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Powerful Women Rising - A Business Podcast for Female Entrepreneurs
Welcome to Powerful Women Rising, the no-nonsense, laugh-out-loud podcast for heart-centered female entrepreneurs ready to make an impact (and a profit) while staying true to themselves!
Forget cookie-cutter, one size fits all advice. Each episode provides customizable advice and strategies to help you grow and scale your business - from leveraging authentic connections to mastering the art of marketing without feeling like a salesy weirdo. Plus, you'll hear insightful interviews with experts who shed light on those sneaky blind spots in your businessand dish out practical, no-BS advice for making more money in a way that feels good.
Tune in and transform the way you do business – because when women rise together, the sky's the limit!
Powerful Women Rising - A Business Podcast for Female Entrepreneurs
Navigating Conflict: Building Stronger Business Relationships w/Dr. Donna Marino
You can’t build a successful business without relationships - and you can’t have relationships without conflict.
In this powerful conversation, I’m joined by Dr. Donna Marino, a licensed clinical psychologist and family business consultant, to talk about one thing most female entrepreneurs avoid (but desperately need to get better at): CONFLICT.
The truth is that your ability to navigate conflict directly impacts your long-term business success. Whether it’s with a client, contractor, collaborator, or vendor, knowing how to stay grounded and handle hard conversations is a leadership skill we all need.
In this episode, we talk about:
• Why conflict is a normal and necessary part of doing business
• How emotional dysregulation hijacks your brain - and what to do instead
• How to prep for tough conversations so they don’t spiral into drama
• How to build your "conflict courage muscle"
If you've ever bitten your tongue, avoided an issue, or said “it’s fine” when it really wasn’t - this episode will give you the tools (and the mindset) to handle things differently next time.
Links & References:
- Join us at our next PWR Virtual Speed Networking Event!
- For even deeper connections, check out the Powerful Women Rising Community!
- Connect with Dr. Marino on LinkedIn
- Listen to Dr. Marino's Courageous Conflict podcast!
Connect with Your Host!
Melissa Snow is a Business Relationship Strategist dedicated to empowering women in entrepreneurship. She founded the Powerful Women Rising Community, which provides female business owners with essential support and resources for business growth.
Melissa's other mission is to revolutionize networking, promoting authenticity and genuine connections over sleazy sales tactics. She runs an incredible monthly Virtual Speed Networking Event which you can attend once at no cost using the code FIRSTTIME
She lives in Colorado Springs with two girl dogs, two boy cats and any number of foster kittens. She loves iced coffee, Taylor Swift, and Threads.
Hello Dr Donna. Welcome to the Powerful Women Rising podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here today.
Speaker 1:Yes, me too. We're talking about a really interesting topic today, and I think this is a great topic because it's not one that you often think of when you think of entrepreneurship or running a business, but it's something that comes up a lot, that I feel like people don't talk about a lot, so this is going to be really good. Before we dive in, tell everybody a little bit about you and about what you do.
Speaker 2:Sure, my name is Dr Donna Marino and I'm a licensed clinical psychologist, but what I do now is I do advisory and consulting with family businesses, and so I kind of do the marriage between business and psychology and help families navigate all of the dynamics and history and influences that comes through being a family and enters into that family business.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's such a specific niche too, which is very cool, but I also think it applies to a lot of different business relationships too, especially what we're talking about today with conflict. Like I, have friends who had business partnerships that they were in for many, many years that ended badly. I have people who were in business partnerships for many years that ended nicely, and even just relationships with clients or potential clients or former clients. There's going to be conflict everywhere, and so I'm excited to talk to you about the best ways for us to navigate that, whether it is with our family, in our business or with other people.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. And I would even say, melissa, that solopreneurs still have conflict. It comes up with their vendors and the people they contract with and the programs they buy to grow their businesses. So unfortunately, we can't get away from it, so we might as well just dive in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can attest to that, because I have tried to get away from it and it turns out you can't. Full disclosure. I am like about as conflict avoidant as they come, so this is going to be great. I don't even like to say the word. So okay, when we are talking about conflict in a relationship, what are some tips that you have for navigating that conflict or communicating about that conflict or dealing with it in a way that we can do our best to try to preserve the relationship?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I know the quick pat answer is empathy. Right, but empathy is hard and do we really know what it is? It's sort of one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. What I think, before you can even have empathy, is to be able to not make assumptions, to be able to kind of create some kind of neutral ground there where you can say, actually, I don't know how that person is feeling, I can't put myself in their shoes yet because I don't know how they're feeling. I don't know what happened to them on their way walking into my office or before they picked up the phone to call me, giving people some grace by being more of a blank slate and thinking I'm telling myself a story already that's got me riled up as to why this person did this or said this or what they meant. But that's just my story. Can I get the facts? Can I see what's going on for this person? And try to just kind of erase that whiteboard before you start talking.
