Navigating Difficult Dialogue ft. Aaron Miller
Thrilled to come and join you guys this morning. Thanks for giving me a few minutes to share some lessons with you, some leadership skills that we do. So I am Aaron Miller. I'm the vice president of the Leadership Louisville Center and Leading Better. Some of you is there might be here from Louisville except for Doug?
Aaron Miller:All Louisville folks. Okay. So you might be familiar with Leadership Louisville Center. We're gonna be coming up on our fiftieth anniversary in a couple years. We're a nonprofit organization.
Aaron Miller:We're downtown right next to the Science Center, and our purpose is to inspire leaders to inspire and equip leaders to be better and do better. So you might be familiar with programs like Leadership Louisville, like Ignite Louisville, Bingham Fellows, things like that. That's what we do. Those are a lot about kind of immersing folks in community, but we also have a division called Leading Better, and Leading Better is the leadership skills piece of what we do. And we are kind of a full service leadership development shop.
Aaron Miller:Actually we just talked about DISC. Dwayne was talking about DISC. We can come and do DISC assessments for your team. We have full day trainings on communications and conflict management and all kinds of great stuff. So if you have any interest in any of that after the talk, let me know.
Aaron Miller:But I'm here to to spend some time talking to you about that conflict management piece. This is a subject that I'm personally very huge fan of. I think in today's world, this is one of those skills that seems lost. People find it really easy to get online and be really nasty. And they've kinda lost the ability to disagree in person too.
Aaron Miller:So how can we realize the importance of conflict as a leadership skill and know that the best teams don't agree on everything all the time? In fact, you're doing your organization a disservice if we just go along with the loudest voice in the room all the time when we know that there are other options and there's other things to do, and we just don't know how to engage in that productive disagreement. So that's what this talk is gonna be about. I already talked a little bit about Leadership Louisville and Leading Better. I've been with the organization going on fifteen years.
Aaron Miller:Prior to that, I spent seventeen years in broadcasting. So I was a morning radio guy here in Louisville for a really, really long time. If you go way back, you've been here a long time. But that's also part of the reason why I'm so loud and I'm so peppy in the morning. So apologies in advance for all of that.
Aaron Miller:But I'm also trained in crucial conversations. I've trained this course hundreds of times. So as we go along, this is not gonna be just like a lecture. This is gonna be interactive. So if you got questions, anything like that along the way, please just just jump right in.
Aaron Miller:So we believe, and and lots of thought leaders on the subject believe, that conflict is a critical skill for success in organizations. It's a thing that builds high performing teams. It's a thing that builds psychological safety. All of these things, if you're gonna be part of a group where we have each other's back, where we want the same thing, where we feel like we're included and we belong and we're heard, The ability to disagree well is just a critical skill. And Patrick Lencioni, this is there'll be a couple of books I'm gonna recommend if you wanna dig deeper.
Aaron Miller:Five dysfunctions of a team is a great one. But really what we're talking about is just two opposing viewpoints and how we handle it, whether we're just gonna be nice and go along or whether we're gonna get nasty, is kind of the the challenge. That is the opportunity to grow. And we tend to often, because of how we're built, and we'll talk about this in just a second too, we tend to struggle being in the middle where we should be, where we're not just being nice and going along, and we're not getting defensive and getting angry. We're kind of built as humans, though, to struggle with this a little bit.
Aaron Miller:So think real quick about a conversation you know you need to have with somebody. It can be a peer, it can be a direct report, it can be a family member, it can be someone on a committee that you're serving on somewhere, but think about a conversation you know you need to have a disagreement, and maybe you're a little nervous about engaging in it. I'm not gonna ask you to share what that is, that's for you, but tell me why you haven't had that conversation. Why haven't you had that conversation?
Audience:I can't envision a clear resolution.
Aaron Miller:K. So you it's not gonna go anywhere, so why bother? Yeah. K. What else?
