Christina Tangora Schlachter

In today’s workplace, influence is more important than ever. When you know how to exert influence at work, you can control and more rapidly advance your career than others can. Four basic steps can help you achieve influence, no matter where you are in your career; if you’re higher up in your company, consider leadership best practices to further boost your impact.

Are you looking to change behaviors in employees and create productive and dynamic team players? Critical conversations are a way to do just that! Staying ahead of possible conflicts and intervening when issues do arise are what critical conversations are all about. They are the best way to keep employees motivated and ensure productive teamwork.

Business change comes in many varieties, yet most change types share one goal: to achieve a more productive, efficient, and adaptable organization. During changes — whether they are the result of a merger and acquisition, a technology implementation, or other large-scale change — people need visible leadership, ongoing, effective communication, and a cohesive effort toward building a sustainable structure.

Mastering the art of critical conversations provides many benefits, such as learning how to deal with conflict. By mastering critical conversations, you may discover some other personal and professional benefits as well. Critical conversations increase your leadership potential Senior executives often judge leadership confidence by looking at these three traits: Asking for exactly what you want without being pushy, aggressive, or annoying Handling difficult personality types and situations at work with poise and ease Maintaining all these skills during change, crisis, and chaos By using critical conversation methods, you can handle difficult personalities and situations and ask for what you want and need without being overly aggressive.

Workplace dynamics can make a good team perform at an extraordinary level or fall to pieces. Many workplace dynamic critical conversations come about because of subjective issues such as personality differences. So before you have a critical conversation with individuals or a group, diagnose what is causing the problem by looking at the group dynamics.

If you have a laundry list of issues that need to change, prioritizing them before having a critical conversation is key. Decide which issues you need to discuss in a critical conversation, and which ones can wait or even never be discussed if the other areas change. Here are a few things to keep in mind when prioritizing what to focus on during the critical conversation: Consider the biggest consequence: To prioritize all the issues, start with the facts and the impact the facts have on the organization or team.

Critical conversations are often emotional, which may lead to confrontation. You can turn confrontation in a critical conversation into accommodation by using one of three proven methods. Whether you’re kicking off the critical conversation or on the receiving end of a potentially confrontational situation, moving from argument to collaboration will create more positive results.

Combining coaching with critical conversation skills can employees achieve and sustain top performance in support of organizational goals. Using coaching along with critical conversation methods can turn any positive dialogue into a five-star discussion. Coaches provide feedback and encourage discussion that can influence changes in behavior, performance, or even beliefs.