Once in a while you must have a critical conversation. These usually start off well and end in disaster. So how does one make them a win-win for everyone involved? Be honest and authentic. Honesty can be difficult when you expect the conversation to go badly. Honesty makes it less likely that you will second guess your entire conversation later. Now this is not the brutal honesty a bad singer gets during American Idol auditions. It is the honesty of friends alerting you of bad breath. Many good interactions have gone bad because all they can remember is your breath stinks. Everyone is better off for the honesty and use of a breath mint.
Then there is authenticity. If you are an extrovert this is easy it means just being yourself. For the introvert it means articulating your thoughts in a way that gets your point across. Many would call this being blunt. Authenticity and bluntness are not the same. Authentic is like a pair of Levi Jeans there is only one original, but everyone will try and duplicate them. People often take on a different personality for a critical conversation. You try to be a diplomat when you should stick to your guns and be the gunslinger you are inside. Even more common is the desire to be a mega-phone and get things off your “chest”. This often amounts to having a short fuse stick of dynamite. It leads to the blow up that kills critical conversations.
So the value of critical conversations can often be judged on the scale of honesty and authenticity you have during them. Get the worst case scenario out of your head and be present for the entire conversation. Only then will you see vast improvement in your critical conversations.
-AH
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