601: The Four Pillars of High Performing Teams with Mike Robbins

Pete Mockaitis
Mike, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Mike Robbins
Pete, thanks for having me. It’s an honor.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom. And, right now, you do speaking and consulting on high-performance teams, but in a previous career, you played baseball. What’s the story here?

Mike Robbins
I did. I did. Are you much of a baseball fan?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’ve enjoyed attending some games in my day, but I don’t follow much of anything sports.

Mike Robbins
Hey, it’s all good, man. Baseball is an acquired taste, so to speak. I grew up in here in the San Francisco Bay Area where I still live, and played baseball as a kid. I actually got drafted out of high school by the New York Yankees. Didn’t end up signing with the Yankees because I got a chance to play baseball in college at Stanford, and then got drafted out of Stanford by the Kansas City Royals and signed a contract.

And the way it works in baseball, you get drafted by a major league team like the Yankees or the Royals or the Cubs or any of the other teams in the major leagues, you have to go into the minor leagues, which I did. And I was working my way up, trying to get to the major leagues. Unfortunately, I was a pitcher and I went out to pitch one night, I threw one pitch, and tore ligaments in my elbow and blew my arm out when I was 23 after starting when I was seven.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man.

Mike Robbins
I know. And then three years, two surgeries, and a lot of time later, I finally was forced to retire from baseball. But, you know, learned a ton, it was definitely disappointing the way that it ended, but, ultimately, went into the dotcom world in the late ‘90s, had a couple different jobs working for some tech companies, and realized, which I didn’t know going in, that there were going to be a lot of similarities particularly from sort of a team and performance standpoint that were somewhat similar in baseball that were similar in business, and that’s actually what prompted me to start my consulting business almost 20 years ago.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. And, yeah, pitching, man, it looks violent what’s happening to the arm.

Mike Robbins
Yes, not a natural motion. Not what you’re supposed to do with your arm over and over and over again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I’m glad you’re feeling okay and you landed on your feet, and that’s good news. So, let’s talk about some high-performance team stuff. Just to kick it off, what would you say is maybe one of the most surprising, counterintuitive, fascinating discoveries you’ve made about high-performance teams?

Mike Robbins
Well, I think one of the things I realized early on, and again this goes back to my sports days, is it’s not always the most talented teams that are the most successful. Obviously, you need some talent, right? But anybody listening to us, whether you manage a team, or you work within a team, or have been on any team in your life, you may notice it’s not always when you have a team of rock stars that that ultimately makes the team the best.

I often ask when I’m speaking to groups and teams and leaders, Pete, I’ll say, “How many of you have ever been a part of a team where the talent of the team was good but the team didn’t perform very well?” and whether I’m speaking like I was six or eight months ago in front of an actual live group of people or we’re on Zoom or Skype, most people will raise their hands or nod affirmatively. And then I’ll say, “But on the flipside, have you ever been a part of a team where it wasn’t like every single person on the team, in and of themselves, was a superstar but something about the team just worked?” and, again, just about everybody can relate to that.

So, again, we all kind of know this but we think, and, again, a lot of managers and leaders that I worked with, or companies, were trying to hire the best and the brightest, which is important, but, ultimately, there’s something that happens when groups of people come together. And so, high-performing teams is about, yeah, we have to have a certain level of talent, but people need to understand their roles and it’s really about the relationships amongst the team members and the level of commitment or engagement the people have to the work that has a lot more to do than the actual talent of the individuals on the team.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, that totally resonates. And maybe could you maybe get us going here by sharing an inspiring story of a team that went from, okay, doing fine to really kicking it into high gear when they adopted some of your best practices?

Mike Robbins
Yeah. Well, a lot of examples. I think of there’s one team that I worked with a number of years ago and they, as a team, this was at Adobe, great technology company, great software company, and I’ve been doing a lot of work with Adobe, and the leader of this team actually changed, so the team members were all the same. But I’d worked with this leader, she was with another team, she took over the team. And what was interesting, so, again, none of the team members changed, and it took a little while at first, and part of what she really implemented was, “Hey, we need to communicate more authentically, be even more vulnerable with each other, be willing to fail.”

And a lot of times when a new leader starts with a team, everybody is a little bit on edge, everybody is a little bit walking on egg shells, wanting to impress the new boss. And one of the first sessions that she did with the team, and I wrote about this actually in my book Bring Your Whole Self to Work that came out a few years ago, but she did a series of sessions and had me help facilitate some of them where people really got real. She started, one of the things she said was, “I’m not sure I should’ve taken this job. Like, it’s a promotion for me but I really like the team that I was with before,” and sort of set a tone for, “We’re going not try to perform for each other, meaning impress each other, we’re going to perform with each other.”

