Michele Phillips  
Or when you put love, when you connect your head to your heart, and you're having the conversation for the right reason, people feel that. So it's not just about saying what you need to say in a difficult conversation is, or is your heart in the right place? Are you having this conversation for the good of all you? Music.

Jeff Ma  
Hello and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff MA and as always, I'm here to have conversations and hear stories from real people, real businesses, real life. My guest today is Michele Phillips. Michele is the president of key performance, and she's carved an impressive over 23 year journey in the entrepreneurial world, leaving a lasting impact on the corporate landscape. Michele is not just about titles. She thrives on personal connections, bridging the gap between personal and corporate realms with her dynamic approach as a corporate workshop leader and private coach, her book happiness is a habit simple daily rituals that increase energy, improve well being and that joy to every day was published in 2013 and continues to inspire and uplift readers, maintaining a great ranking on Amazon over a decade later and great reviews. Michele's expertise in happiness and performance is a unique blend of neuroscience habits and positive psychology, providing actionable strategies for success. With over two decades of experience, Michele has guided many, many renowned fortune 500 companies, just to name a few, Pfizer, Verizon, Barclays, the PGA. Michele's depth matches her growth passion, a Fordham University master's degree holder certified in positive psychology. She's been a consumer health digest writer and a revered coach, and in August of 2017 her book was rated in the top five personal development books on Amazon, which is a testament to the transformative impact that it has, resonating in inspiring countless lives. So since her insights have been graced gracing the stages of different national television and radio programs, I'm very honored and excited to have her here with me on the show today. And I'd like to welcome you, Michele, to this podcast. How are you doing?

Michele Phillips  
You're amazing. You read the whole thing. Thank you, Jeff,

Jeff Ma  
yeah, and I is not relevant to the show at all, but it's been a long journey to get you here. I've we've been in contact for so long and reschedules and and so happy to finally have you here, because I've been looking for this conversation since, gosh, like a couple, like half a year or more,

Michele Phillips  
in a while. And, you know, I always say busy people, and this is what happens sometimes when too busy people are trying to connect. So I'm very I'm thrilled to be here as well.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome. Michele. I'd love to start with a general but very important question of, What is your passion and where did you find

Michele Phillips  
it? They found me. My passion is I can't stop learning, and when I learned something, I can't wait to share it, and it fits right into what you're doing. When I was at Fordham, I gave a presentation. I was young, and I gave a presentation on called I made it up. It was called leading with a heart, because I felt like those two things were so important. And I got up, I was in my late 20s. I gave this presentation, and this VP of a big company was in my class, my cohort at Fordham, and she came to me and said, I want you to give this presentation to my executives. And I ran home and I was like, Okay, I didn't even have a full day presentation. I went home and I wrote it and I delivered it, and then they all started hiring me. So even though I knew I that was passionate about this subject, it was like that divine timing that put me in front of the right people. And I just have had so many cheerleaders before. I mean, I even tell you the story goes even further. Before I knew it, they put me on their corporate jet, and they flew me back in the day to they owned Chateau St Michele and Columbia quest wineries in Seattle, and my career was born, and I just knew I had a passion for helping people connect their head to their heart.

Jeff Ma  
Well, that's what I want to tap into today. Connecting head to the heart is love as a business strategy in another in another phrase, in my opinion. So one of the topics that I was very interested in, kind of picking your brain today, is around difficult conversations. And I think this is because the listeners, often of this show don't have any trouble understanding the high level philosophical. Know, kind of understandings of a good culture. I think we all appreciate a good culture. But I think in practice, what it comes down to is oftentimes dealing with discomfort, dealing with feedback, dealing with conflict, and a lot of these things surmount to a difficult conversation or two that that can make or break a lot of our experiences, our relationships, our culture as a whole. And so, kind of connecting the head to the heart through this topic is something I really wanted to pick your brain on today, if you don't, if you don't mind, and like, I would love your take on difficult conversations as a starter, I guess, as a whole, like, what's your take on it? How does how does it? How does it go?

