The ripple effect of conversations at work is real, and most of us underestimate it. Every word you say in a meeting, a one-on-one, or even a passing hallway exchange leaves an imprint on the person who heard it, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades. You may have already forgotten that conversation. They haven't.

Think about a time someone said something to you in a professional or personal setting that stayed with you far longer than you expected. Maybe it held you back. Maybe it pushed you forward. Either way, you still carry it. That is the ripple effect in action, and it happens whether you are intentional about it or not.

In this episode, I share two conversations from my own college years: one that held me back as a writer for decades, and one question from an advisor that has driven my entire career. Neither professor knew what they were creating. That is exactly the point.

I introduce what I call the Ripple Effect Framework, three questions to ask yourself before any important conversation. Whether you are heading into a performance review, a difficult moment with a team member, or a one-on-one that feels uncomfortable to start, these questions shift your posture from reactive to intentional. The three questions are: What happens if I have this conversation? What happens if I don't? And what set of ripples do I want to create? I walk you through each one, including why avoiding a conversation does not spare anyone from the ripple. It just changes the shape of it.

The conversation ends. The ripple does not. That is the frame for everything I cover in this episode.

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.

Have you ever had a conversation that lasted maybe just five or 10 minutes, but it absolutely changed the next 10 months, or maybe even the next 10 years? Now I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I was out on my paddleboard early one morning recently, the water was completely calm. It was like glass, but there were lots of boats out on the lake, some close and some far away, some moving fast and some going at a much slower pace.

And I kept watching as their wakes would ripple toward me. Some of them hit hard, and if I was standing on the paddleboard, it became really difficult to balance, and I might have to pop down onto my knees. And some of them were almost imperceptible. But here's what I noticed: every single one of them reached me eventually at some magnitude or other, and it caught me thinking.

That's just exactly how conversations work. The conversation may end, but the ripple it has doesn't. So today, I want to talk about that ripple effect in our conversations-the conversations that stick with us and have lasting impacts on maybe something as big as how we see the world or ourselves, or maybe they have smaller ripples, but they still last. So when I think about the conversations that have had the biggest ripple on my own life, two specific conversations stand out, and they both happen when I was in college, within a few months of each other.

So the first was a professor who, in one conversation with me, as we were reviewing an essay that I had written for his class, said just simply this: "Well, it's okay if your work isn't profound. It's good enough. You're not a writer like Barbara, referring to a classmate of mine. That was it.

That one sentence. He referred to Barbara as a true writer and implied that I wasn't. He probably forgot that he said that by lunchtime, but I spent years, decades, even needing to convince myself that I indeed was a writer, and it wasn't just Barbara as the only person who could be a writer. Now it may be true that she was more naturally gifted and talented as a writer than the rest of us in that class.

I spent those years and decades overcoming the ripple effect of that particular, perhaps even offhanded comment that I wasn't a writer. Now, since then, I've written a dissertation. I've written numerous articles for popular press. I've written numerous academic articles and pieces for business audiences.

I've written two books, and I have another book in the works. For ages, I remembered his comment and thought that I had no business trying to write. Now that's a negative ripple effect that lasted far longer than the conversation deserved. Now the second conversation was with my major professor and advisor in college.

I am still in touch with her, Dr. Root. If you're listening now, this one's for you. As we were having an advising conversation, she asked me what I wanted to do with my degree, where my professional aspirations might take me.

Now I was 20 years old, and I told her I wanted to be a professional speaker. She paused, and she said she had every bit of faith in my ability to do just that, but then she asked me one singular question that had a profound ripple effect on me. She asked me, "What is your message? Now, as the 20-year-old that I was from a relatively calm and normal by all means upbringing.

I mean, my house didn't burn down. I hadn't gotten trapped on a mountain. I my parents hadn't even gotten divorced, so there was nothing particularly remarkable about me at 20 years old that that had me with some big message. Now, some 20-year-olds do.

I simply hadn't. But that one question, where she thought she was probably just doing her job as the advisor, had a tremendous ripple impact on me. A tremendous ripple effect on me. That one question has been living in my head for 30-five plus years.

