Building Unity Through Clarity, Communication, and Compassion (S4) S22:E1

In today’s episode of the Inspirations for Your Life Podcast, we dive deep into a challenge that many organizations, leaders, and teams quietly face—but often don’t fully understand until it escalates: the conflict that arises when external demands don’t match internal values. Whether it’s regulatory shifts, partner expectations, or cultural mandates from outside your walls, these pressures can create tension, resistance, and division. But what if you could navigate these moments with clarity, emotional intelligence, and purpose? Join me, John C. Morley, as we unpack 10 key areas where conflict can arise—and discover how to turn friction into fuel for transformation. 🔥💼

1️⃣ Misalignment between internal values and external mandates 🧭When internal values clash with external requirements, it often feels like being pulled in two different directions. Your organization's culture may be rooted in collaboration, empowerment, or innovation—yet the external demands may call for rigid compliance or standardized procedures. This misalignment creates not only confusion but also a sense of betrayal for employees who’ve bought into a shared vision. Bridging this gap requires dialogue, transparency, and a conscious effort to preserve what makes your culture unique while adapting responsibly to outside forces.

2️⃣ Lack of clarity on required practices 🔍Nothing breeds conflict faster than ambiguity. When teams don’t fully understand what’s expected of them—or why—frustration festers. Miscommunication about the “what,” “how,” and “why” behind new practices can lead to inconsistent execution and resistance. Clear documentation, regular Q&A forums, and visual workflows can help demystify expectations and reduce the emotional charge around change. Clarity is more than logistics—it’s empowerment.

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Episode Transcript

(00:20):
Hey guys, good evening, it is John C.
Morley here, serial entrepreneur.
Great to be with you.
This is, well, it's a Saturday and that
means that we're starting with a brand new
master topic, which we'll be doing in just
a moment.
So welcome to the show.
It's so great to have you with me.
Our master topic for this fantastic week that

(00:42):
we're kicking off today, May 24th, Saturday, 2025,
it is building unity through clarity and
compassion.

(01:05):
So when we learn how to build things,
our life can change, mostly in a positive
direction.
All right, everyone, so welcome.
I do invite you to check out me
at truth.com, where my amazing, inspiring, courageous,
anytime after the show.

(01:26):
And if you are hungry or thirsty or
cold, sour, tart, it doesn't matter whether it's
healthy or not, just go and get that
and head on back to our show.
All right, everyone.
Welcome.

(01:47):
You know who I am right now?
I am John C.
Morley, serial entrepreneur.
I'm not a podcast host, but I'm also
a podcast coach.
And it is my privilege and my pleasure,
gentlemen, to be with you here on Instagram.
All right.
So I'm diving deep, guys, into a challenge

(02:11):
that many organizations, leaders, and teams quietly face,
but often don't fully understand enough.
The conflict that arises when external communities don't
match, whether it's regulatory shifts, partner expectations, or
cultural mandates from outside their walls, these pressures

(02:33):
can bring tensions, resistance, and panic.
Well, what if you could navigate these conflicts
with clarity, emotional intelligence, and purpose?
Well, that's what we're going to do today.
I'm going to unpack 10 areas where conflict
can arise, and oftentimes does, and discover how

(02:56):
to turn this friction into fuel for change.
All right.
Let's kick this off, everyone.
Number one, the misalignment between internal values and
external mandates.
Internal values, let's say, values, external requirements, often
goes by being between different directors.

(03:17):
An organization's culture may be rooted in collaboration,
empowerment, or inclusion, yet the external demands may
fall to a region of compliance or standard
of execution.
This misalignment of the right to knowledge can
also be a sense of betrayal for employees
who are fighting for shared visions of what
they're doing.

(03:38):
For instance, GATT requires dialogue and a conscious
effort to preserve what makes your culture unique,
while adapting responsibility to outside forces.
I know that sounds hard, but really, let's
go into this consciously.
And if you don't have communication, well, you

(04:00):
really don't have to.
Number two, lack of clarity on unrequired practices.
Nothing reads your context.
It's not fully understandable to investors.
Well, it's because of miscommunication about the what,

(04:24):
the how, and the why.
And behind new practices, you have to regularly
evaluate forms and visual workflows to help you
justify expectations and reduce the emotional charge around
change.
Clarity is more than just an environment.

