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Episode Overview:
"Unlocking Courageous Cultures with David Dye" is a transformative guide that explores the principles and practices necessary to foster a workplace culture characterized by authenticity, innovation, and bold decision-making. David Dye, an expert in leadership and organizational development, delves into the art of cultivating courageous teams and leaders who are unafraid to voice their ideas and take calculated risks. Drawing from real-world examples and research, this book provides actionable strategies for leaders at all levels to inspire open communication, trust, and a willingness to confront challenges head-on. "Unlocking Courageous Cultures" empowers individuals and organizations to unleash their full potential, driving sustainable growth and fostering a culture of courage and collaboration.
Additional Resources:
Skot Waldron (00:01.958)
Here we go, David, good to have you, man.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (00:04.935)
I'm so glad to be here.
Skot Waldron (00:06.906)
All right. You, um, are changing the world. I hear and multiple ways, not only building wells, uh, and Cambodia, which is honorable and amazing, um, but also workplace cultures, uh, and trying to change the way we operate in that space. Um, tell us what you've been doing to impact that space.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (00:31.402)
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of folks in the world doing leadership development and kind of work workplace types of training and that kind of thing. We are really interested all about working with leaders who want to be human centered. They want a human centered workplace culture and they're interested in doing the development that lasts over time. So, you know, not just, you know, sometimes people just want to do a training and check a box and move on. For us, it's all about that sustained behavior change, sustained culture change in our leaders and our managers and ultimately in our teams to
to build that culture. So at the treetop level, that's what it's all about. And for us, the focus is really on practicality. You can get all the theory you want, but I don't know what to do in this moment when I've got a tough conversation to have with an employee or I've got a teammate who potentially we're in conflict over what we think our manager said. Like we gotta practically know how to do something with that if we're gonna be able to work together well and have the culture we want and enjoy our work where we're spending so much of our day.
Skot Waldron (01:31.034)
Wait, we're supposed to enjoy work? Is that what you just said?
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (01:35.366)
Well, listen, I want to be realistic because, okay, so I'm self-employed and sometimes my boss is a jerk, right? That idea there's work that I have to do, certain things that have to be done that I don't always enjoy the doing of them, but I certainly enjoy the purpose behind them and the way that they're serving other people and those connections that I can make. So, yes, work can be enjoyable. It doesn't have to be a slog and it definitely doesn't have to be...
a battle and a contention with my manager, with my team, or with my direct reports, depending on my role.
Skot Waldron (02:08.562)
So why don't people enjoy work? What do you think? What's the thing that like you're finding?
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (02:13.75)
You know, it's interesting when, I'm gonna go back to the first book that Karen Hurt and I wrote together called Winning Well, A Manager's Guide to Getting Results Without Losing Your Soul. And if you look at, let's just take managers as a group because they both have their own experience and they impact, they affect the, they're the number one in work impact for people on teams. So if you take managers, most of them,
aren't trained sufficiently in how to do that job, which is just mind boggling if you think about it, that organizations are putting people in places of responsibility for human beings, which human minds are the number one asset that people have in their organization, and they're putting people in charge with responsibility for all those human brains without sufficient training. So there's a lot of research around the extent to which managers say, oh yeah, I need more training. I was not as properly trained. So what do they do?
They default to a couple things. We'll default to our biology, which under stress, what do we know how to do? Well, our hindbrain says, ha, run or fight. So we got fight, flee, friend, freeze, all of these kinds of things that we'll do, none of which are productive leadership techniques. They may keep us safe in the moment or help us feel something in the moment, or if we yell or get angry at our team from a fight perspective, that may get results in a moment. Or we may try to be liked by our team.
And either way, whether we're using people and pushing, yelling, and screaming to get things done, or we're trying to just get, be liked, neither of those leads to long-term lasting results. What they do lead to is a lot of stress for you as a leader and stress and headache, heartache for your team. So when you look at the workplace and the key role that a manager and a leader has, they don't have the skills to lead effectively. The default behaviors end up being destructive both for themselves and for their team.
