EntreLeadership - #256: Hard Talks Made Easier with Joseph Grenny

Episode Date: April 2, 2018

While the thought of having difficult conversations may fill most of us with dread, business social scientist Joseph Grenny says avoiding conflict is a big mistake. In fact, he says such conversations are absolutely crucial to an organization’s health and overall success. Sure, the stakes are high—and the tension may feel even higher—but ignoring incompetence or bad behavior only creates alienation and a culture of mistrust. Luckily, Joseph shares practical ways to defuse the situation and achieve a successful resolution. Also joining us is John Felkins, Director of All Access at Ramsey Solutions, with a few dos and don’ts for handling tough conversations. entreleadership.com/podcast Difficult Conversations Checklist from EntreLeadership How to Achieve Work/Life Balance from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Enter the conversation with a perfect mix of curiosity and confidence. Yeah. We start pounding the table and asserting our position. What we don't do is back up and try to share the premises of our position. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders.

Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Speaking of conversation, that's what we're focused on this episode. Joseph Grinney is the co-author of a book entitled Crucial Conversations. You're going to love that. And then our head coach of All Access Coaching, John Falcons, will stop by as we talk about the Ramsey Solutions way of handling the difficult conversations. And of course, we're going to give you free resources from our Entree leadership team and our friends at InfusionSoft. Joseph Grinney is a four-time, New York Times bestselling author and a social scientist focusing specifically on business performance. As I mentioned at the top of the program, the book is Crucial Conversations.

This is a fascinating conversation that gives you a great construct on how to maximize conversations and certainly the most important ones. Here is my conversation with Joseph Gleney. Joseph, great to have you with us. I want to just lead you right in to. defining what the book title really is saying. What would you say are crucial conversations and why is it so important for leaders to be able to handle those so well? These are conversations that stand between us and the results we care most about. It turns out that most of the time when we're stuck, it's because people, it isn't because people don't have the right ideas. It's because

they can't discuss the ideas. They can't be intellectually honest. They can't hold people accountable. They can't disagree with people in positions of authority. They can't correct people when they're making mistakes. So we began to focus on these conversations because time and again in organizations, we found that the most important predictor of organizational success is how long it takes for disagreements or disappointments or differences of opinions to get surfaced in a respectful way. Really well said. So I love right at the beginning of the book, you lay out a pretty audacious claim,

and I love it. And you call it the law of crucial conversations. What is this law? Yeah, the law is that anytime you find yourself stuck, there are crucial conversations keeping you there. A corollary of this that we've talked about is that you can measure the health of an organization by looking at one simple thing. And that is the average lag time between when people see something and when they say it, between when they feel it and when they express it, between when they experience it and when they discuss it. And so that lag time in most organizations yawns so long that all kinds of mischief happens, mistrust, disagreements, problems and conflicts between departments and teams, issues that go unaddressed for a long period

of time. When that lag time is huge, that's what creates all of the political mistrust and alienation that happens in most organizations. And so the way to get unstuck, according to that principle, is to develop a culture where people promptly and effectively address these crucial conversations. And really, this book walks anybody through how to do that because there's so much fear, fear of the unknown of how it's going to go. There's all types of things. And this book really walks people through in a practical way. And what I want to do, Joseph, is tee you up to talk about a few chapters that I singled out

that I think will be great for folks to get a really good sense of how helpful this book is. Chapter 3 is entitled Start with Heart, How to Stay Focused on What You Really Want. So teach us a little bit. Summarize that chapter. Yeah. the first thing that goes wrong in crucial conversations is usually not your behavior, it's your motives. it's that your heart goes to a bad place. And so I'll give you an example.

I was watching a leader one time who was trying to engage his team in a cost reduction exercise. And in the middle of it, somebody criticized him, basically said he was hypocritical because he was spending all sorts of the capital budget on improving his own office while he was asking them to shave nickels and dimes from using office supplies more efficiently. And when he heard that, I could see immediately what was happening to him. His face shot red, his hands gripped the sides of his chest, chair, he became defensive. The conversation was no longer about cost cutting or getting to the right answer. It was about him saving face, about him trying to get revenge. It was about him being right.

