Under Attack? Leaders: “Tell Me More”

Have you, as a leader, ever been tasked with standing in front of a sizable audience to share unpleasant news? Or even, just…news? Or a decision, idea, thought, bit of input or innocuous commentary on the weather?

First off, public speaking is hard enough without throwing unpleasant or controversial information into the mix. Secondly, it seems quite a bit of what we say can turn controversial faster than you can say “is the dress white or blue?”.

HR Pros and leaders frequently find themselves in front of such audiences presenting such news and just as frequently they may find themselves facing a sea of angry, frustrated employees. Sometimes that sea of anger and frustration can boil over the line toward disrespect, aggression and intimidation. Being on the front lines delivering tough news is no joke. Even if not taken to that extreme, just having to answer pointed questions, while literally standing on the spot can be daunting.

I was speaking with an employee of a large corporation the other day. He was describing an example of what he felt was the callous, uncaring, out of touch decisions and attitude by upper management there and his attempt at speaking up for himself and his colleagues.

He gave the example of the boss’ boss’ boss coming in to speak with the crew about changing job conditions. The senior manager announced that from now on lunch period was returning from a half hour to an hour, there would be no leaving the job site and vehicles could not be left running. As he spoke about this example to me, he was incredulous and looking to me for validation that these new conditions were an absurdity. I looked back at him blankly. I didn’t get it. “Isn’t an hour lunch better than a half hour?”, I asked.

“An hour’s fine but we can’t leave the vehicles running and we can’t leave the job site.”, he said. And then he went on – proudly – to say how he raised his hand and when called on, asked a question of the boss’ boss’ boss (ignoring the clear signals from his own boss to ‘not go there’ evidenced by the frantic drawing of his finger across his neck to indicate “please, for the love of Mike, do not do this”). He asked: “Umm, excuse me but what’s the temperature in YOUR office?”.

Now here, I would like you to imagine that you are the boss’ boss’ boss standing in front of a large crew of fairly disgruntled employees and getting this question. Cue threat response, engage fight-flight-freeze reaction, commence frantically clawing through the swirling chaos of your overburdened mind to handle this in a non-self-destructing manner. Now hold that thought.

One of the most beautifully all-purpose and effective invitations in interpersonal communication is the sentence: “Tell me more”. Uttering these words in the face of frustration, anger, complaints, resentment, confusion, defensiveness – you name it – more often than not, diffuses tension, re-balances power struggles, fosters dialogue, and engenders true and genuine connection.

Back to our big boss. Apparently, the seemingly irrelevant question caught her off guard, aggravated and flustered her. Thus, her response was a cool: “That is not germane to this discussion”. It didn’t get any better from there since, as you can imagine, the whole crew had an unpleasant pill to swallow about work conditions AND have now had their recalcitrant spokesperson shut down and dismissed as not germane. Not an ideal employee communication or engagement strategy.

Had the senior manager taken a beat and simply said “Tell me more.” What she would have learned was that on bitter cold New England winter days (or hazy hot and humid summer ones), to have to spend a mandatory hour sitting in a freezing cold (or sweltering) truck felt detrimental to the health and wellbeing to the folks having to be subjected to these new conditions. Now, where she goes from there of course is fraught with pitfalls as well (e.g. “Yes, we thought about that and we don’t care.” or “Oh, we didn’t think of that, good point, we’ll go back to the drawing board.”) but it’s a far better position than the one created by shutting it down. By inviting the employee to tell her more, she would have disarmed the grenade (so to speak) of the initial question, connected with the human being asking it, learned from his perspective, understood his world view and thanked him for his input. She would have made a much more positive impression on the entire crew AND handled like a BOSS leader.

A few things to remember when you’re the leader and up there in front of the angry mob:

• Words can’t hurt you so decide ahead of time to not take them personally. (This right here is ninja-level self-care)
• Words are information you can use to build understanding and connection. Listen to the words being used and ask for more context if you need to understand where they are coming from (tell me more about that).
• Anger and frustration lose steam when given a vent so don’t be afraid to give it some breathing room: “Wow this really hit a nerve. Steve, tell me more about this. What do I need to hear?”
• Sometimes questions are asked not to be answered but to invite exploration; as a request to be heard, seen, understood, regarded. Look for and leverage those opportunities.
• Thoughtful, genuine questions build connection and understanding: Tell me more. How does that impact you? What could work instead? What is the result if we can’t change it?
• Don’t feel you have to answer everything on the spot. Just say thank you or thank you and we’ll take this under advisement.
• No one should tolerate being bullied. If you are being mistreated, set and communicate your boundaries: “I understand you are angry and frustrated and we can discuss this with professionalism and mutual respect.”

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