Latest / Nurse Leadership Dumpster Fire / Difficult Conversations Done Right: The Tools That Work
Transcript
- speaker-0: What a complete dumpster fire. You have a nurse that is totally out of line and you have to have a brutal conversation. What's your move? Do you freeze? Do you overreact? Do you avoid it altogether? Or do you grab a hose? Let's talk about how to put that fire out by yourself. In today's video, we're going to be talking about how to have difficult conversations as a nurse leader. We're going to be breaking down some tried and true tools that are going to help you be successful when you start actually trying to have these conversations. speaker-1: Why do nurse managers avoid having these hard conversations? speaker-0: It's good question, but it's very common. A lot of nurse managers, including myself, really struggled with this in the beginning. speaker-1: I think some of those fears are gonna be around fear of being disliked, fear of coming on too strong, or being told in the past that they came on too strong. Maybe don't know how. speaker-0: Maybe you never have given feedback to anybody and you don't even know where to start. And because ultimately we want to be able to get past this and have a productive and professional relationship. And so there is often a fear of how they're going to respond in a negative way. speaker-1: Fear of how is that person gonna respond? Rate your anxiety one to ten and drop your number in the comments. We want to know what makes you so anxious about having these chats. speaker-0: The hardest part is just doing it. But put kindness in your heart and clarity in your voice. speaker-1: Before you open your mouth, make sure you clear your mind. Firefighters don't run into a burning house without a plan. speaker-0: These are some ground rules to make sure that when you do have these difficult conversations, that you have set yourself up to have a productive conversation. speaker-1: The first thing we need to do is lay out the intention. What does this person need right now? And how we describe that and what is the best case scenario that you're hoping for in the outcome? So I'm gonna give an example of a time I had to give feedback and we're gonna go through how I laid out the intention. We had an employee in our area who was in nursing school, was on our unit as a ⁓ CNA, lovely human, kind, and really enjoyable to be around and talk to. I was noticing a trend of avoiding some of the patient interactions. And one day I pulled her aside and I said, What's going on here? It's looking like you are not enjoying being in a patient room and taking care of the patient and helping them to the bathroom and those types of tasks. So tell me about what your future goals are. So she kind of tells me her story and she's like, I really I want to go into nursing, but I don't really want to do patient care at all. And ⁓ as she kind of opened up about this, I went into I think that maybe you're on the wrong path for your future. And let me tell you why. And I said I ri I'm not telling this because I want to hurt your feelings, but I want to tell you this information because I want to give you a chance at the best success and a happy life because it looks like nursing might not be your path. speaker-0: The second step of this is to use some type of icebreaker. I personally like to use humor because it's just sort of how I default. And I've used this both in my personal life and in my professional life. For a personal example, I had a friend who I had to have a hard conversation with, and we scheduled a time to meet, and she knew that I needed to tell her something and talk to her about something important. So she was already a little bit braced. But I walked in and I handed her a glass of wine and I said, You might need this glass of wine before you hear what I have to say. Now that may work in my private life, but I can't necessarily do that in the professional world because we're not allowed to drink on the job. But I have used humor in professional settings when I'm actually delivering very important information. Very recently, I was having to give some bad information to a unit. I had a unit that was asking to go on a compressed tour. I had done a lot of research, I had looked at the data, and I had talked to my executive leadership team. And we determined that it wasn't the right move at this time. And I knew that they were gonna be very unhappy because they were all very hopeful that we were gonna be able to do that. And so when I showed up to have this conversation, I literally just said to the team, I came here to ruin your day. And they all kind of laughed and I said, Just kidding, except I actually do need to tell you some tough information right now. So In the end it lightened the mood and even though it was still hard feedback for them to hear and they didn't like hearing the message, they still appreciated that Aya came in person to talk about it and I tried to do it in a jovial way so that they knew that I wasn't trying to be inhuman or a dictator or just like a power hungry manager. speaker-1: So for me, what I typically will do is I will start the conversation and just see how the person is, check in. Because sometimes it may not be the best timing to give that. So I want to make sure that they're in a good space before I deliver anything that's might be a little more challenging because I don't want to pile on more. So typically I'll be like, Hi, how are you? How's your day? How is the fam? And then I gauge whether or not this is the right time. So if it is the right time, then I go into I have some things that are a little bit challenging to talk about and we wanna get into it. So is it okay if if I go over that information with you now? I give them the opportunity to be like, I can't handle that today or yes, let's go ahead and get into it. The third one is put out the fire. Don't beat around the bush. Focus on actions you want and to see instead of what went wrong. Cindy, do you have an example of this? Yes. speaker-0: And what I want to talk about is an example of when you use tangible information. I think a lot of times in leadership and in general, as humans, when we're giving feedback, we have a tendency to talk around things and we don't get to the point and really identify the specificity. So recently I was working with a nurse who was having difficulty with her documentation. Specifically, she was working on S bar communication, but in her R, which is supposed to be recommendation, she wasn't fully closing the loop. And so in her R, she would say something like, This patient needs to go to this team next. But she didn't clarify if that communication had already happened or if she was going to do it. So if I was reading her note, I was left wondering if the issue that needed to happen next was already taken care of or not. And so when I sat down with her, I just literally opened up her note. And I said, when I read this, this is what I'm having a hard time understanding. And then I found another person's note who had a very well-written R. And I said, this is what I'm looking for. When this person said, the person needs to go to this team next, the call's been made. Joe so-and-so is handling it, and they will call the patient in the future. speaker-1: What are your thoughts on that? Drop a comment and let us know. speaker-0: Do you have an experience where you gave specific feedback, but it didn't quite land the way you thought? We'd love to hear from you. speaker-1: Number four is the containment and aftermath. This is your paper trail. This is where you now document, or other words, we're gonna be giving you feedback. You wanna create that follow-up email and make sure you summarize what you talked about and and email it back to that person and and offer the opportunity for them to correct anything they felt like wasn't accurately portrayed. This is where you'll get some of those misunderstandings clarified now. speaker-0: Because sometimes we think that we're being clear, but a person may have heard something completely different. And I have experienced this firsthand multiple times where I thought that I had given a person a specific direction, but they heard something completely different. And so then when they came to deliver it, they gave me something that I didn't expect. And if I didn't put that in writing, I have no way to go back and say, Well, what I actually asked you for was this. And so going forward, I now Make sure that after I have those conversations that I'm outlining of what I need from you next is this. As a sidebar, we do have an episode all about how to handle a a poor performing employee. If you want more information on that, check it out. speaker-1: Becomes your safety net. The email that you send, because if you have to follow up, you can refer on this date we talked about X, Y, and Z, and you can even re-forward that email, and this is what occurred since that conversation. And then you can follow back up, have that conversation, and then refer and move forward. If you want more resources and take a deep dive into this, we're going to show you some resources and some books that you can read to help give you a well-rounded ability to have these types of conversations because not everybody is going to receive information the same way. So having a couple of options in your toolbox is helpful. With that being said, we will be recording some more in-depth conversations about this. So look forward to those and like and subscribe so you have options. The first book we're going to talk about is Crucial Conversations. Crucial Conversations is a great tool to get you started. It uses a method called state. speaker-0: So that book also gives you a little bit of an algorithm if you need that to help get you started. And it even has workbook sections so that you can write out your conversation before you even have it. speaker-1: The next one is nonviolent communication. That book is a way to approach conversations in a very safe way for a lot of people. speaker-0: In nonviolent communication, they talk a lot about how we can't receive information if we feel like we're being attacked. And so it teaches you how to frame the information in a way that's going to come across as helpful instead of negative. Because we're always going to be able to hear information more readily if we don't feel defensive in this in the first place. And that book helps you set yourself up so that you can give that feedback so that it actually lands and goes somewhere. The last resource that we want to talk about is by Brene Brown and it is called Dare to Lead. And this book really talks a lot about how you're going to function internally with yourself, making sure that you're actually demonstrating vulnerability as a leader so that you can model that behavior and allow your staff to feel comfortable being vulnerable as well. She goes in depth about how to have difficult conversations and also talks a lot about why that difficult conversation is actually necessary for growth and kindness. Exactly. speaker-1: Clear is kind. That's from Brene Brown and that is true. All these books will be in our comments and our description and available for you if you didn't get the chance to write them down. Check these out and like and subscribe so you can continue to have more cross.