Featured Session: Why Work Feels So Unfair and How Hard Conversations Help

Thank you very much. In Perth, Australia. Is anyone here from Perth by any chance? I knew Alex would be here. He's from Perth. Um, so I was sitting in this restaurant in Perth, Australia. I was having lunch by myself. I love eating by myself, because I get to do my favorite thing, which is eavesdrop on everyone else's conversation. So, I'm listening to these two guys at lunchtime during the business district. So a lot of people on their lunch break. And I'm listening to these two guys have this conversation. One of them has a really loud voice, it was really easy to hear everything he had to say. And he starts telling his colleague, "Oh yeah, no I didn't get that job. They gave it to a woman." And I was like, "Oh, this is interesting." So I'm like looking behind me and his colleague's like, "Oh that's too bad. That's too bad." He's like, "Yeah they had to do it." And. And my immediate thought was, "Oh, That manager did actually not tell him the real reason he didn't get that job." And let's be honest; I don't know what happened. I don't know who was dishonest in that situation—whether it was the guy with a loud voice being dishonest to his friend, whether it was the manager who gave him some other reason. And, maybe they really did get the job to a woman because they were trying to advance gender equity. I don't know, But what it made me realize is that there are so many perceptions at work of unfairness that could be possibly remedied by a difficult conversation. And since I am an expert in difficult conversations, I thought, "Oh, this is a new mission. How do we eliminate the perceptions of bias by having." hard conversations. So that's what we're going to do today. So I want to first start by asking you to think about a hard conversation that you really need to have at work, but you hesitated to do so. Maybe you even chose not to. And I want you to think about what held you back? What held you back from having that conversation? What were the reasons you told yourself, "I'm not going to do it." "I'm not going to do it." And just shout a few of them out. Let me hear from ya. What were some reasons? Fear. Fear, what else? Insecurity. Insecurity, what else? Anxiety. Anxiety. They won't get it. Yes, what else? They won't change, right? Why would I even bother? Those are all understandable, and my guess, and I can't see you very well because of these incredibly beautiful lights, but I'd love for you to raise your hand because I guess, all of us have had a moment where we chose not to. a hard conversation. So, raise your hand if you've been in that boat. I think that's all of you. I can't see you in the back. Hi back there, but I can't see it. You are not alone, right? This is something that most of us do. We are hardwired to make things go smoothly with our colleagues. We are hardwired for harmony, for connection, and so raising a difficult conversation feels like it's going to disrupt that. It feels like it might damage the relationship, it might slow things down, it might not work. So, why would we do it? Now, There was one study that showed that eighty five percent of people had concerns or issues at work that they were afraid to raise. That's a huge number. And that presents a real problem. Because when we do not have those hard conversations, when we avoid them, we allow for perceptions of unfairness. And this is what I want to enlist you all in fighting against, right? I want to make work a little bit more fair. So, if you raised your hand, which I think a lot of you did, I want you to think about what that topic was. What was the issue or concern you had that you were afraid to raise and that you chose not to? Because we're going to get back to that a little bit later. But I want you to have that in your head. Was it a piece of feedback? Was it a concern about equity? Was it. policy that you thought wasn't working, was it that you thought the strategy would fail? What was it that you were afraid to speak up about? Because my friend in Perth, He did become my friend by the way, because I just listened to him and I now know his life story. So he's my friend. My friend in Perth was left to wonder. He was left to fill in the holes, to fill in the vacuum with his own story. And that story included bias, and so many of us are left to wonder. We don't have the information, so we're left to wonder: was it bias or was it me? Now, how many people have had something happen at work where they thought, "I think this is bias. I think it's gender discrimination, racial discrimination, age discrimination." Yeah, that's a lot of you. I have certainly been there myself. It is truly uncomfortable position to be in because You don't want to believe this is what's happening. You don't want to believe this unfairness exists in your workplace, that you are the target of that. But without the information, without understanding the hidden assumptions, the rules that are often disguised or secret at work, it's understandable that we fill that in. Now I do want to be clear here. : That work is at times a lot of times unfair. And, there are lots of things that are going to make us feel like work is unfair because it is right stagnant wages, discrimination, gender bias. Right a, the threat of AI, losing our jobs to maybe not even the existence of AI, but the perception that AI could take our job. There are lots of things that are making work, unfair, and you add to that bad management, toxic work environments and avoidance of conflict. And, it's no wonder most of us feel like we're not getting a fair deal. Now, I wish I could tell you I could fix all of these things today in this talk or ever, but I can't. Work is going to remain broken, right? It's going to feel like this: a car without wheels. But we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to change what we can control. And when we are overwhelmed. by things that are unfair or that are huge or overwhelming, we have to control what we can control. And there is something you can control, which is your voice. Whether you choose to speak up, whether you make something clearer, whether you have that hard conversation. Now, we'll talk t here is lots of reasons why you might not be able to voice the exact thing you want to voice, but that is something that you. The challenge, though, of course, is that do we do it? Even though it's something we can control, do we actually speak up? I