Latest / Leading in Change / Communicating in Change: How to Have Hard Conversations When Everything Is Uncertain (Part 1)

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Communicating in Change: How to Have Hard Conversations When Everything Is Uncertain (Part 1) · Leading in Change

• Kellie Bourque: Change used to feel like a one-time event. Something you managed and led through, then came out the other side. But we are not living in that world anymore, and change is constant now. That means the job isn't leading through it, it's learning to lead in it. So how do you actually do that? That's what this show is all about. I'm Adrian, a partner and consultant at Success Labs, and this is the Leading in Change podcast. And every episode we dig into the real questions leaders are wrestling with right now. Everything from delegating effectively when the target keeps moving to managing your career in the age of AI. Topics are coming directly from our clients, listeners, and leaders just like you. If you want to lead your people well and manage effectively in the chaos, you're in the right place. Let's get to it. Hi, I'm Adrian. And I'm Melissa. And we are partners at Success Labs, and this is the Leading in Change podcast. And today we will be talking about communicating in change. And by the end of this episode, you will hear a little bit more about what you as a leader can do to effectively communicate better in times of high stress and high change. All right, you ready? Yeah, let's do it. But first, it's icebreaker time. Okay, let's go. I have a deck of cards with they are HR approved work related questions or personal questions? And the personal ones are really fun. Okay, that's funny. Okay, I'm just not gonna look. Okay. yeah. And then I'm gonna draw a card. And whichever question we like best will answer or both. Do the personal one. Okay. I I think the work one's better. Well, okay. whatever you want to do, go for it. Okay. The personal one's not as good as the work one. So the work one says, What's your go to coffee order for work days? I'm boring because I don't drink coffee. I know, but I think it's interesting what you drink. it's it's it's embarrassing. It's not I can't my body cannot process caffeine or coffee. So I have a coffee like substance that if you put enough like stuff in it, creamer and such, it kinda tastes like coffee. But it is actually roasted dandelions ground up. I love that. It sounds so weird, like but it's enough of a it gives me the fix. Yeah. And then you always get a medicine ball. When we're at Starbucks, especially if I'm traveling, I love to get a medicine ball tea from Starbucks. But yeah, and I'm not really a coffee drinker. What about you? What's your coffee order? it really depends. So I'm a regular garden district coffee, which is like a local little coffee shop. And the second I walk in the door, they start making me a venti Americano with room for cream. Okay. They know that's my order. But I've really gotten into matcha lately. I'm also a matcha girly. Okay, perfect. Either of those. All right, here's another one. This one's a little bit of a faster answer. Which would you bring back for adults? Nap time, recess, or field trips? man, this is a hard one. I know you can only bring back one. So what I'll say is I kind of have already brought back nap time. Like I think I've told you that I used to go like nap in my car in parking garages at earlier stages of my Probably not very safe, but okay. Yeah. I would say field trips. Field trips. I love to get out, like change your inputs, change your output. I love to just see new things, explore new places. Yeah, field trips. How about you? Nap time. Nap time. I want a little bit. I want like 15 minutes to just recharge. I would totally bring back nap time. I that. I get it. I think that would be really helpful. It would probably help with that like afternoon slump of just like when I nobody. Like there's no rules. You can take a nap. In the middle of the day. Okay. So if you just find me at two o'clock laying on the carpet in my office. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when Ariana Huffington got really into like napping and had nap rooms in the office. This was like in the early aughts, and that's when I started like napping at work. I was like, Look, it's science backed. It's proven. It's it's it helps. If she says it's so, then it's so. Then it's so. Yeah. Okay. Okay, well let's dive in. So I want to start by talking about, you know, if if you could share, why do you think communication is different in times of change or times of high stress. Yeah. in times of change or high stress, it the stress and the rapid rate of change creates an environment where it just feels chaotic and things feel out of control. They're out of the norm. And so communication is even more important. And I think we make more mistakes because you could have I I see this a lot with leaders. You could have the best of intentions. You could learn all of the right techniques But when you're in a disaster or in a crisis or when things are moving very rapidly, we often will revert back to our worst habits or worst traits. And because that's what feels like comfortable and safe. And so we do things backwards often when we're in really high stress change environments. What do you mean by that? And like what's one of the things that you see leaders do that maybe undermines their ability to effectively communicate? Yeah. The biggest thing that I see that undermines a leader's ability to communicate effectively and change is that they start to get really guarded. They feel like I need some semblance of control. So this is the information that I know. I'm gonna keep it right here until I have all of the data, all of the facts, all of the decisions. And they just keep things so internal that they don't they forget to communicate and share. And so, or or sometimes I guess the other end of that spectrum is that they overshare, which can cause a lot of panic with people as well. So I think we kind of go to one extreme or the other. And we might what you're gonna hear a lot today, I imagine, through our discussion is the Goldilocks. Like just stay in the middle. Like be yourself. You don't have to be all of this or all of that. Just kind of stay in the middle. But yeah, that can derail a a person's ability to be able to lead through change. Yeah, I love that. So I I wanna, you know, explain to people why I think you're a really interesting person to have this conversation with. You know, you have a Background, a PhD in healthcare communication. And so that's learning how to effectively communicate with people in very high-stakes situations. And while not everybody is communicating life and death at work, it you oftentimes are in scenarios where you are communicating information that can significantly impact people's lives. And so I'm curious, you know, what experience do you bring from that kind of foundational education to how you coach your clients? Yeah, so my master's and PhD are in communication theory and I specialized in health communication. And I went to the University of Memphis, which is a fantastic master's and PhD program. And it was set inside I was very close to a really robust medical health district. So there were tons of hospitals and clinics and things where we could learn. And they were all very good at most all some of them were teaching hospitals. So they were very used to having researchers come in. And I got to work on some really cool research projects beyond just my own dissertation work. But one of the ones that I am especially proud of and still feel honored 12 something years later is I worked on an ICU project. So what we would do, I actually worked the night shift on like Friday and Saturday nights. I would go in late at night and observe interactions between physicians and families or physicians and the patient. And I would often have to the reason one reason why I say like I was very honored to do this work is because I would ask, can a researcher come sit in on this really important conversation that you're having? I I had, you know, they they had every reason to not let a stranger into that room. And but they did let me in because they knew what I explained is I'm trying to study how this happens so we can teach the next generation of healthcare providers how to communicate more effectively and make you feel more comfortable. And so often what I was doing is watching how they would make decisions as a team. So the physician was giving information and the families were trying to make decisions mostly on end of life care for their loved one. The the gravest conversations that I got to observe were when they were they were actually discussing when is the right time to turn the machines off, which is a very fraught conversation. Yeah. there were family members that were aware and accepted things already. There were some that were still We're praying for a miracle. So you had a range of emotions, a range of of reactions. And the physicians, some of them did it very well, and some of them struggled through those hard conversations. What did really good look like? Really good looked like being genuine, not feeling like they had to be so stoic. Like it sometimes I even had families that would say, I really appreciated that the doctor, she cried with me. Or he held my hand when he said this news. they also literally got on their level. So did not stand over the bedside or stand over the families. They set he he or she would sit down with the families and even put themselves lower, like lower themselves to reach out to hold their hands as a sign of respect. And it's not like they verbalized that, but it was this kind of innate, instinctive way to interact with people. They also would prep the room. and prep the space for these hard conversations. They would be tissues within arm's reach of every chair or every person that would be in the room. they would dim the lights. They would draw the curtains so nobody else could see or hear what was happening. They truly made it about they kind of created a little cocoon for them to have this safe space to have this really hard conversation. And so while we're talking about a life or death situation inside of a hospital, there's so many lessons that could be pulled across into any industry and even into very stodgy corporate America, where you could still use some of those same lessons. Yeah. So what I heard is be genuine in yourself and don't try to conceal your emotion if it's there. prep the space, right? So making sure that, you know, if you think it's gonna be emotional conversation, that there are tissues or that you're in a private space to have the conversation. And then I think it's interesting about the proximity, right? So what I heard you say is don't You know, if they didn't have the conversation in the doctor's office behind a desk, it was absolutely sitting next to one another in chair, you know, yeah in a in an intimate space. Well, and y think about it this way. if I said, I'm gonna pull you into my office where I feel safe because this is my space, and I'm gonna sit behind my desk with