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Hard Conversations
Dear HBR: answers your questions with the help of HBS professor Leslie John.
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Are you dreading a work discussion? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Leslie John, a professor at Harvard Business School. They talk through what to do when you need to set your boss straight, meet with a direct report who wanted your new job, or hash things out with a negative team member.
Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.
From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:
HBR: Taking the Stress Out of Stressful Conversations by Holly Weeks — “Stressful conversations are unavoidable in life, and in business they can run the gamut from firing a subordinate to, curiously enough, receiving praise. But whatever the context, stressful conversations differ from other conversations because of the emotional loads they carry.”
HBR: When to Skip a Difficult Conversation by Deborah Grayson Riegel — “In a 2013 Globis survey of more than 200 professionals on the topic of difficult conversations, 97% of respondents said they were concerned about the associated levels of stress for the other person, 94% were worried about damaging the other person’s self-esteem, and 92% were fearful of causing upset.”
HBR: How to Have Difficult Conversations When You Don’t Like Conflict by Joel Garfinkle — “Lean into the conversation with an open attitude and a genuine desire to learn. Start from a place of curiosity and respect — for both yourself and the other person. Genuine respect and vulnerability typically produce more of the same: mutual respect and shared vulnerability. Even when the subject matter is difficult, conversations can remain mutually supportive.”
HBR: Choose the Right Words in an Argument by Amy Gallo — “Instead of thinking about what you want to say, consider what you want to learn. This will help you get to the root cause of the conflict and set you up to resolve it. You can ask questions like, ‘Why did that upset you?’ or ‘How are you seeing this situation?’ Use phrases that make you appear more receptive to a genuine dialogue.”
DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.
DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts and help you move forward. Today we’re answering your questions about difficult conversations with Leslie John. She’s a professor and teaches negotiations at Harvard Business School. Leslie, thanks for joining us.
LESLIE JOHN: Thanks for having me.
DAN MCGINN: So, what is it about difficult conversations that make us react so anxiously to them?
LESLIE JOHN: It’s uncomfortable. You feel like you’re hurting the person’s feelings.
ALISON BEARD: There’s this presumption when we’re talking about tough conversations that they’re conversations you need to have. But are there cases in which you actually don’t?
LESLIE JOHN: Yeah. So, this may not be a popular thing to say, but I’m a proponent of kind of calculated avoidance. Sometimes it’s just not worth bringing up a difficult conversation.
DAN MCGINN: If you think you should pick your battles, how do you do the calculation, which ones are worth fighting?
LESLIE JOHN: I would say it’s probably more of an art than a science. I think I would look for, is it a persistent issue? Is it a serious issue? And is there a sense that bringing it up can help drive towards a solution? Can you have a productive conversation about it?
ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I started working at my company almost straight out of college. The CEO who’s very involved in all operations took a liking to me, almost immediately. And I was promoted within my first year. Recently I was put on a project that involved working closely with the CEO. The workdays were very long. Since he’s busy, I would often be at the office from 9 AM to 10:30 PM. But only be able to work with him for a few hours. Halfway through the project, I asked him to start letting me know when he would have open windows to meet with me so that I could better manage my schedule. He would give me a time, but often miss it, or be hours late. I tried my best not to show my annoyance, but after the project was finished he told me that he could sense my frustration during those late nights. He said that I should work on pushing through my fatigue and be more positive. I would have really liked to stay in his good graces. I’m very thankful for the opportunities that he’s given me. But it’s maddening to have no sense of what your schedule will be day to day. I’m burnt out. How do I explain this without hurting my career?
LESLIE JOHN: I have lots of thoughts. There’s so much in that scenario. My first reaction is I feel empathy for this woman. It sounds like she is working incredibly hard. She’s incredibly motivated. It sounds like she’s good at what she does because the CEO has taken a liking to her and she’s in a position with lots of responsibility. I feel empathy for her because she’s working so hard and she feels that she’s not getting the face time that she needs with the CEO to do a good job, so it’s really frustrating. And so, I empathize with that. What strikes me is that I wonder whether there may be a difference in expectations. So, it’s interesting because the CEO’s kind of advice or feedback is to kind of be more positive, and I wonder whether the CEO actually understands what the issue is. I’m not sure that they’ve actually had a conversation about it.
