147. In Favor of Explicit Conversations
What do you do when things aren’t working?
Do you complain?
Brainstorm ideas to solve the problem?
Ask folks for help?
Tell people what’s not working for you?
Lay on the floor and cry?
I’ve done a lot of that last one myself, especially when I was first building my business in 2018 and 2019.
But over the years, I have come to really value the benefits of having explicit conversations when things aren’t working.
Sometimes the conversation is being honest with a friend that you’re disappointed in how they treated you recently.
Sometimes the conversation is telling your romantic partner that your business isn’t growing as fast as you thought it would and you need to reevaluate the household budget.
Sometimes the conversation is pitching your boss on a new schedule because the one you’ve been doing is really not playing nicely with your family time, hobbies, etc and you want to set clear expectations about a different arrangement.
It can feel frightening to have an explicit conversation and say what you really mean, especially if you’re not used to doing this or if you grew up in a culture that criticized directness.
But having explicit conversations can also create wonderful results like a repaired friendship, better alignment on how household resources will be spent, and a delicious new work schedule that actually works for your life.
Explicit conversations aren’t just for when things aren’t working.
You can also use this type of conversation to foster closeness and connection when things are going well.
If you shy away from having explicit conversations or feel awkward when you try to have them, definitely tune in this week. I’ll walk you through what an explicit conversation is, what the benefits and drawbacks are, and how to cultivate the ability to have them in your life and career. You’ll be amazed how much satisfaction and delight are available when you start using this skill.
If you want to join me for an in-person deep dive day where we coach all day on whatever you want, DM me on Instagram or send me an email to find out more!
Want to create a wildly delicious life and career? Let’s work together.
The Satisfaction Audit bonus coaching call is happening TOMORROW, Thursday, August 17th 2023 at 2pm Pacific. I would love to have you join us, so sign up for the call by clicking here!
I have one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Click here to schedule a consult call with me so we can talk about how one-on-one coaching could support you in creating a magical life and career.
My small group coaching program, Satisfied AF, is officially open for enrollment! Click here to schedule a consult call for Satisfied AF and we can figure out what’s not working in your life and career as well as how to transform it into something that delights you.
Want something a little more extra?
I have just the thing.
My year-long coaching and mentorship program, Unhinged AF, is the most extra, extravagant offering I currently have. One-on-one coaching, in-person or virtual deep dive days, and special surprises. If this sounds like just the thing for you, book a consult call and let’s discuss a customized program that’s all about helping you break free from your current life and career to build something that truly blows your mind.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The benefits and pitfalls of having explicit conversations.
Why most people don’t want to have explicit conversations.
A client story about the power of having explicit conversations.
Instances in which we might want to have an explicit conversation.
How to give yourself permission to have explicit conversations.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
If you’re enjoying the show, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
Feel free to ask me any questions over on Instagram!
If there are topics y’all want me to talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about the benefits and delights of having explicit conversations.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I’m in a great mood and I hope you are too. I just got back a few days ago from Savannah and I had the most fun time. I was on a retreat with a small group coaching program that I’m part of as a client. As many of y’all know, I’m doing Susan Hyatt’s The Ultimate coaching program, which is a year of coaching and mentorship where I get one on one coaching with her, and I’m also in her group program and we also have in-person retreat days.
And so last weekend was the retreat for the small group called Beyond. And so I was in Savannah with, I think, 12 other amazing women and non-binary folks and it was so much fun. It was such a powerful experience. It was just so cool to be in community and getting to know these people more deeply, being supported, supporting them, and making big decisions and power moves in our lives and businesses. So I’m very fucking fired up from that and really excited to think about starting to meet with my clients in person.
I’ve been in business for just about five years and the whole time I’ve done everything virtually. Even before the pandemic I only met with clients on Zoom. I guess I did have one client when I very first started who was also in Seattle and I met her in-person a few times. But that was definitely the exception. And then almost all of it has been virtual.
But working with Susan Hyatt and getting to be in-person with her has really, like I said, it’s gotten me fired up. So I’m going to start offering in-person coaching days. I’m not going to do retreats yet because I think they require a lot of skill and planning and I think it makes more sense for me to start with something, you know, this is what I always recommend for clients, is starting with something too small to fail or easier to tackle and to navigate and manage.
So I’m going to start with in-person deep dive days. So if you would like an in-person deep dive day where we coach all day on whatever you want, it can be business, it can be working at a job, it can be relationship stuff, it can be moving to a new city, whatever you want, that’s going to be something I’m going to be offering.
And if you just cannot wait to find out the details, just DM me on Instagram or send me an email via my website and we can talk all about how you can be one of the very first people to have one of those deep dive days.
Okay, I wanted to tell you all about a client win. So one of my clients who actually signed up to be in SAF in the fall and as part of the client signing up early, I gave her some bonus coaching calls. So we did some coaching and then she reported back a great win and I want to tell you about it, with her permission, of course.
So the coaching was about she had just gotten promoted at work and taken on a new leadership role. And that’s super exciting, but it also meant there’s way more work on her plate and she was having a little bit of trouble balancing it all and getting everything done without overworking, staying late, working on the weekends and that kind of stuff. And it was interesting, because I asked her, have you spoken to your direct manager about this? And she hadn’t.
And part of the reason she hadn’t because we touched base and I was like, what was the blocker to you doing that? And it was like she wanted to be able to do everything herself without any help, right? And I think she just thought she should be able to figure it out. But the reality was there was more work than there were hours, right?
And this happens a lot. I’ve had this happen with so many clients over the years. And sometimes there’s work we can do more efficiently or more effectively, but a lot of times people are overworking and their direct boss or manager or supervisor does not actually realize that they have more work than they can fit into 40 hours. And I’m a really big fan of just having an explicit conversation, so I invited this client to do that.
And let’s be clear, y’all, she didn’t want to do that. And people generally don’t, right? People generally do not want to have an explicit conversation about their limits because they have this internalized belief that they should just be able to do everything on their own without getting help. Or that they should just be able to manage the workload, especially if someone that they admire used to be in the role and they never saw what happened in the background, right?
So they think, well, that person just managed it, I should be able to too. Or we’re scared to tell our manager that we can’t handle the workload because we think maybe they’re going to take our promotion away, or maybe they’re going to tell us we’re not good enough.
And I get all of those fears, I’ve had many of them myself. Just because I’m a fan of explicit conversations doesn’t mean they’re always super fucking easy, right? They can be really scary, but they’re very revealing, everything comes to the surface, and we just have this opportunity to get clarity. And sometimes the clarity is not super fun and our favorite, but a lot of times the clarity is actually really helpful and then everything goes forward much more smoothly.
And that was the case for this client. So she reported back in an email that she talked to her manager, and everything is much better. She decided to give one of her projects away and then her manager was like, “Great, that’s exactly what you should have done.” So she has a breakdown, right?
She’s in a leadership position, but she’s also still doing the main work of the team. And so she thought it was supposed to be a certain percentage break of how much was the leadership work and how much was the work for the team? And some of the assumptions she was making, she was incorrect about.
And here’s the thing, we so often are like, oh, I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to find out I’m wrong. But sometimes finding out you’re wrong is the best fucking news. And it was for this client, right? Because the things she was wrong about, when they got corrected, it actually made her job much easier and much more doable.
And I wanted to tell you about it because I know that a lot of you are experiencing something similar to what my client is going through where something in your life or something in your career or something in your business is not fucking working. And maybe, like my client, you’re like, I cannot do my job in the amount of hours I have, but I don’t want to work extra.
Or maybe it’s like something in your business, right? Where you’re like, I cannot be profitable at this level of revenue, but maybe you don’t want to talk to anyone about that to kind of figure out what’s going on or like how you could be profitable. Or maybe it’s something with parenting your kid where you’re like, I cannot figure out how to parent my kid about this one issue.
But if you are hiding that, again, I get the impulse and it’s not that we have to share everything with everyone, but sometimes being able to have explicit conversations with people where we say, hey, this thing’s not working and I don’t understand why, that can be so powerful.
And it can really reveal, I think, ways for you to move forward and little tweaks you need to make or big tweaks you need to make. And sometimes it does bring up things that we really have to confront, where we’re like, oh, that’s really fucking not going to work. But then that’s also good to know.
So that was the win from my client, was that when she had this explicit conversation with her supervisor, everything got a lot better. So I a little bit started tackling the main meat of the podcast in that win, but let’s circle back to the top so we can really make sure we get it all.
And also big congratulations to this client for doing something super brave because, like I said, a lot of us don’t want to have these explicit conversations. And she did and she got an amazing outcome. And that deserves so much fucking celebration. Good job, you’re fucking crushing it.
Okay, so this is what the whole podcast is going to be about, is explicit conversations, the benefits and joys, how to have them. And yes, we’ll touch a little bit also on pitfalls and things we don’t prefer as much because, of course, there are cons to everything as well.
Okay, so like I was saying in the part where we were sharing the client win, a time when we might want to have an explicit conversation is when something’s not working for us and we kind of can’t figure it out on our end.
So when I was talking to that particular client, one of the things I was also mentioning is sometimes in particular with bandwidth, like work bandwidth, when we talk to our manager we can say like, okay, this is how I’m doing things. These are the things, like these are the priorities, is there something I’m missing, right? Is there a faster, better way to do this that I just don’t know about?
There are so many times in work situations where something is taking a lot of time and the person isn’t doing it in the most efficient way. So that can be like, I mean, it might be a little embarrassing but also think about how beneficial that is to find that information out as soon as possible.
So one of the joys and benefits of having explicit conversations is you might find out there’s a better way to do things that’s going to give you so much time and energy back. Another benefit is you can check on priorities, and that’s also something I invited this client to do.
Some advice I got a long time ago, I think it might have been from my friend Gina, but I’m not 100% sure. But the advice basically was when you come to your manager to talk about something that’s not working, come with solutions all ready that you’ve come up with, right?
So if you have more work than you have time to do it, like let’s say you have 15 tasks and you have time for three. If you get clear on what the 15 tasks are and then you look through those and then you pick what you think the three priorities are. And then prioritize the other 12 in the order you think they go in and kind of think through, is there something here that could be delegated? Is there something here that maybe doesn’t need to be done at all, but I need to communicate that I’m not going to be doing it?
And so when you go to your manager to have this explicit conversation, you’re kind of saying to them, okay, this isn’t working, but here’s the solution I’ve come up with and I’m just checking that solution. Because your manager might go to a different level of meetings, they might have different intel about what’s needed or what’s important.
And I used to do this at Expedia. I would always have a ton of projects and I would go into meetings with my manager, Bobby, and I would be like, okay, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what I think the prioritization is. Am I missing anything? Or like, here’s what I’m doing and here’s how long I think it’s going to take, am I missing anything? Could this be done faster? Is there a tool I don’t know about? Am I doing someone else’s job as part of my job because I didn’t know someone else is actually supposed to be doing it?
I wrote IT communications, right? And so I don’t totally remember because this was years ago, but I think in the beginning I would just write the thing from scratch. And then over time, I built a template. And so when people wanted the communication from me, I would kind of send them the template and be like, fill this out and then I’ll zhuzh it, right? I’d floss it and make it pretty and make all the language sound good, but they had to fill in things like dates and times and the content, like what was going to be happening that the email was about.
And that was great for a few reasons because reason number one is that I’m not kind of going back and forth with that person to kind of get all those details, right? They have a document that lists everything I need. And also, then it’s on them to do the work for then the work to come back to me. So anyways, that’s a bit of a little – You know how I am, it’s always tangents all the time here.
But that’s kind of something you could be talking to your manager about. But especially when you step into a new role, like my client, we have all these underlying assumptions. We don’t know what people in that level of role are doing a lot of the time. Maybe we know what that level of role did at like a different company, but maybe we don’t know what it does here. We don’t know what the systems and processes are.
And it can go both ways. Sometimes we’re doing our work super fast and then we need to check in about things like, am I missing something? Is there a process or system here that I didn’t have in my old work that I need to be doing so we don’t all be surprised later when it’s not done?
And sometimes it’s like, oh, this is taking up all my time, but it’s only supposed to take up 50% of my time. Are we confused about the workload and how long that should take? Or is there something I don’t understand about how to do this work?
So let’s look at some examples that are not about work, even though this is a work podcast, for now. Spoiler alert, we’re going to have a new podcast name and a little bit of a new approach coming soon. So stay tuned for that.
So you might also want to use the tool of explicit conversations, let’s say in a conversation with your significant other that you live with. Maybe something’s not working there, maybe it’s like the chore breakdown of the house.
And so the way a lot of people handle this is like one-offs, right? Like, no, you unload the dishwasher or, no, you take the trash out. Or there’s kind of a passive aggressive approach of just being mad at the person or doing the work, but being resentful.
And I would invite that an explicit conversation could be really beneficial in this situation. Now, again, it might not be the most fun thing you’ve ever done with your significant other. It can feel awkward. It can feel uncomfortable. But it can be so helpful to kind of get on the same page.
And what you’re doing then is you’re getting real information, versus operating from assumption, right? Because you might be like, I always unload the dishwasher and they never unload the dishwasher and it’s bullshit. And then you might sit down and have an explicit conversation and they might go, I always take out the trash and you never take out the trash.
Because this has happened with Alex and I. We both sometimes think we’re doing more work than the other one. But when we have explicit agreements and we look at the breakdown, then we’re like, actually, I feel really good about this. Right? Like in our house Alex always takes out the trash and the recycling, and I never do, but I have other chores.
And we’re so silly, y’all. We’ve actually gone through our entire chore list recently, and this was my idea because this is how my brain works. We associated a cost to every single chore that either one of us does in the household. And the cost of the chore is based on what Alex calls the nasty factor, like how gross is it to do this chore? It’s based on the time factor, like how much time does it take up? It’s based on an energy factor, like how much energy mental or physical does it take up?
And so we associated a cost with every chore and then we divided our chores such that we both are doing the same amount, like money wise, which makes us both super happy because sometimes I’m doing a chore and she’s not just because that’s the moment I’m doing my chore and she’s not doing hers right then. And I used to feel much more annoyed and resentful, and now I’m like, oh, I’m earning her taking the trash out, right? I’m like, oh, it’s so fucking great.
And I know that we did this kind of analysis where I feel like it’s very equitably distributed between the two of us. So that feels really good. But so that’s the kind of thing that could happen in an explicit conversation.
When we have sort of these, I mean, I guess we could call it implicit. I guess it’s not an implicit conversation, but we have like implicit understandings or implicit agreements. They’re not explicit. They’re not spoken. They’re not agreed to. And then there’s also a lot of wandering.
There’s a lot of wondering, like, am I doing this right? Is this working? Are they happy with it? Is everything getting done? Where am I? And I think for so many of us, we don’t like being in that implicit place of trying to guess if the other person is happy and if they like whatever is going on. But it feels scary or hard or something else to actually just have the explicit conversation.
I think for a lot of people, they also don’t want to have the explicit conversation because they think they’re already supposed to know. So I think that’s really interesting, too. I’m like, but do you know? And they’re like, no. And I’m like, so then what if we find out? And they’re like, but I should know. And I’m like, but you don’t know. And how were you supposed to know? Are you supposed to guess?
So there’s a layer to this, too, of giving yourself permission to want an explicit conversation. Giving yourself permission to have the desire for things to be stated out loud, stated in writing or whatever, and agreed to. And that that’s something you’re allowed to ask for and you’re allowed to want. And actually, in a lot of situations, it makes way more sense to have that.
I saw this TikTok once. It was like, there’s ask culture and guess culture, I don’t know. But kind of the breakdown was one culture will wait for someone to offer something, but the other culture will ask for it. And I understand that there can be different cultural breakdowns.
And if that applies to you and you prefer to do the implicit understanding, I’m not here to tell you that this is a better way. And I’m not here to tell you that you have to do it this way. I just want you to understand the benefits and joys of this way so that maybe it’s a tool you can have in your toolkit.
A lot of us also, whether we discuss things explicitly or we try to come to implicit understandings, a lot of that depends on the culture that we grew up in. The culture of our family, but also the culture of the city or state. The culture of the area of the world that we grew up in. And so there are also people, I think, who really want this skill, but they’re like, oh, I don’t know how to do it.
So this is also a moment to say if you’ve never communicated like this, it’s not too late. You can still learn this skill and you can still employ it, and you can still enjoy the benefits and delights of explicit conversations. And you might feel a little awkward at first. And that’s okay because that’s how we all learn. And so I think I would just try it in really small ways that feel really safe, and then celebrate the shit out of yourself. And then you can try it in increasingly bigger ways.
And another thing you can do is you can also find a friend to practice with you where you’re like, I’d like to practice having explicit conversations. Can I practice that with you? Role-playing, I think, always seems silly when you’re doing it because you’re like, but we both know it’s a role play. But the human brain learns through play much faster than how it learns through other things. And to me, role-playing is just a form of play.
And also, human brains like to do things they’ve already done. So the more you’ve done something, even if you were just playing, the easier it is to then do those actions or say those words again. So that’s a way that you can tap into this skill if it’s not something that’s already in your repertoire.
Okay, but let’s also, of course, take a moment to talk about the cons and pitfalls of explicit conversations because let’s be honest, there are some. If you’re afraid of having these kinds of conversations, that makes sense too because a lot of times when we have an explicit conversation it goes great. We get great information that helps us move forward.
Once in a while when you have an explicit conversation, it goes sideways, right? You’re like, oh, am I performing well? And they’re like, no, you’re not, right? Or you’re like, oh, let’s divide the chore chart and your significant other is like, I’m not going to do that. Or you’re like, oh, let’s define the relationship and the person is like, I don’t want to define or be in the relationship.
So I’m not saying that there’s no risk. And I’m not saying that it’s never going to sting, the information that you get. What I would offer is that it’s often good to know, right? Like, if you’re in a job and you finally get up the guts to ask if you’re performing well and they say you’re not, that’s good to know, right? Because either what would constitute performing well is something you’re not willing to do, like working extra hours or something. Or they’re going to give you information about how you can perform well and then you can address that, right?
Or if you want to negotiate the chore chart with your significant other and they’re like, I don’t want to, I want you to do it all. That’s good to know. Do you want to be in that relationship? If you do want to be in that relationship, do you want to live in the same house as that person? Or maybe you’re like, oh, I want to be in the relationship but not live in the same house. That would be an unconventional solution, but you’re allowed to have unconventional solutions, right?
And if you’re sort of implicitly just trying to understand what’s going on or kind of guilt them into doing chores, you’re allowed to do that. But if you get the information that they’re not interested and they’re not going to do it, that’s just good for you to know. And then you can choose how you want to move forward.
And I would offer the same thing if you’re trying to define the relationship with somebody, and then what you find out is they don’t actually want to be in a relationship with you. Yeah, that could feel really painful. We might need some soothing, right? Self-soothing or friend soothing, or we might need to take a walk or have a warm bath or cry for a little bit. And also, it’s probably useful to know that information versus just wondering about where they’re at and if they’re in with you or not.
So that’s one set of pitfalls. And then I think the other thing is not everyone is comfortable with explicit conversations. I think, as I’ve kind of built the case for on this podcast, I think it’s a great tool. You also get to feel it out with the different people in your life. And there’s like a continuum of how explicit you want to be, right? Like you can have what I’m going to call softly explicit, or you can have super direct conversations.
Kind of for the purposes of this podcast it’s just having the conversation, even if you use kind of soft language around it or you’re not super blunt or direct. I think it can still be an explicit conversation if you’re just talking to the person and getting the information and sharing what you need to share. But not everyone responds well to that.
I will say, I think in a workplace it’s more expected. In personal relationships some people don’t do well with it. So I think you kind of have to use your own best judgment. And you also have to decide what kind of relationships you want to have.
If you want to have relationships where you can have explicit conversations and you try to have an explicit conversation with someone and it doesn’t go well, that’s good to know. You can then decide, okay, I’m willing to do it differently with this person because I really cherish them.
Or you can decide, you know what, maybe they’re actually not a good fit, because I want to be able to have these conversations. And if they can’t do that, maybe they don’t actually fit into the kind of life I’m trying to build, the kind of life that’s going to be wildly satisfying and delicious to me.
Okay, so it’s your turn, what explicit conversation would you like to have? And maybe like to is the wrong framing. What situation in your life could be dramatically improved if you were willing to have an explicit conversation? Who do you need to have that explicit conversation with? What information do you need to give them and what information do you need to get from them? And what needs to happen for you to have the courage to do that?
All right, I’m so excited for what could be possible in your lives and for how you can use this tool to create more satisfaction and delight, more alignment, more deliciousness in your life and in your career. And I want to hear all about what you create when you use this tool, so come comment on Instagram and tell me all about it, send me an email. I love hearing what y’all do with the information we talk about on the podcast.
Remember when I told you about the satisfaction audit and that we were going to have a special call about it? Well, I have those dates now. The satisfaction audit bonus coaching call, which is open to the public, is going to be on Thursday, August 17 at 2pm Pacific, and I would love to have you join us. You can sign up for the call at the link in the show notes and there’s also a link on Instagram in my bio.
During this call, what we’re going to do is go over what the satisfaction audit is and how to use it in your own life, career, and other areas of your life so that you can be having a more satisfying, delicious, wonderful time, so that you can get more of what you want. It’s going to help you figure out what’s working and what’s not working. It’s going to help you figure out where you want to go. It’s going to help you remove obstacles. And we’re also just going to have a super fun time. So be sure to sign up for that call and join us.
And also, listen, this shit is not for the faint of heart. If you need someone to support you and to be there with you as you go about developing this skill, if you want someone to celebrate with you when you finally have an explicit conversation and it goes really well, I have room for one on one clients and there’s also still room in the next cohort of Satisfied As Fuck. And I’ve got those deep dive days, those in-person deep dive coaching days.
And I would love to support you in one or all of those programs. So scoot on over to my website, sign up for a consult call and let’s talk all about how coaching tools and coaching with me can help you create a life that is wildly satisfying and delicious.
All right, that’s what I have for you all this week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I’m in a great mood and I hope you are too. I just got back a few days ago from Savannah and I had the most fun time. I was on a retreat with a small group coaching program that I’m part of as a client. As many of y’all know, I’m doing Susan Hyatt’s The Ultimate coaching program, which is a year of coaching and mentorship where I get one on one coaching with her, and I’m also in her group program and we also have in-person retreat days.
And so last weekend was the retreat for the small group called Beyond. And so I was in Savannah with, I think, 12 other amazing women and non-binary folks and it was so much fun. It was such a powerful experience. It was just so cool to be in community and getting to know these people more deeply, being supported, supporting them, and making big decisions and power moves in our lives and businesses. So I’m very fucking fired up from that and really excited to think about starting to meet with my clients in person.
I’ve been in business for just about five years and the whole time I’ve done everything virtually. Even before the pandemic I only met with clients on Zoom. I guess I did have one client when I very first started who was also in Seattle and I met her in-person a few times. But that was definitely the exception. And then almost all of it has been virtual.
But working with Susan Hyatt and getting to be in-person with her has really, like I said, it’s gotten me fired up. So I’m going to start offering in-person coaching days. I’m not going to do retreats yet because I think they require a lot of skill and planning and I think it makes more sense for me to start with something, you know, this is what I always recommend for clients, is starting with something too small to fail or easier to tackle and to navigate and manage.
So I’m going to start with in-person deep dive days. So if you would like an in-person deep dive day where we coach all day on whatever you want, it can be business, it can be working at a job, it can be relationship stuff, it can be moving to a new city, whatever you want, that’s going to be something I’m going to be offering.
And if you just cannot wait to find out the details, just DM me on Instagram or send me an email via my website and we can talk all about how you can be one of the very first people to have one of those deep dive days.
Okay, I wanted to tell you all about a client win. So one of my clients who actually signed up to be in SAF in the fall and as part of the client signing up early, I gave her some bonus coaching calls. So we did some coaching and then she reported back a great win and I want to tell you about it, with her permission, of course.
So the coaching was about she had just gotten promoted at work and taken on a new leadership role. And that’s super exciting, but it also meant there’s way more work on her plate and she was having a little bit of trouble balancing it all and getting everything done without overworking, staying late, working on the weekends and that kind of stuff. And it was interesting, because I asked her, have you spoken to your direct manager about this? And she hadn’t.
And part of the reason she hadn’t because we touched base and I was like, what was the blocker to you doing that? And it was like she wanted to be able to do everything herself without any help, right? And I think she just thought she should be able to figure it out. But the reality was there was more work than there were hours, right?
And this happens a lot. I’ve had this happen with so many clients over the years. And sometimes there’s work we can do more efficiently or more effectively, but a lot of times people are overworking and their direct boss or manager or supervisor does not actually realize that they have more work than they can fit into 40 hours. And I’m a really big fan of just having an explicit conversation, so I invited this client to do that.
And let’s be clear, y’all, she didn’t want to do that. And people generally don’t, right? People generally do not want to have an explicit conversation about their limits because they have this internalized belief that they should just be able to do everything on their own without getting help. Or that they should just be able to manage the workload, especially if someone that they admire used to be in the role and they never saw what happened in the background, right?
So they think, well, that person just managed it, I should be able to too. Or we’re scared to tell our manager that we can’t handle the workload because we think maybe they’re going to take our promotion away, or maybe they’re going to tell us we’re not good enough.
And I get all of those fears, I’ve had many of them myself. Just because I’m a fan of explicit conversations doesn’t mean they’re always super fucking easy, right? They can be really scary, but they’re very revealing, everything comes to the surface, and we just have this opportunity to get clarity. And sometimes the clarity is not super fun and our favorite, but a lot of times the clarity is actually really helpful and then everything goes forward much more smoothly.
And that was the case for this client. So she reported back in an email that she talked to her manager, and everything is much better. She decided to give one of her projects away and then her manager was like, “Great, that’s exactly what you should have done.” So she has a breakdown, right?
She’s in a leadership position, but she’s also still doing the main work of the team. And so she thought it was supposed to be a certain percentage break of how much was the leadership work and how much was the work for the team? And some of the assumptions she was making, she was incorrect about.
And here’s the thing, we so often are like, oh, I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to find out I’m wrong. But sometimes finding out you’re wrong is the best fucking news. And it was for this client, right? Because the things she was wrong about, when they got corrected, it actually made her job much easier and much more doable.
And I wanted to tell you about it because I know that a lot of you are experiencing something similar to what my client is going through where something in your life or something in your career or something in your business is not fucking working. And maybe, like my client, you’re like, I cannot do my job in the amount of hours I have, but I don’t want to work extra.
Or maybe it’s like something in your business, right? Where you’re like, I cannot be profitable at this level of revenue, but maybe you don’t want to talk to anyone about that to kind of figure out what’s going on or like how you could be profitable. Or maybe it’s something with parenting your kid where you’re like, I cannot figure out how to parent my kid about this one issue.
But if you are hiding that, again, I get the impulse and it’s not that we have to share everything with everyone, but sometimes being able to have explicit conversations with people where we say, hey, this thing’s not working and I don’t understand why, that can be so powerful.
And it can really reveal, I think, ways for you to move forward and little tweaks you need to make or big tweaks you need to make. And sometimes it does bring up things that we really have to confront, where we’re like, oh, that’s really fucking not going to work. But then that’s also good to know.
So that was the win from my client, was that when she had this explicit conversation with her supervisor, everything got a lot better. So I a little bit started tackling the main meat of the podcast in that win, but let’s circle back to the top so we can really make sure we get it all.
And also big congratulations to this client for doing something super brave because, like I said, a lot of us don’t want to have these explicit conversations. And she did and she got an amazing outcome. And that deserves so much fucking celebration. Good job, you’re fucking crushing it.
Okay, so this is what the whole podcast is going to be about, is explicit conversations, the benefits and joys, how to have them. And yes, we’ll touch a little bit also on pitfalls and things we don’t prefer as much because, of course, there are cons to everything as well.
Okay, so like I was saying in the part where we were sharing the client win, a time when we might want to have an explicit conversation is when something’s not working for us and we kind of can’t figure it out on our end.
So when I was talking to that particular client, one of the things I was also mentioning is sometimes in particular with bandwidth, like work bandwidth, when we talk to our manager we can say like, okay, this is how I’m doing things. These are the things, like these are the priorities, is there something I’m missing, right? Is there a faster, better way to do this that I just don’t know about?
There are so many times in work situations where something is taking a lot of time and the person isn’t doing it in the most efficient way. So that can be like, I mean, it might be a little embarrassing but also think about how beneficial that is to find that information out as soon as possible.
So one of the joys and benefits of having explicit conversations is you might find out there’s a better way to do things that’s going to give you so much time and energy back. Another benefit is you can check on priorities, and that’s also something I invited this client to do.
Some advice I got a long time ago, I think it might have been from my friend Gina, but I’m not 100% sure. But the advice basically was when you come to your manager to talk about something that’s not working, come with solutions all ready that you’ve come up with, right?
So if you have more work than you have time to do it, like let’s say you have 15 tasks and you have time for three. If you get clear on what the 15 tasks are and then you look through those and then you pick what you think the three priorities are. And then prioritize the other 12 in the order you think they go in and kind of think through, is there something here that could be delegated? Is there something here that maybe doesn’t need to be done at all, but I need to communicate that I’m not going to be doing it?
And so when you go to your manager to have this explicit conversation, you’re kind of saying to them, okay, this isn’t working, but here’s the solution I’ve come up with and I’m just checking that solution. Because your manager might go to a different level of meetings, they might have different intel about what’s needed or what’s important.
And I used to do this at Expedia. I would always have a ton of projects and I would go into meetings with my manager, Bobby, and I would be like, okay, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what I think the prioritization is. Am I missing anything? Or like, here’s what I’m doing and here’s how long I think it’s going to take, am I missing anything? Could this be done faster? Is there a tool I don’t know about? Am I doing someone else’s job as part of my job because I didn’t know someone else is actually supposed to be doing it?
I wrote IT communications, right? And so I don’t totally remember because this was years ago, but I think in the beginning I would just write the thing from scratch. And then over time, I built a template. And so when people wanted the communication from me, I would kind of send them the template and be like, fill this out and then I’ll zhuzh it, right? I’d floss it and make it pretty and make all the language sound good, but they had to fill in things like dates and times and the content, like what was going to be happening that the email was about.
And that was great for a few reasons because reason number one is that I’m not kind of going back and forth with that person to kind of get all those details, right? They have a document that lists everything I need. And also, then it’s on them to do the work for then the work to come back to me. So anyways, that’s a bit of a little – You know how I am, it’s always tangents all the time here.
But that’s kind of something you could be talking to your manager about. But especially when you step into a new role, like my client, we have all these underlying assumptions. We don’t know what people in that level of role are doing a lot of the time. Maybe we know what that level of role did at like a different company, but maybe we don’t know what it does here. We don’t know what the systems and processes are.
And it can go both ways. Sometimes we’re doing our work super fast and then we need to check in about things like, am I missing something? Is there a process or system here that I didn’t have in my old work that I need to be doing so we don’t all be surprised later when it’s not done?
And sometimes it’s like, oh, this is taking up all my time, but it’s only supposed to take up 50% of my time. Are we confused about the workload and how long that should take? Or is there something I don’t understand about how to do this work?
So let’s look at some examples that are not about work, even though this is a work podcast, for now. Spoiler alert, we’re going to have a new podcast name and a little bit of a new approach coming soon. So stay tuned for that.
So you might also want to use the tool of explicit conversations, let’s say in a conversation with your significant other that you live with. Maybe something’s not working there, maybe it’s like the chore breakdown of the house.
And so the way a lot of people handle this is like one-offs, right? Like, no, you unload the dishwasher or, no, you take the trash out. Or there’s kind of a passive aggressive approach of just being mad at the person or doing the work, but being resentful.
And I would invite that an explicit conversation could be really beneficial in this situation. Now, again, it might not be the most fun thing you’ve ever done with your significant other. It can feel awkward. It can feel uncomfortable. But it can be so helpful to kind of get on the same page.
And what you’re doing then is you’re getting real information, versus operating from assumption, right? Because you might be like, I always unload the dishwasher and they never unload the dishwasher and it’s bullshit. And then you might sit down and have an explicit conversation and they might go, I always take out the trash and you never take out the trash.
Because this has happened with Alex and I. We both sometimes think we’re doing more work than the other one. But when we have explicit agreements and we look at the breakdown, then we’re like, actually, I feel really good about this. Right? Like in our house Alex always takes out the trash and the recycling, and I never do, but I have other chores.
And we’re so silly, y’all. We’ve actually gone through our entire chore list recently, and this was my idea because this is how my brain works. We associated a cost to every single chore that either one of us does in the household. And the cost of the chore is based on what Alex calls the nasty factor, like how gross is it to do this chore? It’s based on the time factor, like how much time does it take up? It’s based on an energy factor, like how much energy mental or physical does it take up?
And so we associated a cost with every chore and then we divided our chores such that we both are doing the same amount, like money wise, which makes us both super happy because sometimes I’m doing a chore and she’s not just because that’s the moment I’m doing my chore and she’s not doing hers right then. And I used to feel much more annoyed and resentful, and now I’m like, oh, I’m earning her taking the trash out, right? I’m like, oh, it’s so fucking great.
And I know that we did this kind of analysis where I feel like it’s very equitably distributed between the two of us. So that feels really good. But so that’s the kind of thing that could happen in an explicit conversation.
When we have sort of these, I mean, I guess we could call it implicit. I guess it’s not an implicit conversation, but we have like implicit understandings or implicit agreements. They’re not explicit. They’re not spoken. They’re not agreed to. And then there’s also a lot of wandering.
There’s a lot of wondering, like, am I doing this right? Is this working? Are they happy with it? Is everything getting done? Where am I? And I think for so many of us, we don’t like being in that implicit place of trying to guess if the other person is happy and if they like whatever is going on. But it feels scary or hard or something else to actually just have the explicit conversation.
I think for a lot of people, they also don’t want to have the explicit conversation because they think they’re already supposed to know. So I think that’s really interesting, too. I’m like, but do you know? And they’re like, no. And I’m like, so then what if we find out? And they’re like, but I should know. And I’m like, but you don’t know. And how were you supposed to know? Are you supposed to guess?
So there’s a layer to this, too, of giving yourself permission to want an explicit conversation. Giving yourself permission to have the desire for things to be stated out loud, stated in writing or whatever, and agreed to. And that that’s something you’re allowed to ask for and you’re allowed to want. And actually, in a lot of situations, it makes way more sense to have that.
I saw this TikTok once. It was like, there’s ask culture and guess culture, I don’t know. But kind of the breakdown was one culture will wait for someone to offer something, but the other culture will ask for it. And I understand that there can be different cultural breakdowns.
And if that applies to you and you prefer to do the implicit understanding, I’m not here to tell you that this is a better way. And I’m not here to tell you that you have to do it this way. I just want you to understand the benefits and joys of this way so that maybe it’s a tool you can have in your toolkit.
A lot of us also, whether we discuss things explicitly or we try to come to implicit understandings, a lot of that depends on the culture that we grew up in. The culture of our family, but also the culture of the city or state. The culture of the area of the world that we grew up in. And so there are also people, I think, who really want this skill, but they’re like, oh, I don’t know how to do it.
So this is also a moment to say if you’ve never communicated like this, it’s not too late. You can still learn this skill and you can still employ it, and you can still enjoy the benefits and delights of explicit conversations. And you might feel a little awkward at first. And that’s okay because that’s how we all learn. And so I think I would just try it in really small ways that feel really safe, and then celebrate the shit out of yourself. And then you can try it in increasingly bigger ways.
And another thing you can do is you can also find a friend to practice with you where you’re like, I’d like to practice having explicit conversations. Can I practice that with you? Role-playing, I think, always seems silly when you’re doing it because you’re like, but we both know it’s a role play. But the human brain learns through play much faster than how it learns through other things. And to me, role-playing is just a form of play.
And also, human brains like to do things they’ve already done. So the more you’ve done something, even if you were just playing, the easier it is to then do those actions or say those words again. So that’s a way that you can tap into this skill if it’s not something that’s already in your repertoire.
Okay, but let’s also, of course, take a moment to talk about the cons and pitfalls of explicit conversations because let’s be honest, there are some. If you’re afraid of having these kinds of conversations, that makes sense too because a lot of times when we have an explicit conversation it goes great. We get great information that helps us move forward.
Once in a while when you have an explicit conversation, it goes sideways, right? You’re like, oh, am I performing well? And they’re like, no, you’re not, right? Or you’re like, oh, let’s divide the chore chart and your significant other is like, I’m not going to do that. Or you’re like, oh, let’s define the relationship and the person is like, I don’t want to define or be in the relationship.
So I’m not saying that there’s no risk. And I’m not saying that it’s never going to sting, the information that you get. What I would offer is that it’s often good to know, right? Like, if you’re in a job and you finally get up the guts to ask if you’re performing well and they say you’re not, that’s good to know, right? Because either what would constitute performing well is something you’re not willing to do, like working extra hours or something. Or they’re going to give you information about how you can perform well and then you can address that, right?
Or if you want to negotiate the chore chart with your significant other and they’re like, I don’t want to, I want you to do it all. That’s good to know. Do you want to be in that relationship? If you do want to be in that relationship, do you want to live in the same house as that person? Or maybe you’re like, oh, I want to be in the relationship but not live in the same house. That would be an unconventional solution, but you’re allowed to have unconventional solutions, right?
And if you’re sort of implicitly just trying to understand what’s going on or kind of guilt them into doing chores, you’re allowed to do that. But if you get the information that they’re not interested and they’re not going to do it, that’s just good for you to know. And then you can choose how you want to move forward.
And I would offer the same thing if you’re trying to define the relationship with somebody, and then what you find out is they don’t actually want to be in a relationship with you. Yeah, that could feel really painful. We might need some soothing, right? Self-soothing or friend soothing, or we might need to take a walk or have a warm bath or cry for a little bit. And also, it’s probably useful to know that information versus just wondering about where they’re at and if they’re in with you or not.
So that’s one set of pitfalls. And then I think the other thing is not everyone is comfortable with explicit conversations. I think, as I’ve kind of built the case for on this podcast, I think it’s a great tool. You also get to feel it out with the different people in your life. And there’s like a continuum of how explicit you want to be, right? Like you can have what I’m going to call softly explicit, or you can have super direct conversations.
Kind of for the purposes of this podcast it’s just having the conversation, even if you use kind of soft language around it or you’re not super blunt or direct. I think it can still be an explicit conversation if you’re just talking to the person and getting the information and sharing what you need to share. But not everyone responds well to that.
I will say, I think in a workplace it’s more expected. In personal relationships some people don’t do well with it. So I think you kind of have to use your own best judgment. And you also have to decide what kind of relationships you want to have.
If you want to have relationships where you can have explicit conversations and you try to have an explicit conversation with someone and it doesn’t go well, that’s good to know. You can then decide, okay, I’m willing to do it differently with this person because I really cherish them.
Or you can decide, you know what, maybe they’re actually not a good fit, because I want to be able to have these conversations. And if they can’t do that, maybe they don’t actually fit into the kind of life I’m trying to build, the kind of life that’s going to be wildly satisfying and delicious to me.
Okay, so it’s your turn, what explicit conversation would you like to have? And maybe like to is the wrong framing. What situation in your life could be dramatically improved if you were willing to have an explicit conversation? Who do you need to have that explicit conversation with? What information do you need to give them and what information do you need to get from them? And what needs to happen for you to have the courage to do that?
All right, I’m so excited for what could be possible in your lives and for how you can use this tool to create more satisfaction and delight, more alignment, more deliciousness in your life and in your career. And I want to hear all about what you create when you use this tool, so come comment on Instagram and tell me all about it, send me an email. I love hearing what y’all do with the information we talk about on the podcast.
Remember when I told you about the satisfaction audit and that we were going to have a special call about it? Well, I have those dates now. The satisfaction audit bonus coaching call, which is open to the public, is going to be on Thursday, August 17 at 2pm Pacific, and I would love to have you join us. You can sign up for the call at the link in the show notes and there’s also a link on Instagram in my bio.
During this call, what we’re going to do is go over what the satisfaction audit is and how to use it in your own life, career, and other areas of your life so that you can be having a more satisfying, delicious, wonderful time, so that you can get more of what you want. It’s going to help you figure out what’s working and what’s not working. It’s going to help you figure out where you want to go. It’s going to help you remove obstacles. And we’re also just going to have a super fun time. So be sure to sign up for that call and join us.
And also, listen, this shit is not for the faint of heart. If you need someone to support you and to be there with you as you go about developing this skill, if you want someone to celebrate with you when you finally have an explicit conversation and it goes really well, I have room for one on one clients and there’s also still room in the next cohort of Satisfied As Fuck. And I’ve got those deep dive days, those in-person deep dive coaching days.
And I would love to support you in one or all of those programs. So scoot on over to my website, sign up for a consult call and let’s talk all about how coaching tools and coaching with me can help you create a life that is wildly satisfying and delicious.
All right, that’s what I have for you all this week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
Enjoy the Show?
Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts.