719: Hard Conversations Build Better Businesses with Whitney Guison
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What if better communication was less about winning arguments and more about building stronger relationships? Whitney Guison, President/CEO of the Nixa Area Chamber of Commerce, talks about hard conversations, community involvement, and why business owners need shared language with their teams. Whitney explains how clear expectations, defined policies, and immediate feedback can prevent unnecessary conflict. They also discuss how chambers of commerce can help pet care businesses build legitimacy, relationships, and local trust. This conversation is a practical reminder that pet care may start with animals, but it grows through people.
Main topics:
Clear communication in business
Handling hard conversations well
Building shared team language
Chamber involvement for growth
Community trust and legitimacy
Main takeaway: “It’s not about winning arguments. It’s about winning people.”
This is the heart of what strong communication is really about. In pet care, hard conversations are unavoidable — with clients, employees, contractors, community partners, and sometimes even ourselves. But the goal should not be to bulldoze our way to the end or prove that we were right. The goal is to build enough clarity, trust, and shared language that the relationship is stronger on the other side. Better communication helps us lead better, serve better, and create businesses people can trust.
About our guest: Whitney Guison is the President/CEO of the Nixa Area Chamber of Commerce and a keynote speaker focused on leadership, communication, and conflict resolution. She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Communication, with an emphasis in conflict resolution, and is a trained mediator. Whitney works with leaders and teams to help them approach hard conversations with clarity, humor, and practical tools. Her work centers on helping people turn conflict into stronger relationships.
Links:
Whitney Guison website: https://www.whitneyguison.com/
Nixa Area Chamber of Commerce: https://www.nixachamber.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-guison
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61588893950449/
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Collin 0:02
Welcome to Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at Time to Pet and Dog Co Launch. Working in the pet care industry means two things: you will invariably work with dogs, cats, and other animals, and you're going to work with people too, and to talk about how to work with people, work with them well, and be involved in a broader community of not just dog walkers and pet sitters, but businesses at large. I'm really excited to have Whitney Guison. She's the president of the Nixa Chamber of Commerce, and full disclosure here, I'm a member of the Nixa Chamber of Commerce, and so I wanted to have Whitney on to talk about this. Whitney, for those who aren't members of the Chamber of Commerce, please tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Whitney Guison 0:52
So, first of all, thanks for having me on, Collin. I appreciate it, and you are a great member of the Nixa Chamber of Commerce because you come and you participate in it, which is kind of the only requirement of being a chamber member is show up every once in a while, you know. Yeah. Besides paying dues, of course, but we don't even talk about that. So yeah, I'm the Nixa chamber president. I have been. We have a small but growing chamber in Southwest Missouri, just south of Springfield, Missouri, and we've got a great community here, and the chamber in this community is very involved in not just business, but in the community as well. We just finished the biggest festival that our town holds, which is put on by the chamber, as well as other community events that we do. And on top of that, we obviously support business, their growth, and getting them connected to each other and to the community, so that they can be strong and have we can have a vibrant commercial industry here in our small town.
Collin 1:49
Did you grow up wanting to be a chamber of commerce president?
Whitney Guison 1:53
Nobody grew up wanting to be a chamber of commerce. Nobody. If if they tell you they grew up wanting that, they lied because there are full grown adults that I run across every day who don't even know what a chamber of commerce is, and I used to be one of them, so I can't even judge them. But my own family, when I got this job, was like, "So, like, you were elected to this? I'm like, "This is not an elected position. No, it's not even a government position, so it's it's a nonprofit technically, but it's a membership-based nonprofit. So it's you join it as as as a member. So we're a 501 c6 Most chambers are, even though there are a number of chambers who do also have a 501 c3 component for the charitable nonprofit. We do not. We are just this the basic membership-based nonprofit. So no, I didn't want I didn't want to be it when I grew up.
Collin 2:45
Well, what what got you interested in this position? Because it is an interesting thing to fall into, I guess. It is,
Whitney Guison 2:50
and I think falling into it is probably the best description of anyone who is in the chamber world. You do fall into it. My husband and I own a small business in Nixa, and we opened that in 2019. And a couple years later, the position became available to be the chamber president. And I, after engaging with the chamber as a business owner, and going to all the chamber things and understanding better what business ownership looks like and the importance of having a community that supports you, and having access to trainings, having access to information, having access to the city in which you're doing business in, having access to other business owners. When the chamber director position became available, I told my husband, "I was like, I as much as I love running our small business, I want to do this more. And he was like, "Cool, let's see if they hire you. And they did. So that's kind of how that went. I just I have a passion for entrepreneurs and small business owners, especially. But anything my my passions have grown as my knowledge base has increased, which it I didn't realize exactly what a chamber president truly did when I was hired. I my focus was let's help small businesses be stronger, and it's so much more involved than that. But I don't want to ever lose sight of that because that's that was that that that's my roots. My husband and I have a small business, and they need so much support. A small business, so much support to stay alive and stay afloat and stay healthy.
