You’ve got a clear focus on what matters most. Your team seems to work well together, but then you get that call: “I need to talk to you about …” or a team member suddenly explodes at their teammates and storms off the floor. It’s conflict, a disagreement, or a clash of personalities. Handle it well and you’ll build trust and influence. But ignore it or respond poorly and not only do you lose trust and credibility, but the conflict distracts your team from the work that matters most. Team conflict can feel like quicksand and a distraction from your work, but it’s an excellent opportunity to improve morale, productivity, and processes.

8 Ways to Deal with Team Conflict

1. Hire for Conflict Communication Skills
2. De-escalate Heated Conflict in the Moment
3. Reflect to Connect
4. Gather Information with Three Quick Questions
5. Diagnose the Situation: Is this a vent or a problem that needs to be solved?
6. [For Problems:] Discuss and Choose an Appropriate Solution
7. Schedule the Finish
8. Bonus: Equip Your Team with Powerful Phrases to Resolve Conflict Together

Team Conflict is Unavoidable

Early in my (David’s) career, my boss Jim, the Executive Vice President, took me to lunch at a popular spot for business meetings with a bustling dining room. Apparently, he’d seen me struggling with a common problem new leaders face and chose this lunch to deliver some coaching.

As we waited for our food to arrive, I got up to wash my hands. Jim stopped me for a moment and gave me an assignment: “Take the long way through the restaurant to and from the washroom. Walk slowly and catch the bits of conversation you hear.”

I followed his strange instructions and when I returned to the table, Jim said, “Of the conversations you heard, how many of them were complaining–about their boss, a co-worker, or a problem at work?”

“Half or more, from what I heard,” I answered.

He nodded. “And that’s normal. It’s human nature to complain. You can’t respond to every complaint you hear. Not every complaint needs a solution. And complaints don’t necessarily mean anything’s wrong.”

It was an important lesson for a young leader: conflict between people is unavoidable. But there’s always a leadership opportunity when a team member brings you a complaint. Depending on the circumstance, it may be an opportunity for that person to grow, for you to improve your leadership, or a moment to connect, build a stronger team, or a better process.

How to Address Team Conflict Productively

Here are eight steps you can take to address conflict effectively, build healthy professional relationships, and help your team maintain their focus on what matters most.

1. Hire for Conflict Communication Skills

As a leader, you have two choices to build teams that are good at conflict resolution: either hire for the skills or teach the skills.

What doesn’t work is expecting people to have skills you haven’t specifically checked out or taught them. And the fastest way to build a team that’s good at conflict is to hire for those skills. You can do this with a few behavior-based interview questions. For example:

“Tell me about a time when…”

• “A coworker seriously irritated you. What happened? What did you do? What was the outcome?”
• “You radically disagreed with your manager. How did you handle that?”
• “You weren’t able to do your work correctly because of someone else’s behavior. How did you address the situation?”

While many people will describe how they stayed silent, kept their head down, or got frustrated and left, you’re looking for the candidates who spoke up and shared their concerns elegantly.

2. De-escalate Heated Team Conflict in the Moment

A quarrel between teammates escalates into a shouting match. Seemingly out of nowhere, an employee swears, slams a door, and storms into the breakroom or parking lot.

Many managers respond to these heated moments by getting sucked into the drama or trying to ignore it altogether. But either way, the situation won’t improve.

When tempers flare, your first job is to re-establish a safe working environment for the entire team. That means taking a breath and making sure you are calm, centered, and don’t react to the drama. Next, if the people involved are still in a public area or with the rest of the team, move the people involved to a more private space where you can talk.

Rather than talking right away about their unprofessional behavior, begin the conversation by getting the facts. Ask “What happened?”

As you hear their side, check for understanding: “So what I hear you saying is that there were too many people in your space and you couldn’t get your work done. Do I have that right?”

If the person is distraught and says things like, “You don’t understand!” You can help de-escalate the conversation by calmly and quietly saying, “You’re right. I don’t understand. And I’d like to. Can you tell me what happened?”

As you confirm the facts, you can also de-escalate the situation by acknowledging and checking on feelings. For example, “It sounds like having all those people in your space was very frustrating?” (More on this in #3 below).

Once you’ve heard the other person’s perspective and acknowledged their feelings, you can guide the discussion to solutions. This depends on the specific circumstances, what happened, and if they can safely return to their work. An apology might be in order, along with some coaching to help them deal with their frustrations productively. The next steps can help you know what direction to go.

3. Reflect to Connect

When a team member comes to you with a frustration, complaint, or problem, (even if it’s not an explosive situation) the most effective thing you can do to build a productive conversation is to acknowledge their emotion. When they know you’ve heard them, it diffuses some of the emotional intensity and builds a connection that allows you to move to constructive next steps.

We call this process of acknowledging emotion “reflect to connect” because you are reflecting the emotion you observed and making sure you understand what’s on their mind.

For example: “It sounds like you’re really frustrated with the lack of response from marketing and that’s sapping your motivation. Do I have that right?”

Note: you’re not telling them that their feelings are right or wrong. When you reflect, you are checking for understanding and creating a common starting place for the conversation.

