Management Hacking 102: Personalities, Empathy, and Difficult Conversations

all right I'm going to start a minute early because I've got a lot to cover today and 45 minutes is not a lot of time so uh we'll get started so hey welcome to my talk management hacking 102 so how many of you saw part one of this last year at bsides one or two of you okay all right cool so so this is actually the continuation of my first talk which uh was management hacking 101 uh where we covered kind of the basic six of management and Leadership um but this talk I wanted to go a little bit deeper into a couple areas that I feel are really important for all managers whether you are new in management or

leadership or you've been around the block a lot of for a while um topics such as personalities personality types so learning about yourself and learning about others we're going to talk about empathy and why that's so important to lead with empathy especially in this industry um and we will talk about ult conversations um which is a I think maybe the most important topic um that we'll cover um but also we'll sprinkle in a couple other things around managing change so we'll go through something called the change cycle um as well as we'll talk about motivation and what motivates you and your teams so just a recap of uh management 101 so we talked a lot about your role

as a leader and setting expectations listening communication giving feedback what's the components of a a great team um we also dived into kind of Performance Management so areas of like you know how do you manage to Performance of a team just kind of from a basic level um emotional intelligence which is extremely important uh in leadership and Team Management um and then finally we kind of wrapped it up with coaching and um we did talk a little bit about motivation and personalities um but this talk really is going to go a l lot deeper into those two topics specifically so you can check out the full present ation it's up on YouTube it's also on my blog

spc. so what is this talk about so like I mentioned we're going to go a lot deeper into people and personalities uh we're going to talk a lot about motivation the different types of motivation and motivators um and what motivates yourself and your team and then empathy I think this is huge empathy is something that we need much more of in this industry and frankly the entire world so we're going to talk about how to be more empathe um and to lead with empathy um what's brand new so two topics in particular I added to this was dealing with change so how do we take ourselves and our team through the change cycle which we'll go

through um and then having difficult conversations who likes having difficult conversations really well it's important to have difficult conversations but they are very very challenging so um we'll talk about a framework uh that you can use for really any difficult conversation so even if it's outside of work you can apply these things actually more than difficult conversations all the things I'm talking about today will apply to your personal life and personal relationships as well which is pretty cool so just a little bit about me so uh my name is Tom eston I'm the VP of Consulting and Cosmos delivery at Bishop Fox um I'm a I'm a United States Marine Corps veteran uh from back in the day um

I started my career over 18 years ago um and I just checked the other day I've actually been in it and technology for about 24 years so I'm like really old when I think about it um but it's been great I've I've started out as you know uh a help desk technician breake fix you know laptops and that kind of thing and then ended up in security um forming kind of the First Security team at a company that I worked at um back in the day when it was called infosec before it was even cyber security um and got a lot of experience uh that way and then just through the years I uh got into

Consulting I led and managed various teams um uh even before that I was a pentester so um I kind of understood the industry and offensive security early on um I became a director and now I'm a VP so I've had a lot of great experience over the years and I've got lots of stories that I'll be sharing in this talk as well um and hopefully those stories will also resonate with you and then I'm also the founder and co-host of the shared security podcast um I've been doing that for 14 years hard to believe um so if you're looking for a security podcast uh you can find us wherever you like to listen to your

podcasts so let's talk about personalities so why do we want to understand someone's personality well first and foremost it's really about discovering each person's unique way of receiving communication so we're all different based on our personality type and so once we understand the personality type of oursel and others we can craft our message and our communication in the right way so th so the people that we're talking to will actually understand and comprehend what we're saying it also allows us to become more empathetic we reduce conflict we find common ground with each other once we understand personality types and honestly it's about your own growth as well so the more that you discover about yourself and who you are the better

person and the better leader that you can become so I kind of put this quote in here um and I've seen this throughout my career once you understand people's personalities it's it's something magical will kind of happen on a team when everybody has had kind of training and understanding around personality types you really can start bonding with with the team you start seeing Improvement in a lot of areas um and it's mainly around communication you all just become better communicators so what's the first step in terms of learning about personality types well you have to start with yourself um and that is really the first step here and how you do that is there is

