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Courageous communication, the ability to confront those sneaky, hidden obstacles that strike fear in our heart and keep us from taking risks.
They also rob us of the ability to have more rewarding relationships in our personal and professional lives. How do you raise your game to engage in more courageous communication? Today’s special guest has some answers. Stay tuned.
What You’ll Discover About Courageous Communication:
* How calculated risks lead to more courageous communication.
* How positions of power should influence courageous communication.
* How leaders can use courageous communication to defuse fear in their organization’s culture.
* The critical role of mindset in courageous communication.
* And MUCH more.
Guest: Michelle Gladieux
Michelle Gladieux (Glad-ee-oh) is the author of Communicate with Courage: Taking Risks to Overcome the Four Hidden Challenges and President of Gladieux Consulting, a team of 10 known for top-notch design and presentation of seminars in communication and leadership topics around the U.S.
She provides executive coaching and strategic planning for clients in industry, government, at non-profits, and in academia. She has 18 years of collegiate teaching experience at three universities in her home state of Indiana, accepting her first adjunct faculty position teaching business courses at age 23.
She’s worked as a Corporate Human Resources and Training Director in the cold storage, robotics, and construction industries and enjoys visiting conferences as a keynote speaker and workshop designer. She serves on boards including the National Public Radio affiliate in her hometown for more than a dozen years. Michelle has mentored thousands of people and her positive effect on those she advises is evident even after just one interaction. Readers are delighted that she’s finally documented some of her best tips (“Pro Moves”) in Communicate with Courage.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Communication episodes.
Contact Michelle and connect with her on Facebook and Instagram.
Check out her book Communicate With Courage: Taking Risks to Overcome the Four Hidden Challenges.
Also be sure to check out the information at Gladieux Consulting.
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HOW TO CONQUER THE SNEAKY HIDDEN CHALLENGES OF COURAGEOUS COMMUNICATION WITH MICHELLE GLADIEUX
Courageous communication, the ability to confront those sneaky, hidden obstacles that strike fear in our heart and keep us from taking risks. They also rob us of the ability to have more rewarding relationships in our personal and professional lives. How do you raise your game to engage in more courageous communication? Today’s special guest has some answers. Stay tuned.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and Their Bottom Line. I’m your host Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I have an amazing guest for you today. She’s Michelle Gladieux.
Michelle is the author of Communicate With Courage: Taking Risks to Overcome the Four Hidden Challenges. Michelle has taught organizational behavior and leadership courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at three different universities and works as an executive coach, instructional designer, trainer and keynote speaker through her work as president of Gladieux Consulting.
It is such a treat to have her join us today.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now Michelle
Thanks for having me, Hanna. I’m excited to be here.
Well, I’m really excited too, because courageous communication sounds easy in theory, but in practice some people act like they need some liquid courage. The kind you’d get on karaoke night and they’d choke otherwise and don’t really say what’s on their mind. Or they let things build up and then kablooey, say things in an artful manner.
So since you’ve written the book about courageous communication, I would love to hear your thoughts about what courage is and what it means to engage in courageous communication.
Beautiful question. I was just texting ten minutes ago with a client who thought he had fumbled a call with his new boss, and he said,” I don’t know why I get so tongue tied around her.” And she’s very strong, very capable leader that he’s reporting to and I wrote back and I started to text. It’s too bad we all just can’t have a beer and then have the hard conversation. I thought, no, that’s not appropriate from an executive coach who doesn’t, we don’t know each other that well yet. Right?
We haven’t even had our first session yet. So I wrote back and said, “Well, next time you’re feeling that way, maybe name it and say, I’m feeling tongue tied today. I don’t know. I might be feeling a little intimidated because I’m the first person to open this facility in the state for you.” Maybe if you name it, some of the ick feelings will go away.
So I wrote the book hoping to encourage people to go seeking their own bravery. And we know that that’s an intangible thing. But, when you’re using it because you sort of feel like the world’s electric, when we pull up courage in ourselves because we notice it’s needed because we’re afraid we have an, I think a natural high that’s going on when we’re stretching beyond our usual limits and we’re out there experimenting just like kids again.
We used to be brave enough to try to ride a bike for the first time. You’re going to bang up your knee, et cetera. So I guess I’ve just gone through life noticing like, “Oh, that person maybe just would have said something or would have not said something or would have attempted to show some empathy there, I would have said I’m sorry or would have said I love you. It would have been better.” It would have been a higher payoff communication.
So I wrote the book as a handbook to try to help really grown ups of all ages get to their potential as communicators.
