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Mar 02
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844: The Six Words that Dramatically Increase Your Impact with Jonah Berger

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Jonah Berger says: "By understanding magic words and their power, we can increase our impact in every aspect of life."

Jonah Berger reveals how to massively increase your persuasiveness through simple shifts in your language.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The simple two letter shift that makes you more persuasive.
  2. The easiest way to look–and become–smarter.
  3. A tiny speech habit that’s undermining your impact.

About Jonah

Jonah Berger is a Wharton Professor, internationally bestselling author, and world‐renowned expert on change, word of mouth, influence, natural language processing, and how products, services, and ideas catch on. He has published over 70 articles in top-tier academic journals, teaches one of the world’s most popular online courses, and accounts of his work often appear in places like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. Millions of his books, Contagious, The Catalyst, Invisible Influence, and most recently Magic Words, are in print in over 35 countries around the world.

Berger has keynoted hundreds of major conferences and events like SXSW and Cannes Lions, advises various early‐stage companies, and consults for organizations like Apple, Google, Nike, Amazon, GE, Moderna, and The Gates Foundation.

Resources Mentioned

Jonah Berger Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jonah, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Jonah Berger
Thanks so much for having me back. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I had so much fun chatting with you last time, and I know you’re going to have a boatload of wisdom reading through your latest book Magic Words. I’m just going to dig right in because I think you have too much great stuff in the time we have. So, could you start us off with perhaps one of the most particularly striking, surprising, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while putting together this work?

Jonah Berger
I think the most surprising thing to me is the bigger question, which is that everything we do involves language. And I put in almost in there because there are things we do, like breathing, that don’t involve language but almost everything we do involves language. We write emails, we build PowerPoint presentations, we make phone calls, we make presentations, we talk to either through face to face or through digital means, everyone in our lives, words are how we convince others, they’re how we connect with loved ones, they’re how we hold audiences’ attention.

We spend almost every waking moment of the day using language in one way or another. Even our own private thoughts rely on language. And yet while we spend a lot of time using language, and sometimes we think about what we want to communicate, “So, I’m making a presentation today. Okay, my goal is to get people to support this initiative, and so I’m going to talk about it in a way that will get them to support it.”

We think a lot less about the way we use those words, and that’s a mistake because subtle shifts in the language we use can have a huge effect on our impact. Certain words can increase persuasion by 50%, certain language patterns are much better at holding an audience’s attention, and the words we use can even impact social connection with the ones we love.

And so, the big idea behind Magic Words is kind of we can use language better, whether at home, or at work, whether convincing clients, holding attention. By understanding how language works and how we can use it, and understanding the power of magic words, we can increase our impact in every aspect of our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jonah, that’s so much good stuff. Could you give us an example of a subtle-shift or two in language that has a huge impact?

Jonah Berger
Yeah, let me give you a really simple one. So, often, when we’re trying to get people to do something, whether at home or at work, we often use verbs. And what do I mean by that? Well, we say, “Hey, can you help me out?” We use the verb ‘to help’ to ask for help. Similarly, if we’re a nonprofit and we’re having a get-out-the-vote campaign, we might send mail to people’s houses, saying, “Please go vote.” Vote is an action that we’re hoping that people will take.

But it turns out that a subtle shift, even a couple of letters in those type of appeals can greatly increase the likelihood that people do what we want them to do. So, let’s take something as simple as helping. A number of years ago, some scientists at Stanford University did a study at a local elementary school where they made a mess in a classroom and they asked students for help cleaning up that mess.

And for some students, they used the typical approach, they said, “Hey, can you help clean up?” as we often do. But for another set of students, they changed their question very slightly, they said, “Hey, can you be a helper and clean up?” Now, helper, I don’t have to tell you, it’s very similar to help. It’s just adding the word E-R at the end, but that subtle shift led to a 38% increase in the portion of children that helped.

And it’s not just kids in classrooms, it happens with adults in a variety of different domains. So, in another study, when individuals are trying to get folks to vote, they changed the pitch they used in the mailers to people’s houses. Some people got the traditional pitch, “Hey, please go vote,” others were asked, “Would you be a voter and go vote?”

Now, again, voter and vote are even closer, they’re just adding an R to the end of it, but there, asking people to voter, to be a voter, increased the percentage of people that turned out to vote by over 15%. And you might be sitting there going, “Well, okay, help, helper, vote, voter, what’s the difference?” And the key insight here is that by turning actions – voting, helping – into identities, being a voter, being a helper, can make people more likely to take those actions. And the reason why is the difference between things like identities versus action.

So, imagine I told you about two people, I say, “Hey, I have two friends. One of them runs and the other one is a runner.” If I told you about those two people, which one would you guess runs more often, the person who runs or the person who is a runner?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, the identity is a runner, it sounds like they run more. And even when I did, you reminded me, when I did my first triathletes, I didn’t even think – triathlons – I didn’t consider myself a triathlete yet, I was like, “Well, I mean, I walked the last half of the run portion, so am I really a triathlete?”

