Episode 29: How to have difficult conversations at work – with Denise Liebetrau of Prosper Consulting

Episode 29: How to have difficult conversations at work - with Denise Liebetrau of Prosper Consulting

Jeremy Cline 0:00
In most cases, you don't usually get to choose who your work colleagues are. So it's kind of inevitable that sometimes you're not going to get on with them or have some disagreements. This episode is all about what to do if that happens to you. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life.

Hello and welcome to Change Work Life, the podcast that's all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. It's fair to say that very few of us like conflict or having difficult conversations, but sometimes at work there are people that you just don't get on with or who do something which gets your back up or upsets you. My guest on today's episode is Denise Liebetrau, the founder of Prosper Consulting. Denise is a business consultant and coach, and in this interview, Denise gives us her hints, tips and frameworks for having those difficult conversations at work. Hi Denise, welcome to the show.

Denise Liebetrau 1:03
Thank you for having me Jeremy.

Jeremy Cline 1:04
Denise, can you start off by introducing yourself?

Denise Liebetrau 1:07
Sure. My name is Denise Liebetrau and I am the CEO and Founder of a company called Prosper Consulting. I am an HR consultant and compensation expert with more than 25 years of experience in Fortune 500 companies. And what I do is I partner with business leaders to get the people, their processes, their performance metrics and rewards in place to maximise profit and impact. But I also sit on the other side of the table with employees, and so I'm a career and salary negotiation coach. And with my many years of experience in HR, I help career driven professionals get paid what they're worth, and I help them plan their careers so that it's aligned to their values.

Jeremy Cline 1:49
I'm going to ask you a cheeky question. Who would you prefer to act for the individuals, or the companies?

Denise Liebetrau 1:54
You know, it depends on who I'm working with. If I'm working with a business owner, and they are about recognising their talent as being their competitive advantage, I love working with those folks. On the employee side, I love working with people who are determined to grow and change and are decisive and resourceful and willing to put in the time and effort. So it really depends on the person.

Jeremy Cline 2:18
And how did you get into this area in the first place?

Denise Liebetrau 2:21
I worked in large companies, and that was all well and good for a couple of decades until I got laid off and I was back out in the job market and trying to figure out my next step. And as I was talking to other large firms, I'm like, this just doesn't give me the energy it used to. And I thought, you know what, if I'm going to become an entrepreneur - which I had always had in the back of my mind - now is probably a good time to do that. I decided I wanted to build a company that I could do from anywhere, that I didn't want a vacation from, and I controlled the to do list. So I started my company as an HR consultant, but I had so many people asking me for advice on how to get promotions, how to get the job search ramped up, how to negotiate once they got an offer - that I was like, you know what, I should be helping the people on the other side of the table as well. And so I developed my coaching practice.

Jeremy Cline 3:08
I'm intrigued by something you said there, always wanting to be an entrepreneur, and having spent two decades working for big corporate firms. What kept you?

Denise Liebetrau 3:18
Money. And the fear of failing in that entrepreneurial space. I grew up on a farm in Kansas in the United States, and I was around entrepreneurs and people who were making a living that way, but I was scared. And I got to the point in my life where I had had some very personal challenges and things that happened, and I realised that I was letting fear hold me back. And I don't want to live a life with regret. And so I decided to step into that fear and take action toward what I wanted. And it's turned out to be a beautiful, wonderful life and I'm delighted that I'm happy and that I get to commute from upstairs in my house to my basement office, and then I get to help the clients that are wonderful to work with. And I get to say no to the ones that I don't find to have the right mindset. So it's been it's been a good chain.

Jeremy Cline 4:09
The reason that I wanted to have you on was to talk about difficult relationships at work, which I know is something that you deal with your clients and in, I guess, from both the the individuals and the company side. I'm not looking for the purposes of this conversation to talk about management because I think that's probably at least one other episode probably many more other episodes by itself. So let's focus on dealing with co workers, and then let's go on to dealing with a difficult boss. First question, I was debating whether to ask you this at the beginning or the end - is not getting on with your co-workers, or indeed your boss, ever a good reason for leaving a job? Because I've kind of heard this received wisdom that Oh, people change, people leave - if you leave just because of someone else then they might leave and it'll be okay. But I've never quite been convinced by that. And I'm interested in your take on that.