ALISON BEARD: But she said she talked to him once about it.
LESLIE JOHN: It’s unclear what she said during that period. So, we often have intentions to bring something up, but sometimes the way it comes out isn’t exactly as we think it comes out. So, whether there was kind of a communication barrier, or whether the CEO, you know, she could have perfectly communicated what she is feeling, and it’s possible that the CEO is just not understanding it.
ALISON BEARD: Or, is understanding it and [OVERLAPPING VOICES] thinks she should suck it up.
LESLIE JOHN: Yep. It’s possible. Honestly, I can really see both sides to this where the CEO is incredibly busy and another thing that came to mind is the employee, she may, they may have kind of different expectations of the degree of autonomy that she should be having.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah. I would be just as frustrated as our letter writer is here. Everybody’s boss has their own quirks and their own weaknesses. This guy’s problem is his schedule’s disorganized and he’s not very punctual. He doesn’t show up when he says he’s going to show up. And I think as an employee’s, more broadly, we all need to find a way to work with whatever frustrating behavior our boss has and figure out a workaround. She needs to look at this as, potentially a great opportunity if she can get over this frustration that she’s experiencing.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I was definitely wondering whether she misunderstands her role in the project and his level of involvement, and how much of a priority it is for him. So, I do wonder whether she should just rethink her schedule. Can she get any more insight into what he’s doing? Does he have an executive assistant that she could start speaking with? But again, that involves opening communication in a way that might feel like complaining. So, how does she do that artfully and should she even do it artfully, since he’s already batted her down once?
LESLIE JOHN: Right, right. It’s very hard to change people’s behavior. So, I’m skeptical that she’ll be able to kind of ask her boss to show up for meetings on time, even though that’s disrespectful and it has negative consequences on her. I think it’s probably less fruitful for her to try to change him and I think it’s more fruitful for her to come up with these kinds of workarounds that you’re alluding to. So, she could say to him, look I understand you’re extremely busy. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to proceed on the assumption that you’re extremely busy and I’m going to work away on this project and be as autonomous as I can, and I’m going to inform you of the critical decisions I’m making and at any time I welcome your feedback and I want you to tell me if you have input or disagree with anything. I can envision the CEO being delighted to hear that. But I also think part of the solution may be in her own mind of changing her expectations of the job. So, we know that things are going to come up in the day that are completely unpredictable, there’s going to be lots of new road bumps. Assume that that will be the case and that way when they come up you’re not caught off guard by them and you’re only pleasantly surprised when they don’t.
DAN MCGINN: Alison, you raised the point of using the executive assistant as a tool here and I just want to underline that. And I think people underestimate the level of insight that executive assistants have into the lives of the person they’re working with. The executive assistant could be a powerful tool here in helping the person who wrote us the letter understand when the boss is likely to come in. They know. They know where these people are and they really need to tap into that expertise and try to give her a little bit more certainty. It’s not just her. If this is the way the CEO is running the organization, the other pieces of the senior leadership team must have found workarounds.
LESLIE JOHN: Well, that’s a piece of advice I was going to offer is that is there anyone else in the organization, a trusted colleague that she could privately talk to, not in a way that she’s bad mouthing everyone’s boss, but just to figure out how everyone else handles it and get advice from people who have been through it before.
DAN MCGINN: I did think a little bit about her age in all this. She’s probably still in her 20’s. If you’re going to choose a time in life when you’re going to have to maybe work some nights and have a little bit of uncertainty in your schedule, maybe it’s a little bit easier to make those compromises in your 20’s than it is when you’re older and have a family.
ALISON BEARD: And also as a young employee talking to a much more senior executive, talking about the fact that you feel you’re working too hard when he’s already told you, you need to push through and be more positive.