Aaron Miller:Why haven't you had that conversation? I'm really good at awkwardly standing in silence until people participate, so you're not getting out of this easily. What's some reasons? Why wouldn't you have had that conversation?
Audience:Worry you're gonna flub it and kinda go the wrong way.
Aaron Miller:Yep. Might make it worse. Yeah. What else? I'll be
Audience:honest. Like, I work in a remote culture, and, like, these conversations are, like, almost impossible to have in a remote culture. Like, nobody really knows each other that well. You know?
Aaron Miller:Yeah. It's easier if you have that ground setting. Like, you can argue with your best friend all day about all kinds of stuff.
Audience:You're not ever around them, really. Yeah. Your conversations tend to be short and possibly even without a face
Aaron Miller:a lot
Audience:of the time. So it leads to, like, a a place where, like, what you're talking about, this conflict, like, never even happens a lot of the time. It's not good.
Aaron Miller:So what is think about because you haven't had this conversation, what's what's going on for you because it's this lingering thing? Or what's going on on the team? Or what's going on on project or the work? Stagnation. Stagnation.
Aaron Miller:What else? Process Process is slow. Yeah. We're not we're not moving forward. There's distractions.
Aaron Miller:There's just this thing that's lingering out there.
Audience:Potentially, it could get worse.
Aaron Miller:Mhmm. Could get worse. If if you just ignore a conflict, if you ignore a disagreement, does it ever just resolve itself? No. It doesn't.
Aaron Miller:It's gonna it's gonna continue to fester. There's all this stuff like having these lingering disagreements and having a disagreement go poorly often just lives rent free in your head for long periods of time, and people leave organizations because of it. It's sometimes easier to put a resume together and go job hunting than to actually engage in productive disagreement. So if you think about unresolved conflict creates these toxic atmospheres in your team. Right?
Aaron Miller:Because it's not just if you and a team member are at odds about something, it's everybody else is gonna feel it. I bet if you know of something going on in your organization or on your team right now, it's not a thing that just lives between two people. It it has an impact. It it can lower morale. It increases stress, not just of you sometimes of the whole team, and it can cause turnover.
Aaron Miller:But if we think about what could go well if you had this conversation, if you had this disagreement, if your team got good at disagreeing, what what's the positives that could come out of that? What could go well? What would be great about that? Eliminates fear? Yeah.
Aaron Miller:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What else? Make faster decisions.
Aaron Miller:Faster decisions. More productive results. More productive results. Yeah. The relationships on your team are gonna be better.
Aaron Miller:The solutions you're gonna come up with if we can debate back and forth about ideas without somebody getting mad, we're gonna come up with creative solutions, and we're all gonna be bought into it. So there's so much reason to get good on your teams at productive disagreement. But it's still really hard, and it's kind of how we're built. Personality conflicts are one type where we just we're not getting along. A lot of times, those are baked on historical unresolved things, but there's something going on where we just get on each other's nerves.
Aaron Miller:The other type is the ideological. We're debating ideas. We're debating timelines. We're debating budgets. We're debating, I I don't know the kind of decisions IT leaders have to deal with every day, but I'm sure there's one way to solve a problem, but usually a lot of different ways to solve a problem.
Aaron Miller:So we should be able to discuss all of these different ways to solve problems. High performing teams disagree on ideological stuff all the time, and high performing teams learn that the personality stuff can be put aside. We can talk through some of it, but spending all day arguing about about individual personality differences is also not a productive way to move forward. So give me an idea. What's like a common project in your field?
Aaron Miller:Maybe a three to six month type of a thing. My brothers are both in IT, but I'm not. So I wanna pick an example of something that'll feel very real to you guys. What is what's what's the type of work you do? Maybe describe a project, a common type of project.
Aaron Miller:Anybody?
Audience:We do we go to acquisitions, for example. So our organization in 2024 acquired a different organization that's actually in San Francisco. Okay. And just dealing with that acquisition takes about a year, give or take, depending on just the equipment, personnel, and just just how to work through the process.
Aaron Miller:So Okay.
Aaron Miller:It takes a So imagine for a minute we're gonna role play real quick, and I'm your manager. And I don't want you to think about how you would respond to me. I want you to think about how you would feel in this situation. So by the way, you're already working a lot of extra hours. You're putting in time on the weekends.
Aaron Miller:You're down a person because we're hiring, so everybody's carrying a little bit of extra load. We're busy. And there's an acquisition coming down the road. And I just came from a meeting with the senior leadership team, and I need to talk to you about it. So do you know how we're working on this project, the integrating all these systems with the acquisition?
Aaron Miller:I know we had about a twelve month timeline on that, but I just came from a meeting upstairs, and they really wanna accelerate this. They really think, well, it'll just be so much better if we could do this faster. And I know you're doing a great job, but I gave you a promotion last year because you're a team player. So I told them they asked if we could get this done in ninety days to bring all these different systems together, and I said, yes. We could do that.
Aaron Miller:We could do that. So we've committed to this timeline now, and I need you to make it happen. I need you to figure out what it's gonna take for us to shorten that timeline down to ninety days. How are you feeling about that? Feeling.
Aaron Miller:Not what you would say. How are you feeling about it? Frustrated. Frustrated. What else?
Aaron Miller:Angry. Angry. Overwhelmed. Left out. Left out.
Aaron Miller:Kinda devalued. You weren't even in the room when stuff about your life's being decided. What else? Anything else? When you when you feel this way, when you're angry and you're frustrated and and, like, this stuff is happening, like, just saw every weekend go away, no time with your all this stuff.
Aaron Miller:Physically, we respond differently. Some people might be like like sweat when they're angry, face what what it for you? How do you how do you respond? How does your body respond in that moment? So we're cursing?
Aaron Miller:Right. The words come out. We get a little extra.
Aaron Miller:Blood pressure.
Aaron Miller:Blood pressure's up? Down miles. So no sleep. What else? You're sitting there.
Aaron Miller:Are you clenching your jaw?
Audience:Stress level improves.
Aaron Miller:Yeah. Your stress is but do you feel it in your shoulders? Like, where do you feel it? Stomach. Stomach.
Aaron Miller:Right? We all carry it differently. But it's a it's a physical reaction that we have. When we are in a stressful situation, when someone has just like, in this moment now, we'd have a new timeline for a major project, we need to have a rational discussion about this. We need to talk it through.
Aaron Miller:We need to figure out how to solve this problem, but we're now usually in one of two places. Some of us are the silence folks, so we're gonna shut down. We're gonna shut down. We're gonna exit that situation, probably call somebody and vent, but we're we're kinda in that shutdown mode. Other folks, we're gonna get a little extra.
Aaron Miller:Not violence like you throw throwing punches, but, like, we're gonna be a little louder. We're gonna be maybe filter goes away on the vocabulary words we might choose in that situation, but we get a little extra. This framing comes from the book Crucial Conversations, which is another one that I'm gonna highly recommend if you wanna take a deeper dive on on some of this subject matter. It's kind of this reptilian brain response. It's it's it's a natural human response to conflict and stress.
Aaron Miller:We kinda fight or flight. We, either kinda shut down. It's kinda if you see a bear, you're either gonna freeze or you're gonna run. You don't stop and rationally think about it. Like, you've got the emotional part of your brain.
Aaron Miller:You've got the rational part of your brain. When the stress level increases, the, kind of emotional, very quick decision making part of your brain takes over. And we usually go into one of these two modes. So are we in the best physical space right now to have a good conversation?
Audience:We're not.
Aaron Miller:We're not. And it's normal. It's a thing we all do, and it's what makes disagreement a challenge. But we know it's important. We know we need to have this conversation.
Aaron Miller:So how can we do it? So the this what success looks like is dialogue. If we can move past that stress, if we can recognize that we're now in silence or violence and start to bring it back and calm down, what we wanna do is get into dialogue. What would that look like for you? If we're in dialogue now, if we're solving the problem First,
Aaron Miller:it's a walk or a drive.
