Billie Gilliam: Leaders Need to Ensure Psychological Safety

I would communicate with the person who is influenced after I speak to the whole team and say, what do you think? And she was like, oh, it's going to be tough. They're going to hate it. And like, okay, you're right. So can you talk to them for me? She was like, yes. Like, thanks. And you let me know later what they said. Because I wasn't the person. Didn't matter if I supervised them. She was the inform. She was an informal leader. I knew she could if she was convinced they would be. And it's just recognizing that, hey, do you have, uh, what's your objective? And you might not be the person to push that objective. It might be someone else in your team who may not have the leadership role. But leadership is not really about the position. It's about the person. So I recognize in teams who people listen to. I'm like, oh, that's my informal leader right there. So I always. I always look for the informal leader. That's the one who's going to push the agenda forward. I'm going to talk about it. But I. I recognize how removed I can probably be depending on what position I'm in at the time. But I knew if that informal leader was buying it then, because buy in matters, you do better if people buy in.

Hey, I'm Kwame Christian, and you are about to step into the world of Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world, where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier while getting more of what you want in the process. Each episode is packed with practical tips and strategies from the experts. We delve into negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills that are crucial in both business and in life. Whether you're closing a deal, managing a team, or navigating personal relationships, Negotiate Anything provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Our conversations are real, relatable, and most importantly, rooted in practicality. So if you're ready to transform your conversations and elevate your negotiation skills, join me on Negotiate Anything. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation. Billy, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you. I appreciate you being here. I'm excited.

Yes, me too. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

All right. I am a clinician, a therapist in Cleveland, Ohio. I have been in practice for over 20 years. And not only am I a clinician, I am an educator. I've taught at higher ed, a bunch of clinic, counseling, Courses in addition to working with couples, individuals and families in terms of their trauma or just family dynamics and stress management, things of that nature. And also training and community trainings. I've done so between writing, teaching and clinical work is really where my passion lives.

Incredible. And you're not just writing in general, you're also writing for Psychology Today and Fun Fact. So my undergrad degree was in psychology and I was always reading Psychology Today. So for me that is like the mecca of writing in the psych space. So that's really cool.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah, definitely. So today I'm excited about this episode because it is so practical and whatever you are doing, listeners, if you are leading in an organization, leading in a family, or just you're a human who happens to interact with humans, you're going to have to have tough conversations. And I think that emotion management and the ability to have difficult conversations, those are key elements of leadership. And they are often the hardest part of leadership. And your background in trauma informed therapy, I think is a really strong foundation for how we can have some of these tough conversations with the people in our lives. So can you give us an understanding of what trauma informed therapy is before we start to get into the fundamentals of how to have the conversation?

Sure, absolutely. So there's two ways we can speak of it, but I want to speak to it in a way that I do the work in. Right. So there is three things that I combine in trauma informed therapy. There is that cognitive behavioral model, right where. And there's nothing wrong with it. Most therapists worth their salt is trained in cbt and that's where your thoughts impact your behaviors. Right. And impact your feelings. Feelings. And it's this cyclical thing that happens. And it's, it's a. It's a good therapeutic approach. It is considered evidence based. However, it is almost like if you get sick, right? You coughing, sneezing, runny nose, and you take some NyQuil or DayQuil, your symptoms go away, but you're still sick. CBT is great at symptom management. It will be your band aid, it is your symptom, but it does not get at the underlying reason why you have the symptoms to begin with. I like to marry that with what's called narrative therapy. Narrative therapy is about what something means. And that's what's so important in the. When I think of trainings and the corporate world and businesses is people don't understand. People respond to what something means, not what something is. Because we can both encounter a circumstance in a situation, but we respond differently because the meaning is different. So that's the symptoms that we manage. That's the meaning that we manage. And then lastly, which is. I hate that we have to use this fancy word for it, but it is. It's called somatic experiencing. And that's really a fancy way of saying body work. Easter cultures are really good at managing or dealing with the body. They really big on that. But Western, we're a little bit different. We're very heady individuals. But what we don't realize, we walk into every circumstance assessing for safety or unsafety. It's a very unconscious process. We do not think about it, we just do it. And so when the body says, I don't feel safe, it sends a signal to the brain that says, react in this way. And oftentimes that signal is off because it depends on what we have historically have gone through in our past. And the body doesn't care about whether or not it's accurate. It says, hey, I'm not safe. You need to either run, you need to fight, or need to freeze one of these actions you need to do. But my work is helping people be able to a. Help settle the body. And settle is different from calm. And I guess we can, we'll get to that and what that means. So to help settle the body and then evaluate whether or not the signal being given is accurate or does it have the residue of trauma on it from some other traumatic experience? So those three things I combine to do the trauma informed work.

