Business Builders Podcast

Difficult Conversations

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 4 • Episode 65

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In this episode of the Business Builders Podcast, Brenton and Ron discuss the essential skill of having difficult conversations. They share practical strategies to approach these challenging discussions with confidence and effectiveness, ensuring better outcomes in both business and personal interactions.

Key Topics Covered:

1.Importance of Difficult Conversations:

  • Understanding why avoiding difficult conversations can lead to bigger problems.
  • How addressing issues head-on can improve relationships and workplace dynamics.

2.Preparation:

  • Identifying the objective of the conversation.
  • Gathering relevant information and understanding the other person’s perspective.
  • Deciding on the appropriate environment and timing for the conversation.

3.Arranging the Conversation:

  • Tips for inviting someone to a difficult conversation without increasing their anxiety.
  • The importance of clear communication and setting expectations.

4.Conducting the Conversation:

  • Maintaining a calm and open mindset.
  • Framing the conversation positively and avoiding judgment.
  • Using “I” statements to express feelings and concerns without assigning blame.
  • Encouraging the other party to share their perspective and seeking mutual understanding.

5.Follow-Up:

  • The necessity of follow-up meetings to ensure progress and address any ongoing issues.
  • How to provide support and adjust the action plan as needed.

6.Real-Life Examples:

  • Personal anecdotes and examples from Brenton and Ron illustrating effective and ineffective approaches to difficult conversations.

7.Resources for Further Learning:

  • Recommendations for books on the topic, including “Crucial Conversations” by Kerry Patterson, “Fierce Conversations” by Susan Scott, and “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott.

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Hey there, Business Builders, have you ever struggled with having difficult conversations? With the right approach, you can go from walking on eggshells to navigating these challenging discussions with confidence. This episode tackles the art of handling difficult conversations effectively, ensuring smoother interactions and better outcomes in both your business and personal life. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And this week we are continuing on the effective communication series. And our topic today, Ron?

Ron Tomlian:

Having difficult conversations.

Brenton Gowland:

Ooh, difficult conversations. Tell me more about that.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, in my experience, we're always faced with the potential for having some type of awkward, unpleasant conversation in our business life, in our personal lives, with friends, and the usual response is to avoid it. And most people avoid it because they don't know how to have it, or they've had bad experiences in the past. And the worst thing in my experience, again, that you can do when you need to have one of those conversations is to avoid it, because invariably, it comes back to bite you in the bum when you don't have it. Well, what's that saying you approve. This is not quite right, but you approve the behavior that you walk past.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes, do you know, what that saying is?

Ron Tomlian:

You reinforce or allow the behavior that what you walk past.

Brenton Gowland:

Or deserve?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, well, that's right.

Brenton Gowland:

If you put the deserve word in there, you deserve the behavior you walk past. It puts what you've just said about difficult conversations into a whole different light, doesn't it?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, and we all know that it would be better if Agreed, if you allow people to walk over you, you end up being we could address the situation. And oftentimes, as we talked about in the lead up to this podcast, people are sometimes not even aware that they're doing something that would annoy someone else, that is problematic for someone else, everybody's doormat, and you never get anywhere in business. they're not even aware of the situation. So to allow it to You have to teach people how to treat you, you have to set continue is not necessarily the person who's you like the word offending, it's the person who notices it and does nothing about it. And what's interesting is there are people have written books on this stuff. There's Fierce Conversations by Helen Scott, there's Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenley. There's Radical Candor by Kim Scott. All of these books stem from the fact that people avoid having difficult conversations with other people, to the detriment of both parties. parameters. You have to establish norms, and you can't do any of that without having difficult conversations. Right.

Brenton Gowland:

So it's a massively important thing, and the more you have difficult conversations, believe it or not, the easier it becomes, actually the person who initiates them.

Ron Tomlian:

Because it's like with anything where you jump into water, and the first time, it can be pretty frightening, but soon, it doesn't take long before you know how to swim, and you quite enjoy the experience. And that's not to say you want to enjoy having awkward conversations with people, but certainly you don't want to be the person who avoids them.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. You want it to be something that is natural. I remember with one of my clients, I run this process we call them P360's. So Performance 360 so we get the business to talk to another business, and we do a review to find out how we can improve the relationship. And this particular client, we ran this process, and they got quite emotional, because there was some really difficult things that were brought up. Then we ran a conversation between the managing director of one company and the managing director of the other. And at the end of it, my client came back and said, Well, that went a lot better than expected. Who else can we do this with? It went from a really difficult, I don't want to do this, I can't believe they said that, to a we've ended up in a better place, and that wasn't as bad as I thought. So it's going through that process and seeing the outcome that I think makes it more normalized, rather than something to be scared of.