So there are so many motives that get in the way of us having effective crucial conversations. Now, what we found by studying people who are good in these moments, who show up in an effective way is the first thing you have to do is start with heart. The first thing you have to do is get your motives right. And the best remedy when your motives go south is just to stop and ask a very simple question. And the question is, what do I really want? If you just stop and ask yourself, what's the long-term goal? What do I want for me, for the other person, and for the relationship? It takes you to a completely different place than when you're unconscious and start to feel defensive in these moments. It transforms the conversation. And what would you say to a leader if

they know now that they've heard this and they catch themselves. And they're going into a meeting. And this is on the same topic, but a little bit indirect in the way I'm asking this, if their heart's just not in a good place, maybe for some other reason. And that affects maybe this other issue, even though it's not directly related. Do they stop? You know, is it one of those things where, hey, maybe this isn't the right time to have a crucial conversation because I'm not in a healthy place, maybe for some completely other reason. I just want you to speak to that because I think you're on to something with, you know, where our heart is when we're in any crucial conversation. Yeah, I think you've asked the question in a way with an answer embedded in it.

Oh, okay. You're absolutely right. In a crucial conversation, the importance is authenticity. And so if what's true is that in this moment, I'm not in a good place. The only authentic thing you can do is acknowledge that. And to say, I need a time out. I've got to get myself back to where I can focus on the topic at hand. So will you please forgive me for a moment while they take a breath?

Now, leaders often don't have that luxury. And so one of the remedies for that is this skill I'm trying to teach it. It sounds deceptively simple, but it is profoundly therapeutic, simply stopping, taking a breath, changing your physiology for just a moment and asking, what do I really want here? One of the challenges we have in crucial conversations is that when adrenaline courses through our body, because we're under threat or stress, portions of our brain shut down. The physiology that I won't go deeply into here is pretty clear that by asking yourself an abstract question, a question like, what do I really want? You signal to your body that you're not under any kind of physical imminent threat. It signals to your body that what you need is cognitive resources. So if you ask an abstract question like, what do I really want?

Blood flow literally gets redirected. Adrenaline starts to wash itself out of your bloodstream. It calms you. It focuses you. So these simple little cognitive interventions are profoundly important and can help you get back to a healthy place quicker than you might think. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. It is a great exercise. All right, let's move to chapter five. Make it safe.

How to make it safe to talk about almost anything. Now, again, that sounds almost like, come on, are you serious? Because leaders sometimes I think that's like, can we actually talk about this and be productive? You say yes. How do we make it safe to be able to do so? Yeah. I once watched a CFO who needed to talk with one of the business line leaders in a very large organization about his concern that she was embezzling and that she was incompetent. So talk about a crucial conversation.

I mean, the stakes couldn't be any higher than this. Now, you look at that, and the reason I share that really striking example is because most of us would look at that and say, that content is undiscussable. There's no way you could talk with anyone and have a non-defensive conversation about something so threatened. And that's because you and I labor under the misconception that the predictor of success or failure in a crucial conversation is how risky the message itself is. And that's not true. All of us, everyone listening to this podcast and viewing it recognizes that we have been in conversations where we've talked about incredibly risky things and had it go surprisingly well.

And we've had the reverse happen too. We've talked with a loved one about something as trivial as which way the toilet paper hangs. That's right. And had it turned into a huge contest, the content you're trying to discuss is not what predicts success or failure. What predicts it is how safe people feel discussing that content. Your number one job in a crucial conversation is to create what's called psychological safety. And you do that in two ways. First, you have to generate evidence for the other person that you care about their problems, interests, and concerns.