Michele Phillips  
I'll give it to you in one sentence. I think it comes. I think Timothy Ferris said it in one of his books. He said the quality of one's life is based on the number of difficult conversations you're willing to have. And I'm probably quoting him wrong, but it was something along those lines, and it really resonated with me, because so often we don't like or we don't agree with other people or what's happening, but we just kind of stuff it, or we talk about them behind their backs, or we don't address the problem head on. So I really became an advocate for when you put love, when you connect your head to your heart and you're having the conversation for the right reason, people feel that. So it's not just about saying what you need to say in a difficult conversation, is, or is your heart in the right place? Are you having this conversation for the good of all and when you're in that place where you know that other person is doing the best they can and you're doing the best you can, but you both see it differently. It breaks down the barriers that we put up, so many false barriers, because we take our heart and we take the love out of it, but when we bring our heart and the love back, we realize this is another human being, and we say we're able to have a more fulfilling, more authentic conversation. That

Jeff Ma  
makes a lot of sense. And I think is, I guess, are there steps to this? Is it easier said than done? Because it makes perfect sense. And at the same time, we all get triggered. We all get we all get, kind of, kind of suddenly put, thrust into an uncomfortable situation. So what's, what's in a way, what's a way we can approach this, these situations and have positive outcomes out of difficult conversations?

Michele Phillips  
Yeah, I basically, I talk about the emotional ladder, right? There's a, there's a array of emotions that psychologists will tell you. So let's think about those emotions. If you think about the bottom levels of emotions, depression, fatigue, and if you think about depression and energy, you don't even want to get out of bed. You have no energy. And if you think of the highest part of the emotional ladder, you think of love, joy and exuberance, and you think, oh my gosh, so much energy. You know, jumping for joy, that kind of thing. But in between, there's many different levels. So a person that, say, depressed has no energy, but a person that's angry has a little more energy, right? But the energy is misplaced, because if you have a conversation in anger or out of revenge or out of jealousy, as I'm going up the rungs of these lat this ladder that I'm seeing in my own brain, the energy is not where you want to be, but when I could get my feeling, I'm not feeling revengeful, I'm not feeling anger, I'm not feeling jealousy, I'm feeling maybe blah. I'm just feeling I don't like where I am, but I'm not I'm okay. And once you start to feel, you literally feel relief in your body. And you do this by talking yourself literally up the ladder of emotion. So you, most people want to jump from, say, the bottom to the top, and that's that's why we drink and eat and do shop and all those things. But if you could talk yourself up soothingly to say I'm really angry. Well, am I really angry? I'm really no, I'm not angry. I'm just jealous or I'm just disappointed, right? All these emotions give a little more relief to your body. And I have the emotional scale, you know, with my clients, I have it all mapped out. And then once you can get to that almost bored on stage where you're not feeling anything, then it's like, okay, now I'm in a better place to have a conversation. It's almost like when you were a kid and you wanted to ask your parents for something, and you knew, like mom's in a bad mood, don't ask her. Now, it's the same thing with yourself. You have to know your own body and say, is, if I go into this conversation right now, where are my emotions? Do I want to just get them and prove them wrong? Or do I want to have a positive outcome? And if you can't say I want a positive outcome, you're not in the right place to have the conversation. And that's where coaching comes in. You know, phoning a coach, talking it through with someone, or even just, you know, sleeping on it till the. The the emotions dissipate a little bit, and now you can go in and have a difficult you still have the difficult conversation, but you're in a better emotional space.

