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Crucial Confrontations: Bridging the Gap between Performance and Expectation

By Kerry Patterson and Eric Patten

After two years, they realized how wrong they were: the new unit hadn’t produced a single product.

Our team’s job was to find out why.

We began our interviews with employees and received revealing responses like this:

“The problem is that I’m still doing work left over from my old position. I have two bosses: my current boss and the boss I had two years ago. I have to work twice as hard for twice as many people and I’m still making the same pay. It’s not worth it.”

And another:

“The real problem is that management keeps changing direction on us. They tell us one thing, and then someone else is brought in and they change it the next month. There’s no leadership.”

Other key phrases we heard were: “lack of accountability,” “lack of vision,” “no clear roadmap,” “shifting priorities,” and “we can’t meet a deadline because…”

However, according to everyone we talked to, work was getting done. An old saying from Senegal may sum up the situation best: "Ten digging, ten filling—lots of dust, no hole."

Subordinates were blaming management and management was blaming subordinates.

But the real trouble ran deeper than that. Changes called for new behavior. People had to do things they hadn’t done before and someone else needed to make sure that they did it. Unfortunately, everyone—from top management to lowliest subordinate—routinely broke promises, breeched agreements, and violated expectations.

The crucial confrontations that should have happened—about missed deadlines, face-to-face discussions about not “walking the talk,” and dialogues about not following the vision—were absent. Accountability was non-existent.

As consultants, we routinely see that crucial confrontations are at the heart of every consulting job or change project. Once an organization creates a vision of how things should be, it’s essential that leaders not only share the vision, but then follow up and hold others accountable for living it.

The reason that vision and accountability should be inseparable is fairly obvious. With each new view of how the company will function comes a whole host of new behaviors employees will be expected to enact. For instance, with a new “team” project, people who used to behave independently are now expected to collaborate. Individuals who used to withhold their opinions in order to avoid being seen as naïve or perhaps contrary are now expected to share their differing views in order to maximize input.

But what if employees are not really sure if they should be the first to live the new vision? Maybe they should let someone else take the risk. So they don’t exactly collaborate or share ideas—or whatever it is you’re asking them to do. This is your moment of truth. If you don’t hold the people who violate the vision accountable, if you don’t rectify the problem on the spot, not only will you eventually fail to bring your vision to reality, but you’ll undermine all future change projects. You’ve lost credibility. You’ve become another flavor of the month.

How do you avoid this common pitfall? In preparation for any and all consulting projects you might want to spend as much time teaching accountability as you do creating a new vision. First, teach leaders how to talk about violated expectations and broken promises. Second, teach skills on how to hold people accountable in a way that solves problems and builds on the relationship. These important steps prepare leaders for what they’re sure to face as they set new expectations.

Once you’ve poured the foundation of accountability, you can then work on the rest of the change effort. But take note: starting with accountability takes a great deal of discipline. It’s a lot more fun to brainstorm plans and create a new worldview than it is to sit down with someone who has broken a promise. But you have to be able to do so if you expect people to change. People are going to resist, they are going to take a wait-and-see attitude, and you’re going to have to know how to hold them accountable.

Here are a few of the elements it takes to enhance leaders’ accountability skills:

1. Talk about the right things. Before you begin a crucial confrontation, think “CPR” (Content, Pattern, Relationship).

Our natural inclination during a crucial confrontation is to talk content—what just happened. For example, if a coworker misses a deadline, you might ask why he or she missed the deadline. But what if your coworker continues to miss deadlines? If it’s the second or third offense, you should change the topic.

Instead of talking content again (“why did you miss the deadline?”), talk pattern (“It’s not just this one instance of missing a deadline that has me concerned. This is the third time you’ve missed the deadline. It’s the trend of missing deadlines that I’d like to talk about.”).

If the infractions continue, talk relationship (“Could we talk about our working relationship for a moment? For some reason you have continued to miss your deadlines. I’m beginning to feel like I can’t rely on you anymore and that I need to start tracking you—and I don’t want to work like this. I’m curious, what role do you see me playing here?”)

2. Make it motivating. If the other person is able to do what’s been asked, but has chosen not to, don’t start with power. Using discipline and other tactics is one of the worst ways to motivate. At some point, it may be necessary to fall back on power; just don’t start with it.

Instead, start by making the invisible visible. Talk about natural consequences that the other person cares about, both good and bad. What is the effect of the behavior on other employees, customers, or shareowners?

3. Make it easy. Not all problems are due to motivation; sometimes the problem is one of ability. Maybe our expectations aren’t realistic. Maybe we haven’t provided the person with the right tools. Maybe the person is constrained because of bureaucracy. Whatever the constraints, we need to discover them and make changes. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the person to meet expectations.

This, of course, is just a sample of what it takes to enhance accountability. The good news is that these and the other skills routinely demonstrated by top performers can be learned. They also provide a wonderful starting place for virtually every consulting project or change intervention.

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Kerry Patterson coauthored the New York Times bestsellers Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, consultant, and chief development officer of VitalSmarts. Patterson has designed and implemented major corporate change initiatives for the past twenty-five years. Find out more at www.vitalsmarts.com.

Eric Patten is a senior consultant for VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance. At VitalSmarts he is developing a series of products to enhance Crucial Conversations Training, a powerful tool for improving organizational effectiveness, building teams, and enriching relationships.