Hi. My name is Diana Rogers. I'm senior product manager at Global Payments. Work in tech for about six years.Started at a small start up, then switched to a big company, then helped to launch an aviation start up, and now work for Fortune 500 company, and it's very different experience. So today, I'm gonna be talking about communication and how to handle conflict and how to handle situations when people question your authority and push back on you. So, let's see. I would love you to be more active in the chat and ask questions and share your own experiences. I don't know if you guys can raise hand, but if you want to share some situations, where somebody questioned you or it was a conflict that you didn't know how to handle or it got emotional and weird. I guess it happened to all of us, but I would love to hear some stories. If you can just chat something real quick. Yeah.

I'm gonna come up with a couple from my experience and experience of people I worked with. So, one lady from, crypto community here in Utah, she showed up for a meeting for a technical discussion. And when she joined, one of the guys asked, oh, I thought it's gonna be a technical discussion. Like, why are you here? It was super weird. So, yeah, I can see some comments coming up. I got a lot of there is no budget for whatever it is I propose. Melanie, is it different for you versus other people in the company, or is it just the company doesn't not giving budget to anybody? How to handle complex pushbacks with more dominant people, and how can we own the room with our strategies? Mhmm. Okay. We're gonna discuss all of this.

Got asked in a meeting why I choose a certain solution as if it was a stupid decision and not giving me the time to explain. Oh, this is a good one. We're probably gonna gonna learn how to handle situations like this. I got question like, oh, you're a certified product owner. Why you don't know how to do QA? Because our QA went on maternity leave, and I had to help out as much as I can. And I'm like, I don't know how to do QA. So it's a few examples. And what we're gonna be talking about today that this pushback happens on multiple levels. I'm gonna be talking about three main levels. First one is emotional. Second one is not respecting boundaries. And the third level is trying to change your status in the room, your position in the room.

What we're not gonna be talking about is great constructive criticism, which happens, and we need to be ready for it. And at this level, you don't need to use any techniques or do anything outside of your normal work. You just handle, the feedback. You improve. You fix things. But what we're talking about today is slightly different. It's more on pushing conflict manipulation side, and that's what we're gonna learn how to handle today. So before we get into this three levels, three steps, I'm gonna talk about step zero. And before you get any kind of negotiation or conflict, you need to know where you're standing. What's your position in the company? What's your goal where another side is standing? And what what what's your level leverage? Like, what you potentially can do?

Like, if it gets super escalated, do you have an option to leave the company as the last resort? And it's very different position if you can or cannot do this. And we always need to remember about it because it's easy for us to get emotional and overstep the boundaries. So before we even start any communication, we need to remember what is the final goal, how important is this relationship for us, what are we trying to achieve, what would be the best outcome, and we start negotiation from that. And it applies not just for the work situations, but also for communicating with your partner, communicating with your family, with your kids. It applies to many different situations in life, so this is great. If you read the book, The Art of War, it's actually very, very helpful.

And the main rule, is to know yourself and to know your enemy. Hopefully, what we're talking today is not gonna be your enemy. It's gonna be your friend, your colleague. And the first level we're gonna be discussing is emotional level. If you guys have kids, and I know most of you do, you know that when kid is emotional, when kid is crying, screaming, it's impossible to negotiate and to get to great outcome, decision, learning point. It's just not gonna happen. And it's the same with adults. Like, when you talk to somebody who is emotional, like, for example, you just got feedback from leadership and they say that they're not gonna give you budget, for example, and it really affects emotional state of team members. Before discussing anything, you need to make sure that you're, you know, on the same calm level when you can discuss things.

And if it's not the case, it's just not gonna happen. So, for example, if colleague comes to you very upset, potentially, like, blaming, you can start, you know, trying to protect yourself coming up with argument right away. The very first things that we need to do, we need to, verify the feelings if any I don't know why it does this thing. If any of you worked in the customer support and talked to angry clients, you probably know what I'm talking about. Like, before discussion, we need to communicate what emotion this person, is experiencing and try to show some empathy. There are a few different ways to show the empathy. Empathy. As an example, I can see that you're angry. I'm feeling the same way.

Like, this feedback was very frustrating, and we can start from there and see how this person reacts. More than likely, they will be like, yes. Yes. It's great that you know how I'm feeling. It's pretty terrible. Or if you're not on the same page or the same level, for example, you got promotion and your colleague didn't, and they're not hiding that they're angry about it. You can say, yes. I would be angry if I was you. You probably can say that you are angry as well because you're probably not. So this is a good way to just calm down the emotions. And if it works out, it's great, and you can continue working. And if it doesn't work and it gets aggravated and it's just too many emotions, it's very wise to step back and not to continue conversation right away because it's just not gonna go well no matter what.

The same with the kids. Like, you know, if toddler is emotional, it's not a good way to say, oh, you shouldn't be crossing the street like you just did. You need to wait until that come down, and then you can have conversation. Yep. Second level, I'm gonna go pretty quick because I have, like, fifteen minutes for presentations and five minutes to answer questions if you guys have any questions. So we can prepare some. Second level is boundary violation. This happens pretty often. It doesn't have to be personal boundaries. It can be work boundaries. For example, for me, it's very important that we work as team members. And if we have issue as a team, we all work together on it Instead of saying, like, this is not my job. It is not my fault.

You guys figure it out. I'll do whatever you tell me. This is my big values that we need to be working together on solving things. So when it doesn't happen or something else doesn't happen depending on your situation, we have a formula. We say what we didn't like, how it made us feel, and what we want instead of it. In my case, it will be it makes me very frustrated when we blame each other instead of trying to find a solution. Can we please try to jump on this and discuss, for example, localization for the website altogether and how we can solve it? And, it does three things at once. It solves what's okay and not okay for you. It shows that you're a human who has feelings and doesn't leave people guessing what's going on in her head.

And it gives you the path to solve the problem and expectations on what would you expect. And you can use this formula with your family, for example. Like, if you have grandma who wants to ask you, are you gonna have more kids? And it's not a key question for you, you can say grandma. It makes me very uncomfortable to hear questions like this. Can we please not bring it up in the future and I decide for myself what I want for my family? And it doesn't sound harsh specifically when you notice how you feel. It's kind of like balancing the relationship between you and your grandma, between you and your colleagues. You can guys try to practice it. It it's very handy in many situations, pretty much in daily conversations.

And the last one and the hardest one is the status attack. This doesn't happen too often, but it does happen sometimes. For example, the worst one I'll start with the worst one I've heard. What happened to my friend? She did a presentation for, executive suite, and they listened to her. And in the end, one guy say, it was a great presentation for a woman. I liked it so much. And she was like, what? So another example will be, like, I didn't expect this work from somebody who has so many years of experience. Yeah. I can see faces. Yeah. And the first one I came up with oh, I thought it's a technical discussion is is another one. What do we know in this situation? First of all, we really, really do our best not to get emotional because if we do, yeah, it's kind of ruins everything. Like, it's hard to push back.

It's hard to think straight. It's hard to say the right thing. So we need to breathe out breathe out. And what happens with comments like this will be changing your status. So what it used to be, professional woman presenting something for other people. And then I'm like, oh, good for a woman. So status goes down immediately. It can be racial, very rarely, but happens. It can be experienced. It can be, oh, you don't have enough experience in this industry, for example, even if overall experience is good. Pretty much anything. Sometimes women get, like, oh, you're, like, too straightforward. You're too harsh even if we say exactly the same thing as men do. How do we handle this? What happens, like I mentioned already, is somebody trying to change your status verbally, especially if it's in front of other people. So it's unbelievably important to communicate what's happening.

Like, are you saying that woman is not as professional as men? Is this what you're trying to say? Or are you trying to say that my experience with government doesn't apply for business cases? We just need to vocalize it and work around it. Let me read the chat real quick. Yes. I can definitely see how it's easy to do. It's another thing about practice. Like, the more we practice answering, the easier it is to come up with a good straight answer when it happens. Yeah. Yeah. I don't show the slides. I prepared them just for myself, but I feel like it's, just better to discuss and explain it. Maybe next time I'll come up with the slides. Yeah. So a couple more examples on how it can look like. I got a comment, from my partners that, like, oh, women are not good budgeting or something like this.

I'm like, okay. So you're saying that women are not good budgeting, and sometimes it's repeating word by word. Like, if if it wasn't, like, hidden, you don't need to show it to the light. You just repeat it, And then you come up with arguments. Okay. Like, I actually do budget. I actually have, like, enough savings and more than average in my age. Like, what are you referring to? Is it just, like, your opinion based on your previous experience? Are the men who are not good in budgeting? Are the women who are good at budgeting? You just, like, start asking questions, and immediately, the whole structure starts falling apart. And it's actually pretty easy to do if you just ask straight questions. Yeah. So like I said, it's important to see the difference between actual, criticism and the status attack. And sometimes, it's it's hard. Sometimes you hear pushback and it gets personal.

You feel upset, and it takes a second to figure out, okay. Does it is it is it fair? And it's important to answer honestly to yourself because sometimes criticism is fair criticism is fair. And if it is, it means that it's like a biggest presence that you can get from your colleague. It's the place where you can grow. It's the place where you can build, you can improve. It's also important to remember how exactly it was it was presented. Good criticism should be on one on one. It should not be in front of the team. It should be both way communication, like, instead of just an assumption, like, why did you act this way? Maybe you had all the reasons to act this way, but this person is not interested.

So you need to be able to communicate back and forth and potentially ask for feedback in the future if you are improving. So just a few steps to remember about. Yep. I already mentioned name it out loud. Let's just repeat real quick. So we have three levels. Level one is emotional. Level second is boundary, and level three is changing of status. And it's not just the steps that person goes through. It can stop start from any level, And usually it does. It's very rarely an escalation. Usually, if somebody's emotional, they don't go higher. You can work on this level and never go anywhere else. I really want to recommend you guys to read the book Crucial Conversations. It's separate approach than what I was just teaching, but it's a great foundation of communications. Yeah. Conflict management, negotiations, improving relationship, very helpful.

So I