EntreLeadership - How to Tackle Tough Conversations at Work with Brendan Wovchko

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Let’s be real: Conflict can be super uncomfortable. And if you’re a leader, there’s a good chance you’re faced with it often. But you know what’s worse than having a hard conversation? Avoiding it—and letting problems with your team fester. Fortunately, Brendan Wovchko, senior technology officer at Ramsey Solutions and former business owner, has a fail-safe framework that will help you approach difficult and downright awkward conversations with confidence. You’ll learn how to steer conversations toward actionable outcomes, coach your team members to correct their behaviors, and diffuse any tense situation.   ramseysolutions.com/shows/the-entreleadership-podcast Ramsey Solutions' website Download the Guide: Planning an Uncomfortable Conversation EntreLeadership Partners Schedule a call with Tim, the Producer   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

I'm sure at your company, everybody does everything the right way the first time without you having to say much about it. Yeah, right. Hey, if you're frustrated because people on your team aren't behaving right, that just makes you normal. But you know what? As a leader, it's your job to address it and hold people accountable. But we don't like doing that because those conversations are always uncomfortable. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and my guest today is Brendan Wachgo.

Brendan is the senior technology officer here at Ramsey Solutions. He oversees all of our product engineering teams, and through his career, he's had to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations, and he's actually gotten really good at it. He's done it in a way that's very effective. In fact, he's become the resident expert with our leadership team on how to do this, and he teaches it internally, and it's really good stuff. So we said, let's bring him on the podcast, because we know business leaders everywhere are dealing with this issue. Before we jump into Brendan's process, I first wanted to ask him about why is it so hard as leaders for us to embrace uncomfortable conversations? The hardest part about leadership is you have to lead from a place of giving what you never got.

When you're in that position, like you just, you don't have any instrumentation at all, you know? And if you've never been in a situation or if somebody has had a healthy conflict with you, it's really hard to know how to like do it yourself, you know, reproduce it. What does healthy conflict even look like? Because in most parts of life, not just work, healthy conflict's not like a typical thing.

I know that one of the things you've taught us and worked with a lot of our leaders on is really thinking about the outcome that you want. Before you just kind of parachute into one of these conversations, you want to have a plan for the conversation, which we'll talk about in a second. But say more about kind of that idea of beginning with the end in mind. Yeah.

So, I mean, I think if you're about to have like your first hard conversation with someone, you do have to keep the end in mind. You know, the end can be one of multiple things, but probably the two most obvious conclusions are we talk about it once. It gets fixed. We're done. Which is, which is the kind of, you know, that's the kind of thing that you want to do on the regular. Hopefully they all go that way. They all go that way. They don't all go that way.

So, you know, if all you do is walk into every conversation just assuming that it's going to be a one-time thing, you're probably going to end up getting yourself in some hot water in the long term. So when I walk into what I know is going to be a difficult conversation, I try to use some things in that conversation that can be themes that can be carried throughout multiple conversations. Right. So what do you mean by that? Well, first of all, I have a bit of a plan in my head. it's like, okay, you know, first contact, right? The first time I dive into a difficult conversation with somebody on a particular topic, there's kind of this agenda I run.

But I want to say some things in there that if the conversation has to keep on going, the metaphors and others, we'll get into it in a second, that are kind of connective tissue between multiple conversations. So the model I kind of keep in my head is, okay, I'm going to have a first contact conversation with somebody. This is the first time we address an issue. And then, you know, after that first contact, the likelihood is we're going to kind of have to go into a coaching pattern with that person over time, you know. And, you know, you might have just one coaching conversation.

You could have two or three. I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to have 10 coaching conversations on a topic, right? There is some limit in there. And it's not really for me to say, like, you know, definitively what the number is. But generally, I'll have a first contact conversation. and then we'll do a couple follow-up, you know, coaching conversations on the topic. And, you know, if those coaching conversations, you know, really aren't going the right direction,

you know, you've got to like continue to escalate it, you know, as to how you're talking to the person about it. And if that, if that coaching's not working, you know, we have this phrase we use here at Ramsey that's a bit unique to us that we call it emotional firing. And that's when you kind of take it up to the next level and you really let. the person know, like, listen, you've got to make some decisions here between which is more important to you, the behavior you've had, or your job, you know. And if that emotional firing does, you know, part of that emotional firing is usually, you know, putting somebody on a performance plan. And if the performance plan doesn't work, then you're unfortunately moving on to termination, right? But if you, if you walk all the way through those five steps, one of the things that's

really useful is to have some consistent things you're saying across all five of the conversations. You know, so it's kind of a common language to help people understand. I found on that first contact conversation, there's a lot of frustration that builds up for me because this person's got a certain behavior that's driving me crazy or I'm getting feedback from the team. And what I've had to mature into is that until the first conversation, it's actually my fault is the leader. Like really, it's on me because I haven't given them clarity. Right. And for a long time, I don't know why. I think it's common with leaders. We assume people know or we assume they can read our mind.

Yeah. And it is often the case you give that first conversation and they go, I just didn't know. Yeah. And it's a good example of when we weren't being clear on expectations. Right. Well, I think one of the things that happens, I mean, every leader walking the street on some level deals with the challenge of being an avoider. Like every human walking the street deals with the challenge of being an avoider. And I think one of the greatest challenges for us as leaders is to start to overcome that, right?

But let's assume for a second that you have fully overcome the avoider behavior, you know, that sometimes comes around. And you think that's just because we want to be liked? Like, why do we orient towards the avoider? Oh, man, I'd have to go back and get my therapy degree to answer that one. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, yeah, probably on some level. I think it's probably different for everybody, you know, for me, and without going into another, you know, totally different topic. I'm an anagram eight. So for me, I'm usually afraid I'm going to, like, hurt someone. Come on too strong. I'm going to come on too strong. And one of the things I've had to learn is there is a big difference between hurting someone and harming someone. And sometimes if you're trying to help someone, it may involve hurting them. But the line I've got to draw from a draw from. for myself is it's never okay to harm someone. How do you differentiate those? I think hurt is temporary and harm is more permanent, you know?

Or, I don't know. I think it's one of those, you know, in the moment. It's like it's going to sting a little bit. It is, yeah, I think it's okay to create a stinging moment, but it's never okay to mess with someone's psychology, you know, to define who they are. You know, in tough conversations, like I actually, actually had an experience in my early 20s when I had started a business. And I had an investor tell me that I'm just not cut out to be an entrepreneur. It's really none of his business to

ever say that. Wow. You know, if, if, it would have been appropriate for him to say, like, I don't think you're at a stage of life right now because you're 21, that you're ready to be an entrepreneur that works with investors. That would have been okay. Because the other one was about your identity. Right. It's about my. I actually, you know, probably still when I was in my late 20s, maybe early 30s, in one of my early kind of senior leadership jobs, I had a CEO say to me, you know, I feel like I'm just asking you to be six inches shorter. It's something that you can't do, you know?

