In this episode, we talk about dealing with workplace conflict, communication in conflict, and the greatest-of-all-time power phrases you can rely on to achieve your desired outcomes.
Have you ever noticed that what you say can make all the difference in the type of information you receive, how people respond to you/what you share, and the overall trajectory of a situation?
In this episode, I talk to the CEO and President of Let’s Grow Leaders, Karin Hurt and David Dye about dealing with workplace conflict, communication in conflict, and the greatest-of-all-time power phrases you can rely on to achieve your desired outcomes.
You’ll also learn about The 4 Dimensions of Healthy Conflict – since not all conflict is destructive. When handled correctly, it can be an incredible catalyst for engagement, creativity, and innovation.
Let’s dive in!
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Karin Hurt and David Dye help human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. As CEO and President of Let’s Grow Leaders, they are known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick. Karin and David's many books include Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates, and a new book coming out in May 2024, Powerful Phrases for Dealing With Workplace Conflict: What to Say Next to Destress the Workday, Build Collaboration and Calm Difficult Customers.
A former Verizon Wireless executive, Karin was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of great leadership speakers. David Dye is a former executive and elected official. Karin and David are committed to their philanthropic initiative, Winning Wells – building clean water wells for the people of Cambodia.
Learn more about their work and pre-order the book at letsgrowleaders.com.
- I'm Celine Williams and welcome to the "Leading Through Crisis Podcast," a conversation series, exploring resiliency and leadership in challenging times. My guests today are Karin Hurt and David Dye, who are CEO and President of Let's Grow Leaders. And they are also the bestselling authors of "Courageous Cultures" and "Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict: What to say Next to de-stress the workplace, build collaboration and calm difficult customers." Welcome Karin and David.
Thank you so much for having us.
Glad to be with you.
Absolutely. It's my pleasure. I'm really excited to talk to you about many things. Even from just the few minutes of chatting before we hit record, I can already tell this is gonna be an amazing conversation. So to get started the way we always do, I'm gonna ask you each, the name of the podcast is Leading Through Crisis, when you hear that phrase, What comes up for you? What does it mean to you?
You know, it's interesting. When I hear that and when I first got familiar with their podcast, I thought, well, there's crisis with a Big C, right? Things that are catastrophic. The world is in a lot of Big C crisis right now, so I don't wanna minimize any of that because that is so heart wrenching, some of the things that people are having to deal with. And I think all of us have crisis with a little C all the time. And we have, you know, there's a crisis when, you know, the cat jumps on your thing and, right, and takes down your camera and, you know, there's a little c crisis all day long and they also are important. And how you show up in your Big C, your little C, and your middle C crises really does make a difference. And so I think that, you know, thinking about how do you distinguish those, that's one of them because a lot of times, I think we tend to focus on our little c crisis as if they're a middle c crisis or even a Big C crisis, and being able to differentiate that. We have a client who is a former Marine, and sometimes some big bad things go wrong in his world, and he'll say, "Karin, nobody's shooting at us." And you know, he says... So I think that is a helpful way to think about some of this.
Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you, Karin. David.
For the definition for me, I think there's that element of the unexpected, like something unexpected has happened that throws us off kilter and we need to solve for it, and whatever the magnitude, whatever the severity and and so forth, for scale. One of the things as we've been talking about leading through crisis that occurred to me is when I was in a chief operating officer role, had two or three different crises that happened a year or two apart, and we navigated them and were leading through 'em. I was getting some executive coaching at that point in my career. And debriefing what had happened, we had done well through those and I was really proud of our team. And the coach asked me a really, to me, insightful question. He said, "That's great that you guys have led through the crisis and got through the crisis. Can you, as a team, do as well when it's not a crisis?" And I thought that was a really good question, just leading through crisis and solving them, and then how do we establish not crisis and minimize the extent and the amount of crisis and do as well through it. So it's an interesting dynamic of how we show up in those environments.
