We’ve all been in situations where we’ve had to have that difficult conversation. Whether it’s giving bad news, tackling poor performance, or just telling someone something that you know they’re unlikely to be happy with.

Whether you’re a people pleaser or worried about the knock-on effect of what you say to others, if you don’t get comfortable with tackling the challenging things - if you don’t call out the things that need to be said - it can have a profound impact on you, your integrity, your reputation and the trust that you’re trying to build with your teams.

The context, nature and dynamics of the conversations you have will change the more senior you are in an organisation and not everyone is prepared for that.

In this episode I’m talking to Louisa Clarke, a difficult conversation specialist and founder of Confidently There, which helps organisations to develop their verbal communications culture.

We talk about:

• What is a difficult conversation
• The internal signals you need to pay attention to
• The impact of not having THOSE conversations
• Restorative practice to encourage open conversations
• The role of the executive team
• How to tackle people-pleasing and historic baggage
• How to nature of difficult conversations might change as you shift from subject expert to organisational leader
• How humanity can help you to navigate challenging situations
• Naming the elephant in the room
• Responding to difficult conversations or feedback
• The one thing to remember to ace those difficult conversations

Resources and helpful links

• Difficult Conversations Checklist
• Louisa Clarke LinkedIn
• Dr Becky Kennedy Instagram

You might also be interested in listening to our How to Take the Lead episode on difficult conversations.

If you want to transform your leadership impact book a free consultation call with me

About Louisa

Louisa describes herself as a difficult conversation specialist. She works with values-led organisations on their verbal communication culture, specifically upskilling individuals and teams to feel better equipped to lean in and have the difficult conversations in a way that is as ethical as it is effective. In her work Louisa disrupts the notion that we have to choose between being impactful and being kind. Her work challenges the idea that we must choose between prioritising high performance OR wellbeing, choose between being powerful OR having integrity.

@confidentlythere on Instagram

Louisa's Website

About leaders with impact

Want to know the secret of great leaders? In Leaders with impact we'll be exploring what makes an impactful leader; sharing stories of success and strategies that set them apart.

If you are ambitious for your organisation but are struggling to identify what you can do differently as a leader to deliver the right improvements, then hit subscribe to learn how you can get clear on your strategy, implement some self-leadership and connect with those you serve.

New episodes are released every fortnight.

Get in touch

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Speaker: 00:00:02

we've all been in situations where we've had to have that difficult conversation.

Speaker: 00:00:06

Whether it's giving bad news tackling poor performance, or just telling

Speaker: 00:00:09

someone something that you know they're unlikely to be happy with.

Speaker: 00:00:11

Whether you're a people pleaser or worried about the knock-on

Speaker: 00:00:14

effect of what you say to others.

Speaker: 00:00:15

If you don't get comfortable with tackling the challenging things, if you

Speaker: 00:00:18

don't call out the things that need to be said, It can have a profound impact

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on you, your integrity, your reputation.

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And the trust that you're trying to build your teams.

Speaker: 00:00:27

The context, nature and dynamics of the conversations you have will change the

Speaker: 00:00:30

more senior you are in an organization and not everyone is prepared for that.

Speaker: 00:00:36

I'm Lee Griffith, a communication strategist, executive coach, and

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all around champion of leaders who shun the old school stereotypes.

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I'm here to help you get clear on your strategy, implement some self-leadership

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and connect with those you serve through your communications so that

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you can deliver improved organizational performance, engagement, and reputation.

Speaker: 00:00:53

Visit sundayskies.com to subscribe to my newsletter and get notified when new

Speaker: 00:00:57

episodes are released every fortnight.

Speaker: 00:01:01

In this episode, I'm talking to Louisa Clark.

Speaker: 00:01:03

A difficult conversation specialist and founder of confidently there,

Speaker: 00:01:07

which helps organizations to develop their verbal communications culture.

Speaker: 00:01:10

We talk about the types of conversation leaders need to be having, how to be more

Speaker: 00:01:14

self-aware and how to bring the human side into those challenging situations.

Speaker: 00:01:18

Enjoy.

Lee: 00:01:21

So I'm delighted to welcome Louisa to this week's

Lee: 00:01:25

episode of Leaders with Impact.

Lee: 00:01:27

Thank you very much for agreeing to come on Louisa.

Lee: 00:01:31

You are an expert in difficult and challenging conversations.

Lee: 00:01:36

Is that right?

Louisa: 00:01:37

Yeah, that's right.

Louisa: 00:01:38

Well, thank you for having me on.

Louisa: 00:01:39

It's really lovely to be here and I'm excited to get into this chat.

Louisa: 00:01:43

I work with leaders, teams, and sometimes whole organizations on how

Louisa: 00:01:49

to have the difficult conversations.

Louisa: 00:01:52

More ethically, more effectively, more regularly.

Louisa: 00:01:56

How do we make ourselves feel okay?

Louisa: 00:01:58

What is that self management stuff that means it feels possible for

Louisa: 00:02:01

us to lean in and, air the stuff that can often feel challenging.

Louisa: 00:02:05

Yeah.

Lee: 00:02:06

yeah.

Lee: 00:02:06

So difficult conversations I think can be a really subjective topic because

Lee: 00:02:12

what's difficult for you might not be for me and vice versa and that

Lee: 00:02:16

perception of difficulty can also be perhaps whether you're on the giving

Lee: 00:02:21

or the receiving end of a conversation.

Lee: 00:02:24

So in the realms of the work that you do, how would you

Lee: 00:02:27

define a difficult conversation?

Louisa: 00:02:30

I think that's exactly it.

Louisa: 00:02:32

so I think for me, a difficult conversation is, it's, it's to do with

Louisa: 00:02:37

the response that we feel in our body, even at the thought of needing to

Louisa: 00:02:40

raise something, it's very often those topics that sometimes we don't even

Louisa: 00:02:45

realize that we're putting them off, but we're definitely putting them off.

Louisa: 00:02:48

It's from our own internal response generally, that that's going to come up.

Louisa: 00:02:52

Because sometimes actually, of course, it's also difficult, you know, if let's

Louisa: 00:02:57

say you're a leader or a manager, and you need to have a really challenging

Louisa: 00:03:00

performance management conversation with somebody within your team.

Louisa: 00:03:03

And let's say it's a really complex situation because actually

Louisa: 00:03:06

on a social level, you get on really well with this person.

Louisa: 00:03:09

You really like them.

Louisa: 00:03:10

They're lovely.

Louisa: 00:03:10

They always remember your birthday.

Louisa: 00:03:12

They always make a fuss.

Louisa: 00:03:13

They have a great time when you're out for a team dinner or drinks and you always

Louisa: 00:03:16

really enjoy conversation with them.

Louisa: 00:03:18

But then their performance has not been meeting the expectations

Louisa: 00:03:22

that you've set and you know that you need to broach that with them.

Louisa: 00:03:25

The thought of even doing that, you feel something happen to you internally

Louisa: 00:03:29

at the prospect of needing to do it.

Louisa: 00:03:31

That for me, there we are, that's a prime difficult conversation territory.

Louisa: 00:03:35

and of course it's also a difficult conversation for the person that's

Louisa: 00:03:39

about to receive that information.

Louisa: 00:03:41

so, yeah, the work that I do tends to be the person that has to have it.

Louisa: 00:03:45

It's about how do we hold ourselves accountable to stop avoiding and,

Louisa: 00:03:49

putting off or delaying or softening and slightly treading around the edges?

Louisa: 00:03:53

Or for others, it's how do we have them in a way that doesn't involve getting

Louisa: 00:03:57

our bolshie boots on and getting all up in someone's grill and getting all

Louisa: 00:04:00

kind of overly, you know, assertive is good, yes, aggressive, tones of

Louisa: 00:04:04

aggression, never, never, never, never.

Louisa: 00:04:07

And I think part of what took me into this work was realizing I feel really

Louisa: 00:04:12

strongly, we've only ever had it modelled to us, or shown to us, that difficult

Louisa: 00:04:17

conversations happen in one of two ways.

Louisa: 00:04:20

That either, they either just don't happen at all, and we tread around the

Louisa: 00:04:23

edges, and there's a massive elephant in the room, and nobody's saying the thing.

Louisa: 00:04:27

and then resentment builds up, and buildup of the unsaid

Louisa: 00:04:29

happens, and frustration builds.

Louisa: 00:04:31

Or we've seen people going in and we've had that whole, well,

Louisa: 00:04:34

you've got to be powerful.

Louisa: 00:04:35

You've sometimes just got to name it.

Louisa: 00:04:37

You've, you've got to kind of pull people into line.

Louisa: 00:04:39

You've sometimes got to be a little bit assertive and aggressive.

