WMBA 6010 Week 4 Difficult Conversation Plan Example

Two Missed Handoffs to Manila and a Remark in the Team Channel: A Plan for One Hard Conversation With a Project Manager, Including the First Sentence and the Twenty Minutes After It Goes Wrong

Student Name

Walden University

WMBA 6010: Managing People and Promoting Collaboration

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Two Missed Handoffs to Manila and a Remark in the Team Channel: A Plan for One Hard Conversation With a Project Manager, Including the First Sentence and the Twenty Minutes After It Goes Wrong

The Situation

P. L. is one of my seven project managers at Larkspur, the fictional translation agency in this course's case. He joined eighteen months ago, and his first year was strong. In the past six weeks three problems have appeared. Twice he sent translated files to the desktop publishing team in Manila after the agreed handoff time, which pushed their work into a weekend and delayed two client deliveries by a day each. He has missed or arrived late to four of the last six early-morning calls with the Lisbon linguists. And last Tuesday, after Manila flagged a layout question, he wrote in the team channel that "Manila finds a problem with everything," a remark that the Manila lead, T. B., raised with me privately.

I have not yet spoken to P. L. about any of this beyond a passing comment after the first late handoff. The conversation is now overdue, and waiting longer would let him reasonably say that no one told him there was a problem.

Purpose of the Meeting

The meeting has one goal: agreement on what will be different from next week, specifically handoffs on time, attendance at the morning calls and how he raises frustrations with other sites. It is not a disciplinary meeting, and I will not threaten consequences in this first conversation. It is also not an inquiry into his character. Whetten and Cameron (2020) describe supportive communication as problem-oriented rather than person-oriented and descriptive rather than evaluative, and those two rules shape almost every line of the plan.

Stone et al. (2010) argue that every difficult conversation is really three: a conversation about what happened, a conversation about feelings and a conversation about identity, what the exchange says about who each person is. I expect P. L.'s strongest reaction to be in the third, since he sees himself as one of the team's reliable people.

The Plan

Table 1

Conversation Plan in Five Parts

The meeting is scheduled for thirty minutes, in a private room, early in the week.

The opening sentence matters most. It tells him the subject immediately, because a long warm-up makes people anxious and then feel tricked. It also frames the goal as a plan, not a verdict.

The evidence part is short and factual. I will describe the handoff times, the call attendance and the exact words of the channel message, without adjectives. In the meta-analysis by Kluger and DeNisi (1996), about a third of feedback efforts left performance lower than before, chiefly those that made people think about themselves rather than about what they were doing. "You've become unreliable" points at the person; "the files for the two September projects reached Manila after 5 p.m. their time" points at the task.

The third part is where the conversation may change. P. L. may have a reason I do not know about, such as a family situation, a client making late source changes or confusion about the new handoff time after daylight saving changed in Europe. If he does, the plan adjusts. My job is to ask and then to listen long enough that he finishes.

The Reaction I Expect

Based on how he has responded to smaller comments, I expect P. L. to explain the problems by pointing to causes outside his control: the scheduling tool assigns him more projects than others, the morning calls are at 7 a.m. his time, and Manila does raise many questions. Some of this may be true. The risk is that the conversation becomes a debate about whether each problem was his fault.

I will not argue each point. Stone et al. (2010) suggest shifting from blame, which looks backward, to contribution, what each person did that helped produce the outcome. I can acknowledge my own contribution: I did not raise the first late handoff properly, and I have not reviewed his project load since the scheduling tool came in. Saying so makes it easier for him to acknowledge his.

The channel remark needs separate handling. It was public, it was about colleagues and it was raised with me by the person it described. I will say plainly that whatever the frustration, criticism of another site goes to me or to the site lead, not to the shared channel, and I will ask him to talk to T. B. directly.

The Twenty Minutes After It Goes Wrong

The conversation could turn badly in two ways. P. L. could become angry, raising his voice or saying that he is being singled out. Or he could withdraw, agreeing to everything in a flat voice and offering nothing.

If he becomes angry, I will not match it or defend myself point by point. I will name what I see, say that I can tell this feels unfair, and ask what part feels most unfair. If the conversation cannot continue productively, I will end it for the day, saying that we will continue tomorrow at a set time and that I will send him the three facts in writing tonight so he can respond to them. Ending a meeting is not a failure; continuing one that has become a fight is.

If he withdraws, his agreement means little. I will ask him to propose the first commitment himself and to tell me what would make it hard to keep. If he still offers nothing, I will say that I would rather hear disagreement now than discover it in two weeks, and schedule a short follow-up for the next day.

In either case, within an hour of the meeting I will email him a short record of what was said and agreed, send it to him and invite corrections. The summary protects both of us and makes the commitments concrete.

What Success Looks Like

Success is not his agreement in the room. It is handoffs to Manila on time for the next four weeks, attendance at the morning calls and no further remarks about other sites in the shared channel. If the problems continue after two weeks, the next conversation will be more formal. If they stop, I will tell him so, since a manager who raises only problems teaches people to dread the meeting invitation.

References

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254-284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.254

Stone, D., Patton, B., & Heen, S. (2010). Difficult conversations: How to discuss what matters most (2nd ed.). Penguin Books.

Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S. (2020). Developing management skills (10th ed.). Pearson.