Executive Podcast #229: How to Lead Through Discomfort

Each of us, as leaders, will face a number of struggles and challenges as we move toward achieving our goals. Some of these will be people issues; some of these may be cultural issues.

In Dare to Lead  by Dr. Brené Brown, she identifies several areas that can be uncomfortable for leaders and their teams. If we don’t embrace the discomfort and work through the difficult things, we can completely derail our best efforts.

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, for our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Just as a reminder as we get started, I want to encourage you to go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. There you can learn a little bit more about our foundation that we built all of our leadership training on. We help teams with culture and development, and that is the five levels of leadership. It’s something that we do around our coaching process, along with some of our speaking and our training, along with other content pieces, our 360 degree leader, inclusive leadership, just things that Perry and the team are continuing to throw out. And if you want to learn more about that, I’d encourage you to go to that website there, fill out the form, and then our team will be back in touch with you. You can also download the learner guide there for our lesson today that Perry has created.

Well, today’s topic is titled How to Lead Through Discomfort. Now, those of us, us that have been listening for a long time know that Perry and I are on the relational, the people side of things. And so this will be a great conversation for us because these are things that we have to do as well as a leader, people with influence, we’re going to face struggles that will be, sometimes they’re tactical issues that we need to deal with. Sometimes they’re people issues, but we’ve got to address these challenges head on. We got to have conversations about them if we want to achieve our goals. If we don’t deal with them, it becomes very destructive. It becomes very disengaging with the team. It affects the culture. And so when we think about this, what are the discomforts that you’re thinking about that you kind of built into the lesson that drove this title today?

Perry Holley:

Yeah, this comes up a lot. I actually struggle with the title and you’re right, the relational aspect of you and I are similar in that way. We like people to be happy, we like to make relationships, we like to make things good. And I know in my own leadership journey that I was so relational that I would avoid some of the uncomfortable things just because, well, they’re uncomfortable and I don’t want to do it, but as I got further in it just things don’t get better. They get worse if you don’t address them. And so then I was rereading Dared to Lead by Dr. Brene Brown. Brene Brown is fantastic author. If you’re not reading, you should, catching her online. YouTube, there’s some great stuff. Even got a Netflix special, I saw it was very good. But she identified several areas that can be uncomfortable for leaders that can get in the way of attaining the results.

And if we don’t do these difficult things, so I’m not going through all of them, but I picked some that I thought I hear a lot in the coaching work that we do and I would love to hear what you think about that. The first one is, as she said, “Leaders and teams tend to avoid difficult or tough conversations including giving honest, productive feedback.” That could be considered a tough conversation, just giving honest feedback to someone. And I just thought maybe your point of view on why would we tend to avoid the difficult conversation and what damage are we doing?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I’m glad you picked this one out first and I love that you said, “Hey, I just picked out a few”, that you’ve heard from our coaching conversations or working with some of the executives because I promise the few that you’ve picked out that you’re hearing are consistent with a lot of our listeners and maybe even you and I as well. So I love that. The first thing I think about when you ask that question or even kind of pose the tough conversations is do you have a process in place? Meaning that a lot of times, one of the things that has helped me is that doing it on a continual basis, a lot of people wait and they go, “Well, I’ll address that at their annual review.” And then what ends up happening, they wait two or three months and then they get there and they’re like, “Well, it’s not really that relevant.”, but it really is relevant at some point in time.

Perry Holley:

It was relevant.

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Chris Goede:

Was relevant. That’s right. The other thing too is then I think if you wait, then they become bigger issues. And so we want to make sure that we’re taking care of those while they’re small versus allowing them to pile up. So do you have a process and do you have a common language that you use around the tough conversations to be able to give honest feedback? You hear, Perry and I talk a lot about the intent versus perception principles. It’s a great common language to use so that you don’t damage your relationship with that team member. We talk about it level two in the five levels to stay connected with our team and to build relationship with them in order not to disconnect for them or to ruin that relationship and the work that you guys have done together. Then I just encourage you to have a common language around what that looks like.

