‘I have learned to have a different relationship with resistance… when we’re actually really on track with things, resistance comes up.’
Sarah Rozenthuler is no stranger to the art of conversation at work. With over two decades of experience as a business psychologist, she’s seen both how energizing high-quality conversation can be, and also how most people, most of the time, would do almost anything to avoid difficult topics (or difficult people).
Her latest book, Now We’re Talking, addresses the deep-rooted reasons for this – the fear of our own and the other person’s emotions, the challenge to our fragile self-image, the risk of the bad outcome, and more – and also the transformative power of leaning into the resistance and engaging with each other more effectively.
And we discover along the way that sitting down to write a book involves much of the same fear and resistance. Sarah’s own journey as a writer, the false starts and the slow burn, is as relatable as it is enlightening. So here’s a nudge to lean into the discomfort – in writing, in conversation and in life – because it’s a sign that we’re doing the work that matters.
Sarah’s site: https://sarahrozenthuler.com/
Sarah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rozenthuler/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Sarah Rozenthuler, who is a world renowned speaker, chartered psychologist and leadership coach. She’s the author of Powered by Purpose, and How to Have Meaningful Conversations, and her most recent book is Now We’re Talking: How to discuss what really matters.
So first of all, welcome to the show, Sarah. It’s lovely to have you here.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Thank you very much, Alison. Thank you for having me here.
Alison Jones: And I do love Now We’re Talking as a title, by the way. I just feel like, you know, as a podcast host it resonates.
But where did the title come from? Where did the book come from? Tell us how it all started.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Oh gosh, I’ll come to the book in a moment. I think the title was one of those moments, those intuitive flashes that happened in the shower, I think after, if I’m honest, I think it was even months, not weeks of backwards and forwards about the title with my editor at Pearson. So I’d suggested things and you know, it just takes a while sometimes.
Alison Jones: It takes a while. Sometimes they just arrive fully formed. Most of the time you have this kind of good enough title, don’t you? And you sort of mooch along with it and you carry on writing and you don’t let it stop you. But you know there’s this sort of sense of dissatisfaction that you haven’t quite landed it.
And then, as you say, often in the shower or on a run or something or in a conversation with somebody. It’s quite hard to sit with that, isn’t it?
Sarah Rozenthuler: Yes, what I knew was I wanted a title that in a way was chatty, that would reflect the energy of the book around talking and talking in a way that things really land with people. And I think that’s what, so Now We’re Talking, you know, it’s got that sense of…
Alison Jones: …aha! Now we’re talking.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Yes, and so the book, the topic of the book is communication and in particular how to have important conversations in the workplace more successfully.
I argue that it’s an absolutely critical leadership skill and one that’s often overlooked as well.
Alison Jones: And one that has to be more intentional these days, doesn’t it? Because, I mean, I’m old enough to remember when you kind of got things done by going and talking to people, but it just doesn’t happen like that anymore. You have to work quite hard if you’re going to have a relationship and you’re going to catch the nuance.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Yes, and challenging conversations are something that many of us avoid at the best of times. The research would indicate that around 70 percent of managers and leaders say that, you know, dread having these tricky conversations. And then, yes, in the context of hybrid working or lots of online working, I think it can be even more of a stretch to lean in and have one of these tricky conversations, if that’s from screen to screen as well, because sometimes we don’t have the option of doing things in person.
Alison Jones: Yes, we’re often managing people remotely.
I mean, when we talk about, clearly it’s a topic that’s very, very topical, but I’m guessing that it’s something that you, I mean, you talk about it as a core leadership capability. I’m guessing it’s something that you’ve come across in your work. Tell me about the process between you sort of noticing this as a systemic issue in the workplace and that journey to going well there needs to be a book about this and damn it, I need to write that book.
You know, what was that process like what
Sarah Rozenthuler: Yes, so I’ve worked as a business psychologist for over 20 years, and I started out doing the very standard things that occupational psychologists would do, which was recruitment and selection work, designing assessment centres, working the psychometric tests and so on. But after I got chartered, which took me about five years, I realised that I wasn’t really feeling that energised by doing that work, even though I think it absolutely has its place and it’s very valuable.
