Navigating Difficult Conversations

Show Notes

Summary

This episode is about difficult conversations at work and in leadership. Mathias and Sara explore why these conversations feel so stressful, and why they often leave a longer emotional trail than we expect.

Main themes include:

• giving hard feedback
• sharing bad news or layoffs
• handling conflict between co-founders, teammates, or cross-functional peers
• communicating major decisions people may disagree with
• dealing with unspoken or misaligned expectations

Keywords

intentional communication, difficult conversations, giving feedback, sharing difficult news, preparing for a challenging conversation, clarifying and managing expectations

Takeaways

A big takeaway is that difficult conversations go better when you:

• prepare carefully

• script key points and anticipate reactions

• think about the other person’s perspective

• use facts instead of assumptions

• acknowledge your own role in the situation

• treat the conversation as a starting point, not a one-time event

Chapters

00:00 Navigating Difficult Conversations

02:26 Lessons from Hard Feedback

02:31 Navigating Difficult Conversations

06:05 Personal Experiences with Tough Talks

09:51 The Importance of Preparation

14:12 Strategies for Delivering Bad News

18:43 Understanding Emotional Responses

20:08 Navigating Emotions in Difficult Conversations

22:13 The Challenge of Giving Feedback

24:19 Understanding Perspectives in Feedback

26:28 Setting Expectations and Accountability

29:38 The Importance of Commu

32:39 Moving Forward After Conflict

Transcript

Mathias Meyer (00:00) I remember very vividly when I walked over to have one of the most difficult conversations in my life as a founder. It was the kind of conversation you never really consider when you start a business. I was about to give some very hard feedback. The kind you prefer not to give. Ever. I keep thinking about this and other difficult conversations, which we tend to associate only bad feelings with.

Why do our worst moments stick with us for so long when we'd rather pretend they didn't happen? Maybe it's because it's these moments that have the potential energy to shape us for life. We can look back at them as mistakes, but they are really little turning points where we learn something about ourselves. They give us pause to reflect if this is really how we want to show up when things get tough.

What you can learn from them is compassion, acceptance that your view is only one of many, that the other person has a perspective that's just as valid as yours. And you learn to do the work that reduces the need to have these conversations in the first place. Or you can come at the conversation from an angle of partnership, of wanting to figure out together what the best way forward is.

My past self at times thought that only I saw the true and full picture, that only I knew what to do. The sad thing is that once a person starts thinking and acting this way, others are likely to follow in their steps. That's how conflicts can get messy, draining energy to the point where the only way forward is to go separate ways. I like to think I've gotten better at all of this.

But truth is that these conversations don't really get any easier. Maybe I've accepted that the work is both on yourself and on the relationship you have with the other person. That's where the focus should be. A difficult conversation is less so when you can have it as partners, as equals, as humans. This is what Sara and I are talking about today. What those conversations are.

how we can have them, and we share what our own tense moments have been.

Sara Hicks (02:38) Hello, Mathias.

Mathias Meyer (02:39) Hi, Sara. We are today talking about difficult conversations, which I mean, you and I have had plenty of both with each other and also with the folks that we've been working with. I mean, speaking for me, it's a topic that's coming up quite a bit in my coaching conversations. How about yourself?

Sara Hicks (03:03) yes, I have had my fair share of difficult conversations.

We have had difficult conversations. It does come up in coaching in different ways. Sometimes it's about feedback, which can be difficult, difficult news to share, or critical parts of the business. So

Mathias Meyer (03:25) Uh-uh.

Sara Hicks (03:26) looking forward to jumping in.