Aaron Miller:You have to take a walk or a drive first, Circle back around, and now we're gonna engage in dialogue. So if that's going well, if this conversation is going well and it's not difficult at all, what is dialogue? Like, describe. You're in the room. You're having a good dialogue with somebody.
Aaron Miller:What's it look like? What's going on?
Audience:Acknowledging that this has just happened to us and we have to figure it out.
Aaron Miller:Yep. Yep. Great. What else? Open Open conversation.
Aaron Miller:What's that look like, though? More specific.
Audience:Both both parties are able to share their perspective without pulling anything back or Okay. Fear of retribution.
Aaron Miller:Both are sharing their perspective. And what else? Asking listening. Asking questions. What was the other
Audience:one? Listening.
Aaron Miller:Listening. Yeah. So it's really important that you talk, but that when they are talking, you're actually listening, not just waiting to talk again, which is the way we get a lot. It is listening with the goal of understanding. It's with this curiosity.
Aaron Miller:It's with this are we having good open conversation where I'm actually interested in your perspective and you're interested in mine and we're taking turns? So that's what dialogue looks like, and that's what you need to keep in your mind as you go into these conversations where you know you're gonna disagree. Because what happens when the stress level increases and when the dialogue starts to to break down a little bit? What does our goal become? What are we usually kind of our motive switches to?
Audience:Defending ourselves.
Aaron Miller:Yeah. Defend defensiveness, or the opposite is is winning. Like, I just wanna win. I I don't care what they have to say anymore. I just need them to know that I'm right, that we're gonna do it my way, and that it's time for them to get on board.
Aaron Miller:So dialogue breaks down looks like winning. So what is the tool kit we can employ to to break through that, to stay in dialogue, and to have better disagreements on our teams? It's a three step process, and the first step is focusing on the facts. I want you to think about that situation that you know you personally need to deal with. And I want you to think about, and you can even jot down a few thoughts about what is it about that person that's gonna make this this challenging.
Aaron Miller:Because a lot of times when we talk about a problem, we'll lead with, you know, you're just not taking this project seriously. You're missing your deadlines. You always wanna argue. Right? These are the types of things we talk to, especially in coaching meetings.
Aaron Miller:We will often lead with our frustrations come in stories, And we need to focus on facts. There's a big difference between facts and feelings, and this is where conversations usually break down before they even start. Because there is a thing that happened that we are disagreeing about. You said a thing that I want to now debate, or you missed a deadline, or there's an endless supply. You are overbearing.
Aaron Miller:Those are all feelings. If it has the word always and never attached to it, it's a feeling. You never get your project. You're not bought into this. I can tell in the meeting that you were not interested.
Aaron Miller:Right? You saw a thing. You saw them in the meeting at their looking at their phone, and you told yourself a story about their mental space. They're like, oh, they're not paying attention. They're not engaged.
Aaron Miller:They don't even care about this project. A feeling is this nonspecific observation. We've told a story. Our brains are fantastic at taking one or two facts and telling an entire story to fill in the blanks on the rest. But that story becomes very, very real to us.
Aaron Miller:And a lot of times when we're disagreeing about something, we are leading with the stories. I want you to think about this. Imagine I'm your boss again. You're in your workspace. There's a huge project due at 05:00.
Aaron Miller:Huge project due at 05:00. I'm usually on the 4th Floor. You're on the 2nd Floor. You notice about 10AM that I am walking past your workspace looking in, and I walk on past. And about two hours later, I do the same thing.
Aaron Miller:It's not normal behavior. I'm walking past, and I'm peeking to see what you're doing. About two in the afternoon, the same thing happens. How are you feeling about that? Boss is panicked.
Aaron Miller:Say again?
Audience:Boss is
Aaron Miller:panicked. Is panicked. How are you feeling about that? Anxious. Anxious?
Aaron Miller:Feeling micromanaged maybe? Feeling like you're not trusted? Right? What what what's going on? Why am I doing this?
