Thursday Apr 27, 2023
Something to Fight for - Featuring Dr. Liane Davey
It's fair to say that most people do not enjoy experiencing conflict. Conflict is uncomfortable, and it's challenging to handle it properly when we are a piece of the equation.
Today's guest is Dr. Liane Davey, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and facilitator on conflict. Liane is a spoonful of sugar in the world of conflict, combining a solid academic background with a wonderful sense of humor.
In this episode of Pity Party Over, we will discuss many practical tools to handle conflict, like the importance of understanding the truth of others before sharing our own and how to balance vulnerability and accountability to strengthen our connection with people.
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Managerial & Leadership Development
#conflict #lianedavey #thegoodfight #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn
Stephen Matini: I'm here with “Lady No,, I'm here with “Lady No.” My first question for you is, when did you become aware that “no” was gonna be center stage in your life, in your professional career?
Liane Davey: , when I started doing a lot of work on conflict and the importance of healthy conflict it, it started to dawn on me that no is a really central and important word in being able to have boundaries, have healthy conflict.
I think it, it was, I don't even remember how long ago it was, maybe 2013, I'm not even sure, and I was writing for Psychology Today, and I wrote a post playing off of the name of the month, November to call it “No-vember.” That's when I started this, you know, identifying my brand with saying no.
And so in this subsequent Novembers, I've been doing this sort of 30 days of things to say no to, to be happier, healthy, and more productive. So it was that first realization, and the first year it was just one article, about 10 things to say no to. But over time, it's become something very important to me. And not only, I think it, it started as a conflict thing, now it's about focus, and it's about boundaries. And so now it's using no for all sorts of good.
Stephen Matini: One of the comments that I receive from people most of the time is, it's easy for you to talk because you are an independent professional. So you are in a position you can say no, but me in this place, in this organization is much harder. People are often caught in this dichotomy: if I say no, how I'm going to be perceived? And if I don't say no, I'm gonna end up being a pressure cooker. When that happens to you, what is the first step that you take with the client?
Liane Davey: So what I'm trying to do anytime that I'm gonna have conflict in a healthy way with somebody, is the first thing I'm trying to do is understand what is their truth.
So what we want to do when someone says something we disagree with or we want to say no to, we tend to assert our truth. Let me tell you, , why that's so wrong and what I really need, instead of just spending a moment pausing to try and understand where that suggestion came from. So first of all, I would just reiterate what they said.
Okay, so I understand you want to host a big in-person client event, just reiterating and even that quick pause that says to the person I'm listening to you, even that is gonna help you be on a better path.
Then I'm gonna ask a question to understand where are they coming from? So I might say, tell me about your thought process. What got you to recommending a client event? Those sorts of questions. Big open questions that allow them to paint the canvas with their truth. You know, probably you need a couple additional questions to really understand what it's about for them.
And then you wanna get to the point where you can say, all right, so my sense is that for you, this is about maybe our marketing campaign didn't land. Our customers don't understand the value, and you really wanna bring them together and have a have a second shot at telling them about our new product.
If you can get to the point of having their truth come out of your mouth, they won't even know you're having conflict. And from there you can share your own truth. But the, the first step is very counterintuitive. It's not at all what people think the first step of conflict would be. The first step of conflict is to get to speaking their truth.
Stephen Matini: Easy, easy or hard to implement in your own life what you preach?
Liane Davey: Hard. It, it was really funny. I posted something on LinkedIn and, and my 21 year old daughter who's now away at university, you know, she was seeing me writing all of this stuff about productive conflict and, and she just texted me like, mm-hmm. , like .
So it's hard and it's hard because the stakes are very high. It's hard because you have decades of baggage with, with your family members with doing it at home, but I'm getting better at it and I'm, you know, really focusing on raising things sooner, working through the discomfort all those sorts of things at home.
Professionally, you know, it's a little easier, but if I can figure out how to do it at home, then I'll be in a much better spot at practicing what I preach.
Stephen Matini: People say that to me all the time. They say, well, you must have been able to handle this well, so that mm-hmm no girl the same thing. Maybe I know how to handle a little bit better. Yeah. But you have to be vigilant all the time, really.
Liane Davey: Absolutely. Yeah. I, the only difference for me is I say there's just a lot of accountability. Once you write a book about productive conflict, it's, it's really good accountability. So I just have I have more of a, an obligation than other people might feel because I do take it very seriously that I can't tell other people to do this if I don't do it. So I put a lot of energy into doing the things I recommend, but , that's the main difference.
