Episode 306: Powerful Phrases for Dealing With Workplace Conflict with Karin Hurt and David Dye

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So with that, let's get into today's episode.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Karen Hurt and David Dye from Let's Grow Leaders. The podcast name is The Leadership Podcast. And so this is going to be— I love the fact whenever we are able to touch on topics that we've discussed before, but I really love it whenever we can look at business maybe from a slightly different lens. And today we're going to be talking about workplace conflict. Now, if you've been in business any amount of time, you have faced some sort of workplace conflict. When you're dealing with people, people on your team, your customers, people are complex, and there's going to be some level of conflict, especially coming out of COVID And from 3 years ago, there were so many things where people are going remote, etc., and it just created a lot of stress in the workplace. And we spend so much of our time at work. I really think that you're going to get a ton out of this, and I say that often, but there's some things in this episode that I think you're going to be able to really take away. We, we spend some time talking about vision and how do you not only just craft a vision, but more importantly, how do you get your team bought into that vision. That was one of our very first topics. And then we bring that down into what they call the 4 C's. So we're going to unpack that. And then furthermore, they're going to share some actual phrases They call them the GOATs, which I think is great. The GOAT phrases, the greatest of all time phrases that you can actually deploy and use. These are tools that you can use to implement right away in your business. I think you're going to get a ton out of this. This was a jam-packed episode where we go kind of high level all the way down to eye level and very practical. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Karen Hurt and David die.

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Karen and David, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Oh, thanks so much for having us.

Delighted to be here.

Excited to have you. So we always start with background and origin story. I love hearing the journey of how people got to kind of where they are. So Karen, I'll tee you up first. Why don't you share a little bit about your background and, and kind of how you got to where you are, what you're doing today?

Okay, so before founding Let's Grow Leaders 10 years ago, I was at Verizon for two decades So that's, adding up those years starts to make me feel really old. But I was in HR for the first decade and I did everything but compensation. So leadership development, organizational development, business partner, lots of merger integration work. And then I moved to a variety of field assignments. So I led a 2,200-person sales team and a 10,000-person customer service organization. The reason I start there is because everything we share is really practical and is based based on the experiences that we've had. Yes, it's research-based, but we don't share anything unless we know that it would have been helpful for us and our teams. And then I'll let David share his background, and then we'll share a little bit about how we got together.

Yeah, absolutely. So my, my leadership background was in human services. So I had a 17-year career in the nonprofit world and serving from every position from starting like volunteer leader up to chief operating officer for state organizations, CEO for a national replication, and did a lot of leadership development. My favorite thing to do was pouring into leaders, investing in leaders. And you get to a point where you just can't do that face-to-face anymore, particularly as we were expanding nationally. And so, I started writing a blog and that blog led to a book, to starting my own business ultimately. Karen also did a blog journey, and that's how we actually met was via our leadership blogging online.

Yeah, so I started my blog when I was leading our— the transformation of our outsourced call center channel, and I had all these call centers that were taking Verizon's calls, but I didn't have direct influence over them. And so, I was writing a blog because I wanted to share practical tools and techniques so they would have better cultures so they'd get better results. And so the quality of the calls would go up. And so I never intended to really leave Verizon, but the blog blew up. It started getting an international following. People said, when are you gonna write your book? When are you going to come be our keynoter? And then I thought, huh, maybe I could do that. So David and I met on, as he said, online, writing in this space, not the swipe right, swipe left kind of online. And we showed up at the same book publishing lab and noticed that we were writing pretty much the same book. Which was our first book, Winning Well. So we decided to collaborate. We wrote the entire book with him living in Colorado, me living in Maryland, and apparently fell in love while we were doing it. Get to the end of writing the book, we're starting to decide, you know, how are we gonna promote and everything? And we realized, I realized first that we had fallen in love, and then I told David we had. And so now we are married. We continue to write books together. Together and our last book. So we had Winning Well Together, then Courageous Cultures, and now this new one, Powerful Phrases.