Jonah Berger
“I did a triathlon but am I triathlete?” Notice the difference. And so, what you’re pointing out is that these identities, they seem bigger and more long-lasting, “Someone who runs, yeah, once in a while they go for a run. Someone who’s a runner, well, that’s a part of who they are. That’s an identity.” And so, we all want to hold desirable identities, we all want to see ourselves as smart, and athletic, and knowledgeable, and helpful in a variety of different things.

And so, actions, like voting or helping, yeah, those are good things, I want to do those things, but if those actions are an opportunity to claim a desired identity to be a voter, to see myself as a voter, to see myself as a helper, well, now I’m much more likely to do those things because the identity is more desirable than the action.

So, if we want to motivate people to do something, frame actions as identities. If we want to get people to do one of these things, frame them in that way. The same thing goes with the negative side. Losing is bad, being a loser is even worse. Cheating is bad, being a cheater is even worse. And so, research shows in a classroom context, for example, you want to get students not to cheat, don’t ask them not to cheat, say, “Don’t be a cheater.” It greatly decreased the percentage of people that cheated.

And so, I think this has implications not only for kind of motivating others or getting them to do what we want, but also even how we describe ourselves or others. So, on a resume, for example, we could say we’re hardworking or a hard worker. We could describe a colleague as being innovative or being an innovator. Just like with running and runner, it’s going to seem more like a stable trait, like it’s who you are if it’s described as an identity rather than an action.

So, again, a subtle shift in language, just a couple of letters, can increase our impact in a variety of ways.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so good, so good. And, well, one, it sounds a lot easier than when I try to do with my kids to tell them I have a mission for the super cleanup team, which kind of works. I’m going to try…

Jonah Berger
Yeah, but that’s a desirable identity, cleaning up. Cleaning up is not that fun, but being a member of the super cleanup team, well, hold on. If being a member requires that I clean up, maybe I’ll clean up because I want to be a member.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, now I’m thinking about identities, so I guess there’s don’t litter, don’t be a litterbug. They just invented that word. And, likewise, is it Home Goods who had that ad campaign about, like, you’re a thrifter or be a thrifter. And it’s funny, it’s like, “I don’t know if being a thrifter is a desirable thing.” And I guess it depends who your segment is.

Jonah Berger
Exactly right. So, LL Beans has this campaign “Be an outsider.” And “Be an” looks like Bean, but not everybody wants to be an outsider, not everybody wants to be a thrifter. But the type of people that interested, your target segment, probably does. Most people want to be a listener. Being a listener is not a bad thing. And so, being a leader is not a bad thing. So, rather than ask people to listen or lead, ask them to be a leader, ask them to be a listener.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, within the book, we’ve got six such principles, and here we’ve talked a good bit about activating identity. Can you share with us what are the other key principles?

Jonah Berger
Yes. So, let’s step back for a second. So, as you noted, there are six key principles or types of language. I actually gave one example of one type. There are other examples of that type, but just to talk about the types for a second. They actually can be organized in a framework called ‘the SPEACC framework.’ That’s S-P-E-A-C-C. I’m not clever enough to come up with a word that starts with K so I’m stuck with two Cs at the end.

But that stands for the language of similarity, posing questions is our P, E is emotion, A is agency and identity, and the two Cs are confidence and concreteness. And each of these are a type of language that we can use to increase our impact. So, we just talked, for example, some about the language of agency and identity. They are the identity-activating identities but the same is true, more generally, with other types of examples there.

There are some nice work, for instance, that shows that when we’re stuck on a tough problem, rather than thinking about what we should do, think about what we could do makes us more creative, it makes us a better problem-solver. Even if we don’t end up doing one of those things that we came up with that we could do, because sometimes things that we could do aren’t actually good solutions, but by thinking about what we could do rather than what we should do, we think about a broader range of possibilities, and that helps us reach a better outcome overall.

And so, a subtle shift in language there can help make us more creative and a better problem-solver. Or, think about something as simple as the word ‘you.’ Again, only three letters here, ‘you’ it seems like a very small word, but lots of research that I and others have conducted shows that ‘you’ is extremely powerful.

Work I’ve done on social media content, for example, shows that the word ‘you’ increases engagement. If we want people to click on, like our content, engage with it, or open an email, words like ‘you’ in a subject line holds people’s attention, acts like a stop sign, suggests something as relevant for them, and encourages them to pay attention.

At the same time, ‘you’ can also be damaging if it’s used in the wrong ways and the wrong context. Often, if you look at customer support pages, for example, pages that use the word ‘you’ more often, people find them less helpful. If someone says, “To fix your computer, you need to reboot and do this,” someone might be sitting there, going, “Well, I need to do all this work, why is it my fault?” ‘You’ can suggest blame in a negative way.

And so, ‘you’ isn’t just a word. It’s a word that can do a lot of work and we can use it to increase our impact.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, that’s powerful stuff. And I’m thinking, when I see social media posts or news items in the headline which says something like, I don’t know, “The War in Ukraine: What You Need to Know,” I resent it because, I’m like, “You don’t know who I am, publication. Thank you very much. Like, you have not researched me. You have not segmented me. Everybody has different sets of needs, values, preferences, wishes with regard to this news article, so that’s pretty freaking presumptuous of you to say this is what I need to know. Thank you very much.”