Jeff Ma  
What about the other person? I guess, I guess I have control over my me reaching that, that rung of the ladder, but it that it's a two way street. I guess a difficult conversation is so what if they're still stuck on the lower rungs? And, you know, I kind of open it up with the intent of positive outcomes, but it just fires the whole thing up, and it gets us into a bad space. Is that something to consider

Michele Phillips  
definitely? And I work with my clients a lot on this, and some, sometimes I work with intact teams, so they've all have the same tools, which is great. But if you're not in my class and you're not receiving the coaching, and, like you said, Jeff, you come to me all open hearted, and I'm just still in the, you know, the anger revenge stage again when I, let's say, I attack you. It's verbally or whatever. When you're able to stay in the love space, you can't attack someone who's not attacking you back, so to speak. And I use the example in my classes, like I put my hand up against another person's hand, and I say, push on my hand. And it's normal for us to push. The minute I stop pushing on the other person's hand, they stop pushing right we all there's no resistance. So even if someone comes at you with resistance and you don't get defensive, they can't keep coming at you, because there's nobody pushing back at them. So again, not patronizing, there's a difference, but lovingly, I really want to have this conversation with you. This might not be a good time. I suggest we, you know, parking lot, it for a little while, and come back to it when we're both feeling better again, both feeling better, keyword, not when you're feeling better, because that's antagonistic. So it's really understanding the language. And I've been had doing this for so many years, and I coach some difficult characters, but when I come in, I'm such an open heart. They can't be that angry, antagonistic person with someone who's not that way back with them. So even the most angry, revengeful person lets their guard down with me because I practice it. That's not to say I don't get into these situations with my own, you know, people in my own life, where my own emotions are high, but it's the practice of it, and realizing this is a good time, this is not a good time. You know, I work in a metal factory. I was working there for many years doing training for their leadership team. And you know, what was so nice is when these guys, you know, they're working on the floor of a metal factory. It's high pressure. There was, you know, during covid, they were, I mean, screen doors were flying off the shelf. They were just crazy busy. But these really rough, tough guys, as I could say, when they knew, when they got into it with each other, when they were going down that road, they knew enough to say, You know what, we're both going down a road that's not going to get us where we want to go. We need to take a break, come back to this in a half an hour, and they were able to start walking away, start having those difficult conversations, and knowing when they were in the right place to have them, and watching them transform was just so rewarding.

Jeff Ma  
I love that, and it makes a lot of sense. I I'm it brings me to a curiosity, what in your experience or opinion, is the hardest type of conversation, like, What? What? What are, I guess, in the workplace context, what is the most difficult conversation to have?

Michele Phillips  
Oh, that's a good question. I think, what what I find. Let me tell you what I find. I find that most of these difficult conversations are due to the fact that we take too many things personally. And when people come to me and they'll say, this is what I'm upset about that and so one of my clients will call me and say, am I being too am I taking it too personal? I'm like, Yes, you are taking it too personal, so it's easy again. These things are easier said than done, but these are skills, and there are habits, and they're like muscles. So the more you use them, the better you get at them, and the less offended you are when things are happening in your life, the more you know you're growing spiritually and emotionally. So I don't know if they're difficult conversations, but I think when people are taking things personally, those are the difficult ones versus, you know, you didn't do the spreadsheet right? I don't have a lot invested in the spreadsheet, but when I think it's personal, you don't want me on your team, you didn't invite me to the meeting because you don't think I have anything to offer. Those are the conversations I think that people find the hardest to have, and they're the ones they avoid.

Jeff Ma  
Yep, agree, we've been there. I mean, we've all been there. And I think, I mean, I find humans to be just, we're just such incredible storytellers, and we're. So good at taking, I guess, point A and point B, and then just kind of filling in everything in between. Is there, is there any way that you've helped people try to avoid kind of the assumptions and like, the kind of things that lead to making it personal? Because a lot of times it's us filling in the blank, it's us filling in the intention, or putting some dialog in someone else's head that doesn't exist, or telling a story, or maybe it does exist, but we haven't verified. You know, we just, how do we avoid that, that dangerous path?

