“Let’s Talk for a Change!” – How to Engage People in Productive Conversations About Important Issues
This is a podcast conversation I had with my friend and colleauge Susan Ni Chriodain, a UK-based leadership coach who has a podcast Life Beyond the Numbers.
In this conversation, we share stories of challenging conversations we’ve had and the lessons we learned about:
- What keeps people from speaking up.
- How to create psychological safety
- How to overcome the natural human tendency to explain other’s behavior negatively while giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt.
We start off sharing our perspectives on why knowing how to facilitate constructive conversations is so important and the price we and our employers pay for not being willing and able to engage others in important conversations around difficult issues.
Here’s what we explore:
11:23 – a difficult conversation that deepened a relationship
19:20 – separating the behavior from the person and challenging the stories we tell ourselves about why someone did or said something…i.e. the importance of “getting your stories straight” before you have the conversation.
33:40 – The importance of sending the nervous system “Cues of Safety” and how this activates the ventral vagus pathway, the neurological foundation for responses that are “cool, calm, and connected”…i.e. they enable us to connect with others and respond in peaceful, compassionate ways.
42 – The importance and challenge of managing your own emotional state when having difficult conversations
46- How Susan emotionally self-regulates
52 – When is it useful to do an email preamble to a crucial conversation; what it should include and what it shouldn’t
56:20 – Susan talks more about Cues of Safety and what they look like
1:04:30 – We discuss a part of Susan Cain’s book Quiet where she writes about how Harvard students are coached to always sound certain, and how certainty prevents constructive conversations and reduces Psychological Safety
1:09:45 How to apply this in your life
If you would like to explore how you, or your whole team, can become more comfortable and skilled at “courageous conversations,” feel free to reach out.