Stephen Matini: You have become such an important voice for conflict. So now that you have become an important voice for conflict, how do you see it compared to, let's say, when you started out this whole thing? What has changed?
Liane Davey: Yeah. So I, I think when I started working as a team effectiveness advisor and consultant, I, I think my original point of view was that there was too much conflict in teams and all this unhealthy, dysfunctional conflict. Now, all these years later I believe there's not nearly enough conflict and, and there's much, much, much less than you might think.
So one of the things that's changed my perspective is differentiating between, I like to think of conflict as a verb, like as a, a process, as something you, you do. And so I, I pull out all the things that are, oh, no, we have issues that we aren't addressing, and I try not to talk about those as conflict.
So we have grievances and resentment and bitterness. There's lots of that. So don't get me wrong, when I say there's not a lot of conflict in teams there is lots of resentment and bitterness and grievance, but what there isn't a lot of is the active path toward resolving those sorts of things. And so I reserve the word conflict to be no, no, you have to actively be doing something. For me to, to call it conflict,
Stephen Matini: I was working with the leadership team, and these are people that have been working together for a long time mm-hmm. . So they had really very specific ideas of one another. There was a lot of cliquey weird stuff happening among themselves. So a lot of mistrust. Yeah. So we did the whole program and I'm, I don't think it was successful. And in the end, I still sensed their hurt, that inability to be transparent, to be communicative. So yeah. When you work with people that have been known each other forever and they don't trust each other, , what is the first step that you would take with them?
Liane Davey: So, interestingly, I don't start with the relationships because as soon as you start with the relationships and the team dynamic, I find people become defensive. They immediately are like waiting for the accusation to be pointed at them, and or worse, they're ready to launch the assault at, on, on somebody else.
So instead of going into a team that has trust issues and a dysfunctional dynamic, and talking about the dysfunctional dynamic, I go in talking about what is the organization counting on this team to do? And there are a couple of things that help with that. First of all, I start talking about how is the world changing? So I'm talking about trends, opportunities, threats to their organization that come from the external environment.
So the purpose of doing that is that if we're going to make changes in how we're behaving, we can say, it's not that we were failing. It's not that we were doing it wrong, it's just just that the world has changed and we need to evolve to keep up. And so there's a little bit of psychological safety in not admitting that this change is because of, of of, of me or being wrong, but instead a, about the future.
And so, external orientation, longer time horizon, those kinds of conversations about what the business needs from you are safer. And people tend to align around those things. Their shoulders go down a little bit as they relax, but then the question becomes, okay, so if that's the way the world is changing and therefore our team needs to be more of this and less of this, then you can get to the, okay, so how do we need to show up differently to be that? And it's just a safer path toward the same conversation.
So that's how I come at it. And again, unconventional, counterintuitive. I think a lot of people who believe they have trust issues and, and go to a team offsite expect to be bearing their souls. And, and, and usually at the end of the day, people will say, well, it's not what I expected, because it's been a more constructive conversation.
It's been back to, this is the other thing that's important, but getting them out of their own grievances and into, there are a lot of people counting on you to be an adult here, the shareholders, the customers, your suppliers, other employees. And so sometimes that's also helpful to give them some perspective that if this team can't pull it together, there are, there are people who are gonna feel that and who are gonna lose as a result. So that's where I start in a situation like that.
The other thing that's worth saying is that in the vast majority of circumstances, there's at least one person on a team in that situation who just can't believe again. And I make that clear before we start, and the goal would be for the people to raise their own hands and say, I can't be a part of this. I can't believe in this. I can't let the wound heal. And those people just decide to, to leave. But almost always, at least one person leaves before you can reset the team.
Stephen Matini: If the team leader, if that person is not fully involved, is that person doesn't fully sponsor the event, can the team still become more functional and trustworthy?
Liane Davey: Yeah. I believe that they can. I think about it a little bit like children who are raised by very dysfunctional parents, and at some point the kids learn to band together and, and protect themselves. You know, help meet one another's needs, be a safe haven for one another. So it's, it's a positive step. It is going to feel better for team members.
So one of the things you can do is if one of the ways the general manager is failing is that they don't get people aligned, they don't prioritize effectively. If that's the case, getting together with your teammates and saying, okay, at least we should be aligned, and let's all agree among ourselves what we're gonna prioritize, you can do that.