Absolutely. I think it's, to go back to what Karin was saying as well, is that if we don't have a perspective on the different capitalizations of the crisis for Big C, small C, middle C, sometimes we get used to leading and showing up in one way and then that's the only way we know how to show up. And so we'll manufacture crisis, we'll manufacture situations so that we can show up the way that we think, not that I'm saying, you know, that you were doing that, David, but I think I'm at my best when there's a lot of change in chaos going on so I'm gonna manufacture something to make that happen. It doesn't mean it's the best for everyone else, and it doesn't mean that the people on my team or that I work with or that I report to, or whatever the case may be, that they feel the same way. And yet we get really focused on the personal small C crisis and making it something potentially more
Yeah.
Like with what Karin was talking about, I know one of my shortcomings sometimes that I really have to pay attention to and Karin helps gimme perspective on it, is, okay, I'm leading through one of those bigger, challenging types of things where you really do need to like, you know, figure it out, coming with high energy, and you're really solving a lot of problems and kinda amped up. And for me, it's how do I amp back down? Because, you know, she'll ask me a question, I'm like, "Well, we got this" da-da-da-da-da, and I'm in that like kinda mode, and she says, "What are you talking about? This is that, that's then," and, you know, and it's like my adrenaline and my cortisol is still so spiked. I gotta bring it back down to like deal with the real world at a normal level.
Yeah. Listen, I think that the idea of, clearly having a podcast called Leading Through Crisis, I think the idea of crisis and change is fascinating because we do all manage it really differently. We do all show up really differently. And one of the things that is really consistent in crisis or change is that uncertainty, right, that we don't really know what's gonna happen. How do we show up when there's all that uncertainty?
Yep.
And I'm curious 'cause I know you talk about uncertainty in some of what you do. So I'm curious what your perspective on that is, regardless of the change or crisis piece.
Yeah, the first thing, this is where we always start when someone is saying "everything is uncertain," is that not everything is uncertain. It is easy to feel like when there is a major fast pivot, even, you know, just through the pivot that we all just went through with the pandemic, right? It feels like, "Well, everything is uncertain. We don't know what variants are coming. We don't know how long this is last. We have, we don't, we know." What do you know? And so if you can start with, what is it that we know for sure, like what's sacred and not changing, right? Your values. You know your values, right? You know there are certain aspects of the things, you're there to accomplish your mission. Those aren't changing. And then you can make a list of the things and here are the variables and here's the things that you don't know. Just that, we find, can deescalate a team in crisis pretty fast. And they're like, "Okay, well, so we just have to deal with this stuff, 'cause, all right, we can do that." And so, you know, providing that level of clarity, a clarity about a number of things. Okay, so clarity about what's changing and what's not, and then clarity about what are we gonna do? And maybe you just need to provide, depending on how bad the crisis is, and I've led through, when I was at Verizon for 20 years, we dealt with some pretty crazy stuff and well, all right, so I would break it down. Well, this is clarity, what we're gonna do today, you know, just today, and then I'm gonna tell you and we're gonna cuddle at the end of the day and we will talk about clarity about tomorrow. Now of course there were a lot of us that were looking at the bigger, longer things, but, you know, keeping people focused on taking some tactical, practical action can also help.
I think another element is, I'm thinking of a client that we were working with, doing with some leadership development work, but then their number one customer was a big utility and the utility had undergone some changes and was redoing everything and it threw their entire business plan out the window and into chaos. And the executive director, CEO had met with us and he was just distraught about "What on earth is gonna... Have so many unknowns, everything was unknown." So we did the work that Karin was talking about, "Okay, what do you know? Not everything's unknown." But then the second part is, as a leader, and this is something that kinda popped out of mouth at that moment, but that we really share frequently with our clients. Because you may not know what you're going to show up to, but you always get to choose how you're going to show up. And to remember that choice and the perspective and the emotional intelligence and everything else that we are showing up with is so vital for how we're going to lead in those moments. So we'll never know everything there is to know about anything. There's always some level of uncertainty, but we always get to choose how we show up.
