I know. It's great, I love it.

So, what we're going to talk about today is really focusing around what we consider difficult conversations with people on our team. We've been doing a number of podcasts lately that are focusing on CEOs and their relationships with their board of directors. But of course, where there's people, there's going to be potentially perceived conflict and difficult conversations—they happen everywhere, personally and professionally. And I know that when there is conflict on a team, organizational performance can suffer in in a number of ways, the company's image can suffer, the reputation, their brand, the CEO, and the Board may lose the confidence of investors and shareholders. And that's a really big one that can impact organizations in a negative way. And and then people are just simply miserable going to work when there is a perceived conflict. At least that's been my experience Liza.

Liza Provenzano

And those those situations that you describe Maureen, are real risks...not being able to work through conflict, not being able to find our way to the other side of a disagreement. Those are real risks. And you've seen it...you know, you've laid out a few good examples there of things that can go sideways. For an organization when a team or two individuals can't navigate their different opinions.

Maureen Farmer

I'm just going to lay out a couple of scenarios that I am familiar with over the past, oh, I'd say six months or so. So a couple of different situations. Of course the the goal here is to sort of lay out kind of a case study and then go through an analysis of it and then provide practical solutions that the listener here today can take away and use in their own business.

So, one particular situation is that we have a new CEO has been brought into the organization. And the CFO, for example, is having difficulty connecting with the CEO in terms of laying out expectations for the next few quarters at work. And the CEO indicated to the CFO that he was, you know, not 100% happy with this person's performance. And this was done through a third party vehicle. And when the CFO approached the CEO to have that conversation, the CEO kept stonewalling him and postponing the meeting, and it never happened. And so now the CFO is feeling a little bit uneasy and share out of control because he doesn't know. He doesn't know number one, what is what the issue is, or or secondarily how to fix it. That's one scenario.

And the another scenario that's happened, I think this is quite common, is when we have a CEO and there's a new board member, who's not necessarily even the Chair, but a very influential shareholder, who's also a board member, and is acting very aggressive toward the CEO and not allowing the CEO to make certain types of decisions that should be under the purview of a CEO. Those are just two examples of common scenarios that have crept up in the past six months or so. And I would love to know from your perspective, and in your practice, what types of conflict you're seeing.

Liza Provenzano

Those are two challenging scenarios and with very different types of behavior being displayed, the stonewalling in one hand, aggressive behavior on the other. So, we can talk to those but to to answer your question about the types of conflict or challenging situations that I'm seeing in my work at this time...

It's predominantly with the leaders that we work with the types of situations they're bringing up are performance concerns that those are very challenging conversations to address, you know, how do I have a discussion with someone about their work, just not being up to speed and still help that individual continue to be engaged, help them to, you know, find the way forward in a motivating way. So that performance conversation is often one that preoccupies leaders that we work with. And another type of conversation that comes up with some regularly regularity is conversations with peers where, you know, I'm relying on a peer, it's for them, I appear to do something, or to work something out with me, that my performance rests upon. And therefore, we just can't seem to figure it out. So that's there's that cross functional challenge, where I can't tell you what to do. But I certainly have to be able to influence you in a positive way, because my success depends on it. So that kind of peer discussion comes up from time to time, too. So those I say, are the two probably most common examples from the leaders that we work with.

Maureen Farmer

And so are they primarily around performance? Like, what would be an example of a performance issue? I'm sure there's, you know, hundreds and hundreds of possibilities. But what are some of the common performance issues that come up between peers, for example?

Liza Provenzano

Performance issues between peers, it's, again, more of this clarity or lack of clarity on the cross functional expectations and commitments. So for example, you know, I might work in a sales organization, and I am relying on a colleague in, you know, the product development organization for some of the changes that I need to make for the product for my customer. And, you know, I just can't seem to get the time and attention or priority, because they've got other things on their plate. And so how do I, you know, work with my peers so that my needs are being met and their priorities in their work plan too? So I think the performance concern is more prevalent around direct report relationships where, you know, again, my success depends on my team's ability to deliver and I'm accountable for their performance and when they're not delivering, that's impacting my ability to meet my goals as the leader of the team.

And sometimes, what happens there is there's an individual on my team that is behaving in a way that is causing some grief or destruction or disruption somewhere else. And I have to address the team members behavior, or they're just not meeting their deadlines and their work is below standards. So, those two types of performance issues are fairly consistent. It's a behavior issue, or it's missing results.

Maureen Farmer

And I'm sure that that's fairly common.

Liza Provenzano

Yeah, it is.

Maureen Farmer

Yeah. And so you've been brought in, I'm just imagining this, you've been brought into an organization. And now you are going to help the leader...do you work with the leader alone? Or do you work with the leader and his or her direct report together?

Liza Provenzano

In most of the work that we do, it's directly with the leader. And it's either working one on one with the leader or with the leader as part of a development initiative, where they're one of a group of leaders. So, I'll give you an example.

Where we work with a small group of leaders, and we have two coaches in the work and we work with them in small groups. And they'll bring in situations that they're dealing with in their work. And we will provide them with tools. And we'll help them to discuss how they will apply those tools in order to have a productive conversation to address that performance concern that they have, or how they'll apply those tools to address that challenging discussion that they have to have with a peer who's just not, you know, stepping up to do their part. So, we'll work in small groups or one on one.

Maureen Farmer

So, I would love to know a little bit more about the type of tools that you use in those those developmental meetings or leadership development meetings.

Liza Provenzano

Yeah, there's a couple of things that happen in those conversations that help the leader to leave those meetings again, whether it's one on one or within a small group, the the leaders leave with with two things, I'd say I put one one category, I would say is they leave with increased self awareness. And the self awareness is really around what is my style? What is what is my style of work? What is my style of leadership? How do I tend to respond in situations where I'm being challenged, or where it's difficult? So for example, in the scenario that you described with a new board member who's being aggressive towards the CEO, one question for that CEO is, what is your typical style and view and belief around conflict? So, having awareness of one's own beliefs around how they respond in situations like that is really important. And I can elaborate on that in a minute. And then the other part of the work is the real practical tools around. Okay, let's talk about how do you want to structure this conversation? Let's get really, really clear about what you want to accomplish as a result of the next discussion. Because it may take more than one discussion to navigate conflict or disagreement. What do you want to accomplish in the next discussion, and help them break it down because that clarity can be really powerful. And then we look at a conversation model and some skills that they use in adopting a conversation model that helps them get from the beginning of the conversation to a place of action? How do they build receptivity or openness with the other person to hear their point of view? And also how do they solicit and understand the other person's point of view? So we walked through some skills on how to do that and get to a place of mutually agreed upon action at the end of the discussion. So again, both folks leave the conversation feeling all right. So, the skills are really around self awareness, and then practical application.