I was not here for a therapy session, and yet I feel like I had a breakthrough. That's amazing. That's so cool. So let's, let's recap here for the audience because there was a lot. So with your approach to trauma informed therapy, it's based on these three pillars. We have the CBT model, which is the foundation. Then we have narrative therapy and somatic experiencing. So cbt, we're talking about how thoughts influence emotions and feelings, and then those feelings will lead to behaviors and. And words. Right. But I love this narrative therapy as well, because everybody has this life story that we hang on to. And giving meaning to those thoughts and feelings, that's really powerful because I never thought about it before in terms of going deeper than the. It's like, okay, this is the way I was thinking. I need to change the way I'm thinking. And then I change the outcome. But asking why I think the way that I do, understanding that life journey, that's so powerful. And then I love that we're talking about the somatic experiencing, too, because we have this body knowledge, but we don't have much body awareness to understand that the body is telling us things. And it's our job to interpret whether or not that's accurate. And so there's a difference between being safe, feeling safe, and knowing one of those things for sure. And so recognizing that the body sends signals, and now you have the opportunity to interpret that, that's really powerful. And when you think about putting all of this together, you can see how all of it really clearly aligns with what we need to do in a difficult conversation. Because we need to keep all of this in mind, not only for ourselves, but for the other side. Because even if we do all the hard work to understand ourselves in on these three pillars, that doesn't mean that the other person has. And as we have these conversations, we might run into those challenges. And if we don't understand this, we won't know how to overcome those challenges.

Absolutely. I'm impressed with how you were able to summarize that and get all that together. I'm glad you captured it. But that's absolutely accurate. We don't, especially that body work. People are walking around here always feeling unsafe because sometimes unsafe is really discomfort, and discomfort does not mean dangerous. And we walk into things going, oh, my God, this is not safe or not, and I'm in danger. Now, that's not something we overtly say, right? But that is something that lives in the body. And all we do is call it anxiety, right? And so we say. We say unsafe danger when it's really discomfort. And discomfort isn't dangerous. It's just discomfort. And they're just signals. They're not actual labels. So what we tend to do is label it a thing. It is just this. It's like the check engine, like, of your car. Their check engine light just says, hey, you might want to look at it. But it doesn't say, strip the car and get a new engine. It just says, hey, you might want to look at it. And that's what the body says. But we go into full. Let me dismantle this whole thing.

It's so funny, Billi. It sounds so silly, but it's so funny. We all have lived in our body for most likely decades, and we don't know what to do with it or how it works. And I think about a couple of years ago, as an example, I'll tell on myself a bit. There was a really stressful time in business and I started to get These stomach problems, I didn't know if it was an ulcer. I went to the doctor and everything. They prescribed me medicine. The medicine wasn't really helpful. And then I started to. I started to get therapy and to think through it on a deeper level. And you know, what was happening to my stomach. What was happening was I was feeling a lot of stress and pressure and as a result, I was not eating. And late in the day I was getting stomach aches because I'm hungry. I didn't have an ulcer. I couldn't. At this age, I could not identify that my stomach problems were caused by hunger. Right. Not a more significant malady. But once I was able to kind of think a little bit deeper about it and understand my body and my mind a little bit better, we could make that determination. But again, it's just a comical example of the fact that sometimes you feel. Feel things, you don't understand what it is. That's a physical example. But a lot of times we feel things emotionally and we don't really connect with what the truth is because there's a difference between a thought or a feeling and what is actually real. And for us as leaders and having tough conversations, we might become very frustrated because the other side does not feel safe in the interaction. And in your mind, that is unreasonable. And then we respond emotionally to that which probably makes them feel less safe. So understanding that how do we approach conversations and relationships in a way that can actually lead to the person feeling psychologically safe enough to wholeheartedly engage with you in the conversation?

