Career Warrior Podcast #288) Dealing with Conflict | How to Increase Your Promotability

Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:04
Welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast.

And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life. Today’s episode is all about conflict. Maybe this is something you struggle with something that you’re dealing with right now, or something that you try to avoid at all costs, because this makes you anxious. I know it does for me. Well, in this episode, we’re going to talk about how to deal with conflict the right way. Because it is a major part of the job, search your career. And if you’re not encountering any of it, then you’re not doing it right. So we’re also going to cover promote stability with an emphasis on mid level professionals. What are some things we can do to increase our brand value to get promoted to move on up in our careers, it’s something I get very jazzed about talking about. Before we get in today’s episode, I do have breaking news, the Career Warrior Podcast has just teamed up with LinkedIn in order to join the pilot of their new program, the LinkedIn podcast Academy. What does this mean? It means that we’re going to be making a commitment to you to your listener to engage with you and to improve the show. This means we’re going to be increasing to weekly episodes now. So if you are subscribed, you’re going to see a new episode every Monday morning. It also means you’re going to see the logo LinkedIn presents under show because they are going to be co branded with us now. This means a lot because we cover LinkedIn and many of our episodes. So a special shout out to the LinkedIn podcast Academy team. And for you listeners, we’re going to be better engaging with you on LinkedIn and different platforms as well. Today I brought on Tessa white also known as the job Dr. Tesla White is a former fortune 50 executive, and a 25 year human capital expert for fast growth companies and mergers and acquisition strategies. Tesla is now the go to Career Expert published in Forbes Wall Street times Good Morning America and USA Today. Tesla was also recently named as one of 2022 top entrepreneurs to be inspired by in USA Today, she is known to more than 1 million Tik Tok and Instagram followers. Wow. As the job doctor, you can find her under both platforms under at job at Dr. Tessa, which I’ll make sure to link within the description. Tesla started to cry for help and is created a much needed guidebook with the unspoken truths of career success, which was published under Harper Collins. This was made in order to teach how to avoid career layoffs and traps and achieve greater wealth speaking directly to the millennial and Gen Z audience who are competing for jobs at a rate not seen since World War Two. Tessa I’m so excited to have you on the career warrior podcast. Welcome to the show.

Tessa White 2:56
Thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here.

Chris Villanueva 2:58
We are going to have a lot of fun during this conversation. But the thing I want to open up with is talk about this book that you wrote called The unspoken truths of career success. What was the pain point you were trying to solve when you wrote this book, and I’m sure it’s gonna resonate with many listeners today.

Tessa White 3:16
Well, interestingly enough, I had originally and titled it, the lies that got you here. And for me was about the things, the untruth or the things that people believe about how the workforce works that aren’t true. And the things that I do them a disservice. Because as the head of HR, I get to see what’s happening all the time behind closed doors, all the conversations that are happening. And I realize people are getting tripped up including myself on the same things. And I felt like if I could uncover what those things are, and how to work through them in a way that you can come out ahead, that would be really useful to people. It’s I wrote basically the book that I wished I would have had, as I was growing my own career.

Chris Villanueva 3:58
Yes, I love that. And I’ve thumbed through the books, I’ve bought into pretty much every chapter and read excerpts from it. And I can’t wait personally to dive into and finish it front beginning to end. But what I’ll do is I’ll pull some excerpts that I know I had questions about, I know listeners, future readers of your book will have questions about as well, because I think it’s really exciting to actually have your voice in this podcast. And the topic that I wanted to pull out of the book and to bring to life was this topic of conflict, personally excited because it’s something that it’s played a big part of my life. It’s something that makes me nervous yet at the same time, and it’s something that if I or other career warriors can learn to deal with in an effective way, then it can really move things along. So one of the bullet points that your publicist emailed when they were suggesting show topic was this bullet that says the number one action that builds trust disagreeing, and that really popped out of me? So I’d ask you what makes disagreement the number one action that builds trust. And can you bring any fun stories here?

