As leaders, we all know that we need to sometimes have difficult conversations. Julia refers to them as courageous conversations.
These are conversations, which, if they took place, would improve life for us and everyone else in our teams. The problem is that fear often causes us to put this off and, as a result, the offending team member continues to provide sub-standard performance, miss deadlines, engage interpersonal conflicts and exhibit ‘toxic’ behaviour.
Andrew and Julia discuss the emotions involved and how important thoughtful, unambiguous and honest conversations are. During their conversation they look at feedback, different personality styles and tapping in to your inner self.
In Julia’s book The Alchemy of Change she gives tips on how to approach courageous conversations using a framework that she calls the 6 C’s to successful Courageous conversations:
Centre: the key that you stay in charge of yourself, your purpose and your emotions energy throughout any courageous conversations remembering to breath.
Clarity: being clear on the reason for the conversation and the outcome that you desire
Curiosity: cultivating an attitude of discovery and curiosity.
Coherence: showing you’ve heard and understood and trying to understand the other person so well you can make their argument for them.
Congruence: when you sense the other person has said all they want to, then it’s your turn
Co-Create Closure: building new solutions.
Communication is essential in business. Learning to read body language and listening is essential to notice any inconsistencies in what is being said.
Show Notes:
Here are the highlights from this episode
- What are courageous conversations (00:50)
- Emotions (2:34)
- The Six-Step Process (3:30) Email us for our fact sheet
- Being Centre and Present (4:19)
- Clarity on Outcomes (5:00)
- Curiosity (5:32)
- Coherent (6:20)
- Congruent (6:44)
- Co-Create (7:06)
- Make Gravitas count (8:46)
- The Power of the Horses to lead the way (9:56)
- Creating Time & Space ( 12:57)
- Understanding Personality Types (15:43)
- The Chair Exercise (18:17)
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.