Excerpts from Crucial Confrontations by Joseph Grenny

“I have a judicial colleague who is extremely overwhelmed by his workload. Although he is offered help periodically by his judicial colleagues he always seems to find a reason why that help won’t work. He continues to complain about his workload.  I would like to be able to help him, but I am not sure how to start the conversation. What advice can you offer?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Personal Crucial Conversations @ Work: Overwhelmed and Complaining

 It seems you’ve asked yourself what you really want and determined that you’d like to help your colleague work through this problem.  Since you have taken the coaching path, I’d suggest your first conversation be about setting boundaries.  

 In this conversation, share your insights about the pattern.  He is stuck; there is a persistent and repeating problem that he can  he is address with you and  there is an opportunity to change the situation.  I suggest that after you share your insights about this pattern, ask him if he sees it the same way and then ask if the two of you could explore some solutions. You now have a clearly defined mutual purpose.

 You can now explore some options with him about how to improve his skills:

 1.      Training:  Signing up for a CLE, look at what offerings the National Judicial College or the Institute for Court Managment has  on how to multi-task and prioritize workloads.

 2.      Reassigning Workload: Perhaps there are some unidentified organizational trends increasing his workload and some of his work needs to be addressed.

 3.      Spending time practicing approaches, scripts, and responses that would help with the boss: In this situation, you are sharing specific ideas about how to start the conversation, what to say, and how to respond to your colleagues’s anticipated comments. This type of dialogue has moved from venting and gossiping to coaching.

 4.      Making a Commitment to Change:  Your colleague needs to make a specific commitment to change.  

 If we assume good motives and clarify purpose, we can do our best to have conversations that center on coaching instead of venting and, in the end, deliver results.