Alisa Cohn: belief

Transcript context

…What do you do if they just disagree, if they're just like, "But I do have those skills and I don't think this is fair." Thoughts on responding to that sort of feedback? I guess, that's the defensiveness stuff. Yeah, that's the defensiveness stuff. And again, I hope you've done your homework to identify that actually that person doesn't have those skills and if there is a [inaudible 00:29:16] for example, but I do have those skills or sometimes people, I think more, even more often, they don't respond to what you just said. They will instead explain to you that they've been here for a year or they're the only internal candidate or their peer got promoted. Right, they'll sort of explain to you things which are not part of your decision-making process and then it's helpful for you to say something like, "Yeah, listen, Matilda, I really understand that you were thinking that after a year, you'd get promoted around here. And in the past, I do think because of the stage of our company, probably people have been promoted at that period. That's not the place we're at right now. As we scale, we really need to think about not just what we need for today and tomorrow, but for the future. And that's why I want these specialized skills in here. I think it's going to help the entire company." So that's an example of a discussion that you could have. I do have the skills. That's kind of interesting. I'd love to hear what you see as those skills. And it's not a problem to have the conversation right there then, but if there's a "Yes, I do, no, I don't, yes, I do, no, you don't," that pushback is never productive. And so, that's where you want to probably again take a pause and say, "Listen, I totally hear you. You and I have a different point of view about this. I'm not sure if it's productive to continue to discussing right now. Let's talk about it again in a week. But I also want you to know this is a decision that I've made." I love though, when they come back to you and like, "But here's X, Y, Z." And you're like, "That's not what I was saying necessarily." I love that you basically mirror back. I hear what, I understand you believe, I understand you've been here for a year. I understand you're the only internal candidate," like making them feel very heard. That's a really powerful mechanic there. That is a good tool. Is there another script that you think might be helpful to talk through that is a common hard conversation people have?…

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