The key to ensuring that confrontation produces positive outcomes - key to handling CONFRONTATION skillfully.
In most of our working environment, stress is laid on building better relationships with teams and individuals.And most of us make conscious effort to build and nurture relationships across. Despite your efforts and the efforts of your team members, someone may initiate or continue unacceptable behavior serious enough to warrant corrective action.
A final communication tool to ensure course correction of the unwanted behavior is that of CONFRONTING unacceptable behavior assertively. How you handle such situation is critical to your effectiveness and your goal of encouraging accountability.
How do you respond to the word CONFRONTATION?
For most people the word conjures images of unpleasant, angry, combative sessions in which participants are accusatory, judgmental, defensive and uncooperative with one another. Few people have positive associations with Confrontations.
Positive Side of Confrontation
As you would have realized, confrontation can benefit all concerned. If someone's behavior is creating problems for others, chances may be that the person may be completely unaware of it. And if no one is willing to say anything to him, his undesired behavior continues and possibly damages relationships.This lack of discussion and awareness can explain why "Ignore the undesirable, and reinforce the desirable" strategy may have failed at changing the behavior.
The key to ensuring that confrontation produces positive outcomes is handling the confrontation skillfully. Most people do not know how to do that because they have not received any training and they have not had any good role models from which to learn the skills.
The CARING CONFRONTATION process involves four steps:
1. Identify the Behavior: Did you describe the situation in relation to te other person's characteristics?Did you use adjectives such as arrogant, lazy, passive, stupid...... If yes, you did what most people do. Typically, when we have difficulty dealing with another person, we consider the person to be a problem.
If we define the person as the problem, we are likely to set out to change the other person in some way to resolve the difficulty.But we cannot change the people's personalities.We cannot change their core values or their lifelong attitudes.
The behavior is where the problem lies. It is what the person does that we wish he did not do, or it is what that person doesn't do that we wish he would do. It is basically doing or not doing the behavior.
You must identify the specific behavior and describe it to the other person in factual, non-blaming language.
2. Identify the Tangible Effects: Why is the other person's behavior a problem for you? Because the behavior results in or could result in undesirable impact upon you. How does the behavior affect you?Does it cost money that comes from your budget? Does it take time and effort away from the activities? Does it affect the quality of product you produce or the quality of service you provide? Does it distract others from being productive? and so on........
More that one or two tangible effects often result from person's unacceptable behavior. It is these concrete results that make the behavior unacceptable.
If you can think of no concrete, tangible effects of the person's behavior, then you probably disapprove of the behavior just because it is different from what you consider appropriate. You are judging the behavior by your own standards, which is normal human tendency, but it gives you much less reason to ask someone to change his behavior. People don't like others beliefs and standards imposed on them and there's a strong probability that they might refuse to comply (heard of Teenager's Rebellion?)
When you can explain to someone hos his behavior causes a tangible negative impact upon you, ten he is much more likely to change it. Idea is to provide a rationale rather come up as an overbearing parent figure.
3. Identify your Own Feelings: Whenever someone's behavior creates a problem, you are likely to respond emotionally. It is important to be aware of your feelings and to communicate to the other person.
Many people find this aspect of confrontation challenging because few people learn much about the emotional part of being human. Many people are unaccustomed to identifying their own emotions or feelings.
You may get a better feel for your emotional responses if your realise there are only four basic human emotions - Mad, Sad, Glad and Scared. All the other words words we use to describe feelings are simply degrees of intensity of one of these four, or combination of two or more of these basic emotions.
4. Identify the Change You Desire: The final step is to identify - What kind of Change you Want. Do you simply want the person to stop using the behavior? Do you want a different behavior in place of unacceptable one? Do you want the other person to suggest a solution?
The last question above is important. People are most likely to follow through and implement a change they thought of themselves. If you allow other person to suggest a solution after you have presented your case, you may discover that the other person may come up with a better and acceptable solution. This is then ideal, since the other person will have sense of ownership and is likely to be comfortable in implementing the same.
As a Thumb Rule - Avoid using commands in a confrontation situation. Even directing or guiding personalities, may get the other person to rebel against your telling them what to do.
Most people will react more cooperatively when you ask them to change a behavior or ask for their ideas.
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