was in an Uber recently and the driver was driving very unsafely. He was cutting people off. People were honking at us. And I sat in that back seat, and you know, I'm an expert on speaking up, saying the hard thing having hard conversations. You would think I'd said, sir, please drive more safely. Oh, no, i sat there quiet. the entire time. Because I was making a risk assessment. Could speaking up in this moment make me more unsafe? Could he get angry? Could he drive in a more erratic way? Could he stop? It was late at night. Could he stop and make me get out of the car, right? So I chose to stay quiet. And this is the risk assessment all of us are making at all times. We're asking ourselves, is it worth it, right? Is it worth it to speak up to say. say the hard thing, to give the person the feedback, to tell them why they didn't get the promotion, why they didn't get the raise, why they didn't get the assignment. And many times we choose not to because we have reasons. We have valid reasons. And I'd love for you at this moment to think about that topic that you were thinking about earlier that you didn't speak up on. What was the reason you didn't? What were the various reasons you told yourself? And you shouted some of those out, right? Fear and security, anxiety. But what else was going on? Did you feel like you had to protect your manager? Did you feel like you would be throwing a colleague under the bus? Did you feel like they wouldn't react well? These are the kinds of things I hear all the time from people. Right is that they don't want to hear it. They're not interested. This will be terribly awkward. I don't even know what to say. And these are valid reasons. But, the problem is we often assume these things are true without interrogating, whether they're actually real. And, there's lots of social science research that shows we anticipate an interaction with another person to be much more awkward than it ends up being, Or that we assume it's going to somehow harm the relationship when sometimes the exact opposite happens. So, you need to ask yourself: are those reasons real? Are they excuses or are they reasons? Now, I love the work of an expert named Elaine Lin Haring. She wrote a book called "Unlearning Silence, " and she posted this amazing thing on LinkedIn, which I immediately liked and asked her if I could borrow for this talk because it's such a perfect articulation of something that happens in our minds, which is that we. Immediately think of all the reasons that speaking up will be costly to us, and you named some of those. We just talked about them, right? It will be, you know, awkward. They won't hear it. That things will blow up. I'll slow the meeting down. The initiative won't happen. Whatever it is, and then we look really intently well You know what? If I don't speak up t here is all these benefits :. The meeting will go on our relationship will stay intact. I won't have to. deal with this, it'll probably get better. They won't change anyway, so it'll allow us to just sort of stay copacetic. The problem is we fail to assess two other factors, which are the risks of not speaking up, of staying silent. We don't think about those nearly enough and we don't think about the benefits of speaking up, right? So that's. One tactic I want you to be able to use when you leave here. And you think about this hard conversation you need to have, and I am going to give you homework. Just be prepared, right? This is one of the things I want you to do, which is to reverse this risk assessment. Now, you of course should think about the cost of speaking up. Right? In that Uber, I was thinking about what those costs might be. But I also want that you to think about what are the costs of staying silent? And what are the benefits of speaking up. Now, because when you choose, Especially if you are a leader or someone who has informal authority in your organization, your choice to stay silent has ripple effects. It affects everyone around you. Other people choose to stay silent. People make the assumption that it's not safe to call out things that are unfair. It's not safe to give people feedback directly and. And, you start to create a culture because culture is co created on teams and organizations. You start to create a culture that values silence and stifles voice, and that is a really dangerous place to be. This is what Patrick Lencioni, who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, calls artificial harmony. And I am pretty sure all of you have been in a situation that is marked by artificial harmony. It's that time where you are sitting in the meeting Everyone's nodding, nodding, and then the meeting you know ends. And I will meet in the hallway and go, "Yeah, but what did you really think? What do you think?" Right? Or everyone is just smiling and thinking, "God, I really hate working with you." Right? Those smiles and those nods feel good; they make things run quote unquote smoothly. But there a lot of risks to artificial harmony. There a lot of downsides ;, a lot of dangers to that right stalled innovation. unspoken ideas, festering resentments. It is not a good place to be, and it feels good on the surface, but it can be corrosive to an organization and to its culture. So you need to be careful that you avoid this artificial harmony. And what you can do individually is lean in to the hard conversation, which I'll talk in a moment about. But I want to first share with one of the best antidotes to artificial harmony. which is psychological safety. This has been this a term popularized by Doctor Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School. This her definition, how she thinks about this. And, you can see that organizations teams that are marked by psychological safety will counter all of those risks of artificial harmony. Now, before I go a little bit deeper into this, I want to ask how many people in the room are middle managers? So, they're not the most senior person in the organization, but they're not an individual contributor. That's quite a few of you. Oh, actually, if I block those lights, I can see you. Oh yeah, that's quite a few of you. Now I'm guessing when I'm sitting here saying you've got to give more feedback, you've got to speak up. You're starting to feel a little bit like this right? Middle managers are in a tough spot right now. They have to do all of the traditional work of setting targets and firing people. doing reviews, right? They have