And there was a tiny turning point for me where one day I was asked to run a focus group, it was a very small group, and I went home that day feeling really energized. I caught my reflection in the mirror and my eyes were bright and my cheeks were pink and I thought gosh, I’ve had a really good day at work today and why is that?
And I figured it was because of the quality of the conversation and the group dynamic and I was untrained as a, let’s say, as a facilitator, as a coach at that stage, so I was just working intuitively, and I realized just by noticing what was energizing that it had something to do with the quality of dialogue in a group, and that then set me off on a path, on a thread that I followed for the last 20 years or so, just being really interested in how it is that people can talk together, particularly actually when it’s more than one to one, when it’s in a group setting or a team setting, and particularly when there are difficult subjects to talk about that have people kind of running for the hills or not speaking out and saying what’s really true for them.
And so I’ve been both doing some research, reading other books and then developing myself as a practitioner, as well as doing consulting work, and coming to the writing, I was very fortunate with this book because it was commissioned by Pearson because they wanted to have a book on difficult conversations, they thought it was a very timely topic. And I just thought, well, writing, on my best days I love writing, and I think writing crystallizes thinking like nothing else.
Alison Jones: What about not on the best days, Sarah?
Sarah Rozenthuler: Oh, on the worst days, writer’s block, I absolutely struggled to sit in my seat for even a 30 minute sit. So I might not even try and write for 30 minutes, I might cut it right down to 10 minutes. That’s me on my worst days. But as you would know, when you’ve signed a contract and you’ve got a word count and a deadline, then it does help focus the mind.
Alison Jones: It does help focus the mind, but it doesn’t help remove the discomfort, does it? And I’m really interested actually and just as you’re speaking and I’m seeing something that I hadn’t noticed before which is that we resist difficult conversations even though we know we have to have them, and on the other side of them, it’s always better. Like, always better, it’s always better than not having it.
And we resist meaningful writing, even though it’s really important to us, and we know that it’s going to help, and on the other side we feel fantastic because we’ve got it. What’s going on there?
Sarah Rozenthuler: It’s so interesting. I think there’s a lot going on there, but a couple of initial thoughts that you’ve sparked immediately. So, I have learned to have a different relationship with resistance, partly because of the wonderful book by Nick Williams, The Work You Were Born to Do.
Alison Jones: I do not know this. Okay.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Ah, so, as you know, I’ve written about purpose myself and meaningful work and Nick was an early, he was onto this topic much earlier than me.
And one of the things he writes about is how resistance can actually be a really strong indicator that we do need to lean in to that direction. It’s not a sign that’s saying don’t go here. If anything, when we’re actually really on track with things, resistance comes up. We both feel a pull in that direction, but resistance comes up as well.
So I’ve learned over time to just slow down a bit when there’s resistance, try and relax a little bit in the face of it and see what it might be telling me. And I think the other thing that you sparked with your question around the difficult conversations in particular, was because they trigger reactivity.
Whether that’s our own reactivity, some of us get all aggressive and we just want to have our say and kind of really move against the other person. Others of us want to sort of really move away and we withdraw and we give the cold shoulder and then other reactivity comes out in the form of being overly compliant.
We sometimes talk about the ‘move towards’ tendency and we become a bit of a yes woman, a yes man, we lose our voice. We don’t say what’s true for us. So there’s reactivity in us. There of course can be reactivity in the other person if they’re getting triggered as well. So they, I don’t know, we might fear they start shouting or that they burst into tears.
So there’s a lot of difficult emotion in difficult conversations, and it’s often unacknowledged. Many of us have never learnt many tools for handling difficult emotion in ourselves. So, there’s other things I could say, but I think that’s also why there’s so much resistance.
Alison Jones: And what also occurs to me is the thing about safety, is that in both we are making ourselves vulnerable because as you say we don’t know how that other person’s going to react and we don’t know how people are going to receive what we’ve written and we are putting our heads above, you know, we’re coming out of that zone of safety.
And also there’s something about identity, isn’t it? What, when you say about your truth. I mean, often we don’t really know what that is. You know, what is our truth? What is it we want to say? What do I really think about this? Because what I thought this morning is actually different from what I think now after I’ve had lunch.
