114: How to Stop Arguing With Reality and Keep Teams From Endless Frustration

In this week's episode, we're looking at a drama spiral that so many teams don't even realize they're in that causes a ton of suffering at work, and it's called arguing with reality. Welcome into another episode of the Reality Based Leadership Podcast. I'm Alex Dorr, CEO at Reality Based Leadership, and I'm so excited that you're here. And joining us at the podcast that helps you lead without, build alignment in your teams, and call those you lead to greatness. And as you know, if you've been listening a long time, or if you're new here, our research at Reality-Based Leadership has discovered that the average person is spending about 2.5 hours per day in drama. And there is not a client that I'm keynoting with in all industries or doing workshops with that isn't trying to figure out what is going on in the marketplace right now in their industry, in their profession. They're looking at ways to be more efficient, ways to build engagement, ways to retain the best people on their teams. And they're trying to figure out all this uncertainty and ambiguity. And so, on this podcast, I try and take those themes that come to me in questions and these workshops out on the road. And I want to bring them here so we can talk through them. Sometimes my thoughts are fully baked and I got something really quick I can teach you. Or discuss. Other times, I'm just thinking through some of these challenges with a couple of bullet points. But I want it to be an open conversation with you, the listener, and with your teams to be able to continue to evolve our leadership and lead in the modern workplace. And we're in some challenging times. We're in some different times. And where this podcast is going today is going back to some of the basics of reality-based leadership. And I've wanted to come back to the basics because so many of my sessions are actually noticing, as I've said in the last podcast, that people are trying to get really fancy and clever with their leadership. And in uncertain times, it's better to get back to the fundamentals. And so that's what I'm doing myself. And it's even helping me grow back, you know, in another layer of my learning of reality-based leadership in our own business is what are the basics of ditching the drama? What are the universal principles? What are the proven ways that lead to teams that have low friction, low interferences of drama, And they're able to move forward aligned and towards the results they're trying to achieve, even in these uncertain and complex times. And that's what today's session is all about. And it is core to reality-based leadership. It is called Reality-Based Leadership. And so today's episode is about stopping the argument with reality. And so many of the situations, the conversations, the coaching, the workshops, the keynotes I'm in, if we get into Q&A or we start to work on some of the tools, someone in inevitably brings up a business challenge, a challenge with internal colleagues or external customers, patients, you know, those that they're serving. And as we break down what's happening, it leads us into basically where there is an unpreferred or a challenging situation. And that's the reality. And it's, many times it's interesting because their role in the organization is actually to deal with the nuance, the complexity, The challenge in front of them. Simple examples, and it's not specific to what I'm thinking of here, but, you know, it's like someone in sales support is like, brings up a challenge that they have to support sales. Like the information's missing, they have to go out and get it, they have to chase it down. And I know in a perfect world, it's like all the information was inserted correctly into the system, but that's why we have sales support. So that's where that person adds value is finding that information in a nonjudgmental drama way and doing the best they can, maybe having a professional conversation with what could be a little bit better on the sales side, and they're fulfilling their role in sales support. Or I'll even talk to my peers that are in speaking and they're really frustrated. You know, there was some delays with some weather over the last few weeks before recording this, and they were like arguing with the delays and that it kept getting bumped and that, you know, people weren't the nicest in the airport when they've been sitting there all day. And I'm like, well, that's part of being a speaker. It's like being a speaker and saying, well, I don't like people looking at me, and I don't really like talking all day, and I don't really like, you know, having hard questions asked to me about challenges in businesses. It's like, well, then you're not a speaker. Like, you're arguing with the reality of your role. And I know a lot of jobs are changing right now. Many of us feel like we're being asked to do and work beyond our role or that job description. And that's been happening for a while, that shift to— with jobs shifting so fast and change happening so fast, is it's really hard to narrow down our job description into bullet points because by the time that gets solidified, there's some new changes. There's some ways we need to adjust to do what the business or the organization needs. And so a lot is changing in our reality. We are trying to figure out this, you know, where things are going in the future with the AI disruption and the technological advancements and trying to balance that, that human interaction with optimizing and And standardizing some of our work that hasn't been that efficient. So there's a lot going on there in our organizations as far as reality to argue with. But the lesson here is when you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time. Because it is what it is. It is, it might be a situation or an, it's not a nightmare. It's not a, you know, absolute mess. It's not a disaster. That's where we start to take a