Whether you’re an IT Executive, B2B Integration professional, or EDI Analyst; having the crucial conversations with your peers or management regarding your B2B Integration environment can be challenging. I recently attended a training class on personality types and crucial conversations. I must admit, I learned a lot about myself and areas I could improve on in both my professional and personal life.
Crucial conversations are important and often times the stakes may be high; there are emotions involved and a variety of opinions. These conversations are still important to have as it could result in a person’s success. If you want to improve your results and relationships, you need to improve your ability to have crucial conversations.
You know there is a need to have a crucial conversation when you are awake at night, distracted by the subject or simply thinking about it constantly.
When you are ready to honestly, respectfully and accurately discuss all the relevant issues, here are a few things you need to consider before doing so.
- Identify what you want from the conversation.
- What results do you want to fix or achieve?
- Is there a consistency in situation?
- How will the conversation make a difference?
- Are there consequences if the situation continues?
- Be clear when stating and describing the facts.
- Avoid trying to convince others
- Create a shared meaning of the issue at hand
- Think about what you are saying and how it is coming across
- Ask for other person to provide their thought process
In summary, when faced with crucial conversations, you can avoid them, deal with them negatively or deal with them positively. Think about how respectfully and rapidly you would like to have the situation solved. Everyone has both personal and professional problems, you can’t address every issue so pick your battles!
If you would like to learn more around improving your ability to have a crucial conversation, please pick up the book “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High”. Happy reading!