And this team that was doing pretty well and had some pretty good talent went to a whole other level over the next year by really building a deeper sense of trust and communication. And, ultimately, what we call and what we now know as called psychological safety which basically means there’s trust at the group level, the team is safe enough for people to speak up, admit mistakes, ask for what they want, take risks, even fail not that we want to but we know we’re not going to get shamed or ridiculed or kicked out of the group for doing that.

And I’ve seen that over the years so many times with teams and with leaders, a willingness to really go there, a willingness to understand, as my most recent book is called We’re All in This Together, that we’re all in this thing together. Again, this idea of performing with each other as opposed to trying to impress each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so I think it’s great distinction right there, performing with instead of performing for. And so, you’ve got sort of four pillars of a culture of high performance, and the first one is psychological safety. So, that’s come up a few times on the show, and for those who don’t know, could you give us the quick definition? And then maybe just share with some of the best and worst practices. I think there are some subtle ways we erode psychological safety. I’d love it if you could flag some for us.

Mike Robbins
Oh, for sure. Well, again, psychological safety, basically, the way I think about it, I had a chance actually to interview Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School, she’s basically the world’s leading expert in psychological safety. And it’s group trust. Again, it means the group norms are setup in such a way that we know when we’re on a team with psychological safety, as I was saying before, we’re not going to get shamed or ridiculed or kicked out of the group for simply having a different opinion or making a mistake.

And trust is more of a one-to-one phenomenon, Pete. So, you and I can have trust with each other or not. That trust can get broken. It can get restored. Psychological safety is more, “How much, if we’re part of a team, how much trust do we feel that the team exhibits as a team, as an entity, so to speak?” And so, one of the things that’s really important in how you can build more psychological safety, if you happen to manage a team or be the leader of a team, is, like that example I mentioned, this leader from Adobe who since has left and she’s now at Intuit, but she really was able to show up in a way that she was vulnerable with her team. She was willing to share how she was really feeling, admit mistakes, admit whatever was going on, as I like to say, down below the water line, if you will, of the iceberg. That can help create more psychological safety.

Also, whether you’re in a management position or not, how we respond both as a leader and as team members when something doesn’t go well, when there’s a failure. So, that’s a moment, often I say, “Look, nobody likes to fail, teams don’t like to go through stress, but almost every team is these days especially, but how you respond to those moments can either make or break how much psychological safety there is.”

An example being somebody doesn’t deliver on a project or doesn’t perform at a certain level, how is that responded to? Is it dealt with directly but is it also dealt with in a way that is respectful of the human beings involved? Again, if we get called out, which isn’t always a bad thing, but if I know I’m going to make a mistake, let’s say, Pete, that you’re the boss, and I screw something up and you chew me out in front of the team, maybe even I deserved it to some degree, but that’s probably going to have me and everybody else go, “Uh-oh, don’t screw something up around Pete because he’s going to jump down your throat.”

On the flipside, not that we’re going to sugarcoat it, or people have to be grownups, but if I make a mistake and it gets handled in a way but you deal with it directly but respectfully, now that sends the tone to the rest of the team, “Hey, you know what, this didn’t work out the way we wanted to, but we’re really glad, Mike, that you brought that forward, you took that risk, even though you failed. Let’s do more of that.” It’s like, “Okay,” well, then that reinforces, “Hey, we can take risks and make some mistakes,” and now that sort of sets that tone amongst the team members.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that so much and, boy, I’m having a flashback, and it was in my early with my first project with Bain, I think, they thought, “Hey, this guy is an intern so he can handle a lot of hard work and challenging stuff.” And so, I was in charge of this giant Excel business and I was making some mistakes and it’s creating some embarrassment, and it was very uncomfortable, and sure learned a lot.

Mike Robbins
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
But I remember I was having a chat with Brett, we’re having a little sort of a little mid-point feedback check-in, and I knew what I was doing wrong, and I’d started to make some improvements. But I just loved the way he set the tone, he said, “Well, you know, it’s just work.”

Mike Robbins
That’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Hey, we’re safe, we’re healthy, and the project is still going. But, yeah, we got some things we got to focus in on.”

Mike Robbins
That’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
And I really appreciated it. And even when you feel like you’ve screwed up about as bad as you can, you can bring some humanity and some comfort into those situations.