Ron Tomlian:

It's as we will talk later on. It's like doing presentations.

Brenton Gowland:

Agree.

Ron Tomlian:

The number one fear of people in business, people in general, is having to do a presentation. And yet, if you talk to people who are comfortable doing presentations, they were once like that, I don't think many people enjoy doing presentations to start with, but once you get used to it, once you find the rhythm, once you do it often enough that you feel comfortable and then confident doing it, it eventually becomes. Becomes a little bit addictive. Now that's a positive thing. I think with with difficult conversations, it's always going to be awkward, it's always going to be difficult, but if you have a framework for doing this, then it becomes so much easier, and that's what we hope to share today.

Brenton Gowland:

Agreed. So let's start at the beginning. What Ron is a difficult conversation?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, to me, a difficult conversation is when in typical flow of relationships or typical flow of business, it's going to be awkward, there's going to be emotions involved. It's going to mean something to both parties. So there's high stakes, and something's going to have to change as a result. So that's when it's a difficult conversation, when it means something, when you think it could get emotional, and you need to manage those emotions, including the other persons and your own.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so in a business sense, though, what's the difference between a difficult conversation and a more formal, managed conversation, like where we have to go through correcting a staff behavior formally.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I like to think that you should have a difficult conversation with someone well before you have to go down the path of having to bring in the lawyers and the Hi people and make it a formal warning. Sometimes that happens and it's unavoidable, it's still the same, and you can still approach it in the same way. It's just that other parties start to get involved. So I'd like to think people will have these type of difficult conversations well before it becomes a formalized process.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, in essence, that'll save the business a lot of money, won't it.

Ron Tomlian:

And it saves people a lot of heartache, and it gives them the opportunity to make the changes before you start going down the path of formalized processes within organizations.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so we've talked about what a difficult conversation is, and any examples before we jump into talking about them?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, like I said before, it's usually some type of problematic behavior that you want to identify and change in another person. It could be the effect that they're having that they don't even know about on others within a team because of their behaviors.

Brenton Gowland:

So you've had another team member complaining about them. You might not have been directly involved, but you know, it's an issue for other people, so you got to deal with it.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, it sometimes is the way they express their attitudes. It could be their attitude and the way they, as I said, that that comes out in their own conversations. It can be just about anything that can be problematic or negative moving forward in terms of your workplace or your team.

Brenton Gowland:

That's interesting. I'm going to give you an example that's not about work.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay.

Brenton Gowland:

That shows this up. So out the front of my house, yep, there's a driveway. Clearly, everyone's got one, but mine's in the corner of a street, and I had this gentleman who was a younger bloke, probably in his late 20s, start parking with half his car across the driveway, and my initial reaction was fury, because I couldn't get out of the driveway properly. And I know that in situations like that, I don't know. Have you ever had where one of your neighbors sticks a note on the car that's rude and they don't put a name on it? I was actually reading an article in our local newspaper recently about the fact that Karens are on a massive rise, and we know what we're talking about by Karens.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. It became a popular thing during covid.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. So in particular, they talk about people leaving notes on people's doors, about their animals, threatening all sorts of things. Now you don't want to jump down that road. This particular person looked a bit rough. Drove this big charger type vehicle, and I wanted to address it. I had to address it. So I thought, How can I go about this? Now, this isn't in the workplace, but this is, in some sense, is even more awkward, because you don't know how this person is going to react. They don't say how low they grump around because I observed them in the street a little bit one day they were having this garage sale out the front of their house. And I took it as an opportunity just to say hello and to get this person recognizing who I was. And I didn't bring anything up at that particular point, and I started thinking about, what would I say? How would I approach this. How could I do it in such a way that this person saw me as someone who was non threatening, and helped them to see my side of things? So I remember I saw him in the street one day and and I'd known him enough from the garage sale and having a quick, brief conversation to be able to say hello and him say hello back. And I I stopped him and said, Look, I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you. And of course, it got dark and said, Well, it depends what it is, mate. And I said, Well, okay, I got to paint you a picture. So I know this street is crowded, but when I come out of my driveway and. Now I try to navigate out. If you park too close to the letter box, it means the front of your car's over and it becomes very difficult to get out. If you could just focus on parking a meter or two back from there, that'd make it really easy for me to get out, and it means I wouldn't have to try to avoid hitting your car, and he said to me, Oh, I would have never even thought about that. Yeah. No, no worries. I'll make sure I park a meter or two back in the future. That's all I asked you. Never parked in that spot ever again. But I know that sounds trivial and minor, but it took about three weeks from when I noticed it to being able to get to a point where I could have that conversation, that it wasn't me just approaching him cold on that subject. So the opportunity with the garage sale was an opportunity for me to actually build some sort of rapport before I got to having the conversation.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, that's music to my ears, because you did everything right in terms of preparation, arranging the conversation, having the conversation, then you didn't have even have to do the final one, follow up. They're the basic four steps.