Collin 4:23
You mentioned some misconceptions that people have around a chamber of commerce. I know I thought it was a city organization or at least at a county level, but you're saying it's formed outside of that. Absolutely, right? But but it does have partnerships with authorities and in local organizations too,
Whitney Guison 4:42
I think an effective chamber. Any effective chamber, if they want to claim being effective, has a very good relationship with their municipal partner. So, so in our neck of the world where you and I live, there's tons. Every little community has a chamber. There's so many chambers. If you kind of. Spanned out, and you like. I go to conferences and talk to people. There's often you'll see counties or areas of smaller towns that all have one chamber that kind of ties all of those those towns together and builds that strong network of business. A good chamber is going to. So, and I only say that because even in that situation, that chamber of Commerce, Commerce, if they're worth their stuff, is going to have good relationship with the municipalities that it touches, and this chamber is no different. We absolutely have very good relationship with the county and the city of Nixa, as well as other entities that are not even affiliated with them, like the school district. And there's some economic development partnerships that we have as well that are outside of municipalities that do a lot of work in our area, and the reason why we want to have those relationships is so that when a small business or any business comes to town or wants to build in town or wants to expand when they're here or whatever it is, and they don't know what to do because their job isn't economic development, their job is whatever their job is, they can they have a resource to come to, and they can say, "Hey, Whitney, I want to do this thing. How do I do it? And I can plug them in with all the people that they need to connect with. And it's not me. None of it's me. You know, but no one else has. It's my job to cultivate those relationships, so that when someone comes and they say, "I have a question" or "I have a problem, I know where to direct them to. I know who to connect them to. I can be that bridge that says, "Hey, you need to talk to this person, not this other person you've been talking to. Or here, I'm going to get you in contact with this, or I'm going to set up a meeting with this individual. We're going to fix this because I don't regulate anything, but I do build all of those relationships so that when my businesses have problems, or they have goals, or they have they're trying working on something. I can pull in the right entities to support them, and they don't have to run around trying to build those relationships on the fly because they decided to expand. You know,
Collin 6:50
right? Oh, and I think that touches on a really key distinction. And I think another misconception that people have is: is this just another networking thing? Is this like a BNI, or is this like another you know group where people are coming together? And what you're really saying here is no. A good chamber of commerce is more about connections to resources and people for the betterment of your business and what you're trying to do fundamentally.
Whitney Guison 7:15
And and there is absolutely that networking component, and we lean heavily. That's what people see. What they see on the day to day, is the networking component. You come to the lunches and you come to all of the different things that a chamber puts on, and every chamber is different. Our chamber is very event heavy. We have lots of stuff for our members to engage with, to meet each other, and to support each other. But we've since I've taken over, I've really tried to turn those things as well, and it's it's like you know steering a ship. You're trying to move it to where yes, you come and network, but hopefully while you're coming and networking, you're also getting some professional development, and you're you're growing in like we just had one on AI and how you use AI in the workplace. We having one on marketing coming up. We're going to have one on culture in the workplace. Like so, the networking quote unquote events that we have. I don't want it to only be networking all the time. We need to be focusing on what how we're pouring knowledge back into our commercial business owners and professionals, so that in our small town they have this a good set of tools to continue to thrive. Instead of you can't just stagnate, be like, hey, we met people today, so check that box. You know, you got to add more value, and that's what at least the Nixa Chamber tries to do is add that value and give our businesses as many resources, trainings as we can. Obviously, there's always limits, but we do the best that we can to really support our businesses and give them the tools they need.
Collin 8:37
And I think that's a good starting point. Of if you are listening to this and you have a chamber in your area, you've thought about joining it. You know, and more than just hey, how? What are your networking opportunities? Ask what are your educational opportunities? What kind of resources are you bringing in? I mean, one thing, Whitney, that I know we always enjoy when we come to the luncheon is you know you have the the county commissioners there talking about how things are going. You've got the school giving a report. You've got the city; they're giving a report. Like it means that as a business, I am able to stay educated on what's happening around me, so that I'm not surprised. I mean, something very simple as hey, you know, one time they gave an update on some major road construction that was happening. Yeah. As a dog walker or pet sitter. That's my life is route planning and understanding where to go and how to navigate. And all of a sudden, it's like, well, this entire intersection is now dead to us, and we've got to make sure we account for that in between visits. It was just like, yeah, oh, okay. It's that kind of stuff that you can really get tapped into. But you do have to be. I mean, you mentioned like you have to be engaged to some extent, you get out what you put into
Whitney Guison 9:44
it. Absolutely.
Collin 9:46
Now, people are listening to this. How do they know? Like, are there? I mean, this is kind of a weird question, but you do interviews with people all the time who may be interested in joining the chamber. Are there any? Like, how do you walk people into whether it's a good decision for them to join? One versus not.
