| “For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.” – Margaret Heffernan
Living Your Values, Even When You Don’t Wanna
I don’t want to, but I really need to initiate a potentially challenging conversation with a former colleague. My clumsy first thought about what to say goes something like this:
“Hello there. Remember nearly a decade ago when we abruptly stopped talking to each other and never talked about the conflict and never resolved it and never spoke again? Well, since I have a video call with you later this week about a potential project, we’ve both gotten called into, I was thinking we should talk about it now. What do you think?”
Honestly, I don’t wanna.
And because I don’t wanna, the way I was planning to approach the situation was to simply show up on the video call, smile, say hello, greet my former colleague politely, and just focus on the details of the project. But one of my teammates reminded me that Connected Realities has a tool to prepare for conversations just like this one. It’s called the Brave Conversations Worksheet. I filled out the worksheet in anticipation of reaching out to my former colleague and it helped me to:
- Clarify what I wanted to address in a potentially challenging conversation
- Consider what I want to get out of the conversation
- Identify my feelings about the conversation
- Get real about my motivations for having the conversation
- Examine the values I want to use to approach the conversation
- Consider how I contributed to the challenges
- Think about how I want to frame what I want to say
- Prepare me for having the conversation
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If you find yourself needing to bravely approach a challenging conversation, take a look at our Brave Conversations worksheet. Like me, you still may not wanna, but you will feel more prepared for a conversation that has the potential of transforming conflict.
