804: How to Repair a Stakeholder Relationship, with Caroline Webb

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
Leaders are often called on to repair relationships for the benefit of everybody. When that relationship is a key stakeholder, it’s especially important to approach it intentionally. In this episode, the most important steps to help that repair go better. This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 804.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:20]:
Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:28]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born; they’re made. And this weekly show helps leaders thrive at key inflection points. We all have heard some really wonderful advice, conversation, training over the years. Mentors help us in so many complex situations, and we talk about a number of them on this show, and particularly those complex situations tend to come up in thinking about how we navigate the relationships with the people we manage and giving feedback and accountability, of course. And then there’s the other direction of managing up, right, of like how to influence upwards in the organization.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:13]:
And then there’s another situation, one that’s actually maybe even a bit more common, and I think even in some ways more complex because we don’t talk about it enough. And that is, how do you repair and strengthen a relationship with a stakeholder? Maybe that stakeholder’s a peer, internally. Maybe they’re in a partner organization, or maybe they’re a client or a customer or supplier. When that relationship isn’t working as well as it could, what do you do to start? Today, a conversation on exactly where we can begin. And I’m so pleased to welcome a guest expert who’s going to help us to do this well and think about this in some wonderful ways. I’m pleased to introduce to you Caroline Webb. Caroline is a leadership coach, economist, and author of How to Have a Good Day, which has been published in over 60 countries. She has been named as one of the top 50 executive coaches in the world by Thinkers50 and is senior advisor on leadership to McKinsey & Company, where she was previously a partner.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:08]:
She is the author of Leadership Intelligence: Science-Backed Strategies for Mastering 21 Everyday Management Challenges. Caroline, what a pleasure to have you on.

Caroline Webb [00:02:18]:
Thank you so much, Dave. I’m delighted to be here.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:21]:
I am delighted too. I’m so looking forward to this conversation. And as I alluded to in the introduction, there are so many complex and difficult situations that come up in leadership, as we all know. And managing up and giving feedback down, of course, are some of the most common ones. What we don’t often have a playbook on is how to handle the situations of navigating stakeholder relationships when they come up. This is a bit of a different situation in a way, isn’t it?

Caroline Webb [00:02:52]:
It is, but people are people, you know, and whatever we think about when we consider our own frailties and foibles and the things that might push our buttons, anyone that we’re working with can have their own patterns, their own things that rub them up the wrong way. And if we’re going to be the best leaders we can be and the best professionals we can be, we’re really thoughtful about how to bring the best out of every single relationship. And that means getting under the skin of what’s really going on for the other person a lot of the time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:20]:
I was struck by 2 sentences that you write in the chapter of the book on navigating stakeholders. And as the subtitle of the book mentions, there’s 21 topics in the book, we’re zeroing in on one of them. And there’s 2 sentences that really leapt out at me. The first sentence is, “Everyone perceives situations differently without realizing it”.

Caroline Webb [00:03:40]:
Yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:41]:
And I read that sentence, I was like, “Okay, I think most of us recognize that”, at least theoretically, even if we don’t necessarily always stop and think about it in the moment. But then there was the second sentence that landed with me even stronger. And you write: People with power tend to find it especially hard to imagine that anyone else sees things differently. And I’m wondering, what is it that’s particularly difficult for people who have power?

Caroline Webb [00:04:09]:
Well, just about every sentence that I ever write is backed up by some set of studies. So I don’t write that lightly. There is research that shows that as you accumulate more power, it becomes a little bit harder to put yourself in the shoes of other people around you. And it’s not because people who get more senior are jerks, I mean, that’s not our experience. That’s not what we see, that’s not what we feel. It’s as you rise up, I guess I have a couple of theories.

Caroline Webb [00:04:42]:
I mean, one is that the weight on your shoulders gets greater. Maybe it takes a little bit more effort to stop and put yourself in the shoes of other people. And then of course, you know, as you do become a little bit more powerful, people start laughing at jokes a little harder. And maybe it becomes a little bit more difficult to imagine that you might be rubbing anyone else up the wrong way, because you’re getting a lot of support and appreciation from people around you, in general, as you rise up. So, I think for those 2 reasons, as we become more senior, we have to be quite attentive to the relationship dynamics that might have been a bit more obvious when we were more junior. But I think this is something that actually is relevant for anybody at any stage because we’re all subject to confirmation bias. We all come in with a point of view and then see and hear evidence that tends to confirm that point of view and tend to miss evidence that points the other way. So this is a very deeply wired thing for human beings.

Caroline Webb [00:05:42]:
It’s just something to watch out for even more as you get more senior.

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:45]:
You remind us that, of course, in any relationship where something isn’t quite working or isn’t working as well as it could, you often get stuck in a bit of a pattern. And of course, there’s a contribution on your side; there’s a contribution on the other person’s side. And you write on this, an invitation: When we make an effort to imagine someone else’s situation, a process known as perspective-taking, we become better able to collaborate with them. Tell me a bit more about perspective-taking and what is it that’s important about it?

Caroline Webb [00:06:17]:
This is a term of the art in psychology, and it means what you might imagine, which is taking someone else’s perspective, putting yourself in a different vantage point so you can see the situation differently. And it’s powerful in all sorts of ways. If you look through behavioral science, it can help you make better decisions if you imagine that you’re in a— looking in at the situation from the outside. It’s really remarkable how just putting yourself in another person’s shoes and thinking, I wonder what could be going on for them, can appreciably improve the quality of your relationship even without talking to them. But that’s what the research suggests. And I think there are a couple of things that underpin that. First of all, obviously you are opening your perspective a little wider. You’re thinking, oh, right, I guess maybe my way of seeing things isn’t the only way of seeing things.

Caroline Webb [00:07:03]:
But I think the other thing is actually that we’re all very emotionally contagious as humans, and the way that we feel radiates itself to other people, even as you are listening, even as we’re on a Zoom or a Teams call with someone. There’s evidence to suggest that we can pick up other people’s state of mind, and it does tend to leak out of us and spread to other people. So, just the sheer fact of saying, okay, I’m imagining what you might be thinking, Dave, allows me to perhaps loosen my grip on my point of view, Caroline’s point of view, and that shifts my demeanor a little bit. It shifts my demeanor from seeing you as an adversary, potentially, to someone who has a point of view, which I might not agree with, to be clear. None of this is saying you have to agree with people who think differently to you, but it’s so powerful to consider their point of view because it will shift your standing, your demeanor with them, enough for them to be able to pick up that you’re trying to get on their wavelength rather than trying to get under their skin.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:09]:
There is something so powerful about shifting the mindset piece of this, even before we get into some of the tactical things we can do. I have a client right now who is navigating a stakeholder relationship that is challenging for all kinds of reasons, and she has really shifted her mindset on this relationship in the last month or two. And it’s been fascinating to watch how, as she shifted her mindset, all of a sudden it’s opened up the possibilities for tactical things to happen and opportunities to come up that all of a sudden, sort of, like, just appeared. But I think often the reality is, is that when— before we do that perspective-taking, we don’t even see those things. Like, in a way, they’re always there, but we have to almost start with ourselves first.

Caroline Webb [00:08:57]:
Yeah. Well, this is one of the reasons I like to cultivate tiny habits that you can remember in the heat of the moment, because a lot of this stuff is quite unconscious. And so, if you rely on remembering, “Oh, I remember that there’s a different way of seeing things. I’ve got confirmation bias, so I’m always missing something, and I may be missing something that is actually important in what they’re saying”. I think it’s helpful to just have a go-to “Huh! Okay. What could be going on for them that would make their behaviour make sense?” Just to have a kind of go-to question that you can remember and apply. And I would say it’s been life-changing for me, honestly, to have a question like that top of mind, to always remind me to start to think about the other person’s perspective.