Brenton Gowland:

So go through those four steps again, just in case people miss them.

Ron Tomlian:

Preparation. Number one, preparation. Number two, arranging the conversation. Number three, having the conversation, and number four, following up. And that's it. But Karen's don't go through that process. Karen's react, and this is what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to avoid the reaction without thinking about, how am I going to get what I want out of this conversation in a way that both of us win from the conversation? Because Karen's think only about Win, lose. This is about win, win.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so of your four points, if we start with preparation, that's, well, I think the preparation part then starts with identifying what needs to be discussed in your own mind.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, yes, I actually think that's the second point. Yeah, the first point is deciding, what am I trying to get out of this conversation? What am I trying to do? Is it just as Karen's would do. I just want to vent. I really don't care what happens at the end of it. I expect that they're going to do something as a result of it, but I'm not thinking too much about how the interaction is going to go. What am I trying to achieve? So you got to work out what your objective is, is exactly right, and this, this is something that people sometimes find difficult, because oftentimes they just want to get the issue under the table, and of course, they'll know what to do as a result of that. But the objective defines how you're going to do, what you're going to do once you've identified that objective.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so if we take the example of my little neighborly discussion, the objective I wanted to achieve was to not have that car parked in front of my driveway.

Ron Tomlian:

Not have that cave packed in front of your driveway. Well, which you could have achieved by blowing it up, you know, and have a neighbor who isn't after your blood as a result. Okay, so I want a peaceful neighborhood. I want that car not to be parked across my driveway, and I want there to be at least some type of cordial interaction from that point onwards with that person.

Brenton Gowland:

So that was a neighbor example. So it might be at work, like you said, you want to change someone's behavior, and it might be change of behavior towards me, change your behavior towards other people, improve your performance, better focus at work, all those kind of things. It could be a raft of things, but you will have an objective that you want to achieve.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, but it's it's worth to my way of thinking, thinking about, what am I trying to get out of this? Well, if I have to have this conversation, what do I want to be the end result, the ideal end result, and identify that the next is, as you quite rightly said, information gathering. What are the facts of the situation that I can see? And it is very much what I can see. This is my perspective on things. Let's be clear about my perspective on what's the situation thinking about when I am going to have this type of conversation. What is the best environment to have it in? Give us some examples of that, the environment. Well, if you're going to have a difficult conversation with someone, do you want to have that in the hallway of a crowded office? Because both of you are going to want to listen carefully to what the other person is saying, and a crowded hallway is probably not going to be conducive to that. Do I want to have it in a coffee shop? Do I want to have it in my office where there's a power differential, because I'm sitting behind my desk and the other person is sitting in a chair opposite me, with some type of barrier between us, and they're going to be awkward and uncomfortable, right from the word go. So what's the environment that I think will be most conducive? Safe to having this conversation and thinking about that, and not only in the environment. What sort of timing do I want to have it at the end of the day when the person's trying to rush home to his family? Do I want to have it at the beginning of the day before they get into the workflow? Those sort of things come into my preparation.

Brenton Gowland:

And sometimes the hallway is the right place because you want to keep it so informal that they don't even know they've had an awkward conversation. But that comes back to the objective and planning.

Ron Tomlian:

We talked about, the fact that there's high stakes in a difficult conversation. Usually, if you're going to have something in the hallway, it's minor. There's not high stakes involved so difficult conversations, I would say, almost invariably, you want to have it in a quiet spot that's private that no one else can hear. But one of the maxims that I always use, if you want to praise someone, you praise them in public. If you want to pull someone up on their behaviors, you do that in private. And so let's suppose you're trying to pull someone up on their behaviors. Well, that's a private conversation.

