3.46 How to prepare for a difficult meeting

If you put off having difficult conversations or get frazzled just thinking about it, then you need to bookmark this episode! I am going to give you my three step process for preparing for a difficult meeting. You’ll learn how to manage your own worries, strategize for success, and leave feeling proud of yourself. 

If you are preparing for a viva or oral defence, check out this episode for more specific advice. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week we are thinking about difficult meetings. We've all had them right where you are, just dreading having to tell your supervisor you haven't done things that you said you were gonna do or waiting for your annual review meetings or whatever it might be, where you find out whether you've progressed enough to go into next year all the way through to meetings where you're just worried it's gonna be a bit uncomfortable. Right?

They're a lots and lots of reasons that meetings can feel uncomfortable. You are worried about actual tangible outcomes from those meetings. Maybe you are worried about what might be said in those meetings and your emotional responses to it. You might be worried about other people's emotional responses to what's said.

You may be worried it's embarrassing or awkward or upsetting or a whole load of different things. And all of those worries are completely legitimate. We've all been in meetings where it has been super uncomfortable and we've not enjoyed that situation. So it's not a big surprise that when we are looking ahead to a meeting that we anticipate might be difficult, we're sort of not filled with joy.

The trouble is what we often end up doing is rehearsing all the ways it could go badly. So we then end up having a horrible time between now and then, and often end up not being as prepared as we could be 'cause often when we experience uncomfortable emotions, we procrastinate. Right? Or we end up super over prepared so that we've come up with a sort of defense against absolutely anything that they could possibly say.

And we go in there with that kind of mindset, or I've gotta stand my ground, I've gotta convince them, I've gotta do whatever. And that doesn't make the meetings go well either. So often these kind of self-protective mechanisms that we understandably do, end up making the meeting more uncomfortable or more confrontational than it needs to be, and certainly not as calm and helpful as it could be.

So in today's episode, we are gonna think about what you can do instead. What it is that we tell ourselves that make these things feel so complicated and how we can focus on different things in order to make these meetings feel less uncomfortable or be better able to tolerate the uncomfortableness in the run up to and in the meeting itself so that we can achieve our goals and more move on to more interesting and exciting stuff. Now this topic today is actually a taste of some of the stuff that I'm going to be teaching and coaching on in quarter three of the membership this year. So if you're listening to this in real time, you still have enough time to get on the waiting list and to join before we begin on the 11th of August, we open for people to actually like pay and stuff from the 4th of August.

So if you enjoy today's episode and you want more advice about managing the relationships with your supervisor, how we can make that work better, get the things that you need, and managing your relations beyond that, whether that's building community, which we're gonna talk a bit about next week or whether it's networking and collaborating across different universities and disciplines, if you need support with all that stuff, make sure you're checking out the membership. So go to PhD Life Coach.com, click on the membership button that's at the top, tell you all about it. And depending on when you're listening to this, you can either jump on the wait list in which cage, you'll get some freebies or you can just join if you're listening in the first week in August. If you are listening to this, I know some people find my podcast and then kind of binge all the past episodes. If you are listening to this going, oh no, it's not August anymore, I missed it. You can join every quarter. So. Four times a year, we have options and each quarter has a different focus but if you particularly wanted this focus on building relationships and all that sort of stuff, it's okay. 'cause when you join, you have access to all the past content as well. So never fear, the PhD Life coach membership is here for you regardless. So let's think about preparing for these difficult meetings, and I wanna divide this into three sections, really.

I wanna think about really understanding what we're telling ourselves about this meeting, because often that's where this all begins, okay? This sort of assumptions that we are making. We are gonna think about how we plan our strategy. For in the meeting, and I've got a bunch of different things I want to talk with you about there.

And then finally, we are gonna think about how we plan for after the meeting, and that's one that we almost never do, but I'll explain to you why it's so important.

So let's start with the assumptions. I want you all to think about a difficult meeting that you've got coming up. Potentially something where you're just, it might even just be your next supervisory meeting. Might be something kind of bigger scale than that. Try and pick something that feels like it might be awkward in the future. And I want you to think, in fact, you grab a piece of paper and start listing all the thoughts you have about that meeting, why you think it might be difficult. What are you really worrying about?

And as you do that, I want you to really ask yourself, what am I assuming here? What am I assuming about what's gonna happen in that meeting? What am I assuming about what they will say? What am I assuming about what we will say? What are you assuming about what they will think? 'cause sometimes that's just as bad as the things they say, right? Even worse, 'cause we don't necessarily know what they're thinking. What will they, what Are we worried that we are going to think? Okay, try and brain dump as much of that as you can. And whenever you think you've run out thing, write it in actual sentences. As always, when we do our reflections, write it in actual sentences.

