Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations Into Breakthroughs

Leaders, managers, and mentors are charged with getting people to stretch their limits, but they avoid doing it because of the potential for tension and conflict - and besides, they don’t know if it’ll result in any lasting change anyway. Top executive coach Marcia Reynolds here offers a technique that enables readers to take their people through “the discomfort zone” with minimal pain and maximum gain.

We can’t see our own blind spots (hence the name), so the role of the leader is crucial. Reynolds explains how to pick the right time and place to enter the discomfort zone and how to create a “safety bubble” so that people will trust your intentions. Then, drawing on discoveries in neuroscience about how people learn, she shows how to ask the kinds of questions that will short-circuit the brain’s defensive mechanisms and habitual thought patterns and help listeners see clearly where they’re falling short and how they can do better. She includes a plethora of actual examples from her coaching practice.

Reynolds can’t make the discomfort zone into a cake walk - leaders still need the courage to enter it. But she offers a path through it that will result in helping others to achieve lasting changes and enduring success.