several different types of Personality uh tests that are out there um and in this in this talk we're going to cover the uh four most popular types that you'll probably encounter so there's the Myers Briggs which will go in depth about the anagram the dis and then my favorite which is the process commun a model or also known as PCM now as I go through these what you're going to find is that there are some similarities between all of them and that's kind of the cool thing about this there isn't like one personality test that I would recommend saying yep you got to do Myers Briggs and that's it I recommend kind of looking at all of them and then seeing

kind of which one resonates with you the most for me personally and for others I've talked to it's been the PCM um but others kind of resonate more with uh the Myers Briggs which is obviously one of the most popular ones that are out there so as I go through these kind of look for those similarities you might find it really interesting so Myers Briggs um this is based on the theory um which is proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung back in 1921 um so kathern Cooks Briggs and her daughter Isabelle Meers Briggs they created this indicator assessment which is known as the mbti this is back in 1943 during World War II because they needed Wom women to

enter the workforce because of the um the building of tanks and ammunition and guns and everything needed for World War II so kind of a historical fact that these two women were innovators getting women into the workforce which is pretty cool so Myers Briggs the Myers Briggs type indicator is based on four dichotomies that match up to 16 different personality types which is indicated by a code with four letters so you've probably seen these codes and letters and people talking about them we'll kind of go through what those codes mean so the first one is called favorite world so do you prefer to focus on the outer world or do you prefer your inner world this is called called

extroversion or introversion so we all have that type next is information so do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning this is called sensing or intuition decisions so when making decisions do you prefer to First Look at logic and consistency or look at the people and special circumstances this is called thinking or feeling and then lastly structure so in dealing with things in the outside world do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options this is called judging or perceiving so when looking at your own personality type there's a test that you

can take obviously that will kind of match you up but just by reading this you can probably figure out maybe where you land uh we all kind of know do we prefer extroversion or introverts or introverts um you'll look at your team you'll kind of understand is someone more shy or quiet maybe they're a little introverted someone that talks a lot or likes to be involved in activities they're probably more extroverted so for me um I am an entj which is organized confident and sometimes impatient and stubborn but I also kind of float a little bit between uh ESTJ which is practical realistic uh sometimes insensitive and and I can be argumentative so um what's interesting

about Myers Briggs there's lots of different material that's out there too so um I'll have a link to all the notes from this um with some good reference guides and books and other materials if you're interested in learning more about Myers braks next up is the enag so the enag is actually goes it's potentially there's a little bit debate in the community about this but it may go back to 4th century Egypt so it's one of the oldest types of uh known uh typology uh around personality types that's been out there um so you may hear people talk about with the anagram I'm a three or I'm a six or I'm a one and we're going to go

through all of those they go from 1 through nine um and again this is another type of uh popular personality indicator that's out there so first is the reformer so these are people that are rational they're very idealistic um self-controlled and and may be a perfectionist um the helper this is the caring person the interpersonal type they're very generous people pleasing uh and sometimes possessive uh the achiever so this is the success oriented pragmatic type they're Excel they're driven um they're very image conscious so I'm actually an achiever that's my anagram type there's the individualist so this is the person that's maybe sensitive they're very withdrawn um sometimes dramatic and self-absorbed and temperamental um the investigator so

this is someone that is intense they're cerebral type they're perceptive they're secretive and somewhat isolated the loyalist so they're committed security oriented type they're responsible anxious and sometimes suspicious the Enthusiast busy fun-loving type very spontaneous uh distractable and sometimes scattered the Challenger the powerful dominating type they're very self-confident decisive willful and and often AAL and then lastly The Peacemaker so this is someone who's easygoing um they're reassuring they're agreable and complacent so there's different types of these anagram tests that are available but I do want to call out that the most popular one is called the Rizzo Hudson anagram type and I'll have a link to uh a really good book that talks about this

