The Graceful Path to Having Hard Conversations

Recently, I found myself hesitating to have a tough conversation with someone on my team. Things were not getting done as planned, and I began to make assumptions about what the issue might be. I really like this person and didn't want to pressure her, knowing she was very busy.

But I knew I couldn't let it go on. As we talked, I realized my assumptions were completely wrong and that she was dealing with something entirely different. By talking it through, we were able to clear the air and find a productive way to move forward.

Do you ever struggle to have those tough conversations, fearing defensiveness or anger? If you're interested in learning more about what I learned and how you can approach these conversations with more ease, give a listen now!

Resources:

• Want to increase your profitability? Grab my book “The Profit Bleed.“
• Looking to grow your construction business? Check out our exclusive group "The Contractors Collective.”
• Want employees to take more ownership? Check out our course - “Build Your Dream Team.”
• Are you struggling to hire the right people? Check out our “Contractors Hiring Blueprint” course.

Connect with Vicki on social media:

• YouTube: Vicki Suiter
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickisuiter
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuiterBusinessBuilders

If you love listening to this podcast, please leave a review in Apple Podcasts.

Transcript

0:00

welcome back to the profit Builder unscripted I'm super glad that you're here today because today we're going to be talking about how do you address issues with your team when things aren't going very well without having it be a conflict all right let's jump[Music] in today's episode we're going to be kind of continuing a conversation that I started a little while back that is specifically around this topic of building great teams and getting teams to take more ownership and getting teams to um really uh own their their role in a business and allowing us as business owners to be able to step away and and know that um things are handled without us but more importantly the thing that I know about growing a business is that our ability to be able to grow our business is directly related to our ability to be able to grow our team and our ability to be able to have our teams take on more ownership and to be accountable for a result in our business as opposed to what oftentimes happens and I've been accused of this myself that we treat them like helpers and um what I'm you know this this series that I'm talking about right now is about a journey that I'm going through with my team where I realized not long ago that I needed to shift the way things were happening in my business because a it was not getting me where I wanted to go it wasn't growing and it wasn't I was ending up doing things that I wasn't having fun doing and I was finding myself Tethered to working a lot of hours on things that were not bringing me joy that were not um really the best use of my time and talents and maybe you can relate to that in your business and you know I've been talking to contractors and business owners about this for years and um you know I've gone through different iterations of this for myself over the years as my business has grown and I've made changes but I've I found myself back in this place of oh my team has a greater capacity and greater capabilities but you know we all know that sometimes getting our teams to take ownership feels like it's a struggle right or um like the experience that I've been going through is I'm noticing um certain things like last time I shared I a couple episodes ago I shared about you know it was hard to completely let go and I found myself needing to you know gain control again um and and I guess I should back up for just a second because what I did is um there's this big project that I have been managing um it is a part of doing doing my business part of it is um I had a Blog now doing the podcast and um it was a project that was consuming a lot of my time and I realized that I wasn't tapping into what my team could actually do and and how they could actually take ownership of it and manage it and really run it without my having to be such a micromanager about it and my being in the middle of the weeds of it and so on and so forth and what I realized is um that there's there's multiple steps to doing this right I first had to make the request which I did I asked them if they were willing to do that and they agreed and then I've noticed over these last several weeks as we're embarking on starting even just starting this podcast um and having them take on the different parts and Ma saying hey this is yours um that there were things that were um missing in our plan that I was not um completely giving up um micromanaging it that I was still doing some of that that I was um not uh giving my team all the information they needed to be able to be successful in what they were doing and you know what it have reminded and it's been such a great uh opportunity to reflect on how I talk to contractors about how to build great teams and noticing how some of the things that I tell people to do I have not been doing myself and noticing where the struggles are and the challenges are and and this the reason I'm recording sort of this series is because I wanted to share with you my own experience as I'm making this transition but also some of the things that I'm learning and discovering along the way and you know I if I had to say one thing it would be that I have been very mindful of noticing what's happening that the ab that that whole ability to be able to observe when there's a breakdown but then