And I don't know if that's really over the line, but it was close. You know, it was one of those things where it caused me to question like, am I in the wrong line of work, are my dreams misaligned with reality? Like, those are the kinds of things that I don't want to induce with somebody, especially people that I might not have a super close relationship with, which, depending on the size of your organization, sometimes you're having hard conversations with people you've only met once or twice, you know. But yeah, that hurt, harm thing.

It is a little hard to define, you know, where the line exists between those two things. but from the point in time which I learned that, that's really been a good navigating factor for me in those kinds of conversations. So it sounds like you're saying there's a couple things going on here. As leaders, we have to have the courage to mature out of just being an avoider. We have to lean into this stuff. This is our job. And the posture that we have as we go into it, it's important that we're not going to say things that are harming this person. I think really what you're saying is it's about the behavior and not their identity. Right. So we have a responsibility to them and to the rest of the team to address the behavior when it's off.

Right. Yeah. So if you get to the point where you have, you know, gotten past that hurdle of avoidance, right? You were asking, like, well, why do you think, you know, people don't have these kinds of conversations? I think, number one, it's avoidance. I think, you know, the second factor in avoiding, or I'm sorry, like, you know, just having these hard conversations. is it's hard to put your finger on what the problem is. So I think for a lot of leaders, we lead from the gut, or at least certainly I do.

You know, I'm a person that's very, like, I will feel something is off before with my mind, before my mind tells me what the off thing is. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are that way. So, you know, if I'm in a situation where I'm feeling like something is off, it can, unless I intentionally put myself through the exercise of really defining what the problem is in clear terms, of course I'm going to kind of avoid the conversation a little bit because what am I going to do? Get in a room with a person and say like, you know, there's just some stuff that really doesn't feel right.

And I think it's putting your job at risk. And they look at me in the eyes and say, well, what do I need to change? And my only answer is like, I don't know, just, you know, stop making me feel weird. You know, that's not, there's a, there's a point where you can be vague enough as a leader where it kind of almost becomes abusive behavior, you know. So I really think the first thing you got to do is get really clear about what the problem is. Yeah, this is the biggest step that I've, I've struggled with because I'm very much am a feeler, like my intuition and gut instincts. And that's typically really good for business ideas or for sales. Right.

Right. And we just go, I don't know. I just have a knack. for, we're going to go that direction and there's a pile of money over there, I promise. And then, ta-da, it is. And everyone's like, how did you? You know, like, I don't know. It's just a feeling.

But when we're doing this with giving feedback, it's very unfair to team members because there's nothing concrete for them to then go take action on. Right. It's the classic situation of the greatest gift you have can also be the exact, you know, opposite of a gift, where, you know, the ability to, like, move through ambiguity and tolerate ambiguity in your entrepreneurism or in your pursuit of an idea or in your business model, you know, sometimes can be a gift because it allows you to be flexible. But then when it comes to like operating with your team, the ambiguity thing can be disastrous, you know, whether it's

just individual feedback to a person or just making a plan for your team, you know. Yeah. So your process, which I love, is to start with figuring out what type of problem it is. And I think this is really important because there's a lot of different types of problems. It could be the team member. It could be with their performance. It could be something else. So what are the examples of the categories, if you will, of the types of problems? Yeah. So, you know, it's funny when I started leading a team of people, you know, that was that was one level of responsibility. And then you start leading other leaders. And part of the reason I put some of this stuff down on paper is because when you get to the point where you're leading leaders, like right now I lead about

30 other leaders, I need to teach them how to do this stuff. You know, and so, you know, a while back, I just, I just got pen and paper and started saying like, okay, what are the problems that you experience, you know, in a work environment? And sometimes they're really simple things like showing up late, you know, and other times, you know, they can be, you know, quality of work related or they can be, you know, emotions coming out weird ways at work, right? So I think we'll mention later we're going to have it, we're going to have a download, right, where people can get access to all the stuff that we're talking about. But the categories I've got that I put together are basically, you know,

emotional, you know, this is a list of problems that are designed to help you kind of put your finger on what is the issue that's going on with a team member. And that, you know, some of the categories are emotional, communication, you know, professionalism, quality of work, their productivity, you know, whether they're creating an unsafe environment. for other people that they're working around, you know, things like that, right? And if you can actually, as a leader, if you can actually look at a list, a lot of times it'll connect with you and you'll say, oh, that's what's going on. Yeah. There's a lack of professionalism that's happening here.

That's good. Or there's an emotional thing that's happening here that's inappropriate for the workplace. I really like that you've broken this out into eight to ten things. It's more granular than just hard skills and soft skills. I also like that when you key in on that one thing, there's a lot. often room to give people credit for the other eight things that are going well. Right. You know, but if it feels like this is all encompassing of their entire career, it gets really heavy, really fast. Right. I think you got to be careful in an uncomfortable conversation that you do mix the positive

with the critical feedback, but one of the mistakes that oftentimes get made is, you know, you'll schedule a 30-minute meeting with somebody, and you spend 28 minutes talking about all the, all the good things they do, And then, like, basically drop a bomb on them in minute 29 and you're like, ah, and we're out of time, you know, and you got to go. And so I totally agree with the idea of, like, you know, it is good to remind people the good stuff that's happening and the right things that they're doing. But you want to make sure in a conversation with somebody that you're actually dedicating, like, the vast majority of the time to dig into the issue at hand.

You know, because the number of times over the years and it's like personal fail, you know, I look back at my own personal failures on this topic. And the number of times that I bet that I had what I thought was an uncomfortable conversation with somebody. And when they walked out of the room, they either didn't know what just happened or they thought I was just being encouraging. Right. Because I so didn't want to like trigger the fear or shame.

I've totally done that. I was uncomfortable the whole time. Yes. And they thought everything's good. And then I'm like, we have to have another meeting. And I'm uncomfortable the whole time until we have the next meeting. I am 100% guilty of that. That has definitely happened.

Well, and that's what happens when you make that uncomfortable conversation about you. Right? Like, I am so worried that I am going to, you know, hurt this person. I am so worried that I'm going to, you know, do something inappropriate in this conversation that I'm so jammed up inside my own head that I don't actually give the person what they need to be successful, you know. And I don't know if that's the case for everybody, but I had to tell you that's probably the biggest personal. hurdle for me is I got to stay focused on helping them not being obsessed with me. I've seen it a lot with entrepreneurs. I'm also guilty of this. I have tended to give

too much grace to the point of failing as a leader for top producers, especially when they're salespeople and they're bringing them revenue. Right. And as logical as it sounds to say, we'll just treat everyone on your team equally. And as much as we might desire that, I think the fear in my head sometimes is if I get too intense with this person or two, I turn up the screws too much and hold them accountable, they may get so frustrated and they quit and we can't afford that right now as a business. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that a lot of times what we do as leaders is in our heads, we make the problem between us and them. And I don't know what the percentage is. And maybe it's a factor of, you know, the kind of leadership job I have now.

