Would you describe yourself as conflict-averse? Meaning, when you sense a conflict or a difficult situation coming your way, you back yourself into your corner, shy away, or maybe even just ignore the situation altogether? Years ago I would have been right there with you in both my work and personal life. These days I find myself owning difficult conversations and addressing situations of conflict with ease, especially at work, and in a much more comfortable place not because I care less or find it any less intimidating, but because I’ve learned how to structure my responses and navigate my way through highly difficult or high-conflict situations and conversations in a way that is less emotional and focused on the outcome. 

Here’s a five-step process to structure a difficult conversation due to a high-conflict situation at work or at home in a way that will help to keep you at the forefront of driving and managing the conversation while facilitating and reaching a streamlined resolution that benefits all parties involved.

Step 1: Define what you know.

Use this first step as an opportunity to take a deep breath and identify what you know about the situation. Do this in your most comfortable brainstorming method. For me, this is as simple as a notebook and pencil; for you maybe it’s a bunch of post-its, a journal, or a Google Doc. Whatever your method, write down everything that’s relevant that you know about the situation. This step isn’t always comfortable and almost always generates big emotions for me, especially when it’s home-related (vs. work), but it will clear your head and get your thoughts out in a place where you can see them, react to them, and process them.

Step 2: Bucketize what you know into groups.

(And yes, “bucketize” is a technical term!)

By grouping what you know you’ll start to create categories, which ladder up to the bigger issue at hand and will eventually become your outline for your conversation. Common categories in difficult or conflict-heavy situations in a work setting include things like “issues,” “timing,” “quality,” “resources,” etc. In a home-based situation, the categories look different and might include things like, “money,” “help around the house,” “help with the kids,” etc.

Step 3: Define your ideal outcome.

So now you’ve organized your thoughts and identified your major topics. What do you want to happen as a result of the conversation? Or what must be the outcome once the conflict is resolved? This is a decision that will result in an action. For me, in my consulting world, this is typically a client-driven decision that results in my team being able to execute based on a decided direction. Maybe for you, it’s a clear answer on how to allocate a budget or which person will receive a promotion. At home, maybe it’s an agreement between you and your spouse of how you’ll divvy up home responsibilities or re-allocate monthly funds to be more effective for your family. Whatever it is, make your outcome big enough to drive to an action, otherwise, you’ll find yourself back at step one in no time at all.

Step 4: Create a roadmap.

Whether it’s two steps for twenty-two steps, you need to have a thought-through roadmap to achieve your desired outcome based on the problem you’re addressing and what you already know. At work, for example, if your problem is a delayed kick-off on a project and you know it’s delayed because of budgetary constraints and your desired outcome is to start within two weeks to maintain your original timeline, then your roadmap must include steps to alleviate the budgetary constraints and gain approval to start your project. At home, if your problem is getting your spouse to engage more completely in family activities, then your roadmap needs to articulate when the family activities occur, where he/she could jump in to be more present and how immediately he/she can start exercising these new habits. Be thoughtful and succinct with your steps. It’s all about quality and accomplish-ability without making anyone feel less-than.

Step 5: Build an agenda.

No matter if this is a client-facing meeting, a chit-chat with a co-worker, a conversation with your spouse, a huge presentation to a bunch of senior executives, or a sit down with your mother-in-law, you’ve got to have an agenda. This agenda should be structured as follows: Problem statement (why are we here?) | Intended outcome (what we will achieve) | Recap of what we know (how we got here) | Opportunity to achieve the outcome (roadmap) | Immediate next steps (how we will ensure outcome success). This structure avoids personal nuance and keeps the conversation on the outcome (not the conflict / difficult situation), which will ensure success.

Remember that conflict isn’t a bad thing in any setting or with anyone. Good things come from conflict – innovation, relationships, love, challenges, appreciation – just to name a few. Change your thinking about how to manage and work through difficult conversations and conflict-heavy situations creating opportunities for growth (personally, in relationships, and professionally) well beyond what you could have imagined in a status-quo world.

A point of view seems like a simple thing, maybe even something that you’re assuming you “just have” and don’t necessarily need to work at developing. If this is you, good for you! However, for most of us, this is not the case. Recognizing when to put your perspective – your point of view – forward and how to articulate it is a skill that’s developed and refined. It requires thought and consideration. Choosing the right words are important as is selecting the audience that will receive and ultimately interpret your point of view. Sometimes delivering a point of view off the cuff is great and other times it will take considerable preparation. 

