27. Transform Conflict Through Authenticity Instead of Argument
Have you ever noticed how often we get caught up in proving we're right instead of being authentic in our conversations? I see this pattern all the time in corporate settings, where leaders become so focused on defending their position that they lose the opportunity for genuine connection.
In today's corporate world, we're trained to lead with facts, data, and polished presentations. But I've discovered that my greatest leadership advantage comes from something entirely different: the courage to be truthful and authentic, especially during heated conversations.
When we step away from the right-versus-wrong mindset, we create space for curiosity, mutual understanding, and innovation. This episode explores the powerful distinction between positioning yourself as right versus showing up as real—and how this single shift can transform your leadership impact.
Whether you're leading a team, making big bold decisions, or tackling tough conversations, confidence is the key to showing up powerfully. That's why I created the Confidence Hack, a simple yet powerful tool that has helped tons of women just like you break free from limiting beliefs and step fully into their potential.
Click here to download the Confidence Hack for free now!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How your brain's limbic system hijacks your ability to think expansively during conflict.
Why focusing on being "right" creates power dynamics that shut down authentic communication.
How to recognize when you're operating from defensive patterns rather than authentic presence.
The neuroscience behind why most of our responses by age 35 are subconscious and based on past patterns.
Practical techniques to create internal safety that allows your prefrontal cortex to function optimally.
How to use curiosity and validation to transform heated conversations into productive dialogues.
Why truth-telling, even when uncomfortable, builds more trust than strategic positioning.
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Full Episode Transcript:
What if navigating company politics didn't mean proving you're right, but instead showing up as the most real, authentic version of yourself? In a world that is full of polished scripts and strategic positioning, true leadership comes from those who break the mold, who move beyond rigid right or wrong thinking and into powerful, real, human-to-human conversations. In this episode, we'll explore how your brain's automatic responses, especially as it relates to conflict, holds you back, why authenticity is your greatest asset, and how to confidently lead without playing the corporate game. Let's dive in to the power of being real versus being right.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
All right, welcome everyone. Today's episode is going to be a shorter one, but it's going to be super impactful and powerful. Today we are talking about leading powerfully and authentically and how it's really more about being real versus being right. This has been a skill that has helped me set myself apart from a lot of other people in the corporate world because my ability to be truthful, to be honest, has helped people to see me more clearly, to connect with me on a deeper level. And especially in some of these heated conversations has helped me to feel more confident in who I am. It's really helped me to trust myself more and to have confidence in my feelings and my thoughts about a certain situation.
It's also been super helpful in me opening my brain up to other people's perspectives and motivations and find that this piece has helped me to have a broader perspective. And when we have a broader perspective and we're thinking more expansively, we can actually as a team, as a group of individuals working in a company, come up with better solutions, more innovation. But we can't do that if we don't really feel safe. That's why there's so much research on psychological safety and how important it is to be safe. Because if we don't feel safe, we're not going to show up as real. We're not going to show up as authentic. We're going to try to say the right thing, the surface level thing.
Often times, the women that I coach, they use facts and data versus using those facts and data along with their emotions. And they often times find that the conversations are really limiting because they're like, "I don't really understand. My CEO understands like the path I laid out. I talked about the actions, the recommendations, but he still feels like something's off and he's still scared to move forward. And I just don't understand." And part of that is because you think that there is a right way. You think that if you have all of the data and the facts, that somehow it should be, you know, simply that's the right decision because the facts and data are, you know, all that we need to look at.
But the reality is that most people make decisions based on their emotions, and you don't know what people's emotions are if you're not curious and open to understanding them. So instead of making your boss wrong or the CEO wrong because he doesn't like your idea or doesn't want to move forward, because if you make him wrong, then you're right. But then if he makes you wrong and then he's right, then you might feel scared and you might want to step back and you might not know how to navigate it. But what I coach a lot of the women that I work with is to be curious, to say, "What about this plan concerns you the most?" See, it's jumping into curiosity and it's validating his emotions. That is really the power of being really conscious and really curious.
