July 15, 2025 • 30 mins
In this Mike on the Mic episode, I explore what it truly means to lead through adversity. I break down the Stockdale Paradox, a powerful mindset that balances realism with hope, and show how I helped leadership teams apply it in real time during major crises. You’ll walk away with a step-by-step process for guiding your team through difficult times—without losing morale, clarity, or momentum.
Whether you're facing layoffs, market shifts, or internal challenges, this episode gives you the tools to face brutal facts while still believing in your team’s ultimate success. Let’s turn uncertainty into opportunity.
Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike Goldman (00:01):
When you're going through a difficult time
impacting business, impactingopportunity, impacting job
security, maybe impactingcompensation, the people that
have the largest ability to dustoff their resume and find a
different opportunity quicklyare your highest performers.
The obvious problem with that iswithout your highest performers,
(00:23):
you may not get through this theway you hope to.
You made it to the betterleadership team show, the place
where you learn how to surroundyourself with the right people,
doing the right things.
So you can grow your businesswithout losing your mind.
(00:45):
I'm your host and leadershipteam coach, Mike Goldman.
I'm going to show you how toimprove top and bottom line
growth, fulfillment, and thevalue your company adds to the
world by building a betterleadership team.
All right, let's go.
(01:06):
One of the most important skillswe need to master as leaders is
the skill to communicate duringdifficult times and, and how to
get our mindset right in thosetimes.
How to help our team members.
(01:27):
Get their mindsets right duringdifficult times.
And uh, depending on when you'relistening, you might be going
through a difficult time or, ormaybe you've got one coming up.
If we're running a business, wecan't escape that.
If we are trying to grow, tryingto scale trying new things,
things are not always gonna beperfect.
But there are certainly timesthat are less perfect than
(01:50):
others.
It seems like.
Decades ago, but it wasn't toolong ago that we all had to deal
with with COVID, and mostleaders learned very quickly
that they needed to communicatemore with their teams and with
their team members during thosedifficult times.
(02:11):
But it's not just important.
You communicate more during adifficult time, it's gotta be
the right communication.
So I wanna talk to you about,something called the Stockdale
Paradox that I first learned,from through Jim Collins many
years ago.
And the Stockdale Paradox, Ithink is a wonderful example and
(02:36):
a wonderful philosophy techniquein, in how we should be.
Thinking and communicating asleaders during a difficult time.
Let me tell you the story firstof the Stockdale paradox.
So, that name Stockdale comesfrom Admiral Jim Stockdale, who
(02:56):
was the highest ranking USmilitary officer that was held
as a prisoner of war in theHanoi Hilton, during the, the
Vietnam War.
He was there from 1965 through1973 an incredible amount of
time, seven or eight years as aprisoner of war.
(03:19):
Now some of you might know thename Admiral Jim Stockdale,
because he was also the runningmate, uh, of Ross Perot running
as vice president in 1992.
And at that point, you know, itwas, uh, kind of amusing.
He was.
Uh, he, he was in a three-waydebate since Perot ran as an
independent in a three-waydebate, vice presidential
(03:40):
debate, and he was getting kindof old and I think he forgot to
put his hearing aid in or itwasn't working.
So it was kind of ludicrous thatUh, he really couldn't hear
anything that was being said.
But anyway, if that's theAdmiral Stockdale, you remember,
get that out of your mind.
We're talking about AdmiralStockdale highest ranking member
of the US military, uh, uh, warHero POW in the Hanoi Hilton for
(04:05):
seven or eight years, from 65 to73 Now.
When he was there, he wastortured repeatedly.
He was denied medical care overthose seven years or so of
captivity, you know,unimaginable hardship, not
knowing if we he would eversurvive, not knowing if he would
(04:28):
ever see his family again.
Now, despite those brutalcircumstances, Stockdale
maintained an absolute.
Faith that he would prevail inthe end, you know, even as he
confronted a pretty harshreality every single day.
(04:49):
and one of the things he noticedis that many of his fellow
prisoners clung to kind of ablind optimism that they would
be out by Christmas.
You know, they just assume thewar's gonna be over soon.
You know, we're gonna be out byChristmas, and.
A lot of those folks, the folksthat had that optimism, which
(05:12):
you think would be a good thing,those folks often broke down
mentally and physically, whichmeant in a brutal place like the
Hanoi Hilton, it meant many ofthose folks didn't survive
because when they had this blindoptimism and their hopes were
dashed, that.
Christmas came and went and theyweren't freed again from this
(05:35):
POW camp.
They just kind of broke againmentally and physically.
And Stockdale credited hisability to last those seven
years.
Uh, he credit his ability tobalance this realistic
acceptance of the brutal factsthat.
(05:57):
They may not get out byChristmas that they were gonna
have to deal with this everyday, that they may be in there
for years.
It was this realistic acceptanceof the brutal facts with an
unwavering hope for ultimatevictory.
The balance of those twoconflicting thoughts.