Brenton Gowland:

If I wanted it to stay really informal and keep it from getting to the really difficult stage I might look for when someone's around a place in the office that not many other people are around, potentially, but I might have that conversation there with them and just do it in such an informal way, like I did with that gentleman in the street. If it's minor, as you say, I might do it somewhere like that, because then it keeps it really minor and informal and non threatening if it's a little bit heavier than exactly what you're saying.

Ron Tomlian:

And again, this comes to context.

Brenton Gowland:

Because if we need to arrange a space, it all of a sudden, puts that conversation into a more serious kind of framing.

Ron Tomlian:

Yep, a lot of this context really depends on the relationship we currently have with that person. Is it problematic? Is it casual? Is it a boss employee type of relationship where there is a level of formality that already exists.

Brenton Gowland:

And how do you go about that? You'd say to someone, Hey, do you have five minutes?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, that's the second part. That's the arranging the conversation. So the other thing, and I think in terms of preparation, very clearly and negotiators will tell you this, with the best information that you have available, and sometimes is fairly incomplete, is try and think from their perspective. What does this mean for them? Is this something that's important to them? What are the stakes for them involved in this having this conversation or this behavior? Do I have the full picture, and maybe if I don't have the full picture, that I suspend judgment on why they're doing something or the way they're doing something. And the other part of preparation is after you've gone through that whole this is what I want to achieve, and this is how I'm going to identify and have the conversation, maybe a bit of rehearsal.

Brenton Gowland:

I think rehearsal is very important, even if it's just in your own mind.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, yeah. I think it helps if you've got someone who you trust and to someone who can keep things confidential and who maybe is used to you doing this, someone who can role play with you people underestimate or denigrate the you know role playing. But I find role playing to be incredibly helpful in preparing me mentally for the process that I'm going through.

Brenton Gowland:

We used to do a lot of role playing and training events.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I remember once I was running through a schema for having difficult conversations, and the next step was to do a role play. And somebody said, Look, we do role plays all the time. Let's not do the role playing. I said, Okay, well, I put it to a vote, because these are all fairly senior people, they decided not to do role play. We did another activity which was involved with talking about problems, common problems they had at the end of the day. We did a evaluation of the day, and the guy who wanted not to do the role plays put his hand up and said, Well, I think we were cheated today. So what do you mean? He said, Well, we didn't do a role play. And luckily, everyone else jumped onto him and said, Well, you were the guy who initiated that. He said, Yeah, I find role plays to be difficult and confronting, but they're probably the most helpful thing, I was feeling a bit lazy, so I didn't want to have it, and you let me get away with it. Yeah, interesting, isn't it? But that's because most people do find role playing a little bit confronting at times, but it is an incredibly helpful way of preparing or trialing new techniques, but preparing for difficult situations. So my suggestion is, in your preparation phase for this role play a bit. Yeah, it's interesting. I would generally role play in my head. I got that kind of imagination where I can see both sides of a coin and and I usually have the conversation in my head several different ways. I can 100% see the benefit in. Role playing, but again, that that's like a difficult conversation 10 out of 10 rather than a three out of 10. Yep, yep.

Brenton Gowland:

That's where it's a high stakes conversation.

Ron Tomlian:

That's exactly right. And you need to gage where this type of conversation is on your spectrum of this is the most difficult thing I'm going to confront for the next 10 years, or this is something in passing that I just want to try and get off my chest.

Brenton Gowland:

Well. So that comes down to, okay, if we're talking about preparation, the point you raised was objective is first what I want to achieve, then you were talking about gathering the information, deciding what environment you should have the conversation is. So I think before that, we should actually gage the level of the conversation. So part of that information gathering, part is what level of conversation is this going to be? Is this going to be a hallway conversation? I'm going to try and talk to them in just in the general space in the office, because it's a very low stakes conversation, and keep them like I did with that gentleman in the street that was a low stakes conversation, really, but I wanted to keep it informal. There's no way I could have just knocked on his door at that point and said, I've got an issue. But in passing, it was perfect. Okay, if you gage the level of conversation, this is going to be a high stakes conversation. Might be a tissue box needed. I think we've all, if we're at any level of management, have had those tissue box conversations, where we've had to bring something up with a staff member, where it's been very emotional, and you've had to go through that process with them, or that experience with them again, understanding where this conversation is probably going to land is also part of understanding that other person's perspective, and maybe that's when you gage what level of conversation this is going to be.

