Podcast transcript: Building strong relationships at work with Michael Bungay Stanier

Shelley Johnson: Hi, welcome to Let’s Take This Offline, a brand new podcast from the Australian HR Institute. My name is Shelley Johnson. I’m a proud AHRI member. And I’ve spent over a decade leading HR teams and helping to create positive work cultures. Whether you’re on your commute, taking a lunch break or looking for inspiration, this podcast aims to share meaningful conversations and actionable insights that leave you feeling inspired, informed and ready to take action. A key part of being an effective HR practitioner is building strong strategic relationships with stakeholders to build your influence and move your organisation towards its goals. You could argue that success in HR relies on your ability to build trusting relationships with everyone from the CEO to graduates. Done well, relationship building becomes HR’s superpower, but it tends to be easier said than done. For example, how can we protect a relationship when delivering difficult news? What’s the first thing we should do when we sense a relationship is declining? And how can we manage tension that arises from being caught in the middle of the expectations of leaders and those of employees? To answer these questions, I’m speaking with coaching and leadership expert Michael Bungay Stanier. Michael founded Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that has trained thousands of managers to be more coach-like in organisations from Microsoft to Gucci. But he’s probably best known for his book, The Coaching Habit, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. And in his most recent book, How to Work with Almost Anyone, shows how you can build the best possible relationship with key people at work. Let’s dive in. Well, Michael, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to chat to you today.

Michael Bungay Stanier: Shelley, I’m super excited to be here. 

Shelley Johnson: Thanks, Michael. We like to start every episode by asking our guests this one question. What’s your best piece of advice for HR professionals?

Michael Bungay Stanier: You know, it’s become a bit of a mantra of mine recently, which is like be the person who started something, be the person who reaches out. I mean, this is a, I’m in Australia, because my Mum’s moving from the family home into a nursing home. And she’s a bit scared and a bit overwhelmed by it. But when I’m walking around the home with her, I just say hello to everybody. And Mum is like, what are you doing? I’m like, Look, nobody likes to be the first person to say hello, but everybody loves to be greeted. So what is it to be the first person to say hello? And if you’re the person who initiates, the person who reaches out, the person who says hello, that can often make some magic happen.

Shelley Johnson: It’s really interesting as well, for HR, I feel like a lot of the things that in my experience working in HR internally, and also consulting, has been, we tend to operate in that reactive realm and and get stuck in dealing with a constant cycle of people issues, which can be a challenge, and it can be a drain on that emotional energy. How do you experience that in terms of having energy reserves to be the first person that greets someone or to engage in those relationships and fully show up as your best self?

Michael Bungay Stanier: So it’s a juicy question, Shelley. I’m just trying to figure out how brave I want to be in answering it. Let me be brave. I think one of the things that make you strategic is a willingness to say ‘yes’, and therefore willingness to say no, because your ‘yes’s have no shape to them, no weight to them, unless you’re willing to say ‘no’. And when you’re saying no to something, you’re inevitably saying no to someone. In other words, you’re letting somebody down. Somebody’s got expectations, hopes, requests, kind of like, you’re going to do this for me. And you go, actually, I’m not going to do this. Because I’ve said ‘yes’ to this, and this is the most important thing for me to be working on. And that means I have to say no to these things. You often move into human resources and people development because you love people, because you’re committed to the flourishing of people. And the dark side of that is you can be in a kind of, you know, the Drama Triangle, the rescuer role, I’ll fix it, I’ll save it, I’ll solve it, or die in a ditch to try and make this thing happen. And that is pretty exhausting and pretty draining, and so one of the, what I noticed from people who are in the world of HR who are forces, is they’ve got to they’ve got to courage and a fearlessness and a willingness to say we’re doing this, which means we’re going to disappoint some people over here because we’re saying no to them. 

Shelley Johnson: I love what you’re saying about the courage that that takes and I think You can even use opening this conversation, Michael by going, can I be brave? Let’s be brave. 

Michael Bungay Stanier: Exactly. We’re going right there. I’m trying to role model what it means I’m like, Okay, should I say this? I think I should say this.