uh in a little more detail next up is the dis so this was created in uh 1928 by psychologist Dr William Molton Maron and dis is really a behavioral theory that describes personality through these four Central traits so first is dominance so a person high in dominance wants to be wants others to be direct to the point open straightforward and they want to focus on on results influence so they like to be emotionally honest friendly they have a sense of humor steadiness they want you to be agreeable cooperative and show appreciation for them and then conscientiousness these are people that are detail oriented and they want others to be accurate and pay attention to detail and minimize socializing so kind

of having seen all these personality types so far you can start seeing some similarities based on uh what we've already shown but back in the 1940s there was actual an actual test that was created for this um to to help identify what traits that you align with um dis is really popular in the business world I found um I learned about disk many years ago uh at a job that I had and this is the one I kind of come back to as well because it's very simple uh to understand and again like the others there's multiple sources and interpretations of disk disk in particular can be interpreted in a lot of different ways but this is kind of

the most common interpretation that I'm sharing with you here oh and by the way I am uh a d so I'm more on the dominant side but I also floats a little bit um with the c is is my dis type so the last one I want to share is and my favorite is the process communication model so this was created by American clinical psychologist TBL ker um back in the 1970s and it was created for NASA so this is actually the personality test that was used to uh determine who's on the flight crew for like the space shuttle and the other programs because you can think about it right you probably want you know whoever's the

mission control or the mission Commander to be of a certain personality type when things start going wrong in space right you probably don't want your social butterfly in charge of the uh the spacecraft so um we're going to go through the six different personality types around this um and these actually really resonate with most people once they see them for the first time um and what's interesting about PCM is that we all have a little bit of each of these six types but we are dominant in one of them and they call that the base so it actually goes from bottom to up and I'll show you an example of what that looks like so first is the promoter so these

are people that are very action-oriented adaptable P persuasive and Charming their traits they have the ability to be very firm and direct um the question they like to ask themselves is am I alive and some examples from movies or or TV so James Bond um Sean connory is the best James Bond by the way just my my personal opinion um Captain Jack Sparrow uh and Tony Stark from Iron Man the rebel so the rebel reacts to people in things with likes and dislike these are the funloving spontaneous they're creative they're playful they're always telling jokes everything's kind of fun and funny um their traits are they like to see the humor in things and they live in the present so the question

they like to ask themselves is is am I acceptable and so movie TV personalities so Captain Kirk from Star Trek uh Tiffany uh was played by Jennifer Lawrence in silver Langs Playbook and then my favorite uh Jeffrey Labowski uh which was Jeff Bridges in the big Labowski I love the big lowski such a great movie thinker so this is someone who thinks first they identify and categorizes people's and people and things they are very responsible logical and organized their traits they think logically they take in all the facts ideas um before usually making a decision they really want to think about things before moving forward with something the question they ask themselves is am I competent so

movie TV person examples Spock perfect example of that from Star Trek Aaron Brockovich who was played by Julia Roberts um and then Monica Geller for any of you that are friends fans that would be Courtney Cox uh on Friends the Harmon ER so harmonizers are people PE people people people uh they love to uh relate to people instead of things so they're social they're creative compassionate and caring people right they're your Social Butterflies they always want to work in groups and be around people they get energy from being around people um and they're also really good at bringing people together um and adapt at those social skills of organizing teams so the question they ask themselves is am I a appreciated and

a great movie TV person example is Sam from The Lord of the Rings so Lord of the Rings again another great movie now the persister let's talk about them for a minute so uh these are your judgy people um they Judge first and they evaluate people on things with rather strong opinions sometimes they're very opinionated people they're dedicated though they're observant and they're conscientious so they're traits is they will they have the ability to Give opinions beliefs and judgments sometimes unwanted and you know that's okay um but the question they ask themselves is am I right and am I valued so uh the movie TV personality I like to call out is Dwight from the office any