Ron Tomlian:

As long as you've thought about it, I don't think I mean, this is not a rigorous, step by step process, as long as you can tick the box and say, I've thought about the context, I've thought about their perspective, that is on your checklist of things To prepare before you start even going into the conversation.

Brenton Gowland:

So moving on to arranging the conversation, you've decided what you want to do, you've gone through all those bits. You've done your rehearsal.

Ron Tomlian:

Yep. Then you have to organize a time that's convenient for you and that other person to have that conversation. And as we talked about beforehand, one of the difficult things is that you can raise a person's anxiety by just saying, I'd like to have a conversation with you. What about well, can we leave that until we have the conversation? See, I don't think that's fair if you do that. Well, sometimes it can be difficult, depending on the situation, to adequately give them an indication of what you're going to be talking about, without raising the whole issue in its in itself.

Brenton Gowland:

That comes down to the environment and the timing right? Because if I wanted to say to a staff member, have you got five minutes, if you're the boss, they're always going to say yes, 99% of the time, unless they're a unique individual, then you're going to have to be formal. But if I said to someone, have you got five minutes right now, and my practice is always, if they say no, like I said, that's only 10% of the time, I'll say, when do you have five minutes? But generally they're going to say yes. So at that particular point, I think what you're saying is incredibly valid. They're not going to know you're going to go sit in an office, you're going to go to a coffee shop, whatever. But if it's immediate, then, yeah, but if you're saying to them, I find it very difficult to understand how, if you say, Oh, can we arrange a time for a conversation, and you don't tell them what it's about, how do you how does that work?

Ron Tomlian:

I think you can Gen talk generally about this is about something to do with work. I don't want to bring up the whole thing at the moment. I just, I'd like to organize a time where we can shoot the breeze for a while.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, yeah, I'll take your word for that. I just know that most times when I've it's been a if it's a staff member. There's also rules about having those kind of conversations.

Ron Tomlian:

And again, this, in my opinion, this is before it gets to anything formal, okay, where you want to address a behavior or address a problem or an issue before it gets out of hand and goes to formal processes.

Brenton Gowland:

I'll say this. This is where having one on ones with all your staff solves all these problems because you can leave these conversations for the one on ones if you've got regular interaction.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely and we can address the idea of an annual performance review. I like to think that people are going through performance reviews once a month with their people and having ongoing conversations, rather than leaving it to once a year. But not everybody does it that way. And

Brenton Gowland:

look, I'm comfortable if I'm going to talk to a staff member and say, Hey, have you got time for a coffee this week? And they say, but, yeah, sure. What do you want to catch up about? I just want to catch up with you talk about a few things and see how you're going in this area, if that's honest the truth. Yeah, right. Right? Yep, if I'm dealing with something specific, and probably this is because I've done it a fair bit, I would be the person who said, I want to talk to you about this particular thing that's happening in the office and get your viewpoint on it, because I think you're involved or whatever, I might do it a lot smarter than that. But

Ron Tomlian:

This is about the preparation, yeah, this is about thinking about, how am I going to address this and get the invitation? Again, people who have pas sometimes delegate that to the PA. You arrange the time and place for this person to have a conversation with me, and the PA will have to be the one who delivers some type of indication of what's going on.

Brenton Gowland:

You could also, if you're a manager in a business, there's, I guess there's some formal kind of things you could use, again, like you said, it's the preparation thing and the invitation and the timing. You could actually ask, I think it's time for us that let's have a feedback meeting. I want to give you some feedback. Those kind of things work, yeah, with people, because often they say, yes. The two things I think you want to achieve in arranging the conversation is not to put the person in a state of high anxiety correct and put them in defensive mode. That's what you're trying to achieve. So however, with that relationship, you can achieve that so that they're open to the idea of you having an honest, two way conversation between you and the other person. So that's what you're trying to achieve. So therefore, part of your arranging the conversation is actually working out and almost rehearsing how you do the invitation.

Ron Tomlian:

No part of your preparation should be thinking about, yeah, absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

All right, so we've we've arranged a time, yep, we've decided how we're going to have the conversation. How do we have the conversation?

Ron Tomlian:

I think that the first thing to do is, before you go into any conversation, is preparing your mental state.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, what do you mean by that?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, it's about you not being anxious. It's about you being open. So it's about your mental state and your attitude. If you go into a conversation and your attitude is, have a closed mind. I know what this person is doing. I know why they're doing it. I've judged their intentions, and I am closed to anything but delivering bad news to them, and they've just got to change. Then I think you're going to be in for a state of grief at the end of it.