Throughout my professional years I’ve had major successes and failures in this area. I once was so vocal about a professional partnership in a meeting that the owner of my company’s face literally turned red with fury. On the flip side, I’ve also taken the time to write white papers and blog posts about professional topics that were so well received they landed me speaking gigs at national conferences. So there will be ups and downs when it comes to both developing and sharing your point of view, but the lessons learned will make you better, more articulate, and confident as you grow… and that my friends, is what it’s all about. 

How to Develop a Point of View

While it’s not rocket science, there’s a process to it. To develop your point of view around <insert topic here> you must listen, assess, and understand. 

Listen: Has someone asked you a question about something you’re not familiar with? Or a question about something you are an expert in? Or a question about what the industry is doing? Or what you’d recommend in <insert any scenario here>? These are opportunities to develop a point of view. When you’re listening, truly listening, you’re tuned into your environment. Whether that be consulting with a client, a water cooler conversation with your coworkers, or even a performance review with your boss. You need to be listening for the opportunity and reason to develop and structure your point of view around an appropriate topic, subject matter, toolset, etc. 

Assess: Now that you’re listening and truly tuned in to your professional environment and have triggered the need to develop your point of view, you must assess what is required of your point of view. In some cases this might be simply digging into your memory bank, formulating a few quick thoughts and away you go. In other cases it might turn into a bit of a research project because you aren’t fully versed in the topic or because it’s something you’ve never considered for yourself, your client, or your team before. The goal is to assess the depth and breadth of what’s needed from your point of view for it to be successfully shared, heard, and generate your desired end result.

Understand: At this point, you know you need to have a point of view, you’ve generally determined what’s required of your point of view, so now you need to understand what it means. It’s one thing to simply say, “I think you should do X because of Y.” It’s entirely another to work out the implications of that perspective for the person or people you’re sharing it with. Will it help them achieve their goal or satisfy their knowledge gap that triggered you to develop your point of view in the first place? If they came back to you in six months would you still agree with your recommendation? Do they have the tools to take what your point of view is suggesting and become actionable? You must understand your intention of sharing your point of view and how the implications (which are most likely very positive) of your point of view may affect the person or people you’re sharing it with.

How to Share Your Point of View

In the consulting world, there’s an acronym we spout off: WIIFM. It stands for “What’s In It For Me?” WIIFM is used to put context to what we’re saying and how we’re saying it. Are we thinking about our audience? What are the follow-on questions they might ask and are we prepared to answer them? Essentially it’s a lens we use to ensure our bases are covered before we share out a point of view with our clients. 

If you develop your point of view perfectly, but share it imperfectly you’ll find yourself at the beginning of the process. Here’s how to ensure success when sharing your point of view. 

Consider your audience: How you share your point of view with a co-worker is different from a client. As is how you share your point of view with a client who is a VP with decision-making power, a budget, and a strategic partner compared to a client who is an implementer who is tactically focused. Depending on who your audience is, your methodology for sharing should be different. Think through who your audience is, your relationship with that audience, and what they will expect from you when sharing your point of view. Take the time to think through the WIIFM for your audience and how you’ll deliver on their expectations.

Choose the right Communication Method: Based on my experience, here are some communication options that work well. 

• Lunch or Coffee: When speaking informally, or with an individual you have a semi-personal relationship with, discussing over lunch or coffee is a great option. It invites discussion and takes the pressure off of delivering expertise. It also creates an opportunity to dig deeper into questions and learn how to continue to develop the point of view in a way that will drive continued work, conversation, relationships, etc. 
• Formal Meeting: This is where a PowerPoint deck comes in handy. They’re not always super fun to create, but when you’re presenting to a group of people, perhaps even over video, it’s a great tool to facilitate a formal meeting and is easily shareable so folks can reference it later. 
• Email: When the need to develop and share a point of view generates out of a simple conversation, following up at a later (but timely – no more than a week) point in time with a well-worded email is a great option. It lets the person know you heard them (listen) and reacted thoughtfully (assess) and are here for them (understand).

Follow Through: Part of sharing a point of view is the follow-up on that point of view, especially in a professional setting. If you share with your boss how you plan to achieve a promotion, but don’t continually follow-up to let her know your progress, what was the point of developing and sharing in the first place? Likewise with clients. If your team spends hours preparing a presentation articulating a perspective on how the client can increase ROI by 10% but you don’t follow-up to put the work in place and kick it off, that 10% increase is lost. Once you’ve communicated your point of view, develop a plan to follow-up on it and keep it moving. This follow-up plan will be different depending on your audience and how you communicate it, but it should exist, even if it’s a simple quarterly email to check in. Don’t let your point of view go to waste.

Get going!