If the team leader is pitting you against one another, creating competition, you can again come together and decide, we're not falling for that. Let's support each other. You can manage up together, . So there are lots of different things you can do.
They aren't a full solution. I include it in a category that I call, if you can't make a dent in the problem, like you can't fix the boss, reduce the dent it makes in you. And so that's gonna make it a little bit better. Your experience will be better if you've got your colleagues and your teammates on side. It's not fixing the underlying issue of a poor leader, but at least you can buy yourself some time. See if that, you know, leader disappears if they, you know, have an epiphany. If you manage them up in a way that allows them to be successful in new and more healthy ways, at least for the time being, I do think you can make it a bit better.
Stephen Matini: You have this way of approaching this topic, which is so different compared to anyone else in my opinion, because you have a strong academic background, and you can feel it when you talk, but the way you speak it, it's always unconventional. You say things in a way that make a lot of sense. Where do you get your inspiration for talking about these things in a way that is so interesting and fresh?
Liane Davey: Yeah, you're gonna laugh at this story. This is a silly story, but this is the truth. Many, many, many years ago, I was watching the TV program, 60 minutes and 60 minutes. It was coming up to the American Thanksgiving Day holiday when everybody cooks turkeys for, for the holiday.
They did a little segment on, there's a, a brand of Turkey called Butterball Turkey. When you buy a Butterball Turkey, it's coded in plastic and it has a telephone number on it, a toll-free number to call for Turkey emergencies, . And they did this segment on TV of the approximately 30 people at the time, all women, home economics graduates, this is probably in the eighties, I saw this segment.
Those people are there just to answer your calls and deal with your turkey emergency. So it's things like, it's my very first Thanksgiving as a married woman and my mother-in-law is coming for dinner and I forgot to thaw the turkey. It's still frozen. What do I do?
Or I forgot to buy the ingredients for stuffing. And these ladies would do things like tell you to open your fridge and open your cupboards. They would write down everything you had and they would create new recipes for you on the spot for how to make things.
It was of a fun segment, but the most important part of the segment and the inspiration for me was the leader of the whole group. She said, look, there's only one magical thing about what we do, and that is we begin, we respond after they've told us about their turkey emergency, we respond to every single call with, it'll be fine. And what we're doing is we're projecting to the people that no matter what this is, we're the experts. We got you, and we're gonna get you to the other side.
And that truly was my inspiration, realizing that, you know what? I have so many recipes for better listening, better conflict. You know, I, I have all the recipes. I do have a PhD in Organizational Psychology. I'm not worried that I can open the cupboards in the fridge and find a way to get you through this.
The most important thing is that you believe that I can get you through this and you can get yourself through this. And so as I've come to understand neuroscience better over the years, understanding the role of mirror neurons, the role of emotional contagion, I know that what I'm doing is giving the room a chance to believe, to stay in the moment, to stay with it. But all of that inspiration came from a very simple Butterball, Turkey lady , just saying, the most important thing is it'll be fine.
So that's the truth of where my silly inspiration for the, the way I carry myself, the tone I use, the words I choose, I want them all to be, you can do this, I'm right here with you. Okay, let's open the cupboard and see what we got to work with.
Stephen Matini: So you're like the Julia Child of conflict
Liane Davey: . Yes. Exactly. I love that. Yeah.
Stephen Matini: You know, now that you said it, I understand
Liane Davey: I, that's the holy story. But that's, that's where it comes from.
Stephen Matini: Before when you were talking ... have you noticed any gender dynamics in the Henley of conflict within organizations?
Liane Davey: I think if I am, if I reflect on it, I would say no , that individual differences are massive and much bigger than gender differences. So there are certainly ways that men and women are socialized differently, the women to be more, to be more submissive, to, to give in, to bend to power.
But I, I can tell you many examples of women who are vicious in conflict and, and really nasty. And, and so I might say women are more passive aggressive than men, but women's passive aggressiveness is, is gossip and that sort of thing. But men are very passive aggressive, but it's often in the form of sarcasm or one liners or those sorts of things. So it's not that men or women are more passive aggressive than the other, but that we've been socialized to channel that.
I see many women who are conflict avoidant. They often talk about it from the, either, I don't want to hurt somebody else. I don't wanna say that cuz it would be hurtful or it comes from imposter syndrome, who have I to disagree with that person? But I see many, many, many men who are highly conflict avoidant.
