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Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams and your business. Hosted by Ryan Castle, along with Dr Mike Ashby, we share insights, experiences and stories on achieving breakthrough successes in business and life. In addition to a podcast, The Breakthrough also specialises in delivering management training that actually sticks, is cost effective, and easy to implement at scale to sustain change from the inside out.
Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams and your business. I'm your host Ryan Castle along with Doctor Mike Ashby. We share insights, experiences and stories on achieving breakthrough success in business and life. In addition to a podcast, The Breakthrough is a coaching and advisory business that provides programs for business leaders, owners and managers to develop your skills and capabilities to boost your business and enjoy a better life. To learn more, click the link in
Mike Ashby:the episode show notes or go to thebreakthrough.co.
Ryan Castle:Now let the breakthroughs begin.
Mike Ashby:Mike, welcome along to this episode of Business Leader Breakthroughs. Great to have you back on the show.
Ryan Castle:It's great to be back, Ryan. It feels like it's been a while. You've been talking to other people, haven't you?
Mike Ashby:I have. I have. It's lucky we've got an open podcast relationship.
Ryan Castle:It is just as well.
Mike Ashby:Let's not start this off as a difficult conversation because we are in fact here today to talk about difficult conversations.
Ryan Castle:About difficult conversations not have one.
Mike Ashby:Yes. Well, we'll see how it rolls. We might end up there, but definitely the topic of difficult conversations. And we have now worked with hundreds of organizations and the thousands of managers in those organizations. Of all the skills those organizations would like their managers to have, and they are numerous, but the one that most commonly comes up is how can you help my managers be better at difficult conversations.
Ryan Castle:Yeah. And you know, I I don't think it's just managers. We've got a senior leader program, a high performance leadership program, and I was working with a group of execs. And in the in the course of some of the content, I said, oh, you know, having having these challenging conversations with underperformers in your organization, you you either train, transfer, or terminate. And, boy, did we go down a whole thing.
Ryan Castle:And I should have known because exactly as you say, every organization, every owner or leader you talk to, you start the you start the conversation about how do we deal with underperformers who are kinda not bad enough to fire without know, not fire on the spot, and we can't they're not bad enough to put them in performance, but how do we how do we deal with them? And that always starts a bit and we just spent the rest of the time talking about that. And then so that was a month ago, and then when we came back into the programme, were meant to move on to the next piece of content. All we did was talk about the conversations they had. It's a really fundamental piece of management, and it's it's really hard because it's it's look.
Ryan Castle:A difficult conversation is anything that we find hard to talk about because we fear the consequences. And we, you know, we we focus at work, but it's the same it's the same throughout our lives. Do we avoid the conversation, or do we confront it? It's a bit like that, you know, that hand grenade. You kinda feel like you're pulling the pin out and chucking it in, and and once you've pulled the pin out, you can't kinda put it back in.
Ryan Castle:You you've you've gotta go through with it. So you you we we all tend to hold off for as long as we can, don't we?
Mike Ashby:We do, and it's because there's the emotion involved, and the emotion is typically on two sides. It's not only for the person, maybe the manager who feels like they need to have the difficult conversation, they feel emotional about it and then the person on the receiving or the other side of the conversation also has their emotional reaction to a difficult conversation.
Ryan Castle:Yeah.
Mike Ashby:And occasionally you get one-sided emotion and that can be a really bad outcome as well where you get people that are devoid of empathy and they go right here's my coaching mate I'm just going to lay it all out I don't think it's a difficult conversation because I'm just going to tell you how bad you are. Yeah. Don't feel like that results in very positive outcomes.
Ryan Castle:No. That's more like a kicking really, isn't it? An old fashioned hiding, and it's not it's it's not how people expect to be treated today, and it's not respectful. And I guess it's important to go back to the purpose of these conversations. There is a time for a straight out lecture.
Ryan Castle:Right? There is a time in extreme circumstances where a balling out is exactly the right response, and there is nothing to say on the other side. Very rare. Mostly what we're trying to do in a difficult conversation is process and resolve an issue, and we're doing it through communication. And that's really important to hold on to that purpose.