Caroline Webb [00:09:45]:
But it starts with yourself. It starts with saying, “Okay, I noticed that I’m getting riled”, and as I’m getting riled up, I’m thinking, okay, so there’s something in this relationship that needs some attention. And so of course, it always does start with you and noticing when there’s that tension that’s existing and saying, okay, pause, take a beat. What is it I need to do?

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:07]:
You mentioned a moment ago the importance of in the moment remembering something and having a go-to starting point. And I think that is one of the things, for me, at least when I think of stakeholders and situations where there’s not like a reporting relationship necessarily, that I think makes it doubly hard in a lot of situations, is we don’t necessarily know even where to start with that. Of like, there’s not a clear, like, “Okay, this person reports to me or I report to them”, or rules of engagement, and that’s one of the reasons I love your bridge model, and you have this really wonderful analogy of thinking about both us and the stakeholder and how we can work together to strengthen the relationship. And before we get into the details of it, I’m wondering if maybe you could just paint the bigger picture of the model and then maybe we’ll look at some of the components of where we start when we do get in this situation.

Caroline Webb [00:10:59]:
Yeah, I love the visual metaphor of a suspension bridge for this because it immediately reminds you that there are 2 sides to any relationship. Which, I mean, is obvious, right? But it- sometimes we need to be reminded of this in the middle of a complex situation. It’s 2 sides, and there needs to be lots of support. You know, you’ve got Tower 1 on one side, let’s call it them. And we’ve got Tower 2, which is our side; let’s call it us. And then you’ve got cables that hold the thing together. And then you’ve got the deck, which is where you might meet in the middle if you have the right kind of conversation. So they’re the 4 components that I think of.

Caroline Webb [00:11:40]:
And just having that mental image in my mind can be helpful to remind me, “Oh, this is not all about you. I mean, it starts with you, but it’s not all about you”. And there are things you really actually can do that will make a difference to this relationship. Because sometimes I think we get stuck in a situation where we just think, “Oh, I can’t see how to improve this”. And I would say that everything I’ve learned from the research, but also, you know, obviously 35 years of working as a professional, as a leader, is you really can improve even the worst of relationships. So, I’m very happy to dive in and talk about all the bits of the bridge.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:19]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, and on that point, I mean, our mutual friend Michael Bungay Stanier has this great phrase of, like, “the best possible relationship”.

Caroline Webb [00:12:25]:
Yes, yes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:26]:
Which I love that language because it sends the message that sometimes the best possible relationship is not that great.

Caroline Webb [00:12:33]:
No, it’s just a bit better, right? So, I’m here to tell you that you can make even the worst relationship, usually, a bit better.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:40]:
Yes.

Caroline Webb [00:12:41]:
I am not here to tell you that you can absolutely turn someone who’s got a lot of issues that they might have inherited over years and years. You can’t click your fingers and make every relationship a dream. But there is almost always, I mean, I would say always, right? But I’m sort of cautious in my language, but almost always something you can do to improve a relationship. And I think often we write relationships off without actually having done the things that we can do.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:08]:
Yeah.

Caroline Webb [00:13:08]:
And I think that if you do everything we’re talking about today, and there’s still no way forward, then I think it is reasonable to say, “Well, maybe I’ll drive a different route and take a different bridge”. You know, maybe I will actually dismount gracefully when it becomes possible for this relationship. But so often there is so much we can do before we get to that point.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:31]:
Well, let’s look at the different components of this, and you articulated them, but I’d love to dive in on a couple of the details. And of course, the first tower is the other person, their concerns, what’s going on for them. And you invite us to start here, which is hard, of like asking a few questions that would help us hopefully to understand a bit better. What questions do you find help in this situation?

Caroline Webb [00:14:00]:
Well, I first ask myself, what do they really care about, and what could they be worried about? And when you are in a bad place with someone, you might say “They care about nothing, and they shouldn’t be worried about anything!” And you have to get through your sort of first response sometimes. But everyone has human sets of needs. You know, as humans, we need a sense of feeling competent and in control. We need a sense of feeling connected to other people, included. And it’s quite often the case that there are things that would put us on the defensive that can put them on the defensive. And actually taking a moment to say, “Well, okay, so they care about doing a good job. And it may be that my— maybe that something is disappointing them in the relationship, that something has fallen short”, but it could be nothing to do with you as well.

