173 - How to have a difficult conversation

Champ Consultants is an award winning independent firm of highly experienced, qualified accountants and tax advisors based in Caterham, providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy. And tax services. If you would like simple but creative answers to your tax problems, called Champ Consultants your business partner on one double eighty three three four nine three hundred. Good morning, and welcome to your business hour with Me Chantale, Me Matthew, and we're joined with Richard.

Good morning, Richard, good morning. So let's find out a little about Richard. So, Richard has spent the last decade helping high performance schools, elite sport environments, and leadership teams face the conversations that most people run from. Now he's bringing that experience to the workplace, where leadership lives or dies in the heat of dialogue, is what he says.

So, Richard is known as the non perfect Dad, and I love that. I just think that that's so honest. Nobody's perfect. And he's the creator of non perfect dad at work as well and head of awkward conversations.

So, Richard, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into this and what is it you actually do, because I've got no idea. Well, good morning, It's great to be with you both this morning. I have had a really horrible chest infection for the last week, so I have to cough and splutter our try and mute my mic quickly and apologize for that. So what do I do well?

I actually wear two hats. The easiest half of my life to describe his honor, I'm a Baptist church minister in Upminster and Essex. That's kind of one half of my head. The other half of my life is I run an organization called Non Perfect Dad.

A non Perfect Dad started because my wife and I were leading a church in North Romford in a very deprived area, and through doing that, we led all the parenting courses for the local authority at the sharp and ugly end of safeguarding. And as you can imagine, that has a significant number of difficult conversations both with parents, social workers, schools, other key stakeholders in child protection plans. And through that time I started to get really curious about what the good conversations, what are helpful conversations look like in those environments.

Now the church could only inform me part time and so I started little business and through lots of good fortune, I land up working in high performance sport, helping premiership football teams national squads work through the conversations that parents and young people have during those high performance moments, helping coaches think through how they have high challenge conversations with athletes and parents to ensure that effectively those conversations weren't costing potential opportunities for talent to shine because the people in the room didn't have the skills to have the difficult conversations that came with that.

And now non Perfect Dad continues to work in high performance sports environments. I work in lots of school environments helping slts have difficult conversation as well, and now also in industry, I'm working across a number of different sectors helping businesses have those difficult conversations which which happened in all environments, whether it be your own home, in the charity sector, in the voluntary sector, and also in businesses. And these are the conversations which we think we know how to do, and it actually our intuitive skills tend to be there to protect us rather than to help the other person get the most out of that difficult conversation.

So you use an acronym there quickly SLT. Was seeing your leadership team. That is right, Matthew, thank you Sorry, yes to senior leadership team. That's all right.

No worries because if i'dlaught it, somebody else is bound to think it's better. To be clear. So becoming a Baptist minister as well? Is that?

How did that come about? Was that something you thought that you would end up doing. No, I've always loved youth work, and I moved to South End on Sea to work for a wonderful church there as their youth worker. We were very, very fortunate.

We were given a huge grant to be able to run a skate park, and through running the skate park, I was in my early twenties and had a lot more hair than I have now, and I thought I was going to change the world. And I realized it's such an obvious revelation now as a dad of three, but that kids go home, and that the great youth work we were doing with these kids at the eskatepark was good and was helpful, and yet the home environment had such a bigger impact over these young people than we could in the hour or two hours a week or even two one or two hours a day, depending on how often the kids came to see us, that we could have And so we started to do a far more holistic approach, thinking how we could include families, how could we connect with the family around this, how can we help there be better conversations for everybody involved in that conversation.

And around that time, so I was still the youth worker. Around that time, I suppose I felt the call to wider ministry, to being able to support the whole family, to work with adults as well, And so at that point I then went back to university and did a theology degree in South London and got ordained as a Baptist minister. That process takes about nine years, so it's quite a lot of study in a long time. It's quite a long time and decent accreditation through that process.

Wow, brilliant and so in your role as non perfect act and also probably in your role as a minister as well, what do you think is one of the most challenging things you've have to overcome? Well, I think thank you for identifying that. You know there is a clear overlap between the roles they're you know, leadership is about people, and I think the biggest challenge is always in leadership is to get yourself out of the way, really, you know. And I think our own individual blind spots, the way we have conversations, our own desires, our values, etc.

They impact the team and the people around us, and that's not a bad thing. That The challenge is, particularly in difficult conversations or around developmental conversations, is we tend to accidentally insert ourselves in the center of that conversation, whereas it I tend to talk about like taking the mic off people. You know, Actually, if you're doing like an annual review or an annual appraisal with someone, that's their time. It's their time with the mic.

And what leaders often do is they just take the mic back too quickly and they insert themselves over that. I once worked for a Yorkshireman and I'm very jealous because my brother and sister got born in Yorkshire. I'm a forces brat and my family moved around, but my brother and sister got born in Yorkshire. I got Lincolnshire, which which has no real kind of national sorry to anyone else born in Ecolnshire, but most people go where.