reality. And we put judgment on it and we assign motive on it and we assign meaning to it, to our preference. And that's where a reality or a situation or a, a new item to be taken care of on our plate becomes something that's a disruption to our day instead of part of our day that we either take care of, figure out how to delegate, figure out how to ensure it doesn't happen again. And so when people get caught in this argument with reality, I often start with talking about the 3 lanes in life. And if you can imagine There's 3 boxes, and on the first lane, there's like your business. There's your responsibilities, your role, like those that you are able to influence and that you're working with. And it's— that's like your business, your part in shared accountability and delivering on the projects you're on and things like that with those that you interact with. And then the second column is there's other people's business. So your business, other people's business, their work, their jobs, their responsibilities. And then there's the third lane is called reality's business. Some people call this God's Some people call this like the universe. But if you want stress and you want to guarantee frustration, get out of your lane. Meaning forget about your lane, your business, and get focused on what other people are doing or not doing and judging there. And as you get over-responsible for what they're not doing, then you get under-responsible for what you should be doing. And then your work goes down as you're worried about other people's. And then if you really want a lot of suffering on your teams, It is going into the third lane, which is arguing with reality. You know, why in the heck does this keep happening? Who thought of this, you know, process that was decided long, you know, before or away from where you're at? It's not local to you. Once we start to argue with reality, regulations we couldn't be a part of, you know, disruption in the supply chain, just so many things going on right now, then you're so far out of your lane that you cannot take care of your business. So if you want quick happiness, Yeah. Look what lane you're spending your energy in. Look where your teams are spending their energy in. And here's the breakthrough. If you're going to leave your business, you can only do it judging— oh, sorry, excuse me. If you're going to leave your lane, you can only do it helping, not judging. I call it stop judging, start helping, where we are noticing the problem. We're not judging the reality. We're saying, given this unpreferred reality, how can we help? And then I lean over to that other lane and I see how I can help get this back on track. And so that's where the argument with reality starts. So I had a whole story and example that I share with this for the podcast, but I, I just recently, if you'll bear with me as I, this is off the cuff, but yesterday as I'm recording this, I was all prepped for an awesome virtual session. It's a 6-part series with a client. We had a kickoff in person. This is the first virtual one. And then we're going to do a few more virtual and finish with with an in-person. And it was their first one in this new setup. They got this new training room. They're really investing in their leaders. We got a great plan. And we've had it all approved on the calendar for months. And I'm jumping on and I'm like, hey, can you send the test link? I get on about a half hour before just to make sure all's good. And, and we had each other's phone number for logistics with virtual. We do that sometimes just to make sure if something comes up, just quick text is faster than email. Yeah. And she's texting me like, okay, I'll send it over. Let me get that for you. And I'm like, well, that seems kind of late to be getting this. And, uh, from their IT person who was working on final details. And so that comes over and I click into it and it's— and it, um, it doesn't— it doesn't open up. It's just kind of spinning. So I go back to the email and I realize it says June 2nd is the time slot, not June 1st. And in my head I'm like, it's— it's June 1st is today. It's on the calendar. I have it in my calendar. Our We have our file that has all the speeches. We have our internal CRM, like everything's saying the first. And so I'm clicking in it and I'm like, I'm not seeing it. And she's a little bit of like the tone of like, do you really need it? Like, what's, what's, why do we need it right now? And I'm trying to put two and two together. And all of a sudden I see OMG come through my text. And my contact with the client is like, did I schedule this on the wrong date? And so we immediately pick up the phone and we start to figure out what happened. Because I, before I picked up the phone, I'm like, oh my gosh, who dropped this on our end? How am I gonna like, you know, not make an excuse to the client? How do I apologize? Like, how do we save this? And then I'm thinking, I hadn't looked ahead to today, I guess the next day. Am I even available? My week was, you know, pretty full this week. And so what's that gonna do? Is it even possible if we have to move this forward? Like, do they have any other dates open? Do they have everybody? They have a lot of people coming in for this. I'm like, Geez. So I'm already spinning, already not in my best self. And so as we get on the phone, we do a little bit of investigative work and it just was, you know, we had looked at it wrong. Our side had it, contract had it. It was just on the scheduling. It was blocked off due to the fact that they were doing the link for their setup, whereas we normally send over the link. So a little bit on both sides of just confirming as we're moving fast what's going on there. Literally what was crazy about this is this— I'm bringing this story in— has never happened In 12 years of me doing this, which is probably like 1,200 speeches. I don't even know how many virtual that would be. Never happened. And so speaking of unpreferred reality, but