Jonah Berger
Well, yeah, good. So, what you’re talking about is how ‘you’ can evoke reactance. So, we find in online reviews or in word-of-mouth, if someone says, “I like this,” we’re like, “Okay, you like it.” If someone says, “You’ll like this,” we say, “Well, how do you know I’ll like it?”

And so, yes, if someone knows you, or if the content is relevant to you, then you can sort of act as an intensifier, might make it even better. If I like playing basketball, “Six tips you can use to be a better basketball player,” well, suddenly, I’m even more interested. Whereas, if it’s like, “Six tips you can use to be a better water polo player,” which is not relevant to me, I might have that reactance.

And so, again, I’m not suggesting that ‘you’ is great in all situations, but it’s a powerful word that we can use with great impact if we understand it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’d love to dig into a few of the additional principles here. How about asking the right questions?

Jonah Berger
Yeah. I love the area of questions. I think it’s fascinating. And I’ve talked about questions a little bit, I talked about questions a little bit in my last book The Catalyst, and the more I’ve learned about the power of asking questions, and the more research has come out about questions, you really realize they’re useful in so many different ways.

I think many of us think that questions are a tool to collect information, and they are. Questions do help us collect information, but they really do a lot more than just help us collect information. So, one area that I think we’re mistaken about the use of questions is asking for advice. And so, often when we’re dealing with a tough problem that we can’t solve, or a difficult situation, we try many things. We often don’t ask people for advice.

And why? Well, we assume they’re busy, they won’t know the answer, or, even worse, they’ll think less of us. So, in a work context, “Am I really going to ask my boss for their advice on something? Maybe they’ll think ‘Why don’t you figure it out yourself? Why don’t you know that already?’ It makes it seem like I don’t know something.”

And so, some research looked into whether asking for advice was a bad idea, and so they ran a number of experiments in which people asked for advice versus didn’t, and they looked at the outcomes. And they found something really interesting, which is we all think that asking for advice is going to hurt us, it’s going to make people think we’re less intelligent and less competent, and all those things. That’s not what happens. In fact, the exact opposite happens.

Asking for advice makes us look smarter and more competent, and has a variety of benefits for how we’re perceived. And the reason why is really simple. People are self-centered. People think that they give great advice. We all think our advice is good. And so, when someone comes along and asks us for advice, we go, “Wow, they’re a pretty smart person, they knew to ask me for advice, they must be smart themselves.”

And so, asking for advice makes us seem better not worse, more competent not less competent. And that’s just one example, but it’s not just about asking questions, about the type of questions we ask. Certain questions are better than others, and there are certain situations where types of questions can be more effective than others as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, lay it on us.

Jonah Berger
Sure, yeah. So, let’s talk about what types of questions to ask. And often, when we ask questions, we ask questions to be polite. So, I can’t remember back to the beginning of this call but you probably said something, like, “Hey, how are you?” And I probably said something like, “How are you?” And we both asked a question. “How are you?” is a question, but that isn’t actually a question that has a big impact. It is a question but it’s more being polite. It shows that we’re a polite person but it doesn’t have as big of an impact.

Researchers looked at hundreds of social interactions, everything from speed dating and workplace interactions, and they found a particular type of question was very useful. It made people like the others they interact with more, and, in a dating context, even made them want to go on a second date. And that type of questions was what are called follow-up questions.

And so, a follow-up question goes something along the lines of this, if someone says, “Oh, yeah, I really enjoyed that presentation,” we could say, “Yeah, I did too.” Or we could say something like, “Oh, neat. What did you like about it?” If someone says they’ve had a tough day, we could say, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Or, we could say, “Oh, what made it so difficult? Tell me more. I want to understand more about what happened.”

Questions that follow up on what someone said show a few things. First of all, it shows that we paid attention. You can’t ask a follow-up question if you didn’t pay attention to what someone said. But, second of all, it shows that you care. You care not only enough to pay attention, but you care enough to ask for more. It shows that we’re responsive, and because we’re responsive, it makes people like us more.

And so, it’s not just about asking any question, sure, we can ask questions to be polite, and that’s fine, but the more we’re asking questions to be responsive, to show that we care, the more they’re going to lead people to like us more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I dig it. Well, now could we hear a little bit about conveying confidence? And you say – I love your table of contents – “Why Donald Trump is so persuasive no matter what you think of him?” Lay it on us, Jonah.

Jonah Berger
I’ve enjoyed writing popular press books because it’s a little bit like that old Michael Jordan quote, like everybody buys sneakers. Like, you’re entitled to your own viewpoint, but unless you want half the world to hate you, you probably shouldn’t get too deep into politics.

And so, I want to frame this discussion by saying whoever you support, whatever you believe in is great, but, yeah, whether you like someone or not, Donald Trump, in particular, you can’t deny that he is amazingly good at selling ideas. Whether you like him or you hate him, he’s done a fantastic job of making a large set of people believe what he has to say.

And so, if you like Donald Trump, you’re probably saying, “Great. It’s wonderful.” If you hate Donald Trump, you’re saying, “Oh, God, why is he like that?” But I think a smarter strategy is to step back and say, “Well, what makes him so effective?” It’s easy to complain about him. What makes him so effective? Why is he so persuasive or convincing? What does he do that makes him so impactful?

One of the speeches he made when he first announced his candidacy, he said something like, “I’m going to build a great wall. Nobody builds walls better than me. I’ll build them very inexpensively. Our country is in trouble. We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have them. We don’t have them anymore. When was the last time anybody saw us beating China in a trade deal? I beat China all the time. All the time.”

Now, critics listened to that speech, and said, “Oh, God, this is ridiculous. It’s overly simplistic. It’s empty. It’s filled with bluster.” And, yet, less than a year later, he was elected president. So, what did he do? What does he do in his speeches that make him so impactful? And it’s not just him. So, if you look at folks like Steve Jobs, if you look at startup founders, they get a lot of attention.

If you look at leaders that everybody listens to. If you listen to so-called gurus, they often do one particular thing, which is they speak with a great deal of certainty. When they talk, other people listen because they seem like what they’re saying is obviously true.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “We’re going to win so much, we’re going to get tired of winning.”

Jonah Berger
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s as certain as you can get.

Jonah Berger
“I don’t know what that means, but I like it, right?” Who doesn’t like winning? Who wouldn’t like winning more? And if you dig a little deeper, you might say, “Well, what does ‘winning’ mean? How are we going to get there?” But, forgetting that for a second, because that’s what most of us are doing when we’re listening to something, if someone says something we like is going to happen a lot, we go, “Great.” That’s what we’re paying attention to.

And so, Trump is just one example of someone who speaks with a great deal of certainty. And you alluded to this a little bit yourself. Something isn’t just true, it’s certainly true. It’s definitely going to occur. It’s obvious. It’s unquestionable. Every time, this is clearly what’s going to happen. It’s guaranteed. It’s unambiguous. He uses a lot of language that is really certain.

And in a variety of contexts, research shows that certainty is good. Work on financial advisors, for example, shows that people prefer more certain financial advisors, even though those financial advisors that are certain aren’t any more accurate. Even in some cases where they’re making more extreme judgments, people like them more and want to choose them more because they seem so certain. If someone seems really certain, it’s hard to not want to go along because they seem so confident about what they’re saying.

Contrast that, though, with the way most of us communicate. So, I’m an academic and I’m terrible with this. I do this all the time. I often say, “Well, I think this…” or, “It seems like this will happen,” or, “Maybe this is true,” or, “This might work,” or, “Probably this will happen.” As a consultant, as a speaker, we default to those tics all the time. Those are called hedges.

What hedges do is they make it clear that we’re not so sure, like they hedge. They don’t say, “This is definitely true.” They say, “This might be true.” “Is it going to rain tomorrow?” “It’s definitely going to rain tomorrow.” “It might rain tomorrow.” “Is this a good strategy?” “It’s certainly a great strategy.” “It might be,” or, “It’s probably a good strategy.”

The problem, though, and I’m not saying that hedging is never good because sometimes things are uncertain, but the problem is that hedges reduce our impact. They undermine our impact because, while not only do they share our opinion, they simultaneously say we are not sure about our own opinion. And if we’re not sure, it makes people think we’re less certain or less confident, which makes them less likely to listen to us.

And so, if our goal is to communicate uncertainty, great. Maybe there are times for hedging. I’m not saying we all need to be like Donald Trump. There are certainly times for hedging, but if we want people to listen to us, or we want people to be persuaded, we need to ditch the hedges. Unless we’re using them strategically, unless we’re using them on purpose, don’t just say it because it’s convenient. Don’t just say it because it’s a verbal tic when we’re filling in space. And, second, when we do need to hedge, there are some types of hedges that are more persuasive than others.

So, contrast, for example, if I said, “This seems like a good strategy,” versus I said, “This seems, to me, like this is a good strategy.” If I said, “This might work” versus “I think that this might work.” In some cases, I’m saying something is generally uncertain, “It seems” or “It might work.” In another, I’m adding my personal perspective. And we can call these general and personal hedges.

Personal hedges are saying, “I’m adding a personal pronoun, I, me, my, to whatever I’m saying.” And it turns out that adding these personal pronouns in actually makes us more persuasive because it makes us seem more confident. If I want to show there are some uncertainties, and rather than saying, “It seems like this will work,” “It seems, to me, like this will work,” the listener goes, “Okay, well, you’re a little bit uncertain, but you’re willing to say that it seems, to you, to attach it to yourself, and so because of that, you seem more confident and I’m more likely to do what you suggested.”