Denise Liebetrau 5:06
So I'm going to go to the classic consultant answer, which is it depends. I look at difficult conversations as conflict resolution. And so I'm going to give you a definition of that. So it's a process to generate a sense of completion while taking responsibility for moving ourselves in the direction of what we most want. So if you're having a conflict with someone, sometimes it's about you, sometimes it's about them. Sometimes it's a combination of the two. And what I always tell people is you should try to have an open, honest collaborative conversation about what has happened or what was said or how you thought about it or a behaviour to see if things can change. Some people just don't realise when they say something or do things that they're causing you grief and making things more difficult. So sometimes if you give feedback in a constructive way, it works out and people modify their behaviour, at least they try to do better, and other cases they don't. And some people just don't care if they hurt others and so it becomes a situation where it's so toxic that you really can't live with it anymore. It is okay to set healthy boundaries and to say, you know what, this is not okay anymore. And I need to pull myself out of this situation and get to a better place. So I think it's important to try. But there are some people you just have to either distance yourself from or block and no longer interact with, because it's too toxic and too detrimental to your wellbeing to be with them.

Jeremy Cline 6:27
Before you get to that point, let's talk about co-workers in your office space. And there could be any number of characters that grate on your nerves. So it could be the person who ostensibly you do the same job as they do, they never seem to do any work and yet seem to get the same credit as you, or there is the person who is always making the snide comments and who kind of seems to be sucking the enjoyment out of the office, or there must be lots of different characters. If you're in that sort of environment, so you're in your open plan office, and you've got to see these people every day - how do you even start with trying to improve things?

Denise Liebetrau 7:08
So let's take one of the examples. Let's say you have a co-worker that isn't doing the work. When I've had to coach employees in the past, and they're like, my coworker isn't doing the work and I have to pick up the slack. And I'm like, 'Wait, wait, wait - time out. Why are you picking up their slack?' Sometimes I've seen employees who will swoop in and they kind of want to save things, and they pick up the slack, and then the other person doesn't get called out for not doing the work. So first of all, don't do the other person's work. Make it obvious to your leadership that they aren't getting the work done, so that leadership can have the right performance conversation. If you need to highlight the person isn't doing the work, then you need to be really careful about what you say and how you say it, right? Because it needs to not be pointing fingers because that's not a productive thing and your boss isn't gonna probably like that, but it needs to be about the broader thing. So let's say you need to get some work done for a project to meet a certain milestone. You might need to have a side conversation with your boss and have a list of things that you're worried about related to that project and meeting certain milestones and say, you know, go through your list and on one of those items is Bob. I have some concerns about Bob, I'm not sure what's going on. I don't know if he doesn't know what needs to be done in what timeframe, if he's not got the right skillset or training, but I think there's something going on over there that you need to look into to make sure that his part of this project is progressing along with what everybody else is doing. And if you put things in that kind of context, and it's in the broader context of getting the project done along with other things, a lot of times that is a way to do it without coming across as kind of tattle telling and pointing fingers. Does that make sense?

Jeremy Cline 8:44
Yeah. In that circumstance, would you advise speaking to the manager rather than speaking to Bob?

Denise Liebetrau 8:50
Well, I think you could talk to you can do both. You could talk to Bob and kind of gently poke at it, so Hey, I was depending on you to get this to me by this date, can you tell me what happened? Do you need help? Are you struggling with something? And depending on how Bob responds, then you can kind of go from there. I will be honest with you that, you know, there's so many different things that can go wrong, right? And I always think of, I'll give you five things - I'm holding up my hand. Who does what, by when, with what - the resources: time, people money - and why, what's your motivation? And if you go through those five different things, usually it's one or more of those things that gets in the way. And sometimes it's just no clarity of roles and who was responsible for what - and if that was really clear, then you have to dig in a little bit. But if you've had a conversation with Bob, and you can't figure out what's going on, it's perfectly reasonable to share it with your manager and let them know along with any of your other concerns about a project for instance, so that they can take action to get things back on track. The trick is not waiting too long, right? You don't want to have it wait so long that you can't get the work done, meet client needs or whatever it is.