But often times what happens in our brain when we're in heated conversations, the neuroscience that literally happens is there's that limbic system, which I've talked about in previous episodes, where that limbic system in our brain is all geared for survival. It doesn't want to explore, it doesn't want to be curious, it wants to be safe. Its biggest goal in life is to be safe. And when we are in the position of thinking something's right or wrong or good or bad, and I want you to really think about this, especially in our political landscape today. Most people get very triggered, feel super heated because they truly believe that something is right or something is wrong or something is good or bad. And they are unable to open themselves up to other possibilities and other perspectives because they're actually very attached to that belief or that context, versus being able to say, "Hey, I believe this is right and wrong and I believe that this is true, but I'm still open to hearing other people's perspectives and genuinely want to know and want to learn."
When we are genuinely open to learning and wanting to hear what other people have to say, and we're open to sharing ourselves in that way, then we actually create, like I said, very different outcomes for ourselves and the people that we're with. Because what happens is if you're in your survival brain and you say something and somebody says something back and you perceive what they say back as threatening, then you're also talking to their survival brain. So it's like two survival brains talking to each other, really talking at each other, trying to get louder and convince each other. So just think about how much like with politics and other things where people are just talking at each other, trying to use facts and data and trying to use their strong emotions and passions in that moment. And it can feel like, oh, this is powerful. This is me showing up authentically.
But really, what it is, is a defense mechanism. It is like closing yourself off to hearing somebody else and you're defending how you feel. And when you do that, you actually have a big blind spot. You're not open to getting other data into your brain. You're not looking at it expansively. And the prefrontal cortex of our brain is where we do that. This prefrontal cortex is all geared for expansive thinking. It's the part of us that wants to sign up for a marathon. It's the part of us that wants to go for a really big goal, maybe wants to be a CEO someday. It's the part of us that wants to start a business. It's the part of us that's expansive and is ready to go do difficult things and take on challenges because we are open to what the world and what people in our world have to offer us.
But what happens is, and that prefrontal cortex, I've shared this before, doesn't get fully formed until you're 25. But this is the part of our brain that can deal with really complex thinking. It can deal with thinking, this is my truth and this is somebody else's truth. And that's okay. That's safe to be having two truths in the world, even though, you know, I feel more connected to one and this person feels more connected to another. But it opens up a lot of possibilities because we're not in that scarcity survival brain. But what happens when we're emotionally triggered, when we have lots of emotions, and so this is either personal or professional, conflicts or high-stakes situations, and we in our bodies feel really triggered with emotion, that limbic system actually narrows in and it cuts off access to that prefrontal cortex.
So this is the brain part. When you're so focused on being right and your livelihood feels like it's attached to it, then we're going to defend. Then we're going to be in that survival mode. And we will more likely regress and use different regressive patterns, like potentially, if you learned, and often times I tell my clients this, we learn about conflict and how to solve conflict from watching our first authority figures, which are our parents or our caregivers, right? Our primary caregivers. All of this gets laid down between the ages of zero to seven.
So if your parents were really conflict avoidant, you may be conflict avoidant. So even if you feel really powerfully that you're right, your regressive pull, you know, in a board meeting when somebody else says, "I actually don't agree with your approach." What you might end up doing because you are in that survival brain and that fear, and instead of asking that question of like, "Well, what part don't you agree with? Tell me more about that." You might just totally narrow in on yourself. You might shrink down. You might just be quiet for the whole rest of the meeting, right? That might just be your patterns.
And Dr. Joe Dispenza actually, he's a neuroscientist who's done a lot of research on this. And he talks about how by the age of 35, most of what happens to us, most of the way people operate is very subconscious. We use our past patterns from our past work experience. We use patterns from our childhood. We use all of these different ways to, you know, show up. And especially if we're triggered, if especially we're emotionally triggered and you're not in that prefrontal cortex thinking, you're going to be regressing and you're going to show up in patterns that feel safe for you, feel familiar for you, but aren't going to create that growth and have you showing up as a powerful authentic leader.
And this is why it's really important to learn the skill of being onto ourselves and going to school on ourselves. This is something that I teach a lot of my clients. If we can learn how to track ourselves and notice ourselves, you know, not being authentic to ourselves, repeating ourselves, positioning ourselves in a way that is really about being right, we can actually intercept ourselves. We can create a different response.