all of these distractions, including maybe a computer or a cell phone or whatever it is, there are bar there are a lot of barriers between me and the other person. And also again, that's my space. Yeah. I feel comfortable there and you don't because it's not your space. Yeah. So that room that that patient has been in, that family has probably been by the bedside for days, weeks, months. So that is a safe space for them to have that there. But I always say, like, either have it in their space or have it in a neutral space. Just don't have it in yours and really think about think about what what's around you and what could distract you. how do you approach it from a virtual environment? That's an interesting thing. yeah, so virtual environment, I would probably do the same thing where I would I would but I would name it, right? I'm in my office, nobody can hear us. this is not a recorded line, we're not recording this session. It's just the two of us. And I want to have this conversation with you. And I think there's also like people say, people in our industry often say, like, I hate teaching or hate facilitating workshops online. We had to during COVID, but we don't have to now. But I still get requests because I have clients that have teams all across the nation and that's the easiest way to pull everybody together. And you have to like over animate. You have to, you have to really think about your body language. I hate when people stare at themselves when they talk, but I do think you need to check in and look at yourself. And that's why when I'm facilitating, I have it where I can still see myself in a small box and I can see the whole room because I want to know if they're nodding along to something I say or if I if I can get animated and it doesn't look Wild. But you kind of have to over-animate or over over connect, over talk, explain what you're doing. pull back the curtain, not for privacy in this instance, but like of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I think you have to explain that. Yeah. I think that makes sense. Yeah. a couple things that stuck out to me. One on the like checking in with what you're doing, like looking at the faces. One of the things that I often tell people when I'm coaching is really register the face of the person or people that you're talking to and calibrate what you're saying based on that, right? Like you might think I'm gonna come in and be really candid and just shoot people straight and it might really take people back, right? Or you might think you're being really clear, but if you see like a lot of confused faces, you probably need to be more explicit, right? And then the curtain analogy, you know, I I I I love I I think I've shared this before when I was working at LSU, I worked with a woman who'd been a healthcare consultant and she talked about how when she'd gone into a hospital that was getting dinged on privacy scores and wanted to evaluate why they were not scoring high on this, it wasn't that they there was any one thing they weren't doing right. It was that they weren't being explicit about why they were doing it. So when you pull back the curtain saying, I'm pulling back the curtain for your privacy instead of just pulling it back. So literally saying the why behind what I'm doing. That's exactly right. I think I think that's a an important point that leaders they know the why, right? So they forget to communicate it, but they may forget to communicate it out. Yeah. I love that. It reminds me of something we all especially on virtual environments, we we have our RBF or whatever your resting blank face looks like. Yeah. but there is such a thing as a listening face. And Celeste Headley's TED Talk is A wonderful one. We use it a lot at Success Labs. But I love in one in one part of her talk where she says, listening is the most important thing that you can do in any conversation, but especially I think hard conversations. And you don't have to do all the tricks to like repeat back what somebody said or to really nod to show that you're listening, because if you're actually listening, people will know that you're listening. But I do think in a virtual environment, we do need to amplify that a little bit more where. What does that look like? It's it's what you're doing right now. Like if you were talking, if I was I'm the one talking, but you're nodding to say that you listen and your your body language changes. You might lean back when you're thinking about something, or might lean forward when you're really interested. So think about your body language and how you can communicate because you don't have that three D forty ability to like check in with somebody. It's very one dimensional. So you have to like over animate it. What are some of the verbal cues that you can give to make sure people know that you're listening when you're trying to communicate hard or or confusing information. Yeah. I I you might even say something like, I saw your facial expression change. Can you tell me what you're feeling? I love that one. I use that a lot. Yeah. And don't say, are you upset? That's another piece of advice that Celeste gives in that TED talk that I'm mentioning. We can link in the show notes, but it's don't say are you mad? Are you sad? Because they will either say yes or no, say how are you feeling? Because there's a very big range. the other thing that I'll say, this is a a little off topic, but there when we are experiencing emotions, humans are they run the gamut, right? There's tons of emotions. We are pretty comfortable expressing anger or madness, like