Alisa Cohn: preference

Transcript context

…The best story I've heard to make that really real for me, I think it was Kim Scott when she came on the podcast. She told a story of, I think it was Bob, where everyone just knew he was terrible and it was like, everyone's was just like knew he was not good and eventually, the boss had a conversation with him eight months into it and told him, "It's not going to work out. You're just doing a bad job." And he's like, "Why didn't anyone tell me? I didn't realize that. If you told me, I would've changed." And everyone assumed he knew. And so I think to your point, this is to help the person. It's not not to hurt them. Yeah, a hundred percent. One of my clients, he was running a division and one of his people was not doing it right, not doing it right, not getting the right kind of data, not having to do the right kind of analysis, whatever it was. We were talking about it and I said, "Well, how come you have another feedback with her?" And he said, "You know, she's just going to cry. She's just going to cry. She's older, whatever, she's just going to cry. It's going to be too uncomfortable, whatever." So we worked, we talked and talked and talked. I gave him a script. We really worked it out and he agreed that he would go in and have that conversation with her, which he did. And he reported back to me and he was shaken. She cried. Of course she did. She cried. That's what he knew she was going to do. And so she was upset and she went home early and the whole thing. The next day she came in and she said, "Thank you so much for telling me that. I wish someone had told me that 15 years ago. I think I could have had a different career." And I think that is so meaningful for all leaders and people who are responsible for other people to understand that you're uncomfortable when they start crying, of course, or they have this difficult reaction or whatever. But honestly, the only way you're going to be able to help someone grow in their career and become the best person they can be is by leaning into these tough conversations. What I love about the scripts we're going to talk about, which we probably should transition to, is it's again, one thing to hear that and be like, "Yes, okay, I need to do this. I need to get better at typical conversations. I need to have that talk without someone that we should let go." It's another when it's like tomorrow is the meeting and you're like, "Oh, my God. I have to have this conversation now." And so, I love that you actually give people a really simple approach to how to lay this stuff out in various different contexts. So let's talk through some of these approaches and scripts you've come up with. What do you think would be a good one to start with?…

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