Jerry Fu is a conflict resolution coach who helps Asian-American leaders advance in their career and life journeys.
Having taken on several pharmacy leadership roles, Jerry started coaching in 2017 to help other Asian-American professionals deal with the conflict they encounter at work, with their culture, and within themselves.
Prior to starting his coaching business, Jerry served as a pharmacist and began facilitating leadership workshops in 2012. 
Today, Jerry offers a range of coaching services, which includes individual coaching, group workshops, and keynote presentations.
He has appeared on over a hundred podcasts and plans to appear in plenty more. To learn more, you can visit https://www.adaptingleaders.com.
Connect with Jerry on LinkedIn.
What You’ll Learn in This episode
- Career journey
- Conflict Resolution
- Self development
- Cultural influences
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Best books to read
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio Show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast Conflict Resolution Coach with Adapting Leaders, Mr. Jerry Fu. Good morning, sir.
Jerry Fu: Good morning, Stan.
Stone Payton: Well, it is a absolute delight to have you on the program this morning. I think a good place to start would be if you could help me and our listeners kind of get our our arms around this this topic, this whole field of conflict resolution. What is it? Why should we be thinking about it? And what what have you learned in your time working in that arena?
Jerry Fu: Yeah. Yeah. Conflict is important because it doesn’t go away on its own. And the benefits of learning to deal with it, whether it’s a healthy conflict like personal growth or an unhealthy conflict like a roommate who hasn’t paid his rent is. Yeah. The sooner you learn to deal with it, the sooner you can move on to to more meaningful, more important things. The sooner you can have some kind of peace of mind knowing that not only can you enjoy the fact that you’ve moved past the situation, but to being confident, knowing that the challenges that you encounter inevitably next round you’ll be more prepared for.
Stone Payton: So what’s the backstory, man? How did you get involved in this kind of work?
Jerry Fu: Sometimes you don’t choose it, sometimes it chooses you. And so in this case. Yeah. I realized very quickly that I didn’t want to admit it. I just knew that any time someone was upset with me, my people pleasing nature would kick in. And my immediate response was to placate and take the path of least resistance, even if. Something was not quite to my liking or might even compromise some legal or ethical implications. And. I learned this when even when I was dealing with things as a pharmacist. Right when I remember. I’ll give a quick example. At one point, a patient ran out of refills on his diabetes testing strips and he kept just making a big scene about, well, legally it shouldn’t matter. I need strips, I need strips. I need to be able to pay for them. And I just remember that one night I just didn’t have the energy to fight it anymore. So I just gave him a courtesy bill. But the problem, right, was that once I set that precedent for him, he insisted on it every time. And. You know, which is which anyone would understand. Hey, yeah, diabetics should have testing strips, but, you know, after a while, people may question, How are you filling all these prescriptions on this insurance when legally you haven’t crossed your T’s and dotted your eyes? Right. And that’s money that we could lose from insurances just to audit us. And they say, oh, well, you know, legally you didn’t have everything lined up, so we’re just going to take all the money back, right? So now I’m out. Whatever revenue I could have made had I done things properly, had I stood my ground right to say, Hey, look, I understand you. You need your strips and I need to talk to your doctor before I can do anything right. And to be able to have the courage to stand up to that. And even if he says I’m going to complain to your supervisor, shouldn’t matter. Right? The compliance is number one. And I just didn’t like the fact that he didn’t like me unless I gave him what he wanted.
Stone Payton: Hmm. All right. So you sought out coaching. You began to read up on this, begin to study on what happened next.
Jerry Fu: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the other challenge was when I actually stepped up into leadership and I realized that if I did not manage expectations well. And then I was the one who got in trouble. You know, just it was just really frustrating. And so, yeah, the funny thing is, is. When you get over the fact that you don’t have to figure this out on your own, you don’t have to, like, stumble around in the dark. Because these problems aren’t new, but they’re just new to you. And so when I started to study leaders and work alongside leaders, I really respected them. I studied how they brought out the best in me, how they even managed conversations with me to be sure that I was doing everything that I needed to do to pull my weight. And they would share their resources and say, Hey, Jerry, here’s some here’s some books that you might like and that you have useful information. And that’s a great first step. And we all know that even though leaders are readers, it’s the application of those concepts in these books that’s turning point, right? And to dispel the myth of, Oh, well, if you’re good at this, you won’t fail at it, you won’t have to learn and improve your technique as soon as you realize.
Jerry Fu: If we’re going to have a falling out with someone, you’d rather go down swinging and have them know exactly why you’re upset with them as opposed to just flushing the friendship just because they didn’t secretly meet your expectations. So, yeah, part of it is am I willing to explore what other people have done about this? And so I came up with kind of like my own recipe, testing different comps, just figuring out what worked for me. And even then, I still have to continue to refine my process because I can always get better at this and even if I refined my process. The challenge is the stakes are going to get higher and higher every single time. And that’s the paradox of self development. As David Alan says in this great book, Getting things Done, the better you get, the better you better get.
