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If you have ever walked away from a difficult conversation at work thinking, "That is not how I meant for that to go," the problem probably is not your intent. It is your pattern. Most leaders know what they are supposed to do in hard conversations. What they do not know is the specific habitual pattern their brain runs every time the pressure is on, and that gap is exactly why generic communication advice never quite sticks.

After years of researching workplace communication and working with hundreds of leaders, I have identified four distinct patterns in how people show up when a hard conversation needs to happen. Each pattern has its own triggers, its own blind spots, and its own version of "this is fine" thinking that gets in the way. And the reason most advice does not help? It is written for all four patterns at once, which means it fits none of them perfectly.

In this episode, I break down all four patterns: the Improviser, who dives in before they are ready and replays the conversation afterward wondering what went wrong; the Avoider, who knows the conversation needs to happen but always finds a reason to wait; the Escalator, who holds it together until they do not; and the Deflector, who has the conversation, sort of, and walks away thinking they handled it while the other person has no idea anything was wrong.

I also explain why self-diagnosis on these patterns is so unreliable, including why an Escalator almost always thinks they are an Avoider, and why almost nobody identifies as an Improviser even when that is clearly their pattern. Knowing which pattern you are actually working with changes what you practice, what you prepare for, and how you approach getting better at difficult conversations. I walk you through how to find out which of these four patterns is yours, using a free two-minute quiz at janelanderson.com/hard-conversations-quiz.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

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Take the free Difficult Conversation Pattern Quiz

I've been trying to get better at difficult conversations for years. I feel like I know what to do, but when it actually happens, it still doesn't go the way I want. What am I missing? Now this is one of the most common things that I hear from leaders that I train and coach, and it is not a sign that they are failing at difficult conversations or failing at anything. It's actually a sign that they're asking the exact right question, but just a step too late, because if you're using a framework like the one I teach, then that isn't the missing piece. The missing piece is understanding your own distinct pattern.

After years of researching workplace communication and working with hundreds of leaders, I've identified four distinct patterns on how people show up in difficult conversations. And the reason that most advice doesn't stick is that it's written for all four patterns at once, which means it fits nobody perfectly. Now today we're going to change that. I'm going to share what the four patterns are and how you can find out which pattern plays out for you. So let's get started.

Now, most people think that getting better at hard conversations is about learning the right words or staying calm or being more assertive. Now, all of those things are important, but what the research actually shows is that the way you handle a difficult conversation is a behavioral pattern. It's a habitual set of things that you think and that you say that yield the exact same result.

It shows up the same way in all kinds of situations. Anytime you're under that pressure, that difficult situation that feels like a difficult conversation, you get the same results over and over and over again, and that's why the generic advice doesn't stick. You can't fix a problem that you haven't identified. It's like you're trying to essentially debug a program without knowing what kind of code is even running.

We need to understand the code, the patterns that your brain is running in order to shift your thinking. And then, of course, shifting your thinking is a precursor to shifting what comes out of your mouth. So we need to understand that neurological pattern that's happening first before we can start to do anything about it. Now here is the really good news. Patterns can be identified and patterns can be changed.

Yes, that is absolutely right. Patterns can be changed, but you first have to know which pattern you're working with before you can set about changing it. So let me introduce you to the four different patterns that I found in my research. So over the years of researching difficult conversations. In fact, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see my book head on how to approach difficult conversations on the shelf behind me, I have researched how to hold those difficult conversations, and one of the newer things that I've been researching is, what are the patterns, the ingrained, habitual patterns that people have, that we don't necessarily see about ourselves, that make all the difference in terms of how we approach a difficult conversation.

So over the years of researching and coaching, I have seen these four distinct patterns emerge, and I've named them, and I want to share them with you today, not necessarily to explain them fully, but to see if you recognize yourself in one of them. Okay, again, there are four of them, and towards the end of this episode, I will give you the exact instructions for how you can find out which one of these patterns your difficult conversation default is, okay, so the first one is the improviser.

Now the improviser doesn't avoid the difficult conversation. No, no, no. They hop right in. They dive right in. Oftentimes, before they're completely ready, they maybe haven't completely thought through what they wanted to say, or they haven't taken the time to anticipate how the other person might react when they are on the receiving end of this information, and they're really relying on the fact that it's going to sort itself out in the moment.

Again, the improvisers name would suggest that they're doing a little improvisation as the whole thing plays out. Now, sometimes it works, and a lot of times it doesn't, or at least it doesn't work to the level that you were hoping it would. And afterward, the improviser will replay that conversation over and over, wondering why it was they said what they said, And how exactly did that land as wrong as it did.

Now, if you've ever left a hard conversation thinking to yourself, well, that's not how I intended for it to turn out, or even that's not what I meant to say at all, then you might be an improviser. Now, once you know which one of these four patterns you have, it is going to be that much easier for you to figure out how to handle a hard conversation, and again, it will become more and more apparent.

Now, I hear a lot of people say, Well, I'm just not confrontational. I avoid confrontation at all costs. And if that truly is the case for you, you might be the next type I'm about to talk about here. Type number two is the avoider. Now, again, I hear a lot of people say, Oh, I'm conflict averse. I'm conflict avoidant. I need to say something, but I just can't bring myself to do it again.

That you might be the avoider then, but you might not also. A lot of people think they're an avoider when there's one of the other underlying patterns that is really what's at play. But the avoider, well, they know that the conversation needs to happen. In fact, they've probably known it for a while. They've drafted it in their head, they've rehearsed it in the shower and in the car, and they've again, they've played the situation over and over and over, and they know now exactly what to say.