Let it all fly out of your brain. And whenever you think, oh, I think that's everything. I want you to ask yourself, But what else? What are the assumptions am I making? What am I making this mean? We wanna get out as much as we possibly can. When we let thoughts spin around in our heads, they just magnify inside.

And those of you who have been with me for a while will know that one of the first steps of self-coaching is to be able to get thoughts out of your head so that you can see them, so that you can actually look at them in a slightly more rational way than when they were just sort of banging around inside your head.

So if you need to pause and go do it, go do it. But make sure you come back to the podcast. And what we're gonna do then is we're gonna look at these thoughts. And you are probably gonna see a whole bunch of drama there, which is completely understandable, right? We always have these full on dramas in our heads.

That's fine. There's no big deal there. But we get to recognize them for what we are, and we're gonna ask ourselves, the three questions that I always get my clients and my members to ask themselves about these sorts of thoughts is, are they true? What else is true? And what if it's true? And that's okay. I might even add a fourth one.

I do sometimes also ask, do they help? Okay, so these thoughts you're telling yourself. You're telling yourself that your supervisor's gonna think you're an idiot. They're gonna hate you, they're gonna be disappointed that they're probably gonna tell you that they should never have recruited you. All these sorts of things.

Is it true? Is it actually, how do you know? How can you describe it in a way that might actually be true? Because for some of these, it might be right, your supervisor might be disappointed about something, that might be true. Perhaps. We'll have to think about how we know that, but it might be, are they gonna tell you they should never have recruited you?

Probably and hopefully not. Okay. So we get to figure out which ones do we think are true and whether they're helpful or not. Because sometimes, even if they are true, it doesn't necessarily mean they're helpful. Okay. Telling ourselves, I don't think my supervisor likes me. It's possible. That's true.

Okay. Supervisors are human beings. It's possible that, I mean, I think it's unlikely, but it's possible. But is it helpful to keep telling yourself that they don't like you? Does it help you show up in the way you wanna show up? Almost certainly not, Even if it is true. Okay, then we're gonna ask ourselves what else is true?

Because often when we're filling our brain full of the drama of what might happen, we are not filling our brain with the other things. It might go fine. They might be keen to help. Uh, they are invested in your progress. There's another thought that's probably true and that would probably help more.

Um, I can get through a difficult situation. That might be a thought that is an alternative that feels true, but helps more than the others. Okay? Be careful as usual. We're not aiming for manifestation thoughts, we're not aiming for. I can handle any situation at all. I don't feel emotions.

We're not here for that. This could be awkward. We just need to tell ourselves that we're capable of doing awkward things. And then the third one as usual, is what if it's true? And that's okay. It might be true that your supervisor's gonna be disappointed. It might be true that you'll have to completely rewrite this draft or whatever.

In what ways is that okay? And by, okay, I don't mean up not upsetting. I don't mean not a bit of a pain. I mean, how will we be okay if that's true? And many, many of the things we tell ourselves, you know, it will be really embarrassing. It's like, yeah, it might be. Maybe it'll be really embarrassing. But how could we be okay anyway?

So we are sort of planning just so that we are not going into this with this enormous amount of drama because when we have this enormous amount of drama feels horrible, changes the way we prepare, changes the way that we act in the meeting and after the meeting. So it is not always easy, especially with your own stuff, right?

It's always easier to see how somebody else is being a bit dramatic, but you can kind of peer into those thoughts, pick them apart a bit bit and go, you know what? These ones are probably true, but I can deal with it. These ones I need to stop telling myself 'cause they're probably not true. These ones I don't tell myself very often, but actually probably are true and help. So we get to sort of tease it all apart.

The next step, step two is that we're gonna start to strategize for this meeting. And no one really teaches you how to do this. And in fact, some elements of this I did quite a automatically. So the sort of pragmatic, what am I gonna say? What solutions am I gonna bring?

That kind of stuff. I generally did that. Okay. I didn't find that stuff more difficult. But we're also gonna think about how we want to show up as a person. And this one I definitely did not do. I remember my very good friend, Jenn Cumming, who friend of the podcast, um, who. Sports psychology professor, absolutely genius.

One of my, you know, really, really close friends and I remember when we were junior academics together, her saying to me that before she goes into a meeting or whatever, she thinks about the other person and thinks about what they were from that meeting and thinks about how best to present her ideas in order to make them convincing to them.