LESLIE JOHN: So much of it depends on kind of what your goals are in life. So, have some reset moments in your life where you think, what are my goals, and my day to day behavior, is that consistent with my goals? It’s very easy to get caught up in kind of the day to day and in this situation, the demanding boss, the demanding job and there’s motivation. And so, I think it’s important that we kind of step back sometimes and think, is my behavior consistent with what actually I want to get out of my life?
ALISON BEARD: And if she decides that’s not the case and that she still doesn’t want to be working these long hours, how does someone so junior, at the start of her career, have that conversation, even have the courage to have that conversation with the boss in a more meaningful way beyond what she’s already said about, hey, could you give me a little bit more clarity into your schedule.
LESLIE JOHN: Yeah. I noticed that in this letter, there’s an emphasis on kind of the hours worked. And what might be helpful is to instead of emphasizing the hours worked, frame on output. So, I would actually question whether working these long hours is actually making her more productive. I actually personally think that taking more breaks, she could achieve probably the same amount because she would be rested and not feeling burnt out all the time.
ALISON BEARD: But I think the problem is that she’s not getting enough done because she’s waiting around for him all day. So, she either needs to fill those hours with another highly productive project that will yield an impressive output, or she needs to figure out a way to work with him so that this project can be successful.
DAN MCGINN: She, what she wants to do here is try to set some limits in a situation where she doesn’t really have a lot of power to try to do so. So, not as sort of a blanket policy, but maybe as a onetime experiment, she makes evening plans to do something that is just bulletproof in terms of the choice she’s making. Something that no one in their right mind is going to question, so he can’t say no to that. See what happens. How does he respond? Maybe he’s fine with it. Sometimes people bend over backwards to be accommodating because that’s what they think they need to do when if they just sort of set a little bit of a limit it might go a little bit more smoothly than they think.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I agree.
LESLIE JOHN: We make assumptions all the time about how she could be, well, I’m not sure that she’s assuming that she has to work long hours because of what, it sounds like the boss is saying push through it.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, but point taken.
LESLIE JOHN: Well, I think there is that dynamic often when someone complains about their long hours, or the fact that they’re working too hard when they’re quite junior as a more senior person, you say yeah. That’s exactly what I did when I was your age and that’s why I’m CEO now. So, if you want to be CEO, and continue to work with me on this project, push through. And I do understand that reaction. So, it’s great we’re giving her some advice about how to approach it in a way that the CEO might be more receptive to.
DAN MCGINN: So, Alison, what’s our advice?
ALISON BEARD: So, we think that first, she should realize that there’s probably a difference in expectations, both on the priority level of the project for the CEO and the degree of autonomy that she might have. She should except that she probably can’t change his behavior and maybe frame the uncertainty and long hours of this job as a certainty, and think of it as a pleasant surprise when her schedule is predictable. Understanding that when you’re at the start of your career you don’t necessarily have a ton of control and you’re trading that off for the learning. She might want to tap into executive assistants or other colleagues who have developed workarounds. But if she decides that ultimately she needs to have a conversation with him, she needs to frame it not around the hours, or her feeling burnt out necessarily, but about the output. He is serving as a roadblock to progress on this project and so she’s going to take more control and proceed, understanding that he trusts her and she welcomes his feedback at any time.
DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: I’m about to get a promotion to director and will have two people reporting to me. One of my new directs has been with the company over 10 years and is in his 50’s. I’m in my late 20’s. I’m told that he joined this team to learn technical modeling skills. I’ve been hired for my ability to communicate with executives, build strategies and influence decisions. The director before me focused more on the technical side of the role. In my four years at this company, my new direct report has seen me move up twice already. He has a ton of experience and knowledge, but he’s not very good at communicating his thoughts. My boss told me that this individual also showed interest in my new role. My boss told him he’s not suited for the role given his communication skills and ability to handle political situations and that the incumbent needs these skills. He was understanding of that feedback, but I don’t know how he sees me. How do I approach my new direct in our first one on one meeting? How can I show him that I have something to offer him from a development perspective? What if he asks me why he’s not been promoted for years? Meanwhile, I’ve been promoted twice in front of him. Any advice on how to handle this?