Over the years I've had moments of thinking that men are more conflict avoided or I see more of those than women who are. So I think it's really about massive individual differences. Each person I work with, I try and treat them as somebody who has a very different story, different baggage about why they, you know, approach conflict the way they do or run for conflict the way they do. I do think there are very interesting things about men and women in the workplace. But I wouldn't say that it's that we can say, you know, women do this and men do this.
Stephen Matini: One thing that I may have witnessed are cultural differences.
Liane Davey: Very, very true, right? So I was facilitating a session in Bangkok in the room, there were a couple of very senior women from Asian countries, one from Korea, one from Japan. There was a man who was Dutch and another man who was Colombian. And I would say the big differences in the room were both cultural differences, so just the, the Colombian participant, the way he expressed everything was so passionate that it was very easy to over-index his contribution just because it was so passionate.
And the, the Dutch person beside him, people were not getting as upset about the issue as I think he wanted them to be. But it was because he was so level as he described it. But then I think we had the, when we had the Asian folks in the room, I think we had this interaction of both Asian cultures, but also women in Asian cultures.
So all of it is in the mix, you know, certainly understanding the difference between how an Israeli is going to, you know, show up in a conflict. It's not personal, it's just the issue, and it's going to be very direct versus various South Asian cultures where it's gonna come at you very indirectly, maybe only on the break. So there's, there's all of that. You really have to be attuned to all of it. When you do this work, don't you, ,
Stephen Matini: What is the Canadian way to approach conflict?
Liane Davey: A hundred percent passive aggressive.
Stephen Matini: Oh, really?
Liane Davey: Yeah. So it's very funny because Canadians have a reputations as being very nice. We're always talked about it as a very nice culture. And I just laugh. I'm like, no, we just stab you in the back.
So we, we do have a very strong culture of being polite and civil and friendly to your face. And I would say English Canada versus French Canada is a little bit different on this. I think, you know, culturally québécois folks in Canada tend to be better at at getting the issues out on the table. But for lots of Canada, lots of passive passive aggressiveness in the culture and it makes things hard. It means conflict avoidance is, is a big deal for us.
It's like anything else. You can't, you know, describing an entire nation, of course 38 million people with one description is, is unfair. But just relatively speaking, I think that's what, and it's interesting cuz I work with a lot of expatriates who've come to work in Canada or Canadians working in US teams, and people are always surprised at, at how much effort it is to try and get them to get the issues on the table. It's challenging.
Stephen Matini: One of your interests right now is the concept of messing up. It is about becoming, expressing all the who you are. This idea, is it connected to conflict? I think it is. Would you mind telling me more about?
Liane Davey: Yeah. So for me, the ideal combination in relationships is this interesting combination of vulnerability and accountability. That's why I love messing up, because there's no better chance to get this perfect combination of vulnerability and accountability then when you mess up .
And so by that I mean vulnerability is being willing to sit in the awkward, to sit in the discomfort of, I messed that up. I know that me messing that up had an impact on you. All of that. That's not a great feeling. Or I haven't messed up yet, but I feel it, I feel it coming. , I don't know how to cope with this. I I I'm not on track. All that vulnerability. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. So when we show someone else that we are fallible, but we are willing to be seen as kind of whole creatures who are imperfect, it encourages others to do the same. So when we're vulnerable with our teammates, it strengthens the connection.
But if we're only vulnerable, our teammates might feel like, okay, I'm a little nervous about counting on Leanne because I'm not sure she like she's making me, she's making me worry. . So vulnerability on its own, while it's great for connection, it's not good for confidence.
So we have to add the other half of the equation, which is accountability. And accountability says, yep, I, this just made me break into tears and I own that. I'm gonna take ownership of continuing the conversation, getting to an answer, still realizing that I own this and I need to figure it out.
And so when you have accountability, then you get that sort of confidence. But if you have only accountability and no vulnerability, it's like you're driving, but you're driving through people, not with them messing up is this amazing chance we get to show, oh, okay, I'm not perfect.
You know, you can see me sitting in this true discomfort of learning that I've let other people down or let myself down. But also to show you that I own this. I'm learning, I'm making changes, I'm gonna do something differently.
