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Steve:
So you just get the vibe of your office dialed in: free snacks in the break room, ping pong tables, casual dress code. It's fun and everyone is working well together. That's a good thing, right?

Amanda:
I think we've all had the experience of not telling someone something because we were afraid to hurt their feelings. And then when the bad thing that we thought was going to happen happened, you kind of said to them, Yeah, I saw it coming. So what's the person's response? Why didn't you tell me?

Steve:
The advantages of having a little conflict in the workplace on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast?

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Steve:
Hello, everyone. I'm Steve Walker, host of The CX Leader Podcast and thank you for listening. It's never been a better time to be a CX leader. And this podcast explores topics and themes to help leaders like you deliver amazing experiences for your customers. It's an easy tenet to accept that a lack of conflict translates into a productive workplace. The less HR puts out personality fires, the more people can concentrate on their jobs. But a study published back in 2003 by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley found that if the traditional rules of brainstorming, which encourage people not to criticize any presented ideas, are replaced with instructions encouraging debate – and even criticism – productive and innovative thinking may improve. Well I'm excited about our guest today. She's Amanda Ono, vice president for customer experience at Resolver, a risk intelligent platform. And she's going to help us clarify this idea of having a healthy level of conflict in the workplace and why it can be a good thing. So, Amanda, thanks for coming on The CX Leader Podcast.

Amanda:
Really happy to be here. Thanks, Steve.

Steve:
Well, I've got to tell you, I'm already a little uncomfortable here because I'm not really a big conflict guy, but I got to tell you, in my years of experience as a business person, if you're not at least uncomfortable part of the time, you're probably missing things. And I think that's just been sort of a hard lesson for me to learn because I'm sort of a I think of myself as being a nice guy, easygoing, affable. So anyway, I'm really excited to talk about this because I know it's something that that we struggle with at our company and sometimes we even struggle with our with our clients. So before we get into our topic, why don't you just give us a little bit of background, sort of how you got to your position in CX and and tell us a little more about Resolver as well.

Amanda:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, my journey actually came through the people and culture side. You know, growing up recruiting, building training programs, learning programs had an opportunity to implement across several countries some of these programs. Then I joined Resolver about six years ago. So Resolvers, a SaaS company based out of Toronto. And what our platform does is essentially gather all risk data and analyze it in context so people can really understand the business impact of risk. So instead of risk teams being seen as back office and administrative, they're really seen as a driver of opportunity. And I think COVID certainly taught us that understanding risk in our personal and business lives was a pretty key element for success. So we're really proud that our risk intelligence technology has such an impact for companies around the globe. So that's Resolver. And in my journey, I was brought in to to start building people and culture. We did an ambitious thing and acquired three companies and grew by about 120% in a really short period of time. About two years ago, I was asked to oversee customer experience, to take some of the learnings I had on the people and culture side, what I'd built, you know, from a culture perspective, from a process perspective and map it over to our customers. It was a wonderful opportunity for me because of course the confluence between employee experience and customer experience is pretty tight. So that's been my journey over the past two and a half years is, you know, leading a professional services and support learning and operations team to help deliver for our customers.

Steve:
Great. That's a great background. And now I get it. And I really did resonate with the increase in awareness and concerns around risk, certainly accelerated by COVID, but all sorts of other things, cybersecurity and and all the sorts of bad things that are going on. Well, let's come back and talk about conflict in the workplace and how that ties in to your role as sort of a talent developer and now a CX pro. Make the case for why it's a good thing.

Amanda:
For sure. So, you know, I think we've all had the experience of not telling someone something because we were afraid to hurt their feelings. And then when the bad thing that we thought was going to happen happened, you kind of said to them, "Yeah, I saw it coming." So what's the person's response? "Why didn't you tell me?" Right. And so it was it was a bit of a reframe around conflict. And, you know, I've just had some experiences in my career where I think people generally shy away from conflict because they look at it from the lens of hurt versus help. And I've just seen it differently. You know, I've seen conflict as an opportunity to see different opinions. And opinions aren't bad. I think it's what people do with conflict that's bad. So when it's name calling, when it's focusing on the person and not behavior that's bad. So, you know, is. Being a jerk at work bad. Yes, but is actively sharing different opinions through healthy conflict. Good. Yes. And I think we've really seen that how we've been able to grow our company has been based on creating a culture and an environment where we're having debate and having some of this conflict is is really been helpful for the growth of our business. And, you know, I had an old mentor that I always kind of said to me, there's your truth, my truth and the truth. And so I've always seen conflict and, you know, this ability to share opinions vigorously as a way to get to the truth faster. And I think when you're going to scale a business, that's that's the only way to do it.