Ryan Castle:You're not there to win an argument. You're not there to beat the other person because you've it must be that you're already invested in maintaining the relationship. Like, you want to keep this person, or you want them or you want to retain a relationship with this person, whether you wanna keep them or whether you are happy to see them go, you want to keep a relationship with them. That's different from look. You can leave tomorrow.
Ryan Castle:You've you've, you know, you've done so badly. You've behaved so badly or whatever that you can go right now if you want. That's different.
Mike Ashby:You have breached our values, and breaching our values is not acceptable and there is a consequence to that. That's not what we're talking about here. That would be a disciplinary meeting. That would be a, you know, you've breached our values. What we're talking about here is growing someone, going hey we're observing some things here that are not going the way they should be, let's have a conversation about how we have that conversation and then it's a growth, we're really looking to invest in this person and part of the investment is confronting the fact that we have to have the difficult conversation, but you bring it with care and respect for the individual because you want them to grow and be better on your organization.
Ryan Castle:And you want them to stay, you're prepared to have a conversation about where you try and process and resolve the issue. And the issue might be one of I kind of in the in the content we separate out underperformance, which is about capability. So let's let's confine this one to attitude, and that might affect their performance, but it's there's an attitude thing or a behavior that is destructive or not constructive or undermining. The conversations we're having yesterday were very much about people who, by their attitudes and demeanors, were undermining the team and sometimes quite subtly and some and a quite underhanded sort of fashion. So I guess the where you start is in these kinds of conversations is is what happened, and that's always interesting because we have our own version of reality.
Ryan Castle:Know, we have we think we've seen and you know, all you have to do here is think about a conversation that you've had with a loved one. We've, you know, your last your last row. It started with what the other person thought had happened, and it's so different from your version. Well, that's true at work too. We have a bunch of things going on.
Ryan Castle:We have the truth assumption, which is this is what I saw, and I know what's true, so I must be right. And we have what we call the intention indention, which is this is what you were thinking when you said that. That is always guaranteed to inflame things. You've got it wrong. You know, there's no way you can so when you're sitting down with the person that and you're, you know, that you're trying to have this conversation with and if you hear yourself thinking, they did this because, just remember you're wrong.
Ryan Castle:Pretty much 99% of the time.
Mike Ashby:That is a great frame.
Ryan Castle:Yeah. And if you if you can hit just you might be right. There's probably more than 1% chance. You might be you might have reasons for being more confident, but you don't know. You are inventing that.
Ryan Castle:And then the third one is who's to blame because we love blame.
Mike Ashby:Is that a scope guide I see running past?
Ryan Castle:That's right. A scope guide. Yeah. Yeah. And it's yeah.
Ryan Castle:It's called the blame game, isn't it? Because it is a game. You know, who's to blame here?
Mike Ashby:So let's overlay those three elements, the truth assumption, the intention invention, and the blame game. Just reminding me of an example, was working with a client, we were actually doing some active manager training with the group, I was running a co lab and there was an individual in the group who really came to that learning experience with a very closed mindset. And the basis for her closed mindset was I am so busy, I work, she was a person that arrived at work at 6AM in the morning, worked all day, worked late into the afternoon, wore it like an absolute badge of honour and because of that perception and I'm thinking about how I overlay these three and make sure that I don't trip myself up in the overlay, you know my perception of her response in that learning experience was I've just come with a closed mindset because I work really hard. I work really long hours. I'm a bit of a martyr in this organization.
Mike Ashby:Right at the time, I was like, a difficult conversation needs to take place here. Probably my assumption was maybe you're not doing your job as effectively as you could if you think takes you that long. That could have
Ryan Castle:been an assumption. Another one? Another truth assumption would be you're not contributing as much as you should or could here. You're not contributing as much as you could here. That's your truth.
Mike Ashby:And what do we feel that that person's what what might have their truth assumption been?
Ryan Castle:Their truth assumption may well have been, I'm trying as hard as I can. How can you say that? I mean, that's a classic what happened. Right? It's exactly the same scenario, but we've got totally different versions of it.
Ryan Castle:I'm I'm I'm here, despite everything else I'm goddamn here. What else do you want? A talk.