So, oh, that's fantastic. What a great story. Well, um, I am really excited. I love the fact that you talk about practical tools. I mean, there are some really great books out there, but sometimes I wonder, was this put in like in academia? Like, I don't know how to apply it. You know, it's like it's way up here. It's not even 30,000 foot. It's like way up here in the stratosphere. And I think, um, yeah, helpful. I don't know what to do with that. And so I love practicality to where it's born actually from real life experience. Okay, so here's my first question. Karen, what do you mean by leadership development? I know it's a really simple question, but like, what is that? What is leadership development? Why should I even care as a as a business owner, entrepreneur, why should I even care about my leadership development for me and even my leaders?

Yeah, when I think about leadership development, what I'm thinking about is how do you help the people managers on your team get better at the, at the human engagement side of the results that they're trying to achieve? So, you know, we talk about how do you really create great clarity towards an audacious vision And then how do you bring your team along through that? And so when we talk about growing leaders, we talk about doing that in very practical ways in terms of how do you equip people with the communication skills they need to be successful? How do you help them stay focused on the most important things? How do you equip them to have the difficult conversations that they need to have in a way that balances the results and relationships?

Oh, that's good. I love balancing the results and the relationship for sure. Now, I personally— David, I'm going to throw it to you to add in some color there, but I personally would— I can bend over to the hard skills of business easier than the soft skills of business. It's like it's more natural for me to kind of go that direction, you know, especially with the team. But the reality is, is they— it's got to be both, right? It's got to be like both sides of it. David, um, love to hear your thoughts on that, and then I'm going to ask something around vision.

Yeah, certainly. The, the color I would add is, you know, when you think about any kind of skill in business— and so if you're insurance, right, you got it, you've got sales as a skill, and you've got managing all of the accounts and dealing with policyholders and their needs and all those sorts of things, right? So you've got the technical expertise of the skill that you're bringing to the table in whatever kind of work you might do. Managing and leading people is a skill. And right now, Gallup actually has released some, some recent research. Managers actually have a higher disengagement rate than employees for the first time in history since they've been doing these numbers for decades. And so that skill and that challenge of leading people well doesn't come naturally and we have to invest in it just like we would anything else. So if I'm investing in somebody who's customer-facing and helping them to be good with customers, to have the technical knowledge and expertise they need, well, and that person gets promoted into some kind of leadership or management role, now they're entrusted with your most important, your most valuable asset, which are people. Do they have the skills to do that? And so equipping people with those practical skills, that's the way that I look at leadership development.

Yeah, that's great. So Karen mentioned something, David, I'd love to get your thoughts on. And she said about getting buy-in on a vision. So I'd heard for a long time early in my career, you know, vision, vision, vision. I was like, oh yeah, whatever, all this vision stuff. And then actually I figured out, no, having a vision for where this ship is going is rather important. Okay. And so I'm a huge believer personally. Of the 3-year vision, and this is where we're going over the next 3 years, not just looking at it on a 1-year time horizon. But my question is around practically being able to get people bought in to the vision and keeping it. Now, there's obviously an aspect of, well, you, the business owner, better have— better be clear yourself on where it's going.

Sure.

But then I'm really curious about what does it actually look like to get people bought into that?

Yeah, it's funny, as you're asking that question, I'm thinking back to my very first leadership role ever. And same, I had read everywhere, oh, vision, vision, vision, you got to have a vision. So I spent all weekend coming up with the vision, and I came to meet my team, all 3 of them, and I had nice envelopes that were ready to be opened, and I laid them all out for everybody, and with great fanfare had everybody open their envelope to unveil the vision that I had spent all weekend coming up with. And they read it and looked at me as if, "What is wrong with you?" And this was decades and decades ago. They looked at me, "What's wrong with you?" And one of them said, "David, were you ever going to ask us?" And it was such an important leadership lesson. When we're talking about vision, yes, absolutely, as a founder, as a business owner, as a team leader, whatever your role might be, you've got a picture of what tomorrow can be and what is possible if we work together. What's beyond any one of us to do if we collaborate and work together? And if you want that to be owned and you want people invested in it, talking and getting their perspective of what's possible and what they see as the possibilities and what's their why and encompassing and wrapping all of that together, from a practical standpoint, that creates shared ownership and it's a much, much stronger path to go than just trying to compel people to follow whatever might have been in your head.

