What to do DURING Uncomfortable Conversations

0:03 Hey everybody, welcome to today's episodes. It's a little bit different because today's episode is only a podcast recording, meaning it's not being live streamed and it is only available to those of you who listen to the podcast. And there there could be future episodes that are much like this. I don't know why. I just decided, hey, let's, let's try this out and see what happens when you just record the audio for the podcast. It's not, it's not my favorite. I'm finding, I find that if I go live, there's potential for live audience members and it feels more authentic. So I'm going to try to just be really authentic during this time, even though nobody's live with me and I'm not talking to anybody.

0:53 All right, so let's move forward with today's episode. This is actually a follow up to last week's episode. In last week's episode, I talked about what happened when we get anxious about an upcoming conversation or meeting. Oftentimes we try to prepare for it. And the way we prepare for it is by crafting a movie in our mind. And a lot of the time, most of the time, actually, those movies are not at all accurate and they don't play out the way that we intend because we cannot control other parties during these situations. The only person we have control over is ourselves. And so today we're really thinking about, OK, if we do have control over ourselves, we've prepped in ways that allow us to think about how we show up for the meeting or conversation, but we haven't prepared for what someone else is going to say because we know that's outside of our control. We have no control over how they respond. So go back and look, listen to that episode. There are several things that you'll want to practice before conversations that are uncomfortable. Today we're talking about, OK, what do we? What do I actually do during the meeting? Because I know I can't control what someone else is going to say.

2:21 I can't control Sometimes I can't really control my feelings and my feelings start to get in the way. My heart starts starts to flutter. I might my ears get rid. I'm just talking about things that happened to me. My ears get red, my face will get flushed. I often this is the strangest thing and I would I'm so curious to know if this happens to you. Sometimes when I get flustered in a conversation, I will start to speak and then my mind will go blank and I forget what exactly it is that I wanted to say. And so then I start to stumble and stutter and then I feel like this is a lost cause because I'm not saying what what I'm what I want to say Sometimes because I get so flustered, I don't see what needs to be said. So I'm curious to know if that's happened to you. So we know preparing for the meeting is one thing, but being in a meeting or in a conversation is a totally different thing.

3:25 I'm going to give you a couple of tools or things to think about, really one tool and one thing to think about as you go into these meetings. And these are things that will have to be brought back to your mind during this meeting. OK, first and foremost, I don't know that I mentioned this in last week's episode, but if at all possible, before you go into a meeting or conversation that you feel is going to be uncomfortable, it would behoove you to ask clarifying questions about the meeting, especially if you're not sure what the meeting's about. So if that's what's bringing you some anxiety, ask. Hey, I just want to clarify what this meeting is about so I can prepare accordingly.

4:16 You may or may not get a response. You may or may not get the response that you want. So for example, you might get some someone who responds with you don't need to prepare anything, just show up or I just need to talk about a few things. Well, that really doesn't tell us anything and causes probably more anxiety and stress than is necessary. So, but, but it is helpful for you to try to clarify ahead of time so you can give yourself a little bit of Peace of Mind as you go into the meeting. Remember, we're leaning in instead of leaning back. We want to stay curious longer. How do we do that?

5:00 During this meeting? I want to go through a couple of things that remember I'm pulling from. If you listen to last week's episode, you know that I'm pulling a lot from the work of Susan Scott and Kate Murphy. I also am going to be pulling a strategy from my own book, The Craft of Clarity today. So let's first talk about listening behaviors. And you may recognize as I go through this list of listening, bad listening behaviors and may find yourself thinking about other people that exhibit these bad listening behaviors. You might even be thinking about yourself. And that's what I'm advocating that you do is just really pay attention to what are some bad listening behaviors that could get in the way of me leaning in and listening with curiosity and staying curious longer.

5:47 So here's what Kate Murphy she says. She says among the most frequently cited bad listening behaviors are interrupting, responding vaguely or illogically to what was just said, looking at a phone, watch or around the room, or otherwise away from the speaker. So in other words, you're distracted. And then the last one is fidgeting, like tapping on the table frequently, shifting position, clicking a pin. If I'm thinking about how I show up to listen, probably the behavior that gets in the way of me listening well is because I get nervous responding vaguely or illogically to what was just said. And I think the reason that happens is because I'm so focused on what it is, I'm going to say that I'm not really listening to understand what my dialogical partner is going to is saying.

6:44 So I'm curious, have you do you recognize any of the of these in others? Do you recognize them in yourself? The one that is probably a pet peeve of mine that I noticed in others so much is looking at their phone, their watch, looking rather any in any way that they're distracted and not looking at me as the speaker When this happened. Any the narrative in my mind is what I have to say is clearly not valuable, meaning I'm not valuable in this situation, meaning I'm going to stop and then I just shut down. That's just me. It's kind of a pet peeve that I'm working on because I know people get distract, I get distract, people get distracted, and some people are pretty decent at listening and doing other things. But what it shows me is probably not what they want to show me, right?

7:40 Like, I know their their intent is not to show me that I don't matter. But that's the narrative that I spend here. Here's what Kate Murphy goes on to say. And I love this next part. She says if you do these things, stop. But that alone is not going to make you a good listener. It will just make it less obvious that you are a bad listener. So we've talked about listening behaviors. Recognize which of those you might need to reflect on and monitor as you're listening to someone. The next thing that you want to do kind of goes back to what I said earlier is clarify. So the next thing I'm going to, I'm going to advocate for you to do, Did you hear that? That grammar going to the next thing I'm going to, goodness gracious, I'm probably going to keep using that phrase too. The next thing I am going to advocate that you do is perception checking.