And how does she wanna come across it? I dunno, just being like. Oh my God, this is, gee, do people do this? Because I was very much a steam in there and be as persuasive as I humanly knew how and not a lot else. The idea of I'm gonna hold back so that they think it's their idea, or I'm going to give them space to raise their concerns rather than me just give them all my opinions.

Absolutely like completely unknown to me. So if you're like, oh, I don't think about this. Don't worry, I didn't either, but I've learned and it's really good. It really, really helps. So what are we going to think about? Well, the first thing we are gonna think about is when we want to have this meeting, if it's not already booked, because often what I see more than anything is that people put off having difficult meetings. They sort of feel like, think, oh, things might resolve themselves. It might not be an issue. Maybe they'll change.

Maybe they'll stop. Maybe it'll blow over all those things. My first tip is to err on the side of early action. If you've got an awkward conversation. It is not likely to get less awkward. Now it's slightly different, i'm not talking about, you know, if somebody's just left the room in a huff, you don't have to go steaming in.

Give them time to chill out. Right? But if you are sort of thinking, Ooh, I've gotta tell my supervisor I haven't done this piece of work, or I need to tell my supervisor, I don't understand that, or I need to get feedback on this piece of work, but I'm worried they're gonna tell me it's rubbish, or any of those things, I want you to err on the side of early action.

Because usually what we are doing is we are simply procrastinating experiencing those uncomfortable emotions, and most times it will get resolved more quickly and more effectively if we can get on it sooner. So err on the side of early action. 

The second tip I have here, and this is gonna sound like a funny one as usual, but my second tip is focus on managing your own emotions, not other people's. And by managing emotions, I don't mean not having any, you know, I've cried in meetings, I've got cross in meetings, I've got frustrated in me, you know?

We don't have to not have emotions. I don't mean that, but what I mean is often our obsession is not disappointing the supervisor, not frustrating the supervisor, not making the supervisor cross, not making the supervisor, all these different things, right? We are trying to manage their emotions about the stuff that we want to talk about, and the problem is other people's emotions are really, really hard to manage. You can be considerate, right? I'm not saying don't be considerate, but when we're trying to tiptoe around other people's emotions, we often end up making it worse. Yeah. If we end up trying not to disappoint our supervisor, we end up sometimes not being honest and authentic about the problems that we're having, which means they can't help us, which means we get further behind, which ultimately could be potentially more disappointing.

I am not saying just steam in there and say whatever you want, but your supervisors, the people you're having difficult meetings with are adults. Okay? They are adults who are more or less able to regulate their own emotions. Some of 'em may be better at it than others, but it is certainly their responsibility to regulate their own emotions, and it is not your job to prevent your supervisor ever being disappointed or ever being cross or ever being upset.

So what do we do instead? What we do instead is thinking about who do we want to show up as? How do we want to come across in this meeting? Now, again, this doesn't mean coming across as perfect. I would really, really encourage you that vulnerable can be a really useful way to show up in a meeting and a really sort of effective and healthy way to show up in a meeting where you are able to say, I've actually found this bit really difficult. Now we don't have to go in there with all our drama saying, oh, and I'm so scared this, and please reassure me, but we can go in there saying, I've found this bit really hard and this is what I want the support with.

So think about how do you wanna come across in this meeting? Do you wanna come across as clear? Do you wanna come across as calm? Do you wanna come across as thoughtful? What might it be? What we get to think about is how do we present that? Now I just really wanna reiterate this point about emotions 'cause it can get misunderstood and I have a strategy as well. So often people think that if they get emotional in a meeting, then that's the worst thing in the world. And to be honest, people tend to think that crying in a meeting is the worst of the worst because our gorgeously, patriarchal society has somehow convinced ourselves that crying and sadness are bad emotions where anger and.

Things like that, frustration are somehow more socially acceptable to express. I don't know how this has happened, but anyway. That's beside the point. I am not saying don't express emotions here at all. What I am suggesting though, is that you a focus on how you want to come across, but b, also don't use your emotions as a way to demonstrate how serious a problem is.

I have experienced many, many times from both staff and students to be honest people coming to me and almost having geared themselves up to emotionally tell me how awful this is, how emotionally difficult this has been for them, dah, dah, dah. And that's fine. Sometimes you may feel you want that release, but I want you to think very carefully.

And I actually talked to a client about this recently. In fact, it was the winner of one of my, the giveaways that I did to celebrate a hundred thousand downloads of this podcast. I talked to them about it and if you go to a meeting intending to share all of your emotions in order to get them to see how bad this is, for example, I want you to think carefully what you want from that meeting, because if you present emotions as the problem, the problem is I'm overwhelmed. The problem is I'm stressed. The problem is I'm tired.