And we spend a lot of time with organizations helping them translate a big picture vision down and to execute it at a very practical level. And what it comes down to is you've got to take— we call it our most important thing. So any organization, they're going to have— say you've got your 3-year strategy, you're going to have your 3 most important strategic things that you're accomplishing. That's your vision. Well, underneath that, you have your initiatives. Right? These are the things that you're doing to, you know, that you've got timelines and action plans around to accomplish that vision. Underneath that, you have activities that are going to help with those initiatives. What many people don't talk about though is the behaviors, the specific habits that everyone needs to do every single day to show up. These are things that you're doing because they're the fabric of the work that you're doing. If you've got habits around customer If you've got habits around sales, if you've got habits around the way you're treating your employees, it's all of those pulling together is what helps you to execute on a vision.

Yeah, it's almost like they're saying, okay, you know, I see the direction that the business is going, that you as the founder own that vision, but they have to see themselves in that and they have to connect the day-to-day of, you know, whenever they have that difficult customer, they have to be able to connect the day-to-day to this broader picture. You know, I think oftentimes, like when you think about like a Lego or a puzzle set on the COVID or on the box, there's that picture of what it's going to end up like. And in our head, it's so crystal clear. In fact, I had someone tell me recently, we were at a retreat in Kiowa and they said, you know what, it's not even, it's not even that, it's more clear than that. I— it's like I'm, I'm in it and it's like 3-dimensional, you know, or maybe even 4-dimensional, whatever that is. Like they said, like it's even more clear than just the picture on the box. But yet I struggle so much of taking it out of my head, getting it in on paper, because like even my words seem to like fall short on what it is I'm trying to say, even though I, I'm trying to use the words. And then they say then for me to take that and actually communicate to the team becomes a whole nother challenge for me to be able to do. So, Karen, thoughts on that?

Yeah. So one of the things that we, to break that down for people is, are you communicating anything that's strategically important? The things that are the key elements of your vision, not once, not twice, but 5 times, 5 different ways. So if there is a certain way you want people showing up for your customers, And if there are habits that you really need people to do consistently, one of the mistakes we see organizations make is say, "Well, we told them at the offsite, you know, or we sent an email." And, you know, there is so much noise to break through. So it's about how do you communicate? Okay, so you did it at the offsite. Fantastic. Then maybe you do follow it up with an email. But then what are some of the other creative ways that you are going to reinforce whatever these key messages are so much that people are like, I got it, you can stop now, right? And that's when you know that you've probably communicated just enough when everybody is tired of hearing it.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay, David, so I have one question that we're going to move off vision. Okay, so we're going to move to, we're going to move to something I've never had, which is workplace conflict. I'm saying that jokingly, obviously. But, uh, David, but one last question on vision, okay? Yep. I'm specifically asking around the length of the vision document, okay? So what I'm saying is, is that at first I looked at my vision as a paragraph, okay? And then you read books and you start to understand, no, no, no, it's actually there's no way I can pull this down into a pithy paragraph. It really needs to be multi-page. I was like, okay, that makes sense. But the longer it got, the more it got difficult to communicate to the team because they're like, well, they can't remember all that. What do you want them to do, memorize it like they're in 7th grade like my son? No, no, I don't want them to memorize it. I want them to internalize it. You get what I'm getting at, right? So it's like, I don't know, what do I do? Take that big long document that's 5 pages long and summarize it and give them that. What are your thoughts on that?

Uh, my thoughts are sensory experience. And so one of the, the ways to think about vision is, as you're doing that co-creation, as you're communicating what that picture looks like, what does it look like, feel like, smell like, taste like? What is it, the experience of being in that world as it exists when we get there? And Great visions are, to some extent, we don't fully get there, right? If you're trying to provide best-in-class customer service, well, customer service needs and desires change and evolve over time. So we're never gonna actually get there, but we're always pursuing and moving towards that, right? So engaging our team, what does that look like? What does it feel like? What's happening? What does the customer feel? What's their experience? All of those kinds of things help to find that and to kind of create that space. And that a vision is literally a picture. It's a picture of what can be. And so, we'll do this with our clients sometimes is getting a group together and say, "All right, let's actually draw it out. What's a vision of how this team can be or how this organization company can be at our best when we're operating at our very best?" And they'll draw metaphors. A line of ships or a hiking, you know, entourage going up a mountain in a really organized, equipped way. And okay, we'll draw a picture of what that looks like right now. And, you know, there's a house on fire, everybody's pointing a different direction and, you know, that kind of thing. And so that, that sensory experience of actually making it tactile in terms of what we can see, hear, feel, taste, touch, all of that can help get that because our brains can absorb a lot of information where it doesn't have to be 11 pages. And it can be a shared, literal shared picture of what's going on.

