Growth & Grace

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This is a KU NB studios original program.

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The following program is underwritten by Crawford management group and Chris glow and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and Moore the University of Nevada, Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Even better than that was the last time, baby

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we back and we back and we back and we back.

Leaha Crawford 0:44
Hey, I'm good. Hey, y'all, it's Leah Crawford, how are you this morning? I don't know if y'all noticed we went from cold to hot. And as Wes my my amazing engineer says, you know, we only had two weeks of spring. We only know, so y'all take care of yourself. Hydrate. Hydrate. Very important, because it is, it is hot outside. Again, it is March Madness. I don't know if y'all have been watching, but oh my god, the games are absolutely amazing. And when Julian comes back home, you know, when Julian comes back in the studio with us, we can see if his prediction. I'm gonna go back and find out who he said, if they made it through. But today we have somebody awesome in the studio that's gonna talk about something that is upcoming, a big event she's doing. And you know, we're just gonna jump right into it. Good morning. Tracy, good morning. Leah, how you doing? I'm doing well. Tracy, first of all, tell us a little bit about you. Yeah, my

Tracy Duran 1:43
name is Tracy Duran. I grew up in Las Vegas. I am a Well, I'll start with one thing. I am an organizational development consultant, helping organizations build dynamic teams, taking into account all the differences that people experience that create them as individuals and making sure that they can work across those differences in effective ways. And then I also side gig own a construction company.

Leaha Crawford 2:08
Side gig right? Construction Company. So let's talk about the organizational development. What does that mean?

Tracy Duran 2:15
What does that mean? That's a great question. That is where I work with organizations that may be doing great, but see their potential to do more. And what I do is I look at how are their systems and processes interacting with the humans, with the people that run those systems, to ensure that they are able to be innovative, be creative, reach their fullest potential by utilizing and building up their human capital.

Leaha Crawford 2:43
All right, so let's talk about human capital, because human capital is everything, right? It is human capital is everything. So what tools do you use to even because you got to assess the human capital first to see what type it is, right? Okay, so what do you do?

Tracy Duran 2:57
So I use a couple different assessments. I first will, typically, in a long term engagement with an organization, do a cultural assessment, where really looking at the individuals through interviews, staff surveys, staff engagement type surveys, looking at how is the team getting along? What is the level of trust, how are they engaging in conflict? Where are those pain points, and where are those strengths that can be leveraged to help them move forward, once I have an understanding of how the organization is flowing, and what are those smooth areas, and where are those barriers I look at, where those needs are that were identified in that assessment, and what tools can I use to support them? One of the things that comes up almost across the board is conflict. Most teams and organizations are conflict avoidant. They don't want to put the work in to have the difficult conversations, which keeps them stagnant or creates a false sense of harmony.

Leaha Crawford 3:58
You spoke a word, okay, stagnant and a false sense of harmony. Do you that could be in families as well?

Tracy Duran 4:09
It absolutely 100%

Leaha Crawford 4:11
so these skills that you're learning are transferable.

Tracy Duran 4:15
They are they are transferable.

Leaha Crawford 4:17
Okay, so what is the significance about doing this work. It really

Tracy Duran 4:23
helps promote high performance on teams, and more importantly, what it does is create healthy work environments. When people don't show up and feel healthy and whole within their work environment, you don't get their best. You don't get their they don't they don't reach their full potential, and you don't get a tap into that full potential.

Leaha Crawford 4:45
Okay, so have you so tell us a story. Tell us about a company that you've worked with and you walked in and you had no names, but just how could you see the impact of the work that you were doing with them? Yeah, absolutely.

Tracy Duran 4:59
I. Um, recently, I've been working with a company that their motive is healing, taking individuals on healing journeys through change and transformation. What we found was that they they were brilliant and serving their their students, the people that signed up to participate in their retreats. However, their staff, because they were so passionate about the work and what they were doing, their staff were starting to experience a sense of burnout. They were feeling overwhelmed. They felt as if they were taking on more and more and because of the organization's mission of healing, they also didn't feel they could speak up. And so what we did is we went through a process of looking at what is happening, what are the systems in place that are preventing people from moving forward, preventing people from feeling like they can speak up? And it became the things we identified were conflict avoidance was one of the key ones, as well as a sense of mission passion taking over their ability to advocate for themselves because they believed in what the organization was doing and didn't and felt if they spoke up about the challenges within the organization, they were risking their job or their livelihood. So instead of advocating for those systems changes that ultimately made the organization stronger, they kept just kind of gliding below the surface, and things kept brewing and turmoil kept just kind of sitting below, you know when it rumbles, but doesn't do anything. But that prevented them from being able to fully move forward. So things like, they scaled the organization drastically, but didn't slow down to ask what the people's needs were, and then the people didn't feel like they could speak up and say, Hey, we need to build some redundancy in so we can offer so as we're offering retreats more frequently, we have more staff to support the retreats. Instead, they just kept offering more and more, and people became more burnt out, more discontent, and it created a lot of tension and unhappiness. But people didn't want to leave

