The Lawyer Life Podcast

How to Have Difficult Conversations

• Autumn Noble

Share episode

Send me a note!

One of the most inevitable results of being a "grown up" in this world is that you will often be faced with opportunities to have difficult conversations with other humans.  When should we dive in and have these conversations? How do navigate our fears and worries so that we can still show up authentically? How can we best prepare for the discussion to protect ourselves from potential disaster? In this episode, we unpack all of that and more and discuss the top five tips for navigating those difficult scenarios

Watch the full episode on our YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/tFacC8m7cNo

New episodes every other Wednesday. 

RELATED TO THIS EPISODE: 

Free coaching consult/coffee and more!: https://autumnnoble.as.me

WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME:

SHOP THE LAWYER LIFE COLLECTION on Etsy

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

You are listening to the Lawyer Life Podcast, episode number 22, How to Have Difficult Conversations.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lawyer Life Podcast. I am your host, Autumn Noble. I am an attorney and the founder of the Lawyer Life Collective, where we do life and career coaching for lawyers. Are you ready to transform your legal journey?  Dive into this empowering coaching experience that's all about you. 

Join me in the Lawyer Life Collective where we focus on developing your business acumen, harnessing the power of your voice, setting firm boundaries, and crafting a client base that resonates with your unique skills. Say goodbye to career stagnation and hello to unparalleled happiness and fulfillment in your legal career. As a bonus, all of my one-on-one coaching clients gain exclusive access to all of my online content, plus a guaranteed seat in every upcoming seminar series. Let's embark on this transformative journey together and redefine what success looks like for you.

Hey everyone, thanks for joining me again this week on the Lawyer Life Podcast. Before we dive into this week's topic, a few important announcements. On May 14th at 6 p.m. Central, the Lady Lawyer Collective is kicking off a new master series entitled, Finding Fulfillment in Law. I will provide more details at the end of the episode, so stick around to hear what those are all about.

Now let's go ahead and dive into this week's topic, how to have difficult conversations. In the past few episodes, we've been talking about just how to deal with difficult people in general, how to know if a relationship has run its course, and more importantly, how to transform any relationship. As we have navigated all of those interesting topics, one of the possibilities that's always been floating around in the background is the opportunity to have some really difficult conversations with the people in our lives, who are challenging us or pushing us to grow, or perhaps those individuals for whom the relationship has just run its course. So today we're going to talk about how to navigate those conversations so that we don’t have to fear them or avoid them.

One of the most inevitable results of being a quote unquote grown up in this world is that you will often be faced with an opportunity to have difficult conversations with other humans. I like to think about these as opportunities because despite being an attorney, I am not a huge fan of confrontation and I really don't like upsetting other people. These are therefore an opportunity for me to flex my muscles that I don't use very often, and operate outside my comfort zone when I'm contemplating difficult conversations.

In coaching, I find that one of the reasons people avoid having difficult conversations is because we often want the people in our orbit to like us. As humans, we are not designed to live in solitary. We are designed to live in a community. And so historically, part of our ability to survive really hinged on our ability to make relationships and to keep the peace amongst the people around us.

Fast forward to today, and one of the reasons that we really struggle with having those difficult interactions with other people is we don't want to rock the boat, like we don't want to feel out of the community. As women, we don't want people to call us the B word or describe us as being difficult to work with. Most of us are afraid that the individual that we're talking to is not only going to bad mouth us when we have that conversation with them, but then they're going to go and they're going to badmouth us to other people and then they're going to judge us, or worst of all, they're going to agree with the other person and say, yeah, she's really a you know what on a power trip. 

In any given day, many of us are going to find ourselves in situations where we are just uncomfortable. And truly, if you're listening to this and that does not describe your day, we should probably talk because that is a huge sign that we're not pushing ourselves to evolve.

In those uncomfortable moments, a huge portion of that discomfort comes from our worries about what the others are going to think about us when we voice whatever it is that's bothering us and our worries about what the other person is going to make that mean. So what do we do with those worries and how do you navigate those fears so that we can still show up authentically? Today I'm going to unpack five tips for navigating those difficult scenarios.

