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3.5.3 Preparation Is Key

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Leadership and Influence

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

4.7 (21 ratings) | 5.5K Students Enrolled

Course 3 of 4 in the Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work Specialization

The only thing you get to change is yourself, and in the prerequisites to this course we’ve given you real tools to do that. Now, use those tools to influence the course of your future, your team's future, and your organization's future. Make a plan for yourself that will help you help others, and learn skills to make it happen. Listening and being sure of your values underpins everything that comes with professional influencer and leadership soft skills. We’ll go on to look at self-assessment and leadership planning, negotiation, addressing and resolving conflict, and successfully identifying and promoting circumstances you want. After this course, you will be able to: - state your own mission and plan with confidence - negotiate and persuade - deal with difficult people - contribute to crafting a working environment you want to work in The prerequisites for this course are Courses One and Two of the Specialization "Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work".

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From the lesson

Week 3: Difﬁcult Conversations as a Leader

Develop skills for tackling difficult conversations, including giving and getting feedback and handling complaints.

3.5.1 Complaint-Handling Guidelines1:21

3.5.2 2MC: Side Business1:20

3.5.3 Preparation Is Key5:49

3.5.4 Complaint-Handling Guidelines, Part One6:26

3.5.5 Complaint-Handling Guidelines, Part Two5:32

3.5.6 Applying the Guidelines: Side Business6:00

Taught By

C. K. Gunsalus
Director of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE), Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory

[MUSIC]

As with all things, the more prepared you are,

the better you will be at receiving complaints.

And there are three parts to being prepared that I think are particularly

helpful.

One of those is knowing your role.

Second one is having some scripts prepared for

complaint handling situations and complaint receipt situations.

And the third is having good boundaries.

So knowing your role is particularly important because

understanding in which role you are being addressed is the first,

most critical place that you may go really wrong in these conversations.

If somebody comes to you and starts telling you something that's wrong,

very early in the conversation it would be important to establish whether they're

there because they're laying this problem in your lap and expect you to act upon it,

or they're simply venting and seeking your role as counsel and advice.

So in what role are you being addressed is the first fork in the road.

Are you asking me to act upon this or are we just talking?

Remember Meredith's mother-in-law from course two, where someone came and was so

upset about her husband and he's moving the mother-in-law under the house?

And by the end of the conversation, simply by listening and reflecting back what was

being said, the person who brought the complaint had pretty much worked it all

the way through to a solution by the end of the conversation.

Very often people will come to you and work their own way to a solution.

So one of the scripts to have, at some point in your conversation,

is to say and what action are you seeking from me?

Because you may hear, at that point, nothing, I'm just venting.

Or you may hear, I don't really know.

In which case,

you need to have a script that says, I can see you're still thinking about that.

Why don't you think about it over night, and come back and see me tomorrow.

You may hear the following,

I want him shot at dawn on the quad with maximal pain and humiliation.

And then you need to have script that says something like, and

what action are you seeking from me that's within my power to grant?

So, knowing whether you're expected to act or not is quite important,

because you will hardly ever irritate or upset someone more than when they've

just thought they were just talking and you go off and act on what they tell you.

So establishing that early is important.

There are some other scripts that are important that will help you in receiving

complaints.

The first is establishing what action, within your power, is being sought.

Another is for coming towards the end of the conversation.

That's the point at which you need to be able to say something like this,

just as I've listened to what you have to say, now I'll need to go out and

find out how others perceive that.

I will do this and get back to you.

Now, people don't like it when you say this.

Because the first thing that will happen is that they'll say, what,

you don't believe me, are you calling me a liar, I just told you what happened.

And then what you need to have a script prepared to say is, just as I would never

take action on a matter involving you without speaking with you,

I am not going to take action on matters involving others without speaking to them.

I will do that and get back to you.

There's one more script that's pretty important to have in these conversations.

And that's the one where somebody gets mad and says, I'm going to sue you and

everybody you've ever met.

And that's the point at which, still staying calm,

words to some effect of saying, I can't make those decisions for you.

I'm pleased to do my best to work on this, no one cares about this problem and

getting it right more than we do.

I am willing to work on it.

I cannot make those decisions for you.

Some version of you need to do what you need to do.

The other thing is to remember your boundaries in these conversations.

You will learn things in the course of some of these conversations about

complaint handling.

About other people and their lives and their problems, that maybe you didn't know

beforehand, just working with them, and that you didn't want to know very much.

And that sometimes you're now going to have to speak with them about as well.

Someone may come to you and tell you that they suspect a co-worker has a substance

abuse problem, or someone may come and tell you about other situations.

These can be very difficult, just learning about them is hard enough.

And then girding yourself actually to have to conversations with people them about

them can be equally difficult.

As you prepare for this conversation, one more piece of advice.

The conversation is not about you.

You're not going in as a friend, you're not sharing advice about what you,

as a human being would do, you're in your role as supervisor.

Don't overshare about yourself.

Don't give advice.

Later on we'll be talking about rules for particularly difficult kinds of

conversation and a key one is when in doubt, leave it out.

This is a key place to leave out any personal observations and

focus on the conduct in the workplace that it's your job to address.

So as you prepare, know the role in which you're being addressed.

Have some scripts prepared for complaint response and

handling and have good boundaries.

[MUSIC]

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