You can encounter any number of tough conversations throughout the day in your professional and personal life. We all approach those interactions differently and often bring our own baggage into the exchange. It’s not intentional it just comes with the territory when you encounter real emotions from a real human being.

Or as I often think about it -when you see the real humanness in someone.

It’s something I think about every single time I walk into a locker room after a loss. I’m an NFL sideline reporter and I’ve worked in professional locker rooms for more than 20 years. It’s my job to get interviews after every single game win or lose which means some weeks I have up to six tough conversations in a 30-minute time frame immediately after a loss. 

There is a lot of emotion surrounding 53 pissed off, frustrated, disappointed and exhausted men.

None of them really want to see me walking toward them with a microphone. All of them understand...

I talk to losers.

It is literally part of my job.

When people find out I work in sports broadcasting they automatically jump to the cool parts of the job like being on the field and talking to players after a win. But that’s only part of my job. I talk to players and coaches win or lose. I talk to players after making spectacular plays and after they dropped a pass that could have been the game-winning touchdown.

Not all interviews are fun. Not all interviews are easy. Sometimes those conversations are tough and ones that I would rather not have, but as I mentioned it’s part of my job.

It’s also part of your job to have tough conversations and address mistakes, errors and shortcomings. I know you want to avoid them. I also know it’s better if you don’t. As someone who’s forced to have these conversations on a weekly (if not daily) basis here’s what I know to be true: Being direct and straightforward is the kindest and often easiest way to...

It sounds like a good idea, but telling your team to over-communicate with you or each other isn't helping.   

Asking your team to over-communicate might lead to more emails, conversations, Slack messages or group texts, but none of that matters if they're not communicating the right things. If you're not on the same page it's a waste of time. People who spend time trying to "over-communicate" the wrong message aren't being productive. Of course, they don't realize that until the message doesn't get a response (or the response they were hoping for) at which point they wonder why they wasted their time, and get frustrated and upset. 

Your team needs clear instructions on how to best communicate with you as their manager or leader. 

That means you need to spend time thinking about:

The information you really need. Do you want specific sales numbers or confirmation sales are you? The important information might be obvious to you, but your team doesn't see...

As we think about connecting in real life again, resuming networking habits, or maybe refining that podcast you started in the last year. Remember this: Curiosity doesn’t replace preparation.

Curiosity alone doesn’t lead to a great conversation or even a productive one if you didn’t take the time to get curious before the conversation started.

Spend a few minutes to consider things like:

How do you know this person? Are you familiar with them or do you need to do a little research?

What’s happened in the time since last talking to them? Think about what could have happened in their industry, with their job or in the world in general so you can bring empathy, understanding and perspective to the conversation.

What are you hoping to get out of the conversation? Identify the objective before you start talking so you know where the conversation needs to go.

What needs to happen for it to be a successful conversation? Drill down and get a little more specific on...

"How are you?" 

In "normal" times it's the appropriate thing to say when starting a conversation and part of the script we follow by default. 

These days, that question is asked with sincerity and best intentions, but I'm willing to wager the answers fall short of expectations. 

If you really want people to open up, share their story and reveal personal details you have to ask a more focused question. 

"How are you?" is the equivalent of me, a sports broadcaster, striking up a conversation with a player by saying, "Tell me about the game." I fully expect the athlete to look at me, shrug and then say, "What part of the game do you want me to tell you about? The beginning, the middle, the end, the role I played, the effort of my teammates, the adjustments we made because of the opponent?"

(If he or she doesn't do that, they're being far too polite, because that is a terribly unprepared way for a reporter to start a conversation with an athlete.)

Open-ended...

More isn’t better. Longer conversations don’t lead to better communication. Additional information doesn’t lead to better understanding.

Unnecessary details in a conversation can just as easily create confusion as clarity.

I was guilty of that this week.

My editor and I met to discuss the plan for editing the 32 interviews I completed during my 10 days in Spring Training. It’s a conversation we’ve had every year for the last 10 years and something we’d been talking about for the last month. I thought we were on the same page. I expected a quick, easy conversation and was floored and frustrated when he suddenly had objections. 

I couldn’t figure out what changed and why we suddenly felt like adversaries instead of colleagues and friends who can practically read each other’s minds because we’ve worked together for so many years. 

And then I saw it. The look on his face and the stack of papers in his hand.

...

When I look into the future for 2020 I see sports. Lots of sports.

Although, I suppose that’s true for every year and every decade. Which is why every year I update this handy dandy chart of major sporting events and general sports timelines to track throughout the year.

It’s a habit I developed early in my TV career as a sports producer. I was responsible for generating nightly content and staying on top of upcoming events and having a calendar of events helps with the planning process. So, about this time every year I would literally get out my paper calendar and pencil in sports schedules I needed to follow. I’ve maintained that habit as a blogger and business owner who talks about sports.

This chart helps me track topics for the weekly Conversation Starters blog… AND it helps me plan follow up emails and conversations with sports-loving clients and people in my network. 

There are lots of reasons I use sports conversations in business, here are the...