Mike Robbins
It’s true. And I think that’s an important distinction. Look, one of the things that happens, and I see this a lot in Silicon Valley and with a lot of tech companies, but just companies in general that want to be progressive, we want to have a really positive working environment, is that I think sometimes we err on the side of being nice versus kind. Nice is often sugarcoating, withholding, not really addressing it. Kind is where we have a sense of kindness, a sense of empathy, a sense of compassion, maybe even some levity and some humor. But, again, if somebody makes a mistake, it’s important that we address it.

I remember actually years ago at Stanford, I remember pitching really bad, and my pitching coach said to me, “You know what? Well, there’s good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” And I said, “How about the good news?” He said, “The good news is there’s a billion people in China that don’t know that you just pitched like you know what, right?” He said, “The bad news is we got some things to work on.”

And, again, to your point, it sounds like your example from Bain, I think there’s a way in which we can address issues and challenges, and even failures. Amy Edmondson from Harvard said to me, she said, one of the things she wishes about psychological safety is that we had maybe named it something else because sometimes people hear this concept of like safe space, meaning like you can’t say anything negative. She said, “That’s not like it at all. Teams that have a lot of psychological safety really have a lot of give and take, and there’s a lot of open, honest dialogue and debate and conflict, and challenging each other. It’s just we know it’s safe enough to do that.”

When I work with a team, Pete, and people say, “Oh, well, no one ever…there’s never a conflict. We never have any issues,” I’m like, “Okay, somebody’s lying and/or it’s not safe enough to do that.” So, those are the things that we can see. Even at home, sometimes my wife and I, we have two girls who are 14 and 12, and the girls will really get into each other, say stuff to us, and I’ll say to my wife, “Look, we do need to teach them about ways to communicate respectfully, of course, but the fact that they feel safe enough to speak up to each other, to us, is actually a sign that there’s something healthy going on here, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t say anything.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Well, let’s talk about the second pillar then, focus on inclusion and belonging. What do you mean by this?

Mike Robbins
Yeah. Well, look, this is so important. I wrote We’re All in This Together last year and finished up writing the book in the fall, and didn’t know it was going to come out in the midst of a global pandemic on top of sort of a national and somewhat global reckoning around racial injustice in our country, specifically in America. But what I’d seen so, look, diversity has a lot to do with representation, right? And we may or may not be in a position where we’re hiring or we’re the people making the decisions on who gets hired. What we do know from all the research is that racially-diverse and gender-diverse teams perform better than teams that aren’t diverse.

But what I really focus on in this particular pillar in the book is on inclusion and belonging, which we have a lot to do with whether we’re making hiring decisions or not. And inclusion is about, really, doing anything and everything we can in our power to make sure we’re not overtly excluding people, particularly people who come from non-dominant groups. Myself being a straight white, cis-gender man, looking at, “Okay, how am I communicating? How am I operating? How am I thinking? What am I doing? What am I saying?” for anybody who’s a woman, a person of color or identifies as part of one or any minority group, it’s trying to, as best we can when we’re in positions of power or authority, do things and say things and be mindful and be open to feedback so we’re not excluding people consciously or unconsciously.

But even deeper than inclusion, as important as it is, what we’re ultimately trying to get to is a place of belonging. And what we know from Maslow’s Hierarchy, and so many other things, is that belonging is a fundamental human need. Everybody has a need to belong. And so, from a leadership position, but also from a team perspective, whatever we can do to create an environment where people feel as much as possible like they belong, the more engaged they’re going to be, the better they’re going to perform, and the more trust.

I mean, psychological safety comes first but we got to focus on inclusion and belonging because they’re so fundamental to so many aspects of success, especially in today’s world.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’d love to hear a bit about the how there. I’ve certainly been in environments where I felt very comfortable, it’s like, “Oh, yes, I belong here and it’s great.” It’s sort of like, I guess, in my experience it’s sort of like people sort of delighted in me and my quirks and what I brought to the table versus, and a lot of those are sort of non-verbal cues, and it’s sort of like, “You know, we kind of all like each other more than we like you, and we’re not overtly saying cruel things to you,” but I just got the vibe, like, “Yeah, I guess I don’t really belong here. I’ll kind of move along.”

So, can we make that explicit? What are the things, the practices, the do’s and don’ts?

Mike Robbins
Some of it starts with a sense of emotional intelligence and social intelligence and, ultimately, even cultural intelligence. Something as simple as just me even asking you the question “Are you a baseball fan?” And then you say, “Well, no, not really. I’m not into sports.” That’s actually a really important thing to know, not because it doesn’t really matter if I like baseball and you don’t, but sometimes we make a bunch of assumptions, “Oh, you’re from Chicago. You must be a Cubs fan, and blah, blah, blah,” and, all of sudden, you’re like, “What the hell is this guy talking about?” And, inadvertently, I’m trying to connect with you, but what I’m actually doing is creating more distance and separation if I don’t know that as an example, right?

And, again, there are a lot of things that we do, and this happens. Look, I travel. Well, I used to. I don’t as much these days. None of us are traveling. But I travel around the world, and I go places, and I think of myself as a pretty open minded culturally-sensitive person, but the moment I step outside of not only the United States but the Bay Area where I live, I realize, “Oh, my goodness, my worldview is so influenced by where I live, where I grew up.” That’s not a bad thing. It’s just something to be aware of, to be mindful of.

Oftentimes, I’ll be sitting in a room and I’ll make some comment about just the gender dynamics, and some of the men in the room, not because they’re sexist necessarily, just they’ll look around and go, “Oh, is it mostly men in this room?” Like, they’re not paying attention. Whereas, every single woman at that table or in that room knows exactly that there’s, “Oh, there’s four women in this room.” Do you know what I mean? So, things like that.

Again, a lot of times with some of these issues, some of us either aren’t paying attention to them because they don’t relate to us personally, or we may be are paying attention to them but we don’t know exactly what to say, or how to say it, or how to address it, so it actually leads into pillar number three, without jumping too far ahead of sweaty palm conversations, which is so fundamental that a lot of what we can do, right now especially, is ask questions and be curious about things even if we might be a little uncomfortable with respect to, “Are there things that are happening that are creating less inclusion, less belonging? And if so, let’s talk about that.”

And the challenge is that we often get defensive because immediately we feel like we’re being accused of something, when, in reality, if you’re committed to your team having a culture of belonging, then you want to know if there’s anything that’s being done or said by you or anyone else that’s getting in the way of that. And, in some cases, people who, what I know from my research, I don’t know from experience because, again, I’m male, I’m white, I’m straight, but when I talk to people from different groups, depending on how much psychological safety there is or how safe they feel, they may not always feel safe even bringing that stuff up. So, those of us who are in positions of power or authority, if we happen to be asking questions about that.

I think about this. I learn all the time from my wife and from my daughters of things that I don’t see just along the lines of gender. One of the stories I share in the book, my wife Michelle and I were at a workshop, and the woman leading the workshop said, “I’m going to ask the men a question, then I’m going to ask the women a question.” It was a workshop that was sort of for couples and about our relationships. And she said to all the men in the room, “When was the last time you felt physically unsafe?” And she said, “Just raise your hand one time and I’m going to name off some timeframes. Is it in the last 10 years, five years, a year, six months, three months, a month, a week, the last 24 hours?” I raised my hand for sometime in the last year. I could remember a specific moment I was in DC on a trip and got lost coming back to my hotel, and was walking around in the dark, didn’t know where I was and just felt.

She asked the women the same question, Pete, and she’s gone on 10 years, five years, none of the women were raising their hands, and I’m like, “What’s going on? Why are they not raising their hands?” She gets to one week. A couple of hands go up. She says, “Within the last 24 hours,” almost every woman in the room raised their hand, that they had felt physically unsafe at some moment in the last 24 hours, including my wife sitting right next to me. And I’m like looking at her, and I’m looking around the room, most of the guys in the room were all looking around, go like, “What? When? Where? What is going on?” And the women were looking at us like, “How do you not know this?” And the woman leading the workshop said, “This is one of the fundamental differences between men and women, and we almost never talk about it.”

And, again, that’s just an example that, “Oh.” Again, in the working world, in the environment that we’re in, like, “Oh, these things play a big role.” And if we can be more mindful, be more curious, be more open, be more humble about trying to see things from different people’s perspectives, and then being interested in creating the most inclusive environments where people really feel like they belong, now people are going to feel more like they have a seat at the table, and they’re not busy sort of defending themselves or holding themselves back as much.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, there’s a lot of great stuff there in terms of the mindset and the awareness and the assumptions, and I think that a lot of times the non-belonginess comes about when folks make assumptions. And sometimes I hear it explicitly in terms of they say, “Well, obviously this…” It’s like, “Well, it wasn’t obvious to me.” Or words like, “Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you certainly know about this.” It’s like, “Well, I didn’t know so I guess…” Or there seems like there’s sort of contempt for a viewpoint.

And, politically, what I find quite intriguing is, oh, boy, there are some data that shared that large swaths of us, regardless of Republican, Democrat, are just fearful, it’s like, “Don’t even bring it up because you might get fired, and some people are willing to fire and think you should be fired.”

Mike Robbins
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Or then there’s so much contempt as a baseline assumption that, “Well, of course, all of us vote this way or that way.” And there are some surprising…if you really dig into some data, I’m a nerd for this, like it’s surprising. For example, I learned, so you’re in the Bay Area, for instance, you might…I was surprised to learn, I checked the sources every which way, but in the Bay Area, there are more Trump voters in San Francisco proper than there are LGBTQ folks in San Francisco proper, indeed.

Mike Robbins
Really? Interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you wouldn’t expect that.

Mike Robbins
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And I imagine the Trump voters aren’t speaking up. And then when there are…and so let’s go with either side politically or racially or anything. If you just have it as an assumption, “Well, of course, we all believe this and, thus, I have license to speak about the other…a set of views in a contemptuous way,” I think that shuts down the belonging in a hurry.

Mike Robbins
It does. I see this because, living where I live, which is sort of at the macro level to your point, one would assume, “Oh, it’s pretty liberal politically.” So, if you have conservative views, you’re going to be more in the minority, although, to your data, it may be more widespread than one thing. But, again, even growing up here, I know if you share conservative views out loud in this area, ooh, that’s very risky to do. On the flipside, when I travel to other parts of the country that are more conservative, and I meet people, or people have conversations with me, and say, “Oh, my views are a bit more liberal but I don’t really share that out loud because that…” you know

And so, I think if you think about this, this isn’t simply just about Left versus Right here in the US, although it’s a very relevant issue right now given that we’re in a Presidential election season, I think from a leadership standpoint, and from a team standpoint, I’m not one that believes we should never talk about anything controversial at work. I think that stifles authenticity. I think that’s unrealistic. However, I do think we need to be mindful of not making assumptions that everybody agrees and believes what we believe because that does create, “Oh, when I realize…” even if you take it out of the political realm.

I was talking to a group of people the other day on a Zoom session, and we were talking about what makes it difficult to speak up. And somebody said, “When I know that I have a minority opinion.” And they weren’t talking about politics. They were just talking about, like, “I’m the only one that thinks this about this decision. Everyone else is on board.” That actually is really hard to voice, because, “Do I really want to be the one dissenting voice in the room when everybody else seems to be on board?”

But, again, if you think about it, if that person doesn’t feel safe to bring that up, and the group isn’t interested in knowing where people stand, we still will go with the majority and we’re going to move on, but that person that makes a mental note, “Oh, if I have a dissenting opinion, I better just keep it to myself.” And that starts to become part of the culture of the team, and then we don’t even know what we don’t know, what we’re missing, and people are less engaged, and people aren’t really speaking up, or they’re not totally bought in, so all of these things go to both psychological safety and belonging.

And then that leads to pillar number three, which I alluded to, which I call embrace sweaty palm conversations, which is about, you know, I had a mentor years ago, Pete, say to me, “Mike, what stands between you and the kind of relationships you really want to have with people is usually a 10-minute sweaty palm conversation you’re too afraid to have.”

Pete Mockaitis
Sounds right.

Mike Robbins
Yeah. He said, “If you get good at those 10-minute sweaty palm conversations, you’ll build trust, you’ll resolve conflicts, you’ll talk about the elephant in the room, you’ll work stuff out, you’ll get to know people who are different than you.” He said, “But if you do, like most of us, and you avoid them because they can be awkward, or uncomfortable, or you say the wrong thing, or you unintentionally offend people, or put your foot in your mouth, or it gets weird, then you end up just sort of having mediocre lukewarm type of relationships.”

And it’s tricky. I don’t love having sweaty palm conversations. They are not my favorite. But if a team is really going to perform at the highest level, if we’re really going to build trust one-one-one, and psychological safety collectively, if we’re really going to be able to have that sense of belonging, we got to be able to have those sweaty palm conversations. If I really screw up, I need someone who can come to me with kindness but also with some directness and authenticity, and tell me, like, “Hey, man, you really screwed this up. We got to work on this,” but do it in a way that doesn’t have me walk away feeling like, “I’m an idiot, and I’m a loser, and everybody hates me,” because that’s not going to be helpful. But, at the same time, you know what I mean? And that’s predicated on the ability for us to engage.

And, look, right now, it’s harder to have sweaty palm conversations via Zoom or Skype or WebEx or the telephone, not that they’re necessarily easy when we’re in person, but we don’t have the same sort of body language and physical cues to go on, but we still need to have them so we got to continue to develop our ability both individually, but they become easier if the team has more of the norm of, “We’re going to have those conversations in the room even if it’s a Zoom room. We’re not going to have the conversation afterwards, or send little text messages or IMs to each other about what we really think. We’re going to actually talk about it directly.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, hey, talking about vulnerability, I’ll put you on the spot. What happened, a couple of examples of the sweaty palm conversations, that were quite meaningful?

Mike Robbins
Well, gosh, I think of like I’ve had a whole bunch of sweaty palm conversations with my team over the last few months. When COVID first hit, we had…look, the way I make money, Pete, the way I’ve ran my business for all these years, the vast majority of revenue we generate is through speaking engagements that either myself or someone on my team goes and delivers in person. Every single one of those, it was on our calendar, got either cancelled or rescheduled or just went away within a matter of like two weeks.

So, I had to say to everybody, “Listen, I don’t know if we’re going to have a business anymore in the next six months. I hope so.” And then it was a bunch of individual conversations with everybody on the team about their roles, how they were doing, what they needed to do, and we had to let someone go, which was a really uncomfortable conversation, as often happens in business. And none of those were fun or easy for me, and, at times, I’m a pretty emotional guy, I was a little bit scared and stressed out as would make sense.

And, again, I think it’s just important for us, when we have those conversations with people, they don’t always go well. That’s the thing. Like, I had a situation recently where I had to have a conversation with someone, we had a little conflict going, and we had the conversation, and it blew up the relationship, like didn’t really work out well. That’s not usually what happens but that’s the fear that we often have, “Hey, I’m going to address this thing,” and this person is basically going to say, “Well, have a nice life. See you later.”

But, again, in hindsight, in that situation, for me, I realized, “You know why that happened? First of all, I addressed some of it by email before so it already didn’t start off in a good way. And, second of all, there were a bunch of sweaty palm conversations that I didn’t have leading up to that one that, ultimately, had that thing blow up.” So, again, it’s a constant work in progress. I mean, this stuff is messy. But great teams talk to each other and not about each other. It’s easier for me to go tell my wife that you’re getting on my nerves, let’s say if you and I are on a team together, than it is to go talk to you, “Hey, Pete, we got to talk about this thing, man. I got this issue. Let’s try to work it out because I don’t know how that’s going to go.” That’s vulnerable to have the conversation with you. It’s easy for me to go complain to my wife about it because she’s probably going to agree with me, or at least hear my version of the story, and go, “Yeah, Pete sounds like a jerk.” You know what I mean?

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Mike Robbins
But that’s not going to benefit you and me and our relationship is definitely not going to benefit the team if that’s the way we operate.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when it comes to these conversations, do you have some best practices associated with one’s summoning the emotional fortitude to go there, and, two, some do’s or don’ts for when you’re engaging them?

Mike Robbins
So, yeah, absolutely. The first thing is it’s important to acknowledge that they’re hard and they’re scary for all of us, so to have a little bit of compassion for ourselves and the other person or people involved. The second thing is we do need to get clear about what our intention is, “Why do I want to have this conversation?” Because if what I really want to do is come tell you why you’re wrong and I’m right, it’s probably not going go well. Even if I’m upset, even if I think something went wrong, I need to get to a place of, “My intention is really to clear the air, to connect more deeply with you to resolve a conflict,” some more positive intention.

The third thing is, whenever I have a sweaty palm conversation, and I encourage everyone to do this, is tell the truth. Lower the waterline on the iceberg, as I like to say. Meaning, express a little bit of how you’re actually feeling in the moment, which, for me, is usually some version of, “I don’t really want to have this conversation. I’ve been avoiding this, or I’m scared you’re going to get upset. This is not going to go well.” And I know it’s sort of counterintuitive to be vulnerable in the moment that maybe we have an issue, or a conflict with someone, or maybe we don’t feel super safe with them, but we’re relational creatures. So, the natural human response to vulnerability is empathy, so people tend to respond in kind if we start. Now, is it a guarantee? No. Could they jump on us and use it against us? Yeah, absolutely. But way, way, way more often than not, that’s not what happens. It ultimately gets the person into that place.

And then the final thing is it’s usually important to have some kind…not to be attached to a particular outcome necessarily but have some kind of action that can be taken from the conversation. Even if we agree to disagree, can we talk again about this, or revisit this, or how are we going to address this in the future? Or if we do come to some kind of solution, what are we going to do so it isn’t just this? As a friend of mine likes to always say, “Conversations disappear.” So, some kind of way of forwarding the action after we have that conversation, whether it’s a one-on-one conversation or as group, because there’s nothing worse than I get the courage up to finally come and talk to you about the thing we talked about the thing, “Pete, you’re open.” “Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.” And then nothing happens or nothing changes, especially like if you’re my boss and I’m like, “Well, geez, I’m glad he listened to me but he didn’t really take anything to heart, and now we still have the same issue running over and over again.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Yes. Well, then let’s talk about the fourth area, the care about and challenge each other. You made a distinction earlier between kindness and niceness, which feels very applicable here.

Mike Robbins
Very much.

Pete Mockaitis
What are some of the pointers in terms of doing both?

Mike Robbins
Well, so this fourth and final pillar is about caring about and challenging each other simultaneously. And that same pitching coach I had at Stanford used to always say, his philosophy on coaching was, “You got to love them hard so you can push them hard.” And he was talking about it in the context of baseball, but I think that’s true for leaders, managers, that’s true for human beings, for teams. Meaning, “Can we really focus on constantly caring about each other?”

Now, when we’re caring for people, doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re all best friends, that we have the same values, that we like hanging out with each other. That’s a bonus at that. But you can care about people that you don’t even like, that you don’t agree with. You can care about people who bug you. Caring about is about finding value in people, wanting them to do well. And I often say, “Look, even if you’re super selfish and you don’t genuinely care, you’re just interested in your own success, it’s in your best interest to be around other successful people doing well because success is contagious. So, at the very least, can you at least care? I care about the other people on my team. Usually it’s not that hard to do, but then simultaneously, then challenging people, pushing people.

And, usually, when I talk to individuals about this or I talk to leaders or teams, most individuals, myself included, like I’m stronger on the care side than I am on the challenge side. Some people are stronger on the challenge side. I mean, it’s easier for them to push, push, push, but, like, oh, it’s harder for them to just naturally care about people. The tendency we have if we go, “Oh, I’m a pretty caring person but I have a hard time challenging people. Maybe I shouldn’t care so much.” No, no, keep caring as much as you do, just challenge yourself to push people a little harder, hold people accountable, have a healthy high standard.

And if you’re someone who really pushes people and challenges people, but you realize, “Oh, sometimes I’m a little harsh about it,” you don’t have to necessarily lower your standards unless your standard is perfection, by the way, which is people always fail. But what you want to do is then raise your ability to care about people. And some simple ways to do that are just looking for things that we find that we value and appreciate about people, and letting them know. Thinking if it were someone’s last day you are able going to get to work with them, what would you want to thank them for? What would you miss about them?

Again, looking at people as the full nature of being human. One of the things I do think is beautiful about this really challenging time in the pandemic, we are getting to know people. Even though we don’t get to see each other and spend time together, we’re Zooming into people’s lives and into people’s homes, and we’re seeing their dogs and their kids and their apartments and houses, and they’re sitting in their flipflops and shorts, and maybe they put on a nice shirt for the Zoom call or whatever. But it’s kind of equalizing in a way. Whether you’re the CEO of the company, or you’re an intern, or you’re anywhere in between, it’s like everybody’s got a life and a house and a family and friends and stuff they’re dealing with, so, in some ways, I think it’s both more challenging but in some ways also easier, if you will, to get in touch with other people’s humanity even in this weird virtual world we find ourselves in.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really like that prompt there for the caring in terms of, “If it were the last day, what would you miss about them? What do you really value about them?” And so then, it’s just that easy, huh? You just let them know, “Hey, I really appreciate that you did this. I really love the way you do that.”

Mike Robbins
Well, you know, it is and it isn’t. I mean, here’s what’s funny about it. Look, my very first book that came out like 13 years ago, it’s called Focus on the Good Stuff, it’s all about appreciation. And I’ve been studying appreciation and gratitude for years. And what I do know about appreciation of other humans, it’s super valuable. We all want it and crave it. When one human being expresses appreciation for another human being, it raises the serotonin level in both people’s brains. If we do it collectively in a group, it actually raises our serotonin level, which lowers our stress level and increases our happiness and fulfillment. But it also increases our oxytocin if we do it in a group, which physiologically binds us to each other.

However, all of that said, most of us are terrible at receiving appreciation from other human beings. We’re just awkward. We don’t know what to do. We don’t know what to say. We either give a compliment right back, or we somehow discount what they say or blow it off. As simple as this is, and I swear this is like so basic, but I’ve literally seen this enhance the culture of teams fundamentally, is that we learn how to receive appreciation from other people more graciously. We simply say thank you and shut our mouths. Because part of why we don’t express appreciation as much as we could, and should, is because it’s not psychologically safe to do. It’s almost socially awkward to do.

But when you create an environment on your team where we can express, now we’re not doing it manipulatively, we’re not doing it inauthentically just to be nice, we’re doing it genuinely, what happens is people start to really feel valued and cared about. And when you create that sense of caring, what becomes available is the challenge.

Again, I say this all the time to people, “Think of the people who you will allow to give you feedback, meaning you’ll take it. And you may not always like it or agree with it, you may not even want it, but you’ll consider it. Why do you take their feedback? Because they’re super smart? Maybe. Because they’re an expert? Maybe. Because they’re your boss or your spouse? Okay, maybe. But it’s not their role, or their intelligence, or their resume. It’s because you know they appreciate you. They value you.”

You could give me a piece of feedback, Pete, and some other person. Let’s say you and I know each other well, “And I know Pete’s got my back. He cares about me. He wants me to do well.” Even if your feedback is pretty harsh, I’ll listen to it. Some other person who I either don’t know, I’ll think, “Well, that person thinks I’m an idiot or whatever.” I’m not going to take their feedback even if I really need it because I don’t already feel valued by them. I don’t know that they care about me.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Yeah. That totally adds up. And love them hard so we can push them hard, yeah. Even if the accuracy is perfect, like, it is deeply insightful, the odds are high that it’ll kind of blow right past you if you don’t trust the other person cares about you.

Mike Robbins
It’s true because, look, relationships and, a lot of ways, teamwork, there is a scientific aspect to it. Data is important. There are lots of different assessments we can do but it’s more of an art than a science. Because, again, a computer could spit out a bunch of feedback for me that I need and all this data and I do all these assessments, I go, “Okay, but what I really need is a human being who cares about me to not only explain it but communicate it in a way that it’s really going to make a difference.”

Think about, again, your life, think about your career, I can think about mine, the pivotal moments along the way where people said things or did things, even if, again, it might’ve been a little bit tough love, and it’s like, “Wow, I really heard that.” It usually wasn’t, again, some piece of data or information as much as it was some communication that came through that touched us. Our mind, our heart, said, “Oh, I need to make a change, or I need to take a risk, or I need to stop doing something, or start doing something, or whatever,” and it’s like we look back in hindsight and we can see those pivotal moments, the challenges in the moment, “Can we be the kind of people that both give and receive that type of feedback and support in a way that’s going to benefit the people around us?”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, tell me, Mike, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Mike Robbins
Here’s one of the paradoxes of right now: We’re all in this together, yes, and people are having very different experiences. I like the metaphor, “We’re all in the same storm right now but we’re in different boats.” And so, I think both can be true. And what great teams and great leaders and just human beings who are interested in making a difference for other people have the ability to try to connect with an understanding, have empathy for different people’s experiences.

There is something oddly binding or bonding, if you will, about this experience we’re all going through, as challenging as it is, and there’s also a lot of uniqueness and diversity and how people are experiencing it. So, that’s a long way of me saying we need to have as much compassion for ourselves and each other because I know it’s corny and everyone is saying it, but we’re in unprecedented times and nobody was really prepared for this even though now we’ve been in it for five or six months or whatever. We just continue in and kind of make our way through it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mike Robbins
Well, I’m not just saying it because I used it as a title of one of my books, but I love Oscar Wilde’s quote “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Mike Robbins
I love the positive psychology research on positives to negatives in terms of feedback, the five to one ratio, which the Gottmans did related to married couples, but I think it makes sense in leadership and teamwork and just all human relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Mike Robbins
The one that just popped into my mind was Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson that came out in the late ‘90s, and had a huge impact on my life and was one of the main things that got me on the path of doing this kind of work all those years ago.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Mike Robbins
A microphone for my podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Well, you sound great.

Mike Robbins
Well, I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Mike Robbins
Meditation.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you frequently?

Mike Robbins
I would say that when we’re going through something difficult, instead of asking ourselves, “Why is this happening to me?” change the word to, to the word for, and ask yourself, “Why is this happening for me?”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Mike Robbins
Best place is our website which is Mike-Robbins.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mike Robbins
Be kind to yourself. I think we’re often our own worst enemy, and the kinder we are to ourselves, not nice, not pretending like everything is fine and perfect, but kind, genuine self-kindness, self-compassion, there’s almost no way we can overdo that. And when we’re kind to ourselves, we’re just naturally kind to others.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Mike, this has been a treat. Thank you. And good luck in your adventures.

Mike Robbins
Thanks, man. You too.