But I find probably 80% of the time, 90% of the time with me, the problem isn't actually me and the other person. The problem is the person and how they're interacting with their teammates or somebody else. And that in itself is actually a really, really important distinction because you can get those wires crossed in your head and make the conversation way harder than it needs to be. because if it's not actually a conflict between you and that person, but you put yourself in those shoes, you've instantly made it more complicated and hard than needs to be. So one of the things that I use when I have these conversations with folks, I use kind of a simple metaphor. And, you know, in the context of whatever conversation we're having, the third coaching conversation or the, you know, the first contact on a topic, I'll use a consistent metaphor. And the thing that I'll say to somebody is, like, let me just make sure that you're clear on what my role in this conversation is. Like, the problem here is not between you and me.

The problem is between you and your team, for example, right? And I want you to understand that my responsibility in this situation is to sit on your side of the table. My job is to be the advocate and the coach for you to resolve this problem that you're having with your team. And I would like nothing more than to spend my entire time on your side of the table. But if we bump into a situation where you stop taking my feedback or you're not really engaged in this process, this process of resolving the problem, I might have to consider standing. And if I do end up standing, then I'm going to have to become the neutral party in this situation, which makes this harder on you than it needs to be. And unfortunately, if as the neutral party, this isn't headed the right direction, I may end up needing to sit down on the other end of the table. And I think both you and I know what that means.

And I don't think either of us want that. Right. And one of the things I really like about that metaphor during a hard conversation is the fact that it creates clear boundaries and expectations without actually being threatening. Right. You can say to somebody, I'm here to be your coach. But if you don't participate, the end of that story is I'm on the other side of the table and we both know how this end. You know, that scenario ends. And I think that's a really powerful.

I found that to be very effective in having conversations with people. Because if, you know, the scenario plays out that you don't want, which is emotional firing, performance plan, termination, you get all the way down to that termination at the end. And it doesn't have to be a long conversation. You're basically just saying to somebody, hey, listen, unfortunately, because of your lack of participation in this process, I've had to move to the other side of the table. And unfortunately, today is going to be your last day. It's not like you do this process right and termination does not have to be like a terrible thing. Because you've already set up at that point. But I really like it because everybody, I mean, in a difficult conversation, it's just human nature that the worst case scenario instantly flood your mind of,

I'm about to get fired. Yeah. And when you can say, hey, hey, hey, that's not what's happening here today. Today, I'm your coach. And I believe in you. And I believe that I can help coach you back toward being in a healthy spot. That's kind of what that metaphor is about. Right.

Well, yeah, before I ever get into a metaphor with somebody, you know, first thing, when a calendar invite pops up on that person's calendar and they're like, oh, no, you know, hopefully they don't think, oh, no. But they might, you know, like you said, they get flooded with that worst case. with you regularly. Yeah, they don't mean with you regularly. And it's like, oh, you know, I got a calendar invite from Brendan. It might, you know, cause some nerves. You know, when that person walks into my office, I don't talk about the weather. I don't ask them about their pets. I don't, like, I don't mess around. I need to make sure that I'm trying to impact what their state is when they walk in the room, right? Because if their state's all messed up, they're not going to hear a word of what you're saying. So when they walk in the room right off the bat,

There's two things I address with people. I help them understand like, hey, this is going to be a mildly uncomfortable conversation. Or I might say it's going to be a casual conversation. Or I might say, this is an extremely serious conversation. And I need you to be really locked in for what we're about to go through together. You know, how you handle that first 10 seconds of a conversation is going to set the tone for everything, you know. And then the next thing right after that, that's what we're going to be able to. really, I think pretty important is you get to address the elephant in the room, which is,

but don't worry, no one is going to lose their job today. Or if that's not true, listen, you need to understand that your job is potentially on the line based on how this conversation goes. You know, you got to really, you know, set. Calibrate the intensity. Yeah. You're calibrating the intensity of the situation and you're letting people know straight off the bat, like this, This is either, this might be tough, but there's not going to be like a really scary ending. Or you really need to stay engaged in this conversation because it might be a really, it might be an ending that nobody enjoys. I'm curious about how the idea of being on their side of the table, you know, it makes sense if there's a conflict between them and another team member or, you know, the rest of the team just feels like they're always a downer or whatever the case may be. if it's something more like them coming in on time.

Right. And in their mind, they go, well, I think your rules for me having to be here at 830 are a little bit legalistic. And I don't see the problem with me coming in 10 minutes late. How do you keep them from putting you on the other side of the table where it's about you've got stupid rules about being on time? Yeah. You know, with personalities like that, I mean, I think what you have to do is you can't, you do want to address things circumstantially, but you got to get upstream of the problem. a little bit. If somebody kind of gets, I don't know, what would you call that? Was that passive aggressive? Is it just aggressive? Or they just, they don't respect how it's done. Right.

Or they see it as too policy driven and they're kind of like, I'm a free spirit and I'm getting my job done and why are you micromanaging me. Right. I would tend to address the upstream behavior of that a little bit and say like, listen, the way that you just kind of address that with me, like, do you see us on the same side here? Or are you? you are, are, are you treating me like I'm somebody else? Are you treating me like you don't know me? You know, um, because if, if you go, uh, if you go directly into the circumstantial argument, it's, it, you know, it's their rock brain versus you. And if somebody's kind of in rock brain world, they're not going to, you know, they're, they're not going to respond the way that you want.

You got to get upstream of it to try to get into their emotional state a little bit, I, I feel like. Yeah, I think that's really good. At the times that I've tried to, you know, they're not going to, you know, to argue about a specific behavior. It's like the ball keeps moving, you know, and then, you know, you might win them over with logic on that one, but then they jump over here. But what you're saying is, is you really got to get to their attitude and their heart. Right. Because those things are actually the kind of the root of whatever's going on with the behavior. Right. The funny thing as leaders that we suppress sometimes is we forget to talk in difficult conversations about how we feel. So if, you know, if I bump into a sticky situation,

somebody. A lot of times my logical brain goes into, well, this is your opinion, this is mine. But I got to stop for a second and just ask, like, how did that person just make me feel? And if the answer is, they kind of offended me a little bit or they hurt my feelings or, man, the way they just communicated was really confusing. There's gold in just pausing for a second and saying that, right? Because a lot of times with a lot of times, more belligerent person, what they're trying to do is start an argument. It's pretty hard to argue with somebody's feelings. So if you just stop and say like, hey, the way that you just said, the tone in which you just spoke to me, honestly, it hurt my feelings a little bit. Like,

what were you trying to accomplish? And then you're having a far more productive conversation than why did you just walk in the door five minutes late? You know, you can get to that too, but you can, you can deal with that at the end and that, that'll be far easier, you know? So you've, you've, You've got kind of the intensity established. You address the elephant in the room of nobody's getting fired today. Hopefully that's the case. It may not be. But regardless, you've got them in the right state and they now have the right expectations for what this conversation is about to kind of be about.