That's a great question. Awesome question. And it's the same thing that I say when I speak to couples. I love working with couples because I let them argue a little bit in front of me because I need to see the dynamic. I need to see it. And I go, oh, I see the loop, I see, ah, okay, you do this, you do this. Ah, I see it. But what ends up happening is intention over impact, right? There's three things. There's intention over impact and it's removing maliciousness. Right. And I'll speak to removing maliciousness in just a second. But in asking people for. We don't tend to get clarity because we make the assumption that because we're both speaking English that we all have understood exactly what each other is saying and that's not necessarily the truth. If I'm speaking to someone and I try to look for body cues, just make sure. Now here's a caveat. Online, we have lost some non verbals, right? Because we are really trained to look at the screen. We've lost some non verbal. So where you think you have connection and understanding, you may not because we are trained to stare and not blink. But in person you're going to shift your eyes, you're going to do some things with your hands, you're going to do some different. So in person I get cues that tell me something's happening. But what I would say, especially when we're working with individuals and in companies and we got to have a difficult conversation, is a number one, I'm not going to tell you 10 things you've done wrong. I stick to only three. After a certain number, people are no longer listening to you. Okay, let's start there. Secondly, I tried to do it very slowly and ask people, what are you hearing me say? What did you hear? Because just because I said a thing doesn't mean you captured that you might have caught something else. And if it doesn't, if you didn't capture what I said, it is my responsibility to fix what I said. I need to go back. And let's say, for example, that the employee is, has the ego strength to say, oh, I don't like the way you spoke to me. You said this and this and this and you done this. And for me, I would say, hey, that was not my intention. That was my impact, but that's not my intention. Let me revise what I'm saying so the impact could be the accurate impact. So there's difference. We get clarity. Number one, get clarity throughout the conversation. I like call it taking the temperature. Take the temperature to see, did that person capture what you gave them? Because we're so busy trying to ask people what they think and we tell people that their feelings don't matter in business, but feelings do matter. And whether people realize and are not feeling feelings drive us, not our thoughts. We do what we feel, we don't do what we think. That's the only reason why commercials work. Commercials work because they're all about making you feel something. So if we can assess how somebody is feeling in the moment and like, okay, what did you hear me say? Well, I feel like, okay, so now I feel like I touched the feeling. What did you hear me say? Well, I think that, okay, so then if it's inaccurate, it's like, no, that's not. I'm saying my apologies. Let me give it to you again. Because I've had to have difficult conversations, right? I've had to write people up and then I've had people say to me I feel good and I just got in trouble because I'm not attacking your personhood. I'm attacking a behavior that's not effective for what they want, not for what I want, for what they want. So being able to help a person get to that space by clarifying and then managing intentions and impact to me is critical when having a difficult conversation. I hope I answered that question. You had to like sometimes stop me so I get too circular. Hopefully I answered.

