“We need to have a hard conversation.” No one wants to hear those seven words. If you hear this statement, it often means things have gone terribly wrong in your church, family, business or athletic organization. It indicates things have declined to a very unhealthy level and changes are desperately needed.
On February 1, 2015, one of the most famous plays in NFL history took place. The Seattle Seahawks were trailing the New England Patriots by the score of 28-24 in Super Bowl XLIX. The Seahawks had the ball on the Patriots 1-yard line with :27 seconds remaining in the game. Conventional wisdom was to have quarterback Russell Wilson hand the ball to the team’s star running back Marshawn Lynch for what surely would be a game-winning touchdown.
However, head coach Pete Carroll called for a pass play. As discussed in Annie Duke’s excellent book Thinking In Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All The Facts, this was statistically not a bad call. In addition, the process for making the decision was quite sound. However, the result was horrifying. The Patriots’s Malcolm Butler intercepted Wilson’s pass at the goal line preserving the team’s victory.
As shown in the picture below with Seahawk cornerback Richard Sherman, the team became emotionally, psychologically, and relationally fractured. Trust in team leadership was in danger of surely being lost. For the team to move forward into the following season, hard conversations needed to take place and allow healing to begin. Quarterback Russell Wilson stepped up to facilitate the process.
Wilson organized a working vacation for 85 teammates and family members in Hawaii. Sensing high tension, finger-pointing and increasingly poor morale, the trip was designed for everyone to air their differences and attempt to rebuild team unity.
In the September 7, 2015 edition of Sports Illustrated, author Greg Bishop chronicled the team’s trip. As I read his account, I gleaned 15 Keys For Having Hard Conversations:
- Admit Hard Conversations Are Needed – A leader’s primary responsibility is to properly evaluate reality. Wilson intuitively knew the Seahawks needed to iron out their differences.
- Hard Conversations Best Happen Organically – Leaders are self-starters. It was the players who called this meeting, not the coaches or management.
- Hard Conversations Should Be Initiated By Leaders – All the team’s leaders were present except Earl Thomas who was rehabbing an injury. The meeting’s primary leaders were Wilson, key locker room voice wide receiver Doug Baldwin and safety Kam Chancellor. Baldwin said, “Kam was pivotal. He’s like the godfather of the locker room. Any problems, any issues, you go to him.”
- Hard Conversations Require Brutal Honesty – Nothing was off limits regarding everyone’s feelings about the team, its personnel, how decisions were made and why the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl. Therefore…
- Hard Conversations Can Be Harsh – You want an environment where everyone can get their issues off their chest. The best advice I ever received in this area was to start hard conversations by saying, “This is going to be hard for me to say and hard for you to hear.”
- Hard Conversations Need All The Relevant Parties Present – Wilson traditionally invited only quarterbacks and receivers to the annual off-season trip to Honolulu. in 2015, the entire offense and defense were invited.
- Hard Conversations Are Filled With Tension – Healthy teams wrestle with tension. They don’t run from tension, they run to the tension. Healthy teams understand tension is part of growth.
- Hard Conversations Come With A High Personal Cost – Wilson personally chartered a private plane for the 85 passengers. This was the price of doing business.
- Hard Conversations Require Everyone’s Participation – Passivity and lack of transparency are the enemies of a hard conversations. They are not one-way conversations. The team’s first meeting took over 45 minutes with everyone sharing their initial thoughts.
- Hard Meetings Increase Accountability – It forces people to take responsibility for their actions and role in team success.
- Hard Conversations Ask And Answer Hard Questions – It gets issues out into the open. Baldwin said, “There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered. And a lot that needed to be asked.”
- Hard Conversations Honor People’s Time – These conversations are a top priority. It is important enough to be properly scheduled and not randomly put together. Russell had meticulously scheduled every moment of the trip. This included morning workouts to afternoon trips to team dinners.
- Hard Conversations Build On Previous Success – Previous success provides the foundation from which to build from. Every evening the team watched motivational videos which included team highlights from their biggest wins.
- Hard Conversations Require Vulnerability – Baldwin said, “We were forced to be vulnerable. And that made us closer.”
- Hard Conversations May Still Not Work – Because of lack of buy-in, skill, or just a difference in opinion, your best intentions may still not work. Baldwin concluded, “We didn’t know if the trip was going to work. We still don’t.”
If done right, these type of conversations improve performance, solve problems, regain lost momentum, (re)build team chemistry, and ensure future success. Ironically, this hard conversation did not work. The result of Coach Carroll’s much-debated decision to have Wilson throw a pass rather than hand the ball to Lynch fractured the team’s locker room. What should have been a NFL dynasty was never the same again. I hope your hard conversation has more success.
My latest eBook is available for download. The Top 65 Leadership Quotes Of 2022 Part 1 is a resource every leader should have. Great quotes bring clarity and put into words who we intuitively feel as leaders. They give us wisdom and insights which advance the mission and vision of our organizations. This eBook includes thoughts and insights from leaders like Warren Buffett, Nick Saban, James Clear, Dawn Staley, Jurgen Klopp, Jerry Seinfeld, and even Ted Lasso. This resource will take you about 10 minutes to read but a lifetime to apply. You will want to stop and ponder the implications of each quote. Click HERE or on the image provided for immediate download!