949: How to End Miscommunications, Unclarity, and Endlessly Repeating the Same Conversation with Marsha Acker

Pete Mockaitis

Marsha, welcome.

Marsha Acker

Thanks, Pete. I’m happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to talk to you, hear your wisdom. And first, I got to know, your pitch claimed you had the answer for “Why do organizations have the same conversations over and over again without getting anywhere, feeling frustrated?” So, I’m just going to put you on the spot right from the beginning. What’s up with that and what do we do about it?

Marsha Acker

Well, I think that so much of what we do every day is about having conversations with one another, and I think many of us would look at conversations and communication as not something that we need to go get any kind of development around it because we already do it. I mean, we do it all day every day, and I think many of us likely think we’re good at it.

But what, in the work that we do, I have found there’s a model that we use to help all of us look at the structure of conversations, and the structure can actually predict the outcome of the conversation. So, maybe a quick litmus test would be to think about “How often do you feel like you have the same conversation over and over again?”

Like, you had a conversation a couple weeks ago, and now you’re back in a conversation, and you’re starting to have that kind of Groundhog Day moment where you’re going, “Hey, wait a minute. I think we’ve been here before.” So, a lot of times I think many of us have those moments, but we don’t really know what to do about it. So, real quick, I think what we could do is, if you want to play with me for a moment, we could lay down a little bit of the theory, and I can tell you a story about how I apply it.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. Well, I guess, first, I want to tee up the stakes here. Is it, in fact, possible to exit this? Because I think it was Dr. John Gottman who was talking about married couples, he’s like, “You’re going to be basically having the same couple arguments for decades until you die,” which, in a way, was heartbreaking. But in another way liberating, like, “Oh, okay. Well, then I guess we’ll need to figure out how to disagree in an effective, loving kind of a way.” But are you suggesting that, “No, we are not doomed to this fate”?

Marsha Acker

I think that if we notice that we keep coming back around to the same thing, the way I think about conversations is there’s likely something that, each one of us is thinking, but not really saying, or not saying it in a way that the other person can hear it.

And so, that leaves both of us, in some way, kind of leaving the conversation with a piece that we’re thinking but not saying. And I think that’s part of the work to do, is, “Can we be in the conversation and actually be authentic and be effective in how we’re communicating with one another?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, is it your premise that should we find a means of effectively articulating the unsaid, then we will escape the groundhog loop?

Marsha Acker

I think when we’re able to really fully name what’s happening for us, yes, because we can escape the groundhog loop because both of us are able to work with new information or new data that comes into the conversation. So, that’s partly what enables us to change the nature of the outcome.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool. And so, you said then, in order to pull this off, you want to cover some conceptual territory?

Marsha Acker

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, go for it.

Marsha Acker

So, it’s work that comes from David Kantor in his theory of structural dynamics, theory of face-to-face communication. And, basically, what it says is that everything that we’re saying can be coded, and if we can code a conversation, that’s partly what will allow us to change the nature of it. So, there’s quite a bit of depth to it, but the very simplest way to start is in action. So, really, everything that we’re saying can be coded into one of only four actions, everything in conversation.

So, the four actions are, one is to set a move, which is to set direction in a conversation. So, move often points. You just made a move when you said, “Let’s hear what you have to say about the theory.” That would be a move. The second action is to follow. So, the follow gets behind or supports what’s happening in a conversation.

The third is to oppose. So, oppose offers correction. It says, “Hey, hold on. Stop. Wait a minute.” And then the fourth is a bystand. And a bystand offers a morally neutral comment about what’s happening in a conversation. So, to bystand, I might say, “I’m noticing I’m really engaged in a conversation right now.” It just puts some data into the conversation.

So, someone could make a move and say, “Let’s go get ice cream.” Someone could follow and say, “That sounds good to me.” Third person might say, “Nope, don’t like it, don’t want to go.” And a fourth person might say, “Well, I’m noticing we have two different ideas about what we’re going to do. What do we want to do next?” So, it’s sort of prompts for a new move.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m fixating on the, I think, did you say innocent? Or maybe I just added that myself, because innocent bystander tends to go together, like in comic books or something, “Innocent bystander.”

Marsha Acker

Yeah. No, just to bystand.