Tessa White 5:03
Well, isn’t that interesting. It’s so counterintuitive, that disagreement would build trust. And yet, what I found in the workforce is we avoid Well, it’s not just the workforce, it’s life, we avoid conflict, and especially Gen Z, and millennials avoid conflict. And they’ll avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately, that doesn’t serve you in the workforce. Think about, who do you trust the most in the workforce, you trust the people that you think are being straight with you, and honest with you, I trust people that tell me the truth. But we, we walk around all day long, doing what I call halfway conversations, where we’re sharing just a fraction of the truth and somehow expect everybody’s going to read each other’s mind. And we’re going to be communicating, and we’re not, we go around not communicating all day long at work. So it’s a really important skill set. And in fact, I talk a lot about communication throughout the book. It’s woven throughout every chapter because the ability to have hard conversations, the inability will stall out your career, you’ll just stop and you don’t grow from there. And it’s such an important gateway skill. And I think it needs to be addressed.

Chris Villanueva 6:10
I love it. I asked like, if you have any tips in a bit for somebody who might be shy, or really, I don’t know what the term is like conflict avoidant, that personality, conflict averse people who don’t want to talk to a manager and in such a way, but to pull a phrase or pull an excerpt from your book. It says getting comfortable with conflict is an essential skill set. If you expect to continue growing in your career, you can walk around trying to please everyone and never confronting difficult topics with your manager or coworkers. But you will not be able to make it to a director position, if that is how you operate.

Tessa White 6:47
That’s right. Because when you’re a director, when you hit that role, your job is I call you a builder, your job is to get buy in for resources and for your priorities. And getting buy in at that level is all about jockeying for who gets the top priority and who gets dropped and who gets the money. So inherent in the whole job of director is this idea of having hard conversations. So if you can’t lobby for those things, you don’t stay in your role. And I can think of any a director who I’ve had to let go, who just couldn’t find their voice where they’re very nice people, they were people that other people liked. But if you can’t get the resources, or the buy in for what you’re trying to do, you might as well leave now, because it’s so essential.

Chris Villanueva 7:34
Absolutely. Can you give any specific examples or stories about a time in which there was conflict, and then it by embracing that conflict and ended up yielding some good fruit to move your career or someone else’s career forward? I’d love to hear that. Oh, sure.

Tessa White 7:49
I’ll tell a self deprecating embarrassing story.

Chris Villanueva 7:53
All the better. We love those here.

Tessa White 7:55
I have lots of those. By the way, I did not have a perfect career. I love it. I had my team member come to me and tell me I was a micromanager. Now, think about that for a minute. That’s probably the most scary thing that you could ever say out loud to your manager and think you could get away with that’s pretty tough stuff. Sure. But it’s the way that my colleague said it that was so impactful. And this is where this whole idea started to come together for me. Here’s what he said instead of saying you’re a micromanager and we’re all going to quit, which is probably what he wanted to say he came to me and said, you know, there’s something going on that I don’t think you understand, or you may not be aware of, if it were me, I would want to know, do you mind if I share some feedback with you? Sure. And so he proceeded to tell me, I know that when you’re giving us assignments, one of your superpowers is your ability to kind of have a vision for what that looks like. And the quality at which we would you know, be able to get that across the finish line. But what’s happening is you’re giving the assignment and then you’re changing things so often along the way, that your people are starting to shut down their own creativity and you’re not able to get the full potential of all of your people. And I think what’s starting to happen is they’re starting to just wait until you tell them exactly how you want it changed. And so you’re never gonna get anything better than what’s in your head. Okay. And so is that what you intended? I was like, What? What so think about the way he said that it was honest, brutally honest, but in such a way that I could receive it. He assumed good intent. He assumed I wasn’t trying to hurt people or do it on purpose. And that I think is the key between good communication and bad communication because you’re right, people either go too far one way and get really bitchy or they go quiet and don’t say anything at all. And it’s that middle ground of assuming good intent, I think really can make the difference for people. Yeah,

Chris Villanueva 9:51
I recently just completed the I don’t know if you’ve seen the masterclass series is being publicized all over YouTube and commercials and things like that, but the masterclass done by Chris Voss, who was a former Oh, he’s great FBI negotiator. He’s amazing. But he talked about the concept of a straight shooter. He says Everybody loves a straight shooter, but it just depends on how this person delivers the message. So, so true, the straight shooter could give it to you in an honest, genuine way. But if they deliver it in a way that shows that they don’t care about you, or it just it comes across too harsh or something like that, I think the delivery of the message is something that really matters there. So

Tessa White 10:33
it matters a lot. I’m the person that in between, right, that gets to deal with the conflict between the manager and the employee, and you hear these conversations going back and forth. And if there’s one thing, if you take apart or pick apart that conversation, people are assuming bad intent on each other. You’re surprised when you actually look at the actual conversation like wow, the minute you can change that, you begin to have better conversations that you can actually walk away solving those problems and building trust.