Speaker 1:How do we do that, though, if we're having a lot of emotion? Yeah, specifically, a lot of anger.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know you can't run into something when you're high with emotion. When you get high with emotion like that, your frontal lobe just basically shuts down. You go into fight, flight or freeze. Your whole sympathetic nervous system is fired up and what the body does is it shuts off those logical thinking areas of the brain and all your limbs and everything are actually what are getting the blood circulation and all of that because it's preparing you for a fight and to either get out of there or to go to fisticuffs.
Speaker 2:So while you're in that heat of that anger, that's really not the time to do anything. Don't make a decision, don't have a conversation, walk away, go for a run, go for a drive if you can do it safely. But do something first as a release and then when your brain comes back online again, then you can approach it. But a lot of times, whether it is panic, we tell people to breathe. Well, that's great, but we've just got to get through the moment. And if they can breathe, great. But we have to work at just resettling that nervous system before we can move into a logical mind.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Okay, so I have gone for a walk or I've pet the cat or listen to music. Whatever I'm going to do, I've calmed down a little bit. I'm able to come into the conversation thinking like, okay, let me not make assumptions, let me just see where this person's coming from and, you know, kind of check it out and see if maybe what I'm assuming is actually true or maybe it's not. So what do I do then when I go into that conversation and I'm trying to come from that place, but the other person is coming from the like, angry, accusatory, defensive place?
Speaker 2:I'm going to say there's one more step before you walk into the room, right? So now you've calmed down, you can organize your thoughts and you need to think about okay, if other days of the week and other moments I actually like this person, respect this person, believe they have good intentions, asking yourself kind of the question well, if that person is truly all those things, why would this happen? And just getting yourself into a place of knowing that we're coming from good intent, trying to consider what is our mutual purpose in this, what is our mutual ground. You know, if you work together in a business, can I agree that we both want what's best for the business, and maybe I don't agree with what they did, but at the end of the day, we both have this in common.
Speaker 2:And then next, asking yourself what do I want out of this conversation? You need to walk in there knowing that, regardless of how that person's feeling, how angry they might still be, what's my intention? What do I want? What do I have control of to influence that? And then, what do I need to let go?