And, you know, a lot of times in the trainings that I give, I talk about Viktor Frankl, who obviously trained himself and has this amazing quote about how between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is our ability to choose consciously. How do we want to show up? Are we going to use more surface level data? Are we going to use our old tactics to show up? Are we going to make the other person wrong? You know, a lot of times in our world right now, people are clinging onto rightness or righteousness. And it's like a defense mechanism and it really closes a person off from having this human-to-human connection, this curiosity.
But if you're able to calm yourself down, take a few deep breaths, notice yourself in that train of mind and that thought track, then you can actually create that internal safety, which I'll have the podcast producers link here, internal safety, naming your emotion, that actually calms the brain down enough to allow that prefrontal cortex to work. And when I am talking about being real, it is in that prefrontal cortex because being real, there's not just a right answer as being real can be messy, can be truthful, requires you to be curious, requires you to connect with your own emotions, and that allows other people to see what's going on with you.
And I'm going to give you some real-world examples of this because I think often times people are like, "Well, I was being real. I do truly feel like I, you know, this is the right answer." And that's another part of the talk track, right? It's just continuing to convince that there's a right way versus a wrong way. And if we're in this thinking, you know, something's right versus something's wrong, something's good versus something's bad, then there's always a power position at play. Somebody is bad and wrong and somebody else is the other way. So that power dynamic doesn't create mutuality. What we're really talking about here is being real is to be mutual with someone, to be honest with someone.
And I want to share an example from my career. I remember I was in my, I think I was in my early 30s. I had just started with this company. And I was in Chicago, the leadership team was in London. And I got kind of tapped from other sister companies to look at another job. And I think I was probably less than six months into this job. So politically and just like from a company standpoint, it was kind of odd for me to be looking because I had just started this company. But I had real feelings. I didn't really love working with this leadership team that was in London. And I remember, you know, when my boss's boss came to Chicago and he wanted to have a meeting with me and he didn't seem very pleased, he didn't seem very happy. I was scared for sure. And he had said something to me like, "Hey, tell me what's going on. You know, I heard that you are interested in these roles. You've just started here. We've made a big investment bringing you on here. What's going on?"
And I appreciated that he was in person to have this conversation. I appreciated him wanting to know. I still felt scared. I was still like, oh, he's not going to like what I have to say. And part of me wanted to be surface level. I wanted to defend. I wanted to say, "Well, they tapped me and I was curious to learn more." And very surface level, innocent like, you know, they wanted to know. But I made a critical decision in that moment, which really changed the trajectory of my leadership and my ability to be authentic with my boss's boss, who eventually became my boss because I accelerated. And this is, you know, a pivotal moment of that acceleration.
Instead of choosing to be surface level and to sort of brush him off or manage him, I told him the truth. I said, "Hey, listen, I feel like I'm doing the best I can in my role in Chicago. I make lots of recommendations and I think I've accomplished a lot of things. But every time I have these recommendations, I get a lot of pushback from you and the London team about my decisions and I feel micromanaged." And so I liked this job, but I was curious because I honestly feel like you guys don't trust me.
And that was super real. And that wasn't easy for me to say, right? But what happened right after that was, of course, there was a pause. He really took in what I was saying. And noticing all of these things also helped me to create safety in my body to be there and present and not want to shrink back. And he actually said, "I can see where you're coming from." And that made the world of difference because instead of us trying to convince each other, instead of him making me bad and wrong, and me saying that I'm right, it actually became the bridge of honesty, trust, and rapport that helped us to not just talk about the surface level problem, but to resolve what was going on. And I just very much felt seen and heard in that moment, which enabled me to feel even more secure in my job and helped me to create a stronger foundation with him and the rest of the London team. But if I had chosen to be, you know, surface level, right and defend and all of those things in that moment, that wouldn't have been what was being created.