I love that. One of the things that often comes up for me is this idea of control when it comes to uncertainty, right? We feel uncertain 'cause it's a lack of control. And I'm not saying it's a, you know, one and done, but that's what I often see is all the uncertainty feels like a lack of control. And to your point, David, we can always control how we show up. That is always within our control, that we can be really clear about. And I think that to me is really important to keep top of mind and to keep reminding people of. Also, so I appreciate you saying that, and it brings me back to what you were talking about, Karin, which is the idea of clarity. Sometimes it's okay to be clear that you don't know what you don't know. And owning that is clarity. And it's so fascinating to me how many leaders don't wanna say that, because that's gonna be scary or that's gonna be uncertain. And it's like, actually, people can appreciate that level of clarity.
Yeah, yeah. We call that landing in the and of confidence and humility. So, you know, you're gonna show up with confidence that, all right, I'm gonna be a strong leader in this. I'm gonna create a compelling vision. I am gonna be confident in the strengths of me, of the team. I'm gonna ground ourselves in our past success, confidence, and then humility to say, and I don't have all the answers, right? We're gonna figure this out together. This is how we're... You know, and the humility to stay open to possibilities, to try some new things, to do many experiments, they may or may not work. And if you can, you know, stop in a crisis and say, how do I approach this crisis? With confidence and humility. And then another land in the and, focusing on results and relationships along the way, you're off to a good start.
Yeah, I love that. I think confidence and humility is a great, just like that phrasing takeaway, easy to remember for people. I think that's simple and I love that because you can remind yourself of that. It's two words. How do I approach this with confidence and humility?
One of our clients had bumper stickers printed for everybody's computers that say, "Land in the and," and that's it, of confidence and humility, right? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I love that. David, it looked like you wanted to say something, I might have been wrong, but I wanna make sure. Okay, balancing two people. I just wanna make sure I'm not missing what someone is going to say. So I'm gonna pivot a little bit. We were talking about this before we hit record, but I know that you've done some research on conflict, which is to the book that is behind both of you currently, that you've done some research recently and it sounds like some of what you were finding was super interesting. And if you're open to it, I'd love for you to share anything that you're comfortable with around that, 'cause I think it's probably incredibly relevant to all of the listeners right now.
Yeah. So our publisher came and asked us if we'd be interested in writing this book. They had seen there's a need in the marketplace for a book on helping people to navigate workplace conflict. And we said, "No, we thought about it, figured out that yeah, we wanna do this, but we wanted to know more about what's happening in the workplace with regard to conflict right now." So that's why we did this research. And so yeah, we surveyed 5,000 plus people, 46 different countries and asking them several questions around workplace conflict. And then the number one was, "Is conflict in your workplace getting worse, the same, or less over the last few years?" And whichever ends the way you answer, "Why? Why do you think it's worse? What's making it better if it's better?" And so that was the first set of questions we asked. And really interesting, 70% of folks said that it's the same or worse today than it was just a few years ago. But what's interesting is if you look at the 30% who said, "Oh, you know, there's less, I have less conflict," when you ask them why, half of that group say, "It's better because I left. I'm not at the same job. I went to a whole different workplace," or "I'm working from home, so I'm not around people as much anymore. So I'm not having as much conflict with them." And you know, the sad part about that is that what's lost in that. And there's nothing wrong with working from home, per se, it's how we're doing conflict. So if we're just avoiding any kind of engagement with each other, what's lost in that? We're not getting the creativity, the new ideas, the innovation that what healthy conflict breeds. So not all conflict is destructive. We wanna eliminate-
Not at all.
the destructive conflict and really engage in that collaborative healthy conflict that breeds new ideas and innovation.
Yeah. I love that you said. I do just wanna highlight, I love that you said not all conflict, that there can be healthy conflict. Not all conflict is bad because I think people, when they hear the word conflict, especially in a workplace, immediately get, I mean, I was gonna say shut down, that's extreme, but they, you know, it's like, "Oh, I don't wanna deal with it." And it's like actually, creativity, innovation, all these wonderful things come from conflict and differences of opinion, and that is healthy. And so I appreciate you saying that. I don't think we say it enough in general when we talk about conflict.