If you have a team full of people where you know, they're not hiding things from you, they're not pretending they're perfect, but they're also earning, your trust doesn't get better than that. And until you go through the fire together, until you mess up together, you don't really know if, if that's where they're at. And once you do, you go, okay, now I can relax and we can just know that we'll get through whatever we need to get through.
Stephen Matini: I had to learn how to handle conflict. And it was someone was actually a professor who taught me how to do it. For a couple of years was this constant no, no, no, no, no, no. And then for a while I thought, well, now I figured it out. But based on what you said, I think that for me now, the biggest challenge is probably balancing my accountability and me wanting people to be accountable with vulnerability, which is showing up as myself, my emotions, how this one affects me and all that. Which is hard. It's not easy.
Liane Davey: It's like yoga, it's a lifetime practice trying to get that balance right. And it tips right? , you have, you have periods where you tip into more vulnerability and what you're expressing in the, there's John Iso. Dr. John Iso talks about everywhere you go, you spread a virus. You decide if it's positive or negative. And when you tip into the vulnerability for a little while, you maybe spread a virus that's kind of negative and you have to like, woo, gotta tip back the other way. But if, if you tip back too far, the virus you spread is this sort of false sense of strength. And that's not a good thing to spread either. So I think it takes a lifetime of, of just constantly getting that, that balance right.
Stephen Matini: So maybe it's time to change the notion of conflict management because you talk about good fights. Yeah. And now you're talking about the importance of being messy. So I'm thinking that maybe it's time to change conflict management into, I don't know, how would you call it?
Liane Davey: Yeah. I totally, I've never had that thought before in my life, but I love it because it does make it sound like we're going to contain it and we're the boss of it. Exactly. It's the very opposite of let's throw it open and see what's in there and really, so like stop managing the conflict, start kind of experiencing it and moving through with some forward velocity. Right?
Yeah. And I think it's why some people switch to conflict resolution. I think that is a good term. But the, the problem I have with conflict resolution is I think it applies to each decision and each deliberation, but I think some people who hear about conflict resolution think, oh, we can resolve the conflict in our team and not have any conflict anymore when I believe that conflict is something that needs to be present in your team all the time. The productive tension amongst very different and opposing demands, wishes, needs, all those sorts of things to the extent that we can think about conflict resolution is let's pick one thing, work it through to the right decision. I'm good with that. But if we use that term to, to suggest that, you know, we're done with it once and for all we've resolved that we don't need to have conflict anymore. That's an issue. We should, we should be looking for the good fight in every conversation we have.
Stephen Matini: The way that your approach, you know, your, your angle comes to me is about ... what is the word? Continuity. It's not something that should be managed, something that stops. And now we figured out. In change management a better word is more resilience. You know? Yes. What the heck? You manage something that changes all the time. So resilience gives a sense of, that's something you continuously have to work on.
Liane Davey: I don't have a perfect word for it. You know, I always talk about it as embrace productive conflict, right? Mm-Hmm. It's something that we have to like hold onto, get comfortable being uncomfortable. It's something that should be a part of in an ongoing way.
Stephen Matini: I don't know if the right word is messing up, but when you said it to me last time, I felt that I could breathe. It feels as so much more humane, more realistic than managed conflict or whatever that is, you know?
Liane Davey: Yes. And people are messy and issues are messy and you know, decisions we have to make in organizations are messy. So let's actually appreciate that. And the key to making optimal decisions in a messy world is having all the information.
I always think about it like algebra, you have your equation, I have my equation, and we need to solve for the unknown. We can do that. If I know your equation and you know mine, then we've got all the data we need to solve it. But unfortunately we don't do a very good job of getting your truth on the table, my truth ...
You come from sales and I come from operations, we have very different perspectives. Your equation is very different than mine. We need to figure out what we do that optimizes the system and we just, just don't think about that frequently enough.
Stephen Matini: Conflict management or whichever word that we're going to use in the future has so many ramifications. And one of them that is so important is time management, which maybe that's another obsolete concept, but you said it's not a workload, it's our thought load. And you said, I work really hard at not being busy. I thought it was beautiful.
Liane Davey: You know, a couple of years ago I realized that it's not workload that's killing us, burning us out, it's our thought load. How much is buzzing around in our brains, waking us up at night, keeping us up at night, you know, having us in a conversation with one person fretting about the conversation to follow.
That's when I got really obsessed with this. How do we think differently about our thought load? How do we manage it in a way? And of course we're back to NO, because you don't manage your thought load unless you are able to compartmentalize, really figure out what is the one thing that I need to be paying attention to right now.
And so that's work that I've been focused on. So, you know, very practical things I've been working on like the bullet journaling technique. So I did a YouTube video about how to use bullet journaling as a way of taking things out of your current thought load, putting them in a schedule only at the time when you're gonna turn it into your workload.
Collaboration and saying no, and, and understanding how somebody else’s, so doing a a, a racy understanding, okay, I don't own this so I'm gonna stop worrying about it. I know this person is on it so I don't need to fret about it. It's another piece of the puzzle.
There are so many pieces of the puzzle. Of course the most important one is prioritization. And most leaders and managers I know suck at prioritization. They are profoundly abdicating their responsibility to their teams.
Prioritize comes from the Latin for one, not seven. So there's all these pieces of the puzzle that I've been working on to help us get out from this absolutely inhumane thought load. Because as many people keep telling me that their workload is too high, I'm not buying it. I don't think people are actually accomplishing very much at all.
It's like the difference between watching FIFA watching a football game where you know, you have 90 minutes and the run of play is 90 minutes. And if, if something distracts you, like an injury for two minutes, will we add the two minutes on because we need 90 minutes. And then I thought about NFL football and how there's, I don't even remember the stat cuz I can't stand to watch it because there's so little action.
And I think that's what most people do with their work week. They're they're talking about, oh, like it was a three hour game. Yeah, but you were on the field for seven minutes. Like what? So we have so much distraction, we have so many things that are slowing us down. That's not a workload problem , it's a thought load problem. So I'm very excited about that. I think it's where my next book is gonna go is how do we manage the thought load problem? And, and that excites me.
Stephen Matini: This way of thinking of time. When did you approach it for the first time?
Liane Davey: No, it hasn't been around all that long because I used to be pretty bad at it. So I think about five years ago starting to do more mindfulness starting to manage my own. And I, it was really deciding a few years ago that I choose not to be busy. You know, another epiphany I've had is I'm okay with having a busy schedule. I'm just unwilling to have a busy mind.
So many days, I think the day I spoke with you I had the wonderful conversation with you. I enjoyed very much and nine others that day , I was 10 different conversations, client meetings, sales calls, all sorts of things. But at no point did I feel busy during that day because each time I was fully invested in the conversation, I wasn't thinking about anything else because I have used a whole variety of techniques to manage my thought load.
So it's probably been about five years all tied to this decision. I was working with my colleague and friend Tammy Herman, and we were doing a program years ago to help women be more influential at work. And one of the things we realized we had to work on with them was their introductions, just their casual, if someone says, hi, how are you? What, how do you respond? Because they were all responding with busy.
I said, as soon as you respond with busy, you look like you're not on top of things, you signal to the other person that, oh, you should probably be quiet now cuz this person needs to run off. You don't say I'm open for more cool opportunities.
So we actually started with changing how they even respond to those casual conversations. And that was many years ago, I think it was 2007 when I decided I was never going to use the B word. I was never gonna talk about being busy as as a description for myself. So that was really valuable when I, when I had that epiphany and it just took until a little more recently to figure out all the tools to manage my thought load so that I could live up to that.
Stephen Matini: Yeah. If I had to say when things started changing, it's probably the same thing, these past four or five years, you know? Yeah. Like to give an example, today at some point I was it around lunch time, someone that I've been working with forever, she said, can we talk, can we talk at 4 something? So it was like 30 minutes before being here with you. Yeah.
And I said to myself, no, I don't want to get to my conversation with you feeling tired or stressed out. I really want to enjoy it because how many times will I have the chance to talk to you? I really wanna be here. , you know, and me in the past it would've said, yes, this could be an account, could be a project, girl, you need the money. You know, I would've thought a million things, but I said, no, no, this is my day, you know, and I want to enjoy this and we can talk about it tomorrow. And the world is not gonna end.
Liane Davey: The likelihood that postponing that call by a day makes that opportunity evaporate is close to zero. And actually, if that person is so frenetic that if you didn't answer today, it, it's probably something you are better off without. Right. So I, I think just being conscious like you are, like you were in that moment, it is absolutely so liberating.
