With a background in HR, Gideon Schulman CMgr FCMI has in many ways made a career out of having difficult conversations. Redundancies, disciplinaries, disagreements within teams – they’ve all been in his wheelhouse for many years. Even so, he still remembers one of the first such discussions, decades on from having it. And he says he continues to use the lesson it taught him.
“I had to go and speak to a manager who had terrible body odour – so horrendous that people were complaining about it,” remembers Gideon, who is chief executive of multi-service organisation Davka Group.
It’s a conversation most people would find awkward but, by going in with an open mind, Gideon discovered there were complex reasons for the person’s hygiene issue.
“His marriage was breaking down, he wasn’t sleeping and he was ill on the back of his stress. It was only once I delved into the conversation that I found out all these things.”
Peeling back the layers
It was, says Gideon, a clear illustration that there are “multiple layers” to any tricky situation. Bearing this in mind – and being willing to discover the different causes of a problem, and to learn about the individual involved – is his top tip for dealing successfully with difficult conversations as a manager.
“You need to be able to delve into those layers and understand what’s behind a situation. The important lesson is not to take a situation at face value – be prepared to understand what’s behind a behaviour and what’s led to that situation.”
Joann Robertson CMgr FCMI, a supply chain and logistics manager for more than three decades, also speaks of the need to build understanding when tackling difficult conversations. When she inherits teams that are perceived as underperforming – a classic setting for a tricky discussion – she first uses “a technique I call my discovery period”.
“I do a 90-day discovery to evaluate the expectations the team has been working under, and how those expectations lean back into what the organisation expects more broadly.”