In fact, my speaking career for the last 15 years has been the answer to that question. It took me 20 years to answer the question. Along the way, I picked up a PhD in organizational communication. I taught at the college level.

I studied virtual team communication for my dissertation research. I led a global team in a big company. I became a certified coach. I worked for a small company, and so much more.

All in search of my message. Now, that message I am very clear about right now. If you hadn't already noticed, but her question had a very positive ripple effect. It motivated me to answer the question, to learn things, to share those things with others in a way that motivates and inspires them to be better at their jobs, to be better managers, and just to be better humans overall.

Just like I'm trying to do. Now, I don't think either of those professors knew what they were creating. Neither one of them understood the weight of what they were dropping into the water, and of the tremendous ripple effect that it would have on me. And that, my friends, is the ripple effect.

And here's the part that should stop you in your tracks right now: you are doing this to people every single day. Your words, the conversations that you're having with them, are having ripple effects. Now, most of us approach important conversations, especially the hard ones, by asking, "How can I survive this? How can I say the right thing?

How can I not make it worse, but that, my friends, is absolutely the wrong question. It keeps you in reactive mode. The better question is, what kind of ripple effect am I trying to create in this conversation? And be intentional about it, because again, your words are going to have that ripple effect, whether you mean for them to or not?

In fact, I can think of a couple of other conversations where I was the person, not necessarily on the receiving end, but that I said something to come to mind, where I was talking to a friend about their futures and about relationships and you know various things that one explores with in in the contours of friendship, and I can remember a conversation I had with somebody, and I remember right where we were when I had it. But to me, it was a conversation of little to no consequence. But for her, it had everything to do with the person that she was about to marry, whether or not they were going to have children of their own. And at the time, I had this just I provided some offhanded comment, which provided her with great inspiration, and now I'm happy to say that that family has adopted three children from Colombia.

Now, not necessarily because of something I said, but what I said reframed a situation for her that said, like, of course I could adopt in this relationship, and we could have a family that didn't that that wasn't derived of children of our own. Now again, I what I said was kind of an offhanded comment. Being supportive as two friends are to one another, the ripple effect that it had on her and the family that she created was tremendous. So again, not just at work, but in our personal lives as well.

Ask yourself, what kind of ripple am I trying to create now? Would I have said anything differently in that conversation with her? No, but I think I might have thought a little bit more carefully, a little bit more deeply about the weight that my words carried, because for me it was an offhanded comment, but for her, it had a lasting, huge ripple effect. Again, what kind of ripple effect are you trying to create?

Because every conversation that you have is already creating a ripple effect. Now, some of those ripples are small and last for 10 minutes or a few hours. Some of those comments that you make entirely unintentionally may have that ripple effect for the next 10 months, 10 years, decades. In my case, so the question: How are you doing it intentionally?

Whether or not you are doing it on purpose, because every conversation has the potential to change more than just the conversation. So I call this the ripple effect framework in your conversations. Now, whether you're heading into a performance conversation, a feedback session with somebody, a difficult moment with a team member, a one-on-one conversation with an employee, or just simply a conversation between friends, this ripple effect, this ripple effect framework absolutely applies. Now, before your next important conversation, especially, ask yourself these three questions to help frame up the ripple effect.

Question number one: What happens if I have this conversation? Because a lot of times we avoid those conversations, don't we? So what happens if I have the conversation? Think past the discomfort of the conversation itself, and what does this conversation make possible?

It might be that the person gets clarity that they didn't have before. It might be that a problem gets addressed before it becomes a crisis for your team. It might be that someone changes course, and maybe thanks you for it years later. Like I know Dr.

Root knows that I have thanked her years later because we've stayed in touch. It might be that your team watches you step up and do the hard thing, and their trust in you goes up for it. The positive ripple effect always travels further than you think it will. Now, question number two is: What happens if I don't have the conversation?

And this is where leaders underestimate the cost. There's a ripple effect of you not speaking up, of you not having the conversation. When you avoid the conversation, you don't avoid the ripple. You might make a ripple that's already there worse, but you certainly create a different one.

That negative ripple of silence is sneaky, and it spreads slowly. Other people absorb the cost. They start working around the problem. Trust erodes quietly, and the culture shifts in ways that you don't even notice until it's much harder to fix.