And you said something earlier that's probably worth coming back to. Like, okay, well you two are entrepreneurs, you know, you control your lives, isn't it easier for you? And I would say no because of exactly what you said. You have that thought of nobody's paying me a paycheck. I don't just all of a sudden two weeks later get by, here's what's in your account. So it's very hard often to turn down those things to say no, to disagree with a client or prospective client about what they need.
So it's really just how you think about it and how you frame it. Certainly if you report to someone and they're your boss, you need to have conflict with them and use some techniques. I have one of my most popular YouTube videos is how to have conflict with your boss. And I go through four steps for, you know, how to do it in a way that won't get you fired. So you have to think about it, but, but I wouldn't say it's easier or harder to do it in one situation or the other, just the stakes are different.
Stephen Matini: I so do not envy younger people for that because yeah, I think it's something that probably comes with age for some people, you know?
Liane Davey: And, and for some it just never comes, right? So, you know, one of the things I remember doing when I was a manager and I was managing, I was young, so I was probably say 38, something like that.
I had young kids and I was a manager of people who were even younger. On Mondays. My kids were competitive dancers. And so they danced six days a week and the carpooling was quite something. And so it just worked out that Mondays was my day among the, you know, there were two couples, four of us who split all the driving and Mondays was my day. And to leave the office, drive home, pick up all the kids, take them to get a bite to eat and get them to dancing for 4:30, I had to leave the office at 3:00. So I started this sort of really, really important thing for me as a manager, which is at three o'clock I would do what I call leave loudly.
Even though some people who need to leave the office, we would normally leave about five 30 and I was leaving two and a half hours early. Some people would just sort of quietly slip away . And I did the opposite. I'm like, okay, off to drive the dance bus and, and make sure everybody heard me. Because leaving loudly was such an important way to say, we can do this. It's okay.
We need to fit personal lives and our work lives together in a way that's gonna last for the long haul. And I let a team of consultants, it's a grueling thing. Everyone knew that it, you know, as soon as the kids were in bed, I would be logged back on making up that time. There was no question about it. And I said, see, you don't question that. I don't work hard enough and I don't question that you work hard enough. So leaving loudly was a really important thing for me early in my career to signal to people that work hard, contribute value, and then be where you need to be. It's always been important to me.
Stephen Matini: Would you be an actress if you were not be doing this for a living? You would be great at stand up comedy Yeah!
Liane Davey: My favorite compliment I ever got was a salesperson in the organization I used to work in said I was like a love child between Jim Collins and Tina Faye. And I was like, okay, that's the greatest compliment. I try and sit in my big powerful brain, Jim Collins and hopefully I always refer to my brand as the sort of spoonful of sugar from Mary Poppins, right? The conflict work is very uncomfortable, very intimate, very deep. People are often yelling or crying or all these sorts of things. So if there isn't a little sugar to help the medicine go down.
Stephen Matini: We talked about a million things, . Is there anything that would be important for people that are going to listen to this, to bring home, something that you think it would be really, really important for them to focus on?
Liane Davey: I always go back to one line, which is some things are worth fighting for. If there's one thing I can encourage your listeners to do, it's to, and maybe it's even a daily practice or weekly or just try it once and see what you think. Make a list of the things that are worth fighting for.
If you are in operations and that salesperson keeps selling new, different customized things to everyone, you may say consistency, efficiency, that's worth fighting for. I need to make sure that the sales leader understands the impact that all these differentiated products have on our ability to be efficient.
It could be in a relationship, right? It could be the way you're treated by your colleagues and feeling comfortable and feeling respected. That's worth fighting for. Whatever it is. It's amazing how, if you're clear on what's worth fighting for, suddenly the courage to have the harder conversations to say no or to say yes or or to really engage. You'll find it. But if we aren't clear on what's worth fighting for, it's much, much harder. So that's a practice.
You know, today. What's worth fighting for today? As you're going into a meeting, as you're walking in the door, you know, who that's not in the meeting is counting on me to fight for them. And what are they counting on me to fight for? Because pretty much all of us, when we walk into a meeting, we represent people who aren't in the room. And if we aren't willing to fight, no one's fighting for them. That's just what I would encourage people in any domain of your life, in a relationship at work, what is worth fighting for. And if you have the answer, you're gonna feel really emboldened and empowered all day.
Stephen Matini: Liane, you are a blessing. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you share with me that it is going to enrich a lot of people. Thank you so much.
Liane Davey: Oh, I, I have found our conversations so joyous. So it's very, very, very much mutual, Stephen. Thank you.
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