Brenton Gowland:

So it's my outcome or the highway,

Ron Tomlian:

yeah, my way or the highway, absolutely right? If you are open, if you're calm, you're not judging a person. You're not talking to them about how they're a bad person. You're talking to them about a behavior that they, in all probability, are completely unaware of. Then you're helping them, you're coming from a place of concern, then you're much more likely to end up with a good result at the end that achieves the objective that you're looking for. Okay, so number one, mental state, my mental state and going into it makes perfect sense. Two, I have prepared. I'm now in a state where I'm mentally prepared, but I'm also ready to have this conversation. Okay? Because I've done all the preparation beforehand. The first thing you want to do is frame the situation, and oftentimes you would already have a relationship with that person, so you would talk about the relationship. You're a valued member of our team, and the work that you've done on Project X has been outstanding. Everyone the hamburger method, well, yeah, and you know, a lot of people use this, I'm going to give them I'm going to butter them up. I'm going to give them the bad news, and then I'm going to butter them up at the end. I don't believe in that, but I do believe you have to set a context. You have to frame the situation. This is not about me coming in and giving you bad news, right from the word go, you're a bad person. You do bad things. This is about saying, This is how I see you in the context of our relationship, our working environment, whatever it is, and let them know what they mean to you and how you see them in the general context. And this is what I find really important. Once you've done the framing. Now you're going to talk to them about a problematic behavior or problematic situation. As soon as you use the word but or however, you have just basically wasted your time with the framing beforehand. Because when I hear but or now, now, however, whatever segue you use that is like that. It basically puts a line in the sense that everything I've set up till now has been bullshit, and now we're going to get to the hub of the matter.

Brenton Gowland:

Sounds very hamburgerish.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important. Once you've set the framework, as in the valued member, they do good work, they are seen by others as leader and. Use the segue, and I'll give you an example. You're a member of my Tec group. If I were to try and address a problematic behavior in you, I would say something along the lines of Brenton. You're a valued member of the group. People listen when you speak, especially about issues associated with marketing. You've been there for a while, and people respect you, and it's because of that, and because I see li Yu is one of the leaders in the group, that when you're continually on your phone during a meeting, as you did last week during the session where we had a speaker, I find it troubling, and I know other people have spoken to me about that type of behavior. Now, luckily, Brenton, you know, you don't do that I'm talking about if I were to address a problematic behavior. The segue is and and because of all the good stuff I've said, I expect a higher standard from you in terms of this type of behavior. So in fact, the context becomes crucial in establishing that the behavior is out of line with what you're expecting with that person. You then give them an indication of how it makes you feel when you see that behavior or the situation that you find yourself in, and you talk about i i feel let down. So I statements, I statements, there's there's no judgment in I statements. Nobody can criticize you for I statement. I feel disappointed. I feel let down. I feel concerned about your status as a leader within the group and what I'd like to see, what I'd really like to see is that use of mobile phone during the meetings to stop. Now, that's how I see the situation, and this is really important. That's how I see the situation. I've identified the problem. I've let you know how it makes me feel, and maybe how it makes others feel. Now you put a lie another line in the sand. This is my understanding of the situation. This is how it affects me and affects others. I'd like to know how you see that situation. I'd like to know how you perceive what's going on when you do that behavior, because there could be, and I I haven't got all the information, there could be a very good reason for that, and I'll give you an example. I used to be in executive teams and so on. And when mobile phones were new, and you couldn't easily put the phones on solid mode, this is well before there were smartphones, I would have my phone with me and it would go off. And the CEO at the time dragged me into her office, and she gave me the rounds of the kitchen, having my mobile phone with me in the first place during those meetings, and secondly, having it on. Now, my daughter was badly asthmatic, and I was first point of call because I was the only one who had a mobile phone. My wife, at the time, didn't have one. I was first point of call in case there was an emergency at school, so I had to have my phone on as soon as she understood that that was the case. He said, Well, of course, that's a seat. Why didn't you tell me this beforehand? Because I didn't always problematic behavior. So what we did is we, at the beginning of every meeting with the executive team, I would say, Look, guys, I'm sorry, I've got to keep my phone on because I first point of contact, nobody else will be calling me unless it's the school and unless it's about my daughter's asthmatic situation. Problem solved, but she didn't understand the situation, and she didn't understand where I was coming from. I didn't understand it was problematic. It wasn't because the phone went off during meetings. It was that she saw my phone in my pocket and that it was on, it had never gone off. But that was the problem. She saw that it was on and that it could have gone off. So once we had that conversation, we could both resolve it to our mutual satisfaction.

