OTT Issue #19: Hard Conversations Unlock Potential Energy, According to Science

Would you rather travel a shorter distance on a nice, smooth trail, or go farther over hilly terrain??

Honestly, it’s kind of a silly question. Going downhill is especially hard on the knees. Climbing can lead to an undesirable level of sweatiness. Winding paths are unpredictable, but definitely longer.?

In other words, most of us are signing up for short and smooth every time.?

But it turns out that traversing hills and valleys can give us the energy we need to go farther, faster. Because science!

Flat Trail Ball (FTB for short) was probably secretly celebrating before this race started. Clearly, luck was on its side, and the Bumpy Trail Ball (BTB) was going DOWN. I’m sure there’s a fair bit of ball trash talk going on in the video, just at a frequency we humans can’t hear.?

As it turns out, BTB?was?going down, but not in a bad way. Because going through the low points on the bumpy trail converts potential energy into kinetic energy, propelling BTB to the end of the track faster than its trash-talking neighbor.?

The principle holds true across multiple permutations of the bumpiness. In fact, deeper lows can convert more of BTB’s potential energy into the kinetic flavor, pushing it even farther and even faster.?

But these are controlled experiments in a science lab.?

In reality, hills usually come with other challenges. Thunderstorms, bears, snakes, hypothermia – all of these are on the table when you’re looking at a change in elevation.?

When going off the trail (or up a hill) at work, there’s a 100% likelihood that those challenges will include the humans you work with. To navigate them, you need more than a boatload of potential energy. You’ve got to be able to have hard conversations.?

In a non-science-lab setting, effective hard conversations are what helps propel us out of the lowest low points and up to the summit we seek.?

These moments convert potential energy into progress.?

Otherwise, it can be wasted on unproductive arguments, ineffective politicking, or straight-up trying to smash another ball that’s in our way.?

Hard conversations can be hard to define, but one of my favorite descriptions is the ability to disagree without being disagreeable and to argue without being argumentative.?

Like psychological safety, hard conversations won’t just fall into your lap.?

You can always find an excuse to overrule someone and undermine psychological safety. Expediency, efficiency, education (and I’m sure other reasons that don’t start with “e”) – there’s always an out if you look hard enough.?

Likewise, there will always be a way to avoid hard conversations. Most people don’t like having them. So they’ll be very helpful in providing convenient off-ramps to a totally different topic whenever you try to push.?

But, also like psychological safety, hard conversations matter.?

They reveal previously unseen impediments.?

They allow us to give a name to unspoken grievances.?

They make it OK to have different points of view.?

If we have hard conversations often, they become part of the natural background sounds of our team. This means we can confidently follow BTB into the lowest parts of the path, because we know the low points convert our potential energy into awesomeness.?

Let’s imagine this in an “off the trail” scenario. I’m a Marketing Ops director who’s just come back from?MOps-Apalooza?full of ideas for operational improvements. I have three paths I could try to get them done:

1. Flat and smooth
2. Bumpy?without?good hard conversations?
3. Bumpy?with?good hard conversations

The first one looks pretty inviting, and it feels like the safest. But remember what our good friend science showed us: by choosing the path of least resistance, I actually don’t go as far as I could have. And it takes me longer.?

Flat and smooth are easy, but less powerful.?

In the second option, I try to take advantage of the power of the bumps. Maybe I start charging around demanding that people listen to me, shouting about flaws, and getting into the lowest lows.?

Down in the trough, I should be converting potential energy to kinetic, but I can’t ever make the transition. Roadblock after roadblock shows up in my path, and I end up stuck because I’m spending all my time and energy fighting unproductively.?

But if I can repeatedly have hard convos well, I can capitalize on the potential of the trough, get to the top of my next hill, and then repeat the process (that’s option three).?

As a bonus, this cycle is iterative and allows for learning as well. So each dip I enter, and each summit I reach, gets a little easier to manage. (I realize BTB doesn’t really pause and iterate in the video…but it’s a ball. The metaphor only takes us so far.)

Even though the bumpy trail is technically longer and indisputably more difficult, we go farther faster than if we picked the “easy” road.??

But that means proceeding into the trough with both skill and awareness, speaking truthfully but carefully in hard conversation after hard conversation. Bumps are best traveled once you’re sure you can disagree without being disagreement, and argue without being argumentative.?

- Andrea