Aaron Miller:Why am I walking past your space three times in a day when you've got a major project due? Check to make sure you're sitting there working on it. Right? But or or what else could it be? I'm worried.
Aaron Miller:What else could it? So I'm I'm making sure you're getting it done so I don't look bad to my boss.
Audience:Your neck is on the hook.
Aaron Miller:My neck is also on the hook.
Audience:Or you may be taking a walk.
Aaron Miller:Maybe I'm taking a walk. Maybe I'm taking a walk.
Audience:Maybe he's checking on somebody else and you're just next
Aaron Miller:to him. Maybe the person next to you was supposed to get me something yesterday, and I keep checking on them and they're never there. What else could be going on?
Aaron Miller:I'm glad somebody's interested.
Aaron Miller:I'm trying to make myself available to you on a very busy day. There could be a thousand reasons why I'm walking past your desk, but you're like, you're mad about it. All you know is that you saw and heard a thing. I walked past your workspace slowly, maybe I broke my ankle. I walked past your workspace slowly three times on a day when you have a project due.
Aaron Miller:And a feeling kicked in. You had a feeling about it, you told the whole story. You told the whole story about what's going on. And then you're probably going to act on that story, on that narrative that you've created. And we do this all the time, and then when it's time to to disagree about this, be like, hey, how come you don't trust me?
Aaron Miller:I don't know what you're talking about. And we spend the first half an hour of our of our coaching time disagreeing about facts. Facts should not be debatable. The thing that happened, all that happened is I walked past your space, and I looked in the same direction as your office. Is late for a meeting a factor of feeling?
Audience:Fact?
Aaron Miller:When's the meeting start? Give me what time does meeting starts at nine? So if I'm there at 09:01, am I late? Have you always been at your meetings at 09:01? You ever walked in at 09:02?
Aaron Miller:At what minute do you become late? Does it depend on whose meeting it is?
Audience:Some people think you should be 15
Aaron Miller:old.
Aaron Miller:Some people think if you're not there in your seat at nine, like, does does every meeting you've ever been in if it's a 09:00 meeting, does it actually start at nine, or do people sit around and chitchat for three to fifteen minutes depending on the culture? Right? So if you need to coach your team member about, about being on time, we need to be very specific. Hey, there was a staff meeting at 9AM. You walked in at five after.
Aaron Miller:What about body language? Is body language like, am I yelling at you right now? Am I, though? No. I'm being loud.
Aaron Miller:Could you say Aaron was yelling in the room? Would that be true or not? We do this all out. It's like, you know, you were looming over me. As, you know, we were we were talking, and and you just looked disinterested.
Aaron Miller:We make judgments. We tell stories about people based on body language all the time. And we need to know that the fact is I am using a slightly elevated volume from my normal level, and it's because I'm talking to a room full of people. Although, I'm naturally my voice is just in a range that carries, so I get accused of yelling all the time. People can hear me if I'm talking to somebody in my office, you can hear me four offices away.
Aaron Miller:It's just that's the register where I'm at, and I I project a little bit. So I get accused of yelling all the time. The fact is my voice is louder than than most people's voices. The feeling is that I'm yelling. So we gotta get really good at separating facts from feelings.
Aaron Miller:Because if we wanna talk to somebody, we need to know what that fact is. What is the thing that actually happened? And we need to know how that landed with us. We need to know the feeling too. Because when I need to talk to you, if you need to talk to your manager about the behavior, about the walking past your office, I wanna start with the facts.
Aaron Miller:Hey, Adam. You're my boss, Adam. I was working on that project today, and you walked past my office at 10AM and noon and 2PM. That's the fact. Our normal behavior is like, hey, how come how come you you don't trust me to get this project done?
Aaron Miller:Why are you micromanaging me? You know, like, what what did I do to upset you? Because we've got this whole story that they don't trust us, and it's very real. But the fact is, all we know is I walked past your workspace. But now we're also gonna share that story.
Aaron Miller:So you walk I walked you walked past my workspace at at ten and at noon, and it made me feel micromanaged. So there's a fact, and it made me feel this way. It landed on me like this. It had this impact on me. Why would we do that?
Aaron Miller:Why would I why would I share that? You're talking to a team member. Hey. We meeting today started at nine. You walked in at 09:15, and it made me think you're not prioritizing the meeting.
Aaron Miller:I'm gonna say that. Why?
Audience:Transparency engenders trust.
Aaron Miller:Yeah. What else though?
Audience:Just make sure it doesn't happen again.
Aaron Miller:Well, not necessarily. Why might they have been fifteen minutes late for the meeting? They were they were sick. They were having a something going on. What else?
Aaron Miller:What else could have been going on? It might have been a behavior to correct, but we don't know. All we know is the meeting started at nine, and they walked in at 09:15. What else could have been going on for them? Do I have a back to meeting?
Aaron Miller:My back to back
Audience:Usually, happens is is every meeting when I was going to the organization, I just gave them, like, five to ten minutes grace period for attending that.
Aaron Miller:So they had a previous meeting with somebody higher ranking than you, and it was gonna be awkward to walk out. What else could be going on? The car broke down, kid's sick. There's a lot of reasons why they might have been late that have nothing to do with them not thinking your meeting's important.
Audience:Customer crisis.
Aaron Miller:Customer crisis. But when it happens three times in a row and we don't ask about it, we've now told ourselves a story. They're always late for this meeting. They do not care about this meeting. They don't care about me.
Aaron Miller:They don't care about this project. When really, they might have the same standing meeting every week right before yours that always runs over. But we're gonna find out by asking, hey, there's a you know, the meeting started at nine. You you showed up at 09:15. It makes me think you're not prioritizing it.
Aaron Miller:Don't assume your story is correct. The next step we have to do is ask an open ended question. So we're gonna share those facts. We're gonna share a couple of things that have led us to a conclusion. We're gonna share our conclusion.
Aaron Miller:Sharing that story tells them where they're at, like where I'm at. Like, hey, this thing happened, and here's how it landed with me. We're creating empathy. We're making a connection. We're letting them know, hey, this thing, and this is what happened, this is how it landed.
Aaron Miller:And now we're gonna ask an open ended question designed to create understanding. Not a open ended question of when are you gonna stop being late. It's a, can you help me understand? I mean, the question should be super easy. Can you help me understand?
Aaron Miller:What are your thoughts? Can you tell me what's happening? I'd love to hear your perspective. What am I missing? Say more about that.
Aaron Miller:That's actually my favorite one. It's just, hey, this thing happened, and it made me think this. Can you say more about say more about that? Again, the the question needs to not jump to when are you going to correct this behavior? It needs to be help me understand because I've told a story, and it might be wrong.
Aaron Miller:It might not be. They might just be disorganized, and then we need to have that conversation, and you're gonna keep asking questions, and we're gonna get to roots of what's going on there. But if you structure a conversation in this way, and this is a lot of this is coming from research from VitalSmarts, which is the company that wrote crucial conversations, two decades of research. They recorded thousands of hours of different meetings in different companies to see those ones where we are having great productive disagreement are ones where we are practicing structures like this. So, hey, when this now we're just now we're just in an open meeting.
Aaron Miller:We're debating a marketing time. Well, what's a good time what's a timeline you guys might work on? You're all in the same mail, so I use a marketing timeline production timeline, coming online with a new system. Go live. So we're debating a go live.
Aaron Miller:And Brian really thinks it should go live on November 1. Leah thinks it's it's December 31. And Brian's like, well, we're gonna go live November 1, and that's just all there is. And Leah's like, hey. So you said we're gonna go live on this date, and he makes me think that's already been decided, but I think we still could have conversation about that.
Aaron Miller:Can you tell me more about your feeling on that go live date? Just open ended questions. And does that feel like a threatening way to for somebody to to to talk with you in a meeting?