When we're having difficult discussions, we're being vulnerable and we're expressing our truth and we want the other person to receive it as such with an open mind and an open heart and not take it and go badmouth us to everybody else around us. We just don't want to be judged for being honest and sharing our truths. This gets really complicated because we know we can't control what the other person thinks. Logically, we know that, but yet we strive to craft a conversation that will perfectly impress upon the other person our position, and we agonize over the story trying to perfectly prepare the discussion to prevent the other person from thinking X, Y, or Z about us. We spend all of this time and energy trying to figure out how can I say that so that they don't think I'm being a brat, so that they don't think I'm being entitled. This is an exercise in futility. You have no control over how these people will receive you, or even if they'll listen to you in your perfectly crafted conversation.

And this leads me to that first point. Since we can't control what the other person thinks about you, and you'll never know if we're successful in crafting that perfect presentation to control what they think and control what they do with the information, our first order of business is to just let go of those thoughts and worries and stop trying to control how the other person receives the message. Instead, we have to look for ways to alleviate our own discomfort and release the pressure from those worries. And we do this by owning those worries and allowing them to be part of the conversation. This is the kind of conversational version of the best defense is a good offense. So we air out all of those worries that are making us show up all weird and trying to control the other person. 

So for example, if you are asking for a raise or a promotion, one of the very natural concerns that I hear is that the other person's going to think that we're greedy, we're ungrateful, we're threatening to leave, or we're acting entitled. Our minds kind of become filled with these worries and judgments, so much so that we talk ourselves out of the conversation entirely. So instead of letting those worries drive us away, or letting those worries drive us to spend all sorts of time and energy trying to figure out how to not let them think that about us, those worries become part of the discussion. 

As part of the conversation, you might say, in thinking about our discussion today, I want to make sure that you understand how grateful I am for the opportunities that you've given me. I think it's really important for women to negotiate their pay, and I just want to explore this with you to see if there is room to move. I'm not planning on leaving, but I just want to better understand the rationale behind my current compensation. You might even take this a step further and say, I hope you don't take this to mean that I feel entitled to a raise or a promotion, but I just want to understand my current pay. Something like that.

You can see I've really kind of sprinkled throughout that conversation every single one of those worries. Now, that's not going to mean the other person is going to walk away not thinking you're entitled or not thinking that you're acting like a brat or that you're ungrateful. We don't know what they're going to do with it.  But from our perspective, we've at least released some of the pressure so that we can feel better in the conversation. We don't have all those worries floating around up there. Oh my God, they're going to think this. Oh my gosh, by the look on their face, they think I'm acting like a brat. All of those thoughts are tremendously unhelpful. And so when we air out those worries in the conversation, we can at least know we've clearly stated our case.

I don't think I'm entitled. I don't think I'm ungrateful. I'm not threatening to leave. You can take that information and do with it what you want, but I at least know I have spoken my truth.

So tip number one is for every nagging worry, every fearful thought about what they might be thinking about you in those moments, we just take them and we air them out. We call them out so that everyone has the opportunity to make their own decisions about those worries.  If the worry is bothering you and making the conversation challenging, just find a way to bring it in.  Because remember, the point of these conversations is to be authentic and to share our truth. And so all of those worries and all those fearful thoughts, they're part of your truth too. And so we want to bring them to light, just like everything else we're sharing in the conversation.

When we don't own those worries and we just try and power through and have the conversation anyway, we end up kind of showing up weird and manipulative and almost kind of disconnected from the moment. And the other person's going to feel that because instead of actively engaging in the discussion and tracking the discussion and making your points, you've got all this weird energy floating around back there worrying about what this person is thinking about you and what they're making everything you say mean. And so, when we air them out, all of that can stop. And then we can just continue to focus on the moment and continue to have the conversation and be present for it.

This brings me to point number two, stop worrying about what the other person will think about you. Now that we've aired out our worries and we've aired out our truth and we've started having the conversation, it is not helpful to chase that rabbit down the hole and try and figure out how they're receiving the information and what they're thinking about it. You're never going to know. And so it's just wasted energy that again, disconnects you from the conversation.