4. Gather Information with Three Quick Questions

Once you’ve acknowledged the person’s feelings, your next step is to get more information. Your actions going forward depend on the specific circumstances so it’s vital to know what’s happening. There are three questions you can ask to quickly assess the situation:

• What do you want me to know?—We learned this question from trial attorney Heather Hansen. It’s a fantastic question to help draw out what is most meaningful to the person who brought you the issue.
• How might I help here?—The power of this question is that it quickly reveals whether the other person just wants to blow off steam or has a problem. It also gives you insight into how they perceive the problem.
• Should the three (or more) of us talk together?—This question is helpful in those situations where you suspect the person might have a motivation other than solving the problem (like undermining a colleague or currying favor). For people who complain and want to dump their problems on you, it helps maintain mutual responsibility.

5. Diagnose the Situation: Is this a vent or a problem that needs to be solved?

After you ask these three questions, you will likely have enough information to diagnose the situation. Here are some of the most common types of team conflict to look for:

• The person just needs to vent and get a frustration off their chest.
• There’s a misunderstanding.
• One party is unresponsive or sees priorities differently.
• People are working toward different goals.
• There’s a style or personality conflict.
• You discover toxic behavior.
• There are structural issues with a process or systems causing the conflict.

6. [For Problems:] Discuss and Choose an Appropriate Solution

If the person doesn’t need any action and just needed to blow off steam, your reflect-to-connect will likely be all they need to get back to work. For problems, however, the solution will depend on the specific situation. Here are a few examples:

• If you identify a misunderstanding, equipping the person to have the discussion and clarify what’s happening might be appropriate.
• Sometimes you’ll find that you caused the problem. Perhaps your statement of goals is unclear or you haven’t clarified how values should resolve when in conflict. In these cases, your best path forward is to convene the interested parties and give them the clarity they need.
• For other cases of unresponsive peers, personality or style conflicts, or other situations where a discussion will help, you may bring the people together and discuss the situation and come to a mutual understanding of the way forward.
• When you discover toxic or abusive behavior, you and/or your HR team may formally intervene.
• When you uncover structural issues, fix them if you can. If you can’t take immediate action yourself, let your team know how you will advocate for them and help them work through the specific challenge.

7. Schedule the Finish

Whatever the next steps you and the people involved agree on, be sure to schedule a time in the future when you will all review what happened and ensure that everyone followed through on their commitments and responsibilities. Scheduling the finish ensures that you won’t repeatedly have to revisit this same team conflict.

8. Bonus: Equip Your Team with Powerful Phrases to Resolve Conflict Together

Click here for FREE Sample Chapters

One of the most effective ways you can help your team to resolve conflict is to give them the tools to have meaningful conversations with one another and the expectation that they will use them. The highest-performing teams don’t shy away from conflict. They embrace it and understand that every disagreement is an opportunity to build relationships and improve results.

When there’s a lack of clarity, help your team ask questions of one another, like:

• “What would a successful outcome do for you?”
• “How does this look from your perspective?”
• “Here’s what I understood _______. Did you hear it differently?”

Equip Your Team for Mutual Feedback and Accountability

One of the most important set of powerful phrases to help build feedback skills is the I.N.S.P.I.R.E. Method for accountability conversations. Its balanced approach will help your team members build their relationships while achieving results. And for those situations where they can’t resolve the issue because the problem is a lack of clarity at a higher level, they will be able to figure that out and come to you with a solution request, rather than a vague complaint. 

Your Turn

Team conflict can be productive–and certainly shouldn’t consume you with other people’s drama. You will energize your people and maintain productivity when you acknowledge their emotions, ask a few key questions, create an appropriate path forward, and follow up to ensure everyone followed through.

What would you add? Leave a comment and share your best tip for helping your team resolve conflict, build better relationships, and get back to what matters most.

Related Articles:

Team Conflict: How To Surface and Discuss Simmering Issues (Video)

9 Mistakes That Sabotage Collaboration and Destroy Trust

The post How to Deal with Team Conflict and Get Everyone Back to Work appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Even the best leaders face communication challenges in today’s fast-moving work environment. This episode offers a practical solution to help you ensure your messages are clear, reduce frustration, and boost your team’s performance.

Here’s what you’ll gain from listening:

• Learn why asking “Do you understand?” is ineffective and what to ask instead.
• Find out how to eliminate communication gaps that slow down progress and create stress.
• Gain advanced techniques to strengthen your leadership communication at all levels.

Now, discover the communication skills that will transform your leadership and improve team cohesion!

Mastering An Essential Communication Skill

[00:00] Introduction to Communication Skills
You’re about to learn one of the most powerful communication skills that can save you time, reduce frustration, and elevate your leadership. The episode introduces a simple but transformative tool that will change how you lead conversations.

[01:52] The Problem with Asking “Do You Understand?”
Asking, “Do you understand?” seems simple, but it’s one of the least effective ways to ensure clarity. You’ll discover why this common question leads to misunderstandings and what to do instead.

[02:51] The Importance of Checking for Understanding
Mastering checking for understanding will help you identify gaps in your team’s knowledge before issues arise. Learn how to ask the right open-ended questions that foster real clarity.

Practical Applications of Communication Skills

[04:06] Applying the Check for Understanding
Here, you’ll dive into practical ways to apply the check for understanding technique. You’ll hear examples of how to phrase your questions to guarantee your team’s full comprehension.