so much work to do. And now they're asked to do the initial, the additional work, the emotional care of their teams. They have to worry about their mental health, whether they're burned out. Now I think these are all wonderful things. But, it does mean the role of the middle manager becomes incredibly burdensome and at times truly overwhelming. There was a recent article published in Harvard Business Review that showed new research shared new research that showed middle managers actually feel the least amount of psychological safety. And this is understandable; they are, you know, under a lot of pressure. They're not getting modeling from the top that it's okay to make mistakes, so they feel like they need to be perfect. They, like I said, have this sort of outsized role that they play in organizations. So Middle managers are under a lot of pressure. The problem is, when your middle managers don't have psychological safety, how can they build it for others? And, this is a reinforcing cycle because the more we take risks and speak up and have the hard conversations, the more we lay the groundwork and create psychological safety. And the more we have psychological safety, the safer we feel to have hard conversations. Middle managers who are the glue in the organization aren't feeling that psychological safety. Don't feel like they can take the risks and have the hard conversations. Things are going to get bad, and many of you might be experiencing this in your organizations right now. So, to those of you who raised your hand who are middle managers, I want to tell you I am not adding to the incredibly long list of things you have to do. I am offering support because that's what you need. You need support. You need training. You need permission to make mistakes, and you need time. The other thing I want to offer you is that everyone in this room, regardless of your role whether you are an individual contributor, an executive, Whether you are a founder, all of us have a role to play in having these tough conversations. And, we cannot only leave them to middle managers to do so. We have to support our middle managers by helping them build. to co-create a culture where hard conversations can happen. So, let's talk about how. How do you actually do that? And I am going to share five tips to help you get better at having these hard conversations. And I want you, as I am talking through these tips, to think about that topic that you were concerned about raising, that you felt wasn't safe to bring up or to say out loud. And I want you to think if any of these tips will help make that conversation a bit easier. or at least give you the courage and the guidance to do it. So, The very first tip is to change your definition of what makes a difficult conversation successful or a failure. And I am going to tell you a story about this woman. I am going to change her name; you'll understand why in a moment. We'll call her Susan. Susan and I were working on a team together; it was a small team, we were putting together this product that was going out in the world. Susan had worked at. organization for twenty plus years. Her role was sort of a middle manager role, but she was incredibly well respected. She had a lot of informal influence. And the rest of the team was made up of more junior people, people who were newer to the organization, newer honestly to their careers. And Susan used every meeting to basically dismiss all of their ideas and explain why she knew better. Now I have to be honest, Susan's ideas were really good. And the ideas that she was dismissing weren't always great, but it wasn't about whether she was right. It was about her tone and the way that she was treating the people on the team. So, two people on the team came to me and said, "Hey, we're not super happy with Susan right now." I got it right away. They said, "We've nominated you to talk to Susan about this." Now, I had already written my books at this point about conflict at work. I understood why they nominated me, but I was not happy about it. Now, I'd like to tell you that writing two books about conflict at work, talking to people about difficult conversations all the time makes them incredibly easy. But it does not. I still get sweaty palms. I still lose sleep at night. It's still hard. So, I spent about twenty four hours prepping myself for this conversation with Susan. Even enlisted a friend. to help me role play a few of the conversations. And I thought, okay, if anyone can do this, I can do this. This is going to be good. I've got these younger folks relying on me to make this go well. So then we want to guess what happened? It went terribly! Like so so bad! Susan immediately was like, "What are you talking about? I don't do that." Right? She was dismissing me while I was telling her she was too dismissive! Like it was so incredibly bad! And I kept, you know, I had all of my lines ready. I knew all of my tactics. I tried to, you know, tell her like, "Listen, I know you don't intend to do this, but this is the reaction you're getting." She was adamant that I was absolutely wrong. That I was perceiving this incorrectly and that everything was fine. So I did what I often advise people to do, which is i took a day. i reflected on it and i went back to her and i said listen. I don't think that conversation went well yesterday. Here are some things I wish I had said differently. That conversation went even worse, right? Susan was madder that I had showed up, right? With this idea that I could actually convince her that she had done something wrong, and she was just adamant she didn't. So, right? That was a failure, right? I failed at having that difficult conversation. Fast forward three months later, Susan has a sort of pal at work, you know, her work BFF. Um, and we'll call her Naomi. And Naomi and I were working on a project. And I'll tell you in that intervening three months, I did my best to sort of not completely avoid Susan but skirt around her. Right? I didn't feel like our relationship was on solid ground. And so when Naomi said something to me about Susan, I must have made a face. Right, like oh, like you know, Susan's not my favorite, but I didn't actually say that. I probably made a face. And I and he goes, "You know, Susan really likes you." Like what? She was like yeah. She said you gave her some great feedback that was really helpful in how she interacted with the other people on the team. I mean what? Like I was