How to Tell the Hard Truth…More Easily

Summary

Podcast Summary: Becoming You with Suzy Welch

Episode: “How to Tell the Hard Truth…More Easily”

Date: October 7, 2025
Host: Suzy Welch (with guest Sophia Welch)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Suzy Welch, NYU Stern professor and renowned expert on decision-making and purpose, tackles the eternally tough topic of truth-telling—specifically, how to tell difficult truths more easily. Joined by her daughter Sophia Welch, Suzy introduces a structured method for delivering hard truths (called the "OILS" framework) and demonstrates its use both in personal and professional contexts. The tone is candid, supportive, a little irreverent, and filled with real-life anecdotes.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Why Don’t We Tell the Hard Truth?

• Common reasons for avoiding honesty:
  • Fear of hurting others
  • Anxiety about blowback or outsized reactions
  • Awkwardness and self-doubt
  • “You don’t want to hurt people. People don’t want to hurt people.” — Sophia [05:42]
• Many people hover in what author Kim Scott (Radical Candor) calls “ruinous empathy,” avoiding confrontation to spare feelings but often creating worse outcomes.

Radical Candor Explained (Kim Scott Framework)

• Four conversational quadrants:
  1. Obnoxious Aggression: Direct but uncaring. The “asshole quadrant.”
  2. Manipulative Insincerity: Indirect, doesn’t care personally.
  3. Ruinous Empathy: Cares personally, but avoids directness—most people dwell here.
  4. Radical Candor: Cares personally and is direct. The ideal for hard truths.

“Radical candor is that fourth quadrant, where you do care... but you say something hard.” — Suzy [09:39]

• Memorable moment: Suzy recounts being shocked by Jack Welch’s candid-yet-caring restaurant critique. [10:21]

The OILS Methodology for Hard Conversations

• Developed at McKinsey; Suzy teaches it at NYU.
• OILS stands for:
  • Observation: State what you've noticed, with no blame or opinion.
  • Impact: Describe the effect this has on you (and others).
  • Listen: Let the other person share their perspective. Truly hear them.
  • Suggest: Together, come up with possible solutions.

“It's a system. You know, I'm all about systems thinking.” — Suzy [13:55]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why honesty is so hard:
  • “Most people are kind of passive aggressive... whisper it to other people and you don't ever confront the person.” — Suzy [08:20]
  • “We hover around in ruinous empathy and it eats us slowly alive.” — Suzy [09:15]
• On family “trigger words”:
  • “Lovingly is like a trigger word.” — Sophia [11:50]
  • “Only in our house would lovingly be a trigger warning.” — Suzy [11:56]

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Live Demonstration: OILS in Action (Mother/Daughter Edition) [15:16–22:33]

• Scenario: Suzy feels Sophia’s comments during Suzy’s flow state at work are deflating; Sophia sees it as concern for Suzy’s well-being and their relationship.
• Step-by-step OILS:
  • Observation: Suzy observes Sophia interrupts her intense work states.
  • Impact: Makes Suzy feel “de-energized,” sad, and leads to conflict.
  • Listen: Sophia clarifies her intent—she feels she only intervenes when Suzy is exhausted, wanting her to find balance and participate more in family life.
  • Suggest: They agree to better communication and mutual understanding.

“If what everything that this looks like to me is actually you loving it, then by all means.” — Sophia [22:04]

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OILS at Work: Handling a Difficult Boss Scenario [23:34–26:19]

• Scenario: Sophia (as her younger self) wants professional growth beyond her assistant role.
• Suzy coaches Sophia to structure the conversation:
  • State the purpose: Announce intention for a hard conversation.
  • Observation: Exclusion from important meetings is a recurring pattern.
  • Impact: Stunted professional growth, limited ability to help the boss.
  • Listen: Boss rebuffs the request; Sophia is left with clarity and data for her next move.

“Sometimes somebody's personality is actually going to make these conversations impossible. But you know what? There's still upside because you spoke your truth.” — Suzy [25:54]

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Takeaways and Life Lessons

• The OILS approach may not guarantee solutions but always enables you to speak your truth—which, in itself, is liberating and clarifying.
• Use OILS close in time to the incident—don’t wait and let feelings fester.
• Speaking the hard truth, especially in a structured and caring way, often yields connection, progress, or at the very least, clarity.

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Personal Reflection from Suzy

• Suzy shares heartfelt regret over lost friendships (due to avoided conversations) and recounts a recent business triumph made possible using OILS.
• The existential and tactical must combine: “We’d all rather know the truth and speak it, but damn, that’s hard to do.”
• The episode ends on an emotional note with mutual appreciation between mother and daughter.

“Go try it today.” — Suzy [34:30]

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------| | 00:05 | Suzy introduces the episode and theme | | 06:04 | Discussion of “radical candor” | | 13:55 | Introduction to OILS methodology | | 15:16 | Suzy and Sophia role-play OILS at home | | 23:34 | Role-play: Sophia addresses a difficult boss | | 26:19 | Analysis of when OILS “doesn’t work” and its value | | 29:00 | Final reflections, personal regrets, boardroom success story | | 34:02 | Suzy and Sophia exchange personal affirmations|

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Summary

This episode offers a deeply practical, refreshingly human roadmap for telling hard truths—whether at work or at home—without sacrificing relationships or self-respect. By weaving candid family banter with robust management theory and lived experience, Suzy and Sophia drive home the value of structured radical candor and equip listeners with a repeatable, accessible tool for some of life’s most challenging moments.

Key takeaway:
OILS can make difficult conversations not easy, but easier—and the path to becoming your authentic self opens, one honest talk at a time.

Transcript

[A]

Well, hi, everybody. Hi. Welcome so much. It's Susie Welch. And I want to start off by saying one of the oldest, most familiar, most, you know, it's true in your bones quote that everybody knows is the truth will set you free. You've heard it. You've actually said it. And this quote has been attributed to. To a lot of people. And. But the truth is that it actually comes from the Bible, and it was said by Jesus in the Gospel of John. And he says, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Now, he was talking about spiritual truth, and actually I happen to believe with him about that, but it's true about emotional and intellectual freedom as well. This quote, the truth will set you free, and knowing the truth about ourselves and sharing that truth with all the people that it affects, that will set you free. And that is why Becoming you exists. And that's why we're here again. I'm Susie Welch. This is Becoming youg. This is a special episode of Becoming you. Well, they're all special, but this one's especially. This one's especially special because I'm joined once again today by my daughter, Sophia Welch. Say hi, Sophia.

[B]

Hello. Has anyone else been on three times? Just say no.

[A]

Dustin? No. Nobody. Nobody has been on three times. Okay. But I'm really glad you're here. You are actually the perfect person down on this podcast because you. This podcast is about how we tell the truth and what it costs us and what it gains us. And actually, what it's really about is how to tell the truth, because it's so hard. And the facts are that we almost never tell the truth about hard things. Rarely. Do you agree?

[B]

Yes. I don't agree. For you personally, yes, I have a.

[A]

Little problem with the truth in that I might overdo it with the truth. But in general, that's a new thing for me. I was not always that way. I had to get there, and that's part of why I've loved doing this podcast so much. But it's really hard to tell the truth in. In this Becoming you podcast. The whole point of it is to change that. When you figure out who you are and you come to this place, maybe you've taken the values bridge and you see all your values, and then you see the gap between how much you're living them and how much you're not living them. That means you're gonna have a conversation with somebody about the ways they're holding you back or, like, in the best case scenario, how they can help you Live more of yourself. I wish I'd had a ton of those conversations. I bet you do, too. With me over the course of your life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think we're pretty honest with each other, but yeah.

[A]

Yes. In fact, we are later going to both and we are going to enact two hard conversations with each other. One where Sophia. I'm gonna tell. Give Sophia hard feedback, which you may not want to hear, but we're going to talk about it. And then Sophie and I are going to actually reenact a conversation that she wished she had had earlier in her career with a boss. But it's really hard to tell the truth in this Becoming you podcast. The whole point of it is to change that, to give you, my dear listeners, who I love so very much, actually, a tool, an actual methodology. It's so easy. I teach it to my students at NYU Stern School of Business, where I'm a professor. I teach this methodology them. It's for telling the hard truth to other people. And it's not going to make. Okay, so the title of this podcast is something of a lie, because it's not going to make telling the hard truth easy, easy, easy. But it's going to make it easier. And I wish I had had this technique when I was your age. Now, you had me as a demonstrator and modeler of telling the truth all the time, but I did not have that in my life. And. And the truth will set you free. So, look, the name of this methodology, for short. It's called oils O I L S. It stands for stuff. We're going to go there. It was invented maybe 30, 40 years ago at McKinsey and Company, the famous consulting firm. And as I said, I teach it to my students, but I'm going to teach it right here and right now in this podcast. If you stay with me for 20, 25 minutes, me and Sophia, for 20, 25 minutes, you're going to walk out with a tool. And I bet because of it, you're going to be able to have some conversations that you've been struggling to have, maybe for a day, maybe for a year, maybe for your whole life. And so this is going to be all about truth telling. But first, I'm take a breath and start at the beginning. Welcome to Becoming youg. Becoming youg is a podcast where we help you answer the question, what the heck should I do with my life? It's based on a methodology that I teach at Stern, NYU Stern School of Business. It excavates three Data sets, your values. That's your deeply held beliefs and motivations, your aptitudes, both intellectual and emotional, and your economically viable interests. And it puts that all together to determine what should be your path in life, your journey. It takes a while to get there, but when you do, you feel exquisitely alive. And look, we could answer this question, and I hope we do, every. Every week for the rest of our lives, because figuring out what to do with your life is the work of your life. Here's the thing. Here's how this all fits together, is when you discover who you are. And that's not easy for many of us. You then have to. Or then you really want to come closer to living that person. There's a reason why you're not living it, and that requires conversations. It requires action. Sometimes you just have to change what you're doing. You have to change where you work. You have to change a relationship you're in. But most of the time, the first thing it changes is that you have to have honest, truthful conversations. And that's how we're here. All right, so let's just start off by talking about why we don't tell the truth. Any ideas why people don't tell the truth? I have a theory, but I'd love to hear yours. Why don't you just, like, have honest conversations? Why don't we do it?

[B]

You don't want to hurt people. People don't want to hurt people.

[A]

That's part of it. Scared of blowback?

[B]

Yeah. It's awkward. It's tough. You don't know if someone's gonna have an outsized reaction, possibly.

[A]

Why are you looking at me with that expression? I'm not. Okay. I'm not. All right. All right.

[B]

I was actually thinking about myself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we both have. We share that trait. I don't know where you got it from. All right. But look, funny thing is, Sophie and I struggled, like, for an hour this morning to come up with a conversation that we could have with each other that was a hard truth that we had not already said to each other. Because around here, we do two things. We practice radical candor, and we use oils. Basically, this technique I'm going to teach you. So let's talk about radical candor. Radical candor is the way you have to approach the world to have any truthful conversation. That's not just candor. It's radical candor, which you've heard me discuss so many times. It's actually a construct that was invented by Kim Scott. Go read her book, Radical Candor. She's a great thinker, a great writer, a great scholar. I respect her. I'm about to wholesale steal her ideas to tell them to you, but I'm giving her full credit for them. Here's how she thinks about Radical Candor. So Radical Candor can be understood as one of the four ways of talking to people in conversation. There's four different ways, and it's based on two different dimensions. On one dimension is how much you show you care personally, and on the other dimension, it's how directly you confront somebody. So if you can imagine, if you're a person who directs people, really direct, you know, like, really confronts them directly, but you also don't give a damn, all right? You just. You just don't care about them as a person. That's what Kim Scott calls obnoxious aggression. And as she herself points out, you could just call them all assholes, but it's just kind of, you know, in general, we don't like to use that word too widely, but that's like the asshole quadrant, where you just are a jerk. You say whatever's on your mind and you don't give a damn about how the other person is experiencing it. And you experience those kind of people all the time in. In the. In show business?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

I actually rather rarely encounter them in academia. Okay. Academia people tend to be pretty polite.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, then look, let's look at the quadrant of where you care a lot about somebody and you have a lot of emotionality around it, but you won't. You won't confront them directly. You don't like to be confrontational. You. You keep it inside, all right? And you don't care personally either, all right? You just are kind of. You're not going to say anything hard, and you don't really care. And that's just manipulative insincerity. Okay? And it's pretty rare. You usually care a little bit, but most people are kind of passive aggressive, and you just. Then you just. You're sort of. This is a quadrant where you basically don't say anything. You keep it all inside or you whisper it to other people and you don't ever confront the person. Okay, Then, as Kim Scott points out, most people are actually pretty nice. They do care personally, but they don't want to confront directly. There's. Like you said, they're scared, they don't want blowback, and they're not sure they're right. And you think you should be nice to people, and that's A really dangerous quadrant. That's where we almost all end up all the time in hard conversations. She calls it ruinous empathy, which is we really don't want to say something hard because we're afraid of hurting somebody's feelings. We have something we want to say, but we are afraid to confront them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that is runous empathy. That's where most of us spend most of our time in really tough conversations. And that's why we don't have them. And we hover around in run sympathy and it eats us slowly alive.