(06:19):
Was he believed the key reasonthat he survived and later
actually thrived.
and it formed what we call theStockdale Paradox.
And again, the Stockdale paradoxis in any situation is this,
this combination of confrontingthe brutal facts, being open and
(06:40):
honest about the brutal factswith yourself.
And with your people, combiningthat with this balancing thought
of an unwavering faith thatsomehow we will be victorious in
the end.
And, and those two thoughtstogether, almost competing
(07:04):
thoughts together are soimportant because if we just
have one of those.
Things are gonna fall apart.
You know, if we just have this,uh, you know, if we're
confronting the brutal facts andthat's all we have, and we
believe that COVID is gonna lastforever and, and we're never
gonna break out of it, you know,or we're gonna be prisoners of
(07:26):
war forever and, and, you know,we're just gonna die here and
there's no, uh, there's no othermeaning.
There's no victory at the end ifit's just about the brutal
facts.
we die.
We die.
A slow death or we die a quickdeath.
and if it's just aboutunwavering faith, but we don't
confront the brutal facts,that's you going back and
(07:46):
telling your team.
Don't worry, we'll be fine.
Don't worry, we'll be fine.
You know, I promise this is thelast layoff and then we'll be
fine.
Or don't worry, you know,everybody, you know, we'll,
we'll all be back to work, youknow, in two weeks.
It's gonna be fine at somepoint.
People stop believing you.
At some point you stop believingyourself and that unwavering
(08:07):
faith rings hollow.
So we need that balance.
Now, again, depending on whenyou are listening to this, you
may be going through somethingright now, or maybe this is
about prepare, preparing you forsomething in the future.
But I will tell you as I amrecording this, there's.
(08:29):
So much going on in the worldand in our country with, you
know, internationally, you know,war in the Ukraine, uh, you
know, problems in the MiddleEast.
There is, you know, issues athome around.
Tariffs around this big,beautiful bill that, depending
on when you're listening tothis, you, you know, more than I
(08:51):
do, whether, whether that's beenpassed and what it looks like
or, or it hasn't been passed.
But between tariffs and thatbill, there are a lot of
companies that, you know, atbest.
Are confused right now andthey're having a difficult time
making decisions.
Um, at worst, maybe they'regoing through a downturn while
(09:11):
we change into whatever we'rechanging into as a company and
as a global economy.
and I wanna take you through,depending on whether you're
going through something now or,or you will go through something
I wanna walk through.
An exercise that I actually justdid with a couple of my clients
that are going through adifficult time and you know, I
(09:35):
learned that these clients werehaving a difficult time a little
bit before the meeting and I hadto think pretty quickly, what
would, what would we do, how Iwas going for a quarterly
planning session, and normallyour quarterly planning is all
about growth.
You know, what are we gonna doto grow moving forward?
And given what was going on?
(09:55):
And I'll pick one company, uh,in particular, and I won't share
too much about them to kind ofprotect their privacy.
But this is a company, who,depending on how this big,
beautiful bill, whether, youknow, how, if it's, if it
becomes law and how it becomeslaw, there's a chance their
whole industry.
(10:18):
Will, you know at best struggle.
You know, at worst it may reallydecimate the industry.
So I knew going into thissession that we were not
necessarily talking aboutgrowth.
We were talking about survival.
And I also knew if we went inand we made this a bellyaching
(10:40):
session all about all the thingsgoing wrong and all the bad
things that could happen, ifthat's what we did, we would not
very, we wouldn't accomplishvery much.
and I think the CEO would'velost the heart and soul of his
leadership team.
On the other hand, if we wentinto that meeting believing
everything was okay.
(11:03):
Then people would've calledbullshit and we would've created
some typical quarterlypriorities and plans for growth.
But everybody would've left thatmeeting saying that was a waste
of time because we didn't dealwith reality.
So we changed up, uh, the way wedid things and, and the first
thing I did.
With this group now, I alwaysstart out with good news in
(11:25):
every meeting.
Even though, initially thefeeling was there's not a lot of
good news.
There's just a lot of fear andbad news.
Uh, we started off with goodnews because, as soft and fuzzy
as this sounds, you get more ofwhat you focus on.
Whatever you give energy to isgonna expand.
So there are always good thingsgoing on.
(11:47):
So we started with good newsand, and even that just kind of.
Lightened the mood a little bit,but, but I very quickly shifted
gears and we started with thebrutal facts.
Remember, Stockdale paradox isconfronting the brutal facts,
and at the same time, thisunwavering faith that we will be
victorious somehow in the end.
But we started with the brutalfacts and.
(12:11):
We had a group discussion thatfrankly lasted a good part of
the morning talking about thosebrutal facts.
Now, we didn't just talk aboutit, uh, we didn't just bellyache
about it and complain about it.
What I had everyone do, and I'mgonna get very specific here, so
if this is an exercise you coulduse, I'm kind of giving you a, a
(12:33):
step-by-step approach is, uh, ifyou know me, you know, I'm very
big on post-it notes and flipcharts.