Right. And so then where do you go from there? The idea is when, you know, we're initiating a difficult conversation, which is, hey, I've just gone through the step of figuring out what the problem is. Like, I put my finger on the problem. I know what it is. So now I'm ready to have an uncomfortable conversation with somebody. So first thing I do, they walk in the door within the first 10 seconds. The thing that I want to do is I want to establish the intensity.

I want them to know, hey, this is just going to be a casual conversation all the way to the other end, which is this could be an emotional conversation for you. You know, and then immediately after that, I want to address the elephant, like what we talked about. You know, you want to be able to say, and, you know, and don't worry, nobody's going to lose their job today, right? literally within the first 10 to 15 seconds of somebody entering your door, you have managed their emotional state, right? And there's a couple things that I tag on to that too. So, you know, for the next 15 seconds, I'm going to suggest an outcome to the conversation. So they walk in the room, you know, tell them what the level of intensity is going to be. Hey, nobody's going to lose their job. But the nature of this conversation, the outcome that I want is, I think we're having. a little bit of a misunderstanding, and I want to hear your side of the story. You know, versus the other end of that spectrum, you know, which could be, you know, far more, you know, potentially severe than that, which is, hey, listen, this session is going to be about you hearing me about some behavior changes I need you to make. And those are the exact same.

Those are the exact things I need you to do. So it, as I kind of like walk through some of this, You know, if you can imagine to the left, there's a really kind of soft version of things. And to the right, there is a far more, you know, a stern side. What you really want to do is you need to choose your level of intensity on all of these different things that you're going to talk about. So, you know, I suggest that outcome. And then I just let people know how long I think this is going to take to address. Like, hey, you know, I just wanted to get together. I wanted to hear your side of the story, and I think this is going to take 15 minutes or less.

Or you could say, I need you to hear the behavior changes. I need you to make. And I don't think that this is a single 30-minute conversation. I think we're going to end up having to get together three or four different times about this. So literally within 30 seconds of somebody walking in your door, you've let them know, like, what the intensity level of the conversation is, whether there are jobs on the line or not, what your desired outcomes, going to be and how long you think this conversation is going to end up taking, like 30 seconds. In those 30 seconds, if you kind of like follow that formula, you will give people more clarity than they've probably ever gotten in any hard conversation they've ever had in their life.

Yeah, I can imagine that if somebody knows what to expect, they're going to be a lot more relaxed and open going into the kind of the meat of the discussion. Right. The funny thing is, is for the people that are likely to get the soft version of the conversation, they imagine it to be the exact opposite. And for the folks that actually need the intense conversation, they usually are not expecting it. They're just thinking, oh, everything's cool. You know, we're just going to have a casual conversation. So it's almost funny, this expectation setting process is really necessary because the person that doesn't need the tough conversation is totally freaked out.

they're going to get it. And the person that needs the tough conversation thinks that you're just having a chill conversation, you know? And if you don't set that on the upfront, you're going to, you know, the rest of the conversation's not going to, not going to go according to plan. A lot of that is personality style. I've found, we talk about the disc on this podcast a lot. I'm high D, high I and lower on the S and C. But I found that the S's and C's that I lead, they tend to be the ones that are more freaked out and hard on themselves. Yeah. Whereas if you're high D like me, you kind of need to get hit in head with a two by four to hear it. Right.

And so you got to kind of consider the personality style. That's very true. Like for the high, I'm glad that, you know, that the disc is like a common language for people because there was something I wanted to share, but I was like, oh, you know, under the wrong context, that could be dangerous advice. One of the things that's been personally hard for me, because I'm, I'm an ID. I'm like 99% I, 99% D and the S and C don't exist, you know. And one of the things I've really needed to learn how to do, which doesn't totally make sense, considering that I'm a high D, is I've really had to learn how to throw the first punch in a conversation. And that can be really dangerous advice to give because if you're a person that is used to throwing punches, I don't need to be sitting here and encouraging you to throw bigger or harder ones. but probably for most people, like particularly the S's and the C, the leaders who are S's and C's, you're going to need to, or eyes, eyes, S's or C's, you probably need to learn how to throw a punch.

Yeah. You know, and that is something that I've actually really had to learn how to do over there. And, of course, I mean, you're speaking figuratively. Yes. You know, it's like throwing the punch is having the guts to be very truthful and clear and direct with somebody. Right, like to get it out there. Get it out. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So you've kind of set the tone. You've got the intensity. You told them how long it's going to take and kind of how long we think we're going to have to talk about this. And then there's the section where you have to kind of address the problem. Right. Yeah.

So hit the tone. Then we're going into the problem. Right. And we're 30 seconds in at this point. We're not like at minute 28 of the meeting. Right. So, you know, you got to make sure that you hit the problem. And so there's a way you can kind of like step your way.

end of the problem. The first thing that you, in my opinion, that you've got to clarify for people is like, what's the origin of the problem, right? Have I, like, observed some behavior and I'm just trying to address it? Are we in a situation? Like, I have a gut feel that there's something off, but I don't really have a ton of evidence. Or, you know, on the more extreme side, it's like, you know, there has been a formal accusation made. You know, you've got to tell people what the, origin of the problem is. A lot of people skip that part, right? And when you, when you let them know about the origin, you got to move then into the scope. Like, hey, is this an issue that's impacting, like, you know, you're making weird noises at your desk and the person that sits next to you

is impacted. Or is funny you said that. I just remembered, it was like three weeks into the job. Yeah. And I was such a green, immature punk kid. And, but I thought, Ramsey stuff was really cool and destroying credit cards was cool. And people would send in, like, their old credit cards that they had cut up. And so we had all this memorabilia around the office. And I had a dart set. And I had a credit card that somebody sent in at my cubicle. And I put it on the, like, the little bulletin board.