Jeremy Cline 9:56
Could you just repeat those five things, the who does what?

Denise Liebetrau 10:00
Yeah. I learned this technique from a consultant years ago, but it's something that I use when I'm working on projects: who does what, by when, with what - so what resources do you have - and why? What's your motivation? What's the why. It's a great way, if you're in a meeting with somebody, and you're discussing work that needs to be done, just kind of write those things in your notepad. And make sure you have clarity around those five things.

Jeremy Cline 10:26
And what happens if it's just non compatibility of personalities? The example I saw recently was someone who felt like they were the youngest person in the office, and everyone else was older than them by a good 15 to 20 years, even though they were all sort of similar grades and everything but these guys had been doing it much longer, and this was someone who was out of college and they just kind of felt they weren't really being taken seriously by the other guys and just leaves you feeling uncomfortable and unhappy and undervalued - what can you do in that kind of situation?

Denise Liebetrau 11:06
You can have a conversation one on one with somebody. And so if somebody says something that makes you feel undervalued, oftentimes in that moment, you're having an automatic thought - well, gosh, that doesn't make me feel very good. But take a step back. And before you make assumptions about what the other person's intent was, with their comments, or how they behave, take a step back and go, boy, they really cut me down there. Is that really true? Or is that your perception of what they said? What I always do is say - I'm going to pick somebody else's name, Susie - 'Susie, when you said this, this is how I took it. It made me feel this way. Is that how you intended it?' And just calling people out on it sometimes is a really good approach because they'll be like, 'Oh, gosh, I didn't mean that'. Or if they did really mean it that way and you just say it, say 'Did you really mean to kind of cut me down and make me feel bad for not knowing that?' and then be quiet - sometimes that uncomfortable space will make people own that they didn't do something or they said something that was really kind of mean and not very nice.

Jeremy Cline 12:06
And presumably you want to try and get this person by themselves and have that conversation rather than in front of the office?

Denise Liebetrau 12:11
Yeah, you don't do that in front of a group, you do it quietly. There were many times when I was in the corporate environment, things would happen in conference rooms, and you'd have meeting and then I would pull people aside after meetings and say, 'Hey, Susie, can we have a conversation? You said something in that meeting, and I just need to clarify something with you. There was something said that I just need to talk to you a little bit for that. And can you come see me later today?' 'Sure, I can come see you.' And if you sit in an open plan office, right, you kind of have to navigate and get yourself to a quiet corner in the hallway or, you know, a conference room. But yeah, have a quiet conversation and say, 'Hey, when you said this, this is how I took it. Is that how you meant it, and then just be quiet.' Sometimes we make assumptions that are more about how we internally feel about ourselves than what the other person's intent was. But there are people who will do things that are mean and just awful. And if you call them out on it, they'll show up with their attitude and go, 'Okay, well, good to know.' And then you have the information you need to take your next step.

Jeremy Cline 13:04
So going on from that, can you maybe talk about some of the reactions, which maybe aren't the ones that you'd hoped for? So rather than the 'Oh god, I'm sorry, I hadn't realised I said that.' What other reactions there might be, and what the next step is to those reactions?

Denise Liebetrau 13:19
So in your situation, you described a younger worker with people who've been doing the work a lot longer and you call somebody out and say, 'You know, when you said that you made me really feel bad and felt like I really don't know what I'm doing. Is that what your intent was?' And if they come back and say, 'Yeah, that was my intent. You don't really know what you're doing.' And you go, 'Wow, let me take that in for a second.' In that situation, maybe I don't have the same experience and level of expertise you do. Because I am newer at doing this work than you are. I actually look to those of you around me to learn from, to gain experience from, and I feel very lucky to be on this team to be surrounded by all of you, but I'm never gonna get better if you aren't willing to share your expertise and education and spend some time with me so I can get better. I'm open and willing to have those conversations, are you? And then see what they say.

Jeremy Cline 14:06
Let's go into talking about the boss now. And I'll be interested to know whether it's kind of all the same sort of approach or whether there are different approaches when you are dealing with superiors compared with co-workers. And the boss, it could be the micromanager, it could be the boss who sets the unreasonable deadlines, it could be the sink or swims - they just sort of fling something at you which you've got no training or no experience of, no preparation, and suddenly, you're expected to do this impossible deadline. That's the three examples that come to mind. How do you deal with the difficult boss?