But I worked with this with this yorkshireman and he used to say, oh, you have to excuse me for being rude and blunts because I'm from Yorkshire. And I was like, well, I know loads of people from Yorkshire and that isn't universal of everybody from Yorkshire. But he just was unwilling to park his own bad habits to be helpful for the person who was trying to work with. He expected everybody else to move around his bad habits to enable the team to be successful and to be able to make progress.

So there's nothing wrong with Lincolnshire. That's where me and Chantel first met. So we know exactly where that is. And I would imagine your career comes with a numerous amount of rewarded aspects.

Is there anything rewarding that stands out to you or any situation? Yeah? I mean for me, I mean I love being on a stage and speaking and doing public speaking and leading courses and that's that's a real privilege and a real joy. But actually for me, the best bit is the one to un con stations afterwards, is you know, whether it's you've been working in a premiership academy and a parent will come up to you afterwards, and you'll you'll have a good ten minutes problem solving something that's really that they can see he's been holding them back, and they've kind of had that light bulb moment of oh, actually, or working with a business leader who who loves his business, loves his staff and yet comes to that point of realization going ah, actually, that would just be so much more helpful.

How do we go about that? And then we have a just a good two way conversation about helping them. I love kind of seeing those light bulb moments and then hearing about the long term impact of that hearing I rang, I'm doing one to one with a CEO of a company that's turning over twenty thirty million a year at the moment, and I rang his pa to arrange it and my next appointment with him, and she said to me, what have you done with him? He's a changed man?

And for me, that's why, Wow, that's a member of staff saying that about someone I've been working with. It's all it's well and good if the individual says, oh, I'm changed, But when they're staff, team say this is incredible, this is this is revolutionizing our environment. That that is such an encouragement that for me is always such a joy. And do you think therefore, that your skills and your knowledge as a minister is what makes you a better say leadership.

I suppose really it's like a leadership coach almost, like, isn't it really? Do you think that it's good because their skills are quite into linking, aren't they? Well, I think empathy is the key different. So I think one of the things you learn in church ministry is you land up in lots of different contexts.

You know, you can one minute be holding a newborn baby and helping a family deal with the joy of that that. The next minute you can be with a couple preparing for their marriage. The next minute you can be with another couple who are going through divorce. You can you can be back in the hospital again, dealing with somebody who's elderly and has lived a good life and is you know, tired and ready to go.

You can be back at the hospital bed and be with someone incredibly young whose life is coming to an end. And the challenge of kind of contextualizing yourself to all those conversations and helping people gain encouragement and hope and acceptance in those moments. Yes, is a real privilege. And it's the same when you walk into a business.

You know, the empathy that is required to be a good leader, to enable people's teams to make progress is essential. So many leaders say to me, I wish my team wouldn't take it personally, and I think, like, no, you've misunderstood. Like it's like, they're not robots. It's always going to feel personal.

Help them deal with the fact that it feels personal. Don't wish that they were like robotic. Actually, there's some empathy there that could help you move past that so quickly and be helpful so quickly. So yes, So I'm very fortunate as a church minister you have this great privilege of being in the great moments of people's lives and the real dark moments of people's lives.

And in all of that it's about kind of having empathy and again not making yourself the center of that story, but allowing what's going on and that person to be the center of that story so that they can get the most that they can from that moment. Brilliant. So when you work now with schools and elite high performance schools, and obviously now working with businesses as well, is there a certain type of client that you work with or just generally like from size of business point of view?

No, I mean, I suppose the key differential, and this is slightly different to church life, is they tend to be places of high pressure, you know, so they tend to be businesses that are pushing things pretty hard, either they going through a big period of growth or that there's lots of challenges in demand schools I work with. I tend to work with those schools who are either very good at sport or and so they have lots of young people who are in what we call talent pathway. So there'll be young people who are good at sports school, but they'll also be representing county cricket teams or in professional academies, et cetera.

And I suppose that the common theme is how do we inject a calmness that helps people move forward in those high, high pressure moments. How do we help people learn to grow you know, buzzwords confidence and resilience often misunderstood words, But how do we help people grow those and display those through those high pressure moments? So is that a crossover between your work in the corporate world, and you mentioned schools and elite academies. I mean, they're very different environments you would think, but is there a commonality to what you're doing for them?

Yes, there most definitely is. The first commonality is how do you have conversations about people moving forward? Like all those environments are about development and growth, whether they be about the development of the bottom line for the business, how do we make more money for those young people they have a level of talent, what conversations need to be had about what helps them move forward? So are they overtraining?

Are they under training? So for example, in those talent schools environments, it's who gets that young person for which part of the week and what's healthy for them. So there's lots of conversations about how much do they play for the school club, county national side, how does that work? There are lots of conversations around being realistic and setting genuinely useful goals.

And yet you do want these kids to dream of playing for England and winning World Cups and making that work. But that needs to be grounded in a process, and grounding that in that process is where difficult conversations happen, and people often are very good at that because those conversations can will need to bring a level of honesty to them. And then I think it's the same in the business as well. You know, if your business is just always going to turn over a nice amount, you're always going to get customers, and there's no real pressures on you, you don't need to worry about having those conversations are very safe, comfortable.

