Situation: A CEO has a challenge. While a key employee does excellent work and has fresh, new ideas, he can be overly protective of these and how they are implemented. The result is that conversations often become combative. How can the CEO better lay out alternatives and improve these conversations? How do you improve communication with a key employee?

Advice from the CEOs:

• Have a conversation with the employee about communication and competitiveness.
  • Be honest. Acknowledge your own combativeness during previous conversations. Discuss and develop alternatives to avert this in the future.
  • If future communications take the same turn toward combativeness, be conscious. Admit what’s happening and shift the tone. Keep the conversation civil.
• When this employee offers an idea, listen and repeat the idea first to confirm that that was said was understood.
  • Ask questions to clarify specifics of the idea prior to offering a different perspective.
  • When offering an alternative, ask for the employee’s thoughts on that perspective and whether this would complement or conflict with his idea.
  • The objective of the conversation is to develop alternatives which will benefit the company and its operation. Keep the focus on this.
• Take some time and sketch out your own thought process before responding to his proposal. Ask for some time to consider this, if necessary.
  • Repeat his words and objective as you heard it and ask whether you heard correctly.
  • Identify any challenge that may arise implementing his suggestion, and ask whether he sees the same challenge. Could his suggestion be tweaked to avoid this challenge.
  • Present another alternative only after the previous steps, and ask what the employee thinks about this alternative. Work together to design and decide on the appropriate solution. Assure that he receives credit for his idea.

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