Louisa: 00:04:42

And you've got to discipline.

Louisa: 00:04:43

We've got to whip people into shape when things are going wrong.

Louisa: 00:04:46

and I don't believe that is a good or sustainable or positive solution either.

Louisa: 00:04:51

And the penny drop for me was when through some of my background and training, I kind

Louisa: 00:04:55

of hit upon this thing, or there are, the worlds of some of my training introduced

Louisa: 00:05:01

me, I suppose, to what feels like the sweet spot between those two things.

Louisa: 00:05:04

And I guess so much of my work is how do we name the thing that needs naming?

Louisa: 00:05:09

How do we make those difficult conversations as productive and

Louisa: 00:05:12

effective as we possibly can do, and as kind and as human as we possibly can.

Louisa: 00:05:18

I'm so over this old narrative that we've either got to be a boss bitch,

Louisa: 00:05:23

assertive aggressive, I get massive and quick results because people fall

Louisa: 00:05:28

into line with me when actually all we're doing is inviting compliance

Louisa: 00:05:31

through a bit of fear and shame.

Louisa: 00:05:34

Or well I'm really well liked but yeah I do let some expectations

Louisa: 00:05:38

and standards slip here and there.

Louisa: 00:05:40

I don't set boundaries particularly clearly.

Louisa: 00:05:42

They just don't feel comfortable for me.

Louisa: 00:05:43

And I would rather prize the quality of my relationship over

Louisa: 00:05:47

having those expectations met.

Louisa: 00:05:49

I'm done with the idea that it's a binary choice between those things.

Louisa: 00:05:52

And the world of work I do is about, okay, well, what is that

Louisa: 00:05:56

sweet spot between the two?

Lee: 00:05:57

Yeah.

Lee: 00:05:58

I love that.

Lee: 00:05:58

And there is so much there that I want us to get into in this conversation,

Lee: 00:06:03

but I want to take it right back to that first thing you said around

Lee: 00:06:07

it's your own internal response

Louisa: 00:06:10

Hmm.

Lee: 00:06:10

I suppose how, how do you know when you are feeling those things in your

Lee: 00:06:15

body, because I suppose you, what you're not trying to do is not have any feeling.

Lee: 00:06:19

So how do you know what's the right feeling and when to deal with that

Lee: 00:06:23

uncomfortableness and when it's, feeling that actually you, you maybe

Lee: 00:06:26

need to be working on the internal feeling rather than the external action.

Louisa: 00:06:31

I'm a massive advocate for developing a really clear sense of

Louisa: 00:06:36

awareness and a mindfulness around what our own internal experiences at all times.

Louisa: 00:06:41

there's a massive part of this work that again, it's part of what I loved.

Louisa: 00:06:46

So much of this work is super practical, but at the same time, there's a huge

Louisa: 00:06:49

part of it to make it consistent and sustainable and properly become

Louisa: 00:06:53

a part of our leadership style.

Louisa: 00:06:55

there's a huge amount that is about our internal landscape and our own

Louisa: 00:06:59

self management and around mindfulness and around self awareness and around

Louisa: 00:07:04

through that cultivating our own sense of emotional intelligence.

Louisa: 00:07:07

So, I think it's about, yeah, our ability day to day and even sometimes

Louisa: 00:07:12

moment to moment, but to be pausing and tuning in, I work with people

Louisa: 00:07:16

frequently who don't even realize that they've been putting off a difficult

Louisa: 00:07:20

conversation for, I mean, sometimes years.

Louisa: 00:07:24

So I was about to say for weeks and then I was thinking, no, it's not

Louisa: 00:07:27

even that, it's not even months.

Louisa: 00:07:28

Sometimes years, and what it has meant is that they've settled into some kind

Louisa: 00:07:33

of process, some kind of dynamic with people in their team that is really

Louisa: 00:07:37

inefficient, ineffectual, and actually leaves a bigger buildup of resentment

Louisa: 00:07:42

and frustration on both sides normally.

Louisa: 00:07:45

and it's like, let's clear the decks and here's how you can do that.

Louisa: 00:07:50

I think so often in, in that example where we haven't been having that difficult

Louisa: 00:07:53

conversation, probably there has been some internal signal going on for some

Louisa: 00:07:59

time that we've just been ignoring.

Louisa: 00:08:01

We've not been tuning into it.

Louisa: 00:08:02

We've been pushing past it.

Louisa: 00:08:04

And there's a psychologist whose work I really like, And actually, she's probably

Louisa: 00:08:08

been one of the most inspiring people I followed around the concepts of leadership

Louisa: 00:08:12

and difficult conversations in leadership.

Louisa: 00:08:14

And she's actually in the parenting space.

Louisa: 00:08:16

she works in the space of how we navigate challenging

Louisa: 00:08:20

conversations with our children.

Louisa: 00:08:22

Her name's Dr.

Louisa: 00:08:23

Becky Kennedy.

Louisa: 00:08:24

she's huge on Instagram and she's got an amazing business and

Louisa: 00:08:27

is an incredible leader in her own right within that business.

Louisa: 00:08:30

But one of her mantras is that if we're feeling resentment, it's a sign that

Louisa: 00:08:36

we didn't set a boundary early enough.

Louisa: 00:08:38

And I love that as a concept.

Louisa: 00:08:41

I find that so helpful and link to your question about, well, how do we

Louisa: 00:08:45

recognize internally if there is some discomfort going on, or if there is

Louisa: 00:08:50

something happening within us around the prospect of a difficult conversation?

Louisa: 00:08:54

Well, there's a really good start.

Louisa: 00:08:56

And, if you're coming away from a situation, I don't know, let's say you

Louisa: 00:08:59

have met with somebody within your team and you know that they haven't been

Louisa: 00:09:03

pulling their weight or there's something about their actions, their behaviors at

Louisa: 00:09:07

work that are a little bit problematic, if you leave the meeting and actually

Louisa: 00:09:12

the taste that's left in your mouth is a bit of resentment because perhaps you

Louisa: 00:09:16

haven't quite held them accountable to be able to know reliably they're going

Louisa: 00:09:20

to move forward and fulfill whatever it is you need them to fulfill or to

Louisa: 00:09:24

upskill in whatever area you need them to, probably that's a sign that you are

Louisa: 00:09:28

the one, it can only be a sign that you are the one that, that has a, a right

Louisa: 00:09:32

firstly, and a responsibility to have that difficult conversation and name it.

Lee: 00:09:37

So you've touched on this briefly, but I want to explore a

Lee: 00:09:41

little bit what that impact is.

Lee: 00:09:44

If you shy away from having those types of conversations, if you've got that

Lee: 00:09:48

sense of resentment and you talked about how that can build up for you and, and

Lee: 00:09:52

the team, maybe the organization, but there's bigger impacts, aren't there when

Lee: 00:09:57

you leave those conversations unsaid.

Louisa: 00:09:59

Yes, huge.

Louisa: 00:10:00

So I mean at the milder end, it's stuff that we've kind of already been

Louisa: 00:10:03

talking about where I think resentment can start to build, like just channels

Louisa: 00:10:07

of communication between you just get a bit cloggy or a bit stale.

Louisa: 00:10:11

It's hard to keep that free flowing honesty and

Louisa: 00:10:14

authenticity going between you.

Louisa: 00:10:16

because yeah, I talk a lot with clients about buildup of the unsaid and I

Louisa: 00:10:20

really see it like this kind of thing that is mounding at the corner, that's

Louisa: 00:10:24

just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's amazing the lengths,

Louisa: 00:10:27

as I say, that people will go to, to not just actually bring it into

Louisa: 00:10:30

the center and go, Hey, let's look at this and let's work through it.

Louisa: 00:10:33

So yeah, frustration and resentment and, clogging channels of communication

Louisa: 00:10:36

at one end of the spectrum.

Louisa: 00:10:39

At the more severe end of the spectrum.

Louisa: 00:10:41

I mean, it's toxic work cultures.

Louisa: 00:10:43

It's, it's power dynamics getting out of hand and being allowed to run riots.

Louisa: 00:10:48

It's really felt experience of hierarchy, that doesn't feel good.

Louisa: 00:10:53

It's what I would term really outdated and old styles of leadership that are

Louisa: 00:10:57

not particularly human, being allowed to rule the roost and continuing.

Louisa: 00:11:01

It's also gossip culture.

Louisa: 00:11:03

That's maybe sort of midway along the spectrum, but yeah, at the

Louisa: 00:11:06

severe end, it's people leaving.

Louisa: 00:11:08

And very often it's, it's you struggling to retain the talent in your

Louisa: 00:11:13

organization who actually are the ones that you really, really want to retain.

Louisa: 00:11:17

They're the ones with high moral value.

Louisa: 00:11:19

They're the ones who are highly ethical.

Louisa: 00:11:21

They're the ones who are clear communicators.

Louisa: 00:11:23

And if they just realize that they're working in a place where nobody is

Louisa: 00:11:27

calling out the stuff that needs calling out, broaching it in a way

Louisa: 00:11:30

that really acknowledges fundamentally, we are humans first and foremost, and

Louisa: 00:11:35

people who have a job and work second.

Louisa: 00:11:37

or perhaps they just are feeling frustrated, The expectations and

Louisa: 00:11:40

standards aren't even being set, and therefore they're not being

Louisa: 00:11:42

pushed to thrive and they want to, they're ambitious, they're driven.

Louisa: 00:11:47

Yeah.

Louisa: 00:11:48

That's often the pattern that I see is very often one of the main

Louisa: 00:11:52

reasons organizations come to me is because they've got staff churn and

Louisa: 00:11:56

they don't totally understand why.

Louisa: 00:11:59

And that for me is like prime, okay, nobody's having the difficult

Louisa: 00:12:02

conversations and that's why.

Lee: 00:12:04

yeah.

Lee: 00:12:05

And I think a lot of organizations strive for this sense of being high performing

Lee: 00:12:10

and having high performing teams.

Lee: 00:12:13

But you only get high performance if people feel like they can speak up and

Lee: 00:12:18

that culture of being able to speak up.

Lee: 00:12:20

If they feel like they are able to take collective risk with each other because

Lee: 00:12:25

there's that trust amongst each other.

Lee: 00:12:28

and you've mentioned the kind of power imbalance that can happen

Lee: 00:12:32

if people aren't speaking up.

Lee: 00:12:34

it also has that broader knock on if people are leaving that they're

Lee: 00:12:38

probably not giving a great experience to whoever it is that they're serving.

Lee: 00:12:42

So whether that's your clients, customers or whatever, or other staff, It will

Lee: 00:12:47

affect organizational performance, financial performance and all of that

Lee: 00:12:50

kind of stuff, and it will ultimately affect an organization's reputation.

Lee: 00:12:53

So these are kind of big impacts for what can feel like, Oh,

Lee: 00:12:57

it's just a little conversation.

Louisa: 00:12:58

A hundred percent.

Louisa: 00:12:59

Yeah, I hadn't even touched yet on, but of course, productivity, of course,

Louisa: 00:13:03

innovation, of course, streamlining of stuff, of course, creativity.

Louisa: 00:13:08

All of these get hampered when power dynamics are running riot, when people

Louisa: 00:13:13

don't feel they do have a voice or they don't feel that their leaders are

Louisa: 00:13:16

genuinely openly available to them.

Louisa: 00:13:19

All of the, all of these things get kind of dampened.

Louisa: 00:13:22

So yeah, it might not look like, huge complaints and grievance

Louisa: 00:13:25

procedures coming through HR.

Louisa: 00:13:26

It might not look like a load of people leaving, but it really might

Louisa: 00:13:30

look like just nothing running as, as smoothly and not hitting that

Louisa: 00:13:34

high performance sustainably in the way that you believe or would want

Louisa: 00:13:38

your, your workforce to be able to.

Louisa: 00:13:39

Yeah.

Lee: 00:13:40

Where do you go if you're a leader and you're working in an organization

Lee: 00:13:44

that perhaps it's got that culture where people just don't feel comfortable having

Lee: 00:13:48

the conversations that need to be had.

Lee: 00:13:50

and I mean that not so much, obviously it's one to one conversations, but

Lee: 00:13:53

in senior leadership roles, they're not only looking at the one to one,

Lee: 00:13:57

they're looking at the collective.

Lee: 00:13:58

So how do you start to tackle that?

Louisa: 00:14:01

Yeah, it's really difficult because, and I'm sure this is

Louisa: 00:14:04

something that, it comes up in your world as well, Lee, a lot.

Louisa: 00:14:07

I mean, culture change is slow.

Louisa: 00:14:08

There's no, there's no getting around it.

Louisa: 00:14:10

It's really slow process, but I think where you go, and this is, we do project

Louisa: 00:14:16

work sometimes with organizations, because of exactly this issue and

Louisa: 00:14:20

the approach that we take to it, comes from the world of restorative

Louisa: 00:14:23

practice and it's where we go in and we actually, design and try to open up

Louisa: 00:14:30

and invite every single, person within a workforce to a group conversation.

Louisa: 00:14:36

And that group conversation is of a size that is manageable for people to

Louisa: 00:14:39

genuinely feel they can contribute.

Louisa: 00:14:40

So we tend to not go over it about 15 at a time, but we then facilitate really

Louisa: 00:14:46

specifically a restorative focused conversation that is specifically

Louisa: 00:14:51

about how people are feeling.

Louisa: 00:14:53

And this achieves a lot of things.

Louisa: 00:14:55

It's, it's a very structured process and a very structured and boundaried

Louisa: 00:14:58

space that has loads of kindness and no judgment and no shame and loads of hearts.

Louisa: 00:15:03

And sometimes of course, that means doing quite a lot of work with the organization

Louisa: 00:15:07

about the way that we are actually going to capture any data from that and a way

Louisa: 00:15:10

that is totally ethical and makes people feel safe to come in and actually speak

Louisa: 00:15:15

because very often if they're getting us in in the first place, it's because people

Louisa: 00:15:18

have not been speaking up at all, right?

Lee: 00:15:20

yeah.

Louisa: 00:15:21

But there's also something within it that is about, sort of, in

Louisa: 00:15:24

the communication of the fact that we're going to start running a process like

Louisa: 00:15:27

this, and we're going to give everybody an opportunity to come and sit in a room

Louisa: 00:15:30

and be held and led by a facilitator through, a process that will make the

Louisa: 00:15:37

space as safe as it possibly can do.

Louisa: 00:15:40

There's also a thing that really invites responsibility in them.

Louisa: 00:15:43

There's something about the process that allows us to say, okay, here's the thing.

Louisa: 00:15:46

We can see and understand and feel that things within our communication

Louisa: 00:15:52

culture right now are not okay.

Louisa: 00:15:54

They're not healthy.

Louisa: 00:15:54

It's not going well.

Louisa: 00:15:56

That must be having an impact on you.

Louisa: 00:15:58

And we want to invite you into this space and we're going to make

Louisa: 00:16:01

it as safe as we possibly can do.

Louisa: 00:16:03

But if you have feelings about this, if you have a strength of feeling

Louisa: 00:16:07

about the way that things are currently running, about your leadership, about,

Louisa: 00:16:11

yeah, anything really at all to do with the way that your communication

Louisa: 00:16:14

culture is functioning internally, if you've got a strength of feeling about

Louisa: 00:16:17

that, this is the space to bring it to.

Louisa: 00:16:19

And we're asking you to please step in and let us know.

Louisa: 00:16:22

Please choose that option rather than...

Louisa: 00:16:24

Feeling frustrated and angry and going home and moaning in the pub to your

Louisa: 00:16:28

mates about it every Friday night.

Louisa: 00:16:29

Like, here's the space.

Louisa: 00:16:30

When we know about it, we can do something about it.

Louisa: 00:16:33

So it's about really cultivating what I would term a very adult to adult space.

Louisa: 00:16:37

A really equitable, equal footing space where regardless of any kind of, formal

Louisa: 00:16:44

hierarchy, as in defined hierarchy within the organisation, that actually

Louisa: 00:16:47

you're just bringing people in as humans.

Louisa: 00:16:49

and we facilitate that conversation.

Louisa: 00:16:52

We ask the really specific questions around the way that they

Louisa: 00:16:54

are being impacted as a result of not feeling they can speak up.

Louisa: 00:16:57

What do they need from here?

Louisa: 00:16:58

We sometimes even give them choices.

Louisa: 00:17:01

We lay out what we have, a series of needs cards.

Louisa: 00:17:03

This is a fairly standard exercise that a lot of, sort of culture change people

Louisa: 00:17:07

might do, but it's around getting people to say, do you know what, yeah, as a

Louisa: 00:17:11

collective, this I don't know, a group of five of us in this room at the moment,

Louisa: 00:17:15

faced with these 36 human needs that we've got on cards, these five feel like

Louisa: 00:17:19

the ones that right now we really need.

Louisa: 00:17:23

And from there, then you get them to choose, whittle that down to one, even,

Louisa: 00:17:26

to focus on, and then you do some work with them around, okay, well, that need

Louisa: 00:17:30

then, what does that look like, sound like, and feel like once that has been

Louisa: 00:17:33

achieved, once that need is being met?

