What’s the best way to handle difficult conversations? New study recommends strategies

Difficult conversations are inevitable in the workplace. They’re often negative and rarely handled easily, no matter where you rank in the organizational hierarchy.

So, what can leaders and other employees do to make them more beneficial?

A study co-authored by Danielle Dunne, an associate professor at Binghamton University’s School of Management, tackled that question. Researchers found that difficult conversations could improve working relationships and become valuable tools for coping with job-related stress, as long as leaders and their employees take the time to validate each other’s concerns and find some common ground.

“There are different ways from a leader’s perspective that you can develop a ‘shared reality’ by providing support or having an appropriate tone for the conversation, to help make that connection with whomever you’re speaking to,” Dunne said. “The way people work and will continue to work in the future is changing based on so many different influences from information technology, innovation and changing roles, so understanding these fundamental interactions is really important.”

Courtney E. Williams from Grand Valley State University in Michigan, Jane Shumski Thomas from Purdue University Northwest in Indiana, and Janaki Gooty from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte co-authored the study, “Negative emotions, difficult conversations and leader–follower relationships.” It was published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

Dunne joined the research team due to her expertise in grounded theory-building methodology, which proved essential to putting the study together. The methodology involves conducting interviews to develop a theory based on data. In this study, 21 people in leadership positions and 17 in follower-type roles were involved.

Participants were recruited from information technology and corporate human resources divisions that service 80,000 healthcare employees spanning nine states and 46 hospitals across the southern and midwestern U.S.

Within that group, researchers focused on 166 examples of difficult conversations. Ninety of those were framed from the leader’s perspective, while 76 were taken from the follower’s perspective.

The most common difficult conversation involved voicing a concern to the leader, such as criticizing that leader’s choices or expressing problems with the work itself. Others dealt with leaders correcting problematic behavior or delivering bad news.

One leader responded, “If you just start yelling or slamming your hands down on the desk or doing things like that … then people feel afraid. Because they don’t know how, what, how you’re going to react.”

Describing the difference between a respectful and nonrespectful tone, another leader said, “So, to basically say ‘I’m concerned’ is different than coming out and saying, ‘Well, this just is not going to work. This makes no sense.’”

Researchers began the study in 2016, and it took about two years to complete. After collecting the data, researchers determined leaders can facilitate difficult conversations through three communication strategies:

• Discuss the problem
• Provide support
• Maintain an overarching tone

The research team also found that leaders are more likely to express concern during difficult conversations than followers, mostly because communicating negative emotions can easily make a person feel vulnerable.

“Our findings show that the leader guides the formation of a shared reality with the follower and validates the follower even when the leader is expressing negative emotion about the follower or experiencing the same negative emotion as the follower,” researchers stated in the study.

As a result, the study recommended that organizations incorporate more communication training for leaders and followers, focusing on more constructively conveying negative emotions instead of avoiding or suppressing them.

“As our findings suggest, leaders may not always need to shy away from negativity in difficult conversations,” researchers added in the study. “This idea, however, may be counterintuitive for leaders and might need to be practiced in a safe and controlled environment prior to the heat of a difficult conversation.”