Leveraging Leadership

How Non-Action Conversations Enhance Business Relationships

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 172

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Emily Sander talks about the importance of conversations focused on understanding, not always on doing. As a Chief of Staff, you're often in "go mode," but sometimes it's essential to just listen and understand a team member's perspective. She gives tips like changing the conversation's setting or tone to foster better understanding and notes that this skill is key for mediating disagreements and improving team performance.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

01:02 Effective Communication Strategies for Chiefs of Staff
02:52 Mediating and Facilitating Better Understanding
06:01 Investing in Workplace Relationships

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Sometimes the point of a conversation is to simply better understand the other person. Oftentimes as chiefs of staff, we get into go mode and a lot of chiefs of staff are go mode all the time. So we problem solve things. we're executive problem solvers, we fix things, we provide solutions. You want a 18 month plan dialed in, golden. I will reverse engineer that thing quarter by quarter. I'll get all the stakeholders on the table. I'll create work streams and communication channels, and I will execute to that plan and you better believe it's gonna be done. That's great. Keep doing that. That's awesome. And. In the fold, in the mix with all of that should be these types of conversations where it's not to do anything. There's no output and takeaway at the end. It's simply to better understand each other. So the outcome of that conversation is, if by the end you go, oh, I get you. Like, no, I got you. Oh, I get it now. Oh, okay. Oh. What you said in the team meeting makes way more sense now. Got it. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Anything close to that, anything like that is a win. These conversations don't have like takeaways or action steps or spreadsheets with like item description and owners and deadlines. That's not what we're talking about here. It's simply, okay, my job in this conversation is to know more about this person and where they're coming from than I did at the beginning. And sometimes it's flipped too, right? Where it's like, okay, in this conversation I need this other person or people to better understand me and where I'm coming from and nothing else. And sometimes a little cue or a little prompt at the beginning of the conversation can help with that. Like, hey, we're all used to kind of go, go, go. What's the driver? What's the outcome? All these things, this conversation is a little bit different. I wanna have a little bit different conversation than we normally have. Sometimes, depending on the person you're talking to, depending on the situation, you can just say something like that and it works fine. Other times it's like, Emily, that would be a little weird. That's a little awkward. So maybe you change the setting of the conversation. You go outside or you go to like a different conference room or whatever. Maybe you just change the tone. Like you consciously just change the tone of your voice and the way that you're speaking and the way that you're engaging and the types of questions you're asking or the types of information you're offering, and it just shapes the conversation in a different way. Many times as chief of staff, you will be mediating. These conversations, right? So it's like two other people or perhaps multiple other parties who are like, okay, we're not aligned, we're clunking heads. People are coming to me as chief of staff going like, what in the world? Like I don't get him, like, I don't get where he is coming from. Or like, why did she say that that's nonsensical. Like what, what is going on? I don't understand. Those might be cues. To have these types of conversations. If it's literally like, I don't understand that person, or I don't understand what's happening or where they're coming from, it might be logical to say, okay, let's try to better understand each other. I know that might sound like, oh, Emily, like, let's sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya. And it's not, it's part of your job as chief of staff to, okay, how do I get these team members and these people to. Optimize performance, if you wanna put it like that. Okay. To optimize performance. Wouldn't it be helpful if we better understood each other and where we're coming from? And this is actually something that I wish I had done more of as chief of staff. So when I look back at my time as chief of staff overall, like great experience and I think I did a good job. But when I was mediating and kind of facilitating conversations between executives who were having disagreements, who were having a conflict, which totally happens. It's a human thing, it's fine. I wish I would've used this tool more and pulled it out of my tool belt more often and sank into it. So sometimes I kind of, glanced over it or glazed over it, and I wish I would've dug into it a bit more because I think that would've been more helpful to the people that I was working with. So just keep that in mind where it might not be. Oh. We need to come to a decision around this by the end of this meeting, or we need to agree on this by the end of this meeting. It might just simply be, let's have a conversation here. And sometimes just having a conversation without the expectation or pressure of a decision or like a go forward step or go forward action plan is what's required. It's what's needed, it's what's most helpful. And so just to like. Set that up and to kind of guide people, oh, okay, we're getting kind of over here. We need to move in this direction. Oh, let's move in this direction and let them have a conversation that can be worth its weight in gold. So just keep an eye out. Keep an ear out for those types of opportunities. oh and a note here is there are types of conversations that are similar to this one, but not quite the same. So if you are holding space for someone to vent, that is very important and certainly what a chief of staff does sometimes like, okay, principals like going crazy. I need to close the door so he doesn't do it in front of the group and like, I'm right here. Go venture your spleen. Similar, but not quite the same. Uh, second one, someone needs to feel heard. Oh, she needs to feel heard and understood. Oh, he needs someone to like truly listen to what he's saying. That is absolutely part of a chief of staff job. And that's like, okay, I'm holding the space. I'm right here with you. I'm giving nonverbal cues that I'm paying attention to you. I am proving that I have listened and heard you by recapping what I said. And making sure that I understood correctly, all of that stuff. And then there's this type of conversation about understanding better. And it's not a, passive thing. It's like you're, you're engaged, you're involved, you're leaning in. It's a dynamic thing. It's not a check the box exercise. It's not like, okay, I'm supposed to talk to this person'cause we're supposed to get along. Let me like say that I talked to Stacy. think about any important relationship you have. Maybe this is outside of work. Maybe think of like your spouse or significant other, or someone you love. Don't you wanna understand them better? Wouldn't that help deepen your relationship? Wouldn't it be helpful if like, oh, like oh, you care about that and you care about it that way? Oh, okay. Like now I know. And now like, that makes us better. That makes us stronger. Okay. Got it. So in the same way, or maybe not in the exact same way, but in a similar way, if you think about the important relationships you have at work, which can be meaningful. Which you're spending a lot of time with these people, which can be a long-term relationship, so you might as well invest in that. So wouldn't it be good to invest in that and to say, okay, let me take the time to really just understand you better and to get to know you more. Okay. The more I do that, the better everything else becomes around that relationship. So it's definitely worth the investment, but that's the engagement and the kind of tone and tenor and sentiment of those conversations. So if you are going out and you're weak here and you're saying, okay, I need to understand someone better or I probably should spend some time so they understand me better, or you're mediating. Two different people or multiple parties. Having this in the back of your head and saying, okay, how can I frame this type of conversation up with these particular people in this particular situation? I think it would do you well and add that into the mix. in addition to all of the. Go, go, go. Let's make progress. Let's keep moving things forward and nudging things forward, and sometimes pulling this rock up a hill forward. That's all in chief of staff land as is setting up these conversations and identifying when these conversations needs to happen, where the point of the discussion is not to do anything is simply to understand each other a bit better. All right. I hope that's helpful and I'll catch you next time on leveraging leadership.