Whitney Guison 10:02
So I am a self-proclaimed horrible salesperson. I I don't sell things well. What what I what I do when somebody approaches me and says, "Hey, should I join your chamber? I never answer that question. I don't know if you should join my chamber. Here's what I do know: is here's what the chamber offers. Here's all the programming we have. Here's the conference that we put on every year. Here's access you have to all the different businesses in town. Here's what you get the lunches. All I run the gamut, right? Here's all the things the chamber does. Here's the stuff you can do in the chamber and not be a member. Here's the stuff you can do in the chamber cheaper as a member, and here's the stuff you don't get access to unless you're a member. You make the decision. Is is it something you want? And I I'm a big proponent of having chamber members who are engaged and who want to be here, not ones who someone told them to join. They didn't know why they joined it because they thought that by joining it they're going to get 10 new leads a month, and they didn't, and so now they're upset at me a year later. I don't want that person. I want the person who is looking to build relationships, build their professional development, people who see that the chamber also has a foothold in the community and recognize that that's a path in which they can engage the community in meaningful ways, and if they are expecting the chamber to do their marketing for them, or expecting the chamber to find their clients for them, please don't join. You will only be mad at me after a year because I'm not doing any of those things, you know. So I don't try and convince anyone either way. It's very much a go to your chamber and have in your own brain what you want out like what's the missing link in your business? Are you going because you want to grow it? And do they have opportunity for you to connect with people that would allow you to grow? Because all chambers are slightly different. We're not all the same. We don't all focus on the exact same things. And so, go to your chamber and figure it out. Like, is do they have the things that you're looking for to grow, or is your community one that kind of backs your chamber? And if you're not a member of the chamber, does it look bad? You know, because that's that's true in some communities where if you're not a part of the chamber, they don't use you. You know.
Collin 12:14
Yeah. Well, so another aspect of this is the view of legitimacy of well, I have to be a quote unquote legitimate business, and and I'm not well. I'm not a banker, and I'm not a mechanic, and I'm not a I'm not I'm in retail retail. I don't have brick and mortar. That's not for me. I mean, what do you say to that kind of mentality around this?
Whitney Guison 12:35
That the chamber's not for them because they don't have brick and mortar.
Collin 12:38
Yeah, yeah, or that they don't view themselves as like a legitimate business.
Whitney Guison 12:42
Oh well, if they don't view themselves as legitimate business, then they're not. I'm sorry. Sorry, you can take that out.
Collin 12:50
No, that's great.
Whitney Guison 12:51
I mean, you got to believe in yourself first. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, the the chamber does actually benefit. I think better people who perhaps aren't your traditional business model like I don't know dog walkers and pet sitters, for example. Not traditional. Anyone can do it out of their basement, right? Like there's like my neighbor's daughter does this. So why would I like? And and I don't say that to disparage any your your industry. I'm saying it's the perfect place for someone in your industry to land to give more legitimacy to the community who's unfamiliar with your business, because being a part of the chamber and saying yes, I am a part of this and this and this chamber, and I service your area does automatically lend. People think of us as like the Better Business Bureau, or they think that we are part of the city. We are not neither of those things, but that doesn't matter so much. It's about perception, and if they see somebody as a member of the chamber and they associate that with legitimacy, then it absolutely is more for you than it is for a bank.
Collin 13:54
Yeah, well, and it provides opportunities to do that kind of boots on the ground education. That's so important. Of that kind of is the the precursor to networking. Hey, who are you and what do you do? Right. Oh, let me tell you about this and that. Just those simple conversations. I know is something that Megan and I focus really hard on more than hey, what's an ad buy, or what's this, or what's this? It's I want to talk to more people about what we do and share and get to know what they do and build these connections, and and that's really that helps you become part of kind of more deeply integrated into the community instead of kind of sitting here on the the periphery.
Whitney Guison 14:39
I I think especially in a town like ours, makes us small. We're 25,000 people, which is not as small as other communities, but not as big as some. In our small town, it's still someone might see an ad on Google, but the reason why they clicked through that ad and used that person is because their neighbor also knew about them. You know, I just. Got a call yesterday. Somebody called me and said, "I'm doing roof inspections at your neighbor at your neighbor's house. So, are you gonna be in town tomorrow at two so I can inspect your roof? And I was like, "Who are you? Like, how did you even get my number? It's and I was and as soon as I said, "Hey, I've got a local person that inspects my roof for me, they hung up on me, right? Like that. the The old way of advertising it absolutely does work. I'm not going to say it doesn't, but it works so much better when you've got your neighbors and your friends who are also saying, "Oh yeah, I met Collin at this thing, and he explained all this, and they seem like really cool people. Or, "Oh yeah, I used them. I don't know the owners, but I used that. Like you're you're gonna go so much further if you have a footprint in your community of people who know you, not just advertisement that everyone has heard 500 times and they can sing your jingle. You know?
Collin 15:55
Yeah, yeah. In my opinion, well, in a trust based economy and something that we work in, of okay, you have to trust me to a let me in your home, and then b you have to trust me to take care of your furry family member and make sure that everything is copacetic when you get back.
Whitney Guison 16:10
And I want to be able to come to you with there's a problem, and not just you be an unknown figure. You know.
Collin 16:17
Yes. Yep. And and a lot of that question of how do I know you? How do I know you? It's well, I'm kind of everywhere, and people know who I am. They might not directly use me because they might not have a need for me, but people can-they recognize the name, they recognize the face, and that's all part of this getting better connected with with people. Have you heard of Ty and Pet Sarita with exclusively cats in-home cat sitting has this to say:
Speaker 1 16:43
Oh, absolutely, do it! I love it. I think it's absolutely from the get-go. If you're just thinking about starting a business, do this. It's it's so inexpensive. It's it's kind of silly not to do it. Organizes everything for you. It's so amazing. I I think there. I think it's it's invaluable. I think especially for a new business owner, just kind of sets you off on the right foot and makes you look like a true professional, not like a fly-by-night pet sitter.
Collin 17:07
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give Time to Pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting TimeToPet.com/confessional. Something else that you work on, Whitney, is you do go around doing a lot of presentations and you do a lot of education around communication with I
Speaker 2 17:28
do
Collin 17:28
with people. Where did this start for you?
Whitney Guison 17:32
Well, all of my degrees actually are in communication conflicts. So ah back before my husband and I were small business owners, before I met my husband, I I chose to do the degree that had no path and no future of communication studies, and I was like, I want, I just want to be really good at talking to people, and that's that's gonna make a lot of money, you know, like solid, yeah. yeah, super broad, not at all specific, not business focused, just humans. You know, like how do you interact with other human beings? So I got my my bachelor's degree and my master's degree in communication studies, and in my master's degree, I focuses I focus on conflict resolution. So I'm a trained mediator. I have certificates in conflict resolution, and it's just-it's something that I am naturally incredibly passionate about because conflict and hard conversations is what, in my opinion, creates strong relationships. It's not the lack of it, but it's dealing with it well that is what builds relationships well, and so I've always had a passion for that. After becoming the chamber president, I had to fill in some gaps in speakers for some lunches, and from there, meaning I didn't have a speaker show up till lunch once, and I just kind of had to like, well, I know how to do stuff, so I'll say this, I'll do this, you know. So I did this thing just to fill the space, and from there I had people asking me to come speak to their their teams, and I then got asked to go to speak at some local conferences, and then from there I got asked to speak to some state conferences, and so I've done some workshops now. I've been I've consulted with some organizations on their team communication, and so it's just kind of naturally snowballed in this position. I think I've just I've just gotten more of that network you're talking about a little differently than you'd think because it's building a business that I didn't have when when I started, but I've turned it into a little bit of a business. I haven't decided how much I'm going to put behind it, you know. But as as long as I have opportunities to go and teach people how to handle hard conversations better, I'll take it because I love that more than anything. I think it's the most important part of our experience here is learning how to engage with each other in a way that. Builds instead of instead of tears down.
Collin 20:03
Well, and I think that so there's a line there. I feel like between like there's good communication, there's bad communication, then there's hard conversations. How talk to me about that difference between communicating poorly but having and needing to have like a a hard conversation with an employee.
Whitney Guison 20:21
Well, communicating poorly is honestly-it's-it's a lack of certain intentions and understandings of how humans interact with each other. So, oftentimes, to be quite frank, when I go into an organization and they're telling me they have bad communication,
Collin 20:38
yeah,
Whitney Guison 20:39
what they're actually saying is something is wrong, and we don't know what it is. We haven't been able to define why we're having issues or why we're having lots of hard conversations. Like they're here all the time, and we don't know what's happening. So it's not so much like bad communication. We often throw that out there. Like we need to work on our communication because we don't know what it is we need to work on, so it's a catch-all phrase. You know, like we just need to communicate better. Well, how do you propose we do that? You're like we're fighting all the time, like you know, like we're constantly talking. And so I don't even focus much on whether or not somebody is communicating well. Like it's more about being willing to engage in a process and being willing to alter and shift how you're engaging that process to get the best outcome and the best information. Honestly, because I tend to focus. I whenever I speak, I actually often not whenever, but often when I speak, I'll make sure that the audience realizes I'm not here to assist you in argumentation. I I don't have. I mean I do, but I'm not going to teach you all these tips and tricks on how you convince someone to do something or to be on your side or how you win arguments. That's not what this is about for me. It's about winning people. It's about building relationships. And so if you're saying I'm I'm a bad communicator, what I want to know is why do you say that? What where are the missteps happening? Because it's probably not so much that you're bad at it as much as you don't know what to what you should be focusing on, or you haven't taken the time to to understand what the problem is, and so it's really not about if you're willing to engage in the process, you're probably a pretty good communicator, quote unquote, because you're going to improve consistently over time. None of us are good communicators in the right circumstance, right? In the perfect in a perfect circumstance, all of us are bad communicators, including myself. If I have the the perfect storm of things happening, I'm also a bad communicator. So it doesn't really matter to me if I'm a good or a bad communicator. If you want to build relationships, I can help you do that. If you want to, if you want to have a high functioning team, there's principles and elements that you can engage with to make that happen. And if you aren't engaging those things, then you're going to have a team that's not functioning well, or you're going to have a conversation that's not functioning well. So it's not so much are you a good or bad communicator, but rather are we engaging in a way that makes a hard conversation that makes us get to the end of a hard conversation well? It doesn't make it go away; it makes us get to the end of it in a good way. Does that make sense?
Collin 23:22
Yeah, it has that nice resolution to it. Of of it might we may have you know fumbled our way kind of through that, or it might not have the outcome that maybe I had originally anticipated. But hey, we got through it, and at least maybe we have a mutual understanding because there is this. There's the words that I say, but there's also how they're received in this process too,
Whitney Guison 23:43
correct. And and we communication because it's such a catch all. You got to be really careful when you ask questions about you know what's the difference between good bad communication and hard conversations. That is that's you and that's that's the difference between every human you look at. You know what's the difference between Collin and Whitney? Like like where do you want to start? You know, and so one person's hard conversation is another person's bread and butter. You know, one person's bad communication is another person's like just where they live. That's their baseline. Yeah. And like when I married my husband, he had a very different approach to hard conversation than I had. So every hard conversation was harder because the way he wanted to approach it was wildly different than the way I wanted to approach
Collin 24:26
it. Yeah,
Whitney Guison 24:27
and so I think more important than than trying to understand the difference in all of them. Perhaps we should just focus on how do we have hard conversations with the right expectations and get through them in a way that builds this relationship at the end, not not necessarily changes anyone's opinions, but we end up with good information and we end up with a good relationship.