Michele Phillips  
Yeah, there's a couple questions I have my clients ask. The first question is, is it true? So let's say you and I have a lunch date or a podcast date, and you stand me up and I say, I have I could say, oh, Jeff doesn't respect me, or he doesn't like me, or he doesn't think I'm important enough. But the number one question I have to Is it true? I really don't know. I'm not you. So is it true? I really don't know if it's true. I'm making it up. Do I have any proof? No, I don't have any proof. Who? How would I feel if I believe something different? What are the other alternatives? And these all come from Katie Byron's work. So you could Google the Katie Byron four questions, and I'm paraphrasing them, but it's really walking yourself, realizing that you're I always say I'm judging you, judging me, when I really don't know what you're thinking. So I'm the judging party, and you know the fact is you didn't show up. That's the fact we had a meeting and you didn't show up. Now I'm filling in the blank, but once I realized that I am a story creator, I get to create a new story and say, maybe he got a flat tire, maybe something really pressing came up. It must have been really important for him to let this slide, because that's not who he is at his core. And when you start really asking these questions to everything, life becomes so much easier.

Jeff Ma  
I love that, and I I'm going to actively practice it for myself as well, because that's great. I have another question for you, what does a team look like when they are incapable or never have difficult conversations or Crucial Conversations. What does it look like? What does that paint that picture for me when we're when we're a group of people that just never have these conversations,

Michele Phillips  
the trust phrase and the resentments build, and a lot of times when you have the difficult conversation, like every difficult conversation I've had, first of all, it feels better to me once I it's always all the angst is before I have it, because I'm having the conversation with them in my head, oh, I'm going to say this, and they're going to say that once I have it, all that energy is gone, and I feel better. And usually what I thought was wrong. So these assumptions we make, the stories I have, this great exercise I work with my classes where I put them in flip chart groups, if we're live and I say, I want you to pretend you've just been invited to work on a project with a group of people you don't trust. I want you to write down on the flip chart what are the behaviors you exhibit when you're walking into a room. Then you know you don't trust anybody on this project, and they write down all these things, like, they, you know, they're they're close to the close. They're guarded. They don't share. They, you know, they're very quiet. They say all these things. And then I flip it on them and I ask them the opposite question. So now you're going into a room of people you totally trust. How do you behave? Oh, I'm open. I share and you know, they give me all these great adjectives and explanations. And then the next thing is to realize that the common denominator in both scenarios is them. The energy that you bring to every project affects the project. So if you're working with a group of people you don't trust, and you walk in their arms folded. Now, I'm not sharing my ideas, and I'm going to give as little as I have, but if you walk in saying, I want this to be a successful project, and I am going to start to build bridges. You know, Jeff and I didn't have maybe we didn't. The last project we work on, worked on didn't go so well, but this time, we have a clean slate, and I want to say, Jeff, let's make some new guidelines for how we communicate or when we, you know, give updates on this project. So realizing that I always say, what's a great quote? What? What part of what I can't say it? What part do you play and what you're complaining about? So it's kind of like saying this traffic stinks. It's like, well, yeah, if you were home, there'd be one less car on the road. So you're part of the thing they're complaining about. So by complaining that the you know the group isn't trustworthy is realizing that you're part of that, and you have one person has. So much influence over many when they come from their heart. And that's another great you got me going now, one person who's connected to your their heart is is more powerful than millions who aren't

Jeff Ma  
who elaborate on that.

Michele Phillips  
Because when when you're connected to your heart, people feel it. I I've met people in my life that when they walk in the room, you just feel the energy. You feel the glow they they are communicating to you without even saying a word, because every cell in their body is open and just love. And it's such a beautiful feeling. And I always aspire to that. I hope I my clients would say that about me, but when you walk into a room that no one's trusting you. You could feel the tension. I could cut the tension with a knife, even though no one's talking. So again, that that person that comes in just with the with the open heart, and you know, it says, I am going to be the one that sets the tone for this meeting, that sets the tone for this project. And you don't have to be the project lead, but you can set the tone and just, you know, I always take, I always act like on the host wherever I go.

Jeff Ma  
I have, I guess, something in mind, because as I think of difficult questions, conversations, sorry and just crucial conversations, my my head always goes to kind of like, like feedback conversations or or especially where, you know, there's people like speaking your mind, on on like behaviors and interactions and relationships like this is the tricky stuff to me, because, like, if I'm In a team and someone's not performing, I find it relatively for me, at least straightforward to be like, Hey, let's talk about this performance. Let's talk about this. But if it's more like, hey, the way you spoke to me in that meeting kind of upset me, you know, like, and it's like, opinionated, it's my feeling. So it's true, but it's also it seems, it seems at times silly to bring up, or it seems like I might get, I'm afraid of what the reaction might be. All these thoughts kind of go through my head, and I feel like there's a conversation, there's a difficult conversation there that I want to have. How do I, I guess, you know, because I think the internal struggle is like, where do I, you know, how much truth do I need to bring out here? How worth it is this conversation? How do I build the courage to have it like from this perspective, what kind of like advice do you have, or what kind of insight do you have for this person?

Michele Phillips  
Well, first of all, all your emotional intelligence is showing right now, just by the way you're framing the question, you're being very cautious, and you're using I statements. So those are all the things. It's when you spoke to me at the meeting, this is how it made me feel. It's not, you know, pointing fingers. It's not saying you did this or you did it wrong, or you're patronizing, or you talk down to me. It's I feel less than when you call me by my last name at meetings, whatever it is. And, you know, being open to listening and you said another really important thing is, is is it worth having this conversation? So if this is someone that's in your life 20% of the time, probably not worth it, right? There's people you know saying the wrong things to us all the time. If this is someone in your life more than 50% of the time, and it's affecting your relationship, it's important to have and again, it's approaching the conversation from this is a uncomfortable conversation for me to have, but I value our relationship. I always say to my clients, you know, let's say Jeff, I value our working relationship on a scale of one to 10. In the last month, how would you rate our relationship? 10 being the best, it's ever been, one being the worst. And if you say eight to me, then what can we do to make it better? So it's always being open to the other people's perspectives. And again, they are opinions. So I always say they're people are welcome to their opinion, but you're welcome not to take it. And it's really, again, processing. And I like to say, when you ask for feedback, and then someone gives it to you, not to get defensive, and to say, I need 24 hours to digest this. And then you take your 24 hours and you go, is it true? Can i improve? Could you know, a lot of the times we we've all we've all been disappointed, and we've all been the disappointer, but sometimes when we're the disappointer, we don't even know we've done it because we're moving so fast. So it's really, you know, sometimes my own husband will say to me, oh my gosh, Michele, I didn't like when you said I'm like, Mom, I did. Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Thank you for telling me. But if nobody ever tells you, you don't know. Yeah, so I. And the other thing I want to add, I do live 360s for my clients, where you'll give me five to seven responders that you choose, that you work with, and then I do a live phone interview. I ask the same nine questions, and people are so kind and supportive when you're asking someone that respects you to give you feedback. It's just a beautiful it's a beautiful exercise, nice.

Jeff Ma  
So what I heard was that a good approach to tackle those situations, after analyzing if you should have them, is to, I guess, shift the conversation, or at least start the conversation with like, the intention and like, kind of shifting it to the how much you value the relationship, how much you know it's important to like address this, because you don't want it to get in the way things like this, rather than you did this, or I'm just hurt, like, just focusing on those things, sounds like you can We can shift it to a more we, I guess, approach to the to the to the growth.

Michele Phillips  
Yeah, and you're hitting on something really important, because you you care about this related to it. If somebody you didn't know called you on the phone tomorrow and said, Jeff, I'm never going to speak to you again, you'd be like, Okay, right? I don't know you. I don't care about you. But when you care about someone, that's when the emotions get involved, and that's why we avoid it, but the more we can just speak, what's the Brene Brown quote, speak your truth with grace, which I love also.

Jeff Ma  
Do you have any advice for I guess people who are looking to have more of these conversations in the workplace, but might feel like these? I guess maybe find it that it's just not, it's not easy to start when, like, maybe the environment doesn't kind of call for you that's very professional, and it feels like we, everyone around you is just trying to get their work done. Everybody's like, just staying very, very PC with everybody. And it seems like that this, this requires a a scheduled one on one meeting, and then lots of preparation. Like, is that how it should be, or is there another way to approach difficulty, to practice?

Michele Phillips  
I would practice where it's easy. Practice with your family. Practice children are really good practice because they tell you what they think, you know, practice in environments where you don't have a lot at stake. And even with your co workers, practice with the easier ones. I wouldn't just tackle the most difficult person you know on your team, because then you you know, it's like you don't get the win. You want some early wins. You want to practice again. You can always do role playing. And I've done role playing. I did role playing with Johnson, and Johnson recently on Zoom, where it was so much fun. I didn't know how it was going to work, but the people that were role playing stayed on, Cameron, everybody else went off, and they just had this conversation, and it went so well. So, you know, having someone to role play with is an option, and then, you know, looking for the low stake wins to start with,

Jeff Ma  
and I guess my my last piece is I'm always looking at different power dynamics when it comes to these things. Difficult conversations shape very differently when one's like a boss, a CEO, or, you know, other position, that kind of types of power in play. So is there anything, I guess, in your kind of approach that can help handle that from either side? I mean, more importantly, I would assume from the position of lesser power, needing a crucial conversation like, what is the what is the approach there, or what, what outlets do they have,

Michele Phillips  
yeah, two I've we've already discussed them, but I'll give you two examples from my own early career, when I first started my career, one of my first bosses, for whatever reason, when I went out to lunch with this other colleague on the team, when I got back from lunch, she treated me differently the boss, it was this weird. I don't know. She just didn't like the other person. So then I got the brunt of it, and I had to, like, get the courage, I was just out of college, get the courage to walk in and say to her, I don't know if you notice, but when I come back from lunch with X, you treat me differently. Oh, right, just saying it out loud, I could be imagining things. And you know, she didn't really like say she was or she wasn't, but it stopped my next boss in the same career, early my career, again, my perception was the guy I was on the same level with another man, and I felt like the man got the better projects and I got the more fluffier projects. So again, I had to go into his office and say, This isn't the first boss was a female. This boss was a male. And say, it seems to me as if x gets the more juicier projects and you're giving me. And again, I didn't realize, so it's really practicing. You gotta, just like, put on your, you know, big person pad, so to speak. Can practice having these conversations and then realizing when you say something, when you name the elephant in the room without being accusatory, right? They can't get defensive. And then, you know, you see what happens. So again, rat, if you work for a rational person, they'll be rational with you. You know, if you work for someone who's not rational, then that's probably not the best approach, but realizing that you have power, you always have more power than you think, and to start exercising it, all you could do is go in and speak your piece, and then if nothing changes, then again, you have choices to make, but at least just speaking your piece will free you and make you feel better.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. Thank you for entertaining my myriad of different types of questions. But I just generally, generally find this conversation, this difficult conversation topic, to be so important, and I really appreciate you for all the different perspectives you shared today, because I'm taking a lot away, and I know the audiences as well. So thanks. Thank you for joining and sharing everything today, Michele,

Michele Phillips  
and thank you what you're doing for the world with this podcast. Thank you, Jeff, absolutely.

Jeff Ma  
Thank you to the listeners. Always appreciate the time you guys spend tuning. In hope you're checking out book love as a business strategy, and be sure to check out Michele's book too. I'll leave a note in the podcast, show notes for that. And so with that, we thank you all. We hope you have a wonderful week. We'll see you next time you.