TIPS ON CONFRONTING PEERS AND OTHERS

• Have your facts straight.
• Consider the questions of having to reveal where you received your information. Confidentiality’s may be at stake.
• Be gentle, but direct. You may spend much time in this conversation, so don’t waste any by trying to sugar-coat the issue.
• Expect some defensiveness, maybe even after the confrontation.
• Do it without an audience.
• Don’t check with everyone else before you offer your criticism. Speak for yourself.
• Be prepared to discuss criticisms that may be directed back at you.
• Divorce yourself from any anger, remember the big goal is to help this person’s performance and improve your working relationship.
• Have some sort of solutions in mind to the problem you are confronting.
• Commit to listening. You are not there to just speak your peace and leave.

TIPS ON BEING CONFRONTED

• Be approachable. The more walls you throw up, the less likely you are to get help tearing them down.
• Listen. Even if the criticism is way off target, you will know how you are being perceived and where the perceptions are coming from.
• Don’t respond by just hitting back. It probably took a certain amount of courage and trust for that person to come to you with their concern.
• Here’s the tricky one: do offer this person any perceptions you have about the role they may have played in the problem.
• Ask this person for ideas on how to improve things.
• Don’t automatically internalize everything the person says. Evaluate their criticisms — they may be well intentioned, but dead wrong.
• Keep the conversation private, unless you both agree to share things with others.
• Listen for things you’ve been told before — these are clearly areas for improvement.
• Stay focused on the issue at hand and don’t dredge up old conflicts. You’ll only extend the barriers between you and this person.
• Ultimately remember that some conflicts is borne of sheer stylistic difference. Make sure the confronter isn’t just trying to make you more like himself.