Well, I definitely applaud the goal of your book about, we can all find ways to improve our communications. I think that’s one of the things that we’re constantly learning or should be learning so that we can have better relationships both in our personal lives and definitely professionally. I guess one sticking point for me is what tips do you have for us about how to evaluate the risk involved in having courageous communications? Because when the stakes are high, we don’t want to bang up our knees.
No, we have to be believing that the situation is worth stretching in because it aligns perhaps with our values. So the risk is worth it. Or maybe we’re sticking up for ourselves. I’d say the risk is usually worth it. Or maybe we’re sticking up for someone else. Maybe they’re not in the room and we’re not going to get good vibes from the person that’s talking behind their back. Maybe if we say, I’d feel more comfortable if we could get on here and give her this feedback together with her present, you might get the cold shoulder.
People might not find you as fun in that moment. But when you align with your values or you’re living toward something you believe in, the risk is often worth it. And I’ll define risk as kind of like extracurricular communication, something many humans would walk on by and think, “Yeah, I don’t have to stick my neck out like that.”
But when we engage in a new mindset or a new behavior without guarantee of what the result will be, at least when I try that, when my clients try it, we sleep better, we carry ourselves differently. It affects our self-esteem. So I’m not saying everyone should strive all the time. I’m saying you make a couple thousand decisions from waking to sleeping each day. Look around what relationships are meaningful to you.
All right, so it’s about picking the battles, not the wars kind of thing if I’m reading between the lines.
Yeah, that’s well said. That’s well said. In the book I’ll talk about you want to do a toast at your best friend’s wedding? Don’t have 4 or 5 drinks and then stand up. You won’t do it. That’s not a risk you want to take. So we want calculated, intelligent risks. And obviously the book is written to help people figure out which risks to take and then how to get past the fear that stops us from taking them.
I like that. Intelligent, calculated risks. I’m wondering, does it make a difference? What impact does the position of power have on which side of the desk somebody is sitting in being able to have those courageous communications?
Absolutely. It’s a different sort of dance. So if you have more positional power, the goal is, I believe, should be to make sure everyone in the room knows that you believe that everyone there is equally valuable as humans. And if you’re on the other side of the desk with less positional power, that’s a great thing to remember also that you are no more or no less valuable than the person with the most high falutin title.
Not that you shouldn’t respect authority that’s earned your respect and offer deference sometimes. For example, maybe you’re speaking to a subject matter expert. You don’t want to come off like you know it all. You might not be their equal in knowledge, but you can certainly be their equal in value as a human. And I notice that communication flows better when parties in the communication are thinking like that and believing that. It’s hard, though our egos get in the way, of course.
Well, that deference thing in particular, I remember hearing somebody in the political sphere saying that when people talk to the President of the United States, for example, offline, they’re like, “yeah, we got to tell him this, this, this, this and this.” And then when they actually walk into that Oval Office, the deference just – they it just doesn’t come out. It’s really hard for them to say in very direct terms what they just told a colleague 20 minutes earlier.
So isn’t that the truth? And the environment is set up to induce that sort of reaction as well as it is in many companies or organizations. Right.
Well, that’s an interesting thing because, I was just speaking with someone about this whole concept of respect and how to show it. And she was telling me that in the employees that she speaks with and coaches and trains and so forth, she, almost to a person, there’s a tremendous fear about being able to speak their mind. So in a culture where there is an element of fear and granted in some it may be much higher on the Richter scale than in others.
What recommendations do you have for leaders to try and diffuse the fear factor or to try to rebuild trust when there is high fear?
Well, corrective actions and rewards need to be fair. People need to be evaluated based on job relevant characteristics and not the non-job relevant characteristics. One concept I find interesting and love to teach is in-group and outgroup, and I would define as do other people interested in my field in-group as people you have eye contact with regularly and you can ask them open ended questions like what do you think about this? Or how was your weekend?
And you offer them praise and constructive criticism pretty easily and there’s a trust there and you share information with them. And I’ll actually have clients list your in-group for me. It’s confidential. Bring it to the next coaching meeting. Also list your outgroup and your outgroup in your organization. Or I suppose you could say family as well are those that you are maybe less geographically or emotionally close to.
There’s not a lot of eye contact, trust, information sharing, giving and receiving criticism and praise. So pick somebody this month from your outgroup and move towards them using those elements I just described in that operational definition to see if you can’t bring them a little closer to your in-group. And I’ll have leaders map this kind of stuff.
And one client cracked us up because he brought the list back and the entire IT department was in the outgroup. I didn’t have to write names and just that department. And I find that with manufacturing supervisors, warehouse supervisors or plant managers or general managers, et cetera, you know, third shift, don’t know them very well. Second shift, same deal. First shift.
