Why do high-stakes conversations always feel so intense? Is it really necessary for these difficult conversations to feel like they’re really so high-stakes? In this episode, I discuss the two questions above, what makes a conversation a high-stakes one, three questions to help you be prepared and ready to create the best outcome we can, the importance of understanding how you handle stressful situations and conversations, and more.
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Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. This is where we talk about the intersection between leadership, human dynamics, and service. And I’m really glad that you’re here with us today. We are going to talk today about high stakes conversations. Why do they always feel so intense and do they need to? Is it really necessary to feel like these difficult conversations are really that high stakes? What makes a conversation a high stakes conversation?
There are times when there really is a lot on the line, when you’re in negotiations, when you have to make a change and confront somebody about making a change. There can be high stakes conversations, no doubt about it. But I do believe that after observing and being a part of so many different kinds of difficult conversations, they are quite often not nearly as high stakes as we make them out to be. Sometimes, we build those high stakes conversations up so much in our minds that we end up showing up to them in ways that really aren’t helpful.
So, today we’re going to talk about how, to not necessarily lower the stakes but, to be prepared in such a way that those high stakes conversations actually turn out so we’re prepared and ready to create the best outcome we can. The first question is what is really at stake? Now on the surface level, there are going be things that are stake. As we mentioned before, negotiations; it could have to do with money. It could have to do with a deal. It could have to do with whether or not you get the sale or whether or not you’re able to convince someone to get onboard with your idea so that you can move forward.
So what is it on the surface level that is at stake? What is this conversation about in an objective sense? Think about it in terms of chips, like poker chips. You might be holding a few poker chips. The other person might be holding a few poker chips. There might be some at stake on the table and the question is where will these poker chips end up at the end of the game? It’s important to know what exactly those poker chips are. So before you head into a conversation, think about what are the objective things at stake.
The next question is what outcome do you want?
Now, this may seem obvious on the front end, but if you think about it, sometimes we’re not exactly sure what we want to happen. So, we might have an idea of where we want those poker chips to end up, but the real question is why do we want them to end up there? If you end up with all the poker chips, for example, if you end up with everything that you want, what will happen to the relationship or what will happen to the company or what will happen with buy-in? What do you really want? Do you want everybody to do what you say, or do you want the company to move forward? Do you want your initiative to move forward? Do you want your relationship to move forward?
So, this is where we take the idea of those objective things, those poker chips. And we say, OK, those are the things that are at stake, but just a layer beneath that is a sense of what the goal really is. What is the ultimate goal of the game, to win? What does the win look like? So, get a clear picture in your head of what the win really looks like. What does it feel like? What do you want to accomplish out of this goal, out of this conversation? What do you want to accomplish out of this conversation?
It’s really amazing to me how often people are really not sure what they want. They have a sense of what they want. They kind of see on the surface of what they want, but there’s so much more going on inside of them that they’re having a hard time clearly picturing a positive outcome. So, get very, very clear on what would be a positive outcome, what are you willing and then think in terms of options. If this option were to happen, what would that mean for the situation if option B were to happen? What would that mean for this situation? Think those things through. Think through the different kinds of outcomes that could take place and what you’re OK with.
You might have an ideal situation, but you might also have a situation that you’re OK with. So, make it really clear in your mind what is it that you want out of this situation but then also what are you willing what else would be a positive outcome even if it’s not the ideal? Alright, so we have a sense of your poker chips. You know what you’re dealing with here and then you also know what you want to happen.
Now the question is what do you really have to lose?
Alright, we’re going to take this from that surface level and we’re going to go way deeper. So you know on one sense that you have these poker chips or these certain things that are at play that could be lost. But there’s more going on. There’s always more going on inside of us because we’re human beings. We have desires. We have fears. We have things that we really care about and so we have to kind of look down a little deeper to find out what it is inside of us that is at stake.
This really gets to a sense of your ego or that sense of value and purpose and identity: What do you really have to lose inside? So, here are the two things that often come up.
- Rejection
- Failure
“If I am rejected, if somehow or another this thing that I’m offering or somehow in this situation I am rejected,” then some people are going to feel an intense sense of lack of value that they’re not enough. They’re going to feel like they are being rejected as a person, not just because not just their surface kind of poker chips being rejected, but their whole sense of self can be wrapped up in the fact that they’re offering something or in the fact that they are having this conversation and they don’t want to be rejected by the other person in some kind of way.
So is it a sense of rejection that could bother you or is it a sense of failure? Is it, “If I don’t accomplish my goal then I fail and if I fail then what does that say about me as a person and my value?” Both rejection and failure have to do with our personal sense of value, and whether or not we believe that other people believe that we’re valuable or that we believe that we are valuable. So it’s this sense of our own personal value that is at stake when these things happen, “If I’m rejected or if I fail, what is the point?” “So who am I?” “If I’m rejected or if I fail, what am I really worth?” “What do I have to offer?” “Why does it even matter?” These sorts of questions are deep, internal questions that you may not even realize you’re asking on your thinking about your high stakes conversations, but you might know that they are present if you pay very close attention to how nervous you are or how intense you are in the pursuit of getting what you want.
One of the tools that I use with clients, either in groups or one on one is the Fascinate® Assessment. It is a simple assessment, easy to comprehend, but yet super accurate. You can take it quickly and it can make a huge difference with a small amount of effort. And so that’s the one of the reasons why I use this assessment. But this past week I was doing a workshop with a team and we were talking about one of the concepts in the Fascinate® Assessment, which is the sense of double trouble. And what that means is that each personality is different. Everybody speaks with a different kind of language, were perceived in different ways and then you put a couple of those different languages together and you come up with an archetype.
It’s sort of your unique way of interacting with the world, how the world sees you. But if you get super stressed out then you can double up on just one of your languages or advantages is what they call them. And you can get super, super dialed in on it. And the way that I look at this is that our personalities are like a super power. They’re going to show up big, regardless of whether or not we’re using them for good or for evil; or perhaps a better way to put that is whether or not we’re really helping people with our personality and the way that we communicate or we are causing problems with it.
And this particular assessment gives people a real clear sense of, this is what it looks like when you are stressed out and it’s not good for other people. So, for example, the Innovation Advantage, somebody who particularly thinks outside the box and is creative and that sort of thing. If they are totally stressed out, they just want to be left alone. It’s like this sense of anarchy like “Just leave me alone.” Everything feels like chaos. They cause chaos when they get stressed out and that sort of thing.
Whereas, someone with the Alert personality, which is a little bit more about being detail-oriented and that sort of thing, when they get really stressed out, they could tend to be more like a control freak and wanting to pin people down and get exact on their information in their processes. And it could be really annoying to other people and it’s truly seemed like a control freak.
Well, we each have these different things inside of us. You know, we might not have the exact same ones, but we all have a personality. We all have gifts and talents, abilities. But these things can also be used for hurting people, for causing problems when we are motivated in the wrong way. So, one of the helpful things about this particular assessment is that it shows you how your personality can look when you get stressed out. So when you start to see yourself doing these things, even though you don’t want to see that in yourself, even though I don’t want to see myself as being too powerful or throwing ice like Elsa, I don’t want to see that.
But when I do see that it is an indication that I’m stressed out right now to the point where I am being motivated by fear. When fear is really stirring up inside of us, you know, you get to that inner brain, the place in your brain where it really starts to work with fight or flight and it takes over the rational brain, the frontal lobe. It just sort of like become such a big deal, like “I have to get this figured out.” “I have to solve this for myself.” “I have to get the right answer because if I don’t, I feel like I’m going to die.” And it’s easy to laugh at, but think about it when you get totally stressed out, do you ever feel like, “Oh my gosh,” like you’re just going to die if something happens?
My example is that when I was younger, maybe early twenties, well before that, I really felt like I needed to be perceived as good, strong, and competent. Those were kind of the main things that, “Boy, if Andrea doesn’t show up in this way then I don’t know what’s going to happen” because I was really, really concerned that if people didn’t see me like that, they wouldn’t listen to me. They wouldn’t take my advice. They wouldn’t want to be my friend, all those things. And so my sense of identity was this kind of good, strong and competent persona, and I had to be her. I had to be that Andrea. If I broke out of that box in any kind of way, if the ideal Andrea turned into, “Oh wait, she’s not so good.” “She got in trouble for something,” or “she is not so strong, look at her, she’s crying.” Or “She’s not competent.” “Look, she just made a fool of herself.” When those things would happen, I would feel like I was going to die. It was that intense.
I told the story in my book, but one of the times that I really sort of broke me out of this situation was that I felt it so intensely when I was in my early 20’s that I felt like all three of those things kind of burst out of my box all at the same time. And I wanted to literally go dig a hole and cover myself up with all the dirt and hide from everybody because I felt like I was so, not me. I felt like I’d screwed it up and now that I can’t be me, now that somebody has seen me as not me, like who am I now? I totally lost my sense of self because my sense of self was wrapped up in the good, strong, and competent persona. And I really thought that was the real me.
Well, what happens when we get into these high stakes conversations is that all of that is at stake. Whatever it is that is your sense of self, your persona that you believe needs to be there in order for people to like you, in order for people to be influenced by you, in order for people to follow you, and in order for you to succeed; they have to see you in this certain way. All of that is at stake in these high stakes conversations.
And so my question for you is what is that specifically, for you? What is it for you that is at stake when you show up to these high stakes conversations and if things don’t go your way, what will happen to you inside? Are you worried about rejection? Are you worried about failure? Usually, it’s one of those two things or some variation on those two things. When you come to a conversation and your primary goal is to survive and to get what you need to maintain your sense of your persona then everything is at stake. You’re going to come to that conversation with more intensity or perhaps with more fear or you’ll totally run away from it, but you’re going to be in that sense of fight or flight because you feel like you’re going to die if you don’t succeed.
So what do you need to do to navigate this? How do we need to handle this? Well, number one, we need to get really clear on all of the answers to those questions that I just posed. What is at stake on a surface level? What outcome do I really want to have and what would I be OK with? But then also what’s in stake inside of me, because if you go to that level and you’re able to recognize that, “Oh my gosh, I feel like so stressed out.” “I’m looking like a different version of myself than I really want to portray to other people.” “I am feeling more intense,” or “I’m feeling more reserved than usual and I’m letting fear and the fear of my own self being rejected or myself failing.” “I’m so motivated by that fear that it feels like this is a huge deal.” “It feels like life and death are at stake.”
So many times we put those kinds of stakes on these conversations that would otherwise not need to feel like high stakes conversations.
So how do we deal with it? The real question is how do you move toward a motivation that is not fearful but instead is loving? Now, I’m talking about focusing, turning your focus from yourself and self-preservation and survival and being able to get what I need to feel OK. Instead of feeling like that to turning it around to what do I have to offer in this situation? What do I have to offer the person that I’m maybe talking to? How do I need to show up in a way that is going to be positive and actually contribute and help them? Because if I show up as my best self, if I show up in the way that I’ve been gifted to show up, then I know that I’ve done my job because the other people need what I have to offer. The situation needs what I have to offer.
And “if I can focus on offering what I have to offer instead of on surviving and making sure that I feel OK, if I can make sure that I’m actually focusing on the other people and the situation itself and what I can bring to the situation” then you’re taking yourself out of the equation. You’re taking your own sense of value out of the equation and all of a sudden the stakes are not nearly as high because they’re not life and death like it felt like before.
And here’s how you know that you have gotten to the place where you are filled with love instead of fear in the situation, it’s when you are willing to sacrifice your own comfort. You’re willing to swallow your pride. You’re willing to do whatever it takes to offer the best of who you are to the situation. It’s when you actually take those steps, when you actually feel uncomfortable and keep moving forward, anyway, that you know that you are being motivated by purpose and love and that you are here to offer the best of who you are to the other person and to the situation.
And when you know that, you know that you have not, that not only does your voice matter, but you have made it matter more.
These are some of the things that we do when we work with emerging leaders. When we do executive coaching, we do training. Everything that we offer at Voice of Influence has depth to it. And so if you’re wanting to help your organization, if you’re wanting to help yourself move to a deeper level in a sense of freedom and influence that is beyond what you can imagine, there is a path and it is unexpected. It is the unexpected path to connection and impact.
Contact us at andrea@voiceofinfluence.net to schedule a conversation about how we can help you, help your team be a voice of influence.