And rather than just talk aboutthe brutal facts, bellyache
about the brutal facts, havingcertain members of the team
dominate the conversation andothers sit back and listen.
(12:55):
I had everybody write on threedifferent post-it notes, what
were, what did they believe thethree most important brutal
facts of the situation were.
Brutal facts about the world,brutal facts about the economy,
(13:15):
brutal facts about the tariffsand the big beautiful bill.
brutal facts about where theywere as a company right now.
Brutal facts about where theywere as a leadership team right
now.
So it wasn't just about theoutside world and things they
had no control over.
They focused on the brutal factsthat they had control over.
(13:37):
And we got all of those thingsand it was super important.
Uh, and some of the brutal factssurprised me.
There were brutal facts therethat talked about the fact that
as a leadership team, they hadbeen.
Very slow to make decisions fromtime to time.
(13:58):
Brutal facts about the qualityof, of some of what was going on
with their clients.
so.
What we did for each of thosebrutal facts.
And, and by the way, what I'mdoing here is I actually did
this work with two differentclients.
I'm blending the two of them tokind of protect, again, protect
their anonymity.
(14:19):
and also to give you somehelpful examples.
but what we did is we put thosebrutal facts up on a wall, up on
the flip chart, and then we talkthrough each one of them.
To get a sense as to whetherthey agreed and aligned on the
brutal facts.
They didn't all align on all thebrutal facts.
Some of what one member of theleadership team thought was a
(14:42):
quote unquote fact.
Another member of the leadershipteam thought was just flat out
wrong.
So we had to discuss some ofthose and agree with what those
facts were.
Some of them were just facts andthat was.
You know?
Yes.
That's a good, that's a goodpiece of information that we
need to take into account.
And others, like the team whosaid, we've been really slow to
(15:05):
make decisions, that becamesomething we needed to dig into.
What was behind that?
How did they create thatsituation?
What created that situation?
What were some options for themin.
Adding some more velocity totheir decision making because in
(15:26):
difficult times, slow decisionmaking is death.
So what could they do to speedit up?
So we had this group discussionwith no hiding everything in the
open, engagement from everybodyon the leadership team.
and.
You know, super importantinsights from the team, and we
(15:47):
did not speed that conversation.
Like I said, that wasn't a 20 ora 30 minute conversation that
took up most of the morning ofthis.
In one case, it was a two daysession, and another case, it
was a one day session.
But in both cases, it took up agood, a good part of the
morning.
So, number one, we started withconfronting the brutal facts.
(16:10):
Now we've got the other side ofthe Stockdale paradox, which is
this unwavering faith that wewill be victorious in the end.
So how do you handle that?
It's a little morestraightforward to say, get, say
let's get the brutal facts onpost-its up on a flip chart.
how do you deal with thisunwavering faith of being
(16:31):
victorious at the end?
And what we did I is we actuallybroke it into a few different
pieces.
Number one is we needed todefine, in this case, in this
situation, in the world we arecurrently living in, we needed
to define what does winning evenlook like.
(16:54):
You know, and, and frankly, in,in one case, and again, I'm
combining two clients here, andthe example, in one case,
winning looked like, what couldwe do?
As if a tornado was comingthrough your town, uh, what
could we do to, you know, battendown the hatches, keep our heads
(17:16):
down and survive this to liveanother day that was winning.
And the other case it was, youknow, what can we do to right
now?
Totally turn this situationaround and use it to grow.
The company.
(17:36):
So while one situation wascertainly significantly more
optimistic than the other, giventhe realities of of, of those,
of the brutal facts for them, inboth cases, we need to clarify.
We needed to clarify whatwinning looked like, what was
their North star.
(17:57):
We needed to remind ourselvesin, in what the purpose of the
company was.
What's their big why so we don'tlose it during difficult times.
What will it look like?
What will it feel like toactually come out stronger in
the end?
and through that definition ofwhat winning looked like short
(18:19):
term and long term, and even forthat one battening down the
hatches there, there waspotentially something very
positive in the long term.
We started to encourage hope.
In that team that frankly, boththose teams that may not have
had all that much hope going in,we started to encourage hope
(18:40):
without a sense of falseoptimism because we had talked
about those brutal facts at thebeginning, and defining what
winning looked like, took thosebrutal facts into, you know,
into the situation.
It wasn't, you know, we're gonnabe out by Christmas.
It was winning with a large doseof reality.
(19:02):
Now, once we understood whatwinning looked like, and again,
I did that in the same way,what, what does winning look
like?
Write that down on two or threeor four different Post-it notes,
put it on the wall and let'stalk through it, and let's align
on what winning looks like.
Then once we understood whatwinning looked like, now we
(19:24):
needed to create a plan.
To make that happen, and weneeded to set some priority
actions, and in one case, therewas one plan.
Here's what we're gonna do.
