Welcome to Visionary’s Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.Â
 Hi, and welcome back. This is episode 59 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast. episode is part one of a two-part series on how to have difficult conversations.
One of the most common coaching topics I have with my clients is about their relationships with their employees, their boss, their business partners, and sometimes even their families.
As Tony Robbins says The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our life. You've probably heard people saying that employees don't quit companies, they quit their bosses, because our relationships have the biggest impact in our everyday in how we feel, in our belief that we can be successful or not. That we're appreciated. It has to do with self-esteem. So I want to start this episode by saying that having strong relationships, honest, authentic, trustworthy relationships is a determining factor in your level of success and your own happiness.
And yet most of us haven't received a training on how to have good quality relationships. We've learned it from other adults that were never trained or never taught how to navigate them successfully. So for all of us, this area is probably one that we can grow a lot into. Today, I want to share with you how to have difficult conversations because knowing how to have these type of conversations is crucial for having good relationships.
So what is a difficult conversation? Let's start by defining what a difficult conversation is. It's any conversation you would rather not have because either the stakes are high, the emotions are strong, your opinion is completely different than the other person's opinion. You are risking safety. You're putting your job in jeopardy, or you may even risk losing a client.
When I think about my clients, usually these conversations involve anything from giving performance feedback to a team member, talking about unmet expectations with your business partner, setting boundaries with a potential client, a current client, with your investors.
Basically any conversation that requires you to talk about money, honesty, emotions, unmet expectations are difficult conversations. In other words, it's a conversation that triggers discomfort because there's something meaningful at stake. Your relationship, your image, your sense of control, your safety.
So if they're so uncomfortable, why are they so important to have? I think the best way to understand this is by looking at the consequences when we avoid these type of conversations or when we, instead of having them end up yelling or saying things that are offensive .
When we avoid having difficult conversations, we erode trust. When we stay silent, the tension doesn't disappear. It accumulates. It starts controlling you. It starts taking up space in your brain. It's no longer about the conversation, but it starts becoming about your fear of the worst case scenario. It becomes this huge thing and therefore you avoid it even more.
Some years ago, I was talking with a client who was the COO of a startup. For years, her relationship with the boss, who is the founder and CEO of the company was fantastic. She grew within the company.
She took on more responsibility. She delivered the results that were expected of her. Everything was working fantastic until the company wasn't meeting the goals it had set out to accomplish, and there was a little bit of blame going both ways and maybe, yes, some conversations, but never the conversations that got to the core of the matter.
What ended up happening is that each of the parts started gathering resentment towards the other part, being frustrated, they stopped believing in each other. They stopped believing that they were good partners. They stopped believing that together they could make the company grow. The distance started growing. The tension was palpable. This started affecting my client's health, and at the end, what ended up happening was that my client left the company.
Because when we don't address the elephant in the room, when we don't address the truth, the core of what's bothering us, it grows and relationships end. Have you ever got to the point that no matter what the other person says or does, it bothers you?
Their physical presence bothers you and you start avoiding them altogether. Well, what has happened is that you've accumulated so many unspoken truths that now you're very distant from that person. It's grown into resentment or even contempt.
Think about it this way, imagine that the other person. Think about maybe it's your business partner or an employee. That's something that bothers you and you don't say anything about it. Well that's as if you had put a pillow in between you and the other person. A pillow is small, it's fluffy, it doesn't really possess any risk. You can live with it. So then you do something that bothers the other person and the other person doesn't say anything to you. So it's as if they would put another pillow between you. And what happens with time is that you start accumulating pillows. One after another, and there's a moment that you have so many pillows between you that you can't touch each other, you can't be close to each other. And how you know, you've created so much distance between the two of you is because you start being bothered by that human being.
So with time, what happens is that you've put so many pillows in between the two of you, that you feel so far away. There's so much distance and disconnection that there's resentment that's growing. Contempt that is growing and how you know is because whatever they do, it bothers you. Can you relate?
So what a difficult conversation does is it removes the pillows. Every time you speak your truth or the other person speaks their truth and you listen to each other and you understand each other's point of view, you remove the pillows. that's why difficult conversations are not the conversations you have just once a year. When you're giving the end of year review, it should be part of your daily practice, of your weekly practice. We should all have difficult conversations the moment that we see we're putting pillows in between us and the other person.
The quality of your relationships are determined by the difficult conversations you have. When you don't have those difficult conversations and you keep those things that bothered you inside of you. You're no longer showing up as yourself.
You're showing up with a mask. A mask that is pretending that everything is okay. When in reality you have feedback, you have unmet expectations, you have thoughts about things that bothered you, and when we show up with a mask to our relationships.
That's not an honest relationship, that's not a truthful relationship. That is a very superficial relationship that at some point will break.
A common misconception I hear is that good relationships are the ones that don't have arguments, but with this episode, I hope you start understanding that it's the other way around.
It doesn't mean that you have to have fights, but it means that you're human beings and you're both constantly making mistakes, we're often misinterpreting things. And the difficult conversations, what they do is help us understand each other better and move forward.
