In the movie, Up in the Air, George Clooney played a consultant who traveled around the country and fired employees on behalf of client companies. When he was forced to use video technology as a substitute for face-to-face meetings, everything went bad.
Fast forward eleven years and life now imitates art. Difficult conversations in the workplace are now virtual. In fact, as the end of 2020 approaches, employee performance evaluations that used to be face-to-face are now likely virtual. Here are a few other examples of virtual difficult conversations:
- Requests for funding in the middle of budget cuts
- Briefings to influence decision making
- Handling challenging Q&A for any project
To achieve your objectives in these important conversations it’s critical to plan and master the environment:
- Map out the main messages in advance to help stay on track.
- Recognize that people have different learning styles – Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic. This may affect the way you present information.
- Consider Perceptual Positions: Different people may react to the same conversation through many different perspectives.
- Utilize a variety of questioning strategies to communicate and gain information: open-or-closed-ended, multiple choice, or assumptive. Each type of question can help steer a conversation in different directions.
Difficult conversations are always a challenge. Adding the virtual factor makes the interactive even riskier. You can either blame 2020 if it goes wrong, or work harder to create a more successful outcome.
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