Steve:
Yeah, I love that. I actually have a mentor that says there's three sides to every story. So…

Amanda:
Right.

Steve:
…it's the same concept.

Amanda:
Yeah.

Steve:
But you know, in kind of in my introductory comments there, I kind of confessed my own concerns about this and I really do believe it. I mean, I believe that healthy conflict without hostility is really, really helpful, particularly when you're dealing with stuff that's ambiguous or that can't totally be explained by facts. And we do that a lot in business, and we certainly do it a lot in CX where we got to make a call to keep things going. So how do you engender a culture where you you can encourage conflict without getting into some of the bad stuff?

Amanda:
Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the head. It's, it's embedding it into the culture. So, you know, when we built our guiding principles on how we want it to operate and we view a guiding principle as, you know, how does culture actually show up? How does your values actually show up? One of the key things we looked at is, is the concept of assume positive intent. Assume if someone has the courage to tell you something, it's because they want the best for you and they want the best for the business. And it might be uncomfortable, as you said, but they're doing it in a really the most caring way you can do it is is with honesty. You know, and Kim Scott, who built the framework, radical candor, does a really good job talking about this. And and certainly some of those concepts are threaded through how we we operate as a business. And so there's the philosophy and approach of things in a guiding principle. But then the next thing is, is really, you know, embedding training. So we do a ton of training on empathy. I think, you know, whether you're an employee or on the customer side, empathy is so important for being able to do conflict in a skillful way because you're really understanding perspective. We use a tool called the Empathy Toys. It's a it's a wonderful tool that that uses play to encourage empathy.

Amanda:
And I think that was a key part of how we really embed it. You know, there's different perspectives and different opinions and it's it's not conflicting if you're coming from a good place. Final thing we really embed it was training on giving and receiving feedback. It really is a skill. You know, I think a lot of times we train on how to give feedback, which again is is part of making it a healthy debate, but we don't always train on how to receive it. What does it mean when you get it? How do you react in a way that is not personalized? How do you react in a way that is looking at the intent? And so we really kind of embedded a lot of these training and coaching practices into our culture. So what that does is eventually normalize that. You're going to share, you're going to have different opinions. It's okay, we're all in it together. And by the way, if you're in a meeting and everyone's agreeing with you, you're probably not having a thoughtful meeting. And so I think that just became embedded in our in our culture as a result of, you know, our guiding principles, our training and how we coach. So that makes the conversations a lot easier for us.

Steve:
I want to just break that down a little bit here, because I heard kind of a three pronged approach here. It's it's assume positive intent, empathy, and then giving and receiving feedback or training more in how you receive feedback. That's kind of your your three legged stool there?

Amanda:
That's that's right.

Steve:
I love this. And we talk about empathy a lot on on the podcast. But I think one of the parts we haven't talked about as much is feedback is really a blessing and particularly if you're a CX pro, right? I mean, that's part of the the strength of what we do for our organizations is we keep challenging the organization and we we avoid complacency. We're trying to keep up with the fast changing market. So, you know, and then I think you're right that I think most people provide feedback that's well intentioned, and so we have to view it that way. How can you encourage some of that to happen more? I know you talk a little bit about the training, but what are some of the cultural things or what are you guys doing to just make sure that this is pervasive in your organization?

Amanda:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, you can have all the philosophies and trainings, but what it shows up in practice is is where it's actually, you know, the hard work. So, you know, I think one thing that we've done really well is, you know, before people attend meetings, we're sending them pre-reading and prep. So when we're critiquing an idea or a concept, it's done asynchronously. The good news about that is it also allows the the conflict to be seen a little bit more as not conflict. It's just a critique. And so sometimes when you're doing it in real life, when you're sharing an idea with someone, people are more apt to feel defensive, they're more apt to feel a little bit perhaps attacked. But when you're providing feedback asynchronously and in your own time, when you're processing, I think it really just gives you that opportunity to to view the criticism as not an affront to you personally, but a constructive way that you're going to get at the better idea. So that's something we've done that I think has been really powerful for us. You know, I've been in a lot of meetings where someone's presenting an idea and, you know, you have an emotional reaction to the idea and then it kind of goes sideways.

Amanda:
But, you know, making sure people are actually processing the idea and the concept is is super powerful for us. I think the second thing we've done that actually, you know, we really help train our our coaches like our managers on doing this well is when we're in meetings, if the temperature is right, it's it's asking people for their perspective. And this is where empathy is so important. So rather saying then saying, Steve, what do you think? Which can feel like a little bit of a callout. It's it's kind of looking at it and saying, you know, from your seat in the UK, how would you look at this? As a new manager, how would you look at this? So, you know, the individuals in the room who are trying to brainstorm around the idea recognize that this isn't a personalized thing, but we're just tapping different perspectives around the room to create the best result.

Steve:
Now, does this start right from the get go with new employees at Resolver? I mean, is this kind of part of your onboarding?

Amanda:
It is, yeah. And I think that's a really important part of how we've embedded it into our culture. I always think that when new hires join your organization, they have a little bit of an emotional backpack of beliefs and feelings they bring into the company. And so for a lot of people, they find the fact that we really encourage this uncomfortable. So I think, you know, it is embedded in our onboarding and we're very quick with early feedback and celebrating those wins. So if we had someone that started and they kind of said, Hey, we used to do it this way at my old company. And, you know, I would just totally look at this in a different light. We encourage that. You know, we say kudos. Thanks for sharing that. We'll give you a little context of maybe why we're prioritizing things differently. But, you know, keep on giving us that opinions and keep on, you know, kind of ruffling the status quo for us. And so I think when you encourage people early, you know, you're not only telling people, you know, philosophically, this is how we want to do this is how we want to be.

Amanda:
This is how we want to show up in in real life. I think part of that, too, is to go back to the idea of training on receiving feedback is modeling the behavior. I think it's super important when you're the receiver of a conflicting opinion, especially when you're in a leadership role, to be conscious about how your reaction and listen we all are can be defensive shows up so you know really trying to be skillful and when we receive that kind of feedback or that criticism or that like conflicting opinion to say things like, I haven't thought about it that way. And, you know, maybe my previous hunch was wrong. I think it's so important to model the behavior from a leadership perspective because it makes it really safe for people to know, okay, I said something and I didn't get yelled at for it. Right. Which is, you know, becomes a reinforcing mechanism where people are going to continue to to share their conflicting ideas.

Steve:
You know, we're always on the lookout for new and exciting ideas, and we'd love to get your thoughts on how we're doing. If you have a minute, go to cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback and complete a short survey. Tell us what content you feel will help in becoming a more effective customer experience leader. Again, that's cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback and we look forward to hearing from you.

Steve:
Hey. My guest on the podcast this week is Amanda Ono, vice president for Customer Experience at Resolver, a risk intelligence platform. And we are having a very fascinating and enlightening conversation about encouraging constructive conflict in the workplace. I keep going to like self awareness part of this too, because I think people come at it from different places. You talked about the jerk. You know, there's there's people that don't mind being a jerk and we all know them.

Amanda:
Yeah, totally.

Steve:
And then there are some people that are so timid and shy that they're just never going to be comfortable with this. So, you know, how can you bring kind of from the two perspectives and get it into a place where you really do make it cultural without, I think, taking away what the individual brings to the organization?

Amanda:
Yeah, that's that's a great point. I do think some of it it's just a lot more natural. I think, you know, some people are just a lot more proactive. They've been reinforced throughout their career to to give feedback. You know, I think for us, it really goes back to how we collaborate and ask for feedback. And so how we ask for feedback again, doing it asynchronously. So if we have an idea and it's in a document, let's look at it independently, let's provide feedback independently and not in flight. Because what it does for people that are not necessarily, you know, as perhaps as extroverted and forthcoming with their ideas is it gives them space and so they can process. They don't need to be doing it in real time, but they they need to be doing it in a way that is meaningful. And so I think just figuring out asynchronous collaboration and how you ask and receive feedback was probably a key part of that because often people, if you're really sensitive to people's feelings, you don't want to say it in a room to other people. Right. However, if it's a document where you're commenting on it and you're being thoughtful in terms of your feedback, it feels a lot more comfortable for people.

Amanda:
So I think that's a key thing we've done. And we've also just again, I think some of it is coaching, coaching people who are on your team to say, you know, you have really good ideas, you're very thoughtful and your approach, is there a way that would be better for you, for you to give us feedback? So I think you do have to also kind of, you know, simultaneously coach someone to be to build their confidence in giving feedback and providing that conflicting opinion, but also just, you know, create space for them and ask them, you know, what should this look like for you? What would be the most comfortable? Because they will build their confidence as they continue to see that their feedback is heard. And it's seen as insightful. And, you know, the conflict wasn't that bad after all. They're going to continue to do it. And so I think it's just creating those those virtuous feedback loops for for folks to gain the courage to to be part of the healthy debate.

Steve:
Yeah. Again, your comments about leadership, I'm going back and forth between sort of the formal hierarchical leadership. And I thought your comment about, you know, take a deep breath, don't don't overreact, don't immediately go to the counterargument. Perhaps you just ask a clarifying question or just pause and say, hey, you know, I haven't thought about it that way. I mean, that's that's really great. And I think that's encouraging. It doesn't mean that the person's ultimately right. But then I was also thinking like, you know, there are times when in my career where, you know, I was wrong and somebody tried to tell me and, you know, had I maybe accepted that feedback a little better, we might be better off. So I love this kind of stuff, this kind of the soft side of of the skills of people skills. And and I think, you know, CX leaders don't necessarily have a lot of formal authority in their organization. A lot of what they're trying to do is more cross functional or it's more collaborative. But I think the same approach is maybe the same approaches are even more effective in that kind of environment. You got to take on that?

Amanda:
For sure. Yeah, I think leading by influence is is a big part of how CX moves things in multi-stakeholder engagements. And and so I think it's, you know, it's it's it's how do you celebrate when a disagreement or a healthy debate got you to the common goal faster. And, you know, we've seen this across the board. You know, there's times where people disagreed and then, you know, through conversation evolved their thoughts. And I don't I think sometimes, you know, I've always experienced where, you know, people have said to me, oh, like we've changed our mind on this. And I always kind of step back and think, have we changed our mind or have we got more information, more opinions, had some healthy debate and it led to a better result. I don't see that as changing our minds. I see that as evolving how we think about things to get to the common goal. And so I think it's. Also just encouraging people to help think about how thinking is actually done to achieve a result. I think there's many organizations, you know, traditional leadership is very binary. You make the decision or you don't, it's right or it's wrong. And I guess one of the things that we've encouraged and I think why we've been successful in building a customer experience team is to kind of sometimes lean into the gray zone that might happen and acknowledge that that's how that's what's going to get us to the answer.

Steve:
Yeah, philosophically, I think this is such a great concept for our CX pros to embrace, and yet it just is. It's just a little bit uncomfortable. Do you have any tips or anecdotes about when things went a little a little haywire here and and how you can bring them back on the line because.

Amanda:
So there's always the feelings, right? Because, you know, when you hire conscientious, smart people, they want to be right. And honestly, typically when you hire leaders, they've been put into that position because they're good at being right. Yeah. So then you come into a culture where you say, you know what, we're going to debate, we're going to maybe look at different perspectives. We're going to actually incite some conflict so we can get to a better result. So, you know, I had a leader that I gave this feedback to to kind of poke the team a little bit more to get these different opinions. And she came into a meeting and she overcorrected on it and basically was going around the room of internal collaborators telling them they're all wrong. So, you know, that's not artful. That's not the way that's going to get you to a good result. It does take training. It does take a, you know, some some kind of skill to do it right. And so I just sometimes you have to break it with humor. You know, in this instance, I asked her if she was the wrong police.

Amanda:
Everyone laughed and it kind of broke her cadence. She understood that she was maybe coming in a little bit hard on it and then pulled it back. So, you know, I think it's I think sometimes humor, you know, kind of when you're in these tense situations, I think one of my superpowers is to kind of say to people, well, this is going sideways. Why don't we take five? Right. Like, I think you have to do it because it's going to happen. But if, you know, you're you know, again, to go back to the philosophy of assume positive intent, if, you know, everyone at the table wants to do great things for the customer, wants to do great things for the business, you're going to get to the right spot, but you sometimes need the space to get there. So I think there's also just a level of of of patience you have to engage with when you're when you're engaging in healthy debate, because it's not always going to get to the answer like immediately, but it's going to get to the right answer.

Steve:
Now, I totally agree with you. You know, sometimes when people are so dug in about what the solution is and they're just going to force it, it ends up taking longer and it's probably going to be less successful. And sometimes if you slow down, work the process, make sure that everybody feels a part of it, that you can modify the position enough so that everybody can feel like they have a piece of the action. It actually ends up being faster and more effective and…

Amanda:
Absolutely, yeah. And anyone who's in CX who's been through change management knows that that's that's how people change becomes really, truly adopted and integrate it. You know, I don't think people wake up in the day and want to have conflict or want to be seen as a jerk. But, you know, if you wake up and you say, you know, I want to I want to share my perspective. My perspective might conflict with someone else, but I know we're going to get to the right spot. It's a totally different mindset to engage in when you're trying to scale an organization and service your customers.