Mathias Meyer (03:30) Do you, I mean, not for going too deep into any of the conversations that we've had, but what are the general themes that come to mind

Sara Hicks (03:40) Yeah, I mean, think a lot of the difficult conversations I've had to have in my career and also just my personal life center around usually misaligned expectations, I kind of want to say, where,

Mathias Meyer (03:56) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (03:57) either context is off or you know, expectations are certainly have drifted apart yeah, anytime when I'm going into a difficult conversation and I feel this thing in my chest and this tightness and

this stress about what I'm gonna say, what I need to say, what I hope is heard.

any number of those things just bring a level of stress and a level of heightened awareness into that conversation you feeling it you remembering

Mathias Meyer (04:31) Yeah. Yeah.

I have very vivid memories of quite a few conversations.

the stakes seemed very high for them. you know, one that comes to mind was the first time I had tell someone on my team, that what they're doing is not okay. And, you know, if that continues to happen,

There are consequences on the horizon. know, laying people off is just one of the most unpleasant conversations you could have, I would argue. can't imagine how difficult that must be on the receiving end, but even just.

having to have this conversation, preparing for it and managing the emotions that go into it it's just probably one of the more painful experiences I've had. And I think the other ones that come to mind for me were conversations with co-founders where the relationship was very challenged, where, you know, I didn't have the right

tools or experience to resolve the tensions or conflicts or even bring these to a productive conversation. And I just kept trying things and they didn't work

even thinking about these conversations now and even if I would have them today I'm not sure they would be any easier but at least you know even from the coaching practice and processing all of this stuff over years now

I

would think I could prepare better for them, but I'm pretty sure like even then they would still be churning stomachs and you know everything else just the the desire to run away. I think one one vivid memory I have I walked to one of these conversations with a co-founder and I forced myself to smile which just felt so wrong in the moment.

But I needed to force some happiness hormones to flow to just move me into a slightly better and slightly more productive place. Like could feel readier for this conversation.

Sara Hicks (06:42) Yeah. Change the energy.

Mathias Meyer (06:48) Yeah, other conversations have just done power poses and things like that just to.

get a minimum serotonin and dopamine flowing so can push past some of the nervousness. These are just fun things to think about.

Sara Hicks (07:06) memories right? I mean I was just thinking about what you and I experienced you know we had to do some layoffs together and I still vividly remember the all-team meeting and then obviously all of the individual conversations all the preparation which and then

the conversations after, not just that day,

days and weeks after and just how that felt and individually, how individuals were processing it. Yeah, and another difficult conversation. remember when I came in as an executive leader to a team and we had to

have a pretty big shift in direction in our strategy with the product. Understandably so, existing team members who were there

were really frustrated and angry with this change and this shift and trying to understand it. we definitely could have rolled that out in hindsight a lot differently. And that's part of these experiences, that we're talking about, whether it's with

a co-founder, with a team, or with layoffs, or.

giving difficult feedback to a team member or to a even to a boss.

Mathias Meyer (08:21) Mm.

Sara Hicks (08:23) It's never easy. think what changes now is how I prepare. But it's still get anxious. I still get that little bit in my stomach, even as a coach.

Mathias Meyer (08:33) Yeah, I think that's an interesting thing you mentioned about even just these layoffs that we went through in the conversations that happened after. it's it's a much longer arc.

because emotions need to be managed, not just my own, but of the folks who are still there, who have to battle their own survivorship bias, just wondering why they're still here when other people have left.

I think an argument to be made that, especially when it comes to these difficult conversations, usually It's not just one conversation.

one conversation is barely enough. I think I think maybe just going through difficult conversations as like a theme. You already mentioned, you know, giving a team bad news, giving uncomfortable feedback or laying someone off firing someone.

telling you know, when their probationary period is finished, they're not going to get a full-time job. Giving crucial feedback to your boss, which is an interesting one that always comes up for me when I do speed coaching at leadership conferences where, especially with senior leaders who just don't know.

how

to give their boss feedback that also lands. I think the most common one that I come across these days in my coaching practice,

like someone came in, someone who was an engineering leader and said their product counterpart.

is not understanding certain technical concepts and technical ideas and that product counterpart should really just do their work to educate themselves. And

you know, that was the expectation. But as to, know, to your earlier point, like that expectation was never really set. Like it's, it was just increasing levels of frustration

Sara Hicks (10:29) this comes up in coaching so often, which is, and it's come up in my career as a product person. They're just like, they don't get it. Someone will come into,

Mathias Meyer (10:38) Mm-hmm. They don't guess.

Sara Hicks (10:41) like the engineer is saying the product person doesn't get it. The product person is saying that this person doesn't get it or

Mathias Meyer (10:46) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (10:47) X doesn't get it or the boss doesn't get it. And I always dive in and I'm like, what do you mean they, what's it?

Mathias Meyer (10:55) Hmm. what you just. Yeah,

Sara Hicks (10:58) unpeel this a bit.

Mathias Meyer (11:00) and once you've unpeeled the onion, what you just explained to me, why can't you say that to them then? Problem solved at least then at least they understand what you understand. But yeah,

Sara Hicks (11:06) Right. Right.

Mathias Meyer (11:14) that's that's that's work, right? That's usually that means you have to do something. You have to go to that person.

almost, you know, move across this hump that's now there, where you both know something is between you. And well, maybe just, you know, address this plainly. It's like, hey, I know it's been weird between us. And I would like to, you know, help resolve this situation. And I've had the feeling,

that you didn't fully understand some of the concepts that we have here. if that assumption is indeed the case, I would like to explain those to you if you're open.

but anyway, I mean, we're, we're almost solving the situation already. think, I think one you also mentioned was, like communicating a decision or getting people on board, where, know, they're going to have concerns. There is resistance. for example, like a change in direction or, you know, shipping schedules or, you

return to office mandates where that come with the added caveat that there's usually no rational reason why leaders want people back in the office. And so it's just communicated as a mandate, leaving middle managers pretty much in a bind. Or the

Sara Hicks (12:44) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (12:45) newest thing is, you know, we have

hiring freezes and instead more work needs to be done using AI instead of hiring. And it's just like, why? I think that's, that one came up quite a few times where especially middle managers were stuck.

having to explain to their teams decisions that they themselves were not on board with.

Sara Hicks (13:07) Sure, sure.

Mathias Meyer (13:08) And also didn't even from senior leadership didn't get any context or reasoning why this decision was made.

So,

Sara Hicks (13:23) Yeah, should we pick one and kind of talk through some of the things that we might do to prepare or, you know, like, yeah,

Mathias Meyer (13:31) Let's do that. Yes.

Sara Hicks (13:34) yeah.

Mathias Meyer (13:35) I mean, I was just going to... There's an easier one, which is giving a team bad news, which is not necessarily easy per se. But I mean, there are varying levels of bad news, right?

Sara Hicks (13:48) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (13:50) I mean, layoffs are probably the worst kind of news that you could give. But beyond that, bad news could also be...

where there's a change in direction and all of the work that you've been doing for the last two or three months is basically has been for naught. That can be bad news as well.

How

does it feel to go into a conversation like this,

Sara Hicks (14:15) we're human, right? So we have emotion. like, it just feels, yeah, there's a nervousness, there's a worry, there's an anxiety, I might not sleep as well the night before I,

I need to consciously do those things that you talked about, Just before the call, I might do some pushups just to shift my energy in my body. I'll definitely do some power poses. The crazier, the better.

I go into those conversations and it really depends on the context, right? Is it a conversation with an individual, with a whole team?

In the case of shifting strategy or shifting feedback, most likely talking to a team of people.

Mathias Meyer (15:00) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (15:01) In those cases, I always think like, I roll this out in the most gentle and respectful way?

Now sometimes you just have to just say it in front of a whole group of people and you can't pre have pre conversations. You can't have pre meetings. You know,

it just depends. But ideally, you know, I've been able to, you know, bring, you know, a group of people into the decision. and work with those people around the decision, around the change.

what that means, why we're doing it, what that means for the existing work and the existing people and the existing team. And then those people become support for me, right? And support for others.

Mathias Meyer (15:47) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (15:48) But that's in bigger organizations. Sometimes that's a luxury you don't have. It's a smaller group, it's a smaller startup, a smaller team.

I prepare, like I write down everything, like script it out. I will script out sentence by sentence what I plan to say. I will also try to imagine in advance the difficult questions that might come up and I try to

Mathias Meyer (16:18) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (16:19) answer I will rehearse, even if it's just me reading my script.

and practice a bunch of times.

I have brought in others into the conversation, like Mathias, you and I were able to do this when we were working together at Reaction Commerce. We could work on our scripts together. We could really practice. And I also, think one thing that we did that I've carried forward is different people require,

more context or different context or, because they have more tenure in the company or they have, you know, different, different levels of experience or they're going to be impacted differently.

of course, like what we share and how we, how we talk with those individuals needs to adjust.

really to me is like the more I prepare, the more I practice, the more I script it out,

Mathias Meyer (17:13) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (17:14) the better I feel going into the conversation, I mean a little bit less anxious, yeah, it's just some of the things I try to do.

Mathias Meyer (17:23) Hmm. Yeah, I think for me, I always think about, especially when it comes to bad news is staying ahead of anything like gossip or rumors developing once certain news is shared, right? And some of that is, or maybe all of that, a lot of that is the preparation, as you mentioned, thinking about as many of the people who are present.

what they might be worried about, addressing those questions. think for me, at the tail end of my CTO work, any announcements already had an FAQ section. It's like, is why this is happening. Or here's a question that someone could ask. does show, and it is important that

as you prepare for sharing these news, that you think about how this actually impacts the team. And it does have the added benefit that you stay ahead in terms of, gossip and rumors.

Sara Hicks (18:29) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (18:30) I think especially when it comes to layoff, I think a spreadsheet that was, in some cases, time to the minute.

linking

out to different Google Docs of what is being said in this conversation. Like, who are we talking to first? And why? And who are we talking to next? And then just mapping all of that out. it did have the benefit of thinking

Sara Hicks (19:00) Hmph.

Mathias Meyer (19:01) about from all possible angles, what are the scenarios that could happen?

What a team doesn't join this all hands call? someone just isn't present? What do we do? We can't let that linger. We need to find a way to address that. And

Sara Hicks (19:15) Yep, someone's out that day. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (19:20) you can't plan it to the umpteenth detail, but at least you get into a mindset where, for me as a former developer, I always like to have a plan B. I think that's, for me, that's the most important thing when there's a plan B.

I feel comfortable with Plan A. If Plan A doesn't work out, We'll just do something else. And we've prepared for that.

Yeah, think that preparation is a common theme and

Sara Hicks (19:51) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (19:53) and putting yourself into the other person's shoes. think

Sara Hicks (19:56) Right.

Mathias Meyer (19:57) that's one as well.

Sara Hicks (19:59) Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to go there, which is like, even with the preparation, we're still powerless over the individual's response. Right. So,

Mathias Meyer (20:08) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (20:08) you know, even with as much handholding and sincerity and empathy and preparation and spreadsheets and, know, as plan A and plan B.

we still have to give space and time for the individual to respond. And so that means, in the moment there can be emotions.

I'm always afraid of those emotions. Is there going to be some sort of anger or sadness or

Mathias Meyer (20:39) Yeah. Where's sadness or like all of it?

Sara Hicks (20:43) any of it? Yeah. And then in time, is there going to be fallout?

like not

Mathias Meyer (20:49) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (20:50) only with that individual, which is understandable in some ways, but also with the rest of the team. feel like I'm concerned and I'm also afraid of this have a ripple effect, more

conflict will happen from it and how to think about that and how to, you know,

give space for that emotion, also try to prevent the conflict from escalating.

what's the balance of obviously sharing this feedback, sharing, having a difficult conversation, giving space for the person to digest it and to respond and to have sadness or worry or anger.