Your point of view is part of your brand. You’re putting it out there for consumption and digestion. Remember to listen, assess, and understand along the way to ensure it’s a point of view you’re proud of and can stand behind as you thoughtfully share it out. Get to listening, because you have a lot of value to bring and important perspectives to share!

“Interesting” is the word I’d use to describe how I felt about maternity leave. Several months without working? Interesting. People would cover my daily tasks and then I’ll just pick them right back up when I get back to work? Interesting. I’ll have weeks and months to literally just take care of our baby? Interesting. 

Thoughtfully considering, thinking about, and planning for maternity leave is so important for so many reasons. The prep work absolutely is about making sure you’ve got work squared away and great transitions in place. However, it’s also about you and starting to get your mind right as someone who’s transitioning from a 40, 50, 60-hour work week and a routine to which you’re accustomed, to a totally different experience and a totally different routine or lack thereof. Prepping for maternity leave is also about your family’s finances and getting very knowledgeable about your benefits. 

For me, this was a scary, exciting, strange, and highly educational time. 

Like most things, before any of us can truly start working on something we need to understand what it is. This was my first task; to figure out what maternity leave meant to me, what I wanted out of maternity leave, and aligning with my husband about how much money we felt comfortable backfilling for the time that I would go without pay. For me, maternity leave was going to be a time to focus on learning to be a mom first and foremost while staying plugged into my team in a way that I dictated. Given that I would be a first-time mom and had no real idea of what to expect, it was also important to me that I had flexibility in my maternity leave. Specifically, planning for the worst case scenario in terms of labor, taking advantage of every single day available to me, and having a slow-to-come-back option for integrating into work and merging my new life as a mom to a sweet baby boy with my career as an executive. Once I was comfortable with these items it was easy for my husband and I to decide on a window of time that we felt we could financially cover (which turned out to be two full weeks) while still meeting my personal needs and desires for maternity leave. 

I believe this was the hardest part. Envisioning something so huge and life altering as maternity leave is one thing, but to truly articulate it and express your actual needs is another. This took me months of reflection and conversation and a lot of self-awarded grace to be truly honest with myself. 

The next step was to start getting work squared away. This meant three things: 1) I had to inform people that I was pregnant in a timely manner so my belly / non-cocktail-drinking didn’t give it away, 2) I needed to understand my benefits by working with HR, and 3) I had to define what was needed from a skill and personnel perspective to cover my responsibilities while I would be on leave. 

Informing people was hard for me. I didn’t want to be treated any differently and I wasn’t sure how people would react. I went about this very pragmatically. I made a list of people I needed to inform in priority order and went from there. For folks like my direct boss, I shared the news over lunch. For my closest co-workers (who are also friends) I made personal phone calls and reach-outs. For Human Resources, I sent a formal email, cc’ing my boss. For most other people, I shared as I saw fit and/or as I had a free extra conversational moment… typically of the, “so what’s new with you?!” variety. 

Once people knew that I was pregnant (and they were all so excited for me, by the way), I worked with a Human Resources representative to learn of the company benefits for maternity leave. To each meeting I came prepared with my list of questions and/or needs (based on what I had defined as important to me and agreed upon financially with my husband) and worked back-and-forth with HR to document and understand my options and ultimately what my leave and return to work would look like. We ended up with an excel-spreadsheet-based calendar, color coated by leave type (short-term disability, sick time, bonding leave, unpaid, etc.), with two tabs; one for actual maternity leave and the other for my return to work. I then used this spreadsheet to communicate my plans to my boss and secure approval, followed by sharing with my team members and ultimately with folks who would be providing coverage.

In addition to the maternity leave benefits themselves, Human Resources also helped me file all the appropriate paperwork with my insurance for short-term disability and understand exactly who, what, and when I’d need to contact and provide once our baby arrived. 

This process with HR took a few months in on-and-off stints. By the end I knew exactly what to expect and was prepared with a straightforward to-do list to ensure nothing was forgotten. I also understood what my payment structure would be during this time, which was hugely important!

The final step in getting work squared away – actually assigning coverage – was the easiest part. I participated in the interview process for my backfill and helped to ensure she was brought on board well in advance of my leave. I defined a transition plan with my leadership and over about a two-month period brought folks up to speed on what they needed to know and do. By the last two weeks team members were largely fully covering for me allowing me to ease out of my customer-facing role and provide support behind the scenes. 

By the time my due date came I still wasn’t totally sure how I felt about not working for 16 weeks, but I knew I was as ready as I could ever be. I loved knowing that I did everything I could to be prepared, help others prepare, and have clear expectations in place. Going into my maternity leave in a state of ease was the way it should be and made my actual maternity leave a great experience.