Denise Liebetrau 14:41
So what I do is, again, have a conversation and say you want to talk about the facts and not the story. So let me distinguish fact from story. So facts are what a video camera would record - a very factual objective description. Its reality, what happened without finding any meaning to it. Story is something that you can argue with, it's opinions, it's beliefs, it's judgments, it's assumptions and those kinds of things. So what I always start with is what's the fact, and then talking about how it made me feel. And then the story I made up about it, claiming my part in that and then making our request. So let me give you an example. Let's say you've got an employee who's in video conference meetings, and they fail to mute themselves. And you can hear them typing and eating and moving papers, and it's really distracting. So you could say something like, 'Ryan, the last several times, we've had a video conference meeting, you fail to mute yourself, and I can hear you typing and eating and moving papers. And that makes me really frustrated and angry,' and I make up the story, 'you don't notice that impact your noise is having on the rest of us on the team. And while I know you're the boss, and so forth, it really is distracting for the rest of us to get the information we need when we're on this call. My part in this is I have never told you this before and the team and I have talked about it and kind of gossip about it, and we shouldn't do that. So I'm going to stop that and I've stopped speaking up in those meetings, as a result. All of us. So my request to you is can you mute yourself on the calls when you're not speaking so that we can hear everything more clearly.' And then you shut up and let them talk. So it makes sense. You see, you tell what's the fact what's the behaviour, you say, here's how it made me feel. And then you say, my part in this, or the story I made up about this is, and then you request what you'd like them to do instead. Well, you give me an example, Jeremy, give me an example of a boss's behaviour that might need to be corrected.

Jeremy Cline 16:27
The boss whose behaviour perhaps when it comes to introducing you to clients, or something like that, who you kind of feel slightly patronised in the way that you've been introduced, either they sort of downplayed your experience, or kind of focused on something which isn't how you'd really like to be introduced, or something like that?

Denise Liebetrau 16:49
Sure. So I would say what name do we want to give this boss? Should we give it Nancy? I would say 'Hey, Nancy, I noticed when you introduced me to the project team, from the consulting firm ABC the other day, that in that introduction you said,' and you'd be very factual again, 'I felt after that introduction, that that didn't really clearly express my level of expertise and experience. And it kind of downplayed what I'm contributing to the project. And so the story I made up in my head about that is that you don't really understand my experience fully in you don't know how to introduce me in a way that accurately represents me. And my part in this is that I've never talked to you about this before. This has happened more than once, so my request to you is to use this type of an introduction, and here's a copy of how I'd like to be introduced so that my experience and expertise and so forth is explained in a way that's powerful and that clearly articulates what my role is on the team. Do you think you could do that?' Does that make sense?

Jeremy Cline 17:48
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Denise Liebetrau 17:50
Whether it's personal or professional, I learned this from a company called Crafted Leadership here in the States here in Colorado, and it's a good approach both personally and professionally because it gets to the facts and how it made you feel, which you can feel however you want to feel, right? And people might argue with you about some of this kind of stuff, and you listen, and then you can follow that pattern again and again. I can give this collaborative kind of approach to having these conversations to you in a few slides Jeremy, so your audience can listen to it and download it.

Jeremy Cline 18:19
That would be brilliant. I was going to ask if you have any sort of scripts, because it sounds like there are pretty much not not exactly scripts, but a form of how you can set the conversation going.

Denise Liebetrau 18:29
Yeah, it's a collaborative framework to conflict. And it's a little awkward at first when you start doing it. But again, it's five things: I notice, I feel, the story I made up is, my part in creating this conflict is, and would you be willing to or my request is. And it does take planning right before you have the conversations. Most of us have to get out of that assumption, story, judgement stuff to get to truly saying the fact that you can't argue with as the first statement is often one of the more difficult parts of this, but it can be a really effective way to talk to a senior leader or a colleague about something that's bothering you.

Jeremy Cline 19:08
You said earlier that it's advisable not to wait too long until you have the conversation.