Mathias Meyer (21:30) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (21:30) but then

also to ensure that it's not causing too much conflict and it's not escalating

unnecessarily, right?

Mathias Meyer (21:41) And sometimes that is exactly why you need to have a difficult conversation, right? So they're keeping it from escalating. the fear of how the other person might respond or react.

might get angry at us, they might quit. I think that's a fear, especially when you give someone feedback that is maybe not as pleasant. It's a team member that you value highly and you're afraid that they might leave because of this conversation. Or as I said, there's these ripple effects.

or

it tarnishes your reputation in some way. People are going to be mad at you for being laid off, which absolutely is a fair right to be. And also in the same way, you have to put yourself out there and say, well, we made a mistake here. We made certain assumptions about how this would go. It didn't go that way. And this is unfortunately what needs to happen now.

So there's a high vulnerability element to a lot of this as well. which almost brings us to the next type of conversations is giving feedback to someone, especially the more difficult kind. Right. It's

Usually easy to give someone positive or reinforcing feedback. Although for me as a German, it's something I had to get used to. It was very uncomfortable to me in the beginning when people asked me for that. That changed over time. But giving someone feedback on something that hasn't worked or certain

Sara Hicks (23:18) Right.

Mathias Meyer (23:19) expectations they haven't met.

When giving their feedback like this, unless we really know from the past, from past conversations that this person is gonna take that feedback and do something with it, something about their approach, change something about their work, how they interact with other people, unless we have that experience, just never know they will respond.

had one client who I had a conflict with someone on the marketing side. And they asked me like, so if I want to just go into this conversation and just tell them how they're wrong.

was like, well, tell me about how they're wrong and why you're right. And describe what you even think their perspective is? What is their stance? And that usually goes into I think something about bad intentions, some making assumptions about what their motivations are, making assumptions about why they're doing something.

And

what they want to achieve with that, which are usually not founded in reality. They're founded in the frustrations that you have about the situation. That it is just, you know, why can't they just do their thing? Why can't I just do my thing? And somehow that automatically lines up and everybody's going to be happy. Even though you already know this is not the reality based on

recent experience, which is, you know, led us to this coaching conversation.

Sara Hicks (24:49) Right.

Right. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:53) you assume that you're how whatever you're doing is the right way.

Sara Hicks (24:58) Right, right, right. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:59) And however you

see the world is the correct view of the world and how they're viewing it is obviously wrong.

Sara Hicks (25:04) Yeah. Yeah, I've seen this.

I've seen this as well so many times where someone's just adamant like this is their right. This is the feedback. They have to give this feedback. They're ready to they're ready to just, you know, jump in and

I'm always up the like, let's first pause for a second. And, understand is this, this feedback, is it a personal grievance? what led to this situation?

what context has been shared or has not been shared? I what information does the person giving the feedback have that the person receiving the feedback or will be receiving the feedback have?

Mathias Meyer (25:47) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (25:48) context is missing?

what's contributed to lead to this situation that we're in. And I think just spending some time really with the person who's ready to give that feedback, who's convinced that they need to give this feedback, that they have to share difficult news, that this person's done something wrong or they're not contributing or meeting expectations. It's like, okay, well, understand that a little bit more.

Mathias Meyer (26:12) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (26:13) I think that's where I've always felt like there's been the most growth for me individually as well as, you know, for the hopefully for the folks that I coach, but just taking that bit of time to almost put yourselves in the shoes of the other like, okay,

where,

Mathias Meyer (26:28) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (26:29) What's contributing to this?

