Candor - Courageous coaching conversations

COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS Why is it that we, as smart, hardworking people with the best of intentions when confronted with challenging situations, where direct feedback and coaching is needed, often avoid or withdraw from such conversations? Chances are we do want to raise an issue or speak our minds, but we don’t want to polarize the conversation, make ourselves or others uncomfortable, be seen as a troublemaker, or be labeled a “non-team player.” As managers and leaders we face an assortment of daunting situations and responsibilities we must execute if we are to be effective. These challenging tasks include: • providing performance feedback to people who really need it, but do not want it; • making tough decisions under pressure • and holding people accountable for results. When it comes to effectively performing these vital functions, one skill stands out above all the rest: the ability to have clear, candid, and courageous conversations. Our new book on Courageous Conversations will help you explore the importance of having successful and meaningful conversations about our most important issues and challenges—particularly when solving business problems, helping team members learn, and providing coaching and performance feedback. In this book, we use a “story” format to illustrate our points. This is a fictionalized case study. It explores a situation that develops as a result of vague, ineffective conversations between a senior leader and a manager and how to build a foundation of openness by using a simple user friendly road map. The circumstances surrounding the issues explored in this book will be all too familiar for people in positions of leadership. Our Courageous Conversations framework is not a panacea; it certainly won’t fix all of our leadership woes. What it does do is provide some tips and skills to help guide you through the dialogue. In this book, we will help you identify and overcome the destructive conversational patterns that have developed over time like: • avoiding, • minimizing, • competing, • debating • and controlling. We all fall into traps that can cause us to have unproductive conversations with others. This is a guide to developing a new set of skills that will increase your conversational competence, bring your natural tendencies to light, and give you something to hang on to when discussing important issues where emotions can run high. We hope you enjoy the journey!