Audience:If
Aaron Miller:we lead with, hey, I heard you say November 1 is the deploy is the go live date. Why are you such a bully? Right? That's we've now told, like, oh, they're they're just making a decision. They're going forward.
Aaron Miller:They're not open to debate. They're just being a bully, and I'm just gonna come at them like that. Instead, if we take a second, what are the facts? Separate the facts from that story we told ourselves. We're gonna share those facts.
Aaron Miller:We're gonna share how it landed with us, and we're gonna ask an open ended question designed to get us into dialogue. And you're gonna have a extremely higher chance of now getting into the discussion, getting past that stress and anxiety. Now we're in dialogue. Now we're solving problems. So in the time we've got here, I don't know if you can fully do this activity, but you could take a picture of this slide with your phone, and there is gonna be a handout that I'm gonna give Doug to to share with the group.
Aaron Miller:But think about that example you need that conversation you know you need to have. There is something lingering. There is something that's causing a problem for you because there's a conversation you need to have with a peer, with a manager, with a with a team member. What are those facts? Don't lead with 20 facts.
Aaron Miller:That's gonna put them on the defensive before you've even gotten to the question. But pick a few. Pick one to three. Share that story, that narrative, how that has landed with you, and then what question's gonna help them get into dialogue? And know that you're not ready to have these conversations if you can't name the facts.
Aaron Miller:So if it's if I'm just incapable of deciphering what is the thing that actually happened versus the summary of events that I've created, If I can't really think of an honest and open ended question, and if my goal is really I just wanna have this conversation to get this off my chest, then probably don't. Maybe you should keep that one to yourself. Okay. So that's I'm open to questions now. We got a few minutes for q and a.
Aaron Miller:Does anybody have questions about any of this? Doc?
Audience:I have a question. It appears as though the open ended questions you formed keep the focus on the other person Mhmm. Trying to understand. Would you validate that?
Aaron Miller:Yeah. It is it is absolutely we're trying to get them into dialogue. We're trying to get them to add their understanding to the room, and we're genuinely interested in hearing it, which can be very difficult. This is a muscle you have to flex a lot to get good at it. In fact, I recommend practicing on not the most important argument you need to have today.
Aaron Miller:Practice it on something little. Learn to flex this muscle. Share this with your team so it can become part of a culture where we all wanna disagree better. The book Crucial Conversations does a lot of this. Five dysfunctions of a team also has some similar stuff in it.
Aaron Miller:But the the goal of the question is for them to feel comfortable sharing what's going on.
Audience:And just one more observation on that. There's not a lot of I, me, or my in those open ended questions. It's really focused on the other person. So the language that you use seems to be important. Yeah.
Aaron Miller:The orientation, perhaps? Could be. If you came to the full day version of this training, there's a whole section about why the question why is not ideal in these. Like, tell me more. Help me understand.
Aaron Miller:Not why. Why why are you doing this? That's kind of that question tends to put people on the defensive. Why are you like this? Why are you doing these things?
Aaron Miller:Stay away from if you're problem solving and we're, like, discussing, why why are we doing this this like, there's a lot of reasons to ask why questions in problem solving, but not in conversations like this, where we're trying to get into this healthy dialogue and solving problems together.
Audience:I think it's five whys for incident management.
Aaron Miller:Okay. Five whys for incident management. Yes.
Audience:Do you find it, how deep you want to go and find out the root cause of it?
Aaron Miller:Any other questions?
Audience:I have a question. It might be too much for this, and this is this is a client that we do a lot of work with. So I'm just, like, an influential partner, and I'm a member of the consulting team. But I have a couple of leaders who are just so cool with one another. And and, like, if they were on the same team, they could be incredibly powerful.
Audience:Mhmm. Like, do you start to bring them together or encourage this? Mhmm.
Aaron Miller:The it's hard to make other people leaders wanna do this. Right? You kinda have to start with you, and you kinda have to start again. This is a muscle. You're not gonna leave this forty minute session, and be ready to like, it's gonna it's not gonna solve all your problems.
