S4E7. Choose Respect Over Drama with Lauren Schieffer

Do you want to dump the drama, increase production, and lift morale? Do you want to have more engaged employees or members? How well do you handle conflict within your organization? Are you and your team having respectful communication with each other?

Lauren Schieffer can address all of those questions and more. She’s the daughter of an Air Force officer, and she grew up being uprooted and relocated every couple of years. This experience imbued her with profound independence and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The lessons she learned from growing up have helped her make smart decisions and overcome adversity with humility and a sense of humor.

Lauren has navigated just about every aspect of corporate America in her varied career. From trucking to achieving top-tier Sales Director status for a global direct-sales cosmetics firm, to managing a nonprofit foundation. In her speaking career, she’s presented across the world to multiple organizations, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies to improve their communication effectiveness and reduce unnecessary conflict. Organizations and associations that hire Lauren find that their employees treat each other better, communicate more effectively — and respectfully, spend less time dealing with drama, and have a more unified focus.

As a leader, how do you disrupt the drama within your team or peer group? The best solution is always going to be prevention. If we are creating workspaces that do not lend themselves to drama, we can go a long way in preventing drama.

When you are in a leadership position, you cannot be conflict-avoidant. If you cannot prevent it, you have to face it head-on. If a leader isn’t confident in handling conflict, they leave that burden on their employees — and the outcome is going to be far worse than if management got involved.

If there was one thing you could apply every day, it would be to wake up and solidify two things for yourself: That you have value because you exist, and are therefore worthy of merit. And two, make a choice to treat people with respect regardless of what they think, say, or do. This does not diminish your value as a human being, it solidifies it. If everyone would embody these two things, the world would be a better place.

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