How to lead through high-stakes situations

Are you stuck in high-stakes conversations?

High-stakes situations and conversations include any time the stress levels go up for you because of the topic on the table or the conversational dynamic. Maybe you and your team feel like you’re butting heads and aren’t making headway. Perhaps there’s an underlying sense that the really important topics aren’t getting addressed. Sometimes, the leading indicator of high stakes is non-responsiveness.

Especially when change is coming at us fast, we can find ourselves practically living in the zone of high stakes. When our organization is experiencing growth or layoffs, when major deadlines loom, or when we depend on rapidfire ideas and solutions to propel us forward. 

But here’s the thing: if you find yourself in high stakes on a regular basis, you’re at risk for showing up as a less-than-deal version of yourself as a leader — and you’re not going to help you or your team get out of high stakes any time soon. 

Behavior change in high stakes: the achilles heel of effective leadership

Do you ever feel like you become someone else when the temperature rises in a meeting? Maybe you shut down. Maybe you yell. Maybe you decide to just tell people what you expect them to do and end the conversation abruptly. 

Well, you’re not alone. According to the research of David Kantor, who developed the theory of face-to-face communication known as Structural Dynamics, our behavior actually changes when the stakes rise. And when the stakes rise for us as leaders, we can leave a damaging wake in our path. We are often reactive, and we usually say things or feel things through the lens of moral judgment — the deep-seeded desire to “be right” and make others “wrong.” It is not unusual in high-stakes situations to punish those who disagree with us. 

As leaders, the choices and decisions we make in these moments have deep implications for individuals and for the organization as a whole. When other perspectives are left unheard or shut down, we are not only missing critical opportunities to learn and think with the collective intelligence around us, we are likely to establish counter-productive patterns in which people stifle their ideas. This is when conversations become less productive.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Well, it is what is. We have to keep going, and it’s my job to make decisions and absorb the pressure.” However, this is a fatal flaw in leadership thinking. It ensures that you and your team will stay in high-stakes mode, and it decreases the potential for getting the results you want.

You do not have to be the “lone hero” in your organization’s narrative. Just because you sit in a top seat does not mean that you have to or should be the one making solo decisions. As a matter of fact, your team members are there to be thinking partners with you — and the results will be better for it. 

As a leader, one of the most powerful things you can do to help you and your team move through difficult topics and tense conversations is to learn how to lower the stakes and access your team’s collective intelligence — no matter what comes your way.

The first 3 steps for lowering the stakes in every conversation

1. Notice when the stakes are rising — for yourself and others.
   When you find yourself in a conversation and you start to feel irritated, impatient, frustrated, or even withdrawn and disconnected, these are critical data points for you! They are often the first signs that the stakes are starting to rise. And when you’re able to catch sight of what you’re feeling, you can take action.

   First, name what’s happening quietly to yourself: “Ah, the stakes are rising for me.”

   Then, get curious. Ask, “What, specifically, am I reacting to?”

   And notice when the stakes might be rising for others, too. For some, this might be obvious through their tone of voice or pace of speaking. For others, it might be less visible and look like silence or withdrawal from the conversation. You might say to yourself, “Ah, the stakes might be rising for others here,” and then consider why that might be.

   As simple as it sounds, this in-the-moment exercise will keep you engaged meaningfully in navigating complexity as a team — rather than feeling tempted to short-circuit difficult conversations by telling people what you want them to do and cutting the meeting short.

2. Pause — Slow your roll.
   Have you ever been in such a hurry trying to clean up that you just swept some dirt under your rug instead of grabbing a dust pan? Teams do this often, they stumble upon a difficult topic, and rather than pausing and taking time to talk about it, they ignore it. They just keep moving — often because they are driven by deadlines or other pressures.

   If it happens one time, not a big deal. But when it becomes a habit, the undiscussable topics become so large that you trip on the rug every time you enter the room. The pile of undiscussed topics becomes yet another source of high stakes in a team. And, inevitably, the topic will emerge and it will feel like the biggest, worst version of itself. After all, when things fester, we have time to ruminate, recriminate, and lock and load for battle.

   So, when we’re feeling irritated, frustrated, demoralized, or any of the other symptoms that indicate high stakes for us, we need to find a way to slow the conversation down to help change the nature of what’s happening.

   It might sound like this: “I’m noticing we just moved really quickly past that last topic, and it feels like a very important subject. My sense is that there might be different points of view here. Who would like to share first?”

   High-stakes conversations often have some spicy heat to them. The key to remember is that going faster, skipping over the subject, avoiding difficult dynamics, or walking away simply prolong the source of the high stakes and make it worse in the long run.

3. Inquire — Ask what’s happening
   When the stakes are high, what’s needed is more authenticity and inquiry in the conversation. Letting people know that the stakes are rising for you is helpful data for the whole group. And inquiring about what’s happening for others can be the pressure release valve that someone else needs in order to say what they are really thinking — instead of what they think is expected of them.

   To effectively ask what’s happening in a way that leads to richer and more productive conversations, the key is to locate empathy — both for yourself and for the other people in the room. Then you can look for ways to lower the stakes by bringing inquiry into the conversation.

   Pause and ask what’s happening for others in the conversation. Then really listen to what the other person(s) has to say, without interruption. Share what’s happening for you. Practice slowing down the conversation, and invite further engagement.

   It might sound something like this: “I’m starting to feel like we’re making this decision without considering all the impacts it could have. I’m noticing that the more we talk, the more anxious I become — and that’s not going to be helpful to us moving forward. Let’s slow down. What are others thinking? What options and solutions are available to us?”

Embracing opposition

One of the common ways for the stakes to rise for us is when we experience opposition — someone directly pushing back or offering a different point of view to our own ideas. 

Counter-intuitively, however, one of the best ways we can lower the stakes is by inviting opposition and learning to embrace it as a leading indicator that your team is willing and able to share valuable perspectives even when their viewpoint does not align with your own. 

As a senior leader in the organization, you will bring a certain amount of positional power into every conversation. The greatest danger in this is that people may be wary of sharing a perspective that is clearly different from yours — or even in direct opposition to it. 

It’s your job to welcome and invite different points of view without punishing people for speaking them. And this requires building the skills of communicative competence in your team. Team members need the experience of having real and honest conversations, over and over again, in order to build the confidence that they can share their perspectives and navigate differences, together, no matter the subject. 

Learn to be comfortable with — and even welcome — opposing viewpoints in group settings. Don’t ask people to share with you one-on-one. Don’t give someone the cold shoulder the day after they voiced opposition. Don’t ignore their email to you the next morning. These actions send the signal that it’s not safe to speak up. 

In the end, the key to leading through high stakes is learning to lower the stakes for yourself when opposition or difficulty sneak in the door. This is how you stay in the conversation, help others through it, and create the space for collective intelligence to thrive.

Written by Marsha Acker.
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