Difficult Conversations

Unknown Speaker  0:00  

Music.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:08  

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast, where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host, Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic and certified executive coach. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:30  

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for being here today. I have missed you all. I have been in the river of misery. In September, I caught something from my daughter who just started kindergarten, and I swear I've been coughing and sick for the last six weeks, so I am just coming out of it, and I apologize I missed the last week of September with a new episode because I just didn't have a voice and couldn't talk long enough without coughing to record anything. So I am back, and I'm so excited to be on the mic today talking to you on this specific topic, because I have been hearing from a lot of my clients lately about this. We've been doing a lot of coaching on it, and I thought I should record a podcast episode about this, because I feel like I have had similar conversations. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:27  

I was coaching one senior leader who has a new boss who was hired during her maternity leave, and they have very different communication styles, and so talking about how to approach conversations with him. I also was coaching someone who has a challenging employee who offers feedback openly and honestly and can kind of be a little bit triggering, and so we've had conversations about how to approach that employee I was talking to someone who is scaling their startup and has an employee who is no longer a fit for the organization, and so talking about, how do we have that difficult conversation of, hey, you might not be right for the team anymore, even though you've done all this amazing work for the company, and another leader who's covering for someone who is out on paternity leave, and she's having to take over his direct reports, and so communicating with them, so just lots of communication happening. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:40  

And I think the reality is that as leaders, a really important part of our job is to have tough conversations. I think that when we move into management role, we underestimate how many of these conversations we're going to have to have with our employees, with our peers and fellow leaders and executives. And honestly, it doesn't matter if you're a pro at it, you can practice and practice and practice. There are just going to be some topics and some people who are going to cause you anxiety, and you probably have this thought of like, I should be, you know, I'm further along in my career. I should be okay with this. I shouldn't have anxiety about this. But the reality is is we're human, and these conversations can be tricky and can be triggering for us, and maybe you've become a pro at addressing things with your employees, but when it comes to advocating for yourself or a raise or a promotion or additional resources or time off, that feels really difficult. Or maybe you can have all the tough conversations at work, but when it comes to your partner or your mother, you feel like you're showing up as a completely different person, and you're getting so nervous about these conversations. And it's totally normal. It's totally, totally normal to get nervous about a conversation, to feel anxiety about it, no matter how many times you've had it. Of course, as we have more of them, we build that muscle, and it feels a little bit less daunting. But I think there are just always going to be some tough conversations we have to have in our careers and in our lives that we feel anxiety about. So I want to share a few coaching tools that I've shared with my clients and that I think might help you prepare for the next conversation that you're anticipating might be a little bit tough. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  4:29  

So the first tool I want to share is from a book I read years and years ago called Crucial Conversations. I actually made this required reading for every new manager that I hired into or promoted into my team, because I think it's so vitally important, and I highly recommend reading the whole book. But I think the main takeaway for me, or like the essence of it, is the importance of thinking about what is your goal. For the conversation, or what are your three to five goals for the conversation? How do you want to show up? What do you want to make sure that you and the other person walk away with at the end and writing those down and getting very clear on them, so that that way during the conversation, you can keep it on track? I think a lot of times, whenever we just kind of go in. And we've thought about the conversation a lot, but we haven't been very intentional in our thinking, and we haven't thought about, what are my goals for this conversation. It's so easy to get pulled off track, and so easy to just kind of get down into a rabbit hole, and we're like, how did we get you this is not what I thought we were going to talk about. So that's number one. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  5:43  