“Hey, I know it was not your intent to do this, however, the perception is this, can we talk about it?” It’s a much different conversation. The other thing is, I’ve read this article that said “80% of team members right now have a current tough conversation that they need to have, that they are dreading or are just continuing to put off.” 80%, that means that 80% of your team right now has something that they want to talk to you about or talk to somebody else about in the organization. And I think if we don’t address it, we lose innovation, we lose accountability with each other. We lose team morale. And so those are things that we develop a system, develop process, develop common language because we need to be having these conversations.

Perry Holley:

Someone hired me to come in and do a talk on how to have handle difficult conversations. And I thought, “Really, that’s a thing?” And I got in front of the audience. I said, “By the way, how many of you,” like 150 managers in the audience, “how many of you have a conversation you need to have with someone that you’re not having?” So many hands went up, I almost fell off the stage. I thought, “Wow, this is really a thing.” And then I realized in my own life it was as well, that we struggle with that. An interesting side note, Dr. Brown said that over half of the people that were surveyed talked about this was a culture issue, a cultural norm that they had seen around and she called it “a nice and polite”, we want to be nice and polite. And that’s leverage. They use that as an excuse not-

Chris Goede:

Not to have [inaudible 00:06:30]-

Perry Holley:

…have the conversations. Can that be a cultural thing?

Chris Goede:

I think it could be.

Perry Holley:

I was wondering here, we’re pretty nice and polite.

Chris Goede:

I was going to say, “Let me look back to your notes. Is that about the Maxwell leadership?” Yeah. You and I in that conversation are our organization because it allows them just to have an easy out, an easy excuse. “We don’t do that around here, so I’m just going to kind of shuffle it under the rug.” The problem is that I think cultures get better when you begin to have better conversations. And sometimes when I say better, I’m not necessarily talking about they’re all good conversations. You do have to have that tough conversation, but if you do it with the right intent and the right heart, I think that will definitely promote the culture. I think cultures have to promote having regular conversations. I think that drives the ability for clarity. It also drives your team members becoming better listeners to what the other perspective is or the other situation.

And I always use this example as we don’t have to agree, but we have to be in alignment.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, good.

Chris Goede:

And so here, when we go into a leadership team meeting, Mark’s like, “Listen, if everybody agrees with each other, then we all don’t need to be in this room and we don’t need to be having this meeting. I want to hear your feedback. I want to hear your thoughts. Now when we leave, I want us all to be in alignment and I want us to have where we all got each other’s back as we go forward against the world.”, kind of thing. But the only way we can have a really good healthy culture is to understand that we can have these tough conversations. We can do that.

And so I would just encourage you, as you think about your culture and you think about do we embrace this type of communication, this type of hard truth, if you don’t, then it starts with the leader by the way. It starts with you. Begin to model that so that it shifts and it change that because you definitely want a culture that is not just all, “Yes sir, yes ma’am and this is the way it is.” And because what’ll end up happening is your engagement will be extremely low and your turnover will be extremely high.

Perry Holley:

That’s right. This little thing I use, but we talk about three questions every follower is asking about you. We’ve talked about it many times here, and if you’re not written this down, you should write this down because I use it when it comes to giving feedback, when it comes to giving constructive feedback, when it comes to having maybe uncomfortable conversations. And those three questions are, “Is Perry trying to help me? Does Perry care about me and can I trust Perry?”

They’re asking those about me. That if I can just speak to you, even if it’s difficult, with that in mind, do they know in my communication, I’m trying to help you. I’m not trying to judge you, not trying to condemn you. I’m trying to help you. I care about you and you can trust me. I’m not doing this to manipulate. I’m trying to help you. And even though it’s a hard conversation, I want you to know for the betterment for us to move forward. And that just helps me sometimes get my mind right, get my tone, get my attitude right before I say anything to anyone. And it’s also, I’m a very relational person as those conversations don’t come naturally easy to me. I’ve had to learn it. And it’s a great tool to be able to have those conversations. It kind of moves things quickly in the right direction.