And especially in this world where we're, you know, global and you're not always going to be seen with people and we're kind of having all these conversations through Zoom. I think a lot of times people are like, "Well, it's harder to be authentic." Well, it's the same hardness, right? But we need to create safety for ourselves and share our truth because truth is disarming. It is being super present. You know, people trust you when you're being honest, even if they don't like the message. This is where trust and connection gets built. And this is how leading powerfully and authentically really comes through. So instead of going at something to try to fix a problem or position something or manage someone, being real with them can create a whole new list of possibilities.
And for me, what happened in that circumstance was he actually became my boss. I kept getting promoted and people knew me better. People understood where I was coming from. And it was because I decided to show up as a real person, not just a fake person, not just parts of me that I liked. It wasn't easy for me to say those things, but being an authentic, powerful leader is not always easy. And so this is the path towards that.
And so for you, as you're looking at the conflicts that you're dealing with, asking yourself, am I choosing to be right in this moment or what would it look like for me to show up as real? And the more and more you track yourself, the more and more you notice, the more you are going to start intercepting those past automatic habits or defense mechanisms that come up. And the more powerful it will be for you.
I had another client who used this recently. She was noticing herself feeling like wanting to step back because her bosses were not happy with the sort of hybrid or work from home policy in the company. And she felt like very strongly that for her team it was good, that for her team, they didn't need to be in the office, whereas a lot of the part of the company worked in a shop. So there's actually shop where you have to get work done. So you can't actually just work from home. And so she expanded her mind versus, you know, she wanted to fight for everybody have a similar policy for the whole company. She stepped out of being right and defending her team and actually saw the bigger picture. And she saw the bigger picture because she was able to get into that prefrontal cortex and do that work.
And so she started asking herself or asking her bosses, like, what's your concern? And they were like, "We can't have people in this shop, you know, not be in the shop or trust them to just do their work at home because they're on time sheets and they need materials here to do some of their work." And so this allowed her to step out of holding onto, you know, what she thought was right in the moment and helped her to see that there's a lot of different ways to solve this problem. And that maybe we need different policies for different parts of the company because of what they do and how they do it.
And so, I just want to share that example because that again, allowed her to be authentic, powerful and understand and be curious about what her CEO was saying and why he was feeling so strongly one way or the other. She was more focused on her own people versus the whole company. And so if she had just focused on that and made him wrong, that would have just ensued a lot of things that, you know, would not be helpful for the company. Instead, she focused on the broader perspective and helped them come up with a policy that would be a win for her and the win for the people in her company, but also a win for her leadership who was really concerned about productivity in the shop.
All right. Well, that is the episode today. It's a shorter one, but it's such a powerful message. And again, just notice where you want to be and how being real, what would that look like for you? How would you navigate things? You know, how to be able to be authentically you in these situations, disarm people with your truth and your presence and be super curious. But we can't be curious and connected to other people without having that safety within ourselves. And so this is where that emotional intelligence piece comes into play and how we can support ourselves with that piece and feel safe in our bodies to show up more real in the real world and have these authentic conversations.
I'd love to hear what you think about this episode and how it is impacting you in your leadership. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear anything you have to say. It's just Yann Dang on LinkedIn. And of course, leave a review of the show. Thank you so much. See you next week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
All right, welcome everyone. Today's episode is going to be a shorter one, but it's going to be super impactful and powerful. Today we are talking about leading powerfully and authentically and how it's really more about being real versus being right. This has been a skill that has helped me set myself apart from a lot of other people in the corporate world because my ability to be truthful, to be honest, has helped people to see me more clearly, to connect with me on a deeper level. And especially in some of these heated conversations has helped me to feel more confident in who I am. It's really helped me to trust myself more and to have confidence in my feelings and my thoughts about a certain situation.
It's also been super helpful in me opening my brain up to other people's perspectives and motivations and find that this piece has helped me to have a broader perspective. And when we have a broader perspective and we're thinking more expansively, we can actually as a team, as a group of individuals working in a company, come up with better solutions, more innovation. But we can't do that if we don't really feel safe. That's why there's so much research on psychological safety and how important it is to be safe. Because if we don't feel safe, we're not going to show up as real. We're not going to show up as authentic. We're going to try to say the right thing, the surface level thing.
