Sometimes I watch an episode or two of Madam Secretary (1)- and it gets me thinking about crucial conversations and starting with your heart like nothing else. While it’s great to have your team skilled in crucial conversations, it is even better if those who teach it to the team also practice it themselves within that very organization. 

Elizabeth McCord is the Secretary of State for the US (in the fictional world of Madam Secretary). She’s hastily brought in after her predecessor suddenly gets killed/ dies. While she’s more than up for the job, she really has to work with misplaced loyalties within her direct team. They were the team of the dead guy and they are great at their job. She doesn’t have the time or the intent to replace them with another staff and so she starts the tough job of turning them all into people loyal to her, while she’s obviously battling issues of foreign policy. 

Why does this resonate so much with me? 

As a crucial conversations practitioner, I am learning that ‘Clear is kind’ and share openly what I am feeling rather than put on the ‘tough leader’ mask. What am I ‘thinking’ about an issue comes easier to me as a ‘corporate warrior’ rather than ‘what am I feeling’ about it? And that’s the same with the team - it is far simpler to work with the issue once everybody associated with it has brought out what they are “feeling”; and then put on the thinking hat. You might wonder if its really that simple? 

And I would claim, it’s simple – but not easy. 

Because, there’s pressing work to attend to, and it may seem like a waste of time to get into an “emotive” space with a co-worker. Whichever emotive space that may be : defence, offence or perceived indifference. 

This brings me to my next point. And that’s your ability as a leader to create psychological safety. 

In this series, the Secretary of State and her team, find their way with each other by being honest at what they are feeling, what are the boundaries that they will not cross and by being bloody good at what they do.

Google and their work on team effectiveness say as much. Google’s People Analytics Team studied what makes a great manager (2). Using input from executives across the globe, the research team identified 180 teams to study which included a mix of high- and low-performing teams from engineering and sales. The study tested how both team composition (e.g., personality traits, sales skills, demographics on the team) and team dynamics (e.g., what it was like to work with teammates) impact team effectiveness. Ideas were pulled from existing research as well as Google’s own experience with what makes an effective team. The researchers found that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together. The better, more effective teams looked at psychological safety, dependability, structure & clarity, meaning and impact; in that order. An environment of psychological safety means feeling alright to express oneself, be open and authentic, and not feel the need to ‘posture’. Something I have seen children do quite easily – they don’t temper their response based on what the other might think of them, or fear that what they said could penalize them. 

‘Make it safe’ is another foundational skill I teach in Crucial Conversations training. And I will be the first to admit it’s not an easy one to master. You can understand it cognitively, and practicing it is a life long journey. As a leader you need to work at creating that “psychological safety”, which means that that you need to ready to ‘give and accept” developmental feedback. Things might be unsaid and yet understood. But things might be said, and yet misunderstood. Crucial conversations help with facilitating both aspects of any conversation. 

Many of us in our personal or professional lives have avoided crucial conversations, not just over weeks and months, but sometimes over years or even decades. How do we even begin to strategize about conversations that have been on the back burner for this long? (3) 

Do you think that arranging a crucial conversations workshop for your top rung is the need of the hour? How do you work through that immense backlog of conversation and of course the associated emotions? Can you really change the way you predominantly relate to another person? How do you bring in the patience both for yourself and for others to change things - possibly when it is your silence that has led to this stage? How will you deal with different people following this journey at different speeds and that ‘self-realization’ is an ongoing challenge?

One of the best ways to create a ‘speak-up’ culture is the notion of ‘Leaders as Teachers’. When leaders who are skilled at having effective crucial conversations are also able to teach this skill-set, that can be a big step in the process of embedding a ‘speak-up’ culture. 

The classic challenge of any ‘siloed’ intervention as we know is that some people learn the skills, they think these are useful and want to use them - but the structure around has remained exactly the same and the organization does not get the benefit it could. As a result, though some pockets of the system benefits and there may be some relationships and hence engagement improve, there is no lasting impact. But if you train not just a handful of leaders, but and entire leadership team – and even better then they train their own teams in this skill, you start creating a culture change. 

Crucial Conversations is a fantastic skill set to master as an individual, and if you are a leader that wants to go beyond just equipping yourself with the skill set – then consider learning how to teach this skill. Teaching others is the best way to master a skill set.