When we let other people receive our truths, however they want to, and do whatever they want to with it, it's actually a truer investment in yourself and the relationship, because you are allowing them to be whoever they want to be. And you're not trying to manipulate them, and you're not trying to control them. That is the foundation of a good relationship. But it's also an investment in just being authentically you. When we let go of our worries about what they're thinking about us, we just focus on ourselves and being honest and speaking our truth and letting the rest of it go.

The more you live with authenticity and stay true to your values, other people are going to see it and grow to respect it. And that makes it a lot more difficult for bad gossip to find traction. And so, when we just commit to speaking our truth and letting the other person make it mean whatever they want, it makes it a lot more difficult for people to go and then gossip about it or judge you about it because they'll start to know and understand that's just who she is. If something's bothering her, she says so. And people can respect that.  And truly, whether people do or don't, the only thing that we really can control is how we show up. So any attempt to control what they're thinking in that moment is just a futile endeavor.

When we are vacillating between wanting to have a difficult conversation and wanting just to avoid it and just keep moving on, what's at the heart of that decision-making process is really the choice between living in accordance with your truth or living a lie with other people. Because when we don't speak our truth, that relationship becomes founded upon a falsehood.  When we don't tell people what you said really hurt me, I really want more of this, I actually don't like that, or here's what I really thought about that. When we don't share those things, the relationship is now founded upon a falsehood where the other person has a misunderstanding about what you want, what you like, and how you actually feel about anything. And so, the choice is always between being authentically myself and ideally growing the relationship by being honest or, being inauthentic and having a relationship that's not really founded upon me and who I actually am.

In my experience, anytime that we try to ignore what we really think and feel about a situation or a relationship, it simply compounds and it grows stronger until we blow up. And truly, if our goal here is to not rock the boat and not upset people and not have people gossip about us, you know what really doesn't help those endeavors? Having a blow up. And so if we can just own everything as it comes up and be honest and let people know when you're upset and let people know when we're hurt, we actually foreclose the possibility of a blow up that could really wreak havoc on how other people see us and what they think about us. 

So my point here is don't ignore the feelings, they will come back. And we just have to recognize, we have to figure out how to have this conversation in a meaningful way, because avoiding it is only going to make it worse.

If you think about instances in our lives where we finally open the door to a disagreement with somebody, and we make one point and they sandbag us with a thousand irritations that they've had for the last 10 years, it's shocking. And you have this moment of, why didn’t you tell me that? How has this been bothering you for 10 years? And you're like, you didn't say anything? Like, what is happening here? We must also endeavor to not be those people because those little annoyances and those little frustrations, they don't go away. And that is why people bury you in 10-year-old frustrations, because they don't go away. And they harbor them, and they sit there, and they fester. And eventually they come out in an explosion. 

So again, as we think about these difficult conversations and how much easier it is to avoid them. It's not really an avoidance. It's just a prolonged, larger blow up. And so, what I recommend is that if something is important to you and it bothers you, discuss it with the person now or forever relinquish your right to bring it up at a later date. And don't be that person that sandbags someone else with 10 years’ worth of gripes, because that's 10 years of inauthenticity in that relationship. And that's really hard to recover from. When we commit to having them, despite how difficult they are and despite all the worries about it, the relationship has a potential to actually grow stronger and those blowups become more of an unlikely possibility.

So as you think about and contemplate the potential conversations in your life that might be difficult, remember, air out the worries, just own them in the conversation, and number two, let go of what you think the other person is going to make it mean, or how you think they're going to be judging you in the moment. You can't fix it, you can't prevent it, we have to let it go. 

Similarly, point number three, we have to stop judging them.  Leading up to the conversation, we have to stop judging them and we have to be prepared to not judge them in the moment because it really only sabotages what you're trying to do. 

I like to think about it this way. One of the common judgments that I have had in my legal career is when I'm interacting with someone, typically an older man, and in my head I'm thinking he's such a jerk. He's not even listening to me.  And when I give energy to that, leading up to a conversation or during the conversation, I show up like a total jerk and I stop listening. Because when I think that about them and I believe that about them, I get angry and I get mad and I go out of my way to make my point. I talk over them, I cut them off because I think that's what they're doing to me. And now the whole conversation has really ratcheted up and we're both showing up like a bunch of jerks, and that is not helpful. And so in those moments, it might be really tempting to judge that person and think of all the horrible things that they've done and all the ways they've shown up as a jerk and never really listened to you in those moments. You might have a lot of proof for those things, but they're not going to help you in the moment. They're only likely going to drive you to show up and act the exact same way that you're judging them for acting.  And if that is not the goal that you want, we have to bring a different energy to the discussion.