Denise Liebetrau 19:13
Yeah, do it within 24 to 48 hours. The closer you can do it to the behaviour that you want to see change, the better.

Jeremy Cline 19:20
I guess the flip side to that is, how do you know that it's appropriate to raise it? And I guess you don't want to be having a conversation every 10 minutes because you're feeling slightly annoyed by someone and you don't want the reputation as the person who is constantly booking the meeting room to go and speak to colleagues and bring them up about xyz that they said.

Denise Liebetrau 19:40
Yeah, I think all of us can have off days or moments where maybe we don't say things in quite the nicest tone or in a way that is respectful as it could be. But if you see a pattern of behaviour and it continually bothers you, and it's impacting you enough, that impacts your your performance and how you're showing up, have the conversation. I think too often what I see is people don't have conversations, and then what is a small issue becomes bigger and bigger because they didn't address it, because the person didn't get the feedback that they needed to know that that is an issue. Or it can just become so much greater than what it needs to be if you don't have the conversation soon enough. So you do have to see a pattern of behaviour. But if you do, and it's bothersome enough, then have the conversation.

Jeremy Cline 20:20
Do companies actually do enough about this sort of thing? Can they be doing more in terms of getting people like you in to speak to people and not just the management but everyone about maintaining a harmonious working environment?

Denise Liebetrau 20:35
Yeah. And I think the other thing we sometimes have is we sometimes have this expectation we're not going to have conflict. I think conflict is actually sometimes kind of good, having differences of opinion and having different ideas and perspectives around the table when you're talking about things. I don't necessarily think conflict is bad. I think conflict is bad if it creates a situation where performance is negatively impacted. And we aren't getting to better out. There are some companies who bring in experts in this type of dialogue so that they can teach their teams these types of approaches. And there's lots of different approaches. This is just one of the ones that I like most at this point, but there are lots of different ways that companies can bring it in. But really, it comes down to individuals. Companies are made up of individuals is what I should say. And individuals will either show up with a sincere wish to interact in a way that is respectful, and that creates good outcomes in a workplace environment that drives strong performance, or people don't know how to act to make that happen. I think good leaders, whether they're in HR or senior leaders of companies will teach these kind of tactics to folk and help develop their teams so that they can have these conversations, or individuals who are suffering will reach out and find these types of approaches to help themselves in these situations. So it kind of depends, but it's all down to the individual.

Jeremy Cline 21:53
Do you ever find that it's part of the culture of the company? I guess there are certain professions, particularly sales ones, cars or real estate sales, where there's actually a lot of an intentional creation of pressure and competition within the environment. Good thing, bad thing? Can it be done well in such a way that it's healthy and not counterproductive?

Denise Liebetrau 22:17
I will bring up a sales situation that I was in. I worked in a large telecom company here in the US for a number of years, and so we would have different call centres and they would have competitions on certain success metrics in terms of call resolution, like solving customers calls within a certain timeframe, and different call centres would be stack ranked from best to worst and so forth. And so there's competition like that. I think if you do it in the context of what are the best call centres of the best phone reps doing that those at the bottom of that list aren't doing, and then how do you teach those behaviours and those actions to the people who are at the bottom so you bring the whole group up and everybody gets better - I think that's perfectly fine. If you're setting up people in a car dealership or in real estate sales to be competitive with each other and what you create is behaviour where they're stealing customers from each other, or they're not sharing tools or resources in order to better numbers themselves at the downfall of their colleagues, I don't think that's very good. So I really do think it's kind of competition can be okay, but it has to be done in a way where it is respectful of the broader needs of the organisation, and not just solely focused on making some people feel bad or putting them at the bottom. It should be done in a way where you take the best practices and share them so everybody gets better.

Jeremy Cline 23:38
So if you're someone who is in a difficult situation at work, and maybe it is one that has been going on some time and you are just thoroughly depressed, you're dreading going into work. You're hoping that the weekend drags on as long as possible and you just don't know where to start. How do you mentally prepare and get to a place where you can think about doing something about this?

