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The People Gardener Podcast with Rhonda Delaney
The People Gardener Podcast with Rhonda Delaney
Turning Conflict into Growth: A Leader's Guide to Cultivating Team Cohesion
Discover the silver lining within workplace conflicts and transform these moments into stepping stones for growth and team cohesion. As the People Gardener, I, Rhonda Delaney, guide you through the final chapter of our series dedicated to empowering small business leaders like yourself. We dissect not only the art of conflict resolution but also the critical role of leading by example. By embracing discord as a catalyst for insight, and with recommendations such as "Crucial Conversations" and "Fierce Conversations" in your leadership library, you're poised to navigate these challenges with confidence. Learn how your actions can echo through your organization, setting the tone for values and culture, and why consistency in word and deed is your strongest tool in cultivating a thriving workplace garden.
Feeling the itch to actively step up your leadership game? Join me on a transformative 25-day journey with the People Gardener Collective app, where each day blooms with a new focus to enrich your leadership skills. This challenge, '25 ways to be interested,' is your invitation to deepen your connection with your team and refine your approach. I'm eager to hear your stories of growth and breakthroughs, so don't hesitate to share your progress. Whether it's a review, a tweet, or an email, your experiences are the seeds of our collective success. Together, let's nurture our leadership capabilities and watch our business landscapes flourish.
Well, hey there, welcome to the People Gardener podcast. I'm Rhonda Delaney, your host, also known as the People Gardener, thrilled to put this podcast together to help small business owners, new business owners, frustrated business owners and aspiring leaders, whether they're inside business or outside. Each week, we bring you some actionable steps so that you can actually improve your skill as a leader. That's what we're about. We're here to help you become a better leader by giving you access to lots of different perspectives. By giving you access to lots of different perspectives. The guests are varied. We're thrilled to have them. Get out your pen, get out your paper and be ready to learn Every single episode. You're going to be able to take something away that you can implement. Are you ready? Let's get to work. Well, hey there. Welcome back to the People Gardener podcast.
Speaker 1:This is the final part, part three, of this series. There's a lot of things that small business owners, consistently across the board, have struggles with, and that's what we're doing in this series we're addressing those struggles. It's the final four in the 12 that we're going to discuss. So the first one is you avoid conflict resolution, and this is, oh, the first thing I want you to understand is it is part of the human condition and it is not terminal. We definitely have to work at changing how we look at conflict. Conflict is an opportunity. It's not something that is happening to you to make your life miserable and all the rest of it. It's an opportunity to learn more, to probe, to discover, to have your perceptions about something possibly changed. Whoever is in the conflict or in the challenge, it's an opportunity for them to express their perspective, and often the conflict arises is because people are focused on themselves and their perspective and projecting that out and the two different perspectives are clashing. There's no space to absorb them and maybe learn to understand where the other person is coming from. When you let them fester meaning you don't resolve the conflict or you don't attempt to resolve the conflict, you ignore it they become unmanageable and then you've got this great, big, huge problem that didn't need to be there.
Speaker 1:As the business owner, there's times where you have to personally be involved in the conflict, but if you have department heads, make sure that you're interacting with them and helping them, giving them the courage, giving them the support, helping them to understand that, hey, this has to be dealt with. I'm here to help, I can be your sounding board and I can maybe give you some thoughts and some ideas. It's a skill that every successful business person needs to acquire and it's not a comfortable one for a long time. There gets to be a point where, yeah, it might become a little bit easier, but you know, it isn't. It isn't comfortable, and I did talk about a few books earlier on in the podcast and a couple that have been really helpful for me understanding how to have these conversations where emotion has a tendency to overrule.
Speaker 1:The first one is Crucial Conversations that's the name of the book and then the other one is Fierce Conversations and just getting a better perspective, maybe a more objective perspective about the challenge, about what the issue is, and helping you develop a framework for yourself that, okay, when I have these conflicts that I need to resolve, here's how I'm going to do it, here's where I'm going to start, and then my next step is this so that when you're going into that, you feel comfortable, that you know what it is, that you need to establish, what you need to learn in order to have a conversation that can expose all of the issues, so that, collectively, those in this conflict can come to a resolution that works for them, for you, for the company, for the customer. This skill is worth its weight in gold and you will manage to save relationships with customers, with employees. Get these two books and spend some time. Come up with your game plan that would work for any situation. Make it broad. Here's my three steps that I'm going to take.
Speaker 1:Another mistake that happens is that you, as the owner, as the leader, don't lead by example. There's a disconnect between what you're saying and what you're doing. There's a disconnect between what you're saying and what you're doing. There's a disconnect between what you are saying in an interview process and how you're onboarding people. They don't match. Focus on showing your team, not telling them. It's so easy to just say words. It's a lot more difficult to follow it up with actions, and absolutely actions speak much, much louder than words. And how you're addressing the challenges I mean.
Speaker 1:One of the things is you know it's okay to make mistakes. You know I understand that we all make mistakes, but then you absolutely blow your lid when somebody makes a mistake and your people are watching and going. Okay, well, she said this and then she did this. So which one of those am I going to believe? I'm going to believe how she acted, because I don't want to be in a situation where she behaves that way when I make a mistake. They need to know what you're going to do before you even do it, because you have demonstrated to them time after time after time what your values are, what is important to you and how you conduct yourself. They're watching you, don't kid yourself. Their head may be down, but they can hear, they can see how you present yourself.
Speaker 1:If it's on a zoom call, if you're working, working remote, the most important part of your day is what you're showing them about, who you are and what you believe. And that starts with when you arrive. Right if you're in a physical location, are you walking in the door and you're going straight to your office head down, don't interact with anybody? Or are you walking in with a smile on your face and saying good morning to people and maybe stopping and chatting or asking a question? That sets the tone for people? If you're this, you know, head down straight into the office. It doesn't invite people to come in and ask you any questions. It doesn't invite them to want to share an idea that they have that might save the company significant money or might improve the customer service experience. That just blows people's minds. You want to show by your actions and how you conduct yourself that, hey, I am here, I'm interested in each of you, I appreciate each of you and let's all work together.
Speaker 1:When you are in the throes of small business ownership again I go back to lots of hats, lots of spinning plates it's easy to become just completely internally focused on all of the things. And the third mistake that happens for this week is you neglect the team building exercises, your team. They need to get to know each other. You need to get to know them. And when you give opportunity for your team to be together not necessarily working, but it could be working as well coming together, brainstorming there's lots of ways to put your team together, but lightening things up, having fun on the job you want people to enjoy coming to work, so when they can enjoy time with each other inside the work day, it makes for a much happier team and a more engaged team, which in turn results in more productivity and bottom line. You are transforming your employees into raving fans. It doesn't have to cost you a lot of money.
Speaker 1:In my corporate we loved having food competitions, so you know we might say, okay, it's the salsa, we're having a salsa competition, so everybody that wanted to participate they would make their salsa at home and I'd go out and get the tortilla chips and we would have everybody that could come and we would have a judge judging. It's like, okay, mark, you know all these in the order that you like them, and we would have a winner. And it was so fun because everyone's standing around, they're eating, they're expressing what they're thinking about what they're eating, and you got to know who liked it spicy and who liked it mild, and somebody wanted it, you know, more fruity and others wanted it. No, I need it thicker. This is too thin. It was just really interesting because you were learning things about people that you worked with. Potlucks are great, something that I used to do. Again, I'm working in a physical environment. It's more challenging, no question, when it's when it's a remote environment, but I would yeah, it was about.
Speaker 1:Well, during the busy see, our busy season, when everybody's heads were down might be once a month I would bring my espresso machine from home and I would be the barista for the morning. I would make coffees, I'd bring all my syrups and, yeah, I would go and I would ask them for their order. I'd hand them their cups and they would have to with their marker. They had to put their name on it and what they wanted, what type of coffee they wanted, and so I do that in the morning and then I do around in the afternoon. They all started talking about the coffees that were on their desks or they'd have the coffees in their hand. Oh, what did you order? So it's creating that environment where people are comfortable sharing who they are. Now, if you want to spend a bit of money, you can go into the go for a round of golf or everybody's out for dinner. It could be that you decide okay, we're all going roller skating or ice skating, maybe it's laser tag, I mean, those all cost money. Yes, absolutely, they're wonderful.
Speaker 1:As far as the team building and week is, you disregard employee feedback. Cardinal sin, absolutely cardinal sin. Those feedback moments are gold and so vital for creating the opportunity to transform someone into a raving fan. I regularly, once a year, I had everybody give me feedback and I spent weeks going through line by line by line, addressing issues, encouraging them. Hey, nothing we can do about it right now. Keep it on your report.
Speaker 1:When somebody gives you information that a process, a procedure, another employee, even yourself, you are a challenge, you need to address it. You need to thank them from the bottom of their heart that they're willing to share with you. You can't fix something that you don't know is broken. You need them to share. You don't want them to hold these things in because then it moves into anger and bitterness and frustration and looking for another job and leaving. You don't want that. It's incredibly expensive to replace employees.
Speaker 1:So when you accept the feedback that they're giving you and you act on it, I'm not saying you have to agree with everything. I'm not saying that you actually have to do anything at this particular moment because it might not be possible based on the systems that you have. But you need to acknowledge that you got it and you reviewed it and you appreciate it and thank them profusely for sharing with you. It's hard. It doesn't matter how extroverted and how confident somebody is. It is still hard to give feedback that you know is contrary to the thinking of your boss and you believe in your heart of hearts that the boss just doesn't get it. They're missing something and you want to share with them what they're missing so that things can be improved. It's a very difficult thing. So, as the owner, you have to make sure you go overboard in thanking them for sharing, because if you don't, they're going to close up and they're not going to share again.
Speaker 1:And somebody that decides to be courageous and share with you something that they more than likely know you're not going to like, that is when you know that you have created an environment where people feel like they belong and they feel seen and they feel heard. It's those conversations that are going to move the needle forward and create this business that is a fabulous place to be, place to be. These ones this week they will change how you operate and they will transform your employees into raving fans. If you simply do the work and every day you are working at becoming the leader that you need to be, it's not going to happen overnight. It might be a year from now, might be two years from now. Be patient, it will happen. That's it for this week. We'll talk to you again next week.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks so much for listening to this episode. Hopefully you got a few nuggets that you can get into play right away. Every week, we certainly try and bring you things that are going to make a difference in your leadership journey. If you haven't already gone on and checked the People Gardener Collective app, it's on the Apple Store and Google Play. The free membership has my 25 ways to be interested. It's a 25-day challenge. It's one item a day. It is a fabulous place to start your leadership transformation. Check it out. Love to get some feedback, so don't be afraid to leave a review or shoot me a message on any of my social channels or my email. Ronda at rondadelaneycom. Thanks again for listening.