office fans yeah he's totally the persister so last is the imaginer so these people are very reflective and and they're motivated into action by things and people so they're reflective they're calm they're reserved they're kind of your quiet and shy type very introverted um I find that we have a lot of imaginers in uh cyber security um it's not a bad thing um it's just a lot of people like this like to work alone they don't like workplace drama they're the type that says just leave me alone let me do my work um and they're very introspective right they they work very well with things like repetitive tasks we see this a lot in Consulting there's

a lot of people just like to do the same type of work over and over and they're very good at what they do um but the question they ask themselves is am I wanted and uh the best movie TV personality example I think is Forest Gump just a perfect example of a true imaginer so here's my PCM results um and like I mentioned it starts from the bottom up so I am a high thinker followed by a promoter and then a harmonizer and the last uh personality type I resonate with is an imager what's interesting though is that I actually see myself in all of these and this week is a great example of that so I'm going

to be in Vegas for five days of doing very extroverted things like what I'm doing now but I'll tell you what I'm going to lock myself in a room for like three days after this and I just want to be by myself I don't want any other distractions I want to kind of tox myself from just being so extroverted all week and that's okay right but it's interesting and and kind of think about where you hit and some of these levels um and again I'll have some links um that you'll take you to where you can get the test for this as well as some additional reading materials if you're interested I think it's great so let's talk about motivation who

knows of a guy called David gogins few of you yep do you think David is crazy yeah he's kind of crazy um but he is one of the most motivating uh individuals that I have um I I've read about and follow like on social media um he's kind of like a drill instructor in some ways he's a former Navy SEAL he's been through a lot in his life um but uh and he does crazy things like running a 100 mile race on a broken foot right just masochistic type stuff but what I like about David is the message that he he brings which is about you know here he talks about motivation it's kind of

craap it comes and goes but it's about being driven and I I take this as a leader is we're all here to motivate our employees so they become driven right so they literally destroy the things that they're working on right U not physically destroy right but actually have that drive in them to be motivated so all of us as Leaders that's our job right how do we find out what motivates our teams how to get them motivated to to do great things so everybody including our eles has different ways that we like to be motivated and we have to either ask them or we have to determine what those motivators are so and this is really how

they are energized and how we achieve results but think for a minute what motivates you is it money is it promotions is it titles is it uh grandiose things is it gifts we all have these different things or is it just a simple thank you um a lot of us just have different we all have different types of ways we're motivated so let's get into to how people are motivated so there's two typical types of motivators there's intrinsic and extrinsic motivators so intrisic is about uh autonomy so belonging curiosity they want to feel love learning and Mastery um and they want to have meaning in their work extrinsic people are more focused on competition they like getting

badges they have a fear of failure fear of punishment in some way so like if you're motivated by like those workouts where you got somebody yelling at you constantly and that works for you you're probably more of an extrinsic type of Mo motivation person gold stars money points rewards those are all things that kind of fall into those categories so that kind of leads to talking about this Theory called uh mullen's human motivation Theory which uh is really based on three things which is achievement affiliation and power so what's interesting about this is just like in the personality types every has uh a focus uh in terms of the ways that they like to be motivated so as I

go through these three think about which ones uh you might resonate more with and your team so the achievements oriented person so how do you know you've encountered someone that is uh an achievement person so they're competitive right they're they're concerned about outp outperforming someone else um they want to be involved in unique or very innovative accomplishments and they want to advance their career or they have a long-term achievement goal so these are the people that say I want to be a director in three years I want to be the CEO I want to do this they usually have a plan in place of what steps they're going to take to get to that next level the

behaviors you'll see so they get energy from working towards goals and they take moderate risks um they want personal responsibility and the big thing with achievement people is they want feedback right they want frequent and very specific feedback about their work they're doing how good of a job they're doing um this is very important for the achievement oriented person um and they'll get very frustrated when they're unable to get data or results and they typically will choose experts over friends to work with so uh how do you motivate someone uh with the achievement motive well you want to allow opportunities for them to work alone um and be responsible for very challenging tasks so some

techniques you could could use um be a coach so Define those job responsibilities and those goals delegate responsibility um negotiate on those performance outcomes and then provide ACC access to experts next is the affiliation motive so how do you know well these are people concerned with they're about being disliked disapproved of or rejected so their interest is a concern for others belonging to a groupism importance um and they perceive setting as setting as a social situation conductive to Friendship so these are your people people people right they love being in groups they love organizing groups and they really want to be around people so they're they get their energy around people they look to make friends at work

so these are the people that usually going to go hey can we go get a drink after work with the team uh can we socialize can we hang out um sometimes they put people before actual tasks so that's something to know about um and they may take negative feedback personally so even if you're giving a feedback you're having a feedback session with with them they may be like ooh like that really hurts and then you as a leader need to kind of overcome that and tell them like it's not that bad um so they're very interesting people these are kind of your Social Butterflies how do you motivate them well obviously give them opportunities to work in groups give them the

opportunity to create groups where they can work together with others pray them for good work um assign them jobs that allows them to help others um and Prov and provide group incentives as well so anything around social events parties these uh affiliation people love that stuff power motive so let's talk about people with the power motive now there's two there's two things about power people you have to understand there's good power and then there's bad power so that's kind of called positive and negative so so power people on the positive side they kind of use that influence uh for the benefit of the greater good right these are kind of your historical great leaders right that

have done amazing things uh in history right um they're they're very dominant on that dominant side and they're very influential um and they can do good things but on the negative side you'll see people that may be more selfish more narcissistic um also very influential um but have a tendency to go more on the negative side so you also may see Power people kind of play both of them so a little bit good a little bit bad and they're trying to find that balance this is a real struggle for a lot of power people um and unfortunately we see a lot of um bad examples in the world I won't mention any but you could probably all

guess who maybe in politics or other areas that maybe more on the negative side so their behaviors they get energy from influencing other people in outcomes um they want to influence they want to have an impact um um they love public attention um and they do things to enhance their status right and again keeping in mind that they're not all narcissists necessarily right but they could easily float into that into that danger zone so to speak so for power people you want to give them opportunities to work through uh you give them opportun to impact others positions of influence Authority leadership um you know you definitely want to give them decision Authority um in their area of expertise um and often

times they're looking for titles offices Insignia public recognition very important for power motive people um they also provided inspiration through identity of working on a great cause right give them something awesome to work on something that's really important for the company power people will love that so now I want to talk about empathy and this is really important because I think that and as the quotee from PL here everyone's fighting a battle you may not know it you may not see it but everyone has some type of personal struggle going on and for me in my career um this kind of came to a head at one of my previous jobs where I had I

had an employee that was uh started out as a total rock star just an amazing pentester totally just five-star individual slowly his performance started declining over a period of a couple months and I couldn't figure out like what's going on like he was going dark I couldn't contact him we were all working remote of course so it's really hard to kind of follow up and have one-on ones and one day I got uh we were literally at the point where we got to let this guy go um we're going to have to put him on a pip you know he's just not going to be working here anymore um because of his performance and I got a

phone call from his wife saying that um his wife found him passed out on his desk and uh nearly dead and they called d11 got him to the hospital and came to find out he was a diabetic he was having a diabetic episode um and he didn't know he was diabetic and uh it was one of those things I realized I'm like wow I thought that it was just his performance that was going downhill but I didn't realize that he was struggling with his health and that mean that for me taught me a little bit of empathy right like I have to see through that and once he got the help he needed he was again back up

to being that star pentester um and I showed him a lot of empathy for his situation and talked with his wife um but like I said we just don't know what people are going through and so we have to think about that and put ourselves in their shoes so what is empathy so it's the ability to sense others feelings and perspectives and it's really taking an active interest in the concern of others the important thing here is empathy is not the same as sympathy it's very very different um it literally is a Step Beyond sympathy where you're really feeling what that person is going through and by becoming more empathetic I think we can really build stronger

relationships with in our personal relationships with our teams um it really can go a long way and I think we all just need to learn to lead with more empathy so here's some situations I've encountered um maybe some of you have encountered um as a manager or leader um you know there's obviously the typical employee history with a negative performance or they have a poor attitude um they may have opposing views maybe on a particular project um or something that should be managed and empathy gets really hard when like something triggers you right you have a a personal trigger right that somebody has said something to you and you're like oh that's it I'm going off right um or there's a conflict

with something that you strongly believe in um or you're emotionally drained you're overwhelmed or you're in a very stressful or High Press situation these are all things that it becomes very difficult to show and have empathy but we can overcome that so how do you become more empathetic so first and foremost perform active listening so active listening is about paraphrasing and restating how they feeling where you ask questions and you summarize information back to the person so active listening is definitely one of those skills that definitely can be learned um but it's so important that when someone says something to you you're telling them I understand you and you're repeating it back to them we all

want to hear that we are understood put yourself in their shoes right ask them questions to talk about their family life talk about what's going on at home you have to try to open them up to discuss like what is really making them and what maybe are the issues that they're having that then they might be be bringing into the workplace um identify common ground if you can I know that's hard especially in this politically charged climate but um we have to try to just find those those common ground and understand different perspectives on things people have just naturally different perspectives than us so we have to try to really understand that and again by a by asking questions

and Performing that active listening is one way you can do that and the language you use is important too so saying things like wow that must be challenging for you or you know I know how you feel I've been through the exact same thing and then maybe telling a story of how something you went through was very similar to what they're going through can really go a long way and last you want to be curious right that's all about asking questions and don't be judgmental so hold that back right we don't want to be uh judgmental and we don't want to be the persisters or the Dwights in uh in these empathetic situations so I hate to bring it to you all that um

change uh is coming you cannot stop the change train right I think it's like death taxes and change those three things are always going to happen so um especially now like I just he about you know more layoffs in the industry there's lots of things going on so um I want to take you through the six changes of the change cycle and so hope this will probably help you as you go through change so change is hard right um everyone processes change a little bit differently um and honestly performance will suffer on teams your own performance will suffer as well um because it's your job to get you and your team through these changes so don't

forget about yourself we all have to process the same change that maybe our teams are going through so I want to quickly go through the six changes of the change cycle um this is kind of a well-known thing you can kind of Google this and you'll find different versions of it but this is essentially the same um so we'll talk about what you're going to see what you're going to hear and then what you should do for each stage of the change cycle so first first and foremost is stage one when the change happens this is what you're going to see you're going to see people avoiding withdrawing acting suspicious of others you're going to hear things like this isn't fair why

me I don't know or who I don't know what to believe this can't be happening you're going to hear a lot of distress but the things you should do is Ain calm first and foremost and show empathy for the situation listen let them talk about their concerns clearly Define what happened and kind of like this is how you're going to move forward this is what happened this is the change address what's the worst that can happen and can we live with it and then ensure that ongoing two-way communication it's so important that as a leader you're constantly staying communication with your team as you're going through these changes stage two is you're moving from doubt to reality so you're going to see

be a me versus them mentality defensiveness blaming a lot of judgmental and negative comments you're going to hear this makes no sense they don't know what they're doing management sucks they're terrible you're going to hear all this stuff um do they know how this is going to impact us but what you should do again address all questions concerns determine what relevant information is missing um Define that current reality right the Chang has already happened we got to start moving on um but continue that ongoing two a communication stage three is discomfort to motivation so you'll start seeing a little less frustration maybe some anxiety lowered productivity um people are really burnt out they're tired they

still can't make sense of the change but this is where you need to step in as a leader provide some direction you may have to somewhat micromanage a little bit that time I'm very much against micromanagement but in a big change that happens sometimes you have to step in help out um do more directive type things um assist people in prioritizing their work um create maybe some informal or formal distractions get the team together go out for a drink something like that and then continue that two-way communication now this is important there's something called The Danger Zone and you you and your team may actually go back to stage one where you're just going to say I'm just going to give up

there's nothing I can do and you'll see a lot of things where people will say like yeah I'm fine everything's good when in reality they're not okay um and they are back to stage one so you're going to hear some more neg negativity but what you should do is just help them identify um that root cause of feelings from Fear to discomfort encourage more dialogue um and then be really sensitive to their the needs right show more empathy and you'll get them out of stage one again stage 4 is uh Discovery to perspective so you will see people offering new ideas they're going to start identifying solutions to maybe some problems that were encountered during the change and you're going to

see a lot more energy so here I see lots of options I'm actually excited about the new things that we can do and this might be the best for all of us right so what you should do keep encouraging that idea sharing and possible solutions identify good decision-making strategies and then move away from that micromanagement don't need that anymore number five is understanding the benefits so you're going to see productivity increases determination teamwork Pride people will say I finally feel good about this this makes sense uh I couldn't see it before but I actually see how this can work now and then you should acknowledge results and productivity encourage mentoring and lastly celebrate progress right

everyone's doing a great job getting through the change stage six is now what's called integration so you'll see excitement you'll see mentoring positive attitude you'll know that you're through the change people will talk about what they learned it was tough but we made it um and it was for the best right um so continue to acknowledge what happened acknowledge those good change skills know what was done well maybe do a retro talk about what we you know what could do better next time and that's when you know you're through those changes so real quick just to finish up on the change um one thing I want to call out from this slide in particular is often times as Leaders we want to

just charge in and try to fix things because we think we have the solution that would not be a good idea when your teams are going through change so kind of hold back right avoid being defensive um avoid assuming the worst kind of check your attitude at the door I found that um you know we're just trying to fix things when in fact we just have to continue to lead our teams through that change so the last topic we going to talk about today is difficult conversations and this is important so I love this quote and I have a link to this book which is I think is the best book on difficult conversations by Dela

Stone um often we go through an entire conversation or indeed entire relationship without ever realizing that that each of us is paying attention to different things that our views are based on different information so how many times have we gotten into an argument with somebody and we didn't have all the information or we made assumptions about their intent or we found something out later after the argument happened that damn I didn't know that like it happens all the time and this applies to any kind of relationship whether it's work or personal so I want to talk about uh how a strategy around difficult conversations and something that you can use to kind of get us through that so

what is a difficult conversation well it's anything that you find hard to talk about right so this comes when we enter this thing called a difficulty dilemma so do you avoid a situation or do you confront it um there's no easy answer but I will tell you and I'm sure many of you know this that if you avoid a difficult conversation things are just going to get worse eventually so uh a great example of this is like a performance issue with an employee probably performance is going to continue to get bad if you don't have a difficult conversation about their performance personally like a new neighbor moved in and they have a dog that will not stop barking all night

long do you as the neighbor go over to their front door and say Hey I want to talk about your dog do you avoid it hope it goes away um typically the dog is just going to keep barking so you might just want to have that difficult conversation so these are all situations that we're going to be in um and and a lot of times it's around relationships so why do we need to have difficult conversations well we need to address obviously sensitive pressing issues resolve conflicts um it really help us gain a deeper understanding of others once you have that uh difficult conversation um you're going to improve relationships and you're going to have a

lot of personal growth so one of the things I recommend is like if you're thinking about maybe not having a difficult conversation I'll walk you through a framework which will help you kind of understand if you should have that that conversation or not but often times you're going to find you probably want to have the conversation so what are some ingredients of difficult conversations first and foremost we all have different perceptions right we think we're right and the other person is wrong that's the big one right um we have different information about the same issue um and we also have different interpretations about that same issue there's also something about assumptions right about intent one thing that's important is

like unless someone explicitly States their intention we really can't know their intention right um and we may feel intentionally hurt by that other person but this also may be in correct assumption maybe that person really didn't want to hurt us right but often feelings and blame are involved so we feel very passionate about a situation or about an argument that happened and we let emotion take over we get angry we yell we scream right those are all negative things right and then we make judgments right which we already talked about being judgmental um this never ends well in difficult conversations so here's a strategy for how you handle a difficult conversation first of all you got to make it safe to

talk and the way that you do that is um by embracing a mutual purpose and offering mutual respect to the other person and I know this can be hard right um one way to do this is by using what's called a contrasting statement so you state the message you are not trying to send then State the message you are trying to send so for example I am not trying to say that my project is more important than yours I am trying to communicate that we both have high stakes involved in terms of the success of our project that sounds much better that is a much more safe entry into that difficult conversation second is listen

right so seek first to understand and then to be understood is a great quote right that's about showing empathy and you want to quiet your own internal voice that angry voice inside that's saying like I know I'm right and that other person is wrong and you need to express how you are feeling but you need to do it in the right way so for example you might want to say I I want to hear what you have to say but to be honest I'm feeling a little defensive right now that actually is much better State and saying like something else that's going to anger the other person you also do this by open asking open-ended questions

so tell me more help me understand paraphrase I've already mentioned the importance of paraphrasing repeat back to them what you're hearing acknowledge your feelings say things like I can tell you feel hurt when I said those things to you those can all go a long way adopt the yes an so think about um you don't always have to give up your position even if you feel very passionate about your position you can feel hurt and angry but also think about that they can feel equally hurt and angry so you want to validate both views of a situation recognize your story and separate impact from intent so are we sure about what actually happened right could we be making conclusions or

assumptions we might be so you want to ask yourself these three questions so what did the other person actually say or do right think about it what is the impact of this on me how do I really feel about it and then based on that impact what assumptions am I making about the other person's inent so those are those three questions you always want to go into ail before you go into the devil conversation and really think about that IM messages so you want to start uh a statement with you never never want to start a statement with you this always comes across as accusatory and blaming and it always puts the person on the defense whenever you start

with you so for example you just kept rambling on in that meeting versus I didn't understand you in that meeting help me me help me hear what I'm missing is a much better approach and does not put a person on the defense and then focus on contribution not blame so there may be situations where both parties contributed to the problem we want to call that out and identify it so how can we learn from it and not repeat what we did next time so conclusions so we all have unique way of receiving communication and that's why it's so important that we understand the personality type of others but also our own so I encourage everyone to go out and learn more about

personality each person on your team has a different way of of being motivated so do we and we have to find out or we have to ask what motivates them individually showing true empathy very difficult but it's so important and we can all learn to be more empath empathetic it takes time it takes effort but we can all do it change is hard there's a lot of change going on in the world there's a a lot of change going on in our industry but we've got to navigate our teams and ourselves through those six uh stages of the change cycle conflicts are often because of a lack of information from one side or the other

and we often make assumptions about intent so really go through that strategy um you know Plan before you actually have the difficult conversation so rehearse just like anything practice it rehearse it think about the conversation you're about to have don't just jump into a difficult conversation without preparing for it and lastly like I said we all need to have those difficult conversations just don't ignore them they often just end up getting worse so a few recommended reading um and uh listening of course um this is the book I mentioned difficult conversations how to discuss what matters most I think it's the best book I've read on difficult conversations highly recommend it the other uh podcast

I recommend is cyber empathy podcast with the wonderful Andra zaharia um I have gotten so much out of this podcast she really talks about empathy as it relates to the cyber security industry and it's fantastic highly recommend it um you could scan this QR code it is not malicious I know this is a hacking conference but I promise you it goes to my blog and nowhere else um but this has a full list of all of the links book references everything in the uh presentation um that you can check out so with that I think I'm right at time so I'll take questions kind of I'll be around here mingling a bit but uh thank you all for for coming out um you

can find me on X it's it's not Twitter sorry I didn't change it Elon did but I'm probably more on macedone but I'm agent 0x0 on both and then that's my blog and my podcast so thanks everyone appreciate you