And I think the most important thing is a 5-page document feels overwhelming because it's still hard for people to understand what is— so what do I do? And so one of the things we spend a lot of time thinking with organizations on is, okay, so say your value is, you know, is integrity, your value is communication, your value is Some will have work-life balance. Your value is risk-taking. What does that look like at a behavioral level? And what do you do if two of those values are in, in conflict? And place real scenarios on it. So say we really do value work-life balance for our staff. Well, we also value responsiveness for our clients. Okay, well, what do we do? And then you pull a scenario out. What do you do when those two values are going to clash? And because sometimes they will. And the more real you can make that, that's the kind of stuff that people will remember. And we actually did that exact exercise with a senior leadership team. And we had these scenarios and the CEO answered the question. No, you in this circumstance, you would tell the client no.

And they're not—

everybody's eyes got really big. And they're like, you would? And she's like, oh my gosh, we've got to run a sustainable business here. We can't just run ourselves to the ground all the time. Our clients will understand. You know, and it's that kind of, oh, that's what we mean this culture is.

And they're not hypotheticals. These were actual situations that had actually occurred in the history of the business that everybody could wrap their head around and go, oh yeah, I know what that looks like.

Yeah. All right. So that's actually a good one to tee up. So you all have your newest book that's coming out in May of 2024. This is my shameless plug that I need this book beforehand. No, I'm just kidding. So Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Work workplace conflict, what to say next to de-stress the workday, build collaboration, and calm difficult customers. Okay, I don't have any of those issues. I never have. But there's people out there listening to some of this that probably do. Um, okay, uh, now that being said, here's, here's how I'm going to tee this question up. I, if I could— I'm not going to because I didn't get permission— but I have a client that voxed me, sent me a Voxer this just a couple hours ago and said, hey, me and my effectively second in command, one of his leaders, we're having a riff. All right, we have a disagreement. And so tomorrow he and I have a call. He wants to talk about this riff, this conflict that they're having, okay, around basically what to do. There's kind of moving chess pieces around. All right, I'll just kind of leave it at that. The very first question that I said, or first thing I sent back to him is I said, that is wonderful that you're actually having conflict. I was like, the fact that you can have healthy conflict in with him and that you guys can work through this is a sign of a healthy culture. Did I tell him right?

Yes.

Okay, that's good.

All right.

That was coaching coaches right there on that. But no, Karen, talk about that. No, seriously, about around this, even the mindset first around conflict, because I early in my career, wanted to avoid conflict like it was the plague. Like if we have any conflict, any rift, that that's a sign of a bad culture.

