Last week I had the privilege of working with a global DEI team responsible for helping thousands of employees navigate tricky conversations about current events in the Middle East.
 
With a #team this large and diverse, conflict is inevitable. My work is to ensure that compassion is inevitable, too.
 
While we spent time exploring what makes any difficult world event tough to discuss – it’s personal, provocative, painful, polarizing and political — we also prepared these professionals to open these conversations effectively and respectfully at work. The feedback from the training highlighted a few immediately applicable successes so I thought I’d share two quick and direct ways that you might also get these potentially awkward conversations started:

"One commitment I’ve made is to talk to everyone on the team about how they’re feeling and coping with the news these days. Would you like to schedule a time for us to talk?”

“Would you like to chat about what’s going on? And you can absolutely say no.”
These simple openings acknowledge the potentially awkward nature of the conversation and leave an open door for someone to say “yes”, “no”, or “maybe later”.

And remember that letting someone opt in is more respectful than expecting them to opt out. If you’d like to go deeper into managing stressful interactions when everything feels heavy and divisive check out, How to Stay Positive When Everything Feels Negative.