Chris Villanueva 11:02
Do you have any practical tips for let’s call myself a recovering people pleaser? I’ve always been this way ever since I was young. But it’s something that I’ve worked on, or I believe I’ve worked on throughout the years. It’s something I still struggle with. But for me, psychologically, it’s hard for me to overcome that hurdle. And to delving into the conflict, especially if it’s something that I haven’t had in a while, I will say there have been periods in my life where I’m like, super gung ho, I never take things personally. And I’m ready to just get it done. And to delve into it without dealing with any of that personal stuff. But on the other hand, there are sides where I’m like, gosh, I feel like I’m protecting my ego right now. And I don’t want to move into the conflict, because I’m afraid it’s going to destroy that ego or some sense of it. So do you like I said, Do you have any tips for those who want to get over that hurdle? Or jump into the deep end of the pool and start dealing with conflict? 

Tessa White 11:59
Yeah, I think a lot of people are like you, Chris, I think they want to do it. And they have the intent to have the right conversation. They just do it the wrong way. That’s why I dedicate so much of the book to this and give so many scripts, my advice to you would be the minute that you can remove intent out of the conversation, which is woven into all kinds of things when we talk to our manager, especially, it helps. So what I expected, what I observed, if you can just start there, what did I expect to happen? What actually happened, it takes the emotion out of it. And it’s a fact based conversation, and it begins to set the stage at least for you to have a really good conversation because there’s no blame. All you’re saying is, I expected that I would be working, you know, 40 hours a week, but we would occasionally have projects that would take us over time that that would be the exception rather than the rule. But what’s happening is for the last eight weeks, I’ve had to put in 50 hour weeks. Okay? Right. So you’re just you’re identifying the gap. That’s a really good start. And even if you botch up all the middle part of the conversation, if you end with a question that is again, not blaming, and assumes good intent, that’s Is that what you intended? Or do you see it differently? Or is there something missing that I don’t understand, you’re leaving the conversation open for that person to go, oh, I, of course, I wouldn’t intend for that tab, I didn’t realize you were working that hard, or I didn’t, hey, this project is going to end really soon. But if all you do is say, I’m getting burned out, and I can’t take it anymore. That’s not going to be very productive conversation.

Chris Villanueva 13:37
That closes the loop there. And as like as a podcaster, and somebody who loves to have genuine conversations, I think what that person did, which was really powerful is they opened it up by asking you a question, like a really powerful question at that. Like, is that what you intended to make this a more productive conversation that isn’t pointing the finger? Like just complaining about something? So

Tessa White 13:59
surprisingly, the hardest part of the conversation for most people is identifying the gap. They go, why am I upset? Like really? And when you take the emotion out, why am I upset? There’s an expectation that was missed always that it takes a minute to kind of vet that out. And I tell people before you go ham on somebody, go sit down and write down what did I expect? And then what did happen so that you can convey the differences. And it just becomes so much easier to have a conversation that way to start with that.

Chris Villanueva 14:28
So we have to ask, since this was we’re getting, you know, open and personal here. But what was the outcome ultimately, of that conversation? Did it lead to that progress, like we spoke about,

Tessa White 14:38
honestly, it was one of two times in my career that I got really, really impactful feedback that was negative. That changed me because somebody dared to say it. And the reason this was so big for me is I still work. I still work on it. In fact, I am so sad for the employees that lived with me before I realized I was doing this And I’m sure they’re out there, because I am so mindful of it now. And I try so very hard to change the way that I behave with people. And it’s one reason I talk about that topic of micromanagers a lot. It’s one of the top frustrations people express about their manager. And if they’re like me, they didn’t even know it. So for me, it was a changing moment, you know, a transition point for me. But I’ll tell you, I cried a lot of nights, when I realized that that’s how my people were experiencing me is not what I intended, not at all. And yet I was lose, I was about to lose a good share of my staff as a result of it. I mean, that’s pretty sobering stuff.