[B]

I think you end up thinking it's not even worth it. It's not even worth it because who knows how. Who knows what the result would be, Right.

[A]

You're scared.

[B]

So I might as well not because maybe it wouldn't work out the way that I want. So let me just.

[A]

We just have self doubt around it. Okay. So radical candor is that fourth quadrant. We where you do care. Okay. You care enough. And you also confront directly. So you come from a place of love and caring, but you say something hard. That's radical candor. And it's so hard. I'll never forget the first time I actually saw it, really saw it done. Well, it was so shocking to me. Jack and I had just started going out and we went to a restaurant. He asked the waitress we what he should order. And the waitress said, she told him the special. She said it was great. And then it came out. We both ordered it. It was unbelievably bad. And he said to the waitress, why'd you tell us to order this? It's terrible. You're not going to get any tips if you keep ordering. If you keep telling me to order it. And she's. I was like, I almost jumped out of my skin. I thought, you don't tell the waitress that the food at the restaurant is bad. And like he was. He did it. He was clearly smiling at her. He was definitely on her side. He said, you're not going to get any tips. He was definitely on her side.

[B]

I believe this is the example.

[A]

No, but it's so vivid.

[B]

No. Yeah.

[A]

And the waitress said, I'm so glad somebody just said that. I can't wait to go back into the kitchen and tell the chef that this is a terrible dish and they should stop forcing us to. And it was like he was radically candid with her. She received it exactly where he was coming from. He was on her side. So radical candor is very, very hard. Now I'm gonna say right now that I have finally gotten to a good place with radical candor. My problem was when the kids were growing up, I over indexed on the direct confrontation because I made an assumption that I should not have made, which was that my children understood that I cared personally. And I have tried to correct this by now. When I say something that's about to be directly confrontational, what do I do? What's the first word I say?

[B]

Lovingly.

[A]

Lovingly. So I always start to show, to demonstrate that I'm coming from a place of loving caring. I say to my children, maybe have a conversation lovingly. And then I directly say what I think they'd be better off hearing. And so what I guess that is, it sort of like makes you like Pavlov's dogs in that when you hear the word lovingly, you want to run out of the room.

[B]

Yes, that's absolutely correct. Lovingly is like a trigger word.

[A]

Only in our house would lovingly be a trigger warning.

[B]

Yeah, because you know something bad's coming.

[A]

Okay, So I want to say, and I think you will confirm firm, that I over indexed on the direct confrontation when you were born, when we were kids. When you were kids, for sure. And I've had to claw it back. So I don't want to. In no way do I want to hold myself up as a poster child for doing this right my whole life. I think I've gotten much better at it as time has gone on. And I want to tell you one of the reasons, and that's the technique that I'm about to talk to you about. Oils. Here's how it goes. You have a conversation and it's quite structured, and in fact you can plan it. And the first part is called O for observation. You state something without any opinion or any commentary, and you just observe something, all right? You just state an observation you are observing and you are experiencing. Okay? The second part of this, the second step is I. And that's for impact. And that is when you describe the impact that this behavior is having on you or other people that you care about. I is for impact. And you say, this is what I observe. This is the impact that it's having on me. And maybe the impact I think it's having on you. The third part is the absolute hardest part. It's L for listen. And that is when you stop and you say, I've just told you what I've observed and what the impact it has had on me and maybe others or on you. And I want to hear your point of view on this. And then you have to zip your lip, and you actually have to listen to the person tell it from their point of view. But the whole idea is to stay quite dispassionate. And actually, when I use this all the time, I say I'm about to use the OILS methodology to have a hard conversation with you. My o. My observation is this. My I is this. Now it's time for me to listen to you so that they're drawn in to the method, they're drawn into the system. And then after you hear them, and you usually engage in conversation and dialogue, at that point, the final step is S. And that's for suggest, and that's when you ask the other person to suggest solutions so that you can come to a shared solution to this problem. And look, no system is perfect, but I have seen this. Take the negative energy, take the passion, take the irregularity and the improvisation out of very hard conversations, because it's a system. You know, I'm all about systems thinking. All right, Sophia. And I have chosen something that I want, a hard conversation that I want to have with Sophia, and I'm going to do it with the OILS methodology.

[B]

Well, you chose it, and I acquiesce.

[A]

You acquiesce. We went through a few, and this is the one you agreed to. Okay, let's do it. Sophia, I'd like to have. Come on.

[B]

Okay, okay, okay. I just. You brought me on the podcast to tell me something you don't like.

[A]

This is true. Okay, okay, okay. No, it's not that I don't like about you. It's definitely. You're standing between me and my values, and that's why we're having this conversation. Sorry. Not sorry. I should have this conversation with you. So now I'm gonna have it. Stop making that face.

[B]

Okay, Well, I just disagree.

[A]

That's the subtitle of this podcast is Stop Making that Face. Okay, Sophia, I want to have a hard conversation with you, and I want to use the OILS methodology, as I always do, to have this hard conversation with you. Are you. Are you ready? Are you in a place where we can have that hard conversation?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. I want to start with my observation, and I observe that every time I'm in intense flow state at work, when I'm really working and very intense, intensely experiencing work, and sort of all cylinders are firing, and I'm kind of like popping off with energy and intensity. Okay. What I observe is that you tell me to stop it. That's my observation. Okay. Now I want to talk about the impact. Okay, okay. The impact it has on me is so de Energizing and so enervating. I love my work. I have incredibly high achievement and work centrism as values. And I feel like you've come into the room and you've thrown, like, a wet blanket on me or you pop my bubble.

[B]

You're editorializing way too much.

[A]

No, this is the impact it has on me. I'm allowed to do that in the impact statement.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. Because you're gonna have your say in a moment. This is part of oils, all right. And all those emotions you're feeling are fine. Okay. But I want to tell you the impact it has on me. And further, I'm. I don't like the impact it has on you because every single time it happens, you and I get into something of a fight. And so this is something I've observed. It happens every time I'm in intense flow state at work. You tell me to stop working, and then we have a fight. And so my observation. Let me just finish my remarks. I observe that this happens all the time. I observe that it makes me feel sad and mad and misunderstood. And I observe that it also then puts you in a adversarial conversation with me. That's my observation and the impact. And I've really been meaning to talk to you about it for a long time, because it happens all the time. So now I'm done. And I want to hear your point of view about this. I want to listen.

[B]

Okay. My point of view on this. I think that I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy. And I think that when you are. I'm surprised that you're. That you said that. It's when you're, like, popping off with energy. Because I think the time for me, the time that I feel like I bring it up the most is when you seem exhausted. And at least how I read it is that you. Like we were talking about last night, how it's like, I can't get out from underneath this. So if I was perceiving joy, I think I wouldn't ever say you have to work less. I think my response is in. I'm responding to what I perceive to be sheer exhaustion. And then I think that the other part of it is I don't like that you don't have time for anything but work. It means it's hard to get your attention on anything else. And if you get your attention on anything else, it's for 25 seconds at a time. And so I have to be very like Intense when I'm trying to get you to listen to something, because I feel like I have such limited time to speak to you about things that are not.

[A]

Or just.

[B]

You have very limited. You don't have any time. So I think that's another part of it. And then also, I think about when we were in France and we were having oysters, and you were, like, struck by the fact that people can do fun things.

[A]

That was a revelation.

[B]

And you were, like, in. You were like, some people just do this. And I was like, yeah, it's. It's great. We're having fun. This is a fun thing. And so I want more of that for you. I know you've been a workaholic my whole life. I have no problem.

[A]

We don't use that word on this show.

[B]

Okay. I have had high work centrism, and work centrism is my number one value. So I understand that. I love to work. I'm obsessed with my work. I could barely be here today because of my work. Okay, So I get all that. But I would just say my main point is I want you to be happy. And what I usually read your sort of this idea that you have as, like, popping off with energy, to me, doesn't look like that. It looks like someone that's drowning.

[A]

Okay. All right. I hear you. And I. These are interesting observations to me. And I think what I hear you say is you don't think I'm popping off. You think I'm exhausted. You also say. You also say. You're also saying that when I. When I'm busy all the time, there's no time for me to pay attention to you, which I did not factor in. And the third thing is that you go back to that one, that blessed hour we had on Ilecite where we had, like, champagne and oysters, and I had. I had a moment where I realized that actually there was another way to live, but I quickly banished that thought.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

All right, so let's talk about how I feel like when you do that, you are standing between me and the full expression of my values. But I especially have work centrism. And so I hear you. But the second thing I hear is that one of your ulterior motives is that I'm not giving you enough time and time and energy and time that you want to have to talk to me.

[B]

Can I answer this? Not that you don't have enough time, but that it heightens every interaction we have, because I know that there's not that much time for me. I don't need you to have more time for me. I just. If you had more time, our interactions would be sort of less intense.

[A]

Okay. All right. So now that we've had hurt each other using the OILS methodology, can we talk about ways that we can get to a solution, a shared solution? I'd love to hear suggestions from you about how this could be better for. I, for instance, can immediately think of that when I should stop using the word exhausted and I should just say to you, like, I'm tired, but in a good way. I just. Work was very fulfilling today. And then I need to communicate with you better about.

[B]

No, because you are who you are. And I think that the solution is me just sort of surrendering to who you are and.

[A]

Or at least understanding that when you interrupt my.

[B]

Well, it's interesting that you see it as an interruption.

[A]

I do.

[B]

It's. I mean. Okay.

[A]

But can we agree that we need to understand these interactions with each other much better? I need to be more sensitive to the fact that you would like more time and attention from me.

[B]

I don't think you. I don't think so.

[A]

I'm happy to be sensitive to that. Okay. Don't block my desire to make a share.

[B]

No, but I don't want you to feel like you have to be someone else.

[A]

No. I listen talking to you, and I need to be better at that. And I do consider that one day it would be nice to go back to ILC and have oysters with you again. It was a peak experience in my life. But I do want you to understand that I don't want to be deflated when I'm. When I'm loving on my work, and I. If you could meet me there, I'd be really happy.

[B]

If. What? If what all of this is. If what everything that this looks like to me is actually you loving it, then by all means.

[A]

Okay. All right. So can we agree that. That you will stop raining on what I feel perceived that you are raining on my parade?

[B]

Yes. It's not raining.

[A]

And I'm gonna try to carve out more time to talk to you in a way that's not heightened. I am. Can we agree to that?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I just want you to be happy.

[A]

I want you to be happy.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. All right. So those are.

[B]

And that is how parenting is done, everybody.

[A]

Actually, I wish I'd had it as a parent because there were so many times where I flamed out at you and I could have done an oils with you.

[B]

And vice versa.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. And Vice versa. Now, look, oils is not just for conversations in your personal relationships. It's also really useful at work. And so Sophia and I are going to actually demonstrate her using oils on me. And she's going to be playing herself in her early 20s, when she had a boss who had hired her as a personal assistant. And Sophia wanted growth. She wanted to grow into a more executive kind of role. She wanted to be more important in the organization. And she took the job as an executive assistant, being told, you can grow in this job. Then she took the job, and this very bombastic, very tough woman would not let her. Or she perceived that she would not let her grow. And so let's call that person for the sake of conversation, Sandy. Okay, so I'm gonna play Sandy. That wasn't her name.

[B]

You don't want to call her Carol. Carol.

[A]

Carol Merrill. Let's call her Carol Merrill. Okay, so I'm gonna play Carol Merrill, and you're gonna play Sophia. And so why don't you try some oils on me? And let's go.

[B]

Okay. All right, so my observation is no.

[A]

Carol Meryl, I want to have a tough conversation with you. Oh.

[B]

I have to start it that way.

[A]

I think it's very useful to actually set the context and say we're about to have a conversation. That may not be easy for either of us. Okay. I think you should.

[B]

Okay. Hi, Carol.

[A]

Hi. I'm busy. Hurry up.

[B]

It's true. I would love to have a tough conversation with you.

[A]

Okay, I'm tough.

[B]

There was a conversation yesterday with a couple of agents that I expressed that I wanted to be a part of, to shadow so that I could learn. And I ended up being cut out of that. And I feel like.

[A]

Nope, just stop with the observation. And I was not allowed to attend.

[B]

That, could I say. And I think that that's a pattern.

[A]

Yeah. And that was a not uncommon experience.

[B]

Okay. Not an uncommon experience, Carol.

[A]

Okay. And then you have to just. I mean, I think to have these conversations work. I'm really glad this is going this way, because to have these conversations work, you almost have. Tell the person beforehand. I'm going to go through a method where I'm going to state an observation, I'm going to talk about its impact on me, and then I'd love to hear your point of view. And then I hope we can get to a shared solution. So you got to drive this bus. Okay, you stated your observation. Okay. Now I'd like to talk about the impact on me.

[B]

Yeah. So the impact on me is it stunts. My professional growth. But I think probably, hopefully, more importantly, it stops me from being as helpful to you as I possibly can be because I don't have all the information that I need to keep things running as smoothly as possible here. And I want to do that because I want to do a good job.

[A]

I don't remember you asking to be part of that meeting. I don't include my assistants in meetings with agents. I just don't do that. I mean, you got to fight to get to a position like me in this world and. And what you do is need to know. I'll tell you what you need to know and know more.

[B]

Okay? So here's the thing. I'm now we're now and seen, because I'm talking now as myself, okay? So Susie, not Carol.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

So I. I would love to talk about this more because what do you do when you are. When it's just someone's personality?

[A]

You're right. Sometimes somebody's personality is actually going to make these conversations impossible. But you know what? There's still upside because you spoke your truth, okay? Instead of holding that conversation, and you never had that conversation with her. But here's the fact are you actually spoke your truth. You made the observation. You. You talked about its impact. You listened to them, and there was no shared solution. But you know what? You still move forward. You spoke your truth.

[B]

Right? Because now I know, okay, there's not gonna be.

[A]

That's right. That instead of guessing, instead of the manipulative insincerity or all the other things, you did what you had to do to set yourself free. Now you know, now you have the data, okay? So she made Carol Merrill would have come back at you and said, you know, need to know. You gotta pay your dues, just like I did. And it might be very hard for you in that position to say. I think in that position, what I would let me just restate. Then I observed that I've been left out of a lot of meetings. And the second thing is that it makes me feel like I can't help you enough and I'm not growing as much as I want. And then even if the. In the listening portion of it, she says that's just the way it is. You can say, well, it looks like we're not going to get to a shared solution on this one. But I really thought it was very important that you hear what I was experiencing and how I felt it was impacting me. And I'm glad we had this time together, okay? Because these conversations look this Is not, you know, I do not broker in hacks or silver bullets or magic pills. I just don't do that. And this is not, this does not always work, but it always, the one part of it that always works is that you have spoken your truth, which in some degree will set you free. Sometimes you get to a shared solution like you and I did, but other times it just, all it does is give you a very important data you needed to know. And as I said earlier, the whole point of this is as you grow, as you discover your values, as you forge forward on the journey to finding yourself, you are by definition going to have difficult conversations. And usually we just avoid those or we go into them unprepared or we willy nilly have them at the worst possible times or we have them when we blow up. You know, we can't take it another minute. And so I'm saying is like there's an alternative. There's a structured alternative. Have a conversation. Tell them you're having a hard conversation and that you want to have one and that you're going to use a four step methodology oils. I'm going to tell you what I'm observing. I'm going to talk to you about its impact on me and maybe on you, because it usually has an impact on the other person. I want to hear your side of it and then I hope we can work to shared solutions. And here's the thing about this. The closer to the actual incident that it occurs, the better, you know, the more timely, like, don't store it up and wait and then blow up. Do this like, okay, this just happened. Hey, before you leave today, can we have a structured conversation about something I'm observing? All right? And this is all radical candor. 99% of the time we don't have these conversations. But if we want to be, if we want to live our truth, we have to start telling other people what our truth is. I mean, do you think you'll use it?

[B]

Yeah, I don't think that I will announce that I'm using it because then that would be really dorky.

[A]

Too cringe for you, huh? Yeah. Okay, I like cringe. I am the queen of cringe.

[B]

No, but I definitely will use it. I, I, you ought to use it.

[A]

I think, I think it's, it's not on. It's not a mistake that you and I look at Trouble coming up with ideas for this podcast about like candid conversations you could have with each other because we have them all the time. I mean, for me, as I said, the challenge is to make sure people understand I'm coming from a place of love. Maybe that's one of the reasons I talk about how much I love people all the time, is that I know that my intensity can be interpreted as just intensity and not as just intensity to fix the world, which is what's really driving me with my value of radius at number two. So I really love this tool. It's. It's. I think of the conversations that I didn't have because of it. I lost a really good friend. It still pains me. She was a dear, dear friend, and I lost her because I could not have this kind of conversation. And here's the situation. You know how you have some friends that you develop because you were first in a business relationship with them. So she was a certain kind of broker to me. I don't want to get more specific than this. It was many years ago, and I met her because she sold me a certain service. And along the way, we became really good friends. And it was. But it was always this kind of awkwardness because she also sold me something that I always needed. And it wasn't drugs. Okay? It was insurance. All right? There, I said it. Okay? So anyway, nobody was thinking it was drugs. Nobody was thinking. That is so true. No one was thinking it was drugs, sadly. Okay, so listen. So it was. There was a moment where I felt like she was just. I think there's no polite way to put this. She was like two in my face. She was like, you know, I had only so much room in my life. I was newly married to Jack. I had four children, and I felt like she just wanted too much of me. And I think I could have actually had this conversation with her. I didn't want to lose her as a friend, but I could have said, hey, can we have a conversation? That might be very hard for her, but I think that there's a shared purpose in this conversation I'm observing. My observation is that you called me five times last week, that you left me a lot of emails that I did not answer, and that you were really mad when I couldn't make it to dinner the other night. The impact on me is that I feel pressured by you to spend more time with you than I have. And it makes me sometimes scared to be with you because I can't give you that. And I feel like the impact on you is you feel me pulling away and you don't understand it. And then I listen to her speak, and we could have actually had that conversation 2030 years ago and I'd still be friends with her. I sometimes see pictures of her because we are sort of actually like connections on LinkedIn. I see pictures of her and I still miss her. I still miss her. I could have done it. I think of the number of times I could have done it. But I will say this. I want to end on a very happy note as we're approaching the end of our time together. I actually used this in a business setting the other day where there was a really difficult decision in front of a group that I'm involved with, a board that I'm on. And there was a very difficult awkwardness in the room about a certain situation. And I actually said. I actually said I want to raise a very difficult issue. I want to raise a very uncomfortable conversation. I hope everybody understands that I'm coming from a place of absolute love for everybody in this room and this organization and that my intentions are nothing but success for everybody involved in what I'm about to bring up. And then I made some observations about something that was happening and I talked about the potential impact on me and everybody in that room. And then I sat back and listened for around 40 minutes. And we got as a group to, like, probably in my business experience, one of the greatest shared solutions. It wasn't my solution. I wasn't the person who made the suggestion. I had one other suggestion, but another person kind of reacting to my suggestion had an even better suggestion. And it was such a win that afterwards, another person in this organization actually came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, thank you for raising this hard conversation that all of us wanted, but none of us could bring ourselves to do. And I thought, because I got oils okay? And I love it. And I think that the truth will set us free to live our values and to live as our most authentic and effective selves. And so I'm really just psyched to share it with everybody. This is like a true blocking and tackling version of becoming you. But, you know, becoming you at its best is super existential and super tactical at the same time. And I think this is a perfect example is that the existential part is we all rather know the truth and we all rather speak the truth. And the tactical part is, damn, that's hard to do. So I'm really grateful to you for coming in and doing this whole exercise with me. I would like to tell finish by telling you a truth that's hard to say to you because you're not going to believe it. What I'm so proud of you.

[B]

Oh, well, that's nice of you to say so.

[A]

You don't believe me? That's so bad. All right. I also want to say this.

[B]

I do. I do.

[A]

I want to say this also. I think that I am proud of you. And I should have said it more often. And I. A hard conversation that I need to have with myself is why I didn't. But I am proud of you. And I'm really glad that you're here. And I look forward to years and years of more candid conversations with you and oilsy, oily conversations with you. I know.

[B]

No, it's good.

[A]

All right, look, becoming you is about finding out who you are and then actually actualizing who you are. And that is never easy. I'm not gonna lie. It is never easy. It's easier for some of than others and sometimes in our lives. But part of it is finding a way to talk about it. And I hope that this little strategy is really useful to you. Go. Here's my. Here's my ask. Go try it today. Go try it today. I'll see you next week. Week. And this show is produced by the amazing and fabulous Mikey Robley, Eliza Zinn, Issa Lampson, and Hallie Reiner. And if you liked what you heard, and I'm on my knees praying that you did, follow me at susiewelch across all my platforms, everywhere, Instagram and LinkedIn and even TikTok. Although somehow TikTok doesn't seem to work for me. And don't forget to leave a rating and a review below because a lot of people have. And I love you people who have. It's not all my children because there's just too many of them. I will see you next time. And until then, keep becoming you, Sam.