Stone Payton: And this is a skill set that anyone who has the responsibility of generating results with and through other people. I mean, this is a vital skill set. This is not a nice to have, is it?
Jerry Fu: Oh, it’s a it’s not a luxury. It’s it’s an essential part of your leadership diet. And to use one metaphor. Right. Because whether you look for conflict or conflict finds you, you need to have a it’s best to have a system in place. Because I tell people all the time I am still conflict averse. I don’t like it. And I know that in order to compensate for that, I need to have a system in place so I don’t default into into bad and unproductive habits. So yeah, I tell people all the time, you know, I don’t want to just say, Oh, I know I, I’m a conflict coach for people pleasers because no one wants to say, well, I’m a people pleaser. Yeah, let me sign up for your services. You’ve got to say something nice to like conflict resolution for harmonizers or peacemakers, right? It’s in the same boat, but it’s people are more likely to resonate with that label as opposed to one that points out the flaws.
Stone Payton: All right. So let’s talk about the work itself, the mechanism. It’s individual coaching. It’s working with groups. Walk us through what the tell us what the work looks like.
Jerry Fu: Yeah, yeah. I think it mainly happens on two levels as you as you hinted at already. The first is individuals. So I can unpack a quick example. When I’m working with someone one on one, one of the one of the moments I really celebrated with one of my clients was when he had talked about how he had been promoted into a leadership role and they inherited a team about three months ago and he said, I have a situation where there’s a guy on my team has been with the company ten years, so this guy clearly has seniority with the company and he says, Well, this guy has been kind of frustrated because he’s wanted to be promoted into management. But the last two supervisors. We had basically told them, no, I gave up on him. So how do I get him to take my feedback seriously? Because I am in a position to help him, but I also need him to realize that unless he gets unless he’s willing to receive and apply tough feedback, like he’s not going to, he’s just going to end up with the same fate as the other two supervisors. Right. And so the framework I usually. Take people through that. That I give away on my website is involves five steps.
Jerry Fu: The first is to imagine that what does success sound like? What would a successful conversation be? And the second, once you have that possibility in mind. Is to initiate such things in motion. Right. 10 seconds of courage to say, Hey, man, when’s a good time to set up a conversation? To have to talk about what you want? Right. Whether you send the email or send the text, you want to set things in motion and then lock the gate behind you so you can’t backtrack because conflict averse people like myself, right? We want to rationalize, right? We want to say, oh, well, it’s not so bad. Maybe I don’t have to deal with it today and that this doesn’t help you. So, yeah, so you want to imagine, number one, is this possible? Number two? Well, if it is possible, what would it sound like then? You want to put something on the calendar. Third step is to script your critical phrases and you say, okay, well, what do I want to address? Let me put it on paper. Let me get these thoughts organized. Let me anticipate what kind of pushback I’m going to encounter and how I’m going to respond to that pushback. Then step four is to rehearse these things because you don’t want to just write these down.
Jerry Fu: You want to practice saying them out loud, check your tone, check your body language role, play with the friend. Right? Just to kind of iron out your phrasing and kind of get some muscle memory in there. So that step five where you follow through, you actually can think on your feet a little bit and make sure you remember that the cost of not engaging is always going to be worse than trying and and not getting the result that you initially intended. And so that’s on an individual level, on the group level. Yeah, it’s more of the same where people basically kind of throw their problems out in the open and kind of walk them through that framework. And now you have people, you know, bouncing ideas off each other on the things that they can say as the as the leadership maxim says, one of us is not as smart as all of us. And so when more people in the organization are committed to really making sure they have a culture where conflict is not only celebrated but encouraged because they understand they’d rather take a proactive approach to stamping out fires before they can even start, then that’s when I think you start to see real transformation.
Stone Payton: So you’ve been at this a while now. What are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What are you enjoying the most?
Jerry Fu: I think. I just like getting calls and emails from clients telling me how how relieved they are that they’ve been able to move past some of these situations. I’ll give you an example. The first one of the first thank you calls I ever got was from a friend who agreed to test me out as a client, and his situation was more of a personal one where he saw he asked that a girl in his church group. She said yes, gave him her number and then he tried calling or texting or a couple of times and was didn’t get a response. And then he does a little homework online and it turns out she already has a boyfriend. And so he was initially really upset and we talked through it. And I can’t believe she would lie to me and things like that. And I said, Well, hey, hang on a second. It’s easy to justify that story. It’s very easy conclusion to come to. But what if you just did a little detective work with her and to some extent with her just to say, hey, you know, there’s some things here that don’t add up and you help help shed some light on these. And it turns out she was the kind of girl who, even if she had a legitimate reason to say no, there was some guilt around saying no to guys when she wanted to kind of reward their courage for asking girl out. And so even once once he once he heard that and realized, oh, she was just being nice, even if she didn’t have to be, it still sucks that I didn’t. I got my hopes up and thought that I would go on a date or so, but I’m so happy that I found closure, even if it wasn’t the intended result I was looking for. I’m not trying to stick it to anybody. I’m just thankful to say, Hey, that hurt. And let’s talk about how you don’t have to do that. And so that can we can prevent this in the future. And I think that’s all anyone can ask for.
Stone Payton: Yeah. So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a guy like you, a practice like yours? How do you get the new clients?
Jerry Fu: Yeah, I’m still I’m still refining that process, so I’m not going to lie. I mean, part of it is, you know, I like the approach of warm traffic where I’m already working alongside other platforms with with programs like rare coaching or other things that I’ve already identified needs. And so one strategy is just to work for someone else who already has a platform, right? And it may or may not get you the value and compensation you’re looking for. But it’s a start because you can start to see where real needs are. The other is to network with other coaches and see, Hey, how can we partner with each other and match your skill set and complement complement it with mine. And the other is, yeah, just if you find an organization or find a niche that you know needs your help, hey, why not send them an email, get them on the phone if you can and say, Hey look, I would really love to work with you. Part of it is just having confidence in my own product and the value that it brings and being okay with the fact that not everyone’s going to need it. And you’d rather and then this is what I’m willing in the process, right? I’d rather test out, send the message and get a no or non response than to just kind of let them reject you from the start by never sending anything.
Stone Payton: So let’s talk root causes a minute, because it strikes me that some of the some of the genesis of a challenge with conflict could go all the way back to childhood or culture or environment. Have you learned anything on that front, like where it comes from?
Jerry Fu: Oh, yeah. It’s. It’s this survival mechanism, right? Like the fight or flight or freeze are typically right. The three actions that we. One term I thought was really funny. It was called lizard brain. Right. Because like, when you just get into a point where you’re just in a panic situation, you don’t know what to do. Are you going to do one of those three things? Right? So me growing up as a minority, whether I’m in Wisconsin or Tennessee, right, I was just an easy target. And so, you know, me being a smaller kid, I didn’t know enough kung fu to hold my ground in a real fight. And so. Right. So you try to run away or you just panic and hope that things would just blow over or you take the hit and you just kind of resent them and resent yourself for not being able to handle the situation with more confidence in a better and a better way. And so, yeah, between not wanting to deal with the conflict, when my parents were upset with me, if I questioned them in any way, and then other people making fun of my culture and you’re like, I don’t know how to fight back in a way that not that I’m trying to inflict pain, but just to kind of stand my ground and be more of an advocate for myself. Yeah, and just this need to even belong.
Jerry Fu: And you just said, Well, I want them to like me. And even though I feel like I’m compromising who I am or what’s important to me in order to gain their acceptance, I’m going to do it. Because right now that’s that’s the bigger priority, even if it’s unhealthy and such an unhealthy dynamic. So, yeah, I mean, it started from a young age, just approval addiction and looking for looking for a spot to belong. But later on in life, you compare it to realizing, hey, this is a self discovery process, and you realize, Oh, I don’t have the time or energy to get everyone to like me. I just need people who are willing to accept me more on my terms. And is there some level of adaptation? Sure. I mean, that’s what my website domain is based on, is to adapt to whatever situation doing it. But it’s never meant to compromise your identity or what’s important to you. And so that’s where the conflict resolution comes in. So when you realize, hey, you know what? Thank you for this disagreement. And because we know neither of us are going to budge, then this is we should we should move on, not despite each other, but it’s in our best interests that we can both focus more of our time and energy with people who are able to be more accepting of who we actually are.
Stone Payton: This topic, it seems to have implications and immediate application to something as important as if a leader is trying to navigate their way through and do a good job with diversity, equity and inclusion and that type of thing. I mean, they need to get good at this and they need to to create an environment that allows everyone to get better at this, don’t they?
Jerry Fu: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I can tell you just from my work on one community in particular, we’re still ironing out a statement that is that self declares, Hey, we know that the statement in itself is not the goal, Right? And the statement the self declares, Hey, this is a continual process, this is a self correcting process. And this we know that this will evolve over time. And we are also, you know, we’re not just going to check a box just because every with every shiny thing that comes up when someone says, Hey, you didn’t count for this culture, you didn’t come for this holiday, like that is not a fair burden for any one person, any one committee to say, well, we were the ones that sorry, we didn’t know about every possible culture and minority and obscure holiday, that would be difficult for any one person to take inventory of. But we are going to create an environment, as you said, right, where if people want to take the initiative to say, hey, look, I want people to know about this because I think it’s overlooked. By all means, you have the freedom and the support to to share that content that you believe will edify and strengthen and educate other people, not for not to show yourself off, but so that the group as a collective can have more awareness and learn something and improve themselves for sure.
Stone Payton: It strikes me that you might be an excellent candidate for getting on the other side of the microphone, maybe having your own radio show, authoring a book. Any plans like that down the road, writing a book or doing a radio show or. I mean, you’re already doing the keynote work.
Jerry Fu: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. So the nice thing is I there is I had the opportunity to contribute chapter to a leadership anthology. A consultant friend is is putting into motion. And initially it was supposed to self we were supposed to self publish back in October. But the great news is that Wiley actually picked it up because he already published two books before and I was just thankful that he wanted to include me in his his compilation. And so the. The book is called Secrets of Next Level Entrepreneurship, and that will come out in April of next year. So that much is set into motion and that’s I’m very excited about that. Happy to update you all when whenever that officially gets published. And then, yeah, I like the idea of hosting my own podcast. I know I’m only one person at this point, so I don’t have the bandwidth for it at the moment, but it is something that I’m sure will be on the horizon that I’ll revisit when I when I have a little more margin.
Stone Payton: All right. Well, I think it’ll last until the until that book comes out and your next one that you write completely by yourself and you do the the show, what’s on your nightstand or what do you think should be on our nightstand? What should we be reading, thinking about doing, practicing ourselves related to these topics? Let’s leave our listeners with a few pro tips before we before we wrap.
Jerry Fu: Yeah, yeah. Great, great invitation. And here are some ideas I’ll put on the table for people to explore and experiment with. You know, one is as simple as if you meet somebody with a culture not familiar with, well, just ask them, Hey, would you be willing to share some interesting things about your culture that you really celebrate, whether it’s food or traditions or other things like that? Just put yourself in a situation where you’re excited to learn something new, right? I always love travel for that reason, where you go to a country that you don’t know the language and you just you don’t like the struggle on one hand of the adjustment and the growth. But once you get used to the team, it’s really great. Another option, another idea is to read a book called Third Culture Kids. It was suggested to me by coach at Harvard in previous years, and it was a great book just showing how globalization leaves people with cultural perspectives, a combination of them that no one else would be able to identify with. Right? There is people that spent time in Argentina and and Singapore as a result of their parents job trajectory and things. And it just is just such a great book to explore these case studies and say, hey, how do people with these backgrounds still find a way to belong? And it’s a struggle to to resonate with with what their life story involves.
Jerry Fu: And then yeah, otherwise, yeah, there’s other other great books. I love Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, which is just a great book on Asian perspective on how to get a career path and be more of an advocate for yourself. But otherwise, yeah, just take take time. Take a 30 minute coffee meeting with. But the boss or someone from a different background just to say, Hey, you know what? I’d love to learn more about your story and see what kind of and end the conversation with How can I support you? How can I support the things that are important to you? And maybe, maybe that leads to some interesting time in community service or or seeing a part of the city that people don’t want to give attention to, whether it’s refugees or underserved populations. There’s just so many great that it just can lead you to so many different opportunities that you wouldn’t have discovered until you got a little curious.
Stone Payton: Well, I am really glad that I asked. Thank you for that. But what’s the best way for our listeners to get connected with you and tap into your work, man?
Jerry Fu: Yeah, Yeah. Let’s just. Let’s just have people start with checking out the free guide on my website. So if you go to w w w dot adapting leaders dot com slash guide you. I give away a free pdf download of the five step framework that will help people navigate difficult conversations and give them a higher chance of success. Because here’s the thing, guys like I have to practice what I preach or no one will hire me. And so this is the exact process that I have to use to not have to, but I get to use to kind of trick myself forward whenever I find myself lapsing into, Oh, I really don’t want to have to deal with this now. Right. Or I don’t want to have to resolve this issue or I’d rather be doing other things. But until I deal with the albatross in the room, like it’s not going to go away. So, yeah, check out the guide. Check out the case study that we walk you through and see what ideas that leads to. And from there, from the website. You can also you can book a complimentary 30 minute call. You can check out the free blog with useful summaries of leadership, literature and other life tips. But yeah, the meat of the value comes from the gut. So w w w adapting leaders dot com forward slash guide.
Stone Payton: Well, Gerri, it has been a real pleasure having you on the program this morning, man. Thanks for hanging out with us and sharing your insight and perspective. You’re doing important work, man. And we we sure appreciate you.
Jerry Fu: Thanks, Don. It’s hope. It pays dividends, graciousness for sure.
Stone Payton: All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jerry Fu with adapting leaders and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.
