for the bridal party or the Grooms party you have to you know buy a dress rent a tux you have to get out of work a lot earlier than if you were just attending the wedding because now not only do you have
• 09:00 - 09:30 a rehearsal dinner you might have some other events a spa day leading up to it so it means a lot of days off that you need and then you still don't get a vacation for yourself you've spent all your vacation on a frat a fraternity brother sority sister another friend so extra vacation can be worth a lot and another thing might be a flexible schedule Maybe you've been working
• 09:30 - 10:00 remotely and they want you in the office all the time and you come back and say I am sorry I really need to be home during certain hours I am good at working during those hours but I have children they're old enough to take care of themselves but there's no one there if there's an emergency or something and sometimes they'll come back and give you that instead of money and then practice
• 10:00 - 10:30 negotiating practice how you're going to deliver you don't want to be nervous you don't want to sort of tiptoe you just need to say what you are asking for and then keep your ask brief don't give all these different reasons you need more money or vacation or that kind of thing just just know your script and say it and then and once you've negotiated and
• 10:30 - 11:00 they've agreed to something ask for it in writing because HR people leave the person who interviewed you leaves you need to have a an agreement a contract so what are some things you can negotiate for well of course money you can ask for them to pay all of your insurance instead of just some of it or or maybe you have to pay at their
• 11:00 - 11:30 company Visual and dental and you want them to pay for that it's not usually that much out of their pocket maybe you could get them to contribute more to your retirement plan matching retirement plans where you contribute some and they contribute some are very valuable and maybe they would be willing to do that more paid time off look at the bonuses you know ask about bonuses are there bonuses that's company take that into
• 11:30 - 12:00 consideration and then stock options are sometimes something you can negotiate if they have stocks so here is a total Compensation Plan it is not just the salary so on the left you'll see some indirect compensation the left three things the protection programs such as insurance and a pension
• 12:00 - 12:30 and pay for not time not worked like vacations holidays sick leave and jury duty some of them will have three days funeral leave which relatives they do they include because you might say well my cousin is like my sister I wonder if they'll pay for that services and perks that's like do they have a recck center do they pay for Fitness plans a lot of companies do because it offers a big
• 12:30 - 13:00 benefit to them they need healthy employees to keep them at work and because it helps keep their insurance rates down for everybody maybe there's a car or a car allowance or some sort of lease reimbursement maybe they offer financial planning maybe they offer will Services I know Texas Tech does and maybe they have subsidized meals a lot of Hospital cafeterias are subsidized for their employees and it's really inexpensive
• 13:00 - 13:30 and really saves them a lot of money and then you have your direct compensation which includes your base pay any extra Merit pay your with in base pay can be in the form of a salary which is like a fixed rate no matter how much time you work and then wages or hourly wages but then there are other things there are bonuses and commissions and money paid for tasks you do that's the peace rate there can be profit
• 13:30 - 14:00 sharing stock options shifter differentials are like overtime or more paid for if you work at night or more paid if you work a holiday and then deferred pay would be something like a savings plan at Texas Tech and many big organizations you can have them take out money of your paycheck every month before taxes and
• 14:00 - 14:30 and it is to use on medical expenses or child care or Elderly Care and you use that money when you need it but then you've never paid taxes on it and it can lead to some big savings there are you know stock purchases on your behalf and annuities so there there's all way kinds of ways we get compensated and you need to look at everything so take a look at
• 14:30 - 15:00 this you are offered a position at company a and Company B well this looks like a no-brainer Company B is going to pay me $10,000 more per year than company a so of course go with Company B right well you have to look at everything so on health insurance the lower salary company pays the employees health insurance whereas the Company B does as well but
• 15:00 - 15:30 they have a higher deductible and they are going to uh end up costing you a lot more money if you have any medical expenses so company a pays the employees dental insurance and long-term disability and Company B makes the employee pay with those things if they want them life insurance same thing uh no it's not it's not the
• 15:30 - 16:00 same thing life insurance company a offers it but the company the employee pays for it same with vision insurance and Company B it's voluntary and the employee pays for it so those are kind of a wash and then 401K it which is a retirement fund they'll match up to 5% at company a so let's say you put in 5% every month of
• 16:00 - 16:30 your salary into your retirement they'll pay another 5% so it Company B you're putting in 5% and that's all there is to it there's no extra 5% so you end up with a lot less money for retirement that's a big deal and then you can see that there are some more things that they offer at company a and not at Company B but they both both offer some career Dev