because this has never happened, easier bait for me to argue with reality for not only now in the moment trying to solve it, in the midterm, which is like after we get it stabilized, like how much am I going to lose energy and vent about it and, you know, be spinning? And then longer term, like, what's the extra when my wife gets home and I talk about what happens today? And oh my gosh, you know, it's like that type of thing. And so anyway, one of my favorite models is, and I can draw it up here for the viewers, is just finding the space for impact is how you counteract arguing with reality. And so I'm just drawing this here and I'll speak it out loud. For those that are listening. And then there's really 3 areas. And as I hold this up, imagine there's, there's 3 boxes. And on the left side, there's the unpreferred reality. That's where I'm at. And then on the far right side, you'll see there's another box here. It's the ideal future. It's like, what would great look like? Basically, you know, this situation remedied, you know, all is good. We still serve the client, we risk mitigate, like this turns out okay. And so there's this ideal future of what I would see great looks like, given the situation we're in. So we're sizing up our reality. We got the wrong time. It's got to be tomorrow, hopefully. So I'm looking at some of the constraints and the details there. And then the space in the middle, there's, there's just a more of a, a thinner box in the middle. I call it the space for impact. The space for impact or where to add value or the space for leadership, frankly. Impact. And the idea in any of these situations, like the one I am, is how long do you spend arguing with the unpreferred reality, which is where most people go, is just sitting there and spinning into, I can't believe this happened. It's absolutely ridiculous. Like, how do we not catch this? This is all terrible. And like, even blaming the client who we're trying to obviously stay in partnership with. Like, this is— that's not where you want to go, but that's where the ego goes if you're not careful. And then wishing for an ideal future, which is a lot of like loathing into how did this happen? Oh, You know, I had my whole week planned. Now, that's ruined for the next few days. Like this, you know, I'm thinking in my head, we got our newsletter this week, which is, which is a lot of writing for me and getting that out. And it's like my whole plan as I slotted it up is now shifted for the week. And this is everyone's day-to-day, a new disruption to your day. And so, it's finding the space for impact. And my favorite technique as you go through this, if you can bring it in as a habit, Is to just practice given that. So, an unpreferred reality comes, it's a disruption to your day, it's a surprise to your day. You thought something was done, it's not. It is, you know, something that you thought was working well that it isn't, or you just have an unexpected challenge come up that needs to be taken care of. It's usually an unpreferred reality. Now, instead of spinning and spiraling into all of the reasons why we shouldn't be here, because that's going to burn a bunch of energy, It is saying, okay, I don't love that. I might even say that's not ideal in my own response. Wow, good to know. Given this unpreferred reality, what would great look like? Save this experience, make sure we get the virtual session and figure out how to make it, you know, least disruptive to the team and what we have scheduled this week. And then what's the space for impact? And so catching that spin, I could look at my, my years, 5, 6 years, 7 years before, as I was just starting You know, the practice and really going deep with reality-based leadership and speaking on this, this would have totally thrown me off guard. But here it was like maybe 15, 20 seconds I felt if you put a time on it of like, whoa. And then it got into given this unpreferred reality, what would great look like? And then what's the space for impact? And so that's on that phone. It is a little bit of humor. It's connecting with the, with the client. And we're both, you know, laughing. There was shared accountability. And we're just thinking short-term, how do we stabilize this before we look midterm and long-term? to make sure it doesn't happen again. And so we were able to look at my schedule, I guess it'd be today, and the afternoon was able to be open. I just moved my content that I was going to be doing now to right after the session, and I'll get to that after the session that was canceled. And we were able to reschedule. All is good, doesn't have to shift with her big team, and we're there. And then once that was stabilized, sensing the moment that we could talk about Hey, let's confirm dates moving forward. Let's make sure we got them all, which ones are virtual, the last one's in person, and we're all good. And then we scheduled a time to test all the equipment today, I guess, because it's a new place for them. Did the test, all's good so far. And so, I bring in this story, wanted to just share how I teach this for a living and I screw it up but only daily. So, if you're out there as a reality-based leader with your teams expecting to do this perfectly, Just know that you won't. You don't have to. And if you think you have to do it perfectly, you probably won't get started with using some of these coaching techniques and tools. And so know that perfection's not the goal here. It is seriously picking a technique, finding where it applies in your day-to-day, and then in general moving people to self-reflection, or if it's really stuck, into some of the tools we teach Probably not on this podcast, but some of the other ones. And so, my self-reflection was using, given that this is an unpreferred reality, what would great look like? That's that ideal future. And then, how can we get there? And that started the self-reflection. Whatever list came to me on the call with the client, we started