Yeah. We talk about four dimensions of healthy conflict, and one is related to what we've just been talking about, clarity, really creating clarity about, what does a successful outcome look like? You know, that's the first place to start, because if we're trying to solve for different outcomes, no matter how much we try to collaborate, we're not gonna be on the same page. And then from there, you think about connection. You know, are we connected as human beings? But the better you can connect as human beings before you need to resolve a conflict, the deeper the trust, the easier you're in a productive conflict. So creating that connection all the time. But then also if you're in what we call an ACE, an acute conflict emergency, you start with connection. You know, hey, I really care about you and I know that we can figure out a solution. I'm confident in that, you know? Or creating a connection. Hey, what I hear you saying is that you're really frustrated about this. I see that, you know? I don't want that for you. So let's talk about, you know, this. So creating that connection. And then curiosity, showing up and saying, you know, let me just be curious about your perspective, really curious about it and curious about different ways and alternatives to solving it. And then commitment, helping, 'cause this is moving towards the next action, right? Because a lot of times people have "Groundhog Day" with conflict, we keep having the same conflict again and again because we aren't really putting actions in place to solve it. And so in the work that we're doing around conflict, we teach people to how to really maximize each of those dimensions. And then we have 300 powerful phrases. That book is powerful phrases for dealing with workplace conflict. So 300 phrases to deal with: What do you do if somebody steals credit for your work? What do you do if your boss is a micromanager? You know? And then how do you deal with it from all those four C's?
So I have a question about those four C's, but I do wanna acknowledge-
Okay.
as you were saying that, I was like, I feel, and you were saying that people are in the "Groundhog Day," I was like, I feel like so many people I know in their personal lives are in that "Groundhog Day" and don't know how to resolve it, whether it's in a relationship or family or whatever. And they just cycle maybe even more so than workplace sometimes 'cause sometimes you can avoid things in the workplace, as you were saying. I was like, everybody needs to understand that regardless of whether it's workplace conflict or not, because they do get into rabbit holes. That was my comment, but the question I had for you was, of the four C's that you just mentioned, and there might not be an easy answer for this, I fully acknowledge it, but it just popped into mind. Where do you often see people getting the most stuck? Like, is there a place where you're like, 'cause I hear those and I'm immediately, like, curiosity to me stands out as a place that like we think we're curious and all we're doing is asking the leading question to get to my answer, which isn't really curiosity, right?
Yeah.
So that's what stood out to me. I'm not saying it's at play, but I am curious, is there a place where you see a lot of people or certain types of people, whether it's like leaders or whatever, who gets stuck in that cycle?
Well, David, you go 'cause I think we're gonna say the same one, so you start.
I don't know if we will or not. I was gonna speak for myself on some level because Celine, what you're saying, you know, is so true that leaders get stuck in different places. I think everybody gets stuck in different places and there's a lot of factors that go into that. For me, I find one of the most powerful... We have, as Karin said, the 300 plus phrases. We also narrow it down and we have three, what we call go-to questions, the greatest-of-all-time power phrases for each category of each dimension. And one of our curiosity goats is, "I'm curious how this looks from your perspective," which is an incredibly powerful phrase. And when I ask it, two things happen. And I say when because I don't always do a good job of asking.
Oh my gosh, are you human, David? You don't always do-
I know. It's shocking.
A good job?