And I would take my darts while I was on a sales call. And I would chunk it at that thing. And I thought it was a fun, you know, like we're anti-credit card. I'm throwing darts at it. And I get a popover from my leader. Jack at the time. He goes, hey, dude, no more darts. He just walked. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And for those of us that know Jack, he has a magical way to do that. Yeah. But making funny noises at your desk, it was driving everybody crazy because they're like, what is the new guy doing with the darts? Oh, yeah. Listen, you know,

for, for, I'm a software engineer myself, so let's not pretend for a second that I don't have my own set of crazy little isms. But I, you know, one of the really fun things about my team is, is, uh, they do weird stuff sometimes. Every team does weird stuff, but, you know, I, I, I, I love my own kind at the software engineer. And they do weird stuff. So, I mean, I, I have had, you know, if you remember a couple years ago when those, like, fidget toys came out. Yeah. Some of them would make noise. And the number of times that I had to, like, listen, man, you got to stop, like, making constant clicking sounds, you know? Some of that is just, all of us have some level of, um, self-awareness. And then we have blind spots. Yeah. We just don't know. How are people.

experiencing us. And sometimes as the leader, we're just helping people build self-awareness. Yeah. So, you know, if you're going to help somebody understand, like, the problem that we're having, you got to let them know how big the impact is, right? And so is this an issue that's just like, it's annoying the person next to you? Or are you doing something, you know, that impacts like a really large group of people, you know? And I'm smiling as I'm saying this, because dozens of examples are ripping through my mind that I probably can't use on a podcast. What does it? No, say, come on, you've got one you can use. I mean, oh, man, I don't know. I mean, the number of times over the years I've had to have conversations with people like, hey, listen, I need you to wear a deodorant at work.

Right. Or, you know, I mean, just take the personal hygiene thing and use your imagination. And I've had to have that conversation, you know. So these would be examples of affecting everybody on the team. interacting everyone around you, right? And once you kind of let them know, like, what the scope of the problem is, it's also really important to let people know, like, how frequently is the problem happening? Because a lot of people, to your point, have a really low level of self-awareness on things, right? So it's like, hey, you're tapping a pen on your desk all the time. And everyone within the sound of that tapping is going nuts. And by the way, you're not doing it like once a week. You're doing it constantly. You know, so that combination of like, you know, hey, you know, the origin of the problem, we've had a complaint. It's impacting, you know, X number of people and the frequency in which it's happening. People skip those parts when they're describing a problem. And if you skip those parts, it's really hard for people, you know, for the person on the other end of the conversation to understand how important the problem is. Because by nature, people have a way of, um, diminishing the impact of the thing they do. Like, they tend to think, like, well, it's not that big of a deal. Yeah, I mean, I would think if you just told me in a drive-by, hey, dude, stop tapping your pen.

It would feel really petty or like you're micromanaging me. And so I think it makes it not feel that way if you say, hey, look, it's happening all the time, and it's causing other people to be distracted in their work. Right. And so I know it might seem petty, but it's something that's a habit that needs to change. Yeah. And I'm using the pen example because it's a pretty innocuous. example, but a lot of times it's, it's situations like, hey, listen, we are, I am beginning to notice

that, you know, you are in a frequent pattern daily of being argumentative, unnecessarily argumentative in meetings. And that really hurts people, you know, and, you know, when you can start to put more shape around a problem, you know, I wish every problem was the pen on the desk, you know, unfortunately, I can't even think of the last time that that actually happened. Usually it's some other behavior that's a little bit more serious, you know. Well, and I've found, like when you're telling somebody, hey, you're being too argumentative and that hurts people, like, it's really important that you have a relationship with this person and that you've talked about their career goals.

Yeah. Because when you can say, hey, based on where we've said you want to be growing and maturing, and you said you want to have more responsibility, have more influence with the team, it really helps you be that coach. Right. Because it's like, in order to help you get where you said you want to go, this is a behavior that's getting in your way. Right. Versus you coming down on them as I'm going to micromanage the behavior. It's like you have goals and this is an obstacle. Let's help remove this obstacle. Right. And that rapport factor is such a big deal. You know, if you own a small business or you lead a small team and you know everyone, it's so important to have that rapport, you know. And if you're fortunate enough to be in.

in a leadership position where you're leading a lot of people and you don't necessarily have a personal and direct relationship with every one of them. You've got to make that proactive investment in your own personal brand as somebody who's approachable and kind. Because when you have to have that hard conversation, you have to have that, you know, a femoral sort of reputation of being a reasonable person to deal with. It's just making me think there was a group of us, Dave was having a conversation. with yesterday. And there are two things that he said that I thought were really powerful. And he said, you know, even when conflict is healthy, it's messy. Right? Even when you do it well, it has the, it holds the

risk of being messy, you know, and you got to be comfortable and okay with that. And the other thing that he said was a problem will never get better unless it's, it's corrected. Yeah. And they don't fix themselves. They don't fix themselves. They just don't. A problem will never get better. better unless it's corrected. And guess what? You as the leader, buck stops with you. Like, if you don't do it, nobody else is going to. You know, it's literally what we get paid to do.

Yeah. That's why we get paid the medium-sized bucks. Right. I have found there are times at this point that a team member goes, oh, good, great. And they fix it, and it was easy. There's also times where several things happen that aren't fun. They get defensive. Yep.

Or they get argumentative. or maybe they shut down a little bit, and their mouth is saying, I understand, but you can tell in their body language that they're not getting it. Or they just kind of, they go silent on you and they don't want to engage any further. Obviously, like if we're paying attention, these things are not healthy. When it doesn't go well at this point, how do you navigate that? It's so interesting, right? Because I think there are actually two sides to that answer. answer. It's the obligation that I have is the leader in the conversation. And then it's how they want

the conversation to go, even though they don't realize maybe in the moment how they want the conversation to go. So let me explain what I mean. So it's my job as the leader to create a safe environment for the conversation, right? If you've never read anything about the topic of psychological safety, it's fantastic. You read about it. It'll change your mind about how you do a lot of things in leadership. It's my job to create an environment of psychological safety. But interestingly, what every person wants in a difficult conversation is they want dignity. And part of the problem, depending on the person's level of self-awareness is they may not know how to create it for themselves or they might not know how to protect it. So you've got to do that for them too sometimes.

So if somebody's getting, you know, emotional or, you know, they're kind of getting a little scrambled or they're getting argumentative or, you know, I guess, you know, I like to read psychiatry books sometimes, disintegrated. You know, they can't like keep themselves emotionally together. it's actually part of my job to help them have a dignified experience in a hard conversation. And here's the magic. If you ever find yourself in a situation where one of those things is happening, really, you just have to say the word and like a switch flips inside their brain, right? So a lot of times as somebody's starting to get emotional, all you have to say in the situation, not that emotion's right? wrong, by the way. There's nothing wrong with emotion, but there's some points where it can get... Well, you just get to a point where, I mean, hopefully you can stay... I mean, in the psychology, it's like, if we're in our prefrontal cortex, you know, the logical, mature processing part of our brain,

and we get kicked out of that into the limbic brain, which is the fight or flight, freeze, our pulse goes up, our palms get sweaty, we get frantic, we start stumbling around. We're not really presenting as our best or logical self. just surviving. And so if you just double down on an intense conversation with somebody, once they've gone over, I call it going from green to red. Once they're red, you really can't keep hitting things with logic and be effective at that point. Yeah. So in those sort of situations, I'm sure there's a thousand tips and other people have better ones than I do. But one of the things that I do is consider dignity. So in a situation where I have somebody that's coming off the rails a little bit,

I'll say to them, listen, you and I both want to be able to look back at this. And it's day, a week, a year. And we want to remember this time we're having together right now is a dignified experience. And I just want to remind you of that. And I don't have to do that a ton, but I have never had that strategy go sideways. Something about when you call into the light someone's sense of dignity, it will cause them to, a chemically and emotionally healthy person will gather themselves in that moment. I have found. You know, that's good. So you've kind of set the tone in the first 30 seconds, address the elephant, suggest the outcome, and then how long we're going to talk about it.

