112 When You Know You Need to Say Something, But You’re Afraid to Make It Worse

When you need to say something but fear making it worse, the conversation can feel impossible. Learn what makes tough conversations so difficult—and how to return to your Grounded Self before you speak.

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EPISODE 112 TRANSCRIPT

When You Know You Need to Say Something, But You’re Afraid to Make It Worse [00:00]

Welcome back, my friends. I’m Liz Jolley, and this is Episode 112 of The Great Leader, Great Mom Podcast. Today, we’re digging deeper into tough conversations. We’re going to talk about the fundamental question: Why do we call tough conversations tough? Because most of the time, the words themselves are actually pretty simple, right? You can say the words: “I need more help.” “The deadline is not realistic.” “I’m not available for that.”

[00:30]
The sentences aren’t the hard part of the conversation. The hard part is everything we attach to the conversation. We don’t just want to say the words. We want the other person to understand, agree with us, apologize, appreciate us, and see how much we’re carrying—like the load at home. We want them to respond in a certain way that, if you get down to it, is all about making us feel much better. That is a massive amount of pressure to put on one conversation. No wonder we call them tough.

[01:19]

Think about a conversation sitting in your brain right now. Maybe it’s with your boss, your coworker, your partner, or your teenager. You know you want to say something, but right behind that thought comes this wave of dread. So what happens? A lot of us don’t say anything. We just wait. We rehearse it in the shower. It may keep us up at night. We replay it in the car. Maybe we talk to ourselves about it in the car. We write a text and then delete it. We tell ourselves we just need to find the right words. Meanwhile, the thing that drove us to want to have the tough conversation is still there. It’s just leaking out under the surface. For a lot of us, it shows up as faking it. We say, “Oh, we’re fine. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great. I’m doing just dandy.”

[02:04]
We’re making ourselves suffer because we aren’t having these tough conversations. But we also really don’t want to have the conversation because we’re worried about how it’s going to go. There are so many things in a conversation we can’t control. We wish we could, but we can’t control the other person’s reaction, their opinion of us, or our own discomfort. Underneath our desire to communicate, there’s usually a sneaky, very human agenda: “I need them to change so I can stop feeling irritated or annoyed—or so I can feel valued.”

[02:40]

Let’s look at a work example. I’ve had clients tell me, “Liz, tell me the exact words to say to my employee. They’re being super negative, and I need them to stop without getting defensive or quitting.” I totally get it. I truly care about teams. But underneath “I want to help them so they can grow,” there’s often a part that says, “I need them to agree with me so I can feel like a good leader—so I know I’m doing a good job and feel validated.” If you walk into the room needing somebody to respond in a certain way, you’re going to end up bracing, monitoring their face, and trying to manage their reaction in real time. This usually doesn’t work. When somebody does get defensive, we leave thinking, “See, tough conversations just don’t work. I didn’t say the right thing. That was terrible.” But the conversation didn’t fail just because it didn’t control them. That doesn’t mean we weren’t successful in what we wanted to do. Those are two very different things, which we’ll get into in this series.

[03:43] Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed at work. You want to ask your boss about your workload, and then he adds one more thing to your plate. You’re already so overloaded that you can barely attend all the meetings on your calendar. Your brain starts spinning: “How do I push back without looking incapable or difficult?” Notice what just happened. The conversation is no longer about bringing the workload forward factually and talking through priorities. It’s now about your identity. You’re trying to protect your entire sense of worth in that room. Because that feels like way too much to handle in a conversation, you may stuff it down, go home feeling super resentful, and try to do a million things—which is literally not humanly possible. Maybe you end up being short with your spouse or partner.

[04:39] When they ask what’s wrong, you say, “Nothing,” but you’re seething underneath the surface. That brings us to the home example. Maybe you want your partner to do more. You say, “Hey, the dishes are piling up. The kids are melting down. I want more help,” but you don’t want to sound like you’re nagging. If we’re being really honest, you may not just want help with the dishes. You probably want him to see the invisible load—all the things you do at night—and appreciate you. If a simple conversation about the dishes is secretly carrying the job of making your partner fully validate your “good mom-ness” or how well you handle the house, it’s a loaded conversation. It comes with impossible expectations. We can’t control people like that. Sorry. If I could help you control them, I would be doing that. But we humans are more complicated than that.

[05:25] When we’re terrified of the discomfort of a tough conversation, we start reaching for what I call all the wrong vehicles to get us where we want to go. None of these things are inherently bad, but we often use them as defense mechanisms to avoid the real work.

[05:56] The first is outsourcing our words. When we want to have a tough conversation, we may go to Google, ChatGPT, a friend, or HR and say, “Tell me exactly what to say.” I love a clean sentence—don’t get me wrong—but a script cannot clean up your resentment, and it can’t guarantee a perfect reaction from the other person. We’re just not that powerful. A script is a tool. It’s not the work that actually prepares you to have the conversation.

[06:30]
The second thing we do is vent to people instead of cleaning up our conversation before we go in. This looks like talking to everybody about the person without actually talking to the person. You talk to your sister or best friend, the poor mom next to you at the soccer game, your spouse about everything that happened at work, or your coworkers about your boss. It may make you feel validated or give you a little relief, but it doesn’t actually solve the problem. You’re not giving yourself what you really want in these moments. [06:59]
The third thing is hinting and hoping our way into something magically happening and the other person changing. Instead of saying, “I need you to handle bedtime on Tuesdays,” we sigh dramatically. Then we overreact by slamming the dishwasher door or stomping out of the room. We’re hoping all of our not-so-subtle hints communicate what we aren’t saying with our words instead of being our authentic best self and bringing it up. Hinting feels safer, but it isn’t. Frankly, it just adds to conflict, confusion, and all the things we really don’t want. It probably takes us in the opposite direction.

[07:46]

The fourth thing is hiding behind systems. This happens throughout our corporations, where we put feedback into an anonymous system. Or maybe it isn’t anonymous, but it goes from us to the person’s boss—most of the time without any context. Often, that feedback is very vague, as we discussed a couple of episodes ago, so it isn’t helpful. We hope we’ll feel more comfortable if we can type it anonymously and don’t have to explain ourselves or look somebody in the eye. But it doesn’t actually help change anybody. We hope the boss will magically read the feedback about their employee and then change them. That doesn’t work because they don’t have the context. They don’t know. While it may feel slightly more comfortable, it isn’t truly the best way to have the conversation that addresses what you’re after.

[08:49]

The fifth thing is spending so much time overpreparing and mulling it over that we explode. We may write an email and delete it, then rewrite it later. We decide Friday isn’t the right day. Monday isn’t the right day either. Then three months pass, the pressure builds, and we’re ready to explode. One little thing happens, and we snap. Then we call it honesty: “I just spoke my mind.” But honesty without self-awareness is just a wrecking ball. It isn’t helpful.

[09:17]

Here’s the solution: Grounded Conversations. That is where I want all of us to shift from tough conversations. Grounded Conversations are not about dumping, proving your side of the story, or forcing someone to finally understand you. A Grounded Conversation begins before you even open your mouth. You stop and trade in your agenda for a clean reason to speak. You have to clean up your own side—your own brain. [09:46]
Instead of saying, “I need my boss to stop giving me work so I can stop feeling panicked,” try a cleaner reason: “I want to clarify the priorities so we’re aligned on what’s realistic here, and he can understand all the context that goes with this list—because he probably doesn’t know.”

[10:04]
Instead of, “I want my partner to see everything I do, feel bad about it, and apologize,” a better reason would be, “I want to ask for a new agreement at night and stop silently carrying all the resentment.” The new reason might be, “I want to bring this up and talk about how we share this load. What can we do? How can you help?” You bring it up not from resentment, but from a clean emotion—which we’ll talk about next week. The clean reason doesn’t require the other person to have a perfect response. You have to hold space for their response. It puts you back in your lane.

[10:35]
I love the Byron Katie quote that says there are three types of business: your business, my business, and God’s business. A lot of times, we spend all our time in other people’s business or God’s business—or the universe’s business, whatever you want to call it. We have no control there. We need to do our part. That means cleaning up our reasons for wanting to have the conversation and getting honest: “Why am I calling this tough? What do I wish would magically change?” Then we’re going to get specific and tell the truth with kindness to the person—not go talk about them. Afterward, we want to have our own back and hold space for whatever their response is.

[11:21]
Their part is theirs. They may get defensive. They may need more time to process. They may literally never change. But you can still be grounded in any room, no matter what is happening. You can be your authentic, true self. You don’t need another person to respond perfectly for you to live truthfully. You don’t need them to validate you before you’re allowed to belong to yourself. [11:36]
Here’s your practice this week: Think of one conversation you’re calling tough or actively avoiding. Before you ask, “What should I say?” ask yourself, “What am I hoping this conversation will give me? What am I wishing would be different about this?” Just get curious. No shame, no judgment. Don’t beat yourself up over this. [11:56]
If there’s a conversation you keep replaying, dodging, or rehearsing, come to my upcoming Tough Conversations to Grounded Conversations workshop. We aren’t going to hand you a robotic HR script, I promise. I’m going to show you how to slow down the conversation you’re carrying and look at what’s underneath it so you can clean it up before you say the words—from a place that is your authentic, clear self. Go to LizJolley.com/grounded to sign up.

[12:31]
Let’s do the work so we can be our Grounded Self in any room we’re in. With that, take care, everybody. I’ll see you next week.