But when I do ask it, two amazing things happen. One is it gets me out of my amygdala. It gets me out of all the, like, it engages the front part of my brain and like I'm showing with . And that curiosity and whatever other frustration feelings I have, hard to coexist. So it kind of puts me in a different place. So when you ask that, I'm curious how this looks from your perspective, it will automatically help you get out of that stuck-ness. But then also, my goodness, what we learn in asking a question like that, how does this look from your perspective? Like, it blows my mind every time I do ask the question. What I learn, the other people's perspective is so very different than mine for all the reasons, right? You know, experience, but I mean there's just so many different things that go into that, personality, everything else. So I think that is one where it is easy to get stuck, it's easy to forget that there are other perspectives and I understand why, right? I want that respect, I want to be valued, I want to be seen. I want all those things for myself and in my feeling stuck about those, it can be hard to step outta that for a moment and say, okay, well, let me actually try extending that to somebody else and see what's going on there. And then that opens the door for further conversation. So that's my answer. Karin, how would you-
Mine is different. So I would say clarity, because so often we find that, you know, what's causing conflict is an expectation violation. I expected you would empty the dishwasher before you left for work. You did it. Now we're in conflict. That's a simple one, but particularly, as we've shifted to remote work, we're seeing so much newish conflict around this, around lack of expectations. My expectation is you're going to have your camera on because it's the polite thing to do. And your expectation is that you shouldn't expect me to put my camera on. I have Zoom fatigue. Well, as a team, we have never established what are our norms. So we're in conflict, but if we had just had a conversation about, when do we put the cameras on and when do we don't? These are our norms, now we eliminate the conflict. Conflict in a matrix organization. Well, how are we going to make decisions? Do we have a clear expectations about how we're gonna make decisions? Well, if we don't, then I think I get the right, you think you get the right, somebody else thinks we need to ask the boss, and we're in conflict. So working office occasional. You can work wherever from wherever you want. This is a true conflict that has come up. Our policies say you can work from wherever suits you that you can be productive. Okay. So I go online and I am watching, and my coworker, who by the way has not returned my emails for the last three days, has a picture of themselves on Zoom at a petting zoo with a pony in the background, responding to everybody's comment about how cute this is. So now my coworker has time to respond, A, be at the petting zoo with her child who is little, is responding to this whole social media, causing all the ruckus. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here waiting for data. So the challenge there is, there's really lack of clarity. We don't really mean you could work from anywhere at any time and do anything. We need to have some standards about how to do that. So I am all about curiosity. It's my favorite one. It's the dimension that I am the best at, but I do think that a lot of the conflict is coming from lack of clarity.
I can absolutely see that. And I appreciate what you said about expectations, because I find it really interesting how many, I'm gonna say organizations, but also leaders are really against the idea of expectations these days. Like there's a lot of, like back talk, that's not the right word, negative talk around expectations. Like we just shouldn't have expectations and we have to take that language out of whatever. And it's like, I mean, you can take the language out of it, but we all have expectations. Call it whatever you want. That's real. And when they become ghost expectations, which for me is when they're unset, like that's the language I always use. It's like we're just not acknowledging them. We're not speaking them. They're like in the background affecting things, but we're like, they're not real 'cause they're not expectations, but they are.
I think and I understand why people wanna get rid of the word. It has a loaded sense to it. There's a power dynamic involved, all of those sorts of things. So when we're talking about it, what we're really talking about here is that we have a shared understanding of what success looks like and how we're going to get there. And if we don't have that conflict, like you just can't do it otherwise. You have to have a shared understanding. And sometimes that does come from the policy handbook and other times that comes from a team discussion about what success is gonna look like for us that we build some consensus around, but either way, you need to get there or it's really difficult to move forward.
Yeah. I think that, I mean clarity is, it's a game changer for anyone because you're in, I mean, I would hope. I'm saying this like it's a fact. I would hope for most people, when you get to that point of clarity, you are saying the things out loud and people are, whether or not they're agreeing, they are in alignment by the end of the conversation, by the end of the whatever's happening to say we are all heading in that direction together. We are all on board with this. Even if I'm like, that's not how I do it, I don't agree with it, I can say I'm in alignment.