Often times, the women that I coach, they use facts and data versus using those facts and data along with their emotions. And they often times find that the conversations are really limiting because they're like, "I don't really understand. My CEO understands like the path I laid out. I talked about the actions, the recommendations, but he still feels like something's off and he's still scared to move forward. And I just don't understand." And part of that is because you think that there is a right way. You think that if you have all of the data and the facts, that somehow it should be, you know, simply that's the right decision because the facts and data are, you know, all that we need to look at.
But the reality is that most people make decisions based on their emotions, and you don't know what people's emotions are if you're not curious and open to understanding them. So instead of making your boss wrong or the CEO wrong because he doesn't like your idea or doesn't want to move forward, because if you make him wrong, then you're right. But then if he makes you wrong and then he's right, then you might feel scared and you might want to step back and you might not know how to navigate it. But what I coach a lot of the women that I work with is to be curious, to say, "What about this plan concerns you the most?" See, it's jumping into curiosity and it's validating his emotions. That is really the power of being really conscious and really curious.
But often times what happens in our brain when we're in heated conversations, the neuroscience that literally happens is there's that limbic system, which I've talked about in previous episodes, where that limbic system in our brain is all geared for survival. It doesn't want to explore, it doesn't want to be curious, it wants to be safe. Its biggest goal in life is to be safe. And when we are in the position of thinking something's right or wrong or good or bad, and I want you to really think about this, especially in our political landscape today. Most people get very triggered, feel super heated because they truly believe that something is right or something is wrong or something is good or bad. And they are unable to open themselves up to other possibilities and other perspectives because they're actually very attached to that belief or that context, versus being able to say, "Hey, I believe this is right and wrong and I believe that this is true, but I'm still open to hearing other people's perspectives and genuinely want to know and want to learn."
When we are genuinely open to learning and wanting to hear what other people have to say, and we're open to sharing ourselves in that way, then we actually create, like I said, very different outcomes for ourselves and the people that we're with. Because what happens is if you're in your survival brain and you say something and somebody says something back and you perceive what they say back as threatening, then you're also talking to their survival brain. So it's like two survival brains talking to each other, really talking at each other, trying to get louder and convince each other. So just think about how much like with politics and other things where people are just talking at each other, trying to use facts and data and trying to use their strong emotions and passions in that moment. And it can feel like, oh, this is powerful. This is me showing up authentically.
But really, what it is, is a defense mechanism. It is like closing yourself off to hearing somebody else and you're defending how you feel. And when you do that, you actually have a big blind spot. You're not open to getting other data into your brain. You're not looking at it expansively. And the prefrontal cortex of our brain is where we do that. This prefrontal cortex is all geared for expansive thinking. It's the part of us that wants to sign up for a marathon. It's the part of us that wants to go for a really big goal, maybe wants to be a CEO someday. It's the part of us that wants to start a business. It's the part of us that's expansive and is ready to go do difficult things and take on challenges because we are open to what the world and what people in our world have to offer us.
But what happens is, and that prefrontal cortex, I've shared this before, doesn't get fully formed until you're 25. But this is the part of our brain that can deal with really complex thinking. It can deal with thinking, this is my truth and this is somebody else's truth. And that's okay. That's safe to be having two truths in the world, even though, you know, I feel more connected to one and this person feels more connected to another. But it opens up a lot of possibilities because we're not in that scarcity survival brain. But what happens when we're emotionally triggered, when we have lots of emotions, and so this is either personal or professional, conflicts or high-stakes situations, and we in our bodies feel really triggered with emotion, that limbic system actually narrows in and it cuts off access to that prefrontal cortex.
So this is the brain part. When you're so focused on being right and your livelihood feels like it's attached to it, then we're going to defend. Then we're going to be in that survival mode. And we will more likely regress and use different regressive patterns, like potentially, if you learned, and often times I tell my clients this, we learn about conflict and how to solve conflict from watching our first authority figures, which are our parents or our caregivers, right? Our primary caregivers. All of this gets laid down between the ages of zero to seven.
So if your parents were really conflict avoidant, you may be conflict avoidant. So even if you feel really powerfully that you're right, your regressive pull, you know, in a board meeting when somebody else says, "I actually don't agree with your approach." What you might end up doing because you are in that survival brain and that fear, and instead of asking that question of like, "Well, what part don't you agree with? Tell me more about that." You might just totally narrow in on yourself. You might shrink down. You might just be quiet for the whole rest of the meeting, right? That might just be your patterns.
And Dr. Joe Dispenza actually, he's a neuroscientist who's done a lot of research on this. And he talks about how by the age of 35, most of what happens to us, most of the way people operate is very subconscious. We use our past patterns from our past work experience. We use patterns from our childhood. We use all of these different ways to, you know, show up. And especially if we're triggered, if especially we're emotionally triggered and you're not in that prefrontal cortex thinking, you're going to be regressing and you're going to show up in patterns that feel safe for you, feel familiar for you, but aren't going to create that growth and have you showing up as a powerful authentic leader.
And this is why it's really important to learn the skill of being onto ourselves and going to school on ourselves. This is something that I teach a lot of my clients. If we can learn how to track ourselves and notice ourselves, you know, not being authentic to ourselves, repeating ourselves, positioning ourselves in a way that is really about being right, we can actually intercept ourselves. We can create a different response.
And, you know, a lot of times in the trainings that I give, I talk about Viktor Frankl, who obviously trained himself and has this amazing quote about how between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is our ability to choose consciously. How do we want to show up? Are we going to use more surface level data? Are we going to use our old tactics to show up? Are we going to make the other person wrong? You know, a lot of times in our world right now, people are clinging onto rightness or righteousness. And it's like a defense mechanism and it really closes a person off from having this human-to-human connection, this curiosity.
But if you're able to calm yourself down, take a few deep breaths, notice yourself in that train of mind and that thought track, then you can actually create that internal safety, which I'll have the podcast producers link here, internal safety, naming your emotion, that actually calms the brain down enough to allow that prefrontal cortex to work. And when I am talking about being real, it is in that prefrontal cortex because being real, there's not just a right answer as being real can be messy, can be truthful, requires you to be curious, requires you to connect with your own emotions, and that allows other people to see what's going on with you.
And I'm going to give you some real-world examples of this because I think often times people are like, "Well, I was being real. I do truly feel like I, you know, this is the right answer." And that's another part of the talk track, right? It's just continuing to convince that there's a right way versus a wrong way. And if we're in this thinking, you know, something's right versus something's wrong, something's good versus something's bad, then there's always a power position at play. Somebody is bad and wrong and somebody else is the other way. So that power dynamic doesn't create mutuality. What we're really talking about here is being real is to be mutual with someone, to be honest with someone.
And I want to share an example from my career. I remember I was in my, I think I was in my early 30s. I had just started with this company. And I was in Chicago, the leadership team was in London. And I got kind of tapped from other sister companies to look at another job. And I think I was probably less than six months into this job. So politically and just like from a company standpoint, it was kind of odd for me to be looking because I had just started this company. But I had real feelings. I didn't really love working with this leadership team that was in London. And I remember, you know, when my boss's boss came to Chicago and he wanted to have a meeting with me and he didn't seem very pleased, he didn't seem very happy. I was scared for sure. And he had said something to me like, "Hey, tell me what's going on. You know, I heard that you are interested in these roles. You've just started here. We've made a big investment bringing you on here. What's going on?"
And I appreciated that he was in person to have this conversation. I appreciated him wanting to know. I still felt scared. I was still like, oh, he's not going to like what I have to say. And part of me wanted to be surface level. I wanted to defend. I wanted to say, "Well, they tapped me and I was curious to learn more." And very surface level, innocent like, you know, they wanted to know. But I made a critical decision in that moment, which really changed the trajectory of my leadership and my ability to be authentic with my boss's boss, who eventually became my boss because I accelerated. And this is, you know, a pivotal moment of that acceleration.
Instead of choosing to be surface level and to sort of brush him off or manage him, I told him the truth. I said, "Hey, listen, I feel like I'm doing the best I can in my role in Chicago. I make lots of recommendations and I think I've accomplished a lot of things. But every time I have these recommendations, I get a lot of pushback from you and the London team about my decisions and I feel micromanaged." And so I liked this job, but I was curious because I honestly feel like you guys don't trust me.
And that was super real. And that wasn't easy for me to say, right? But what happened right after that was, of course, there was a pause. He really took in what I was saying. And noticing all of these things also helped me to create safety in my body to be there and present and not want to shrink back. And he actually said, "I can see where you're coming from." And that made the world of difference because instead of us trying to convince each other, instead of him making me bad and wrong, and me saying that I'm right, it actually became the bridge of honesty, trust, and rapport that helped us to not just talk about the surface level problem, but to resolve what was going on. And I just very much felt seen and heard in that moment, which enabled me to feel even more secure in my job and helped me to create a stronger foundation with him and the rest of the London team. But if I had chosen to be, you know, surface level, right and defend and all of those things in that moment, that wouldn't have been what was being created.
And especially in this world where we're, you know, global and you're not always going to be seen with people and we're kind of having all these conversations through Zoom. I think a lot of times people are like, "Well, it's harder to be authentic." Well, it's the same hardness, right? But we need to create safety for ourselves and share our truth because truth is disarming. It is being super present. You know, people trust you when you're being honest, even if they don't like the message. This is where trust and connection gets built. And this is how leading powerfully and authentically really comes through. So instead of going at something to try to fix a problem or position something or manage someone, being real with them can create a whole new list of possibilities.
And for me, what happened in that circumstance was he actually became my boss. I kept getting promoted and people knew me better. People understood where I was coming from. And it was because I decided to show up as a real person, not just a fake person, not just parts of me that I liked. It wasn't easy for me to say those things, but being an authentic, powerful leader is not always easy. And so this is the path towards that.
And so for you, as you're looking at the conflicts that you're dealing with, asking yourself, am I choosing to be right in this moment or what would it look like for me to show up as real? And the more and more you track yourself, the more and more you notice, the more you are going to start intercepting those past automatic habits or defense mechanisms that come up. And the more powerful it will be for you.
I had another client who used this recently. She was noticing herself feeling like wanting to step back because her bosses were not happy with the sort of hybrid or work from home policy in the company. And she felt like very strongly that for her team it was good, that for her team, they didn't need to be in the office, whereas a lot of the part of the company worked in a shop. So there's actually shop where you have to get work done. So you can't actually just work from home. And so she expanded her mind versus, you know, she wanted to fight for everybody have a similar policy for the whole company. She stepped out of being right and defending her team and actually saw the bigger picture. And she saw the bigger picture because she was able to get into that prefrontal cortex and do that work.
And so she started asking herself or asking her bosses, like, what's your concern? And they were like, "We can't have people in this shop, you know, not be in the shop or trust them to just do their work at home because they're on time sheets and they need materials here to do some of their work." And so this allowed her to step out of holding onto, you know, what she thought was right in the moment and helped her to see that there's a lot of different ways to solve this problem. And that maybe we need different policies for different parts of the company because of what they do and how they do it.
And so, I just want to share that example because that again, allowed her to be authentic, powerful and understand and be curious about what her CEO was saying and why he was feeling so strongly one way or the other. She was more focused on her own people versus the whole company. And so if she had just focused on that and made him wrong, that would have just ensued a lot of things that, you know, would not be helpful for the company. Instead, she focused on the broader perspective and helped them come up with a policy that would be a win for her and the win for the people in her company, but also a win for her leadership who was really concerned about productivity in the shop.
All right. Well, that is the episode today. It's a shorter one, but it's such a powerful message. And again, just notice where you want to be and how being real, what would that look like for you? How would you navigate things? You know, how to be able to be authentically you in these situations, disarm people with your truth and your presence and be super curious. But we can't be curious and connected to other people without having that safety within ourselves. And so this is where that emotional intelligence piece comes into play and how we can support ourselves with that piece and feel safe in our bodies to show up more real in the real world and have these authentic conversations.
I'd love to hear what you think about this episode and how it is impacting you in your leadership. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear anything you have to say. It's just Yann Dang on LinkedIn. And of course, leave a review of the show. Thank you so much. See you next week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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