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How to Have Hard Conversations Without Anxiety · Mork Unfiltered

• Patrick Mork: Welcome back to Morgun Filtered, folks. And today's conversation is gonna be slightly different because first off, I'm not gonna be interviewing anybody. Instead, we are gonna talk about something that everybody struggles with. So let me start off with a couple of questions first. Do you have any pending conversations that you're really dreading having? You know, like the kind of conversation you need to have with your boss about a raise, or maybe a coworker who has bad body odor, or maybe somebody on your team that is failing to deliver on time. Or maybe it's like your child, your son or your daughter that constantly leaves the room a mess and it drives you absolutely crazy. Well, today's episode, we're gonna talk about how to actually have these uncomfortable conversations, right? And I wanna start off, kick us off with a story just to give a little bit of context of an uncomfortable conversation that I should have had years ago and that I waited too long to have and the consequences that this cost me. So in this case, I was living back in Santiago, Chile. And any of you guys who have read my book or anything about me know about this, this, this phase in my life where I was, I was running this company that had started called Leap. It was a startup. We were doing leadership development. And I had a ⁓ a young French guy on my team who's a really good guy, really good salesman. And, you know, as it happens in in in sales, this guy's performance over time started to deteriorate. And this was like following COVID. And following COVID, you know, ⁓ at some point he came to me and he said, Hey, look, I'd really like to go back, you know, to my home country and spend a couple of months with my family because I don't see them. And I said, Okay. And, you know, during the course of that time, his sales were getting worse and worse and worse. We were getting less attraction with clients. People around the team were starting to notice. I knew I had to have this tough conversation with him, but I refused to do so because he was my star salesperson and I was worried. That he might take it badly or that he might worse decide to leave the company. Long story short, things did not get better. They did not improve. Everybody was noticing. The numbers were certainly showing it. And at some point, he outright told me that he didn't really want to do sales anymore. He w rather wanted to stay in the company but take his career in a completely different direction, which he was very passionate about, but wasn't really what we need in the business. And six months later, he ended up leaving the company anyway and going off to be independent and do his own thing. And it caused all sorts of problems. And I hated myself for it. And everybody around us knew. And the impact both on team morale, on our company's sales, and on the business itself was like catastrophic. And so the reality, guys, is I have this conversation with COs and leaders that I work with all the time. Most of us dread having these conversations. Most of us. don't know how to have these conversations and we get very uncomfortable about doing it. And so the reality is like what nobody's telling you is that the problem is not really the anxiety of having the conversation. The problem is actually not having the conversation itself. The problem is the movie that you're running in your head about why you shouldn't have this conversation. So most folks are not necessarily avoiding the conversation. They're avoiding this story that they've made up in their mind about the conversation. And if any of you have actually ever had these different conversations, you know that sometimes when you have that conversation, what's your reaction? ⁓ wow, that wasn't actually as bad as I thought. So, you know, when we're replaying this conversation over and over in our head, the big problem is we're not addressing the elephant in the room. The problem's going on longer and longer and longer. The person's not getting the feedback that they need. And of course, your situation's getting worse. And the kicker on this is that everybody on your team sees this. Everybody on your team knows this is happening. And everybody's looking at you and being like, why is he or her not making this decision? Like we're all seeing the pattern of behavior. Why is nothing changing? And the biggest problem on that, folks, is especially in a startup where culture is everything, the things that you tolerate, the things that you do not address, those actually become the culture of your company. Right. So if you're worried why people are not accountable, oftentimes it's because you're not having the tough conversations. So today we're going to share five tools that are going to help you deal with these. Difficult conversations. And the beauty of these five tools is you can use them not only at work, but you can use them anywhere. You can use them in your personal life. You can use these tools and it'll make your life a whole lot better. Tool number one, you have to actually name the fear that you have, right? So when you're thinking about why am I not having this conversation with my son, my boss, my coworker, my spouse, what is it that you're actually afraid of? Because oftentimes when we write things down and we think of the worst possible consequence of. Not having that conversation, it's actually like the consequence of not having the conversation is actually much worse than the consequence of having the conversation. We'll tell ourselves things like, ⁓ my God, if I tell them they're gonna be upset with me or they won't like me, or it's gonna blow up in my face and they're gonna they're they're gonna leave the company, right? So here is the reframe that is going to help you have these difficult conversations. Here's the thing that I want you to change in your mind right now. You are not judging the person. You're not judging the person. You're judging and trying to tackle the problem. So when you can separate these two things, these conversations become much more easy to have. They become a lot easier to have because you're not rejecting the person. What you're trying to get at is the root of the problem. And so when we collapse these things, that's exactly where the fear live lives. Okay. So the second part of the of this reframe is a simple question, which is what's the cost? Of not having this conversation. If you don't have this conversation, the situation drags on for another month, another three months, another six months, another year, where are you going to be? Okay. Tool number two: when you decide to have this conversation, which is hard, always prepare ahead of time, make some notes, and make sure that you stick to the facts. The worst part of having