So right now, take a look. How are your relationships. Are you thinking this is a great relationship? Because we never have differences? Because we never have difficult conversations. And if you're answering yes, I invite you to look a little bit deeper. What are the things you're withholding from that other person, and how are those withholds hurting the relationship?
Because let's be honest, if we don't talk it out, we will act it out. Suppressed truths are never forgotten. They end up being leaked through frustration, sarcasm, emotional withdraw, burnout, and eventually leaving that relationship.
And when you turn difficult conversations into a practice of your leadership, they will never get that big, that it's gonna be so hard to have them. The sooner you have them, the more often you have them, the easier it will become with time. The more trust you will build with the other person. And also the faster you will learn who that other person really is. And then you can evaluate if that is a relationship you wanna continue investing in.
One of the things I often hear from my clients is that they don't like conflict. They tell me no, it's, I prefer not to have conflict. I like that we work in harmony, that we're working altogether. But I just wanna make a point here to say how conflict is different than a difficult conversation. In fact, I believe conflict is what happens when we don't have these type of conversations. Conflict is what happens when dialogue breaks down. Conflict is reactive. It's fueled by emotion, by fear, or the need to be right.
Conflict happens when either we go silent, so we avoid, we withdraw. Or when we get violent, we attack, we control, we blame, we scream.
So difficult conversations are not the same as conflict, in fact, a difficult conversation is how you transform potential conflict. Conflict that will show up in the future.
In difficult conversations, the goal is not to win or to determine who is right. The goal is to understand each other, to create safety and clarity so both people can see the full picture.
One of the things Brene Brown says that I love is that clear is kind when we're clear with the other person. When we're clear about our expectations, our thoughts, our feedback, that is demonstrating kindness to the other person.
You can think about it this way. Conflict. It's me versus you. Difficult conversations are us versus the problem.
As we shared earlier, difficult conversations feel very uncomfortable. So the math we do in our subconscious brain is, is it worthy having them. And I think it's a very important question. Is it worth going through the discomfort of a difficult conversation? And this is something you have to be very clear on.
Often when my clients come to me and they tell me about an employee who's underperforming that they haven't been doing well, and they're very frustrated with them. My first question usually is, do you believe this employee can do better? Do you believe this employee can turn things around and meet your expectations? Or Have you lost complete faith in them? And the reason why I ask this question is because when we tell ourselves, oh, I'm gonna give feedback to this person, but we don't believe they can change, we're actually not gonna get the results we want. When we notice we have completely lost faith in an employee, maybe the difficult conversation is not about how they can improve. But maybe it's a conversation about ending the relationship.
In psychology, there's something that's called the Pygmalion Effect, which basically means that the expectations you have about someone's performance have a direct impact on that person's performance.
In 1968 researchers Robert Rosenthal and Lenor Jacobson conducted an experiment in schools. So what they did is they went and told the teachers that they were gonna give their students a test that demonstrated which of those students are high potential.
After the test, they presented the teachers with the list of students who are high potential. A few months later, they came back to the school to understand how those students were performing, and what they discovered was that the students they had chosen as high potential were performing way better than the rest. The truth was that the test they give the students meant nothing. They had randomly chosen the high potential students.
So then the question was, why were those students performing better? And what they found out is that when the teachers were told that this group of students were high potential, then the teachers started dedicating more time to those students, challenging them more, helping them become even better.
So what the  Pygmalion effect means is that when a teacher, a manager, a parent, holds high expectations for someone, they may unconsciously provide more support, encouragement, and opportunities leading that person to perform better.
And it's true the other way around as well. Think about an employee you don't believe in, you probably avoid them. You don't wanna spend as much time teaching them. You are maybe not giving them the tasks that are gonna help them get out of their comfort zone and expand, and therefore that employee will continue not meeting your expectations.
Basically, when we don't believe an employee or someone can perform at the level we want, we usually don't set them up for success.
That's why it's so important to understand your beliefs about the other person. And if you have an employee who's underperforming, who you no longer believe can do better then don't spend time giving them feedback. Instead, have the difficult conversation to end the relationship there.
I think that when we continue keeping employees or team members that we don't believe in that relationship is not good for either of us. I've also coached people on the other side when their bosses don't believe in them and they start losing motivation, they stop believing in themselves.
Clear is kind and the clarity there is that you no longer believe in them, and it's better to let them go.
So to recap this first part, we need to understand that relationships determine the quality of our life, and that having difficult conversations in an effective way determines the quality of those relationships. Difficult conversations are not conflict. They're the way we resolve conflict. They're meant to bring us closer together. Difficult conversations are not to see who wins or who's right. They are meant to create a stronger bond between you and the other person.
In the next episode, I am going to walk you through the steps I teach my clients on how to have these difficult conversations. And I'll tell you this, the first step is to put yourself righteousness on the side. And to take responsibility for your part.
So between today and when we publish part two, I encourage you to go listen to episode 28 titled, the Cost of Being Right, Because I believe that taking full responsibility for our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions is the most important thing in having a good relationship. So stay tuned for part two where I'm gonna walk you through the steps that are required to have a successful, difficult conversation. See you next time.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions. as well as your team and your money so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com slash consult that is c a r o z u l e t a dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
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