Culture Focused Practice

 Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here, and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Welcome back. Okay, so if you have been telling yourself that you are just, you know, keeping the peace, you're keeping the peace of your practice, and you're doing this by avoiding hard conversations, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. You're not keeping the peace.

So you basically are creating chaos that shows up later. You are stealing tomorrow's peace. In essence, you're sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and what ends up happening is that the chaos that comes up later as a result of avoiding hard conversations is quite generally speaking louder, messier, more expensive and just more chaotic than it would be that you just had the conversation in the first place.

In this episode, I am going to call out the myth that conflict avoidance equals harmony. It fucking doesn't. Conflict avoidance is not harmony, it's dysfunction in disguise. So let's unpack how your silence might actually be sabotaging the very culture that you are so intentionally trying to curate and maintain.

Let's go.

Before we keep going, actually, I'm gonna stop myself. If this hits home. If you are thinking, oh yeah, this is spot on, hit subscribe. The more you subscribe because this resonates with you, the more that like-minded people will also stumble across it, and ideally it will resonate with them too.

And then one more thing, let's cover the agenda. There's four items on here. So number one is why you avoid conflict. Number two is the hidden cost of avoidance. Agenda item number three is what avoidance looks like. And lastly, how to start leading through conflict. So this is gonna be quick and dirty today.

Number one, agenda item number one, why you avoid conflict? I'll tell you why. Because you hate it. I'm just kidding. Well, no I'm not. You might actually hate it.

Um, I'll say that avoiding conflict can be a learned behavior. So I'm gonna say it's learned, but also I'm gonna say there's something physiological about this.

So it might be learned from clinical work. A lot of us are therapists turned, um, entrepreneurs or business owners, or we are some sort of like service provider, and it's not that, you know, I grew up in the restaurant industry, so it's sort of this, the customer's always right? It's not that, but we're trained to ensure that the people around us are taken care of and that they feel okay, and that they are emotionally tended to and cared for, et cetera.

The reality is that that's not the same with our employees, but what I am saying is that the behavior is learned a lot of times from the clinical work that we do.

It's also learned from, if we tend to be people pleasers, then we're probably gonna do the same thing with our businesses. And so again, this avoiding conflict, even if you're not somebody that would identify as conflict avoidant and you find yourself avoiding conflict, it could also be a result of this, you know, people pleasing tendency.

I get it, honest. I mean, I absolutely have, engaged in people pleasing practices, it doesn't serve me. Well. Mm-hmm. That's not true. It serves a part of me, but it doesn't serve the entire practice in the way that I should be seeking to serve the entire practice.

And even related to this people pleasing aspect, I think there's something as it relates to our upbringing. You know, if you're somebody who strives to maintain peace, not necessarily people pleasing, I would say not like a yes person, but somebody who just is constantly kinda mediating, it's hard to be a group practice owner and it's hard to make those decisions or have those conversations that need to be had whenever your goal is to keep the peace.

Because when you are in an ownership or even in a leadership position, you can't keep the peace. You have to be disruptive sometimes. You have to say things that people don't necessarily wanna hear or hold people accountable in ways that don't really leave them feeling good, you know. It might be good for them and good for the group, but it doesn't feel good in the moment.

So it could be any of those like learned styles of behavior. Again, it's like, uh, keeping the peace or mediating or people pleasing, or even just the way we've learned how to engage in the clinical work that we do.

Another reason why you might avoid conflict is that you are conflating or misconstruing discomfort as danger. This also might be family of origin or upbringing type stuff, but what I don't think a lot of people are good at, broadly speaking, and even this is like regardless of upbringing or family of origin and stuff, I think in general people are not good at this.

They feel discomfort and then the sort of immediate urge just to shut it down. There's not seeking to understand, there's not trying to see this thing through to its full completion. It's just this sucks, but how do we end it?

You know, It's like we go into this almost like a panic mode a little bit. And not like, you know, running around from it with the walls on fire behind you or something, but some sort of panic mode where you're just a little bit, you know, freeze up slightly and you really just wanna like stop the uncomfortable feelings.

Not really helpful, but very common. I'll say that.

So that might be another reason why you avoid conflict is that you are misconstruing or conflating or misidentifying that sense of discomfort as danger. This, this must be wrong. Or I would say even just straight up wrong, like something must be wrong because it shouldn't feel this way.

A third reason why you might be avoiding conflict is that you might be seeking approval, you know, whether directly or indirectly. This is hard for me and what makes it hard is not the approval piece necessarily, but it's the wanting to be accurately understood. And so if I'm saying something and I don't feel understood, it's hard for me to make sense of myself in context.

Like where am I and what are my surroundings? It's hard to see myself, and so I don't necessarily know if that's tied to leadership worth necessarily, but I do think maybe there's something around effectiveness.

Like, am I effective in what I'm doing? Am I effective in what I'm saying? Do people understand where I'm coming from? I, I sort of constantly feel like I'm almost like gut checking, like there's constant sort of checks and balances that's taking place when I speak based on what I'm saying compared to what other people are hearing.

So I think there might be something when you are having a discussion that it can look like avoiding the topic at hand.

And the reality is that for me it might be something like I am not avoiding conflict necessarily, but I'm working really hard to make sure the other person gets it, so to speak. And then in doing that, I'm almost like diminishing or decreasing the accuracy or the maybe intensity with regard to what I'm trying to actually say. Almost like it works against me, you know?

And I think the same with tying your leadership worth to approval from the people around you. So maybe this looks like people pleasing, but I think it's more like if you're a person who wants to be liked or you want people to think you're nice, or you want people to think that you're thoughtful or generous or what have you.

If you want people to think of you in a very specific way, like with a certain type of word, it might be that your worth as a leader, we could broaden this to say your effectiveness, your worth, how good you are at this, is tied to that one trait that you have decided is the most important thing.

So if that trait is most important, then that means you will avoid a conversation that needs to be had in order to ensure that that thing stays true.

It's not that this is bad, or this makes you bad or wrong, or something like that. I think what's more important is that if you do that thing, then seeking to recognize what it is and when it happens, and like I said, I know some of my own stuff is being understood and if I'm not, it takes a lot, a lot, a lot of effort to continue a conversation.

And I have worked with people before who have I don't even think maliciously or directly, but just by nature of who they are as people sought to manipulate that with me in order to sort of keep me stuck in this loophole of, fuck, I'm not understood, but the understanding is never going to happen and the conversation still needs to take place.

And so you probably have a thing. I'm saying that I have a thing, you probably also have one. Recognizing does make it much easier to catch when it happens. Maybe not in real time, but even after the fact, and that means you can go revisit whatever the conversation is. So tying your worth again, or effectiveness, et cetera, to whatever that trait is that you think is most important, that's going to be a reason why you avoid conflict, a likely culprit for, for avoiding conflict.

That's agenda item number one.

Let's segue, then. We're gonna segue to the hidden cost of avoidance. There's a few hidden costs to avoidance.

One is compounded resentment, so the more that we avoid the conversations we need to have, the less trust that people have in us and around us. And so the compounded resentment is not from one hiccup, one thing doesn't go well, and it sort of leaves people feeling icky.

It's multiple times on repeat that this conversation isn't happening even though it needs to occur. It's people meaning your team around you seeing that there's a person who's sowing discord or who's not performing, and they just continue underperforming or sowing discord, and it's never really fixed.

All that does is erode trust in the people who are seeing this thing play out and happen, period. So that's where that compounded resentment comes in.

Another hidden cost is a lack of role clarity. I love this. If we are not having conversations about the. Responsibilities for each role, like what's required, what accountability measures are, what metrics people are responsible for, what specific things they should be doing, processes, workflow systems, et cetera.

We're gonna see a dip in performance, not even because people are bad or wrong or doing something on purpose. But because they don't know what's expected or they don't know what they should be measuring, or they don't understand the key responsibilities for their role.

Further still, I would say if you don't have conversations about that performance dropping, then you're gonna get more of the same. And so that's actually kind of, um, a twofer so to speak. You know, there's the lack of role clarity, period, that can correspond with performance dipping, but then there's also the conversation that needs to take place after the performance dips, and then it doesn't, so then there's more performance dipping. So two for one, you do not want those two birds though.

A third hidden cost of avoidance is that potentially, I'm not saying for sure, but potentially your team becomes conflict avoidant. So if the implicit message, sort of the subtle tone of the group is that we don't talk about things that we need to talk about, that doesn't just end with you. That starts to permeate everywhere.

Your leadership team, your right below your leadership team, all of your employees, your operations team, maybe your client care or your intake person starts avoiding conversations with people coming in the door, not telling them what's actually needed or what is expected. And then you've got clients who are frustrated because they're not getting information they need.

And also with you. If you're not having hard conversations, people will not have them with you. I think as a boss, as a leader, there's power and authority and a hierarchy.

And I'm saying that because if you don't normalize a conversation style or type or approach or topic, nobody's going to around you. If I don't say to my people, I need you to speak the fuck up, I need to hear from you what is not going well, they're not gonna come to me and offer that up on some silver platter and say, Hey, boss, just thought you should know, this sucks.

What? No, like no, hell no, that's not gonna happen. I have to be the one to have hard conversations to initiate them, including conversations that might be hard for me to even hear, to be a part of, to, you know, to see where other people are coming from with regard to what they're frustrated about, for example.

So, my point is with your team becoming conflict avoidant. I think that just circles back and points to the significance of being the one in charge or a higher up at the practice and the responsibility that is just embedded in that role that that's you. You have the power and the authority to instill change in this regard.

A fourth hidden cost to avoidance. I think this is just a given, but your culture suffers. Your culture's gonna suffer. It's gonna erode. A loss of trust, a loss of honest conversation, a loss of feedback, a loss of accurate emotionality, authenticity, transparency, candor, anything that you need for a healthy culture.

All of the things I just listed for the record. It's all gonna go by the wayside. If you cannot engage in healthy conversations, even if they're hard, the stuff is gonna start to erode. It's gonna start to trickle, so to speak.

Trickle. So there are multiple costs to avoidance. There are probably more, but those are four common, I would say common or maybe broad ones, they're gonna capture most of what can happen.

So if we segue then to agenda item number three, what avoidance looks like. If you are wondering, well, fuck Tara, is this me? Do I do this thing? I don't know, do you? I don't have any idea. I don't know you, so I can't answer that question for you. What I can do is give you some examples.

So here are some signs for what avoidance might look like. Number one saying, it's fine. It's fine. Everything's good. No, it's fine. It's good. Come the fuck on. And no, it's not. Even if it is good, there's always room for improvement. There's always, I don't say that lightly, room for improvement, improve. Always.

Saying it's fine. Does not make it fine. Saying that it's good, but also I still wanna improve these things is way more true. Saying actually, we're at the lowest we've been in five years and I'm really struggling to figure out what's going wrong, but it's important to me to do so. That's also fine. It's fine to say anything it except it's fine and then act like that's just the answer in its entirety.

Another sign is delayed feedback or half honest reviews. So if you are maybe getting feedback like months after something happened about it happening, and it's sort of finally come down and you feel like things are back to normal, and then someone says to you, yeah, five months ago, you know, I was really feeling this sort of way, or I was really frustrated about this, or I really thought we needed to fix this.

Why is it taking five months for this person to speak up? That's delayed feedback. Or half honest reviews where you, let's say send out a survey, you get all this feedback, and then you meet with someone one-on-one with regards to their survey.

You know, you're trying to get more information from them, and you realize that their survey answers are, hmm, not entirely truthful, that they're really withholding as they give feedback. That's what avoidance can look like, and this is where it starts to show up with your team.

Further still that delayed feedback might not be just you receiving feedback from others. It could also be you giving feedback. So if you notice something and then you don't give feedback on it until two months later, that's a problem.

That is delayed feedback, that is a problem. You should be giving feedback much sooner. Basically, immediately after something goes down, you should be giving feedback.

Avoidance can also look like letting poor behavior slide to keep morale up. I'm gonna say that in quotes because that's not keeping morale up, but I think if you are living in an avoidant state of mind, it can feel like, well, I need to keep morale up so I can't give honest feedback.

No, it's counterintuitive, but the healthiest cultures are the ones that give honest feedback. They're the ones that have really hard conversations face to face with each other, because that's what enhances intimacy and connection and culture.

It's not avoiding the conversation so everybody feels like it's okay or it's fine. It's being honest with one another because honesty equals trust. Especially when done in the right way. It assumes trust and then also it enhances it. It continues to make things better.

So, letting poor behavior slide does not keep morale up. That is a sign. If you are thinking that. If that's your mentality, that's a sign that you are engaging in avoidance.

Lastly, engaging in avoidance can look like overcompensating with praise to soothe your own guilt. This one actually hits hard for me, so I'm not gonna say I overcompensate with praise. I think because my brain moves too fast for myself sometimes, like I don't need a lot of praise. I don't necessarily need someone to tell me what is going well.

I wanna hear what's not going well. You know, my, my thought process is, well, this is going fine then cool, but like, how do we make it better? I'm kind of always thinking along those lines. So my tendency is actually to probably not give enough praise, and that's something that I have to work on and I still just constantly struggle with.

But if you are somebody who is going outta your way to praise people because you kind of feel bad and you're not sure how things are going or they're not doing well, but you don't wanna tell them that it's not going well so you find something that they're doing well to really highlight and really say, well, this is really great, you know, good job so and so, just because you feel bad, because they're not doing well in this other probably key area.

That's avoidance. That's a sign that you're engaging in avoidant type behavior

For the record, this is all okay. And by okay, I mean to say if you recognize yourself in whatever it is that I'm saying, take heart. It's cool. We can figure this out. It's not a doomsday type scenario where you're fucked, like this isn't gonna get fixed, you're never gonna cure yourself.

It's more like we just need to recognize what's happening before we move forward from there. We need to be able to see it clearly in front of us before we do anything differently.

In light of this vein of thought, let's move on to agenda item number four. How do we start leading through conflict instead of avoidance?

If you don't know, I'm telling you I love healthy conflict. It's so good to experience in a clean way and to go all the way through to the other side for a relationship enhancing experience.

So how we start leading through conflict is that we practice clear, timely, and direct feedback. So this doesn't mean you tell somebody how and why they suck.

This means you let them know explicitly what it is that's not going well, what you wanna see instead, and you do it quickly. Same with dog training. If you ever do clicker training, you know operating conditioning with dogs, as soon as they do the exact behavior that you want, you click. If you have to charge the mark first, but that's a side conversation.

It has to be at the exact moment that it happens because that's how they make that association, like this is the thing that's needed. It's the same with people. Very, very soon after we do something, we need to know if that's the thing that's needed or if not, honestly.

So for example, if somebody is not following a process. And you notice this 'cause you see this email come through and you look at it and you think, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? What the fuck? Like, hang on, this isn't right.

Immediately I'm gonna text that person, hey, do you have five to talk? I'm gonna call them 'cause I am that weirdo that just calls people whenever I wanna talk or I'm gonna shoot them an email and say, Hey, just quick feedback. This is a little bit off. Call me as soon as you can so we can talk through it. Or I'm gonna plug something into your schedule today so we can just talk through it quick.

Boom, immediately. And then when I meet with them, I'm gonna say, so I saw this email. I wanna make sure you understand the process because from the email, it seems like you're a little bit off.

I'm gonna clarify the process. I'm gonna ask them if that is what they thought they were doing, and if so, then we're gonna correct whatever it was that they did and I'm gonna say, okay, cool, you're enacting it wrong. Or if they say. That's not what they thought they were doing. Perfect, then now they've been course corrected. And I'm gonna let them know we need to follow this process from here on out. It's for this reason.

I always. I like to give context. I think I'm probably overly communicative in that way, but I know for myself, I wanna be anchored in a why and so I'm gonna do the same thing when I talk with people about why I want them to do something.

So immediately that's that timely feedback. I'm gonna correct something, I'm gonna do it face to face because it might be perceived as negative, and that's always better than doing it via email. Like I'm not trying to have somebody, you know, fly into a ti zzy, 'cause they got this email when I could just talk to them face to face and be like, yeah, no, we're cool. I just wanna make sure you know what you're doing here.

And it's very clear, yeah, this thing is wrong. This is what you did is wrong. This is how you should do it. Where's the confusion? And if that clears it up, then we're good to go.

That might be hard for you to do. The reality is that you can adore a person and they still can do things incorrectly.

So when I meet with people, this is also why I like to do face-to-face meetings. If there's something that might be perceived as negative. When I'm meeting with somebody, I am human with them. Like, I'm here with you doing this. I'm not trying to chastise you. You're not in heaps of trouble or something.

It's just letting you know this isn't right. We have this in place for this reason. What questions do you have? Make sure you do it this way. Cool. Thanks.

If that were to continue, that's a different conversation that we would be having. So if it happened the fifth time, we're gonna have a much different conversation. The first time is gonna be a quick correction.

And I think that it's obvious there's a very clear ask at the end of that conversation, or a very clear expectation that is set. So again, that's part of the clear and direct feedback is, this is what I expect of you moving forward.

Another way to start leading through conflict is to normalize rupture, and repair. Anybody familiar with attachment anything is gonna know this. If you did any sort of couple's work, if you do any sort of parenting related stuff, you're gonna understand what I'm talking about here.

For those who don't, the long and short of this is that healthy relationships have rupture, they have issues, they have conflict, they have friction, they have discord. And they repair. And the repair process going through that process is what makes a relationship stronger.

We should normalize the fact that rupture's going to happen. You're gonna have moments of friction and conflict and tension and the important thing is that you repair.

So when I talk about when I'm giving feedback with somebody, I'm doing it face to face and I'm being human with them. That's in large part because of this repair need. If somebody is perceiving what I'm saying as negative, I wanna be right there with them.

I wanna make sure that they know we're good, like we are good and you, it's okay that you're frustrated with me with this, or you might have strong feelings about what it is that I'm saying. I wanna be here with you in this because I want you to know that it's safe to do this with me and I'm good. I can hold space. We are good. Period. That is that repair piece.

A third way to start leading through conflict instead of avoidance is naming your own discomfort out loud. I think this is so underutilized and underestimated.

This says a couple things. Number one, do you remember when I talked earlier in this episode about being in leadership and having authority and power? It puts you at the top, so to speak, with regard to being in a hierarchy, which, if you're in leadership, it is a hierarchy of some sort.

So number one, you're in a position of power. By saying how you feel, and you're not defaming, you're not saying inflammatory things, you're not character attacking. You're stating something about your own feeling, your own felt sense of doing whatever the thing is.

It might be, this is a super hard conversation. I know it is for me. I can imagine it is for you too.

Immediately in saying that you're making it okay for them to speak up. If they're comfortable, they might not be comfortable, but you are saying it's cool if you also are struggling with this. That's one thing is you're using that power you have in that hierarchy to open the door for a conversation that can be really beneficial. A style of conversation, I should say.

Secondly, what you're doing is you are modeling vulnerability, which from a culture perspective, from a Daniel Coyle perspective, is really important for healthy cultures.

So if we can show vulnerability and say, I fucked up, this sucks. This is really hard to do. I don't know what to do right now. I need to think about it. Sort of, I don't know. I made a mistake. All of these things, they send a really strong signal.

One that it's okay to make mistakes and mess up. Two, you're saying you're not perfect and that you don't expect other people to be. That's the message, you know, one of the implicit messages I should say. And three, in doing those things you're also increasing the sense of vulnerability for people around you. Super important to do.

Another reason why this is so powerful is that it literally brings up right now to the forefront. So when you're saying something in real time, you're also allowing space for the other person to share in real time what might be happening for them.

So of course there's like this modeling piece of vulnerability and then there's opening the door for the conversation to take place. But stating it in that moment also is a, from an existential perspective, we would say here and now sort of bid. You know, it's like right now this is what's happening for me.

So you are leaning into this here and now moment, which can feed into repair from what might have been a rupture. And then it's also allowing space for the other person to do the same. So powerful. I love here and now. Also, it kind of takes the onus off of you.

I think sometimes we feel very responsible for knowing at the beginning where a conversation needs to end up. I don't know if we always need that. I don't think that we always need to know exactly where something's going to land.

I think that we need to trust ourselves to be honest in the process and to be influenced by what the other person is saying.

And so if we say, well, I know I need to make this point, for example. This thing is important, but I have no idea what they're gonna say back to me. Maybe they say something about their onboarding. Maybe if we, let's stick with that example of somebody didn't follow a process.

I could go into it and say, this is a process you messed up. This is that clear, timely feedback. You know, this is a process. You messed up. I need you to do this. Thanks. Bye.

Fine. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, although I would say you're not preemptively tending to what might feel like a rupture or what might be scary for the other person. So you're missing out on an opportunity to be human and you know, I'm gonna say repair that you might not need to repair, but let's just go along those lines.

You know, you're missing out on an opportunity to repair. You're missing out on showing any vulnerability about approaching a conversation with somebody with regard to them messing something up, and you're also not getting any feedback from them about why things didn't go the way that they should have.

And so it could be that if they say, well, they were trained wrong, that's really important for you to know because then that influences the onboarding that takes place. It influences if you have onboarding videos, some of the videos that need to be adjusted and updated.

It might be where they say, that doesn't make any sense to me for this reason with this population. I don't understand why we do this and not that. if they have insight into a process, fuck yeah, that's what I want. I absolutely am gonna make modifications based on stuff that makes sense. And so it might be, with a certain population, this process is adjusted.

So that's an example of if you are saying something in the here and now and you are allowing for somebody to share back with you, then you are potentially getting feedback on what could be happening, thus allowing you to make changes.

I think the other piece is, again, this is you don't need to know exactly where it goes. You need to know the points that you need to make, but I, I would contend that you absolutely should remain open to the people that you're talking with.

Another thing is that maybe they say, I've been having a fucking terrible month, Tara. I can't keep my head on straight. My, you know, partner lost his job, my dog died, my mom has cancer, my child is sick, whatever it might be. Or I'm just going through an exist existential crisis, any of those things.

I want to know what is happening for my people. A that might soften me up. And so instead of saying, well, you need to do this still, I might say, holy shit, a thank you for telling me. B, what support do you need? I wanna help you stay effective at your job. I wanna make sure that you are doing things in the way that makes the most sense for you and the business. What do you need from me? How do we help you get through this?

So again, tending to that sort of repair piece, just preemptively and also being human with people around you. So I'm gonna get off that soapbox. I'm gonna keep going.

The last thing that you can start doing for leading through conflict instead of avoidance. Stop confusing comfort with effectiveness.

This is kind of the opposite of the discomfort being dangerous. Don't mistake comfort with effectiveness. Just because I'm comfortable in a conversation or with a person or things feel comfortable around me, that does not mean they're effective.

Sometimes I would even say that if you are leaning too heavily into comfort, like well, things feel really good and everybody's comfortable, so it must be going really well.

No, that's not what it means. It means that things feel comfortable, which is great. It's, it's a nice feeling when things feel comfortable, but it doesn't mean that things are going well, so that doesn't mean well stop looking at your score card. That doesn't mean stop paying attention to clinician metrics. That doesn't mean well, it's comfortable, so don't rock the boat or have any hard conversations that you might need to have.

It doesn't mean any of those things. It means that it's comfortable, cool, comfort and effective are not the same thing.

That's more of a mindset shift with leading through conflict instead of avoidance is just not equating comfort with effectiveness rather than, hey, actively, you know, engage in timely direct feedback. You know, that they're, they're a little bit different, but all still pointing to the same goal, which is leading through conflict instead of avoidance.

All righty, my friends. That is all I have for you today. I hope this has been helpful. I hope this has resonated with you. I already asked, but I'll ask again.

Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. If you have loved this, what would really be helpful is if you review it. So of course I want five stars, but my real preference is that you be honest with your review.

Ultimately what that does is it helps more people who need this find it. And that is really what I'm here for, is being of service and helping folks. So thank you so much. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, and I will see you next time.

Thanks. Bye.