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Hey everyone, welcome. Good to see you again. Uh good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are. It's great to get back on here again this week. We got some good feedback last time on the sessions we've done up until now. So here we go. We've got episode four. So we just want to take you through. We talk we we put in the in the post last week we were going to talk about leadership in difficult situations. That's really the topic that we've got lined up for you this morning.
So hey Neil, how are you doing? Good to see you. All good? I'm outstanding, thank you.
And we finally got it right. Finally got the colours back. Well, actually, in fairness, we cheated. Uh we we actually decided to coordinate because the uh, you know, and and actually give us some feedback on the colours because purple work. Uh but no, I'm fine actually. Thanks. I'm a I'm a little tired today, actually, but um just I didn't sleep that well last night, but I um which is unusual for me. Um, but I'm buzzing around this topic.
Leading in leadership in difficult situations is something that I I get so frustrated about when I see it not being managed properly or not being dealt with properly, and and you see it so often. So now I'm really looking forward to delving into this one today.
And look, it's not a single strand, right? We see this in our personal lives, we see it at work, we see it with customer situations, we see it everywhere, right? So, what we're gonna go through, guys, is our thinking in terms of what does this mean, what's it all about. Um, so I guess we can go a couple of places. What do you think, Neil? Where do you want to start off with taking this for today?
Well, I guess uh a difficult situations fall in different areas. So I'm guessing the if you think about the difficult situation we all found ourselves in, and every leader found themselves in back in well, in the UK in February, in China it was a bit earlier, you know, the US a bit later. Yeah, but every leader's had to deal with a difficult situation in the environment, the you know, the the health environment through this lockdown. So that's probably a good area to start.
How does a leader deal with that kind of difficult situation whenever it might come up?
Yeah.
I don't know. What are you what are your thoughts on that?
Well, I mean, I guess from because it's not only the leader that's got the difficulty to deal with, because it's it's about it's the person delivering the message, but also the person receiving the messages has got some difficulty in there. Um so yeah, I think I think where I'd want to start off with this though is let's talk about customers. Let's talk. I mean, you and I have had some interesting deals that we've done over the time, right?
And there's been some times that we've got into conversations with those customers. Did we know those conversations were going to get difficult? Or did we enter a room knowing we were going to have a difficult conversation that day? Because that's another thing. Have you planned it, or have you got to react to it when it happens? Have you got anything you'd want to offer up around customer?
Well, okay, so um, okay, so so we'll we'll move on from the environment and the we'll talk about customers. I tell you what, let's start again because I wasn't listening to you. You weren't. No, but that but that's not uncommon, right? Something was going on in my head, was it? What was going on in my spa? I'm not going to press pause and start recording because I think it's really important that uh so what I said was listen this time, right?
Well what I said was we've leaders have all had to deal with current difficult situations recently um and because of the environment and uh because of what's been going on. And you're right, not it's not just leaders who had to deal with it, everyone's had to deal with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leaders have had to kind of take a leadership position on it.
Yeah, and I've spent a lot of time talking to the the leaders I coach over the last few uh months about it, and it's been very difficult, you know, it's that kind of roller coaster ride of personal emotions, what happens to my business, etc. Um, but I think there's a common three theme that comes through whenever I'm having conversations is you can't you can only control what you can control.
Yeah, you can't control the pat the fact that the pandemic's happened, you can't control what the government's doing. Yeah, you can't control what's happening in the economy. What you can control is how you react to it and what you do. Yeah, no, that's fair.
So I think that's my thought process around the leadership is the leader's got to help the organization focus on what they can control and what can they um what can they do to make a difference and how can they decide what they move forward with rather than focusing on too big a scenario which they can't control.
So when you say leader in that context, you're talking about the leader of a business, or you're talking right.
So you so actually I'm sorry, my thought, good point, right? I'm thinking leader of business, not leader of a country, but okay, you know, similar similarities, yeah.
Yeah, no, so you're absolutely right. And and you know, your your point about you can only control what you can control is absolutely right. Because you can end up dwelling on things that are out of your control, you can end up having conversations that will make no difference at the end of it, and you'll just frustrate yourself and everybody else.
Um, so if you take in context where your company might sit in that and the things that you can influence, the difficult conversations are gonna be, I mean, let's take a really direct one for a leader in that difficult situation. Can I afford to keep everybody that I've got in my organization? I'm gonna have to make a decision, and then there's gonna have to be conversations that are gonna have to come from that about whether I furlough, do I make people redundant? You know, what do I do, right?
Um, and that's a difficult situation. And I think the other thing you've got to think about is it's not just about now. No one no one had a forecast, did they? This pandemic's gonna last for two and a half months, and then it's all gonna be okay. No one knows. Correct. So, do you make a short-term decision? Do you make a longer-term decision? And you've got to live with that, right?
Um, yeah, and so that's a really interesting point, right? Because there are difficult in a in any difficult situation, there's probably difficult conversations. So there's difficult decisions that need to be made.
Yeah, yeah.
And my advice on that, whenever I'm coaching anyone, is you know, get the facts, gather what you need to know, but focus on what you can control. Yeah, you can't control it. You might be able to influence it. So if it's effective, if it's the senior management you're trying to make, you might be able to influence it, but you can't control it. Yeah, yeah.
So make decisions around what you can control, and and you you're right, one of the things you can control is your employees, is you know, your costs, your cost base, your your buildings, your assets, your people are one of those. And I guess in any difficult situation, there's a difficult conversation to have. Um, and how do you approach those? And you know, I said again, I see so many people doing that poorly.
But what advice would you have for people on approaching difficult conversations with people?
I think one of the first look, these things are always going to involve emotion, right? So you've got to think about how you're gonna control that emotion. But I think you've got to stand back. First thing I'd say is stay calm. Because as soon as you start panicking, or as soon as you start behaving erratically, that makes people are nervous around you and it makes you behave strangely. Um, but like you and I focus on a lot of the time is what is the outcome you're looking for?
When you go into those situations, you need to be clear on what outcome you're trying to achieve when you come out of it, because that will guide where you need to go. Right? So let me take I'm in I'm in a company, I'm in a difficult situation, I've had to furlough people. Now I need to decide where do I want to go as my outcome? Do I want to just keep my business stable?
Do I want to decide that I'm gonna have to delve into some of my, you know, some of my wall chests to keep my business running? Or do I want to say no, I'm gonna be very um direct about it and very aggressive about it, and say, I'm gonna take the actions I need to take to make sure that my balance sheet can survive. Um, so you need to decide what your outcome is.
Yeah, so you you're right. So it's uh well, and and then you've got to try and guess what's gonna happen to the business, or you've got to try and plan for what you know and and and hope for, but also plan for the worst. Um and I guess what what I've learned personally from my own situation and also working with other people is where there's a difficult decision to be made, first thing I'd my first advice I give is you know about work what's in your control.
The second thing is don't don't put off making the decision. You're never gonna have all the facts, you're never gonna have everything you need to know. So long as you've got enough to make a balanced decision, uh, you know, a reasonable decision, then don't put it off.
Because the worst thing I and I this will come up a time and time again as we talk through this difficult situations topic, is poor leaders put off difficult decisions and difficult and and don't manage difficult situations because they hope they'll go away, or they aren't strong enough to make a decision to do something about it, yeah. Or they're afraid of the message they're gonna be delivering. So that putting that putting it off is one of the worst things you can do.
So once you've got what's in your control, then make a decision, then implement it.
Yeah, I mean the chance of it getting better if you put it off is pretty slim, right? So it's it could do, but it's highly unlikely because if it was likely it was gonna get better, then it wouldn't be a difficult situation, right? It'd be a short-term hiccup.
Yeah, and and and if you do think it's gonna get better, that's part of your decision-making process. So you've got to balance out where you think it's gonna go. So that then leads on to uh so having those, you know, you've got you've got a difficult situation, you then need to have a difficult conversation. So let's say you've got to furlough someone uh or you've got to make someone redundant, which is real at the moment for leaders, you know. So that's a difficult situation to be in.
So how do you make that least painful? Or how do you make that um because it's always gonna be painful, but how do you make it the the most positive experience or the what the how can you manage that in the best way for everybody concerned?
Yeah, I mean we're also assuming that in that difficult situation everything's negative, right? I think you've also got to find are there any positives in here? Because if you're gonna deliver a difficult message, um look for there might be a positive that you have to. I'm not saying about spin doctoring it, I'm saying make sure you put all the facts forward and on the table so people can see the whole picture overall.
Um, and I think that that's got to be done before you just go launching out with maybe what you think is a bad message and you haven't thought about the overall picture. So look at the whole context, think about what that is. Then I think it's about sharing and being open, right? You know, I think last week we talked about communication. Fairness was the week before. Week before we talked about communication, right? And we said, do you always share everything with all your employees?
Well, in difficult times, I think you do need to share why am I making these decisions? You can't just make the decision and move on, and no one knows why. Yeah, they might not like it, but they'll understand it, and I think that's a really important point. Don't expect people are always going to like everything you have to say, but you have to be fair, they're not stupid, people understand if you share.
Yeah, I agree, and I think you in that difficult situation where the more information you can give people so that they understand the decision-making process, they understand your thought process, uh, they understand everything the same as you do, it makes that conversation easier.
Yeah.
And but but one of you know, the one of the key bits of advice, again, I always give people when they're having to have that difficult conversation, is don't sugarcoat it, don't make it all soft and fluffy, and you know, you're a you're a you know, you're a fabulous person, you've done lots of great stuff for the business, all that all the stuff, because they know what's coming.
Why not just sit and say, look, got the current situation is this, we've got to let some people go, or whatever it is, you know, we've got to make some changes. Uh this is how it affects you. Yeah, yeah. And I think the bet, you know, I there was um a film that Brad Pitt made um many, well, probably five or six years ago, called Moneyball. And it was about baseball, it's a true story about a baseball team in Oakland, California.
And in that film, he he had a statistician that looked at statistics to hire people and fire people, and they had they were getting rid of one of their key uh players. Um, and the statistician said, Well, you know, well, I'll I'll give the message this time. How should I do it? And Brad Pitt said in his his spiel, he said, Um, look, let me ask you a question. Do you want, would you prefer a bullet to the stomach or a bullet to the head? And he said, What do you mean?
Well, he said, a bullet to the stomach, you're gonna die slowly, a bullet to the head, you'll die instantly. So when you're delivering a message, which would you prefer? He said, Well, I'd prefer a bullet to the head. He said, So don't sugarcoat the message. Get him in here, tell him he's leaving, he's been uh let go. Here's the number of an agent, good luck.
Yeah, and whilst that's probably a little harsh if you've got a long time, the point is still good, is don't make someone suffer over a long period of time before you deliver the message you're gonna deliver anyway.
Yeah, no, I agree. I think the only other conversation in that kind of scenario is what can I do to help deal with what you are in now? So I'm not gonna dress up what I've just told you. You are where you are, you are leaving the business in four weeks' time. Now, what can I do to help you with that? Yeah, and you know, they might not be totally receptive to a conversation right now, um, but I think that's important because I think the empathy has to be both ways as well.
We've got to have empathy when you're delivering a difficult message or when you're just in a difficult situation, but I'd also expect the recipients to have some empathy back the other way. So here we are in this pandemic situation, and I was on our family Zoom the other day, and we were talking about the situation, and somebody commented about how rubbish the government have been handling this, and they were attack, attack, attack, attack.
And I can't help but lose that, lost it at the time and said, Stop, really? Really? Do we really think they've done a terrible job? Or do you think they've done a bad job of the thing that you're talking about now? Because let me put it another way. Have you ever been a leader? And have you ever been in a situation where you've had to deal with a difficult situation?
Because if you haven't, I don't know you've got the ability to comment about how badly other people are handled it, because you've never been there, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Now, if I'm a if I'm a victim of what you just commented, so if I was a school teacher and it's affecting schools, I get that. But I think there's got to be empathy both ways to say if I was sitting in that chair, how would I deliver that difficult message? How would I handle that difficult situation?
And that's an interesting point, right? If the person wants to invest the time to understand, and I think you you make a really good point, is how much it's easy to criticize without information. Yeah, it's easy to look at a decision and go that's wrong without investing the time to read or learn or listen to the information.
Yeah, I remember setting up leadership calls years ago to set to speak to people about stuff, to share, and and people don't turn up and then they go, Well, why are we making these decisions? Well, if you turned up and listened to the situation, the facts, whatever, you'd understand. So you're right, there is a bit of a two-way street, but it's interesting how communication keeps coming back leadership and communication, leadership and communication.
Yeah. Uh whether it's one-to-one, whether it's group, but it's that making sure people are informed, making sure people understand.
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Um this is just one of those kind of difficult situations. But one of the things I've learned, you know, I I remember having to deliver a really difficult message to a sales organization that had overachieved, and we had to say, we can't afford to pay everything.
You've done too well. You've done too well.
Yeah, so we we we um you know there's a percentage of we're gonna have to take a hit on a percentage of our commission. But you know, getting everyone on the phone, sharing it with everyone, under sharing the situation, we're all in this together, it's affecting everyone in the same way. Actually, you know, the it the feedback from that was really positive.
And you know, it's it's a while ago that that happened, but I learned from that, and I've learned from other situations that if you treat people like adults, you involve them in the conversation, you don't sugarcoat stuff, you give people facts, don't give them waffle and gift stroke their ego, just give them facts, then dealing with a difficult situation is a lot easier.
Yeah, yeah. Now it's a good point, actually. And so I think we've spent a bit of time here around communication, right? You're absolutely right. It is a key topic, absolutely linked into this. Let's just think about something slightly different, then, right? I think we have touched on it, which is actually about decision making, right? Because it's not just about the communications, the decision making.
Yeah, yeah.
So, what do you think about decision making when you're in a difficult situation? Do you think what what do you think are the key uh attributes to think about in making those decisions when you're in a difficult situation?
So I think it it it and is it different from any other time, by the way? Um it's diff probably different because the emotions are different, it could be different because time scales might be different, so the difficult situation might be something that's urgent. Um but in in it it's a bit like I said at the uh early on in this conversation, you know, understand what's in your control.
So what what decisions can you control, understand um the facts, what facts can you you get get from the you know what what do you need to know and and what advice can you get? But don't wait to get all the facts before you make a decision um to get input, but then just make a decision, just get on with it and take it, take it. It doesn't mean you've got to be dogmatic about going down that route. You know, if you get some more information, you have to change a little bit.
You know, in in politics they call it a U-turn. I just call it getting more information and adjusting slightly. So it's uh you know, from that point of view, uh so that would be my thoughts on decision making. I don't know what you're what your thoughts would be.
Yeah, I think the only other thing I'd bring in there, Neil, is is about getting advice and working with people around you, right? Because you may not have everything in your head, you may have missed something in your thinking, you may have not got a key piece of data that somebody else has got that could change what you were thinking, planning, and the decision you might have made. So involving other people in that, I think, is really useful. It's not a sign of weakness.
Getting other people's opinion is not a sign of weakness, right? Some people might think, well, you're the boss, you should know. Well, no, why should I know everything? And each people, sorry, each group of people have their own specialist area. So I might make a decision about the business, but not consider a sales angle, or not consider a delivery angle, or not consider a commercial angle. So you get all those points of view, and I think you make better decisions.
Um as you say, do it quickly, right? Do it quickly, get people in a room. We have to move, we have to think quickly, but we need to act fast as well.
Because if there's a different just do it, make a decision.
Yeah, look, if there's a difficult situation going on, there's every chance people outside that room know it's a difficult situation. There's anxiety going on already, right? So you need to move.
And I think, you know, so um one of the things you asked early on was about customer, difficult customer situations.
Yeah, yeah.
And and everything we've said so far applies to that, and you see companies getting that wrong so often. You know, companies will have a situation where a product has got a problem with it, and they try and hide it. Yeah, instead of communicating with the customers as soon as they know there's a problem, what they're doing about it, how they're gonna deal with it, that's it's very similar to everything we just talked about. Yeah, don't hide it.
Tell people they're adults, customers are adults, tell them what the situation is, um, make sure you've got all the facts, what are you doing about it, and then uh then they can make their own decisions as well.
Yeah, agree. I mean, look, what's what's the most emotional topic between customer and vendor? It's money, right? Um, and how many times have you and I hit on situations where this is going to affect the price to the customer, right? And then we've tried to find a way around it because you don't want to go deliver that message. Yeah, go deliver that message. Go deliver that message based on what we now know that we didn't know before, this is what your contract price could look like.
Once you shared that, once you're open with it, deliver the difficult message. I mean, it's painful going into that meeting knowing that they it might not be received well, but otherwise, what are you gonna do? So that's I comes back to what you said earlier. Don't hang on to it. By all means, examine can you find a different way around this before you deliver that message?
Because it is going to cause some potentially some relationship upset, but not if you do it well, and there's respect on both sides.
No, and and and and any difficult situation with a customer can turn into an opportunity if it's handled properly. Yeah, you know, you if you deal with it in a really good way, they see you've got a problem, they see you're dealing with it, they then have more respect for you as a supplier or as a manufacturer or vendor, whatever, because you're dealing with it in a professional way, that then can it can strengthen the relationship because everyone has problems at some point.
Yeah, you know, it's if you hide away from them, it's like if you avoid the difficult conversations or the difficult decisions. Don't skirt around them. Weak leaders, poor leaders, skirt around those conversations and they avoid them or they put them off, or you know, they'll play with their email or they'll do their WhatsApp instead of getting on the phone, phoning a customer and going, This is this is the current situation, this is the issues we're having, this is what we're doing about it.
You know, I'm very sorry, obviously, I'm sorry. Um, but but I think you just got to do that. I don't know, I'm ranting a bit there.
No, it's interesting it's interesting what you just said there, because look, you and I study behavior and we understand some of this, right? But there's an important behavior here that people need to realize, in case you don't know this guy, right? When you've got a difficult situation you need to manage, you will prioritize other things ahead of it and convince yourself they're more important to deal with because you don't want to deal with what you need to deal with.
And we've probably all done it, right? There's the difficult thing you don't want to get to, so there's other things that will keep you busy, and that's why you didn't get to it. Now, the reason you didn't get to it is because you avoided it.
And and and and you know, my again, my uh experience of this personally, from not doing it right and from being on the receiving end of it, is a decision put off or a difficult situation not dealt with starts like this big, and it then gets bigger and bigger and bigger the more time is because because you know, people aren't stupid, or situations aren't, you know, they they grow because the the blanks get filled in or the vacuum gets filled in with rumors or suggestions.
So yeah, you've got to just not don't be a weak manager and and avoid the the difficult situations. Uh, you know, get on and deal with them, would be, you know, but I think that's all a lot of the stuff that's coming out of this conversation.
Well, it well, it probably comes on to the you know, the the typical matrix of urgent, important, right? This is important, right, to start with, and as long as you're putting it off, it's starting to move up the urgent scale as well.
Right, yeah, good point.
Yeah, now when you come to fall off the urgent scale, now you're in a terrible place because you have to do it tomorrow when you could have taken time, planned it, and gone and done it more effectively. So think about that as well, guys.
And actually, you make a really, really good point there, right? Because difficult situations don't necessarily need to happen. No. And again, poor leaders have more crises to deal with because they don't manage them upstream. Absolutely.
Don't take the not urgent but important actions, like making sure you're clear with your employees about what their jobs are, like making sure your customers understand what you're delivering as a service, um, like making sure your balance sheet is strong enough to deal with ups and downs in demand. So you deal with things when they're not urgent and important. It it's a funny how great leaders have fewer crises.
Yeah, it's a coincidence, isn't it?
Funny that, funny that um actually, probably we probably should have put that at the beginning of this that said we're talking about dealing with difficult situations, but you shouldn't have any if you're a great leader.
But look, things hit you, things hit you, right? No one plans a pandemic, right? So things hit you from nowhere, and you have to work within that. Um, so actually, I think one of the key lessons here is think and plan ahead. How would you handle difficult situations when they're gonna happen? Because they are gonna happen. You just don't know when, you don't know how frequently.
I think the frequency of them says how good a leader you are, because you shouldn't be having too many of these if you've got a problem, right?
Um so I think what we're saying is so it kind of I what we've said over the turn is deal with them, deal with stuff early so it doesn't become a difficult situation. Yeah. When you if you do end up in a difficult situation, focus on what you can do, focus on what's in your control, gather as much input from as many people as you can to make sure you've got it all the information you need to make a decision.
Yeah, make a decision, don't avoid a decision, and then make sure you're having conversations with everyone so everyone's informed about what's going on and why it's happening, whether that's customers, employees, even investors, you know, so they know why you're making decisions in the way you're making them. So I think that's kind of the structure we flowed through.
Yeah.
Is there anything else in that?
Yeah, no, I think that's fair. And you know, there's a couple of things that we've hit on whilst we've been here. One of them has been about difficult conversations, and maybe that's a separate topic, right? Maybe there's a separate topic here about how you have a difficult conversation with someone, whether it's a customer, whether it's an employee or an employer or a partner or whatever, right? So I think that's something we can come and look at uh later on.
I think it's worth us thinking about that. Um, so I think from from what we talked of today, I think I think we've covered a bit of ground. I hope it's been useful. I don't know if there's any more we'd probably want to go into, Neil. I think we've probably given it a good idea.
Well, hopefully we we there's some interesting thoughts in there that will help uh people. I think you're right. I think difficult conversations uh links in with some of the stuff around good practice around managing employees as well. Um, so I think there's a there's a lot that we could cover. I'd be really interested in everyone's feedback on this uh and um you know your thoughts.
Please, you know, subscribe so that you get to hear about when these uh videos get put up on on YouTube, or you can do the same in uh the podcast in Spreaker. Um so yeah, but please leave us. We're getting good feedback, we're getting more views, and we're getting some fear. So it's obviously helping, which is which is really pleasing for us because we just want to help a little bit. Yeah. So hopefully that's been useful today.
Do you want to just wrap up? Well, well, the other thing is people have also been sharing some examples, right? As they're coming back with the feedback, they're talking about well, I was in this situation, or here's my opinion of what this actually means. Please keep giving us that, guys, because Neil and I haven't got all the answers here, right? What we're providing is some level of catalyst for a conversation.
So by all means, share with us stories you've got, good, bad, could be better, whatever, that we could use as part of the conversation with you. Um but other than that, look, thank you for your time, guys. Thanks for joining us here. Um, episode four. Neil and I are gonna keep going. Give us suggestions of anything new you want. Neil, have we thought what we want to do next week? I don't think we've really decided.
So I'd love to get a guest on next week. Um, but we just need to think about that because I could I I'll call it a surprise guest because it's gonna be a surprise to you and me. But um we'll we'll I'll put something in the comments at the bottom of the video about what we decide for next week. Okay, fantastic.
Great to see everyone. Thanks for your time, guys. Thanks for your time. Enjoy it. Speak to you again soon.
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