How to manage a colleague who annoys you
You know when you have conviction on a deal and a colleague gets in your way asking a thousand questions?
You get annoyed and go into turbo "argue rational facts" mode attempting to move them off their worry about a fairly irrelevant scenario.
You're wasting your time.
Here's what to do instead: "LAVA"
1. LISTEN to their concern without interrupting or coming over the top.
2. ACKNOWLEDGE their point of view. "I hear you're concerned about XYZ" without any judgment/sarcasm.
3. VALIDATE their concern. "I hear you. It's understandable you'd be thinking about this."
4. ASK open-ended questions "How would you like to explore this? What more do you want to know?"
The Bust In Your Model
When you debate rational facts with someone who's emotionally aroused, you're likely to get angry yourself when they don't respond to logic that makes complete sense to you.
We are all animals at our core, hardwired to detect Threats, which spike our survival Anxiety, and then enact Defenses like Fight/Flight/(Freeze)/(Fawn).
Your anxious colleague freezes due to their anxiety of being wrong on a deal. Their objections are merely defenses to slow down funding a deal, which their survival system perceives as a potential threat to their career/survival. Their objections are not an affront to your intellect. It’s not personal!
While this is not a rational view of the threat of the potential of one bad deal, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast & Slow details how the survival brain pushes us into action in milliseconds, while it takes a few seconds for the rational/conscious/human brain to come online.
The Fix
As you reframe your colleague's resistance to your agenda as a moment of (un)conscious existential pain for them rather than a personal affront to you, you can more effectively manage your team to get what you want.
It just takes a bit of slowing down on your part -- arresting your own frustration in the moment.
Why LAVA Works: Deep Dive
To slow down the videotape here, LAVA works for the following reasons:
1. Listen. You hear the root of what's animating their survival brain.
2. Acknowledge. You say "I hear you" crying baby. Your concern is loud and clear and I'm here with you... you're not alone
3. Validate. You join their concern "Makes complete sense you'd feel that way."
4. Ask OPEN-ended questions. By empowering them by asking "what/how would you like to..." -- you give them a sense of control! Anxious people seek control... and when you surrender control to them, they calm down.
Acknowledge & Validate until you sense a physiological shift in their energy. Frantic voice -> calm voice. Tense body -> relaxed.
Don't try to move too quickly to Step 4 of asking them how'd they'd like to move forward. Until their (un)conscious screams from the survival brain have been heard and seen, they won't be in a posture to think rationally.
There is no tiger.
#privateequity #executivecoaching #directlending #empathicleadership
Inspired by Dr Laura Crawshaw, Ph.D., BCC and iPEC Coaching and Daniel Kahneman