Speaker 2:Another thing I'll throw in there and I know it's a lot is really thinking about the person who's on the other side and how do they communicate? What do you know about them as far as their triggers, their defenses? It's really I think about, with leadership, any relationship if there is something I want, how do I need to communicate it to get it? It's not necessarily the way we would communicate it. That person may take in information differently than me, they may process longer, they may be more emotional, all of these things. So it's really, you know, if I had to summarize all that, it's really kind of zoning in on who it is you're approaching, what it is you have in common and what it is you want, and then you get to get into the room.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if I'm in the room now, I've done all those things, and do you ever recommend setting some ground rules before you have the conversation? Like listen, I know this is a very emotionally charged situation. You're frustrated, I'm frustrated. Can we agree that we're going to sit here until it's resolved and no one's going to storm out? Or can we agree we're not going to yell and call each other names, especially if that's something that has happened in the past? You know this is a thing that happens with this person. Is that something that's helpful?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Is that something that's helpful Absolutely. And you know, when I facilitate family meetings, I have a list of ground rules that I print out and they have to sign off on that they agree to. So in certain contexts that are more formalized, like saying okay, I really need to have this conversation with you I know that this triggers both of our buttons I want to agree that we'll talk about behaviors, not character or person. We will keep it in the first person as much as we can. This is what I saw. This is what I felt. Is that what you intended? And if you need a break, please, if any, if either of us needs a break because we're overheated in this, let's say I need five and then come back. And if you come back and still need five, you can do that, but there's no storming off and there's no just forgetting about it and not resolving it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and then when you storm off, I don't have to wonder like is he coming back? Are we still having this conversation? Do I keep sitting here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this works with spouses, it works with kids. It's, you know, relationships. There's often one person who escalates and attacks right, goes the more aggressive, and I don't mean like physically attacks, but they're all riled up. And then there's the person who hates the conflict and shrinks and will shut up and like anything to make this over and they shrink right. So you have to find space for both those people.
Speaker 2:If that person is getting too overwhelmed to be able to engage, they need to be able to call timeout. But that person who's pursuing, if you don't give them a, I'm taking a timeout. It doesn't mean I'm not listening, it doesn't mean we won't finish this, but I am getting so flooded I need to reset myself so that person knows you're not blowing me off, we will finish this. It may not be as quick as I want, because usually that person is just so eager to get to the end of it and they want to engage and the other person is just like I said they're flooded, their physiology can't take anymore and that's why they start shutting down that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I feel like all of this sounds good in theory and I picture like I'm a very emotionally intelligent person who's good at relationships and communication and I'm having a conflict with another person who is also very emotionally intelligent and good at relationships and communication. So we're going to follow these rules and we're going to do these things and it's going to be great. How do we handle it when it's not great?
Speaker 2:You know there's several ways For one. You may have to do it in small snippets, kind of like I'm saying where you okay, we'll come back to this tomorrow. Sometimes you need that objective third person, right, so a facilitator. It could be a therapist if it's a marital relationship, or just another non-partial person who's in the office or you know, depending on what that relationship is. You don't want to put people in the middle, but sometimes we need help having those conversations.
Speaker 2:I think that what I love in coaching is working with both the individuals and the people together and you really get a picture of where each person is coming from and what they really mean and what they're really trying to say and what you know what insecurities are getting kicked up, and then you can help facilitate that conversation because you kind of know who they are. But you know, when it's just the two of you, you can do things too, like you know, taking it off site into a more pleasurable activity or something, just trying to diffuse those defenses and really rely on the relationship. If there's a relationship under all that fighting, there's a good bedrock. Keep coming back to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, because that's one of the things that I teach is that businesses are built on relationships, right?
Speaker 1:Regardless of what kind of relationship it is, whether it's a referral partner or a client or a vendor.
Speaker 1:If you've put in the work and the effort to have that foundation, I think it's going to be easier to navigate these conflicts together. And, to your point too, you have more of an understanding that, like, okay, we both are on the same page in terms of what we're trying to accomplish here. Like, if it's a vendor that you're having a conflict with, you both have the same goal of serving your clients well. Right, they want you to be happy. You want your clients to be happy, because that's how we get referrals and we get more business. We're all in that together. So how do we then make sure that you are able to accomplish your part, I'm able to accomplish my part, and if you have that relationship, you know that that person is not trying to screw you over. You know that they are trustworthy. You know that they are just as invested in you coming out of this happy as they are themselves coming out of it happy, and I think that would probably make a big difference too.