And so, if we have to hedge, let’s hedge in a way that doesn’t undermine our impact or what we’re trying to get across.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, Jonah, you got me thinking, like you could totally say, “That is definitely a major risk,” and you haven’t said it’s certainly going to happen. You said it’s a risk. Risks, by definition, have a probability. Or, “That absolutely could be a huge opportunity for us. It could be an opportunity. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” but you can throw those adverbs and that intonation of certainty on something even when there’s uncertainty.

Jonah Berger
It’s definitely one of the paths we should pursue.

Pete Mockaitis
Definitely.

Jonah Berger
Rather than saying, “It’s not clear what path we should pursue,” saying, “It’s definitely one of the paths,” or, “I’m very certain about a narrow…” And so, what you did right there, and this is probably what you’re trying to do, but you did it very nicely, is you shrank the world but you added certainty. We’re always certain about something, there’s always something there we’re certain, but we may not be certain about the big picture, we may not be sure that a particular strategy is going to work, but we may be very certain about a part of that strategy. We may be certain that this strategy is worth considering.

And so, there are ways to add certainty in a way that doesn’t make it seem like the entire world is obviously clear. And so, I think, again, in times where we want to be clear that there is uncertainty, and there are two sides, and we need to be careful and all those things, and, yes, use hedges. I’m not saying not to. But in times where we want to be persuasive, let’s be careful about hedging just because it’s convenient.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. Now, can we hear a bit about leveraging concreteness?

Jonah Berger
Yes. So, to talk about this, I’ll share a story of mine, which there are a couple personal stories in this book, and this one is one that really helped interest me in a range of the topics in this book. So, a few years ago, I was coming back from a consulting project, I think it was in Dallas or something in the area, and I was in an Uber on the way to an airport to fly back home. I was very excited to go see my family, and I got the text message that every traveler dreads, which is “Your flight has been delayed.”

And as often the case, they had rebooked me on something, and it was the next day, it was a connecting flight, it was, like, 36 hours later, it was a terrible, terrible option. So, I call customer service and tried to improve the situation. And after sort of talking back and forth with them for 10 or even 12 minutes, the situation was not much better, and I was frustrated.

So, I get off the phone, and the very nice Uber driver had been forced to listen to what I had to say, said, “Oh, it sounds like you’re really frustrated,” and I was like, “Yeah, but it’s got to be tough being a customer service representative, like you do is hear from people like me all day who are frustrated and want to get home and are stuck and are sort of annoyed, and it must be a difficult job.” And he goes, “Yeah, but my daughter is actually a customer service representative, and she loves it.” And I go, “What do you mean?”

And he was like, “Well, she loves the job and she’s so good at it that, actually, they’ve now gotten her to train other people to talk to customers.” And I sat there, going, one, “That’s really interesting,” and, two, “What is she doing that makes her so effective?” Just like Donald Trump, like we can sit there, going, “I like him,” or, “I hate him,” or we can sit there, going, “Something he’s doing is working. What is it?”

And so, with a great colleague, Grant Packard, of mine, great, great friend and colleague, we went and got hundreds of customer service calls and analyzed the language of those calls to look at what increases customer satisfaction. And we also have data on whether people purchase again from the firm. So, are they happy once they get off that call? And does that call lead people to come back and buy things from the firm in the future?

And, obviously, problem-solving matters. So, yes, it matters whether they get me on a better flight, whether they find my bags, whether they solved the problem, but we looked at controlling for that. Does the language, can the language you use shape customer satisfaction? And I think there’s a key challenge that comes up in customer satisfaction. It comes up in a variety of areas of life. It’s not just customer satisfaction. It’s also when we’re talking to a group or even chatting with a spouse or a friend.

We want to signal that we’re listening. We’ve talked about this a little bit already, but when someone calls customer service, we don’t just want to solve their problem. We want to show them that we care. When somebody at the office talks to us about something, we want to show them that we’re interested in what they have to say. And so, how can we use language to show listening? We can shake our heads, yes, but how can we use language to show listening? How can we use language to show caring?

And it’s good that companies care about us, because when you’re on hold, they often say things like, “Oh, your call is so valuable to us. Thanks for staying on hold.” Twenty-five minutes into you sitting on hold, and you’re sitting there, going, “F you. If my call is valuable to you, you would answer the phone in less than 25 minutes.” So, they want to show they care but they don’t know how to.

We found, though, that a certain type of language shows listening. And that type of language is what we can describe as concrete language. And so, what does concrete mean? Well, if you can touch something, if you can feel it, if you can smell it, if you can see it, it’s concrete. A table is concrete. Trees are concrete. A cup is concrete. A strategy? Not so concrete. Soon, the word soon, not so concrete. The word tomorrow, well, that’s more concrete. I have a sense of when tomorrow is. I don’t know exactly when soon is. Beautiful? That’s a nice word but not very concrete. Striking red color, very concrete. I can see that color in my mind.

