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Day 96 in MIT Sloan Fellows Class 2023, Strategic leadership communication 3, Overcome hostile situation

MBA SFMBA Strategy communication leadership

Today, professor Lori kindly organized an additional session for our strategic leader communication.

We quickly reviewed some frameworks and remarkable past presentations by outstanding leaders.

 

However, today's deep dive was "communication against hostile audience"

Typical Cases 

  • Lay off
  • Report bad performance
  • Shut down projects/shops/companies
  • Shrink budget/team
  • Reorganize the team/project

We need to explain it in a relatively positive way if possible.

Then, we should talk about 

  • why we should do that
  • why there is no alternative/moderate resolution
  • how we should take an action after that.

Basics in front of hostile audience

  • BE CALM
  • BE NEUTRAL
  • NOT BE JUDGEMENTAL
  • STICK TO DATA AND PREPARE VERY WELL

Professor Lori also introduced the following article from BBC.

Winning over a hostile audience - BBC Worklife

 

 

Reflection

The conversation about letting your employees be fired is the hardest one. 

We talked about some tough questions.

  • Why did you not alert me?
  •  Is there space to remain? Is there anyway to improve my performance?
  • Your fact does not sound fair to me.

Also, communication tends to be culturally different between Western culture and Japanese culture.  In Japan, it would be very tough decision, so we would bring all the information, not only employees' faults but also companies' problems.

If you blame employees all the time, it would be too harsh message for a person who lose the job.