[06:45] Ensuring Team Alignment
Miscommunication can lead to wasted time and missed opportunities. This section teaches you how to use communication skills to confirm that everyone is on the same page, whether you’re delegating tasks or reviewing project details.

[09:31] Organizational-Level Communication: Ensuring Cascading Clarity
Leaders often struggle to ensure that their messages reach everyone in the organization. You’ll learn the importance of checking for understanding at different levels to make sure your communication cascades effectively.

Overcoming Common Communication Barriers

[12:10] Overcoming Time Constraints with Effective Communication
Are you concerned that using this communication skill takes too much time? You’ll discover why investing a few extra minutes in clarifying conversations will save you hours of frustration and rework later.

[14:22] Addressing Intentional Misunderstandings
Some team members may intentionally avoid understanding to escape accountability. This summary explains how to use communication skills to address and coach through these scenarios, ensuring accountability across the board.

[15:23] Managing Negative Emotions in Communication
Dealing with negative emotions is tough, but avoiding them makes communication worse. You’ll learn how to use empathy and communication skills to navigate difficult conversations while keeping your team engaged.

[17:41] Recap: The Power of Mastering Communication Skills
In closing, the episode emphasizes that the “check for understanding” is one of the most critical communication skills. You’ll walk away with a stronger ability to lead, inspire, and ensure your team’s success by communicating clearly.

The post One Critical Communication Skill Every Busy Leader Needs appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Tired of sitting through endless PowerPoint presentations that never answer your question? Does your team drown you with emailed essays and spreadsheets without clear conclusions? Help your team provide more useful information and drive clear decision-making by asking yourself three questions.

Why Your Team Wastes Time with Vague Reports and Frustrating Presentations

When your team doesn’t give you the information you need, there are usually a couple of factors at play.

Often, they simply don’t know what you want or how you want it. They don’t understand how you’ll use the information or what happens next.

Sometimes, they’re looking for approval (look at how hard I worked on all this data!). Or they deliver vague reports and drown you in data to keep out of trouble and avoid your anger or criticism.

Three Questions to Help Your Team Give You Useful Information

You can solve for all these issues and unlock your team’s potential by asking yourself three questions.

1. Have You Clearly Asked for What You Want?

You know what you want. You need a clear recommendation and point of view from the people closest to the issue.

But do your people know that?

If you haven’t clearly asked for what you want, the answer is always “no, they don’t.”

And you almost certainly want that report or analysis differently than their last manager.

When you communicate what you want, think about the following questions:

• What will a successful report or presentation do? Are there specific criteria the team needs to meet? Clarify the criteria right away.
• How will you use the information? If you want raw data to analyze, let them know. If you want a single recommendation with one page of analysis that you can pass to the next level, tell them.
• How much analysis and precision do you need? Sometimes you need a general direction and a quick summary. Other times, you need maximum confidence and for the team to take the time to make sure it’s right.
• How do you like to get information? You might prefer to read a report and then ask questions. You might like a verbal presentation.
• When do you need it? Schedule the finish and ensure they can meet the timetable.

Take the time to clarify what you want. Your team can’t meet expectations they don’t know about.

2. Have You Checked for Understanding?

Once you tell them what you need, check for understanding. You don’t know that they have it and will truly present useful information until you hear them explain it in their own words. For example, you might say:

“If there aren’t any other questions, let’s do a quick check for understanding. What will a successful report do for us? How and when will you present it?”

Note: asking “Do you understand what you need to do here?” is not a check for understanding. You need to find out what they understand.

3. Are You Responding or Reacting?

You asked for what you want. You checked for understanding. But people still bring you vague reports or slide decks with hundreds of irrelevant slides.

Now what?

The next step is to pay attention to how you respond (not react) to your team. If you react poorly, you’ll get more useless information.

We’ve worked with many frustrated senior leaders frustrated who see too many data dumps and endless PowerPoint presentations.

But ask their team what’s going on and they’ll tell you, “It’s a total waste of time. No matter what I present, they’ll tear it apart, tell me I’m an idiot, and go in a different direction. Why waste my time? I don’t need the grief and will just to have redo everything I’d already done.”

When your team doesn’t bring you useful information, of course it’s frustrating. But you can avoid this negative spiral and help them do better next time by choosing a helpful response.

Here are tools to handle the two most common problems:

1. When They Didn’t Do What They Agreed

You asked for a one-page summary with bulleted recommendations you could include in the Board presentation. Due Thursday at 5:00. You checked for understanding and everyone agreed.

But you got a massive PowerPoint presentation with four spreadsheets of data in a microscopic font—on Friday morning.

Your best response here is an accountability conversation. You can use our I.N.S.P.I.R.E. method to have this conversation. Your part of this conversation could look like this:

I – Initiate: “My intent here is to help you prevent rework and for you and the team to be as effective as possible.”

N – Notice: “We agreed that you would present this information in a one-page summary with bulleted recommendations. This isn’t that.”

S – Support: (not really needed here as the problem is self-evident)

P – Probe: “I’m curious what happened?”

I – Invite: “Can you please get the one-page summary we agreed to done today? How can we ensure you do these presentations accurately going forward?”

