A manager finally sits down with a direct report who's been missing deadlines for weeks. She's rehearsed this one. She knows she's frustrated, and she's told herself to stay calm, not get defensive, and give him a fair chance to explain. She walks in feeling steady.

Ten minutes in, it goes sideways anyway. Not because she lost her composure. Because she had no idea his father had been hospitalized the week before.

She checked herself. She never checked the room.

This is the check most leaders learned to run, if they run one at all: am I calm, am I being fair, have I prepped what I'm going to say? It's a real check. It's just a check on one person. It tells you everything about you and nothing about what's actually true on the other side of the table, what's going on for them, what they're carrying in alongside you.

Self-awareness gets taught as one skill: know yourself, watch your reactions, manage your tone. That's only half of it. Real self-awareness runs in two directions at once: what's happening inside you and what's actually happening with the person in front of you.

The leaders who handle hard conversations well aren't running a better version of the first check. They're running a second one that almost everyone skips.

Try this before your next hard conversation →

Before you think about what you're going to say, run two quick checks instead of one:

• Internal: What am I actually feeling right now, and where is that coming from
• External: What do I actually know about this person and what's going on for them right now, versus what am I just assuming

Run both before your next important conversation and notice the difference.

Replay and tell me what you found out that you weren't expecting. I love to hear from you!

This dual check is one of the things taught in Week 1 of Confident Conversations©, a 6-week practice-based, online course for leaders who are done winging it. Week 1 targets your inner compass and is the foundation of everything else we build.

[Learn more about Confident Conversations]