Mike Ashby:If we move to the intention invention, what might have I been inventing? I might have been inventing in that moment that her intention was not to participate, and she had no interest in doing so.
Ryan Castle:And her intention was by behaving, let's call it badly or negatively in that, her intention was to send a message to everyone else about look at me, I'm too busy for this. So that may have been her, you know, even subconscious intention. Mhmm. That's that's what we may have thought. Right?
Ryan Castle:Yes. That's what we invented.
Mike Ashby:Yes.
Ryan Castle:That she was just just trying to just trying to kind of send out the big Martha signal to everybody look at me I'm so hard done by it. Right?
Mike Ashby:And then in the blame frame, I in that role I had in leading that group, my blame frame might have been because you're coming with that intention you're wrecking the learning experience for others and you're not making misses, so I'm squarely placing the outcome of this learning experience to everyone at your doorstep.
Ryan Castle:Yeah. And you're to blame for your own situation. I love the idea of contribution instead of blame. I think it's a really powerful way. You know, we had a a big family dust up bust up, you know, kind of yeah.
Ryan Castle:Without without going into all the grisly details. It had been a long time coming, and it was pretty it was pretty nasty. And I was thinking about, oh, who's to blame? Who's more to blame? And and then I realized it's just the wrong way to think about it.
Ryan Castle:Actually, who contributed? Because there were a couple of people who contributed more than anybody else, but there were, you know, two or three others who contributed quite a lot. And in fact, when I looked at it, we all contributed, including me. And thinking about it and contribute in terms of contribution in a workplace setting is who's contributed to that that person in the in the collab? Who's what has contributed to her behaviour?
Ryan Castle:Certainly she has. Absolutely. Has her manager? Yeah probably. Somewhere along the line.
Ryan Castle:They've contributed by either not giving them enough resource, failing to stop them doing too much themselves, failing to almost enforce a work life balance, a more balanced approach, failing to have the difficult conversation early on, they're all contributions to that outcome, and perhaps the people around are also made a contribution by not speaking up. You know, when you look at it like from contribution, it's a wide circle, and that's much more valuable than blame I think.
Mike Ashby:So say I was that person's manager and I had identified that this conversation needs to take place, what should I do before I even talk about having that conversation or setting the meeting? How should I think about preparing that for that myself?
Ryan Castle:Yeah I think you've I think it's really important that you look at what you're bringing. So you look at the you know, you start by detaching detaching yourself a little bit from it, and you go into you know our active mindset, what's really going on here? And you look at yourself and you realise, yeah, you're actually pretty annoyed with her or him for their behaviour, what they're doing in the group, and it's kind of ruining the the group process. You know, this is not the first time, and you're probably carrying quite a lot of stuff about them, quite a lot of feelings actually. The first thing you got to do is acknowledge how you feel to yourself, and once you've done that, you can take a more detached but still compassionate approach.
Ryan Castle:So I think it I think it starts there. Starts with owning your feelings. What would you what advice would you give yourself?
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Similar I think acknowledging how I was feeling about it. One little anecdote that always rings true for me, Mike, is something that you told me years ago when you reflected on a senior leader at a bank and whenever he had a difficult conversation to have he always opened the conversation with we have a problem. Yeah. And the use of the word we rather than you are a problem or I've got a bone to pick with you or something, initially started there and then I always try to think about the what's the process we're talking about here, what's going on rather than looking to critique the individual themselves.
Ryan Castle:Yeah. Yeah. And look that's really important too. First off this is about feelings right? It's your feelings, it's their feelings.
Ryan Castle:If there were no feelings it wouldn't be a difficult conversation. It would just be a technical conversation. So in a way, your difficult conversation is about feelings, and a lot of people go, oh, let's, you know, let's just keep this professional. It's only business. I have famous last words.
Ryan Castle:It's it's only it's not personal. It's just business. Many a dirty deeds been done under that guys. So it starts with your feelings, owning owning your feelings, and then being open to hearing their feelings. I think that's that's really important, and it's part of the the mindset you go in with.
Ryan Castle:And, you know, back back to your family, anger is actually okay. From there are times as we talked about when, you know, something's gone seriously wrong. Maybe it's I always remember a great article from years ago, a guy called Bing who wrote in the he was on the back page of Fortune magazine. Seriously, I think it's it's 2006 or something, and I've still got it. It's called the upside of anger.
Ryan Castle:Google it because it's it's really good, and it just talks about how he went from being all kind of relaxed and mild and people were taking the mickey and they weren't getting the presentation done, and, yeah, they're just a bit sloppy and what came in was rubbish, and he, you know, he just blew like complete kind of volcano, and, you know, made various threats and all this kind of stuff, and the workplace went very, very quiet for a very long time, and what landed on his desk at 08:00 in the morning was perfect. And he, you know, he breathed. He breathed. There are times when anger is appropriate, not in the con and certainly not aggression, and
Mike Ashby:you've got It's about making that anger personal.
Ryan Castle:And it's not about and it's absolutely about keeping it to the behaviour, not the person. You know you can criticise behaviour and that's reasonably objective, but you know criticizing the person who is probably trying their best, it just takes you into a space that you're not gonna get out of nicely. So always about the behavior. And when you start the conversation, getting to their getting to their feelings. What's what was going on for them?
Ryan Castle:How did they feel about that? Invite people to share.
Mike Ashby:And people are always more willing to hear constructive feedback if they also feel like they are being heard. Difficult conversations should never be one way. They are not a lecture. They are a conversation for
Ryan Castle:a reason. It's a it's a process, you know, process and resolve an issue. The number of times difficult conversations have pretty much ended once I've once somebody has talked about how they felt about a situation and literally got it off their chest and feel that I've heard them, then we can move on to the to the resolution. But you can't move on to the resolution until you've done the process, and part of the processing is getting the feelings out on the table, and people need to feel safe with that.
Mike Ashby:Now in our active manager program when we teach people the skill of difficult conversations, they usually have a cheat sheet and that really helps them to prepare in advance for the conversation. We won't go through that in detail in this podcast, but what are some of the things that people should be giving consideration to before they they arrive? So we've talked about the the feelings the feelings piece about that understanding of coming with the active mindset Yep. About looking at at behavior. What else should we be thinking about as we lead into that conversation?
Ryan Castle:Taking the attitude of learning not winning. It is good, isn't it? Yeah. I think it's yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:Learning, not winning. You are there to
Mike Ashby:But I'm always right. Oh, no. Hang on a minute.
Ryan Castle:Right. No. You're still right. Don't worry about that. You will achieve a lot more if you start out seeking to learn rather than to win.
Ryan Castle:And that involves, what do you think happened? How did you how did this situation make you feel? And then, know, the the we have a problem, I think owning that I I love that phrase. I've used it myself. So John Anderson was was somebody who used that, and and he was an outstanding chief executive.
Ryan Castle:And he would he would start with we have a problem. Because if the person's got a problem, I've got a problem. And if if the two of us have got a problem, the organization's got a problem. Probably the rest of the team's affected. All of that stuff.
Ryan Castle:We really it really is we. You know? You're not the problem. The behavior is a problem for all of us, so we share the problem. I think the other thing to do is really be prepared to manage yourself during the conversation.
Ryan Castle:I think this is really important. You know, it's almost certain that you'll get knocked off balance. You know, some they will say something that triggers you. Triggers is a very popular word these days. They will say something that sets you off, and you have to be prepared.
Ryan Castle:And, you know, we know what it's like to be knocked off balance. It's that kind of moment of, you know, the adrenaline starts. We're gonna fight, flight, or freeze. We're gonna do one of those three, and that's the moment that we have to prepare for. We don't know when it's gonna happen, but it is gonna happen.
Ryan Castle:And in that moment, we have to be prepared to just stop and take that kind of three breaths so that we create a little bit of space between the the stimulus and the response between what's happened and our reaction, because that reaction is driven by the old lizard brain, you know, the prehistoric kind of taking care of my species, including me, the the survival instinct. Right? So three breaths, active mindset, and just regain, you know, a choice about how you respond. Think the other one that I have found really, really important and and and really empowering too is in in these when we kind of mull over these conversations, when we ruminate about them as we do, often what we're focused on is their reaction and how we seem to them. The fact that they're gonna get angry, the fact that they're gonna they're gonna cry, the fact that they're gonna yell, the fact that they're gonna go all quiet, the fact that they're gonna turn it back on me.