Now, notice I'm not describing this as a trick or a technique because, it isn't. You have to generate persuasive evidence for them that will cause them to say yes. I think Ken really cares about my problems, my interests, and my concerns. In fact, almost as much as I do. And if I start to believe that, I do this. I go, ah, I start to relax and I start to be open to hearing what you have to say, even if I don't like it, even if I disagree with it, I'm capable of hearing it. The second thing you have to do is generate evidence for them that you care about and respect them personally, even if they're behaving despicably. And I could give you dozens of examples of how this works. But as soon as the other person knows, you care about them as a person, even if

you're about to confront them for some really bad behavior like embezzling from the company, they start to open themselves up to your message. Now, what I'm not suggesting here is that, therefore, the conversation will be a walk in the park. You're still going to have to be able to make your point. You're going to have to be able to make it persuasively. But at least you won't be fighting against their defenses to the same degree. Your number one job is to create psychological safety. Wow, that's good. Okay, just to recap, I wrote it down. You got to show them that you care, and you got to show them that you respect them. This is good, leaders. This will take a lot of the fear out of the tough conversation. Really good. Okay, let's move forward. Chapter 7,

state my path, how to speak persuasively, not abrasively. This is a challenge for me sometimes in the sense that I don't even think I'm being abrasive. I'm just so fired up about something. And if you don't have the right posture, you know, the physical posture or something, it can come across abrasive. I think this is a really great challenge. Really spoke to me. Teach us on this as well. Yeah, two things. I'll give you the principle and a tactic. So the principle is enter the conversation with a perfect mix of curiosity and confidence. So it's important to be confident in your point of view to the degree you actually are. But try to stop short of certainty. If you stop short of certainty, if you stop short of

you're at least open to additional learning. If you come in absolutely certain, you shut down the potential for dialogue. And that's where curiosity comes in. You want to come in asking a question, why would a reasonable, rational, decent person take that person's point of view? Why would they see things so completely opposite me? Come at it like a good scientist would, like a detective who's trying to trace back their path of logic to the essential data that brought them to the conclusion that they carry. So that's the principle, a balance of curiosity and confidence. The tactic is this. When you want to share your point of view, share it in this order. Facts first, story second, emotions, if necessary, third. You and I tend to do the reverse. We tend to start with emotions, then dump our story and almost

never get to the facts. What we do is we say, well, I think that we ought to make this capital investment. I feel strongly about that. That's what we do. We start pounding the table and asserting our What we don't do is back up and try to share the premises of our position. If you do, it humbles you. You start realizing that your logic is not impenetrable. There are alternative points of view. It also takes you back to starting with heart. If your motive isn't right, if your motive isn't making the right answer for the business or for our team,

then it exposes itself because what you really wanted was to be right or to look good, to win the argument. So it's humbling to force yourself into this way of making your argument. facts first, story second, feelings third. The facts are the observable evidence that you've got that is usually fairly irrefutable, although these days in politics, that seems to be open to question two. Second is the story. These are the conclusions and judgments you've drawn from your facts. And finally is the feelings. What's your gut? What's your emotions? You know, where's your affect around all of this as well? So if you keep yourself to that strict order, it keeps you humble,

curious, as well as confident. All right. Then we go to chapter 9, move to action, how to turn crucial conversations into action and results. I mean, hey, that's why have a crucial conversation if we're not going to get some action and some results. So how do we do that best? This one is deceptively simple. And I'll say it and most of the people listening this will not properly appreciate how necessary this discipline is in a team setting, for example. So I watched a very high performing team one time as part of our research. We spent about 10,000 hours watching people in the course of their various crucial conversations. And one of the highest performance teams, I watched have a spirited discussion

about a policy issue. And at the conclusion, they were ready to move on to another issue. But the leader of this team stopped and said, okay, great. So we've come to this conclusion, who is going to do what by when and how will we follow up? The whole team sat back rather than charging to the next agenda item and surface some more issues that were provoked out by asking who is going to do what by when and how will we follow up. There was additional controversy to be had. And until they tied down every one of those four elements, WWWF is the acronym, until they had, they didn't have closure. That discipline keeps you from having deja vu dialogues. We've all been in relationships, we've been in teams where it seems like the same issue comes up again and again and again. And it's usually

for lack of this one simple discipline, tying a bow at the end of the crucial conversation by asking, okay, then who is going to do what by when, and how will we follow up? How will we ensure that this policy has been implemented, that this new agreement between us is actually translating to change behavior? That is a critical, small, subtle, but significant element of a good crucial conversation. I love that. Okay, and then putting it all together. This is how you entitle the last chapter. Again, we haven't given them the whole book, but I really want our leaders to go, okay, of what we've heard today from Joseph, this is how we make sure that we're completely looking at how to handle and win through crucial conversations. The notion of putting it all together

is just moving to action with practice. So let me just give a challenge to those of us that are participating today. Many people want to read the book and get a good idea or two, but we fail to actually move it into changed behavior and changed habits. The best way to do that is just think of a crucial conversation that you've been avoiding. We've done this research now for 30 years and everybody's got something in their vault, something that they've been holding back if they were entirely forthcoming with a colleague, with a direct report, with a boss about a weakness or a disagreement, or something you haven't expressed. And the invitation that I'd offer today is to think about who is that person and what's the issue you'd like to discuss.

and then use this as an opportunity to challenge an assumption that you and I have carried since we are three or four years old. Somewhere early in all of our upbringings, you and I start to carry a damnable conclusion, and I mean that in a very precise way. We start to conclude that you frequently have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend. We start believing that if you're absolutely honest with people, you may rupture relationships. That's right. And that the only way to preserve relationships is to compromise truth. Well, what I've learned through hard-fought experienced in my own life is that all human suffering begins when we start compromising either truth or love, either one. If you start compromising your commitment to another human being or you start holding back from truth, you interrupt the intimacy and the connection that all of us want and need in our personal lives, and that is the essence of a vibrant organization.

It is possible to have both truth and love, to have truth and friends, to be entirely honest with other people, and do so in a way that not only doesn't rupture the relationship, it strengthens it. But you'll never know that until you start experimenting with this. So my invitation is think of that person, think of that message, use what you learn from the book to start crafting a way of trying to get truth on the table and to do so in a way that promotes psychological safety, that expresses your commitment and compassion for that. that person. And if you do, you'll find it's far more doable than you ever thought possible. And it will enrich every relationship of your life. So true. What is the science behind this book? I think people

connect with this. There's a question. This is very practical as you listen to it. But I know that there's a lot of science behind this. And I want our audience to understand what has gone into what has now become this book and several of the chapters that we just have reviewed. Yeah. So first and foremost, we didn't come at this topic because we were interested in communication. We studied high-performance organizations. We were wondering what differentiates those who tend to execute flawlessly on their strategy and innovate consistently as organizations. And what we found is the number one determinant in their culture

is how quickly and effectively truth gets on the table, period. Resilience in organizations, the capacity to innovate, to change, to challenge people to achieve their potential. is a function of how quickly truth gets on the table and how effectively truth gets on the table, period. Your job as a leader is to shrink the lag time between when smart people see a problem and when smart people discuss a problem to zero, if at all possible.

So that's number one. It was studying organizational performance. Second, having noticed that crucial conversations that these moments matter so disproportionately, we started watching them. We spent over 10,000 hours observing people having crucial conversations and tried to understand what are the practices and skills that led to an effective outcome or that led to violated relationships and separation? And so the skills in the book

came from that very disciplined observation. For example, you asked about making it safe. We found that if in the first 30 seconds of a crucial conversation, you generate that kind of psychological safety, the odds of you being thoroughly heard in your point of view, not necessarily agreed with, but thoroughly heard, go up by 97%. So these aren't trivial, tiny little differences. These are the physics of a crucial conversation. And finally, the science comes from us having then taken this as a potential solution into organizations and attempted to see if you could actually change behavior. Could you shrink lag time to close to zero? And if you do, do patients' lives get saved in hospitals? Does client retention improve in a financial services firm? Do you get better

productivity and less waste in a manufacturing operation? And time and time and time again, we found that that's precisely what occurs. Well, it's amazing stuff. It's a great read, very practical. Three million copies and counting sold. Crucial Conversations, Tools for Talking when Stakes are high. You've been listening to one of the brilliant co-authors, Joseph Grinney. Joseph, thank you. This is really, really practical and also really vitally important as you have laid out so beautifully for us. Thank you for hanging out with us. We're better for it. Happy to talk with you, Kim.

