Greg McKeown:
Welcome, I’m your host, Greg McKeown. I’m here with you on this journey to learn how to make our highest point of contribution.
Have you ever suppressed your feelings or honest views at work because you wanted to avoid trouble? Have you ever avoided speaking up with someone at work and instead unloaded to someone else about it? What if you could find the words to have the conversation you are avoiding?
Today, I have invited Amy Gallo to the show to help us. Amy is the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing With Conflict and also, more recently, Getting Along How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People). She’s also the co-host of a successful podcast and a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, where she writes about workplace dynamics.
By the end of this episode, you will be able to deal with conflict at work or at home in a way that is both professional and productive, where it improves both your work and your relationships. Let’s go.
If you want to learn faster, understand more deeply, increase your influence almost immediately, share the ideas from this podcast episode with someone else within the next 24 to 48 hours. Amy Gallo, welcome to the podcast.
Amy Gallo:
Thank you so much for having me, Greg.
Greg McKeown:
Amy, you have a marvelous TED talk and in that, you tell a marvelous story right at the beginning about how you came to the subject of conflict resolution and the conversations that we need to have that sometimes we don’t have. Can you launch us with that story?
Amy Gallo:
Yes, and I’m glad you find it marvelous because I find it so cringy. It was over 20 years ago, and I still find it so incredibly cringy.
So this was when I was working as a management consultant in New York City, and I worked with a client who actually was in an office 20 blocks north of us in Manhattan. And I had this routine with her, which is that anytime she sent me something, I would forward her email to a colleague, and I would tell my colleague everything I wish I could say directly to the client but was afraid to. And then, I would close that response and then reply directly to the client, telling her what I think she wanted me to say, which was basically agreeing with everything she proposed.
So I’m sure everyone listening knows exactly where this story is going. I one time, instead of forwarding the response, responded directly, thinking I was writing to my coworker, and basically explained everything I thought this client was doing wrong, and I did not mince words. I’m pretty sure I used a few curse words in the email and as soon as I press send…
Greg McKeown:
Hold on. You don’t have to curse. But other than that, precisely. What did you say about that client? To that client?
Amy Gallo:
Yes. I don’t know why she thinks this will work. This is an idiotic idea. I’m going to let her know that we’ll do it. But she’s foolish to think, and I’m paraphrasing here because I’m trying to keep it PG . It’s foolish to think that this will have any chance of succeeding.
Greg McKeown:
I can see this like this, like full caps response. You think you are completely safe completely to say anything you want.
Amy Gallo:
That’s right.
Greg McKeown:
Just right to them and then you realize what you’ve done. Carry on.
Amy Gallo:
And the funny thing is, remember my colleague who I would do this with, her name is Susie. She sat 10 feet from me. There’s no reason I couldn’t just turn to her and say it, but for some reason, I felt compelled to write it in an email. So I pressed send, and of course, as one does, I realized immediately what I had done. I looked over to Susie, and I was like, oh my gosh.
And it’s funny, our boss sat behind us, we lose, it was this big open office, and our boss sat behind us about 30 feet. And I remember, I can picture this exactly, I said, Susie, I just sent it to her. And she said, what did you send? And I said, come look, come look. And she looked, and we both looked behind us at my boss sitting at his desk, and she’s like, you got to go tell him. And I was like, oh gosh, okay, here I go.
And I really thought he would fire me. It felt like a fireable offense. I just really offended a really important client for our firm. And he looked up, he seemed shocked, of course, when I explained what I said, he asked me to send him the email, and he said, go apologize. And because she worked a mile and a half up the road, up third avenue, I got in a cab. I went to a bodega, and bought some crazy, really absurdly-sized bouquet of flowers.
Greg McKeown:
I bet you did.
Amy Gallo:
Thinking I can hide behind this, at the very least. And she was incredibly, incredibly gracious. And you know, I walked into our office, she looked up at me, and with the face that I knew right away from the look on her face it was going to be okay because she didn’t look angry. She looked confused, to be honest. And she just said, why didn’t you tell me?
Greg McKeown:
Why didn’t you tell me?