LESLIE JOHN: So, I’m partly rolling my eyes because it feels like a manufactured issue. It feels a little bit like a humble brag. Like she has been very successful. She’s been promoted and she’s, oh no, I’ve been promoted, but it’s so hard because of the people underneath me.
ALISON BEARD: That totally was not my reaction. I felt a ton of sympathy for her because she is this person who’s been promoted above technical experts and she is not seen as one. And she now needs to earn their respect. And she’s a younger woman dealing with a 50 something man who’s been at the company longer than she has. I mean, I feel like this is a really common problem that people do face.
LESLIE JOHN: So, I agree that it has the trappings of a situation that is extremely difficult for this woman. But what I’m missing from the scenario is actual evidence that there is this issue. So, it’s possible that, and we know there’s tons of research on this, that women who are young, look young are, who are just as competent as male counterparts who are older and look older, they don’t get the respect that they deserve relative to their counterparts. So, my reaction is not at all to dismiss these very real phenomena. Just because these phenomena exist doesn’t mean that when we have the features where they could be possible, doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily there.
ALISON BEARD: So, she’s working herself up when she doesn’t need to.
LESLIE JOHN: It’s possible she is.
DAN MCGINN: I didn’t read it as bragging, but I absolutely read it as she’s worrying about emotions that he might be feeling, or he might not be feeling. He may have completely understood the explanation and rationale why he didn’t get this promotion. He might recognize that she’s been doing a lot of things right in order to get promoted twice. So, it seems like the risk here is that she’s going into this conversation assuming that it will be difficult when it might not be difficult.
LESLIE JOHN: I agree and in fact, what if he is not feeling this way? What if he does respect her and he recognizes that she should be promoted? She’s the one that should have gotten the job and not him. But what if our woman has this assumption that there’s a real problem here and she brings this up in a conversation. Oh, I know that I haven’t been here as long as you. So, you can envision the situation where the man feels like, actually feels badly when he didn’t initially. That’s taking things to an extreme. The point is that it’s unclear what this man thinks. It’s unclear how he feels. And one of the tools that we can use in that situation is to try not to assume and to ask questions. So, my recommendation would be that this woman that when she meets with him to ask him questions. Try not to ask him leading questions that presuppose an issue. Try to ask him questions to understand what his goals are, what his challenges are, whether she could be helpful to him and so on. It’s possible that these concerns she has come to be. I had a student in front of class question me and say, I looked at your CV and you’ve never had, you’ve never actually had a real job before being a professor. As in I didn’t work in industry for a long time. So, people say jerky things too, right? That there are jerks in the world, unfortunately. So, it’s possible that he could question her. One of the things that I would suggest to her, I’m saying this understanding that it’s really hard to do in the moment is to keep it about him and not about her. So, this is not —
ALISON BEARD: For this first conversation.
LESLIE JOHN: Right. What’s, it’s not an issue what her qualifications are and why she’s promoted. That is nothing to do with their employee relationship. So, to try and steer things away from talking about her and her qualifications and why she’s in the position, more to management and the pursuit of the firm’s goals together. Easier said than done.
ALISON BEARD: And when you’re feeling nervous and insecure, I’ve experienced this personally, it’s really hard not to drop in a few comments that sort of show you know what you’re talking about and that you can be an asset. So, how does she control, A, calm her nerves and then B, control that impulse to share with him?
LESLIE JOHN: Yeah, and I think in these, there’s this really strong impulse to defend yourself. My intuition is that overall it probably can leave a worse impression than staying silent and kind of making it not about you. Because as soon as you start talking about your qualifications, it’s now an issue about you, which you wanted to avoid. One of the things that you can do in these situations is embrace silence. So, if you don’t know what to say and you’re worried that you might say something that puts you in a, that you’ll regret saying, or that puts you in a weakened position, don’t say anything. It’s OK to be quiet. It’s OK to be silent.
ALISON BEARD: I feel every hole in conversation as I just did.