Shelley Johnson: Yeah, I think you should. And to me, if I think about your work, that’s a hallmark of a healthy relationship, the ability to have brave conversations and stiff into the mess and painful, and your latest book, How to Work with Almost Anyone, dives into this idea even more. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Michael Bungay Stanier: If there’s a theme to my work, it is, you know, with the Coaching Habit and the advice trap and the other books I’ve written to try and make human flourish more in organisations is to build adult to adult relations, because I think your organisational life, it will trend to dehumanising you it’ll trend to infantilising you. I think that one of the things that HR can do so brilliantly is help people build these adult relationships. When I say that people often nod their head and then they go, Wait, what is an adult to adult relationship? Because it is a kind of therapy speak. And for me, and I don’t get an adult relationship as being able to ask for what you want, knowing that the answer may be no. And that’s a big hard thing. Because knowing what you want is often tricky to get to be brave enough to ask for what you want is tricky to get to be able to hear no or say no is also tricky. So these are no small things. But a lot of what I’m trying to do, you know through the Coaching Habit, and the advice trap, and the new book, how to work with almost anyone gives people the tools and the courage to kind of be up for those types of conversations. 

Shelley Johnson: So speaking of conversations, in the book, you talk about this thing called Keystone conversations, what is the keystone conversation of why does that matter for organisations?

Michael Bungay Stanier: Yeah, so the Keystone conversation is the primary tactic in this new book. And you can sum it up in a single sentence, it is a conversation about how we work together, before you plunge into the work or the stuff that needs to get done. But before we go into the details of that, let me explain why you even bother. And it comes down to, first of all, this deep awareness that your working relationships have a huge impact on your happiness and your success, not just the quality of the work that gets done, but just how you’re feeling about it. And you know this to be true, right? If you think for a moment about one of the worst working relationships they’ve had in recent times, and you think of that person, and you think of those interactions, and you think of the impact on you. It was miserable. You were frustrated and sad and confused and self doubting. And in a word, diminished, you’re shrunken down. And then if you flip that, and you think of that, like the best working relationships you’ve had, you know, ones where you’re like, Ah, this is, this could have had some magic to it somehow. Well, it’s the opposite. You’re braver, you’re better able to negotiate ambiguity, you’re more courageous, there’s an expansive quality, you can feel the best version of you showing up doing the best work, feeling the best about yourself as well. So your working relationships really matter. And most of the time, we kind of cross our fingers and hope for the best. You’re like, ah, some are good, some are bad. So be and I’m like, what if you could more actively shape the quality of the relationship. And the idea is to build for the key working relationships, your best possible relationship with that person. They’re not all going to be perfect. And we have a bell curve, it can be some lovely and some not lovely in some in the middle. But all working relationships have potential. I think all of them have the potential to be better. And the Keystone conversation is a conversation about hey, look, before we get into the work, how do we want to work together so we can best do the work together? That’s what starts unlocking the potential of a best possible relationship.

Shelley Johnson: I love that idea of the best possible relationship because I think it’s an optimistic way to look at how we work well with people. And it implies that we continually work on improving the relationships to get to that best possible version. I’d love to know what are the signs of a healthy relationship?

Michael Bungay Stanier: Yeah, I think the best possible relationship has three core qualities to it. It needs to be safe, it needs to be vital and it needs to be repairable. So let me break those down one by one. You start with safe, because there’s not going to be a single HR person who isn’t already nodding along to this going, Yep, I’ve heard about psychological safety. I’ve heard about Amy Edmondson, she’s been talking about it for 10 years now. We’ve all got the key insight that psychological safety is critical. My guess is many of you people listening have gone to Google and downloaded project oxygen and project Aristotle the research on effective means and effective managers. And this idea of psychological safety is shot through those reports. It’s like you just need it. It allows people to show up as who they are to say the things that need to be said without retribution. So it’s about removing the fear. But telling, you know, I had this moment where I’m like, I don’t just want psychological safety. Because I’ve been in some working relationships, I felt really safe. And also, quite frankly, a little boring, and a little smothering and a little tedious. And I’m like, I need, I need more than that. And so this is what the idea of vital means, you know, vital meaning not only alive, but essential that two meanings are both perfect. And you could think of this as psychological bravery. So a willingness to push and provoke and challenge and get out to the edge and take risks. And if it’s just psychologically safe, then it’s a bit boring. And if it’s just psychologically alive, then it’s a bit dangerous. But if you’ve got the right dance between the two of you, you’re finding it needs to be safe enough and it needs to be vital enough, then something magical is about to happen. And then the third element is repairable. This is really interesting. You know, as part of the research for this I read a lot of the kind of the Gurus in the world of relationships. So like Esther Parral. And Terry Real, Dan Siegel, and John Gottman. And if you read across their work, you realise that the romantic relationships that last are the ones that get repaired. That’s part one of the insight. Part, two of the Insight is most of us are pretty crappy at repairing relationships, which is like we’re not that good at it, we’re kind of like I just absorb the pain or just feel sad about it and private, and a willingness to say, hey, it is an evitable that this working relationship will get dinged up and bent and cracked and damaged. Sometimes in big ways there’ll be drama, but mostly in small ways. An ability to repair gives that chance for the relationship to be as good as it can for as long as it can.

Shelley Johnson: I love this idea of repairable and even the small things, the small things that repair relationships, and the small things that damage relationships, what are some of those signs that you see on teams that damage that the smaller things, the subtle things that you say that damage relationships,

Michael Bungay Stanier: You know, the universe tends to entropy to chaos, and most of the damage that happens in teams and just between people working? I feel like it’s not, it’s not deliberate. You know, it’s, it’s a misunderstood gesture, it’s a bad night’s sleep, a promise that you thought was made but wasn’t made, or you’ve got different memories of what was made. It is somebody going, this is the standard, somebody else going no, this is the standard. And you just have these little tears in the fabric all the time, like just things get damaged. You know, generally, I think, Shelley, in working relationships, it’s mostly self healing, you know, it kind of needs to be because, you know, time moves on and you gotta keep working with the person and you like, it’s not that big a deal. And then I never quite got back to where it was at its best. But here’s what’s powerful about repair. And the parallel is in the world of retail. This is kind of counterintuitive research that says, if you’re a brand, and you screw up with a customer, and then do an amazing job at fixing the screw up, they are 10 times more likely to recommend you then if you’ve just never screwed up in the first place. So if you’re designing a retail experience, you really want to design a screw up in the first interactions, and then a designed solution which blows people’s minds because then you’re like, then you create raving fans. It’s true about relationships as well, which is like if, if there’s been the damage. Like if you and I are working together, and I’ve said something and you’re feeling a bit upset about it, and you’re like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say this to my core. And I’m like, great. So what do we need to do to make this right between us? Now we’ve both shown a commitment to the relationship and a commitment to it being better and a commitment to speaking the hard truth. I trust you more you trust me more, we’re more likely to actually be able to work, walk further together and do better things together. Because we’ve actually, you know, we’ve survived the first test.

Shelley Johnson: I feel like this is a truth that all HR people know and see that when you repair a relationship, it actually gets better because of what happened, it becomes more healthy. And it reminds me of this idea of antifragility. I’ve been talking with a lot of teams about it lately. It’s from the centre labs work where he talks about how anti fragile systems and relationships get better as a result of challenge and struggle. So like An example of an anti fragile system is when you break a bone. For anyone listening who’s broken a bone before, they’ll know this when the bone heals it calcifies. And it gets stronger where the original break was. And so that’s an anti fragile system. And I think the same can be true in healthy workplace relationships, that when we have issues with people that we work with, if we’re proactive about how we repair them, they become stronger and better as a result of that challenge. But I think one of the big struggles for us in HR is that we’re often trying to get managers to have some of those repair conversations, Michael, but the tendency for most people is to avoid conflict and retreat from those conversations. So I’d love to know how you help leaders and teams overcome that fear of conflict and difficult conversations so they can get to that repair stage?