Mathias Meyer (26:30) Mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (26:31) And I think that that always really helps.

and kind of just sets the conversation up more as equals rather than as this person who is the right in the right and then the wrong. That's not really

Mathias Meyer (26:42) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (26:43) the way to approach it,

Mathias Meyer (26:45) I think very early on in my coaching career, I talked to an engineering leader and somehow this became a theme. Like within weeks, I had several of these conversations that started with something like, have someone on my team who's not performing and how do I tell them? And so underlying that is the assumption that you fully understand.

A, what does performance look like? is, mean, putting aside that this is an inherently difficult thing to assess, especially in engineering, but also elsewhere. It's very subjective.

I usually go into like a couple of follow on questions just to actually, as you said, to get the person to take several steps back, not just one and take them back to the beginning, whatever the beginning is. Beginning could have been beginning of the project, beginning of the quarter. It could have been the beginning of when this person started working here.

It just ties back to something that you said very early on. It's like, does this person know what's expected of them? Like whatever measure you have in your head, which is usually where it is about productivity, do they know that this is how they're being assessed? Right? So like at that point it was, well, they're

committing less code than other people. or they're contributing to fewer pull requests than other folks Or they don't, you know, they don't seem to be working as many hours as everybody else, right? There's always a comparative element to other folks, which is usually driven by output. That's a slightly different thing. But

Sara Hicks (28:26) Right. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (28:28) There's a set of expectation.

There's a certain measurement that somebody needs to live up to. And then more often than not, that measurement was never really communicated, right? And then communicated and then the other person also had an opportunity to say, well, A, this is realistic. Yes, I can do this. Or can we adjust this or this or that?

You know, we are at the point now where everything seems to be really bad. And now you need to give that person the feedback. And what should have happened maybe long the way is like, following question is like, does this person know that they are not living up to these expectations? That's the second question. Yeah, that's feedback. That would have been, you know, if you think back through the entire arc of however you got here earlier on, this would have been a lot easier to give.

Right. And when everybody understands what they're supposed to do and is agreed on that, that's also easier to do. I think in our book, we talk a little bit about rethinking accountability from a different angle, which always starts with setting expectations.

And

setting expectations in a way that is not, you know, not top down or not at least not completely top down, but at least it's a conversation, right? It's like I at least have an opportunity to say, yes, this is realistic. This isn't realistic. This here's why, et cetera, et cetera. And then we can maybe, you know, twiddle some knobs And then, you know, we both of us rubber stamp it.

and we're off.

I'm sometimes marveling at the fact how often all of this comes back to unspoken expectations. Because like we're, you know, there's a fear of spelling those out. this very common thing is people, managers or founders thinking that their team should just get it. They should just like intuitively know what is.

Sara Hicks (30:26) Right.

Mathias Meyer (30:27) common sense and apply that. But then common sense is, you know, different to everybody.

it's just interesting, like how it all comes back to that and how easy it would be to just spell those out, whatever assumptions we have, being able to those, you said, preparing for feedback.

preparing for difficult conversations, not letting them turn into grievances, but rather trying to understand why did we assume this to be true? What are the expectations that are hidden in there? And then going into the conversation with a level of curiosity of these were my expectations. Were these, were they realistic? What did you

Sara Hicks (31:05) Great. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (31:07) expect? What did you assume to be true?

Sara Hicks (31:10) Right? Yeah, what happens often is, you know, because we don't have these.

these steps along the way where we're checking in with each other, we're sharing feedback as it happens. It's building up, right? And so then there's this big, difficult conversation where I think the tendency is to kind of throw the kitchen sink in with everything. It's like,

Mathias Meyer (31:34) Hmm

Sara Hicks (31:35) there's this pile on aspect. And I always try to coach

that's not gonna be productive first off. you know, you kind of have to start with the discussion with, you know, two, three max,

facts. They can't be opinions. They can't be, you know, like, hey, I want to just go back to moment. Here's

my understanding. Try to understand what you have in common about that situation. Learn more from where the other person is coming from, what they heard, what their motivations, what their assumptions were, and what their expectations were around.

this this factual event or this factual projector.

And in order to move that to to something that's constructive, you have to, you know, have that empathy, you have to have that like, trying to understand where they're coming from.

Mathias Meyer (32:29) Mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (32:30) find,

a part of the conversation that you both agreed on and then build upon that. always difficult because fester

sometimes

Mathias Meyer (32:39) Mm.

Sara Hicks (32:40) even after the conversation, especially if there's two or three or four, multiple examples of frustration building and where feedback hasn't been given, you're not current in that relationship.

Mathias Meyer (32:52) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:54) it just becomes so difficult. the sentence we use the most in our relationship, Mathias, and then also it's front and center in our book, but it's we're here now, which is we

Mathias Meyer (33:04) Mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (33:05) can't change the past. Nothing we can do about it. All we can really do is as leaders and as people and as humans, okay, acknowledge that we're here now.

Mathias Meyer (33:18) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (33:18) and

we have work to do. We have work to do to mend this relationship, to move forward, to lead differently or to manage differently. that's the agency we have. we can all control

Mathias Meyer (33:30) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (33:30) what we do next. We can't control what we did yesterday.

Mathias Meyer (33:34) Yeah, I think there's this one side or, why sometimes we err on this side of just blowing things up, telling someone else they're wrong and assuming we're right is it's it is a lot of work. It's easier to just assume you're just going to have this one conversation and everything's going to be great after you've blown it all up.

maybe that adds a barrier to going into conversations like this. It's like, can't we just all get along? Can't we just all focus on the work? But

Sara Hicks (34:03) Right, right.

Mathias Meyer (34:04) then the work is a result of a complex mesh of people don't know each other, but somehow have to work together and manage not just their own emotional state, but that of, well, whoever else they're interacting with. That's just an interestingly

complex system, right? there are relationships that need maintenance, nurturing. That's one side. I think that the other side of what you said is going into a conversation and just retracing steps, trying to find the point where you diverged.

And also assuming that your perspective is not the only truth. And also maybe even just acknowledging in this conversation that you contributed something to getting to this place, right? That to the conflict, to the tension, that is not something that the other person did. But even just starting like, we're here now, I would like to get us to a place where we can work together without...

all of this stuff that happened in the past, that can actually make the conversation a lot less daunting. If you go into a conversation like okay, my one goal for this conversation is I want to understand what the other person assumed expected all of that.

That's my goal and ideally I can share mine and then that's it.

But at least it lowers the stakes

because you're not yelling at someone, you're not telling them how they're wrong. You're just going in, admitting some fault that can even soften the conversation right from the get-go. And it's like if I'm being yelled at, I'm immediately going into the fight or flight response. If I'm being, somebody comes to me and says, well, I did this thing.

and we're somehow stuck in this rut and I would like us to get out of it. Would you like that too? I mean, I can still say no, that's certainly a possibility, but at least,

Sara Hicks (36:13) Sure.

Mathias Meyer (36:15) everything softens usually. And then you can start something that's hopefully more productive.

Sara Hicks (36:22) Right, right. Sometimes it just needs time as well. It's like, just, hey,

Mathias Meyer (36:25) That is true.

Sara Hicks (36:27) how about we check back in tomorrow or, after the weekend? time gives some perspective and some softening to a situation.

Mathias Meyer (36:37) Agreed.

Sara Hicks (36:38) All

Mathias Meyer (36:40) Well, this was quite something second podcast conversation for the first real topic.

Sara Hicks (36:44) We just

jumped into difficult conversations, why not?

Mathias Meyer (36:50) think

when I suggested this, were several conversations in this realm that I've been talking to clients about.

But now we're getting, we got it over with. That's something. I think the next topic is probably not any easier, but I mean, what is, what is easy in a work environment?

Sara Hicks (37:14) All

Mathias Meyer (37:14) Okay, lovely chat,

lovely and difficult.

and we'll see you next time.

Sara Hicks (37:20) See you next time.