Ryan Castle:What we have to do is let go of the idea that we can control their reaction. We can't control their reaction. And if we let go of that idea, then we can focus on looking after ourselves. You know? It's their reaction.
Ryan Castle:It's their history. What this is about for them is all to do with where they've been, and we have no we have nothing to do with that. What's the best thing you can do when people start yelling?
Mike Ashby:Yell back. Second one, yell back, calm down.
Ryan Castle:That always works, doesn't it?
Mike Ashby:Always. Will will you just calm down?
Ryan Castle:Never fails. Yeah. So think they call that fuel to the fire, don't they?
Mike Ashby:They do. And and I think it part of the mindset of coming to these conversations is going, we may not get this resolved, addressed, or talked through in one meeting. Yeah. Absolutely. As much as we'd like to, as much as we'd like to go, oh I've got a difficult conversation I just want to get in, get over and done with.
Ryan Castle:Yeah.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Actually my experience has been sometimes if the emotion is getting away to go, let's let's go away think about this both we can come back tomorrow or the you know few days time and discuss it again or or sometimes we are aware of team members that they are overnight processes of how they think about things. They don't like to be requested to process things on the spot.
Ryan Castle:Yeah.
Mike Ashby:So being at a table going this is an audience I want to hear from you. Would you like to think about this overnight? We'll talk about it tomorrow. It can really deescalate that emotion and the feeling piece. And that is our role as managers and leaders is that this is not a once and done thing.
Mike Ashby:No. This is You know, growing our people.
Ryan Castle:Yeah. Totally. Totally. And and helping them to resolve, you know, problems that we've got. And this might surprise you given how well you know how much I talk.
Ryan Castle:Right? I am an overnight process. I am definitely a go away and process the emotion piece. I am not fast to express emotions. I do get a little impatient, don't I?
Ryan Castle:I can get a bit grumpy. Yeah. It's true. But in in really in deeply difficult conversations, no. I've I've gotta go away.
Ryan Castle:I've gotta just, you know, literally overnight. And then I can then I can actually be I can own the emotion and and but still be quite calm, but I can talk about my emotions much, much better in a way that that, you know, creates some understanding around it. There's something my old mentor, Peter Taylor, used to say. We had some horrendously difficult conversations in our in our role at the current company monitoring unit. Big, big arguments.
Ryan Castle:And and he would always say, look. If we can't solve the problem, let's agree a process. And I think that's such a great that's great wisdom. We don't try and solve the problem now with what we know and what we've got. Let's create a process that we can sign up to and agree that this will, you know, kind of tell us the answer, give us the answer we need.
Ryan Castle:That's all part of of holding on to yourself and having tools that you can go to. You're not having to rely on your lizard brain because you really don't wanna rely on on your lizard brain. I suppose the other one in the kind of the tools to go to is is holding to purpose, which is always what's in the best interest of the business. And that enables you as a manager to stand back from how you feel about this and how your ego is threatened or you're you're feeling you're being undermined or you're feeling or you're feeling too sympathetic. Are you you're going too soft.
Ryan Castle:Always going back to the best interests of the business helps you make the right decision and and hold fast to that. Great example with one of the guys on the program. He had somebody who was on ACC, on workers compensation, had injured his hand at work and had been off work for a number of months. He wanted to come back. There was genuinely no role for him.
Ryan Castle:There was he couldn't do light duties. He certainly couldn't resume his role. And it was a really awful conversation to have to have to say, look. I'm afraid there's just no job here for you. You know?
Ryan Castle:And and our guy was was a procrastinator from to start with. His his colleagues used to say he feathered things. He would always kind of fudge things and, you know, take a long time to get to it. So he had to have this difficult comp really difficult conversation. And he said that the the thing that enabled him to hold fast to it when he was immensely sympathetic to this person's plight was it's it just doesn't work for the business.