Hello my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. First of all, never stop. Second of all, this is great because I know you're used to saving relationships, but I think just with that portion of this episode, you've saved thousands of relationships. So yes, you are leaders. Listening to this podcast, this will help you at work, but I'm assuming you are lovers as well. And if there's somebody that you love, pay attention to this part because this is really, really powerful. And where do we even start? So I love separating the intention from the impact because there's a distinction. This is what I hope to accomplish. But as I was trying to accomplish it, this is what actually happened in their world. And so what you've done is you've reiterated the importance of stating our intention because a lot of times people think it's so obvious. I've been married to you for a long time. Why would you think I have it out for you? We've been working together for 10 years. Why would you think I don't trust you? Right? But we don't say those obvious things at the beginning and so we allow somebody's mind to wander and go into scary places. So starting off with intention is important. And then doing those temperature checks. What's beautiful about this is that you don't need to go to some kind of high level negotiation seminar. But hey, if you do want to come, you know, check us out, we can help you. But you don't need to go to something like that to understand how to do that in a conversation. Conversation, you pay attention to the body language, recognize the change in tone and body language of facial expressions, things like that. When you notice a change, just check in. Hey, how are you doing? How did that land with you? What are you hearing me say? Because it's a humbling thing. Because what we have to do, which is your next point, is take responsibility for the interpretation that they have. So I'm not going to blame you and say, ha, you weren't listening. This is an indication of the low level human that you are. No, hey, my bad. I did not explain myself well. Let me try again. And by taking that responsibility, you make it easier for them to listen again and it doesn't become a combative interaction. And this little line that you dropped, I think is really powerful. Maybe the person does not have the ego strength to tell you the way that you made them feel. And that's a really powerful thing. Especially when we're thinking about in the workplace with that leadership dynamic, the person might feel a certain way, but not feel empowered to say that to you. So for you, as a leader, it's your responsibility to help them to feel safe and actually solicit that information. How did that land with you? What are you hearing? That's a really important thing to actually get the information you need to make those adjustments in the moment. This is powerful, powerful stuff, Billi. Really helpful. And now I think everybody understands this, but it's exceptionally hard to do because you also are a person who has emotions and feelings. So we have to manage their emotions and feelings while at the same time keeping ours in check. So how do we handle ourselves during these difficult conversations to make sure that our emotions don't lead us astray?

That's really good because there's a couple of things that I know I do actually really just period, not just as a person, but also as a clinician. Same thing that I do all the time is I have regular conversations with myself. I duly process so I can talk to you and I can have a conversation with myself going, how you doing, Billi? What's happening for you? But also I have to ask myself, and this is what's important, am I in the space to have the conversation? Because there are certain things that I know about myself I don't do well if I'm hungry. Like, if I'm hungry. I am a very different human being. I don't do well. And what I've done in previous leadership positions and I will tell the staff I'm working with hey, if you. I always keep a little orange juice with me. Something to get my sugar up. And I said, if I'm not in a space, it's like I will eat first and then we'll have a conversation. And I'll never forget, I was in a meeting once. This older gentleman I was supervising, he had to be like 72 at the time. And he said, hey, Billy. And I was like, yeah, John. He was like. He said, did you eat today? And I was like, no. I said, am I abrupt? He was like, yes. I was like, my bad. I was like, you're right, because I couldn't catch it. So, number one, are you in the space to have the difficult conversation? Have some level of self awareness because you might be challenged from the other person and you may not be in the space where you can manage the challenge. That's one. Number two is being able to ask yourself emotionally, how am I feeling throughout the conversation and being able to speak to that. If I'm feeling. There's Sometimes I know if I'm not in the space, I will say, I can't talk about this right now. I cannot do it now. I can circle back in an hour or later on in a day or this. But I have to. I know that about myself going, I can't do it now because if I keep going down this road, there might be some things I say that I don't want to say because I don't ever say what I don't mean. And that's important to me. I never say I am never going to have to apologize for what I say because I really do think about it. But if I don't know, if I'm in a space to talk, I might have to apologize for how I said it. Does that make sense? Because delivery matters more than anybody believe. I am not going to give you. And I have to tell couples that all the time. Well, I said such and such, or I've told other leadership or when I've had to do mediations. It's not about what you said, it's about how you said it. So me checking my own tone, checking, checking my own body, do I feel settled? Do I feel like I can have this conversation? Am I in the mental space to have it or am I in the physical space to have it? Those things are important. And recognizing am I the right person to have it? That is e. You got to be able to put your pride aside. Can you have the conversation? Is this a conversation for you? Maybe someone else might be able to have the conversation. Because people don't realize relationship means everything. You cannot just say things to an individual just because you're in a certain position and think. Now, you might be able to say it, but you're not going to get the response that you really want to have. But that's the difference between power over and power with. If I'm seeking to have power with you, I'm here to make sure power is. If I have to utilize my position, my rank. It was a bad day. It was a bad day. But if we can talk about through a thing and then you get it and you understand it, and then we can move forward and help. Help and help process and work through it, it's a good day. But pulling rank is always bad to me. If I have to tell you, you need to do it because I told you to do it, that's a bad day. I do not like ever having to say something like that. And I. I never sit at a head of the table. I will sit somewhere else. Head of the tables make people look to me for a decision. If I sit somewhere else at the table, it gives other people chance to think about what they think. An answer might be, a solution might be. We are very. As creatures, we're very creatures of habit, and we're quick to look to someone else for leadership. That's why I like round tables. Because then people. The exchange of ideas happen more readily that way versus the head. But those are just a few things. I feel like I said a lot of stuff, but check it with myself. Can I have the conversation? Am I in a space physically and mentally? Am I the right person for the discussion? Right. And checking in my feelings. How are you doing, Billy? How are you? How are you doing in this moment? Are you still okay? Are you okay? And I do that. I say that. Are you okay? Are you good? Okay, you're good? Keep going. Keep going. So those are the three things that I do coupled around everything else I just mentioned. But those are the three things that I do regularly.

Oh, this is great. And the only problem I have with what you said is that we didn't have this conversation about two months ago. Because I'm thinking back to a very specific incident. Whitney and I, we were driving to the gym, and the boys were in the backseat, and they were just being kids, not even being bad, just being loud and making noise and everything. And we were just trying to have a. Like a financial discussion. And then Whitney said, why are you yelling at me? I was like, I'm Kwame Christian I teach conflict resolution. Kwame Christian does not yell. I'm not. Yeah. She's like, yeah, you're yelling right now. And then I thought to myself, I said, don't you have this funny slide in your presentations where you say, you know when people accuse you of yelling and you don't think you were yelling? You were certainly yelling. I'm like, oh, what's wrong with me? And so I had to stop and think about it. And I realized that I was overstimulated. There was too much noise. I'm used to having conversations that are high level like this. It's just you and me talking and we can get really in depth. And when I hear the noise from the children screaming, saying, daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. What? We're on a bridge. Why are you talking to me, Dominic? Why? We're having a serious conversation. We're on this bridge every day. And then I start to lose it. And so had I heard this episode first, what I would have done is I would have checked in and I would have said, hey, can you have this conversation right now? Are you okay? No, I'm not. And the thing is, we could talk about this in terms of emotional intelligence and self awareness, but I really think the word that comes to mind for me is humility. It is humility. Because when I think about humility, I don't think about it through that virtuous lens. I think about it in the term, in terms of accuracy. It is just a simple, accurate assessment of where you are. And a humble person can recognize and say, you know what? I am not in the place to have this conversation. I'm hungry, I'm overstimulated, I'm tired, I'm triggered, whatever it happens to be. And it takes a really humble and strong person to be able to say, now is not the time, today is not the day, or, I'm not the right person. Now that one hurts. And I know you have a background in mediation, so I want you to go a little bit deeper into that. At what point do we need to bring somebody else in to have a difficult conversation or help us through a conversation like this?