The conversation that you're avoiding is already affecting your team. You just can't see it yet. Or if it's a conversation you're not having in your family, it's rippling out in your family as well, or with a friend. If there's a conversation that needs to be had, maybe it's around personal boundaries in your friendship.

You need to have that conversation because otherwise, it's creating those negative ripple effects that, again, you might not see just now. But as those negative ripple effects move out, they don't get smaller; they get bigger, and that ripple effect is not necessarily one that you want to deal with later. So deal with it now while the ripple is small. Okay, and then question three: What set of ripples do I want to create?

Now this is the question that changes everything. It moves you out of reactive mode, out of how do I survive this, and into intentional leadership, whether that's in the workplace or in your personal life. You're not asking how to get through a conversation. You're asking what kind of a future you're trying to build, and that is a completely different posture, a completely different conversation.

It shows up in the conversation. People can feel the difference between a leader who is treading water in the moment, or even dreading the moment, and a leader who is choosing the moment. A leader who came prepared to deal with the tough stuff, to deal with the awkwardness of what a difficult conversation might play out as, a leader who knows why it matters and a leader who is thinking about what comes after this conversation. So every conversation changes more than the actual conversation that you're having.

The question is, what do you want to change? And I challenge you to take it on intentionally. Again, I want you to think back to those two different conversations I had with two different college professors at right about the same time in my life. One of them had a negative ripple effect that, quite frankly, held me back for years, if not decades.

Totally did a number on my head-a total mind mess up. The other one was a question that challenged me, but propelled me forward. Now, I may have taken too long in answering the question. I may have been able to start my career as a professional speaker earlier than I did.

If I hadn't taken so dang long to answer the question, but I answered the question very thoroughly about what is my message. I went in search of a PhD. Not that you need to do that much work, but I went in search of a PhD to answer the question. I taught college.

I held a variety of of leadership positions in organizations small and large, in search of my own answer to the question. Now, in the work that I do, I take the answer to that question very seriously, because people are putting me on large stages in front of large numbers of people to share a message, and I don't take that lightly. So I do think it makes sense that I took a couple of decades to answer that question to feel confident in the message that I share with the audiences. Messages much like this one and all the podcast episodes I have, and of course, all of them are extensions of keynotes that I give.

So I don't take that lightly that I did spend a couple of decades working on the answer to that to that positive ripple question, what is your message? Okay, now it's time for you to put it to work. This is a segment where I give you your action item based on this week's episode. So this week I want you to identify one conversation you've been putting off, not the hardest one, not the hardest one on your list.

Just one that you need, that you know you need to have. And you know, maybe it isn't even a difficult conversation or a hard conversation. It could be a conversation about somebody's future. It could be a conversation that inspires somebody.

It could be if you have teenage children. It could be the conversation about what they want to do after they finish high school. Before you have the conversation, I want you to ask yourself the three questions that I framed up earlier. Number one: What happens if I have this conversation?

Like, what are the positive outcomes that could come out of this? Question number two: What happens if I don't have this conversation? What are the negative ripples for not going there, not speaking up about this, not having the conversation? And then question number three: What set of ripples do I want to create?

What is my intention here? Now you don't have to have the conversation this week. So your put it to work this week is to do the planning, is to think through this three part framework. I want you to have clear answers to those questions before you go into the conversation, because once you do, you will probably find the conversation isn't so hard to start as you maybe initially thought.

You just need a reason that is bigger than I just need to muscle through this. Once you have that reason, you can let that be your guiding framework for having the conversation. And again, you don't need to rush into that conversation this week necessarily, but this week I do want you to spend just a few minutes answering those three questions: What happens if I have this conversation? What happens if I don't have this conversation?

And what set of ripples do I want to create? Now, eventually, you'll have the conversation, and the conversation will end, but the ripple, my friends, doesn't always end. Every conversation changes more than the conversation. Think about that this week, and make it a good one.

Not just the conversation that you're going to have, but this week as well. Make it a good one, my friends, and I'll see you back here next week for another episode of the Working Conversations podcast.

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