we are okay expressing that, especially in public environments, versus when we are sad or lonely, like there's a different range of emotions, and the sad and lonely ones we don't like to show because it makes us feel a lot more vulnerable. And so oftentimes we might be experiencing something that makes us sad, but the reaction that you are seeing is that I look mad. And if you really dig deeper, you can understand like where that's coming from. But you have to be curious. You have to ask the questions. You cannot assume. You cannot prescribe it or guide the conversation in a way. You have to really open up and like let them tell you. Yes. I love that. I think that's exactly right. I use the tell me what your face means a lot. And I oftentimes my anger shows up with tears and it's because I'm usually disappointed about something, either myself or the other person or the way something has ha happened. But it definitely shows up as anger on the surface. And then as soon as I see that, I can't help it. But like I start tearing up or what yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna cry with you. Yeah. So tell me, and then I wanna start to get into some of kind of the practical tactical things. But you know, what do you do when you're met with big emotions as a leader that's communicating? So Let's say worst case scenario, you're I've had to go through giving people news about layoffs, mass layoffs, you know, or when you're firing someone for underperformance, or even hey, we're gonna have some significant budget cuts and our jobs are okay, but our work is gonna get a lot harder. Like and and people react to that. How do you handle that kind of situation? Well, first off, if you are doing a really good job as a leader, you're providing information along the way. So like let's use the layoff example. If a layoff, a a widespread layoff is a different beast than just firing one individual. If you're firing that one individual and they are genuinely surprised, then you've also failed as their manager to not give them the feedback along the way. They cannot be surprised. so that's that's that one. But I think it's okay to check in and to pause. You delivering bad news is not a 30 minute check-in where you are talking for 30 minutes. Okay, so what should it look like? I think it should be like at least 50-50 of like I'm talking, you're talking. So that means that you've got to prepare questions. You can't just be the one delivering. You've also got to receive and ask questions. So being very genuine about, I know this may be upsetting, but I would like to hear from you. What are your thoughts? What questions do you have? And if you don't have any right now, I know you might need some time to process, especially for our introverted friends. They might need some time to process. Give them that time and then check in with them again later. Yeah. also, I think there's there's this assumption that when we have a hard conversation, especially in a time of change, that it needs to be like rip the band-aid, say it all at once. And that's a good start, I guess. But I also want to give the cat or g give the added advice of you don't have to do it all in that one moment. You could take a pause. Especially if there's a lot of really strong emotions that are happening. let's let's take a pause. I'm gonna let you process this. Let's come back in an hour or come back tomorrow when you've had time to sleep on it. I don't wanna say the wrong thing in a sin in a in a bad convers or you know, hard conversation. I don't want I wanna show up as the best version of myself. And sometimes the news throws me. So I need time to process that so I can come back and actually have a productive conversation. Yeah. I think that's fair. Yeah. You know, one of the things that we do in our leadership labs is we have people do role play with actors. And our actors are amazing because they really kind of take it over the top, right? But their scenarios that have happened, like I've had an employee really start yelling at me and getting s extremely defensive and in a way that I almost felt physically unsafe. Right. And so practicing how do you maintain that composure? And how do you stay on message and not get derailed by all the other stuff that they're swirling around the argument and sticking to the facts? I think that's part of it. Like you've got to acknowledge their feelings, but don't let that change the reality of the situation. Well, and that's why you have to have an agenda. You have to prepare for these conversations. And it's not just here's what I want to say, here's my three bullet points. It's also. How could they react? If the conversation gets derailed, how am I going to get it back on track? what happens if they are surprised by this? What happens if they start crying? Like, really run through those scenarios. And again, I say this, I feel like on every episode, the two most important competencies or skills that a leader can have, especially in high times of change, is communication skills and relationship building skills. The better you know your people, the easier these hard conversations are going to be, because you're probably gonna be able to guess. what they say, what they're gonna say or how they're gonna react. You have to know who they are and tailor your communication to them. If you have to have five hard conversations in a row where you have to terminate someone's employment, they those are five separate, completely different conversations. You may have a few talking points that are the same in everyone, but it's got to be