And so, we found that using concrete language increases customer satisfaction, makes them more satisfied at the end of the call, makes them more likely to buy more from the firm. Rather than saying something like, “Oh, we’ll get you a refund soon,” “Your money will be there tomorrow” is a much more concrete way of saying the same thing because the challenge often, as a customer service representative, and anyone trying to help someone else out, is we tend to use sort of language that works in all situations, “I can help you with that.” “I’m happy to solve your problem,” whether that problem is a delayed flight, a lost bag, anything at all.

And while that kind of Swiss Army language works in a variety of situations, really good for us, it doesn’t show someone listened. It’s so general that it doesn’t show someone we heard what they said. But concrete language, similar to what we talked about already, shows that you paid attention, that you understood what was said, and that you care enough to do something about it, it shows listening. And so, as a result, it has a variety of benefits, both in customer satisfaction but in other domains as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, Jonah, that’s so good. And I’m thinking about my own customer service experiences as the customer. I really like that concreteness when they say, “You’re the third person in line on the end. Your wait time is approximately nine minutes.” It’s like, “Okay.” Like, I really understand these expectations. And, contrarily, I get really irritated with these chatbots who act like they can solve any problem but, when push comes to shove, they really can’t, which is why I’m there in the first place.

It’s, like, if this were an easy problem, it would be loaded into the interactive voice response, the IVR systems of the push button or whatever, and I would’ve already solved it via automated portals. So, when I’m talking to a human, it’s thorning, like, we got some nuances about a changed billing/shipping address, and that’s why I need to go down the route of talking to someone. So, it is quite irritating when I get the general language, which isn’t even true, “I could help you with that.” I was like, “Well, we’ll see. We’ll see, chatbot, if you got the right stuff, but I have my doubts.”

Jonah Berger
I certainly agree, and I think everyone would like, when they call customer service, to be heard and to be listened to, to feel like someone cares. And as a customer service agent, you only have so many degrees of freedom. You can’t create a flight that doesn’t exist. But just as someone listens to a colleague at work, or a spouse at home, by using the right language, you can make it clear that you listened, that you heard, and that you care, which can, on the margin, make things better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, Jonah, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about your favorite things?

Jonah Berger
No, I think the only thing I would say, which we sort of started out talking about in the beginning, is we all use language all the time. Language is how we convince clients and customers, language is how we change the minds of bosses and colleagues, language is how we connect with our loved ones at home. By understanding the power of magic words, we can use language in these situations more effectively and in all areas of our life.

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

Jonah Berger
I think one quote that I like a lot is from Albert Einstein. I’m going to get it probably a little bit wrong here, but he says something along the lines of, “If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” And I think it’s really easy to think things are complicated. Many things are complicated but part of the job of a good communicator is figuring out how to meet their audience more than halfway and simplify it. And so, I always found that quote quite motivating even though if I don’t always achieve what it sets out to do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Jonah Berger
One of my favorite books is a book called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s a great book on communicating, and I find myself going back to it again and again over time.

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

Jonah Berger
I have started using voice to text more in a variety of areas of my life, whether writing emails, whether writing articles, not just texting on the phone. It’s not always perfect but it does an amazing job of allowing us to sort of dump more thoughts out quickly, which I think is really great. One thing to be careful of, the modality we communicate through, the medium we communicate to, speaking rather than writing does change what we say, and so we need to be a little bit careful. But I think it’s a great productivity tool and a good way to express ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jonah, I got to follow up here. I’ve been disappointed with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. How are you rocking and rolling? Is there a particular piece of software or is it built-in into the MacOS?

Jonah Berger
I’m just using whatever comes with Microsoft. So, whatever comes with Microsoft Word, whatever comes with Outlook, I’m using that. And I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m not expecting perfect. I am amazed that it captures, generally, what I’m saying, and it gives me a place to start and sharpen some thoughts.

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

Jonah Berger
Oh, yeah. Well, Magic Words is available wherever books are sold, so Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever you like to go for books. You can find me at my first name-last name-dot com, so just JonahBerger.com. There’s a bunch about the book there, a bunch of free resources. One page, there’s guides and the like. And you can also find me at @j1berger on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

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

Jonah Berger
Yeah, think about how you can use language more effectively. We all have things we want to communicate but we often think less about the specific words we use, and there’s a lot of opportunity there. So, by understanding magic words and their power, we can increase our impact in every aspect of life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jonah, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and many magical words.

Jonah Berger
Thank you so much.

Feb 27
0

843: The Master Key to Overcoming Procrastination with Dr. Hayden Finch

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Hayden Finch says: "It’s not time management. It’s emotion management."

Dr. Hayden Finch unpacks the psychology behind procrastination and shares strategies for overcoming it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why time management won’t solve procrastination—and what will.
  2. The easier way to do what you don’t want to do.
  3. A powerful question to help motivate you into action.

About Hayden

Dr. Hayden Finch is a licensed clinical psychologist, behavior change expert, and dessert enthusiast.  She is the founder of the Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety, an online therapy clinic that helps anxious and overwhelmed high-achievers learn actionable, research-proven skills to turn self-doubt into self-confidence.  She is a go-getter with a passion for empowering others to find meaning in a busy life.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Hayden Finch Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I should also mention, the video is not being recorded at all. So, however you want to roll, so there’s that. Hayden, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Hayden Finch
I‘m so thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so thrilled to be chatting with you. You’ve got the coolest name for your organization – The Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety.