Steve:
Well, let's talk a little bit about how this works at Resolver and kind of with your background and how you've come from more of the talent side. And and this is a way that you attract and develop and talent and then turn that into great customer experience. How does it all work and how does it all play out? What's your philosophy on this for how it impacts your business?

Amanda:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think some of it actually starts in who do you recruit, right? So when we're when we're recruiting for people who sit in our professional services or support organization, we ask them about times where they've, you know, demonstrated courage and they've shared an opinion that was different than or maybe unpopular. And so we actually ask right off the hop because, you know, you can you can definitely develop it. But we want to see that people will have some courage when they come into our organization, because we know that's going to be what helps make people successful in our environment. So I do think it starts and you know who you bring into the organization, you know, as I talked about with onboarding, I think that's a big part of it as well as the training we do. The probably key piece here for us and how we've really ingrained it in our culture is, one, really allowing the managers to be seen as someone that encourages that, that conflict and feedback and those different opinions. And so I think that's been a key part of the training we've developed for our management here as well as, again, as I said, modeling it, you know, how have we modeled the behavior. When the CEO writes a week in review and talks about an experiment we did and how it didn't go as planned and we made a mistake.

Amanda:
People understand that, you know, mistakes and failures are going to be part of the regular course of business. And so I think that's a key thing because, you know, when when when people hear from senior leadership, yeah, we had different opinions and maybe Steve was right after all, it helps people normalize that this is going to happen. And when we're sharing ideas and we're being proactive about, you know, engaging in healthy debate, we're going to get to a better answer. I think even, you know, we're a product based software company, how you build a product roadmap is a lot of conflict, right? You have the resource constraints of how many engineers do you have? What is the product think our customer wants? What is sales think they can sell? What is services think they can deliver? So it's actually kind of ingrained into how many software companies have had to grow because that's how you build a fantastic product.

Steve:
I always learn stuff on this podcast, Amanda, but I've learned a lot today from you and some some really great take home value for me personally as a leader of a small business and also as a, you know, a coach and counsel to not only my colleagues and but my clients and other people in my community and so forth. So, Amanda Ono, what is your take home value? This is the part of the show where I ask every guest to kind of give the one tip or technique that they want our listeners to take back where they could actually apply it and make make some positive change happen. So, Amanda Ono, give us your best tip.

Amanda:
I think when it comes to scaling a really effective organization that delivers for customers and also engages people, it's getting into the mindset that you want to solve problems with each other, not around each other. And I think when you do that, it means that you're going to get to the answer in a more effective way. But to do that, you might have to ruffle some feathers. You might have to have a little bit of conflict along the way, but it's those diverse opinions that's really going to get you to the right answer. So solve problems with each other, not around each other. It means you're going to have to give direct feedback. It means occasionally you might see things that people who are conscientious feel a little bit hurt by. But when you assume positive intent, you're going to get to the best answer for your customers.

Steve:
I think that's a great tip, Amanda. I wrote it down with each other, not around each other. And I think we can all kind of envision some characteristics that we've come across. And I think that's a real simple kind of thought to keep in your head as you're observing how your people work together. So thanks again for being a great guest on the podcast this week. Amanda, I really appreciate you sharing your story.

Amanda:
Thank you. It was a lot of fun.

Steve:
And if anybody would like to continue the conversation, can they find you on LinkedIn or on your company website?

Amanda:
Yeah, LinkedIn.com\amandaono is the best place to find me. I love to connect with people. I love to share the thought leadership. So yeah, I would welcome the opportunity.

Steve:
Again, My guest this week has been Amanda Ono, the vice president for customer experience at Resolver, a risk intelligence platform and really enjoyed hearing her thoughts and and gave a lot of good take home value for our listeners. So thanks again, Amanda, for being being here on the show. Hey, and if you ever want to talk about anything you hear on this podcast or previous podcast or about how Walker could help your business's customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Remember to give the podcast a rating through your podcast service and give us a review. Your feedback will help us improve the show and deliver the best possible value to you, our listener. Check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all of our previous episodes, podcast series and contact information. You can drop us a note, let us know how we're doing, or suggest an idea for a future podcast. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experienced management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at Walkerinfo.com. And thank you for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader, so keep going out there and doing what we do and we will see you again next time on The CX Leader Podcast.

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