R – Review: “I’m hearing that you just forgot and scrambled to get it done at the last minute. And that your solution will be to get it in your calendar with the details going forward. Do I have that right?”

E – Enforce: “We have another one of these reports coming up in two weeks. Let’s schedule time on Friday afternoon. I’ve just sent you a calendar invitation. We’ll spend ten minutes to go over that next report and fine-tune it before you submit it.”

2. When You Disagree or Can’t Use Their Recommendation

Your team gave you the information exactly as you requested. But just this morning, before their presentation, you got some information that changed the strategy. Now their recommendation doesn’t make sense.

Or maybe, now that you see their data, you disagree with their analysis.

How can you respond in a way that doesn’t discourage, disempower, or deflate?

The answer is to Respond with Regard. There are three steps to respond with regard: gratitude, information, and invitation. You get more of what you celebrate and encourage. So here’s how your part of this conversation might sound:

Gratitude: “Thank you so much for putting this together. I really appreciate the thought you put into it and for caring about where we’re heading.”

Information: “So this morning we learned that the joint venture that would help this project work isn’t going to happen. As I look at your analysis, that understandably played a big role.”

Invitation: “I would love to get your thoughts and recommendation knowing that this partnership isn’t happening. Let’s talk through when we can do that.”

Or, where you see things differently, your information step might sound like:

“Looking at your data, I’m coming to a different conclusion than yours. Here’s what I’m thinking. What am I missing? How do you see it differently?”

Your Turn

When you consistently ask yourself these three questions, your team won’t just give you useful information. You’ll improve morale, efficiency, and make better decisions. We’d love to hear from you: how do you help your team move from vague reports and data dumps to meaningful information you can use?

You might also like:

• Managing Up: Turning Information into Influence with Your Boss
• Help Your Boss Stop Wasting Time with Bad Delegation
• How to Get Your Team to Stop Sending You Frustrating Email Communication

The post No More Vague Reports: How to Help Your Team Give You Useful Information appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

When your manager asks you for information, don’t just answer their question. Have a perspective. To get better at managing up, ask yourself three questions that will turn information into influence.

The Problem: Why Your Boss Is Frustrated

Every day we hear from frustrated executives buried in data. Their team sends them reams of information without context, PowerPoint decks that don’t answer the “obvious” question, or vague answers that lead to more questions.

And it’s all unnecessary. If your manager asks you for information and your answers don’t build your influence, or worse, cause frustration, you probably made one of a few mistakes.

Presenting Information: Common Managing Up Mistakes

Avoid these common mistakes when answering questions and presenting information.

Mistake #1: You Misinterpret or Underestimate the Ask

You’re swamped and moving fast. There’s so much to do and then your boss asks for an update. And you want to be responsive, so you quickly throw together a chart that shows the last twelve months. But you don’t explain why February’s numbers were so different. Now your manager wonders why you don’t care about the obvious issue.

You’re so close to the project that your focus is on twigs and leaves, not the tree…and much less the forest. Your manager asks you for information. So you bury them in minutia that’s meaningful to you – but they wanted your perspective on the project’s success. And now they have to ask again.

Your manager asks for your analysis. So you put together a tight description of what’s happening and why. But you don’t make any recommendations. And your frustrated manager wonders, “What am I supposed to do with this? Shouldn’t you be able to solve these problems?”

Mistake #2: You Think Your Boss Thinks Like You

Everyone has a natural style of how they get information and make decisions. But these styles differ from one person to the next.

Maybe you prefer to read. So you prepare excellent written emails and reports – that your manager ignores. Because she prefers to listen and talk through the information. Or, you like to see all the data when deciding, so you give them everything. But they just want a summary, or your suggestion.

Mistake #3: You Try to Stay Out of Trouble

Your manager asks for an update and you bury the bad news in a spreadsheet or a hundred-slide presentation. Rather than interpret the data and risk a negative reaction from your manager, you dump it all on them and leave them to figure it out.

Or you don’t offer a point of view or recommendation because you worry about how your manager will react.

After all, they can’t get mad at you if you said nothing wrong, right?

Well, wrong…of course they can still get upset. And now, to make it worse, you didn’t actually do your job because you didn’t lead.

Mistake #4: You Try to Look Too Good

There’s a time to show your work. But going overboard makes you look insecure, not competent.

When you showboat and point out how outstanding you are, you cast doubt as to your true capabilities. Worse, in the effort to show off, you miss the chance to genuinely help and build the influence you want. You’ll have much more influence managing up when you add true value.

Three Managing Up Questions to Turn Information into Influence

Avoid these four mistakes and add value by asking yourself three key questions. If you aren’t confident in your answers to any of the questions, use these communication tools and Powerful Phrases to maximize your influence.

1. What does your manager need?

This is the most important question to make sure that you add value. What does your manager actually need?

Ask yourself this question a couple times, from different angles.

Because your manager might not ask for what they need.

They’ll ask for what they think they need. Or they ask for the first part, but not the second and third pieces. Maybe they don’t understand the issue as well as you do, so they ask the totally wrong question. Or they don’t specifically ask for your recommendation, but they expect you to have one.