In another case where there wasa little bit more uncertainty,
we actually created twodifferent scenarios and created
a plan.
(19:45):
For each of those scenarios anda timeline for when we would
know which scenario based onsome outside circumstances, when
we would know which scenario wasthe right scenario to execute
on.
So we pivoted from facts tofocus.
(20:09):
What do we need to do to movethe needle?
What are the specific actions?
Who is accountable?
And we needed to create anambitious plan but base it in
reality.
Now, in both cases, we createdplans that the team felt great
(20:35):
about, but.
there was another very criticalpiece to this.
Now, very often when you'regoing through difficult times,
as these two companies werethere, there are some difficult
decisions you've gotta makeabout your team.
(20:56):
In some cases, there may need tobe some layoffs.
In some cases, there may evenneed to be things like salary
decreases.
And what that means is, in thecase of, of both of those
things, it doesn't just impactthe folks that may be getting
(21:17):
left, laid off, but what aboutthe other folks?
What about the rest of the teamand what about the rest of the
team that's watching the news orthey see what's going on?
Or they see that you just lost abig client or they see that
tariffs are impacting us, or thebig beautiful bill might be
impacting us, or COVID isimpacting us, or whatever you
(21:41):
have going on.
So what I did with both of theseteams is, is talk through with
them very specifically what theyneeded to do to share the
situation.
With the entire team, how canthey share the brutal facts with
(22:02):
the entire team without scaringthe crap out of everybody and
sending them running, and alsoshare and, and impart this
unwavering faith of beingvictorious in the end when you
do that, when we did this.
(22:24):
When I did this and, and coachedand facilitated these two teams
through it, we paid very, veryspecific attention to their
highest performers.
When you're going through adifficult time impacting
business, impacting opportunity,impacting job security, maybe
(22:48):
impacting compensation, thepeople that have.
the largest ability to dust offtheir resume and find a
different opportunity quicklyare your highest performers.
The obvious problem with that iswithout your highest performers,
(23:10):
you may not get through this.
The way you hope to without yourhighest performers when that
tornado finishes going throughyour town.
When when we're back to workfrom COVID or when, you figure
the world out from tariffs, big,beautiful bill war in the
Ukraine, war in the Middle East,whatever's going on after that,
(23:33):
tornado rips through the townand you get out from underground
and look around.
You may have a much weaker teamif you haven't done the right
thing to prepare and, and takecare of your top performers.
So we spend a lot of timetalking about specific
(23:55):
communications, very oftenone-on-one communications to
those folks how we.
Talk to those folks.
How we, what should we do?
You know, there was discussionsabout, you know, salary
reductions and do we includethose folks and what happens
with bonuses and, and all thesedifferent things.
(24:16):
But we need to pay close, veryclose attention to our top
performers and we need to figureout whether it's our top
performers of the rest of theteam.
How do we message kind ofauthentic hope without.
sugarcoating it.
How do we maintain trust,morale, and buy-in through all
(24:38):
this adversity that we're goingthrough?
And all of this means a greaterfrequency communication on the
leadership team to make sure youare.
Adapting as you need to, as thesituation changes out in the
world or within your company.
(24:59):
As you are messaging folks andyou're hearing messaging back,
how does that impact you?
So a greater frequency of, ofcommunication, a greater quality
of conversation, and all of thismeans that openness and honesty
is more important.
(25:20):
And what that means is.
If you are not going through adifficult situation now, get
ahead of the game and startworking with your team.
Your immediate team.
Your team, as you cascade down,do what you need to do to create
a more open, honest, vulnerableculture.
(25:43):
A culture where you can give andreceive honest feedback without
fear of retribution.
A culture where people aren'tafraid to say, I screwed up.
I'm sorry I made a mistake.
I don't know how to do this.
The more open and honest you canbe before you've got some crazy
difficult situation you're goingthrough.
(26:05):
The more open and honest youcould be before that, the better
conversations you'll be able tohave when you're going through a
difficult time.
When that difficult timehappens, it may be too late at
that point to say, we are gonnastart having open, honest
communication with everybodyand.
You know, go back and look atprevious episodes of my podcast.
(26:28):
There are a number that I'vedone as solo episodes or that
I've done with guests that talkabout trust and openness and
honesty on the leadership team.
So in wrapping up, where areyou?
In need of facing a brutal factright now or, or helping your
(26:52):
team face brutal facts.
It doesn't have to be this giantproblem like a couple of my
clients are going through.
Could be something smaller, butwhere are you in need of facing
a brutal fact yourself orhelping your team or your
company face a brutal fact andstart there and run a similar
(27:14):
process again, it doesn't haveto be a.
You know, business threateningsituation.
But any situation, what are thebrutal facts?
Number one.
Second, what does winning looklike?
Third, what's our plan to go getthat win?
What's our plan of action?
(27:35):
Who's accountable?
And then what do we need tocommunicate out there?
How do we cascade thatcommunication down?
What do we need to do with andfor?