Caroline Webb [00:14:52]:
It could be any sort of thing that might be making them feel overstretched or insecure, or perhaps they’re under pressure. Maybe they’re not feeling great about their role, and it might not be anything to do with you. Just entertaining the possibility of what are these things that tend to knock all of us sideways, and what could be going on for them? And as I mentioned earlier, there’s a question I really like, which is what could be going on for them that will make their behavior make sense without assuming bad intent? That last bit is the extra sauce.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:27]:
Yeah.

Caroline Webb [00:15:28]:
And you don’t have to believe what your hypotheses might be. You might say, well, maybe their cat is sick, ho, ho, ho! I’m here to tell you that it’s actually still a step in the right direction to say, oh, they’re a human who might have a pet that’s sick. Or, you know, maybe they’ve got challenges with their kids at the moment, or maybe they are feeling overstretched because there was a reorganization in their department. It doesn’t have to be that you know exactly what’s going on. It’s just the sheer fact of considering different stories that has been shown to make a difference. That’s perspective-taking.

Caroline Webb [00:16:06]:
Now, of course, it’s great if you actually do seriously attend to, okay, what really could be going on with this person? But what’s interesting is just the mere fact of considering them as a human who might have human concerns has been shown to make a difference.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:21]:
That strikes me as so key. And you mentioned this in the book, that even if you’re completely wrong about your assumption or hypothesis on what might be going on for them that has to do with you, doesn’t, whatever is in fact the relationship, that the process of just thinking through that, and actually having empathy and thinking about their side is so valuable for all the reasons you just mentioned.

Caroline Webb [00:16:44]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I do find if any of you’re listening to this and thinking, feeling a bit skeptical about it, I do find starting with a humorous explanation can, kind of, prime the pump and get you starting to think. So if you’re not sure about all of this and you’re dealing with someone who’s really tough, start there. And then usually what I find is you start there, and then you start to come up with other ideas and suggestions to yourself about what might be going on.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:09]:
And speaking of yourself, then there’s Tower 2, which is your side of this, understanding what’s going on with you, your reaction. And one of the things you invite us to do here is to- and this is, I think, hard, but really valuable, is to figure out what’s pushing your buttons in this relationship, in this situation. Have you found a way that helps people to kind of do that, to step a little bit away from ourselves for a moment and see it a little bit more objectively?

Caroline Webb [00:17:39]:
Well, I think the place to start, again, there needs to be a sort of a nice easy place to start. And again, studies show that even if you do only this, it’s helpful. Is just to label what you are feeling. This is what psychologists call affect labelling. And to say, “Huh, Caroline, you seem to be a little riled up, again, that phrase, by the fact that this person keeps on imposing a really rigid process when they’re not giving you a sense that they’re really listening to what you’re saying”. Okay. All right. And you might think, well, isn’t that wallowing? It’s interesting.

Caroline Webb [00:18:15]:
I mean, if you went on for 5 minutes and 10 minutes and 15 minutes and sort of yelling at yourself, and another thing, then maybe that would start to be less productive. But we’re talking here just about naming your feeling. And the more specific you get on that, again, something that researchers call emotional granularity, the more specific you can get in your language, the more the effect has been shown to reduce the sort of state of alert in your brain when you think about this person.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:45]:
Huh.

Caroline Webb [00:18:46]:
Because you go from thinking, “Oh, this person’s so annoying. They’re really just trying to make my life a misery”, to, okay, this person is imposing process. All right. They’re imposing a process I don’t like. Okay. That is a lot less massive and encompassing than, “They’re just a pain!” And the more specific you can get also, not using the words always and never, because that’s almost always never the case, right? I mean, it’s very rare that anyone is always something or never something. And you say, “Okay, they’re imposing a process when I think they feel that there’s a real risk that might come up and bite us”.

Caroline Webb [00:19:32]:
Alright. Now, this is starting to feel a bit more contained, and I am feeling frustrated by that because I feel like it’s taking time. Oh, and I’m stressed by that because I feel really stretched myself at the moment, and extra time at the moment feels just a little bit too much.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:49]:
Hmm.

Caroline Webb [00:19:50]:
All right. Now you’ve brought this thing down to land, and that’s a very helpful place to start. It can help, I think, also to write this down, write it on a piece of paper. There’s something about increasing your sense of distance. And you might even put yourself in the second person and say, “Okay, you are feeling annoyed because there’s a process here that’s taking up some of your time”. And that can have a little extra effect if you do it that way. And then the other thing that I would mention is that sometimes you’re not even reacting to what they’re doing. You’re reacting to what they’re ex— you’re expecting them to do because you’ve encountered something that’s a little bit like this in the past, and it’s your brain responding to a memory of a time when a process ended up ballooning and taking so much time, but actually you’re not in that situation now.

Caroline Webb [00:20:46]:
And if you ask yourself, well, hold on, what is this reminding me of? And why might this be particularly pushing my buttons? And what is different now versus the thing that I’m remembering? That is an extra bonus step that I think can really help.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:02]:
And speaks to that point you made earlier of like, things often get stuck in a pattern, and sometimes it’s not necessarily even a pattern that’s relevant to the current situation, but because we’ve had an experience with someone, or we’ve had someone else in the past push our buttons in the same way, all of a sudden, all that baggage comes along with us into the current conversation.

Caroline Webb [00:21:20]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. You only have to remember one boss who did something like this, or one client who did something like this, and then you’re sensitized to it. But you don’t have to- this is not something you’re trapped in forever. You can, once you name it and you identify it and you can talk to yourself about it, then that’s giving you a bit of agency and saying, “Okay, hello brain, this is not the same as before, so, stand down. It’s not as much of an emergency as you may be thinking.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:49]:
Yeah. And then you can start thinking about the cables that go between The 2 towers, right? When you transition to that step and then thinking about strengthening the connection between the 2 towers, you and the other party, where do you invite people to start, and what does that look like?

Caroline Webb [00:22:09]:
Well, I think of 3 things. I think of appreciation, involvement, and elevation. And appreciation, I think, is always, always such a powerful thing to reach for, because we have these human needs for competence and connection, as I mentioned. And when you have someone praise you or recognize something you are doing, it boosts your sense of competence, and it boosts your sense of connection. Now, you might say, this person’s really annoying. I don’t wanna say anything nice to them. I don’t want to, why should I praise them? They’re making my life a misery. Well, you know, I’m definitely not going to suggest that you should make something up, but it’s a useful exercise just to say, okay, is there anything I can appreciate about this? Maybe I can appreciate that this person cares enough about the success of our project that they want to follow a process that’s going to reduce risk.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:03]:
Hmm.

Caroline Webb [00:23:04]:
And maybe I could even say that out loud to them. And if I did, then what that does to the other person is that, by engaging their brain’s reward system in a quite profound way, you help to take them off the defensive. If there’s something that they’re worrying about, if there’s something that, some stress that is driving their attachment to this very rigorous process, then having you say, “I really appreciate the fact that you are trying to make sure that we do this right”. Doesn’t have to be hokey, doesn’t have to be excessive flattery, but just naming that can make a difference. And I think it’s always the place to start. And then I think the other thing is we have such a desire for being included in general. So, this feeling of being excluded is such a painful thing for a lot of us. You can even see it on a brain scan when people are excluded from a silly little game.

Caroline Webb [00:23:59]:
It engages parts of their brain that are associated with pain, with physical pain. So, social pain of exclusion is something that’s very observable. And so, what often happens with stakeholders is that they don’t feel, perhaps, that you’ve explained choices, or trade-offs that you’re making. And another thing that you can do apart from explaining choices and trade-offs is to ask for advice, which you may or may not need, but you could get a lot of a shift in a relationship by saying, ” So tell me how you’re seeing this and what would you do?” And most of us love being asked for advice because it does make us feel competent and connected.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:39]:
Yeah.

Caroline Webb [00:24:39]:
And then the last thing I would say about elevation is just, how could you help them succeed? I mean, there’s not always a lot that you can do here, but it is a kind of empathy to say, okay, they’re a human trying to do a good job. Is there anything I could do to help them be more successful? And that’s worth putting in the mix.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:55]:
You said something too in this that just strikes me as, in a way, often so obvious to us that we just forget about it, which is saying some of this out loud. And, it’s just interesting, like, oftentimes in relationships, we are on some version of a bridge, and most of us have many bridges and many different stakeholder relationships. And there’s something about just pointing out to everyone that there is a bridge, right? Sometimes just saying, hey, this thing we’re both working on together… I mean, in a way it’s obvious, but also I find that leaders who are really good at just starting conversations, meetings, offsites, retreats, whatever, kind of framing the larger picture first and just even in non-conflict situations, just framing that larger conversation first, that nobler motive, like Dale Carnegie said, all of a sudden then the context of the rest of the conversation, I think, becomes a little easier. And there’s a tendency, I think, a lot of times for us not to do it because we’re like, well, isn’t it obvious that there’s a bridge here? And yet the other party needs to know that you also see it and you recognize it and you understand that. And I hear the spirit of that so much in everything you just said.

Caroline Webb [00:26:05]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the appreciation doesn’t have to be- it can say that we’re both working on this, and I appreciate the energy that you’re bringing. And I agree that that appreciation can feel more authentic, and it can be easier to come to you if you think about the fact that you are on the same team, in some way, in an extended way, that you are rarely an adversary, really, and you are trying to get something done together, as you say, the noble purpose.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:33]:
Yeah, yeah. And even the term stakeholder, like, they have a stake in something that your organization’s doing, you’re doing, you, them. Like, again, it comes back to the bridge analogy, which is why I love it. And then there’s the deck, the deck of the bridge, the really the part where you meet in the middle. What does this part look like when you get to it in a situation like this and you, and you want to really strengthen it?

Caroline Webb [00:26:58]:
Yeah, I think it is, it’s really clear how you have this kind of conversation. And there is a roadmap that I’ve seen work again and again for finding this ground in the middle, the meeting in the middle of the bridge. And it’s got a set of steps that are very, very clear. They actually start with almost exactly what you were just saying, Dave, the positive goal for the relationship. “Our working relationship is important to me. I want it to be as strong as possible because the work we’re doing is so important. Do you have a moment to talk about how we’re working together?” And that’s what I call the intention for the conversation.

Caroline Webb [00:27:37]:
And there are other steps after that, which are observation, implication, invitation, and collaboration. I’m sure we’ll throw through those in a sec, but it starts with that naming that intention upfront, which is naming the existence of the bridge and the fact that you all want it to stand strong.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:55]:
Yeah, and you’re framing the bigger picture, the rest of the conversation, the relationship, and why this is important. And even if you inevitably, with stakeholders, we’re going to see things differently sometimes, right? But even if you do, you’re framing it in the context of a larger intention that both parties already agree to by nature of the relationship.

Caroline Webb [00:28:17]:
Yeah, absolutely. And then, once you’ve named that positive intention for the relationship, and in effect also a conversation that you want to have with them, the next step is to make a factual observation about what’s going on. Now, this is where you don’t generalize or interpret, or extrapolate. You don’t say, ” You always look so angry when you see me”. This is where you get super factual, and you think, okay, and this takes a bit of preparation, don’t get me wrong. I think you do have to think, okay, what’s a factual thing that actually isn’t laden with my interpretations. So, I might say, when I presented in the last meeting, when I got to the point where we talked about the next step in the process, I saw your face fall.

Caroline Webb [00:29:08]:
And I wanted to talk to you about that because it’s not the first time I’ve seen it. I noticed that when I presented the previous week, there was a point where it looked as if your face was registering a reaction, but I wasn’t really sure what it was, but it made me concerned. And this is where you name the implication. It made me concerned because I want us to feel like we’re pulling in the same direction. And the implication isn’t just, well, this slowed up the meeting and turned it into something that felt very tense. The implication is something you own. It makes me feel concerned because, and what that does is it allows you to own your reaction. It also is actually something that the other person can’t really argue with.

Caroline Webb [00:29:57]:
If you are feeling concerned or worried, then you are owning that. But then the next stage is invitation. And we so often forget to do this. We often make the observation emotional and not factual. You know, we layer on our sense of intention behind it. We often forget to talk about ourselves and, in the process, in the implication. And we very often forget to do the invitation, which is where we say, can you tell me how you see it from your side? And what’s powerful about that is that sometimes it’s nothing to do with you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:32]:
Hmm.

Caroline Webb [00:30:33]:
And sometimes it’s something completely different to what you thought it was. And there’s a risk that you try to solve the wrong problem if you haven’t actually had this conversation. And then the final step is collaboration. I’d like to work together better with you. What can we do about this? Can we talk about what would help us both? And that 5-step process, I have never seen it. I’ve never seen it. I know I said I should never say never, right? But never say always, never say never. In my experience, I’ve seen CEOs use it with their chair.

Caroline Webb [00:31:08]:
I’ve seen leaders use it with their peers. I’ve seen leaders use it with someone in their team that they’re not gelling with. There’s something that isn’t quite right. I’ve seen them use it with customers, I’ve seen them use it with contractors. And if you follow this roadmap- intention, observation, implication, invitation, collaboration- you are going to get to that place of being able to see a way to improve the relationship. Not saying you’re going to make it perfect, but I’ve never— I’m going to own it. I’m going to own it.

Caroline Webb [00:31:40]:
I’ve never seen it not improve a relationship.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:42]:
Same here. It’s one of the things I think is so powerful about this. One of many things is so powerful about this model. And like you, when I see people navigate a tough situation and they have a good outcome, almost always they’re using a framework that’s similar to this, if not exactly the same steps, is they’re starting with an intention; they’re making an observation. And I think it’s like really funny but also prophetic that both of us, like when you said, like, you seem to be really angry, like we both laughed. And the, the laughter, for me, is thinking like one of how many times I’ve messed up by saying something like that, or we’ve seen someone else do it. And like, even though we know objectively that that’s not really the thing to say to someone, it’s so easy in the heat of a moment to say, ” You look angry”, instead of saying something like you did, which is, I noticed something shift in your facial expression when I said this at the meeting.

Caroline Webb [00:32:34]:
Yes, yes. And it’s magical if you can get that precise. There was one time I was running a workshop, and it was quite an intimate group of leaders. There were maybe 15 people in the room. And there was one particular woman who just was scowling at me the whole way through. Not absolutely all the way through, but most of the time. And afterwards, I sidled up to her, and I used my steps, I used my process, I used my words. And I talked about this, the shift in her face or the kind of, and she said, “Oh yeah, I find it so interesting what you’re saying.

Caroline Webb [00:33:13]:
I was just really thinking hard about how do I, what do I do with this?” And for her, what looked to me like scowling was her face of concentration and real attention.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:26]:
Huh.

Caroline Webb [00:33:26]:
And I’ve had that happen so many times in my life that I’ve now learned the observation must be factual. You just don’t know what the intention is on their side behind it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:36]:
Agreed. Thank you for this roadmap. I mean, so helpful. I mean, literally a roadmap, right? We think about going across a bridge and finding a way to do that and to start. I mean, I think it’s so, so powerful. So we’re going to put all the details here in the episode notes, the 5 steps, and of course the bridge analogy. Caroline, one thing I’m wondering about, just in the context of this, is, you’ve done so much work so successfully with leaders in so many organizations for years. You’ve written such incredible books.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:06]:
You’ve been recognized by Thinkers50. There’s a lot you’ve figured out along the way. I’m curious what, in the last couple of years, maybe related to stakeholders, but just in general, what, if anything, have you changed your mind on?

Caroline Webb [00:34:20]:
I thought about this quite a bit recently because my first book, How to Have a Good Day, is being reissued next year. And so, I got to revisit what I’d written. And there was one thing I did edit, which was response times to messages. I used to say, well, if you don’t reply to someone who’s really important to you within 24 hours, that’s not ideal. I think my general sense now is you want a response to something that’s important, a relationship that’s important, you do want to do it as promptly as you can, because if you leave the other person hanging, then they’re sitting there thinking, do they like it? Are they annoyed? You want to minimize that as much as possible. But I think my sense of what’s appropriate and necessary has softened a little bit. And maybe that’s honestly because I’ve gotten busier.

Caroline Webb [00:35:14]:
I think when I was a partner at McKinsey, I was pretty overwhelmed by email. So perhaps it’s not that, but I think over time, my sense that you need to be responsive to people that you really care about remains absolutely rock solid. The specificity of my advice, I think, has definitely softened and loosened.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:36]:
And there is certainly a time where delaying a message a little bit can allow you to think about it in a way that makes your response more thoughtful and with better perspective. And again, to your point, especially in a leadership situation, you don’t want to leave people hanging forever. But there’s a bit of a both/and there too, I suppose.

Caroline Webb [00:35:57]:
Oh, so true. And I noticed that if I’m ever feeling a little tight or tense as I’m typing an email, I never send it. I always save to draft and then ideally I have a night’s sleep, and then I come back and look at it the next day. So I would recommend that as a process. I’m sure others would agree as well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:16]:
Caroline Webb is the author of Leadership Intelligence: Science-Backed Strategies for Mastering 21 Everyday Management Challenges. Caroline, thank you so much for your work and for sharing it so generously with us.

Caroline Webb [00:36:28]:
Thank you so much, Dave.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:35]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, 3 other episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode 586: How to Involve Stakeholders in Decisions. Eric Pliner was my guest on that episode, and we talked about the reality that very few leaders make decisions entirely independently. In fact, really nobody does. Most of the time, our decisions are at least influenced by, and often done with, other stakeholders. It’s also the source of tension that results in some of what we were talking about today. How can we do better at involving stakeholders in decisions? In episode 586, Eric walks through a 4-step framework on identifying the decision points and whether the other party has a view, a voice, a vote, or a veto in that. It’s a very powerful model and useful in so many situations in involving others in decisions.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:24]:
Episode 586 on how to utilize it in your organization. Also recommended, episode 614: The way to get noticed by key stakeholders. Daphne E. Jones and I had a beautiful conversation on some of the wonderful things you can do with genuineness and intention in order to build relationships with, and get noticed by stakeholders, either inside your organization or outside. Episode 614 on how to start there. And then finally, I’d recommend the episode with Michael Bungay Stanier on how to start better with peers, episode 635. We talked about his framework for a keystone conversation and how to get to a place that he calls the best possible relationship. Not every relationship is going to be amazing, but we can get to a place where we have the best possible relationship.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:08]:
And the keystone conversation often will help us prevent some of the intensity and also the challenges that we talked about in this conversation today. All of those episodes, of course, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And you can get access to everything, searchable by topic, inside our library at coachingforleaders.com, and through our free membership, just set it up at coachingforleaders.com. All the episodes are freely available on all the podcast apps out there, but sometimes it’s not easy to find exactly what you need through search. And that’s why we have the website set up for you so you can access that, plus tons of other resources inside the free membership. Several free audio courses, almost over a dozen free audio courses, actually.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:47]:
In addition, my book and interview notes, highlights from all the key authors that I’ve interviewed, including Caroline’s book today. Tons more inside of the free membership available to you. All of it at coachingforleaders.com. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Next Monday, I’m glad to welcome Leanne Dzubinsky to the show. We are going to be talking about her key research on how leaders can better support women. Join me for that conversation with Leanne, and see you back on Monday.