I think if you. When people get stuck and you keep trying different interventions or movement to get someone to move forward, sometimes you might be the obstacle itself. Maybe you don't either have a. The relationship and, or skill set. It could be one of those things. There's been times that I recognize and I. So I'm a strong believer of informal leadership. Well, there were sometimes I knew I had to unfortunately execute Things that this was, I was not a fan of, but I still had to do it, right? And so my goal was I knew the informal leader, and this is not someone who's in a leadership position, but this is a leader, right? This is a person who has influence, and influence matters, right? So I would communicate with the person who has influenced after I speak to the whole team and say, what do you think? And she was like, oh, it's gonna be tough. They're gonna hate it. And like, okay, you're right. So can you talk to them for me? She was like, yes. Like, thanks. And you let me know later what they said. Because I wasn't the person. Didn't matter if I supervised them. She was the informed. She was an informal leader. I knew she couldn't if she was convinced they would be. And it's just recognizing that, hey, do you have. What's your objective? And you might not be the person to push that objective. It might be someone else in your team who may not have the leadership role, but leadership is not really about the position. It's about the person. So I recognize in teams who people listen to. I'm like, oh, that's my informal leader right there. So I always, always look for the informal leader. That's the one who's going to push the agenda forward. I'm going to talk about it. But I. I recognize how removed I can probably be depending on what position I'm in at the time. But I knew if that informal leader was buying it, then, because buy in matters, you do better. If people buy in, you just do better.

No doubt. And what's powerful about this, too, is that I think in every organization, most people can listen to this podcast episode and say, oh, yes, I know who the informal leader is on my team or in my company. So we can see that. But sometimes we might be called to lead a team where we don't have that familiarity. You might be the hotshot new manager who doesn't have the context, the cultural context to understand that. So a couple of things that you can do. First, when people are talking in a group scenario, pay attention to the eyes of the people. Because sometimes people talk. Nobody looks. But then there are people who talk and everybody looks and pays attention to. That might be the leader with position, and it might be the informal leader. That's another one. But here's another one, too. If you are new, you could say, hey, I'm trying to learn more about the organization. Who would you say is the one person I need to talk to? To learn as much as possible about the organ organization. It's like, oh, it's this person. You might think it's this one. No, but it's this person. Right. And so you're, you're finding this and now this. I want to circle back to something that you said earlier because it ties in with informal leadership. It ties into position and authority. And you said power over versus power with that distinction. And there is a difference between a boss and a leader. That's something that you said earlier as well. So we want to try to get to the point where people are, they want to follow us. That's kind of what the, the vibe would be as a leader. But how do we make that transition to that type of mode if we've been more of the command and control type of leader in the past?

That's an excellent question. But it really is a lot of self development and what people need. So people who need power over people don't have power within themselves. So that's a whole other issue. Disenfranchised people seek to have power over others all the time. So if you don't have any sense of internal empowerment, you will always seek to have power over somebody else. I've worked with people like that. And it's tragic because it's always conflict. There's always something happening. And it really is like, you do this because I told you I'm going to write you up or you're, I'm your boss. And those are not words. I never tell people I'm their boss. Like, that's just crazy to me to say it. That's crazy. It's crazy to me. I had somebody, it really is. Like I had an owner of a company tell me once, he's like, you need to manage your people better. I said, I don't really manage them. I said, I lead them, but I don't manage anybody. People manage themselves. These are adults that are here. I said, so what people, what the struggle is? Recognizing this is a process. And people don't respect the process because they want outcome. And people don't realize that outcome lives in process. And if you don't give space and time for process, you'll never get outcome. And because we're in this, this culture of everything in 30 seconds or less, or I can have this in three easy steps. You gotta go through the process of it. It takes time to build relationships, to connect to people. And at the end of the day, with all these bells and whistles and great, amazing technology that we have relationships still is, number one. It is always how we connect to people. And especially about just what you mentioned before, about walking to a place new and it's cold, and people tell me, like, oh, the team is awful. They're this, this, this stuff. I hear about it. My first goal is not to start telling people like, hey, we're going to turn this ship around. We're going to do this. I need to sit and just understand what's here. Let me sit for a minute. And hopefully those who are above me gives me the opportunity to do so. Because people ask me, what's the first thing I was like, I need to see what the culture is. I need to sit with it. I don't want to change anything. I just want to sit and talk to people and watch and see. But we don't, unfortunately, we don't give a lot of space because we operate as if we're out of time. It didn't take five minutes to get here. It's not going to take five minutes to get out. And we, we struggle with that in a culture that's very instantaneous. I can doordash my food. I don't have to cook it. I can get something in 30 minutes and it's all done. But that's not what. If you want to develop culture where people stay and where people are connected and people feel like their work is meaningful, you got to be willing to go through the process and recognize that process is outcome.