Speaker 2:Definitely, and I think, as women, more of the problem starts because we do avoid conflict, and when we hire our vendors especially us, you know, solopreneurs we hire within a close network. We want to help each other, we want to help each other grow our businesses, and then when something's not quite right, it's very uncomfortable. We like that other person, we know them, we trust them, and then, though, if we don't say something first, we rob our friend who's running this business, an opportunity to grow and to fix something in a safe environment, before it happens with a client that might not be as gracious or understanding. So a lot of it is really dismantling our beliefs around conflict and what it is and what it does, because a lot of women it's. You know, I like this person, I don't want to hurt her feelings, but we can't get better and grow and, you know, avoid more risky situations if we're not open enough to share with each other.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and I love what you said about kind of reframing it as you're actually doing the person a favor in some ways by addressing the conflict, because I think you know I know a lot of people are like me that we feel like, well, if I say something that's mean, like I'm much better about this than it used to be. But I remember I took my niece out to lunch one day and she was probably eight or nine at the time, and her lunch came with a little bowl of ice cream and she ate like a couple bites of it. And then she was like I'm really full. I'm like, well, you don't have to eat it all. And she said, no, I'm going to eat it because I don't want to hurt his feelings, meaning the waiter who brought her the ice cream.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, Honey, I promise that waiter does not care if you eat the ice cream or not, Like he's not emotionally invested in this ice cream. But we have this feeling, I think, especially among women and we could get into the whole patriarchy and where it comes from but that addressing conflict or expressing that we're unhappy with something is mean and we're going to hurt people's feelings and we need to just be nice and not rock the boat. But I love how you reframed it as like giving other people the opportunity to learn, to grow, to make it right with you. Otherwise you just walk away and are like okay, well, I'll never work with him or recommend anyone work with him ever again, and that's not fair to that person either.
Speaker 2:Right and you never gave them a chance to fix it. And now you have a bad taste in your mouth. You won't recommend them and that can be the thing that damages your relationship, because there's maybe some passive-aggressive stuff coming out or maybe some avoidance coming out. I have to tell you there's a family business near us that is a bakery, and the first cake I ordered from them was just amazing. It is now my favorite cake ever and so I had high expectations. I ordered our next cake and it was for my daughter's birthday and she wanted this specific heart cake and it looked phenomenal. But when I cut into it, it wasn't what we ordered. On the inside. They had made a mistake and I went back to them and I told them and they credited me. I just told them. They credited me the whole amount of this very expensive cake and I was like no, you don't have to do that, we ate it. It just wasn't. And they were like nope, and they refused to not give it to us.
Speaker 2:I wrote them the most glowing review on Google, put up all the pictures. I still go there. I refer them to everyone, right? So here's this like mistake that I could have been like well they were. They were good the one time, but then they I could have been like, well, they were good the one time. But then I brought it up and it gave them a huge opportunity, because I get alerts all the time about how many people have looked at those cake pictures. If you can reframe it that, this really is an opportunity and it may be uncomfortable for me, but it's actually a gift to that person.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Now if you get the courage to address it and you try to do them this favor because you're such a nice person, and they tell you to pound sand, that's different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a big piece of it. This has been coming up a lot in my meetings with people is learning how to do what you have control over have the conversation and let go of all the stuff you don't. And that is very hard but it's very life-changing to do that, to know. I came, I brought this to their attention and gave them an opportunity to fix it, to make it right, and they chose not to. Or I entered this really high-conflict conversation at work where this person called me out in front of everyone in a meeting and it wasn't even my mistake. They just didn't understand the process. I offered the opportunity to fix it. They chose not to. Okay, now I know the character of that person and I can make better choices for myself. You know looking at that, but it's hard because people want to enter these conversations and know what's going to happen and that they are guaranteed the result they want if they have the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we want to know it's going to go exactly how we planned it in our minds, otherwise I'm out. So I think there is an element of this that I want to touch on before we wrap up too. That is about kind of what's going on inside, and I know there's a lot that goes into avoiding conflict or being able to face conflict, but I think a big part of it is courage and just developing that courage to give yourself a voice to say