these conversations and where these conversations blow up in our face is when we are judgmental. And when we generalize. So if we go into a conversation and you say, You're careless, you don't respect my time, or you like you never come prepared to these meetings. That's a judgment. That's something that is a generalization. That is a story. And it's the stories that often start the fights, right? So we want to avoid the generalization and we want to stick to the facts. The fact is you shut up 10 minutes late to the meeting, you weren't prepared. The client felt that it made us look bad. And now the probability that we lose this deal increases. You see the difference? So whenever we're getting prepared to have these difficult conversations, we want to stick to the facts, dates, specific things, things that other people in the room saw, comments that they made. We want to say it in a way which is as objective as possible. And we don't want to say it in a way which is judgmental and generalized. The wrong way to say this is, you know, you're not doing your job properly. The right way to say, It is the report was due on Tuesday and it was missing several data points, which delayed the board pack, and that left me frustrated and upset because I had flagged this in the past. Facts are hard to argue, judgments are impossible not to. Tool number three, fix your body before you fix the problem. Like one of the worst things that we can do is go into these kind of tough conversations with the wrong mindset. So We already know that we don't like having these conversations. If we go in and we're tired and it's the end of the day, or we've had a bad day, or we're coming out of another meeting that was very difficult, chances are very good that you're gonna go into that difficult conversation with the the wrong frame of mind, but you're also gonna go in with the wrong emotional frame. So one of the things that you always wanna do with these conversations is make sure that you're as comp calm and composed as possible. If possible, maybe what you wanna do is even take you know, a couple of minutes to just center yourself. And you can do that. There are apps like Headspace or Calm. There are small YouTube videos where it's like the honest guys where have like a a minute or two minute or a five minute meditation. But you want to kind of like find a space to kind of like do a little bit of deep breathing, compose yourself and make sure that you are emotionally prepared to have this conversation so that you don't fly off the handle and you don't lose your crap when you have these difficult difficult conversations. So the timing rule is never hot, never cold. You don't want to go into these conversations flustered. You don't want to go into these conversations furious. But the flip side is also true is if you're going to have a difficult conversation about something that happened, you also don't want to have it three weeks after the fact. Why? Because three weeks after the fact, the person's already moved on and they might have forgotten what happened. So the general rule of feedback there is try to give feedback within 48 hours, right? And try and be as private, as neutral as possible. And of course, When you're giving feedback, especially negative feedback or feedback that aims to change behavior, always do this in private, not in public. Tool number four, and this is a tool that you can take away, and this is going to be awesome. Use a structure. Don't wing it. Don't go in without any preparation. Don't go in without any notes. And I want you to use this tool to help you have this conversation. This is a super powerful tool that I use with all my executive advisory clients and that I teach all the time. It's called The fuel method was created by a company called Zenger Folkman who popularized this. And fuel basically stands for the following F as in frame it. Why are we talking? What was the consequence of what happened? What was the impact? How did I feel about this? You really have to explain and give people context for what happened. You, you as in understand, right? Well, as soon as you've explained the context, you want to then shut up and ask a couple of questions, hopefully open-ended questions. To really understand how the other person views the situation. So, what was going on for you? Tell me your side of the story. This is how I saw it. What might I be missing? Step number three is e explore. Let them propose the solution to the problem first. Why? Because when people come up with the solution, they feel like they are committed to it. They feel like they can own it. If I come in and I tell you, well, this is what happened, and from now on I want you to do this, I'm not letting you own the problem. I'm giving you the fix. And when people are given the fix, they don't feel committed to the outcome. Lastly, the L of fuel is layout the plan. If we have a tough conversation, but there's no action item, we might as well not have had the conversation, guys. So L is in layout the plan. What are you gonna do? By when? Who are you gonna talk to? What resources do you need? So remember that model, the fuel model, F-U-E-L. Anytime you have to have a difficult conversation. Prepare ahead of time and go in and use that framework. Tool number five, land it or it didn't happen. This goes back to the L. If there are no action items and no dates and no action that's coming out of that difficult conversation, you just had a really difficult conversation for nothing. So you need to make sure that the conversation translates into action that comes from the other person. Guys, that's it. Hopefully this model and these tools will help you. My challenge to you is think of a tough conversation that you know that you need to have and go out and have that conversation. Talk to the other person, put a date in the calendar, prep the conversation, use the fuel model, remember not to judge, remember to stick to the facts and remember some of the other rules that we have. In the show notes of this show is a link to Mork's guide to mastering feedback. This gives you the fuel method, a whole bunch of other rules, a whole bunch of exercises that you can practice. So that you get better at having these conversations every day. That's it for today. I hope you found this episode helpful and useful. If you did, make sure to subscribe or follow this channel. Make sure to share this with somebody who might benefit from this. God knows, everybody struggles with tough conversations. And of course, give us a like and a comment. Tell us about a tough conversation that you know that you need to have, or better yet, tell us about how the conversation that you did have went using the fuel method and these other tools. And we will see you on the show next week. Same time, same place. See ya, catch you later. This is Mork on Filter signing off.