to take action. All turned out good. Now, all of this was like 10 minutes. We were able to stabilize it. And then, we got everything scheduled and prepared to be seamless moving forward. And so, this is the power of one Watching when you're arguing with unpreferred realities or just wishing for a different future that's not there unless you help step into it with the space for impact. And this is really scaled across your team, the opportunity. So, the next part of this is noticing after it was done how the ego tempts you to get back to venting, arguing with reality, or wishing for a different future. After getting it stabilized, then it was 2 and a half hours opened up in my afternoon schedule. Many of us then kind of, that's the day, let's vent about it a bit, and we got to tell some others, and you're figuring out how you're going to tell others. And, and, and that's okay, it's part of being human. But I was just noticing, just as my own practice, like how much I was trying to work on something else or jump into my email or just get a few other things done on my list. And I wanted to go back to like, oh, I thought that'd be done today. I was all hyped up for it. I had all my notes ready. Like I had the stories down and now I got to wait for tomorrow. So some of it was like disappointment. Like I remember being a kid and we had baseball games when I grew up in Iowa and I loved those tournaments, right? It was like, I know I'm going to get like 4 games today and then it gets rained out. So you're just kind of like sitting around there like, well, what are we gonna do this weekend? Like I was so excited to use my bat and like see my friends and it felt like that. And so, it was moving into watching my ego want to argue with that reality that it should have been done and I had the other list this week. But it was just next right action. And this sounds so simple, but conserving that energy into, now we got 2.5 hours. Notice you're already charged and ready to speak. You're feeling excited. Your energy's up. You got that adrenaline going. Let's move that right into the podcast. You're doing that tomorrow as a recording day. Let's do it now. And so I jumped in, we got set up and recorded a couple of podcast episodes. And it was— that's the midterm. Short-term, stabilize it, got it done with the client. Mid-term, move that energy over towards what we can do next and then how we can make sure this doesn't happen again. And then long-term, maybe we just look at our current process, which has worked for 12 years, to see if anything was missed to be able to ensure this doesn't happen again. And that is a full case study of Watching the argument with reality, and then seeing how to use this simple model I gave you of the 3 boxes, unpreferred reality, ideal future, find the space for impact in the middle, and then take action out of that. And if that on repeat as a habit is really where teams start to have high engagement, they're quick problem solvers, there's not as much swing up and down as far as drama because they're able to absorb Anything that's maybe out of the ordinary or a disruption and treat it as, wow, good to know. I figured something like that might happen because something like that happens weekly. Let's see if it's a really big pattern, if it truly is weekly, or if this is a one-off and we can just use resilience to get through it. And that's where we're at. We'll see how this plays out. So, to wrap this up, as always, I like to leave you with some reflection, or if your teams are listening with you, where Are we getting caught into consistent arguments with reality? There's usually certain spots that we just get on the same spin. Can you find those? Can you have a code word or I don't know what it is, but just say, team, call a timeout. That's one of those. And if we weren't arguing with reality, let's draw out this diagram. It is unpreferred. I want to validate that. I'm not saying we should tolerate this, we should enable this. That is unpreferred. This keeps happening. We're working on improving it, ideal future. Let's step into our part in the short term locally that we can do to impact it. And then maybe we can funnel that up to continuous improvement or figuring out what's the pattern and the trend there that we could fix so it doesn't happen again. And so, find those arguments with reality, maybe journal where you're finding yourself arguing with reality, and just that awareness of it Is 75% of the battle. And so I hope this helped you look at a core concept, a core default we have in our human condition that will put you into drama every single time and helped you think through that a little differently. Thanks for listening in. I hope you take this with you and watch for your arguments with reality. Remember, you'll lose, but only 100% of the time. And I don't want that for you. I don't want that for your teams. And we can start to work through this together. Please pass this along to your team so you can discuss it. It's a great weekly reminder, and you could use it at the start of your huddles. You can bring it into your conversations, into your coaching. And then lastly, if you're looking for workshops, you got a keynote, you got an event with your organization, and you'd love to bring in some Ditching the Drama, some Calling Teams to Greatness, some of our research on accountability and change readiness, like work doesn't have to be so hard. This same job you're doing with your teams can be effortless. And we got programs to reveal that to people so they can use these tools to make the work you're doing more effortless, get better results, or at the very least, get the same results with not so much suffering. And so, I look forward to— if you want to talk about those, reach out to our team at info@realitybasedleadership.com. And looking forward to seeing you on the next episode. Remember, keep loving people up, but it's our job to call people up to greatness. I'll see you next time.