(04:45):
And so, you know, if you have someone
on your team that are auditory learners, which
you talk to, if you have some visual
learners, if you have someone that can see,
if you have someone that can feel it
in the process, change
is something that no one really accepts 100%.

(05:13):
Because they're fearful of what they're going to
say or what they're going to do.
And auditory guys perceive loss of autonomy or
control as one of the most triggering aspects
of external management.

(05:33):
Whether it's managers, you know, sidelines, it's tools
you daily work out, choose the right.
The sense of being done to rather than
including and demoralize.
The more involved interpreting and applying external guidelines,

(05:58):
the more likely they are to adopt with
their own ownership.
I have no desire to help you after
all.

(06:18):
Whatever you want to do.
It reminds me of a story, probably a
member of the Christmas Carol, where every year
somebody gets a raise, and this year, he

(06:45):
was appointed to some specialists, putting in a
new school for families to say,
I've got a voucher for an interview.
So, sometimes things don't have any serious effect.

(07:15):
That's what's really insufficient communication about change.
So, change without communication is chaos.
When you know, in real time, context, and
emotional processing, sharing the why behind decisions, outlining

(07:36):
the benefits and challenges, and offering open channels
for feedback, it makes it easier for people
to buy in.
But, you know, this disengagement comes because we

(07:59):
don't necessarily know where we're supposed to be
or what we're supposed to do.
So, when we get that, let's say, like
I said before, you know, someone under us,
while we're eating a nice fine dinner, you

(08:25):
actually have to report it to your parents.
And so, if we understand that we know
our parents are going to get a little
bit of a filter, we have a plan
B to cause a difference, and I think

(08:57):
people don't always do that.
I think that's a serious one.
So, persistent, transparent communication can transform fear into
understanding disclaimers.
And you're buying it.

(09:19):
Number five, emotional response to imposed difficulties.
Let's not forget, though, that the human side
of change, especially when it comes to emotional
response, is not common in the older, more
vulnerable groups of people, but under some circumstances,

(09:41):
these reactions are not just resistance.
They're signals.
We are responsible for the reality in terms
of how we're going to process the context
we're in.
We're going to go through the whole process
louder and harder.
So, my question is, when you have that

(10:03):
iPhone, can they send you a concern
about how they probably feel?
But then they send you an emoji, and
I think that's bad, because some emojis are

(10:24):
not going to say that clear about what
they stand for.
And I don't know about you, but I
like to get the person either on the
phone or in person, because then I have
a very strong distinction about the

(10:45):
need for collaboration and for interpreting external requirements.
External mandates don't always come with one-size
-fits-all.
They're large, and that's where collaboration comes in.
Fighting for what's going to be possible is
key in terms that compliance doesn't come at
the cost of practicality or thought-out.
Diverse perspectives also bring more to the external.

(11:13):
So, it should be a team sport, not
solo decision-making.
The importance of distinguishing policy from the practice.
Sometimes, what's presented as, quote-unquote, non-negotiable,
it's really just someone's preference wrapped in policies.

(11:35):
It seems to be a self-difference.
Trust starts with a clear labeling of what's
mandated versus what's not.
And it helps reduce confusion and tension.
It's also empowering.
It's important to focus that energy where it
truly matters.

(11:56):
I mean, your respect for the economy and
the public.
Now, it's not just the school.
It's also with your teachers, whether you're in
pre-K, whether you're in high school, whether
you're in college, or whether you're self-employed.
Colleges and grad schools.
There has to be a level of respect.

(12:17):
And there has to be a community.
And when we start to understand how clarity
makes things better, it also helps to remove
that perspective.
We all get frustrated, right?
It happens.

(12:39):
But it's how we choose to respond.
How we act.
That's essential.
Number eight is impact on team morale.
And obedience.
Now, that's a big word.
For a long period of time, we've all

(13:01):
accomplished things we did on campus.
In high school, we'd pit departments against each
other and read the top city.
Although the user versus them, or us, it
is so crucial that we honor those underprivileged
and address the fractures early.

(13:25):
Celebrating wins during transitions and encouraging peer support.
And re-grounding students to share the purpose
and meaning of this change.
And I think, I know I've alluded before,
where friends or clients make mistakes

(13:55):
and they can't own up to what they
did.
So they'd rather lie than throw you under
the bus and say, if
you do make mistakes, you're never going to
learn again.

(14:17):
So, should we be afraid or should we
be prepared to make mistakes?
We do not.
That's the role of leaders.

