Leading difficult conversations and offering empathy are crucial responsibilities for many leaders.
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Many managers are responsible for leading difficult conversations and solving internal conflict.
Executive coaches and university classes are now teaching the skills needed to do so.
Here’s how future managers should prep for the tough role, according to founders and professors.
Conflict resolution is a part of almost any job.
Whether it’s a disagreement with a coworker, feeling overloaded by your boss, or not getting what you want from your hires, it’s important to be able to address these situations as an employee and a leader.
That’s why Michael Yan, the founder of the job-search platform Simplify, hired an executive coach. He hoped to learn how to better manage business success, business failure, and his mental health.
“Executive coaching has helped me manage stress and burnout,” Yan told Insider.
Together, he said he and his coach worked on questions like, “How do you mediate between difficult arguments with your cofounders or how do you deal with difficult employees?”
He added: “Because a lot of those are what contributes to the difficulty in mental health for founders.”
While executive coaches are one way to better your management style, higher-education institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and now the University of California, Berkeley, are providing courses on the topic, too. Launched this fall by the instructors Francesca LeBaron and Bree Jenkins, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business class “Difficult Conversations: Conflict Lab” focuses on delivering tough feedback and navigating work clashes, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Here’s what Yan’s coach, a Berkeley participant, and leadership experts suggest managers focus on.
You need a good mindset to be a good leader
One of the first topics Yan and his executive coach covered was bettering his mental and physical health, he said.
“As a founder, balancing mental health and the success of the company almost seem opposite,” Yan said. “But something that we’ve learned from executive coaching is if you’re not prioritizing your own health, it’s hard to prioritize the success of the company.”
Working on mental-health best practices informs how he manages and responds to company conflict today, he said.
“Small triggers may affect your mental health,” like when cofounders are angry at one another or when the staff is underperforming, he said.
“There are times where arguments lead to me being stressed out for a long time,” he said, “and it’s like, how do I approach those things?”
Since working with a coach, he’s created a positive mindset, allowing him to better communicate with his team, he said.
Sometimes, difficult conversations are necessary
Like Yan and his coach, Berkeley’s class works on approaching difficult situations like performance reviews and layoffs, The Journal reported.
In fact, students are required to role-play from both sides of the conversation to experience what the conflict feels like from each perspective, The Journal said. One role-playing exercise includes giving and receiving negative feedback.
From the manager’s perspective, it’s crucial to have discussions with employees who are not performing well, even if it’s difficult, Brooke Vuckovic, a professor of leadership at the Kellogg School of Management, wrote for Insider.
“When you don’t deal directly with problematic employees, you’re sending the clear message to others that their work doesn’t matter,” she said.
She suggests navigating the conversation objectively: Describe what you’re seeing as the boss, note the influence the behavior is having, seek the employee’s perspective, and come to an agreement based on that conversation.
Lead with empathy to build positive rapport
Empathy is a required trait for managers today, especially when they’re tackling difficult conversations. Khalil Somani, a Berkeley student, used empathy when delivering news of a “layoff” to his classmate.
“You’re still resolute in your decision, but you can still be genuine,” he told The Journal after his session.
When managers explicitly communicate with employees about their needs, it also shows empathy. For example, ask them what work-life balance looks like to them, Ed Zitron, the CEO of EZPR, a national tech and business public-relations agency, wrote for Insider.
“A manager’s job should be straightforward: Understand the work their employees are doing and the time it will take to complete the work, and then be able to empathize with those doing the work,” Zitron wrote.