Collin 24:47
And so, is that a process that you design internally to the business and the team? Of these are the steps we walk through when we have to have these kind of conversations. Is that education? You do with your team to to enhance some of these skills and knowledge around this topic.
Whitney Guison 25:05
It is so I like you can do workshops and I do obviously I speech I speak on this to large groups of people, but if you're getting down to the nitty gritty of it, if I'm consulting with an organization, for example, I'll take the top level of leadership, and we'll start there because oftentimes, if communication, quote unquote, is breaking down, there's a lack of clarity around something, or there's a lack of clarity around. Usually, it's expectations, policy, and procedures, things like that. So I'll start with the top leadership. Let them tell me what's going on, and then we will work on before we ever are talking about engaging with another person. We're talking about setting appropriate expectations that are clear. A lot of the problems that we see in organizations is we're arguing about stuff that we've never actually defined, and so everyone's approaching it from a different angle. And the issue isn't so much that we don't know how to talk; it's that I'm describing something that I expect, and they have a different expectation, and we never actually defined a shared expectation. So of course, we're never going to have a conversation that aligns because what you think should be happening, what I think should be happening, aren't the same. And so, honestly, before I ever even talk about engaging with other people, you have to start deeper than that and say, why do we need to engage with them? Like, are they doing something wrong? Do they know they're doing something wrong? Have we written it down that they're doing something wrong? Like, you know, or is it just in your head that they should be doing this other thing? But it's actually not in the company's policy, procedures, expectations, job descriptions all those things, and so I start very high end. I I can work with a company for four months before we ever get to the point where they're actually engaging with an employee about something, because we have to put all of the foundations in place to be able to walk up to that employee and say, by the way, you this needs to be corrected because they didn't have the thing that need to be corrected in like in place or defined before, so they're frustrated about something that they've never actually expressed to the company needs to be done, and that can be a really tricky thing to help some leaders walk through that process and say, "Oh, yeah, I guess we don't have any expectations in place. We should probably do that, you know.
Collin 27:23
Yeah, I'm feeling really called out now. I've got a lot of work to do on making my policies, but I think one thing that changed for Megan and I was when we started to view our company, our employee handbook, and our training manual as almost a company dictionary. That that really helped us, and here's just a very. This is a really simple. This is a ridiculous example, but man, Whitney, we had a lot of conflict around this one thing, and it was walk the dog on a short leash. Now you may be going, well, yeah, okay, but what you just said of but like define some things in that. What's the short leash? And because we kept on having bad outcomes, or the not the outcomes we wanted from the walk or from an interaction, but everybody thought we were talking about the same length of leash that the dog was being walked on. And it turns out, when I was not specific, it was open to interpretation, and the team members used their own expect expectations to shorten the leash, and it wasn't what I wanted. And so we had these outcomes, and we kept having to have these conversations. We kept coming back to this over and over and over and over again, and until I actually defined when I say the words short leash, it means you're holding the leash with less than six inches to the collar, suddenly I had things not just to point back to. Now it wasn't just a oh I'm right because it's look look it's here in the dictionary. It was a we have a shared language now, which really helped those conversations.
Whitney Guison 28:58
And and Collin, I think what you just hit on is perfect in the world of good and bad communication. It's really about shared language, and whenever we approach each other, when human beings interact, we are bringing to the table different definitions for everything, different definitions for body language, for tone, for what that means. When you sigh and roll your eyes, it means this, right? It means you're mad or angry or whatever. Versus somebody else would be like, "Well, it means I'm exhausted and I just got off a bad phone call. You know, we bring different definitions to every interaction, every microsecond of interaction. We are all defining that and interpreting that differently. So, part of conflict resolution, which I don't even honestly like that phrase very much, but part of having hard conversations, we'll put it that way, is getting to get a shared language, a shared definition, something both of us can look at. From the outside and say yes, we agree that this means this. Now it doesn't mean that I agree with that and you agree with that, but it means the same thing to both of us. You
Collin 30:10
know? Yeah, yeah. We had a we have a former formal like write up policy if somebody does something incorrectly in the company, and this is where we get to a lot of hard conversations that we have to have of you didn't follow the procedures, and at the bottom of that, it's it's there's a statement that just says you might not agree with that this happened, but we're agreeing to the same terms, right? It's it's it's when when I say you didn't follow the policy, here is the policy that wasn't followed. Do we agree that that's do you agree that this is a policy that we have that applied to the situation. At least we can start there and then work through those details. But without that, like a lot of times we think, "Oh, I don't. As a business owner, it can be we can feel as though, "Oh, I have to write down more policies, more procedures. You're burdening me with this. Can't I just go about doing the business of business? And the answer is no. Like you have to give people more background, more information, and set those expectations appropriately, so that everybody's on the same page when something goes off the rails.
Whitney Guison 31:13
Yeah. And another way I like to think of it is you're giving people the the avenue by which they can succeed in your organization. We often tend to turn that whenever we talk about like the lack of something, the lack of communication. We always think of the negative side of it. I I wish we would start thinking about. Let's all look back to that job we had where we never knew if we were doing well. You know, we've all had that job. I mean, for some of us, it was when we were in high school. For some of it's, it's right now. You know, like we've all had that job. Be the kind of manager and leader where your people have a clear road to success. This is our expectations of you, and when you do it, we celebrate it and we promote to it. And when you don't do it, you may not agree that you should do it, but you'll know if you didn't do it. You know, like that's a different. Those are two different conversations, and that that also has. Sorry, now we're I'm kind of getting into the weeds, but that highlights another part of of good communication or bad communication or basically getting through hard conversations. In in con in the world of conflict resolution, you don't want those two conversations to be be had at the same time because there is a conversation and I don't agree with this policy versus I didn't do the policy those are two different conversations and oftentimes when we're in a hard conversation we are conflating multiple issues and we never get through to the end of anything because we have three things we're actually arguing about. So you hit it on it perfectly. It's not about do you agree with this thing. It's about did you
Collin 32:49
do it?
Whitney Guison 32:49
Yeah. And we can have the other conversation separate from this one. But for right now, and this this can I wish that more people could learn. And it's not easy to do. So I say this, but it's not easy to say, I I want us to not get taken off to this other conversation right now. Can we please focus on the initial reason why we're here, and we can pick this other thing up in a different conversation? That's that's a hard thing to do, believe it or
Collin 33:19
not. Are you serious about growing your pet care business. Well, don't miss the 2026 Dog Co Business Summit happening October 2nd through the 4th in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Spend the weekend learning from world-class business leaders, including the keynote speaker Donald Miller. Plus, there will be practical sessions from pet care professionals who have actually built and scaled successful companies. Whether you're a solo operator or leading a growing team, you'll leave with strategies you can put to work immediately. Grab your ticket today by visiting dogcosummit.com. That's dogcosummit.com, and we'll see you in Wednesday. I used to teach human anatomy and physiology, and the way we would teach about body parts and stuff is we would learn the definition of the liver, and then we would learn its location. Right? It was two separate aspects of knowledge that we had to know, and it's exactly what you're talking about here, Whitney. It's the definition of the policy and the execution of the policy. And I love how you said that. Oftentimes, we're cross talking, or I may be arguing that did you do it, and the employee is arguing whether it's a legitimate policy in the first place, and we can't work through that until we somebody sits down and goes, "Hey, I feel as though we're not talking about the same thing right now. Let and and sometimes it takes that man that that instinct to I I know I in hard conversations I like to just bulldoze my way through and man we're on the train and we are going and at some point it's going to stop and how it ends I don't know but I will have said my piece restraining myself enough to say like hey maybe we need some more. Space in this, and let me make some more opportunities to have this conversation.
Whitney Guison 35:04
Well, and so I'm I'm very much about. There's a phrase I like to use, which is single track conversations. It's it's having if you're the supervisor, it's having that that goal in this conversation. We're going to talk about you you not following this procedure or this policy, and if if you like, there is an element of kind of bulldozing through to the end of that. If they want to keep coming back and saying, "Well, it's a stupid policy. It's a stupid policy, that is neither here nor there, you know. And you kind of feel like a bulldozer sometimes. Yeah. When you're like, I understand that you don't you disagree with the policy, and I, I really want to have that conversation with you, but this conversation isn't that one. And now you can-it's easier to do that as a supervisor than as like a spouse. You know, that gets a little bit more challenging.
Collin 35:55
Yeah,
Whitney Guison 35:55
but um, but the principle is the same. I, my husband and I have those kinds of conversations with each other all the time. Like I, I hear what you're saying, but we're gonna press pause on that one while we focus on this other thing. And you can do the same thing in your in your business. Let's pause that conversation to finish this one. It's hard to do. You gotta you gotta almost bulldoze a little bit to get there, or else you'll allow yourself to be pulled off in a no man's land every five seconds. And so it can be very especially if you're natural at being a bulldozer. You're you're you're already far along in this. There's some people are people pleasers,
Collin 36:27
yeah, and
Whitney Guison 36:28
it's it is wildly uncomfortable to redirect a conversation back instead of allowing themselves to be pulled off and like let's resolve this first, let's fix this first, and then come back to my thing. You'll never make it back. They'll pull you in circles all over the place if you allow that.
Collin 36:44
Do you have a preference of whether this is needs to be these kind of hard conversations need to be done in person versus remotely over Zoom phone call? Is is there one that's better or worse?
Whitney Guison 36:58
Yes.
Collin 37:02
Ah. Ah,
Whitney Guison 37:03
so I I don't have one of those as a preference, but there's always one that's better or worse, and it depends on your circumstances. I have chosen to send emails versus calling people because I know that the reaction will be large and out of control, and I want them to have the space to be out of control without having to be facing me while they do it. Does that make sense?
Collin 37:26
Yeah.
Whitney Guison 37:27
I've done the same thing in text messages. I've chosen that medium because I know that the response is going to be big, and they should have the privacy of a large response before they can. They have to engage with me. I find that to be courteous. Now, there's other times when I'm like, let's sit down and have this, like have it out, which is fine. Now, I'm not. Now, I'm not talking about when I say that reactions would be big. If I have to give feedback to my staff or something, I I just do that in the moment. I I'm developing a culture in my organization that I manage. What I'm describing about emails is external to my organization. People I have to engage with that aren't my organization, that aren't my culture, that I don't have control over. In my organization, the culture I'm building, we give each other immediate feedback about things. We don't. I don't hem and haw. No one should ever find out in their performance review that five months ago they did something they shouldn't have done. They shouldn't. That should never happen.
Collin 38:30
Yeah.
Whitney Guison 38:30
If they did something they shouldn't have done, you walk into their office and you say, "Hey, you did something you shouldn't have done. Let's not do it again next time. And so I try and do that as much as I possibly can. That's all in person because I work in person with my people. If I don't work in person with my people, then yeah, do it over Zoom. You know, like the circumstance. Like I, there's no best way and there's no worst way unless you choose the worst way for the situation you're in. You know, and I can't tell you what that's going to look like.
Collin 38:54
Yeah. Well, and I, I'm glad you said that, Whitney. Not just because there's no right way, but because many of us, I think, spend too much time thinking, "Oh, this is a hard conversation. I've got to do this in person. I've got to do it, and and I and that may be the single worst thing you can do, depending on the situation and the other person that you're working with. And I think that takes that little bit of finesse to the judgment call of what we do and how we move forward with something, instead of thinking, because I grew up in the if it's a hard conversation, you you got you got to have that face to face. You got to meet with the person, and that sometimes means that I delay the hard conversations because I don't want to do it in person.
Whitney Guison 39:33
Yeah, well, and on the flip side, there, and maybe this is a cop out. So I conflict resolution went through a, and I think we're still kind of at this as a society where if you avoid a hard conversation, then that's bad, right? Engaging is the best thing. I don't agree with that either. I kind of wish that we got a little bit more particular about the things we chose to engage with. You know, like we don't engage everything. I wish there were things we allowed to roll off our backs more. And on the flip side of that, if we can't, right? If there's something we have to engage with, a big part of the workshops that I do, Collin, is talking, helping people work through when do I engage, because you don't have to engage everything. Not every bad interaction requires you to sit down and say, "So my feelings were a little hurt, you know. It just doesn't require that, and we damage a lot of relationships. I'll tell you what. This is listen. Some I process things externally. I want to. I want to talk it through.
Collin 40:34
Yeah. Yeah.
Whitney Guison 40:34
My husband is an internal processor. He want. He thinks about it. He will not say it out loud until he knows that's how he feels. I say things out loud and then go, "No, that didn't sound right. I retract, you know. And so, is it fair to my husband for me to approach him every time I'm disgruntled and say, "Boo hoo on you, and then two seconds later be like, you know, it wasn't that bad. Yeah, like that's not fair. No, and yet we do that often because we we have it in our brains that if something is bugging us, we're supposed to engage
Speaker 2 41:13
it
Whitney Guison 41:14
instead of giving ourselves time to say, "Is it bugging us like enough that we engage this? You know, there's oftentimes if you left it alone for even 24 hours, you realize it's really not that big of a deal, and or it's not what I thought it was going to be, so I don't have to engage it. Now, the things you must engage is different though, and then you have to decide how do I engage it. And I have, like I said, a whole workshop that's focused on how or when do I engage? Should is this worth it or not worth it? But I agree with you. It doesn't all have to be in person. I've shut off text messages to people before because they need to know information right now, and they need to deal with their own emotional response to it. And we're going to come together later and talk about after we both had time to process things and sit down calmly. I'd rather get them information in their in their brains that they can start to work through an emotional response to before I sit down and talk to them about it. But there's times when you have to sit down, like
Collin 42:12
yeah,
Whitney Guison 42:13
you figure it out. You got to read your people. You got to read your room. You got to don't engage every single thing that bothers you, and figure out when you have to engage and how you do it, you're the judge. You know, I can't tell you what the best way
Collin 42:25
is. You said get to know your people. Are there quizzes, tests, things to take? You know, assessments for how people handle certain things, or or Whitney, do I just need to talk to my employees and and learn to know about them as a human?
Whitney Guison 42:42
Do you like all the personality tests, Collin? Are you a personality test guy?
Collin 42:46
No, I'm not. I'm not.
Whitney Guison 42:50
So my husband likes to say the best diet is the diet that you can stick to, right? And I think that's true of like personality test type stuff. People love a good personality test, but unless you have on your wall the personality test summary of every single one of your employees, and you're going to reference it right before you talk to them every day, it's just fun information. Like if if you are like me, and I would say 90% of people, it's a fun thing to do. It's not horrible. Like my staff has taken personality tests. We we like DISC. It's simple.
Speaker 3 43:31
Yeah.
Whitney Guison 43:31
D I S C. It's a personality test. Very simple, and it's a fun thing for us. And we we reference it amongst us sometimes. Like, oh, you're being so you right now, you know, but it didn't change how we interact with each other. It's just fun. I say talk to your people. That's what I say, and be flexible because my personality is very strong, and if I'm working with somebody that is very timid, I have to learn how to alter my behavior in order to allow them to be more expressive. Sometimes I've had staff in the past where I've had to, I've learned to ask for their opinion before I give mine because if I give mine first, they won't they will just agree with me, and I don't like that. And so I say, talk to your people and be flexible. The biggest flex in a good quote-unquote communicator, somebody who communicates very well, is somebody who can shift and alter and adapt to the person they're talking to. And and I don't mean that in a bad way. In a good way that brings them out, that makes them comfortable.
Collin 44:41
Asking that question. What does this person need from me? Yeah, and I found like you mentioned, hey, this I'm interacting with somebody that may be different than I am, and and I can tend to have this this gut reaction of, oh, I don't know if I can work with this person. They're too quiet, or they're not you know boisterous, or they didn't laugh at my joke, or they didn't do all this stuff, and going. I really had to work on that little nugget in the back of my brain and just go, "Hey, that's just this person. And are they meeting every other requirement? Yeah, they're doing fantastic. So, how do I need? What do I need to do? How do I need to say? How do I need to pause? How do I need to this to actually have this conversation? Because if I come in and I say all my piece, it turns out, Winnie, I can fill a 30-minute meeting just by myself, which which isn't helpful for anybody. And so, you know, me kind of sitting there and putting myself on mute and giving them. It turns out, giving them a chance to talk actually helps. And I'm being okay with that, and going, hey, I, and that, but that took me going, being vulnerable enough to go. I might not like what you're about to say because I found I liked to bulldoze through situations because it meant the other person couldn't say things that I didn't want to hear, and I'll just get through. Good, cool, good, good meetings. See you next quarter. Check, move on. Instead of me being vulnerable enough to allow to to to be quiet,
Whitney Guison 46:01
a key concept in in hard conversations is being comfortable with discomfort. You have to. I mean, there's no other way to put it. We too often try and rush to the end. You just described this purposely. We rush to the end of a comfort the end of a hard conversation because we don't want to be uncomfortable anymore. We and to us, if we get to the end, our discomfort ends, and it does for a moment until that thing comes back because we didn't actually do the work to resolve something. We just did the work to get to the end of something. So one of the biggest things is I we need to be more comfortable with just sitting in a discom in discomfort, with asking hard questions, with opening ourselves up enough to gain all of the information we need to fully comprehend the situation that we're in before we push through to an end, and that means we have to sit in discomfort longer, which we don't like as humans. But if we can learn how to do it, we will find ourselves with a stronger resolution at the end.
Collin 47:00
Well, and that means a lot of times it means I have to put myself off to the side and go, okay, well, what's best for the business right now? Does Collin really need to spout off his opinion on everything going on right now, or do does Collin need to follow the business process? And that's been a a thing I've we've worked on a lot. Is hey, there's me Collin the person, but then there's the business that kind of is a screen in front of him that he has to do protect, guide, maintain, for different reasons. And hey, the the business is needing to go this because it's important to this to this outcome. And putting myself off to the side, right? Collin gets a little bit over here, over in the corner, and we just work through it. We just work through the process.
Whitney Guison 47:40
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
Collin 47:42
Whitney. I have really enjoyed our conversation today. I'm very, very thankful for your time. I know you have a lot on your plate. You're going from place to place, and just I appreciate you helping us understand that the the people aspect of business is critical. Whether that's being involved in a community and how we communicate with them and how we handle those hard conversations, so that we have good outcomes that we don't have to keep revisiting, and I know this is this is just like this was a 70,000 foot view if there is one, and there's so much involved in this. So if people are interested in getting connected, picking your brain, following along with your kind of stuff, how best can they do that?
Whitney Guison 48:17
So I actually have a website. It's www dot whitney geese. www.whitneygisson.com, and so you can go to my website, and from there you'll find my email, which is the best way to contact me. I don't put my my personal cell phone out there. Feels like a lot, but that's the best way to to contact me is through my email, which you can find on my website. And yeah, I love coming to businesses and doing this in deeper dives. The only way to do it on a podcast is really that, unless you wanted to really narrow down. But that's that's hard to do. What we talked about today, though, was very very good. I think it's solid solid communication stuff to get people started. At least I think. So thanks for having me on.
Collin 48:59
Yeah, Whitney, this has been fantastic. I'll have links to your website and your email in the show notes and on our website, so people can get connected to you and follow along. This has been an absolute, absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Whitney.
Whitney Guison 49:11
Thank you.
Collin 49:13
I really enjoyed my conversation with Whitney. But my absolute favorite takeaway was when she said, "It's not about winning arguments; it's about winning people. That really is the heart of strong communication. It's what it's all about. And in and in our line of business, hard conversations are completely unavoidable. Spoiler alert: whether it's with clients, employees, or community partners, sometimes even with yeah ourselves, the goal should not to bulldoze our way to the end and prove that we were right all along. The goal is to build enough clarity, trust, and shared language that the relationship is stronger on the other side of this, regardless. Of the outcome, better communication helps us lead better, serve better, and creates businesses that people can trust. We want to thank our sponsors, Time to Pet and Dogco, for making this show possible, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