Louisa: 00:17:35

yeah, I think it's got to be, I think it's got to be an all staff approach.

Louisa: 00:17:40

We've got to avoid, Offering, and I think this is where organizations

Louisa: 00:17:44

often, in my eyes, are sometimes exacerbating the problem when they

Louisa: 00:17:48

think they're trying to fix it.

Louisa: 00:17:49

I think we've got to do anything that we can that avoids catering

Louisa: 00:17:53

to the different levels and tiers of hierarchy and power dynamics.

Louisa: 00:17:57

I think we've got to get everybody in a room and we've got to make it

Louisa: 00:17:59

feel as equitable as we possibly can

Lee: 00:18:01

So you're mixing it up.

Lee: 00:18:03

You're not targeting this at different levels at different times.

Lee: 00:18:06

It is a blended approach across disciplines, across pay bands, et

Louisa: 00:18:12

Yes, so definitely across disciplines.

Louisa: 00:18:14

So I would really advise with a process like this, that it's really not done in

Louisa: 00:18:19

teams because the teams probably have already chatted about this quite a lot

Louisa: 00:18:23

amongst themselves anyway, and they're probably in a little bit of an echo

Louisa: 00:18:26

chamber and there's something so healthy about somebody from finance sitting there

Louisa: 00:18:31

with somebody from whatever, another team is within whatever organization

Louisa: 00:18:34

we're imagining this is from, but hearing what their experience has been.

Louisa: 00:18:38

and it also just, again, it really invites that responsibility.

Louisa: 00:18:41

We are in behave slightly differently when we're put in a space with people

Louisa: 00:18:45

we don't know nearly as well than when we're in with our collective, the kind

Louisa: 00:18:50

of, Standard dynamics of the way that that team exists can just translate

Louisa: 00:18:53

and immediately be there in the room.

Louisa: 00:18:54

And you might find therefore that the ones who always speak up again, always speak up

Louisa: 00:18:58

the ones that don't speak up so much, they know their role within that collective

Louisa: 00:19:01

is to not really speak up that much.

Louisa: 00:19:03

So mixing up departments.

Louisa: 00:19:04

Yes.

Louisa: 00:19:05

The one area of slight sensitivity around this, and we vary it depending on who

Louisa: 00:19:09

we're working with and depending on the kind of feel within the organization

Louisa: 00:19:14

at the time, is around whether you include execs in those conversations or

Louisa: 00:19:20

whether the presence of them is going to mean that people don't feel they can.

Louisa: 00:19:24

And very often that's the case.

Louisa: 00:19:25

So what we tend to do in that instance is the very top exec team

Louisa: 00:19:28

don't partake with everybody else, but we do then share back with them.

Louisa: 00:19:32

And we do also facilitate a conversation for them as well, that's separate.

Lee: 00:19:37

And I was going to ask, I suppose, what, what that most senior leadership's

Lee: 00:19:41

responsibility is in the process.

Lee: 00:19:44

And I suppose what is their role in the contracting?

Lee: 00:19:47

Because I'm assuming that you might get situations where if the culture

Lee: 00:19:52

is that toxic, that staff will still think, well, we don't feel

Lee: 00:19:56

listened to, but by the senior team.

Lee: 00:19:58

We feedback all the time and we don't feel heard.

Lee: 00:20:01

Actually, I feel really scared what the outcome of me sharing

Lee: 00:20:04

my thoughts and feelings are, even if it's done anonymously.

Lee: 00:20:07

So there must be something that, that the leadership as, as a group need

Lee: 00:20:11

to do to take that responsibility and, and demonstrate as well.

Louisa: 00:20:16

a hundred percent.

Louisa: 00:20:16

I mean, I think, yeah, I think there are quite a few things in there.

Louisa: 00:20:19

I mean, the first is that generally in committing to a project like this, that

Louisa: 00:20:25

is partly a signal in itself of senior leaders going, okay, we're willing to

Louisa: 00:20:29

bring somebody else in and to hold this information and we're doing it because we

Louisa: 00:20:32

want to know, and we're ready to listen.

Louisa: 00:20:34

So I think there's some of that process that has kind of already

Louisa: 00:20:37

gone on, hopefully, by the time that we get there, but you're absolutely

Louisa: 00:20:40

right that I've, I've done work with organizations where the lack of speak

Louisa: 00:20:45

up culture was so embedded, the feeling of really extreme power dynamics and

Louisa: 00:20:50

genuinely, the vibe being, well, you don't put your head above the parapet.

Louisa: 00:20:54

You just don't, you don't make yourself a target or there are

Louisa: 00:20:57

going to be negative repercussions.

Louisa: 00:20:59

And people literally said to me, I've seen it.

Louisa: 00:21:00

I've seen this happen.

Louisa: 00:21:01

So no, I daren't, you know, I daren't speak up.

Louisa: 00:21:04

And in those instances, what we'll often do is yes, we're facilitating group

Louisa: 00:21:07

conversations and we invite everybody to come along, but we also offer a one

Louisa: 00:21:11

to one and completely anonymous and confidential channel of communication

Louisa: 00:21:16

where essentially we end up almost being the go between and we work with them.

Louisa: 00:21:20

Anyone who's doing this as a, as part of our organization

Louisa: 00:21:24

is a restorative practitioner.

Louisa: 00:21:26

So they know the questions to ask.

Louisa: 00:21:28

We know the structure to follow that really really does genuinely see and

Louisa: 00:21:33

hear the challenge and we take as long as we need to with one to ones via this.

Louisa: 00:21:37

We can meet off site if it's in person or it happens online.

Louisa: 00:21:40

and then we work them through a process that helps to start put

Louisa: 00:21:43

them in touch with their own.

Louisa: 00:21:46

agency, I suppose, around this.

Louisa: 00:21:47

Very often when people are in that space, they're at the point where

Louisa: 00:21:49

it's like, I just don't know what to do because I feel like I'm knocking

Louisa: 00:21:52

my head against a brick wall.

Louisa: 00:21:53

We help them work through, really validate and understand what's going on for them.

Louisa: 00:21:57

We help them see what their options might be and it would never be about us then

Louisa: 00:22:01

advising what they should do from there.

Louisa: 00:22:02

It's about them decided stepping into their own choicefulness around it.

Louisa: 00:22:06

But what it has allowed us to do on some projects in the past is we can

Louisa: 00:22:09

then work with them to gather a sort of anonymized, report statement, version

Louisa: 00:22:14

of events from their perspective that can then be shared with senior leaders

Lee: 00:22:19

So I want to touch on some of the other barriers for people having or not

Lee: 00:22:24

having those difficult conversations.

Lee: 00:22:27

And one is that people who might feel like they're on the spectrum of people pleaser,

Louisa: 00:22:34

them.

Lee: 00:22:35

they don't like.

Lee: 00:22:36

Conflict and disruption, they, they want to be liked as you said earlier on in the

Lee: 00:22:40

discussion, but we know, again, if you're aiming for high performance that you've

Lee: 00:22:45

got to have that sense of accountability and holding people to account and in

Lee: 00:22:49

order to be managing them effectively.

Lee: 00:22:52

Which means you've already alluded to that conversation around

Lee: 00:22:55

performance and the impact they might be having in the workplace.

Lee: 00:22:57

So how does someone start to deal and tame their people pleasing side if, if it's

Lee: 00:23:04

something that they are struggling with?

Louisa: 00:23:06

Lee, I mean, this is my favorite part of the work that I do as a

Louisa: 00:23:10

recovering chronic people pleaser myself.

Louisa: 00:23:14

these are my favorite people to work with and actually it's

Louisa: 00:23:16

where my business started.

Louisa: 00:23:18

I discovered all of these strategies and tools, around, oh, having a

Louisa: 00:23:22

difficult conversation doesn't have to feel horrendous and I don't have to

Louisa: 00:23:28

have a personality transplant in order to do it and suddenly be all bolshy.

Louisa: 00:23:31

And I was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, light bulb moments.

Louisa: 00:23:34

And when I started off, yeah, I want, I was working with people, really

Louisa: 00:23:37

ambitious professionals who had their eyes on leadership or wanting to step

Louisa: 00:23:40

into leadership or had, but weren't quite advancing in the way that they wanted

Louisa: 00:23:45

to, who really struggle with saying no, with boundary setting, with advocating

Louisa: 00:23:50

for the stuff that they need, with holding other people to account, because

Louisa: 00:23:54

they, yeah, absolutely fall into that, personality trait of being very people

Louisa: 00:24:01

pleasing, really liking pleasing others.

Louisa: 00:24:03

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Lee: 00:24:04

No.

Louisa: 00:24:05

So, where do you begin?