Yeah. So conflict can be incredibly constructive, right? Or it can be destructive depending on how you handle it. And so, and I'll let David speak to a little bit about the research and what some of the people— we asked people, uh, we surveyed people all over the world and asked to, you know, if faced with a conflict again, what would they do differently? And it's lean into the conflict. So we'll share some of the statistics. But in conflict, that's where your creative tension is going to be. David and I are in conflict all of the time. Our brains work differently. We have different priorities that we're focused on. And that's what keeps a very healthy company, right? Because somebody's looking for the vision and somebody's saying, well, we got to look at how are we going to operationalize this? This thing. And somebody's pushing and stretching and somebody's saying, you know what, let's not bite off too much. Let's organize this in a way. How much money are we going to spend? How does this— right? And all of that could be bad conflict if we were yelling at each other, right? But if we're like, wait a minute, so we know how to talk about this in a very constructive way. So, you know, we talk about 4 C's of conflict of, you know, really creating clarity. Do we have a shared vision of what success looks looks like. And so that would be the first question I would have asked those, uh, the person who called you. What does success look like for you? A successful outcome look like for you? What does it look like for this other person? Because if you are trying to accomplish two different things, then you ought to know that first before you try to talk about the how you're going to get there. And so then it's, uh, you know, the connection is the next C. Do we care enough about each other as human beings? Do I think you have my best interest at heart? Because if you enter in a conflict with someone and they think that you are going to throw them under the bus or they can't trust you, no matter whether you use every powerful phrase in our new book, you're going to have a problem because they don't— the human relationship isn't there. And then we talk about curiosity, showing up really curious in these conversations to really want to understand what is the other person's perspective on this and be open and really willing to Listen not only to their perspective but to possibilities for the future. And then ending in commitment, which is how a lot of times conflict doesn't go well, is because we don't reach closure on what we've decided. And so it, it keeps resurfacing the same conflict again and again because we haven't articulated a clear path forward.

That's great. What were those 4 C's again?

So it's, it starts with clarity. Connection, curiosity, and commitment.

Oh, that's great. Yeah. David, you all have— I love research around some of these things because then as valuable as our own experience is, the reality is that we can get hypermyopically focused on this one scenario with this one former team member that used to work for me versus being able to see it across multiple companies, industries, and thousands of people. And to be able to see that. So what was some of the research that you did and what did it show you?

Yeah, absolutely. First, we wanted to know what's going on with conflict today because the last several years have been a little topsy-turvy. And so how has that affected everything? So in terms of the frequency or rate of conflict, what was fascinating is 70% of folks said, of these 5,000+ 46 countries, said, you know, yes, I am experiencing as much or more conflict as I ever have. So you've got that growth. But then the 30% who said, no, I'm having less, we dug in and said, okay, why? And what was fascinating were the number of people who said, oh, well, it's because I left or the toxic person left or I'm working from home so I don't have to be around people anymore. And so a good solid chunk, half or more of that 30%, they're not necessarily having less conflict for productive reasons, the kind that you were talking about. It's more escape. And so you're losing out on the productive conflict as well. And so, you know, that was the very first kind of top-level finding is that a lot of challenges in that regard. And then all of the common effects— stress, people leaving, lower quality of work, reduced productivity, all those sorts of things. And as Karen said, one of the most interesting pieces was— and really where we get into in the book— was we asked people to describe one of their biggest conflicts. In their career and what happened and all that. And then ask them for, if you could go back, give yourself advice for that situation, what would that be? And 55% of all of those folks said, "My advice to myself would be, if I could go back, I would tell myself to be patient and stay calm." And 21% said, "I would recommend to myself, talk about it, have the conversation." And I love both of those, be patient, stay calm, and talk about it. And there you've got 70, just over 3/4 the people, that's their advice to themselves. And I think, you know, emotionally we can all say, yeah, sure. But the question is, how do you do that? Yeah, how do you do that? And that's where the powerful phrases really come in.

You know, um, uh, early, early in my career, I, I mean, clearly I was joking earlier, um, around those things. There's just no way that you've been in business for any length of time that you've not had conflict and stress. I mean, it's just, it's just the nature of it. Um, you're dealing with people and people are complex, you know? And so whenever I think about those 3 things, be patient, stay calm, and talk about it. Um, yeah, I didn't do any of that. You know, number 1 is I wasn't patient. I was like, nope, we're going to talk about this right now. Uh, that's number 1. Number 2, I was highly emotional about it. Okay, I was emotional. I took it way too seriously. I'm still, you know, like, my ambition and drive to try to move things forward was just like just taking it out on people. And I really regret some of that. And I've actually had to go back and clean up some of those, you know, relationships over the years because of the way I handled some of those situations. And I wish to myself, like, man, it was a lot easier if I could have handled this a lot differently then versus having to go back years later and clean up some of the mess in the way that I handled that, because that conversation was even harder, um, than it would have been. And then the third is that really I didn't even talk about it. I mean, truthfully, I was like just skimming the surface because I wasn't willing to look internally inside of me and see that, well, maybe I actually had a part to play in this. So it's a lot easier for me to point the finger at you, David, and be like, was your fault, you messed up. It may be in some cases they did for sure. And I wanted a culture of performance. I wanted a culture to where we actually got crap done. Yet my human element, which is why I said I can lean more on the hard skills of business than it is on the softer skills, is that I realized, hey, you know what, I need to be a better leader.

Period.

I just need to be better. And so I need to have control of my emotions, um, and to be able to work through some of those situations. So hopefully somebody listening to this can kind of relate even to my, to my own personal story and see that. But when you have the drive to want to improve, I think that ultimately you can. Karen, I'd love for you to have, um, share some thoughts on that. And then, uh, I want to get— I'm going to steal Okay, we're going to make you give us 1 or 2 of these phrases. You have 300 actual phrases, so you're not going to leave the podcast until we get like at least 1 or 2 of these teasers of things to actually say, which I love because that helps me to go like, okay, great, got it. 30,000-foot, give me a phrase or something. Be able to—

All right. So, so, David, let me— I'll respond to finish up that part. And then if you can share a couple of— this is a teaser— some of the GOATs. GOATs. So, we call them the Greatest of All Time. So, we've got 12 GOATs that go with the C's. And so, here's the thing, and I'll just give you this example. The other day, one of the things that I do for one of our clients is I go down and I have coaching office hours, you know, a couple of times a year where people can come and just talk about anything that's on their mind. Well, one of these guys, he comes running in to my door, right? Like, he's like, "Do you have a minute right this minute? I am in a conflict and I just got an email from David and it looks like you have a new book. Is that book in your purse? 'Cause I need that book right now." And so of course, book's not out yet. So I'm like, "Oh, come in. What's going on?" And he had gotten him, to your point, himself so riled up and so fired up. And he's like, "I haven't slept in 3 weeks." This has been going on. And I'm like, have you talked to her about this? Well, no, because she's not going to be receptive to this. And so, you know, basically, so we talked through a very simple plan for him to approach her calmly, showing up with connection, showing up really curious in the conversation, and being real clear about what success looked like for him. And this conversation— so then, like, 2 hours later, He says, "Oh my gosh, that was so good. That was not hard." Guess what his regret was? "I wish I had done this a month ago." Right? And that's— so I think that's it. So we talk ourselves out of having these important conversations. And I know I have too. Well, and we assume how the person is going to respond without ever even giving them a chance to engage. And so if there's anything your listeners, we hope they will take away from this conversation, is ask yourself, what is at stake if I stay silent? Right? You know, who, who is hurt?

Me?

The results? Our relationship? Am I re— and what would happen if I tried? And even if you try and you do it really well, and it may or may not work, But then you still have information that you have information that you are willing, you took the high road and that you were willing to try and you have information about what to do next because you know where that other person is coming from.

No, I love that. That's great. All right, David, give us some of the GOATs.

All right. So, when we say the GOATs, the greatest of all time, there are, we, Karen mentioned the 4 dimensions, connection, clarity, curiosity, commitment. So, we've got 3 power phrases for each one. I'm not going to give you all 3 times, so I'm not going to give all 12, but try to— let's do one in each category.

That'd be awesome.

Um, so connection— want to connect to the humanity in one another. A couple ways to do this. So sometimes you can just say, hey, listen, I care about you, I care about this project, I care about our team here and the results we're trying to achieve. I'm confident we can find a solution here. They're just stating my belief in us can be a form of connection. And a bonus on connection, another one there that's also good is very simple. Tell me more.

Oh yeah.

Somebody says something to just don't respond yet and just say, huh, tell me more. And that is so connected because most of us are so eager to get our word in. And when we ask somebody, no, tell me more, what else is there? That communicates a connection that I really do care about what you have to say.

So just tell me more.

All right, clarity. And this is key. Karen was mentioning clarity earlier. One of my favorites, one of the GOATs here: What would a successful outcome do for you? Hmm. Not what is a successful outcome. What would a successful outcome do for you? It takes it to the next step level so you know what the criteria are that they need satisfied in this particular condition? Well, they may come with their idea about, you know, I need time off. Okay, well, we've got a lot of things going on. What would a successful outcome do for you here? Well, what I really need is— why I'm asking for the time off is because of X, Y, or Z. Now that we know that, now we can start crafting solutions. So clarity— what would a successful outcome do for you? Curiosity— another of my favorites here is I'm curious, how does this look from your perspective?

