The podcast by project managers for project managers. Hear advice on how to achieve constructive crucial conversations, and how to ‘rethink’ a story that is driving a negative emotion.

CARRIE WOODS: People don’t care what you know until they know that you care.  And when they know that you care, they will start responding.  And they will feel safe enough to show you their true meaning.

Table of Contents

00:58 … Meet Carrie 02:15 … Getting into Crucial Conversations 04:14 … Crucial Conversation Definition 05:32 … Warning Signs of a Crucial Conversation 07:00 … Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication 08:32 … Achieving a Constructive Crucial Conversation 10:30 … Facts and Stories 15:00 … Using the Right Strategy in a Crucial Conversation 20:58 … Getting to the Root and Performing “CPR” 25:23 … Accountability and Changing Behavior 27:42 … Softening the blow in a Crucial Conversation 32:11 … Creating Safe Environments 33:02 … Moving from Conversation to Results 35:32 … Get in Touch with Carrie 36:50 … Closing

WENDY GROUNDS:  Hello I am Wendy Grounds and welcome to the Manage This podcast, this is the show by project managers for project managers! And so with me in the studio is a familiar voice, Bill Yates....

BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy.  Good to be here. So you may notice that Nick Walker is not in the room, he was here for the first 100 episodes.  And Nick was actually, he acquired so much knowledge as a project manager, he’s taken a new gig as a project – just kidding.  He has retired, and he has moved closer to family so he can be with his grandkids, and he and his wife can spoil them.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I

think he actually mentioned he was project managing a wedding coming up.

BILL YATES:  That’s

true.

WENDY GROUNDS:  So,

yeah, he’s using those skills.

BILL YATES:  Yes, that’s

absolutely true.

Meet Carrie

WENDY GROUNDS:  You know Bill, we’ve all had those difficult conversations, those conversations where the stakes are high and everyone has a different opinion and then emotions get involved. Well, on this episode, we’re talking about just those conversations. Crucial ones and our guest Carrie Woods is going to describe to us how facts and stories drive our emotions and also how we can move from those crucial conversations to getting results. 

Carrie is an author, speaker, master trainer, and executive

coach as well as a Certified Platinum Level VitalSmarts Trainer in Crucial Conversations.  Carrie, welcome to Manage This, we’re so

glad you could join us today.

CARRIE WOODS:  Thank

you.  Thank you so much.  It is absolutely fantastic to be here today.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Well, we’re happy to have you. So could you just tell us, what brought you into this line of work, and what makes you passionate about it?

CARRIE WOODS:  Absolutely, so about 14 years ago I transitioned from the corporate world into being a full-time writer, of all things. And with that, as my client base grew, I moved into instructional design, and from instructional design moved into facilitating the content that I was developing for various organizations, and so today we work with companies like Amazon, Volkswagen, Lincoln Electric, helping develop leaders at all levels to be more effective.

Getting into Crucial

Conversations

BILL YATES:  Well, so one of the things we’re excited about is this whole topic of Crucial Conversations, and it comes from a book, a very popular book, something that a lot of life coaches and others put to work.  And I’m excited about seeing how we can relate this to the world of project managers.  How did you first get into this Crucial Conversations?  Did you read the book?  Did somebody recommend it?  Or how did you become a master trainer with this?

CARRIE WOODS:  Oh, my goodness, so several years ago, actually, the book was recommended to me, and as I shared – so we work with all kinds of companies. And what we found, especially with  my background as a writer, is communication and effective communication is the foundation of any leadership skill. So it doesn’t matter what topic I have on the screen – conflict resolution, driving change, employee engagement, we can go through all the buzzwords.  If you are not communicating well, then you are not being understood, and you cannot drive any of those behaviors towards the results and the outcomes that people need.

So I was always looking for how do people communicate well because it’s something that some people do inherently, it’s just a skill that they have.  And those are the people that we look at, and we go, man, they can just get things done.  What is different about them that they’re just successful while I’m sitting here stuck? And so it comes down to they communicate well.

So with that, the next step, being a trainer, and being somebody who designs learning content, you go, okay, how do I make that a transferable skill?  In my quest to identify that, somebody recommended the book “Crucial Conversations,” and so I read it, and I said, this is it.  I don’t have to figure this out because they’ve done it.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Because they have created an approach that is so transferable, so easy to apply, and so effective that it truly does change people’s lives in an amazing way.