Thank you. All right. Keeping the conversation going. Boy, this could get tricky. Good thing will the producers paying attention. Our Entry leadership team is going to give you a difficult conversations checklist. And stay tuned in just moments. John Falcons joins me in studio to talk about how we have.

actually handle this topic, difficult conversations. So what you're about ready to get is a one-two punch. This tool is going to play beautifully into the conversation you're about ready to hear with coach John Falcons. We call it the difficult conversations checklist. So how do you handle the difficult conversations where you have to take on a matter that needs to change with an employee? It can be very, very tension filled. There are some dues and don'ts. So we're going to walk you through that. Don't put it off. Get it on your calendar. Don't be cruel. Don't lose focus. Do be prepared. So that and so much more, absolutely free. Here's how you get it. Text, difficult. The word difficult to 33444. That's 33444. Or you can get the link to this resource in the show notes

of this episode at entreleadership.com. Click on podcast episode 256. All right, folks, it's always a thrill to have our head coach, John Falcons, good friend, here in the studio, always coaching people today. John, we need you to help us on this idea of difficult conversations. We've been talking about crucial conversations on this episode, but one of the most crucial conversations is the difficult one. The one that leaders, honestly, we like to avoid because confrontation is not fun, but it can be effective. We've got a great policy here on how we do it, so I want you to unpack what's the Ramsey solution? way. Sure. And great point, Ken, that it's something that we like to avoid as leaders. All the coaching questions that we get, I think you can boil down at least 50% of them to how do I avoid

conflict. And you're not going to, if you're going to lead effectively, but to have a good, difficult conversation, here's the things that I'd say to you. Number one, have it early. Have it when it's not huge. Have it when it's not, you know, somebody's got to stay or somebody's got to go. When it gets there, you've already missed your opportunities to have a really good difficult conversation. Keep it low level as non-nuclear as you possibly can. Then the next thing is, is empathize with the, when you go in there and you're going to have this conversation, just start out by saying, look, we're going to have to have a difficult conversation. I got to give you some feedback. It really makes me nervous. And just own that. Like, be okay with

living in the tension of, this makes me nervous to say this to you because I want you to receive it well. but here's the thing, Ken, I need to let you know and then whatever it is. And just be honest, when you do that, when you're direct but you're kind, you're actually going to build trust with that person. When you beat around the bush, you try and spin things or you avoid the real issue, it actually doesn't build trust. And here's the third thing I would say, if it's really tough for you, which side note, maybe this is the third thing, it's not going to be as bad as you think.

Right. Right? There's a lot of fear there. There's a lot of fear. A lot of fear. I mean, just think about back when we, were kids and we were about to get a whoopin, the anticipation of the whoopin was much worse than the whoopin.

Agony. If parents would have just never given us the whoopin and made us wait an extra 30 minutes, we'd have been just anxiety riddled. Yeah, absolutely. So just know that. It's not going to be quite that bad. Yeah. But if you are in the first few times you've done this and you don't really feel like you

know what you're going to do or how you're going to handle it, this will really feel weird, Ken. Yeah. But write it down. Just write it. down what you need to say because you're going to be more clear-headed, you know, before you get into that moment. And then when you get into the moment, take what you've written down in there with you and say to the other person, Ken, I know this is weird. This isn't this formal or official, but I want to get this right. And so I've actually written down what I need to say to you. So I'm

just going to read this. And that's really odd. I know that. But I want to get it out and I don't want to mess it up. So here's what I want to say to you. And then just read out what, you know, what you had written down and then ask the person like, okay, now let's talk about this. You know, how does this strike you? Where do we go from here? But don't be afraid to do that. So have the conversation early. Recognize the fact that it's not going to be as really as bad as you think it's going to be. And then if you absolutely have to get clear on it before you go in there and write it down so you can have a really, you know, on track conversation. Yeah, I want to stay there for a moment because this idea of writing it down allows us to be super clear. And it's the clarity