Amy Gallo:
Yes. Yep. Life-changing question. Right. Why didn’t I tell her? And I had to face right then that I had swallowed the advice that I have since then tried to undo. Which is your job isn’t to say Yes, I agree. Your job is to express your true thoughts and feelings and deliver insights and value for the people around you.
And that’s true when you’re a consultant working for a client. It’s also true when you are an employee working for a boss or where you’re collaborating with colleagues who you’re trying to innovate with.
And I am so grateful to her. We actually haven’t stayed in touch. I should probably send her the TED talk and see what she thinks. I’d be curious…
Greg McKeown:
Hold on. Send her the TED Talk. You’ve had 20 years to send her that TED Talk. Do you think the probability is above 50% that she’s already seen it?
Amy Gallo:
That’s a good question. That is a good question. I don’t know. I don’t know. I actually haven’t even Googled her to see where she is. I know she’s no longer at that company that we worked with. I should find out. It’s funny, in the introduction to my new book, I talk about this difficult boss I had and that that’s also an open question. I changed details and her name and everything, but I also wonder if she’s seen that story. It’s a good question. And part of me wants to leave the client sort of wants me to leave that story where it is because it was such a valuable lesson. If she had a different perspective on it, I’m, I don’t know.
Greg McKeown:
You don’t want to know it now.
Amy Gallo:
Exactly. What if she’s like, I hated you, and you were awful, and I was being as polite as I could. I don’t, I took so much. I mean, it really did set this work in motion in many ways that I’ve done for the last decade. Plus, I’m not sure I want to know that she thought I was an awful person who did the exact wrong thing. I don’t know.
Greg McKeown:
I think that I’m speaking for the majority of listeners right now who want me to challenge you, to invite you gently to send that talk to her, and to express what good came of it and that moment. And including, really importantly, how she responded. The piece you took away from it has been enormously valuable to you and to many other people that have heard that story. Everybody that’s listening wants you to do that. Everybody thinks, no, actually I keep saying everybody, and I know that there’s enough conflict-averse people listening.
Amy Gallo:
It’s funny because it’s not conflict-averse in my view. I talk about conflict aversion all the time. It’s not conflict-averse for me not to want to reach out to her because it’s not, there’s no conflict. We resolved our conflict years ago. There’s no existing, trust me, I have some unresolved conflicts with people, which actually, I think would make a great podcast to call up people who you have unresolved conflicts with and try to work them out with a conflict expert. But she and I resolved that issue. What I hesitate to engage with is the idea that what I took away from that was different or was not how I took it because it was so valuable to me. I’m afraid of the bubble being burst a little bit about what the lesson was.
Greg McKeown:
Well, you are worried that she remembers that so differently to you. That she experienced it. Perhaps it was more hurtful for her or left her with some pain, and you just want to have just the upside of that painful moment, the only pain in it is your embarrassment. Not anything that would be lasting for her.
Amy Gallo:
Thank you for putting it so clearly. Yes, that’s right. And it’s not that I think it would be painful and lasting for her. I really genuinely believe she was settled. Like we worked together for months after this, and I didn’t feel tension. In fact, and this is one of the things I talk about a lot, about conflict and disagreements. I felt closer to her having had this misstep and us being able to resolve it. I don’t feel like there’s anything left undone between us. But I do fear that she’s like, no, I wasn’t as forgiving as you remember. I do worry there’s a different interpretation of the story, which would be interesting to hear. I just haven’t been ready to hear it yet.
Greg McKeown:
That’s also interesting. Maybe I’m processing this wrong. It just seems all upside to me. It’s just you get to say to her, look, I don’t know how you experienced this. This might have been much more frustrating to you than for me. But I’m just telling you that the way you responded that day has materially changed the direction of my life for twenty years.
Amy Gallo:
Yes, that’s right. And you’re right, it’s upside for both of us, right?
Greg McKeown:
Yes. I think it’s, yeah. I think it’s marvelous. If you had her number right now, I would have you call her right now.
