271: Building Social Wealth with Jason Treu

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jason Treu
Well, thanks for having me on the show and speaking to your fantastic tribe.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to hear first and foremost about a game and workshop you invented called Cards Against Mundanity. What’s the backstory here?

Jason Treu
Well, probably now going on 18 months or more ago, I was talking to one of my mentors. And they told me that I needed to try to do something that had the potential to go viral, and I needed to pick something big and something I was going to go all in on. And it was just like, “Well, you just need to figure it out and do it.” And although that’s sort of not specific, I knew that there was some big idea. And I went through a list of things I was like, “I really would like to do a TEDx speech, but if I do one, I want to do one that’s a “How To” speech because then if I finish it, I’ll have something specific that I can translate to a corporate audience or entrepreneurial audience, other people.
So, I thought to myself the one thing that I really wanted to try to do was to try to work on some challenge people might have on culture and performance. And so, I spent about three months doing research and I almost gave up because I wanted to find a research and then build the idea around that, not go in with the premise of something that I thought might work, because I thought that ultimately would be flawed and that might lead me to a result that wouldn’t be as good as the one that I would come up with.
So, I was looking through some research and I came across this professor – his name is Arthur Aron – and he did some research back in 1997, and it was on how to make best friends. And I was like, “This is pretty interesting.” So I read through the research report, which is always pretty dry. And as I was reading at the end the thing that really jumped out at me was, he did a game with 54 grad students that were complete strangers, had never met each other, had no knowledge of each other or anything else, sat them in front of each other, put 36 questions that they asked each other in only 45 minutes.
And they measured afterwards what those people thought of the experiment, and 30% of the people rated that relationship with the complete strangers that they did not know any knowledge of before, as the closest relationship in their life.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, yeah.

Jason Treu
That’s pretty amazing. Just think about that – in 45 minutes someone has done what most people are doing decades or a lifetime – they had done in 45 minutes. And I thought to myself, “That is absolutely extraordinary.” And then in the original research study, one of the couples ended up getting married. But the interesting part is that’s 1997 – pre-social media, so none of the distractions. But he’s done it dozens of times since then and the results have stayed pretty much the same every time that they have done it.
And then the other part of it, I was going across some research by Google, and they were looking at how to build the perfect team. And they hired researchers and they spent three years and millions of dollars, and they could not see any patterns or trends. And then one of their researches walked in on a group and the manager of the group said, “I have stage 4 cancer and I may not make it. I want to let you all know.” And they saw the performance in that team soared over the next six months. And they figured out the only characteristic across all of Google’s 180 teams was psychological safety.
And that’s a fancy word for “vulnerability”, and what that means is that they got to know each other on a deep personal level, they were able to raise controversial ideas and ask questions about people making fun of them or anything else. And that is the basis, and in fact it’s become so embedded in Google’s culture. They had this other business called Project X – it’s their secret business where they go and try these crazy experiments, and they’re spending I think a billion dollars a year on this business. And the first thing that everyone goes through in training is psychological safety, over everything else.
So, when you combine all that, it was like, “Okay, how can we do this in a group scenario?” And so basically I put together cards, like Cards Against Humanity, and you ask questions, such as, “If you could pick one year of your life to do over, which one would it be and why?” And you share this in a group full of people.
And it’s extremely powerful, people who’ve done it had great results, because you start to bond people over experiences. You get emotionally involved with the people. And the thing about it is when you start to care about other people in the room, your performance goes up, your collaboration goes up, your communication goes up, and it’s just like magic. You’ll see results overnight, and teams have rocketed in their results, and organizations, if you’re a small business. So it’s pretty interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so cool. And I’ve played with the Arthur Aron’s study, and once on Valentine’s day I was with my girlfriend at the time. I said, “Hey, let’s go through these questions.” And sure enough it did facilitate closeness. And I know that Aron has replicated it, in terms of same gender and mixed gender cohorts in doing it. So, with your game, how many questions are there and to what extent are they same versus different than Arthur Aron’s?

Jason Treu
I switched them around; they’re not the same. Some of them are. And so, what I do is I put it in a group full of people, and you can play on the small side of it it’s four people, and I’ve done it up to 15, which is probably the maximum; 12 is probably closer to it. And I asked people to do about three rounds, because I’ve seen that’s the magic number. And the other part of it I changed is that at the end everyone goes around and has one minute to say three things that they learned about people inside of the group, because I found it’s very powerful to be able to do that, because it shows you’re listening and hearing other people.
And one of the things that in research and my TED Talk I found is that if you have a very good to best friend in an organization, your productivity is seven times higher and your retention rate on staying in the organization is seven times if you have that. And so, it’s really to find even one person that you’re really closer to out of this experiment is game-changing for any team or organization. And the other last thing I found is that I’d done this on parallel teams in bigger organizations, meaning they haven’t participated in the same room and you see the results, as long as they know that they’ve both done it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s so cool. So then, I’d like to dig in here a bit. So, when you talk about coworkers being able to engage with each other and create these meaningful connections – so you have one specific tool, which is the card game and that facilitates psychological safety and good friendship formation, which is linked to all kinds of goodness. So, could you share with us in workplaces what are some additional tools or approaches or mechanisms by which we can encourage and facilitate this kind of transformation to take root?

Jason Treu
Yeah, so another thing that you can do that I’ve had clients do is when you start off a weekly meeting of any kind, is I’ve had people bring in pictures. And have 30 seconds to a minute and share a story about what that picture means to them and why it’s meaningful. And that builds really great connections and you’ll find that people who do that in a short period of time will rate that meeting as their favorite meeting of the week that they have. And they’ll be way more productive because they have a lot more of emotional investment inside of the organization.
I found other things, like if you have a meeting with people, if you allow the junior staff to go first and senior people last, you create a lot better conversations between people, and if you get them out, and I think that’s pretty important. I found the other thing too that’s helpful is when you have a big event, is to go back and really have a brainstorm on what went right, what didn’t go right. But do it in a very productive way, where there is no right or wrong answer necessarily.
At the beginning and you start to have a brainstorm and then you whittle it down, because then everyone has a voice and you get all of the people to communicate. And that’s why creating psychological safety is so important, because what happens is that a lot of the greatest ideas in the business aren’t getting shared, because no one’s putting them forward, because they don’t know where to go to.
So I’d say the last thing, and a quick thing is, people who own businesses or are at a senior-level often get entrenched and never really communicate with people in the organization. And so, I have them walk around for 15 minutes three times a week and just talk to people about what’s going on in their life. And they immediately see significant results, because it shows people that you care. And I think that if you start to do that, you’ll have people come up to you with ideas, suggestions, they’ll be much more engaged, because the key element of building trust, which is the fabric that holds everything together, is caring. And that is the one factor that trumps everything else. And so you’ve got to deeply care about the people and organization and have everyone do that from the top down, or you’re missing out on a lot of productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Jason, you went right to the actionable tactics, which is great fun and so handy. And so then, you sort of, I guess, synthesized a number of the drivers for why this stuff works into a few key principles, which you lay out in your book Social Wealth. Can you orient us to that a bit?

Jason Treu
Well, one of the things I did with the book Social Wealth is I wanted to do a “How To” guide on how to build relationships, because I found they’re really learned behaviors, and I think a lot of people believe that they’re born with these skills, and if they don’t have them, then they won’t be good at them or they’re introverts or socially awkward, which is really the majority of people. And so then they just opt out or they just don’t have great relationships or they settle for way less than they should.
So I wanted to go through and have it so people could understand that there are great ways to meet people, build these skillsets. It’s just like going and getting in shape. If you go once a month, you probably won’t be in great shape, unless you have freaky genetics. So, you’ve got to go and do that. And the reality is the most important capital we’ll ever have in our life is the relationships that we build with people. No one had a tombstone that said, “I worked a good life.” That’s not happening. So, it’s the relationships and the experience. My dad passed away…

Pete Mockaitis
I’m sorry.

Jason Treu
Several years ago. He shared with me in a moment at the end that he was like, “I should’ve invested more in the relationships and in people, because there’s a lot of regret I have with relationships in my life.” And I thought to myself, “That’s pretty wise words from someone who’s hours away from passing away.” And I truly believe that in the end the only thing we’re going to look back is the relationships that we had built; nothing else. So we need to spend time doing this.
I think also what’s happening is that you’re seeing that there is no work-life balance, there is no work-life integration. Basically what’s happening – people who work – their friends are at their job, they’re one and the same. And so you’ve got to be able to navigate that, you’ve got to be able to build these relationships, you’ve got to understand how to do it, and build the best ones for you. And that you are going to have to change those relationships over time, because just like there’s a great quote by this movie Stand By Me, and it said, “Friends will come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant.” And I really believe that.
Now you’re going to have some good friends that might last for a whole lifetime, but a lot of people won’t evolve the same way you will and they’ll go in other directions. And if you continue to hold on to those relationships, those are the ones that hurt us the most because they tend to start being 70/30, 80/20, and then we feel used and taken advantage of, and they take a really big emotional toll. When the reality is then when you get out of balance you should have a conversation, and at some point you’re just going to have to let them go, if they don’t readjust and swing back.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. Now when you say 70/30, 80/20, you mean sort of like the give-take?

Jason Treu
Yeah, the give-take, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that’s intriguing. Could you give us an example of that unfolding? So, how one person maybe grows in maybe a greater or different direction than another, and as a result there’s more taking that evolves, and then how that conversation could go?

Jason Treu
I think if you look at a person who is focused on their career, on their personal growth, on creating a better version of themselves – there’s not that many percentage of people that are doing those types of things, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, I’d love it if you could drop a number for us. Rough guesstimate inside your heart and mind.

Jason Treu
I probably would say 5 or 10%. I think that may be even optimistic. But I think the challenge is if you’re of those people or maybe a version of that slightly down, that’s at least 75% committed to that, and you’re around people that are very complacent or okay with what’s going on and are not looking to be accountable in their life and looking to overcome challenges and are willing to choose paths to help them get better – they’re going to eventually drag you down, because they are looking out for themselves and they’re not going to be in a situation where they’re givers. And that is the challenge that we all have.
So when that starts to happen, you emotionally more invest in people – you’ll start calling them more, you’ll start planning things more, you’ll start spending more money when you go out and do stuff. You’ll see all these things start, the tide will turn. And you then have to have conversations with people about that and then take a hard look at the relationship you have with people, and that can either be personally or professionally. And then you’ve got to make some decisions based on their response and your interaction. If they’re committed to their own growth and their own creation of a better version of themselves, or if they’re fine sitting in their comfort zone and complacency, and that is where they’re committed to stay.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. So then, I’d love to hear some more, in terms of the skills and principles to bear in mind as you’re going about living life and doing work. How do you recommend that we go about engaging with others to create all the more meaningful connections that we can make?

Jason Treu
I think that the key is, change comes from the inside out. And the first step is self-awareness, and understanding your own emotions and how you’re reacting to situations. So I think it’s important to go back and understand and find out what are your blind spots. What are the patterns that can sabotage your own success? Because if you don’t, you’re going to have a difficult time interacting with other people, because you won’t understand why you’re torpedoing your relationships or not building them forward. You’ll think it’s someone else, luck, or all these other things, when the reality is that everyone has these challenges, and you just have to start to identify them.
So, for instance an example would be, I had a client and I did sales training a couple of years ago. And this woman came up, and she has a pretty high-pitched voice and she was in her mid-30s and was saying, “I want to sell better. I’ve been doing well…” And this is in front of her peers and other managers. And I was like, “Okay, let’s talk about this.” And we ended up getting out of her that she felt shame, that she was really despondent, she felt she wasn’t good enough.
And the reason stemmed from back in high school and college, whenever she got on the phone and she talked to her mother or grandmother, they would make fun of her voice. And they would say things like, “You’re never going to be successful in business. You’re never going to get married. You need to lower the tone of your voice.” And they almost always mentioned it to her, and it’s something that stuck in her head. So now, every time when she gets on the phone with clients, that tape is running in the back of her head. So, you could tell her how to build better relationships, but that’s not the issue in and of itself. It’s the fact that you’ve got to turn that on its head and eliminate that, because otherwise she’s going to be maybe a little bit more successful, but not much, because those things are going to continually hold her back.
So, that self-awareness and fixing that issue and challenge is going to go a significant amount of way, because then you can teach people the next step, which is more social awareness and the emotions, thoughts and behaviors you can sense then in other people and better relate to them. And that is how you build faster, quicker relationships. But if you can’t relate to yourself, then you’re not going to be able to do it with other people, if that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So then what are some of your top suggestions for getting that self-awareness, and surfacing and addressing blind spots quickly?

Jason Treu
Well, the challenge is you really ultimately need help from someone else, because our brain is wired to keep us safe. It is not wired to keep us happy, so it blacks out these things. Now, what you can start doing is start asking yourself, “Okay, what behavior do I want to change?” The next question to someone else is, “What are the stories that I’ve made up in my head about that behavior?” For instance if it’s, “I want to lose weight in the new year”, and the story is, “Well, I can’t lose weight because people are constantly making fun of me, people won’t interact with me because I’m overweight, and that’s holding me back.” Okay, that’s great.
Well, then you start to look in what emotions that is coming up from, what emotions are you feeling when you feel that you aren’t losing weight and you aren’t making progress? And then you start to battle and grapple with that, and then you start asking yourself questions around, “What are the limiting beliefs that come up when I feel those emotions? I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not pretty enough”, I’m whatever it is. And then you ask yourself, “When’s the first time that I’ve ever felt that way that I remember?”
And you really have to push yourself, because then that starts to jog a memory in your head about when was the first time you felt like that, because then it starts to trigger patterns and show you what’s gone on, and when and how long and pervasive this has been. And you can start linking it back. And then you have to go back up the stack and you have to say, “Okay, if weight was not an issue and I was in great shape, then what beliefs would I have around that? I’m enough, I’m awesome. What emotions would I be feeling? What stories what I have around the world around me?” And then you can start reverse engineering what it is and how you’re feeling, and then start to read that, take a look at it, and then take actions.
But the other part of it too is that I found that there are two things that people mistake. One is motivation and drive. And motivation is very fleeting. It’s like we’ve all read a book or seen a movie or done something and we’ve been like, “Man, that’s awesome. That’s great, I love that.” And the next day nothing happens. Well, the differences is drive, is you understand the “Why” behind whatever you’re doing, and you will do that. For instance you will run when it is 10 degrees outside; you’ll not make an excuse that it’s too cold, because the drive is much more powerful. But you have to ask yourself questions: “So why am I doing this? Why is that goal or what I want, why do I want it?”
And then you have to ask yourself the harder question: “What am I lacking in my life that that goal is going to help me with?” Because once you do that, then in both of those questions you can move forward and you’ll be really successful because now you’ll be holding up basically an accountability in and of yourself, and getting to the real answers, instead of letting yourself off the hook and dealing at the surface level. Then you can start really having much greater self-awareness, and you can create massive change in your life really quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. So from that point of having collected some self-awareness, what are some of your top suggestions for building that social awareness?

Jason Treu
So I would say one, you need to practice empathy, because I think when you can practice empathy with people, you can start to understand their viewpoint and you will find common ground much quicker. I tell all my clients and in my conversations with my friends I say, “You’ve got two choices in life – you can be right or you can be happy. Rarely can you be both. So which one do you want?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Jason Treu
When you cut it down like that, then you have to realize that is a significant part of life. And I think when you have more empathy, the other thing that happens is that you’re able to have more difficult conversations with people, because really that’s the requirement for being a great leader or a manager, is having difficult conversations when you don’t want to have them, because then what happens is that you get a greater understanding of the people around you, of the challenges, of emotions, and then you’re on the same page.
And that really is game-changing, because then you don’t have this stuff bottled up for months, years or whatever, or never have it. And then that will make a significant conversation. With empathy there is listening skills – that’s a requirement to do that. I think you start doing a few of these things, you’re going to see significant changes in how people respond to you or people interact with you, how people want to help you, because it will be different than how they are interacting with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now when we talk about some of these empathy elements, do you have any favorite questions that you use either to ask yourself internally, or to ask the person that you’re speaking with, that sort of naturally cultivates more empathy?

Jason Treu
Well, I like to ask people questions… In my head I try to ask myself, “What would the other person be thinking or feeling?” Not how I would be doing it. And then that helps me put me in a frame that takes me out of my defensive posture, and also puts me more in the moment. The other thing too is I try to listen without formulating my counter-argument, because if you do that… That’s what people do, typically they’re not really listening and they don’t really hear what the other person is saying.
And I ask clarifying questions. So, if someone says to me, “You know what? Jason, I’m really upset with you because you didn’t show up for my party or event.” And then I’ll tell them why, and then I’ll be like, “Okay. Well, is there another reason? Is it because you feel like I haven’t been showing up?” And if they say “Yes” or “No”, I try to ask a clarifying question, like, “Okay. Well, there’s something else going on here. We need to dig deeper in order to figure it out, because I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I just don’t know and I need your help to understand why it is that you’re feeling this way and what actions I can take to make the situation better.” So you have to dig down and keep asking “Why?” and ask clarifying questions, and then I think you can get at the heart of the matter, because usually it’s several layers deep.

Pete Mockaitis
And that takes some courage too, because it could be like, “Well, because, Jason, you always do this.” You tell me. We could role-play a little bit. “Because, Jason, you always do this, and you’re one of my best friends. And you said you’d make it and you didn’t. And so, it just makes me kind of wonder what can I really count on you for, and it just makes things feel pretty darn insecure.”

Jason Treu
Yeah. And I think what you’d say to someone in that situation is that, “I hear what you’re saying, and being late and not showing up is a problem. So I’ll make a commitment to you that if I say that I am going to come, I’m going to come. And if I can’t make it, I’m going to tell you I can’t make it and not feel bad, because the problem is I feel bad if I can’t make it, so I just always say ‘Yes’. And I need to draw more clear boundaries and communicate them better, because the way that I’ve been acting is not helpful and it’s not considerate of your feelings, your effort, your time and everything else, and I have to be accountable for that.”

Pete Mockaitis
And what I like about this is, it sounds almost like yeah, of course, we should always do this. But it’s not as much common practice as it may be common sense.

Jason Treu
It isn’t at all. And the problem when you don’t do this is that people harbor ill will and you don’t know why that is. And if you’re in a business setting, that undermines what’s going on, because then people’s retention goes down, they sabotage projects, they don’t put forward their best effort, they don’t help people collaborate. All this stuff is a chain reaction. And the same thing obviously in your personal life.
So, the key thing is, you have to be accountable, and that requires you to lower your ego and you’re going to have to put it in a different place and realize that you don’t have all the answers, and you are on a journey and you’re going to have to pivot constantly in your life. Now, if you’re unwilling to be in that situation and you’d rather be right than happy, then you’re going to be getting very limited results in your life and you’re going to live a very, very small life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so big stakes. Jason, thanks for this. Tell me, is there anything else you really want to make sure to highlight before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jason Treu
I would say that if you’re going to go out and start building relationships both personally and professionally, the key thing is to get in the right rooms with people, because I feel like if you’re not there, then it’s a waste of time. And the places that I love to go that are gold mines are charity organizations, because they have movers and shakers, people who are socially aware, that care, are successful people; cultural places such as museums, symphony, opera; and the other place, which may have a mix of people but at least they have things that you’d be interested in, is interest groups, like running groups, art groups, painting, book clubs, whatever it might be. Those are great places to meet people, because you have things in common. And I think a group scenario’s helpful, because then you can meet a lot of people quickly in those organizations, and people have their defenses down, so they’re much more open and it’s much easier to meet them and to build relationships. And obviously that helps you both personally and professionally.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jason Treu
Yeah, so the quote that I really like is a quote from Maya Angelou, who said, “I’ve learned that people forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” And I think unless we really understand the true role of emotions in our life, and being able to relate to other people and how powerful that is, we’re setting ourselves up to live a really small life, because people – it’s about how you make them feel when you engage and interact with them. It’s not an intellectual contest.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Jason Treu
Really, I would say anything by Brené Brown. She’s a great author on leadership and management. And she’s a shame researcher and she has the top five most downloaded TED Talk of all time called The Power of Vulnerability, and she really talks about a lot of these issues on shame, vulnerability, how to build better relationships. And I think it can get at the real nuggets that are going to help you both in your professional and personal life. And every time I hear her speak – and I’ve heard her several times – she’s brilliant in what she does. So, I would highly recommend her, and she has quite a few books out, so you really can’t go wrong with any of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Jason Treu
Again, I use two things. One is an accountability mirror – to ask myself every day what am I opting out of doing, and why? Because that helps me keep real in what’s going on and not procrastinate and put stuff off. The other thing is, I just go old-fashioned, I use Google Calendar and I schedule everything in for the week.
I sit down on Friday or Saturday or Sunday at the absolute latest and put in time when I’m going to work out, I’m going to go do meetings, after at night, or whatever I’m going to do, so I can see what I need to do. And when I need to wake up, and the rest of the things that I need to do during the week, because I feel like you’d be way more productive when you know what you have to do and you’ll procrastinate a lot less, because you’ll understand what’s possible and what’s not, based on the calendar that you have. And also if you don’t have any free time, you’re going to find out that you’re going to turn into someone in business who’s very tactical, and you’re probably putting out all these fires and not being strategic, which means you’re not really working to your capability, and the organization itself is suffering. So, you’ve got to block out time and you’ve got to use it.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And is there a particular nugget that you share that seems to really connect with folks and gets quoted back to you frequently?

Jason Treu
Again, I think that the one thing I found from doing my TEDx Talk with people is that you will build relationships a hundred times faster if you’re vulnerable. But the key is that everyone wants everyone else to be vulnerable, but they don’t want to be vulnerable themselves. So what you have to do is be vulnerable first, and share something, even very small, because when you’re vulnerable and you share, people unconsciously believe that it’s safe for them to share because you led with it, and they’ve been taught that their life when people do that.
So, be vulnerable, lead with something, and ask really great questions. The questions I like to ask people initially when I meet them is like, “What are you most excited about in your life right now?” Or a question might be like, “What are you passionate about at work?” or, “What are you passionate about in your life?”, because it gets to the core things that people care about.
And you can ask that during a first conversation; you don’t need to wait. Waiting around is just because you feel like that’s a story in your head that needs to happen. Because I do it all the time, and it leads to way better conversations and I speed up the relationship-building process really fast, because I’m getting to real conversations when I meet someone the first time. I’m not waiting until the third, fourth, fifth or tenth.

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

Jason Treu
So, they can go my website at JasonTreu.com. And then if they want they can go download the game that we talked about in the beginning – Cards Against Mundanity – at CardsAgainstMundanity.com. So, playing it is free, and you can get results, and you can play with your friends. And you can play you’re your wife, so you have a Valentine’s Day thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jason Treu
I think it’s true, and it may seem trite, but all growth comes outside of your comfort zone. So if you don’t feel like you’re doing something that’s scary or making you feel awkward, you aren’t really pushing yourself. And you’ll find the people that are the most successful are learning to deal with more and more uncertainty, but dealing with it in a healthy way. And that requires years and years, so you might as well get started now and just you’re going to see your life go in some magnificent directions.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Jason, thank you so much for sharing this great stuff. I wish you tons of luck, and hope that you keep on rocking with your coaching and your mundanity-breaking, and all that you’re up to!

Jason Treu
Yes. Thanks a lot, and thanks for having me on the show!