Latest / Integrity at Scale™ / Why Avoiding Hard Conversations Is Actually About Self-Protection
Transcript
- Hey. Hey. So we talk about avoiding conflict, like it's a communication problem, but most of the time it's a form of self-protection. So we're not protecting ourselves from the other person, and frankly, we're not protecting the other person. We're protecting ourselves from the feelings that the conversation brings up in us. My name is Dr. Tara Vossenkemper, and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Thank you so much for being here with me. Today we are unpacking why leaders avoid hard conversations, what it costs the practice, and how to shift from self-protection to grounded leadership. And I ideally how to do that without turning into a robot or a wrecking ball. Before we go further, let's talk through the agenda. There are three items we're gonna cover. Number one, why avoidance feels safer than honesty. Number two, how self-protection shapes leadership behavior, how avoidance shapes leadership behavior. And number three, how do we break the cycle without swinging to the opposite extreme? And that's really it. It's just gonna be a quick and dirty episode today. So agenda item number one. Why does avoidance feel safer than honesty? Let's talk about this a little bit. There's three like broad things here that I wanna touch on. One of the first things that comes to mind is that self-protection or avoidance if we're being more honest, it mas querades as being nice. So from the outside, it looks like, well, we're being nice, we're being kind, we're being considerate. But the reality is that we are shielding ourselves from the discomfort of the conversation that we need to have. I think you know by this point, and if you don't, this will be news, but you know, just take it in, I like conflict. I don't think conflict needs to be aggressive or over the top or devolve into screaming and yelling and throwing shit. But I like hard conversations. I consider that a form of conflict. Anytime there's like friction or a little bit of tension in a conversation, to me that all falls under the umbrella category of conflict. There's something at odds between two people and or multiple people, you know? But why I like it is because it gets us closer to the most accurate version of reality. By having multiple people engaged in dialogue around one topic, we get to see multiple angles of the same thing. So my view might be very specific and what I'm saying might be true. And if another person is looking from a totally different angle, they have relevant and very real things to share, also. So when we do something like avoid a conversation and we engage in a self-protective mechanism and we say that it's, you know, well, we're, we're being nice. It is shielding us. We're not shielding the other person. We are actually shielding ourselves from an uncomfortable conversation. I'm not saying that conflict, again, broad umbrella term conflict is fun all the time. I'm not saying that it's enjoyable to be in the midst of conflict with someone that you care about or even someone that you maybe don't so much care about, you know. Hopefully with your employees you care about them. But what I am saying is that it's necessary and on the other side of that conflict, and we can get through it, then it enhances the relationship. It enhances intimacy. And of course I say intimacy and I don't fucking mean sex. They are not one and the same. I mean, emotional intimacy, I mean relational intimacy. That's what it really does. It strengthens those things. So one component, just to recap this first point for why avoidance feels safer than honesty, is that avoidance masquerade as being nice and that feels safer than being honest, which can be really hard to do. A second component to agenda item number one is avoidance creates temporary relief. It's a pseudo relief in my opinion, but it is temporary relief and it creates long-term relational erosion. So when or if you are avoiding a conversation with somebody about something important, like a conversation you need to be having with this other person, let's say you just keep putting it off, you know, it's uncomfortable. It, it's relieving to say like, oh dang, they're busy. Okay, I'll just do it tomorrow. And then. Tomorrow just keeps coming. I'll just, I'll just do it the next day. I'll do it next week. Okay, well, I'll schedule something in and then you forget, you know, oops, I forgot. You forget to schedule it in. All of that, fine. You know, you're feeling relieved each step of the way, but the reality is that you are prolonging the conversation that needs to happen. You're avoiding and prolonging the conversation that needs to happen. And in the meantime, while you might feel some temporary relief, you also are probably feeling a growing bubble of resentment. You or the other person, maybe, if they know that something's off and they can't figure out what it is, like they might also be feeling the impact of this lack of conversation taking place, but maybe they don't understand or know why. So