But for the avoider, there's always a reason to wait. It's not quite the right time. The other person seems stressed. Maybe the situation will resolve itself, maybe next week. And the issue keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, because things that you might have addressed when they were small potatoes. Well, they become big potatoes if you don't get after them. And then the resentment starts to build.

And the conversation that would have been two on a scale of one to 10 in terms of difficulty, it's now a nine or a nine and a half because it's been sitting there for altogether too long. Now, if you're the kind of person who thinks to themselves, well, I'm conflict avoidant, or I'll bring it up when things simmer down. I'll bring it up when there's not so much going on. And of course, things never slow down.

If anything we've learned recently, life just comes at us faster and faster and faster. But if you're the kind of person who thinks, well, I'll bring it up when things calm down, well then you might be an avoider. Now our third pattern is the escalator. Now the escalator looks a lot like the avoider at first, right up until they don't the escalator holds it together. They stay quiet.

They let things slide, thinking they'll resolve themselves and again and again and again, they tell themselves they're being patient, or they're being professional, or they're being discerning about picking their battles. You've probably heard this language in your own head, or you've heard somebody else say this, and maybe they, you know, they also maybe have this pattern of thinking going well, I always say the wrong thing, and it's better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing, right?

But then something happens, something that, on its own would be completely manageable, and the escalator snaps that conversation they've been holding in. Well, it finally happens, and it is not the calm, measured exchange that they had planned. It is an explosion. And you know, for each one of us that explosion could be on a different level, a different level of magnitude.

I mean, some people's explosions are huge and professionally embarrassing or personally embarrassing, depending on where it happens, and other people's explosions are maybe not as explosive, but still, to the person who lost their cool, they know. They know they lost emotional regulation. They know that that was not how they wanted it to go, even if it isn't as explosive as somebody else's explosiveness, and then afterwards, they feel terrible about how it went.

And so they go quiet again. And this cycle continues and repeats. If you've ever gone from zero to 60 in a conversation and wondered where it came from, you might be an escalator. All right. Now let's talk about the fourth type of conflict pattern, or difficult conversation pattern, that you might have, especially if you are somebody who considers yourself somebody conflict avoidant.

This one might be you. The deflector is in the conversation. They're present, they're even talking about the issue, sort of but the deflector softens everything. They qualify, they change the subject at the critical moment, and they end on well, but it's fine. Don't worry about it, even when it's not fine, and the other person probably should be worrying about it.

Now here's what's happening with the deflector. They think they actually had the conversation, but the other person usually has no idea that anything was wrong or that that was meant to be a situation where we were addressing something that needed to change. Now if you've ever walked away from a conversation thinking, Well, I tried to bring it up, while the other person walked away thinking that everything was fine, well, you might be a deflector.

Okay, so those are the four types, the improviser, the avoider, the escalator and the deflector. Now I want to just talk for a few moments about why self diagnosis on these is so unreliable. Now, you might have heard one of those patterns that you thought, oh, yeah, that sounds a little bit like me. I'm guessing that some of you heard multiple patterns where you're like, Oh, I do a little bit of that, and sometimes I do that.

Oh, that one even sounds rings a little bit true for me. So here is the tricky part. Most people misidentify their own pattern. We see ourselves the way we want to be seen, not necessarily the way we actually show up. For other people, especially when we're under pressure, an escalator often thinks they're an avoider because they're quiet most of the time. A deflector often thinks they're handling things directly, because technically they said something, and almost nobody self identifies as an improviser, because in the moment, diving in felt like courage, and they didn't feel like they actually had courage.

So the pattern that you might think you have shapes what advice you seek out, and if you've misdiagnosed yourself, you've been working on the wrong thing, and that's why nothing sticks. Now, again, I've been researching this for years, and recently, I brought all of that research into a diagnostic tool, a quiz that will specifically help you identify your own pattern accurately.

It's not based on how you think you show up, but it's based on how you actually behave when the pressure is on and the heat is turned up. It only takes about two minutes to take this quiz, and it's free, and at the end, you'll get a breakdown of your specific pattern, what's driving it, how it's showing up in your relationships at work, and, most importantly, what specifically to do differently.

Now you can find that quiz at on my website for free. Janel anderson.com that's j, A, N, E, L Anderson with an O N forward slash quiz, and you can go there right now and take it, and it takes just two minutes. Again, I'll give you that URL one more time. Janel anderson.com, forward slash quiz. I'm also going to link it up in the show notes to this episode.

And this episode of the working conversations podcast is episode 268 268 and you can find the show notes if that's easier to remember at Janel Anderson comm forward slash 268 for episode 268 I want you to take the quiz. I want you to find out what your dominant pattern for holding difficult conversations is, and then you can do the neuroscience work, the repatterning your brain to break through the existing pattern that's not working for you, to become somebody who is going to address those situations in ways that actually promote resolution and promote change behavior on the other part, on the part of the other person, or on whatever it is that that hard conversation will result in for you when it's handled in a way where you can actually, like, get to the bottom of it and make something else happen.

So the conversation that you've been avoiding or fumbling through or exploding through isn't a character flaw. No, no, my friends, it is merely a thought and word pattern. It's a thought pattern that happens in your brain and then comes out of your mouth. And once you know your pattern, you can actually do something about it. I can't wait to see how the quiz turns out for you. Drop me a line and let me know what your type is, and I, you know, I'll see you here next week on the podcast. Be well, my friends.