How to Have Difficult Conversations

Hello my friends. I'm Brendon Burchard, host of the Brendon show and founder of growthday.com and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. I believe that every day we can be inspired. We can live with intention and purpose. We can bring the joy and honor the struggles of each day to push ourselves to grow, to serve, to be a role model, to lead extraordinary lives. I believe that every day is a great day to grow. That's why I started my company, growthday.com it's an online personal growth platform where you can get me and the world's best personal development teachers live coaching you every week. Sharing our wisdom, keeping you motivated and accountable, encouraging you to find the aliveness and the connection and meaning of life that we're all after. If you're not a member yet, please go sign up@growthday.com and join our huge worldwide community of achievers. For less than a dollar a day, you get the world's best teachers live every week. And look, you've probably known for a long time that you needed some expert guidance, an inspired community and life changing tools. So please, your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode. My friends, please listen closely. Maybe you take some notes so you remember these insights of personal growth and share this episode with three of your friends because we all have to share more positive messages in the world today. So share this with three friends just like you who are committed to their personal growth. And also be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram. Rendon Burchard, Join our million plus community there on Instagram so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening. Now let's begin. Have you ever had to have a difficult conversation with somebody that you just didn't want to have? Whether it was like you delivering a hard message of feedback to them about something that they did that bothered you, or it was giving them difficult information about something happened to a family member of theirs or a friend and it was just a conversation you were looking at and you're like, ugh, I don't want to do this, I don't know how to do this. Or you were just pissed and you were like, how do I do this without starting World War three? I got four ideas for you today. First one that comes to mind is that don't enter that conversation with whatever emotion you are feeling. Conversations are not about you and you already know that. And whenever there's another person, it changes. It's not just 100% on you, it's this 50, 50 game, right? Back and forth, back and forth. And I bet most of the major regrets that you've had in your past or major conflicts that you had in your past was because you were in your own emotion when you had it. Something pissed you off, you got fired up with somebody, right? Something came up and you were just upset about and you said something you wish you'd never said, you felt so terrible about it. And it made the conflict and the conversation ten times harder because you were in your space, you were in your emotion and you forgot. It's like takes two to tango. So first rule is never enter a difficult conversation from a place of emotion that is just your own selfish emotion. Move into a service emotion, which is humility, kindness. Humility says you don't know everything in the world. You're intelligent enough to think. You know what, maybe there's two sides to this story or it's humble enough to say, maybe I don't know exactly how to handle this, so I'm going to go in under the radar. I'm going to go in easy into this conversation versus coming out saying, you did this, I hate you or did you know that? So go in slow. Have humility about the conversation. You don't know the whole story ever in any situation. And also bring in kindness to it. Know that any outcome that you want is not going to come from, you know, barraging the other person with demands and requests and beating them down. That's never going to win you a long term relationship there or support. So enter everything from a place of kindness. If you can get yourself in that place saying, I don't know everything, I'm going to be kind because that's a value in my life. And not only is it value in your life, there's a value in the conversation. Whatever you want, you're going to get more of it by being kind than you are going to be by being brutal on somebody. So first, step out of your emotion of selfish, like concern. Step into the emotion of service and that's humility and kindness. Number two, big idea, begin with the end in mind. How do you want them to feel at the end of the conversation? How do you want to feel at the end of the conversation? What would you love them to think, believe or do at the end? And what do you want to think, believe or do at the end? Like always begin with that. People forget this all the time. They just have a spark of emotion or something they have to deliver and they just deliver it without knowing where to go. And if you don't know where to go, you end up in 50 different sort of open alleys of conversation. You open all these loops of conversation that don't get closed. People get confused. Or you end up starting a fight that you didn't even know you were having because you just weren't clear on where you wanted to go. It doesn't mean that you'll always get there exactly. Because again, humility says you're going to learn together, but at least you'll have a sense of what feeling you want. Do you want her to trust you at the end of the conversation? Do you want him to know how you felt? And that's all you're after. Like, what is it you really want at the end of the conversation? Hey, it's Brendon jumping back in here again. Are you looking to go to the next level in your life right now? The next level of joy, abundance, Success. Success. Then you already know that you need to journal about your lessons learned in your life. You got to track your moods and your habits. You have to learn from the best personal development coaches and teachers in the world. And you got to stay inspired and accountable so that you can be more focused, disciplined, joyous and keep growing. That's what the growth day app is going to help you to do, my friend. It's the world's first all in one personal development app. It has all of the tools you need, all the coaching and the community that you need to level up, to progress every week, to track your breakthroughs and to keep growing in every area of your life consistently over the long term. So go start your transformation right now@growthday.com or just download the growth day app on your phone right now. Every day. You can keep improving every day. We are here for you. And every day is truly a great day to grow together. So let's make self improvement a way of life. Let's make that self improvement stick. Go to growthday.com right now. Third, this is the important one. Try the x, y, Z pattern of delivering difficult conversations or making requests. It's this. You say, I saw or heard X and you just described them matter of factly. I saw you do this. I heard that you were doing that. I heard that you were saying this. Someone else was saying whatever. That's X. Y is how you felt. I saw you do that. I felt this way. I felt upset. I felt confused. I felt disrespected. I felt like you didn't honor what we talked about earlier. And then Z is your request. Can we talk about that? Which almost always should be the request, never go to Z. Like, I want you to do this, this, this next time. Never solve the conversation before you have the conversation. It's very important. I saw you do X, I felt Y. So that Z. Or I heard this, I felt this. I'm worried you might feel this. I have to share with this with you. Are you ready? And just ask for permission. Most of the Z, Most of the requests you have are not specific things you want yet. It's an entrance into the conversation. If you open the conversation and they feel like, oh, wow, this person's gonna allow me to give my input into this. They're not coming to the conclusion. They're not accusing me, they're not dictating what I have to do. They. They're actually open to a conversation here. You'll do much, much better. And then the last idea, the fourth big idea. Be more patient than you're used to. When you're dealing with anything difficult, including sharing bad information or bad news to somebody, go slow. Let them have time to talk and feel it out. Just be patient. Don't feel like you have to be that type a person who resolves it, even if you're trying to do something. Well, you know, I remember years ago, I had to make a call to a good friend of mine and let him know that somebody in his family had passed away. It's the conversation you don't want to have. And it's a conversation I just immediately when I found out, I found out from someone who asked me to call this person and tell him the news. And I thought, oh, my gosh, this is. This is terrible. And I also knew this person who had passed away and deeply cared for them. So I was in a very emotional place. And, you know, of course you want to be the first one to call and tell, but I was like, you know what? I better get myself in an okay place. So I walked out of my house, I walked around the block maybe two, three, four times and just thought about how I was feeling, about how he was going to be feeling, about how I would deliver that message. When I started that conversation, I started from a place of absolute kindness, knowing it didn't even matter what I was feeling. What mattered was how he was going to feel because I was going to deliver something that was difficult. I began with the end in mind. I wanted him to know that by the end of the conversation that he was loved, that he was supported That I and our group of friends would do anything we could for him throughout this situation. That we'd be there every day, every, every moment for him, that we had his back and anything he had to change from his work life to deal with the situation to just his emotional life. I made sure that when I told him, I said, hey, you know, I got this call from somebody and it's going to be very difficult. When I got the call, I have to share with you that I was really struck by it. I know it's going to bring you into a very emotional place right away. So are you in a place where you can. Where you can hear something? I have something to share and I'm sorry to be the person I have to share this with you. And he said, oh, yeah, I am. I said, okay. I said, well, I just heard that so and so passed and I just waited. I didn't try to solve it. I didn't try. I heard someone passed away and everything's gonna be okay. I didn't say someone just passed away. And here's how I feel. I didn't say someone passed away. And I know you're feeling this. I just said I heard that this person passed away. And I just waited. And there was several minutes before he said anything. And it was those several minutes that if I didn't think about that last piece, be patient. I wanted to jump in and make everything okay. But when you're delivering difficulty messages, it's not about making everything okay. It's about starting the conversation. So I just waited. Finally he reacted and, you know, he was emotional and we talked through that. We talked through my emotions and we just had a big heart to heart and we had a moment to share some memories about this person that was like almost took away some of the pain. It was still there but it was just like we could share something. Because I began with the end of mind thinking, I also want to share. Not only that he knows it's okay, but this person was loved and this person will be remembered. And that conversation got to be had because that was an intention. So all of this is wrapped up in look, I don't think difficult conversations are ever easy. But if you can keep these four points in mind, you do a lot better next time at least especially if it's difficult news or difficult feedback. Okay, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the brendon show. Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of chaos and negativity, right? So I'm asking you to be the dealer of hope and personal growth and education in your tribe. So take a screenshot right now and share the screenshot and this link to this episode with three of your friends today. Post it on social media. Use the hashtag growthday. That's growthday because that's the name of my company and we're always giving away prizes to our community. If you'd like to help me personally, then please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Give us some stars, cheer us on, leave a review. Because believe it or not, that stuff actually really does help. And I read all of them. So my last thought for today, please remember you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you. Tomorrow can be an inspired day. Every new morning is a second chance. Every day is a great day to grow. We're thankful to have you here in the Growth Day community, so be sure to go deeper with us@growthday.com. Sam.