they're maybe feeling confused and unsure and a little uncertain and anxious and kinda fearful about like, oh gosh, I, I don't, something's off, but I don't really know what. You are Also feeling uncertain and fearful about just having the conversation probably, which is why you're avoiding it, and again, you're getting a little bit of relief in pushing it back. But at what cost? You know, the, the cost is, then you've got a a six month cycle of resentment instead of a 10 minute uncomfortable conversation. It's kind of the same thing as ripping a fucking bandaid off. You know, like even if you take the bandaid off kinda slow, you're not gonna leave it on for six months to avoid 10 seconds of discomfort. You're gonna probably take it off as soon as you start to notice like, Ooh, this does not feel very good. That actually reminds me. Um, my second child is a redhead, and I don't know if you know this, but redheads feel pain at higher levels, so they're just more sensitive to physical discomfort. This is not just me talking. I mean, I know there's some research out there to support this by who? I don't ask me. I never, never know. Don't ever ask me that question. If I do know, I'll tell you. If I don't know, I'll just say there's research. Maybe go look it up. My point remains the same. My second is a redhead, and for whatever fucking reason, my husband, let him put a bandaid on his face, on his face. He's five, and he has this, it's one of those real sticky bandaids. Okay? You know, the ones that like, they're hard to get off. He does not ever want bandaids being ripped off. Never. I just want him ripped off, like get it the hell off. He does not want that at all. And so he has this sticky giant bandaid on his face and then he started getting headaches and I was like, bud, it had been days at this point. I was like, I, I think we need to take your bandaid off. Like we need to, we need to take this off. He's like, no, you know, he is arguing, he is crying with me. And I was like, man, you, you're getting headaches every single day for, you know, three days in a row or something. Totally outta the ordinary with him. You know, this is not a normal baseline for him to have daily headaches, and this is why I think it's happening because you are. Wearing a bandaid that should not be on your face right now. It's just keeping everything really taut right there, you know? And so we ended up spending, I mean, it probably took me 30 minutes to get this bandaid off his face. I'm not even kidding. It could have taken, you know, three seconds and he wanted no part and it being torn off. So it was a lengthy process of us sitting there and he's upset and crying and I'm saying, we have to get this off, man. I'm really, really sorry, but we have to get this off. I was right for the record. I took it off and immediately his head felt better and you know, he didn't get any more headaches and I could have just let it stay on. 'cause I knew that he was gonna be really uncomfortable and I was gonna feel really uncomfortable sitting there and forcing my child to basically like be in pain as I'm trying to peel this bandaid off. So it's almost like, like the, you know, the easier route would've been like, well, we'll just leave it, leave it on and we'll see how it goes. Sure. Except he also has fucking headaches every day now. Like I don't want that for him. That's not normal. He's five. He shouldn't be having daily headaches. Sure, it could have been temporarily relieving to avoid inflicting discomfort on my five-year-old and there would've been long term consequences, not necessarily relational erosion in this case, but there would've been longer term consequences. He would've been having then daily headaches for however long until that bandaid finally came off. To me, it's all one and the same like. It's almost like pick your poison, you know? Do you wanna do something right now and it brings relief faster, like bigger relief faster? Or do you wanna allow resentment to fester for two months, six months, 12 months, two years? Like it, it does become kind of a pick your poison thing I'll, and I mean, this is potentially just a me thing, but I think a lot of people in general would rather get it done quickly and also, I mean, ideally be honest about it too. So even if avoidance creates that temporary relief, just keep in mind that it also feeds into long-term relational erosion, which we do not want. Third item related to agenda item number one, why avoidance feels safer than honesty. Is that leaders, a lot of them, maybe not all of them, maybe not you, but leaders, fear being the bad guy, being considered the bad guy, being considered not nice, or not considerate, or not thoughtful, or whatever the thing is that you fear. But I think the reality in most cases is that those fears that we have usually come from like historical stuff. They come from old roles, whether it's family of origin or early relationships or early work experiences, too, you know, they come from like earlier on things and they're not necessarily reflective of your current station