The growth of messaging technology has moved many conversations to digital messaging, where we deliver our messages through our fingers rather than our mouth. The Pandemic and government imposed lock down have further reduced the opportunity for people to have proper face-to-face conversations. However, there are many types of challenging but crucial conversations that must be held in a continual interactive method, simply because digital messaging is short, without emotions and one party may take hours or even days to respond.

I am not here to criticize digital messaging; I just want to point out that there are conversations that we must hold through aural communications, be it auditorily through phone or through video calls, if face-to-face conversations are not available. Let's say a manager wants to hold a performance management talk with one of his or her team member. We can imagine that such conversation is likely to be highly charged with emotions and I think you would agree with me that you wouldn't appreciate your manager talk to you about such matter through messaging, right? How about handling customer complaints? Or managing disputes?

The abovementioned conversations are not only crucial for all parties but many would find it challenging. Consequently, some choose to avoid or keep putting off such conversations. We need to realize that such conversations are challenging but can bring about huge values to all parties once properly communicated and the subject matter resolved. More interestingly, I wish to suggest to you that such conversations need not necessarily be so painful.

The key starts with our mindset. When one think of such conversation, more often than not, one forms a potentially awkward if not confrontational picture in mind. Before the conversation even started, this negative picture in mind already put us in an uncomfortable position. What you see in your mind is likely to be what you will get in reality subsequently. That is why we've got to change the negative picture in mind to something more positive and motivating, moving from a painful picture to a nicer picture, moving from valueless to valuable, moving from avoidance to anticipation.

One approach is to begin by giving these conversation a different label. We often use labels such as difficult conversations, important conversations, painful conversations or other negative connotations that add stress to ourselves. Can I suggest that we label it 'High Impact Conversation'? Well, at least this takes away the pain, the fear and the challenge part. Moreover, it suggests a productive outcome, doesn't it? The picture in the mind should be a more pleasant one, with an upbeat feeling, anticipating a great outcome! Do you have a better picture in your mind now?

Changing the mindset will give us a good start but of course is not a complete solution yet. Having said that, there are definitely models and related communication techniques  that everyone can learn to achieve a high impact conversation. That is another story for another day……

#EveryoneCanLearn #HIC #Communication #WisdomWoods #CoachK