Chris Goede:

On top of that, before you go to the next point, one thing that just came to mind was that I think about conversations that I’ve had with leaders that I’ve worked with directly in the past. I don’t remember any of the, “Oh, that was a good job. Oh, that was”… But what I do remember and what I learned from and where my growth came from was, “Hey, can I speak into this for you? I saw this and I know that you can do better here. I know you’re capable.” And I remember those conversations. I think if we all were honest with each other, some of the greatest lessons that we’ve learned are from some tough conversations that people were willing to have with us, but also even then talk about experiences. Some of the things that we failed at and we now have learned greatly from those, more than the ones that we’ve learned that been positive with.

Perry Holley:

Marcus Aurelius said, “What stands in the way becomes the way, the obstacle is the way.”

Chris Goede:

That is good.

Perry Holley:

So everything great is on the other side of something hard I’ve found.

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Perry Holley:

Another thing, the second thing that Dr. Brown brought up identified where we can get stuck and defined by our setbacks and disappointments and failures. Setbacks, disappointments, and failures, when people make mistakes or fail or don’t achieve that, we get stuck. We kind of stop or we don’t move forward. I thought, how do leaders help their teams use setbacks, disappointments, and failures to move forward instead of getting in stuck in that or moving backwards?

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I think this is something, John has written a couple books on failure and it’s become part of our culture and it’s really also built around, we’re huge in the growth mindset, in the growth part of your leadership journey. And so for us it’s about really growth versus goals. And when you look at it this way, you go, “Man, okay, I may not have achieved that goal. I may have as we’re talking about here today, “failed.”” But what did you learn? What was the growth that came from that? And then make sure you document that and then make sure you apply it the next time. Because if you don’t apply it, then maybe you didn’t really learn it and then maybe you won’t be asked to do that job again. But I think you got to be able to do that so that you can document it, fix it, jump back in the game.

We have this thing that we call the cycle of success, and it’s where at the top of this circle, you look at it and it’s like, okay, I’m going to try something. We know we’re going to fail. We’re we’re saying we are going to fail at it. We’re going to learn from it. We’re then going to improve on what we learn from it, and then we’re going to re-enter. So it’s this cycle of saying, “Hey, we are saying that failure is a part of that.” It’s the cycle of success. And so when you’re dealing with this, don’t get stuck, but rather what are you learning? And then how is that going to help progress to where you’re going next?

Perry Holley:

I was just thinking about with my kids was growing up with sometimes they want to fail and stop or even make the same mistake again. And I thought, really, what I want to stop is hearing you say that was on my team, I want to make sure that they know what does our culture say about setbacks and failures? Do we embrace that as a learning? What did you learn? Or are we destined to make that mistake again? Yeah. And the making the same mistake again is unacceptable because we didn’t do the hard work of learning from it. That after action review, what can we learn so that when it happens the next time we do better.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I love that.

Perry Holley:

Another idea that Brene Brown had in Dared to Lead was she identified, I thought this was variance of perfectionism and fear are keeping people from learning and growing. Now, I’ve seen this myself where teammates were working on a project, they were trying, they wouldn’t not say that they were trying for perfection, but they just couldn’t get them to the finish line. And when I asked them if we could just move forward with version 1.0 or version 1.1, they lock up. And I thought there’s fear there in letting something go into production, into the marketplace for fear that we can always make it better, but they don’t. They’re holding back. We’re not making progress. But this perfectionism, is there a way that a leader can help us let go of perfection and maybe look toward continuous improvement? I don’t know what the answer is there actually I do, but I have a point of view.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, have a point of view about it. I actually wrote down in my notes the word ouch because my personality when it comes to we use right path as our behavioral personality traits, is that I’m an analyzer. And so one of the negative or opportunities for growth that I need to watch over there is that I will tend to get paralyzed as I continue to analyze. And so I know this by myself and have a tendency to be on that perfectionist side. A couple things happened to me over the last several years of growth around this is that these two words may make a whole lot of sense to you, and you’d be like, “Oh, well Chris, that’s complete sense.” But for me, it’s a little note that I keep around at times and it says that “Movement creates momentum.” Now that makes a lot of sense, but it’s like just go, just get started.