in leadership, you know, they're not reflective of right now reality. And so I'm saying that because I think it's hard to distance from one and. Step into the other. I think it's especially hard without any exposure. So you know, if you are in a place where you're like questioning if you're the bad guy or you're worried about being the bad guy, but you also don't have any exposure with difficult conversations, so you continue to avoid those conversations, you will perpetually be afraid of being the bad guy versus if you do have those conversations, if you start to actively combat avoidance, then you will have some exposure at, oh my God, I can have a hard conversation and I'm not the bad guy. Oh, okay, then. Like you have this exposure and experience that basically totally goes against the fear that you have about being the bad guy. I'm just using that as the example. Again, your language or the thing you're afraid of might be very different. My point still remains the same in that we cannot actively, I hate seeing combat, like we can't actively go against, we can't trust new roles or we can't trust something new without exposure to that something new. And so I think that's really what I'm trying to get at here is that if you are a people pleaser or you're afraid of being the bad guy, or you're the fixer, you know, you've always been the fixer. I'm not saying keep that out of leadership because that's going to sneak in. Like if, if it's historical, it's gonna come up in leadership as well. What I am saying is that those things don't need to directly influence how you engage in avoidance or if you engage in avoidance at all. And I think they need to be like teased out separate and we need new exposure to actively sort of build up other identities like grounded leadership for example, or truth teller. You know, we have other parts of us that we can also build up that start to, I'm gonna say healthfully, push back against those, uh, more historical internal parts and roles that we have. I think that might be it with agenda item number one, why avoidance feel safer than honesty. Let's segue into agenda item number two, which is how self-protection shapes leadership behavior. I freaking love this concept. Here's a few different ways. One is that you soften the truth and. Let's be real about why it is highly likely to protect yourself from the reaction of the person sitting across from you or the people sitting across from you. It's not to protect them, it is to protect yourself from their reaction. So instead of saying the hard truth, your numbers are bad. They need to be better. We might say something like, you know, maybe I, I think we could spend some time trying to like, get your numbers up just a little bit, you know, like, ma, maybe, you know, we'd like to see 'em around this, this number right here and yours are a little bit low. Like all of that there. Those are, those are very different, um, experiences to even say, and I think the first one is really clear and I think the second one is really Ooh. Um. What's the word I wanna say, just fuzzy. It's kind of like, okay, so my numbers aren't that bad. I'm here. If I was on the receiving end, I would, I would be like, okay, well I'm, I'm close to where I need to be. When maybe the reality is like, no, this person is halfway to where they need to be. In terms of like metrics, let's say. This concept, like softening the truth always makes me think about a story in the Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, and if you don't know now you do, the Culture Code is absolutely one of my favorite business culture related books. Really just culture. Culture, but let's go with business culture. It's incredible. Daniel Coyle is spelled C-O-Y-L-E as a heads up, if you're gonna look that book up. There's an example though in this book that he writes about. Maybe Larry, somebody, I forget, I should know his name. Larry Page. I don't fucking know the, one of the co-founders of Google, and this is right at the sort of inception of ads, and I think there was a lot of competition on the market because nobody had really taken over digital ads yet. And so what he did is that he just wrote on a piece of paper, these ads suck, and then stuck it to like a, let's say, corkboard in the shared kitchen area. That's it. These ads suck. That's very, very clear. And I think in the book, Daniel Coyle writes about how he was known for being really direct and very, you know, straight shooter in that regard. So it was really on point with how he also showed up in life. And while I'm not sharing this, because I think you need to act more like he does, you could if that's your sort of natural tendency, but what I am saying is that the clarity in his message is inarguable. Like, these ads suck. Cool. Got it. Like that's very, very clear. We could like, you know, of course we could spend time talking about, well, how do they suck and why do they suck? But that's sort of beside the point. And I'm sure there was more to the story that wasn't really shared. But what is highlighted in all of that is