shocked that this had landed with her because I had every indication that it didn't. And. This is what I want to tell you. : is that we often think that the success of a difficult conversation is that you walk out holding hands, really happy, smiling like "we're best friends and I told her she's terrible," right? But it's not what makes a difficult conversation successful. Often, what ends up happening is we do these incredibly difficult tricks. We think about it, we lose sleep, and it ends up looking more like this. A mess, by the way. I didn't want people like pictures of real people fighting, but I love this photo. My colleague Andrew Wen took this photo at a public pillow fight in Rome. Which if any of you identify as conflict-averse, I suggest you go here because I think this is a great way to work it out. But the conversation's going to feel messy. You're going to feel like you failed. You're going to feel like your relationship is never going to recover. But that doesn't mean the message wasn't heard, So we need to actually lean into that discomfort and those things, those reasons, those excuses we're telling ourselves: "This is going to be awkward. I am not going to be able to work with this person again." Some of them actually might be true, but that's still not reason to not have the conversation. Because discomfort is actually a sign that we need to reflect, not a sign that we need to retreat. And unfortunately, I am really. Tell us otherwise, right? When we have discomfort, I know for me my the internal monologue is stop, stop. Run away, run away, run away. But discomfort is actually growth. It's how we grow as humans. It's how we learn. It's how we improve. So that discomfort of that hard conversation actually might be exactly what you need and like Susan might be what. that other person needs as well. All right, that's tip number one. Tip number two, I want you to ditch the feedback sandwich. Now, I am sure you have heard this advice before. ; people have been banging this drum for a while. So, I will quickly tell you why I think this is important and I'll tell you what I want you to do instead, because too often, we sort of say, things are terrible, and we don't tell you what to do instead. So, The reason, the feedback sandwich, and just so people know the feedback sandwich is if. Say something really nice. I love your dress. You know, like you're so good at this. And then you slip in this, But you're not very good at analyzing things. And the analysis you handed in last week was terrible, and it didn't make any sense. And I really like your dress. We like go back to the compliment. Usually it's not about their clothing, but we go back to the compliment. And you think, oh, this is how we avoid discomfort. Right, like, and I'll tell you. I actually have thought about this as I am prepping the talk. I am like, "I wonder if I'd done the feedback sandwich with Susan, would it have gone better?" No, I really don't think so. She just didn't want to hear the criticism. And, this is the problem :. What we know what happens with the feedback sandwich is that t here is a simultaneity problem, which is we can't hear both at the same time. So people who feel incredibly confident, perhaps a little bit arrogant. All they hear is the bread. the positive of the sandwich, And people who might be a little more insecure or even actually a little more self- reflective, all they hear is the criticism. And well, The other problem is we think it's going to make things feel more comfortable and it actually ends up just being confusing. So, what I want you to do instead is something I call an intention sandwich. So I want you to be very clear about the feedback. And you may have heard of this tool called SBI: Situation Behavior Impact. It's very simple. I'll give you, um, I'll actually tell you what I would have told Susan, which is in that meeting, that's your situation. You told this person their idea wasn't valid. That's the behavior. And, the impact was that no one in the meeting felt like they could raise a new idea after that. Right? Very simple. But I also want you to put intention before and after that. And what I mean by that is I want you to explain what your intention? in giving the feedback. And often we don't do this because we think, well, of course they know my intention. I am their manager. I care about them. You know, I assumed Susan knew I cared about her and I cared about the team. But we don't often know that, especially when we're receiving criticism, we start to fill in the intention like oh they're out to get me. They don't care about me. They want me to make look bad in front of my colleagues. So. We give We assign motivation. If you are. Clear about what your intention is and giving you this feedback because I care about how you succeed in this organization or I'm giving you this feedback because I know you're looking for a promotion and I believe this will help you. Right? Be very clear about what your motivation is. And then give the situation, behavior, impact, Give the feedback and then end with a slightly different intention, which is to say, "I know it's not your intention but this is the impact." Now, it might be their intention. It might be that they're trying to be dismissive or rude or cut someone off or be, you know, steal credit. It might be that that was their intention. But by saying I don't believe this was your intention, you allow them to save face. You allow them to still believe I'm a good person. And more importantly, when they believe that about themselves, they also believe they can change. So, if you don't tell someone, if you make imply right, if you imply that they're actually not a good person, they can't change that. But if you imply this is behavior that I don't think we need, that's something they can change. All right? So I want you to intention is really important. Here's another thing : Francis Fryer an amazing thing, a wonderful author professor at Harvard Business Review said this quote recently. which is don't distort reality even out of kindness. And I think that's part of why we have that traditional feedback sandwich is that we believe that it's kind to tell someone something nice, and then it's critical and then nice again. And we also, and I can, I am not going to have you raise your hands, but because I think not all of us would like to confess to this, but I'll raise my hand. that we often don't tell people the full truth. We actually change it so it makes it more palatable to them. But that clarity or lack of clarity is even more confusing. So you do not want to distort reality. Be honest about what you're observing, even if it feels unkind in the moment. Okay, third tip, which is to turn up the transparency dial. A lot of the unfairness that we perceive at work, again, Think about my good bud back in that lunch spot and her right, someone was not transparent with him. I am pretty sure about that. And that lack of transparency allowed that sense of bias, that sense of unfairness to take hold and to fester. But there is so much value to transparency. Now, that question you ask yourself is it worth it? Is it not? not right, you are essentially asking yourself how transparent should I be? How straightforward, how upfront and honest. Now transparency has so much value, right? It prevents misinformation. It reduces ambiguity. Ambiguity is really one of the things that makes people really concerned, insecure, unsure about where they stand. That leads to that question: what is it bias or is it me? And transparency also fosters psychological safety. Now, I want to share a term with you. Many of you may be familiar with it. It's a term that used in management science called process fairness. And, what's interesting about process? Fairness is the perceptions that the methods that we use to make a decision or take action are consistent and transparent, right? What I love about this research that looks into this process fairness is that it shows that when there is this sense. that the process was fair, people are more willing to accept the outcome. And the research that's fascinating in this area looks at layoffs. You would assume anyone who would lay off be laid off would not be happy with the outcome, right? They would be really resistant to being laid off. Although I do have a friend who's trying to get laid off right now, which is it's funny to coach someone who's trying to get laid off. That's a different talk anyway she, What, they show about the in the layoff situation is that if people believe there was a fair criteria, That the people who were making the decisions about who get laid off and why, And they were transparent about the reasons that that particular person or group of people were laid off. I am not telling you they're happy, but the research shows they accepted the outcome more easily. So we want to be more transparent about the decision. decisions we make, the reasons behind the decisions, and what the consequences are. So we want to sort of turn up that transparency dial, Especially when we're making a decision like a promotion or a raise or an assignment. That will help the person on the other side understand what's happening to them and ideally accept the outcome more fully. Now you have to also assume that you are far less transparent And you think you are. There is so much research that shows this. One of my favorite pieces of research on this, they assign people to be listeners and to be tappers. And in the tapping situation, the tappers were asked to tap out the rhythm of a very popular song. So usually it was "Happy Birthday," right? So, they're asking them to tap out " H appy Bi rth day " while the listener listens and has to guess what they're tapping out. Now if you ask the tappers how often. Well, the listeners guessed. I know it's a series of taps. I don't know fifty percent of the time they'll probably get it. And think about it, you are tapping out "Happy Birthday, " you are singing " H appy Bi rth day " in your head while you are tapping it out. Now, the listeners guessed the right song. Do you want to know how many times anyone want to take a guess? Fifteen ten percent say again, ten percent one no, yeah one one hundredth that's one percent that's actually low. It was. two point five percent. Because think about it, all they're hearing is tap, and it makes no sense. You have no background to it, right? You have no. The person tapping just hears "Happy Birthday." Assume when you were explaining something hard to someone, when you were having that hard conversation, that you were singing the equivalent of "Happy Birthday" in your head. Right? You have the whole background; you have all of the information. You know what you said when you when you practiced with your friend. You know what the eight conversations that led to this conversation, and they don't know any of that. So they're basically guessing. What is the series of tasks? So how can you be more clear? How can you make sure that clarity is a priority? How, can you make sure that the other person doesn't have to guess what you mean? These are the questions. I want you to ask yourself when you're having a hard conversation. And if you think about this, rather than I have to deliver this message, I'll tell you another story actually. I once had a conversation. I was in that middle manager role. My the person above me told me, " Y ou have to tell this person that they've called in sick too much to work." I was like, "Okay." I didn't ask any questions. I didn't say why is this a problem? It seems like she's getting her work done. I don't know. But I treated it as like a stealth mission. Okay, and in the conversation, you're gone to work sick too much. Okay, bye. Right? And I just left. Does anyone want to guess what happened? She cried. Yeah, I mean it was a. I handled it so poorly. My boss handled it poorly, because we didn't give her any information about why this mattered. She had a whole story in her head as well about what was going on for her. She had very valid reasons to not be coming to work. But I didn't express any curiosity about this. So instead, What I should have done before? I went into that conversation is to ask myself, "How can I make this as clear as possible?" Not, "How do I deliver the news and get out?" How do I make this as easy as possible for me? How do I make it least awkward? No. How do I make it as clear as possible, so she doesn't have to guess what has happened here? All right. Tip number four: improve your emotional regulation. Do you know when we are terrible at difficult conversations, at telling someone the truth, of being transparent about saying the right thing? It's when we are emotionally dysregulated. Now I would argue most of us are emotionally dysregulated most of the time these days. I'm guessing your laughing indicates you feel the same. There is a lot out there in the world that is causing us to be dysregulated. And, there's also a lot internally happening for most of us that does the same. But if we can be emotionally regulated, and I want to be clear, Let's talk about what emotional regulation is because I think a lot of times, we think actually, I'll go back to that. I chose this image in particular, because I think this is what we think emotional regulation means. It means being happy, right? It's puppies and rainbows and we're just cool calm collected all the time. But that's actually suppression. That is suppressing the negative. Emotional regulation is being aware of what you are feeling and making sure that those feelings, those emotions, don't hijack the conversation, don't hijack our reactions, but actually let us remain present in them. Remember before, when I talked about discomfort and the internal monologue for me is " run run, run, stop, stop stop," right? That's emotional dysregulation. So we've got to improve and there is, So much out there about improving your emotional regulation. Ethan Cross has a book called Shift. If you are interested, I think that's a great book to check out. But there is tons of information about this, And I am just going to give you three quick ideas about if you feel like this is for you in the hard conversation where you struggle, right? Where you struggle with this emotional regulation, these are three things you can try in the moment and before. So first, I want you to think about self distancing. There's really interesting research about our ability to distance ourselves from emotions. So instead of "I'm so overwhelmed," right? Amy, you've felt overwhelmed before and you were okay. Right? It's compassionate self talk, But it's actually removing you a little bit from the emotion so that you're not so closely identifying with it. Right? I've had hard conversations before and I survived. You can separate yourself a little bit from that emotion. I also, this is my favorite one. I just use this with my teenage daughter, who was having some roommate drama on college, right? How will you feel in an hour about this? How will you feel next week? How will you feel in a year? And interestingly, her answer to the "how will you feel in a year?" she had the emotional wherewithal to say, "I don't think I'll even remember this conversation." And I was like, "Yes, you're right. That's exactly because we get." Caught up in those moments of how, you know, and that those excuses that come up: "This will be awkward. It's going to damage the relationship." All of that convinces us we can't have the conversation. Convinces us that it's so dire in that moment. And if you just time travel a little, how will I feel about this conversation in the future? Chances are it's going to be no big deal or you're going to be glad you had it. And the third piece is I want you to reframe. And that's how what other emotions? Because usually we choose one emotion, usually a very negative one of anxiety, fear. Right? But what other emotions am I feeling? Right. We're often told for example, anxiety can be a sign that you care about something, that you feel strongly about it. Right. What else do you feel about this conversation? So maybe you are dreading it. Maybe you feel fear but. Do you also feel compassion for that other person, right? What's, another way of looking at the emotions that you are having, that will help you engage in a more positive way in the conversation? That teenage daughter I mentioned when she was younger, we live in Rhode Island and were driving on the highway. Some of you may have heard this story before. I love to share it because it makes my daughter look cool. But were driving on this highway in Rhode Island. We were stuck in traffic, so were moving really slowly. And these two motorcyclists come whizzing by us, right? They're going between the lanes, weaving in and out of cars. They were probably going like ninety miles an hour at one point. And neither of them are wearing helmets. Now I'm terrified to get on a motorcycle, But the idea of getting on a motorcycle without a helmet, just absolutely terrifies me. And so I thought, oh this is a good parenting moment. I don't want my daughter to ever get on a motorcycle without a helmet. I'm just going to talk to her about this. And I just sort of started laying into them, like, "Oh my gosh. Can you believe that? Did you see how fast they're going? That is so dangerous. What if we hit them? They would be terribly hurt." And she got really into it. She's like, "Oh, mommy, I would never do that." And I was like, "Yes! Proud parenting moment," right? I used these people who were idiots to educate my daughter. Right? And then we're quiet for a moment and she goes, "But mommy. maybe they're on their way to buy helmets?" Now, I think we can all agree that's not where they were headed. But what I love that she did in that moment was she changed my entire emotional makeup by just suggesting an alternative view. And it was a view that was not true, right? I think we. I mean, who knows? Maybe those people are wearing their helmets right now. But it gave us a different view and a different emotional take. on that situation, and that's what I want you to ask yourself is like, what is a different way to see this? And it doesn't have to be true, But will it help you sort of break your attachment to the negative emotion you have about this hard conversation? All right. Tip number five. I want you to practice. I want you to practice having these hard conversations. And it can be that you rehearse it with a friend. It could be that you take a low stakes situation and you lean into that. But I want you to practice because I promise you, they get easier the more you do them. I say that from experience and I say that also from research, that we know the more we choose our words, the more we find the ability to say what's on our mind, The more we recognize that it hasn't actually destroyed us as a person or our connection with the other person. We find the courage to speak up more. Now, I am going to give you two options for practice. I mean, you can practice in whatever way you want, but I want to give you two options. One, choose the topic you are going to speak about. And actually, let me tell you a second; then we'll do this. The other is to ask for feedback on the way you give feedback. Now, I know this doesn't sound like practice, but it's actually really helpful to hear from someone you trust. Do not go to the most insecure person on your team and go, "Can you give me some feedback on how I give feedback?" Because they'll be like, "You're great. It's all good. Thank you so much." Right? Find the person who's going to tell you the truth. Find maybe someone who you worked with years ago, who doesn't work with you now, But find someone who can be quite honest with you about whether the way you give feedback is helpful. Now, I do want to do and You can do both of these by the way. Um, but I do want to go back to this first. And did I mention this is the homework portion? Because I did tell you I was going to give you homework. But I do want to do something in this room for a second, because all of you hopefully have been thinking about that topic that you were afraid to cover in your difficult conversation. And I want you just for just two seconds to turn to the person next to you and I want you to complete the sentence, "The thing I wish I could say at work but I can't is." All right? And if you're sitting next. someone who you work with, I'm so sorry. You can just turn around and find someone else. But the thing I wish I could say at work that I don't feel comfortable doing is. All right, so go ahead, try it out. I wasn't thinking about that actually, but. Um. Alright. I'm gonna bring it back. When, my boss comes to these kind of events, and he doesn't do a thing, I hear some laughter. And what do you expect from him? To leave? To get involved or to network? To get involved or at least if he's not gonna be getting some content about it, bring someone else instead of me. Sometimes just saying it out loud makes it feel a little more manageable. And now maybe the person you told was like, "Oh, wow, yeah, don't say that." And that might be interesting feedback. But I think sometimes just saying it out, loud helps us realize. It's not as big as we were capable of. And this is part of that practice, right? Number one: when you choose the topic. start saying it out loud. You can do that in the shower. You can tell your Uber driver about it, right? Not the one I have, but tell like just anyone. You know, I'm thinking about having this difficult conversation. Here's what I'd say. What do you think? Like just get the words out and see what it feels like and see what it sounds like. And, you're going to do that risk assessment. : What are the costs of speaking up? What are the benefits of staying silent? But I also want to reverse that : What are the benefits of saying this thing. out loud. And what are the costs of not? So here's a recap of those five tips. But I also want to spend a few moments, um, talking a little bit about what if you're the person not getting the feedback? What, if you're my buddy in Perth, who now he won't, he doesn't have the self-awareness to know he's not getting feedback, but you all do. So what happens if you're not getting the feedback you need? What can you do? So there's a couple things. I want to explain first that there may be a reason, and this slide here is based on the work of Leslie John, a professor at Harvard Business School. And she talks about the fact that oftentimes not that it's our fault, but that we have played a role in creating this loop. That means we don't get honest feedback. They take the risk of speaking up ;. They've done all the work that we just talked about. You react defensively, which is understandable. We're human; who wants to hear that negative feedback? They decide, "Oh, that wasn't safe or that wasn't worth it," and now you get less honest feedback. So, what do we do to sort of get out of this loop? Well, you really need to make yourself feedbackable. And I know that's not a word, but we're going to do it. You want to make sure that people are willing to give you. the feedback, and that will entirely depend on how you react. And here is someone where I'd like to share some sample language you can use because I really think it's hard to find the words when you are in that emotional. Dysregulation. But here are some things you can try, right? Thank you for that. I am going to reflect on this now. In your head, you might be saying, "Wow, you were completely off base. That was completely wrong." But still say this because you can always come back After you've reflected, after you've gotten emotionally regulated, and say, "You know what? I think that was off base. Can we talk about it?" But by starting with the thanks for sharing that. Imagine, if Susan had said to me, instead of all the reasons why I was off base, had said to me, "Thank you for that. I'm going to reflect on that." And she again could have come back to me and said, "I don't think that was right," but she never thanked me. She got defensive. And guess what? I avoided Susan for a long time. Now, these other phrases here, I do want to talk about this last one, right? Is there, something you wish you could say to me, but you are afraid of how I'll react? Right? Is there something that or you are not sure how I'll react. I am going to tell you a quick story about a colleague of mine. This is his real name. I get to use his real name because it makes him look good. Um, his name is Rosario. He and I worked together years ago and Rosario and I had a pretty We were, you know, work buddies. We didn't see each other much outside of work, but I really trusted Rosario, And he clearly trusted me because there was one time we were working late at night. We're getting ready for a client presentation. This whole, our whole group was gathered, and we were all pretty there wasn't a lot of hierarchy between us, but shocker, I'm, a control freak and I was trying to take control of the meeting. And Rosario said. As were leaving that meeting later, we got the work done. But as were leaving the meeting later, he goes, "You know Amy, ", by the way, I am going to swear, just in case anyone's uncomfortable with that ;, just we can bleep it out in the video. But he said, "You know Amy, sometimes there is a silent 'you asshole' at the end of your sentence." Now I was not prepared to hear that; I have to be honest. And I must have looked shocked. And he sort of turned it into a joke and He later said, "Was that okay to tell you?" And at the time, I would have said, "Absolutely not," because I felt terrible. But the truth was Rosario was right. And that piece of feedback changed the way I behaved in a professional setting. And I would argue my husband might disagree, but i would argue it's changed how I behave in my personal life too, because he pointed out. something that was really important to me, which is that I was distancing myself from people. I was acting like a know-it-all because I felt insecure. And so, I was making people feel smaller in order to make myself feel better. And I did not know that's how I sounded. I thought it sounded smart, like "I knew" "I was in control." But I sounded like a jerk. So if you're going to ask for the feedback, make sure you're ready to hear it. Now, Rosario and I had a good relationship, so I think he trusted that I could hear this, that I wouldn't react defensively. And it did actually make us feel closer as a result. But you have to be sure, especially if you are going to use this last phrase on the slide, that you are ready. The other piece of advice I'll give you about making yourself feedbackable is don't ask for feedback because I can guarantee none of us are like, oh, do you have any feedback for me? Well, you are like yes. I've been waiting for you to ask. But you know what people love to give? Advice. So if you ask for their advice, it's much easier to get. It's like, oh, you value my opinion? I'm happy to tell you how to behave more appropriately in the workplace, right? I'm happy to tell you how to handle that meeting better. I'm happy to tell you how to talk to your boss. So ask instead for advice. And part of the reason that works is because it's future-focused, it's growth-focused. Now, of course, You're going to have to get feedback occasionally about how you behaved and what went wrong. But if you ask for advice, You're much more likely to get an answer, that is something you can do something with, and that is not untruthful. Right? It's more clear. That is maybe more difficult because they're going to be willing to give you that advice because it's not called feedback. Now. In trying to be feedbackable, you can't actually control. And I am going to go back to the simple advice : that you cannot control how the other person behaves, you cannot control their comfort level, right? You cannot control their conflict aversion, you cannot control their tone of voice. So, it's risky to ask for it, and you have to be prepared to hear it. And I want you to be clear: I want to be clear that. Even if you do all of these things, work isn't necessarily going to be perfectly fair. I wish I could guarantee that the car is always going to be missing some wheels, right? But at the end of the day, this is we got to do our part. And again, I said this earlier, But I am enlisting you all in the movement to have more hard conversations to bring more clarity to that work because. One of the biggest myths about difficult conversations is that it will damage our relationships. We are very fearful :. I don't have the conversation because I don't want this to get ruined. But at the end of the day, hard conversations are all about connections and relationships. And experience and research shows almost the opposite, Which is that we tend to have hard conversations with people who we trust and care about. And having those hard conversations tends to make us feel closer. Now, this my mission: this talk, any talk I give, all of my writing. This what I want us to experience. I want you to see the humanity in yourself, to remember you are human when you show up at work, and I want you to see the humanity in others. But I will be honest : this mission feels a little bit at risk right now, and that is because. We have introduced AI into our work relationships. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and this is not a talk about AI, so I'm not going to spend a ton of time talking about this, but I do think I'm guessing some of you in this audience have thought, "Well, can we just have AI have the hard conversations with me?" And for me like can I have them script it? Can, our AIs won't our AIs eventually just have the hard conversation and I won't have to do any of this? And that truthfully that could happen. And it might feel really smooth and really easy, but I just published an article in Harvard Business Review last week, And this QR code will take you to that article talking about some of the risks I see of allowing AI to be an intermediary in our relationships. Now again, I am not. I actually think AI can be a great tool to practice difficult conversations, find some of the language if you can train your AI on your colleagues. Emails and with their permission, right? Like foibles, All that it can be an incredibly helpful tool to figure out how to be more intentional in those conversations. But, what concerns me is that we are outsourcing, the very thing that creates connections with people. And I do not want to see us do that. Right now, there is hope if you look at the South by Southwest schedule. The mention of AI and human in the same title is all over the place, right? We are talking about this, we are concerned about this, and that's great. I am glad we're having these conversations. So actually, not only in addition to publishing that article, But I just recently put together a reading list of articles on this topic of AI and our human relationships. I actually have other reading lists. If you scan this QR code ;, you can get those free reading lists. That you know, there's some about emotional intelligence, psychological safety, difficult conversation. And I want you to engage in this conversation. You showed up today because I am guessing you had that hard conversation you needed to have. And I don't want you to think about how do I outsource it? How do I make it easier? How do I make it smoother? What I want you to do is to lean into the messiness. It is in the midst of communications. It is in the way we speak and then mess up and have to recover, right? It's in the clarifications. It's in those mistakes we make in interacting, the awkwardness. It's in that those moments where we build connections with others. And if we try to create a frictionless experience in the workplace, we're going to miss out on that connection. So let's lean into the messiness. I hope you'll join me. So, one last quick note, Which is that I have my book signing at four fifteen over at the Hilton Austin. There's a wonderful bookstore. I'm a book nerd. There's a lot of authors who write here in this room. ;. These books are there as well. Um, and you should buy them all. Um, but I'll be over there at four fifteen signing books. I'd love to meet you, answer any questions. Thank you all so much.