Hmm.

So how does it look from your perspective? That acknowledges your perspective is different than my perspective. I don't have a corner on the world or all the truth there is to know, like, and I genuinely want to know what's it look like from your perspective. There's a humility in that, to show up with genuine curiosity and be willing to listen there. And then finally, commitment. Karen was mentioning commitment is all about do we have an agreement together that's going to help us craft a different path forward. So one of my favorite with this is to really recap and do a check for understanding and make sure we're on the same page. So, you know, just at the end of a conversation, all right, to recap, I'm thinking we have agreed to this. Is that your understanding? And that this is an observable, concrete next thing that we're going to do. So that we both— yes, this is what we're going to do. And then we schedule— this is again a bonus, I'm going to do a second one here, um, but a second GOAT under commitment is let's schedule time to talk about this again and see how our solution is working. So that we've created a natural follow-up, increases the chances we're going to keep our new commitment to each other, but also it gives us a default time to talk about it when the inevitable interruption happens. The thing we weren't expecting blows up, and oh my goodness, we— that wasn't even on our radar, and now it screwed up our commitment to each other, and we feel horrible if we don't keep that commitment. But if we don't have a time to talk about it, then it just goes lacking and everything else. So if we can schedule that time to circle back and say, how's it going, now we have a chance to deal with it if it didn't go well.

You know what, what really strikes me with this is I was, I was looking down at my notes And when I'm thinking about be patient, stay calm, and talk about it, and I'm like relating it back to now, just some of these goats, I think to myself, yeah, just even having these phrases would actually help me to be patient and to stay calm and to be able to actually talk about it. Because now I feel both. So oftentimes I'll say mindset, skill set, tool set, like, okay, like I have the approach to this. Okay, now I've actually, like, you've helped us to be able to today to acquire some skills to handle these situations, knowing that they're going to come. And then number 3, you've given me some tools, some phrases here to be able to handle. I think this is fantastic. Karen, I know people are going to want to connect with you all. This has been a great conversation. Where would you point them to? Where would you point them to?

Thank you. So our website is letsgrowleaders.com. And the book there, you can learn more about the book there, as well as all of our programs. And the book is already available for preorder on Amazon. So if you're interested and you want a nice surprise in May, go ahead and order that now. Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict. And of course, we'd love to connect on LinkedIn. Karen with an I, Karen Hirt and David Dye, D-Y-E.

Awesome. David and Karen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Really enjoyed it and hope to have you back on in the future.