Then we get into the problem. And we've been talking about the problem. And then at some point, you're going to kind of get to a, okay, so the problem is level of a statement. Here's the thing. If you cannot. So, yeah, we've done some pre-work here. You know, hey, I've got a gut feeling, you know, about this, you know, issue. and it's affecting a specific person, and it happens every day.

You know, you've done some things there to qualify the problem a little bit. When you actually get to stating the problem, if you cannot say it in a sentence and not a run-on sentence, I'm saying a sentence that your fourth grade teacher would have been satisfied with, right? If you can't say it that concisely, don't have the conversation. You are not clear on what the problem is. Like, you got to remember that if you're bringing somebody into an accountability-based conversation where you're asking them to go through behavior change in order to have their employment continued, this is a serious thing, right? And you have to have to treat it seriously.

Do not walk in and be uncertain or, you know, you've got to be able to tell them this is the problem. And the number, and there's one other side of that. there's the side that a person can't art or the leader can't articulate the problem and then there's the other side of it which the leader talks about the problem for an hour and you know it's a situation where either not providing enough detail or you're flooding them with too much information and so when I talk about like that single sentence that your fourth grade teacher would be happy with it's because you want the person to be extremely clear about what it is that we want them to change, or else you're creating a really unfair game that they can't win, you know. You're almost setting a, it's like a boundary, like when you can get it that clear, because how else would you know if you fix the problem essentially, right? I mean, if you can't refine it down to problem solved or problem not solved in a sentence,

then they're never really going to know if they've accomplished this goal of eradicating this problem. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big deal. the number of people that walk out of difficult conversations and realize, number one, that they didn't have a difficult conversation. And number two, that they don't actually know that there's a problem that they need to fix. There's no way to exactly quantify that. But I know the number of people that I lead other leaders. And sometimes people will come to me and I'll say to them, hey, you do realize that your leader's been coaching you and you were literally just steps away or minutes away from being put on a performance plan. And from time to time, and I feel like we do this well at Ramsey, but we make mistakes too. From time to time, we'll have situations where somebody will say, I had no idea that the conversation was this series. Now, that could be a self-awareness person on a problem on the person's part that they just weren't hearing it.

But I tend to think, let me tell you this, sometimes when people will say to me, I feel like Bob is having a self-awareness problem and they don't realize how serious the conversation is. If they send them to me, guaranteed by the end of the conversation, Bob knows how serious the issue is. So even if they have a self-awareness problem, it is surmountable. Right. It is just highly dependent on the amount of emotional courage you're willing to bring to the table during the conversation. Well, and again, I mean, in the spirit of clarity, like if you just tell somebody, hey, generally you need to be more self-aware or you're probably going to get fired. That is so disembarrassed. empowering, you know? But if you can get it down to, hey, look, here's the thing. You have a very

serious personality. And that's okay. And I know you're always thinking and you're smart and we value your thoughts. But in meetings, you look like you're miserable. And so you just need to smile more in meetings. Yeah. Okay. And this is really that simple. If you start smiling more in meetings, everybody else will relax and feel like you're their friend and you're part of the thing. And I really think that's all it's going to take. Yeah. And now they have something they can go, oh, if I'll smile more in meetings, that's going to help with this whole thing. But if you just say, hey, you just need to be more self-aware, you're setting somebody up for failure. Yeah. You can't tell somebody who's not self-aware to be more self-aware. I mean, trying to see into your own blind spot, you can never do it.

So you define the problem very clearly, and then you kind of transition into the impact. Right. At this point, in a difficult conversation, we are probably 60 to 75 seconds in. sometimes people get really surprised if you had the chance to sit in on an uncomfortable conversation with me. A lot of people are stunned. Like nowadays, I have very few uncomfortable conversations where I don't tag team them with another leader because I'm at the phase of my leadership journey where I need to be like modeling things for other people.

So I always make sure I have somebody in there with me observing and learning. And a lot of times they're stunned. They're like, that was the fastest Band-Aid yank I have ever seen. of my life, but you did it, you did it fairly and you did it kindly, and you did not, you didn't destroy the person, you know, and that should be, you don't have, it doesn't have to take a long time to do this. You know, you just got to bring a lot of courage to it. Do you ever write it down and just read it? Yes.

So you don't fumble your words. I mean, it feels like that could. Thank you for bringing that up. So one of the things that I hear really routinely from leaders is they, they feel like, um, there's, they're going to seem like they don't know what they're doing if they bring notes into an uncomfortable conversation. So when people ask me that, like, hey, am I going to seem like I don't know what I'm doing? My answer to that is typically maybe, but you know what's worse? Actually not knowing what you're doing and screwing up the conversation, right? Like, I've been doing this for a while. And I had a situation last year where I had to let somebody go under tenuous circumstances, and I was nervous about it.

And I used the very card that we're going to give people a download link to. And I made the thing, and I filled it out. And I literally just walked through it, bullet by bullet. And, you know, maybe the other person thought I looked ridiculous. But you know what? I made sure I did it the right way. And I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of personal points to make sure that I treat the other person with regard, you know? Yeah, I think winging it is this is one of those places you don't want to wing it.

And there's a reason we're saying it's an uncomfortable conversation. Nerves are going to be involved. Emotions are going to be involved. Mine too. So don't depend on your emotions in the moment for you to just kind of fly by the seat of your pants on this. Every time I've done that, I've regretted it. Oh, yeah. And I have found it's just, it's super helpful.

If it's going to be hard, I've done this number of times. where I'm very emotionally involved in this, and I'm worried that it's going to go not well. I just come in like, hey, I got something. I even just tell them, I feel a little nervous about it. So I wrote this down, I'm just going to read it, so I don't accidentally say it the wrong way because I want to be clear so that you really know.

And then I was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And oftentimes they, you know, you see them kind of relax because I said it exactly the way that is kind of to the point of what we're talking about instead of fumbling around. And I get wordy when I'm, you know, I say more things. or I get more intense that I actually need to be. And there's something about having that in front of you that's really helpful.

Right. So sorry, I took us off track. We were going to talk about the impact. Well, yeah, I mean, I took us over there. But I mean, I think it's good to have the stuff in front of you. So, yeah, you've set the tone. You're only 75 seconds in at this point. Yeah, 75 seconds in.