that it was not, there was no softening of the truth. There was no fear around, well, maybe there was some fear, but it didn't seem like it in his actions around protecting people from disappointment or from feeling bad. So when we say something like, you know, uh, your numbers are kind of bad, but like, it's okay. You know. No worries. We'll, we'll get 'em up there when it's not actually okay. And there are worries. That's not helpful. That is you softening the truth, and it's more about highly likely you protecting yourself from their feelings response, whether it's disappointment or they withdraw or they shut down, or they get really anxious, or whatever the hell it is that they are feeling. That's about you softening things so that you don't feel their reaction. That's really what it is. Another way that self-protection shapes leadership behavior is that we wait too long. I probably, I'm sure that I have been guilty of this. I know that I have been, but we wait too long to address something because we hope that the issue's just gonna resolve itself. Like, okay, well if I can like hint around it, it'll get fixed. Or if I. Do it accurately, then people will pick up and follow suit. It's sort of like I'm gonna imply what needs to be done instead of just actively saying, I need this thing done. And it might be that the conversation feels exposing. It might be all the other stuff, like, I don't wanna deal with the reaction. I'm afraid they're gonna be mad at me. I don't wanna be Mr. Mean guy. I wanna be Mr. Nice Guy. You know, whatever it might be for you. The expression of it is that you're. Waiting too long, like it's like you're, you're sort of waiting until this thing resolves itself. Here's what I'll say. There have been, there are two actually examples coming to mind with this. One is that. A clinician wasn't doing their notes on time. This is years ago, but it still stands out loud to me, and it ended up being like months behind on documentation. Guess who's liable for that? Fucking me. I'm the one that's liable, like this is my business. We had, at the time, there was no policy about documentation completion related to payroll. Like this is very, very early days, Tara, in group practice ownership, so there was a lot of, you know, learning that took place. A lot of trial and error learning through beating my head against a wall. There's another example of a clinician who just wasn't responding to their direct report about shit that needed to get done. They just sort of kept ignoring the things that were being asked. And so the direct supervisor, excuse me, was reaching out, was saying, Hey, make sure to get this done. Hey is like, I need to hear back from you on this other thing. Like they were initiating conversation and it was just not entirely radio silence, but like ultimately radio silence. And I think in each of those there were these like ongoing sort of like low level discussions on what to do with the initial one, with the notes and the documentation. I think that was a little bit messy because I was also the only one doing all the things. I was the only one in leadership. It was basically just me running the entire show. Again, it was, it was very, very early stages. Group practice ownership. And so. I didn't have it in me to continue to like stay in tune with this thing and follow up on this thing. And I thought, I'm just gonna tell this person what to do, and then they'll get it done without, you know, realizing like, no bitch, you need a, like, you need a process in place. You need somebody to hold 'em accountable. That's a whole separate conversation and it's a little bit messy, but I think the example still stands true that it was months of this happening me not following up on it consistently and thinking it was gonna get resolved and then it's, it's way too long. It was absolutely waiting way too long. And then the other is kind of the same thing, like, well, we'll tell them what we need them to do and then they'll get it done. And then that just kept happening. And in this case, it was somebody actually following through with somebody like my person, my leadership team, actually following through with the employee. Following up with them, telling them what needed to be done, you know, that sort of thing. And then getting kind of nothing back. And I think even as I'm talking about that example, what's happening is like I'm realizing that the conversation with that person didn't feel exposing and didn't feel like, well, I don't wanna be the bad guy. What was happening for me is that I think I was questioning and doubting the extent to which the lack of responses impacted us, like the practice or the team, or even the direct supervisor. There was just like doubt and some uncertainty around that, and I don't like to move in those moments. Like I don't want to make a decision when I don't feel grounded in whatever it is, which is funny. Like I say, I am a lean into pressure animal and I absolutely fucking am, but not when it comes to like directly influencing other people in a really negative way because