different for every human. Yeah. They deserve that. Yeah. One of the tools that Devin, the our CEO, shared with me when I first came to Success Labs. I think is really helpful for this. And we've got it in our 90-day playbook. So we can like link that out as well. But it's a basically a communication matrix. So it helps you articulate how do you communicate as a leader so that way your team understands, you know, I I I respond fastest to text message or I really like quick bullets or whatever. But then it also helps you establish early on how your team likes to be communicated with. I prefer one on one communication or I'm really my best in the morning or the afternoon. You know, some of these prompts that helps you understand exactly what you're talking about. Like be proactive. Don't just try to kind of f figure it out through the ether. There's some clear frameworks and tools that you can use to help you understand how your team wants to be communicated with. Sometimes those tools are what's really helpful. Nobody teaches you how to do this. Like I think about if I go back to the healthcare example, I use this like this metaphor a lot. But if you have a nurse who goes to a person who goes to nursing school to become a nurse, they're going to school to learn how to take care of a patient. Yeah. And then when they get really good and and what they learn in the classroom is the stuff that goes on their resume. It's the stuff that's in the job description. It's the stuff they literally do on the job. Yeah. And they take care of the patient. And when they get really good at that, we promote them up into a supervisor role. Where they're no longer doing the thing that they went to school for and what they were hired for. They're no longer taking care of the patient. They are now taking care of a team of people who are taking care of the patient. Yeah. But they didn't learn how to do that. Yeah. And so those tips and tools and tricks that we have or the model, the communication models that are out there, they can be so helpful to just give you the framework, then to create your agenda, then to remember who am I speaking with? How do I tailor this to them? And then At some point like you need to practice this, but also you kinda gotta let it go and just have a communication have a have a conversation with another human. There is another human on the other side of it, one that you probably know hopefully fairly well. Yeah. And it's you know, it's I always say that leadership and and hard conversations, it's a blessing and a curse. It's a burden and a privilege. Yeah. It's the it's the right of passage for leadership, but it's also really hard and it's not fun, but it's necessary and people deserve to have these conversations. Yeah. So I'm gonna run through Kind of what I heard. If you are going into a high stakes situation in in a time where change is coming, you've got to prepare for the conversation. And what that looks like is tailoring it to the individual and making sure you understand how they wanna be communicated with. You wanna have an agenda so you know what you're gonna say and you wanna have some time and space for questions for the other person to respond. is there anything I missed in terms of what that one on one communication looks like? I think you also need to practice it. Practice. And not just like run through your notes, like literally say those hard words out loud. Yeah. Especially if you have to say your employment here is being terminated. Yeah. Like and and and figure also like to think about if this were being said to your loved one, your spouse, yeah, or your sibling, how would you want somebody else to say it? Because they will remember the words that you chose. They will remember how it made them feel. And they will attach that to you for the rest of their life. That's right. Yeah. Whether it's good or bad. Yeah, that's exactly right. so we've talked a lot about kind of like the hard conversations. I want to talk about what I'm seeing in a lot of organizations happening, which is high change and communicating like a big technology rollout or a big software implementation kind of same thing, or a pivot in a strategy, right? Like I'm working with one team that is moving from traditional engineering services to more of a service-based revenue stream, right? So they're changing the way that they generate revenue. And so, you know, one team is kind of getting favored in a different way than this team that has the more traditional you know, what built the business is not going to be what's going to get the business to next level, basically. And so I I I'd love to hear, do you have any tips for how do you communicate change, you know, a change in posture of the organization, a change in strategy, a a new technology rollout to make sure that that message lands effectively. Yeah. I I'm thinking about a scenario I actually had where I was on the receiving end of it. So I worked at an organization where they rolled out a new strategic plan and I had been given goals that I had to fulfill. And they were big lofty goals. Like we were kind of changing the way we did things. But the biggest priorities that we communicated outwardly, like the highest level, my work was not in any of those bullet points. And I remember being so dejected, thinking, like, why am I even doing this? Like, what's the point if this doesn't matter to the bigger? It doesn't roll up to the bigger goals. And I was very taken aback. I was shocked and I had an emotional reaction in front of the team in a small, it was a small team, but a staff