Brenton Gowland:

So she sounds like she handled that situation

Ron Tomlian:

Well, she didn't handle it so well. At the well. beginning, I got to tell you.

Brenton Gowland:

She was angry.

Ron Tomlian:

She was angry, but she was willing to listen to my perspective. That's good, yeah, which was fantastic. And I have to admit, I was so shocked by the fact that she would bring it up in that way that I felt guilty. I felt that I had been letting her down. And there was a whole bunch of things that were unsaid that could have been said beforehand if she'd framed it properly. The important thing is she kept an open mind, and she wanted to listen to my perspective.

Brenton Gowland:

It's fantastic. Yeah, all I can say is I wished in every difficult conversation I had was just about someone using a phone. Oh, yeah. But if it's a more higher stakes kind of behavior, how would that play out then?

Ron Tomlian:

I think the important thing is exactly that focus on behaviors, not to focus on perceived intention. I. See a behavior. I can see what somebody's doing. I can't know what they're thinking or what their intention is, or what their attitude. I can only perceive that, and it's important to keep an open mind about I can see the behavior. This is problematic. I want you to explain what's going on for you when that happens. That's the important thing. I'm now trying to get below the surface of the behavior.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so in that particular case, the outcome really is potentially your manager wanted to change your behavior, or even you could say, potentially your manager just wanted to have a much more streamlined, cohesive environment for everyone to work with in and that was achieved because, as you said, problem solved. Everyone understood. Ah, Ron's got his phone because.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, so it's important to focus on the behaviors and listen to the other person's perspective and the explanation of why they're doing what they're doing.

Brenton Gowland:

So what if it's a bigger problem that takes a little bit more sorting out.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, it's still a matter of focusing on the behaviors and then looking below those to Why are you doing this? Why it could be that a person just doesn't contribute at all to conversations that I have in a team meeting? It could be people think that you're disengaged when that's happened. Well, what you don't know is that I've had a few problems in my relationship, and I'm actually on medication at the moment.

Brenton Gowland:

so a conversation like that would require follow up.

Ron Tomlian:

It's important to have that conversation so that mutually The next step is to decide, what are we going to do? We have a situation. We are both involved. It's not about you having to make a change. It's about us creating a pathway for this type of behavior, either to change for the situation that changed in some way. In my case, I didn't change my behavior. What I did was explain my behavior to other people who were quite open to accepting that, that's what I had to do given the circumstances. So now the situation was more revealed. If you go into these difficult conversations with an open mind, a genuinely curious mind.

Brenton Gowland:

There we go.

Ron Tomlian:

There we go.

Brenton Gowland:

Any listeners who've been around for a while, know that that is Ron's favorite thing to be genuinely curious, and it's very good. I've actually been hearing that a lot lately, not just from you, but from a bunch of other sources.

Ron Tomlian:

There's other wise people out there.

Brenton Gowland:

That's correct.

Ron Tomlian:

If you go into it with that perspective, then you're much more likely to share the situation and share a course of action that will leave you both in a win, win situation later on, which is, of course, what you were trying to achieve in the beginning when you set your objective for having this conversation. So the difficult conversation is really getting the issue on the table so that it will be addressed by both parties or whoever's involved? Yes, that is the hard part, because once it's there, once it's out in the open, you can then follow up on it. You can decide what to do about it. And I think a really important thing is that, and I've seen this happen, unfortunately, so many times you have a difficult conversation with someone, you get the issue out on the table, you now know that both of you know about the issue, and you say, right, well, I've dealt with it because I've let him know what's going on, or I let him know that it's not acceptable, and so we agreed not acceptable. Great. Thanks very much. See you later. What are you going to do about it? And does he really care, or does she really care? The next stage, I think, is, what's the point of having a conversation like this if you aren't going to arrange a follow up meeting, the follow up meeting is saying we decided on a course of action. Now we're going to get back together and see how we're going. Because, for a whole bunch of reasons. There could be things that get in the way that we didn't anticipate when we had this conversation. It could be I'm finding this a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, and as a result of that, I need some additional support or help. It could be that something has happened that puts our course of action to the side, another project has come in, or someone else has joined the team, whatever. So it's important to have agreed what the course of action that we are going to undertake, you and I, I'm going to support you, is the person who identified the problem, and what I'm going to do is the person who initiated the problem, what we're going to do and then what? When we're going to follow up and see how it's going? Because there could be some extra steps that need to be done to get a resolution at the end of the day. If you don't do that, then it's all left hanging. So course of action and follow up, arrange a follow up meeting. So how long before we start seeing a change? Well, I reckon I can get this tackled within two weeks. Okay, so let's organize a time in two weeks, time that we can have a follow up conversation See how it's going. Great. That means that it's not going to be left hanging by either party.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, good. So I wonder how many difficult conversations go