Things can fluctuate across the course of the day. What do we think about this? It’s hard.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Absolutely, and another dimension I think you’re touching on here of difficult conversations and dialogue is to do with self images.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Sarah Rozenthuler: And so we all have a set of self images inside of us, some of them we might be aware of, others we’re less conscious of, but for example, I might have a self image of myself as a competent person and so the thought that in one of these tricky conversations I might actually burst into tears or I might lose my temper and no longer be in control and therefore be seen not as competent, that really raises the stakes of the conversation. Or I might absolutely dread that I’m going to get some tricky feedback. And then that triggers and it can maybe go right back to childhood, a sense…
Alison Jones: off self worth. Yes. Yes.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Yes, and all of that is bubbling away underneath the surface, and I think it makes it really understandable why it is we therefore either avoid difficult conversations or we botch them, we plough right in, we don’t do any prep. Very understandable.
And back to the reason for writing the book, there’s a wealth of tools out there, some of them developed by psychologists some by non psychologists and I just wanted to try and make accessible to managers and leaders in organisations everywhere, these tools and frameworks so that instead of avoiding or messing up difficult conversations, we could have them more effectively.
Alison Jones: And for me this is the absolute joy of organizational psychology, why I think it’s such an interesting field, is it’s at that intersection of human psychology, you as an individual, all the stuff we’ve just talked about, and then the organizational perspective, how do we actually get a functioning organization with a culture that’s helpful and supportive and get stuff done profitably, and it’s the messy stuff in that intersection, isn’t it?
Sarah Rozenthuler: It is. It is. And I find the workplace both really challenging and really catalytic for development, personal development, professional development. And the stakes can be high as well, just in a very objective sense, because actually your ability to communicate, your ability, whether you can have that conversation or not, can sometimes really lead to significant consequences. You don’t get the promotion, you know, you don’t get put on that stretch assignment that you really wanted to be on.
So I really acknowledge that and what can be so catalytic as well. And I’ve seen this with teams that I’ve coached. So, sometimes teams want to go on the journey for example, from good to great, or one team I coached said we want to go from great to exceptional.
And to go on that journey really involves investing time and energy and resources in having the conversations that matter most, whether that’s about your purpose or your strategy, or even next year’s budget, whatever it is. And the best teams I’ve worked with carve out the time to have that dialogue so they’re not just caught in firefighting or operational matters.
And so in the book I’ve learnt as much from when things go wrong as I have from teams and organisations and leaders that are really good at this stuff and they’re generating competitive advantage for themselves because of making that investment.
Alison Jones: Yes, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? We wouldn’t be investing in all of this if it didn’t actually have performance implications. Yes, so interesting.
So we know, because you’ve already told us, that writing isn’t a walk in the park every day for you, but you’ve done several books now. So, and I’m sure you know this, I always ask my guests, what’s your one best tip for somebody listening who perhaps is finding it hard?
What do you wish you’d known at the start of this journey?
Sarah Rozenthuler: Oh gosh, well I’ve made quite a few mistakes along the way. Probably the biggest one, and this would then turn into the learning, was after I wrote How to Have Meaningful Conversations, I then decided to, without going through any publisher or agent, decided to write another manuscript. And I did, and it took a year, and I produced my 60,000 words.
And the working title for that manuscript was Life-Enriching Relationships and because I thought actually in writing about communication and conversation the deeper cut here is about relationships. Anyway, once the draft manuscript was done, I didn’t get any interest from an agent or a publisher. It kind of went nowhere.
And in the end I went to a literary agent she called herself, Katie Forster, who’d been the CEO of Virgin Books, for some advice and she read through my manuscript and she asked me the question, she said, where do you see your career going? She said, do you see yourself, for example, on the sofa of Loose Women commenting on relationships in the Big Brother house?
And I sort of said to her, no, no, no.
Alison Jones: Absolutely not.
Sarah Rozenthuler: She said, well, I didn’t think it was you, and you haven’t actually got the right voice for that, and you’re not actually quite sassy enough for that. Yes, it was harsh and it was a moment of reckoning and then she went on to say to me, look, you’re a corporate psychologist and you’re a woman and you’re probably working with an alternative approach to leadership and leadership development. And if you wrote from that perspective, I know agents and publishers who would bite your hand off.
So anyway, I took the long train journey home back from London to Shropshire and had a good long think about all that and then I did, after I’d licked my wounds and that took a little while. I then really did the pivot towards writing for a business audience and leaders and managers because the first book, the Meaningful Conversations book, was more of a self help, well-being book.
