Rachel talks with Amanda Perez Leder, conflict resolution specialist about how unresolved conflict can undermine an organization’s mission and how timely, facilitated conversations to foster healthier, value-driven environments. Their discussion offers practical strategies for turning workplace disagreements into growth opportunities.
Rachel talks with Amanda Perez Leder, conflict resolution specialist about how unresolved conflict can undermine an organization’s mission and how timely, facilitated conversations to foster healthier, value-driven environments. Their discussion offers practical strategies for turning workplace disagreements into growth opportunities.
For more from Amanda Perez Leder, find her on LinkedIn!
Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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RACHEL: Hey, it's Rachel Cooke, your Modern Mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm helping leaders activate performance and change without the burnout. We do leader activation boot camps, keynotes, and pulse checks to help build custom blueprints. Just let us know what you need. Today's episode is an interview that I got to do with Amanda Perez Leder.
Amanda has led award winning health education, capacity building, and organizational development programs for more than 20 years. She's an expert speaker and facilitator, and most recently has completed a professional certification in conflict resolution, mediation, and peacebuilding from Columbia University.
In this conversation, I invite Amanda to share some insights with me on what she's seeing and hearing in the workplace with regards to conflict. for listening. And to share some actionable tips we can all implement to help drive cohesion over conflict. I hope you enjoy. Amanda Perez Leder. Thank you so much for joining me on the Modern Mentor podcast today.
AMANDA: I'm so excited you're here.
RACHEL: Me too. I've been looking forward to this. Absolutely. So quick background, full disclosure, Amanda, you and I, went to college together in a year that will stay anonymous. Um, we were in the same, we were at a big school, but we were in a pretty small major together. We knew of each other, but we really have only gotten to know each other meaningfully as adults within the past year or so.
And for me, it has been a tremendous pleasure. I have learned so much from you already, and I am so excited to bring all of your wisdom to my audience today.
AMANDA: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
RACHEL: Awesome. So Amanda, you are currently a practitioner of conflict resolution within organizations. That is a, keep me honest, a certification, I think that's the right word, that you obtained fairly recently.
You are, historically, you're more of an organizational psychology, organizational development practitioner. And in the past couple years you've opted to transition into conflict resolution. Is that an accurate portrayal?
AMANDA: It is. And before organizational development, um, I entered through public health.
RACHEL: Right. So you've done a lot of important things through a lot of important lenses. And I would love to talk a little bit about specifically how you transitioned from kind of a broad focus on organization development to a more honed specific focus on conflict resolution. What were you seeing around you that kind of called you to make that turn?
AMANDA: Sure. So it does, I will share a little bit about the public health just because it's related. You know, I first found the field of organizational development and employee engagement and wellness, um, and patient client experience. I came into it through public health and specifically sexuality education.
So like I started as a sex educator. Um, so I have, um, I have a long time passion of helping people talk about the topics that no one really wants to talk about, but are a big part of our lives.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: So as part of being an educator and a public health practitioner, I developed a lot of skills around instructional design.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: So how to create content, curriculum, training programs to help people navigate, again, hard to discuss stigmatized topics. And I loved it from a pretty young age. Actually, Rachel, you mentioned college. I actually started this work back in college, right?
RACHEL: Yeah.
AMANDA: So what I ended up doing through public health is I ended up working for a lot of healthcare organizations.
And one of those healthcare organizations, um, at one point reached out and said, you know what? We actually need someone who can really help translate a lot of kind of difficult to discuss concepts into really usable, digestible formats, but around our workplace culture. So this national healthcare system, they were like, listen, we want to do, and we want to build an employee engagement and patient experience framework.
That's not just wallpaper, right, that is really understood nationwide, right, by all our employees and patients. It's not something that's just kind of up on the wall, but it's something that people really see. And it was a really interesting time in healthcare, right? It was a time where a lot of healthcare was shifting, the introduction of telehealth, a lot of merging, um, of big systems.
So they knew healthcare was shifting and they really wanted to create an engagement and experience system that resonated. So I brought my instructional designer, um, skills to this work, um, and training skills to this work. And then I just, I fell really hard for organizational development. And I was like, wow, who knew that sex education could be so similar to talking about workplace culture.
RACHEL: Right. They're hard to discuss topics.
AMANDA: Right. And they need, they need a lot of sustainability. They need a lot of permission giving to be able to talk about them. And then, you know, I was really, really kind of proud of that work and just thinking about right. Values right. And what values are in an organization.
I like to think of values for an organization or how an organization works in service of their mission. Envision, right? Um, And what I was seeing, what I eventually came to see after 10, 12 years in organizational development is I was seeing that, and again, this was mostly working at the time with nonprofits, social justice organizations, health care groups.
I was seeing that one of the biggest impediments to living out values, Was an organization's mismanagement or avoidance of conflict? And I was also observing that when there are high levels of trauma in an organization, um, so we know that a lot of social service organizations, they disproportionately attract kind of more of us who have trauma in our own backgrounds.
And a lot of the work providing social service health care in this country, social justice in this country. Um, you know, these are, these are highly polarized times. So, so these organizations, they have emboldened opposition groups, right? That add. Add trauma and stress to the work they do day in and day out, right?
So I'm talking about working for reproductive health care organizations on the eve of the Dobbs decision and afterwards, right? All of a sudden having to shut down health centers because they can no longer provide reproductive health care services to their patients who desperately need them, right?
Working with racial equity groups, right? In the time of George Floyd, excuse me. And then also in the years after George Floyd, where. All of a sudden, we were seeing less of a commitment to the racial equity that so many organizations felt emboldened to take on, right? So high trauma times, right? And what I was observing is that right when there's high levels of trauma in an organization, a potential consequence is also conflict aversion.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: And by conflict, I'm also, I'm talking about disagreements, you know, differences. I'm not talking about high conflict necessarily, but even an organization's ability to kind of harness conflict for good and, and manage disagreement. You know, it saddened me, right. It saddened me that that was really getting in the way with organizations abilities to live out their values and their mission and vision. So that's what brought me, Rachel. That's a long way of answering your question. That's what really brought me to really think about conflict resolution and mediation as an additional level to my work.
I mean, it's a, it's a great background and it, it really tracks, it makes a lot of sense if your purpose within an organization is essentially to enhance its efficacy to enhance its ability to deliver on its mission, then it has to be able to lean into conflict to your point from from the most minor, you know, core. I see it this way, you see it that way, all the way up to, you know, resentment and fighting and I imagine the worst that things can be.
RACHEL: So it makes a lot of sense. And thank you for, for sharing that back story. I would love, uh, if we could spend a little bit of time maybe talking about some of the specific types of conflict that you have been seeing and working with organizations to help kind of work through or resolve, of course, without sharing anything specific or confidential.
But can you give us an example or two of the type of situation that you might be called into and what the question or the opportunity is for you?
AMANDA: Great question. So something I'm learning in this work is that with conflict in the workplace, right, it, conflict will rarely, if ignored, right, if ignored, or, you know, we're, we're just too busy to handle it right now.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: We don't want to see it. It's amazing how much of us, because how we've kind of, you know, been trained in, in our personal lives or in our work lives, right. To just, it can feel easier to turn away, right? But what we know about conflict in the workplace is that it rarely gets better on its own, right?
Time doesn't really heal with conflict, right? If there's not an intervention or if there's not a conversation. So I bring that up because Um, time is important and timeliness is important here. Maybe, maybe we can kind of think, maybe people thinking for a moment in their personal lives. Oh, well, kind of conflict got better when I no longer had to see that person or kind of, we moved in separate ways, but that's different at work, right?
We see that colleague, we see that manager, right? We see that volunteer, right? So it's, you know, there's, as long as there is an interconnectedness, It's, again, conflict rarely just gets better on its own, right? So oftentimes I am brought in because there has been some missed opportunities, right? There has been a little bit too much time with folks not coming together for a conversation, right?
And, you know, sometimes. I am brought in to really help folks hear each other in ways that for whatever reason they haven't been able to hear each other. It's been really, really helpful to see how a third party facilitator can kind of create an environment, right? Create a safe environment, a trusting environment, a neutral environment so that parties are able to hold space.
And potentially understand each other a bit more and the more we kind of let conflict potentially kind of go away on its own, which we know it doesn't really do that very often the harder it becomes for parties even actually be in conversation with each other and feel like there is going to be a level of listening and understanding.
