Confronting Reality using “Emotional Risk Management”

Charles Green’s Trust Matters blog (here) is another HR World Top 100 blog – he focuses on the important of trust in professional relationships (with an emphasis on professional services). 

Here he highlights a simple formula for gaining trust — Name it and Claim it — in challenging situations.  In particular, when you’ve found that there is:

…an elephant in the room. The thing that everyone knows is true, but no one wants to talk about….  But if you can Name It—that is, speak the elephant in the room—then you can Claim It—you can recover control.

The essence of Name It/Claim it is that you put as many caveats as you need to slightly overcompensate (no whingeing and cringing) for what you’re going to say, then say it.  I especially like the sales example:

Before we go too much further in the conversation, I’d like to make sure neither of us gets embarrassed by it turning out that price is either way above or way below what the other person thought, so—I’m thinking this is a low 7 digit number. Is that wildly in the same ballpark you were thinking?”

The whole post is worth reading, for it points out the many advantages of quickly getting the bad or difficult new out on the table.  As I’ve heard goes: Bad news ain’t Bordeaux; it does not get better with age.

Hat tip: Graham’s Knowledge Matter’s blog (here).