Ep 42 - 3 Crucial Steps For Effective Communication in Challenging Conversations

A Greek philosopher once said we have 2 ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. As a leader of people and teams, you're guaranteed to find yourself in a hot seat of giving feedback that isn't always welcomed and when you do your delivery makes such a difference. It's really what sets you apart as a leader and more importantly drives the outcomes that you desire. Join me on this episode as I explore the art of delivering difficult messages effectively as a small business owner. We're going to tap into 3 key steps to mastering communication in sensitive or sticky somewhat uncomfortable situations. Let's dive in. Are you that driven entrepreneur who believes that working harder holds the key to your dreams? Are you drowning in the day to day tasks, wishing you had more time to strategize and cast the vision for your business growth? Hi. I'm Donna Dube, your guide on this entrepreneurial journey.

I've walked in your worn out shoes, burning the midnight oil convinced that sheer hard work was the secret to success. Just one more email, one more task, until I found myself on a one way track to burnout. But here's the twist in the tale, I discovered that success isn't just about working harder, it's about working smarter. It's about being intentional with our time. It's about steering our ship with focus, because no team, system, or automation can outperform a lack of direction. In this podcast, I'm sharing with you all the strategies for business growth that it took me years to learn. If you're ready to step out of the daily overwhelm, so you can amplify your profits, then I'm ready to teach you. I believe the only limit to your business growth is the one you set for yourself.

Go grab a notebook, warm up that cup of tea, and let's do this. Well, hello. My listeners. Welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. Giving feedback is, and probably always will be a part of your role as business owner and leader, but I get it. It's not always easy, especially when your feedback involves some sort of critique. You know, people tend to act defensively, right? It's that part of their brain, their amygdala, the brain's emotional control center, and it goes into high alert and rational thinking usually takes a back seat.

In psychology this is known as an amygdala hijack, and it's pretty unhelpful when it comes to trying to have a productive positive conversation. I know you've been in these situations before where even your amygdala went into high gear and trying to have a rational conversation was difficult. So how do we turn down the heat and effectively give constructive feedback? Alright, let's get into it. Today I have 3 steps to deliver any message, any difficult message well. Step number 1 is making feedback receivable. So of course, when you go to give constructive feedback, it's meant with defensiveness and withdrawal. I mean, those are normal reactions that we see human beings going through. And again, it happens because of this center in our brain scale the amygdala and it occurs when we feel threatened.

So you wanna make your feedback that you're giving to your team member or your partner or your client, you wanna make it brain friendly or receivable. And that's the biggest and usually the hardest hurdle to overcome. So how do you do this? Start with short specific question that signals to the other person that feedback is coming. I like to call this like a micro yes. Right? It allows the recipient to prepare and just reduces the surprise not expecting you to deliver this feedback. They're going about their day, they're not expecting some critique, and by giving this short specific question, it's a signal to let their brain know, hey, something's coming. Right? It's a way of giving your employees or your clients some autonomy because it allows them to say no if that timing isn't right, and really helps to make the conversation two way. So here's an example. You might say can we do a quick check-in on how your 1 :1s are going? Or I have some feedback on yesterday's meeting, can I share it with you? So you see how we're asking a question to make sure the timing is right and letting the person know what they can expect next.

After the micro, yes, our research shows great feedback givers focus on the behavior not on the individual's character So what do I mean about that? I mean talk about what they do, not who they are, and when you do that you stay clear of vague words that can really lead to misunderstandings. I like to call these words blur words, b l u r, because they get in the way, make things blurry when you're trying to make feedback receivable. So again, really focus on what they're doing, not who they are. So let me give you an example. Instead of saying you're too sloppy, which really focuses on the person and puts blurry language in there. What do they mean by sloppy? You might say, I noticed your email doesn't use punctuation. Now it's clear, right? It's focusing on a clear observable behavior, the fact that emails don't have punctuation in them. And here's a pro tip.

To focus on behavior. I want you to think about naming only what a camera could capture. A camera doesn't know the person. A camera only sees what's in front of it. So you want to make sure that you are speaking only to what a camera can capture. Observable actions, Right? Avoid those elements that a camera can't see like personality, intentions, feelings, and thoughts. Those things can't be captured by a camera. So make sure you're focusing on only what the camera can capture.

Alrighty. Step number 2 is to make feedback actionable So ensuring that the people who are receiving your feedback, you know, are available and open to it, that's a good start but they need to be able to use it too. And so when you give the feedback, you need to make it actionable. You need to communicate specifically which behavior to do more or less of and you'd be surprised if you actually think about this. It's harder to do than we think So, for example, you came across as rude in yesterday's meeting That's not communicating specifically which behaviors to do more or less of, but if you flip that and you say, I noticed you rolled your eyes in yesterday's meeting. Now you're focusing on giving actionable feedback. Right? You're specifically stating rolling your eyes as the behavior you want to see less of. Alright, so some helpful tools for getting really to the root cause, right? Instead of just a blanket sort of behavior, we want to really narrow in on what the issue is.