in the midst of this, okay, there's some tension here. Yeah. But by being super clear, there's not added tension when the meeting is over. They walk out of there going, I know what wasn't right. Yeah. I know now what is expected of me. I know what I need to do, whatever that is. Yeah. But the clarity is what is so important in this process. Yeah. It's absolutely right. And I know you know this line. We say it around here all the time. To be unclear is to be unkind. So if you're walking around and you're frustrated with somebody in your organization and you're not happy with what they're doing and you're carrying a lot of stress around that and you're not clear with them about that. And then the day that you just go volcano mode and fire them or unload on them,

you're not really being fair to them. And the fact of the matter is is that it's your fault because it's your conflict avoidance that has prevented you from having that productive conversation a lot earlier on. You're not being nice. You're not giving them rope. What you're really doing most of the time is you're avoiding your own discomfort in not having that conversation. And so be kind to them and have the courage to have it. Say, hey, look, you got spinach in your teeth. Or, you know, you need to up your call time. Or, hey, I notice, you know, the service truck isn't washed or whatever it is, in your business, have that low-level conversation, but just set the tone that we're going to talk about this stuff. It doesn't mean that I don't think the world of you, but this is my

role and I'm going to lead you. Would you recommend in the midst of that conversation, the old compliment, constructive criticism, compliment sandwich, or is that unnecessary there? You know, I think that's a great approach. Here's what I have found, though, if you do that too much, it feels, it feels, I don't know, what's the word? It feels manufactured, it feels forced. Inauthentic. Inauthentic. It's like, okay, you're just coming up with something nice to say to me on the front and back because you got to drop the hammer. Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. I'm glad I asked you that because I was just wondering, because at the end of the day, if they're not being fired. Right. And this is just a, hey, you're not in danger losing your job. Right. But we got to have a conversation. That's the stage that you're talking about very early on. Yes.

You're not kicking the can down the road. That's right. All right. Yeah. Every, you know, if somebody is doing something, if they're exhibiting a behavior that's unacceptable within your organization, you need to have that initial conversation, and then every subsequent conversation needs to be a little bit warmer.

So that the day, if it does come, that you've got to let this person go, there's no surprise. It's not breaking news. No. They've seen it coming from a mile away. Yeah, that's really good. All right.

Good stuff. He is coach John Falcons. That's why he's our head coach. Real quick, because when we have you on for time and time, I mean, we've got an amazing community with all access. I just want you to hit real quick. I mean, when we say coach John Felkins, You've got a team of coaches.

So you got your offensive coordinator. You got your defensive coordinator, special teams, the whole deal. What is that like in all access? What does that coaching look like on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? You know, Ken, it's all about taking Dave's playbook for winning that business and helping people win with that in their business, helping them implement that, install that way of doing business. And our coaches do that through facilitating mastermind conversations, through coaching sessions

in this studio, we call it e-coaching. And then they just have videos going on all the time. You know, there's content, there's community, and then there's the coaching that we're talking about. But it's really about helping people not be isolated, knowing what to do because they have good information, and also being able to get feedback from somebody that's saying, hey, I see what you're trying to do. You might try it this way. You might tweak something a little bit. You're going to have better results.

And often, as you know, because our school colors are black and blue, all we're doing is helping people avoid the mistakes that we've made as an organization. organization. It's so valuable, John, and his team. In fact, we got to let him go. He's got a whole boot camp group of people that he's just been absolutely drill sergeing into them the way we do things at Andre leadership. So he's got to go. Thanks for being with us. Thanks. Big thanks to coach John Falcons for hanging out with us. All right, our friends at Infusionsoft, bringing you the how to achieve work life balance resource. This is great. They give you some details here on this. For small business owners, work, passion, and life always overlap. 70% of small business owners have said in a survey that they have sacrificed family or vacation time for work, even on

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Go to infusionsoft.com slash worklife balance. That's infusionsoft.com slash worklife balance. Well, that's going to do it for this episode. So on behalf of Will the producer, Jim, the engineer, and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.