I've set the tone. I've identified the problem, put some shape to the problem. Now let's talk about the impact, right? Because somebody really needs to understand what is the impact of this problem, right? So real quick, you know, well, you want to describe the, the effect. Like, is this problem creating a little bit of confusion? You know, is it creating some distrust? Are you creating an unsafe environment for other people to work in? Don't miss that. You know, it's a big thing to talk about the effect. And then you got to hit on the severity,

which is oftentimes another thing that people really miss, right? So you're creating some distrust on your team in terms of severity. I like to use a visual, I guess, or like a mind picture. I don't know what the right word for that is. But I will use street signs. I'll say, you know, you're creating some distrust on your team. And, you know, it's not, it's not a green light. It's not a yellow light. It's a red light. Or I'll say something like, you know, you're creating some confusion on your team. And it's not like a blinking emergency light, but it's a yield sign. It's kind of a low-grade thing. Yeah. You know, you need to pay attention. You need to pay attention to it.

Because, you know, at the very beginning of the conversation, we kind of tried to let them know, like, how intense is this going to be. But we also need to put some characteristics on the problem itself. Like, I have had conversations with people where I've said, like, I need you to hear me clearly. This is flashing red emergency lights. You got to deal with this right now. And something about the visual of that allows it to sink in in a way that is more meaningful. meaningful than just, this is important you need to pay attention. We've said it before.

You know, that whole people may not realize the intensity, especially when it's like you're on the other side of the table. And if they don't respond well, they're going to get fired. Yeah. We've even said, this is your 911 call. Yeah. Like, this is really that serious. And you see somebody in their body language, they'll go, oh, they're like, they shift.

Right. You kind of need to give them some of those things so they wake up. Yeah. They realize it's not just another meeting. I have another leader friend that he'll say, this is a high-stakes conference. or a low-stakes conversation. You know, I like using the light thing or the, the traffic sign thing because there's more options available to, you know.

But right after you kind of hit on that severity and you tell them, this is, you're 90 seconds into the conversation at this point and you got to check for understanding. So just to be real clear, you know, you're sitting down and having a hard conversation with somebody. Up to this point, you have literally done almost all the talking. But we're 90 seconds in. we got to stop and check for understanding because hopefully right from go, we manage the person's state effectively and they're not flooded. But even with our best efforts, we can't control

people's emotional response. So you got to stop and check for understanding. So I encourage people to ask three things. What are your thoughts? And I know that's a super open-ended question, but you want to ask an open-ended question because you want them just to put their feelings out. You know, well, I'm totally surprised. I didn't see this coming. Or, you know, I didn't realize I was doing that. But when you say it out loud, oh, my goodness, I have really been doing something that's inappropriate. Or they might say, I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't think I do that. just asking an open-ended question like what are you a name yeah yeah that has happened to me yes um i've got some great stories uh but that asking an open-ended question like that really tells you how the rest of the conversation needs to go right and and i'll tell you this if you get a really goofy answer um you might need to start over and instead of saying hey this is a conversation where i want to learn your perspective a little bit, now we've changed it. Right? Because based on the way that you've responded to me, you're not handling this in a humble, approachable, teachable way. You've demonstrated that now you want to have a fight. So now we're not having as diplomatic a conversation. So

sometimes you hit points or, you know, kind of waypoints in this discussion where you might need to start over. You can back. And that's okay. But it feels like at this stage, you're trying to get a sense of their attitude. Right. At this stage. Yeah. Yeah, their attitude. What is their posture toward being teachable? You know, it's a big thing. So three questions. What are your thoughts? Do you feel like I understand your perspective after they share their thoughts, you know? And this is the point. You feel like it's good to summarize like what they said back to them at that point? Yeah. Yeah. Make sure that they've heard that you've heard. how they see it. Absolutely. And then at this, check for understanding point, I like to share

that metaphor. I talked about earlier about the bench, you know, hey, this problem that we're having right now, I'm on your side. I'm working with you to try to get you through this, right? And that, that metaphor is very, very powerful because it helps them understand what my role is in this conflict that we're having and how they can be successful, you know. And then the last part of this is just making sure in that metaphor that they clearly understand, like, I'm on your side of the table, you know, or I'm considering standing, or I am standing, or I have moved to the opposite side of the table, you know, them really understanding clearly what your posture is in the situation is really, really important.

So we've identified the problem, then we set the tone, then we address the problem, and then we talk through the impact and then check them for understanding. And they're probably ready to get out of the room at this point. Yes. But before they go, how do we put a bow on this thing? Yeah. So that check for understanding part, that could take you five or ten minutes. That's where the most, the meat of the conversation is. So when that winds down, we want to wind the conversation down.

You know, the biggest mistakes I've ever made in difficult conversations are the ones that, like, we thought there. we're going to last 15 minutes and then I spent two hours. It's a waste. Don't do it. Like, give them a clear message, let them leave, you know? So the next part is let's set some action steps, right? So you got to help them understand, like, is this yours to fix? Or do we need to get another leader involved? Or do you need to partner up with the person that's offended in this situation and deal with it privately or, you know, do we need to bring that person into a conversation with the both of us? You know, like you've got to shape what the next thing is that's going to happen. Or you set maybe set up some coaching or there's, yeah, yeah. Just what's a resource they might

need or something like that? Yeah, yeah, you kind of fill them in on, you know, what are the next steps that we're going to take? And certainly coaching would be, would be part of that. You want to define the time frame. Like, hey, this is a problem because of its severity, it needs to be resolved immediately. Or it could, you know, the pencil tapping thing, it's like, hey, listen, I realize this is kind of a habit that you've adopted over time. And it might take more than a day to break the habit. But can we agree that you're going to, you're going to get this under control in the next seven days or 30 days or whatever? If you don't really define that time frame, then I can almost guarantee that they're expectations are different than yours, you know?

Make sure to let them know when the next check-in is going to happen. So, you know, hey, we've agreed that you're going to resolve this problem within the next seven days. So let's make sure that we're getting together in the next seven to ten days to recap on this thing and check-in. Like, you want to tell them that right then and there. I really like that. And I want to call out here, it may vary who's driving the check-in process based on whether they're a brand new team member kind of front lines or if they're a leader. You know, I expect my leaders to drive their own, you know, hey, I want you to come back to me in a month and let me know

what you've done about this particular thing. I'm here for you in the meantime, but like I'm not going to babysit you at a certain stage of, like, that's part of leadership. And I'm hoping that they're mature enough at that stage to kind of hear it and then really go solve their own problems if they're at a certain level of leadership. Whereas someone else, I say, hey, I'm going to have my assistant set up something in two weeks from now to make sure we've got that on the calendar. And I'm going to drive the process. So what do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, I think it has a lot, to your point, just has a lot to do with where they are in the organization. If you've got a vice president reporting to you, the level of responsibility that we give to that person, they should be able to navigate some personal behavior change independently.