Pete Mockaitis

To bystand, you said that it’s just an observation. It doesn’t have judgment to it. But I got to know, in some ways, I don’t know, it almost feels like it can, like, “I’m noticing that your eyes are dimming and you are growling.” It’s sort of the implication is almost, like, “You’re behaving angrily and inappropriately in this context.” So, I don’t know, maybe I’m missing too much detail.

Marsha Acker

No, it’s great. So, here’s what’s really great about it. So, what you’re naming is, a lot of times, I think in conversation, what happens is we say one thing, so we voice one thing, and if you were just simply coding the conversation, you might code that as a bystand. But I’m on the receiving end of it and I’m going, “Hmm, that doesn’t feel…” like, I’m not experiencing it as a morally neutral statement because it feels like it’s loaded up behind it.

And so, a lot of times when that’s happening, what we’re doing is we’re saying one thing but we intend another. So, I’m speaking a bystand, but I’ve got judgment behind it, and so I’m really intending an oppose.

Pete Mockaitis

I see. Okay. Levels and layers.

Marsha Acker

Well, that’s the tricky part. So, I’ll tell you a quick story. My daughter, when she was much younger, I called it our Groundhog Day conversation, but it would be the, “Get your shoes on, please” conversation. And I would make a move, and I’d say, “Hey, Lauren, the bus will be in here in 10 minutes. I need you to get your shoes on.”

And her response will be, “Okay.” Walk away. Come back. “Bus will be here in five minutes. Need you to get your shoes on.” “Okay.” Five minutes later, at the door, and when I would turn around and say, “Lauren, the bus is here. Let’s go.” And there’s a little girl at the end of the hallway screaming because she says, “I don’t have my shoes on.”

And so, we had this pattern. I was making moves, and she was voicing a follow. She said, “Okay,” but she intended an oppose. It’s not what she meant. And it sets up this pattern of we’re saying one thing but we mean another. And it creates what we call, in the structure of coding it, it creates a covert action. So, what happens is the oppose, both in your example of you are bystanding, but what’s really behind it is a covert opposition.

My daughter was doing the same thing. She would voice a follow, but she would intend an oppose. Now, you know, why is that? Well, somewhere along the way, I might have laid down the expectations that “You’re not allowed to tell me no,” or, “I need you to do something different.” So, what I learned was that was really much more about…she’s a teenager now and we can still get into this pattern because every time when…so what happens is that we’ll have one or two of these actions that we can tend to do more in our behavior, particularly in different systems. So, in my home space, I’m often the one with her making moves, and I’m sort of expecting her to follow. But what’s not helpful is that she’s quite independent, even as a little person, definitely as a teenager, she’s quite independent.

And so, one of the ways that I started to change our stuck conversation, our stuck Groundhog Day conversation, was I stopped being the one making all of the moves, and I’d start to enter that conversation differently with the intent to give her the space to make the move that I could follow. So, our conversations would sound a little different, I would start to do more bystands, and I would say, “I’m noticing it’s 10 till 7:00. The bus is going to be here in 10 minutes or 15 minutes. What do you need to get done?”

And she’d think about it for a moment, and she’d be like, “Well, I need to put my shoes on.” And I’d be like, “Great. So, do you know where your shoes are?” So, I started to bring more bystand into the conversation and allow her the space to make a move. And it took a little bit more conversation in that way. But eventually, what she would come around to do is say, “Well, I need to get my shoes.” I’m like, “Great. So why don’t you do that? You’ve got 15 minutes. So, when do you want to do that?”

So, where I could, I began to shift the conversation, and it helped to change the nature of how we were engaged in that conversation. And I use that because I think it’s just such a really simple example, but it happens so often in leadership teams, across our workplaces. Particularly in American business, I think we have managed out or trained out the voice of opposition.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s intriguing on so many levels. And you said this happens thousands of times. I was like, “Yes, I have asked my children thousands of times to put their shoes on.” What’s intriguing in a number of dimensions, like one, just general coaching principle. If you pose a question and they think about it, then that is more active and engaging and more likely to feel rewarding. Like, “Oh, I figured out that I need to get my shoes.” And then they did, and like, “I’m taking care of things.”

It’s funny, my kids right now, they’re five and six, and one and a half, but the five and six-year-olds, it seems like they’re relishing these little tastes of independence. They could say, “I’m going to make some toast.” All right, you go for it. And so, they’re into it. They really just plow through bread because they enjoy making toast and it’s delicious.

But I think, even more than that, they like that, hey, they can’t use the stovetop on their own, they can’t use the oven on their own, but even the microwave can be dicey. But the toaster is like, “Okay, I push the button and then I walk away, and then there we go.” But in many ways, I think, Kwame Christian said, he was on the show, he’s awesome, Negotiate Anything is his podcast. In many ways, we have an inner toddler within us, and so that’s strong.

And I’m intrigued by, when you say covert action, with the shoes, I think that sometimes what’s going on is that they’re thinking, “Well, I’m not opposed to putting on shoes. But at the moment, I’m very engaged with this little mouse character or whatever.” And so, I think that’s funny because covert action makes me think of, “Okay, I’ve got a spy who’s like sneaking into enemy territory.”

But I guess that, too, can run a whole spectrum associated with, “How much am I willfully saying yes when I mean no because I’m hoping they’re just going to shut up and forget about it,” versus, “How much am I like, ‘Oh, yeah, sure. Cool, yeah. Sure, I mean I’ll get to that soonish, so it’s fine, yeah’?”

Marsha Acker

What I’m often going for is wanting leaders to become more aware, more self-aware, of their behavior, how does their behavior, it’ll likely be different how we behave at home, talking to our children versus how do we behave in our leadership team, versus how do we behave in our development team when we’re collaborating with eight, ten peers.

I think it’ll be different, there will be spaces. And I think a lot of it happens, it gets laid down for us at a very early age, in our formative years, we develop. One of my childhood stories is not to oppose because it’s rude. And so, that got laid down very early on for me. The way that translated into adult and business life is oppose has often been my least used. It’s been the one for me to work on the most. Regardless of the role that I was in, it would be the one, kind of unconsciously, that I would use some of the other actions.

Or, sometimes I’d just make a new move. If I didn’t really want to directly oppose you, I’d just change the subject, which is another pattern that sits underneath of this. Or, many teams fall into the place of they’ll just agree, they’ll say, “Yes,” or, “Sure.” Or, they’ll say, “Sure,” and then they go out of the room after they finished talking to you, and they tell six other people what they really think of your idea, but they don’t bring that conversation in the room.

So, ultimately, what I’m all about, because I think it’s what changes the nature of the conversation, is, “Can we bring the offline conversation online? And can we be more aware of what our behavioral tendencies are, and where we go to say one thing, but we actually intend something else?” and catching sight of the difference between the action and the intent.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s intriguing. And I guess, as you have this language and you can start to view conversations in this way, that’s intriguing. So, your goal is to get the offline, online, and get it in there. I think sometimes I follow, maybe often, I follow, I use the words okay, and I do the thing. But internally, I’m thinking, “This is so stupid.”

And I don’t know if that’s valuable, but I guess I’ve also had the internal conversation of, “But it’s pointless to bring this up because it’s not going to affect anything. So, the most efficacious, expedient thing for me to do is to just comply, even though it’s going to result in a worse outcome, but fine.” And I guess maybe sometimes there’s a time and a place where that’s just the reality, and so live it, but go ahead.

Marsha Acker

You and many, many, many, many other people. I watch it over and over. And I often say to folks if you’re in a group of people, and you’re not going to be with them for an ongoing basis, you’ve stepped in, somebody’s made a move, you’re following, like the juice doesn’t feel worth the squeeze, so you just say, “Yep, I disagree or I see it differently, but I’m willing to do it.”

I think doing that intentionally is one thing. Doing it out of a habit is another. And I think those things that you are thinking, what I would offer is those things that you’re thinking are actually quite valuable. But it definitely takes a system, like it takes a group of people that you’re working with on an ongoing basis. Because I think what matters is not that it happens one time or in one moment or with one group, but when it gets to be a stuck pattern, like when it’s a Groundhog Day conversation.

Because I think that’s where you’ll, if you talk to people, all the things that are in the news today about quiet quitting, and people are just burnt out, and they’re tired, and they’re exhausted, and they don’t feel connected, and it’s super hard to connect on Zoom. I hear all of that, and I go straight to this model of, “Yep, because we’re not having the real conversation.”

And people get really exhausted, “At the end of the day, if all I’ve done is have surface level conversations, I’ve not really been able to say what I think, I don’t think anybody wants to listen, so I just sort of fall into this victim mode or this apathetic mode, and I get into doing this sort of I’ll just show up and do the thing until I can do something better.” Like, none of us want to work in that kind of setting or in that kind of situation.

So, I always bring it back to, “Well, I wonder what the pattern is. I wonder which of these actions is being voiced and which are missing,” because those patterns, like things that keep recurring, there will be data in that. And so, I’m a huge advocate for teams, leaders at any level, building the muscle of, “Can we have the real conversation? Can we bring the real conversation online?” And it takes time. It’s not a one-time fix.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. So, that’s the main thing is having the real conversation. This reminds me, we had Amy Edmondson on a couple times, talking psychological safety. Any pro tips for how we can have the real conversation more often? One, so we got some coding, we got some awareness, that’s cool. Anything else in terms of building our own conversational courage and/or creating an environment where people feel more comfortable speaking up?

Marsha Acker

Well, I think the work is highly correlated to Amy’s work. Actually, Amy Edmondson and David Kantor worked together at Harvard, so both of their theories are quite distinctly linked. It does take container-building or creating the space. I often say sometimes it can be just helpful to introduce your team to the four-player model as a way to name that, actually, we need all four of these actions in a conversation in order for them to be effective. So, sometimes just all of us starting to gain awareness that we need all four and be watching for when we’re not hearing one of them. So, I think that’s one way.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, that’s great. That’s pretty simple. You just highlight, “Hey, this is what’s up.” And then someone might say, “Hey, I noticed that nobody opposed anything over this whole three-hour meeting. That’s interesting. All just coincidentally in unilateral consensus agreement? What are the odds? Or is someone not saying something that needs to be said?”

Marsha Acker

And, actually, Pete, what I love about what you’re doing is that you’re doing it with a little bit of humor, and I think that that is key to some of this work is to find a way to make it light and humorous, rather than…I realized really many years ago as I was starting to introduce this model to teams and leaders, so they’d take it and they’d be so excited, and then go off to the next meeting, and it was like, “You, you have made too many moves. You need to stop that,” with a bit of finger pointing.

And I was like, “Well, that’s not really what we’re after.” Like, it’s a model to create awareness, but I don’t think it’s really effective if we use it to sort of poke people in the eye with. So, I love the way you’re sort of tongue-in-cheek saying that.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. And when it comes to opposing, I’m curious, do you have any, because I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I imagine for many, that might be the spookiest of the four to step up and do. Any pro tips or any magical words or phrases that are great for opposing? I imagine you’re like, “No, you’re wrong!” is probably not the best way to do it.

Marsha Acker

Well, actually, there is. Well, so two things I’d say. One is we likely all know someone who’s really good at it, so just think about the person. It won’t be hard for everyone. It is definitely based on our behavioral model, like our viewpoint of how we grew up and how we think about the voice of oppose and what it does. So, likely there’s at least one person usually in each group. We sometimes load them up and we call them the devil’s advocate or the naysayer, which I’d encourage everybody to just stop using the labels because I don’t think they’re helpful.

But if you find someone who’s really good at bringing oppose, you can just watch and listen. Sometimes, though, for people who are stuck in opposition, the thing that will be challenging for them is to make a new move. So, they can be really good at opposing, but not good at the suggestion.

So, a really effective oppose, like a way to bring a really effective oppose, is to actually start with more follow and bystand because those are the actions of more inquiry. They’re also the places that, so if you’ve made a move, and you’ve said, “I think we need to switch all of our computers out, and go from Macs to PCs.” And if I want to oppose that, if I just come right back and say, “Nope, I disagree,” it’s helpful because it’s a really clear oppose, so that’s great.

But really, if I just say no, and I push back without voicing anything else, then we’re kind of stuck because now you’ve got an idea and I’ve got an idea, and we’re actually put ourselves in this debate or clash about, “Which one of us is going to have the winning idea?” So, a more effective way for me to oppose that might be to start with a follow, so what’s something about what you’ve suggested that I actually do align with.

So, I might say something like, “Pete, I really appreciate, and I actually share your value about keeping us up to date in technology. I’m with you on that.” I might bystand and say, “You know, I’m noticing that that would create…it would be really expensive. And it’s the first part of the year, we’re not quite sure where our revenue is at.” What’s my clear oppose? “I disagree with doing all of them right now and in this time frame.” But my new suggestion, my new move would be, “What if we looked at it, doing it five at a time?” or something like that? So, what’s my new suggestion? Then it would be back over to you.

And now what’s happened is I’ve actually put some of what I’m seeing, what I agree with, into the conversation, and the idea is that now we can continue a dialogue because I’ve put new data in, and it gives us something to build off of.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. Thank you. All right. Well, in your book, Build Your Model for Leading Change, you spend a good portion talking about self-awareness. And I wanted to hear your perspective on why self-awareness is important for change, when, really, Marsha, it’s the other stupid dummy heads who are the problem.

Marsha Acker

I know. I think life would be so much easier if everybody else would change, and then the world would work according to how we view it and what we want to do.

Pete Mockaitis

Exactly.

Marsha Acker

Yeah, I’m a big proponent of self-awareness. And I think that there’s so much to be gained from even just building on…so one aspect of Build Your Model for Leading Change is having a way to look at behavior because I think that behavior drives, like everything that you and I’ve been talking about, behavior and how we’re showing up in communication. Everything starts and ends with how we work with other humans.

And knowing, “Why do I do what I do? And where did I learn to do that? And why do I have such an affinity for following and bystanding in a conversation? And, more importantly, where can I grow my leadership range? Where can I expand my behavior so that it’s more effective?” And I think the way to go about doing that is through getting to know ourselves in various ways, and how we change based on the different contexts that we’re in, because I think context matters.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so you actually delineate seven critical junctures of functional self-awareness. Could you give us the one-minute version of what are each of these critical junctures?

Marsha Acker

So, the junctures actually expand on the theory of structural dynamics. And without going through each of them, what I would say is they’re about “Where are you able to identify what you do? Are you able to expand your behavioral range? And are you able to notice, kind of growing the muscle for noticing in the moment, when the conversation isn’t working, like, when you’re clashing with someone?”

There’s another piece of it is “Beginning to understand when the stakes rise for me and how my behavior changes when the stakes are high.” We talk a lot about what’s happening today in leading from high stakes, which I think many of us are doing, and how when we’re not at our best, so, “How do we lower the stakes?” And then I think the big piece of it is, “How do we expand our tolerance for difference?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, sure thing. Well, I’d love it, so there’s a lot that we could dig into. Could you share with us, I believe, was it Tasha Eurich, we had on the show, who says, “You’re not as self-aware as you think,” is her assertion? Can you tell us, is there a particular zone in which many people overestimate their self-awareness? And how do you recommend we get after that?

Marsha Acker

I watched many leaders believe, like even if we just look at the four actions, many leaders believe that they are good at communicating, number one, with others, and that they are being clear in their communication. And I think the biggest gap that I watched people discover is where they’re not being clear. So, just the small examples, like we talked about today, where I think I’m saying to my daughter, “I need you to get your shoes on.”

Like, I think I’m communicating, but really, I’m doing something entirely different. It happens to me all the time, even with my own team. I’m fascinated. I’ve built a structure where we can give one another feedback in the moment about that. And so, I think it’s noticing when I think I’m doing one thing, but I’m actually doing something else, and it’s being interpreted really differently than what I intended.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, could you give us an example of a common way this unfolds?

Marsha Acker

So, we have a monthly team meeting, and often the purpose of that monthly meeting is really for us to carve out some time and actually slow down our conversations so that we can talk about how we’re working together. And so, I had come in with a move around some reflection questions that I was actually teeing up for everybody to think about as we led into the conversation about thinking about how we were working together as a team.

And I have a colleague who would have agreed that the purpose of our meeting is to align on how we’re working together, talk about how we’re working together, but this particular person at that moment wanted to be involved in creating the agenda for the conversation, not to have me come in with some pre-canned questions. And so, the feedback to me in that moment was, you know, I hold on, “I think we set out with the intention to have a conversation about how we work together, and I feel like I’m being driven to your agenda, not a collective agenda that we would create together.”

And I think the stakes were pretty high for that person because it’s risky to say that. I think it’s really risky to name it. I, in that moment, so the stakes were pretty high for me in that moment because I kept thinking, “It’s not what I intended.” I felt quite misunderstood, and I felt like I was being accused of something that was really not my intent at all.

And so, it was in the moment of actually being able to park any further forward movement and talk about where the mishap was, where the misunderstanding was, that we were able to take what was a fairly high-stakes moment, and then I began to realize, “Okay, so it’s not so much an opposition. It was an oppose but not necessarily the intent, but it was definitely an oppose to how I started it off.” And it became a really, really fabulous conversation afterwards, so that sort of friction moment led to a much deeper conversation about how we work and where some of that pattern, even that dynamic that showed up, how it shows up in other places. But it was really challenging, and I am fascinated by the number of times that I watch that happen in teams.

So, when teams have the ability to name it, high stakes are happening all the time for us, and it either leaves us to keep talking about, like, I think about it, it’s like moving deck chairs around on a sinking ship versus talking about what’s really going on.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, it’s intriguing. And it was cool that they voiced it, and so you got to go there. And I remember, it is fascinating, one time I was coordinating in this leadership conference, and I just said something like, “All right. Hey, guys, now we’re off to the sketch session,” and then one of the volunteers, their mom, I heard this third hand, their mom said, “Oh, I think Pete just lost Matt as a volunteer for next year.” I was like, “What? What? I just said now we’re going to walk over here.”

But apparently, for Matt, it was rather an important tradition that he – I think he was dressed in a costume of some sort – like, I marched them over, and that was one of his favorite things, and I’m like, “I had no idea.” I looked at the clock, I said, “Oh, it’s time for us to go there.” And then I was completely oblivious that that mattered. And had I known, I’d be like, “Oh, well, let’s wait for a moment for Matt to return with his costume.” Just kind of a goofy camp kind of vibe.

So, you’re right, like we can just be utterly clueless about such things and, yeah, that’s really eye-opening to make sure that we’ve sort of built in those checks associated with asking questions in that context, like, “Hey, what’s the most important for your volunteer experience this weekend?” It’s like, “Okay, good to know.”

Because, I mean, hey, they’re volunteers, right? I owe them everything in terms of when this event occurred, I want to make sure that they’re getting what they need. But I was like, “Oh, I just didn’t make the agenda in terms of the weekend.” So, I’m just rolling the dice, basically. You don’t know who you’re alienating and why if you don’t take the time to get the info.

Marsha Acker

And I love your example because, here’s the thing, none of us will ever be able to plan or attend all the places that we could just make a mess. And unless we have people around us who have the communicative competency to really raise their hand and say, “Hold on a second. Like, that’s not what I thought we were doing,” or to say it rather than go out of the room and stew about it. We will never know, and I don’t think we can ever plan for all of that.

So, I think about navigating all the change and the turmoil that exists today. Like, we’ve got to have people around us that can say, “Hold up, we’re about to go over the edge,” or “I really see something differently here. I think we’re about to miss something important.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s great. Well, Marsha, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Marsha Acker

No, I think we’ve covered a lot, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marsha Acker

It comes from James Humes, and he says, “The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Marsha Acker

I ran across this research, actually, a couple of weeks ago, and it really resonated, still along the same lines, but it was done by ZipDo. So, I think you could go to Google and search it, it was done July of last year. They found that 85% of employees at all levels experience conflict to some degree, and that 60 to 80% of difficulties in organizations come from strained relationships. So, I found that information fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Marsha Acker

There’s a book by William Isaacs, it’s actually been around for some time, called Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Marsha Acker

A journal.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Marsha Acker

I wake up each morning before everybody else, I have a nice cup of coffee, and I journal.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Marsha Acker

I’m known for saying this phrase a lot, “Awareness precedes choice, precedes change.”

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marsha Acker

You can find me on LinkedIn, Marsha Acker, so I’m happy to connect with folks. And then you can read about the book at BuildYourModel.com, and you can also find me at TeamCatapult.com. And if you go to TeamCatapult.com, there is a Re-D-Room, so re, dash, d, dah, room, you can download a handout about what we’ve been talking about today.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marsha Acker

Find a way to elevate dialogue.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Marsha, this has been a treat. I wish you many enriching conversations.

Marsha Acker

Thanks, Pete.