Good relationships, So some of it can be geographic or where you place your time or your effort. And sometimes it’s because we just don’t like somebody or we haven’t gotten along well or there’s been some competition and we can move towards those outgroup folks. Also, we might never want to go out to dinner with them or have them to our homes, but I think we should all be working towards expanding our in-group. You might get rejected and aha, another fear to overcome.
Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s not just the employees that have the fear. The leaders can have the fear too, of being rejected. The one that you’ve just mentioned, or perhaps somebody that they have put in an outgroup, is a person they think covets their job or they feel is smarter than them. So they’ve got a little imposter syndrome going. What advice do you have for them in terms of courageous communication?
I think we start the book with it. The Communicate with Courage book starts with choose a mindset among a couple other good basic things to master before you try to become masterful as a communicator. So we can choose to believe that the world is out to get us, or that that person has unethical aims. And there’s a lot of advice in the book also about what to do about folks that you think are manipulative or unethical.
And to sum that up, limit your time around them as much as possible. But we do find some wins that we wouldn’t normally be able to achieve when we assume the best about others. But we tread carefully with them in our communication. Sometimes I’ll point out to someone like, “Look, I don’t want to assume that you’re trying to.” Dot, dot, dot here, right? I don’t want to assume that you’re trying to take credit for my team when they deserve the credit.
So I’m sure this is a mix up in communication. Can you help me understand? So I teach folks to use preambles and to use some open ended questioning. And still it’s tough to pull off because you can’t fake it. You have to really be trying to assume the best. Otherwise it comes out in our tone and we communicate more by tone than anything else, regardless of words or body language.
Folks are really listening to tone. You know how that is like, “Oh, I had an interview with Michelle Gladieux, the author of Communicate with Courage tonight,” or “Oh, I had an interview.” Right away. As soon as you hang up from this interview, a family member, same words a family member could read tons of valid information in just your tone. So I’m watching mine.
I’ll say this. I think I wrote this book because, gosh, I made so many mistakes. As a communicator. I’ve loved it for so long. I’ve loved it for my whole life. But wow, do I struggle with my weaknesses? And I thought the world could use a guidebook that maybe save them some time because it’s taken me some time to learn some of these lessons and watch others learn these lessons and they are repeated.
And it is because just out of our peripheral vision, very often we can’t quite see what’s got a hold of our mind and it’s controlling us rather than we’re controlling it. And that might always be so. I mean, this is part of the human condition, but I don’t see anything more rewarding than working on communication until we’re really old. If we get to live to be really old.
I couldn’t agree more. And I loved your example about the tone. And oh, because the word oh could be a complete sentence. It really can. It’s two little letters. It says so much. Yeah, yeah. And so, it’s easy to see how when you have more words that mean different things to different people, it’s so easy for misunderstandings to occur.
Now, we’ve talked about courageous communication in terms of speakers and being able to get their message out properly. And I really commend you for your book and giving us the opportunity to learn for what you’ve graciously called your mistakes. Because frankly, that’s what this entire podcast is about, so people can learn from other’s successes as well as, “Gee, I wish I had done it that way” so that they can move their business forward.
And definitely communication is a big part of that. But as I said, there are speakers, but there are also listeners. What can listeners do to improve their courageous communication skill set?
“Oh, dare I open my mouth here?” I don’t know. Okay. Well, I can tell you a tip is benchmark other good listeners, because that’s the only way I can teach this. Very rarely have I heard you’re a good listener. It’s a rare compliment to get.
And sometimes if I’m speaking to an auditorium, it could be a thousand people. I’ll say, “Hey, real quick, raise your hand if you’ve had if you can think of a time you’ve been told you’re a good listener” and it’s usually 20% or less of any audience size that can say, “yes, I’ve received that compliment.” So clearly this is high level stuff.
But what I’m working on is, of course, you hear these classic ideas like, Don’t prepare what you’re going to say while the other person is speaking. You can’t really multitask well and don’t interrupt. It shows a lack of respect. So I’m slowing my rate of speaking down now because maybe if I say it slowly, I’ll finally learn it. Hanna but I’m working on it these days.
I try to let others speak first. I can see the advantage in that and I’m competitive, so I both want to show respect to them and test myself to see if I can hear them all the way out before I disagree or maybe even agree, but usually disagree. If it’s hard to listen, it’s because we disagree. Hear them all the way out.
And the good thing when we do that is that person then has emptied their cup and they’re more ready to receive what you might say if you can hold your horses long enough. So that continues to be a perennial goal of mine.