Skot Waldron (04:11.838)
Do you find that a lot of people get to that position based on skill and then they suddenly have to learn how to lead people and they're like, I don't know how to do that.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (04:27.074)
Yeah, yeah. And so often, there's many books been written about this, going back a long ways to the Peter Principle and so forth. People get promoted to their level of incompetence, that kind of thing. So I'm skillful, I'm skillful, I keep getting promoted, I keep getting promoted until I hit that place where I am no longer skillful. And that often happens when people are given responsibility for other human beings, because it is a totally different skill set than making the widget, programming the software.
balancing the accounts, interacting with customers, making the sale, whatever our skill competence is leading people is a different thing. It's something everybody can learn if they want to. And one of the things that I think is healthiest if you're listening to this and you're thinking about either becoming a manager leader or placing someone in one of those positions is to give them a shot at experiencing or give yourself a shot at experiencing what it's like. You may or may not want to do it and that's okay.
There are many ways to career progression that don't involve leading people and taking that responsibility. And so knowing that is or is not you or that is or is not something that the person you're looking to put into that role once is critical. If they don't actually want to do that work, trying to teach them the skills is just not gonna stick.
Skot Waldron (05:45.97)
But let me, let me push back on that a little bit and say, doesn't our culture though, say if you're not getting promoted up the corporate chain, then number one, you're not going to make more money. You're not going to get more fame and prestige or LinkedIn profile. Isn't going to look as fancy and you're kind of like stuck.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (06:05.15)
And so the short answer to your question is, sure, of course, yes, and, and then I'm going to and that is that, and it's something we need to change and it is changing. And so part of that, yes, human beings are status seeking creatures. So one of the roles that we have to do in our organizations is to take a look at what status actually looks like.
And if we are limiting ourselves to power over other people as the only form of status in our organization, we are not going to have a highly effective organization. We're not going to have a highly effective business, nonprofit company, whatever it might be. There are other ways to do it. And status based on contribution on significant contribution is one of those. So we have a friend, she's also an author, Julie Winkle Giulioni, and she's written a book about
as you've written a number of books about career development, but one of them is the dimensions of career development, that there are actually eight. When you do the research, the climb up the corporate ladder is only one of eight different dimensions that resonate with people. For some people, that is significant. Yes, it is important to them, but it's actually, when you survey and do the research, it's the least significant of all eight. Some of the other eight.
our competence, that feeling of that skillfulness. I know what I'm doing and I'm getting better at what I'm doing. Contribution, I can see and feel and sense the contribution I'm making to other people. So there's just a couple of examples, but there are a number of them and different ways that we can help people cultivate their own feeling of significance and status based on what's actually important to them, not whatever the one way culture has said, you got to do it this way.
Skot Waldron (07:50.974)
Okay. I think that's really interesting to think about the, because we do get, I think, so funneled into this mindset of if I'm not climbing the chain, there's something wrong with me. And it's.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (08:07.335)
It might be there's something wrong with the chain.
Skot Waldron (08:10.094)
There could be something wrong with the chain. And I, and I think that perspective, people don't think about it because we don't, and I, and I want to say too, I think it's a generational thing as well. I think that if we looked back at the baby boomers who have. And the silent generation who have built these companies over time and have grown these companies and brought into Xers and some of the millennials, right. To on onboard them and they, they talk about their journey.
to success, because we look at them as influential people that have built these companies and gotten famous and successful. And we go, what did they do? Oh, they climbed the chain. They climbed the hierarchy and now they're where they are. So maybe I should do that too. And so the mentality of passing that information down is kind of still there. I do think it is changing though with the generations as they move.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (09:02.174)
It is, yeah, it is definitely changing. And, and as you see, and actually if you talk, I'm sure you have, you know, as with, as we're out talking with clients, when you talk to some older generation folks for whom that was the air they breathe, that was the water they swam in it's what they knew, and now they're working with Z millennials and the younger generations who value purpose and meaning and the relationships and their work, their life outside of work.
and the meaning that the work has itself, they're working from a totally different value set, culturally, generationally. Obviously, you have to know the human being because every individual is unique, but generationally, you can make some of those generalizations that are true, and so that is shifting.
Skot Waldron (09:49.714)
So what do you think is the thing that like gold that for leaders that the thing that they should know that nobody tells them, right? That, that, that nugget, that thing that every leader should know, but don't hear.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (10:10.434)
Hmm. Scott, I love that question. I have appeared on, gosh, I can't tell you how many different interviews. I think that's the first time I've ever been asked that and I love it. And I've got a couple of those nuggets that I'm going to offer. One is I think every leader needs to be told that, in fact, I've often thought about I want to print up a little card if I were a CEO of a large organization, I would hand it to every manager upon promotion.