Our top performers.
I always say you can't build agreat company without a great
(27:56):
leadership team, and you can'tlead others unless you're honest
with yourself first.
So it starts there, but again,You can't build a great company
without a great leadership team.
I hope I got you closer theretoday.
Thanks.
I'll talk to you soon.
When you're going through a difficult time
impacting business, impactingopportunity, impacting job
security, maybe impactingcompensation, the people that
have the largest ability to dustoff their resume and find a
different opportunity quicklyare your highest performers.
The obvious problem with that iswithout your highest performers,
(00:23):
you may not get through this theway you hope to.
You made it to the betterleadership team show, the place
where you learn how to surroundyourself with the right people,
doing the right things.
So you can grow your businesswithout losing your mind.
(00:45):
I'm your host and leadershipteam coach, Mike Goldman.
I'm going to show you how toimprove top and bottom line
growth, fulfillment, and thevalue your company adds to the
world by building a betterleadership team.
All right, let's go.
(01:06):
One of the most important skillswe need to master as leaders is
the skill to communicate duringdifficult times and, and how to
get our mindset right in thosetimes.
How to help our team members.
(01:27):
Get their mindsets right duringdifficult times.
And uh, depending on when you'relistening, you might be going
through a difficult time or, ormaybe you've got one coming up.
If we're running a business, wecan't escape that.
If we are trying to grow, tryingto scale trying new things,
things are not always gonna beperfect.
But there are certainly timesthat are less perfect than
(01:50):
others.
It seems like.
Decades ago, but it wasn't toolong ago that we all had to deal
with with COVID, and mostleaders learned very quickly
that they needed to communicatemore with their teams and with
their team members during thosedifficult times.
(02:11):
But it's not just important.
You communicate more during adifficult time, it's gotta be
the right communication.
So I wanna talk to you about,something called the Stockdale
Paradox that I first learned,from through Jim Collins many
years ago.
And the Stockdale Paradox, Ithink is a wonderful example and
(02:36):
a wonderful philosophy techniquein, in how we should be.
Thinking and communicating asleaders during a difficult time.
Let me tell you the story firstof the Stockdale paradox.
So, that name Stockdale comesfrom Admiral Jim Stockdale, who
(02:56):
was the highest ranking USmilitary officer that was held
as a prisoner of war in theHanoi Hilton, during the, the
Vietnam War.
He was there from 1965 through1973 an incredible amount of
time, seven or eight years as aprisoner of war.
(03:19):
Now some of you might know thename Admiral Jim Stockdale,
because he was also the runningmate, uh, of Ross Perot running
as vice president in 1992.
And at that point, you know, itwas, uh, kind of amusing.
He was.
Uh, he, he was in a three-waydebate since Perot ran as an
independent in a three-waydebate, vice presidential
(03:40):
debate, and he was getting kindof old and I think he forgot to
put his hearing aid in or itwasn't working.
So it was kind of ludicrous thatUh, he really couldn't hear
anything that was being said.
But anyway, if that's theAdmiral Stockdale, you remember,
get that out of your mind.
We're talking about AdmiralStockdale highest ranking member
of the US military, uh, uh, warHero POW in the Hanoi Hilton for
(04:05):
seven or eight years, from 65 to73 Now.
When he was there, he wastortured repeatedly.
He was denied medical care overthose seven years or so of
captivity, you know,unimaginable hardship, not
knowing if we he would eversurvive, not knowing if he would
(04:28):
ever see his family again.
Now, despite those brutalcircumstances, Stockdale
maintained an absolute.
Faith that he would prevail inthe end, you know, even as he
confronted a pretty harshreality every single day.
(04:49):
and one of the things he noticedis that many of his fellow
prisoners clung to kind of ablind optimism that they would
be out by Christmas.
You know, they just assume thewar's gonna be over soon.
You know, we're gonna be out byChristmas, and.
A lot of those folks, the folksthat had that optimism, which
(05:12):
you think would be a good thing,those folks often broke down
mentally and physically, whichmeant in a brutal place like the
Hanoi Hilton, it meant many ofthose folks didn't survive
because when they had this blindoptimism and their hopes were
dashed, that.
Christmas came and went and theyweren't freed again from this
(05:35):
POW camp.
They just kind of broke againmentally and physically.
And Stockdale credited hisability to last those seven
years.
Uh, he credit his ability tobalance this realistic
acceptance of the brutal factsthat.
(05:57):
They may not get out byChristmas that they were gonna
have to deal with this everyday, that they may be in there
for years.
It was this realistic acceptanceof the brutal facts with an
unwavering hope for ultimatevictory.
The balance of those twoconflicting thoughts.
(06:19):
Was he believed the key reasonthat he survived and later
actually thrived.
and it formed what we call theStockdale Paradox.
And again, the Stockdale paradoxis in any situation is this,
this combination of confrontingthe brutal facts, being open and
(06:40):
honest about the brutal factswith yourself.