Bravo. I think it is hard for people because they’re so pressed for time and I think some of it is geographic too. You know, around the New York metropolitan area where I grew up, if somebody’s talking fast and interrupting, it’s actually a sign of interest and enthusiasm.
But you take that same kind of a speech pattern into different geographic areas, even in the United States, and it comes off as rude and condescending and arrogant. Like how? “Let me finish, please.” That kind of thing.
You have eliminated something for me. Whenever I go to New York City. Yeah, I feel relaxed. I feel like we have just embarked on spa weekend in Phoenix, Arizona or something.
And I know it’s weird, but because everybody’s moving and speaking as fast as I would like to, I feel like maybe I have found some of my people. Not so much maybe here in northeast Indiana. This is a midwest, great Midwest town, great Midwest work ethic, wonderful hearts, wonderful people. We’re learning a lot together about how to revitalize downtowns and how to be more inclusive, but they don’t appreciate that New York metro area pace.
It’s just it’s different and it’s also one of those things that when you talk about mindset, I think that people need to embrace that people have different styles, communication styles, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being disrespectful, but trying to bridge that gap, especially if you’re in a supervisory position and you have people on your team.
You know, one is very deliberate, slow speaker and any pause somebody else uses as an opportunity to jump in. And it’s like I didn’t finish. And so it’s a challenge. It really is.
So your book Communicate With Courage in the time that we have left, Michelle, what is the most important thing you’d like people to take away from that book?
Wow, that’s a tough question.
I am thinking today about the love letter I wrote to conflict on page 85. It’s in chapter six, and this is where we’re talking about the four hidden challenges being hiding from risk, defining to be right, rationalizing the negative and settling for good enough and each of those gets its own chapter. In the chapter about rationalizing the negative.
I’m trying to encourage people to see conflict as a place to grow. It might bring up ick feelings. “Oh my gosh, I’ve been there.” The yelling, the tears, the whole deal, silent treatment, the tough things we do to one another as humans in conflict, there’s a better way to have it. And there’s a good way to look at it as a teacher.
And so this was one of the easier parts of the book to write because it seemed to just come out of me. Sometimes, I’ve heard songwriters say that they’re lucky to wake up to a song and write it down really quickly. It felt like that. And it’s I’m feeling pretty mushy about how beautiful and helpful conflict has been in my life. And so I wrote a love letter to it. So I’d like people to open their mind about disagreements and see them as the blessings that they can be.
Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, conflict is one of those things that people tend to avoid, but you just can’t keep sweeping stuff under the rug. It only gets bigger and bigger and especially for people in a leadership position. Managing problems, which is the source of a lot of conflict, is part of their job. So without a degree of conflict, who needs them?
That’s right. That’s why they’re making that “big money.” And sometimes that’s true. I will say, though, yes, avoiding too much. You can become a doormat, but competing too much, it can be dangerous as well, because people tend to start seeing you as someone who cares more about the task or their goals than others’ actual feelings.
So when we teach conflict management, we look at all five styles available to humans and we emphasize that you almost can’t overuse collaborate and you almost can’t overuse compromise, but you can sure be overly competitive, you can be overly accommodating, and you can be overly avoidant.
So it would be nice if we kind of could have a scoop of each of those in the recipe and then be like, I see us as lizards, Like you watch the lizard that’s green on a green tree and then it jumps to a brown tree and it becomes brown. That’s what we need as negotiators. And when conflict happens, we need to think, “Oh, I have like five options here. Which of these options, which of these cards in my poker hand am I going to play?”
And it’s really hard when your emotions hijack the situation because you go right back to right back to what you did as a kid that helped you cope or what you saw as a kid. That could have been an example you don’t even want to replicate. The book goes into a little bit about those formative patterns and how we can start to see them and then try something different. Just try something different. Baby steps.
Emotional hijacking, though, is hard to handle at times because people in the heat of the moment, they do get they do get triggered. But I do like what you’re saying and it ties back to the beginning of our conversation about looking at all of these things in order to evaluate the risk that’s involved.
Well said.
So, Michelle, this has really been great. Thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate your time and your insights, especially about how to overcome the challenges to communicate more courageously, because I think we definitely can use more courageous communication and there’s always room for improvement for everyone.
So if you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Michelle Gladieux, her work, her book, Communicate With Courage, that information, as well as a transcript of this interview, can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.
Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to tell your friends about the show and about Michelle’s great work. Leave a positive review and we’ll be back in two weeks with another episode of Business Confidential Now. Until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.
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