Leaha Crawford 7:17
because they like the mission, because they like

Tracy Duran 7:19
the mission, they like each other. They like each other and and so we started offering assess. We worked with the disc, we worked with intercultural conflict styles, and we helped people build their awareness around what are my strengths in conflict? How can I tap into my strengths and advocate? Where are those stressors for me, and how can I be aware of them? And in addition, what are my peers? What are my bosses? What are the people that lead the organization, strengths and stressors? And so when you build up that awareness, you learn not only how to operate and tap into your strengths and know when you need to build up, but you learn how to adapt because you understand the other individuals strengths and stressors. So it's not about changing yourself, it's about understanding yourself and understanding the people you work with. So you can shift and adapt to be effective.

Leaha Crawford 8:16
Wow, and I don't know if y'all caught all of that, and if you need to, I can say, if you want to listen to us, you can go to transistor type in growth and grace. And if you need to stop and rewind what she just said a few times, because that was a lot. That was a lot. But okay, so with, with, with productive conflict feel. Can I say it another way? Yeah, so you can have the uneasy feeling. And what you did was basically, let me show you how to communicate that where it's not explosive, but it is beneficial, absolutely, so that everyone can hear everyone, and then together, we can develop a plan to move forward.

Tracy Duran 8:57
Yes, when we think about the word you used, explosive. When we think about conflict, we usually think about those explosive moments where we lose it,

Leaha Crawford 9:09
and that's it, and it doesn't, I guess it doesn't have to be that, no and Okay, but how do you get around? Because normally when you see conflict, you see Tables turn in, you know, people throwing, I mean, it gets sometimes violent, very aggressive, and people are not, you know, you're not listening, because everyone's talking so no one's hearing anyone, and you could be saying the

Leaha Crawford 9:30
same thing, yeah,

Leaha Crawford 9:32
absolutely. And because everybody's talking and no

Tracy Duran 9:35
one's listening and nobody's listening, yeah, for conflict to exist, there has to be perceived incompatibilities and emotional upset, okay? And so with you know, if you could emotional

Leaha Crawford 9:45
by itself takes you to a whole nother

Tracy Duran 9:46
level, yeah. And how many times have you observed conflict when the emotional upset is present and a person's rising because their natural conflict style is expressive, and the person they're engaging with goes, oh? That's making me uncomfortable. So they try and be calm, to calm themselves down, but what they actually do is escalate the other person, because they're not meeting

Leaha Crawford 10:09
them, because they're not meeting them, yeah,

Tracy Duran 10:11
and then the person who's being calm is thinking they're doing the right thing, oh, I'm going to create this calm environment where the person who's escalating is going, you don't understand me.

Leaha Crawford 10:21
Oh, no, I see you and I understand I'm gonna walk away, because this could get ugly.

Tracy Duran 10:25
This is gonna get ugly. Yeah, and so it's understanding of when do I need a shift and adapt to meet the person's needs, and then creating that mutual adaptation so that when you're engaging in conflict, that engagement and conflict doesn't come about explosive behavior or destructive behavior, but becomes about the content in which you're able to discuss and talk through, because when you can leverage those differences of opinions, you're going to create a better outcome and the ultimate goal, whether it's a new product, a new program, a direction in A business, a family vacation, whatever that may be, you're you're able to engage in conversation.

Leaha Crawford 11:05
Well, because I've seen some family vacations go bad, some family vacations go bad, yeah, but yeah, I've seen Yeah. I've seen some families not speak to each other for years, decades. Yep, over conflict, absolutely, over difference of opinion. All right. Well, you are listening to growth and grace. I am Leah Crawford today, Crawford, today we have Tracy Duran talking about, I guess, a level of self awareness, yeah, a level of self awareness, you know, but dealing with it on one of company side, so whether you're small or large, and she has offering coming up, so talk to me about the offering and what you're doing. We won't, you know, we won't talk about the prices, but just talk about, you know, just the offering, and what's

Tracy Duran 11:44
it about? Yeah, so I'm offering a training around productive conflict called conflict as a catalyst for from friction to clarity. So really looking at, how do you start to take those contentious moments on your team, or that tension on your team, and start to leverage that to produce better outcomes. What skills do you need to build? What awareness do you need to have to help your team move through conflict versus avoid it?

Leaha Crawford 12:13
So again, so talk about the process. So what would they have to do beforehand?

