You are four minutes in and you can tell they are already gone.
The nodding got faster. The answers got shorter. Somewhere around your second sentence they stopped hearing you, and now you are talking to a face.
What most managers do.
They push harder. More detail, more context, a third example, the same point said slower. Or they speed up and get to the end so the whole thing can be over. Both are the same mistake: continuing a conversation that stopped being a conversation several minutes ago.
A director at an insurance company in Mississauga told me she once spent eleven minutes explaining a performance concern to someone who had checked out in the first ninety seconds. She knew it was happening. She kept going anyway, because stopping felt like admitting the meeting had failed. He agreed to everything. Nothing changed. She had to run the whole conversation again three weeks later.
What actually works.
Stop the content. Not the meeting -- the content. You cannot fix this by saying your point better.
Then try something close to this: "I want to check something. I have been talking for a few minutes and I am not sure it is landing the way I meant it. What are you hearing?"
Then be quiet. Whatever they say next is the real conversation.
Three things to hold onto while they answer:
Do not correct their version. Even if it is unfair. Especially if it is unfair.
Do not explain what you really meant. You will get there. Not yet.
Ask one more question before you say anything else. "What else?" works.
When you start again, start from their version of events, not yours. Theirs is the only one they are in the room with.
Losing someone mid-conversation is not a failure. Not noticing is. And noticing it out loud, in front of them, does more for trust than any careful phrasing you had prepared.
P.S. -- What is your tell that someone has stopped listening? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
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Troy Treleaven | Hard Conversations
Dale Carnegie | Lead with Impact Program
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