Ep 503 | Navigating Tough Conversation, the Brene Brown Way

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. And for whatever reason, the past couple weeks I've had many opportunities to get better at tough conversations, uh, from a leadership perspective especially. I have had different scenarios, either individually, like one-to-one, like something that I had to handle with, with someone, or scenarios where, you know, I got the opportunity to coach somebody in the way that they were going to have a conversation, a tough conversation with an individual in their world. Just last week, we did an episode. Actually, it was our last episode on, on empathy versus accountability. Tough love, let's call it, where I had a scenario with an individual who had come to me and expressed that her momentum keeps getting disrupted by life's challenges. And so, we discussed strategically how we would address a conversation like that in balancing both the empathy, like, "I hear you. I understand where you're coming from," as well as the tough love, which is, "Okay, I got you." Now, what can you control and what are you gonna do about it? And so, we went through a framework that I leveraged in that particular conversation. Well, I've had a similar yet different scenario come up and I wanted to discuss with our No Days Off Nation how that went down for me and the steps I took, but I had a unique twist and we're gonna talk about that here in a moment. So, let me outline the scenario for you. I had an individual reach out to me who was interacting with a partner of mine. And in that interaction, that text interaction, and I believe it was also a phone call, whatever happened, whatever transpired, she left that interaction feeling like she wasn't heard, that she was blown off, that while she appreciates, you know, this individual and all of us, and she's, she's not making changes in her life. She just felt she was kind of taken advantage of knowing that she's not going to make any changes. In other words, she was made to feel from her perspective insignificant. She said she, she's, she felt stuck and burnt out and alone and not an asset. And, and she, she brought that to me. And it was, you know, something that's a pretty heavy conversation. And I thought about, okay, now I want to talk with this individual and help her work through these feelings and ultimately come up with a solution or a path forward. And I turned to Brené Brown. That's the twist. Because as you may know, Brené Brown has written a handful of books and she's got an incredible TED Talk on the subject of vulnerability. And I thought if anybody would know what to do here, it's Brené Brown. So I did some research, pulled out some of the books and got an understanding, you know, reminded myself as to maybe, you know, what she stands for, Brené Brown stands for. And I thought I was asking myself, and self, how would Brené Brown handle this scenario? And here's how I think Brené would approach it. And I don't know if you deal with exact scenarios like this, but you probably have some similarities where people come to you and they express that, hey, I don't feel significant. They may not say those words, but I don't feel significant. I don't feel heard. I feel like I'm being made out to be small. And as a result, it's leading to some burnout or it's, it's leading to some emotion without question. How would Brené Brown have a conversation with an individual in that state of mind? I think that Brené would approach this sort of conversation with the lens of, or through the lens, I should say, of vulnerability, of empathy. And I think she'd also discuss boundaries. Here's how I think you might structure this conversation, and here's how I structured the conversation. And approached it. First, I think Brené, if you study what she stands for, you'll find that she always leans into leading with curiosity, leading with curiosity. So she's going to start, I believe, by creating some, some form of safe space for the person to feel heard. She might say something like, hey, I really appreciate you sharing this all with me. It sounds like what you're experiencing is, is, is a painful— is painful. And I want to understand more about what you're feeling. And I want to understand maybe how you think I can support you. It's a really good, dare I say, script. I mean, nothing is boilerplate here, because these are people's emotions, and every scenario is different. But I think it's a good, like, high-level direction to start this conversation, to lead with curiosity, show a bit of empathy. And ideally, the person you're talking to feels more comfortable to open up, especially about the emotions that they're experiencing. Brené Brown oftentimes tells us that people don't need immediate solutions. They just— they oftentimes need to just feel seen or feel validated. So number 1, lead with curiosity, create that safe space. Number 2, I think you could name the emotions. Brené teaches to name emotions without judgment. What does that mean? Brené oftentimes says, if you can't name it, you can't tame it. So this person in this example is expressing feelings of insignificance, of fear, of burnout, of isolation. And so if I was, you know, having this conversation, I might say something like, hey, it sounds like— and that's an important part of this— it sounds like you're feeling hurt. It sounds like you maybe even feel betrayed. And that's possibly prompting you to question your relationship or your place here with us. That makes a lot of sense. Given the situation you just described. So I'm going to end script. That's— that, that sort of discussion there would make the person ideally feel like maybe they're not overreacting. Rather, they're just having a normal response to what's a pretty tough situation, I think. I think from there, you can then seek clarity, clarify or clarity, I should say, around the story being told. Because people— and Brené teaches this— people, we all create stories in our own minds that make sense to us, especially in a painful scenario. So maybe you would ask something like— and I would do this in a gentle manner— what's the story you're telling yourself about what happened? If you take a step back, Do you think there's another possible explanation for why this played out as it did? I think this, this, the intention here is at least to separate the facts from the interpretations, the facts from the assumptions. I think the next step Brené would take in this model, and there's a couple more steps here, I think she'd address the shame and the not enough feelings that, that, that this person expressed. Because Brené focuses a lot on this concept of shame versus guilt. The person, remember, said, I feel small, I feel stuck, I feel burnt out. So rather than dismissing these feelings, I think you got to validate them and challenge them a little bit. I hear you. The feeling of not being enough is probably really painful. I want to remind you though that you are an asset. Your worth is not defined by this one situation. How can we work together to help you see that? I think that, that Brené would emphasize this particular portion of the conversation, because I've heard her say that shame kind of thrives in secrecy. But when it's spoken out loud, and it's met with some degree of empathy, it starts to lose its power. The next step would be the boundaries, the boundaries and what's next. It may be something like, um, uh, I hear that you're committed to working through this because, you know, this person had expressed some self-awareness. I'm guessing, or I hear, I think I heard you say, or it appears though you want to work through this, and I respect that. At the same time, I don't want you to feel like you have to do it alone. So, how do I best support you? What support would be helpful for you right now? Again, it's a lot of great powerful questions and empathy, but it's also asking that individual to take some ownership. What direction do you want to go? And then lastly, I think that once you've had that discussion and you've strategized, you could just reaffirm the connection. Brené would tell us, like in this particular scenario, I think that, you know, this person or all of us, we're afraid of losing key relationships just because we had a bad scenario. We don't want to totally disrupt the relationship. We just want to work through it. And it's tough in this moment. So I think Brene would say something like, hey, I want you to again, make sure you understand that, you know, you are really important to me. You're really important to us. And no decision that you make is going to change that. I want to be here for you, however this unfolds in this particular scenario. So again, another real-life scenario that may not be perfect to fit something going on in your world, but I think there are elements of this that maybe you can think through and figure out how exactly maybe they apply to a scenario that you're in or someone important in your world is in. Remember, leadership is about influence and especially influencing in a positive direction, one that is about growth and development and resilience, perseverance, all of these things that are important to having success. In conclusion, we're going to wrap up here today. Oh, I do want to encourage everybody, if you're unfamiliar with Brené Brown, look her up. I think that all that she stands for, it actually changed me quite a bit. As, as a leader, someone that has always historically leaned more into accountability and, you know, this tough love and not enough into empathy and understanding and asking questions. And I'm still a work in progress. But I think that understanding more about vulnerability and these things that Brené teaches has changed me tremendously. I think it's maybe something for you to look into, too. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.