
These conversations are increasingly common for managers as people are having to do more with less. It’s not just that you’re giving the person some difficult news. Other complications are that you are often under huge work pressure at the time and your team might be small so tensions loom large.
So there are huge emotions on each side. Some people say: ‘Just stick to the facts’ but this is a particularly bleak option. The facts don’t ‘speak for themselves’ – the conversation is really all about the emotion – theirs and, as a result, yours.
If you are going to manage the conversation in a meaningful way you must do so through empathy for the person. To achieve empathy, you have to manage your own emotions well enough to be able to focus on those of the other person.
Helping your team members through times like this touches the well-spring of compassion. You will be astounded at the impact on yourself and others.
Empathy can only really exist when it is honestly felt, but three tips can help in keeping your emotions out of the way and enable your honest concern to come through:
- Know how you instinctively react during strong emotion. This means that you can identify the emotion when it happens and control it rather than have it control you. For example, if you expect your heart rate to go up, it won’t take you by surprise, plus you can plan to breathe deeply to lower it.
- Work out the range of ways you think the other person might react and practice some effective ways of responding. You need these responses to hand because it is hard to think of the right way to respond while you are coping with strong emotion.
- Work very hard at just listening. Discipline yourself to just stay in empathetic silence, rather than feeling that you have to provide a solution.
Once the conversation is over, take a few minutes to recover and check in with your own emotions.