Chris Villanueva 15:38
Well, thank you for sharing that. That is not only incredibly insightful, but I mean, the humility it takes to not only recognize that, but share it with other people. And for your listeners, I really recommend the book, I’m a stories person. And there are plenty of stories that I’ve seen within this book. And I think for me, if I want to make a change or be influenced by something, I need to hear those stories. So thank you for sharing.

Tessa White 16:01
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons, Chris that I put so many case studies, because I think people need to see how it plays out and want to see stories. And they’ll notice in the book, we’ve got case studies all over the place with real examples that I think will resonate.

Chris Villanueva 16:15
Well to grab another excerpt from that same chapter, it says, Then there are three magic phrases. These questions do more than defuse conflict than any other technique or strategy I can teach you. They are a non judgmental way to allow space for the other person to share their point of view without insinuating blame or wrongdoing. Could you share perhaps these three magic phrases and what they actually are?

Tessa White 16:40
Yes, I’ll say them again. And I ate them a little bit in that last story. Is that what you intended? Do you see it differently? Or is there something I’m missing here that would help me understand, and the reason those are so powerful, is those allow an opening for continued conversation, it’s partnership type language. And when people get tripped up, it’s because it’s us versus them? Bottom line, my managers against me, my manager doesn’t want to give me a raise, the employee isn’t performing, it’s us versus them. And what those questions do is it says, You are my partner, that’s what you’d say with somebody that you’re in it for the long haul. And it allows you to just continue to, to dive deeper as to what’s going on and really unwind it before people get frustrated and, and walk away from the conversation. I even use that on somebody that was in senior executive, he was a bully, a big bully, and everybody knew he was a bully. But he didn’t know he was a bully, he thought he was just so direct, and so able to lead the conversation and make things happen. And I remember going on a walk with him around the block. I was so scary for me. You know, he told us people, he they didn’t need to do what HR said, on my couch. He’s just like that. Yeah, don’t do it. Like, oh, my gosh, I gotta, and we had this walk around the block. And those questions allowed us to actually have real conversation with each other, like, helped me understand. And, you know, go to the end of the story, we’re actually still great friends today. And he had no idea that he was perceived as a bully, which blew me away. But we were able to make small inroads, you know, a piece at a time, because when you trust that somebody is going to tell you the truth, you start to rely on them, you know, they’re going to tell me the truth, or they’re going to tell me what’s going on. I’ll know if something’s not going right. Much more than we trust somebody that’s, you know, the Yes, man. And I don’t know how to say that in a gender neutral way. They don’t have a new statement to use for that. But I think most people know what that means. Yeah, absolutely. You know, when you surround yourself with people who just say yes, you begin to not trust that. So that’s why I say conflict builds trust.

Chris Villanueva 18:45
I love that. I’ll pull an example from my own past Live, which I like to do sometimes to get some practical coaching here. But this is about eight years ago, I was managing a restaurant, I was working for a company, I had really high ambitions to move on up, you know, progress year over year. But there was a conflict in which I really wanted a promotion to move on to the general manager level. And I know something i my heart of hearts, I really wanted it and something that I would dream about at night as a young restaurant manager in the big city. But I just remember just the pain when the person who was overseeing me just did not see any of that potential in me and felt like I wasn’t a good fit. So I would ended up not getting recommended for the position. And just after putting in pretty much everything. I wasn’t able to get it at the time. That to me seems like one of those hard conflict disagreement conversations that would need to happen. So how would you recommend whether it’s my past self who was like really striving for that promotion or somebody who is trying to move up in a situation like that? How would you recommend that they approach the conversation?

Tessa White 19:55
First step is to create safety and safety is what are the things we have in common? So in this case, I don’t know the whole story. But I would say, I know you have the best interests of the restaurant at heart like I do, we really want it to be successful. So that’s where you start, what do we have in common? Man, I would begin to do the gap and explain the gap. I really thought I was going to get that promotion, I had done X, Y, and Z, these things, I thought, were really going to instill confidence. Ultimately, now I’m going to the next step, what happened? Ultimately, I wasn’t selected, and there must have been a gap for you. In terms of your confidence level, I was wondering if I could ask for your honest feedback on why you made the decision that you did. So that it would help me understand that better, I feel like there’s something missing, I would help me understand this. And all of a sudden, you know, you’re assuming that it can’t in the other person, you’re gonna have a lot higher likelihood of getting the real honest feedback. But the minute, you know, most people would be like, I’m out of here. You know, they wouldn’t even say anything. They’d say, I busted my hump for this company.