Yeah. One of the simplest tools that we teach that has the biggest game-changing result is what we call a check for understanding. And so this is where you hear back from someone. So you know, we're gonna do these three things at the meeting. Okay, I just wanna make sure we're all on the same page. What are the three things that we're gonna do? People, we teach that, and people like, "You know, when I started the check for understanding and a lot of the time I thought I was clear, but they picked up something different." And so that is just a very simple... And when you're leading through crisis or conflict, that's when you need to check for understanding the most because people are stressed, they've got a million things on their mind. It's different than saying, do you have any questions? Or is everybody good? Because they don't have any questions 'cause they think they've got it, but it's not necessarily what you intended
And you can use it. You don't have to be like leading the meeting either. You can, you know, in conflict conversations just saying, Hey, what I'm hearing you say is this, do I have that right? And repeating back in your own words to see if you're on the same page and really, if communication has happened or not. Yeah, that's just another very straightforward form of clarity that is easy to do, but not as easy to get there sometimes as we might think.
Well, I mean I think it is something that is so often missed, and to what you were saying, Karin, especially when there is conflict or crisis going on at all, because we're all listening for what we think is the most important part of that, which might not be-
Right.
what you're saying, which might not be what's most important to anyone else. And if we don't do a check for understanding, look, we're all looking for confirmation on whatever, confirmation biases. So we're walking away like, okay, I confirmed the thing that was most important to me, and we might've missed the point entirely.
You know, yes. Yeah, it was interesting. So we have a team member who we just asked to do a bunch of ideation about something and David and I just sat here for like two hours this afternoon going through her stuff and it was like, "No, I think she means this." And I'm like, "I think she means this." And we had interpreted it, you know, completely differently, you know? So we have to go back and do a check for understanding on some of those. You know, I think that's just interesting because we're coming from like just radically different interpretations of the exact same words.
Yeah.
And even when you're talking about outcomes, another one of our goats for clarity, greatest of all time powerful phrases, that I think is so important on this subject is, "What would a successful outcome do for you?" Not what is a successful outcome? Because then I just say whatever my picture of it looks like. When I ask, what would it do for you? Now I'm finding out what's underneath it. What are your actual needs? What is the filter to, Celine, to use your language, what is the filter, the confirmation bias that I'm looking through? This is what I'm after. Okay, now if I know that and I know that for myself, and I put mine into the conversation, I find out yours and you find out Karin's, and now we have all of those, these are what the outcomes would do. Now we can start crafting something that has a chance of at least getting there. But if we don't have that information in the conversation, it's really hard to make forward progress.
Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard a leader on anyone, not even a leader, I don't think I've ever heard anyone in a business context ask the question, what would a successful outcome do for you? Everyone gets stuck on the, "What does a successful outcome look like?" That's always the question. It goes to, you know, what you were saying earlier as well, when we wrap things up, we say, "Do we have any questions?" It's why do we ask? Why is that the question we... Even if we ask something as simple as, have I missed anything from your perspective? That changes the information we're gonna get back, but we're stuck on the same questions over and over again.
And it gets to values pretty quick. So what would a successful outcome look for you? Well, gosh, somebody's gonna say, you know what, a successful outcome means that we triple our revenue and somebody else on the team may say, a successful outcome looks like my life is not just in this frantic lifestyle all the time. Like a solution looks like balance and we get outta crisis, right?
Yeah.
And so both of those things may be true, but it's showing your values in that environment.
Yeah. So I'm just gonna ask the question very selfishly on behalf of all the listeners. Are there any other... I know we were talking about clarity and curiosity. Are there any other goat questions or phrases that you're like, this is the other one I would say top of mind always use or we see be super successful that you'd be willing to share?
Well, Karin, we can split 'em up. You wanna do a connection one and I'll hit commitment?
Yeah. So, you know, one of our favorites is reflect to connect. "So it sounds like you're," and then you insert the emotion. Do I have that right? And it's been interesting because we use that quite frequently, and sometimes you don't. It's a check for understanding on the emotion too. It sounds like you're really frustrated. No. Actually, I'm not frustrated. I'm confused. Right? So, okay, well, confused. I'm gonna respond differently if you're confused than if you're frustrated, but I, you know, my confusion is coming out as defensive, frustrated, right? So I think that's an important one from connection. Commitment is David's favorite, I think.