Amy Gallo:
How about this? I promise Greg, if I do reach out to her and I’m feeling very encouraged to do that, nicely encouraged to do that. I would promise to come back and tell your listeners what happened. How about that?
Greg McKeown:
I want to know about this. They’re going to want to know about this now. Now you said something else here that is interesting to me. You said that when you have conflict with somebody and then resolve it, your relationship is stronger than before. Now is there research to support that?
Amy Gallo:
There is research that shows that people are more engaged at work when they feel like they can address conflicts with coworkers, which is slightly different. But there’s also research in the realm of relationships that shows that tension, and strife, as long as they’re resolved, does form stronger bonds.
And I tell this story sometimes when I do talks and workshops about my daughter. I think this is something we intuitively know, but my daughter, who is a teenager now, but when she was much younger, came home from a sleepover, you know, I said, oh, how was it? And she said, great, we fought the whole time. And I was like, what? What do you mean? And she listed all the things they thought about what movie they’d watched, where they were going to sleep, and whether her friend’s brother should be involved in their game. And I said, why was that good? And she said because now we’re BFFs. And she intuitively knew what we do see in the research, which is that when we can get through a disagreement, a moment of tension, a conflict, and get to the other side, we’ve paved the way to allow for a greater range in our relationship. We now don’t have to believe that everything’s going to be hunky-dory all the time. That we’re going to see eye to eye, that we’re going to get along. We’re allowed room to have that strife, that conflict and know that our relationship can survive it.
Greg McKeown:
I remember coming across research years ago that said that if you have a bad customer service experience, but then the company fixes it completely, that you are more loyal to them afterward than before. Which seems completely analogous to what we’re talking about.
Amy Gallo:
Absolutely. I remember reading that research too. And I think the key is you don’t mess up on purpose to do the wrong thing in the same way. I don’t think you create conflict in a relationship. My experience with this client is a good example of saying what you actually believe, even when you know or suspect that it’s not what the other person wants to hear.
Greg McKeown:
I’ve come to believe that early on in a relationship, it’s not that you manufacture conflict, there’s no need because it’s always there. But early on, you should have a very small corrective conversation. Like to sort of begin this healthiness in the relationship that you both learn, hey, we can talk about things. So inevitably, when the next conflict comes up, we’ll also be able to handle it and so on. Rather than having years of unresolved conflict that if that ever comes out five years into an employee relationship, 20 years into a marriage, and then suddenly for the first time you’re expressing it, sometimes those things, I don’t know, that’s harder to recover from. It seems to me.
Amy Gallo:
And it’s not just that moment where it all comes out, it’s the years of unspoken feelings, thoughts, and opinions. Right? We think we’re getting along, we’re actually eroding the connection because we’re not taking the opportunity to be our genuine self to allow the other person to be their genuine selves.
And what you’re talking about creating that moment, or not creating, but surfacing that moment of conflict. Because I agree, it’s always there. There’s no such thing as a conflict-free relationship. There’s no such thing as a conflict-free team. It’s always there. So surfacing that early on, I think, is especially important in work relationships. Because there is this presumption in many organizations, I see this, particularly in the US, but I see it in other places too.
This presumption that everyone should see eye to eye, and that there should be harmony between people. That there shouldn’t be disagreement, dissent, right? That part of good work, quote-unquote, is agreeing with your colleagues. And that is fundamentally flawed.
If you want innovation, if you want inclusion, right? If you want things that matter to the organization, you have to surface those tensions. And as leaders, I think it’s important especially to start to surface those tensions very early on in a team’s work together. Because you want to burst that bubble of, you know, Patrick Lencioni calls it artificial harmony, that the presumption that we’re all going to get along all the time.
Greg McKeown:
Artificial harmony is a great term for what we’re talking about because it’s so fake and it’s so surface. And all the essential important real stuff is existing under the surface and sometimes quite deeply under the surface. So if you don’t deal with it by definition, you are not dealing with the important essential things in a relationship. I completely concur with that.
Now, you said something that surprised me. You said, I think it’s more important in a work environment than in a personal environment. And that surprises me. Why?
Amy Gallo:
So why it’s more important or more imperative, I think because the presumption of getting along I think is greater. If we all have fights with our spouses, we all have disagreements with friends and family members. It’s sort of normalized. It’s not normalized, I think to the extent at which it would be truthful or honest, but it’s more normalized. I do think there’s something about getting into a work environment where we sort of insist on politeness. I can’t tell you how many organizations where, and it’s funny being a conflict expert, people often assume that I’m brought into organizations where there’s lots of conflict and it’s the exact opposite. More often than not, I’m brought in at a place where they’re like, no one’s saying anything. People won’t speak up. And everyone says, oh, we have this phrase we call (name of company) nice. Let’s just say your company’s name is Essentialism. They’re like, oh, we have Essentialism nice.
I can’t tell you how many people tell me this over and over. They feel it’s unique to their company, right? We have this overly polite culture. I’m like, no, every company has this overly polite, and not every company, but most, I do think there’s this presumption, you get into the workplace – because we care about the company’s mission or goals or targets that will somehow just naturally be aligned in our pursuit of those, rather than the road will be rocky to get there. And the rockier it is, probably, the better the work outcome as a result.
Greg McKeown:
Let’s unpack this for a second. I agree that more open conflict happens outside of work than inside work. I agree with that, even though I also think there’s absolutely masses of conflict that goes unexpressed, not dealt with, and certainly then dealt with badly when it is dealt with in a family setting.
But nevertheless, this problem that you’re describing of people not talking about it at work, the question I have for you is why? Really, why doesn’t it happen? You gave one explanation, then we’re expected to be aligned because we have these goals in place. That’s one reason. But my observation is that many organizations have very low levels of alignment. That they’re kind of pulling in all sorts of directions. Why don’t people talk inside of organizations?
Amy Gallo:
Oh, there are many reasons. And I’m curious your perspective on this because I’m sure you see this too, based on the way you’re reacting to these ideas. I know that you’re seeing it. But I have two theories, and then I’d love to hear your thoughts as well. One is that we’re hardwired for likability, right? It’s how we’ve survived in communities for years and years and years, decades, centuries, is that we want people to like us, so they will be in contact with us and be in community with us. So I think it’s our natural instinct for many of us, not all of us, to have people like us. The second is that when we’re at work, we’re performing versions of our best self often. Right? Many of us are performing versions of our best self. And so our best self, we think, is someone who gets along with others who pushes ideas forward, but not in a damaging way that’s polite. And I think that performative version of us is, again, hardwired for likability but believes that agreeing and getting along is the way to make work happen.
There’s one other thing I think that’s really important here is then, and that’s the concept of psychological safety. Oftentimes when I go into organizations before, I’ll do a talk or workshop, I’ll talk to a few people and ask about what’s the culture around disagreement, and dissent. And when I ask, why aren’t you speaking up? Or why aren’t others speaking up? I sometimes get the answer. I don’t want to be fired. And when I push on that and say, oh, do you know of people who’ve been fired for disagreeing with people in authority? Or they’ll say, no, but I don’t want to be the first one. There’s probably lots of examples we can point to of people getting fired for disagreeing with those in power.
I can think of some recent examples in the news, but it’s not truly about being fired. It’s about the fear of the reputational damage of becoming labeled as a rabble-rouser or a pessimist, or someone who doesn’t respect authority. And that lack of psychological safety that if I garner that reputation or if I speak up about something, this internal conflict, as you called it, right? If I speak up about that, that there’s going to be some sort of retribution. Maybe someone won’t walk into my office and fire me, but maybe I won’t get the promotion I’m going after. Maybe I think my colleagues will think of me differently. My reputation will somehow suffer, that I won’t get what I ultimately want out of this job.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. They’re disincentivized to speak up.
Amy Gallo:
And more importantly, they’re not incentivized to speak up. Sometimes it’s not even that the leaders or the managers have said or even communicated in some way, you shouldn’t speak up. They just haven’t made it safe to do so. And when we assess the risk of speaking up or not speaking up, we are going to put more weight on the risk of action, not inaction. So speaking up feels much more risky than staying silent, even though there are costs to staying silent. We all make those risk assessments so that action feels much more dangerous, costly than inaction when that’s often not the case.
Greg McKeown:
It seems to me that hierarchy silences. And so it’s a character in the play of our lives, right? There’s person A, there’s person B, and then there’s the invisible real system that’s involved, the power differential, the I want to survive here, and I don’t know who I’m going to offend here. I’ll just stay silent, so I can survive. And so, as a leader, our obligation is to make up for that character that’s in the room. We have to make it so much more safe to speak up that we make up for this quiet force that’s moving us in the other direction. I’m curious when you say organizations have not incentivized people to speak up. How would they incentivize people to speak up?
Amy Gallo:
One, anytime someone disagrees, reward them right away. So there’s a couple of things. One, I think leaders need to make explicit that it’s okay to speak up, that it’s valued to do so, right? That you want to hear different opinions. So make that clear from the beginning.
I’m thinking of the team leader who sets a norm on their team that disagreement is encouraged, right? We will not always see eye to eye. And staying silent about when you disagree is not only doing yourself a disservice, but it’s doing the team a disservice. So making that clear from the beginning of the team’s work together and saying it not just once, but over and over. And then one of the things, I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase, right? A leader’s whisper is heard as a shout. People are paying very close attention to how you react.
So if someone disagrees with you in a meeting and you just shut down, or you even look uncomfortable or turn red in the face, people are like, oh, disagreement not, okay, good, I’m done. I won’t do that. Right? So you have to just, the way you react to how even small disagreements of, like, let’s start the meeting five minutes late. No, I don’t want to do that. Like whatever, it can be small things. Just the way you react to those disagreements is going to set the stage for what people are willing to do in the future and when the stakes are higher.
So the low-stakes disagreements you have to make okay. And you have to thank people, show that you’ve listened, not necessarily act on that dissent, but show that you appreciate it and it’s heard, and it’s valued.
Greg McKeown:
What company is the best in the world at getting people to really talk about the real issues?
Amy Gallo:
Oh gosh, that is a good question. I’m so often inside companies that aren’t good at this. And so I don’t have a personal experience with a company where I would say they’re doing it really well. I do know Linda Hill, who’s a professor at Harvard Business School, she talks a lot about conflict. She actually wrote the introduction to my first book. She studies innovative organizations, and she talks about creative friction that comes from these disagreements. And again, I don’t know enough about the company, but she’s written some case studies about Pixar and really how they, in the pursuit of innovation and creativity, allow for open dissent and debate about the ideas about the creativity that goes into their work.
Now, I don’t know anything about whether they’re comfortable raising issues about DEI, for example, or the way bias shows up in work like that. That’s also a place where I think a lot of organizations really struggle. And we’ve seen that struggle in the last few years as organizations commit to making their workplaces inclusive and equitable but yet don’t have the skills to have the disagreements and the discussions to talk about what’s really going on. But I think Pixar is a good example of how, at least at the work level, at the subject of the work, there’s open dissent.
Greg McKeown:
What that makes me think of is after Steve Jobs gets fired at Apple and starts Next, there was a 10-year gap before he comes back to Apple. And in that period, two major things happen and help him to evolve as a leader. One is he gets married, and he has a family. And the second is that he spent that decade with the senior leadership at Pixar, not being allowed to be very useful to them. He designed what’s now called the Steve Jobs building, which is absolutely beautiful and done superbly well. He, of course, helped in financing in a variety of ways. And I mean, I’m not saying he didn’t make any contribution, but he did get to observe how a mature, serious group of dialoguers made decisions. So by the time he comes back to Apple afterward, the media never picked up on that transformation. So they just treated him as if he was the same person that got fired before.
And there’s a great version of this story written in the book Becoming Steve Jobs, and the people at Apple who knew Steve best participated in that book, and that’s their favorite book describing who he was because they make the important point that you don’t do the best work of your life for a tyrant. It’s a misreading of what happened there. He seems to me to be someone who was extremely good at getting the conflict out, even if he did it in a particular way, that isn’t the style that all of us should have. What’s your view of that? Was he great at dealing with conflict? Was he terrible at dealing with conflict? What’s your assessment?
Amy Gallo:
What that story makes me think of actually is how it sort of points back to what I was saying earlier, which is that how hard it is for a leader to undo their reputation, particularly around whether you’re going to listen to employees, whether you’re going to allow for conflict, whether you’re open to different opinions. And once you’ve created that reputation. I mean, Steve Jobs is, I think, an extreme example because there was also just so much, he was just so public, and there was so much, so it wasn’t just about how the employees felt about him, it was about how the press felt about him, how the world felt about him. But I have empathy for him that even when you’ve changed, that people will still be hesitant to disagree with you.
Now, my take on what I do know about Steve Jobs is that he was good at surfacing the disagreement, but I’m not sure whether he created enough of a psychologically safe environment for people to engage productively with that disagreement.
Greg McKeown:
There is an interesting story that comes to mind about Steve when he went to somebody, and he just yelled at them, he just gave it to them, which of course, doesn’t sound like a great super conflict resolution type mechanism. About them not having talked up and told him that he was wrong, that they had the information, and that they’d allowed him to persuade them out of their view.
Now, that’s a pretty complex thing, right? You could see the employee going, I mean, that’s a bit rich, right? I told her, I spoke up, you tore me down, and now you’re tearing me down for not having spoken up. But even in that quite counterintuitive example, I think there’s a lot to this that there’s an incentive there. You are like, you better speak up. If you don’t speak up. And if you don’t have data and reason for your point of view, then yeah, that’s not going to work. That’s at least one mechanism for getting people talking, which I think is the beginning of what we’re talking about here. Get people talking, then get people listening, then get people clarifying. Now you’re off to the races. Your reaction.
Amy Gallo:
Yes. Although you know what I’m thinking now, back to my story of my client, right? Think about if I had showed up at that client’s office with my absurdly ridiculous bouquet of flowers, and she had yelled at me, you should have told me. Why didn’t you tell me? I certainly might have taken the same lesson away that, oh gosh, I really do need to speak up. But I would’ve been doing so out of fear of disappointing her as opposed to what she said is, why didn’t you tell me? Which was a genuine question.
Again, I think we’re sort of playing out the Steve Jobs because we don’t know, but if he had asked, what held you back from saying this earlier as opposed to lambasting someone for not speaking up, he would’ve gotten more understanding about what he could do differently, and that other person would’ve been able to surface some of the obstacles that were very, probably very rightly in their way of actually expressing their opinion.
So I agree. There’s something about him being willing to name the elephant in the room to call out people for not speaking up to power, but I think doing so in a way that is aggressive or even shaming or punishing is probably a bit counterproductive, as opposed to coaching someone.
Greg McKeown:
I’m with you on this, and I just came from an event, right? So I just did a virtual keynote for 300 directors, and I had a really unusual experience because the CEO was there through the whole thing. And that’s often not the case, right? Even if they do the intro, they’re like, okay, well, I’m off to other things that are more important. And that isn’t what he did. He stayed the whole time. And then he did something that was also unusual. He kept, not very often, but a few times, just interrupted the keynote just, jumped in, and was like, Hey, listen, now could we do it this way? Or could you maybe respond that way or so on? This is self evidently his style. And it was his style before I went on. I got to listen to a few minutes before, and his first comment to someone seemed like it was just really blunt. And I was like, oof, okay, this is interesting.
And then after I was done, I got to listen for a little while longer while he did like an open conversation and he was like, look, we’re really going to talk. Don’t miss your opportunity. You know what’s going on? And I listened to this conversation, and I thought it was pretty abrupt, but people talked. And so I’m not saying it’s the only way to get people to talk. I know positively it’s not, but I found it refreshing to hear a CEO not be the embodiment of this polite niceness that you’ve just been talking about. And if you can’t get the CEO to talk about what they really think and let’s be open about it, how is anybody else going to do it?
Amy Gallo:
Think about what a different story that would be though, Greg, if you said everyone stayed silent afterward. There’s something that the CEO’s doing with that. And sometimes that blunt open behavior sometimes can be silencing, but it sounds like there’s something he’s done that allows him to name the elephant or call out the issue, but then also gives space for people to contribute and to talk as well.
Greg McKeown:
Yes. It seems to me that there is this duality in order to get people to be able to talk openly. And it’s like a yin and yang balance where you need to be able to listen deeply enough that people will share what’s not obvious and what’s not safe for them normally to share. And that’s hidden below the surface.
And I also think you have to speak more openly and candidly and vulnerably yourself and risk, yes, risk offending somebody else. If a leader comes along and they just go, I’m just going to listen to all of you. Please talk, please talk. And they never share what’s really going on in their honest view right now, no one’s going to really feel safe. Of course, if only bombastic sharing your own opinion as perhaps I am in this moment, you risk that as well. How does a listener right now who may be dealing with unspoken conflict in their workplace at home get the balance right?
Amy Gallo:
Yeah. I think the key is you won’t get it right right away. You’re going to have to try things out. You’re going to have to experiment, and you’re going to have to see. You know, you’re going to lean too far one way, realize you’ve leaned too far. You’re going to pay attention. Pay attention to what’s happening, pay attention to how people respond, pay attention to their facial expressions their body language, and find trusted advisors and people below you who can give you that feedback. So when you say, okay, I’m trying this out, this is the balance I’m going for, here’s the things I’ve done, what’s the impact? How do you think it’s working? What are you hearing? And find people who will tell you like it is. Because the truth is you won’t always know whether you’re being received the way you want to be received, whether you’re achieving that balance just from the way people are reacting to you.
Because again, as you so clearly said earlier, the hierarchy will distort what people perceive they’re able to do but also will distort the messages you get from them about whether what you’re doing is working. And so you need to find ways around that, both by paying attention and truly listening, but also tapping into people who will tell you like it is.
I do want to go back to what I was originally saying also is that which is you have to experiment, and you have to try out things and knowing that they’re not going to work perfectly and that they’re going to be some missteps, but that you can recover from those by acknowledging. Let’s say you come out, you start naming all the elephants in the room, everyone’s like, oh gosh, this is really uncomfortable. And that silences them, right?
You can say, I feel it’s important we raise conflicts. I’ve been trying to point some out. I realize the way I’m doing that is causing you all to stay silent. That was not my intended effect. Let me try something else. Or if you feel, if you think they will actually respond truthfully to you, you can even ask the question, what could I do differently? You have to really gauge whether you’re going to get an honest response to that because you may not. And that’s when you sort of go to your trusted advisors to get some feedback about what’s a better way. What would work.
Greg McKeown:
In this new research and new book getting along? What is the most important habit that a leader listening to this could apply in two minutes or less?
Amy Gallo:
I think the really simple question of, what is my goal here? It’s all about how to, you have difficult conversations, how to give difficult feedback, and how to deal with difficult personalities, right? Whenever you’re entering a situation where you know it’s going to be a tricky conversation, ask yourself, not just once, but probably repeatedly, what is my goal?
Because oftentimes what we’re really being driven by is a goal to protect our ego, to prove we’re right, maybe if we’re conflict-averse, to just quickly smooth things over. And so what is it you actually want to accomplish in this conversation? Is it that you want this project to get done and on time, you know, under budget and on time? Is that really what you’re really focused on? Is it that you want to preserve your relationship with this person because they’re critical to the targets you’re trying to achieve?
What is it you’re actually trying to achieve in that moment? Let that drive your behavior as opposed to what’s more often the ego defensiveness or the ego protectiveness that we intuitively let drive our ability to navigate these conversations.
Greg McKeown:
If somebody is in, let’s say, a managerial role right now, mid-manager, what is a specific phrase that they could use to be able to have those difficult conversations more gracefully?
Amy Gallo:
I’ll connect that to the tactic of your goal is to really state your intention upfront, and not just what your intention is, but what your intention isn’t, right? Before giving feedback, before entering a tough negotiation with an employee, before facilitating a meeting between different teams that are having some trouble, right? Make clear my intention with this conversation, my intention with this meeting is to do X. My intention is not to do Y?
Oftentimes, we presume people know what our intention is or what our goal is, and they don’t, and if we leave that to their discernment, they’re going to often layer things into that we don’t intend. And that will really create grave misunderstanding and miscommunication that then you spend hours, weeks, months trying to undo where you could really, if you genuinely state what your intention is upfront, you can shortcut a lot of that trouble that you invite if you’re not clear.
Greg McKeown:
I love the double whammy to express what your intent is and what it’s not, that both of those create psychological safety for the other person and for yourself. Because I think if you express what your intent is, but then, especially what it is not, you’re starting to remove the primary obstacle in speaking up in the first place, which is you don’t want to offend somebody, you don’t want to be misunderstood, you don’t want the thing you’re saying to be taken in the wrong direction. You don’t want to hurt that relationship. So it’s all about getting that overtly into the conversation.
Amy Gallo:
It’s very similar to this idea that I’ve heard before about communicating change. When you’re leading a change management initiative, or you’re introducing change into one organization that everyone wants to say why the change is so important, what’s going to be different? Create this vision for the future. And what you really also need to do is communicate what’s not going to change, what’s going to stay the same. Because we crave safety, right? We crave consistency. And if I go into my team or my organization and say, here’s how everything’s going to be different, right? It’s very unsettling.
But if you can give them a few touchpoints of, this is what’s not going to change. The way we treat each other is not going to be different. The way we reward you or the incentives, those are not going to be different, but this is what’s going to change. It’s a route really trying to help people settle in so they can listen openly and comfortably to what you’re trying to tell them.
Greg McKeown:
What we know from pretty serious empirical research over many years is that bad is stronger than good. People are as much as two times more concerned with what they might lose than with what they might gain. And I’ve talked about this before here on this podcast, but it’s not just win-win thinking. It’s can’t lose-can’t lose thinking.
Amy Gallo:
That negativity bias is something I cover a lot in the new book because it’s often why our most challenging relationships at work, even though they make up a very small fraction of our interactions, take up an outsized role in our minds.
And I think about like performance reviews I had 20 years ago, I could really tell you verbatim the lines that told me I was doing something wrong. I cannot for the life of me remember the compliments. We enter these tricky interactions or these difficult conversations with this protective mode of, I can’t lose, they can’t lose. And then that creates a lot of inaction and a lot of stuckness as opposed to, it’s very hard to go into a difficult conversation thinking, what could I gain from this? We have to force ourselves to think about the opportunities.
Greg McKeown:
You spent more than 20 years thinking about this subject now. You’ve written two books about it. What is the one thing we just can’t get wrong if we want to be able to deal with conflict right?
Amy Gallo:
We cannot dismiss the fact that we are active participants in whatever dynamic we find challenging. And it takes two to tango, meaning you’re probably contributing to the negative dynamic in some way, but also, more importantly, you have power to change it. And I think one of the things that’s really challenging about conflicts, difficult relationships with people at work is we often lose our sense of agency. We feel stuck, we feel helpless, we feel subjected to their bad behavior, and sometimes that behavior is really bad. I don’t want to dismiss that we are not subjected to it. We actually have things we can do, whether it’s even changing our mindset or changing our reaction, or maybe even changing our job right there. There are more extreme things you can do, but there’s a whole range in which you actually have agency and authority to do something about that situation. And feeling stuck doesn’t help you and does not help the dynamic. It doesn’t give the dynamic space to change and shift and transform.
Greg McKeown:
If you’re not part of the problem, maybe you can’t be part of the solution.
Amy Gallo:
That’s exactly right. I love that. Thank you for summarizing that in that perfect way. That’s right.
Greg McKeown:
Amy Gallo, what a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your great contributions in this important subject to subject as relevant as any in the world right now. It’s been great to have you.
Amy Gallo:
Thank you, Greg, and thank you for all your work. I’m such a fan, and it’s been a truly enjoyable conversation.
Greg McKeown:
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you really for listening to this conversation with Amy Gallo.
What is one idea you heard today that caught your attention, and who is one person you can share that insight with within the next 24 to 48 hours?
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