People often experience angst about difficult conversations because they don’t know how to begin them. I think it’s important to have an opening line — or an opening question — that gets the conversation started, making it easier to improvise from there depending on how the discussion proceeds.
It’s good to have a go-to line to raise issues in meetings as well — something that you can fall back on as your automatic default that will kick in when emotion tends to cloud your thinking otherwise. Examples could include: “Could you please help me understand…” or “Could you say more about…”
Brené Brown refers to challenging conversations as “rumbles” and provides a list of rumble starters (see p. 27) that can also expand your repertoire of opening lines. Two of my favorites include: “Tell me more.” and “Walk me through.”
Like with everything else, getting started is the hard part. Instead of fretting over your lack of an entire script, just practice your first words and allow things to flow from there.
great advice, thanks!