• 16:30 - 17:00 development and then paid time off at company a I want to know what this company is it's unlimited I do have a friend who has worked for a software company for many many years and he services and sells and makes commission and just a year or two ago they went to what they call Flex time off and what it amounts to is unlimited time off now the only disadvantage to that is he'd worked
• 17:00 - 17:30 there so long and now new employees can have all the vacation they want and he had to work up to his five weeks or whatever he was at but you know who cares what other employees get you get it too and it's unlimited at the other company you get the holidays but you get five personal days that is not a lot that's not going to cover your weddings that you need to go to when you're young and it's not going to cover a vacation
• 17:30 - 18:00 so if that's all you did it would cover one vacation but that that would be a huge consideration for me so when you add all these up and some of them are probably estimates company a you're going to end up with $86,000 Company B 835 and it's no longer a no-brainer that you would go with Company B it's much like at Texas Tech we like to my husband and I like to
• 18:00 - 18:30 tell people who you know well my son got a huge scholarship to go to this private university in Texas and you know tech only offered him this much and you know we'll say well be sure to go and look at how much you will be paying nonetheless because those private universities are so expensive so much more expensive than the public universities that those huge scholarships still sometimes don't cover the difference and you still end up
• 18:30 - 19:00 paying more so that's it's the same concept you want to look at the whole package now let's talk about the performance evaluation not necessarily a difficult conversation but there should be something difficult in it there should be some challenges for me as an employee to become a better instructor to serve Texas Tech better in other ways or to continue my
• 19:00 - 19:30 practical knowledge more so I can hand that over to students all requirements of my job and I want to know how to do it better so some things that you can do is with your manager is set goals every year and they need to be attainable they need to be measurable and they need to come out of the company's
• 19:30 - 20:00 goals and those are very important and then you need to keep them in front of you and a good manager will keep them in front of you as well but they don't all do that and then it's good to maybe create some goal buckets now we know about this at Texas Tech as professors of practice or any Professor is responsible for more than just teaching some are also responsible for research your professors of practice like me are responsible for keeping current in the industry so that you always are getting
• 20:00 - 20:30 fresh Knowledge from us your research based professors will do research and and we do the practice but we both do service so that's we keep goals in these separate buckets and make sure we're keeping those buckets filled and then it's good if you can get quarterly check-ins with your manager BEC to to see how you're doing because a year goes by and you're like oh yeah I
• 20:30 - 21:00 did set these goals and we never looked at them again a post checkin form is good where you both fill out a brief form to track the goals and to ensure that you're updating them as needed because things change in an organization maybe your position gets different priorities and then a year-end review will usually involve you doing a selfie value valuation and then your manager looks at
• 21:00 - 21:30 that and does your evaluation and they look and see if the employee met the goals when were they most effective and they will often have a scoring system for Effectiveness and then their HR Human Resources checks and they look at both year in review forms and they identify any discrepancies between how you think you're doing and how your boss thinks
• 21:30 - 22:00 you're doing and they will go through those differences with the employee and with the manager so let's look at some scenarios an employee is speaking to and about another employee in a disrespectful way what you would normally say I don't like the way you're speaking to rob in that tone please stop that's not the way you talk
• 22:00 - 22:30 to someone I won't allow it in the future you should apologize to them your goal in this context is to realign your employees Behavior but this kind of interaction might make the employee feel defensive unappreciated and misunderstood after all this other employee was misbehaving in your opinion in the employees
• 22:30 - 23:00 opinion an employee is continuing to work remotely when company policy dictates a 50% only remote work what would what you would normally say our company policy dictates a 50% only remote work you've been abroad for longer so please stop doing this next time you want to work abroad let your manager know okay you think that's the right thing to say but you're assuming that your employee really you know has no choice and will
• 23:00 - 23:30 stop working abroad but it that kind of approach can breed discontent with the employee and mistrust and they might say you know what is the problem with my working abroad after all do you not trust me to do my work when I'm not in the office so it's good to think about better ways to have a conversation so go ahead and try salary negotiation everyone should do it
• 23:30 - 24:00 everyone should try it try it on a a car lease that you're going to do or a new car or anything you're going to buy because it's a good skill to have and I encourage you to practice it