How to Use Your Values to Shape Crucial Conversations
What to Say When You Don’t Know How to Say It—And Still Want to Be Kind
Sometimes the most respectful thing we can do is speak the truth with care, clarity, and compassion.
How to Use Your Values to Shape Crucial Conversations
What to Say When You Don’t Know How to Say It—And Still Want to Be Kind
Crucial conversations are where values matter most and where they're easiest to abandon.
The challenge is to offer suggestions and advice that will help the person improve while not making them feel undervalued. You don't want your feedback to undermine their self-confidence or self-worth.
We can say we value integrity, respect, or courage. But, it's quite another matter to demonstrate those values when we're giving tough feedback, describing our hurt and discomfort, confronting poor performance, or mending unsatisfactory relationships.
These moments in crucial conversations reveal who we truly are, not our written or imagined values.
They're also opportunities to build trust, align our actions with our stated beliefs, and shape the culture around us, whether at work or at home.
No script exists that you can apply in every situation. Still, these recommendations will help you develop approaches that are rooted in the values you want to live and demonstrate.
Use them as guidelines to demonstrate your values and help you shape all of your crucial or difficult conversations.
Today, we offer two examples: one from work specifically and the other from interpersonal relationships in general, where values can guide us through difficult conversations with integrity.
More examples will follow as we continue to talk about living our values in complex and challenging situations in subsequent issues of ValuesCrafting.
At Work
Giving Difficult Feedback with Respect and Clarity
You learn that a manager, who is otherwise a good performer, has a habit of talking with employees about the business of other employees.
This is unacceptable behavior and is causing the employees to distrust him, as they are unable to confide in him with the confidence the relationship requires.
If you're human, your first reaction might be to fire the manager because he should know better than this, but you'd first like to understand what's happening so that he's breaching trust.
This is where your values of empathy, care, and understanding kick in.
When we meet, you clearly state the behavior that is causing employee consternation.
You find out the manager thought his sharing was helping team members get to know each other better.
He thought he was helping team members cut each other some slack by better understanding their teammates' experiences.
Without emotion, you respond with a description of what his behavior is actually causing the employees to experience.
You allow for interaction and questions.
You tell him that now that he understands the real impact of his actions on the employees, he will need to rebuild their trust in him and continue to build the relationships he needs to succeed.
You express confidence that now that he understands the problem, you don't anticipate it will happen again.
A General Approach to Difficult Feedback
You need to address the employee's performance without damaging trust.
The goal is to provide constructive feedback with respect and clarity to help the person grow as a contributor and team member.
You demonstrate respect when you approach the situation with respect and kindness.
You say, "I know this isn't easy to hear, and I want you to succeed. Can we talk through what's not working and what could help?"
Respect doesn't mean avoiding hard truths; it means acknowledging them and dealing with them.
It means delivering them in a way that preserves the other person's dignity and leaves room for growth.
At Home or in Personal Relationships
Telling a Friend Their Behavior Hurt You
You've been close friends for years. You've helped each other through illnesses, celebrated milestones, dissected relationships and their meaning, and laughed uproariously together.
But lately, something in the relationship has shifted.
Each time you try to share something that matters, a fear, a dream, or even a memory, your friend cuts in with a joke, changes the subject, or offers unsolicited advice.
You start to feel that sharing your inner life has become unwelcome—and you don't understand what changed.
At first, you brush it off. Your friend is busy and distracted. They're stressed. They mean well. But after one dinner where you barely got a word in, you leave feeling silenced once again.
That night, you decide to say something. Not because you're angry. But because the friendship has meant too much in the past to pretend that everything is the same as before.
You send a short text:
"Hey, can we talk for a few minutes this week? Something's been on my mind."
When you speak, you keep your voice steady but warm. You maintain comfortable eye contact and lean in your friend's direction.
"I care about you and our friendship, and that's why I need to say this. Lately, when I try to share something important, I feel dismissed. I don't think you mean to shut me down, but it's made me hesitant to open up."
You don't accuse. You don't unravel the entire history. You name what you perceive is happening clearly, kindly, and to preserve trust rather than withdraw it.
You might add a simple question such as, "Are you experiencing this, too?" Or, "Has something changed in our relationship that I may not realize?"
You want to avoid playing mind games or making assumptions about what your friend is going to say or about what is going on. Just listen with an open mind and heart.
Try to avoid "youing" them or putting them on the spot and lead the conversation from a point of exploration.
In that case, your friend may feel comfortable sharing what is going on from their perspective. Or, they may not. They may even deny anything has changed.
Regardless, you have opened the door to examine and improve the situation. Based on your friend's answers and the discussion, you can choose your course.
A General Approach to Difficult Conversations in Relationships
Sometimes, naming the problem or describing the situation is the most important and caring thing you can do.
This requires honesty, kindness, and a willingness to tell the truth without placing blame or finding fault.
When you act with integrity for a transparent purpose, your positive intention generally shines through in a discussion.
You might say:
"I value our friendship a lot, which is why I want to talk about how I'm feeling. I've been feeling disregarded lately when I talk about things that matter. I know that might be hard to hear, and I'm sharing this because I believe that our friendship is important."
The conversation may not be perfect. It may be awkward. However, you've shown up with care and commitment to making the relationship work, and you've invited the other person to do the same.
A Closing Thought
You don't need to find the perfect words or the ideal approach.
You just need to describe what you are experiencing without placing blame, confronting, or making assumptions about the other person's intentions or actions.
This is where you start to restore.
When you have a clear sense of what matters most to you, your values won't always make crucial conversations easy, but they can make them meaningful.
We will include more examples of living your values in future editions of ValuesCrafting.
For now, please reflect on this.
What conversation are you avoiding? What value could help you begin it?
If you'd like to share, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Reflection and Resources
A Thoughtful Voice on Aging, Meaning, and Options for Senior Living
If you're looking for a grounded, thoughtful voice on the experience of aging and the quiet truths that come from a life well-observed, I recommend Dean Solden's Baby Boomer Blog. He offers a guide to senior living.
His recent post, "The Advantages of Being Older," is a reflection on what we know after decades of living and the peace that can come from having that understanding.
Dean reminds us that life's meaning often emerges from simple tasks, such as pruning trees, choosing the right word at the right moment, and cooking eggs perfectly. After looking it over, please consider subscribing.