Oh, my goodness, this is great. The word that's landing with me is not a word that you said, but I think a word that is sprinkled within what you said, and that's patience, because it takes time. And if you find yourself in a conversation and you're saying to yourself, how can I get out of this as fast as possible? How can I wrap this up as quickly as possible? You're going to be making mistakes, mistakes you might not even fully understand, but the other person can feel, and they will respond to that. And when you're thinking about it from a micro and macro level in these conversations, it is the process, managing the process, and the outcome handles itself. When it comes to company cultures, it's the same thing. It's the process, and it takes time. It takes a lot of, again, humility, assuming, and just recognizing the fact that you don't know everything. And there is some information that is only located within the confines of the mind of the person on the other side of the table. And it's our job to make them feel safe enough to share and that is process. But if you can manage the process and you can be patient during the process, this, then the outcome handles itself.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And people don't realize like, and there's times that now this is difficult, there's a difficult conversation that maybe certain people don't need to be there. Right. But they do good work. And so leaders struggle with getting rid of them. Right. Like, I'm like, yeah, but they're killing your culture, though. They do good work, but the rest of the team here, they're poisoned because this individual is here. You have to decide what you want to do with that culture. Absolutely matters. It is what's going to move to for me that what when people don't pay attention to that is that it's trending. If you recognize you got like a 50% turnover rate and you're already. Then you need to look at your, look at yourself and look at your team. Something's wrong. It can't be. It's not always. We keep picking the wrong employees. And that might be the problem depending on who you have in selection, who's selecting. But it also may be your process and your team itself, your culture development. What's happening, you know, what's your onboarding? What is all of that have you. Are your expectations realistic? And I have learned when they've won it. You know, I work with a. I did contract for individual. I want there to have their productivity up to this. I was like, but if I look back in history and I'm looking at trending, that's not going to be realistic. That's not. Now we can get there if we allow for this, this, this and this, but that they only wanted outcome and they didn't respect process, so they never got what they wanted. So now they had a turnover rate of like 60 employees constantly turning over. It was terrible. It was just terrible. And right now we're in a space where. And I do, I'm very. I pay attention. Well, I like to believe that I pay attention to how trends work where it's an employee. The, the leverage is in the, the space of the employee because there's such shortages in a variety of different places. And I tell people like, hey, listen, command what you want now because the ties do turn. The ties do turn. And then it won't be employee, you'll be employer. Then you'll be like, oh, I'll take anything, you know, so. But I say that the same in this space. Now we're in this very employee leverage space where there's very Few. There's not as many employees. I'm gonna speak very especially in this, in the clinical world, they are clamoring, trying to get clinicians. There's such a shortage in the workforce as a whole. But the issue is they want to get people in an outcome that's not realistic for the time frame they want it in. It's not unrealistic, period. It's just unrealistic in a time frame. Right.

Oh, this is good. And I wish we could keep going, but I know we are at time Billi. So first I want to thank you for coming on the show and I also want to give you an opportunity to let the listeners know about how they can get in touch with you and potentially work with you too.

Oh, sure. Absolutely. Thank you. My email is parkercounseling and consultingmail.com so that's the email. My number, my work number is 216-339-6682. And I am on Psychology Today for individual counseling. But also, like I said, I do trainings for workforces and leadership development and developing culture and do a lot of consulting for a different company. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to even to bring that up to talk about that.

Absolutely. And this was great. I love this episode and it's so important for us to dig deeply into understanding emotions even before we get to emotion management and working through the conversation. So I just want to thank you for just coming in here with all these bars. I took a ton of notes and hopefully we can have you back on again soon.

Sure, I'd appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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