what you need to say, and particularly for women, who are in male-dominated fields, I would imagine that's even more difficult. So what advice do you have for entrepreneurs, women in particular? To start to develop more of that courage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a muscle like anything else. So you don't go to the gym and lift a weight one time and be like, yes, I am strong and I never have to do that again. Unfortunately, right, unfortunately, it's something you develop over time and you can take it in tidbits, speaking up in a meeting or having a private conversation, starting with someone who feels really safe to you first, you know, because some women, even in close relationships, can't speak up and say those things. Sometimes it's the close relationships that are the hardest too. So picking some of that low hanging fruit, it can even be as simple, as I know women who someone will bring, like the wrong food to the table or the wrong order oh, I said no cheese and there's cheese on this. Well, I'll just eat it anyway. As simple as I'm sorry, this wasn't my order and sending it back. So looking for those opportunities for growth and not expecting yourself to be able to do it all at once, but to make these changes, and setting your mind on continuous improvement rather than an overnight like whammo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, and I can see that in my own. I mean, I totally was that woman. I will just eat it without the cheese, I will. I don't know what that is, it's not what I asked for, but I'll eat it anyway. I was totally her. I'm not her anymore now and my the niece, who is now 18, still sometimes she'll, she'll be like, isn't that embarrassing? I'm like it's not embarrassing. I'm like I paid $6 for this coffee. This is going to taste exactly how I imagined it was going to taste when I forked over my $6. Like that's, why would I not say something? And I'm nice about it, I'm always nice about it, but I'm going to get the coffee that I ordered and I.
Speaker 1:But I do think, looking back on you know my journey with conflict or even just speaking up for myself and what could be perceived as conflict, it definitely did get better over time the more I was able to do it and I think practicing in situations like that, where you don't have a lot at stake, right, like if I tell the person at Starbucks, like this isn't what I ordered, can you remake it?
Speaker 1:And they hate me forever. I don't care, like I don't even know their name. Well, I do know their name because I go to Starbucks a lot, but you know what I mean as opposed to like starting with a conversation with my dad about something highly contentious, right, like there's a lot more at stake in that conversation. And I think starting with those Kind of easier situations and showing yourself like, ok, I stood up for myself, I gave myself a voice, I asked for what I needed and everything was fine. Nobody died. Everything worked out Makes it a little bit easier. In the more hard situations worked out makes it a little bit easier in the more hard situations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like collecting your success arrows right and as you build that, you're like, okay, there's another in the quiver and I can do this. And also, you know, I want to say sometimes people think, because I advocate for these kinds of discussions, this is not about just trying to have conflict everywhere you go, but being willing to have the brave conversation, and that's what it is. You said courage. It is, it's courageous, it's brave as women.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of cultural messaging about both genders, about what it means to be male or what it means to be female and what gender means. We're going through a whole transition right now. With that, it's even right or wrong, it's just it's here and now that we're conscious of it all, it's our time to reconstruct that and to look at what no longer serves us. A lot of this behavior came out of evolution and it was survival of the species. But evolution takes a long time and we are not the same as we were when this all began and it's getting to really know ourselves. It's that piece of emotional intelligence of really knowing ourselves and knowing really that we have something to offer and that our voice is valued and being brave is important not just for us but all the generations of women to come behind us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. All the girls who think they need to eat their ice cream so they don't hurt the waiter's feelings yes, they need to see us be like, yeah, I don't want this ice cream, thanks. And see him be like, okay, no, biggie, yeah, I love that, the ripple effect of things. For sure, this has been so good. I feel like we could keep going for another hour, but let's wrap it up for today. If people want to connect with you more, if they want to learn more about what you do, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:All my handles are the same, so it's Dr D-R Donna Marino, m-a-r-i-n-o. So, whether that's LinkedIn or my website or Instagram, and always feel free to drop me a line I do answer my emails and LinkedIn messengers and love to hear from people.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I will put those links in the show notes, but super easy when it's the same everywhere. I tell people that too. I'm like it's the name of my business, it's my Instagram, it's my the name of my podcast. Like just put powerful women rising anywhere in the universe, you will find me somehow. Perfect, I love it. Thank you so much, donna.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
