Piers Cross explains why leaders avoid difficult conversations, tracing it to early conditioning where speaking up felt unsafe. He offers practical tools: use "I" statements, calm your nervous system through tapping, and approach conversations with compassion rather than people-pleasing.
Okay, welcome. So today I want to offer a few reflections about the conversations that you're not having. So I've noticed over the years of working with ex-boarders and with myself and also with leaders is sometimes there are these conversations that we keep putting off. There are these things that we won't speak or we won't say. And today I just want to unpack some of that, you know. Why is this? What are some of the consequences? And what are some of the things that we can do to, yeah, to start having these conversations? So enjoy. So in a week's time, Chris Braich and I are running our 3rd workshop on leadership through the company Compassionate Leaders Global, and we're going to be talking about the conversations we're not having. So the first workshop was about pressure, about leadership under pressure and how we often default back to the, you know, our early conditioning. Second workshop was about self-sabotage, how often we will sabotage ourselves. And then the third workshop we're doing is just around the conversations. And what I've noticed over the years with conversations we're not having is, if I begin with where, where this started. So for those of us who went to boarding school, or those of us who had a challenging upbringing, often to speak up was dangerous. So I was talking to a client today this idea that, you know, it wasn't safe to speak up. Often, you know, if you spoke up, you said, this guy's bullying me, what would happen? You get more bullying. Or if you told a teacher, then the teacher came down on the, you know, the people. You would— when the teacher went, you would, you know, be sent to Coventry. You were ostracized. So we learned to not have these conversations. Another thing is our parents. You know, we might have said to them, "Look, I'm having a struggle," or you know, and often what would happen is the parents would get upset. Oh, you're upsetting me! Or you're making your mother angry, or you're upsetting your mother. And so we learn to squash, to to not say and to not speak up. Another reason is we might have shared, we might have spoken up, but nothing was actioned. We might have written home. You know, oh, I've heard of people who did write home, but then they were, as I've shared in one of the podcasts, they were then edited by the teachers. Oh no, you can't say that. Write it again. So, you know, you could just put data down. I played cricket yesterday. I scored 10 runs or whatever it is. So it's just really important for us to see That the conversation— there is a reason it often comes back to early conditioning, you know. So what I was saying with the client today is it's not to beat ourselves up, that if we're not having conversations now, it's not to say, oh well, I should be having these conversations. No, it's our nervous systems which are in— it's dangerous to have conversations like this. You know, and I'll often say this to a client, this idea of the iceberg. It's just a conversation, it's just a piece of ice on the surface. But because we've had so many instances where conversations have been shut down, people have got angry, it feels so weighty so that we just go, whoa, I can't have important conversations. And from a work perspective, this might be putting a boundary down with someone. This might be you know, saying something like, I don't know, you know, your work needs to change, or something. It's like we struggle to have and to speak. And one of the things I've really reflected on through the work of The Mankind Project and men's work is things like I statements. If you have a clean language to, to take responsibility rather than projection, and saying, it's you, you're this, and you know, you're, you know, it's come back. Oh, what's that within me? Oh, I'm feeling triggered here, you know. And then, and that's something I've really loved with The Mankind Project, is there's space for us to have that dialogue going, you know. We do this in Compassionate Leaders. It's like, I'm— this is not me, it's me. I'm not saying you're doing it. This is what's coming up for me. It might be fear or anger or whatever. It's like to own that. And, and I think that's really important for, for us to do. So what's the, the consequence when we don't have these conversations? So one of the things I've noticed, and this kind of comes back to boundaries that I spoke about a few weeks ago, is we keep letting people say things, or we don't speak up, we don't have the conversation. We kind of feel squashed, and it builds and it builds, and then suddenly, boom! Boom! We explode. We get angry, and then it takes us ages to put the fire out. And actually, it's learning the middle way to just have a calm conversation, and it's to to be kind. It's like, yeah, you know. And if we do feel triggered, we do feel that anger. Don't say anything. Wait till you've calmed down. It's like, maybe there's some fear there. I can feel that within myself when some people challenge me or say hurtful things. It's like to notice, oh yeah, that's within me, and kind of coming back to compassion that, okay, that person said that thing. It's like, oh, I sometimes say hurtful things, maybe to myself. So it's like having that compassion and empathy. So this is, yeah, just some ideas. It's like, you know, when we're having these conversations that we've not had for a long time, you know, we've just— it's just find a middle way. Find a time when you're calm. And it might be when you have that calm conversation and you speak up or you put a boundary down, the other person might get really angry. What we often try and do is then overcompensate. We try and go, ah, you know, sorry. And our work is just to, you know, stay kind, but, you know, not people-pleasing. I think I see this a lot as ex-boarders or people who've been through traumas, like people-pleasing. Now it's going from one extreme to another, but, oh, I'm so sorry I did that, or And actually, sometimes it's for us just to have that conversation. I've had some quite difficult conversations over the last few months, you know, with my family, with other people, and it's like, it feels a lot cleaner. Yes, they might be upset, and that's okay. That's okay. And, you know, so yeah, just some reflections there. You know, and if this resonates, I just invite you to let me know. So this workshop will happen this Thursday night, the 25th, so it's a week's time, 8 days' time, 6:30 till quarter to 8, and we'll Yeah, it's more workshops. There'll be a chance to to write things down, to connect in. What's one conversation that I really need to have that I'm putting off? And one of the things I've noticed over the years, it's like the nervous system because of like the iceberg, all of that time that we've had a conversation and we've been either shamed or it's like. It's— it can be quite frightening, certainly for me, to have a conversation. And so it's to settle our nervous system down, and it might be to tap, might be to do the Havening, just stroking the outsides of the arms, the face, letting our nervous system settle. And then from that place, then we can have the conversation. So yeah, last time we had 77 people registered for the The workshop, it's free. And you know, even if you can't make it, you can still get sent the recordings, the slides, the workbook. And we got to 77. Our limit is 100. So if you do want to come, you know, I would invite you to to book earlier rather than later. You know. So yeah, if this resonates, you're like, oh yeah, I've really been putting off having conversation. Please do. Leave a comment and, uh, yeah, let me know. Okay, thanks so much for listening. Take care.
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