Louisa: 00:24:07

Yeah, it's a really good question.

Louisa: 00:24:08

with them, I actually do quite a lot of theory I use some psychological models

Louisa: 00:24:12

and psychological frameworks and then some frameworks from some areas of social

Louisa: 00:24:16

science, but that all of which kind of are tools if you like for your toolbox

Louisa: 00:24:22

that help you understand, the dynamics that might be going on between people

Louisa: 00:24:28

and therefore why in those moments you might have such a strong desire to just

Louisa: 00:24:32

say, yeah, sure, I can do that as well.

Louisa: 00:24:34

Knowing full well that when you've said that you're going to have to work

Louisa: 00:24:36

all weekend or whatever it might be.

Louisa: 00:24:39

And, what I do know through this work, and this is true of any sort of

Louisa: 00:24:45

behavior change work, I suppose, is of course, We cannot change anything

Louisa: 00:24:50

until we've got awareness around it.

Louisa: 00:24:52

Awareness has to be the first step.

Louisa: 00:24:54

So learning some of those really tangible, theoretical frameworks, is so helpful

Louisa: 00:25:01

in terms of propelling people from that feeling of just, I don't know why I do it

Louisa: 00:25:05

to myself, I just feel this overwhelming urge to make sure everyone thinks really

Louisa: 00:25:10

well of me and likes me the whole time and I run myself into the ground and

Louisa: 00:25:13

I'm exhausted and I'm burning out.

Louisa: 00:25:14

It, it takes them from there to like, ah, how interesting I can see what's

Louisa: 00:25:20

going on in particular dynamics.

Louisa: 00:25:22

From that awareness, then we start to look at some strategies around, what

Louisa: 00:25:26

would your choice be in that moment?

Louisa: 00:25:28

If we're able really kindly and with loads of self compassion for

Louisa: 00:25:31

ourselves, because it's so often this is literally our nervous system is wired

Louisa: 00:25:35

to meet other people's expectations.

Louisa: 00:25:37

It feels fundamentally unsafe in our bodies when we first start doing

Louisa: 00:25:41

this to displease other people.

Louisa: 00:25:43

And so, yeah, it's about working them from that place into a position

Louisa: 00:25:47

of choicefulness and being able to see those internal signals that

Louisa: 00:25:50

are going on for what they are.

Louisa: 00:25:52

The other big area of my background and work is transactional analysis.

Louisa: 00:25:57

I'm on a very long and in depth and very geeky journey, around all of this,

Louisa: 00:26:02

but the fundamentals and the kind of basis of transactional analysis becomes

Louisa: 00:26:06

very useful to us at this point.

Louisa: 00:26:08

It's where we start to understand that internally, within ourselves, we carry so

Louisa: 00:26:13

much stuff with us that is from childhood.

Louisa: 00:26:16

we carry so much stuff with us that are the lessons that we've learned

Louisa: 00:26:19

from figures of authority who, we have been inspired by or who have

Louisa: 00:26:23

taught us or who have been responsible for our care at various points and

Louisa: 00:26:27

the messaging that they've given us.

Louisa: 00:26:28

And a huge part of that choicefulness piece then is about being able in the

Louisa: 00:26:32

moment to see, oh, okay, historically, yeah, I can see that by always pleasing,

Louisa: 00:26:39

by always being incredibly reliable, by always, really making sure that everybody

Louisa: 00:26:43

else's expectations are being met and mine go into the bottom of the pile.

Louisa: 00:26:46

That is how I've really felt safe and it's how I felt most seen and

Louisa: 00:26:51

it's how I felt most connected to.

Louisa: 00:26:53

and I can see all of that.

Louisa: 00:26:55

And that it no longer exists now in my adult, here in the present.

Louisa: 00:26:58

I don't have to continue to follow down that path.

Louisa: 00:27:02

The default path is not laid out for me.

Louisa: 00:27:04

It's there and I could take it, but there is this other choice over here

Louisa: 00:27:09

that is about allowing me in the moment to see that really, really strong

Louisa: 00:27:13

need to say yes to this thing that I know I do not have capacity for.

Louisa: 00:27:16

I'm just noticing you.

Louisa: 00:27:16

Thank you.

Louisa: 00:27:17

I know exactly what you're doing.

Louisa: 00:27:18

You're trying to help me keep feeling safe.

Louisa: 00:27:21

and you're really familiar and this pattern feels really familiar and lovely

Louisa: 00:27:24

and I'm just gonna hold you there because I want to start making a different choice.

Louisa: 00:27:28

And then from there we look at some, and again, this then is sort of from

Louisa: 00:27:32

restorative work, but we look at.

Louisa: 00:27:34

Literal step by step ways to word things, ways to phrase things that

Louisa: 00:27:39

allows you to say the difficult thing, set the boundary, have the conversation

Louisa: 00:27:43

with someone in your team who's always late or whose performance has not been

Louisa: 00:27:47

up to scratch, and how you do it in a way that is really adult, it's really

Louisa: 00:27:51

emotionally responsible, it doesn't shy away from the thing that we need,

Louisa: 00:27:55

but it has real heart and humanity.

Louisa: 00:27:58

and suddenly knowing that we could word things from that space for those

Louisa: 00:28:01

of us who do people please, well, it's suddenly a much easier route to

Louisa: 00:28:06

take than if the only alternative was, well, no, you've got to really lay

Louisa: 00:28:10

into them and teach them a lesson.

Louisa: 00:28:12

You know, that's never going to feel okay in our bodies.

Lee: 00:28:15

it sounds like quite rightfully, there's a lot of work you need

Lee: 00:28:20

to do with yourself and having a difficult conversation with

Lee: 00:28:23

yourself, first and foremost.

Lee: 00:28:25

And it's not about, which I think often people might think it's

Lee: 00:28:28

about, I just need to get over it.

Lee: 00:28:30

Or, because you can't just get over it.

Lee: 00:28:32

You can't just change your personality overnight.

Lee: 00:28:37

'cause you're always just gonna naturally revert back into what feels comfortable.

Louisa: 00:28:42

Yeah, completely.

Louisa: 00:28:43

And I think, I think you're so right.

Louisa: 00:28:44

That is such a, just socially we say that, don't we?

Louisa: 00:28:47

Just like, I've just got to pull myself together.

Louisa: 00:28:48

I've just got to get over it.

Louisa: 00:28:50

And actually I believe that when we are slightly berating ourselves and punishing

Louisa: 00:28:55

ourselves with that, we might actually be slightly exacerbating the problem.

Louisa: 00:28:59

I'm a really big believer that what we resist internally within

Louisa: 00:29:03

ourselves tends to persist and possibly therefore get stronger.

Louisa: 00:29:06

And when we're saying to ourselves, essentially.

Louisa: 00:29:08

Oh, this feels really uncomfortable.

Louisa: 00:29:10

I'm going to have to call out this thing.

Louisa: 00:29:12

This feels horrible.

Louisa: 00:29:13

I should need to pull myself together and get over it.

Louisa: 00:29:15

We don't realize, but we're slightly feeding the feeling because

Louisa: 00:29:18

we're resisting it and it tends to take a hold and get stronger.

Louisa: 00:29:22

What we're far better doing in that moment is to just pause and recognize

Louisa: 00:29:27

what is happening for us without judgment.

Louisa: 00:29:30

If we can, that's the thing that comes along as we really judge

Louisa: 00:29:32

it and we berate ourselves.

Louisa: 00:29:34

It's like, Oh, if I was really a strong leader, I wouldn't have an

Louisa: 00:29:37

issue having these conversations.

Louisa: 00:29:39

If I was really meant for this role, and this is where imposter syndrome so often

Louisa: 00:29:43

starts to rear its ugly head as well.

Louisa: 00:29:45

Right.

Louisa: 00:29:46

But instead it's about catching that narrative if we can.

Louisa: 00:29:49

Seeing what is happening inside of us.

Louisa: 00:29:51

Oh yeah, I can feel, I can feel this feels really uncomfortable

Louisa: 00:29:56

and awkward and horrible.

Louisa: 00:29:58

I feel a little bit like I want to be sick.

Louisa: 00:30:00

I do not want to have to raise this.

Louisa: 00:30:01

It feels deeply uncomfortable.

Louisa: 00:30:03

The second we recognize it, it allows us to actually validate why it's there.

Louisa: 00:30:07

Of course I do.

Louisa: 00:30:08

Of course this feels horrible and difficult.

Louisa: 00:30:10

I don't like upsetting people.

Louisa: 00:30:12

I'm worried that they're going to be upset as a result of this.

Louisa: 00:30:15

That's totally human and normal.

