Kate's Nuggets

Recognizing a High-Stakes Conversation
Episode 2

Podcast Opening over Theme Music:
Hello and welcome. This is Kate's Nuggets, the podcast where I share bite-size nuggets of wisdom about self-leadership. I am your host, Kate Arms. I invite you to listen lightly, let these ideas wash over you. Take what you take and let the rest go. You can always come back and listen again.

Kate Arms:
One of the things about self-leadership is that it's much easier in low-stake situations than it is in high-stake situations.

As you listen to this podcast and get exercises and things to try, I will often encourage you to try in low-stake situations first before you bring them to high-stake situations. In order to be able to do this, however, you need to be able to recognize the difference between a low stake situation and a high-stakes situation.

It's tempting to want to take this stuff straight to the conversations that matter the most because that's where we feel like if we could get that right, everything would be better. And you're right, being able to handle high-stakes conversations well transforms your ability to get things done at work, at home, in all aspects of your life.

For the purpose of practicing new skills, it really helps to start where there's less on the line.

The reason for this is that in high-stakes conversations under that stress, we default if we don't have the skills to handle it well, we default to fear-based behaviors and habitual behaviors and fear-based behaviors are not nuanced, they're not using our full creativity. They do not come from our core selves.

So the first skill is being able to recognize the kinds of conversations in which you want to be careful and maybe not practicing brand new skills for the very first time.

What makes a conversation a high-stakes conversation?

It's not a high-stakes conversation if there aren't differing opinions, there's some disagreement or conflict or variety of opinions or perspectives in a high-stakes conversation. The outcome of a high-stakes conversation matters. The decision that gets made is going to have an impact on people's lives or people's work or people's feelings.

The outcome of a high-stakes conversation matters. Because the outcome matters, emotions run strong.

It is the management of these strong emotions in the context of differing opinions that makes these conversations hard.

If we do not know how to handle these conversations well, we often back away from them out of fear that we might make matters worse.

And in fact, when we handle these conversations badly, we often do make matters worse, because when we handle these conversations badly, we come from our fear-based reactions and in our fear-based reactions, we tend to get defensive, in which case we are not open to being influenced by the other person, which makes them feel unsafe, unheard, unwelcome, unwilling to compromise, unwilling to get creative, unable to get creative in many cases, or we attack or we just stop engaging because we don't know what to do. We get lost, confused, we withdraw.

None of these help make things better. So what we need to learn to do is make things better.

Self-leadership is the art of putting forward what you want in a way that is capable of being influential in the situations that matter to you. Self-leadership is at the heart of successfully navigating these high-stakes conversations.

But before we can navigate these conversations, we need to recognize whether we're in one of them or not.

There are behaviors that show up that typically point to the fact that there's a conversation here that needs to happen that is high stakes, that requires good self-leadership. These are the behaviors that you should be looking for.

If you avoid actually talking to a person and send an email or a text or leave a voicemail because you have called when you know they won't be in the office, you are avoiding a conversation.

Avoiding a conversation is a high sign that it's a crucial conversation that you do not know how to handle well.

If you are present with somebody talking about something important and you or they change the subject, get derailed on tangents or don't quite name what's important, that's a sign that there's a high-stakes conversation that you don't trust you can handle well.

You may notice movement if you are fidgeting or the person in the room with you is fidgeting, or you start a movement and then you stop it halfway in the process, you stop in the middle of a movement or a sentence, there's something holding back, that is a sign.

There might be inappropriate humor or giggling, voices might get raised, or you may start to feel confusion, blank, lost. This is a sign that you do not know how to handle this conversation at this moment because the outcome matters and your emotions are running strong.
And there is a difference of opinion in the space that needs to be navigated.

Sometimes there's just a loss of energy in the process. You may be working with your team on a project and all of a sudden it's just like nobody really seems to care anymore. Nobody's really making progress. And when that happens, it's a sign that there's something that needs to be talked about.

Something where either opinions actually vary or it is suspected that opinions vary where the outcome matters and people care. So emotions are strong.

Over the course of this podcast, there will be many tips I will share with you about how to navigate these kinds of high-stakes conversations, lots of tools that you can use for finding your core self in the middle of these high-stakes conversations, and figuring out how to speak from your perspective in a way that is most likely to effectively influence the group in the direction that you want to go.

And also leave you open to learning where you might have missed some things and might want to change direction.

But the first step is to start noticing, oh, this is a high-stakes conversation and these are the behaviors that show up when I don't feel competent to have this important conversation skillfully, and I am afraid that I will make things worse.

So, for today, here's what I encourage you to practice.

Notice what behaviors that are signs of high-stakes conversations you see in yourself.

When you notice these behaviors, try to cultivate your curiosity about yourself.

What is so important here that I am avoiding this conversation? What matters to me here? And what am I afraid of?

Notice, get curious and see what happens.

End Theme and Credits:
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To dig deeper into the topics I cover on the podcast, follow me at instagram.com/SignalFireKate or at facebook.com/katearmscoach.
To take this work deeper and learn how I can support you personally as your coach, email me at kate@signalfirecoaching.com to schedule a free consultation.
Here's to Thriving! Catch you next time.
Kate's Nuggets is a Signal Fire Coaching production. The music is adapted under license from Heroic Age by Kevin McLeod.