Denise Liebetrau 24:01
One of the things that I always do is, am I in the right frame of mind? Part of it's self care, right? Am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I overwhelmed? So part of it is getting yourself in a good place where you can actually think clearly, and I'll be honest with you, I have had clients who are in awful situations and in tears to me on the phone or in person, and they're like, I don't know what to do about this. And I'm like, Okay, well, first thing we need to do is okay, let the grief out. Cry. Then let's talk about what are the facts versus what are the story and the assumptions you're making? So let's write a list of what those things are. Okay, take a deep breath. All right. Have you tried to change things? How have you tried to change things? And then going through that. And if you ever are in a situation where it just isn't going to change and it's toxic and it's pulling you down, and I have been in those. I have quit jobs without having another job to go to because it was so toxic in the workplace I was at. It's okay to do that. Obviously, you have to make sure financially you can take care of yourself and so forth. But there are times you need to put boundaries around yourself that are healthy in order to get yourself out of toxic situations and saying the word boundaries reminds me - on my website, I have a list of book recommendations, because I mention books a lot. And my website is ProsperConsultingLLC.com. And if you click on Resources and Research there is a book recommendation list and there are two books. One is a book called Boundaries, which is really quite good. And then another one called The Crucial Conversation, that is quite good. But it is okay to remove yourself from certain situations. You don't have to stay somewhere forever and be in a spot where it takes you down. That's not okay. You can find a better place.

Jeremy Cline 25:43
So Boundaries and what was the name of the other book did you say?

Denise Liebetrau 25:45
It's called Crucial Conversations. And for those of you who are 'I'm not so much into reading, I like YouTube and videos', Boundaries is written by a Dr. Henry Cloud and a Dr. John Townsend - both Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend have videos, and then Crucial Conversations is written by Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny. And there's also videos on that. But both of those I think are really great books as it relates to having difficult conversations. And then the methodology I gave you before is from a company called craftedleadership.com, and they don't have a book out yet but they do have some great resources, and I'll obviously give you some slides, Jeremy that you can share with your audience. We do a lot of storytelling to ourselves. Another book, I often will get people to read, her books are good, but she's got a website too - Byron Katie has a process called The Work. Have you heard about this, Jeremy?

Jeremy Cline 26:38
No, I haven't.

Denise Liebetrau 26:39
It's really powerful. I found it one time when I was in this state of deep suffering for a variety of reasons and a lot of it had to do with how I was thinking about things, and The Work takes you into a space of asking yourself some very simple questions. But Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is, and I'll put that on my book list as I'm looking at my book list right now - it's not on there and it's one of the ones I'll often recommend, so I'll put Byron Katie's book out there. It's a really good book to get yourself out of that mental state of suffering and to get to what is really true, what is fact versus story in your head and it can get you out of some of that suffering space. And when you create space to no longer suffer by how you're thinking about something, oftentimes that gives you opportunity to find solutions or to think more broadly or reframe situations in a way that that can trigger some some better outcome. That's another good one.

Jeremy Cline 27:25
Brilliant, I'll link to all those is the show notes. In terms of getting in touch with you, is it the website - is that the best place? Or are you around on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn - places like that?

Denise Liebetrau 27:34
Yeah, I always point people to my website as kind of a one stop shop. So again, that's prosperconsultingllc.com. If you click on the link that says Connect, it'll take you to my Facebook and LinkedIn pages and easy to find me there. If you click on Contact, you can send me an email very easily if you want to talk further, happy to have conversation with anybody if what I'm saying resonates and you have a certain situation that you want to kind of talk through and kind of brainstorm about, we can certainly do that as well.

Jeremy Cline 28:04
All those links will be in the show notes for this episode.

Denise Liebetrau 28:06
Great.

Jeremy Cline 28:07
Denise, thank you so much. This has been really awesome. Thank you.

Denise Liebetrau 28:10
Thank you.

Jeremy Cline 28:11
Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Denise Liebetrau. I love the framework that Denise presented, drawing out facts, explaining how it made you feel, and then making a request for action. I think just having a framework itself is going to make these conversations so much easier. Denise was kind enough to provide me with some slides with her framework, and you'll find these on the show notes page, as well as all the links to where you can find Denise and those at changeworklife.com/29. Denise recommended some great books and if you want to check out those and the books recommended by my other guests, why not visit the Resources page. You'll find that at changeworklife.com/resources. There's another great interview coming your way next week and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye