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Jan 16
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831: How to Manage Multiple Projects without the Overwhelm with Elizabeth Harrin

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Elizabeth Harrin lays out the five critical steps to making the management of multiple projects more manageable.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The easiest way to make managing multiple projects manageable
  2. How to ensure follow through when you’re not the manager
  3. How to strike the right balance between time, cost, and quality

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Harrin teaches people how to juggle multiple projects so they can meet stakeholders’ expectations without working extra hours. She is a project management practitioner, trainer, mentor and founder of RebelsGuideToPM.com. 

An author of seven project management books, Elizabeth prides herself on her straight-talking, real-world advice for project managers. She uses her twenty years’ experience doing the job to help people deliver better quality results whilst ditching the burnout through her community membership programme, Project Management Rebels.

Resources Mentioned

Elizabeth Harrin Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Elizabeth, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Elizabeth Harrin
Hello. Thank you for having me on the show.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom but, first, I think we need to hear a little bit about your ritual involving the song “Firework.” What’s the story here? 

Elizabeth Harrin
Well, when I go live on a video or something like that, I feel like I need to get into the zone. And having that break between just doing my emails or whatever I was doing before, and focusing on showing up and being present in the moment, I do that with music. So, I play a song and I just got stuck on Katy Perry’s, so I play that to get into the right frame of mind before going live and talking to people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, “Firework” is actually a really fun tune, and I love the metaphor at the beginning, like, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?”

Elizabeth Harrin
Absolutely. Drifting around, isn’t that what every project manager feels like at the beginning of a new piece of work, and you have got no idea what you’re supposed to be doing?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Elizabeth, you’re a master of the segue and tying it together. All right. Well, I want to hear a little bit about Managing Multiple Projects. You’ve written the book on it. Could you kick us off with a particularly surprising or counterintuitive or extra-fascinating discovery you’ve made when it comes to managing multiple projects?

Elizabeth Harrin
I think one of the things that surprised me was I did a survey to get some numbers, a bit of research for the book, and most people are managing between two and five projects, and that doesn’t sound like very many, but having to constantly switch between work does create that overhead, and workload is the biggest cause of burnout. So, if you can’t manage that workload effectively and switch between all things you’re juggling, it can be really quite difficult.

And the most surprising thing for me about that survey, and the results I got back when I was interviewing people for the book, was how sad it is that people are feeling so unhappy about the work that they do. And the verbatim comments were, just shocked me that people show up to work, they want to do the best that they can, and they’re not in environments where they can do that.

And I felt that that was something that we need to change in the world because we all need to be happy at work. We spend so much time there, it’s not worth doing things that we don’t enjoy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Elizabeth, that is powerful, and thank you for sharing that. That really does connect emotionally in terms of overwhelm, burnout, sadness. When you say verbatim comments, are there a couple that have lodged into your brain and haunt you, that you could share to tee up just what we might be able to escape here?

Elizabeth Harrin
There was a comment from a woman called Kimberly, and she wrote, “I work in a fast-food project management environment that expects a sit-down service.” And I thought, “Don’t we all?” So many people must feel that they’re in environments where you want to do the best quality work you can, and actually it’s got to be a quick turnaround. There has to be speed and shortcuts, and we have to apply all these hacks just to get through the day because we don’t have the time to focus on the people that matter and the work that matters.

And so, that analogy about feeling like you’re in a fast-food environment but all your customers and the work that you want to be able to deliver, you won’t be able to provide this five-star dining service. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And it’s really funny, and I have felt both of those work desires. Sometimes it is a blast to just shred through a lot of stuff at medium quality and high speed, and just enjoy the thrill ride, like, “Woohoo! Look at all these things checked off and out the door. That’s really cool.” And other times, you really do want to be, I don’t know, sort of like an artisanal, craftsmanship, bespoke, excellence, maximum beauty, maximum quality, and what’s challenging is often you don’t get to choose.

Elizabeth Harrin
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“That might be your mood but what’s required is this.” And if they require both speed and excellence at the same time, yeah, that’s a tricky one.

Elizabeth Harrin
It’s a tricky one, and people end up working longer hours. That was certainly my experience when I went back to work after maternity leave and was in this situation where I was managing multiple projects myself. My choices were do things less good, to a less quality standard, or work longer hours. And neither of them really appealed to me in terms of wanting to be the best professional that I could be and do good things in my career. So, I had to start rethinking what work meant and how I could work more productively because the tools I had only gave me those two choices, and that wasn’t good enough.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful and it sounds like some of your thoughts made it into your book, Managing Multiple Projects: How Project Managers Can Balance Priorities, Manage Expectations and Increase Productivity. If you could give us the key thesis or big idea behind the book, what is it?

Elizabeth Harrin
I’ve put together a five-part model that helps people break down their work, structure it differently, and then keep all their balls in the air. Although, the thing I would say is that no book will ever tell you there’s a one-size solution that will fit every need, so it’s written very much from a perspective of, “Here’s a ton of different tools and techniques that you could try. Test them out in your work environment. Find what fits your working style,” because everyone is different, aren’t they? And everyone’s work environment is different. But, broadly, with a few tweaks, hopefully, you can make the work a little bit more manageable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds exciting. Could you share with us a case study or a particularly inspiring story example of someone who was able to upgrade their managing multiple projects game to see great results?

Elizabeth Harrin
Yes, I can. I do a lot of mentoring as well, so a lot of the people I talk to will pick and choose a couple of different things to apply. I can give you my own example and then I can share some examples from other people. The thing that made the biggest difference for me is the first of those five steps, which is working out what’s in your personal portfolio. So, what was the totality of my workload? Because I had three or four projects that I was managing, but also, I was mentoring my colleagues, I was organizing events at work, I was having to turn up and deputize for my manager at different meetings.

And all the other things, they never really make it into your mental to-do list because they’re the stuff you jot down on a Post It note and you never find the time, really, to put those on a project schedule or anything. They’re just expectations. So, when I had a complete picture of all the things I was responsible for, I then got a big shock about how many hours that actually equated to within a week, and being able to then have an intelligent conversation with my manager, and also to plan my own time, it became a lot easier because I had full visibility.

And I think that’s something that I know from teaching about managing multiple projects, that other people have take away as well, just that realization of all the extra things that we’re expected to do, whether it’s time sheets, or finance reporting, or organizing a party for the end of the year celebrations, whatever it is, all of those things take time away from us being able to deliver the main part of our job, the projects that we’re working on.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I’m thinking about mandatory trainings, I’m thinking about the sort of meetings, I’m thinking about email. Email is tricky because, on the one hand, are these emails about your projects. Well, then I guess, in a way, that time might get counted. Or, are the emails about everything else from the CFO and the CEO and this and that cross-functional group here and there.

Elizabeth Harrin
Yes, team meetings, briefing your colleagues, all that kind of stuff. So, that personal portfolio step was really helpful for me. And one of the other things that I talk about in the book is dependency management. So, how do you work out how your work interacts with other people’s work, and how each of your projects interact with each other?

And I can tell you about Robert, who told me that once he’d planned out those different dependencies between his workload, he felt that he already knew that in his head. But having plotted it out and writing it down in a matrix, he could then use that as a communication tool to help other people in the department understand how their work impacted other people.

And that was valuable then because he could use that to help people talk about, “When does their work need to be done? What’s going to happen if it’s late? This is the implications for these people or this team or that project.” And they could talk about how they could help each other, make sure all of those expectations were met.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, lovely. That is handy. And so, just like a snazzy chart graph, flowchart, bit of graphical loveliness?

Elizabeth Harrin
You could do it that way. I just wrote it in a spreadsheet. I’m very good at simple things. So, the spreadsheet is a list of all my projects, a list of all my other responsibilities, a list of the way that my work interacts with other people’s work. The way that we did the dependency matrix was we had a list of projects down the side, and then a list of the same projects across the top.

And where they met, we could say, “Well, does this project have anything to do with that? Does this piece of work have anything to do with that team?” And you could sort of write in the box, “Yes, we need to be aware of this,” or, “Yes, we have to do that before this one.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, those are handy right off the bat. And could you share, when it comes to managing multiple projects, there are many books and works and tools and trainings on project management, and your corner of the project management universe, managing multiple projects, is distinctive. Can you share with us, what are some of the key differences, distinctions about the game when you’re managing multiple projects versus one super project?

Elizabeth Harrin
I think the biggest challenge for me is having different stakeholders, more stakeholders. If you’re managing a big gigantic project and it’s taking up all of your workload, then you’ve probably got quite good relationships with the people that you work with because you’re with them every day, working with them every day. The team might be large, and I’m not saying there’s not a lot of people and relationships to manage, but there’s one common goal that you’re all working towards, which is delivering the project, and you’ve probably got experience of working with them on a regular basis.

Now, let’s say you’re managing four projects. That’s four potentially quite separate, different teams, each of who want a piece of you at some point in the week, and you’ve got to switch between managing their expectations about how important their work is because not all projects are the same level of importance. Someone has to work on the stuff that’s low importance. And it might be that someone wants more of your time than you can actually give because you’ve got other things to do in your week as well.

So, I think those relationships are probably the hardest thing and the most different thing about managing multiple strands of work rather than just managing one. And that could be managing four different clients. If you’re in a client-facing role, maybe you’ve got four different clients, maybe you’ve got four different internal projects but, ultimately, the more people you have to work with, the harder, I think, the job becomes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then, now could you share with us, you mentioned at the very beginning that burnout, sadness, overwhelm stuff, do you have any strategies, specifically, that are targeted toward the internal game, our emotional landscape?

Elizabeth Harrin
I would say having boundaries is probably the most important thing because often, when people give us work to do, there is the expectation that we have the time to do it. And because we are good employees, and we don’t want to rock the boat, we say, “Yes, of course, I can take on that extra piece of work. When would you like it done by?”

And I think having mental boundaries around, “How do you accept new pieces of work when it’s within your gift to be able to do that?” Are you going to make the point about saying, “Well, I can do this but it will mean I’ll have to stop doing something else. I can do this but not by tomorrow because I’m working on something else. I can get it to you by Friday. Is that okay?”

And having that kind of sense of protecting your own time and your own mental health so that you’re not saying, “Yes, I can do everything, of course. Just lay it on me, and I’m just going to stay up till midnight and be at my keyboard all night.” By being aware of what your own limitations are and how many hours you’ve got available, what else you’ve got going on, planning out the next couple of weeks, you can start to think about, “If I say yes to this, and I have to because my boss is asking,” let’s be honest, you haven’t really got a lot of choice, “How can I make this fit? Whatever help do I need? How can I have that conversation?” And I tend to default to the, “I can do this, and this is when I can get it to you.”

There’s another tool that I can share, if you like.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, please do.

Elizabeth Harrin
One of the things that has helped me has been the two-week look ahead. So, I will take a point in the week where I’ll look at what’s coming up in the next fortnight with the team, to say, “Okay, what do we know about the next two weeks? Who’s got holiday? When have we got big meetings that we need to prepare for? What deadlines do we have?” and then nothing really surprises you, or you’ve built in a little bit of time to be aware of the things that are coming up, so if you do get a surprise, it doesn’t throw your whole schedule off because you’ve already built in some resilience for what you know is coming up.

That’s been really helpful for me because it also means that I can look ahead in terms of just how busy I’m going to be. So, you talked about protecting yourself and being mentally ready to be busy and juggle all these things. If I know I’ve got another week coming up in the future and it’s very busy, lots of big meetings, high stress, I can prepare for that because I can make sure that I’ve got things for the children’s lunchboxes in the freezer, I can make sure I’ve got childcare organized, I can make sure I’m not booking any late-night social events for me that week.

Or, if I am, I’m planning the next morning so that that’s easy. And so, I’m trying to holistically look at work is coming up and what that affects me, how that affects me personally so that I can be more prepared to show up ready to work.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. Okay. Well, let’s dig into your five key concepts. They each start with P, which is handy to remember: portfolio, plan, people, productivity, positioning. We’ve already gotten a couple tidbits for each. Could you perhaps give us a quick definition or articulation of the concepts, and then perhaps a top do and don’t within each of the five?

Elizabeth Harrin
Okay. With portfolio, I talk about having full visibility of the work that you’ve got on the go at the moment and the things that you’re responsible for. So, my top tip for that is just to take an hour, perhaps even less, and just look through whatever notetaking tool you use or your notebook or the notes you’ve got on your phone, and try and write down everything that you are currently working on, looking at how much time does that need to take per week.

And I know working out hours is very difficult, so what you might want to do is just think, “It’s a big thing, a medium thing, a small thing. That’s good enough for this exercise.” And then that’s the portfolio piece done. It gives you a good sense of what’s going on. The thing not to do is to keep that information to yourself. Use that as a talking point tool with your manager and with your team to say, “Look at all these things I’ve got on the go. Can you help me prioritize so that I’m focusing more of my time on the things that really matter to the organization?”

The plan step is about scheduling, working out when you’re available to do things, and the tip I have for that is to look at all the different projects you’re working on, and then look at where they’ve got their big milestones, when are they going live, or when do you have a big meeting about them, and then plot those on – again, I did it on a spreadsheet – because then you can start to see, “Oh, project number one and project number four have very similar schedules.”

“Maybe we could work on them together and maybe there are some benefits in looking at how we can streamline and combine the work, if it makes sense to do so, so that we’re not doing everything twice.” With that you’re going to need help from other people. So, again, the tip not to do is to try and do that alone. Other people will have a different insight about what’s important and what’s coming up on a project schedule, so it’s worth involving the rest of the team in your planning.

The people element of the model is all around working with others, as you guess from the name, and that is to do with thinking through how you use other people’s time. So, my suggestion there, if I have to give you one thing, would be to look at where you can combine meetings. And I can tell you about a time I did not do this.

I went along to a meeting with my project sponsor, my main manager I was working with on that piece of work, and I was all ready to talk about one project, but he was also involved in another project, and he asked me questions about that one and I wasn’t ready to talk about that, I didn’t have any of my notes, so I baffled, made episode, went along, and got through it. But it made me think, actually, other people are working on multiple things, too.

And to them, they might have multiple things they want to ask you about, so let’s try and combine the communication so that we’re only contacting people once rather than contacting them multiple time about each different thing that you’re involved with because you then help them manage their time as well.

With productivity, which is the fourth P, it’s really around managing your own time, thinking through what works for you, what productivity tools and techniques you want to use, and how you can help other people in your team be productive as well. The thing not to do with that is to get sucked into the latest shiny tool or what’s working for your colleagues because, in my experience, everybody has quite different ways of working to the best of their ability.

For me, I’m very much a pen-and-paper person. I do use electronic tools for project scheduling and task management and all that, but I always have pen and paper as well. Whereas, I know people who would never write anything down. So, you need to find out what works best for you and then use that in the way that you work.

Positioning is the last P. It’s also the one that’s the most convoluted because I kind of have to find the P that fit it, but it’s more around, “How do you set yourself up for success? So, what does the environment look like?” So, this is all around checklists and templates and processes, and what can you change in your environment to make life easier for future you.

So, one very simple thing to do would be to think through, “What do I do on a regular basis? How much time do I spend thinking about that? Would it be easier if I just had a checklist or a work construction or something like that? Then, if I’m not here, someone else can do it, but, equally, when I need to do it, I can make sure I just wheeze through it. I don’t have to worry about any of those steps.”

And I wonder if this is part of me getting older, but I used to be able to hold a list of things in my head. Now, I struggle more to think about the different steps involved in every process and making sure that nothing gets forgotten. So, anything that can be written down and templated just saves you time in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to the holding in the head, I’ve really noticed that. It’s a little bit of a stressor in terms of, I guess, maybe the psychologists would call it our working memory capacity. That might not be right construct but something like that in terms of there are so many things we can put there, and then when we try to push it for more, I actually feel sort of stress signals popping up.

And so, what I find interesting is if there is a task that is already somewhat stressful, or I’d be prone to procrastinate on because I’m worried I might screw something up or overlook something, make a mistake, or it’s just unpleasant for any number of reasons, having that checklist in place is very satisfying because it’s like I can free up all the potential stress associated with thinking and remembering the steps because they’re just there, and I can feel a little bit of fun momentum associated with, “Okay, I checked this piece of a checklist. It only took 30 seconds but I did it, and it’s checked. And now momentum is there visibly on the page before my eyes.”

Elizabeth Harrin
Exactly. Who doesn’t love ticking a box on a spreadsheet, right, to say it’s done, cross off that task on your to-do list? Project managers love that kind of stuff. And it’s exactly true, and it gives you a better-quality result because you’re not going to forget things. You’re going to go through a set of steps. And, honestly, the first time I did it, my checklist was a bit rubbish, and as I went through the actual task, I went, “All right, I have to do that as well. Oh, I’ve forgotten to involve that person.” So, you just add it on and it becomes checklist version 2.0, and you keep improving and iterating as you go. But the next time you have to do that, you don’t have to think so hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, now just a couple follow-up questions across some of these five Ps. I’ve had the experience, and apparently there are some psychological truths or principles that suggest that we humans have a real hard time, in fact, estimating how long something is going to take. Is that your experience? And what can be done about this challenge?

Elizabeth Harrin
Yes, that’s very much my experience. It’s really hard to estimate. And a lot of what we do is knowledge work where we’re thinking of things or changing something, and we probably haven’t done that before, so you don’t even have past projects where you can go back and say, “When we did it the last time, it took us this long, so, therefore, we can just use those estimates.”

Sometimes that’s because organizations don’t really capture the data in a format we can go back and use again but, also, it’s because people suffer from optimism bias. And when we think, “Oh, yeah, we can do that in four hours,” meanwhile forgetting about the fact that we all need toilet breaks in the day, and to take calls, and to check our emails, and to turn up and do other things.

So, my suggestion for people who are struggling with estimating is to think about how many hours you’ve got in the day, and then to schedule yourself and other people in your team, or have conversations with other people about what’s realistic for them to do, but only think of yourself as available 80% of your time because that then gives you time for those team meetings, the mandatory training we talked about earlier, and taking phone calls on things that are completely unrelated but still relevant to your job, and then you’ve got a bit of a buffer in your day.

The other big challenge with estimating is that people often approach estimating, thinking that they’re only doing this one thing, whereas, in real life, we’re probably juggling multiple different strands of activity or many projects, and switching between projects also cause us some time. So, time blocking has helped me.

Blocking out some time, a few hours to work on a particular thing, or an afternoon to do a particular type of task, and talking to our colleagues about best ways to get things done, what productivity techniques work for them, how do they organize their time, when have they got holidays coming up that they might need to do more things beforehand to hand over, and that might make them less available for your project because they’re supporting something else is just a lot about talking.

And I think contingency as well. Do you think that would be useful?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Elizabeth Harrin
Yeah, contingency is a buffer time. People often ask me, “But how much contingency should I add to this estimate?” or, “I think this task is going to take five days, but what’s reasonable contingency?” And I tend to, “Contingency should be something that’s based on uncertainty.” So, if you’re not really sure and you’re just guessing, you want to slack on a bit of extra time. Quite a lot probably if you just don’t have the information to make an accurate guess at the moment. But if you’ve done the work before, or you’re quite confident in how long things are going to take, you could probably get away without adding a lot less extra time.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. That makes sense in terms of the variable driving whether you want to add more or less contingency is uncertainty because we just don’t know, so let’s play it safe by having some more in a high-uncertainty zone. So, let’s say that the uncertainty is small, you’ve done it before, but it’s a little different. Do you have a go-to percentage that you utilize?

Elizabeth Harrin
I like 10%, I would add 10% extra on. There are lots of estimating models, so if your organization is quite mature in the way that they approach time tracking and estimating, then there’s a lot better ways to do it than just to add on 10%. But if you are just working on something yourself without an awful lot of other guidance from a project management office or anything like that, then give yourself a bit of a buffer, and 10% seems to cover most scenarios.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when it comes to the people side of things, when you’re in the tricky position of having to lead without the authority, like you own the project but you don’t own the employees, you have to do the stuff to make that proceed, it could be a tricky spot to be in. Do you have any top tips beyond being considerate in leveraging their time, of being extra influential, persuasive, to have people to say yes, and, in fact, follow through with their stuff?

Elizabeth Harrin
In my experience, I think it helps to tell people…well, to not tell people, to invite people to participate and explain the reasons behind why their participation is valuable. People like to do things because there’s a reason behind, not just because they’d been asked. So, the great thing about projects is that often there’s a change or a benefit that’s coming at the end of the work. Projects sometimes have bad outcomes, like, “We’re closing down an office, so we’re making your department redundant,” or something like that.

But, often, we’re trying to do something that will be beneficial for the organization and bring about something that’s good. So, if you can tie their contribution into the vision, or the bigger picture of why we’re doing the work in the first place, they can draw those lines and make the connection between how their contribution matters. That can be quite a powerful way of helping people to feel motivated about doing the work in the first place.

The other thing that works is allowing them to set their own deadlines. So, if you go to somebody, and say, “I need this by Tuesday,” their instant reaction might be, “Oh, I can’t do that. You can’t tell me what to do.” Whereas, if you can say, “We need this piece of work done, and your boss has suggested that you’re the right person to do it. How do you think…how much time do you think this might take?”

Obviously, this is not a conversation you’d have in three sentences, but you’d sit with them and explain what the requirements are and help them see the bigger picture of the project as well. And people can then say, “Well, if I need to involve this person and do this and work with that, then I think I could probably get that done by a week on Tuesday.” And that’s the date that goes in your project plan.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re trying to do projects is they make up all the deadlines themselves. In fact, I’ve sat in a room with senior managers, and they’ve drawn out a project plan on a whiteboard, and said, “Right, that’s what we’re going to do.” And I thought, “But none of the people who are actually doing the thing are in the room.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “You don’t know what it takes.”

Elizabeth Harrin
“You just don’t know. Why are you making this stuff up?” And then, of course, you just caused delays later because you’ve set expectations that are unmanageable. So, using other people’s expertise, and tapping into what they know, and trusting them to suggest the right timeframes can help. And I feel I’ve gone off the question now. Did I answer the question?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no, it’s all juicy stuff in terms of you cast the vision for, “Okay, this is how things can be better when the project is done and how you’re contributing to that.” But the deadline-setting stuff, I think, is handy in terms of thinking like there might be a date by which it’s extra valuable to have this done, like, before the tradeshow, or the big meeting, or the big conference. So, that’s, I guess, would be nice to have it done, and executives can determine that.

However, I’m thinking about this is maybe the first project management lesson I learned I thought that was really useful – was it the triangle? You can probably describe it better, Elizabeth, than I can. What’s the time management or the project management triangle?

Elizabeth Harrin
We talk about the iron triangle, the triangle of constraints, of balancing time, cost, and quality. Although, the thought process behind that has moved on a bit now, and we don’t just use time, cost, and quality as a measure of success. But in terms of talking to your stakeholders, your colleagues, and your project sponsor, and your boss, it is really helpful because you can say, “Well, I can deliver to this level of quality, and it will cost this much and take this long.”

And then they could say, “But I want it faster. I can’t spend that much money. I want it cheaper.” And then you can adjust the corners of the triangle, and say, “Well, if we want it cheaper, it will have to be less quality, or maybe it will take longer because we’ll use cheaper resources to do it. Or, if you want it to take less time, it’ll probably cost more because we’ll throw more resources at it. We might be able to maintain quality but we might have to take a few things out of the project scope and maybe add those in as a phase two later, but then we’ll hit the deadline.”

So, it’s about balancing all these different success criteria. And that’s a really helpful point that you’ve put out there because you need to know what people feel is important, and maybe it’s the deadline, maybe it’s, “Do what you need to do but get it done by the tradeshow.” I worked in healthcare, and I was on a project once, and people didn’t really care about when it got done. Well, that’s not true. They did care when it got done, but what was most important was that when it was delivered, it was good quality.

Elizabeth Harrin
And if that took a couple of extra weeks, then a couple of extra weeks didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. They just needed it to be good. So, some people will say the date is important. Some people will say, “You’ve got a ceiling on this much money that you can spend,” or, “This quality criteria has to be met,” or it might be something like sustainability, customer satisfaction, or some other kind of measure that they think is important. And if you know that, then you can make all of your decisions based around, “How do we get to that?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is powerful to see what is the priority there. And when you say quality, I think my own synonym for quality is how much good stuff, in terms of we can have more…it’s almost two dimensions, like a scope thing in terms of how excellent is the thing and how many of the things are there. Like, if we’re doing a bunch of home renovations, it’s like, “Okay, you want 30 updates across the kitchen and the bathrooms and whatever. And so, we can sort of do fewer of those updates, or those updates could be chintzier, or we’re going to have to have more people working on it, contractors, etc. which will come with the paying for it, or we just take more time to do it.”

So, I think that has been handy for me as I think through stuff, and I get stressed out, like, “Uh-oh, how on earth….?” This feels bad to say but I guess it’s real and something has to give somewhere or else we will be those sad, burnt out, overwhelmed people, is that usually what I sacrifice is quality. It’s like, “All right, well, it’s going to be worse.” But because my quality expectations are usually so insane, we sent you a microphone, so I’m told that no one else does that, and I thought, “Oh, really? They probably should,” but whatever.

So, I’m able to back it up, it’s like, “Okay. Well, we’re just going to allow that, and it’s good enough for 98% of the people who are encountering this thing that I’m making, and I’m just going to have to take a breath and live with it, and that’s fine.”

Elizabeth Harrin
And that’s very much the case at work, isn’t it? There are some things that you absolutely have to get perfect. And if you’re a lawyer writing a contract, you can’t just go, “Oh, well, it’s 80% good enough.” Your client is not going to live with that. But if you’re drafting an internal document just for review to brief your colleagues on something, you know, I prefer not to send out things with typos, but if something did slip through, no one is going to die. It will be fine.

And if it means that you get it out the door at 5:00 o’clock, and you go home on time, and you have a life instead of sitting there stressing about every full stop, and staying at your keyboard till 7:00, because I guarantee that half the people who read that document won’t even notice whether a full stop is there or not. 

Pete Mockaitis
I really like what you said there about no one is going to die, and that is a perspective I’ve come to again and again, because it’s true. There are some things in healthcare, in transportation, in military, police, and other fields where it truly is life and death. The quality of your work will make that impact. And many other times in the land of spreadsheets and memos, it’s usually not.

And so, I find that quite comforting if I’m getting a little bit too worked up about something, is to recall that no one will die no matter how horrible an episode we produce, Elizabeth, although you’re doing great. So, that’s cool. Well, now tell me, Elizabeth, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Elizabeth Harrin
Something that you can do to start managing your multiple projects more effectively is to think about how you can group them into different buckets. So, if you do a couple of things for one client, or you’re leading on a couple of initiatives for one particular department, how can you bring those things together to streamline the communication, try and have meetings where you cover multiple things in one go instead of scheduling lots of meetings about the same thing?

So, looking for connections between the work you do can make it feel a lot less overwhelming. If you’ve got 15 things on the go, for example, that’s 15 things you have to think about. But if you can put them into buckets, and you’ve got five things in each bucket, then you’ve only got three things to think about, and it could be around the solution that you’re building, the person you’re doing it for, the type of technology that’s in use, the date it’s got to be finished by. It could be anything. But if you can group the work, I found in people I worked with have found that it relieves some of the overload because it gives you a way to think about things at the next level up.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Elizabeth Harrin
The quote that I have on my wall is from Francine Jay, and it says, “My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Elizabeth Harrin
I like the copy machine study by Ellen Langer, which is about providing a reason for why we want people to take action. When people know there’s a reason, they’re more likely to do the action that we want. 

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Elizabeth Harrin
If I was on an island, I’d be taking Les Miserables. I really love that book by Victor Hugo. If I was choosing a business book, I’d choose Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers by Anthony Mersino, which really changed the way that I look at our profession.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Elizabeth Harrin
I use a tool called Infinity for task management, and a Maltron keyboard to help me type more easily.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. That’s cool. And a favorite habit, something you do to be awesome at your job?

Elizabeth Harrin
I do Pilates once a week. I think I need to have that time just to be focused on me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers and listeners, and they say, “Yes, Elizabeth, you’re so right when you said this”?

Elizabeth Harrin
Maybe communicate more than you think you have to.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Elizabeth Harrin
You can find me on LinkedIn and on all the normal social media channels. And you can find out more about project management at my blog, RebelsGuidetoPM.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Elizabeth Harrin
I would say to remember that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. So, if you want to just organize your work in a different way, just do it. Most managers want action and results, and they don’t really mind how you get there, as long as you get there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Elizabeth, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck with all your projects.

Elizabeth Harrin
Thank you for having me on the show.

Jan 03
0

827: How to Make the Most of Conflict with Liane Davey

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Liane Davey discusses how to ease the friction of conflict to make way for more productive conversations.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why facts won’t solve a conflict—and what will
  2. How to productively respond to harsh criticism
  3. What most people get wrong about feedback

About Liane

Liane Davey is a New York Times Bestselling author. Her most recent book is The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Your Organization Back on Track. She is a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and is called on by the media for her leadership, team effectiveness, and productivity expertise. As the co-founder of 3COze Inc., she has companies such as Amazon, RBC, Walmart, UNICEF, 3M, and SONY. Liane has a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology. 

Resources Mentioned

Liane Davey Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Liane, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Liane Davey
Thanks, Pete. I’m pretty excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your wisdom when it comes to conflict, and your work The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track. This is a weird segue, but one time I had a consulting project where we had to get one of the world’s largest bakeries, a huge factory for cookies and crackers back on track. And I learned that you have a special love for factories. What’s the story here?

Liane Davey
Since I was a little kid, I used to watch this television show that they did factory tours of things like how do they make crayons, and that one has really stuck with me for 48 years, I think. And so, I just developed this lifelong fascination of how factories work. And not only do I watch the shows on TV, but now every chance I get, I will tour a factory.

And I have also been to a large industrial bakery and watched them make chocolate lava cakes. I have been to the factory where they make Ed shaving cream and Glade candles. And the best one, of course, the Mars chocolate bar factory. So, it’s just I love how the machines work. Industrial engineering just gets me really excited. I didn’t have any of the skills to study it or do it professionally, so I just hop on as a spectator whenever I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fun. And what’s the name of the show?

Liane Davey
So, “How It’s Made,” oh, when I was a little kid, it was called “Polka Dot Door.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Liane Davey
And I’m in Toronto, it was a local show here in Toronto. It was wonderful. They used to go through the polka dot in the door and open up to a video of a factory, but then “How It’s Made” as all of the mega machine type shows and extreme construction. There’s lots of them now, very popular.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is fun. I heard, I believe it was the I Love Marketing podcast, one of their hosts suggested that it’s a good exercise for marketing and business folks because it just gets…I don’t know, I find, I’ve only done it, like, four times, but I found when I did, there’s a bit of kind of like awe and inspiration that gets my mind noodling on, “Well, huh, what’s my podcast? How does that get baked? Where are the stuff? What are my bottlenecks? What can we improve?”

Liane Davey
When I learned that I wasn’t going to be good at engineering or building it, I started to think about the modern economy and what’s the equivalent of a factory or a machine in the modern economy. And, of course, the answer is it’s a team. In knowledge work, the team is the machine, and so I was like, “Oh, I can do psychology, that comes naturally.” So, that’s where I kind of still think of it as machinery, in a sense, but it’s just human machinery.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, Liane, you did the work of the trick of the segue for me because let’s talk about these machines, and sometimes things are not quite functioning properly in the realm of conflict. Could you share with us, what do most people get wrong about conflict? Or, what have you found supremely surprising and fascinating and counterintuitive in terms of your discoveries within this topic?

Liane Davey
Yup, teams don’t have enough conflict.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, not enough. I’ve heard that before. I think it was Pat Lencioni who mentioned it on the show. Please unpack that for us.

Liane Davey
Yes. So, conflict, which let me just define it because I think when there’s wars raging in the world and COVID mask-wearing fights on Facebook and everything else, I think conflict has got a bad rap, but conflict is just the struggle between incompatible or opposing needs, wishes, and demands. And by 10:00 o’clock every morning, if you work in an organization, you’ve faced many struggles between incompatible and opposing needs, wishes, and demands.

So, if we’re going to take a limited number of resources, a limited number of hours in the day, people who are overtaxed and overworked, and decide what’s the most valuable thing we can do be doing with their time, that’s going to require conflict because there are many things competing for their time and attention.

If we’re going to look at a plan and not just rubber stamp it but look at what are some of the assumptions, what are some of the risks, that takes conflict. If we’re going to give somebody feedback, that the way their work landed with us, or the way their behavior landed with us, is causing problems, that’s going to require conflict.

So, all day, every day, conflict is important, critical, to healthy organizations. And so, that’s what people are most surprised about. So, what we get wrong is that, as humans, we tend to run from conflict, particularly with our own groups. We believe that having conflict with those people is going to get us voted off the island, in some sense, and so we have far too little productive conflict.

And then we can also talk about, on the other hand, we tend to have far too much unhealthy, unproductive, harmful conflicts. So, we’re getting it wrong, we have too little of what I call tension, which is the kind of conflict that stretches us, and helps us grow and learn and optimize solutions, and we have too much friction, which is the kind of conflict that is about not listening, not budging, not learning that wears us down.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very beautiful, Liane, the tension versus friction. Maybe it’s I don’t get enough kinesthetic metaphors in my life.

Liane Davey
So, the metaphor, if you want to take it further, so what I say is I use the word conflict, even though a lot of people ask me not to, I use it because I don’t ever want folks to have the expectation that it’s not going to be uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable. Even the healthiest most productive conflict is uncomfortable. But I always say tension is uncomfortable like yoga.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I was thinking weightlifting.

Liane Davey
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that one as well, right? But in both cases, weightlifting and yoga, the stretch of that tension is constructive. It builds muscle. It enhances flexibility. It makes us better. But, on the other hand, friction, if you want to play with the metaphor there, is like getting a blister. And there is nothing good to be said for a blister. It is that chaffing, agonizing, red raw kind of feeling. So, we want more tension, more that yoga-weightlifting stretch, and we want less friction.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Liane, I’d love it if you could zoom in and make this extra clear and real for us in terms of sharing a case study or success story of a team or a professional who had a whole lot of friction and how they converted that into useful tension.

Liane Davey
Yeah, absolutely. I’m working with a team right now where issues have built up, and what I refer to as conflict debt. So, just as we can get into debt by sort of charging things we can’t afford to our credit card, we get into conflict debt by just deciding we don’t have the energy or the time to address issues, and we just put them aside. And, unfortunately, the interest compounds, and we get ourselves into bigger and bigger trouble as that conflict debt piles up in a team.

So, I’m working with a team that’s in a considerable amount of conflict debt, and there’s a lot of friction. And the friction is being experienced as, “They’re arrogant. They don’t empathize,” and it’s all coming out as things that are very subjective. The behavior has now got to a point where “I’m not even responding to their emails. I don’t even want to talk to them.” And so, we’ve reached this stalemate where that’s where I got involved.

And so, the work is to say, “There is tension in here. There is something uncomfortable that we need to talk about, get into the open, so that we can do a better job of understanding the realities and the constraints for everybody involved.” But the problem right now is there’s no chance to resolve the tensions or kind of come up with a solution that optimizes because everyone is experiencing it as friction.

And so, one of the things that you can do is really take the way that you’re feeling. And so, if you’re feeling that is someone is arrogant, that’s a judgment. And arrogance is probably more about how you’re experiencing the other person’s behavior than about what the other person is intending. So, the first thing to do is to just notice that you’re making a judgment, and it’s not real or objective. It’s true that it’s your judgment, and so we don’t want to invalidate it, but we want to start by kind of saying, “What is making me feel that they’re arrogant? What is it that I’m seeing or hearing, or not seeing or hearing, that is leading me to that conclusion?”

And as a very first step, just interrogate your own judgments because those judgments are going to be a big, big source of friction. Once you can kind of interrogate the judgment, you want to, again, not invalidate it, not tell yourself that “I’m not allowed to feel that way” but, instead, to try and translate it into, “Okay, if I wanted to communicate that to the other person in hopes of changing the interaction, how can I say it in a way that is either useful feedback so I could determine what’s their behavior and how am I reacting to it?”

So, I could say something like, “When, in the last three decisions we’ve made, we’ve gone with your recommendation over my recommendation, I feel like my ideas aren’t valuable. I feel like they’re not getting a fair shake.” So, we can sort of take what was judgment about arrogance and translate it into behaviors, “You selecting your ideas over mine, or somebody else’s over mine.”

Or, we can make a request. We can say, “What I would really love is if when you go with a decision other than the one I recommended, could you help all of us understand how you took my input, how you used it, how you mitigated the risks that I mentioned, even if we’re going with the other decision?” So, that’s really a big thing.

When you have friction, when you get into a hole, when you get into that conflict debt, you’ll tend to have a lot of judgment about other people. So, listen to it, interrogate it, and then translate it into something that is constructive, something that is positive tension and move forward from there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I put myself into that situation, I’m imagining the person on the other side saying something you really don’t want to hear, which may be the unpleasant truth, which is, “Well, the input that you have provided historically has been inaccurate and risky,” and I guess, here, we’re doing some more labeling or judging.

Liane Davey
That is what’s most likely to happen, right, so keep going, keep roleplaying that and I’ll answer it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. “Well, Liane, I appreciate you being able to articulate this to me. I guess the challenge we’re facing is that in those three examples that we’ve explored there, your input was inaccurate, and risky, and showed a basic lack of understanding about the core issues that we’re dealing with here.”

Liane Davey
“Wow, that’s pretty unpleasant to hear, a lack of understanding, and risky. That’s certainly not my intention. What do you see as the things I wasn’t paying enough attention to? Or, what else do you think I need to understand to be in a position to offer more valuable advice or suggestions in the future?” So, what you want to do is not allow people to throw judgment back at you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Liane Davey
So, I do think it’s the way you roleplayed it is very true. People will often say “Well, you were risky, or ill-informed, or…” that’s what they’ll give you, so be prepared for that. But the key thing in that situation, so what I was trying to show is it’s okay to say that that just felt like a sucker punch. It’s okay to be human.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I’m sorry, Liane. Even though it was a roleplay, it felt hard saying it.

Liane Davey
Right. And so, it’s okay to say, “That’s really hard to hear. Like, I’ve never had that feedback before.” So, it’s okay to react for a moment, to just buy yourself a little time, or even, with some folks, I just recommend don’t even worry about getting a lot of words out. Just say something like, “Ow,” and then give yourself a moment to then say, “Okay.”

And you can either, in the moment, say, “What does risky look like? Could you share with me what I was missing, what made my recommendations risky? Or, what else do you think I need to understand, or learn, or appreciate to…” and so you can go right after then. Or, you can say, “Ow,” and say, “I’m going to need to reflect on that for a bit. Can I follow up with you on this later? Or, could I ask that we have another time where you help me understand what risky looks like and what it means, and where we go from here?”

So, first of all, don’t let someone judge you. I think that’s a key piece of advice. Make them do the hard work of giving you something objective because you did the hard work to be objective with them. And then don’t be afraid to let people know that you are human and it can be hurtful when somebody judges you.

And then, finally, lead on whether you would like to have that conversation now, or whether you need a little bit of time, but do come back to a place where you can find out both what happened that didn’t work the first time, and what could look differently so that it goes better the next time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really excellent. And as I’m imagining the conversation playing out, I guess you’ll realize that, again, doing more labeling and judging, it’s like, there’s a chance, I imagine it’s slim, Liane, maybe you’ve got the data, that you are dealing with just a full-on sociopath or a total jerkface who just has no…

Liane Davey
Five percent.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, 5% – who has little regard for your feelings or whatever. But I guess, more likely, you’ll hear something which is useful or on its way to being useful in terms of, “Well, Liane, you failed to consider just how sensitive issues X, Y, and Z are for stakeholders A, B, and C. And those are really hot-button issues, and it’s pretty cavalier to just mention them in this flippant context which could really set them off and make our team look bad.” And it’s like, “Oh, I had no idea that those were hot-button issues for those stakeholders, and now I know.”

Or, it’s like, “Your proposals seem to overlook the fundamental fact that a key part of our valuation is the Wall Street perception of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, “Oh, you’re right. I thought all that mattered was cashflow or profitability.” Like, “Okay, hmm.” So, that could, indeed, unlock some insight, or often that’s a problem with feedback is that it remains into this fuzzy land in terms of…

Liane Davey
Right, it’s not feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
“You just need to be more of a team player, Liane.”

Liane Davey
Right. So, let’s stop on feedback for a moment because I feel really passionately about this one. What the vast majority of people called giving feedback is actually making evaluations. It’s not feedback at all. So, feedback, true feedback is to give the other person new insight about how their behavior is impacting you. So, I could say, “Hey, Pete, when you sent me information to prepare for this conversation,” so that’s totally objective. It’s immediate.

Pete Mockaitis
That happened. For the record.

Liane Davey
I say, “I felt like you really take this podcast seriously, like I was excited to be on a podcast that is so professional.” That’s feedback. So, the feedback is not novel information about you or your behavior. It’s novel information about me or the impact of your behavior. And what we do most of the time is we just walk around flinging in judgment at people. And in this case, it’s positive and so people think it’s okay, “Hey, Pete, you’re so professional.”

Pete Mockaitis
Hey, you’re right, I don’t mind that at all.

Liane Davey
Right. But I encourage people, I call that praise. It is unconstructive positive messages. And I encourage people to practice on the positive because if you practice on the positive and get it wrong, you’re not going to get in much trouble. When you move to the more constructive or negative feedback, it becomes more dangerous and higher stakes, so you want to practice on the positive.

But what you’re doing is when you’re giving somebody feedback, if you tell them what they think, if you tell them how they feel, if you tell them who they are, that denies somebody’s personal sovereignty and it’s likely to lead to a really unhealthy conflict. It’s not going anywhere good. If you describe their behavior as objectively as possible in a way that you go, “You’re right, I did send a four-page document about how to be prepared for this podcast.”

You’re going to be nodding and saying yes, and then so I might’ve given you it as constructive feedback, “I was pretty overwhelmed, I was nervous that I’m not ready to be on this podcast, or I’m not good enough.” I could’ve given it as constructive. But, again, the key thing is that your behavior is not something you’re going to debate or disagree with in my feedback. What you’re going to be surprised by and learn from is, “Oh, I didn’t intend to intimidate a guest. I was trying to help you feel prepared.”

So, getting feedback right and actually delivering feedback, giving people the gift of candor, what I would say is candor, for me, is me being willing to be uncomfortable for your benefit. So, it’s uncomfortable if I had…it’s, of course, not true because I felt very positively about the preparation for the podcast, but if I had felt intimidated, being vulnerable and saying, “That was intimidating,” opens me up to saying, “I’m not as professional as your other guests.”

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re not committed. You’re not willing to do the work, Liane.”

Liane Davey
Right. So, candor is me being willing to be personally uncomfortable for your benefit. But I’d like you to know, just in case there are other guests in the future, or in case your intent was not to intimidate the guests, or those sorts of things. So, if we could just get that one thing fixed up, if we could start giving proper feedback, and stop evaluating and judging, like feedback most of the time is just evaluation and judgment in sheep’s clothing. So, if we could stop that, we would deal with a lot of the friction that’s going on at the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Huh, Liane, this is a lot of good insightful stuff. And I’m thinking about that notion of, in my consulting brain sees a two-by-two matrix, in terms of constructive-unconstructive, like, “You’re very professional.” It’s like that feels good but it doesn’t help me. And now I’m thinking about Russ Laraway who talks about continue coaching is like praise or comparable.

And so, I guess, the constructive point might be just something like, “Hey, I really recommend you make sure you keep doing that. Like, if you switch calendar software providers, make sure people still get that thing because it’s so good.”

Liane Davey
Right. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Liane Davey
Yeah, exactly. Or, I could ask a question, like, “What’s one new insight you’ve had in the last month and not incorporated into the document yet?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure, yeah.

Liane Davey
I could ask you something like that to help you more deeply process something you’re doing well. So, yeah, the two-by-two is, “Is it constructive or unconstructive?” And, “Is it behavior I want you to do more of or do less of?” So, that would be what people tend to call positive or negative feedback but I don’t like that term but it’s, “Do I want more of the behavior?” so coaching forward. Or, “Do I want less of the behavior?” and so that’s the two-by-two.

So, praise is everywhere. So, praise like, “Good job.” And if you want a fun research tidbit, Dr. Nick Morgan, so, yeah, Nick is a great friend, and Nick cited some research, so I’m going to get the stats wrong. But it’s something like 60% of folks who receive a text or an email or a comment that’s just “Good job,” about 60% of them interpret that as sarcasm. So, you think you’re praising someone, you think you’re being nice, and they’re like, “Oh, oh, well, fine,” they experience it as sarcasm.

So, that’s all the more reason to not praise people, which is that unconstructive, “I want more of this,” and instead to go to the effort that we’re talking about of giving positive feedback, “So, when you sent out that document, I felt so prepared, I felt confident signing on today, I’m really interested. Are there any new things you’ve realized that you haven’t added to the document yet?”

Handing that baton back to you to process it a little bit more deeply, one of the things that’s good about that is lots of people don’t like getting that positive feedback. They’re a little squeamish or awkward or uncomfortable about it, so they just kind of let it kind of float away. So, by asking you a question, like, “What’s one insight you haven’t incorporated yet?” it forces you to process that positive feedback to work with it, to internalize it a little more so it makes it stickier.

On the behavior we’re trying to get less of, asking the question is really…so, in the case of, where we’re talking about being less arrogant, saying something like, “How do you want to be perceived by your colleagues in operations?” would be a way of forcing the person to process, “Oh, okay, if you’re telling me that the way this lands as I’m smarter than everybody else, processing the question of ‘How do I want to be perceived’ forces me to work with that information,’” again, making it stickier.

So, yeah, so the great pieces of good feedback are sort of orient the person to the situation, describe their behavior, then give them an insight about you, and then pivot the conversation to processing it more deeply, and, “What am I going to do with that information?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so much good stuff, Liane. Well, I’ve got all these questions I want to ask, like, how do we work to the emotion of conflict? And it sounds like we hit it right there. But were there more?

Liane Davey
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy. Okay.

Liane Davey
Oh, yes. Okay, emotion is a big, big, big, big, big important topic for me. We’re not good at it and a lot of our conflict debt is because we don’t want to broach the topic because we fear triggering an emotional reaction, and sometimes that’s a very positive thing, it’s like, “I don’t want to hurt these people. I care about them,” and sometimes it’s a bit of a selfish thing, “I don’t want them to not like me anymore,” or, “I don’t want them to yell at me because that would scare me.”

So, one of the things we need to understand is that, I say this all the time, facts don’t solve fights. Period. And if wearing masks debated on Facebook is not the perfect evidence that facts don’t solve fights, I don’t know what is. But you coming up with some examples of where two people were wearing masks and they both got COVID, and, therefore, isn’t it clear that masks don’t work. And me posting back some article from science magazine showing respiratory droplets, you know, nobody is changing their mind based on that fight with facts.

Instead, we need to understand that fights are about values and beliefs and things that matter. And so, emotions are simply clues that we…I always talk about this. If the dragon starts to breathe fire, you know it’s protecting treasure. So, facts are just the wall of the castle, they’re very unimportant. But if the dragon is breathing fire, yelling, crying, getting angry, pounding the table, then that’s your clue, emotions are very, very helpful clue, that there is something going wrong that there is a value that they hold dear that feels at risk, feels threatened, and that’s why you’re getting the fight that you’re getting.

So, emotions are one of the most important datasets we get in organizations, and emotions don’t always come out as yelling or tears. One way emotions often come out is people start to dial up their language. So, all of a sudden, their sentences are including, “You always…” and, “We never…” and, “Every single…” we start to use absolutes, we start to see sarcasm pop in to people’s comments.

So, all of these things, whether it be tears or sarcasm or any of these other examples, are just signs that there’s emotion present, which means there are values at play in this conversation. And so, trying to put more facts or try to take facts out of the brick wall is not going to help. What you need to do is try and get the brave knight to lower the drawbridge so you can come in and you can find out what’s actually going on.

So, I think emotions are…and a different metaphor, if you don’t like the fire-breathing dragon metaphor, a different metaphor is emotions in the workplace are a lot like pain, not something you want very often but very useful if there’s an injury because they tell you to slow down and stop and pay attention, and it gives you the opportunity to figure out what’s actually going wrong.

So, I find we treat emotions as something to push through as quickly as we can, to suppress, to invalidate, to just say, “Well, this is business, not personal,” or, “Suck it up, buttercup,” when emotions are one of the most valuable datasets that we have in an organization, and it’s so important that we use those data to figure out what is this fight actually about.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when we talk about values, well, I’ve seen long list of values, and I guess I’m also thinking about fundamental human needs in my head is Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication talking about, “I felt like my need for respect wasn’t being met and so I felt angry.” And so, when you say values, are you thinking about a short list on a menu, or are you thinking about it could be hundreds of things?

Liane Davey
Yeah, I think it can be hundreds of things. So, I was working with an organization, a high-tech computer organization, and we were debating about whether they needed to do a layoff or not. And the CEO was advocating pretty strongly against it, while the general manager of the unit that was in the red was advocating pretty strongly for it, and they really…there was a lot of friction. It wasn’t a constructive conversation.

And so, one of the ways to get values on the table in business is to ask the question, “Okay, what are the criteria for making a good decision here? Because it’s kind of cold, and people think that’s an okay thing to say in the world, where, “What do you value?” just doesn’t feel like…” So, when I said that, the general manager said, “Well, I really value performance. I am here on behalf of the shareholders to make sure this business is profitable, and I wear that responsibility very heavily.”

And then the CEO, interestingly, said, “Well, you know what, for me, I feel like tech companies have mojo, and if you lose that mojo, that’s worth more than a couple of quarters in the red. You don’t get it back, and so I’m thinking about that.” And so, those…

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Liane, if I could time out for just a moment.

Liane Davey
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Mojo could be defined a few ways. Could you unpack that a smidge?

Liane Davey
Yeah, absolutely. So, Silicon Valley companies, and actually this is a great time to be saying that, their valuations, both in the stock market but also in the eyes of potential employees or users, they are often quite disconnected from reality. They are not about how much revenue or profit the company makes. There’s just something more about brand, more about hype, more about excitement. Some companies have momentum behind them and some don’t.

And this was a company that had a lot of momentum. It was seen as a cool company, a company people wanted to invest in, a company people wanted to work for, and so the CEO’s concern was that, “If we do our first layoffs, then the big risk is that we lose that and we never get it back. We never go back to being a company that’s never let a single person go.”

So, this was a few years ago now, and it was just so helpful to have that on the table and to be able to talk that through because he’d never articulated it. The general manager couldn’t figure out why the heck the CEO was willing to have his business be unprofitable. And so, once we could talk about that as, “These are all legitimate things. Now, how do we balance them? How do we make tradeoffs among them? How do we decide which way to go?”

And, actually, what was really cool about it is then we got away from the friction and into a really powerful conversation with really good tensions that led to a completely different option, which was, “We have other business units that are quite profitable at the moment. Could we move some of the folks, the really key talent, over to the other unit for a while, make some real progress there, never have to let go people who would be very hard to replace but also give the other business a little bit of a chance to recover, cut its costs.”

So, once we got to everybody feeling heard, everybody feeling that the things that mattered to them were part of the equation for the solution, then they just got so much more creative, then they got out of this adversarial scenario and into, “Let’s really think about this together. If we’re trying to solve for profitability of the business, if we’re trying to solve for keeping the mojo of the company,” others then sort of started to add.

The chief technology officer was the one who raised the issues that, “These are people with specialty skills that we’ve been training for 10 years. If we lose those, we don’t get them back.” So, his addition in things he values to the criteria conversation is what unlocked this possibility of, “Could we secund them into a different part of the organization?”

So, when we feel heard, when we feel understood, when we feel like our treasure matters to other people as well, then we settle into, “All right, now we’re smart people trying to figure out how do we balance these things.” So, it’s a very, very useful and constructive productive conflict technique.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Liane, before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things, I’d love to hear if there’s any super quick and powerful tips and tricks that make a world of difference?

Liane Davey
Yeah, there really is. And the one sort of magic trick of all of this is that most of the time we walk around the world working so hard to have people understand our experience. As Stephen Covey used to call it, we sort of strive to be understood instead of seeking to understand. So, there’s a technique I call validation, which is just when someone says something you disagree with or you think is a dumb idea, pause for a moment, and, instead of shooting down their idea or telling them why it will never work, validate them by saying, “Okay, so you think we should host a customer event in Q1.”

So, all you’ve done is reflect. And then be curious. Ask, try and understand, that’s coming from somewhere, something they value, and just ask a big open-ended question, “What do you see is the big advantages of that? Tell me your thought process. What got you there?” something of a big question. And then listen and ask and reflect until you feel confident that you can kind of get their truth out of your mouth.

Then you might say, “Okay, so for you, you’re worried that our marketing launch didn’t bring the benefits of this new approach to life for our customers. And until they feel it in a different way, until they can maybe put their hands on the new product, you don’t think sales are going to go up, so that’s why doing an event in person feels like the right solution for you.”

What you’ll find is when you speak their truth, their truth, even more importantly, when their truth comes out of your mouth before your truth does, it will be an entirely different conversation. It will shift to truly a conversation, a dialogue, and it won’t be a fight. Then what’s cool about humans is we work on reciprocity.

So, when you’ve taken the time to understand their truth and listen and validate them, they will be highly likely, unless we’re with the 5% of sociopaths, but if we’re with 95% of the population, and then you say, “The way I was thinking about it was that before we talk to our customers, we need to do another round of training with our sales staff. I’m not sure they’re ready to tell the message in a compelling way. So, I was thinking that that was the issue. How do we get the right balance between our sales team and going directly to our clients?” or you can ask whatever other question.

But when you’ve spoken their truth first, when you’ve added your truth, not as something more right or more worthy, but you’ve added it as a second truth, and then you’ve kind of pivoted to, “Hmm, okay, what are our options here? How do we deal with this?” you will find, you avoid, you neutralize 80% of conflicts in your team.

And the one thing, I know you have a young one at home, I have a 20-year-old and a 16-year-old daughter, and this method, it got me through the entire teenage years. If you validate a teenager, if you make them feel heard, if you’re curious about why that’s true for them, and you get their truth out of your mouth first, they actually will hear you out. They will let you coach them. They will stay with you.

So, this technique, my guess is every single person listening will be able to use this technique today at some point because we tend to do the opposite. We invalidate people, we push for our truth, or why our idea is smarter or all of these things first. And if we flip the order, and said, “Okay, let me make sure I know your truth. And as soon as we both know that I know your truth, then I’ll add mine.” It changes everything.


Pete Mockaitis
Thank you, Liane. Well, I’m curious, any particularly memorable exchanges with a teenager that you could share with us as an illustration, like, “Oh, that’s how it’s done”?

Liane Davey
Well, the first, I’m going to first tell you how not to do it because it’s memorable because I did it wrong. When the elder one was in Grade 10, she was taking music because she loved music, and she came home one day and proclaimed that she hated her music teacher, and I blew it. I kind of looked at her, I don’t like the word hate, and I definitely don’t like it aimed at a teacher.

So, my response was, “You don’t hate your music teacher,” which, if you remember, we were talking about this sort of cardinal rules of respecting someone’s sovereignty, and telling somebody else how they feel is not cool, not allowed. And so, I blew that. So, it took me about three weeks to earn back the right to talk to her about this.

Pete Mockaitis
And what did she say, “I do, too. You don’t understand, mom. Shut up”?

Liane Davey
Well, she started and then she just stormed off, the heavy thumps up the stairs and the dramatic slamming of the door, and she was right to do that. I had really overstepped. I had blown it. And so, when I tried again, do-over, you have to do do-overs with teenagers, when I did the do-over, I just said, “Hey, I want to go back to this, and it must really suck to hate your music teacher because you got an hour and 20 minutes of that every single day, and I know you love music.”

And even just me saying that, me just validating that that must be rough, changed her entire body language. And so, then I said, “What’s going on?” And I, being a horrible person, had assumed that this was the teacher who’d finally figured out that she never practices, but that wasn’t it at all. I’m so bad. It turned out that this teacher, there was a kid in the class, probably a neurodiverse kid would be my guess, sitting still, not fidgeting was a challenge for him.

And this old-school teacher just would have no part of it, and she was leaving him, bullying him, my daughter said, and leaving him in the hall for the majority of almost all classes, and that’s why she was so upset. It wasn’t on her own behalf. It was because somebody else was being wronged, and my kid is a social justice crusader.

And so, I said, I could then speak her truth, “So, you’re really worried that Ms. T is quite unfair to Gibby, you’re worried how this is affecting him. Okay.” And, first of all, I was proud of her for feeling all those things. And then I could say, “Okay, now what I’m thinking about is how do we make sure you don’t lose your love of music? How do we make sure this doesn’t affect your grade? Can we find you other outlets for your love of music outside of the classroom?”

And she was totally willing to entertain those things once I had been clear that this was about the injustice and the teacher’s behavior in the classroom. So, invalidating her cost me three weeks, and that was extremely costly, and it was modeling terrible behavior, and I had really blown it. But when I came back to it, and I said, “Look, I’m sorry about that. I blew that and I really want to understand and I want to hear you.”

And when I was open and listened and reflected her experience of the situation, then she was so keen to talk with me about, “What can I do? And what are my other options?” And those were really, really powerful. And she’s a junior in college now, and we have great conversations about hard things now because I finally figured out that this validation technique, which just takes a little practice, completely changes the tone of all of our conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you, Liane. Well, now, if we could hear a bit about your favorite things. Could you start us with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Liane Davey
“When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Liane Davey
So, we’ve been talking so much about cameras on and cameras off, and Zoom and all those sorts of things. New piece of research that when we’re having these hard conversations, when we’re trying to understand values and emotions and those sorts of things, it turns out the telephone is much, much better at promoting what they call empathic accuracy than these web calls.

Pete Mockaitis
Really?

Liane Davey
So, if you really need to connect with someone, if you’re in conflict, if you need to understand where they’re at, and if you want to be more accurate in empathizing, go for a walk, put in your earbuds and talk on the phone.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Liane, that’s so fascinating and counterintuitive. It seems like aren’t we missing out on all these facial expression indicators with the phone? Do we have hypotheses as to what the mechanism is by which that is so?

Liane Davey
Yeah, so it’s new research. So, first of all, we get a lot more information from voice than we think. So, like, here’s my mini experiment for you. If you close your eyes, I’m going to talk, and, at some point in talking, I’m going to start smiling. Could you hear it? Did you hear the difference between? So, right now I’m not smiling, and now I’m smiling.

So, what happens is when you pull up the muscles in your face to smile, it lifts up your soft palate, changes the shape of the resonant chamber of your mouth, and it’s absolutely something that we can pick up on. So, there’s more data in the voice than we think or know. And new studies are saying that we take up a lot of bandwidth, cognitive bandwidth, in trying to process people’s facial expressions and body language, and we’re not always very accurate about it.

So, what you’re doing in going to the phone is you’re getting rid of all of the energy it takes to process and misprocess that facial information, and you’re really keying in on what is actually quite high-fidelity data coming from pitch and tone and words and all those sorts of things. So, yeah, really fun, exciting, new research coming out.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating. Thank you. And a favorite book?

Liane Davey
Well, I guess if you want relative to this topic, I would say Chris Voss’ Never Split the Difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Liane Davey
A former FBI hostage negotiator, and it’s just full of many fascinating stories and insights. And I know that, thankfully for most of us, the stakes are not as high as hostage negotiations in most of our collaborations. But there are many things to be learned from Chris’ stories and examples.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Liane Davey
So, I am a big fan, so my PhD is organizational psychology, so I am coming to every conversation with the understanding that while we want to have one-size-fits-all, and we want to have the perfect advice, that individual differences play far bigger of a role than we yet appreciate on teams. So, I use a tool called The Birkman. It’s a very deep and insightful psychological assessment tool, and I don’t leave home without it. I don’t work with any teams without having that understanding, deep understanding, of the individual. So, Birkman would be my favorite tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Liane Davey
This is not a productive habit, but I am so in love with, you know the Wordle craze?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Liane Davey
I did Wordle. I’m not a big fan of Wordle because some days I get stuck and it makes me feel dumb. But it’s expanded and it’s had babies. It’s gone to Quardle, so it’s four words at a time, and now Octordle, which is eight words at a time. And so, every morning, I do the Octordle, which sounds ridiculous, and I then text my results to my 89-year-old mom who lives far away, and she texts me back hers. And that habit, which is just a little tiny moment of connection to start my day, feels really great.

Pete Mockaitis

And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Liane Davey
That facts don’t solve fights one does come back to me a lot. Maybe another one, since I’ve already said that one, is communication comes from the Latin root commune, which is to make common. And so, in this email-Slack kind of world, I always say, “You can’t make common as one person. So, you can’t communicate to someone. You can’t communicate at someone. You can only communicate with someone.”

So, communication cannot be accomplished on your own. You cannot send an email and check off, “I have communicated.” You only communicate when it’s actually been a two-way process, and you have made something common. And in conflict, I think we communicate with each other far too seldom, so that might be another thought that is helpful to folks. Who have you communicated at that you need to communicate with?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Liane Davey
So, if you want come and interact with me, I always talk about LinkedIn as my couch. Come and sit on my LinkedIn couch and let’s talk about interesting things about making teams happier, healthier, and more productive. And if you want to dive into the treasure trove that is about 500 articles and free resources, that’d be my website LianeDavey.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Liane Davey
Yeah. So, this is a big one because I think the vast majority of us are conflict-averse, we don’t like it, we get into conflict debt, we avoid it. So, my call to action is that some things are worth fighting for.

Pete Mockaitis
Liane, this has been such a treat. I wish you much fun and productive conflict in your interactions.

Liane Davey
Thanks so much, Pete. I have had a blast.