LESLIE JOHN: So, do I. [LAUGHTER]
DAN MCGINN: So, part of the core question this woman needs to consider is that the guy might be upset about this set of events, or he might not be. And she can go into the room just open-minded and try to suss out he feels, but I also wonder whether there’s some intelligence gathering she can do before this meeting. Basically, put your ear to the ground. If he’s upset about this, he’s complaining to the person to his left and this person to his right. And if you have a good relationship with one of them, they’ll probably tell you that.
ALISON BEARD: I also agree that she might be making a problem where there is none, but I would love to see her walk into this meeting totally open minded, if she can calm her nerves, asking lots of questions. But well prepared if he is emotional. If he does not show her respect. And so, how does she prepare to respond because I get your advice about silence and not reacting, but that can also be taken as a sign of weakness. And as a new boss, and a woman who’s young, I don’t want her to seem weak in this meeting. So, I would also like her to defend herself a little bit.
LESLIE JOHN: I think one of the things we might be forgetting here is that respect is earned. So, just saying, trying to convince someone to respect you, even though you should be respected, is not how you get that person to respect you. So, there may be a sense here, we’re thinking that she can do more than she can in a single meeting. I think the goals of this meeting should be kind of more modest in a way as to focus it on asking questions, understand the situation, framing herself as a position of being someone who is calm and wants to be helpful. But not trying to convince the person that they should trust her or respect her, because I see that going badly.
DAN MCGINN: I think the idea that this is a campaign and not a onetime conversation is super important and that your main goal at this first meeting is to come out with a better understanding of what the lay of the land is. I think that’s actually super useful feedback.
ALISON BEARD: But I think in that first meeting she can go a long way to demonstrate that she is a good boss, yes by asking questions, but also just emphasizing that they’re on a team together.
LESLIE JOHN: I agree.
ALISON BEARD: They’re partners, they’re working for a common good and hopefully they’re working for each other. And maybe that can be totally done through questions, but it might require a few declarative statements too. [LAUGHTER]
LESLIE JOHN: Point taken. I’m assuming, she’s, like, a conversant, intelligent person. It’s not just like an interrogation. [LAUGHTER]
ALISON BEARD: So, Dan. What are we telling her?
DAN MCGINN: First we’re telling her to relax. That this difficult conversation she’s preparing for might not be as difficult as she things. It’s not clear if the person is upset that he didn’t get the promotion, if he is going to push back on her as the boss, whether he’s going to behave with less respect than she deserves, so try to go into this meeting with an open mind, with an intention to ask questions and try to get a sense of the landscape instead of with your armor up and your weapons poised. If there is a problem here it’s not going to be solved in a single meeting. That this is going to be a longer process. Respect is going to be earned over time. There’s nothing you can say in this one meeting that if it is a challenging situation that’s going to completely turn it around. You’re going to have a long term relationship with this direct report and this meeting going in with the right attitude can get it off on the right foot, but if it is going to be a challenging relationship. One meeting isn’t going to make all the difference in the world.
ALISON BEARD: Let’s go to the third question. Dear HBR: Last week I started a new job at a nine-person tech startup. The role is a bump up in responsibilities, salary, and title. So, far I absolutely love it. I spent the last few days in one on one meetings with my new colleagues. Everyone has been wonderful except for one teammate who used our time to totally unravel about everything he hates. It’s pretty much all-encompassing. The culture, his work, our mission, his boss. He’s only two months in and is already looking for a different job. I listened and tried not to take it to heart. I do want to be supportive of him, but ever since our meeting he’s used anytime we’re alone together to complain. What’s the best way to handle this? I don’t want to make him feel like he can’t be open and honest with me, but I also don’t want him to think that I agree that this company is awful. It really isn’t. And I know that this mindset can be contagious. Perhaps most importantly, I don’t want to be associated with the negativity. In a very small office, this is a difficult situation to navigate. Help.
LESLIE JOHN: Oh, I empathize with this woman. It is, negativity can be toxic. It’s so demotivating and to her point, I think it can be contagious too. It can just drag everybody down.
ALISON BEARD: Is it a legitimate question to ask whether she should be supportive or just completely disassociate herself from this guy? I know what Dan’s answer is going to be. Go ahead. Jump in. [LAUGHTER]
DAN MCGINN: Wow.