Michael Bungay Stanier: So it’s a really good question. And I’ve got a couple of answers at different levels. So the first answer is just how do you motivate individuals to change. And the key insight is people buy medicine, they don’t buy vitamins, meaning people will do stuff that makes the pain go away, they’re much less likely to do stuff that just makes them a little bit better. I would help people feel the pain of their less successful relationships. So just as I said, at the start of this, it’s like, think back to a time when you’ve had a really tough working relationship. And think of the impact it had on you, how it shrunk you down, how you lost your confidence, how you lost your sense of self, how you lost your trust in what you could do, how you felt diminished, how you didn’t feel seen, you know, if you feel that pain? And if I could show you a way of potentially making that a bit better, would you be interested? And they’re like, yeah, actually, no, you mentioned it, I’m more interested than I thought I would be. So there’s an individual level at which you might talk to people to say, here’s how you might get interested in this. But often HR people are trying to think about things at an organisational level as well, which is like how do we shift our culture, so that we might be more interested in working relationships? And now you’ve got a couple of other things going on? Well, here’s where I think I think you’ve got to figure out what business problem this is helping with. So that you get organisational support behind you to go, we need to solve this. And so if I was in HR, I was going, how do I try and shift this behaviour? I’d be thinking about your senior team, and I’d be going what are they worried about? Now? What’s the strategy they have for how this company is going to be different in five years time? And what problem does, keeping our best people and building better relationships and allowing people to fulfil their potential? What problem does that solve for this organisation? And then you find language that is medicine rather than vitamins?

Shelley Johnson: One of the things I found is really, how do you explain the cost? What is the cost of unhealthy relationships, or relationships that need desperate repair, but we’re just avoiding it. If you’re the HR person listening right now, that’s like, I need to market this to my organisation, how would you sell it?

Michael Bungay Stanier: I would be curious to know what data the organisation collects on what data does the organisation worry about? So it might be retention? No, it’s I can’t we just lose a lot of people in this area, what is going on with that? Because everybody who will have heard the saying people join organisations, but they leave managers, people are leaving, they’re leaving managers, what’s going on with that? But it might also be a, you know, employee survey, where they’re like, how happier about your managers ability to do A or B or C, there might be something to do with the Net Promoter Score, because that’s something that some organisations where it’s just like, Okay, here’s how we figure that out. You know, how likely would you be to recommend working in this place to a colleague or a friend? If that’s not high? What’s that about? And if recruiting the very best people is what matters to your organisation, then you’re finding your story. So I’d be curious to know what’s being measured already. And what does that tell you about what matters to this organisation? Because in lots of organisations, there’s all sorts of measurements that happen that nobody actually cares about. You know, it’s like, I’ve seen 1000 employee surveys. I like oh, here are the numbers for this year. Everyone’s like, fantastic, good. Yeah. Nice. Just carry on. Like, we’ve done an employee survey that feels like all we needed to do, we don’t need to change anything. So like, so none of those numbers matter. But what are these senior leaders, what are the influences? Where’s the power in your organisation? And what do those people care about? So there’s no generic answer. It’s finding the numbers that matter to your organisation. But here’s the number that might be helpful to make your case. This comes from John Gottman, who is one who writes in relationships, best known for a book of the seven secrets of a successful marriage, which is a really solidly good book based on a tonne of research. He says 70% of problems in a relationship are perpetual. They’re not fixable, they don’t change. And some people I’ve told that to like sad faces, they’re like, No, that’s bad. I’m like, no, no, no, that’s good. His way is a powerful, liberating insight. First of all, you don’t have to fix the 70%. All you need to do is figure out a way of working around 70%. And that’s partly what the tactics and strategies in how to work with almost anyone does or is like, let me tell you about you. Let me tell you about me. Now let’s figure out how we work together. And it’s not fixing everything, it’s collaborating together. But then it says 30% of the issues in a relationship are fixable, they are changeable. And I’m like, can you imagine if you took your five most frustrating current working relationships with your boss, with colleagues, with your team, with clients, with vendors, and you made them off 30% Better? Would that not be amazing, it would be amazing, it would go from being unbearable to bearable, it would go from being almost unworkable to workable, not not great. There’s no magic unicorns, burping rainbows, but like it no longer sucks as badly as it does. And sometimes removing the pain is far better than trying to amplify the good. That’s

Shelley Johnson: Such a good way to think about it. We don’t have to strive for perfection all the time. But if we can just focus on taking away some of those pain points and making things 30% Better than 30% Better has a massive impact on the relational health between those two people. Speaking of making working relationships better. One thing that often comes up for HR Michael is this idea of feeling stuck between the employer and the employee, which isn’t necessarily reflective of the reality because any work that HR does to support employees has bottom line benefits to the business. So the two things go hand in hand. So how can we change this narrative of pitting employers against the employee, and instead start to say that we’re all working towards the same thing.

Michael Bungay Stanier: So there is such an ongoing, dynamic, sometimes useful, or sometimes not useful tension between what these two parties want out of that, you know, what you do as an employer is to be going, how do I make, the culture I have and the strategy I have compelling, so that people go, actually, I would like to give 40 hours a week of my time to this organisation because I feel that they’re doing something in the world that that makes a difference. And they’re doing it in a way that honours who I am. So it is about going right? What does it take for us to have purpose in the work that we do and create a managed experience that makes me feel seen and heard and able to contribute, able to learn, unable to grow? That’s the role of the employee. I am an employer, I have two small companies. And it is hard to do that. That’s much easier to say than to do. And the job of the employee is as much as it’s available to you to say, I know what I have to give to this company. I don’t think that’s everything, you know, not wanting to go I know, I’ve hired you, I expect your life. Now, I don’t want that. But I’m like, if it’s an employee, I’m like, if you can find the work, where you’re like, I can use this work to contribute. I can use this work to help me keep growing and becoming the next best version of myself. Which is not necessarily the same as climbing the ladder like I don’t know there’s some people who love to climb the corporate ladder, lots of people go look, I’ve found my place and I’m content here. But I do have a personal bias towards going look i I want people to continue to develop and grow to become the best possible versions of who they are. It’s kind of an adult to adult thing again. I think we unlocked our greatness by working on the hard things. So it’s like how do you find the hard things? How do you continue to grow as much as you can because every employee has a whole life that is far more complicated than anybody else realises there’s a tension between these two desires and hunger. And I think HR plays this role of kind of calling both of these agents to be the best possible version of themselves.

Shelley Johnson: That’s such a beautiful way to put it of being the best possible version of themselves. And it sounds like one of those perpetual problems, where we just have to experience it to move through it. Those brave and gutsy conversations with both sides can be really challenging. And AHRI has a great short course on having these difficult conversations that we’ll link in the show notes. But also, a lot of this can be remedied by those Keystone conversations. 

Michael Bungay Stanier: Coming back to where you started the conversation, which is like, you asked me know, what’s my suggestion for HR professionals, and I said, stop something, be the person who reaches out. You know, when I talk about this idea of building the best possible relationship and having Keystone conversations, I get a lot of people nodding their heads and also feeling awkward. Like, it might be not, it’s not always awkward, but sometimes it is, and even some people, and it becomes a lot less awkward, quickly as you start doing this. So even knowing that you may not know exactly what to say, I mean, the book gives you five questions and strategies and key words. So there’s a lot of practical tools in the book if you want that. But you don’t need the book to walk away from that big idea where you go, ‘Hey, let’s have a conversation about how we work best together. Before we plunge into the work.’ 

Shelley Johnson: You’re so right, we often focus on the work, like the work that we have to do instead of how we want to work. And I think that’s a pretty significant distinction that often gets overlooked. I want to switch gears now, Michael, and talk about your other book, the Coaching Habit, which guides people through a process that is so simple, but powerful, of how do you have effective coaching conversations? This book absolutely took off. And I just want to know, it’s so practical, what is it about these questions that are so profound, and they’ve had such an impact?

Michael Bungay Stanier: As we said, in the first half of the conversation, people buy medicine, not vitamins, and part of what the Coaching Habit does is it is unwaged coaching. So it didn’t really write it for coaches, because coaches already kind of have taken the bait and they’re like, I love coaching. It’s amazing. I’m like, I don’t need to persuade you. What I’m trying to do is all the people who like how my organisation is making the coach, I don’t really want to be a coach. But I have to do this. And it could actually be helpful. How do I do that? So I knew what I was trying to do, make it feel like an everyday practical interaction, you can be more coach-like, because the more coach-like here’s definition is simply Can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and give advice a little bit more slowly? Curiosity takes you closer to figuring out what the real problem is to solve. Curiosity takes you closer to figuring out who the person is that you’re working with what’s really up for them. So it kind of worked both at a strategy and a culture level. So the seven questions, I taught the content in this book for 10 years before I wrote it down in the book. So I kind of just tested a bunch of questions. And I’m like, these are the ones that feel like, these might be a good first seven questions to start with. But I think the real power shell is it’s just like it makes a coach, it makes people go, Oh, okay, if this is coaching, I could probably, you know, take a crack at that. And that, to me, is great success.

Shelley Johnson: I use three of them nonstop, with leaders and the ones that I use the most are what’s on your mind for the opening question. What’s the real challenge for you here, which is like, Ah, so good. And what else? What’s the real challenge for you here? Why does that work so well, for coaching conversations?

Michael Bungay Stanier: The key insight behind it is the first thing that shows up is never the real challenge. It’s just the first challenge. But because we’re also wired to get on with stuff, we’re like, we’ve got a problem. Fantastic. Oh, my advice, monsters are showing up. And I’m going to try and solve the thing that you’ve started talking about. And the key identity shift is if you can become known as an HR professional, you become known as the person with the ideas, but the person who always figures out what the real challenge is, you are immensely more valuable to your organisation. And you have far more impact in your organisation. Because you’re willing to say, look, my job is to figure out what the real challenges are because that is a strategic act. So that’s the kind of the power behind the question and then the way the question is constructed is not so helpful. So it’s not what the challenge is. If you’re asking me what the challenge is, You’re gonna get a bit of a restatement from what you’ve already heard when you ask them what’s on your mind. When you add the word real. What you’re saying is, the first thing you told me isn’t the real challenge. So what’s the real challenge? So immediately, you get them thinking, you can feel the difference. What’s the challenge? What’s the real challenge? It’s a different question, even though there’s only one word added. But then I think the magic happens when you add for you at the end of that question, what’s the real challenge here for you? And now they’re not talking about the problem out there. They’re talking about, here’s why I am wrestling with this. This is what’s hard for me around this. And suddenly, it’s not about in theory, what’s the executive summary of what the problem is? It’s like, here’s what’s hard for me right now. And once they know what’s hard for them right now, they’re actually already starting to solve their own problem. Sometimes, that’s all you need to ask. I’m a believer of like, if you can coach somebody in five minutes or less, everybody wins. And sometimes that’s having the discipline to ask them good questions, and then shut up and listen to the answer. 

Shelley Johnson: And the listening part is so important. I used this question the other day with a leader and I watch them, pause and think. And I think the temptation for me, Michael, was to jump in, and feel the silence. But as I just waited, and I just listened, I saw them start to really reflect. And so their initial challenge was like a surface level issue. But then as I asked that question of what’s the real challenge here for you, they started to really think deeply about the problem. And then as I waited, and resisted the urge to jump in, they were able to identify the big roadblock for them, and simply ask good questions and give people the space to answer and recognise that they have the insight. I think that’s such a profound thing that we can do as leaders we can do as HR. I’m just wondering, for HR people who are listening that want to help their leaders step into that role of Coach, what practically, have you done with organisations at Microsoft and Guchi? That worked well? And how do you get leaders to start to see coaching as a really core part of their role.

Michael Bungay Stanier: So there’s two things to do. One is to practice what you want to see, and teach them what you’re doing. So you can read the book, or watch the TEDx talk, how to tame your device, monster, and all that content is available to be found. And so role modelling it, and then going, noticing what I’m doing, how’s this working for you? Would you like me to tell you what I’m doing so you can do it as well. Sometimes it’s being, you know, willing to speak the hard truth and say you’re an advice giving maniac. And there’s a place for advice. I mean, there’s a really important place for advice, just not as fast or as soon or as omnipresent as you’re currently delivering it. So let me introduce curiosity and coaching as an element of leadership that is underdeveloped in you right now.

Shelley Johnson: What happens when you have a leader who doesn’t want to be coached? What do you do in that scenario?

Michael Bungay Stanier: Yeah, I think lots of leaders, if you come up to them go, Hey, I’m from a car, I’m here to coach you. The typical reaction from normal people is like, that sounds terrible. And how will I resist that? So I most often don’t make a grand announcement that the coaching has begun. And this is a coaching session, and how’s the coaching going? I just want to be curious. So if I’m starting to work with a leader, I go, Hey, how can I help? And then I’ll go, so what’s the challenge here for you? And then what else? What else is hard? So what’s the real challenge? So what do you want? So if you wanted to get that, what would you have to say yes to? And what would you have to say? No, dude, make that real. You can call this coaching if you want. Or you can just call it me having a conversation with you, I’m trying to be as helpful as possible. When you push it into a system that pushes back. When you push into somebody’s going, I’m trying to change you because I want to coach you, they will push back. It’s a survival mechanism driven by your lizard brain, your amygdala. So don’t make it that, don’t make a big deal about it. But be curious and be helpful. 

Shelley Johnson: I love that. Stay curious for longer, and you’re so right. I feel like the temptation is to always jump straight into advice giving or going straight down to the task without giving the right amount of space. I think sometimes we just need to slow down. Well, certainly that’s the case for me. Michael, we like to end every episode of the pod by posing a scenario to our guests to respond to so here’s yours. You’re an HR manager and a race. An employee feedback survey revealed that employees don’t feel they can trust the leadership team. They describe the culture as cutthroat and hierarchical. And as an HR team, you’re all concerned by this information. So you go to your chief HR officer with your recommended fixes, but they aren’t interested in addressing the problem, let alone hearing your solutions. They just want to sweep it under the rug, what would you do? 

Michael Bungay Stanier: I’d be trying to find ways to get the car CHRO, to worry about something. So I’d be finding different dado to say, I know that you and the CEO are worried about employee retention, you kind of come back to what we were talking about right before, which is like you got to find the pain. And you’re like, What are your thoughts around what’s driving people away, and wondering if this feels important enough for us to try and figure out or whether you’re okay with it being a cost of doing business. And so what I’m trying to figure out, if the way for me to try and make something different in this organisation is to is to have the CHRO on board with me. I need to figure out what they care about what they’re worried about how they measure success. And everything I do flows from that. Because if my CHRO is like, I like things exactly as they are, this is working well, for me, confronting a senior person going, this has broken, you and I don’t have a good enough working relationship for me to be able to confront you like this. I’m always going to lose if I’d had a keystone conversation with my CHRO. A year ago, and I’m like, when things are hard, and fast things feel broken? How do we have that conversation has the best way for me to bring up challenges that you might not like to hear. And they go? Well, the best way to do it is to do it off site in a pub having a pint of beer together, looking out over the harbour and chatting about and I’m like, great. They’ll go, Hey, let’s go to the pub, look over the harbour, because I’ve had some things I’d love to talk to you about, then there’s opportunities there. But you’ve just gotta play the person.

Shelley Johnson: I think the thing that I love about that answer is it’s the reminder that we have to do the work on the relationship before it gets to the high stakes moment. Right. So if we’ve had the Keystone conversation upfront early before we have a critical moment, it makes that whole process so much easier. And I think the big thing for me from your work is this idea that if we build the habit of asking great questions and staying curious about the people that we work alongside with, we’re always gonna get a better outcome.

Michael Bungay Stanier: I think so. Remember, there’s a place for advice. There’s a place for solutions. But if you can stay curious a little bit longer. The advice and the solutions you get, you’re going to be more helpful and more easily heard.

Shelley Johnson: It’s such an important thing for us to keep reminding ourselves about. Michael, I just want to say thank you so much for being generous with your time and speaking with us today. It has been such a delight talking to you.

Michael Bungay Stanier: It’s been really nice to talk to you, Shelley, thank you.

Shelley Johnson: I know a lot of HR people listening will already be big fans of Michael’s work. So I’m really glad we got to have him on the pod today to share his insights into how to build healthy relationships and how to maintain them. The key takeouts from me were ensuring that relationships are safe, vital and repairable. And we can do the work early on relationships to remove those pain points. The other part about this conversation I really loved was the insight into HR, deeply understanding the challenges within organisations and being able to speak to and help alleviate those challenges across the board. Thanks for listening and check out the show notes for some resources to help you put these insights into action. If you enjoy this podcast, make sure you give us a five star rating and follow so you never miss an episode. This podcast is brought to you by the Australian HR Institute. If you’d like to learn more about AHRI visit ahri.com.au That’s ahri.com.au.

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