Hayden Finch
Doesn’t that sound official?

Pete Mockaitis
It really does. I think we have a lot of high-functioning anxiety in the listenership, myself included.

Hayden Finch
Yeah. Well, that’s how I sort of got in this space, was like, “That’s me.” I’m pretty high-functioning and have a lot of anxiety, and noticed that my clients were kind of being attracted to me because they were pretty similar to me in terms of being pretty high-achieving people, doctors, and attorneys, and scientists, and also having anxiety, and trying to work all that out.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that’s powerful, it’s important. And kudos on zeroing in on your message and your uniqueness and your brand relatively early in the course of rocking and rolling in your practice. That’s really cool.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, I studied marketing for a minute after I realized that that’s an essential part of the process, and that really helped me kind of figure out how to actually reach the people that I thought would be a good fit for me and that I would be a good fit for. So, yeah, that’s really helped kind of get that branding right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of the insights that you’ve shared in your book The Psychology of Procrastination. But maybe before we do that, could you share, is there anything particularly striking, surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive you’ve discovered about us high-achieving folk having gotten a unique vantage point of looking at the personal deep stuff that we’re all dealing with?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, one thing that’s interesting about especially high-functioning people is, obviously, procrastination hasn’t been so problematic that it’s kept them from being able to achieve great things. Like, these people that I work with are highly successful, and so procrastination hasn’t kept them from being successful like it can for some people.

And so, I see this kind of brand of procrastination in this population that’s really closely aligned with perfectionism. And so, they want to do things perfectly and that can kind of contribute to procrastination, and then the procrastination kind of influences how well they can do something, and there’s this relationship between procrastination and perfectionism that I think is particularly unique to this high-functioning population.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really resonating in terms of one thing I’ve really procrastinated on is just processing my mail, like paper mail, because if it’s really good, I usually grab it already, like, “Ooh, this is a cheque,” “Ooh, this is a card.” And then what’s left is a big pile of, “I don’t know what’s in that envelope. Probably not anything interesting.”

Hayden Finch
Yeah, that’s really common to struggle with, like those basic activities of daily living, but then to not struggle so much with some of the bigger things in life that would seem more intimidating.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. And then with that perfectionism, it’s funny, I ended up buying a bunch of stuff in terms of I’ve got three different kinds of letter openers now, and a nice little six-stack tray, and some special redaction markers, etc. And I guess there’s some perfectionism in there, it’s like, “If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it so freaking excellently.”

But I found that from my own motivational triggers at least, it’s really helping. It’s like, “I am well-equipped to tackle this thing now, so let’s get after it.” Whereas, before, it’s like, “Oh, it’s going to be so hard and boring, and I’m scared that I might realize I’ve neglected something important about insurance, or about taxes, or something, and then feel bad about myself.” So, anyways, yeah, a lot of stuff gets wrapped up in this procrastination.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, and sometimes, you’re right, like setting ourselves up with the best materials can really then motivate behavior. And sometimes people observe the opposite, and they get all the stuff, and they have all these great intentions, and still they can’t go through their mail, that there’s something missing that actually helps them overcome that barrier to really doing the behavior, so it can kind of go either direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, boy, it sounds like there’s a lot of nuances to be untangled here, so let’s do that. Maybe let’s zoom out a smidge. If you had a big idea, core message, or thesis behind The Psychology of Procrastination how would you articulate that?

Hayden Finch
My main thesis is that procrastination is not as much about time management as we would expect. That’s what you hear a lot when you’re talking about procrastination, is you need to schedule, you need to plan, or you need to manage your time better. To me, poor time management can certainly affect procrastination, and improving those skills can be helpful, but, ultimately, overcoming procrastination requires addressing the deeper emotional causes. Overcoming procrastination is about emotion management as much as time management.

Pete Mockaitis
Tweet that, Hayden. That’s good. Uh-huh.

Hayden Finch
Yeah. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that distinction does a lot right there. Cool. So, then I’m curious, okay, well, we’ll get in the how in just a moment. Then, is there any distinguishing or defining we should do about procrastination itself? Like, in some ways, I think we know it when we see it, it’s like, “Well, yeah, that’s procrastination.” But how do we distinguish between procrastination versus, “Oh, I’m taking a break,” or, “This is actually another important thing that’s popped up and needs my attention”?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, there are different forms of procrastination. And so, there’s actively procrastinating versus passively procrastinating. So, active procrastination means, “Oh, I’m going to work on that later.” I’m making this active decision to do it later so that I can do this other thing instead. And that other thing may be something that is also important, maybe more important, or maybe also important but less important, or something that’s not important at all but just something that you want to do. So, I’m actively making the decision to put something off until later.