Crucial Conversation

Definition

BILL YATES:  So define, what is a “crucial conversation”?

CARRIE WOODS:  Absolutely.  Crucial conversations are those moments – so I tell my clients it’s where you find yourselves at a crossroads where you and I are having a discussion, and the stakes are high. Okay?  The outcome really does matter, we don’t agree on what that outcome should be, and now emotions are also running hot. So when you find yourself in the middle of that triangle of high stakes, very emotional, and outcomes matter, that is the reality of a crucial conversation. And I can explain that all day long, and so you can kind of look at it in retrospect and go, oh, yeah, I know what you were talking about.

BILL YATES:  That was

one.

CARRIE WOODS:  That was one.  In the moment how you tend to recognize it is your body’s fight-or-flight response kicks in, and you might not realize what’s happening, but you can feel it. Those butterflies start in your stomach, or maybe your neck starts to get hot, your voice starts to quiver a little bit, and so you go, “Oh, something’s changed.  Something’s changed.”  And that’s your warning sign that this conversation has just turned crucial.

BILL YATES:  So those are some of the indicators about, okay, these are like signs that a crucial conversation is popping up.

CARRIE WOODS: 

Absolutely.

Warning Signs of a Crucial Conversation

BILL YATES:  Sometimes I think project managers know they’re going into a crucial conversation because, oh, my goodness, I have to meet with the sponsor and ask for a 10 percent budget increase. Or I’ve got to meet with a customer and tell him that the big nasty risk actually occurred, so now I’ve got to deal with it. We need some extra money, some extra time, you know, something bad, bad quality issue.  Then there are other times, I think, where we’re kind of caught off guard by it.  So tell us, what are some of these warning signs that you can go into?

CARRIE WOODS:  So when your body senses a threat, you automatically go into the physiological fight-or-flight response, and what happens with that is in that moment your brain floods your synaptic cleft with everything you’ve got.  It’s like hitting the overdrive turbo boost on a car and just all your adrenalin, all your hormones, everything.  So the reaction to that is that all of these physiological changes happen, your hands start to shake, your voice starts to shake, butterflies in your stomach, your neck can get hot.  These will vary from person to person.

BILL YATES:  I

sweat.  I tend to sweat a lot.

CARRIE WOODS:  You get

that sweaty response?

BILL YATES:  Like I am

full-on working out at the Y.  I mean, I

am, like...

CARRIE WOODS:  Yes.  And so when I describe this, everybody, they relate because they know what theirs are, even though it might not match with everybody else in the room.  And when you feel that, you start to go, oh, okay, I need to pay more attention here because – and so it comes down to verbal/nonverbal communication, which we could do a whole ‘nother podcast on. 

Verbal and Non-Verbal

Communication

But let me ask you guys a quick question.  If I had to ask what percentage of the

communication that you put out in the world on a daily basis do you believe is

verbal, so how much of what you say comes out of your mouth?

WENDY GROUNDS:  I

would say maybe about 40 percent. 

BILL YATES:  And so I know the stats on, yeah, I think I know where you’re going with the nonverbal, and it’s way higher than you would expect, share those.  What are those facts?

CARRIE WOODS:  Way higher, so the research shows us that it’s approximately 7 percent.

BILL YATES:  Is

verbal.

CARRIE WOODS:  Is verbal.  So only 7 percent of our communication is verbal, everything else is nonverbal.  It’s your inflection, your expression, your hand gestures, how you fix your hair, how you dress, how you stand, so all of these things.  And you can actually see the impact of this.  Have you ever sent a text or an email to somebody, and all of a sudden they’re mad, and you have no idea why?

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.

CARRIE WOODS:  Okay, so this is why your iPhone now has 2,000 emojis, because they’re desperately trying to put nonverbal cues back into verbal communication.  Have a good day, smile smile smile smile smile smile.  Really?  Please don’t be mad.  Not, you know, good luck with that.  So when we go back to the idea of a crucial conversation, that physiological response, we pick up on those nonverbal cues automatically, and we start to react to them even though we’re not necessarily aware of them yet.