the outcome of this person not responding is termination, ultimately. Like how many? How many conversations, how many times? How like, you know, you reach a point where the only option is this is not the right fit for you. And that was like, fuck are we there? It's sort of like This has a really possibly detrimental effect on this person. That's not something I wanna just quickly lean into and decide. And if I take one more step back and I look at that, it's like, oh yeah, like we needed some systems and processes cleaned up again, sort of like with the notes thing and like further still with this sort of constantly like following up with somebody we needed to have documentation and processes in order, and they just were not as in order as they needed to be. So now they are, but you know, back then they were not. So let me just recapture that 'cause I think I just meandered a little bit. Self-protection shapes leadership behavior in three ways. We've only talked about two. One is softening the truth to protect yourself. The other is waiting too long, hoping the issue resolves on its own. The third, which we have not yet talked about is overtalking. I'm so fucking guilty of this Overtalking or overexplaining to preemptively manage the emotional response so that you don't feel uncomfortable. Absa fucking lly. That is the shit that I am prone to do. That is exactly spot on. Two things. One, I do wanna speak to emotions in advance. I can justify this by saying, um, well, if a limbic system is super loud, if emotional arousal is really loud, it's hard for the person to take in what is actually being said and like the, the next steps, you know, that need to take place. Two, there is a difference between, from my perspective anyway, and maybe I'm just justifying myself, which is totally possible, but I do think there's a difference between a little bit of emotional attention on one side and attempting to manage the entire emotional reaction of another person. The latter is not what I'm interested in doing. I will speak in advance to feelings. If I'm sharing a message that's hard, I'm absolutely going to assume that people have feelings, responses. What I'm not going to do is try to talk in such a way that it entirely like mitigates or, um, removes the need for an emotional response. So if I am dampening my message so much. Or Overtalking. Or overexplain or giving a thousand qualifiers or justifying every move that I've made, what am I really doing? I'm really trying to send the message that I want them to know that I've done every single thing and it's okay and they don't need to feel anyway, and it, I don't need to. It's okay. Everything's gonna be fine. Like it, that's more of a frantic type of energy. Versus me saying something like, look, we gotta talk about this. Here is why I'm bringing it up. Here's why it's important. I'm a little bit concerned because I think it might be overwhelming for you, but we still need to talk about it. That's me laying groundwork and sort of opening a conversation, and also I would say allowing space for the other person to feel overwhelmed or mad or frustrated or confused or anxious or whatever. The alternative, again, is the overtalking over explaining me saying a thousand things so that they basically don't have a response at all. That's protection. That's self protection. That's not about me sharing the truth. That's about me trying to get them not to respond so that I don't feel some sort of way. It's avoidance is what it is. My guess is that if you're in leadership and you're a group practice owner, you've probably done one of these three things. If you haven't fucking kudos, man, tell me your secrets and if you have, I think it's just a matter of figuring out which ones you tend to do. You know? Do you tend to soften the truth? Do you tend to like keep waiting too long and hoping it resolves itself? Or do you tend to overexplain overtalk over justify, over qualify. Like, which sort of camp do you fall in? And maybe you do all three, maybe you do a combo of the three. I mean, it's, it sort of doesn't matter. It's all collectively grouped under self-protection and avoidance. So we've covered then our first two agenda items. Let's segue to the third, how to break the cycle without swinging to the opposite extreme. This is so funny. Before I talk about, this makes me think about people when they start to like learn about boundaries and they start to set them, they get real fucking serious about, this is my boundary and you do not cross it. And they're like really extreme about it. I'm saying this because I think it's funny and I've done the same thing, so it's not like I'm, you know, adding people and saying like, I've never done that. Yes, I have. Yes, I've absolutely done that. I think the risk of doing anything new is that we don't have any felt experience of what that new thing is like, like inside of our body, relationally, emotionally, conceptually. And so when our pendulum swings, it really does swing the highest arc. Like that first sort of swing is gonna be the highest. Think about a few. It's physics. You know, think about a few have a ball. I think it's physics, right? You have a ball on a string, you pull it all the way back up and you let it drop, it's not going to go higher on the other end, and when it swings back, it's not going to go as high as it did. And so you have this ball swinging back and forth and eventually it sort of comes to the center point that is learning how to do something new. I think it is relationally. I think it's when we show up in conversation, when we're learning how to engage in a new way. We are that ball swinging back and forth. We are trying to figure out how this feels and almost like what our limits are. And so it can get real, um, it can be real extreme initially. And so if it is real extreme, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means that you don't yet have the experience of doing it enough to know what good feels like, to know what it feels like for this to live in your body in a really integrated way. And with that said, I think that there are some things we can try to do to break the cycle without swinging to that opposite end. So, uh, there's a couple things. One is, this is, this is just so fucking spot on for me. Um, beginning with inner truth and not outer wording. You don't need to say what you do or don't want to happen. You don't need to say what you want the other person to do. What you should do. What I would encourage you to do, what I would implore you to do is to be. Truthful with yourself about what your like internal little nugget of reality is. So if you are, for example, avoiding a conversation, again that's sort of like self-protective, but avoiding a conversation. You might initially say, well, I don't want to, I don't wanna be harsh. Okay, fine. But the real question is, what is underneath that? I don't want to be harsh, dot, dot, dot. Or if I was harsh, then dot, dot, dot. You know? So sort of like fill in the blank, like keep that thread going. And the reality might be, I am afraid that they are going to be angry and I don't know what to do when people are angry. Like, I shut down. Got it. Okay. So you are afraid they'll be angry. I am afraid of anger. Period. That might be like the core truth. That is the thing that can then be tended to. So that would be the inner truth. That's not you trying to figure out what the wording should be. It's the crux of it all for me is that I am afraid of anger. What I know is that for me, historically, and I, you know, it's funny because my experience with my group is so different now than it used to be. It's hard to say this is still true and I think it is always present, but to a much lesser extent. My fear is sort of consistently around being seen accurately, and I think that's the nutshell version. I think that there are a lot of offshoots to that. I think there's a lot of related roots and like growth from that. 'cause being seen accurately could be, am I saying things effectively? Am I able to effectively communicate? Am I understood? Is my rationale understood? Am I trustworthy? Like do people trust in what I say? Am I fair? Am I considering others when I'm making decisions? Am I centering myself instead of the group? Am I reacting out of old habits and patterns or trying to be grounded in right now? Am I worried that people won't like me? I don't think that's the thing. It looks like that, but it's not really about them liking me, it's about them maybe feeling like I'm fair, like I wanna be fair. I want it to seem fair for everybody. And so when I get pushback or something, it really has me pausing and assessing and questioning, and you know, it's like all of that then comes up again. So I think me being in tune with what is my inner truth, well, part of my inner truth is being afraid of putting myself over others or exploiting others or coming across as abusing power or actually abusing power, taking advantage of people being seen inaccurately, like something. There's like a couple of things that really cluster together. Those are mine to own. Those are not things that people can fix or solve for me. And the reality is like, well, I don't want them to judge the decision i've made. Sure, that could be true, but the fear underneath is I'm afraid I won't be seen accurately. I'm afraid my intentions won't be seen. And that's much different than. I'm afraid of being judged by these people. Like they, they're just, those are different things, you know? So one component, one aspect is starting to break a cycle without swinging into that opposite extreme, you know, is beginning with your inner truth. I think also it's not very like, hmm, what's the word I'm looking for? Fun. Maybe glamorous. Exciting, glittery. You know, it's not something that people probably think of whenever they're thinking about leadership and being an effective leader. And honestly, uh, you know, having hard conversations, they are probably thinking about, well, what do I say and how do I say it? And the reality is that. That is a huge part of a conversation. That's actually the next point. But the other piece is that you need to be grounded in your own bullshit. That's gonna come up because we all have it and we need to be in tune with it so that it doesn't take over and influence how we show up as a leader. At least not to an extreme level, you know? So a second aspect to breaking the cycle of avoidance is grounding in structure so that the emotion doesn't run the show. Look, I freaking love emotions. I think they are beautiful. I think they're data points. I think they're necessary. I think they tell us a lot of information and they need to be connected to structure, at least in terms of like a business setting and like a leadership setting. So if I'm talking with an employee and I just go into the conversation thinking about my feelings and thinking about their feelings and having a conversation about feelings. Cool. Like, that's fun, you know? Sure. That's fun. And also, that doesn't really solve whatever the issue at hand is. Like, that doesn't really continue the conversation the way that it needs to go. So if we need to have a conversation about metrics, because that's just a very simple example. Let's talk about metrics. Me saying, you know, I'm really worried about this. I, I wanna make sure that you know that I think you are a quality clinician, that I have thought a lot about this. I'm really trying to be fair here. I'm really trying to be considerate of how you feel and you know, how are you feeling right now? How are you feeling in this conversation? And we're just talking about feelings and really, you know, doing that. And then we don't ever get to, these are the current numbers. This is the expectation. This is the impact, and here's the ask. That is a useless conversation. It's just useless. And again, I love feelings. But for the purpose of what this is, a conversation, a leadership related conversation about metrics. Strictly talking about feelings, fucking useless. Talking about feelings grounded in structure is not useless. So if we do this, and again, if we're breaking the cycle without swinging to the opposite extreme, you need to be clear on your own inner truth. That's the first thing I would say the second thing is the grounding and structure. And so this can look like, let's just do a very simple formula, having one clear expectation for this person related to whatever the topic is. So with metrics, what is the expectation? Having one clear impact. And so this could be for the person themself or for the business. The impact could be you are missing out on this much dollars per year because you're not hitting these numbers. Or it could be the expectation for employment is this number, the possible impact is termination. If this continues. It's a big fucking impact, you know. And one grounded ask. And so it might be where you say, look, right now this number is here. It's not realistic that it gets too, you know, here within a matter of two weeks. But what I wanna see is the number at this point in a matter of two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, you know, whatever is realistic, and then that's it. That is a basic structure for having a conversation with somebody that you might be avoiding right now. And it's simple. Expectation impact, ask very, very simple. And of course you can talk about emotions throughout the entire thing. Do not let emotions completely take over and wash away the structure of the conversation. Third thing you can potentially start to do if you, if you feel so inclined to break the avoidance cycle without totally swinging the opposite direction. Just practice little forms of honesty. I think that it's easiest to do this when you're not in the middle of a conversation that you have been avoiding. So the idea is that you're practicing this all the time, and then when you get into a space where there's a little bit of a higher level of, you know, emotional physiological arousal, you're still able to do the thing because you've been practicing, like you have the experience of practicing small forms of honesty, having little conversations, dropping little moments of truth just throughout your day, throughout your week, et cetera. So even something like saying, I feel frustrated in the middle of a leadership conversation, even something like, whoa, I'm really overwhelmed to your direct report, even something like, I am really uncomfortable talking about this. Any of those things will help you to build capacity for honesty within a conversation that you have been avoiding or that you, you know, don't feel so interested in having, you know, those self-protective moves. And I think this one is funny because there's micro moments everywhere. You know, it's not like it's just you having this conversation with a direct report. You know? It's not just you having the conversation, you've been avoiding. It's also in your daily life. What are the, the little, little tiny moments of honesty that you haven't really said out loud? I almost think about it like, um, externalizing some of your stream of consciousness. You know, not to the extent that you're sharing every single thing that's coming up, but yes, to the extent that you're being a little more honest than what you have been with the people around you. I think about my husband, you know, we've been together for, I don't know, it's been over 15 years at this point, and where we are in our relationship right now, because obviously we know each other well. If he gets on my nerves or if he's doing something, then I'm frustrated by, I might just say I'm super fucking annoyed with you right now. Like, can I just gimme some space, man, like back off? Or conversely, he might say the same thing to me. And what's really nice is that I know that he knows that when I say that. I'm not asking anything. If I needed something, I will ask him directly. And conversely, it's sort of the same, like if he says something like that, I might say, do you want space? Like, okay, cool. Either I need this answer though, or, alright, cool, let's just talk about this later. Or my bad, I didn't realize you were cranky or annoyed or whatever. I'll just give you some space and then I might, do you know any of those things? But being able to, to do that, just sort of voice when things are going well or sort of annoying or frustrating or you know, you're angry about something that comes because of all of these tiny little micro moments in the course of our relationship. What I'm not saying is that model, how you do this based on me, what I am saying is that these are examples of, for me, would feel like micro moments because they're so normal. That might be a really big ask for you. The micro moment might be something like, I have something heavy on my heart that I really wanna talk out loud about, and I'm a little nervous to do it. I don't think I'm ready yet. That could be the micro moment where you're not even saying that you're frustrated or that you are annoyed, where instead it's like, I need to talk about this with you, but I don't think I can yet. Just gimme a few days. The point is not that you need to do it in a certain way, the point is that you start practicing doing it everywhere in your life so that when you go to not avoid a conversation, when you go to have a hard conversation, you are able to, because you have repetition under your belt and you know what it can feel like to be honest. I also, this is probably, I don't know what this says about me, probably something fucked up, but I think that it's kind of funny, like, uh, to be annoyed with my husband or when he gets annoyed with me. It's just, it's just kind of comical. I feel like it's a relationship, like it's the same way with my leadership team. Like if they get frustrated with me, it's kind of like, sorry, you know, like, not that I want them to be annoyed or not that I want them to be frustrated or not that I like seek to make them feel any certain way, but I think the fact that somebody can be honest about how they're feeling and slash or that it's just okay to show up with whatever feeling you have, to me, speaks to the safety and strength of the relationship more than anything else. And so I think that's why. It feels sort of funny. Like I like, it's nice, like, oh cool. We can just be honest. All right, thanks. Love you. Bye. You know, and then that's it. It's just being honest and being together and sort of doing all this together. So, anyway, that's a little bit of a side note. Let's just wrap this up with one sort of key takeaway. If it's not obvious by now, the whole point of this is trying to instill this idea that avoidance is really very rarely about the other person. It's much more about defending ourselves from discomfort, defending ourselves from identity risks, defending ourselves from emotional exposure, and when we shift from like self-protection, avoidance, to grounded leadership, grounded clarity, hard conversations, they stop being explosions. They stop being major meltdowns. They stop being these things we have to go run in like our wounds afterward. They just start being basic leadership. They start being consistent, healthy, safe, trusted leadership. That to me is really what it is all about. Before you hop off. I got one of two asks for you. One is subscribe to the podcast where you get all the notifications sent to you about when episodes go live. And also it's just easier to find if you wanna go back and binge listen. Two, send this episode to somebody who needs to hear it. I think that my favorite thing ever is people feeling a sense of, oh, it's not just me like that. And so when this goes to somebody new, my hope and goal is that they feel a sense of relief at hearing the message or taking it in or thinking differently about their own leadership style or structure or culture or employees. So send it to the first person who pops in your head. Last thing, of course. And as per usual, thank you for being here with me. I think you know, that time is really valuable to me, and so the fact that you spend any with me just means a hell of a lot. Alright, that's all I got for you today. I'll see you on the next podcast. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Thanks. Bye.