ALISON BEARD: I know what you’re going to say.
DAN MCGINN: The most important words in this letter is he’s already looking for a different job.
LESLIE JOHN: It’s a temporary problem.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah. She’s got a problem here, but the problem is going to go away. The way I would approach this would be what can I learn from what went wrong with this guy? Clearly, the firm made a bad hire, or it screwed up the onboarding. Something went horribly wrong and from a learning standpoint, what can we glean from this situation to not do this again? In terms of smoothing things over with him, he’s on his way out the door. I think the key question beyond what can I learn from what happened to you here, is how can I help you? If she expresses the intention to help him with his job search; that gets him out the door faster. It creates goodwill. I think that will go a long way towards solving the discomfort in this situation.
ALISON BEARD: You totally proved me wrong. I thought you were just going to say, shut your door. Don’t talk to him again. Don’t worry about him. He’s on his way out and he’s the worse.
LESLIE JOHN: Well, he kind of said that in a more diplomatic way.
ALISON BEARD: Well no, but I’m really happy to hear you say there are lots of —
DAN MCGINN: She has very low expectations apparently.
LESLIE JOHN: It’s the key to happiness.
ALISON BEARD: No, I think you’re pragmatic. So, do you think Dan is inherently more pragmatic than I am? And so, I do think though the pragmatic solution here actually is to focus on the other people at the company. She’s just starting. She doesn’t want to lock herself in a friendship or even in my mind, a supportive relationship with this bad apple who’s on his way out the door. So, now we’re reversing roles and I just think she could be done with it. She can focus on her work and try to push him off as much as she can. She doesn’t owe him a friendship, or the support.
LESLIE JOHN: Yeah, so I have in big letters here, temporary. One of the things I noticed in this letter is it has a bit of a tinge of wanting to help this person which is a laudable goal in general, but I guess one thing that I would remind the writer is you’re not his therapist and you don’t have to be his therapist. Like, I want him to feel comfortable venting to me and well, I don’t know that that’s such a good idea. That could actually just make him go on and on and on about, you know, could fuel him. So, this speaks to me to the importance of choosing your battles when you have difficult conversations. Having difficult conversations is not without risks. I mean even if she did it in a really good way, approach him about this issue of the negativity, we have research showing that people who tell others essentially stuff they don’t want to hear are viewed by the recipients as untrustworthy, as unlikeable, as incompetent. So, there are real risks to having a difficult conversation especially in which you’re telling someone something that they really don’t want to hear.
ALISON BEARD: And she points out, she obviously knows the research on emotional contagion, but there’s also a lot of research on emotional labor. And if she invests any time trying to manage this guy’s negativity in her first few weeks on a new job when she is needing to get up to speed, meet all of her other new colleagues, it just seems like a complete waste of time.
DAN MCGINN: Well, I’ve enjoyed being like the good cop for a change. I’m usually the bad cop here. I wonder on this contagion issue, which I think is important, is there anything she can do to inoculate the other employees in the sense that somewhat casually, not making a big production of it, but say in passing, this guy over here, obviously this hasn’t been a great fit for him, a lot of negativity, does he raise any concerns for you? How are you feeling about things? Try to initiate a conversation to make sure that the contagion process hasn’t begun and try to nip it in the bud if it has.
ALISON BEARD: And also be a source of positivity. Walk around talking about how happy she is and how excited she is about the mission and how from all she sees of the culture, it looks great to her.
LESLIE JOHN: I think that I would be inclined to do that in public settings. But in private settings with him, I think I would, that’s probably a rabbit hole I wouldn’t go down.
ALISON BEARD: But I do think she will be forced into a conversation with him. And I think she can say things to him like, I completely disagree with you. This place seems great. If you hate it so much why don’t you just quit? And Dan, it’s nice that you’re suggesting she help him, but what evidence does she have that he is a guy that should be helped? I mean he seems like a bad seed I wouldn’t want to put anywhere.