So oftentimes my role is literally just to come in and to hold space for listening and hopefully understanding to happen right between either two or more parties.
RACHEL: Sounds a little bit like the role that a therapist plays in a family or a partnership.
AMANDA: Yes, and the great thing about this work, the great thing about conflict resolution and, and in this case, kind of mediation, I was kind of, I was giving you an example of a mediated conversation.
It's not on the third party. It's not on, let's say a mediator brought in or a manager who's overseeing this, or maybe someone in HR to come up with the solutions, right? Mediation and conflict resolution is about the parties coming up with mutually acceptable solutions, right? And it's really hard to get there.
If trust has been so ruptured that the parties don't even feel like they have an ability to hear each other out.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: But it's very different kind of from therapy and coaching where, again, those, those, those roles can actually give a little bit more advice.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: But in this work, oftentimes it's really just creating, creating an environment for actually the parties in the conflict to be able to self determine their own solutions and their own ways of moving forward.
RACHEL: Right. Can, which can be really empowering after being in like a conflict that feels so out of your control and disempowering. Absolutely. So I'd love to ask you just about some of the scenarios that I feel like I'm hearing about in my world and I'd love to just get your perspective. So something that I am witnessing a fair amount these days is I am talking to people in my personal life, in my professional life, who are using the phrase toxic culture, right?
Things at work have become toxic. The culture feels really toxic. It feels like people are arguing. It feels like we are talking over each other. People aren't really listening well. There's a lot of disagreement. There's a lot of resistance. There's very low trust. And that's, that's a really big, messy knot to untie.
And I don't want to imply that I think there is any sort of simple, uh, Um, kind of one handed solution to that, but I'd be curious if you were to come into an organization and you were starting to hear descriptions like that, what are, and I would, I would love for you to think about this through the lens of what you might bring to the situation, but also for somebody who's listening and saying, I wish I had access to you, Amanda, but I don't.
And so, how might I self service in this situation? Are there any tips or strategies or bits of guidance that you can offer to somebody who might be feeling like they're in this situation and they're trying to start to create a little bit of change?
AMANDA: Yes. Great question. And I also want to think about what you just said with right with toxic culture.
And I think I want us, I want us to reflect on the state of the world and the country that like, right, that we're in, right. And how organizations, right, big and small operate within the larger context of our, of our, of our society, our country, our world. And Rachel, let me ask you a question. So you've heard the word polarized, right, a lot right now, but just like, how polarized do you think our country is relative to its history, right? Like if you want, like, if you think about like, just compared to other times in our country's history, just, just how polarized do you think we are?
RACHEL: I mean, in my lifetime, it feels like we are polarized 10x more than ever before. That's my personal experience.
AMANDA: Yes. So you are right on. I have a professor at Columbia who like, this is what he does. He studies polarization, right? And a lot of smart minds are literally just studying this. And, and, and just by the way, like when we say polarization, we're talking about when there are extreme positions, right?
That are increasingly opposed to each other within a society. And you're absolutely right. So we have not been as polarized in this country since the Civil War, right? And there is actually, I wish I could show you, there's this graphic, right? But there's this graphic that, that shows party polarization.
And obviously it's just one element of our polarization, but it looks at, right, um, just how polarized the House and the Senate are. And there's actually this large increase, right, going back to kind of the starting in the early 2000s where we got like super like the polarization in Congress just took just a huge jump.
And I have a professor that when he told me this, I was like, my mind was blown. Do you remember who was Speaker of the House in the early 2000s?
RACHEL: Newt Gingrich.
AMANDA: Right. Okay. And he did something. And again, I'm going to go back to toxic culture, but he did something that I think is really, really important for us to think about, right?
What he did at that time was he told all members of Congress that you no longer needed a second residence in DC, right? You no longer needed a second residence in DC. So what that meant was that all of a sudden, Rachel, maybe you were a Democrat and I was a Republican. We weren't bumping into each other at Starbucks anymore, right?
Our kids weren't on the same soccer team. You know, maybe we didn't end up at the same cocktail party, right? We weren't seeing each other outside of maybe what was already kind of a contentious environment. We had less opportunities for kind of meaningful, casual encounters where we could talk about other things that make us who we are.
Right? So I bring that up because I think we should think about work in that way as well. How, and particularly now when so many of us are going remote and there's more hybrid kind of culture. How are we creating enough opportunities for our staff and for our teams to have meaningful casual encounters, right?
We know these things actually build what we call positive reservoirs, positive emotional reservoirs, so that when conflict does come up in the workplace, we can actually fall back from, again, our built up positive emotional reservoirs that we have. And oftentimes these are aimed kind of casual encounters that we have with colleagues outside of like the nitty gritty kind of work stuff, right?
And it's interesting. Congress kind of has that example for us. You know, this actually is also something in anti bias work. This is called contact theory, which is just the more contact we have with people who think differently than us. Spending time with people who think differently than us is kind of the best way to actually overcome bias, um, is engaging with the difference as opposed to avoiding it.
So, you know, I bring up the society, Rachel, because I think, I think toxic culture speak is, we have to think about how we're seeing examples right in our society. A lot of discourse is happening over social media. Our politics are really, really frayed and polarized. And my invitation to organizations is to really think about, right, how so many examples of divisive polarization and high conflict, which are devoid of real listening and dialogue and engaging in difference.
It can impact, it is impacting, right? Our organizational patterns, right? And it does make, it does trickle over to how we communicate, right? So, you know, examples of that, right? In our culture, we see a lot of binary thinking, right? So issues are boiling down to just a pro and a con. Everyone's got to choose a side.
So I'm talking with a lot of leaders about. What we say, a lot of scholars are saying, complicate the narrative of work, complicate the narrative, embrace the complexity of things that you're talking about at work, allow people to really, instead of kind of committing to a side, commit to an understanding of issues.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: We know that there's a lot of cancel culture happening in our society. And listen, some of this is when there is, you know, when there are a real breaking of rules, when there is a true, true injustice. I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about people who make mistakes and are committed to learning and restoration.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: Um, there are lots of examples in our culture where folks are canceled, and there's no educational moment for people to learn and to be accountable. So we do a lot of work around how we create call in cultures at work that really allow people to own their mistakes, own their failures. There's some great organizations who have bulletin boards or virtual boards of kind of, um, their failures, their mistakes, and there's real openness and talking about a mistake they made this week and how they've owned their mistake and are learning from it, right?
So this is kind of call in culture that again is a, is, um, is that, you know, is different from the cancel culture that we're seeing playing out in society that doesn't create a lot of space and time for learning and healing. So, you know, those are some examples and I just, you know, when I hear toxic culture and I'm with you, I hear a lot of that.
It's you know, we're having conversations on how kind of societal ways of working are potentially influencing organizations and, and just, and getting ahead of that.
RACHEL: No, that's a really helpful perspective. Thank you.
I'm also curious, Amanda, how much in your experience you feel like you are seeing kind of stress and overwhelm and burnout that we're all experiencing, but how much you see that The ways in which we show up and engage with each other and if And it's, it's probably a bit of a loaded question. I guess I do have a bit of a point of view on this because I feel like I'm seeing that.
I feel like some of the conflict that I'm witnessing in organizations seems to be stemming from the fact that both parties in an, in an interaction, they just have a, Low tolerance for anything because they're dealing with so much stress and burnout and overwhelm personally, and I'm wondering if you're seeing that and if so how you counsel people to maybe manage themselves so that they can show up better In a challenging interaction.
AMANDA: Yes. Yes. Distress and overwhelm and trauma creating, you know, I would say creating low psychological safety settings, right? Cause it's really hard to like, you know, invite disagreement, which we know psychological safety does, right? Psychological safety are the workplaces, right? That really. Invite the sharing of mistakes that invite the disagreement.
And I think, you know, and I know you've probably spent time on this on this podcast, right? Talking about all the benefits of psychological safety, right? And there's there's a lot of them. So yes, and I think it's reminding. I think folks need reminders of why conflict has and I think folks need reminders of why conflict has Conflict, friction, disagreement has benefits.
Rachel, you and I have talked about this, right? It's ike conflict. It's does have a really negative connotation for people, right? Like if I ask you, I, there's this activity I do where I start and I say, what's the essence of conflict. Let's say it's 10 people. In most groups, 7 to 8 will say something negative, right?
So I think their association with conflict has a negative connotation, right? But we know that it has tons of benefits, right? We know that, right, um, and I think it's, it's socializing this and thinking about this even in a state of, of, of stress and, and overwhelm, right? We know that, you know, with, with my work in nonprofits and, and, and social justice groups, there's no way we break the status quo and accelerate social change without inviting some conflict and disagreement.
We know that conflict can create better work outcomes, right? When you and your coworkers push one another, right, to continually ask if there's a better approach. Like, that creative friction oftentimes leads to new solutions, right? I think sometimes, you know, conflict, not sometimes, oftentimes, right?
Creates new opportunities to learn and grow, right? As uncomfortable as it may feel, right? When somebody challenges your ideas, it's an opportunity to learn, right? And by listening and incorporating feedback, right? We gain experience. We try new things. We evolve as managers and leaders. And again, psychological safety, right?
I think there's a lot of data to support that most of us want to work on and lead teams where people can openly share their unique perspectives, respectfully debate about ideas and solutions, right? And now again, teams that share diverse opinions are going to make better, are going to make better opinions.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: So I think and certainly you talk about the power of, you know, of, of self regulation, right? Of what we need, you know, as individuals within stress and overwhelm to be able to. You know, anticipate, invite conflict. And I think, you know, I think Rachel sometimes too, I think, I think sometimes in that there is a role for letting go of, um, of a needing to, to, to kind of be liked.
And what I mean by that is that I think. You know, sometimes I think we, we stress out about conflict and, and, you know, embracing difference because our focus is on kind of being liked, being liked as, and, and listen, most of us want to be liked and that, and that's normal. But I think if we think about instead of trying to kind of increase our likability, you know, what if, what if our focus was on respect?
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: Both giving it and earning it. And remembering that even when like the subject matter is difficult, like conversations can remain mutually supportive, right? So I think if you model as a leader and manager that you're comfortable and that respect is ultimately more important than likeability, you, you end up modeling that for your team, that it's okay to disagree and it's safer for people to raise their ideas.
And Rachel, like there is an important gender difference here. We know that women tend to struggle with that more than men. And I, um, I think there's also an another thing related to what you said is that I see folks struggling with also to like confusing disagreement with rudeness. Or like a lack of kindness, right?
RACHEL: Yes, I see that a lot. I see that all the time and I think, I think a lot of us could use some coaching on how to disagree with an idea and not a person and do so in a way that is constructive and respectful and not patronizing. Um, I think it's very easy to either be aggressive or patronizing. I think those are almost two sides of the same coin and it's finding that middle ground where you can honestly say, you know, Amanda, I respect your ideas.
Here's a piece that I, I see differently and let me share with you how I see it and I'm not expressing judgment of you as a person or as a thinker. But I'm challenging the idea in the hope that we ultimately land together in a place that blends my thinking with yours and makes it bigger and richer.
And I think, I think that's really hard to do, especially in an environment where there's low trust and a lot of overwhelm. And I think that's what we are struggling with. And so I would love to just get some of your ideas in our last couple of minutes together. So I've got listeners who are people leaders.
I've got listeners who are individual contributors, and I would love to get some ideas from you on what each of those parties can do personally to start to increase their own comfort and capability with just being in a conversation with people where we may not see eye to eye, but we're committed to making the outcome better.
How can each of us individuals and leaders, what work can we do personally on ourselves in order to just be better, more prepared to do that successfully? What I want to leave people with is, hey, if you want to become a person who is better at this, here, here are three things you can personally focus on or work on or practice in order to get better.
Does that make sense?
AMANDA: Yes. One of a big conflict principle, conflict management and resilience principle is people need to believe, right, that you understand them even as they realize you disagree. Before they will hear you. So I think some important takeaways that can help us all, right? Think about how we anticipate and then manage conflict effectively and harness all its good potential.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: And also navigate, right. Some sticky situations that we all experience at work is. I think the first thing that comes to mind is, is the concept of, of, of listening. And I know we talk about this all the time in org development and leadership development. And I think as a, as a new mediator, I have a new found appreciation for the power of real listening people, right?
Um, a really guiding, a guiding principle for me lately has been that people really, they need to believe you understand them, even as they realize you disagree. Before they will hear you in addition to that, like listening doesn't always mean agreement, but it means that you seek to understand more than you already do.
And so understanding right? Understanding is an interest and understanding kind of from both from both parties or everyone who's, um, navigating difference, um, is, is foundational. And I think there's this, there's this technique that this group called Good Conflict talks about a lot that I'm in loving.
And it's called looping. And I would love to quickly kind of tell your listeners what it's about, right? So looping is, so again, you are, you are seeking, there is, there is a difference of opinion. There's, there is a conflict that really kind of has you wrestling a lot. Um, and you kind of sit down with this person, right?
And you are going to listen, for what seems most important to the other person, that's step one. Step two is that you're going to paraphrase. We all know paraphrasing, right? We're going to, you know, really try to reiterate the essence of what you understood. And then a really important next step with looping is you're going to check in, right?
You're going to ask right with, with curiosity, with real interest. If you got it, right. Right. So, you know, did I get that correctly, Rachel, like, or what did I miss? So it's the paraphrasing with the checking in. And if you didn't get it right, you go back to step one. You go back to letting that person really helping you better understand what it is they're trying to convey.
And then you can paraphrase that again until you get that right. And then after you get it right. You actually dig, you go a little further, right? You ask, tell me more, right? I want to understand that, I want to understand that even better, right? Can you give me an example, right? What you're trying to do is you're actually trying to get at some more important values, beliefs, emotions.
Emotions are critical in navigating conflict. They are so important. And this is hard. This can feel hard for us, but like a lot of in mediation, we learn in conflict resolution, we learn like it's okay to go towards the heat, right? Because understanding the emotions that are driving the difference are really, really important in helping people feel understood and seen.
And if people don't feel understood and seen, it's going to be really, really, really hard to reach those mutually acceptable agreements and solution. So looping is just a, you know, it's a really powerful way to think about how we, how we listen and seek understanding, even if the agreement doesn't come right away, the understanding has to come first, how we can engage in conversations around conflict.
Thinking that the step, the first step is increased understanding before we get to agreements, right? So that's something that, that I would want to leave, um, your listeners with for sure. I think Rachel, another thing too, is thinking about role models we have in our life. You know, chances are that we all have someone in our life, you know, a colleague, a relative, a friend.
I know this sounds hokey, but maybe like someone on a show that you've just binged or in a movie, right, who does a pretty good job. Doesn't, it doesn't have to be someone you've actually met. Someone who does a pretty good job of being, you know, being transparent, being honest about their thoughts and opinions without ruffling feathers.
Watch that person, see what they do right. That can be helpful. And then I think, um, you know, for us as organizational leaders, I think thinking macro, right? Meaning that I think disagreements and conflicts, they're going to be even harder to navigate. It's going to be harder to seek understanding and truly listen and do that looping when you think about them as personal jabs.
But oftentimes conflict at work, not always, but it usually starts with differences over goals, objectives, processes, right? So I think, right, think about the business needs, right? The organizational needs, right? So you know, when thinking when, when kind of approaching the conversation, you know, think through about how kind of opening up a conversation really kind of.
Leaning into the conversation, how it will help the organization, the team on the project you're working on.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: You know, I think if, if we're just thinking about kind of the personal jab, or again, going back to we're just seeking likeability is going to get in the way of kind of thinking more macro and wanting what's best for the business or team.
So it's shifting the thinking a little bit can be helpful. It doesn't mean ignoring any harm that you have felt. It's certainly oftentimes it's about talking about, um, but it's also kind of thinking through, why am I feeling uncomfortable here? Is it about, am I personalizing this? Could it help thinking about kind of a, thinking about it a little bit more macro, um, you know, that that's something that oftentimes I, I, I coach folks through as well.
RACHEL: Yeah. I often work with my clients on distinguishing facts from feelings or interpretations. So you know, my leader said X is a fact, but what my leader meant by that or where they were coming from, that might be subject to interpretation, right? So. I think that we can have a tendency to say that because somebody said this, they obviously meant that and I like to invite people to explore other possibilities to come in with an assumption of positive intent and to assume not that that Person on that other team doesn't care about your interests, but perhaps they are experiencing a sense of pressure from their own leader and they're showing up with their own anxiety.
And so what you're interpreting as a personal offense is really just an expression of somebody else's feeling of overwhelm. And I think the more that we can come into a situation. With an assumption of positive or at least neutral intent, I think the better the outcome tends to be. Yes. And, and this is where, again, that reminds me of the timeliness element we were talking about earlier.
If we have too many of those instances, right, that can really kind of get into kind of a more high conflict situation. So, you know, I think. What I heard in that also too was how we create environments where we actually tell staff and teams like managers and leaders, feel free to kind of check for understanding on what I meant.
AMANDA: Right. You know, I, I invite you to say, Hey, you know, I heard this this way. Is that what you meant? Cause here's how it landed on me. That sort of check. And, and I think in fast paced hybrid, overly remote right environments, sometimes there's less ability to do that. But I think if we invite folks to kind of check in and say, Hey, am I, am I reading this wrong, but here's how that kind of indirection landed on me.
Ooh, those build, those build psychological safety, those build conflict resilience. They really, really do, right? Because, and you're also practicing, you're practicing a little bit of that looping, right? You're, you're really checking in, you're checking in for that understanding. Um, and if that's, if too many of those counters kind of, Just go unchecked.
We know they create, they, they, they minimize those, those positive emotional reservoirs that we were talking about earlier.
RACHEL: So Amanda, I want to be super respectful of your time. As we start to head toward the close, do you feel like there's anything that I haven't asked you about or anything else that you want to share with listeners before we bring this to an ending?
AMANDA: Let's see. What would I want to end on? Great question. I think an important part of leadership right now is thinking about the ways that for, you know, in our personal professional lives, we have been, we have been socialized, right. Um, to manage conflict and an expectation that there is, there is oftentimes like a quick fix that a leader, right.
A leader needs to have, um, all the answers. Right. And I think that that certainly creates a lot of stress and overwhelm. Right. So I think, um, what is the work that we need to do as leaders to create more humility, create more self and compassion and the power of, you know, of a leader being able to say that I don't have all the answers or I'm wrestling this with myself, you know, I'm wrestling with this myself.
RACHEL: Right.
AMANDA: How about we take some time, right, to really think through this. I am comfortable being challenged on this because we know, right, we know the, the incredible outcomes that that helps create an organization, but, but what is if we, you know, spend time as leaders thinking about kind of what gets in the way for us to be able to do those things.
I, you know, I just, I want leaders to feel like they, they should take the time and the resources to think about what is the impediment that gets in the way for, for us to have the humility, the self compassion to say, we don't know, let's give ourselves time. Um, Check me on this challenge me. And it's different.
It's different. It's different for different leaders, but I think it is such a worth worthy pursuit and it's not what we're seeing in our society at large. Right. I think part of that toxicity that we're seeing is that everyone has everything figured out. There is the toxicity that we're seeing in our greater environment is devoid of that dialogue and understanding it's devoid of that humility.
So I think how we can bring that in and how was leaders. We can nurture that in ourselves, um, and give ourselves permission to kind of invest in those resources, I think is, is a really, really worthy and, and necessary pursuit given, given the really, you know, dynamic and polarized time that we live in right now.
RACHEL: Really, really well said, Amanda. Thank you. Thank you for all of this, for all of the insight and all of the reflection and all of the counsel that you brought to the show today. I am excited for listeners to hear this and where can they find you? Is LinkedIn the best spot to learn more about you?
AMANDA: Yes, absolutely.
I'll be, I'm coming out with a new website, but in until then, yeah, LinkedIn, Amanda Perez Leder is the best way.
RACHEL: Great. And we'll make sure that is linked in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today.
AMANDA: It was a pleasure, Rachel.
RACHEL: I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Amanda Perez Leder. You can learn more about her and connect with her on LinkedIn.
Join me next week for another great episode. Until then, visit my website at leadabovenoise.com if your workplace could use an activation boost. Whether it's a boot camp, a keynote, or a pulse check, you choose. You can follow Modern Mentor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week. Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. It's audio’s engineered by Dan Feierabend. Our director of podcasts is Brannan Goetschius our podcasts and advertising operations specialist is Morgan Christianson. Our digital operations specialist is Holly Hutchings. Our marketing and publicity associate is Davina Tomlin and our marketing contractor is Nathaniel Hoopes.