You'll get likely solutions to those emotions. You are likely to get reassurance. You are likely to get kind of care and attention. If that's what you want. If that is what you're actually looking for, happy days, let's go. But if what you actually want is less work or a longer deadline or less pressure or those sorts of things, then actually it can be really useful to take the logistics rather than the emotion.

This doesn't mean not telling them you're stressed. Okay, and what this means is really reminding them that your anxiety, worry, stress, disappointment, all those things, those are your emotions and they're things that you can look after. I can care for myself while I'm stressed and upset and things like that. That's fine. You don't need to look after me. I can look after myself. But the reason this is so pronounced is because I don't have time for X, Y, Z because these things are filling my time. That this thing ended up taking longer than intended, and therefore that other thing has been impacted. Okay.

Notice if you're presenting it in that way, you're saying, this is having an emotional impact on me, but I don't need you to reassure me for that. I can look after myself. The bit I need help with is the logistics of how there can be less pressure or less work, or more time or more resource, or whatever it might be in the future.

So think very carefully about what you want for the meeting, and think very carefully about how you want to present to give yourself the best opportunity of doing that. Now part of that is understanding your supervisor, right? What I want you to really do is look for win-wins, okay? I want you to really look for the ways that actually, things that would help you would probably help them too, because often we are pretty entangled in these meetings, right?

Whether they're your examiners or whether they're your supervisors, advisors, whoever, we are pretty entangled. Often what's good for us is good for them too. So yeah, definitely think about what are they looking to get from this meeting? What are their priorities? What would make this a useful meeting for them?

But you don't have to manage their emotions. You get to manage your own emotions, come across in a way that you think is authentic, in a way that you think is appropriate and professional in the way that you want to bring things forward and they get to respond to that.

Another part of the strategy is often we get told bring solutions, not problems. And in many situations, that's great advice. So part of your strategy can be being able to say, if I was solely in charge, could make decisions. These are the steps I would take, these are the things I would do. I would drop that, I would postpone that. I would do this first, for example. Okay, so going with solutions demonstrates that you've thought it through, that you're not just looking for them to fix everything for you. It gives you the opportunity to put across the stuff that you think would best suit you, so you can kind of prioritize the things that you think would be useful rather than just what they come up with.

And it just gives them the impression that you've planned for this meeting. Right. So when we're thinking about how you come across, one of the things I'm sure all of us want to come across at is prepared. And coming with solutions rather than problems is one of the ways that you can do that.

However, and again, this came up in the coaching session that I did recently. The one thing I want you to be cautious of is where the problem is something that is way beyond your pay grade and seniority. Okay. So for me, for PhD students coming to me with a, I'm behind on my recruitment and my data collection problem, I absolutely want them to come to me with potential solutions.

This is their project. They're gonna be implementing the solutions. I'll brainstorm with them. I'll help come up with ideas, I'll make suggestions if I've got experience that will help. But I want them to come with solutions because this is their project. I want 'em to at least thought about it.

However, if they come to me and tell me that the problem is that someone in the lab has been behaving inappropriately to them or that they've been having bullying emails from a member of staff, or that a, there's not enough funding to fix the piece of kit that they need, you don't need to come with solutions for that.

You need to come with observations and implications. So let me know what's happening, let me know what effect it's having. But the solutions to those things are my problem. They're the academics problem, and often they're the people above me's problem, right? So when it's stuff about staffing, when it's stuff about how you're being treated by people, when it's stuff about resources.

Please don't think that you have to bring a solution for those things. Your only job in those situations is to raise awareness of the people who can do something about it. Okay, so we are taking early action. We are focusing on managing our own emotions. We're thinking about how we wanna show up at the meeting. We are bringing solutions as well as problems, as long as the problems are things that are kind of within our pay grade, as it were. And we are gonna look for win-wins. We're gonna look for ways that this will be helpful for both parties. Those are my big tips for preparing for the meeting itself.

Now, the third thing I mentioned was one that I said almost everybody doesn't do. It just never gets talked about, and this is planning for what you are gonna say to yourself after the meeting. Now those of you who have listened to my episode about preparing for your viva will have heard me talk about this, but it is true across any meeting, any difficult situation.

You can apply it to doing presentations, doing conference talks, anything like that. Anything where essentially you are kind of building yourself up to something you're a bit worried about. One of the worst things that make these situations feel super stressful is knowing that if it goes badly, if the person doesn't react the way we want them to, or if we say something, we regret that we are gonna rehearse that for the rest of our lives.