Okay, I wanna jump in before you go, David, 'cause I wanna say something about that 'cause I... And I do wanna get to commitment. So I see a lot of, in tension, conflict, whatever you wanna see in the workplace, I see a lot of people who I think, and this is why I'm calling this out and I wanna jump in, they think they're doing what you just said, Karin, which is they're checking for understanding of someone's emotion. And what they're doing is assigning someone an emotion and then moving past it, right?
Yeah.
So I think they think that they're, that they're saying like, you know, what I hear or what, you know, however they're phrasing it, I hear that you, or you seem really frustrated, right? You seem really frustrated, and then they continue on and they don't actually... So what you're walking away with is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Hang on. And that's where a lot of defensiveness comes in. And I'm saying that before we move to connection, which I do wanna get to, simply because if you think you're checking for understanding when it comes to someone else's emotion, actually listen to what Karin just said and then make sure you're checking and not just telling someone what they're feeling.
You know, and another way to do it is just to say, you know, so you're closing up a meeting and then you say, so before we end, how are you feeling?
Yeah.
And really care.
Yeah, yeah.
Almost nothing worse for me than somebody telling me what I'm thinking or how I'm feeling.
Same.
I'm like, it's funny how, and I'm not alone in that. I know there's like, it's just, you're so right, Celine. It's, whew, that one fires me up.
But it happens all the time, which is why, and I really do wanna get to connect, but I didn't wanna skip that because I think a lot of people would hear what you say otherwise, Karin, and go, I check for that all the time, but it's like, hold on, actually make sure you're checking and not just telling David that he's, you seem very frustrated, let's do this. Wait a second. That's not checking for understanding.
Yeah, between assigning versus, yeah.
Yeah. Connection, David. I haven't forgotten-
Commitment. We're gonna go to commitment.
Commitment. See, I've jumped, wrong words.
Well, 'cause we were talking about connection. We're reflecting to connect and checking in. What is that emotion?
Yeah.
So commitment, one of our favorites for commitment, and this goes to the situation that Karin was talking about earlier, where we get in those groundhog days and you're saying we all are familiar with those at home, at work, wherever. We call this schedule the finish. And the idea here is that we've had a conversation, we've agreed on a path forward, we need to turn that intention into action. And one of the best ways to do that is to put it on both of our calendar. So whether it's, you know, we've discussed a new trash routine with our teenager about when the trash goes out, how that's gonna happen. All right. How about we get together Monday at five o'clock and see how this has gone for the last week or two and let's review. Or if we're at work and we're like, okay, we're gonna need this data. This has been a stressful thing for us. Let's figure out a new way to do this that's not as stressful for both our teams. Okay, great. We come up with this new procedure, fantastic. I'll make the request by here this way. You'll answer them by this, this way. Fantastic. We've got an agreement. Okay, cool. Let's schedule the finish. When are we going to meet to see how this has gone? So we say, all right, let's put it on our calendars. And that's the key. It's on our calendar. And we're gonna have an eyeball-to-eyeball conversation, whether it's virtual or in-person, and take 15 minutes and discuss, how did it go? So the phrase is, "Let's schedule some time to talk about this again and see how our agreement, our commitment is working." What this does, there's two things that this does. First is it increases the likelihood we're gonna follow through on our commitment because now we know there's a time we're gonna be looking at each other going, Hey, did you do the thing? The second thing it does is it gives us a way to handle exceptions when they inevitably happen. So we make a great agreement with full good intentions, and then there's a crisis or our manager comes in with something that no one was expecting that got passed down and oh, it blows up everything for the week. Okay, if we don't keep our commitment, but we also never talk about it again, it erodes trust. So now we've got a built in time to look at it and go, Oh, did you? No, I didn't either, you know? Yeah, I remember our boss came in with that thing. Okay. All right, well, how are we gonna handle that? And if that kinda thing happens all the time, it's no longer a crisis, it's a known thing that happens. Let's figure out how to deal with it. Or if it was a one-off, all right, let's get back to our agreement. Let's keep it this week and let's schedule again in a week and a half and see how it went. So that's a commitment phrase. "Let's schedule time to talk about this and see how our solutions working."