Number two is a coaching tool that I talk about a lot, and it is the idea of approaching it with curiosity. So curiosity and openness provides so much more space than going in with judgment and closeness. Whenever we let our minds start thinking about these conversations, a lot of times, our mind will take it to the worst place, right? We're thinking the worst case scenario, it's going to be terrible. Should be a huge blow up. They're probably going to quit and then write a formal complaint about us, and we're gonna get fired and lose our job, right? We kind of go down this path of we know how it's gonna go, even if it's not that catastrophic, it might just be that Well, I know how this person is, and I know that all our conversations just go this way. So you kind of go into it with this preconceived notion that it's not going to go well. And the reality is, if you've listened to any of my other episodes about how our thoughts impact our results, if we have the thought and expectation that the conversation is not going to go well, then we can guarantee one thing, that the conversation is not going to go well. So instead of going in with that kind of closed mind and the outcome already decided, here's what's going to happen, instead, we can go in with curiosity and openness. What's going on for the other human in our presence? Remember, we're all humans, so just being curious about their experience, I think so often we think we know what someone else is thinking, and it may or may not be true, but we're not going to know what they're truly thinking unless we're going with true curiosity. So what's going on for you, understanding and hearing them? Because the reality is, is that it's very hard to hear someone else when you know they're not willing to hear what you have to say. Understand that whenever we have those preconceived notions about someone else, they're coming in with preconceived notions about us too, because it's a human thing that we do. So if we set the stage and set the tone and the energy in the place of curiosity and genuinely wondering about the other person, there is the opportunity for that to be reciprocated. It may or may not. We don't have control over the other person, but what we can guarantee is that when we go in with judgment and go in believing the worst about the other person and what they're thinking about us and the situation, then there's not going to be that openness. There's not space for it. So we have to, as leaders, create that space. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  8:30  

The third thing is asking ourselves, what could go right? What could go right in this conversation? What are five to 10 positive outcomes of having this conversation, and write them down and force your brain to think about them. Because right now, your brain is going to be coming up with all those worst case scenarios and creating kind of a fear factor in your head. It's going to build it up in your head as it's like this huge scary thing. You're going to be dreading it. You're going to be losing sleep over it. I mean, how many times have you lost sleep over thinking about an upcoming conversation? I know I have. And so whenever we redirect our brains to focus on what could go right, we start to open up the possibilities. I actually had the employee I mentioned who was having a difficult conversation with her direct report, tried this every day for a week or two. She wrote down multiple times a day when she thought of it, five things that could go well in this conversation, and the conversation ended up turning out way better than she had anticipated, significantly better than the scenario she had come up with in her mind. So just open yourself up to the possibility, and ask your brain to stop solving for what could go wrong. Instead, ask your brain to start thinking about and focusing on what can go right? Not only will that make the conversation feel a little bit less daunting and put your nervous system at ease when you are preparing for and going to have the conversation, will also allow you to be more clear headed and show up as the person that you want to show up as in that moment and not this activated triggered everything they say, sets me off kind of person or energy. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:25  

And then the final thing is that maybe check to see if there's an opportunity to break up this conversation into multiple I think a lot of times we think we have to have this one big conversation and like this is our chance to get it all in and out there, if we don't say it now, we're not going to be able to say it, and we kind of create this scarcity, high pressure mindset and situation, and that sometimes makes the conversation feel more high stakes and more daunting, and makes us want to have it less. So we push it off, we avoid it, or we just fret about it and feel a lot of anxiety about it. So is there an opportunity to break it up? Maybe it doesn't have to be one huge conversation. Maybe we can connect in the first conversation and bring up one thing, right? And maybe we can space it out. If that makes sense, that may or may not make sense, depending on what's going on, but just look for the opportunities to break this down into smaller, more bite sized pieces that feel less daunting and more attainable and more manageable. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  11:33  

So whether you're avoiding or dreading an upcoming conversation, I hope these help you so that whenever you are doing whatever you love to do outside of work, spending time with your kids or doing activities or hobbies or things like that, you could focus on them and be really present with them. So you don't have to keep thinking about this and replaying it in your head, taking you outside of the present moment, you can tell yourself, hey, something could go right here. I'm going to be very curious about this. I'm going to be clear about my goals, and when I have that plan in place and I have a protocol and I follow it, then I have the ability to make more intentional decisions about what I want to use my brain for and what I want to focus on in that moment. So I hope it's helpful. I hope that your next conversation goes really well. Report back, I would love to hear if you implement some or all of these tools and how they helped you in your tough conversations. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in, and I hope you all have a great week. Bye. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:46  

Thanks so much for tuning in to the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like, subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care.