meeting. And I said, I don't understand, like, what's the point of what we do? Like, our department is no longer a huge piece of this work. Like, I don't understand. Yeah. And my boss did a really good job of saying, You're right. That's a completely rational reaction to have. And that right there made me feel a little bit better. And she said, However, let me explain it from a viewpoint that you don't have. Because she set in on those planning meetings and she explained it to me in a way that said, like, It may not be visible in the highest level flyers or PowerPoints that we're putting out there, but all of this work is important. This work is going to have an impact. It's going to lead up. And she would show me that path that wasn't visible to me. And it made it so much more like I was I was still a little irritated if I'm being honest, but it took the sting away from it the way she explained it. And then she just encouraged me. She was very good at encouraging me to just remember why I was doing what I was doing and how much joy it brought me and to focus on that rather than the really big picture at the thirty thousand foot level that the board had to be able to articulate. Yeah. Right. And so it it's the what and the why and pulling back the curtain of like what I didn't know. And I felt like that was really helpful. And we built a lot of trust in that in that scenario just by her being honest with me. So what I kind of heard is one connect your team's work back to the bigger goals in some way, shape, or form. I I mean, I I don't think your team should be doing anything that isn't aligned with organizational goals. Why are you I think that's a fair question. And so if you can't connect it back, you should adjust your strategy. That's my personal opinion. If I can connect it back, then how are the people that I'm working with that aren't inside this building going to connect it back? So you've you've got to connect your departmental strategy to the broader organizational goals. You know, one of the other things that sticks out to me about that is sitting down to, you know, explain the big picture and where we're going. And I th you know, you need to connect it back to how that's going to impact each individual, not just their work, but their impact, right? By doing this, one of the things that I remember when we were doing a big database overhaul for LSU, we'd been given a directive to raise a significant amount of money for scholarships. Well That was not going to be possible if we couldn't effectively report on them, if we couldn't do impact reporting, if we couldn't identify the students, if we couldn't steward them effectively. There was a whole lot of things that required systems change to effectively hit these lofty goals. And I framed everything through that, right? W and and so I know it sounds like a leap to say by developing this r impact y this impact report, or by developing this. Endowment report, you are directly impacting the lives of students who are now going to have access to education. But the truth is that work did do that. And so I would do what I called like impact moments. So we would have students come in and talk to the team, even though it was an IT team, right? And say, Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. You know, by supporting the fundraising team, you are helping me get access to an education that I otherwise wouldn't have. And so the more I think you can tie that work back to mission. When when priorities are changing and when people don't understand why they're doing the work that they're doing, making it connected to kind of like a higher purpose, I think helps get people on board and excited and energized to do it. Especially for people that are drawn to nonprofit or fund like think about the type of people, but also think about generationally. Yeah. The our leaders that are coming up into leadership positions, they If we generalize, not stereotype, but if we generalize who they are and what they like and what they are wanting to do, they want to have a purpose. They want to know that their work is leading to something that's bigger than themselves. That's absolutely and so you have to show that sometimes if it's not abundantly clear for them to see that path. Yeah, that's exactly right. And one of the things that I'm telling organizations that are communicating about AI implementation. So there's a lot of fear and hesitancy around like what's gonna happen to my job and being really explicit in saying. Our goal is to get you better connected to the work that you are best suited for, relational work, strategic thinking work, right? Like we are trying to use this technology to get the boring stuff off your plate. Like the more that that kind of thing can be the message so people understand your kind of values as an organization. Now you've got to actually have those values, right? But you know, hopefully your organization does. And so being explicit in that is a great way to get people. engaged and on board with it. That's wonderful. Cool. So values and purpose. Okay. let's go lightning round, close this out. what are things that you see leaders consistently getting wrong in communication during periods of high change and then maybe three things they get wrong and three things that they can do to get right? okay, this is a great question. I might bounce around a little bit. But I think we instinctively try to become somebody who we're not. We're not genuine to ourselves. We try to be this whatever version of leader we think we need to be in high stress or in times of