And it would say, welcome to the hope business. Because leadership is fundamentally about hope. And what do I mean by that? It is the belief that working together, we can create a better future, a better tomorrow working together than we'll have today. And that any of us can create on our own. That's about hope. It's about our ability to improve and work together and do things together.
You're in the hope business if you have chosen to be a leader, whether you knew it or not. And I think a lot of leaders are never told that. So that's one. And the second one would be that everyone is a volunteer. And when I say that, a lot of times I go, what? What? What do I mean by that? What I mean is that there are only a few things you have to do in life. You have to breathe. I mean, you can physically stop yourself from breathing, but otherwise you have to breathe. Your body will force you to.
We have to die eventually. We don't have a choice up at that. We got to eliminate waste along the way. You know, like there's certain things that we can stave off for a while, but we have to do. Everything else, we have a choice. We have a choice that we make. And when we come to work every day, you have a choice about how you're gonna show up, about the level of effort you're gonna put in that day, the level of problem solving that you wanna do, the level of chant like, okay, I've got these five different challenges.
This one feels overwhelming. Don't even want to think about that. That I have a choice to make about that. Most of us have those, um, from a leadership perspective when we're coming to work every day, well, if we have those choices, so do your team. And so when I say everyone's a volunteer, what I mean is everyone makes a decision conscious or not every day about what they're going to contribute, how much of their self they're going to bring and what level of effort, creativity, problem solving, skillfulness they're going to apply to their work.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (12:30.102)
That's a choice, it's a voluntary choice. And somebody says, well, wait a minute, I'm paying them. If they don't choose to work, they're gonna lose their job. That's true, but it's still their choice. You don't have any control over it. So from a leadership perspective, control is a complete illusion. You don't have control. People's motivation is internal. They make their own choices. Everyone is a volunteer. And so once you wrap your head around that as a leader, it changes everything.
Now, I'm not trying to push people into compliance. I'm trying to cultivate an environment where the choices they make contribute to the team, to the mission, to their wellbeing, to the betterment of the company, to the service or product we're providing our clients or customers. It changes the game. It changes from a scarcity mentality to gratitude. Wow, this person is choosing every day to come and contribute this. That's a choice there. Wow, thank you.
I approach that now with gratitude as opposed to a sense of entitlement or push or scarcity. And coming from that energy, that angle changes everything. So those are two things that I believe every leader needs to know and I can't say no one because I'm certainly telling them, but everyone's a volunteer and you are in the hope business.
Skot Waldron (13:49.79)
You see this right here?
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (13:51.793)
I'm a hope dealer. Yeah. I love it.
Skot Waldron (13:54.654)
So it's a nonprofit organization I'm on the board of and my brother started it. And so I just, I love that you said that. I mean, it's, uh, we are in the business of dealing hope. Um, and it is for personal hope, but it is, I love that grandiose picture of, of how do we create a better. Everything for everyone. Right? I mean, it's like, yeah, we're trying to create a better culture. We're trying to create a better product. We're trying to create a better experience for our customers. We're.
But we're trying to, and we're trying to grow our company and how do we do that together and what's the vision and where are we going and let's get excited. And, but I think it's about how do we build hope in the existence of humanity. Right. And how do we help people? I mean, we spend so much time at work. We're learning how to communicate a lot with those individuals. But I think that what's happening too is because we're spending so much time with.
there and that's the first part of our day normally, um, that when we come home, our family gets the second part of whatever happened in the first part. And if we're not into structuring healthy relationships at work, we're going to have the, uh, unfortunate effect of bringing that home and that is going to create unhealthy relationships there.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (15:13.622)
Very true. And I've seen it work the other way too, where I've had very effective leaders in the organization who were essentially hiding from a lot of dysfunction at home in their work. And so, or, you know, seeing where somebody has that bad day with a family member, then they're really struggling with one thing or another, you know, mental health, crime, who knows what it is, abuse. And then that's coming in and affecting what, and so it can go both directions. And so that...
aspect of, you know, that we talk about work-life balance and I'm with the people who say, throw it out, you don't have work-life, you don't have work, you don't have life, you have life and work is a part of that. And so managing that organically as a whole is really part of the equation.