Louisa: 00:30:17

Especially if I'm a bit of a people pleaser, right?

Louisa: 00:30:20

And then finally we can allow that feeling to be there.

Louisa: 00:30:22

I'm allowed to find this difficult.

Louisa: 00:30:24

I'm allowed to find this a bit uncomfortable.

Louisa: 00:30:26

And I can go in and have this conversation.

Louisa: 00:30:29

And it might sound like a flippant bit of self talk that couldn't

Louisa: 00:30:33

be further from the truth.

Louisa: 00:30:35

It suddenly just rewires us away from resisting that strength

Louisa: 00:30:38

of feeling and it allows it in.

Louisa: 00:30:40

And two things happen.

Louisa: 00:30:42

One, it takes the real sting out of the feeling anyway.

Louisa: 00:30:45

In noticing it and just letting it be there.

Louisa: 00:30:48

And actually we feel a reduction in it.

Louisa: 00:30:50

It takes the sting out of it.

Louisa: 00:30:52

but secondly, the other thing is that really that's how we access

Louisa: 00:30:57

the root of our self confidence.

Louisa: 00:30:59

Confidence is not about heading into a situation and feeling

Louisa: 00:31:01

bulletproof and always feeling great.

Louisa: 00:31:04

Confidence actually is about our ability to just be at home with whatever

Louisa: 00:31:07

we're feeling in any given moment.

Louisa: 00:31:09

And I've nabbed that completely again from Dr.

Louisa: 00:31:12

Becky Kennedy.

Louisa: 00:31:13

But it's so true.

Louisa: 00:31:14

It's wonderful.

Louisa: 00:31:15

It's this idea confidence is about just being able to be at home with

Louisa: 00:31:18

whatever it is that's going on for us.

Lee: 00:31:20

It

Louisa: 00:31:21

we can lean in

Lee: 00:31:22

it's, it's another, perception thing, isn't it?

Lee: 00:31:24

Like the term, what is difficult conversation?

Lee: 00:31:27

What is confidence?

Lee: 00:31:28

It means so many different things to different people

Louisa: 00:31:30

Oh, yeah, I completely agree, completely.

Lee: 00:31:33

My background is working in the NHS and I notice that people,

Lee: 00:31:40

particularly clinicians, they get trained to have difficult conversations,

Lee: 00:31:44

one on one conversations with people and life changing conversations

Lee: 00:31:48

with people, but then they move up into a more senior management

Lee: 00:31:54

route, a broader organizational role.

Lee: 00:31:57

And I suppose the context and the dynamics of the types of conversations

Lee: 00:32:02

they have change, but they don't know how to bridge that gap from, I'm great

Lee: 00:32:08

at having those one to one conversations in my area of expertise, but how do I

Lee: 00:32:11

deal with those different scenarios?

Lee: 00:32:15

So, it might be board meetings and, and challenges of a board, it might

Lee: 00:32:21

be going out to the public and having town hall discussions where the public

Lee: 00:32:25

are throwing difficult questions at them, media interviews, dealing

Lee: 00:32:29

with, different stakeholders like MPs or external influences and stuff,

Lee: 00:32:35

vexatious complainants, all of these things you perhaps aren't prepared for.

Lee: 00:32:39

What might you need to adapt in your approach as you move into a more senior

Lee: 00:32:45

leadership role and you move away from the team one to one dynamics you might

Lee: 00:32:50

have, or whether that's one to one client relationships or whatever it might be.

Lee: 00:32:54

How do you start to identify where your areas of development

Lee: 00:32:58

and work might need to be?

Louisa: 00:33:00

So, ironically, I would say, probably, the reason that those earlier

Louisa: 00:33:06

difficult conversations, which actually...

Louisa: 00:33:09

Arguably a kind of more life altering, immediately in the moment life altering,

Louisa: 00:33:13

you know, the thought of having to let a family know that, I don't know,

Louisa: 00:33:18

that a beloved family member's cancer is now terminal, or that an urgent

Louisa: 00:33:23

operation does need to happen, needs to happen right now, and you know, the

Louisa: 00:33:26

high risk, the stakes, the necessary humanity in having those conversations.

Louisa: 00:33:32

Ironically, I think probably what goes on for people, as they move up

Louisa: 00:33:36

and they have to have then those more maybe publicly challenging or scary,

Louisa: 00:33:41

difficult conversations, the world would tell you, or society kind of

Louisa: 00:33:46

tells us that, there isn't much space for humanity in a board meeting, right?

Louisa: 00:33:51

There isn't much space for humanity.

Louisa: 00:33:53

You've just got to be right and you've got to back yourself and you've got to be

Louisa: 00:33:56

solid on your facts and you've got to be unwavering in your confidence in it all.

Louisa: 00:34:01

And you've got to do that when you're in the town hall meeting, or when you're

Louisa: 00:34:03

facing the press, or when you're...

Louisa: 00:34:05

I would completely contradict that concept.

Louisa: 00:34:11

And what I would actually suggest is that as people move up, and they are

Louisa: 00:34:16

faced with these more public and higher stakes conversations, That actually,

Louisa: 00:34:22

there is the time to really key into and take with you the humanity that they

Louisa: 00:34:28

must have had, I mean, I would imagine to even be in that sort of job role.

Louisa: 00:34:33

I can think back to times when, we've had family illness or and been in hospital and

Louisa: 00:34:38

had some had to be on the receiving end of some of those difficult conversations.

Louisa: 00:34:40

And there was one consultant in particular who was just.

Louisa: 00:34:43

Incredible.

Louisa: 00:34:44

Incredible.

Louisa: 00:34:45

There was also one other who, was much less

Lee: 00:34:47

Yeah.

Louisa: 00:34:48

And what was the difference between the two of them?

Louisa: 00:34:49

Humanity.

Louisa: 00:34:51

It was humanity and curiosity, genuine curiosity for how we

Louisa: 00:34:54

were and how things were landing.

Louisa: 00:34:55

Neither of them shied away from saying the difficult thing.

Louisa: 00:34:58

It's just that the one who didn't handle it nearly as well, didn't

Louisa: 00:35:02

shy away from the difficult thing and, but didn't pair it with that

Louisa: 00:35:05

necessarily warmth and curiosity for how this was landing with us.

Louisa: 00:35:09

the other consultant that I can think of was, she was

Louisa: 00:35:13

incredible and it was so clear.

Louisa: 00:35:16

And there was no fluff or waffle.

Louisa: 00:35:18

There was no treading around on eggshells around the outside.

Louisa: 00:35:21

But there was just such desire for connection with us and humanity

Louisa: 00:35:25

and however we were was okay.

Louisa: 00:35:27

that humanity I think is actually what we need more of as we head higher.

Louisa: 00:35:31

Why do we avoid it?

Louisa: 00:35:32

One, because I think, The world teaches us we shouldn't.

Louisa: 00:35:35

We've had this narrative the whole time that powerful leadership means being

Louisa: 00:35:39

infallible and being, always on your game and being, perfect, as we head out there

Louisa: 00:35:46

and are faced by challenge and faced by other people that we just back ourselves

Louisa: 00:35:50

and we know inherently that we're right and we persuade everybody else.

Louisa: 00:35:54

What I would so much rather see is...

Louisa: 00:35:57

A desire to absolutely stand firm by what we currently believe and what

Louisa: 00:36:03

we are wanting to advocate for and what feels important and necessary

Louisa: 00:36:07

to share, even when it's crunchy and difficult, and to pair that the whole

Louisa: 00:36:12

time with a desire to connect rather than a desire to prove that we're right.

Lee: 00:36:16

Hmm.

Lee: 00:36:16

Hmm.

Lee: 00:36:17

I love that sense of curiosity because that is absolutely the foundation of

Lee: 00:36:24

having a great conversation regardless of whether it's a difficult one or a positive

Lee: 00:36:29

one, the curiosity is king, isn't it?

Louisa: 00:36:32

Completely, completely.

Louisa: 00:36:33

It really is.

Louisa: 00:36:34

And also, I have real empathy and understanding for, I mean, as you were

Louisa: 00:36:38

saying about having to go into town halls and deal with people, because you're

Louisa: 00:36:42

having to deliver, I don't know, a policy change or you're having to face the media

Louisa: 00:36:46

about something terrible has happened.

Louisa: 00:36:48

Of course, it's so difficult in those moments to back yourself and have that

Louisa: 00:36:53

ounce of openness, openheartedness and curiosity because it's so vulnerable, we

Louisa: 00:36:58

feel vulnerable to be able to do that, but to be able to stand there in those moments

Louisa: 00:37:02

and say, okay, I want to firstly name, and this is a big thing I coach clients

Louisa: 00:37:07

to do is name the fact it's difficult.

Louisa: 00:37:09

Let's connect over the fact this is uncomfortable.

Louisa: 00:37:11

I want to name today what I've got to share feels uncomfortable

Louisa: 00:37:15

and it feels difficult.

Louisa: 00:37:16

And we're not all going to agree and I need to let you know X, Y, or Z.

Louisa: 00:37:22

But to lead that conversation from that position of here's what I, and

Louisa: 00:37:27

we currently believe, and here are the difficult decisions that we are

Louisa: 00:37:30

having to make, and please know we are not completely close minded here.

Louisa: 00:37:34

I am open to the fact that we may learn something that will change

Louisa: 00:37:38

our view or change our opinion.

Louisa: 00:37:40

I'm also open to the fact that we may learn something

Louisa: 00:37:42

that won't change it at all.

Louisa: 00:37:44

I'm open.

Louisa: 00:37:45

that's the humanity that I would want to see carried through.

Lee: 00:37:48

I wrote down the word before you said it, it was the same word I

Lee: 00:37:51

was thinking, which is vulnerability.

Lee: 00:37:53

I think that's something that those in senior leadership roles can be

Lee: 00:37:56

very scared of showing, but absolutely is the thing that helps you connect

Lee: 00:38:01

most with the people around you.

Lee: 00:38:03

So,

Louisa: 00:38:04

It's that weird catch 22, isn't it?

Louisa: 00:38:06

Completely.

Lee: 00:38:07

and naming that, acknowledging the fact that you do feel vulnerable

Lee: 00:38:11

or scared or that the fact you're about to have a difficult conversation and

Lee: 00:38:14

saying to that person, look, I know this is going to be difficult, but yeah,

Louisa: 00:38:18

completely.

Louisa: 00:38:19

Yeah, completely.

Louisa: 00:38:20

I've got, I talk a lot about just name the elephant that's in the room.

Louisa: 00:38:23

and this has become such a thing.

Louisa: 00:38:25

I've now got little elephants all over my branding everywhere.

Louisa: 00:38:27

And this is why it's also just, it's a really cute little graphic and

Louisa: 00:38:31

I ran wild with it, but, I would use that in any instance, actually.

Louisa: 00:38:34

It's the same if you are a leader and you are having a challenging

Louisa: 00:38:38

conversation with another staff member.

Louisa: 00:38:40

And you can feel that, you know, I suspect we all kind of know these.

Louisa: 00:38:44

I'm thinking immediately if somebody I've been doing some work with recently, but

Louisa: 00:38:47

who the person they are trying to hold accountable just always seems to avoid.

Louisa: 00:38:52

They just always seem to have another excuse.

Louisa: 00:38:54

They just always seem to yes, but yes, but yes, but is the game essentially

Louisa: 00:39:00

that they're playing with you.

Louisa: 00:39:01

And rather than getting stuck in a kind of power struggle around that.

Louisa: 00:39:05

my advice would always be to step out of the game.

Louisa: 00:39:08

Bye.

Louisa: 00:39:08

With loads of kindness and loads of compassion.

Louisa: 00:39:11

Name the dynamic that's going on.

Louisa: 00:39:12

Hey, I just want to pause the conversation we're on because I'm, I'm noticing

Louisa: 00:39:16

that anything at all that is suggested here, I feel as though Immediately

Louisa: 00:39:21

the decision has already been made that it's not going to be suitable.

Louisa: 00:39:25

And I'm curious about what's going on there.

Louisa: 00:39:27

I'd really, really love to understand what's happening.

Louisa: 00:39:30

Cut through it.

Louisa: 00:39:31

Let's name the thing that's happening.

Louisa: 00:39:33

We know it.

Louisa: 00:39:33

We can feel it.

Louisa: 00:39:34

So often we can feel.

Louisa: 00:39:37

This isn't going to go anywhere because this person is so resistant or

Louisa: 00:39:40

slithering around and quite difficult to pin down with loads of kindness

Louisa: 00:39:44

and with no shaming or blaming.

Louisa: 00:39:45

That's crucial.

Louisa: 00:39:46

But with kindness and compassion, let's name it.

Louisa: 00:39:49

Let's not shy away.

Louisa: 00:39:50

Name the elephant

Lee: 00:39:50

that's really helpful.

Lee: 00:39:52

a practical example someone can take into their next conversation, isn't it?

Lee: 00:39:57

And we've talked a lot about people delivering difficult conversations,

Lee: 00:40:01

but of course leaders can be on the receiving end of difficult conversations.

Lee: 00:40:05

And I think that could be just as hard how you respond or don't respond to

Lee: 00:40:09

something can set the tone and precedent for all those types of conversations.

Lee: 00:40:14

So what do you do in the context of where you might be surprised, you

Lee: 00:40:18

might not be prepared, but you know you need to respond in some way.

Lee: 00:40:22

How do you handle it?

Louisa: 00:40:25

So again I don't want to sound like a broken record, but

Louisa: 00:40:27

there's a huge amount of this that is about self management.

Louisa: 00:40:30

And there's a fundamental truth that I use a lot in my work and talk to clients

Louisa: 00:40:37

about actually whatever, whatever level, this is just a human truth for me, right?

Louisa: 00:40:42

Which is that we are always responsible for our own emotional regulation.

Louisa: 00:40:48

Always.

Louisa: 00:40:50

And, the lovely flip side of that is, we are never responsible for somebody else's.

Louisa: 00:40:55

Now, people always freak out a bit about that second part, because

Louisa: 00:40:58

they're like, oh, but I do worry about how other people feel.

Louisa: 00:41:01

I do want to be, and they confuse it with empathy.

Louisa: 00:41:04

Empathy is glorious.

Louisa: 00:41:06

It's a fundamental asset, I would say, for any good leader,

Louisa: 00:41:09

anywhere, any good human, actually.

Louisa: 00:41:11

so I'm not suggesting for a second that that goes anywhere, but I am just

Louisa: 00:41:15

reframing slightly what I believe it is.

Louisa: 00:41:17

I don't believe for a second, empathy is not for me worrying about the way

Louisa: 00:41:22

somebody else is going to feel and feeling their feelings on their behalf.

Louisa: 00:41:29

Instead, empathy is about being really clear in our minds about

Louisa: 00:41:33

these are my feelings and therefore they are my responsibility.

Louisa: 00:41:36

They are yours and I can see and hear them and connect to you about them.

Louisa: 00:41:40

I can imagine what it would be like and wow that sounds rough, that

Louisa: 00:41:44

sounds really difficult, but that's different than us getting wrapped

Louisa: 00:41:48

up in their feelings for them.

Louisa: 00:41:50

The irony being that so often it's hugely, hugely empathetic people that struggle the

Louisa: 00:41:55

most to have the difficult conversations, because they are so worried about how

Louisa: 00:41:59

it's going to feel in their body when the person that they're saying something

Louisa: 00:42:02

difficult to has an emotional response.

Lee: 00:42:04

Yeah.

Louisa: 00:42:05

That's not empathy at all.

Louisa: 00:42:07

That's going on there.

Louisa: 00:42:08

psychologists or psychotherapists would call it something called

Louisa: 00:42:10

codependency, which is where we actually feelings feel contagious and

Louisa: 00:42:14

we get so confused about what exists in our body and what exists in others.

Louisa: 00:42:18

And again, it comes from a really lovely place.

Louisa: 00:42:20

It's probably because at some stage we've been hardwired to adapt the

Louisa: 00:42:23

way that we're behaving to make sure we're pleasing other people right.

Louisa: 00:42:27

But in our adults, and this is a crucial tool that I think leaders need to get

Louisa: 00:42:32

a hold of is the ability to recognize, hang on, these feelings exist in my body.

Louisa: 00:42:38

Theirs exist in theirs.

Louisa: 00:42:39

You can imagine a sheet of glass even existing between you, where you can

Louisa: 00:42:42

see and hear them through it, but their feelings do not come through the glass.

Louisa: 00:42:46

They have a right to feel however they need to feel.

Louisa: 00:42:49

they also have a responsibility to regulate themselves around it.

Louisa: 00:42:53

To go back to your question, of course, that can mean if we are on the receiving

Louisa: 00:42:56

end of something that shocks us, or that surprises us, or that it kind

Louisa: 00:43:00

of, it dysregulates us in whatever way, it's about taking a breath and

Louisa: 00:43:05

remembering that two things are true.

Louisa: 00:43:08

This is our responsibility to manage.

Louisa: 00:43:11

And it's okay that it's difficult.

Lee: 00:43:13

Mm.

