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You know, Judith, you are an expert on the topic of conversational intelligence.
And one thing I've found is, especially difficult conversations,
people's instinctive tendency is to avoid it, just don't do it. Any stories,
examples, ideas for people related to this dealing with difficult conversations?
>> Um-hum... And I'm sure you want me to give them an answer of how to address
that difficult conversation. >> Exactly, yes. >> Right, right... So I have...
Many leaders that I work with, this happened to be a leader in Guatemala, and
we did an assessment on him. And out of the 49 questions, avoiding difficult
conversations was his lowest score, and he knew it. And he would try to practice it.
And sometimes when he would tell himself how he was going to talk about it,
he actually made it worse. >> Ah... >> Because the story that he would tell
inside would be how somebody else was a problem, and he would then put
words around that, that he was a problem and he was impacting people in a bad way,
and he wasn't nice. And the more he told the story, the more he had adjectives and
things that made it hard for him to even say it. You know, like, he couldn't even
look the guy in the eye, because the way he told the story was difficult--difficult
for him and difficult for the person. So he started to think about how to frame,
or what I called reframe, what he wanted to say, from complaining and
judgmental words, which is what was getting him upset...
He had what's called cortisol already, he was upset and fearful. And that's what he
would be doing to the other person. >> Ah! >> So he reframed the conversation
to how the person wasn't bad--in fact, that the person was growing,
they had things to learn. These were some of the things that they could begin to
focus on as they grew as a leader. And so these are the things that the person
wasn't doing and wasn't doing well. But now he framed it in a beautiful box
that talked about how this person could do it better and add it to his existing
toolkit of leadership skills. And the smile on the guy's face,
which he had never seen before, because he always did it the bad way...
>> Right... >> You know, the judgmental way...was amazing. And that reinforced for
him the ability to move from avoiding it to actually being willing to say it and
experiment with it. And for him, it was a turning point. >> And that is a fantastic
example, and it's related to something I do called feedforward. Rather than let's
make you relive a humiliating past, why don't we talk about creating a positive
future? Probably the most difficult conversation you're ever going to have is
when you have to dismiss someone, you have to let them go. Any ideas for
our viewers on that one? >> I have two quick ideas for that one. >> Great.
>> One is that, when you have a leader,
a CEO of a company, who really has a feel for what everybody's capable of doing...
So they know their people well, and they also know their strategy well, clearly,
and they know whether they fit. Those people then become attuned to watching
the executives in the organization to see if that happens,
if they're matched up with the goals of the company and
they're really in tune, right? And they can also feel when they're not in tune.
And I teach leaders that, so that they stay in touch with what's going on.
Sometimes they are going to have to let somebody go because they are not in tune,
or they're not doing things that are having a positive impact on the company.
>> Right. >> When a leader gets taught to follow and track those two things,
something magic can happen.
>> Good. >> That is that I've seen leaders literally walk down the hall
to go to talk to somebody who they know that they have to let go, but
have the person actually walking down the hall at the same time to visit with them
to say they realize that they're not in sync with the company, and it's time for
them to go. And so, the behind-the-scenes important take-away is,
make sure that you tune in as a leader to really this what's the feel of
the company, what's going on, and to observe which people are in tune with you.
And then you know and they know. And when this guy walked down the hall,
it was like, oh my god, we both knew it. So the pain wasn't there, right?
>> Yes. >> And they did what they both had to do. >> Fantastic example. >> Yeah.
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