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Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training in your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I am your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today I have Chris Wong joining me. He has joined us before on the podcast.

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And he’s all about conversations and teaching us how to have them better with our colleagues. And today we’re going to discuss the webinar, From Conflict to Connection: Handling Difficult Behaviors in Tough Conversations. And this webinar brought in over 900 registrants, and we’re gonna be talking more about the context of the event today. So first and foremost, thank you, Chris, for joining me again. Welcome back. Thanks, I’m glad to be here again.

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And so for all of our new listeners, can you catch everybody up a little bit on your background? Yes. So by background, I’m a licensed therapist. I’m now an executive coach as well. And my experience is I did therapy for a while, but I also moved into learning and development. I oversaw leadership and career development. And then end of the spring time of this year, I got laid off just because of budget cuts. So now I’m just doing my own thing. I’m opening my own

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a business practice and so here I am. Yeah, this things can be so unfortunate, but they can open up so many new doors for so many new possibilities, I’m sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we’ll see how it goes though. We’ll all find that together. So what changes do you see happening in the L &D space right now? Well, I think I spoke about this last time and I think I…

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continue to be amazed and interested in how technology is changing L and D just because it used to be out of reach for most professionals to use it. Especially if you’re on a budget, you don’t have access to the latest and greatest technology. But now with AI just being more widespread, I think it’s becoming more more useful and more more adaptable to different price points. So even if you don’t have a huge budget, you can make up a lot of stuff as you go along.

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So I think it’s great. And think that’s also the idea of coaching is really taking off. Not just right now, but like I think in the past five, 10 years, it’s been increasing. So I think it’s only going to improve kind of how we even deliver it. away from standalone training events into actual ongoing engagement, ongoing coaching at all levels.

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Yeah, this is a question that I ask all of the guests that are interviewed on our podcast. And it’s really interesting because every single one hands down always says AI is what they see happening in the chain in the L and D space right now and how that’s affecting and changing. it’s really cool to hear the different perspectives from, um you know, the different industries or, you know, people’s different specialties that they’re they’re in. So how do you think that technology is changing?

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the way that people learn at work and what challenges do you think that that brings?

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I think the biggest challenge is people are generally afraid of technology, not afraid of technology, but they generally are weary and cautious about technology, replacing them or just using it in the first place. Much of my experience is in the nonprofit space and people don’t go into nonprofit work because they love technologies, because they want to work with people or work doing things. And so in that space, you have a lot of people that are really hesitant to use technology.

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until they see that it can make their life easier, their job easier, or speed things up. um Just being able to give feedback, I think the ability to give feedback one day in real time by some by a standardized process will be really helpful, especially for folks who don’t always work near a computer. Like now it’s now it’s being able to access anybody, even if they’re working away from a computer, not away, not at a desk, right? Like security or

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hospital workers, grocery store workers, people that are actively on the floor doing something. They don’t have access to a computer all the time, so they can’t engage in learning and training the way we’ve always done it. So now it’s exciting. Now they can actually access it more with their phones and with other mobile devices. So that’s cool. And yeah, think it’s going to make one of the one of the things I’ve seen recently is this new technology that can make video editing a lot faster.

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And so, you I learned how to use a video editor because I just like using it. But not everybody wants to because it’s really complicated. But if there was a there is a new technology now that auto transcribes and then you can just focus on transcribing the words and the sentences, which is a lot easier for people to understand at a mass level. And so it just makes it more accessible to everyone to be able to use those kind of things. Yeah. And in this new phase in your career, you know, what new things are you up to?

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Well, as I said, I’m launching my own private practice, my own private uh coaching practice. So I’ll be doing that. I’m also launching a new podcast myself. I a previous webinar I did with you all, I met another coach who’s doing similar work. And so we’ve started a podcast on how to get comfortable in difficult conversations. And so we just do interviews, we do role plays. A lot of it is actually role plays. We role play through different scenarios. What’s the wrong way to handle a situation? What’s the

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a better way of handling situation, we debrief it and kind of assess what works, what doesn’t work. So I think that’ll be really exciting once we launch it, I think next month. Or when is this coming out? Yeah, this will be coming out within the next couple weeks. So September, yeah, September, we’ll be launching that. Yeah. So I’m excited to launch that. And I’ve also just published a white paper on how to influence without formal authority. So I think for HR and L &D leaders, I think that’ll be

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super useful for them as well. That’s really exciting. think, you know, everybody is always experiences, tough or difficult or uncomfortable conversations and I, and your presentation style just from the webinars, I make it so much more approachable, I think, and give people that comfortability that they need in order to, to have those conversations, whether that’s within the workplace or their personal lives. I appreciate that. And so we recently did this webinar together about

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about handling difficult behaviors and tough conversations. And can you let us know what the key takeaways were of the event so we can get everybody on the same page if they haven’t had the chance to listen to the webinar yet? Yes. Well, number one, go watch the webinar. think it was really nice, but I’m a little biased. You know, I think the most important skill in any difficult conversation is being able to manage your own fight, flight, or freeze response, as well as the other person’s flight.

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fight, or freeze response. And that’s really the stem of most of these difficult behaviors, whether somebody gets aggressive or they’re resistant, or they start going on tangents or whether they start lying, whatever may be, they’re either trying to fight you or they’re trying to run away from the situation, avoid the situation. So a lot of it is learning how to manage ourselves first, being able to stay calm in that situation so that we can then manage somebody else.

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manage somebody else’s response and respond appropriately as opposed to reacting. So I think that’s the biggest thing is understanding that all those behaviors stem from that, which simplifies it a lot. You don’t have to memorize a thousand different scripts to manage it. You just have to memorize if this is the big response that they’re having, I just have to help reduce that response and then I can respond appropriately from there. Preparation was a big thing we talked about.

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You know, just being able to stay focused and especially if somebody’s going on tangents or they’re trying to minimize something or deny something happened, having having prepared, you can have data and say, well, I know you say this didn’t happen, but this did happen because I have this proof for this evidence that helps keep the conversation focused to especially when people go on tangents or try to talk about somebody else. You can refocus back to what you’re actually talking about. And similarly, the uh

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how you start the conversation, anchoring the conversation and setting the goals and managing expectations ahead of time is a great way to prevent a lot of these behaviors. And then I went through a bunch of scripts, but I think a lot of them share the common theme of there’s always going to be some kind of process going underneath, whether they are either fighting you or they’re angry or they’re going on tangents or minimizing or exaggerating something. The best way to respond to any of those behaviors is to

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just address it head on and call it out, but not in an aggressive way or an accusatory way, but just be curious. Just say, I noticed this is happening. What’s going on? We had talked about this goal. How do we get back? Let’s get back to this goal. What do you want to do? And then I think some people brought up questions. You know, what if, what if this gets too emotional? What if they refuse to talk? What if I get too emotional? I think I, I hope I conveyed it appropriately enough is that it’s okay to take breaks.

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It’s okay to take breaks and let everybody cool off. And you don’t always have to solve the situation right away. And sometimes you might not be able to. Sometimes there’s not always going to be a solution and that’s okay. And it’s okay to then take a break and let everybody cool off and start thinking rationally again. And of these key takeaways, like which do you find to be the most challenging for individuals to put into practice, um you know, when they’re having these difficult conversations?

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The most challenging, I mean, all of them, right? I guess it starts with even just managing your own emotional response and then managing somebody else’s. Because that’s hard. It was hard for me because I wasn’t raised to be okay with emotions. Lots of people I oh know are raised in the same way. Don’t talk about emotions, don’t have negative emotions, don’t have conflict. And so then it becomes hard to…

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You you see somebody, you experience somebody else becoming really heated and your immediate response is, want to shut down or I want to avoid it. So I’m just going to avoid it or placate them in whatever way possible. And then you just get stuck and you’re stuck in this negative pattern. And then whatever dynamic just gets worse and worse. And so during the event, we had so many great questions come through from the audience. And here we’re able to kind of look at the themes that we’ve.

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And we’re seeing throughout the that that questions feed there. So let’s go through some of those questions. So what if you don’t have time to prepare for the conversation? That was a major theme I think we saw throughout that our audience was concerned about. and I and I think I remember saying, just take a break right away. If you’re not emotionally ready, if you need time, especially if you need time to prepare, that’s okay. Just ask for it. Just say, I want to make sure I give this conversation the attention it deserves. Can we come back in five minutes?

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Even if you just buy yourself five minutes, because I get sometimes there’s a pressure to get the conversation, especially from the other person, they might be pressuring to get the conversation over with because they’re upset. Just get by yourself five minutes, enough to just calm yourself down. You don’t even have to think about what you’re going to say. Calm yourself down so you can think, so that you can even have the opportunity to think calmly and rationally and respond, as opposed to just going off your gut in the conversation.

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And what if someone doesn’t feel like they’re emotionally ready to have the conversation? Don’t have it. Just don’t have it. I know that sometimes we feel like we have to have to have the conversation. Don’t have it. Get ready by preparing, writing down a script, working with somebody else. I know if especially in a work situation, you can always reach out to HR. I guess not always, but you should be able to reach out to HR. if not somebody else that you trust.

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to role play or just talk through what you’re thinking in your personal life, know, a trusted friend, a family member, your partner, whoever may be, have somebody work with you to get ready. If you don’t have time, like let’s say, you know, it is a, I don’t know, performance issue or something where you have to talk about something or some time related thing, then you might want to get a mediator, have a third person join you that’s neutral, that can keep the peace and have them come in and…

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manage the conversation. And when should someone be bringing in a third party person to help? When do they say, you know what, this would be a good time for us to bring someone in to assist us with this conversation? Yeah. if they don’t feel emotionally ready at all, and it’s still a time bound thing, they need to talk about it very soon, and they’re still not going to be ready or ever going be ready, bring in that third party to help if they’ve tried.

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Let’s say you’ve tried to talk to this person and it’s just getting stuck. You’re not getting anywhere. You’ve tried a lot of these tips. They’re not working. Then bring in somebody else, bring in a third party. You know, that’s what mediators are there for. They’re good at staying neutral and especially because they’re not in the situation. They’re not emotionally invested. They can stay neutral. They can help both sides hear each other out. The key is to find somebody who’s not on your side or the other person’s side. It’s finding a true neutral person.

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so that they can really help facilitate and mediate. Otherwise, if you bring in your friends, then it’s only gonna seem like you’re teaming up on this other person. Yeah, and so what about when you’re trying to up ground rules and someone doesn’t agree to that or they don’t wanna talk about it? What do you do in that instance? Yeah, I think that happens all the time. think you go back to what I said earlier, which is take whatever is going on

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underneath the surface and just bring it up and ask about in a curious way. Just ask what’s going on for you. that what or invite them into the ground rule process. What ground rules? What do you want to see in this conversation that would make you feel safe to engage? They might say nothing. They might say nothing. I’ll never want to engage and just ask, just explore why they don’t even want to talk about it. I think that’s, I think somebody did ask about what if they just want to move on? They don’t want to talk about this situation.

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That happens sometimes. I think that depends on your goal of the conversation to what did you hope to accomplish? Do you want them to just hear you vent? They may not want to do that. Do you want them to change their behavior? They might just change their behavior just fine. And you’ll want to assess like maybe they really don’t want to talk about it because talking about feelings is hard for them to they just want to move on. They’ll just change their behavior. They’re happy to change their behavior. They just don’t want to talk about it. So I think just exploring more with them like, okay, what

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what is going on for you, you even want to have this conversation. And then that and that sometimes is helpful to uh create some distance from it, right? So they’re not talking about whatever is upsetting them. They’re looking at it from the outside and talking about the entire process, which is sometimes a little a little easier for people to talk about other than just going straight into the actual discussion.

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And before we conclude our conversation today, Chris, where can listeners go to learn more about your work and connect with you? Yeah, so there’s a few different places. If you want to email me, you could just email me at myleadershippotential at gmail.com. I have a couple of courses, on how to navigate difficult conversations, which we have a coupon for. And then I just launched a new one for

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performance coaching for first-time managers. So it’s just a basic quick course for them. You can find all my courses on myleadershippotential.com. My personal website, you can find me at leadershippotential.card.co and that’s C-A-R-R-D. uh And then my LinkedIn profile is always available for people to look at me. You can find me at Chris Wong, LMHC. And then you can just find my white paper.

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at tinyurl.com slash leadership potential. And so there’s a few different things. And honestly, it’s because I just am trying to find as many free resources as possible to build these things. So until until I

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I’m willing to pay for it. I’ll just have piecemeal stuff for a while. Yeah. so if you haven’t had the chance yet, make sure that you click the link in the description and you can check out the webinar from Chris. There’s a lot of great information in there that he shared. And also you can click the link below to learn more about the course that he has with that coupon code there that you can use um to get money off of that course if you’re interested in signing up for that.

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With that, Chris, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me again. It was great talking to you about this. Thank you all for tuning into this week’s episode. We hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, available on all major streaming platforms. And if you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a review. It helps us out a lot. And I will see you all next week.