Chris Villanueva 21:06
Right? That’s what most people want to say. Right? Yeah. And some

Tessa White 21:09
people will say that they’ll go, you know, too far. The other direction, say, I busted my hump, I can’t believe it, you know, you don’t appreciate me, well, you’re not assuming good intent in any of those statements at all. And you just shut down that person’s desire to even engage with you and learn anything.

Chris Villanueva 21:25
Right? That was such a disarming way. And I would recommend anyone who wants to know how to have that conversation, like rewind this podcast, listen to the way that Tesla said that because that was incredibly disarming. And I felt like if somebody, one of my employees approached me in such a way that had that type of demeanor, then I would feel much more likely to give them everything pretty much my full attention and help them to be helped the conversation move forward. So I really liked that. And my young self had a lot to learn. So I wish that, you know, I hope anyone listening to this episode right now is able to take that away,

Tessa White 22:01
I appreciate that you said that, I think you know, just as a if nobody remembers anything about this podcast, except one thing, it is half the conversation that way you would want someone to have it with you, even if you don’t remember my techniques, and that will get you part of the way their craft the conversation you would want. If you’re on the other end,

Chris Villanueva 22:21
I love that. It’s so powerful. So that’s a perfect segue, I think, to the topic of increasing your Promote ability. For a person who may be in the mid level, we do have people listening to this podcast, I’m sure who are more entry level. So perhaps we can circle back if we have time and talk about how to increase promote ability there. But what I do really like in your book is how you break it down pretty much career stage by career stage and talk about the different types of things that you might have to deal with within that stage. So I’ll ask what typically are mid level folks dealing with whether it’s like managers, and they would talk about the collaborators concept, but what are they dealing with? And what are some typical mistakes that we make within the mid section of our careers,

Tessa White 23:05
that’s a good place to focus, because middle part of your careers where people’s career stall out, they get stuck, and they just Yeah, or they’re able to move up. And it’s also the hardest, particularly middle management, middle managers. That’s the hardest job in any company. Sure. 100%, the hardest, yeah, and I call it a mid manager sandwich. And it’s because they’re getting pressure from the top to get certain things accomplished and done. And they’re getting pressure from their people who are saying that’s a stupid idea. And they still, as a middle manager, don’t want to be seen as one of them, the bad guys up top. So they want to be, you know, still except in this other peer group. And so they just are smushed in the middle of that whole thing. And it’s really, really difficult. So I would just say that some advice for those that are in middle management is you’re going to have to learn the art. Again, this has to do with conflict, right? You’re going to have to learn the art of being able to get on board and ask questions, if you disagree with upper management, so that you can convey what needs to be done. You’ve been begging forever to be that your manager won’t let you be more strategic. And you’re finally in a position where you can be strategic. So part of being strategic is making sure your people know, it’s not like you’re one of them is not us versus them. You’re trying to help them get the job done and help them understand why you’re getting certain things done. And you have to be on the same page as your senior leaders, or at least have the argument with them in a private room and come back and be on the same page. And that’s really hard for mid managers. Yeah, it’s really hard for them to do it. It’s a hard bridge to be more strategic.

Chris Villanueva 24:46
Yeah, absolutely. And sorry to cut you off or just say I had a mid manager once who would end up taking feedback from their upper level manager. It’s this person was more of an executive and I just remember they were in constant disagree. We met and that person would complain about their boss to me. And it kind of derailed kind of like broke some of my trust, I would say, like within the whole organization, because there was that disconnect in their own private room. And they brought it over to me. So that is

Tessa White 25:14
exactly right. Because that manager was trying to be buddy, buddy with you. And like, you wouldn’t believe these idiots, right? Yeah, it breaks trust, it breaks trust, because your people are saying, What are they saying about me behind closed doors? I mean, that’s really the question that we ask anytime. A manager or even a co worker is saying bad things about somebody else? Or like, what do they say about me? It breaks trust. And so that’s really a hard lesson for middle managers to learn. You can’t do that.

Chris Villanueva 25:40
Yeah, it really did. And like I’ve good things to say about that organization overall, but the the organizational flow communication could have definitely be improved. So let’s hear another mistake that mid level managers are making in their careers to move things forward. What other things can we do better as mid level managers?

Tessa White 25:59
Well, when you’re in a stage two, you’re it’s all about independence, your manager gives you something to do and your job is to figure out how to get it over the finish line, right, you’re independently working kind of within your little realm. But ironically, you just master that this independence, and you get thrown into middle management, which is a stage three, and interdependence is the name of the game. Because your projects are more complex, you’re crossing over into other departments, and you’re finally into that particular area of expertise enough that you can’t be the end all be all. So you have to rely on other people, you have to rely on outside sources, you have to be able to make a phone call, and find the experts, you have to surround yourself with really smart people. And so often what people do is they try to behave the same way they did in stage two and say, I got this, I got this, I’m independent, I got this, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. So you have to focus on other people and making sure you’re working through the whole ecosystem of the company well, because one thing we know about promote ability is that your ability to get promoted is directly correlated to how well you work with other departments. So this is stage three, hmm. And that’s where you get the champions that will give you the voice to get promoted. So that’s something that’s really hard for people,

Chris Villanueva 27:17
I would say, I’m not even like aiming to get promoted my own life. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m looking to improve my company and its reputation and move things forward. But like, that’s a mistake I’ve made in my own past, even I’d say my recent past employees would probably say, But relying too much on that I’ll take care of it myself, and not understanding and communicating with other different parts of the departments to help get things done. So I think that’s a really good thing that you brought up, it makes a lot of sense to me,

Tessa White 27:44
I understand it, because you’re in a stage two, you’re like, I’ve got this, I’ve got this. And that’s what you were rewarded for. If you got this and you were able to do things without giving your manager a lot of headache, you are a superstar. And it’s so ironic that then you move into this next stage, and nobody tells you, oh, you know, you can’t do it the same way you will get penalized rather than rewarded. It’s just so ironic to me. And yet, nobody ever voiced that to me, until I could see the patterns of people and started to realize that was what was happening.

Chris Villanueva 28:15
And the second one talked about in that very section, there’s a subtopic that says, limit your nose. And so for me that popped out, I had some clarifying questions there. But just I don’t want to leave the entry level person hanging here. Are there any differences between mid level entry level in terms of the mistakes that people are making in order to get promoted? And I know, mid levels or collaborators what are what are I guess entry levels called in

Tessa White 28:40
entry level you are doers, you do it your manager tells you to do and if you do it faster or better, you win. And so you ask a lot of questions so that you don’t mess it up. But in a stage two, you can continue to ask questions over and over, you have to start to figure out the in between between what the manager wants done, and you figure out the in between to get it over the finish line. So for an entry level person, I would say if you’re going from entry level to stage two and preparing your language changes, instead of a manager, I just want to let you know I checked this off the list or I did this thing. It’s it’s more accountable language. It’s something like, Hey, I ran into a problem. This is the way I think I’m gonna handle it. I just wanted to check in with you and make sure that you didn’t have any feedback or anything you wanted to add, right? I’ve got this, but just checking in. So your language with your manager evolves. And in fact, the book has five or six phrases that are very typical that you would change so that you can see what that actually looks like.

Chris Villanueva 29:36
I love that. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Now it’s talked about the section in your book limit your nose, there is a paragraph that says there’s a weight that no carries with it and a price you pay if you use it too often. A read an interesting statistic on marriage from John Gottman, PhD psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington, whose research on divorce predicts shin and marriage stability spans for decades, he said that if the ratio of positive to negative interactions falls below five to one divorce is likely, that tells me that negative interactions are a potent poison, which is as true with work relationships as it is with personal relationships. Oh my gosh, that freaks me out. Because, you know, for me, I would say like as a recovering Yes, man. Yes, person. I’m actually learning to like the word no, because it protects me in a way. So can you just clarify what you mean about limiting your nose in this in this part?

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