It doesn't mean that they're results. it alone, it just means that they should be able to manage the process of resolving it more independently than somebody who's having their first job straight out of college. Yeah. You know, yeah. So that's an important call out. And then I'll say here, the last part of my little framework here, which in my opinion, arguably, is one of the most important aspects of this whole thing is I do what I call a safety check. And the reason why this is really important is because if you have brought a bigger version of yourself to the conversation than what's appropriate and they feel, they don't feel good about it, one way or the other, you need to know that. Now, it's also possible that you brought an appropriate version of yourself to the conversation and they don't feel safe.

and if you figure that out, that's also a very different thing about how you, you know, you kind of figure that out. But I always ask people at the end of the conversation like three simple things. Do you feel like this talk was one-sided, unfair, or unsafe? One-sided, unfair, or unsafe. And I like to, I typically ask that question as I'm standing up to end to the conversation. And if they say, if they say, no, no, like, it was a tough. conversation, but I appreciate your honesty, then you know that it kind of landed. If they're having, you know, some, if they're feeling unsettled about it, then you know,

the way you need to start the next conversation, the next coaching conversation is going to be different, you know. So you're not going to try to address it then. No, no, we're going to make a note. We're ending the conversation now because I need them to process. But I'll, I'll say to somebody, even if I ask. ask, you know, do you feel like this is one-sided unfair or unsafe? And they say, no, I'm feeling, okay, I need to process things. I'll say to them, if you're not feeling good about this tomorrow

morning, come back and talk to me. I don't want you to feel like, you know, I bullied you in this conversation or anything like that. Like, if you're feeling that way, we need, we need to resolve it. And the reason why that's particularly important is it's very unusual that anybody will ever circle back and come visit you. But just extending that offer. will help them understand that your intentions were not to harm them. It might hurt, but your intentions were not to harm them. And if they really do understand your intentions, even if it stings, they will process it more effectively, you know, once they have, you know, the evening or some time to kind of work through it. Man, it's such a good conversation.

And I love how you've brought a framework around, you know, at Entree, we've always had this principle of treat people the way you want to be treated. Be kind to people. People matter. Care about your team. Love them. Be friends. And actually give a rip. Right. But sometimes just leaving it at that without the structure is difficult to implement. And I don't think there's anything here that's bureaucratic or legalistic or overly mechanical. I think I'm looking at the scorecard that he's kind of put together. And we're going to give this to you guys as a free download so that you guys have this resource because Brendan's put a lot of thinking into this, but based on hundreds of times of actually doing it as one of our top leaders here and as somebody that's leading difficult conversations here with our leadership team and with others every day here at Ramsey.

So thanks for putting the work into this because I think it's just a really good framework. And one, I could have used many years ago and will continue to take forward in my own leadership. But you've got to identify what the problem is. and then you've got to really work to make sure everybody understands the tone and then the type of problem and the origin and everything we talked about. Then the impact, you're checking in with them, and then the action items. And then you've got a whole other series. Maybe we'll have to have you back on where you go from a one-time conversation into if you need ongoing coaching. And if this continues to digress because of their response into a 90-day plan and ultimately having to get to a point of termination,

you've got even more on that. So maybe we'll have you back on for those. But we're going to include all of that for you guys in this free download. And I'm really grateful for everything you've shared here today. Lots of practical application. Before we wrap up, any final thoughts of encouragement to leaders as they're dealing with difficult conversations? Yeah, I think I'd probably give people two things. You know, when I think about a difficult conversation, here's what I'm thinking about trying to accomplish in that time together.

I want it to be clear. Like being vague with people can sometimes be abusive. You know, you want to get to that last 10% of truth. You want to be focused. And what I mean by focused is you want to get to the problem, not waste time. And how that translates in terms of time, you're having a fast conversation. Not like super fast, but it's not a two-hour conversation. It's quick, you know.

You've got an obligation as a leader to create some safety. you also have an obligation to help maintain that other person's dignity, you know. And if you can do those things well, I think that is loving your team well. You know, and one of the things that you'll hear Dave say a lot is the opposite of love is apathy. And one of the things that I love most about entrepreneurs, myself being a former one, is that The businesses we build aren't just businesses. We consider the people that we work with family. We consider the people that we work side by side with investments, you know, and we like to think of them as family and think about them as people that we love.

If you really do love them, then indifference and apathy isn't part of that relationship. You've got to tell them the truth, you know? And so I just encourage you, you know, if you feel a love, toward the people who are on your team, if there are people that you care for, part of that relationship is making sure that you're telling them the truth, that apathy doesn't leak in, and you're treating them the way that they want to be treated. That's good. It's kind of counterintuitive, but as you're saying that, I can think back through the

relationships in my life and the ones that I feel the most connected to today are the ones that I've had the most uncomfortable conversations with. It's true, isn't it? Whether I've been the one driving the conversation, or the recipient. I feel the most connection to those people. And there is a bond that happens when we do this right. So Brendan, brilliant stuff. Thank you for being on the Entry Leadership podcast. We'd love to have you back on some time.

And best of luck as you continue to lead us forward out there. Thank you. All right, guys, great conversation with Brendan. And I hope that you understand that in leadership, you're always going to be uncomfortable. You never get to a utopian place where everything is just easy street. and the most difficult part is going to always be with people because emotions are involved. And if you care about them and if you want to do this well, it's always going to be a little bit messy. Brendan talked about that.

But if you have a process that's based on these principles of treating people well and being kind and being clear, and if you're doing it because you care about the mission and you care about the rest of the team, you're going to turn more people from the wrong behaviors back towards going the right direction. And even the ones who don't, you're going to sleep good at night if you ultimately have to let them go because you did right by them. You walked them through a process that was fair, clear, and kind. So to make this a little bit more simple for you guys, because I know we covered a lot of meat in this conversation. And if you're trying to take notes, there's a lot to keep up with. Brendan referenced a tool that he's put together where he's got all of these questions,

and checklists and everything all in one spot so that you have a guide, a resource. Next time you go, I've got an uncomfortable conversation coming up. All you got to do is pull out this tool, print it off, and it will help you prep for that conversation and do it where you stay on track the entire time. You've got to have this. It's fantastic.

All you have to do to get this tool is click on the link in the show notes. All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, be sure to leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And look, if you're a small business owner between about two and 200 team members. We'd love to have a live conversation with you. Get your feedback, learn about your business,

and learn how we can make the show even more valuable for you. If you want to help us out with that, just click on the link in the show notes to fill out a brief survey to schedule a call with Tim, the producer. He would love to have a conversation with you. Thanks for helping us out there. Also, you can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. You can follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty.

This episode was produced by Tim Hull. it was edited and mixed by Will Rudder. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts

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