(14:44):
Leaders must become interpreters.
Advocates.
That means, meeting expectations, setting realistic timelines, and
being honest with each other's minds.
Leaders who model pride, courage, and clarity to

(15:10):
determine whether conflict is a condition or a
trial and error.
A lot of times we get conflict but
that conflict has the power to catapult us
to entirely higher new levels of success.
Doing something and having to change how you

(15:34):
do it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad
place.
Not only are they going to help you
with what you're doing, but they're also going
to shape you.
They're going to build this opportunity to align

(16:03):
external needs with internal culture.
Every conflict is a seed of conflict.
External mistakes pop up catalysts in alignment with
innovation.
When organizations push their line outside expectations and

(16:25):
their values, they emerge stronger as assertions without
losing control.
So make the alignment intentional, non-accidental.
I know so many people that just don't
actually know why they're there.

(16:47):
This is the part of the program where
I'm going to give you a personal message
about me or I'm hoping that this will

(17:08):
solidify what I'm talking about.
This will give you a marker to how
you can because you're never going to learn
anything.
Life is about experiences.

(17:30):
Life is that you're trying to, or
short-sightedness is what's going to happen when
a new selective universe gets

(17:57):
misaligned between internal values and external values.
I remember times when
we felt like our values were re-enacted

(18:21):
or we could, it wasn't about choosing one
or the other.
It was about building a respective, great community
and building a community that allowed us to
draw down on ourselves.

(18:45):
And that made my team.
A hundred and five or six years ago
I rolled out a new process after a
shift that didn't communicate with a single item.

(19:11):
It was all the confusion led to inefficiencies
and frustrations and numerous hours of lost work.
I learned that my job wasn't to say

(19:32):
anything before we could make any changes and
I always try to give them a heads
up about the proceedings along the way.
There was conflict outside of my team being
powerless.
I watched their motivation come on.

(20:01):
It was a turning point and I realized
that involving the empowerment
team's commitment makes me as much more supportive

(20:23):
of the government.
Insufficient communication about issues and I found myself
managing a flood of questions and feedback and
a plethora of emails reinforcing the players emails

(20:45):
and also they resist because they're
uninformed and not heard and they're scared about.
Now I open and the results are night

(21:08):
and day and the team now they know
what they see and they know what I
see.
I want to remove the emotional impact of
a regulatory change and focus only on policy

(21:29):
and tools.
What I miss, they remind me that we're
emotional beings, not just task force and since
then I always need room for emotion, for

(21:54):
trust in friends, co-workers, team, managers that
I've been without.
So expect it.

(22:25):
We need collaboration.
I remember when we received a new compliance
guideline through a smarter
and more flexible system.
I wanted a guideline in our culture that

(22:46):
reinforced the At one
point I mistakenly treated consultants as law and
nearly overhauled the

(23:16):
skill of separating muscles from nice abs.
Now I always ask myself, the person that
I hired to come in had this big
notion of killing us so much more than

(23:47):
I thought he'd done and I sat down
and I realized what he was doing was
killing people and that meant
something to me, it really meant something to
me and it was my team who

(24:17):
were out adversaries and protagonists saw my once
energized team and turned their backs on me
and the other voices and frustrations and so
morale began to drop that moment that morale

(24:39):
was gone so we needed to unify the
role of leadership into the game there was
a moment I'll never forget there were two

(25:06):
selectives caught in the middle I stepped in
as a mediator clarifying what was truly non
-negotiable and what was
truly a part of the job doing it
well, built trust and we

(25:41):
ultimately done it we found out there was
a problem we didn't say why or thank
you one

(26:13):
of my most rewarding experiences was running a
government team that
transformation taught me that external pressure when met
with internal reflection is a great appointment I

(26:33):
don't see the end of it but I
think just having that mindshare has made me
feel so good nobody

(27:01):
wants to just be in order they want
to collaborate, they want to share what it
is but if you don't give them the
chance to actually do that you know what
happens they stop communicating before

(27:27):
you know it so these silent signs can
oftentimes miss your communication remember we need to
be building unity through clarity this is what

(27:49):
this whole week is about, we're going to
go into this a lot tomorrow guys but
you can miss communication and I think that's
very, very important ladies and gentlemen if you
don't know who I am by now, I'm
Jon Snow I invite you to check out
believeinme.com for more of my amazing inspiring

(28:10):
creations and I'm going to catch you real
soon let's start with inspiring creations