Leading Through Conflict: Communicating Unpopular Policies

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Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to long distance worklife where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Turmel. Hi, Wayne.

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Wayne Turmel
Hello, Marisa. How the heck are you?

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Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. How are you?

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Wayne Turmel
I am, I am well today.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Good deal. Because today, we're going to be talking about leadership and conflict and how we can handle disagreeable policies or unpopular policies.

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Wayne Turmel
Yeah, it's part of being the manager, right? Nobody is when everything's going great. Being the boss is fabulous. when.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Trade.

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Wayne Turmel
Policies come down and you, as the manager, are expected to inform the team about them, and even worse, enforce them, it can be super, super unpleasant. And when you are not in the same place as the people that you're working with, it can be unpleasant and stressful. So more stressful to be specific.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. So given you know that we have remote and hybrid teams now. And so it's way different than, you know, walking into the office in the conference room and being like, hey guys, like here's this decision that's been made from on high. So what are some effective communication strategies that managers can use with their remote and hybrid teams when explaining some unpopular policies to their team?

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Wayne Turmel
Well, let's take a step back when everybody's in the office, right. There's like this immediate conversation and kerfuffle. And then there's cubicle conversations. And, you know.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Slack messages and.

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Wayne Turmel
Whining and people going out for beverages later. And, you know, like that when you are not physically co-located with your coworkers and with your team. That same stuff happens, but you don't know what's going on. You aren't privy to the chat conversations and the texts and the whining and complaining. There is so much, as always, with long distance leadership.

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Wayne Turmel
There is so much white space that you don't really know what's going on. And so the number one communication thing is to do it. and communication is in fact a two way process. It's delivering the message, but it's also listening. And it's listening to what people say and what they don't say.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
If you are met with dead silence, there's stuff you need to learn.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and you mentioning dead silence, I mean, that also is a good point to like how we're delivering this message. We've talked about mediums of communication before, but it sounds like, you know, if you're going to deliver something that might be unpopular, probably needs to be on a video call. Yes.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, certainly you want it to be as rich as circumstances demanded. a video call is a great way to break the news if it's possible to do it that way.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
and you need something they can refer back to a written document that it says this is what is and isn't covered.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

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Wayne Turmel
because when you make an announcement, particularly one that is unpopular or has emotional tripwires attached to it, there's no guarantee they're going to get it the first time to really understand what's going on. So the communication strategy as such, there are a few steps that you have to take. The first is you better make sure you understand the change.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
And that's not just whether or not you agree with it. You may or may not, but you darn well better understand it. And there are several levels to this. You need to understand technically what is changing or not, what is going to be the difference. You need to understand as best you can. Why is this happening right? The moment I became a real grown up adult worker was the day I realized that every decision, no matter how idiot shtick, was made for a reason.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
Somebody had a reason for doing what they did. Now, whether this is the right response. There's all that. But if you understand what the reason is, the it tempers some of the, the pain. So you need to understand what is actually changing. You need to understand why it's happening. And you need to understand the repercussions. If we know if you're making notes to yourself for how to break this news, it starts with when this happens, this will be the result.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

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Wayne Turmel
Good, bad or indifferent. And there's what's the result on an organizational level. There's what's the result on a personal level. And the challenge for leaders is that the information comes down always with the priority on the organizational level.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

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Wayne Turmel
This is what it means to the organization when you break it to your people. That's the secondary consideration. They want to know what does it mean for me? And you'd best have as good an answer as you can have. Now that all makes sense. The problem is we don't always have all the information.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
And one of the mistakes that leaders make is if they don't have certain information they either withhold it completely.

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Marisa Eikenberry


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Wayne Turmel
Or they act as if they have the information. And this is going to happen. And what happens as policies get implemented is things don't always happen the way that we think they're going to. And then if it doesn't match what you've told your people they say you lied to us, you weasel.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and.

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Wayne Turmel
You may not have intentionally you may have tried to spare their feelings. You may have tried not to make a situation worse by saying this could also happen, but you also are perceived as not having told them the truth.

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Marisa Eikenberry


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Wayne Turmel
And you did it for all the right reasons and you did it to be a good person. And it's still going to blow up in your face.

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Marisa Eikenberry
I think this is part of course for being a leader to be honest.

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Wayne Turmel
Well but that's you know, how often have we said on this show time after time, leadership first, location second, like, yes, this is breaking bad news. Leadership 101 and when people aren't there, they can't look at each other and go, what the hell? They can write the text messages and the chats are going crazy and there's all kinds of stuff going on, and you can't physically see everybody's eyes, right?