8:30 So this is all about you clarifying what you think you heard, paraphrasing it, and then asking is my perception accurate or am I off? That's what perception checking is. It's you are checking with someone else what it is or if your understanding is accurate. Everyone has their own perception, their own reality, and we want to bring those to a neutral place and not state them as true or fact, but instead bring them to a neutral position so that it's easy for us both to get into conversation about it.

9:12 You're just like putting it out on a platter and saying, let's talk about this perception that I have. And you're recognizing it could be an accurate perception or it could not be an accurate perception. And you're asking their permission to check that. So just clarify. And that could be as simple as saying, hey, I just want to check my perception by you. Is that OK? Or hey, I just want to clarify what I think I'm hearing you say. Here's what I think I'm hearing you say. Is this accurate or am I way off base? That's a way that you can check your perception. So we've talked so far about bad listening behaviors and monitoring for those. We've talked about perception checking. And then finally, and I'm going to reiterate some of what I just said through this method that I'm going to bring you from my book, The Craft of Clarity.

10:04 But reiteration is important because it just means that it's necessary for us to hold on to. In the book, I talk about the pause method. So in The craft of clarity, I have a whole chapter about gaining insight from stakeholders. And what I'm encouraging leaders to do in this chapter is go out to their people and gain some understanding about where they are in terms of the area focus for the campus and the campus's goals. If you want to find out more about this, the book is on Amazon. But you can also find about find out about the Clarity Cycle Framework, which is what this book is all about on my website, Catching up with kc.com/clarity Cycle Framework. So in this chapter, I tell about the pause method and the term pause, all capital letters represent is an acronym for a way to pause and prepare yourself for listening. So here's what how it goes.

11:04 P stands for just pause. So you're pausing to ponder, to pray, to meditate, and that is in the moment. Just listen to what someone has said to you. Take a breath. It may feel a little bit uncomfortable and awkward because we're so accustomed to immediate responses, but it's OK. It is OK to pause for a moment. It is even OK to say, let me pause for a moment and think about that. It's OK to do that. We just, we have to make it normal and it's not normal. But if we're not doing that, then what we are doing is reactive listening.

11:46 And reactive listening simply means we are listening in order to react. We're listening to respond instead of listening to understand. So pause P, pause A stands for acceptance. We want to accept how we are feeling or how they might be feeling. We want to accept how we are interpreting things or how they might be interpreting things. Feelings are completely natural. They're difficult to change, but you can change how you think about your feelings. OK, so just recognize it. Accept your emotions as well as a potential feelings and emotions of or the emotions and interpretations of your dialogical partner.

12:30 And notice I've probably used the term dialogical partner a couple of times. This comes from the work of Jim Knight. I highly suggest you dig into that and understand that what we're going for is a dialogical partnership that back and forth where we both are listening to understand moving forward. OK, so we talked about PA you is understand, try to understand from other potential potential perspectives. This is where perception checking can come in really handy. OK, So what matters most here is the active attempting to understand, right? We may not actually understand where they're coming from, where we might have a hard time getting around that, but we need to pursue understanding.

13:20 S stands for separate. This is pretty obvious, but it's we don't do it. We it is so hard for us to do, especially if the emotions are high. Separate your personal feelings from the situation and try to become more objective it. I know this sounds a little bit contrary to accepting feelings, but it's really not like you accepting your emotions doesn't mean clinging to them as fact. What we want to do is work to separate our feelings from the situation and that allows us to focus on the facts better and better understand others viewpoints.

14:01 So see it as this object, it is something that is, this situation is something that can be separated from me. My feelings cannot always be separated from this situation. But I can see the situation more as this thing that we are coming around to talk about. And then finally, EE is just engage. Decide the most appropriate way to engage moving forward. So you've grounded yourself, now you should be better prepared for how to move forward in this conversation. This pause method allows you just a quick moment to gain some clarity before you continue a conversation. Is it easy to do?

14:53 Absolutely not. None of what I have shared in this episode or last week's episode is easy to do. If it was, I probably wouldn't be recording a podcast episode about it and we probably wouldn't experience so many situations that are uncomfortable when it comes to conversations. Today I have told you about what we can do during the meeting that the three things that I feel like are most important. Or just pay attention to your bad behaviors regarding listening. Practice perception checking. Remember, I'm linking the episode to that podcast to that episode. Wait, whoa, that all didn't make sense. Let me back up. I'm linking that podcast episode in the show notes about perception checking.

15:39 And then finally, the third thing is practice the pause method. If you gain nothing else from the pause method because it is a lot to remember, remember to just pause, breathe and think. Make it the norm. Will it make people a little bit uncomfortable? Maybe. Is that OK sometimes? Yeah, I'm going to say that it is. I'm going to say that it is OK if you want to hear more about that or have a conversation about that or be prepared for an upcoming conversation that you have or a meeting that you feel uncomfortable about, comfortable about, let me know. I would love to hear about it and have a quick conversation via either Marco Polo, Zoom, or simply e-mail me.

16:23 My e-mail is casey@clarity-driven.com. Okay guys, I hope you've gained something from this, and if so, I'd love to hear what's been most useful for you. We will catch you in next week's episode. Bye. Hey listener, I am so honored that you listen to today's episode and I hope you gained something valuable from it. I'd also be honored if you did ME3 solid favors. First, subscribe to this show. I've got a lot of great content coming up, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Second, be sure you're following me on social media platforms. You can find me at. Catch up with Casey on LinkedIn or Instagram. And finally, if you were looking to book a dynamic and relatable speaker for your next event, conference, or retreat, I would love to bring a message about how the craft of clarity makes a significant impact on both leadership and life.