Louisa: 00:43:14

And within that space, even when there is hierarchy at play, so

Louisa: 00:43:17

let's say you are a senior leader and this is your CEO pulling you in for a

Louisa: 00:43:20

conversation, I would still advocate the more that we can head into those

Louisa: 00:43:25

spaces and recognize that yes, a kind of literal hierarchy exists between us in

Louisa: 00:43:29

terms of the way the company is set up.

Louisa: 00:43:31

Fundamentally, we are two human beings.

Louisa: 00:43:33

We are two adults sitting down to have this conversation.

Louisa: 00:43:35

And therefore, If whatever it is that you are spoken to about, the

Louisa: 00:43:39

difficult conversation you're on the receiving end of, if that dysregulates

Louisa: 00:43:43

you to the point you need a bit of space, that you ask for it.

Louisa: 00:43:46

You say, thank you for letting me know that.

Louisa: 00:43:50

I'm finding that quite hard to process or that's hit me quite hard.

Louisa: 00:43:54

I'm, I'm gonna, I'd really like to just take five minutes to regulate

Louisa: 00:43:57

myself, ground myself so that I can come back and we can have

Louisa: 00:44:00

this conversation productively.

Louisa: 00:44:02

What won't happen is the conversation will not be productive if we are really

Louisa: 00:44:08

emotionally triggered and struggling to find our groundedness through it again.

Louisa: 00:44:12

Of course, in good leadership, what you'd hope is that the CEO

Louisa: 00:44:15

actually has handled it with such humanity and warmth and contracting.

Louisa: 00:44:19

And, and clarity and boundaries around it, that you're never blindsided that,

Louisa: 00:44:25

okay, it might be hard to hear, but you're also met with the nurture and

Louisa: 00:44:29

support and care that is required to have you then move on and meet the new and

Louisa: 00:44:34

higher expectations of whatever that is.

Louisa: 00:44:36

That's what you'd hope, but of course it doesn't happen in every instance.

Louisa: 00:44:39

But sometimes just rooting yourself in the only person whose feelings

Louisa: 00:44:43

I'm responsible for actually is mine.

Louisa: 00:44:45

and then trusting, because people always then say to me, Oh, doesn't that

Louisa: 00:44:48

mean that I might, if I don't think at all about the way other people are

Louisa: 00:44:51

feeling, that I might do something that's really unkind or unfair.

Louisa: 00:44:54

And I think, no, you won't.

Louisa: 00:44:56

You won't, because we're human beings who, on the whole,

Louisa: 00:44:59

have a desire for connection.

Louisa: 00:45:00

And trust your own sense of integrity.

Louisa: 00:45:03

Trust your own sense of integrity and let the rest go.

Louisa: 00:45:06

and work with yourself,

Lee: 00:45:07

Yeah, your values still run through the way you lead regardless of, of how,

Lee: 00:45:11

and I really, I really connected with the point you made around empathy, and it's

Lee: 00:45:16

something that I've talked about a lot.

Lee: 00:45:18

actually leaders, it's more about showing compassion because if you try and take on

Lee: 00:45:23

other people's emotions, your, you, you then become the fixer or you, or you avoid

Lee: 00:45:28

the things that you're trying to tackle.

Lee: 00:45:31

So it is about more leaning into compassion than trying to be empathetic.

Lee: 00:45:36

I would say.

Louisa: 00:45:37

I love that distinction, yeah.

Louisa: 00:45:39

I love it, completely.

Louisa: 00:45:40

And this is a lot, I mean, we're getting into sort of Brene Brown's,

Louisa: 00:45:43

world and work aren't we, I love her.

Louisa: 00:45:46

But absolutely that distinction is so, it's so important.

Louisa: 00:45:50

and it is about just shifting out of this notion that actually to be empathetic, we

Louisa: 00:45:55

have to feel on behalf of somebody else.

Louisa: 00:45:57

No, not at all.

Louisa: 00:45:58

We need to be able to see it and hold it, hold it and hold them in the space.

Louisa: 00:46:02

Yeah.

Lee: 00:46:03

So my final question is what's the one piece of advice about difficult or

Lee: 00:46:10

challenging conversations that you would give to leaders that the one thing that

Lee: 00:46:15

you wish they'd pay more attention to?

Louisa: 00:46:18

Yeah.

Louisa: 00:46:19

I think the core thing is.

Louisa: 00:46:21

I mean, I've got so many, but I'm going to try and whittle it down to one.

Louisa: 00:46:24

The core thing is to just give yourself permission the whole time.

Louisa: 00:46:31

To remember that difficult conversations get to tick two boxes

Louisa: 00:46:34

at once, they get to be productive and kind, productive and kind.

Louisa: 00:46:42

And when you're planning to have to raise anything at all, that is a very, very

Louisa: 00:46:47

simple, quick little tick box in your mind to think, right, the thing that I'm

Louisa: 00:46:52

about to say to this colleague, this team member, whoever it is, is the thing that

Louisa: 00:46:56

I'm about to say both productive and kind, and it needs to tick both of those boxes.

Louisa: 00:47:03

As long as it does, you probably can't go far wrong.

Louisa: 00:47:08

And for me, being able to lean in and access that kind of resource in the moment

Louisa: 00:47:14

is about, and I'm looping way back to what I was saying earlier, but it's about

Louisa: 00:47:18

really calling time on this notion that to have the difficult conversation, we either

Louisa: 00:47:24

are going to risk the relationship and not be as well connected afterwards, or, we

Louisa: 00:47:28

are going to avoid saying the thing and just tread a bit gently and just take, and

Louisa: 00:47:33

it's just easier to take more on ourselves and not really hold them to account.

Louisa: 00:47:36

Let's just call time on this notion that it's, it's an either or choice

Louisa: 00:47:40

between being bolshie or being too nice.

Louisa: 00:47:43

It really isn't.

Louisa: 00:47:44

And I love the thought within all of that, I distinguish a lot, I talk about

Louisa: 00:47:48

kindness so much in my work, but I don't talk about niceness, because for me

Louisa: 00:47:52

they're two very, very different things.

Louisa: 00:47:54

Nice is so worried about being liked, and worrying about being liked is a challenge

Louisa: 00:47:59

that is always going to hold you back.

Louisa: 00:48:01

You can absolutely worry about...

Louisa: 00:48:04

quality human connections.

Louisa: 00:48:08

You could worry about the quality and integrity of relationships,

Louisa: 00:48:11

but if we're too attached to being liked, we're going to stay in the

Louisa: 00:48:13

nice camp rather than the kind.

Louisa: 00:48:15

Kind allows us to say the difficult thing, but with compassion, with warmth.

Louisa: 00:48:18

Yeah.

Lee: 00:48:19

I love that.

Lee: 00:48:20

I'm totally signed up for that manifesto.

Louisa: 00:48:23

Yes!

Louisa: 00:48:24

Let's do it, Lee!

Louisa: 00:48:24

We're changing the world!

Lee: 00:48:25

Yes.

Lee: 00:48:26

So thank you so much for your time.

Lee: 00:48:28

If people want to follow you online or get in touch or just to say thank you

Lee: 00:48:35

because they've learned something new from this conversation, how do they find you?

Louisa: 00:48:39

Thank you.

Louisa: 00:48:39

Yes.

Louisa: 00:48:39

So I'm on, I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, and I'm Louisa Clark.

Louisa: 00:48:44

you can find me under my name.

Louisa: 00:48:45

If you're interested, you can have a look at my website, which

Louisa: 00:48:47

is www.confidentlythere.Com.

Louisa: 00:48:50

And I do have on there, a freebie download which is, a checklist

Louisa: 00:48:55

of five steps to take before you have the difficult conversation.

Lee: 00:48:59

I'll put all those links in the show notes as well.

Lee: 00:49:01

And I will be downloading that myself, I think later this afternoon.

Lee: 00:49:05

Well, thank you again.

Lee: 00:49:06

I really appreciate your time.

Lee: 00:49:07

And, I've learned loads in that conversation.

Louisa: 00:49:09

Thank you so much for having me on.

Louisa: 00:49:10

I have loved it.

Louisa: 00:49:11

I could talk to you all day Lee.

Louisa: 00:49:12

Thank you.

Lee: 00:49:15

If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know on apple

Lee: 00:49:18

podcasts or on your app of choice.

Lee: 00:49:20

And drop me a line over on LinkedIn.

Lee: 00:49:22

You can find me at Lee Griffith.

Lee: 00:49:24

I'll be back with the next episode in two weeks time.

Lee: 00:49:26

So in the meantime, remember to sign up to my newsletter at www.sundayskies.Com

Lee: 00:49:30

to get notified of new episodes, guest appearances, and further

Lee: 00:49:33

insights on how to lead with impact.

Lee: 00:49:35

Until next time.