And with your people, combiningthat with this balancing thought
of an unwavering faith thatsomehow we will be victorious in
the end.
And, and those two thoughtstogether, almost competing
(07:04):
thoughts together are soimportant because if we just
have one of those.
Things are gonna fall apart.
You know, if we just have this,uh, you know, if we're
confronting the brutal facts andthat's all we have, and we
believe that COVID is gonna lastforever and, and we're never
gonna break out of it, you know,or we're gonna be prisoners of
(07:26):
war forever and, and, you know,we're just gonna die here and
there's no, uh, there's no othermeaning.
There's no victory at the end ifit's just about the brutal
facts.
we die.
We die.
A slow death or we die a quickdeath.
and if it's just aboutunwavering faith, but we don't
confront the brutal facts,that's you going back and
(07:46):
telling your team.
Don't worry, we'll be fine.
Don't worry, we'll be fine.
You know, I promise this is thelast layoff and then we'll be
fine.
Or don't worry, you know,everybody, you know, we'll,
we'll all be back to work, youknow, in two weeks.
It's gonna be fine at somepoint.
People stop believing you.
At some point you stop believingyourself and that unwavering
(08:07):
faith rings hollow.
So we need that balance.
Now, again, depending on whenyou are listening to this, you
may be going through somethingright now, or maybe this is
about prepare, preparing you forsomething in the future.
But I will tell you as I amrecording this, there's.
(08:29):
So much going on in the worldand in our country with, you
know, internationally, you know,war in the Ukraine, uh, you
know, problems in the MiddleEast.
There is, you know, issues athome around.
Tariffs around this big,beautiful bill that, depending
on when you're listening tothis, you, you know, more than I
(08:51):
do, whether, whether that's beenpassed and what it looks like
or, or it hasn't been passed.
But between tariffs and thatbill, there are a lot of
companies that, you know, atbest.
Are confused right now andthey're having a difficult time
making decisions.
Um, at worst, maybe they'regoing through a downturn while
(09:11):
we change into whatever we'rechanging into as a company and
as a global economy.
and I wanna take you through,depending on whether you're
going through something now or,or you will go through something
I wanna walk through.
An exercise that I actually justdid with a couple of my clients
that are going through adifficult time and you know, I
(09:35):
learned that these clients werehaving a difficult time a little
bit before the meeting and I hadto think pretty quickly, what
would, what would we do, how Iwas going for a quarterly
planning session, and normallyour quarterly planning is all
about growth.
You know, what are we gonna doto grow moving forward?
And given what was going on?
(09:55):
And I'll pick one company, uh,in particular, and I won't share
too much about them to kind ofprotect their privacy.
But this is a company, who,depending on how this big,
beautiful bill, whether, youknow, how, if it's, if it
becomes law and how it becomeslaw, there's a chance their
whole industry.
(10:18):
Will, you know at best struggle.
You know, at worst it may reallydecimate the industry.
So I knew going into thissession that we were not
necessarily talking aboutgrowth.
We were talking about survival.
And I also knew if we went inand we made this a bellyaching
(10:40):
session all about all the thingsgoing wrong and all the bad
things that could happen, ifthat's what we did, we would not
very, we wouldn't accomplishvery much.
and I think the CEO would'velost the heart and soul of his
leadership team.
On the other hand, if we wentinto that meeting believing
everything was okay.
(11:03):
Then people would've calledbullshit and we would've created
some typical quarterlypriorities and plans for growth.
But everybody would've left thatmeeting saying that was a waste
of time because we didn't dealwith reality.
So we changed up, uh, the way wedid things and, and the first
thing I did.
With this group now, I alwaysstart out with good news in
(11:25):
every meeting.
Even though, initially thefeeling was there's not a lot of
good news.
There's just a lot of fear andbad news.
Uh, we started off with goodnews because, as soft and fuzzy
as this sounds, you get more ofwhat you focus on.
Whatever you give energy to isgonna expand.
So there are always good thingsgoing on.
(11:47):
So we started with good newsand, and even that just kind of.
Lightened the mood a little bit,but, but I very quickly shifted
gears and we started with thebrutal facts.
Remember, Stockdale paradox isconfronting the brutal facts,
and at the same time, thisunwavering faith that we will be
victorious somehow in the end.
But we started with the brutalfacts and.
(12:11):
We had a group discussion thatfrankly lasted a good part of
the morning talking about thosebrutal facts.
Now, we didn't just talk aboutit, uh, we didn't just bellyache
about it and complain about it.
What I had everyone do, and I'mgonna get very specific here, so
if this is an exercise you coulduse, I'm kind of giving you a, a
(12:33):
step-by-step approach is, uh, ifyou know me, you know, I'm very
big on post-it notes and flipcharts.
And rather than just talk aboutthe brutal facts, bellyache
about the brutal facts, havingcertain members of the team
dominate the conversation andothers sit back and listen.