Aaron Miller:So you gotta start small, flex, keep doing it, wait in. It's gonna be a little bit nervous at first to but you're gonna find people are receptive to nonthreatening conversations where you're inviting them to share what's going on. When you've got two people that that are at odds and you're not either of them, so you could introduce them to this idea, even not necessarily this specific tool kit, but just the idea that your conflict is not serving the company. Like, this dynamic you've got is preventing people from work, and you're stressing out everybody else. So if they can start to understand their impact and the way you could engage on that with them, you could say, hey.
Aaron Miller:The the you disagree with you know, Jim and Bob disagree, and name three or four facts. Like, these are very specific things. There was a meeting, and you said this thing, and it landed on me this way, and can you help me understand? And start to draw out some of that and help them see, you know, all of these reasons why these lingering disagreements are impacting the company, it's preventing you from making good decisions. If people cannot debate comfortably back and forth about timelines and budgets and, solutions, whatever all the the the different decisions you all have to make, if we're not having healthy debate and disagreement, you're not serving your your organization well.
Aaron Miller:So if they can see this, maybe they would be interested in in in Flexin too. Great questions.
Aaron Miller:Couple of questions occurred to me. One was one of our core values that our company's respect. And and so one day, something happened, and so I asked the question in private. Was that respectful? And the person immediately realized, oh, no.
Aaron Miller:It wasn't. And and there was another day where it was somebody who was a little loud, bull in the giant shop, came at me, aggressive, and I just stopped and said, are you angry with me? And all of a sudden, he physically walked back and took two steps back and said, no. No. I'm not out.
Aaron Miller:He's just a very big D and very on his you know, trying to get something done. And but those two questions, I've you know, was that respectful? Mhmm. Are you angry with me? In private, of course, just the two of us.
Aaron Miller:If you'd said, why are you angry with me? That's assuming, first off, that you've read that situation correctly. Right. So framing it as this curiosity, as this question, you kind of that's the kind of the three part toolkit all in one question. You seem angry with me.
Aaron Miller:Are you? Can you help me understand?
Aaron Miller:Right. And it just came to me out of the blue. I mean, was just like, are you are you angry? And yeah. It was and and it really just took the air out of the room and, oh, back up.
Aaron Miller:Let's okay. Here, reframe. Mhmm. This is what I'm going for. Yeah.
Aaron Miller:K. Great. Thank you for sharing that.
Aaron Miller:Okay.
Aaron Miller:Doug, do I have time for one more question if there is one?
Audience:Yes. Indeed. K.
Aaron Miller:Any more questions?
Audience:I I have one if no one else does.
Aaron Miller:Okay.
Audience:Can Tell us how we can engage with Leadership Louisville if we like what we heard here today. Can I engage as an individual? Can I engage as a team?
Aaron Miller:Great question. I love that one. So we have, in terms of the skills based training, so we offer full day interactive workshops that individuals can attend. You can register on our website. Paul that was here a minute ago, he had to leave early, is our director business development, so he can walk you through getting registered for any of our trainings.
Aaron Miller:We do embracing conflict as a full day. We have a communications training in December. We have a new manager training that is a Ken Blanchard company, training. I think that's in November. And then in January, we have a new training we're debuting on productivity.
Aaron Miller:So it's a great way to kick off the year on delegation and prioritization and all of these all of these skills. We also have programs like Ignite Louisville is for kind of mid career professionals learning to grow their skill sets. We have Leadership Louisville is for more executive level leaders who are trying to get more connected to the community, learn more about the school system here, the government, the nonprofit sector, the economic development sector, especially if you're newer to Louisville and you've never really felt like you belong or you've never really found your people or gotten connected, our our cohort programs are amazing at exposing you to what's going on in the city. And I've got cards if anybody wants to learn more. Happy to connect at any point and talk more about what we do.
Aaron Miller:Thanks for the setup.
Audience:Thank you very much.
Aaron Miller:Thanks, gang. Appreciate it.
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