Ryan Castle:It's just not in the best interest of the business. And it's not even good for this guy because we, you know, we can't give him a decent job to do to get paid. He is basically he's a passenger. But the most important thing that he just kept holding to was the best interest of the business, and sometimes it's really, really hard. That's why these conversations are difficult.
Ryan Castle:As it as it turned out, it was resolved. You know, the process was one where the way through it was, first off, no. You can't work here. And once that was kind of processed and resolved, then they could move to how can we help you find a a job that is suitable for where you're at now.
Mike Ashby:And, Mike, in business career that I I think unfortunately now have to count in decades, not individual years. It's still a boy or a party to a know a number of difficult conversations. None of them have ever ended badly. When I've bought the intention of a balanced conversation, keeping my emotion in check. You know, my my overwhelming experience has been the person on the other side of the table has been willing to have a constructive conversation around what's been going on, and there's never been a bad outcome.
Mike Ashby:Has there been emotion involved? Yep, of course there has. Has tears there on occasion? Yes there has, but at the end of those individual or multistage conversations I can honestly say I never feel like there's been a bad outcome where I felt either myself or the other person involved was left belittled or in a state of rage or any of those kind of things and I think that's part of why we look to avoid difficult conversations as we start picturing the worst possible nightmare that might come out of these. When you treat people with care and respect, I've always found that they've been willing to have a, you know, an open and constructive conversation about it.
Ryan Castle:I could I probably have had some that left an aftertaste for the other person or left an aftertaste for me at on the other side of it because that's happened too, of course. But I would say that I think you are particularly good at this. You are particularly good at holding to the purpose and both enabling people to share their emotions, and really importantly, always respectful and and always compassionate. And and this was the conversation we had with these the guys yesterday in this team, you know, the the they talked about how they had carried out these conversations, and they've done a really good job with some difficult people and some not very and some pretty ambiguous situations. But what really came through was both purpose, holding to the purpose, and treating the people with compassion.
Ryan Castle:Now compassion, we don't hear I don't think we hear much about compassion these days. We hear about empathy and things like that, and empathy is a form of it. I think compassion is a is a wonderful human quality. I think it's part of a more human workplace is that we have compassion for people who find themselves in difficulties, who find themselves on the on the wrong side of a difficult conversation. And the thing we can do that's most important, and perhaps most compassionate, is to be prepared, is to be resolute, but is to stand in their shoes, is to allow our hearts to feel compassion for them.
Ryan Castle:That's a more human workplace.
Mike Ashby:It is. And, Mike, the framework that we have in our active manager program just gives you a really great guide on how to do that preparation without having to do the wing it, remember it, doing some preparation in advance is really really helpful. And whilst I thank you for your comment around how I handled these situations you know it's a skill that I've learned. I wasn't born being great at this stuff they are you know through our own programmes, mentoring from you, things I've observed with other leaders I've worked for and with, they are skills that I have learned and, you know, that's what we'd say to any of our managers is these are skills that can be learned.
Ryan Castle:These are skills that can be learned and it's and it's simple techniques like the one I've used from time to time, quite often actually is, as I put my hand on the door to go into the room where the meeting's gonna happen, I just say to myself, I've got this. So that's a reminder for me to take responsibility for myself and my reactions, and to be less concerned with taking responsibility for controlling how they are, how they're feeling, how they're responding. I can't I have no control over that, but I do have control over myself, and we have lots of tools available. And and through as you say, through the active manager program, all about taking responsibility, how we can better take responsibility for ourselves in a difficult conversation.
Mike Ashby:That's a good wrap, Mike. Thank you for sharing your insights and knowledge on this topic and you are of course the author of our learning content so this is something you've spent a lot of time not only bringing your personal experience to but also researching far and wide about what the latest and most effective techniques are in this area. So thanks for sharing that knowledge today and to our listeners, we hope you have found this of interest and we'd certainly love to hear back to you via our comments on our podcast page. Your own experience of difficult conversations, whether you have been the initiator or the recipient. What have you found has worked well, and what would what could work better?
Mike Ashby:Thanks, Mike.
Ryan Castle:Thanks, Ryan. My pleasure as always.