Use visualisation to change those ‘difficult conversations’ you have at work

Why do they call boxers that want to be the best, ‘champ’? Even if they haven’t technically won any championships?

It’s because the people around them are reminding them every hour, and every day, they are the best. The champ. Positive and repetitive affirmation. Can win, will win, and will be the champ. If they started using the nickname ‘second’, would it matter? Absolutely it would.

Imagine you’re a boxer, wanting to be the best in the world and every hour, every day – and the people who you trust to help you win remind you that you are not going to. To come second. It would matter a hell of a lot.

Your team certainly wouldn’t be making champions – they’d be making OK boxers. It’s not everything that they use the name ‘champ’ but it’s something, and that something matters.

Now, let’s turn to the ‘difficult conversations’ we sometimes need to have at work. We have already called them ‘difficult’. So, what happens when we have these conversations? Yep, they turn out to be difficult. The same affirmation that boxers hear, you hear. ‘It will be difficult. It will be difficult. It will be difficult.’

It’s like programming a computer to achieve an end result. Stephen Covey, the author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, called it in the book’s Habit #2: “Begin with the end in mind.” You might also know it as visualisation, commonly used by sportspeople. Muhammad Ali used sports visualisation as he trained, seeing his opponent on the canvas. Ali imagined this over and over again until he made it true.

But here’s the rub: it works both ways. You can programme a positive outcome or a negative one. When you say ‘this will be a difficult conversation’, you are programming a negative one. So, what do we do? Change it. Use ‘challenging conversation’, maybe, though I fear the word ‘challenging’ has lost all meaning.

I favour ‘open’. Saying to yourself: ‘This will be an open conversation.’ Already, your words, your body language, your tone, and your mindset line up behind the word accordingly. Not ready for a fight, as with ‘difficult’, but ready to collaborate, and listen, while being open yourself.

So next time one of these situations comes around, reprogramme yourself. It’s not a difficult conversation, it’s an open one.