be able to stand back from it and not just be irritated by it or like go oh like I'll take it back to but to be able to stand back from it and look at it which is what I've been doing and go all right like what's missing like what's working what's not working what needs to be different and trusting that I know that my team absolutely um has a commitment to doing a good job that they care about what they do that they want to um be successful that they want to take the next Hill like I believe that about every one of them and that their behavior in my perception hasn't always shown up that way but it's given me the opportunity to reflect on it and ask the question all right like what was missing like what was missing at the front end that caused that breakdown at the back end and you know it's sort of no different than a construction project right like and I've really been thinking a lot about this in this last um couple weeks too about how when we don't have a really good plan at the front end that it can cause breakdowns at the back end um and I'm actually going to talk about that some more in the next podcast because I'm kind of in the middle of that right now and really working through looking at what was saying what could I have done differently and what do we how do we shift going forward um but I I will talk about that but I but today what I want to talk about is this whole thing of how do we when the when things don't work well with our team how do we have the conversation in a way uh that addresses a breakdown but does it in a way that doesn't put somebody on the defensive like one of the things that I I think is true for a lot of us is that we tend to not want to have what I call the hard conversations like when something is going wrong um sometimes what what I notice is that we'll we'll wait and we'll wait and we'll wait to address it and then we wait until we're to the point where we're super irritated super ticked off and then we kind of blow up and then it ends up not being a great conversation and it ends up being this thing of you're wrong I'm right you're and and it's just not a very good feeling which is part of why we end up avoiding the conversation a lot of times right if you ever noticed like that we end up in those places where we end up having a hard convers a an ugly conversation anyway and I had a an experience with somebody on my team I'm um uh I'm not going to mention their name um but I will just say it's somebody who I've worked with for a long time somebody who I really trust somebody who in the past has really been someone who's like very much a go-getter like looking forward staying in front of issues but I've noticed lately um that that's not been the case and that we've had and that when I've made a request about something that was a more complicated project um or a complicated issue that I've gotten this argument back about why it won't work and it's really time consuming and there's just been this very defensive response one of them had to do with the project we're working on now one of them had to do with a completely different issue that had to do with a breakdown around some email stuff and I was just noticing that my I was starting to second guess this person I was starting to think I started to have all this head trash conversation about her in my head about well maybe she just doesn't care anymore maybe she doesn't want to be working here anymore um maybe she's just got um you know maybe she's done right like she's just ready to not be doing this um and I was getting irritated and especially at one of our last conversations not our last one because I I'll tell you about our last one in just a second but it was conversation before that when she was really pushing back at me about something and telling me all the reasons it wouldn't work and I'm like just go find out the next piece of information but I hung from the conversation really irritated and it was a conversation that should have taken five minutes it took like 20 minutes that she just went on this rant with me and you know I stewed about it for a while and then I was making up all this stuff in my head about like maybe she's ready to be done maybe she doesn't want to do this work with me anymore maybe she is moving on like all this stuff and I noticed that my communication with her was um a little stilted um I was very cautious about what I asked her I um I it was just it was not it didn't feel good and I stopped one day and I just went all right I need to I need to have this conversation with her and I need to have what I call the hard conversation the hard conversation which is before I get to the point where I've made up all this stuff and I've and I've you know started looking for somebody else I need to just go have a conversation and go what is going on and as I um sat down with her and I thought for sure I was right about my perspective about what was going on with her we started the conversation and I just said hey there's something I want to share with you and I've noticed that there's something going on with you that when I make a request you're like you you have all these reasons why it's not going to work or you're really defensive and and even at that moment she started to defend the last conversation and I said hold up just one minute I said just let me finish I said what I notice is um it seems like you are um super defensive when I ask you about something when I ask you to do something you know and I cited these few examples I said you know I love working with you and and my experience of you in the past has been you're always like a yes I can do it kind of person and you're usually very you know very um proactive and very much uh yeah let's figure