Skot Waldron (15:58.318)
Amen. A big part of that is building those healthy cultures is feeling valued, heard, understood, and how do we create a culture in an environment where ultimately psychological safety is present, where people can speak without feeling like they're going to be punished or like they're going to be shot down and, and all types of things, right? So when we're trying to build a culture like that.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (16:20.078)
Mm-hmm.
Skot Waldron (16:27.802)
What do you feel like is one of the key ingredients to building healthy cultures that can communicate that way?
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (16:33.918)
Yeah, such an important question, Scott. The next book that Karen and I wrote together is called Courageous Cultures, How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. And we really tackled this question head on that you're asking about how to build that kind of a culture. And the forward, Amy Edmondson from Harvard, who wrote The Fearless Organization, really pioneer of psychological safety, she wrote the forward and talks about how the work that we do as leaders to build that culture
And the courage with which we lead is really the other half of the coin of what she's talking about with psychological safety. The other side of the coin. And so let's get really practical here. As a leader, if I want a team where people are consistently, they're not staying safely silent. They're consistently speaking up with ideas, solutions to improve the employee experience, customer experience, productivity in the workplace, improve that service or product, what have you. If I want
all of that to happen, I got to create that environment. How do I do that? One, eliminate any of the immediate barriers. So if you have toxic shame, courage crushers, harass, any of those kinds, let's just start with the illegal things. Let's get all of those out of the way. You can't have that and expect anything else. Then you go to the level of, how are we reacting to the ideas we do here? And this is where a lot of managers who are well-intentioned will often get it wrong. Like I want ideas, but God, they just bring me these dumb ideas and I get so frustrated.
All right, what do we do instead? We call this respond with regard. Three steps, gratitude, information, and an invitation. This is very practical. Somebody brings you an idea. Let's say it's something that they just didn't know. It's already happening. We're working with a large financial institution across the US. They said half the ideas they get through their robust suggestion system are things that are already implemented. It's like, all right.
Well, are you circling back and letting people know their idea was so good, it's already being used? And they said, oh no, we're not. I said, all right, well, what's happening in the mind of that person? They took the time, they saw an issue, they thought it through, they typed it into the system, boom, it goes into a black hole, they never hear anything again. What are they going to do next time they have an idea? No one cares, no one's going to respond, it doesn't matter. So how do we solve that? We say thank you.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (18:54.562)
Gratitude, hey, thank you for thinking about how we can improve. No matter what idea you get, it could be a bad idea. Could be strategically misaligned idea, but the fact that they were thinking about it, let's celebrate that, encourage it. Thank you for thinking about how we can get better. Then we add some information to the conversation. Hey, this idea is so good, it's already being used. Here's where you can learn more. Hey, this idea, actually, it's at odds with where we're going strategically. Our whole focus right now is on customer retention.
Yes, your idea takes some good acquisition concepts and maybe there'll be a time for that, but right now we're focused here. So we're not going to be able to do that right now. Okay. That's still information. Maybe they just need some additional, they're missing some data. All right. A lot of times people get frustrated. People aren't thinking strategically. They don't have the information they need to think strategically. So we say, Hey, thanks for thinking about how we can get better. Here's some additional information that'll help as you're thinking through this idea. We've got a legal constraint.
This is a regulatory issue here that you need to be aware of. And then there's also a key outcome that this team that would need to be involved, they have to satisfy this in order to be successful. So we add that information and then we end the conversation with an invitation and it's an invitation to continue contributing. So, hey, thanks for thinking about how we can get better. Here's this additional information. I would love to get your thoughts on. And what do we ask them to think about?
Well, either continue thinking about the idea that we just gave them some more data to work with, or if it's not something we can pursue right now or it's already happening, let's invite them to think about where we most need a good idea. So what is the biggest challenge right now you're facing as a team, as you're looking at your leadership of your team? Ask them for their ideas about that. And so the first or second idea you get may not be strategic, may not be honed in, targeted, focused.
may not be fully informed, but when we respond with gratitude, guide their thinking with that additional information and ask them to continue contributing, we build momentum and it makes it much more likely that in the sequence of ideas we're getting, they're going to be more focused, they're going to be more usable and more relevant and build on one another in a more effective way. So that's responding with regard. And so as we talk about practical ways to start building psychological safety, eliminate the barriers.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (21:18.41)
start responding with regard and help each other on the team to respond that way. And then the final thing I would suggest is to ask. So as a leader, what do I mean by that? When we talk about psychological safety and building courageous cultures, many of the leaders that we talk with will say, you know, David, Karen, I'm, everybody knows I have an open door. I was just with a group up in South Dakota yesterday and a couple of matters. I have got an open door and everybody knows they can bring me anything. Okay. That's great, but that's passive.
And there's a couple problems with your open door. One is that it still takes courage to walk through it because I don't know how you're going to respond. Is my idea going to disappoint you or not if the respond with regard hasn't been established? Two is sometimes I don't know I have a useful idea. So when I was chief operating officer of an organization, my CEO, CFO and I sat in a room pounding out a solution to a financial problem we had with health insurance and just different things that were going on.
Took us the better part of a day, spreadsheets all over the room, crunching the numbers, figuring out a solution. I think we've got a great one. I take it out, like, whew, go down to the break room to grab some water. As I'm going, I stop by executive assistant's office and say, hey, Gina, this is what we came up with. Here's what we're looking at. And she says, oh, that's interesting. And she starts thinking, you know how that's going to impact this group over here? And starts naming names and saying, oh, this is their situation. No criticism or anything. Just here's thinking it through. But the consequences she was describing.
We're not consequences that we wanted. We were not done thinking. And we needed to regroup, and we needed to get Gina in that room. So the thing is, Gina was not holding on to an idea. She wasn't reluctant to share. She didn't know she had a contribution to make. And so as leaders, if we genuinely wanna foster and cultivate a courageous culture and psychological safety, we've gotta be asking, proactively asking people for the ideas.
contributions, the solutions that they might have that they don't even know they have. And then we respond with regard and so on. There are a lot of other ways we can do that, but those are kind of the key concepts behind building that kind of culture.
Skot Waldron (23:28.698)
I love that. We're, I'm working with a large organization. Um, well, larger organization, um, and. Trying to create this culture of openness. The CEO is a newer CEO that's come on board and everybody loves this person. Very approachable whatnot, but there's people on the other side of the globe who don't ever talk to the C-suite because they just don't.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (23:56.375)
Mm-hmm.
Skot Waldron (23:57.894)
Right. They run a support team and that's just what they do. But we were instigating this new kind of program there and we're talking about, Hey, what if once a week you send this person a gift card for some coffee and you call them up out of the blue and you're just, or maybe it's scheduled 15, 30 minute conversation and you just call them up and you say, Hey, I'm interested in what's going on over there. Like.
How are things? What went well for you this week? What was horrible? Have any ideas about how to make this thing better? And just listen, you're not there to solve a problem. You're not there to talk yourself. You're there to just pull and help this person feel heard who just is a person, it's a support call person. And they're like, oh, the CEO is gonna have coffee with me today? That I think is what you're talking about is how do I ask and bring them in because what's the likelihood
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (24:53.322)
And it is.
Skot Waldron (24:57.01)
this support person's ever going to make an initiative to talk to that CEO about something that's going on.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (25:02.142)
Exactly. They're not going to recognize all the wealth of information they have. And they do. Those support folks know so much because they're interacting with your customer. The paid points and what's happening. So many opportunities there, but you have to ask. And I'm thinking a specific approach that we'll invite leaders to use when they're having those conversations is what we call a courageous question. And a courageous question is
more than just, hey, how can we improve? Or how can we be better? That's general. A courageous question gets very specific. What's one way that we could improve our customer experience? What's the number one thing taking off our customers that you're hearing? We were working with a friend of ours who we've done some work with. They run a contact center that supports some of the large tech companies.
And the COO is in the habit once a year or so, he'll go and do a tour like you're describing. And his question is, hey, what's one policy of ours that just sucks? So it's just focused on one. So it's specific and then it's vulnerable. And the vulnerability comes because you're acknowledging improvement is possible and that you're asking, which means you don't automatically have all the answers. And so a lot of times people say, well, David, it's just a question. Where's the, how is it a courageous question?
It's a courageous question because as a leader, you have to be vulnerable to ask it. And like you said, the third part of it, just listen.
Skot Waldron (26:27.654)
I love that letting them know that improvement is possible. This isn't the end all be all. And sometimes we put out some stupid ideas that we think are great in the moment, but probably aren't when it comes down to certain things. Chevy Chase is crucifixing, like the Jelly of the Month Club, right?
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (26:51.214)
So we talk about that in courageous cultures. Why does that happen and how can we avoid it as leaders? Because yes, that's a horrible hole to step into, but it happens. Why? A lot of times we will see something work. So as a, for instance, I was leading, working with a group of area directors and one of them was a hunter and a chef. And so he would hunt and bag his own elk, process it, take it home.
make his own sausage from scratch, then make noodles from scratch, Italian guy, and then cook this sumptuous spaghetti with elk sausage that he hunted and despised himself dinner for his team as part of their annual kickoff. Right? Well, his colleagues are like, David, I don't know, I shouldn't even bother doing an annual kickoff. I can't compete with that.
And you know, if you had a senior executive who's watching that guy's team and going, oh, well that's really work and look at the teamwork on that team. We need everybody to cook a made from scratch dinner. Well, that's dumb. The principle is what's important. We call practice the principle. What is the principle underneath that activity? The principle underneath it is showing up for your team in an authentic, connected way that's authentic to you and shows them that you care about them from a personal perspective.
Okay, everybody can do that, but what does that look like for you as a leader? It's going to look different than our hunter chef guy. So that is why we get into so many of those kinds of quandaries is because we take an activity that made sense in this context, take it out of context, put it in a different context. It doesn't make sense at all, but the principle underneath it could have if we dug through and figured out what that is and then replicate that.
Skot Waldron (28:43.838)
Hmm. That's good. Practice the principle. Here's, uh, send that you're about to tackle because out of all this, um, we haven't really brushed on the idea of like conflict and how that can undermine cultures and destroy cultures. And you've been talking about how to invest in managers and how to do this and get the best out of people. But at the end of the day, there's going to be conflict. There's going to be people who get their feelings hurt.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (28:59.414)
Hmm.
Skot Waldron (29:12.51)
There's going to be people that don't get along and all these things. And this is one of the biggest things that I think I deal with when I'm working with, with leaders is they sit there and go, I'm just putting out fires all the time I'm putting out fires. I'm trying to get things done over here. And I'm constantly having to manage people in my office talking about this drama here, gossip there, person, my feelings, this person's a jerk, right. And just managing that conflict thing.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (29:26.743)
time.
Skot Waldron (29:41.762)
You are tackling this right now, which I'm super excited to hear. Um, at the time of this recording, your book isn't out yet. It's coming out in 2024. So if you're hearing this beforehand, not yet, but it's there for pre-order. Yeah. And then you're listening to this after that, go get it. But tell me the premise of why you're tackling this subject now and. What's the angle there you're going.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (30:05.074)
Yeah, absolutely. So you're so right. So first, conflict is unavoidable. You got human beings, you're gonna have conflict. The question is, is it destructive conflict or productive conflict? If we can have productive conflict about ideas and how to improve something and figure that out, and we're all on the same team trying to do that together, you get some really cool things that happen from that. And we also minimize a lot of the pain points that are unnecessary in our teams and our organizations as we have constructive conflict. Problem being
A lot of us, again, don't know how to do that. And we have all of our hard wiring that takes us in different ways. So we did a, our publisher saw the need. HarperCollins asked us to write this book. They said, hey, we are seeing the need out there. Our marketing team's like, there is so much demand for help with conflict. And our sense is that it's gotten worse through and after the pandemic. Can you help? We said, absolutely. But we don't just wanna write from our own perspective on this. We wanna do the research.
So we did the World Workplace Conflict and Collaboration Survey. We've surveyed at this point, as of the time you and I are talking, over 5,000 people in 45, 46 countries and all 50 of the US states. And the findings are fascinating. 70% of people report the same or greater levels of conflict at work today and over the last couple of years. So instincts kind of jive with reality there.
What's interesting is when you go into the bottom 30%, 30% are like, no, I'm having, I'm having less conflict now. Well then you dig in and ask why. And half of those are saying basically they hit an escape hatch. Either they left their company or they're working from home and they're not around people anymore or the toxic people who are causing all the conflict have left. So in most cases, even a good chunk of the people who are reporting less conflict, they
you're not getting any of the productive conflict that you need in order to, to move your team organization forward. So when you look at all of that, it's like, Oh my goodness. Okay. How do we deal with that? How do we address it? So we also asked people to talk about a major conflict that they've had in their career. And you know, most of those are going to be obviously with a boss or coworker, things like that around a whole wide, you would think was there one or two specific things? No, huge range of different topics causing those conflicts.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (32:30.594)
But then we asked, what advice would you give to your former self? If you go back now and tell yourself some advice about that conflict, what would you tell yourself? And you know, 55% of the people said, I would tell myself to be more calm, more patient in the moment, which I just find fascinating. And then 22% said, get better at communication.
Well, both of those, you've got almost 80% of respondents saying my advice to myself would be more calm, be more patient, be better at communication. Okay, how do you do that? That's what the book is about. So it's called Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict. How to de-stress the workplace, address difficult customers, manage a difficult boss, all those kinds of things. So there's over 300 specific practical phrases that you can use.
but they work around four dimensions. Every conflict we'll have at work has four dimensions. There's our connection to one another. There's the clarity that we have or don't have in terms of what we're trying to do. There's curiosity, how we're showing up genuinely interested in one another's perspectives and what's possible. And then commitment. How do we schedule the follow through? How do we make sure that we're following through on whatever conversation we have? And if we can invest in those four dimensions, that's really what it boils down to.
If I can get good at connection, clarity, curiosity, and commitment, I'm going to be able to minimize the destructive conflict and maximize the important constructive, productive conflict that we have at work. So that's, uh, that's what the book's all about. And we get into all the practical phrases you can use in a ton of different situations, you got a gossiping coworker, you got a, uh, boss who's overburdening you, you need to say no to somebody or even your boss, how do you do that? All those kinds of things.
Skot Waldron (34:22.591)
Oh my gosh, that sounds awesome.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (34:24.522)
Yeah, we're super excited about it. I mean, between the research and we did a tremendous amount of work on this, because I'm so excited to get this into people's hands, because even among our own clients, and we worked with thousands and thousands of leaders all over the world, every continent, except Antarctica. So if you're at McMurdo or something, give us a call. So although I think I have a line on McMurdo, so we'll see, that may happen. But the number one question that we get so often is,
what do I say in this situation? And so we're really excited to be able to equip people with the specific words to say. And so you can find out more about that at conflictphrases.com. I'll take it, you can learn more.
Skot Waldron (35:03.346)
Let me guess, this book might help me with some marriage phrases if it's like, you know.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (35:11.074)
Well, it's interesting. We talk about that because obviously Karen and I are married. So we co-own a business. We're partners in life, in parenting and everything else and co-authors. So we took a hard look at ourselves even as we were getting into writing the book. We talk about that in the book because these are absolutely transferable concepts to use in human relationships.
Skot Waldron (35:36.582)
That's what I thought. Yeah, I mean, we're coaching people all the time. A lot of the time we're talking about personal life in general, not necessarily workplace stuff. And so it's all transferable. I mean, better communicator, better, more patients. Like those are kind of life principles, not just work principles. So I think that that's super relevant. All right, David, this has been awesome.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (35:56.778)
Right? Yeah.
Skot Waldron (36:01.342)
Uh, where, where do people get in touch with you? They want books, they want you to speak, they want you to coach. Like what, where's your space?
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (36:08.402)
Absolutely. The dominant place to go for everything is our main website, let's grow leaders.com. And from there you can find links to everything else that's available. So we have a huge amount of free resources and tools, uh, thousands of articles to help you, uh, with your leadership and, and teamwork and so on. Uh, many of those, uh, conflict, uh, phrases, if you're looking, I need something right now.
We've written recently a lot around that topic. So you've got all those resources. If you're listening going, I need that now. Great. Pre-order the book, but you can go find resources to help you as we speak. Let's grow leaders.com.
Skot Waldron (36:46.43)
Brilliant. Love it. You've been giving us some good, but this interview to me has been more about just the pure essence of leadership. Like it's just, it's the core essence of what we need and I just, I value that a lot. It's just so simple and you just clearly articulated all of it really well. Thanks.
David Dye, President Let's Grow Leaders (37:06.054)
We gotta be practical, gotta walk away with something that we can go do. So that's my hope for every listener. Take something that you heard today and whatever you're listening to and go use it.