I really hope that people hear that and actually do it because the number of times I hear, and I hate this corporate speak, but I'm sure you have heard it as well, "We'll circle back to that in a couple of weeks," which is like the... Thank you, Dave. It's like the least committed way of not actually committing to, we'll circle back to it at some point. Oh, I hope that people hear that phrase and actually do that. Stop saying "circle back at some point in a few weeks." What? There's so much that you have shared that I'm really grateful for and so much insight and value and practical things here. So first off, thank you for that. And if there is... Before we wrap up, I always like to give you the opportunity to either reiterate something if you think it's really important or you're like, please don't forget this thing. Or if there's something that you didn't get to get to say that you wanna have a chance to say before we wrap up, this is the opportunity.
So we have a terminology that we use when we kick off any new long-term leadership program, which is "avoid SASRNT syndrome." Now, that's one of the joys of being authors. You get to make up your own names for syndromes.
I was like, what is that? I don't know that one.
So SASRNT stands for So And So Really Needs This. And I can almost guarantee that everyone listening has heard something today where you're like, yeah, you know, who needs to stop doing that? My boss, my wife, my kid, right? And it's very likely true. And we would love nothing more than for you to go by powerful phrases, really workplace, conflict for your wife for Christmas as a pre-order, comes out in May. But if you do that, if you first, you know, teach it to somebody else, you will have so much more credibility if you really do a check for understanding and say, do I really, to your point, how you've been saying, do I really do that or do I just think I do that? And then when you go to teach it, then they say, yeah, you know what? I have noticed that you do do that. And it is very effective, and you have so much more credibility with that. So if you heard something today and you think somebody else needs it, first take a pause and say, am I doing that? And how can I continue to be a role model of that as I spread the word?
I love that, thank you. David.
Yeah, mine goes to... I am thinking about workplace conflict. One of the things that happens to all of us is we have a conversation in our head before we ever have a conversation with another human being.
Amen.
Most of us do. When I was early in my career, our CEO was scheduling this marketing event, and I felt like this thing lacked integrity. And I spent four days of sleepless nights stewing and how could he be so dumb? Where is his integrity? Why doesn't he care? I mean, I was hot. And it really did violate my sense of right and wrong. Finally, in desperation, not elegantly, not using any powerful phrases, I said, "Hey, I don't like this. I can't be a part of this. This lacks integrity." And to his credit, he said, "David, I don't see it that way. I don't see an integrity issue here, and I don't want you to violate your integrity. So what would you suggest we do so that you feel good about it? Oh. Well, why don't we do this?" And he said, "Okay, sounds good. Let's do it." And it was such a lesson to me about the fact that if I had stayed silent, that silence was selfish. And the reason is because I had his whole side of the conversation in my head, you know, in fear and everything else. And if I had never spoken up, I was depriving him of the chance to make a different decision, to ask me for a different solution, to, you know, anything else. And so for anyone listening, if you're stewing about a conflict at work, have the conversation. If you open the door and have the conversation, use some of the phrases we've talked about, you open the door to something else happening. But if you never have the conversation, nothing can change. And so it's amazing what's possible when we approach another human being with genuine intent, asking some good questions, getting curious, getting clear, getting connected, and making a commitment together of what can change.
Our fear of what someone might say and the the conversation we create in our head, the story we create is often so much worse, for lack of a better term, than what actually happens. And so I think-
Yes.
that's a really important reminder for people to walk away with as well. Thank you both for being here. For those who are listening, you can find out more about Karin and David at letsgrowleaders.com. And their book is coming out in May. Can they pre-order it on your website?
Absolutely. It's available for pre-order now, so
There you go. Go pre-order the book. You've got a little taste of what's coming with what they've shared today. Thank you both for sharing so generously and being so open and fun to talk to.
Absolutely our pleasure. Thank you so much for hosting us.
Thank you.
My pleasure. Thanks for joining me today on the "Leading Through Crisis Podcast." If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a minute to rate and review us on your podcast app. If you're interested in learning more about any of our guests, you can find us online at www.leadingthroughcrisis.ca.