What are Some Tips for Having Conversations with Coworkers?

Question

Answer

Tips for Conversations with Coworkers

1. Have a clear objective and end goal.
2. Be prepared with a specific message to get across.
3. Actively listen and solicit solutions.
4. Keep the conversation on point.
5. Be empathetic and understand perception.
6. Have an open mind and avoid getting defensive.
7. Circle back to the objective and goal.
8. Create action steps that involve everyone and everyone’s input.

If you are in a situation where you need to have a conversation with a coworker and it's going to be one of those where you need to talk about a difficult topic, whether it's the way they're behaving, maybe their approach, or maybe you just need to have them step up, let's talk about this. What you want to do is have a clear objective and an end goal and you want to state that right at the very beginning. For example, you might say, "So the objective of us having this talk is to really get on the same page and talk about some things that are happening that we need to improve. Ultimately, at the end of this meeting, I want to leave with an action plan for you, for me, and for anyone else to make sure that we implement the changes that we talk about at this meeting and we all leave with clear goals in mind." That's how you're going to set this up.

You want to be prepared with the specific message that you want to get across. What I'm talking about is you want to talk about the things that are happening, not necessarily the way that it makes you feel. For example, you have a teacher who may be speaking inappropriately to children. That could be she is raising her voice, not getting down on their level, or maybe she's yelling across the room. It's not necessarily that she's being mean, it's just not necessarily appropriate. So your message is, "I want to talk about the way you are speaking to the children, specifically in yelling at them across the room." You don't want to say, "I don't like it" or "It makes me feel bad and you're making the children cry." What you're doing at that point is making it personal. When you make it extremely personal, people take it personally. It actually puts up that barrier that allows people to be subjective and open to what it is that you're trying to improve. Remember, when you make it personal, they take it personally. When you're having these difficult conversations, let's be very specific about the message and be prepared. It's okay to have a notepad or to have bulleted what you wanna talk about or to even make an agenda with these things. You might include things such as this is what you want to talk about, this is the goal, these are the objectives, these are specific examples that you're giving.  Having these things prepared can help you get that message across.

The next thing is to actively listen and solicit solutions. People will help support a world that they built. So when you're giving the answers and the solutions to everyone, they're just going to say, "Yeah, okay, whatever, that's not going to work." Or, "It's going to work for a day," or, "Yeah, I can try that." But if you actively listen and say, "You know what, let me ask you, I've heard some yelling at children from across the room to do what they need to do or to potentially get them to behave in a certain way. Let me ask you if you think that's working. Can you think of any better solutions for when Johnny's not listening to you the three times you yell to him from across the room to clean up his toys, or you asked him to get his jacket on?  Sometimes it's just not working? Can we think of some better ways that Johnny needs to be approached?" This way, what you're doing is you're actually having that staff member solicit and reflect on their own practices and come up with their own ways to do things better. They will support a world they helped build, not a world that you're telling them how to build. You want to actively listen. Remember, you have two ears and one mouth. You have two ears to listen twice as much as you talk. When you really get that buy-in, they're more likely to carry out those action steps.

You want to keep the conversation on point. If they start getting defensive or getting personal about it such as, "Well, I did this, but you do that," or "She does that," you can respond by saying, "I understand, but right now, we're talking about this situation, and how you handle things. I want to make it better for you, me, and the children, and the environment as a whole. That is to be discussed with them, and just as I'm having a personal and confidential conversation with you, I'm going to have a personal and confidential conversation with others that I need to." You want to keep that conversation on point.

You do want to be empathetic and understand their perception. That may be that this is just how they were spoken to as a child or this is how they learned how to do things, maybe in a previous classroom with a previous employer. You want to give them the opportunity to at least explain when you actively listen and say, "Why do you think that's not working?" or, "Do you think that's the best approach to take with Johnny?" Listen to those cues that they're giving you when they're telling you their story as to why, and be empathetic. It's very hard to walk in somebody's shoes and to understand their perception, but it might help you to understand who they are, and it ultimately goes back to building those relationships.

You also want to have an open mind and avoid getting defensive yourself. They may get defensive and they may point out flaws that they see in you, and you're going to have to take that and reflect on that at a later point in time to see if it's actually accurate. You do want to have an open mind to hear what they have to say, but again, avoid getting defensive yourself. It's not professional and then going back to number four, it's not keeping the conversation on point.

You always want to circle back to that objective and goal so when they get defensive or they start talking about somebody else in the room or they talk about how maybe Johnny really needs to see a specialist that this is just not right you can say, "I hear everything you're saying and I'm writing it down, but I at least just want to get this challenging topic that we're talking about taken care of. So let's get back to how we're going to change the way we talk to Johnny and yelling to him from across the room. Let's just focus on that one step at a time." 

You want to create action steps that involve everyone. That goes back to number one, having that clear objective and end goal. "All right, so this is what we talked about. This is how we're going to change things. I hear that you're going to not talk to Johnny from across the room. We're all going to make an effort to walk over to him, get down on his level and speak to him at a face-to-face level in a tone that's not going to be intimidating to him or sound like we're yelling at him because that is degrading to his self-esteem. Clearly, he's not responding to us, so we're going to do this in a different way. You're going to document all of this. That's a really important part that is not on this list. You do want to document this and then keep it and put it in your administrative files or put it in your team meeting booklet that you might have in your classroom. This way, everybody's on the same page. Those are tips for talking to coworkers during difficult conversations, and benefits to you, to them, and to your overall classroom.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Communication as a Key to Classroom Success, by Jennifer Romanoff, MA.