DAN MCGINN: Well, I think it’s to her benefit if he leaves with even slightly more positive feelings. In the age, you know, we mention a lot on this show Glassdoor views can be an influential determinant of a company’s brand as an employer. He’s going to be on Glassdoor trashing the company. Anything she can do to moderate that is not just in her best interest, it’s in the company’s best interest. Think about what this person has his hands on all day. Is he a coder? Is he dealing with client relationships? There’s actually business risk here that if he’s really this negative that he could be in his day to day work hurting the company. If somebody’s expressing this much toxic negativity that it might come through in their work in ways that hurts the bottom line over time.
LESLIE JOHN: Yeah.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, that’s a really good point. So, say she’s not as hardnosed as I am. She obviously really wants to help. And perhaps it’s part of her role to help him and make him a better collaborator. What sort of conversation should she have? How should she approach it the next time he comes to her and starts complaining?
LESLIE JOHN: So, first of all, I’m not sure that that’s the right time to have the conversation when he’s mid complaining. I think it would probably be more productive if he’s not already in a bad mood. One tidbit that may help, is so we’ve been doing some research on ways of giving people feedback in a way where you don’t suffer these negative consequences of being viewed as unlikable and as incompetent just because you’re trying to relay the news. We’ve been finding that there is something that’s disarming about starting with a more positive statement or complimentary statement. To the extent that it’s possible to focus on the impact of the behaviors on others. That may be helpful because he may have no, sometimes we’re negative and we just don’t even realize. It’s possible that he doesn’t actually realize the extent of his negativity, or what impact it’s having on others. One of the things I like about that approach is that it’s kind of not assuming anything about his mental state or why. It’s not reading into things. It’s just saying, this is the behavior. This is what’s happening and kind of how can we address this together?
ALISON BEARD: And she can start by explaining how it’s affecting her.
LESLIE JOHN: Exactly.
ALISON BEARD: Made her first couple of days not very fun.
LESLIE JOHN: Yeah. I also might give some thought to kind of the nature of the negativity. Like someone being negative is a very broad term. And there are versions of that that are actually quite constructive. Maybe this person is kind of skeptical and is kind of the resident skeptic, which can be very healthy. Maybe the negativity is less targeted and more diffuse which may feel more toxic. So, kind of thinking through what kind of negativity it is and whether the nature of the negativity could actually be used in a more productive way is something that might be worth considering.
DAN MCGINN: It’s striking, just looking at these three letters and how we’ve talked about them. One of the things you said at the beginning is that we kind of avoid difficult conversations and it’s interesting. All of our answers I think, we did tend to say: Talk to the executive assistant. Maybe it won’t be a difficult conversation. We did really focus on alternatives in each one of these situations to the idea that maybe you don’t have to sit down and talk to him, right?
LESLIE JOHN: Yeah. It’s interesting.
DAN MCGINN: So Alison, what’s the advice?
ALISON BEARD: So, first she should understand that the problem is temporary. We all agree on that. He’s already out the door. She should see what she can learn from this experience, understanding the problems he faced. Where did it go wrong? How can the organization improve? One real option is for her to just ignore him. She’s right that there is a risk of emotional contagion. She doesn’t want to invest her time and energy in a person who perhaps doesn’t deserve it and will soon go away. But if she is determined to help, it’s just her personality and also if she thinks there’s an impact on the company in terms of client relationships, or his not getting his work done, she should have a conversation with him. She maybe could separate it from the complaining. Take another point to explain how his negativity is affecting others. And approach the conversation as a partner, maybe disarm him with a compliment. Work to change his behavior a little bit as he’s on his way out.
DAN MCGINN: Leslie, it’s been great having you on the show.
LESLIE JOHN: Thanks for having me.
DAN MCGINN: That’s Leslie John. She’s a professor at Harvard Business School. Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your questions. Send us an email with your workplace challenge and how we can help. The email address is DearHBR@HBR.org.
ALISON BEARD: We also want to thank Louis Weeks and Nick DePrey for composing our theme music.
DAN MCGINN: We hope you liked today’s episode and if you want to get the next one automatically, please go to your podcast app and hit subscribe.
ALISON BEARD: And if you liked the show, please give us a five-star review.
DAN MCGINN: I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.