When we allow ourselves to judge them in that moment, we make it all about them. And from there, that really dictates how we show up. And we kind of give up, like, oh, he's just a jerk. He's not even listening. Like, all right, I'm just going to freak out here. And we kind of give up on that authentic goal and having that real conversation, and we blame them. He wasn't really listening. He was totally acting like a jerk. It's their fault the conversation didn't go well.  But the fact of the matter is we can reverse that in the moment and take ownership of how those judgments impact our ability to show up. If the conversation is important to you, commit to having it and stop getting caught up in your judgments about them and come back to focusing on your why. 

And that is our next point. Focus on your why and let everything else go. The history, the judgments, the frustrations.  Instead, we focus on why it's important for us to have the conversation, and that is our singular focus. The other side of that coin is trying to access some curiosity about their why.

Whenever I am gearing up for a difficult conversation, I ask myself, what is it that I want to get out of this? Why am I having this incredibly uncomfortable conversation? I usually find that the true intention is to be honest. And my why is usually something that sounds like because this relationship is important to me, and I want to have a healthy relationship. And in my mind, a healthy relationship is one where I'm honest, even if it doesn't feel good. I focus my energy there, instead of ruminating about how frustrated I am with this person, about what they've done, or about how they've shown up.  From that space, I can go into the conversation seeing a bigger picture and understanding why the exchange is really critical for me. And it allows me to approach the conversation from a place of curiosity and respect and hopefulness, which is very different from the emotions that come with us when we start thinking about everything that we don't like about this person, and we start thinking about all those past hurts.  That energy is going to create a very different result in the exchange. For me, I have found the greatest success in difficult conversations is when I act from a space of curiosity and respect. Respect for the relationship, respect for the bigger goal of the relationship, whatever it is that can get you closer to that emotional space.

The other side of that coin is trying to access curiosity about the other person in their position. And the goal is to really be in the moment with an open attitude and a sincere willingness to try and understand their point of view and to make a conscious effort to stop thinking of what you're going to say next and just absorb what is being said and try to understand what is going on.

Now this is not only going to be really important in any kind of a difficult conversation because it's going to cool your waters down, that curiosity is just going to allow you to show up differently, but it's going to be a really essential tool to have in your toolkit if the conversation goes sideways. I've had many, many difficult conversations in my legal career, and a handful of them have just gone real froggy, and just like couldn't believe the turns that they took. And in those moments, I really just wanted to rage, and I could feel myself getting red and I could feel myself getting really angry with how the other person was responding and I was judging them. This is so unprofessional; this is so immature. Like, this is discriminatory, right? All of these thoughts and all these judgments just make me so pissed in some of these conversations that I've had.  But I knew that if I blew up and stormed out or raged back at them, I was only going to perpetuate this vision that they had of me and this judgment that they had of me. And instead, I knew that I wanted to be more cool, calm and collected in the moment. For me, the way to show up that way was to show up curiously and really start to kind of disconnect from the moment and start thinking, wow, I wonder how in the world you possibly think that this is a good way to respond to this type of a request.  You know, I can't imagine what it would take for someone to treat someone that way, or I gosh I wonder what's going on with you that would drive you to treat me that way in a situation like this. Anything like that allowed me to kind of see it from a distance and not be so emotionally engaged.  That idea of curiosity has prevented many a blowups in my time and has allowed me to be the bigger person in the face of somebody else's epic meltdown because they weren't able to control themselves in a difficult conversation.

So I think this is one of the more important points that I want you to take away today. When anticipating a difficult conversation, your focus should be really tunnel vision on your why. Why is this important? What is it going to get you? What is it going to get the relationship? What kind of a difference will it make for you to do this for yourself? And the other side of that is being curious about why they're showing up the way that they are. Why are they saying the things that they are? What could drive them to act like that? And accessing that curiosity from a place of just trying to understand how the relationship got there and how the conversation is going the way that it's going. That alone can truly transform any difficult exchange.

This brings me to my last point, and it's more of a cautionary tale. As attorneys, we are hired to advocate for our clients to be their voice, to fight for what they want, to speak their truth clearly and calmly. But we often really struggle to do that for ourselves.  It's just not a skill that we are often as practiced at. But if you think about us as humans and our evolution and everything that we have learned over our lifetime from scratch. As humans, we learn to walk, we learn to ride a bike, we learn to cook for ourselves, we learn how to navigate big life changes.

Our lives contain so many examples of things that we never once knew how to do, but we learned how to do it. They always talk about the example of babies and how they repeatedly fall as they learn to walk. And the reason they do that is because every time they fall, they're building different muscles in their body that makes it easier for them to actually walk and get up and maintain their balance. It's every fall that actually makes it easier for them to ultimately do the thing. And everything that we’ve done in life is really no different.

Think about that with respect to your own life experiences and all of the things that you have had to learn and the skills that you've had to develop. I think about myself in high school when I think about this topic. When I was a senior in high school, I got a job working as a page in the House of Representatives. And so that required me to move four hours away from home. You know, I'm 18 years old, I'm halfway through my senior year of high school, I haven't graduated yet, now I have an apartment in the city. And I had grown up in a really small town and we had like maybe two stoplights and just not a lot going on when I was a kid. And so now I'm living in a metropolitan area and trying to figure out how to get around. And one thing that you don't realize when you grow up in a small town is that there are no one way streets.  But in cities, everything is one-way streets because it just facilitates the flow of everything downtown. Well, you can imagine a small town farm girl moving into the city and just getting to a point where I could pay attention to the one-way street signs instead of kind of glossing over them. I wasn't used to looking for them.  And I can't tell you how many times I turned the wrong way down a one-way street and basically almost died. But I kept doing it and there were a lot of moments where I thought, you know what, I'm not going to do this anymore. I don't want to drive in the city anymore. I'm a small town girl. Like, I don't want to do this. But I didn't. I kept going and I kept practicing and I kept learning. I almost died many times, but I didn't. And over time, I became a pretty adept driver in larger cities.

It's a small example, but its point is the same. When we are trying to do something new, there are going to be a lot of times when it feels like we're about to die. When it feels like we're driving in oncoming traffic and nothing is going well and why would I ever do this and I never want to do this again. You are going to have that same experience when you have difficult conversations. It's not going to be fun and it's not going to feel good. But just like any skill.  The more you practice it and the more you commit to it, the easier it's going to get and the better you're going to be at it.

So one of the most important things I want you to take away when you think about difficult conversations, just recognize it's not going to feel good and I'm probably not going to be good at it right out of the gate. We're going to make some wrong turns, we're going to feel like we're about to die, we're going to have some really wild experiences that just don't go well, and that's okay.  It doesn't mean that we failed, it just means that we're learning something new. And so my recommendation is that you commit to using your voice in a way that's authentic to you. Ask for what you want, say what you mean, say no when you want to, and just own that it's not always going to feel good and we're not always going to be good at it and that's okay because that's how you develop a skill. And with practice, it's going to get easier.

So how can we make it a little less painful in those moments where we feel like we're dying in the middle of the conversation? Have a mantra with you when you show up. And that mantra should align with your why. And I honestly recommend writing it down on the piece of paper in front of you. If you bring a legal pad with you, write your mantra down. And it might sound something like, this is just a conversation, it's very important to me. I want to understand where they're coming from. This is going to help me have a better relationship with this person. I just want to understand. Any of those might be helpful mantras or why statements to help cool the waters when things start getting a little bit froggy. 

As I mentioned earlier on the point about curiosity, that is also a useful tool to have ready to utilize when you're starting to feel like this is just not going very well, accessing that curiosity. And that might mean really pushing away from the conversation emotionally and shifting over to, I really am surprised and would like to understand why they're acting this way, why they're responding this way. That's so interesting, I would have never guessed you would have reacted like that. I wonder what that's about. And being prepared to access that curiosity so that you don't engage in an angry tug of war that's going to lead nowhere. 