Right? We've all done it. Okay. We've all got stories in our head. Where we're absolutely mortified by something that we did or something that we said or whatever, and we go over and over them and use it as evidence that we are intrinsically useless, right? We don't have to do this. We don't have to do it.

And what you can do when you are preparing for a meeting in advance of it actually happening is you can decide here and now that however that meeting goes, you will be kind to yourself afterwards. Now, does that mean we don't reflect on it and learn a bit? No, obviously not. We can still reflect on it. We can still decide, ah, it might have been better to do this than that. That's fine. But we are gonna do that in a kind, supportive, loving way. Not a, oh my word, you idiot. I can't believe you said that kind of a way. Right. We can decide that yes, we'll be reflective, but we are gonna be kind, we're gonna be supportive. And importantly, this is not only if you do your best, I want you, and this, any of you who still have exams to do or any of those sorts of things, I want you to remember this.

Most people reassure you with, oh, well as long as you did your best, then it's okay. No, we are not gonna reassure ourselves with that because sometimes you won't have done your best. Or at least you won't have done what you think your best is. You did what you were capable of in the moment, but you may not be able to tell yourself that it was your best.

And I want you to be kind to yourself even if you haven't done your best, even if it wasn't your finest hour, okay? Even if you did lose it and say something you regret or whatever, I still want you to be kind to yourself, and that is important for so many reasons. It's important 'cause it makes it easy to do things in the future.

If you know that you are not gonna beat yourself up for messing things up. You can try literally anything. Yeah, if you know you're gonna be kind to yourself, if you do the worst karaoke ever, you can go do a karaoke, happy days. You can try these scary things because you know you'll be nice to yourself afterwards.

You know that your self worth doesn't have to be contingent on how it goes, so it makes it unbelievably easier to be brave. It also makes that post meeting period much, much nicer, 'cause you're not gonna spend it beating yourself up. Now will those thoughts still come up? Probably, but. We know that we are not gonna feed them, we're not gonna reinforce them.

And we've got other thoughts to divert ourselves to like it went how it went, and I can resolve what I need to resolve, for example. Then we can actually spend much less time beating ourselves up. And then the third reason that's so useful is it makes it so much easier to fix things. If you did screw something up.

So, especially people who've got a ADHD got autism, things that mean that maybe sometimes in the moment you don't react the way that you ideally would react. Okay. The way that you want to, it's not from your best self. Okay? Sometimes we get a bit dramatic, a bit reactive, a bit rejection sensitive, whatever it might be.

Now, if we are super kind to ourselves afterwards, not saying that that behavior was okay and that we're just gonna do it willy-nilly and people can put up with this, but if we don't tell ourselves that it makes us a terrible person, it is enormously easier to go back the next day and go, yeah, I got a bit worked up there, didn't I?

Really sorry, that's not how I want to show up. I hope you understand. How can we move forward, makes it so much easier. Whereas if you are at home telling yourself that you are a terrible person, that everybody hates you forever, so much harder to go and fix it afterwards. To go and have those conversations.

To go and be vulnerable. To be vulnerable, you do have to have a sense of psychological safety that actually I've made a mistake. I'm gonna resolve my mistake to the best of my ability, but I don't hate myself for my mistake. So those are your three big clusters of tasks. Understand where all this worry is coming from, what assumptions are you making, what thoughts are you having, and let's whittle it down to stuff that is true and is helpful.

Then we're gonna strategize for the meeting. We're gonna plan how we can what we want outta the meeting, come across the way we want to and look after ourselves in the process. And then we are gonna plan for how we're gonna look after ourselves afterwards. That can be pragmatic too. It's not just about what you say to yourself.

It can be things like, if you know you are having a difficult meeting, do not expect yourself to come straight out of it and then get on with writing your discussion section. Give yourself some time for the come down. If you are somebody who just needs to sort of get it outta your system. Go to the gym, go for a walk.

Plan to meet a friend. Have somebody pick you up so you don't have to drive home. So you've got somebody that you can moan to. Think about how you can have something afterwards that will help you process the emotions that you've experienced and look after yourself and make it pleasant. Those are my three tips planning for a difficult meeting. If you are not already on my newsletter, get yourself on my newsletter. In fact, if you're not on my wait list yet, why not jump on the wait list for the membership if you're not, message me, find me. I'm on Instagram, I you can respond to my newsletter, all that stuff. Lemme know what it is that's preventing you from wanting to join the membership because I think, and I am biased, but I think that all PhD students should be in my membership.

So if you don't think it's for you, just lemme know why. Okay? It's a deal. And then I might try and persuade you why I think it actually is, but it would also just be super useful feedback for me too. Thank you all so much for listening, I hope you found that useful and I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com.

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