Here are ways to think about what your manager needs:

• How will they use the information? Will they make a decision? Pass it to someone else? Implement your suggestion?
• Quick or detailed? What level of confidence do they need? Do they need a precise, accurate answer, or is a quick range enough for now?
• Do they need nicely formatted to share with others or just an email with a simple answer?
• What are the next three questions your manager would naturally ask? Answer these.

Always have a perspective. Whether your manager asked for it, you need to be read to offer a point of view. You are closer to the work. What would you recommend?

If you’re not sure what your manager needs, there are a couple of questions you can ask to help clarify:

• Check for Understanding by saying, “Here’s what I’m hearing you need and how you will use the answers I give you: ________. Do I have that right?”
• When you don’t have enough information to check for understanding, you can draw out more information by asking: “I want to make sure I get you what you need. What will a successful update do for you?”

2. How do they need it?

When you work with a manager frequently, you can ask this question early in your relationship. If you don’t know the person making the request, include this question in your first conversation:

“How do you like to receive information?”

Some possibilities to explore include:

• Written, diagramed, or spoken
• Bullet point summaries or analysis
• Numbers, narrative, or both

When you can’t know how they need it, try this: start with a one-page brief, bulleted summary of key information and your recommendations. In the following pages, give them the data and analysis. Then make yourself available to discuss the report.

3. When do they need it?

You don’t want to waste time if they need it quickly. Nor do you want to drop everything and abandon your work to provide a report that could wait until next week.

The tool to help you manage these priorities is Scheduling the Finish.

You never want to leave a conversation that requires action without scheduling the finish by addressing three factors:

• Ideally, when will the task be complete?
• Is this workable, or do you need to resolve competing priorities?
• Is the scheduled finish on your calendar (and the calendar of anyone else involved)?

For example, your manager asks for an update on the sales figures for your newest product. You know she prefers written bullet points and the ability to ask clarifying questions.

First, you ask how she’ll use the data and whether she wants the actual data or a trend analysis. Then you schedule the finish by asking, “Ideally, when do you need this?”

She asks for the information by tomorrow afternoon.

You have time at 4:00 pm available to meet. But you also have to attend a marketing update in the morning that won’t leave you time for her update.

So, you tell her, “If I can skip that marketing meeting, I can send you the information at 3:00 and then we can do a quick video call at 4:00 so I can answer your questions? How does that sound?”

Your Turn

You can master the art of managing up, increase your influence, and get your manager the right information at the right time by answering three critical questions: What do they need? How do they need it? When do they need it?

We’d love to hear from you: what’s one of your best ways to get your manager the information they need to lead well and make good decisions?

You Might Also Like:

• Help Your Boss Stop Wasting Time with Bad Delegation
• Powerful Phrases to Win With a Moody Boss, Even a Dropper of F-Bombs
• Managing Up With Grace (How to Give Your Boss Better Feedback With Video)

The post Managing Up: Turning Information into Influence with Your Boss appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The post Beyond Magical Thinking: How to Ensure Your Team “Gets It” appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

When your organization or team communicates effectively, you’re nimble. You can respond to change quickly. But if your organization doesn’t invest in effective workplace communication, you’ll face a constant series of misunderstandings that waste time, create conflict, and drag down everyone’s performance. One easy-to-use workplace communication tool will eliminate most of these frustrations, save you time, and improve performance and morale.

Stop Asking “Do You Understand?”

Every moment of communication with your team or customer is precious. Especially in hybrid, remote, or fast-moving organizations, you’ve got to make every interaction count.

But one of the worst ways to waste these precious moments is by asking, “Do you understand?”

If the person answers “yes”—well, you know nothing more than you did before you asked. They said “yes,” but what does that “yes” actually mean?

Maybe they think they understand (and whether they do or not, you don’t know). Or maybe they just told you yes because that’s what they think you expect to hear.

Perhaps they just want to move on and get to their next task, so they say “yes” hoping to leave the conversation.

Regardless of the person’s intent, when someone tells you, “yes, I understand,” you know nothing more than you did before you asked. And you rarely learn about problems in understanding until later when things go wrong.

Now, if they tell you “no, I don’t understand,” that is better in the sense that now you have new information. But you still don’t know where the confusion happened or what to do about it. And it required the person you asked to have the courage to admit they didn’t understand (which shouldn’t take courage, but often does).

Maximize Your Workplace Communication ROI: Check for Understanding

You can make the most of every conversation and eliminate hours, days, even months of frustration, headache, and heartache by shifting away from “do you understand?” Instead, ask an open-ended question that helps both of you immediately figure out how well you grasp what one another has said. We call this a “check for understanding.”

Check for Their Understanding

When you check for understanding, ask the other person what they understand (not if they understand). There are many ways you can do this. Here are a few examples:

• “Let’s check for understanding here, what are the next steps we will take?”
• “I’d like to make sure we’re on the same page. What’s happening now?”
• “What’s your understanding of our agreement?”

All of these questions are open ended – the person answering will share what they know. There is no yes/no pressure to be right. It’s about sharing their perspective so we can move forward efficiently.

As you hear them summarize in their words, you’ll know what they know and where they are missing critical information. Now you can clarify and ensure everyone has what they need.

Check for Your Understanding

When you are on the receiving end of communication from a colleague, team member, supervisor, board member, spouse, child, friend – or anyone else, you can use the check for understanding to make sure you’ve got it.

This time, you’ll repeat back what you understand and ask for clarification. For example:

• “I’m hearing that we need to move this project up to deliver this Friday and that we should postpone our work on the marketing effort until next week. Do I have that right?”
• “It sounds like we’ve agreed to add a full-time person to this team. If that’s right, I’ll talk to HR to get it posted.”
• “It seems like this task will take about five hours, is that what you had in mind?”
• “I’m hearing that competing data requests from other teams are keeping you from getting what you need to complete this on time. Is that right?”

In all these examples, you don’t allow yourself to assume you understand. You double check. Sometimes you’ll extend that check for understanding to add more clarity. For example:

• “Thanks for confirming. So, what I see happening next is that the product team will be worried. How will we communicate the change with them?”
• “Okay, so not five hours. You want a 30 minute estimation. Are you comfortable with a range then as opposed to a specific number?”

Whether you check for their understanding or yours, now everyone has the same information.

Organizational Check for Understanding

One of the most frustrating parts of life in organizations that grow beyond one level of organization is cascading communication. We constantly hear the workplace communication frustration of senior leaders who don’t understand why everyone isn’t on the same page.

The problem usually stems from a lack of – you guessed it, checking for understanding. But there are usually two or even three checks that need to happen.

If you’re a senior leader who has information to cascade through the organization (and it’s not passive information – people need to do something with it), you need to ensure that everyone’s got it and acts on it. Here’s how you do it:

1. Start with your direct report team.

In addition to the key message, clarify with the team that part of their responsibility is to ensure that their team understands and acts on the message. Check for understanding with your direct reports. For example, “Okay, if there aren’t any more questions, let’s check for understanding. What needs to happen next? By when?” Make sure they’ve got cascading and ensuring understanding as part of their next steps.

2. Skip-level check for understanding.

Once the cascading timeline passes, have some conversations with people who report to your team. Ask then, “What is your understanding of [topic / key message]?”

Listen to what they say. If they have it wrong, don’t chastise them. Instead, gently correct: “Oh, actually, here’s what’s happening… What questions are coming up for you?”  Then you can wrap up with another check for understanding: “Just to make sure I’m communicating as clearly as I hope to, what are you hearing me say here?”

3. Coach the managers whose people don’t have it.

This is a critical step if you want a nimble, responsive, accountable organization. You’ve got to hold your team member responsible for their team’s understanding of the message. If their team doesn’t have it, that’s your team member’s responsibility.

Check in with your team member. Let them know they had some folks struggling with the message. Check with them about how they’re communicating. How are they checking for understanding themselves? Are they? (Or are they falling back on “do you understand” and failing to learn what people actually know?)

If the manager continues to struggle, it may help to attend a meeting where they will be communicating and observe how they do it and then coach them after the meeting. This rarely takes more than once or twice before they figure it out and ensure clear communication.

Eliminate Common Workplace Communication Barriers

Once leaders learn how to check for understanding, there are four common obstacles that get in the way of clear communication.

1. Concern that it takes too long

We get it—when time is short, every second feels precious.

But the investment in clear understanding gives you back so much time later that you won’t spend cleaning up misunderstandings, re-doing work, and solving unnecessary conflict.

2. Feeling like people should be “better than this”

“These are professionals. They should get this the first time.” We hear this one quite a bit.

Frankly, it’s nonsense. Human communication is challenging at the best of times and no one gets it right every time. Heck, we teach these concepts nearly every day, and we still have frequent misunderstandings where we’ll use the same word, but interpret it differently.

One of your most critical leadership responsibilities is communication. You can’t inspire, motivate, or take a group of people anywhere if you can’t communicate. And you haven’t communicated until everyone has shared understanding.

3. Intentional misunderstanding

When you hold everyone on your team responsible for their communication, you may discover a few folks who have been hiding behind intentional misunderstanding. After all, “if I leave it vague, I don’t have to follow through or disappoint anyone. I can’t be accountable for that.”

You and your team will coach some of these folks to greater accountability that will help their performance and relationships. Others may not want it and you’ll ultimately coach them out of the organization.

4. Avoiding negative emotions

Managers who struggle to check for understanding often want to avoid dealing with negative emotions.

If that key message is going to irritate or concern some of their team, they may deliver it without force. They might share the message, but not check for understanding because doing so opens the door for how people feel about the issue.

The person could say, “Yeah, I get it. Here’s what you’re saying. I just don’t like it.” Now what?

Help your managers learn to listen deeply, reflect what they hear—check for understanding about the team member’s concern and how they feel, and go from there. (And model this yourself.)

The next step might be to relay the employee’s concern to you. It might be to acknowledge how they feel and then ask for enrollment: “I hear that this is disappointing for you. I’m not asking you to feel differently. Is it something you can still do?”

Help your managers learn to listen and acknowledge without having to solve every problem or complaint and you’ll improve their ability to communicate.

Your Turn

In our leadership development programs, participants consistently rank the check for understanding as one of their most valuable tools. When you master this powerful workplace communication tool and infuse it throughout your team, you’ll be on your way to a nimble, responsive, and productive organization.

We’d love to hear from you—how have you used the check for understanding in your leadership? Do you have a story of a time people weren’t on the same page? Let’s hear your story!

The post Workplace Communication: Stop Asking “Do You Understand?” (and do this instead) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Do you ever get frustrated by conflict conversations that just won’t end?  You think you’ve reached an agreement, and a few weeks later you’re back to the same Groundhog Day discussion.

Your conversation needs to produce action, or nothing changes. And if nothing changes, it’s worse than if you never had a conversation. Now you’ve wasted time, trust drips away, and people lose hope. Commitment is the answer and the key to move you from words to action.

There are two keys to a useful commitment in conflict conversations. The first is to get specific. You want specific actions with specific owners who have specific finish lines. The second key to an effective commitment is to schedule a time to review your agreement.

Bring on the Commitment G.O.A.T.s

Let’s give you some commitment G.O.A.T.s (greatest of all time Powerful Phrases) that will help ensure your conflict conversations lead to action.

3 Powerful Phrases to Prevent Recurring Conflict Conversations

1. What’s one action we can both agree to as a next step here?

You might not have resolved all the issues, but steering the conversation to one specific next step helps create forward momentum. Asking for just one action will usually feel doable. And if one step feels easy, you can always say “Great, what else do you think we could do?”

2. So, to recap our conversation, we’ve agreed to _________. Is that your understanding?

As you can see, we’re big believers in the “check for understanding” throughout the conversation. It’s particularly important when recapping a workplace conflict conversation. The more emotionally intense the conversation, the more critical this final step is. If you leave the discussion with different expectations, you’ll have continued conflict and hurt feelings.

3. Let’s schedule some time to talk about this again, and see how our solution is working.

If you’ve ever been in one of our leadership training programs, you’ll recognize this as “scheduling the finish,”

One of the big sources of workplace conflict is when you think you’ve resolved it, and everything doesn’t go the way you planned. Scheduling time to talk about the situation again makes the follow-up conversation more natural because you’ve already agreed to it.

A scheduled follow-up increases the odds that you’ll both keep your commitments to one another. And, it gives you a built-in opportunity to discuss the inevitable disruptions to your plan.

Your turn.

How about you? What’s one of your favorite powerful phrases to prevent conflict conversations from recurring?

The post Recurring Conflict Conversations: How to Unstick Stuck Situations appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

For Mr. Whiny, it’s all about addressing the behavior and not getting sucked into unproductive conversations. But with the Caring Complainer, you can use powerful phrases to shift your energy towards positive outcomes and solutions.

What to Say to Chronic Complainers

0:00 – Introduction to Chronic Complainers

David starts by sharing a story about Phil, a chronic complainer who caused a previous facilitator to quit mid-session. David introduces the episode, which focuses on giving you tools to handle chronic complainers at work.

4:15 – Types of Chronic Complainers

David explains the two main types of chronic complainers: “Mr. Whiny,” who complains for the sake of it, and “Caring Complainer,” who genuinely cares but comes off as cynical.

6:30 – Addressing Mr. Whiny

Learn how to handle Mr. Whiny by addressing the behavior directly and disengaging from unproductive discussions. Use a neutral, curious tone to ask, “What’s going on?”

10:20 – Using Powerful Phrases

David highlights powerful phrases from his book, such as, “That does sound frustrating. Do you want to make it better?” These phrases can help move Mr. Whiny towards action or signal when to end the conversation.

14:05 – Understanding the Caring Complainer

Shift your approach to the Caring Complainer by recognizing their protective nature. Use phrases that acknowledge their concerns and help them feel heard.

18:00 – Powerful Phrases for Caring Complainers

David shares more powerful phrases like, “It sounds like you’re concerned about…” and “And what else?” to help redirect the Caring Complainer’s energy towards positive outcomes.

More Strategies for Dealing with Chronic Complainers

21:45 – Encouraging Solutions

Invite the Caring Complainer to envision solutions with phrases like, “What would it look like if we could solve for that?” and “How do you think we can address this?”

24:50 – Wrapping Up Conversations

David gives tips on how to wrap up conversations with chronic complainers, using phrases like, “I’m glad we had this conversation. I need to get back to work.”

28:10 – Phil’s Story Revisited

David circles back to the story of Phil, explaining how genuine listening and truthful answers turned Phil from a chronic complainer into an advocate for the program.

32:00 – Conclusion and Book Promotion

David concludes with a reminder to use the strategies from his book, “Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict,” and teases upcoming episodes that will delve into more practical leadership strategies.

The post Effective Strategies for Communicating with Chronic Complainers appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

• Here’s what you can do when you’re faced with vague feedback, ask for specifics. Try saying, “Could you give me an example of what you’re referring to?”
• If you’re dealing with unfair ratings and feeling frustrated, express your concerns and seek a constructive solution. You might say, “I’m concerned about this rating and would like to understand how I can improve.”
• To avoid surprise feedback, set up regular feedback sessions. This helps ensure you always know where you stand and can address any issues proactively. And when feedback is unclear, don’t hesitate to ask for concrete examples. This will help you get the clarity you need to succeed.

As a leader, giving meaningful feedback is crucial. Aim to be the kind of leader you would want your boss to be. By improving your feedback conversations, you can make your work environment better for everyone.

How to Deal with Lazy and Vague Feedback from Your Boss

0:00 – Welcome and Overview You’re listening to Leadership Without Losing Your Soul with David Dye. Today, you’ll get specific phrases to deal with a manager who gives lazy, vague, and frustrating feedback. Whether it’s last-minute, unclear, or non-existent feedback, David’s got you covered.

1:45 – Celebrating a Book Launch David talks about the launch of his book, “Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict.” It’s been a whirlwind week with book signings, interviews, and a big display at Barnes & Noble. If you like what you hear today, consider grabbing a copy of the book.

Addressing Vague Feedback

4:20 – Missing Feedback When you receive no feedback at all, especially as a top performer, it’s frustrating. Try saying, “Thank you. What’s working? How can I be more effective?” This helps draw out specific feedback you can use.

6:10 – Unfair Ratings Dealing with unfair ratings? Express your frustration and seek a constructive solution. Say, “I’m concerned about this rating and would like to understand how I can improve.” This opens a dialogue for improvement.

8:00 – Out-of-the-Blue Feedback If you get feedback that blindsides you, address it by saying, “I appreciate your desire to help me improve. This is the first time I’m hearing about this. What can we do to set up a more regular cadence of feedback throughout the year?”

9:45 – Vague Performance Feedback When feedback is vague, ask for concrete examples. You might say, “I’m committed to improving my performance in this area, but it’s hard to understand what needs to change without concrete examples.”

11:15 – Constructive Outlook Even with lazy, vague, and frustrating feedback, you can take responsibility for your career development by asking for what you need and helping your manager rise to the occasion.

Powerful Phrases and Leadership Tips

13:00 – Specific Examples David emphasizes the importance of asking for specific examples when feedback is vague. Use phrases like, “I would really like to understand this more. Can you please tell me more?”

14:30 – Avoiding Surprises To avoid surprise feedback, set up regular feedback sessions. This ensures ongoing communication and no surprises during performance reviews.

16:00 – Leading by Example As a leader, it’s crucial to give meaningful feedback. Ensure your feedback is continuous, specific, and constructive to build strong relationships and improve performance.

17:30 – Wrapping Up David encourages you to grab his book for more phrases and strategies. Remember to ask for the feedback you need and give your team the specific, practical feedback they need. Be the leader you would want your boss to be.

The post Expert Strategies for Handling Vague Feedback from Your Boss appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Hi Karin, “I’ve got a peer who will never take initiative. I’m always stuck feeling like I’m the one to push if we’re going to get anything done. I really don’t like that feeling. What should I do? How can I get them to step it up? #AskingForaFriend.”

This one’s tricky. After all, they are your peer. You’re NOT the boss of them. And, it’s impacting you, your work, and your results. Work is more stressful than it needs to be. Let’s fix that.

Today’s “Asking for a Friend” features Glain Roberts-McCabe, PCC, CTDP (she/her) with expert advice for showing up curious and getting clear on your request.

What Does It Mean to Take Initiative?

“Take initiative” is one of those phrases like “be more strategic” or “don’t be so negative” which can be a lightening for workplace conflict.

That request is just too vague for most people. If you want someone to take initiative, a good place to start is to be clear about what success looks like.

Taking initiative might mean anticipating potential problems and proposing solutions, seeking out opportunities for innovation or improvement, or voluntarily taking on additional responsibilities to relieve pressure on your team.

Defining what it looks like to take initiative in a specific context requires setting clear expectations about proactive behaviors, the scope of autonomy, and the desired outcomes. This clarity helps transform the abstract notion of “take initiative” into actionable, observable actions, which enables the person to to contribute more effectively.

How to Start the Conversation

1. Appreciate Different Styles

Understand that we all have different motivational energies.  Some of us like to move fast. Some of us like a little slower, steady pace. And really it’s often that energy gap that’s causing all kinds of tension.

When you start there, it’s easier to give that co-worker the benefit of the doubt. It’s unlikely that the reason they aren’t taking initiative is to tick you off. They might be going slow to really think these through. Or they lack the confidence to speak up and share their ideas. 

2. Invite Conversation

Sit down and ask your co-worker about how they like to work. Talk to them about what it feels like to have to work quickly. Ask what requests they have from you to make their work easier.

3. Make a Request

Of course, once they’ve shared their request, it’s easier to share yours. Here’s where you can tap into the very specific initiative-taking behaviors you are looking for. Don’t just say, “I need you to take initiative.” Instead, you might say something like, “I need you to proactively stakeholder your ideas with your boss before coming to me.” Or, I need you to do a quality check and fix any mistakes before you send the data for me to use.”

This Harvard Business Review Article, Mastering the Art of the Request, by Rae Ringle defines 5 questions to ground a better request.

• What do you want?
• Who do you want it from?
•  When do you want it by?
• What are the conditions of satisfaction?
• What’s the context?

4. Schedule the Finish

Once you’ve both made your requests, don’t leave follow-through to chance. Schedule a time to talk about how things are going. This way, if your commitments to one another are working, you don’t need to remember to celebrate that success. And, if they don’t take the initiative you agreed to as promised, you don’t have to summon the courage to talk about the situation again, you already have it scheduled.

Your turn. What’s one of your favorite ways to help someone take initiative at work?

Click here for FREE Sample Chapters

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