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To Make Tough Conversations Productive, Focus On These 3 Things | Digital Tonto

We all need to have difficult conversations from time to time and navigating them successfully is a key skill for any leader. If you can’t resolve thorny issues, they will fester and grow more destructive over time. On the other hand, tackling them effectively can strengthen relationships and build trust. The best way to approach difficult conversations is to think about why they’re difficult in the first place. What conflicting values are at stake? What role does the desire to assert status play? How can we best align the conversation with the other person’s state of mind? It’s worth taking a few minutes to think through these issues before engaging. But even more importantly, you need to think about why you want to have the conversation. Is there a specific issue to be resolved or are you trying to assert your own identity and status? What are you trying to achieve? What do you expect a positive outcome to look like? How do you want the other person to feel when it’s over? How do you expect to feel? At the core of all this lies psychological safety, which is rooted in a sense of belonging. By creating bonds based on shared values and purpose, affirming others’ sense of status and identity and doing our best to align with the type of conversation that others want to have, we can build deeper, more honest and collaborative relationships that will help us achieve more.

What Gandhi Can Teach Us About Change | Digital Tonto

As one of Gandhi’s followers would later note, before Salt March forced the British to sit down and negotiate with Gandhi as an equal, they “were all sahibs and we were obeying. No more after that.” At that point, Indian Independence was just a matter of time. Many would say Gandhi achieved what he did because he had a natural ability to communicate the plight of the Indians, to differentiate their plight in ways that were meaningful and, that by speaking out against the powerful he was able to get the world to see the injustice that the British Raj was perpetrating against his people. But they’d be wrong. In fact, he did exactly the opposite. He didn’t look for things that differentiated his people from the British, but what they shared, what they could agree on—and then exploited it. That’s what made him a master strategist, because he was able to identify where he was strong and his opponents were weak. Our mistake is that we look back on Gandhi as if he was a saint, when the historical record is clear that he was nothing of the sort. For much of his life, he struggled with his temper, treated his wife poorly and gave into his worst urges. It was only when he was able to learn self-control and discipline himself that he was able to see opportunities that others couldn’t. Most of all, he learned that identity is a trap and once you can escape your own, you can learn to identify the values that you share with others. That is the key to genuinely transformational change. Gandhi didn’t just beat the British, he won them over. When he died, they, like the Indians, celebrated him as a hero.