Tracy Duran 12:18
Yeah, so beforehand, you will participate in Wiley's Everything DiSC productive conflict. So you'll learn about your productive or, I'm sorry, about your conflict style. Okay, so what are those natural characteristics that drive you in conflict? What are those and within those natural characteristics, what are the strengths? So if your natural style is D, which is dominant. Your strength and conflict is you're not going to avoid it. You're going to approach it head on. You're looking to move fast and get results. However, how somebody who is in one of the other styles might experience your avoidance?

Leaha Crawford 12:55
Need somebody's avoidance because, because there are some avoiders, right?

Tracy Duran 12:59
So they're, you know, they're wanting to move fat, or you're wanting to move fast, they're wanting to move slow. That has an impact. Whereas if you know each other's conflict style, and let's say your conflict style is steady and you're an S style, you're looking to prioritize the relationship first, not the results first. But if you don't understand that about one another, not only do you have the issue that you're trying to navigate, but you have those perceived incompatibilities because you're one person's focusing on the relationship, one person's focusing on the result. So they don't have if you don't have that understanding about one another, you can't adapt to each other and meet

Leaha Crawford 13:37
that need. Now let me ask you this real question, can they adapt to each other? Because this person, I mean, I want to move fast. Look here, I want everything done yesterday, yeah. And of it like, Why are you moving slow? Because I got a process, and I got to make sure I have the right words, yeah.

Tracy Duran 13:53
So you know, with that, what I ask people is, do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective? I like that. Yeah. I like that. And so if you want to be right, I can't help you. You're gonna keep you're going to keep moving fast. Leah, right, right, right. But if you want to be effective in that environment, you learn the tools to go, Oh, I'm wanting to move fast here, but I need to slow down and listen more. And the other person recognizes, oh, this, this person isn't mad at me. This isn't about the relationship. It's about the results they're trying to achieve. So I need to advocate for myself, or I need to speed up. And so you learn, you learn those different places, where, how can one slow down? How can one speed up? Where? Where do you leverage those differences? And that skill first starts with the awareness, and then it starts with communication tools, all which will be talked about in the workshop on May 16.

Leaha Crawford 14:47
On May 16, okay, so the workshop, can we get a website that where we can find information about the workshop? Yes@www.id,

Tracy Duran 14:56
eight, collaborative.com, I. I d8, collaborative.com, do you want me to spell it? Please? Yes, please, w, w, w, dot i, d, e, a T, E, C, O, L, L, A, B, O, R, a T, I, V, e.com,

Leaha Crawford 15:21
I remember somebody telling me in marketing years ago, Leah, make your website short. And I was like, No, I gotta be. They were like, I learned that now I understand. I love it, and I'm like, but I want to get my idea across. I want, you know, I want them to write it out. I love it, so do it one more time. Yes. Www.id, yes, www.id,

Tracy Duran 15:43
eight, collaborative.com

Leaha Crawford 15:45
just as it sounds. All right, so I do this assessment, I see where I am, and I get the results, and I don't agree.

Tracy Duran 15:55
You know, it's it's interesting. That doesn't happen frequently, but when it does, there's opportunity to explore and have conversations. And the interesting thing about the disc, and I don't know if you've have, you taken the disc before.

Leaha Crawford 16:09
I haven't done disc. I've done other ones. I have, okay, disc. I'm excited to do it, because I will be there with you.

Tracy Duran 16:14
Yeah, the disc is, it's a great it's a quadrant that sits within a circle, okay? And so as you go out in the circle, if you land further out in the circle, your traits are going to be stronger to that style. As you move into the center of the circle, you're you take on more of the traits of all of this style. And so typically, when a person goes, ooh, I don't feel like that. I don't agree with that, or I don't agree with this, it's usually that they're closer to the center of the circle. And then the conversation then is, let's talk about your natural tendencies, and what do those look like. And then, typically, they might not agree with everything, but for the most part, the assessment resonates with most people. Okay, so I get

Leaha Crawford 17:05
this assessments, because I know a lot of companies do the assessments, digging in deeper. Have you seen where that is probably the disconnect? Like we do the assessment, we know what it is, and then we put it up on a bookshelf, and we just leave it there, 100%

Tracy Duran 17:21
and what I tell my clients is an assessment is simply a tool, okay? And so what you do with a tool is going to determine, are you breaking down a wall, or are you building a wall?

Leaha Crawford 17:34
Okay? Because of different tools, different tools,

Tracy Duran 17:37
different tools, different tools, and are you putting that tool on the shelf? And so if you you know the same as a strategic plan. If you get a brilliant strategic plan and you put it in a nice, pretty design, and you set it on yourself and never look at it, you're not doing anything with it. But if you take that tool and you build your culture of your team around the tool, around building awareness on the different styles, the different characteristics. You integrate it in to meetings. You integrate it into check ins. You integrate the tool and create shared language that. Shared language around the tool is what creates the effectiveness,

Leaha Crawford 18:15
is what creates the effectiveness. So you got to use it. You have to use it. Have to use it. Now, what would you recommend so someone comes to the class, they they they do the class, and they're there. They do the assessment, take the class. How often do you think they should pull that down to, I mean, well, reflect on, I guess, reflect. How often do you think that they should look at it? Yeah, I would

Tracy Duran 18:38
say frequently in the beginning, okay? And then as it becomes more natural, it's, you know, it's like anything. The more we use something, okay, the easier and the more natural it becomes, part of our tendencies. And so if, if you're referencing it frequently, in the beginning, you build up that tool, you know, you build up that experience, you build up that language, you build up that momentum, and then once, once you have that and it feels natural, what I recommend to people is they check in on it. You know, when they when they're like, oh, I can feel I'm not connecting with this person. Let me go back and look at I'm guessing this person is an I, it, you know, they're high influence relationships important. They're fast paced, but I'm not able to connect. So let me go back and look at what are some of the strategies for connecting with an I, oh, I've got to emphasize relationship first. And so you, you can use it as that refresher to make sure that not only are you in building your self awareness, but when you're feeling stuck in an engagement with somebody else, you can go back and reference it and go, ooh, these strategies will help me be more effective here,

Leaha Crawford 19:53
and sometimes that maybe 20 minutes worth of work saves a whole lot

Tracy Duran 19:59
of headache. I. Absolutely And when organizations can master conflict, they reduce turnover.

Leaha Crawford 20:10
And that's huge, because that pays for itself. It does. Onboarding is expensive, can be expensive, yes, and you lose time because you're retraining and redoing and I know I've had some turnover, so, yeah, I've seen it, and it's like, Okay, I gotta okay, and you free for me, what I've learned is, build good job descriptions as an employer. Just build amazing look here. Write down every year what you do. Let's start off every three months. Every year we want to review it, just to make sure I understand what you do on a regular basis, just in case. I have to know we separate and I have to find a new person, at least I have an idea of what I want

Tracy Duran 20:50
them to do. Yeah, and if your job descriptions are clear, yes, you can create clearer expectations. If you have clear expectations, you have the ability to build in and integrate accountability.

Leaha Crawford 21:02
I love it again. You are listening to growth and grace. I am Leah Crawford. I have Tracy Duran on here with me. And I love it because I believe that this is going to be an amazing day, and it'll be some breakthroughs for some people, because it's, I mean, just something different, something easy. Now it is all day. So are you offering breakfast and lunch? At least we are. We are

Tracy Duran 21:23
offering breakfast and lunch. So arrival snacks? Yes, absolutely. We've got breakfast lunch and some snacks. You'll get a continental breakfast on arrival and lunch, and then we will have some afternoon snacks and a

Leaha Crawford 21:36
few treats. A few treats, a few treats. Yeah, well, we can sneak peek, because we're gonna have aI conversations. Who aren't we? I think, I think we are. We are gonna have it Okay, so that there'll be an AI conversation, and we'll talk more about that, because AI is very intimidating to a lot of people. They don't say it out loud, but I know there's been, you know, they feel like they're being replaced, or they can be replaced, jobs can be replaced, and not really understanding how AI can be in tool to

Tracy Duran 22:03
enhance absolutely and that conversation will help people understand the risks of it as well as the strengths of it. Am I

Leaha Crawford 22:08
remembering that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think I think it's gonna be a good a good conversation. Amazing. Yes. All right. So wow, Trey, we almost done. Oh my god. That was quick, right, right? That was quick. So again, if you want to hear this show again, or if you know someone that could be interested, you can find us on transistor under growth and grace, and it's the most recent show to be it had Tracy Duran in the heading. So you can listen again, because self awareness is huge and can change a lot of things, yeah, just by you being aware of you and how you

Tracy Duran 22:46
show up. Absolutely that awareness helps you be able to be more effective in your relationships. Without that, you can't be effective, yeah, yeah. Or you're less,

Leaha Crawford 22:57
less effective. You still might be effective, but it might not be the effect you want to have at all times, but I love it so again. Thank you for listening to us today. Troy. You got any last words you want

Tracy Duran 23:09
to add? May 16 at 8am I hope we see you there. Okay, all right. Conflict as catalyst from friction to clarity, say it again. Conflict as a catalyst from friction to clarity.

Leaha Crawford 23:20
May 16, okay, and if y'all are watching basketball today, I hope your team made it. We're gonna have a good conversation about this. I think it's the sweet 16, and then then it's eight, and then it's the championship. I don't know. I just, I just know was a lot of basketball being played last weekend, and I was at every because I was like, well, we're all the men and they all here because everybody is watching basketball. All right, y'all until next week. Remember, growth is what you go through. Grace is what you give yourself until next time. Peace and blessings. Leah.

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