(12:55):
I had everybody write on threedifferent post-it notes, what
were, what did they believe thethree most important brutal
facts of the situation were.
Brutal facts about the world,brutal facts about the economy,
(13:15):
brutal facts about the tariffsand the big beautiful bill.
brutal facts about where theywere as a company right now.
Brutal facts about where theywere as a leadership team right
now.
So it wasn't just about theoutside world and things they
had no control over.
They focused on the brutal factsthat they had control over.
(13:37):
And we got all of those thingsand it was super important.
Uh, and some of the brutal factssurprised me.
There were brutal facts therethat talked about the fact that
as a leadership team, they hadbeen.
Very slow to make decisions fromtime to time.
(13:58):
Brutal facts about the qualityof, of some of what was going on
with their clients.
so.
What we did for each of thosebrutal facts.
And, and by the way, what I'mdoing here is I actually did
this work with two differentclients.
I'm blending the two of them tokind of protect, again, protect
their anonymity.
(14:19):
and also to give you somehelpful examples.
but what we did is we put thosebrutal facts up on a wall, up on
the flip chart, and then we talkthrough each one of them.
To get a sense as to whetherthey agreed and aligned on the
brutal facts.
They didn't all align on all thebrutal facts.
Some of what one member of theleadership team thought was a
(14:42):
quote unquote fact.
Another member of the leadershipteam thought was just flat out
wrong.
So we had to discuss some ofthose and agree with what those
facts were.
Some of them were just facts andthat was.
You know?
Yes.
That's a good, that's a goodpiece of information that we
need to take into account.
And others, like the team whosaid, we've been really slow to
(15:05):
make decisions, that becamesomething we needed to dig into.
What was behind that?
How did they create thatsituation?
What created that situation?
What were some options for themin.
Adding some more velocity totheir decision making because in
(15:26):
difficult times, slow decisionmaking is death.
So what could they do to speedit up?
So we had this group discussionwith no hiding everything in the
open, engagement from everybodyon the leadership team.
and.
You know, super importantinsights from the team, and we
(15:47):
did not speed that conversation.
Like I said, that wasn't a 20 ora 30 minute conversation that
took up most of the morning ofthis.
In one case, it was a two daysession, and another case, it
was a one day session.
But in both cases, it took up agood, a good part of the
morning.
So, number one, we started withconfronting the brutal facts.
(16:10):
Now we've got the other side ofthe Stockdale paradox, which is
this unwavering faith that wewill be victorious in the end.
So how do you handle that?
It's a little morestraightforward to say, get, say
let's get the brutal facts onpost-its up on a flip chart.
how do you deal with thisunwavering faith of being
(16:31):
victorious at the end?
And what we did I is we actuallybroke it into a few different
pieces.
Number one is we needed todefine, in this case, in this
situation, in the world we arecurrently living in, we needed
to define what does winning evenlook like.
(16:54):
You know, and, and frankly, in,in one case, and again, I'm
combining two clients here, andthe example, in one case,
winning looked like, what couldwe do?
As if a tornado was comingthrough your town, uh, what
could we do to, you know, battendown the hatches, keep our heads
(17:16):
down and survive this to liveanother day that was winning.
And the other case it was, youknow, what can we do to right
now?
Totally turn this situationaround and use it to grow.
The company.
(17:36):
So while one situation wascertainly significantly more
optimistic than the other, giventhe realities of of, of those,
of the brutal facts for them, inboth cases, we need to clarify.
We needed to clarify whatwinning looked like, what was
their North star.
(17:57):
We needed to remind ourselvesin, in what the purpose of the
company was.
What's their big why so we don'tlose it during difficult times.
What will it look like?
What will it feel like toactually come out stronger in
the end?
and through that definition ofwhat winning looked like short
(18:19):
term and long term, and even forthat one battening down the
hatches there, there waspotentially something very
positive in the long term.
We started to encourage hope.
In that team that frankly, boththose teams that may not have
had all that much hope going in,we started to encourage hope
(18:40):
without a sense of falseoptimism because we had talked
about those brutal facts at thebeginning, and defining what
winning looked like, took thosebrutal facts into, you know,
into the situation.
It wasn't, you know, we're gonnabe out by Christmas.
It was winning with a large doseof reality.
(19:02):
Now, once we understood whatwinning looked like, and again,
I did that in the same way,what, what does winning look
like?
Write that down on two or threeor four different Post-it notes,
put it on the wall and let'stalk through it, and let's align
on what winning looks like.
Then once we understood whatwinning looked like, now we
(19:24):
needed to create a plan.
To make that happen, and weneeded to set some priority
actions, and in one case, therewas one plan.
Here's what we're gonna do.
In another case where there wasa little bit more uncertainty,
we actually created twodifferent scenarios and created
a plan.
(19:45):
For each of those scenarios anda timeline for when we would
know which scenario based onsome outside circumstances, when
we would know which scenario wasthe right scenario to execute
on.
So we pivoted from facts tofocus.
(20:09):
What do we need to do to movethe needle?
What are the specific actions?
Who is accountable?
And we needed to create anambitious plan but base it in
reality.
Now, in both cases, we createdplans that the team felt great
(20:35):
about, but.
there was another very criticalpiece to this.
Now, very often when you'regoing through difficult times,
as these two companies werethere, there are some difficult
decisions you've gotta makeabout your team.
(20:56):
In some cases, there may need tobe some layoffs.
In some cases, there may evenneed to be things like salary
decreases.
And what that means is, in thecase of, of both of those
things, it doesn't just impactthe folks that may be getting
(21:17):
left, laid off, but what aboutthe other folks?
What about the rest of the teamand what about the rest of the
team that's watching the news orthey see what's going on?
Or they see that you just lost abig client or they see that
tariffs are impacting us, or thebig beautiful bill might be
impacting us, or COVID isimpacting us, or whatever you
(21:41):
have going on.
So what I did with both of theseteams is, is talk through with
them very specifically what theyneeded to do to share the
situation.
With the entire team, how canthey share the brutal facts with
(22:02):
the entire team without scaringthe crap out of everybody and
sending them running, and alsoshare and, and impart this
unwavering faith of beingvictorious in the end when you
do that, when we did this.
(22:24):
When I did this and, and coachedand facilitated these two teams
through it, we paid very, veryspecific attention to their
highest performers.
When you're going through adifficult time impacting
business, impacting opportunity,impacting job security, maybe
(22:48):
impacting compensation, thepeople that have.
the largest ability to dust offtheir resume and find a
different opportunity quicklyare your highest performers.
The obvious problem with that iswithout your highest performers,
(23:10):
you may not get through this.
The way you hope to without yourhighest performers when that
tornado finishes going throughyour town.
When when we're back to workfrom COVID or when, you figure
the world out from tariffs, big,beautiful bill war in the
Ukraine, war in the Middle East,whatever's going on after that,
(23:33):
tornado rips through the townand you get out from underground
and look around.
You may have a much weaker teamif you haven't done the right
thing to prepare and, and takecare of your top performers.
So we spend a lot of timetalking about specific
(23:55):
communications, very oftenone-on-one communications to
those folks how we.
Talk to those folks.
How we, what should we do?
You know, there was discussionsabout, you know, salary
reductions and do we includethose folks and what happens
with bonuses and, and all thesedifferent things.
(24:16):
But we need to pay close, veryclose attention to our top
performers and we need to figureout whether it's our top
performers of the rest of theteam.
How do we message kind ofauthentic hope without.
sugarcoating it.
How do we maintain trust,morale, and buy-in through all
(24:38):
this adversity that we're goingthrough?
And all of this means a greaterfrequency communication on the
leadership team to make sure youare.
Adapting as you need to, as thesituation changes out in the
world or within your company.
(24:59):
As you are messaging folks andyou're hearing messaging back,
how does that impact you?
So a greater frequency of, ofcommunication, a greater quality
of conversation, and all of thismeans that openness and honesty
is more important.
(25:20):
And what that means is.
If you are not going through adifficult situation now, get
ahead of the game and startworking with your team.
Your immediate team.
Your team, as you cascade down,do what you need to do to create
a more open, honest, vulnerableculture.
(25:43):
A culture where you can give andreceive honest feedback without
fear of retribution.
A culture where people aren'tafraid to say, I screwed up.
I'm sorry I made a mistake.
I don't know how to do this.
The more open and honest you canbe before you've got some crazy
difficult situation you're goingthrough.
(26:05):
The more open and honest youcould be before that, the better
conversations you'll be able tohave when you're going through a
difficult time.
When that difficult timehappens, it may be too late at
that point to say, we are gonnastart having open, honest
communication with everybodyand.
You know, go back and look atprevious episodes of my podcast.
(26:28):
There are a number that I'vedone as solo episodes or that
I've done with guests that talkabout trust and openness and
honesty on the leadership team.
So in wrapping up, where areyou?
In need of facing a brutal factright now or, or helping your
(26:52):
team face brutal facts.
It doesn't have to be this giantproblem like a couple of my
clients are going through.
Could be something smaller, butwhere are you in need of facing
a brutal fact yourself orhelping your team or your
company face a brutal fact andstart there and run a similar
(27:14):
process again, it doesn't haveto be a.
You know, business threateningsituation.
But any situation, what are thebrutal facts?
Number one.
Second, what does winning looklike?
Third, what's our plan to go getthat win?
What's our plan of action?
(27:35):
Who's accountable?
And then what do we need tocommunicate out there?
How do we cascade thatcommunication down?
What do we need to do with andfor?
Our top performers.
I always say you can't build agreat company without a great
(27:56):
leadership team, and you can'tlead others unless you're honest
with yourself first.
So it starts there, but again,You can't build a great company
without a great leadership team.
I hope I got you closer theretoday.
Thanks.
I'll talk to you soon.
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