So I’ve taken quite a while to say it, but it’s about having clarity about who you’re writing for. I mean, this is kind of writing 101. It’s so basic in a way,
Alison Jones: It’s so basic that it’s easy to overlook, actually.
Sarah Rozenthuler: It is. And what’s the book, what, sorry, what’s the impact you want your book to have on the reader, primarily, and then, of course, on yourself and your own career. And this is why I really respect the work that you do and the support that you give to writers and authors, so that you have a sense of alignment between spending your precious time and energy writing and then your wider work.
Alison Jones: Absolutely. And there’s a kind of bold, crass commercial aspect to that, which is that books don’t really make money. So, you know, it can position you brilliantly for a fantastic return on investment if it’s aligned with that.
But there is a bigger piece and we know we’ve talked about sort of self development at work and professional development and the book is part of that, isn’t it?
It’s all that time and energy and thought and development and articulation. And if that isn’t aligned with what you’re doing professionally, what a waste. But if it is, oh my goodness, it’s a force multiplier, isn’t it?
Sarah Rozenthuler: It is, you can really get that multiplier effect. I’ve really noticed that. I mean, I feel it’s been something of a slow burn for me, or it’s just gradually been gathering momentum from 2012 when I published the first book. So 12 years, 3 books down the line. And I think there’s something about just developing one’s voice in writing. And the more writing you do, of course, the more that happens.
But it also helps in terms of, yes, just your credibility, I think. And that sense that you’ve got something to say. And not only that, but there’s some substance to what you have to say as well.
Alison Jones: Yes. And you’ve articulated it beautifully because I always say to people, it’s not just, don’t think about, you know, once you’ve got the book, how will you use it in the business? It’s actually while you’re writing the book, the thinking you’re doing, the conversations that you’re having, the reading you’re doing, all of that is moving you forward and all of it is so rich and joyful or potentially, even though it’s hard, back to resistance.
Marvellous.
And it was really interesting actually, the book that you talked about, about resistance, Nick Williams, The Work We Born to Do. I am very familiar with the concept, but I know it from Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art, where he talks about resistance.
So I don’t know which came first, but I need to read them both together, anyway. Is that your book you’re going to recommend to us? Is there another one?
Sarah Rozenthuler: I just dug off my shelf what I’ve started reading recently, which I’m really enjoying. So this is Be a Better Boss by Henry Englehardt. And I saw Henry speak at the Hay Festival last year, and I always enjoy hearing an author speak about their work. So it’s a great book, it’s not particularly intellectual, but it’s very rooted in direct experience.
So Henry was the CEO of Admiral Insurance for many years and in the Annex, and I’ve never seen an Annex quite like it, but they’ve got all the awards that they’ve won over many, many years, so a high performing organisation. And I like it for a couple of reasons, he’s really underlying about the need not to come from your ego as a boss. And you are there to serve the people that you lead and in particular your job as a boss is to build a strong team. And it resonates I think with my own work that I just think that the team is the strongest unit of change in an organization. If you can strengthen teams you can really uplift performance even more so than doubling down on individual developments.
So, that’s what I’m currently reading, and I really recommend Henry’s book, and he was a great speaker.
Alison Jones: Love it. Thank you. What a great recommendation. Great title too. So simple and alliteration. We love it. Brilliant.
Sarah, if people want to find out more about you, more about your books, more about the work that you do, where should they go?
Sarah Rozenthuler: So, I’m active on LinkedIn, so if you just popped my name into LinkedIn, Sarah Rozenthuler you would find me, I’ll respond, and there’s also my website that again, is my name, so www.sarahrozenthuler.com and you can contact me there as well.
Alison Jones: Brilliant, I will put those links up on the show notes at extraordinarybusinessbooks.com along with the transcript of our conversation today. And just fascinating exploring those interrelated dimensions of purpose and conversation and writing and self development. So yes, I mean, what a great Venn diagram that is, and we’ve been sat right at the heart of it.
Couldn’t ask for a better half hour. Thank you so much.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Thank you, Alison, and wishing all the viewers, all the listeners, all the very best as well and hope you have more great conversations.
Alison Jones: Oh, we will.
Thanks so much, Sarah.
Sarah Rozenthuler: Thank you, Alison.