change. so we're not genuine. we also either undershare or overshare information. And it's I I see it more often that we undershare. We we try to keep information because it gives us a semblance of control, because we don't have any control in times of change. And then they just don't check in with their people often enough. They feel like Everything's chaos. Let me just stay over here and keep getting things done. You've got to have those check-ins. So the things that you should do is watch what you say and how you say it. Your body language is going to communicate a whole heck of a lot on your behalf, whether you want it to or not. So make sure that you are saying what you say and how you say it match up. Share what you can share, even if the only thing you can say is, I don't have an update for you right now, but I will continue to provide you updates as I get them. Yeah. And then I would say, figure out what like watch other people and change and figure out like I really like the way they're doing it. What's my version of that? Like really think about how you want to show up. How do you how do you show up like literally in a space? How are you dressing? How are how what's your body posture look like? How are you engaging with other people? What does your face look like in a room or in a zoom room? Yeah. so really think about how you show up and how you carry yourself because you are in a fishbowl as a leader. Everyone is watching you. Yeah. And everybody can see you. And if they notice that there's a change, then they're going to change and they're going to adopt whatever you have. Like anxiety is contagious and so is hope. Yeah, I love that. That's a great one. One of the things I tell my coaching clients is try to get into the mindset of happy warrior. Like we're gonna tackle this together and we're gonna get pumped in doing it. Right. I love it. And so I I think some of those kind of What can be perceived as like cheesy rah-rah things? they're I think they're actually really important in times of change. So things like team retreats, team building activities, I think they're even more important in times of high stress and high change. Yeah. Can I ask you like a little bit of a one of the rapid fires? Yeah, okay. what is one question every leader should ask themselves before they go into a hard conversation? Cause they want to get it right. What's like one thing that they need to do or ask themselves? I mean, this is gonna sound obvious, but most people don't do it. If you are going into a high stakes conversation, and this can be a one-on-one or this can be a group team conversation, this can be communicating change, or this can be communicating something as heavy as a layoff, what do you want the end goal to be? What does success look like on the other side of the conversation? And so success might be making sure that the people just have a hundred percent of the information. So you need to make sure you have as many answers to the anticipate the questions and have as many answers as possible and know exactly what you're gonna do if you don't have an answer to a question. You know, the flip side of that might be anticipating emotional reactions and how exactly how are you going to handle those emotional reactions such that you can get to the end of the call with everybody on board on the same page and aligned in the way that you're gonna proceed. That's great. Yeah. Okay. So anything else that I missed? No, I think that's it. My final like parting thoughts, if you're gonna have a hard conversation, it's or you have to have a talk with anybody during a high stress environment or in change, practice, prepare, be yourself, and kind of find the Goldilocks. Like don't veer too far into the anxiety or too far into I'm gonna keep everything to myself. Kind of find the middle. be yourself practice. Like it's gonna be it's gonna be okay. Yeah, I love that. And I'd say my kind of takeaways from this conversation, the things that stuck out to me are, you know, to inspire people, connect them to the purpose and kind of the broader goals and get them excited about the change as best you can. But do that in a way that's honest and authentic. Like don't sugarcoat it and don't, you know, try to make s something I there's a crass way to say it, but you know, don't polish something up. Yep. and then you know, I I I think the third thing that I'm taking away from this is you've got to be cognizant of your body language and the body language of others. So check in with yourself and check in with how others are perceiving you and and receiving you. Absolutely. Cool. Well, thank you so much. If anybody is having a hard conversation and you want to prep or practice, call us. We'll be happy to help. I love that. Yeah. And we've got so we mentioned a few things that we'll drop into the show notes. So the Celeste Headley TED Talk, our communication framework. we'll drop a link to how you can get that. Was there anything else we said we'd share up? yeah, the the ninety day playbook. So you can check that out as well. We'll put all that in the show notes and thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you all for tuning in. If this conversation was useful to you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who might use it. Leave us a review, and please subscribe wherever you're listening. You can learn more about our work at Success Labs and connect with us at SuccessLabs.com. We're on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Success Labs. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, keep leading well.