But my suspicious that isn't most businesses. You know, if you found a business, aye that great, just don't message in and tell us because we'll be really jealous of the reality is business is cut and throat. You need staff who are able to respond to the challenges, who are able to grow with development. So one are the bigger challenges I faced the corporate not bigger chodes I faced.

One of the biggest chods I support with you the corporate world is people who are promoted to management of teams. They might have been really really good at the job, and they're because they're good at the job, they get promoted to manage a small team or amediate team or a large team, and you actually the skill set of doing the job and the skill set of managing that team are very different, and often those things actually clash. Skill set of being good at the job. You might need to be quite cutthroat, quite driven, quite hard nosed.

If it's in sales, recruitment, etc. You know, you might need to get a yes. You might be quite have to be quite hard to get a yes. Then when you're managing a team, if you manage a team like that, you're going to cause chaos very very quickly.

And we know how much high turnover costs businesses. You know, we want to hold on to good staff. We want to make sure that staff are able to stay. So in all those things, it's like, how do I take this member of staff who showed potential talent and grow it.

How do we help this young person who's showing potential talent and how do we help them grow? And what are the conversations and whose role is what in that? Because I wrote with a lot of CEOs who perhaps they founded the business, and so often founders tend to get involved in things they don't need to be get getting involved in because they know the business, they know the businesses, and they grew it from the garage or the spare room or whatever, and so they'll leap from their mineral management team to go back and fire fight instead of helping the middle management team do it, and again that causes chaos.

So it's about having the conversations. So again, often what I do is teach people how to unmanage. So I'm constantly teaching eighteen nineteen twenty year olds on how to manage their parents and coaches like this is how to get the best out of that. And I'm teaching middle managers here's how to get the best out of your manager.

Because they all be helpful here, but you can't change them. Here's how you just have the conversations in ways that help them. So how did you actually get into the sport world? Then, well, I would say by God's good grace, because so when I started Non Perfect Dad, I had worked with these very complex families through social services and I wanted to do kind of parenting coaching, and so I started like a parent in coaching business.

But it was very hard to get clients, partly because I was just rubbish a business, you know, Nay, I never run a business. So the arrogance are thinking that I could just be good at running a business and I you know, it took took some while to learn that. I did some lecturing of social workers on how to deal with complex and chaotic families, and that was good and helpful, and yet it didn't pay very well. So I needed kind of better.

And I was just like, where are parents? And you talked about non perfect dad. So I did all the research about other parenting coaches, and they all look perfect with their perfect families and perfect family smiles. And I was like, that is not my family, and that's probably not.

Their families either, because. Let's be serious exactly, they basically bribe those kids with five tubs of ice cream and you know, one hundred pounds to get those photos. So and also I didn't want to put my kids on over social media either. I mean, they put themselves over it, but that's their choice rather than it being you knows, dad's leg up to make money.

And so I was like, well, I'm a non perfect parent, and someone said, well, that's that's right, then just call yourself that. So that's where the name came from. And then I was like where are other parents? I was like, well, where am I?

I'm a dad and I've got three children and I'm constantly side of a sports pitch. I'm constantly ferrying around to clubs. So I started doing stuff in my local sports clubs and that was well received, you know, my daughter's gymnastics club, the rugby club my son played out. And then I was like, I wonder what the big boys and girls are doing for this.

I wonder what like the national solidees are doing. And the beauty of this then age is sports used to be a kind of old boys club and who you knew. But because of places like LinkedIn, which is where I met Matthew and other places, you know, you're able to reach out. And I reached out to some people, and I reached out to a very generous man called Russell Ernshaw, who's the England under eighteen's rugby coach at the time, and he put his email address on a posted puts So I just emailed him and said, I'm trying to get into Paris.

I love to hear what you do. And he was such a curious learner, again a great example of somebody who lets the story be about the speaker rather than like yourself, and he just listened and listen, said that sounds amazing and I was like, oh, thank you. Can I come and see what you do? What you do in England under eighty in camps must be amazing.

I'd really like to learn. And anyway, I went and met the rest of the England Under eighteen leadership team and it turned out they didn't do anything, and they were very humble gentlemen. They said, actually, if we gave you the opportunity, what would you do? And I was like, well, actually I would do X, Y Z, and they were like, brilliant, come and do it then and then so and after that.

It's kind of keeping up with the Joneses. And I was very fortunate. I was one of only a few people doing sports parent engagement at the time, and independent schools tend to be a bit keeping up with the Joneses. So they were like, oh, he's working with England Rugby and Manchester United and Manchester City and so yes, I was very fortunate.

I like to think I'm good at what I do, so I like to think those people who tried it liked it, and that you know, I do get repeat bookings from all these places. I turned them down now because I far more enjoy working in the corporate world. Around London than traveling on a train up and back to cities in the North. But yeah, that's how I fell into the sports world and I thoroughly love being in the sports world.

The challenge with the sports world, Chantella, if I'm being honest, is particularly in those big academies, is you have very little opportunity to affect real change. So Manchester United, they're former academy manager, Nick Cox, was an incredibly open learning man, would want honest conversations. There would be opportunity to change a lots of the other Premiership academies. You go in, you would literally be a traveling jester.

You go and do your session and leave. And it just didn't And I felt like they wanted parents to be put in the corner and do as they told. And as you can tell from what I think, I think, there should be collaboration and conversation, and so I wasn't prepared to return to those clubs just to put parents in their corner and basically be used as a stick to kind of tell parents behave and do as you're told, whereas and these environments have their kids and it's their children, not the environment's children.

So that's why I like working in schools and businesses because I feel like there I'm able to affect real change and have proper conversations with the people who really matter and are setting the culture for the business. And I totally get that. I mean, our youngest son played for GB under nineteenth England rugby and it was very much like it was all about the club. It was all about the GB rugby.

It was all about that. Whereas when he played like he played at school first rugby team and stuff, it was very much like, obviously they're going to have rugby, and he was in Harlequins as well, they're gonna have rugby. They're going to play for fun, but they have an education, they have life and everything else. So the sport revolves around the child rather than the child revolves around the sport at a higher level, because I think at school level they understand that not every kid who loves school professional sport is going to play for England at the end of the day and they need to have a backup, whereas at club level, like at country level, they just don't get that bit, do they.

They just think, yeah, no, our boys are going to do and when they don't they're like, well, it's not my problem. Now you didn't get through. It's harder. It is a lot harder.

I think the challenges again around, you know, around the conversations. I have no problem with a eighteen year old lad or girl thinking they're going to play for them, they're gonna have a wonderful sport. Let them dream. They need that dream to motivate part of the baby.

I think parents need to have their feet firmly on the ground that playing for England under eighteen or nineteen wonderful achievement. Really enjoy it. It probably means very little about their future career totally, and it's it's and it is a great achievement. And you know, and if my kids have made it that far, I would have been thrilled for them.

I wouldn't have interpreted that as great. They're going to go on and again. I find it, you know, this was nearly a decade a guy I was in these England camps and you know, I've still got the programs and I find it fascinating occasionally go through Google the names and some of the people that they said were going to be definite England senior first team players have never played England first team. They have had professional careers, they've done very well.

Others didn't go on much past England under eighteens or England under twenties, and others have become household names through you know. So even but even then, what great and skilled coaches were predicting didn't happen because it's it's so an injury and all the other bits and pieces. Yeah, definitely, well my son, that's definitely and play rugby, animals sports. Yeah, that is definitely true.

So what about the change from the like where you now say you do more in the workplace? Do you work more with CEOs or like top board level or are you all manager of your levels? Shall we say? I mean I seem to find myself working more at the kind of top board level, although I love working with apprentices as well because I think it's just a great you know, it's this is these are young, enthusiastic members of the employment force, and if you can give them these skills early, they'll they'll kind of turbo boost their career.

The reality is that unless you're kind of working with the boardroom and senior management to understand just some very simple but useful skills that would transform those conversations into being far more productive and injector level of calm us. So I happily work across the board or employment field, shall we say. However, I think the most impact I have is when I get time with senior leaders, because they then start to model it. It's all very well going on culture days and things like that, but none of that, I think as is actually that impacting.

What's really impacted is actually what the leader does, what the leader tolerates, what the leader models. Those things really set the culture of a business and an organization, and so being able to work with people in that place is a real privilege. And also I think sees can see a huge amount of fruit for an organization. I mean, when I worked in the corporate world, one of my last jobs before I went to work for myself, we had some senior management training days and one of them we spent the entire time in the boardroom playing bongo drums and I can't remember the lesson.

I well, look, I'm not against having fun, yeah, I think, but yes, what what what is the point of that? And I think and interesting again, you know, part of working with me, teams have to commit to more than a day day's training because you know, from the elite world, we know that it takes so much, so many reps to develop a skill set. And again, often corporate leaders will say to me, yeah, I did a difficult conversation day training data a decade ago. It was really, it was really, it was really you know, it really inspired me.

Okay, but what are you putting into practice from that day ten years ago? Oh? None of it. Well, then then it was a waste of money.

You know. Let's let's look at how we scaffold that into the business so that it actually is a good gives you a good r you know, so that you are you're not wasting your money. Champ Consultants is an award winning independent firm of highly experienced, qualified accountants and tax advisors based in cater providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy and tax services. If you would like simple but creative answers to your tax problems, called Champ Consultants your business partner on one double eighty three three four ninety three hundred and.

Welcome back to your business era with me chantelle me Matthew, and we're chatting to Richard from Non Perfect Dad. We're talking about work. So we've talked a bit before the break about yourself, how you got into it, and a lot over else and you and I off air we did mention and I just want to reiterate for our listeners that even though we talk about top board level CEO, CFOs and whatever, whatever you do, all the work you do is relevant even to smaller organizations with maybe only a team of four or five, maybe twenty, maybe fifty.

It's it's relevant to any organization, isn't it. It's not just top end massive companies footy one hundred. Shall we say, well, I'm my wife and I run our business. My wife's a forest school practitioner, that's her half of the business, and we have a virtual a virtual PA who does five hours a week for us.

I use all these skills and tools, you know, obviously less regularity because we're a smaller team, but they're used. I use them in my own business in the way I try and lead and function as a human here. So yes, they are for any scale. Brilliant.

So let's talk about tips. Now, let's share some tips. I've given you some examples of where we think, where I think medium or small medium sized businesses might have the need for difficult conversations with their staff, but don't have your big HR departments and all things like that. So I don't know what scenario you want to take and how you want to take it, but do you want to give start off with one of them?

Yeah, So we were talking about like either a low motivated member of staff and member staff it just seems really comfortable, comes in, does their job, kind of gets it done, but it's a bit lackluster. I think that's that was one. Yeah, you were picking up yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And what do you do about that? How do you manage that?

Well? I think firstly I would want to be asking the question what is the impact of their lacklusterness? Because often as managers, we kind of see things as a really big and what it can be really helpful to do is kind of break it down into really tight specifics. So what would what would someone who is lackluster not be doing that?

That would tend to be my question to people in that environment. Is it just that they're not buzzy around the office and you feel like or is it that their work rate is seventy five percent of what you'd expect, you know, and actually you'd expecting them to get one hundred percent or is it that they're not putting in those kind of extras that you kind of hope everyone in your business would do. So I think the first thing to do is, with any of these conversations, ask yourself, actually, what is the real specific impact of this behavior that and what is it costing us either as a team, relationally, personally or kind of you know, productivity success wise, because I think to say to somebody, oh, you just don't see yourself, you're a bit lackluster, feels like you may really know them.

They may have worked with you for twenty years and actually over a cup of coffee you may be able to say that. But it's very general, is it's really it's a really hard question for them to actually answer. They're having a bad day that day that you asked that question, and they could just say, oh, just have a bad day. But for you, it's not really answered that question, has it because you haven't approached it in the right way exactly?

Because we again, because we're keeping it really general. And so I think the first thing about difficult conversations is if you're going to have a difficult conversation. You're going to need to get really specific general a general questions actually tend to make people a bit scared. When a senior member of leadership starts asking general questions, people's heads start worrying about what on earth does that mean?

So, for example, you might say, can we just have a ten minute chat tomorrow? Because I'm just worried you not quite yourself? And you know, productivity isn't quite a productory is a creued rob, but I'm just using it to shorten them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, productivity seems down.

Can we have a quick chat tomorrow? That's so vague that that person is either going to go home and think nothing of the conversation, which is some way isn't a bad thing, or it's going to set their head spinning. It's that kind of old Headmaster's called to see me and I was a naughty boy. So for some people that would be a great memory, but for people like you know, oh my word, am I going to get the sack?

What's going on? So because it's not specific, it's not helpful. So I would say in that that the first thing to do is to try and be able to highlight where their lacklusterness is impacting the business. And here's the really hard thing for some people within business I think shall tell is actually, is their lacklusterness just a feeling that oh, they're not driving everything for but actually they are getting the job done and and they're getting it done ninety five percent of the time.

And actually, if they keep doing that for the next five years, I'll be happy. So the question is actually is it worth raising? You know that it becomes is it or actually you're taking on a load of younger staff, You're expecting people to have personal development plans, You're expecting people to make progress, and this person being like luster isn't setting a good example. Then actually that then becomes part of the conversation.

You know, I'm wondering what you know, we are trying to encourage this lot to have a personal development plan. I know that's perhaps new to the business or perhaps we haven't pushed out. We've seen your stuff and that is something we're going to be doing. I'd like you to have a think about in the next twelve months, what is what are going to be your personal development targets?

What is that going to look like? And then so that not only are you modeling, but so that we can help you keep improving, and so that so that we as a business can keep improving. So you can either set it as a kind of as a challenging we're noticing your eighty percent productivity or things just don't getting done, or an are you okay from a pastor point of view, or a kind of challenge to be able to model what other people do. However, the key for me is setting that up as a very specific like us to have a conversation.

I try and like always try and say what type of conversations do you want to have? So I want to have a two way conversation. I really want to get your thoughts about what your personal development plan might look like in the next twelve months, so that together we can have some agreed targets for you to work on. So I'm saying this is a two way conversation, but I'm also giving clear expectations about what the outcome, what my desired outcome is from that conversation.

And obviously, as business owners founders, when we start up businesses and then grow our businesses, it's never our intention to have every hat on because obviously we didn't like set up whatever business we've set up in order to suddenly become hahr, because that's not what we did. What we did, and so we're never experienced in this sort of stuff. We don't have our own experience in things. What would you say is the best time to sort of start having these conversations.

Well, here's the thing that I think. I think that for leaders to learn the skills of doing a couple of skills really well. One is learning how to slow every conversation down. Your business is never going to be worse off because you've injected calmness into a conversation.

Okay, when I did my year ten work experience one hundred years ago, I did it at Papworth Hospital, which was a famous heart surgery hospital, and they let me stand on a box at the head of the patient looking into the chest cavity while they did open heart surgery. Seriously cool stuff. They would not let a They would not let a fifteen year old do that, now, no mate, I loved it. I wanted to be a paramedic at the time, so I followed.

One day I got to follow a patient through and as I was with the patient that I was following through. I watched his pre his operation, and then he was in recovery, which is intensive. Another patient was in retensive care and he crashed. He got very seriously ill, very quickly.

And what was really clear was there's a huge number of junior doctors around him kind of completely trying to, you know, do the defib bits and pieces. But it was pandemonium. And then in walk to the consultant, and that consultant just breathed calmness into that situation. It's not that things didn't happen.

It wasn't he said, right, let's have a five minute break and come back. No, he's just his whole persona. The way he gave instructions, the way he slowed everybody down so that they could be more helpful. And I think if business leaders get into the habit of slowing every conversation down, that when you come to a difficult conversation, you already have the skill of slowing the conversation down.

The biggest challenge I think about difficult conversations is it's like a dusty folder on the shelf of skills, and then when we need it, we're like, oh, yeah, what was that training day we had with rich Oh let's go to that dusty folder. All right, oh oh, slow it down right, Okay, it's like no inject. Learn how to inject slowness into every conversation. So even that conversation we've just talked about, state your i'd like to review this, or we'd like to talk about productivity, and then slow it down for the person.

Give that person the gift of slowing it down. Two things happen when we slow it down. One, slowing things down is contagious, so it gives it gives the other person the gift. You might be completely calm, but your employee might not be, so you give them that gift.

If it's a really normal conversation, when people slow down, they have better ideas. So if you're using this in kind of normal time, non pressure time, actually your staff are going to have better ideas. They're going to feel more valued, it's going to create a better sense of culture around the place. Anyway.

The second thing to then do is once you learn how to kind of slow the conversation down, that's through breathing. The second way to slow the conversation down is make your first response all about them. Okay, And there are lots of ways of doing this. But even in that instance that we talked about someone who's got low motivation, you say to someone, I've noticed you're not being yourself.

No, no, I think, no, I think on the whole, I've been I've been all right. Actually, okay. So I would respond to that, not with a long spiel about why they haven't been themselves or whatever. I would say, it feels like most because they said on the whole, you know, as they said on the whole, which is a really interesting phrase, So it feels like most days things are fairly normal, and then there are some days it's not.

And then I would just sharp and I would let them speak, and I would let them expand on on the whole without them realizing that, you know, or a member of staff, that you've challenged them about something and say, no, that's not fair. I don't think that's right or true. Let's just say they're really pushed back. Okay, okay, sounds like this felt like an accusation, and it feels like it's mister Mark, let them talk.

Let them talk about that emotion, because from that will come will come a conversation that you're able to anchor in onto actionable ways forward. And what most people do when you give them accurate empathy is they do two things. Once they calm down so that it feels less personal. It's bizarre to make it feel less personal.

You make it more personal. So you show them genuine, accurate empathy. And you can practice this every Monday morning. How is your weekend?

Yeah, it's brilliant. Oh it sounds like a fantastic weekend. Okay, sounds like that weekend left your buzzying. Oh it's a bit rubbish.

All it feels like, you know, you're a bit gutted. It's back to Monday. Yeah, you know. So you're just showing accurate empathy.

But the other thing, not only does do people feel heard and emotions are named, what tends to happen is people's brains then allow them to start to give the other side of the coin. So, like that one on you've challenged remember of staff about something, feels that felt like an attack. Yeah, it felt like an attack. I mean, I know my targets haven't always been on time, but most of the time my targets are fine.

Okay, So they've just admitted that their targets aren't always so we're now having a conversation about where the gap is and we're we're able to do that. And I think using ie me I feel a lot less as a leader. Making it again all about them is a really helpful way of doing things. So, for example, praise, I mean, if people take nothing away from nothing else, away from what they're hearing this morning, i'd really encourage you to think about how you use praise in the office world.

I'm team great job today is fluffy rubbish, Okay, I really appreciated everybody's hard work. When I set this business up, I dreamed I would have a team like this, and I really appreciate it. Well, who's at the center of that. That's a business owner, you know.

Instead, when praise goes something like this today, when X happened that throw a massive spanner in the works, that could have really derailed us. Everybody worked together, really, really well and the outcome is far better than we could have hoped for from a disaster like that. That is what makes this a brilliant team in this office. Who's that about.

That's about the team, And that's not only about the team. It's giving them loads of clues as to the type of behaviors you want to repeat. It's giving them loads of clues as to the time behaviors that you want to see them replicate again next time. And so I feel like if we can learn to slow conversations down and inject quality affirmations into all conversations, that when we then hit difficult conversations, those skill sets are there to enable us to kind of have a far more productive, challenging conversation within that.

And I suppose really all these conversations you can take them to any scenario, can't you, Like you say, you just adapt your conversation and the way you ask, the way you approach it. Shall we say, can be adapted to any situation? Yeah, I mean I've got sixteen year old doing our GCSS at the moment. How was schooled today?

Oh? What does it mean? Okay, every parent knows that one exactly. So instead of me going, oh, well today was rubbish, but crack on with your re vision, I'm I'm going to say, I'm going to slow it down.

I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to say, sounds like today was a bit rubbish. No, it was all right, I'm just tired and I didn't get with my friends. Okay, Okay, do you mind if I ask a difficult question, what's the revision plan for tonight?

I don't feel like revising, Dad, don't hassle me. I've had a really long day. Okay, sounds like the best thing for you to do would be not to revise tonight, like literal conversation. Yeah, oh, but then my GCSEs are coming up.

I do need to do some Oh okay, what would some be then? Like genuine I've had that tense to please, don't put you know, put that beyond social media because my daughter will find out what I'm doing, but you know she doesn't. But but listen, everything within me wants to go got upstairs and revive. You don't know what time this is, But that's putting me at the center of that conversation.

She's at the center of that conversation. I want to let her. I don't want to let her problem solve. I know when she's calm, she values her revision and she values her education, and so has she gone and done as much revision as I'd like?

No, but we haven't had a massive fight, and she's gone and done some, you know. And it's the same, you know, the same with my wife, you know, And I don't do this all the time because I'm certainly not, but it could be the non perfect husband as well. And it's the same thing about why haven't you done that? Done that, done that?

You know, you're frustrated that the things you ask to get done haven't got done and I'm sorry, you know whatever. So it's so, it's so. Yes, these skills are deployable everywhere the challenges. They just take practice because they feel counterintuitive to not either make long statements and speeches, to not ask lots of questions, or to get super defensive and put yourself back into the center of the conversation.

I definitely think that GCS one. Yeah, I've had that one many times of our one specific boy of mine. The other two are right, and he'll know about it as well, it would admit. So, yeah, I know what that's like.

You want to literally wring their heads and just go like, just sit down and revise. Please. This drives me crazy, but yes, I. Do agree, you found your solution.

It was just yes, So I. Found my solution with him. He was like literally and he was He'll admit it. He was like useless, useless, And I was like, okay, so if you're going to revise, how do what is stopping you from revising?

And it gets I get distracted and I get bored, and I said, okay, So if I work from home on one side of the kitchen table and you did your revision on the other side of the kitchen table, and we did it for forty minutes and then we took ten minute breaks each, how about that? And it's like, oh, yeah, fine, And I spent the entire summer doing that, but it worked, It worked, and he revised. So yeah, I suppose really you, just like you say, you've got to think slightly outside the box as well.

And it is very hard, especially in that work environment where somebody is not like because them being like cluster can be very counteractive to productivity. It can be detrimental to other members of staff. You worry it could rub onto clients. Is that person being oh, can't be asked, I'll do that tomorrow, then a client problem later on down the line.

So it can have multiple pell effects, can't it. Really? So yeah, it is interesting to think of it as a way of not asking the question, and I think that's really hard. When you said, somebody would say mostly and then you would ask saying what a word your phrase you said, and then something you sort of stated a comment and then didn't say anything else.

I was thinking in the back of my head, thinking, aren't you going to say, like, so, how does how was it affecting you? Or how? And I was like automatically wanting to take it to that next stage, going, come on, rich, I are not supposed to say something else, and you just went and then you just stop. Stop.

I can't stop. Well, what what do people do with silence? They have to feel it, they feel it. Yeah, I think completely right, you don't.

You don't need to do the talking and it. And the thing that I learned about difficult conversations is twofold one. I used to think, in a different conversation, I need to shut this person up as much as possible and get my point across as quick as possible so they'll get on and agree with me. And now think let them speak loads, because the more they speak, the more likely they are.

And there are other skills involved in this, through good affirmations and noticing what's important to them. This isn't. But if you can deploy those skills well, they are more likely to come to your point of view without you even having to say your point of view or they or you'll get You get so much more information that will help you understand how to have this argument in a more healthy, constructive way. So when I work with CEOs, the first half an hour, I know for a number of CEOs feels really frustrating because I don't tell them anything.

I just listen, listen, listen, I'm working. I'm working one c at the moment, they describe themselves as I'm not a people person. I hate people. But they've got to do this.

But so their whole motivation. I want to find out their motivation for using these skills. They're like, I know I need to come on this, but it's probably a waste of time. They've just booked in for another load of sessions.

They've booked in for me to come and see their senior team. Why because I listened, and so for them to have this conversation is all about getting the job done and doing it really really well. They you know, so there's no point in me to about being caring environment and things like that they're not interested in that, so there's no point in me saying that. Because I listened, I'm able to frame the motivation around this person's values.

Another person I'm working with, they're coming up to retirement. They want their business to finish really, really strong. They do not want to be a limper into retirement. They've seen that before in previous years.

They hate that, and that's their motivation. So our whole conversation, it's still the same skill set we're teaching, but all the motivation comes from because you don't want to be because you don't want to whimper into retirement. And obviously I don't repeat that phrase, but it's kind of using that motivation and helping them so they're far more pumped for trying to use these skills because it's two completely different CEO's are completely different businesses, both multi million pound businesses.

But the conversation around listening and getting that is really helpful. The other thing I've learned is most people's first response they don't really know the answer to the question. So if you said to someone I actually suggest they just don't see meself, most people wouldn't really know the answer to that question. And so it's a bit it's a tricky question.

I don't think I would ask you quite like that, but it's a tricky question. So I want to give them loads of time to speak so that they understand a bit more, because as we speak more, that we we get that. I was in a meeting yesterday about a problem that I have, and we were trying to problem solve it with part of our team, and only we batted this around for fifteen minutes, and only after fifteen minutes did I start to see the problem more clearly. I thought I saw the problem clearly when I went into that meeting, but only because I was with some good people who had some good empathetic skills.

They were going, oh, this is frustrating you rich, and there's this, and then by the end I was actually I said this at the beginning, that that's kind of the issue. The real issue is this, this is the real issue we need to solve. They're like, great, we're going to do this. But if they're just tried to solve what I said at the beginning or batted it back, would have been in conflict.

I'd have felt frustrated. But they were highly skilled, caring people who were able to do that. Wonderful. The challenge for us leaders is because we are tend to be the get up and go type, holding ourselves back is exhaustive.

I think that's how would be harder. Long term. I think it makes life a lot easier. But to learn this skill set and to just keep yourself Like with my daughter, of course, I know what a good revision plan would look like on what she needs to do, but letting her develop her own plan is far more productive for her.

She's far more likely to do it. And the skills that I use are very science based. They came from addictions work to start off with. Then I used all throughout the world in lots of different context, but it came from that addiction world where clinicians used to say to addicts, don't do that anymore, otherwise you're gonna die, your partner's gonna leave you, or your kids are gonna hate you, or you're gonna create, and the addict would go, yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, and then they would go out and act out again.

We know, just telling people to do stuff doesn't make them do stuff. It's far better to help them find that in a motivation, and you help people find that in a motivation by listening to them and helping them listen to themselves. Very interesting. So we're bound to have some people who want to find out more about what you do and how you do it.

How do they get hold of you, Richard? Well, I'm on all the social media tarti stuff, but the best two would probably be Instagram or LinkedIn. I mean, you go look at my website. My website is slightly more sport facing than business facing, but LinkedIn is certainly more business kind of facing.

So just Richard Shorter. Thankfully it's an unusual name, so there aren't too many in the world. I think Instagram you're the non perfect dad, and on Instagram I'm the non perfect dad. Yes, and what is your website.

Ww dot non hyphen perfect dad dot co dot uk brilliant. Yeah, We're very happy to have a chat with some people if they wanted to think about how to get rid of that exhaustion. The main thing I think about is this is slightly cheeky. Tell me if you think this is too cheeky.

But I think you don't want your staff thinking about you when they're in bed. No, but the reality is when we survey staff in businesses, most business most staff where businesses leaders mean well, but their ability to handle these conversations poorly. You mean, staff go home and they're lying in bed and they're worried about the next conversation with their boss's and then that means you remember, of staff comes in tired, and that's not helpful. And it also means your member of staff's partner is annoyed because they're not sleeping very well and they're distracted from family life, our home life, and so they don't speak nicely about the boss.

And so actually, you know what you want is you want your staff to be sleeping well, and you want to be sleeping well because it raises everything for everybody. And these simple skills I think can do that if won't put in place. Brilliant Thank you. We have actually come to the end of our conversation.

I think the main thing I've taken away from this is slow down. What about you, Matthew? Yeah, I was exactly the same. It's like, take that breath, slow down and let them feel the silence.

In factly, I'm going to take it to work next week. So they're suddenly going to think to themselves what another has happened to? Chantelle. She's got laryngitis again, so that's normally why I don't talk.

Is one that does some things down once a year in our office until gets laryngitis and can't speak for three days. It's bliss absolutely, so I might have to have seasonal laryngitis every now and again. So thank you for joining us, Richard, it's been really informative. Thank you, And just for anybody who wants to find out more about Richard, it is Richard Shorter and non perfect Dad as well.

And I suppose really if you're a Baptist in Upmns, Dad, then you might actually personally know Richard. I can come and pop in and say hi, So thank you for listening. You can catch your Business Hour and all our podcasts on your Business Hour wherever you get your podcasts from, and you can follow us on Instagram and on LinkedIn, and we are your Business Hour. So that's it from Matthew and I this week.

Hopefully we will catch up with people again soon and we'll speak to you soon. Thank you for listening. Champ Consultants is an award winning independent firm of highly experienced qualifying accountants and tax advisors based in cater providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy and tax services.