Have The Hard Conversation

 How much do high performers out-produce low performers? 

The bottom 20% of any populations takes up 80% of the time of the people in positions of responsibility. 

These inequities and performance gaps can and should be reduced, but they’ll be reduced only when leaders and coworkers learn how to step up and hold people accountable. 

What happens when couples are unable to work through their differences in healthy ways? The cost is obvious. When couples know how to resolve tough problems, how to step up to a crucial confrontation and hold it well, they’re likely to stay together. Couples who rely on contemptuous facial expressions, hostile stares, and thinly veiled threats don’t stay together. 

Psychologist John Gotten videotaped 700 couples as they did their best to work through typical problems. Trained observers then judged what they saw. Couples who were able to talk in a way that maintained respect and solved the problem were placed in one camp. Couples who relied on negative methods were placed in another. As the researchers followed the couples for several decades, the way the couples treated each other during the videotaped conversations predicted who would stay together 94% of the time. Couples who had demonstrated the ability to work through differences by stating their views honestly and respectfully stayed together. 

If you can’t confront violated expectations effectively, you eventually will experience massive personal, social, and organizational consequences. However, if you learn how to hold people accountable in a way that solves problems without causing new ones, you can look forward to significant and lasting change.