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. on on a regular basis. How often would you say you work with a lot of CEOs? How often are they having difficult conversations? Not often enough. Good answer. And the reason I say that is because a natural tendency is to avoid and what almost invariably happens when you avoid these type of conversations is that the problem gets worse because the other person doesn't even know that it's a problem.

Brenton Gowland:

So you teach these frameworks in your TEC group? Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

I like to keep allowing people, not only to learn them, practice them, and revisit them on a regular basis, because it's not something that comes naturally to people.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, have you got any examples where someone has avoided having difficult conversations, yes, and then they've begun to address them under guidance or coaching from others. And the difference it's made.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. I once had a TEC member who really, really needed to rise up to the next level, which is address strategic issues within the organization. What we decided is that he needed a general manager within the organization, and he hired somebody. The unfortunate part is that he in hiring someone, he thought the hire would be the solution, and he hired a person who was a bit like himself, and really didn't look at running the organization, and nor did he give him the right sort of information. He didn't allow him to see the financials because he was concerned about that. After about six months, he continually complained about this person not actually providing him with the type of support he was looking for. I kept saying to him, Well, have you talked to him about this? No, he'll get it. He'll get it. I'll keep giving him indications. I'll keep laying clues in his path. After about six months, it got to the stage where it was just undeniable that this fellow was taking a salary and not doing anything useful. Eventually, this guy decided to confront him on that and the guy said, I was wondering when you would come and speak to me, because I don't think I'm the right guy for this job. What they decided, very amicably, is to parent company. At that point, we then spent some time finding a job description that would fit what he was actually looking for. Recruited to that, and during the interviews, say this is the type of role that I have for this person. This is the type of person I'm looking for. Do you feel comfortable doing that, and do you feel comfortable that we work towards getting you the right sort of information. It all worked out brilliantly. But that could have happened right from the word go, if he'd had those conversations earlier.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, very good. So if you are listening today, the question I have for you is, are there any conversations that you should be having with people that you're avoiding, and if so, maybe it's time for a difficult conversation to take place.

Ron Tomlian:

I don't think there's anyone who is in business who doesn't have a swag of difficult conversations they should be having that they're trying to avoid, hoping it'll go away, hoping that the problem will resolve itself without their intervention and probably not addressing these things, not because they don't feel they need to. It's not knowing how to do it in such a way as getting a win, win situation out of it, always thinking, well, either I'm going to lose or they're going to lose. I'm going to put somebody off. I'm going to lose a valued member of my team, if I address this situation, the truth of the matter is, in my experience, it's more likely you'll lose them if you don't address the situation, and if you don't lose them, you'll lose other people.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, well, if you're listening today, assess whether you need to have those difficult conversations and think about that framework that we were talking about, which was preparing, arranging the conversation, having the conversation, and then following it up. And of course, there's a lot more to it. Is there anywhere we can get resources on these conversations Ron?

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, the fantastic book written about this is a book called Crucial Conversations by Jenny Patterson. Look up Crucial Conversations tools for talking when stakes are high. There's fierce conversations by Susan Scott, there's radical candor by Kim Scott, there's conversational intelligence. Whole bunch of texts that have been written by people not in academia, but by people who have been in business and. Identified. These are the difficult conversations that need to be had, and here's a framework for doing it. What we've done today is wrap up most of those in the format that we've given in a simplified way.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, that's fantastic. Lots of resources there, and it just highlights the importance of communication. And this, of course, is the effective communication series on the business builders podcast. We look forward to you joining us again in a couple of weeks for the next part of the series. For those of you who are listening, it's goodbye from me.

Ron Tomlian:

And goodbye from me.