So be specific by naming what you saw or what you heard rolling your eyes as the often we want to just, you know, generalize things and this is not that time we really be really specific in naming what we saw or what we heard. The second piece here is offering clear data points. So you rolled your eyes in yesterday's meeting. Maybe even specify a little bit more some time in the meeting or what happened in the meeting when that occurred. Right? Give clear data points that the other person can then grab onto and eliminate those blur words. Right? You came across as rude is really blurry. It's not helping them to see exactly what behaviors to do more or less of. And as you get more specific with your feedback you may feel the need to sort of pad it or sandwich it between praise and you might have heard this before, which is the, you know, the, the sandwich of giving feedback.

I strongly suggest you avoid this. The research suggests that it can actually cause confusion and reduce trust from the person who's hearing what you have to say. So instead of I want you to share your praise and your critiques at separate occasions. Don't put them together. As they pop up, ask employees which they would prefer to hear first if you have them both to say, but don't try and sandwich them together because it gets blurry and confusing. Okay. The final and most important part of giving actionable feedback is to really show what impact this behavior has on the company, on each other, on the operations, wherever that's going. So you want to share an impact statement that explains why that absurd behavior really does matter, and this is really the catalyst to help the person understand why that action matters and make it more meaningful.

So as an example, you might say during the last project I noticed you missed 4 of our team collaboration sessions. This made it really hard for us to meet our deadlines as a team because you weren't there to assist with the process. Right? So it's really clear. You missed 4 of our team collaboration sessions and the impact was that it made it hard for the team to meet the deadlines. We're not focusing on the operations. We're giving actionable feedback, and we're showing the impact. Alright, another profit. The most effective impact statements speak to what the feedback, what the person really cares about the most.

So if you know what that is be sure to include it in the operations. So, for example, if the person you're speaking to really does care about the impact of what they do on their team then when you use this example that I just gave, this makes it harder for the team to meet our deadlines. That's going to have an effect on the person because they care about the fact that what they're doing impacts their team. Alrighty, step number 3, making feedback balanced. So balanced dialogue, I don't know if you've heard this way before this term before, but balanced dialogue creates a two way learning conversation and it uses a specific format. Ask, tell, ask. So you begin with a question, you share the behavior and its impact, and then you invite the recipient back into the conversation with another question. And why you do this is that it encourages problem solving and future planning together.

And that's exactly what we want. Right? We don't want to have a difficult conversation with a team member and not work through how we're going to solve it and how we're going to get stronger on the other side. So let me give you an example. Ask, tell, ask. So ask, do you have 10 minutes to talk about your last email to Jill? Tell. I noticed you responded to her email 9 days after she sent it. I operations this because Jill can't move forward without your reply, and this might delay her team focusing on the behavior and its impact, and then ask, what are your thoughts? So you see, in this example, we start with asking a question. We get a micro yes.

We get buy in. Right? We reduce that mystery and we allow the person to be prepared for what's going to come next. Then we focus on the behavior, not the person, and we avoid using blurry words. We're very clear and specific. We show the impact and why it matters and who it affects, and then we ask a question to check-in on how they see it allowing for that open dialogue and a chance to come up with an action plan. I hope you're seeing how this works. I'm gonna give you another example, just so that you you were really clear. Can I share some thoughts with you about that meeting? Ask.

During the meeting you announce to everyone that there is a delay in the schedule before you let me know. Tell? I bring it up because when this occurs we look uncoordinated in front of our clients which can really impact their trust. Impact statement. How do you see it? Can we agree to ask? So you see in that example, we ask, tell, ask. Short question to get their buy in, focus on the behavior and what specifically we want to them to do more or less of, show the impact and then ask again, how do you see it? Make space for that open dialogue. Alrighty. I hope this is making sense and resonates with you. And the next time you need to have a difficult operations, I want you to come back to this episode and I want you to remember, ask, tell, ask, Focus on the behavior, show impact, and make space for that open dialogue.

By making your constructive feedback receivable, actionable, and balanced, you can quickly transform your team's development and really foster a culture of continuous improvement. Remember, it's not just what you say, it's about how you say it. Alrighty, thanks for listening. I'm so glad you're here. If there's a topic you would love to hear on the podcast I would certainly hope you reach out and let me know. Join the CEO Amplify Facebook group and pop in there and let me know what topics you'd like to see on the podcast. Until next time. Stay well.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of CEO Amplify. I appreciate you being part of our thriving community of ambitious business owners. If you enjoy today's episode, I kindly ask you to share this podcast with a friend and take a hot minute to rate and leave a review. It would mean the world to me. Your feedback helps me reach more people and continue providing valuable content. Thanks so much for your support. Keep shining and we'll catch you on the next episode.