it out but that's not been my experience lately and what I've made up over here is that you've decided you don't want to be here anymore and I could be completely wrong or maybe there's something else going on but I'm just trying to understand what's what's happening over there because this is not the relationship I want to be having with you and it's really counterproductive we're like those that was not a good conversation the last one we had it and I would really like to figure out a way to have it be different and at that moment she was like all right well let me tell you what's really going on for me and it was this whole other thing that had nothing to do with me had nothing to do with our business had nothing to do with the projects it had to do with what was going on with her and feeling and I don't need to go into the whole story about it of what was going on with her but she just you know as we talked through it I was like okay let's figure out a way to support you right now and how can maybe do we need to take some things off of your plate do we need to you know push some deadlines out so on and so forth and if you need to put a pause on working with me you can do that like and so it was like my willingness to go all the way to the place of a don't you know be honest and authentic in the conversation be that I was willing to just like open it up for hey whatever it is that needs to happen let's talk about that and it was scary for me because she's an important person on my team to even a take the risk of that relationship blowing up but B also that I was willing to say to her listen if it's not working it's okay like it'll all be all right um which didn't end up happening I'm thankful for she's somebody who like I said Who I Really respect I value a lot but it was just like that whole interaction was a stumbling block in the middle of this project that is a big project and getting this podcast off the ground and getting my team to like really drive it and own it um but it was also just the whole um opportunity that it brought to be able to have that hard conversation with her and like that you know she said to me several times at the end of the conversation I so appreciate this conversation I so appreciate us talking about this um that you know she was able to air what was going on with her and that you know we figured out some a few things that needed to shift but also it gave her an opportunity and us to just talk about what was going on with her that I could give her some input and advice I wasn't trying to you know um be the solution for her but just talking about it was really helpful and it just reminded me like I said that sometimes we avoid hard conversations and maybe we don't need to um that willingness to go into a conversation with that uh I was willing to be honest I was willing to be authentic I was willing to tell her about what was like how it was showing up for me and um that I was willing to really listen and hear whatever her answer was as much as I knew that that could have been a very difficult answer to hear you know having and and sometimes I think that when we're willing to have those conversations it builds deeper relationships with people right um I think that it built more trust in her relationship with me I think that it built more um allegiance to working with me because I cared enough about her to have the conversation and that my whole orientation about it was what's going to be best for you I'm willing to support you and whatever is working you know whatever's going to be best for you and also being clear about what I needed right um in terms of her and her support in that role but that also you know being willing to have some flexibility about it right this minute because of stuff that she's got going on so I um you know I just I I wanted to share this piece of it because I think it's hard managing people and I think it's hard having those conversations when we perceive that there's going to be a conflict and that leaning into it and being willing to just start with here's what's going on for me or and and this is actually something this this expression here's what I'm making up between my two ears here's what I'm making up over here um what I love about that term and I will tell you I didn't make it up I got it from brne Brown I think she's brilliant um but I what I love about that term is it allows me to keep my ownership and responsibility for that part of my experience over here and for me to take responsibility for it and to not assume that it's actually true true and what I find is that that ability to be able to have those hard conversations are so much easier when I am willing to take full responsibility for my own experience and not lob it over there and make it about somebody else because what I find is that it just creates that opening which thankfully that's exactly what it did with her um you know just create an opening for a different kind of conversation and a better conversation and one that allowed us to work through something to get to the other side of it um so I'm going to keep sharing about my um my experience of my journey um of making this transition with my team of having them take more ownership and my getting out of the weeds of micromanagement and um and how I'm navigating that process and what I'm learning along the way because um I think that it's what we all struggle with as business own owners as we're trying to grow our businesses and grow our teams and make sure to check out down below there's some other um links and resources to things that you might find helpful um of uh offers that I have or things that I do and we'll look forward to seeing you next time thanks for being here today