The best difficult conversations you ever have are the ones you don’t have to have because you and the other people trust each other and know that honest conversations – even honest, difficult conversations are about making the other person and team better.
The Trust Account
Think of trust like an account you’re either depositing into or withdrawing from, all day, every day, mostly without noticing.
Every interaction is a deposit, like showing up when you said you would, following through on a commitment when nobody’s tracking but you, keeping something confidential, or offering your help to a team member.
A difficult conversation is a withdrawal… or is it? Imagine… you are having a difficult conversation where you and the other person are sharing a tense moment, some discomfort, discussing a time when they disappointed someone else. But also, I hope you hear and share trust. Trust that you have each other’s interests in mind – even during the important conversation. If the ‘account’ has a positive balance… if trust exists… an uncomfortable conversation will still be manageable. You and I can absorb hard truths when we know our own best interest is at least part of the reason they are happening. Because we trust each other, we may even add more trust to our account because of the respect, thoughtfulness, concern and collaboration we experienced. But, if the account is empty, even a well-intended conversation is far more likely to read as an attack.
Difficult Conversations Are Far Different Than Conflict
A difficult conversation is not necessarily conflict. Conflict is what usually happens when difficult conversations are delayed or avoided.
A difficult conversation often describes the communication challenge involved in addressing something uncomfortable, consequential, or emotionally charged. Conflict, by contrast, describes the tension or opposition between people when their needs, expectations, goals, values, or interests appear to be at odds. Crucial conversations are often defined to include three conditions:
- High stakes
- Opposing opinions
- Strong emotions
In other words:
Difficult Conversation = Talking about it feels uncomfortable, risky or consequential. We may disagree.
Conflict Conversations = Our differences are creating tension, opposition or interference between us.
But please note… while it is fair to say that the distinction of difficult conversations versus conflict conversations mentioned above holds as a useful conceptual separation, it is not absolute and these two concepts can overlap.
Fear Is the Opposite of Trust
I’ve written before that the opposite of trust isn’t distrust — it’s fear. This distinction is very important in this context.
A leader with a healthy trust account can share something difficult and, if they approach it, the right way it will land as concern. A leader without a healthy trust account can raise the exact same issue and even use the exact same words, and it would almost certainly not land well and/or take a lot longer to work through. Part of what an employee’s nervous system is responding to is their expectation of your intent and if they trust you. Fear shows up when someone doesn’t have enough experience with you or evidence from you, that you are safe, honest, and trustworthy.
And here is the interesting thing. You might not even have met someone and trust them… or not met them and know that you could not – ever – trust them. Our reputations – our brand… and/or the reputation of our company may proceed us.
Trust is as much of a part of a successful difficult conversation as is your technique and skill. Scripts and frameworks will help you deliver the message. They don’t create the safety that determines how the message is received. That safety was either built in the weeks and months before… or starting today.
The Trust Tax
When there’s no foundation, everything about the conversation ‘costs’ more. Instead of hearing feedback there is greater chance someone would hear a threat to their reputation, their safety, their job, their sense of self… the list can go on. When there isn’t trust we are likely to protect ourselves and our self-image… this means we may very likely get defensive faster, listen less, and remember the conversation as something that happened to us rather than with us or for us.
This is the trust tax. It’s the extra emotional cost every hard conversation carries when it isn’t backed by a history of small, reliable, positive deposits. This is something the leader makes into your relationships.
Flawed But Authentic Beats Polished But Guarded
This is a big one so it’s worth talking about it as a section. Trying to appear perfect doesn’t build trust.
People don’t trust other people (like their leaders) because they never make mistakes. They trust leaders who stand with them, are consistent and transparent with goals, who hold themselves as accountable as they hold their team. People trust leaders who own it when they get something wrong, and who set the example to say, “I am curious, or I don’t know, or I got that wrong, here’s what I’m doing differently”. They also trust leaders who say you are terrific, you did well, what do you need, and thank you.
The guarded, image-managed version of leadership often reads as secretive, and secrecy is one of the fastest ways to drain a trust account without ever having a single difficult conversation. People don’t need their leaders to be flawless. They need to believe they are trying, in good faith, and that they’ll tell them the truth… including the truth about themselves.
But to be clear, this doesn’t mean you have to be a leader that shares every corner of your life – and there are some actions and streamlined decisions at work that you also should not share. The sweet spot is to be as open as comfortable as you can be about you personally and as open and comfortable as you should be about work. Trust starts with you.
That’s not a soft add-on to leadership. It’s one of the most reliable deposits there is.
What Deposits Actually Look Like
None of this requires grand gestures and we’ve already discussed many of them. They include:
- Being clear about expectations – yours and everyone else’s.
- Checking in with people before there’s a problem to check in about, not only after.
- Keeping people safe.
- Following through on the small things you said you’d do, especially when no one would notice if you didn’t.
- Being consistent and calm.
- Admitting when you were wrong, quickly and without a lot of self-protection wrapped around it.
- Keeping confidences, even the small ones nobody would ever find out you broke.
- Recognizing and rewarding greatness.
Collectively, these are part of an overall foundation and personal / professional brand that the difficult conversation stands on. And consistency isn’t a personality trait some leaders happen to have. It’s a practiced skill, like any other — which is good news, because it means it can be built deliberately instead of left to chance.
The Conversation Was Never the Test
The difficult conversation isn’t the moment trust gets built. It’s the moment trust gets tested — and the test was designed long before either of you sat down. If you want to be someone your team trusts with hard truths, the work isn’t in the conversation. It’s in the hundred small, unglamorous moments that happen before you ever need to have it.
That’s the piece of my philosophy I come back to most often with the leaders I coach and the audiences when I share a keynote: respect gets the conversation started, but the trust we’ve earned is what determines whether it actually goes well.
If you would like some help to build that foundation deliberately, rather than hoping it shows up when you need it most, that’s the work I do in my keynotes and workshops.
If your team could use a shared way of thinking about this – and a genuine shift in how to build trust and have difficult conversations – that’s exactly the work I do in my Difficult Conversations keynote and training workshops.
Please reach out if I can help.Contact me anytime to talk about bringing this to your team.