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Wayne Turmel
Right. If you call everybody into the bullpen, into the cube farm and you make an announcement, you can see so-and-so looks stunned, so-and-so is ticked off. So-and-so just looks confused.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
And you can respond accordingly. You don't have that benefit unless it's a very small team and you're on camera, and even then, you're so busy delivering the message that you may not see everything that's going on.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Well, that's what I was getting ready to say, too. I mean, even if you do have a small team, maybe everybody's on camera. Okay, I might look fine here, but you don't know. My foot shaking under my desk. You know. Right?

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Wayne Turmel
Right. Absolutely. Which means that delivering the message is only part of it. I mean, one of the things that we've taught at the cabin, I can very group for a billion years, and they've been teaching in the world for much longer than we have walked the earth is communication is missed. Message send, message received, message understood, and action taken.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. A commute, a successful communication sends the message. And whatever you want to have happen, happens, right?

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
The problem when you are instituting a an emotional or a complex message, is that message send is the only thing you know is going to happen.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. You can say I sent the message. I held that call. I did that announcement. I sent that email. Yep. You sure did. And it's only a quarter of the process.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. The email went to spam. They didn't watch the video. They didn't attend the call anyway.

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Wayne Turmel
Exactly right. I mean, there's a lot of stuff, so sending the message is only part of it. The second thing is, did they actually hear it?

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, you know, the richer the form of communication, the more likely that they are going to physically it is going to physically hit their ears. Yeah. Right. But we all know the minute you hear something that you don't want to hear, you cease being able to hear it.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. Hey we're doing a reorg. If you're so busy thinking that's it I'm getting fired. I'm getting laid off. This is the end of life as we know it. I am literally not hearing what you're telling me, let alone understanding.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And they might be saying your departments fine. And you don't have no idea it.

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Wayne Turmel
So you have to make sure they they received the message clearly do the best you can to make sure they understand it. And some of that is eliminating the walls that are immediately going to shoot up. If you merely focus on the organizational part of this, they are going to be so busy trying to figure out what it means to them that now, one way to do that, particularly live, is to say, what I am about to tell you is what we know right now.

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Wayne Turmel
There's a lot that we don't know. There's a lot that might change. So I'm giving you the best information I can at this time. I would ask you to listen to it and I will answer your questions as best I can. Yeah. Because you want to eliminate the barriers so people can at least take the information in, then you better make darn sure that people understand it.

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Wayne Turmel
Some of that can happen in the moment, right? It's an all hands meeting. There are questions that most people will not ask their questions out loud. Most people do not even know what their questions are until they hang up and later. So on a remote or a hybrid team, make sure that there is plenty of opportunity for that instantaneous feedback and connection.

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Wayne Turmel
Ideally, if your team is small enough, you would schedule one on ones immediately. You want to do check ins. How you doing? What did you hear? What are your questions and be able to address those as best you can on an individual basis. particularly for those who aren't don't have easy access to you. Right. And again, you want to be empathetic.

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Wayne Turmel
I know this is hard. That's not the same as sympathetic. I know I think it sucks to is not help.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Well. So pivoting a little bit like should managers even be transparent with their own reservations on stuff like if, if, if I'm a leader and I hate this idea, should I tell them.

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Wayne Turmel
I think it is appropriate to say I have questions myself about this?

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
When I first heard it, I had some concerns. I hope that I get the answers that I need, and I hope that I pass those that you know, and I will let you know when I have those answers. It is not it. It is helpful to empathize. It is not helpful to throw the company under the bus.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
Because at the end of the day, on a purely mercenary, selfish level, you as the leader are going to be at least partially responsible for the enforcement and coaching and training and helping people make this change if they know that you're against it.

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Marisa Eikenberry


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Wayne Turmel
First of all, are your efforts really going to be good faith efforts to make it happen?

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
And secondly they know you think it's nonsense so why should they bother. It is going to be three times harder to implement the change than it would it be if people were merely unhappy. So and this goes back to understanding the change, right. Why is it happening? I understand why the company is doing what it's doing. I don't have to like it.

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Wayne Turmel
I don't have to agree with it. But I better be able to say when somebody says, why are they doing this? And there's a difference between the stock is tanking and they need to shore up the numbers. And and you know, the stock is tanking. And so they're throwing us overboard. Those are two very different right ways of explaining what's going on.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And one of them is okay. And the other one is definitely not.

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Wayne Turmel
And it's perfectly natural I mean, you want transparency is important in that it creates trust. Right. Hey I don't know exactly what's going to happen either. We will figure it out together.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. So hypothetically speaking like you know if, if managers have a bunch of pushback from their teams about a decision, you know, and it's something maybe they personally disagree with how they've decided to share that with their team. Hopefully they take some of our advice from this episode. But how do managers handle that pushback? Because, you know, they still need to support what the decision was.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, when the pushback happens, there's a couple of things. First of all, it needs to be heard. And people need to know that it is being heard. And of course, in a remote environment that might be written. So you obviously want to have one on ones with people. But maybe there is a special slack or teams chat, for questions about things.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. You want to take that information because some of the information you're going to be able to answer and you're going to be able to diffuse the drama. Pretty much right away. There is also there are going to be questions, especially if you don't have the answer, that it is your job as a manager to go up the hill and get the answers that you can get, even if the answer is when are the layoffs going to start?

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Marisa Eikenberry
It's still important to know that answer.

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Wayne Turmel
They got to know that.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. And we've talked about this on the show before too. But I want to reiterate because you've you've kind of touched on this already, but this idea of if you get asked a question and you don't know, it's okay to say, I don't know, but I'm going to go find out, do not.

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Wayne Turmel
This is where you get accused of lying.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
Because if you try to gloss over the question or you kind of think this is the right answer. And so you give it because you want to sound like you know what you're doing. You don't want to sound like an idiot. It's going to blow back on you if that answer turns out not to be true.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And we as a society just need to get better about saying, I don't know, but I'm going to go find out.

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Wayne Turmel
We as human beings, just in general. Right? Again, most of what we've talked about is conveying bad news or handling conflict 101, regardless of where you are. I think as we near the end of our time in a remote or a hybrid environment, there are a couple of very specific differences. Number one is you want to make sure that the whole team gets as much information as they can.

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Wayne Turmel
As a team, it's very tempting, for example, to call the people in the office together, make the announcement, and then have a call for the people who aren't. It's a very natural, kind of instinctive thing to do. But the team needs to hear it as a team.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
so that's one thing, is don't fall into that trap. It should be delivered as richly as possible, and it needs a backup. It needs to have a place that people can go back and now read it for themselves. Right when the drama has settled, or they're a little calmer and they can read it and take a look, because then they may get some of their questions answered.

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Wayne Turmel
Other questions may arise.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
And there needs to be an ongoing conversation. It's not like you can just say, well, I told them and that's it.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. It's going to be an ongoing conversation. And then you need to figure out what. Training are people going to need. What are they going to need to know. Some of it contextual, some of it, you know, added hey, here's what's going to happen. And there may be things they need to do differently. What are those things. And get that training in place as quickly as possible.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. Wayne, sounds like we kind of talked about this for a lot longer than now, but unfortunately we are out of time.

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Wayne Turmel
But someday when you are a manager, young lady, you will learn, it's this is the bane. There are two things implementing policies that you yourself might not agree with and having to let people go. These are the hardest things that a manager has to do.

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Marisa Eikenberry
We want to talk about that second one on another episode sometime. Absolutely. That that might be really important. And listeners, if you're listening right now and you're like, yeah, I want to hear that. Please let us know. so that way we know that that needs to go higher up on our list. But listeners, thank you so much for listening to The Long-Distance Worklife. For shownotes, transcripts, and other resources, make sure to visit LongDistanceWorklife.com.

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Marisa Eikenberry
If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes. And if you're on Apple or Spotify, please give us a rating and review. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more listeners like you. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes, and let us know you listen to this episode, or even suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode.

00;20;27;10 - 00;20;50;16
Marisa Eikenberry
Like we already mentioned, we would love to hear from you. And before we go, I want to let you know that the second edition of The Long-Distance Leader is now available for preorder. For those of you watching, Wayne has a copy of it right here and it will be launching on September 17th. This updated guide is perfect for navigating today's remote and hybrid work environments with new principles and proven strategies.

00;20;50;17 - 00;21;14;15
Marisa Eikenberry
Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel show you how to lead effectively no matter where your team is located. Don't miss out on the latest insights and exercises designed to boost productivity and morale. Preorder your copy now at longdistanceworklife.com/LDL and strengthen your remote leadership skills today. Thank you so much for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get you down.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Hey.

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Marisa Eikenberry
You.