[MUSIC]
This week's two minute challenge is one of the hardest ones,
one of the most intense ones,
that we'll use across this course.
It raises a lot of questions for you,
for your sense of yourself,
your professionalism, your professional boundaries,
your relationships with others,
and it especially raises questions because we have, all of us,
really strong feelings about what family should mean and what fathers of daughters,
or fathers of their children parents of their children.
And you are bound absolutely by
your professional obligations to keep the confidences of your patient.
And that's a conflict with the obligation you have to this child,
who is looking at death without a match.
What do you believe in that is going to
take precedent over something else you believe in?
So, I mentioned earlier like honesty and loyalty.
And there's a ton of ethics.
And in a delightful conversation with Marty Linsky a couple of years ago,
we were going through this idea
of figuring out which value you're going to use to make a decision.
And, clearly as you start to work through the decision making process,
and you realize that one decision will conflict with the value of honesty,
that same decision will not conflict with loyalty.
That same decision will conflict with justice.
Suddenly, what happens is your values start getting challenged.
And ultimately, what it led to was Marty saying that,
"You don't know what you believe in until what you
believe in comes in conflict with what you believe in."
Not very many of the conversations you
have at work will be about life or death,
like the ones we've just been discussing.
There will be many difficult conversations however,
and they will all require you to have a set of skills for
managing them constructively, professionally, effectively.
Let's hear what one of our experts has to say,
about how she thinks about difficult conversations that she encounters at work.
So, you will inevitably have hard conversations in your career,
whether it's with a client,
or with someone on your team,
or your coach, or your boss, or anyone.
I think when I have hard conversations,
I try to bounce it off first with somebody that I trust,
and somebody that I consider to be a coach,
or a mentor to me at the firm and say, here's the situation,
here's how I think I'm going to approach it and I try to get
a second opinion of how that hard conversation might go.
I might even try to practice having the conversation with that person,
and just role play with a trusted friend
or adviser to see how that situation might play out,
so that you can think of the different scenarios and really prepare.
And, I almost think that for hard conversations,
you have to prepare for it,
almost like you prepare for a meeting.
Prepare to think of the ways that it could go.
What happens if they go this way?
What happens it they go this way?
So, one of the easy ways to do that is
just to roleplay it with somebody else that you trust,
and then be as prepared as you can.
Go into the conversation and of course,
always try to have hard conversations in person when you can.
It's always hard to tell e-mail tone or even over the phone.
It's hard to judge facial expressions and body language so,
definitely try to have it in person.
This dilemma raises strong feelings and it
brings feelings from different parts of our lives into conflict.
There's personal feelings, you like the dad,
you like the child,
you're worried about the child's health,
and the child's living,
your professional obligations to keep
the confidence of your patient, your professional obligations,
and your sense of honor about not being part of deception or telling a lie,
your sense that maybe you don't understand,
or respect his position and your desire
that he should face the consequences of his own choices with his family knowing about it.
Those are all complicated strong feelings.
If you can change the nature of this problem by asking questions,
listening carefully, and help find another path out,
you'll be in a better situation,
that if you have to select among
really deep choices between your professional obligations,
and your strong personal feelings about what's right or wrong and watching a child die.
These are hard questions and you may be able to change
the nature of the dilemma by asking really good questions,
and listening carefully to the answers.
Why does the dad have such a fear of surgery?
And are there resources that could help him?
If you ask questions and try to uncover the root of his real concern,
maybe there's a way you can help him get over it,
maybe there's a resource in terms of the hospital ethics committee,
in terms of a social worker,
in terms of emotional support for him.
Maybe there are ways to help him come to terms with this,
that don't require you to have this head on clash between your feelings,
and your professional obligations.
Maybe you could suggest to him that you
and he should do the test because if he's not a match,
this whole dilemma goes away.
Asking questions, listening carefully,
might help reveal other paths that can be followed before you,
or the father face
those most serious choices. [MUSIC].
C. K. GunsalusDirector of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE), Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory
