Jennifer Takagi Talks about Difficult Conversations | DFS 397

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and I want to follow up on my

conversation with Jackie Bailey, and that is the piece about

having a difficult conversation. A difficult conversation. I

recently was working with a client who had to have a

difficult conversation, and she's very, I'm going to say

cool, calm and collected, and she's not a demonstrative

person. She's very strong. She's very solid in her beliefs and

her magic she brings to the world, but she's not going to

attack somebody. She's not going to come out fighting. She's not

aggressive, assertive, not aggressive. Those are different.

If you didn't know it, like, look it up, they're different.

And so she was going to have a difficult conversation, and we

really talked through, what do you want out of this

conversation? And legal issues were even involved, and we came

up working together with two main things that she wanted, and

getting that set up was like critical, and I said, I've had

conversations with people before, and they keep derailing

the conversation and diverting blame, if you will, and moving

it over here and over there and talking about stuff that wasn't

even the purpose of the conversation. And I said, I know

from personal experience and just for being like a human

being that that's what happens. That's what happens. And so if

you can have written down your two statements that are your

requests slash demands, and just keep bringing the conversation

back to that you won't be derailed by going down a bunny

trail. And if you've been with me for a while, you know, at one

point, I had a very difficult boss for a lot of years, and the

biggest piece of guidance I was ever given on dealing with this

situation was, Don't give her any more than she asked for.

Keep it very short, very succinct, very to the point. And

I have taken that to all different areas of my life, and

it's very it's very helpful, because as soon as you start

talking too much and sharing too much information, then the other

person has a lot they can hold against you, a lot they can

bring up and throw back at you that you obviously don't want.

So it was really timely that I assisted this client of mine.

And I don't, I mean, I do give business advice. I am a business

intuitive, but like that kind of advice, I don't and I had to

keep saying, I'm not an attorney, and I don't pretend to

be one on this, you know, phone call. And lo and behold, a

couple days later, something came up, and somebody had posted

something on the internet, on on the Facebook, and it really

showed a lot about who they were. And I had heard in the

past that this person had political ideology that might be

different than mine, and that's fine. That's all around the

world, right? Like, I'm I don't draw a line in the sand and say

I can't be friends with you because we have different

ideologies or different religious beliefs or different

interpretations. Like, I'm all okay with all that, but I was

supposed to, like, have a deep encounter with this person to

identify any belief systems that I had around entrepreneurship,

having a business, sharing my message, message with the world.

You know, those kind of things that come up. And I thought, you

know, I'm not rightly sure that I want to do this with somebody

that we're that far out of alignment. You know, bumping up

against the line is one thing, but being on opposite ends

completely was just. It just didn't feel right. So I I'm

gonna say it was Abraham. I swear I was gonna look this up.

But, you know, I'm pretty historical for not looking it

up. Somebody look it up. Somebody look it up and put a

comment on this podcast. I think it was Abraham, maybe in the Old

Testament of the Bible, where he wrestled with. With the Spirit

of God all night and the next day, he had a hurt hip, and that

hip injury pain followed him the rest of his life. And the point

was sometimes you really have to wrestle with God, with yourself,

with the universe, with your higher self, your belief system,

before you go after somebody else. And my husband and I had

been meeting with our associate pastor, who also had a degree in

clinical psychology many years ago, and he said he referenced

that story and said, before you go to the other one with the

complaint or frustration, then you need to make sure that

you've wrestled with God first, ie yourself, so that when you Go

to that person, you truly have their best interest at heart.

I'm

gonna say that again, you don't go to the other person with your

complaint until you truly have their best interest at heart. So

I am struggling with what to say, how to say it, how to

present it. And it took me a minute, like 24 hours, and

finally, I sent a text message, and I shared my concerns, and I

didn't get a response back for four or five hours, and the

response was beautiful. It was, I appreciate what you had to

say. I appreciate the way you shared it, the words that you

chose, and I sat with this, and I've made changes because of it,

like I don't want what you perceived and what you took

away. I don't want other people to take away, and in the end, I

still may not do that activity. You know that business dive deep

with that particular person, but at least he knows how his

actions impacted somebody else. And I could have come out, you

know, guns a blazing, claws out, you know that fork and tongue

coming out to just slice him, but I didn't want to, because I

really have a lot of respect for this person. I but I also really

felt compelled to share with them how their actions impacted

me in a very negative way. So when you are going to have a

difficult conversation with someone, you need to be

prepared, and it's not prepared so that you can attack and win.

It's prepared so that you can end up with a win, win. We when

you can end up with a idea of okay, we can agree to disagree.

Could be the the outcome, or it could be legally, this isn't

right, and this is what should happen. So when you can stand

your ground and convict the other person of their sin

without sinning yourself is like the ultimate thing, and sinning

yourself is when you go in and attack and you literally kill

part of the relationship every negotiation has the opportunity

for everybody to leave feeling like they gave a little they got

a little. And the same is true in our interactions, in our

conversations. And I've often heard, you know, it's very

important to tell the truth, which is true. However, can you

tell the truth without hurting someone? My mom used to say, I'd

come out and I'd say, Oh, isn't this a cute outfit, which I've

never really been a big clothes hound. But I'd say, then, this

really cute. My mom would go, Oh, it's style. Well, I learned

as I grew up, it's style means she really hated it, but it

didn't matter. Her opinion didn't matter. It was just

style. Or if I got my hair cut in a certain way, she'd go, oh,

that style. Yeah, everybody's wearing their hair that way. And

that was her way of being honest and truthful without being mean

spirited. The same thing in an apology. My husband and I got

crosswise about a situation where he was going to apologize

and he owed the apology to a third person, and he would say

he'd call me and go, Okay, this is, this is what I'm going to

say. I'm so. Sorry, but. And I was like, Nope. You said but not

hang up. We were both driving along the highway, so he'd call

and I'd just hang up and I'd say, Nope, you can't say but.

And he'd say, Okay, I'm so sorry that I did blah blah. He was

taking complete responsibility, right? And then he said, but

it's because Nope, it's over. Like, as soon as you say but, or

because it's over, you have to take complete responsibility for

your action. Now I may not be sorry for what I said. I may not

but I may be sorry that I yelled, I may be sorry that I

said it with no tact or diplomacy. I i can be sorry that

it hurt their feelings, like it could be true, but it could also

hurt their feelings, right, like it could be both and but you

can't say I'm so sorry I hurt your feelings, but you were just

a real brat and you deserved it like that's not how this works.

You can't really do that. So the big takeaway for today that I

would really love for you to get before you have a big

conversation, consider what you want to communicate, what is

your commitment to the relationship? If it's somebody

you're never going to see again, that might be a little bit

different. If it's somebody at the ticket counter or at the

gate agent at an airport, you better be nice. You may be

bumped off the plane. I literally watched that happen.

No, it was not me. But consider what's the future relationship?

And what do I have to say that could actually be in their best

interest to help them instead of just attacking them? If you

would like a little more help with this, or you have a

situation that you're dealing with. I would love to help you

with that. If you go to your success call.com and the links

in the show notes, book your call with me, and let's talk

about it and see if we can't make some changes and get you

some ideas on how you can have that next difficult

conversation. I'm Jennifer Takagi, and I look forward to

connecting with you soon.

You.