Responding to False Accusations

Dear Critical Skills,

One of my colleagues told me that I had not involved him in a decision I was making. I told him that I had, and that I had conveyed his views to the person concerned, just as he had asked, because he was the expert in that field.

What do you do if you feel you have been falsely accused?

Falsely Accused

Dear Accused

The situation you describe certainly qualifies as a critical conversation. The stakes are high (both the project and the business relationship are at risk), emotions are strong and both sides are looking at the issue from very different places. I would like to try to answer your question by considering several options.

OPTION 1 - PRIORITIZE THE EVENT.

Your first option is to create enough Common Purpose and Mutual Respect to create a safe environment and discuss the matter. I refer to this misunderstanding as an "incident" because it seems to be a one-off. The basic problem is that you differ in your opinions about what happened. You see the same event in so many different ways that you come to different conclusions and different feelings.

In teams and relationships (or even organizations) where trust is low or processes require many steps and many people to be involved over long periods of time, individuals are asked to write down their roles and responsibilities. This makes things a little clearer. It also means that nobody has to rely on memory, which is not very reliable because memory is not very reliable.

If you had done this with your colleague, some of the facts would have been clearer. But there would still be some ambiguous facts. Maybe no one would have mentioned that your colleague was waiting to be invited to that meeting and you would have found yourself back at the same point, discussing what was really going on.

I say this for this reason: Writing down roles and responsibilities, while sometimes useful, is not always an effective strategy. I should add, however, that there would have been less room for assumptions and frustration if you had discussed at the outset who would do what, when, and how you would follow up. Since you haven't discussed these elements, I suggest that you prioritize, i.e. solve it quickly if you can, and leave it behind if you can't.

OPTION 2 - CLARIFY HOW YOU WILL WORK TOGETHER IN THE FUTURE

You can start this conversation by saying: "It's clear that Sarah and I saw the meeting very differently and disagreed about what happened. Can we talk about what we learned from it and what we can do to avoid such problems in the future when we work together?" If you can both look forward instead of dwelling on the past, you can achieve the Common Purpose and Mutual Respect that make dialogue possible. The purpose of dialogue is to learn, clarify agreements, make better decisions and take decisive action. You can use this as a learning opportunity to make agreements that will improve your future work.

In such a conversation, you can make decisions together and decide what to do if you have conflicts, face obstacles or if there are changes in the project. How will you talk, how will you change the plan you have made? If you are aware that changes are being made, how can you assume good intentions until you talk to your colleague? So instead of "solving" every case, you agree on a process that allows you to anticipate problems and act in ways that solve or prevent them.

ATTEND CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS TRAINING

I want to refer to your statement, you say, "When I tried to explain, things got worse". If you have a conversation like this about working better together in the future, you can also talk about what to do in case of possible future conflicts. So you can put aside your disagreement about what happened and talk about how to move on from here.

A good option for colleagues or spouses who have had problems in the past is to learn from these misunderstandings and let these lessons influence future behavior, rather than holding on to these disagreements.

Best wishes,
Al