Another tool that might be useful when things start to go a little off course is to imagine the conversation as if it were on a movie screen and disconnect yourself from it in that kind of a way, as if you're watching it from outside of yourself and you're not emotionally participating in it. It's another kind of flavor of that curiosity where we're just sort of watching it as if we were a third person. That's another thing that can help you calm down if you feel like it's just not going very well. But ultimately, the other thing I want you to have on your piece of paper when you're having a difficult conversation is your “out”. And it might be something like, you know, I can tell that this isn't as productive as I had hoped it would be. Or it could be, I forgot to tell you at the beginning of this conversation, I actually have to go and hop on a call or meet X, Y and Z. And you might even actually schedule something like that to compress the time for the discussion so that you have a legitimate out if things don't go well. But having that exit strategy prepared and ready ahead of time can give you some added comfort that you're not going to get backed into a corner and create a situation that makes things even worse.

In closing, these types of conversations are scary because it forces us to let go of what other people might think about us. And it forces us to ask for what we want and to be really authentic and vulnerable. And my message to you is that if a conversation or an issue is important to you and you like your reasons for having it, and you are in a good emotional space, i.e. not judging the person, then have the damn conversation. You will thank yourself later for having the guts to do it because there's nothing more validating to yourself than honoring how you feel and honoring what you need. And at the end of the day, it's really all about that relationship with yourself and being able to honor that relationship enough to speak your truth, despite the discomfort that comes with it.

One of the most common things that I do with my clients is help them develop a plan and strategize around really difficult and painful conversations in their personal lives, as well as their professional lives. We experiment with and practice different methods until we find an approach that works best for them. If you're struggling to say no, or to ask for what you really want, invest in developing that talent, and sign up for a free consultation, or sign up to work with me one-on-one and start living in your voice and reconnecting on a true and authentic level with all of the people in your life.

To recap where we have been, first and foremost, when it comes to difficult conversations, own your worries and air them out in the conversation, you will feel better for it. Once you do that, let it go and stop worrying about what they're going to think and what they're going to do with whatever you're sharing with them. You can't control it and it's a waste of your energy to try. Three, stop judging them leading up to the conversation, let go of those judgments and be prepared to let go of them in the moment. It's only going to drive you to show up in the same way that you're judging them for being, I promise you. Instead, focus your energy on your why. Why are you doing this? Why is it important? And be curious about their why, about why they're saying what they're saying and why they're acting the way that they're acting. Finally, be prepared for it not to go well and for it not to feel good. We're developing a new muscle here, we're developing a new skill set, and it's not always going to go great. But be prepared with your mantra, be prepared with how you want to handle a worst case scenario and be prepared with an exit.

 

All right, my friends, I hope that prepared you to have some of those difficult conversations that may have come to light as you start thinking about the challenging humans in your orbit. Next week we're actually going to take this topic one step further, and we're going to do a little bit of Negotiations 101. I hope to see you there.

As I mentioned at the beginning, we have some pretty exciting events coming up. On May 8th at 4 p.m. Central, I'm hosting a webinar that is going to give you an introduction to one of the most essential coaching tools that I use to help my clients achieve any goal. And most importantly, it's free sign up at theLawyerLifeCollective.com to grab your seat.

As if a free webinar wasn't enough, we are also launching a master series for the Lady Lawyer Collective. This master series will be focusing on finding fulfillment in your legal career and it kicks off May 14th at 6 p.m. Central. If you are ready to infuse your legal practice with more joy and more fulfillment, join us for this seminar series. This transformative seven-week program is designed to help you discover deeper happiness and peace within your career. We will meet six times, one hour each session starting at 6 p.m. on May 14th. And as usual in all of my seminar series, it's absolutely free to all of my one-on-one coaching clients and it's included for free as part of an incredible introductory coaching offer for any new coaching clients. If you're not currently coaching with me but you're curious about elevating your practice, this is the perfect opportunity for you to dive in and explore some of my most impactful tools. And of course, added bonus, like all of my seminar series, it’s completely anonymous with no participation or screen time required. Don't miss out on this chance to redefine what success looks like in your legal career. Sign up now at theLawyerLifeCollective.com to secure your seat and let's embark on this journey together towards a more fulfilling practice. I really hope to see you there.