And then the other thing is, hey, if it is 80% there or 80% as good as you think it can be, and you know have perfectionist tendencies, let it go. Not let it go, but let it get started so that then you can continue to finish the wings on the way down as you’re building that because of the fact that that will help you get the ball rolling. And then finally, Mark Cole, our CEO, and I’ve shared this on the Maxwell Leadership podcast before that sometimes I have the opportunity to co-host with Mark where he knows my personality and my traits. And so he challenged me one time and he said, “The next 10 decisions you have to make. I want you to just immediately make that decision. Okay. Don’t worry about how perfect it’s going to be and how this and that. Just write your decision down.”

Because that’s how he operates, it’s just like that. And then he said, “Just put that in the desk. And then when you get done with all your stuff and you delay and a couple weeks later you come back to it and you make a decision, I want you to pull out that sheet, see what you did, and see what you did. And I’ll be dog gone in probably 90 plus percent with the exact same decisions.” And so then I had to walk into his office and be like, “All right, let me tell you what I learned.” And he just sat there with a big old smile on his face. And so it is absolutely something that can keep you from growing and learning because you’re going to grow and learn as you create movement and momentum.

Perry Holley:

It may appear as procrastination, but it is a leaning on perfectionism that says we can get held up in that. Finally, Dr. Brown talked about diminishing trust as causing a lack of connection and empathy. And I wonder if we are so busy running at such a fast pace that we failed to realize that these are people and that they need our attention. And to me, that was really caught my attention that we short-changing connection and feeling for people with people in the midst of this fast pace and all that we’re doing, and thus we’re breaking down trust.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. John Maxwell says that fast is now faster than it’s ever been with technology, with projects, with things that we’re working on. And when that happens, there’s no doubt that we lose the connection with our people. We lose that EQ focus. And so I just want to go back and remind people that with the five levels of leadership, we say that as you move your way up on that influence with people that you work with, live with, and in your family, that you never leave the previous levels behind. So as we make our way up on the five levels and we get to the point where we have influence with people because we’re producing and we’re winning together at level three, and then maybe at level four because we’re developing them and we’re working to make them better professionally and personally, you never leave those levels behind you.

So you never quit producing, by the way because then you wouldn’t have a job. And then by the way, at level two, you never should stop connecting with them and building trust with them, having empathy with them, being curious about all those things that come with that connection. And so I just want to encourage you that 100%, because of the pace of which we all play and live nowadays, that can easily just be like, “Hey, let me just get my to-do list.” Check, check, check, check and move and skip that level. And what happens when you skip that level? We have a turnover and retention and disengagement problem. So I just want to encourage everybody to make sure that you do spend time being aware of that because it is something that is definitely diminishing trust because of the pace of which we’re playing at.

Perry Holley:

And one thing I see a lot of is, and just refer to the law of connection and the 21 irrefutable laws is that you need to touch a heart before you ask for a hand. And we are pretty good at asking for a hand, asking for a hand, asking for a hand, asking for a hand. Have I touched a heart? Touching the heart is that level two you’re talking about asking for the hand? Is that level three? If I’m always asking for the hand, never touching the heart, I’m going to have a problem. I’m going to disconnect. I’m not going to have empathy. People are going to pull back and they’re going to wonder, “Why are you manipulating me instead of motivating me?” So why don’t you wrap it up for us.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. As I close, I love the title and where you brought this to us and to our listeners today, because leading is not easy. And so as we lead, if we do it the right way and we influence people with the right way and the right mode, there is going to be discomfort. My challenge to you is that I believe for me personally, some of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned have been in that discomfort and rest in that discomfort’s not only going to be a great learning tool for you as a leader, but you’re also going to help other people learn when you have the right motive, when you do it with the right intent, when you go about doing it the right way. And it will shape not only your leadership and your brand, but it’s going to shape the culture of the organization.

Especially if you’re leading a team or department or you’re leading an organization, your organization is going to resemble your leadership. So just sit in that for a little bit. Little pregnancy pause there for real, because it just hit home with me too. So just know that that is going to happen and there’s going to be discomfort, but there’s nothing that you can’t work through. There’s nothing you can’t grow through is what I should say. And so dive into that discomfort and know that you, your team and the organization is going to be better on the other side because of it.

Perry Holley:

Terrific. Thank you. Chris. Just a reminder, if you’d like to download the Learner Guide for this episode or leave us a question or a comment, you may do that as well as learn about our offerings at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. We love hearing from you and we’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.