Absolutely our pleasure. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Well, I think one thing around the vision, which you've heard me talk about, just crafting a 3-year vision many times. One of the things that really stands out to me about that is the 5 times and 5 ways that they said kind of in passing, but approaching how to be able to share not only multiple times consistently, but also sharing it in 5 different ways. So, if you went to a quarterly retreat, maybe you do something via email, maybe you send something, you do it in person during your weekly team meetings, et cetera. I think that that was a really good approach to it, not just saying, hey, be consistent in your messaging, which obviously I've even probably have been guilty of saying, but actually saying, hey, what are the 5 different ways that we can communicate the vision? I did love 'be patient, stay calm,' and to think about it. And yeah, I mean, I was open and transparent and said that, 'Hey, look, I've messed this up so many times before,' and I probably still do. So I'm not even saying that I don't do that now, but I do know that there was a time that I really used to run away from conflict. Now, I'm not actively seeking it out. I'm not saying that we need to do that per se, but there is this idea that, hey, if conflict happens, we are able to stay, be patient, stay calm, and then to be able to talk about it. And then just in some of those little phrases that they get, hey, tell me more. That's a great tool to have, a question to have, or as a tool to have in your arsenal. What is— what would a successful outcome do for you? Not just what a successful outcome is, but what would it do for you? How does this look from your perspective? Um, let's schedule time to actually talk about this and to continue to talk about it. I, I think those are all just, again, tools that you can have in your arsenal to be able to deploy, that not only when you're having workplace, workplace conflict, but just in general, and whenever you're trying to lead and become a better leader, uh, for your team so that you can ultimately move the business forward and be able to hit those big lofty goals, targets, and outcomes that you have set. For the business. Go and check out their book, pre-order it. I think it's going to be an awesome book whenever it comes out. Obviously, you got a little taste of that. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors Club Capital, Coach P Consulting, TodayApp Pro, and Autopilot Recruiting. We're so thankful to have them as our podcast partners. And you're listening to this, we have got some big news just on the horizon. I'm just going to say, share that. Is the biggest release or biggest advancement of the podcast that we've ever put forth. And so I'm really excited about teasing that for you just a little bit. So by the time that you listen to this, we'll be getting very, very close to Thanksgiving of 2023. And we're going to be just on the cusp of releasing something that I think is going to be fantastic for all of you. We have been working for a really long time about how do we provide more value? How do we do more for our listening audience. How do we— certainly, how do we continue to grow the podcast? How do we make the podcast itself better? How do we do all of those things to help all of you to be able to get above the business? Well, we've got some things that are coming down the pipe. We're really excited to share with all of you. So thank you to our podcast sponsors, allow us to be able to do that so we can hopefully make an impact in your business and serve more people. If you are looking to be able to develop a team and gain some A players on your team, well, I just was talking to somebody truly about this this morning, is that the thing that they need to do is that they need to build that recruiting system that they feel like that they have that, that system that churns out A players. Well, one of the parts to that is to being able to have really quality people at the top of the funnel. Well, that's where Autopilot Recruiting comes in. They do an exceptional job. You have a dedicated, dedicated recruiter that gets to know you, your business, what are the outcomes that you're after, and how can they help you on the people side to give you some really high-quality candidates that you can talk to and see if they're going to be a good fit in your organization and then take it the rest of the way through your recruiting system. Once they come aboard, then you obviously want to develop them. And that's where Coach P comes in. Coach P does a fantastic job not only developing you as the business owner and the entrepreneur, but also in helping you to be able to coach and develop your team. They're going to give you— if you're an insurance agency and they're going to give you the behind the scenes of what they're doing and what's working right now. So go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Let them know you heard about it on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast and go to Coach P consulting.com. Now, once they come on board, there's a couple things we need to do. One is we need to give them a great tool, right? A great access to a tool that puts the WordTracks, customized WordTracks, right where the action is happening on a day-to-day basis. And let's be real, we're all accustomed to beautiful websites and beautiful user interfaces. Well, that's exactly what it is with todayapppro.com. It's going to be corporate approved. It's going to match with your CRM in a beautiful way so you don't have to worry about any compliance issues. So go to todayapppro.com, todayapppro.com. Now, once you've attracted all these players, once you've developed them, and once they start utilizing a tool, what's going to happen next? We're going to start generating some revenue. We're going to start growing the business. We're going to have some cash now that we can deploy. But we need to be able to understand how to read these, these dials, so to speak, the 3 dials in the business. And for a lot of people, that can be very overwhelming. And we've heard about utilizing financials to make decisions. Maybe you've even heard me say that, but there's really some steps, tangible steps that you can take. And that's where Club Capital comes in to help you to give some great insight into your financials that maybe you've never had before, using those insights to make better decisions that are non-emotional. You can step back away from it, get above the business and be able to make some really good decisions of when and who and how and how much are we going to invest in people, in marketing, etc. Um, and then ultimately, here's the thing: how can you make more money too? How about that? I said it. Yes, you got in business to make an impact, got in business to be able to, to make a difference in your community, and you can do that. But you also got in business to be able to make more income yourself. Let's get real about it. Well, to do that, we need to be able to set some targets. We need to be able to have insight. We need to be able to start managing it. And as they said on the podcast, let's lean in. Let's lean into that. It's not lean back. We're going to lean into it and make some decisions. We're going to do, you know, we're going to get access to the tools. We're going to develop the skills. We're going to understand the mindset that we need to be able to do that. Go to club.capital, Art of One. Till next episode, lead well.

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