And there’s also the passive procrastination, which is just like just not getting around to the stuff, just not getting around to making a doctor’s appointment or to calling your grandma or something like that. It just doesn’t come around. You’re passively procrastinating on those things but not really intending to. So, that’s one important distinction, is, “Am I doing this on purpose? Am I purposely putting this off? Or, am I just like not getting around to doing these things that I need to be doing?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so then, either way, there’s something that ought to be done that you’re not doing.

Hayden Finch
Right, yeah. That’s essentially the definition of procrastination. And you bring up a good point, which is, like, there are lots of things that need to be done in life, so how do you distinguish if I’m working on something that’s important, how do I know if the stuff that is waiting in line is being procrastinated or I’m just not getting to it yet? And that’s a matter of priority.

By definition, there can only be one most important thing, and that’s your priority. And our job in overcoming procrastination is to get really serious about what is the most important, or most urgent thing to be done right now, and what are the other things that need to wait. And you’ll see your mind getting really creative with excuses to kind of trick you into changing the priority order, and making something seem like a greater priority than something else.

And so, you really have to be savvy in calling yourself out when you’re lying to yourself or when you’re making excuses that aren’t helpful in really prioritizing your list.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so powerful. And a couple things you said reminded me of the conversation we had with Perry Marshall who talked about the 80/20 Rule and marketing and other domains, and it’s intriguing. And for me, that’s been so huge with priority, is if I can quantify, like, “What is the expected profit created per hour invested?” as I think about different business initiatives, like, if that’s what I’m trying to achieve.

Then if I lay it out there, I can be dazzled by, “Sure enough, that one is ten times as much as that other one. So, even though it’s unpleasant, I should probably really do that one.” And it’s powerful and beautiful to be able to see it in black and white in such stark dramatically differing terms. Although, often, it is not that clear, it is not that quantified, and it’s much fuzzier.

Well, now, sorry, I’m pausing here because I want to jump right into, “How do I determine the priority?” but maybe that’s not the perfect sequence. Oh, perfectionism. Uh-oh. That’s so meta. So, yeah, let’s just do it. So, how do you think about determining priority?

Hayden Finch
Well, there are a lot of different ways that you can do that. There’s The Eisenhower Matrix, which is if you can imagine is this sort of two-by-two matrix of urgent, not urgent, important, not important. And so, you’ve got a box that’s both urgent and important, and a box that’s neither urgent nor important, and then the other two as well. And you can kind of categorize your tasks into that matrix.

And so, the things that are most important and most urgent are probably going to be your highest priority things. These are kind of emergencies in your life, or rapidly approaching deadlines, things like that. Things that are urgent but not important might be interruptions, so someone asking you, like a coworker asking you on your opinion on something, or for feedback on something. That may be kind of urgent, especially to your coworker but not especially important to you, so that might be a little bit lower priority for you.

Or things that are important to you but not necessarily urgent. These are projects that you want to work on that have no deadlines. So, organizing your closets or making a doctor’s appointment. These things are important but not necessarily urgent, so they’re also going to kind of be in the middle of your list. And then things at the bottom of your list are going to be things that are neither urgent nor important.

So, these are distractions in life. This is social media, this is just hanging out, this is kind of our time-wasters are definitely in that category. And these are going to be at the bottom of our list, and, hopefully, we’ll get there but in terms of prioritizing our time, we want to start with those things that are most urgent and most important. And, again, I haven’t said this, but you want to overcome the urge to, like, just use urgency to measure your priorities, and really looking at the importance of it too.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I think that you’re right in terms of the priority can slide or sort of like we rationalize or deceive ourselves. And so, you can say anything is important, like, “It’s important that I play this video game because self-care is essential. I’ve been working so hard and I need a break.”

But the flipside, it could be, “Well, yeah, self-care is important. You have been working hard, you should have a rest, and this isn’t going to fill you up as much as any number of other activities which might require a little bit more effort, and might not be as immediately accessible, do.”

Hayden Finch
And that’s where the emotional stuff comes in. When you’re really in tuned with your emotions, you can see that your emotions are making the decision to procrastinate more so than you actually making that decision to put something off strategically. So, the emotion is something like, “I just don’t want to work on that project,” or, “I just don’t want to open the mail right now.”

And so, whatever emotion word we would put on that experience, that is what’s making the decision to put it off versus you sitting down, and saying, “Well, mail is kind of like it’s important but not especially urgent, so, therefore, I’m going to kind of put it in the middle of my list.” Like, that’s a very rational process but that’s very rarely what happens because, instead, our emotions are making those decisions for us.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Hayden, I don’t know how many times I’ve dreamt about this ultimate holy grail, and maybe it’s not achievable for us mortals, but exactly that notion, “I just don’t want to.” I think I’ve even written this on a goal sheet somewhere, it’s like, I would like to make “I just don’t want to” or, “I just don’t feel like it” almost irrelevant in terms of the power it holds over me. It’s like, “Duly noted, emotion, but we’re going to do it anyway, so too bad.”

And so, tell me, Hayden, is that an achievable goal or is the state of humanity incapable of that ideal?

Hayden Finch
Well, we can’t certainly eradicate that as an experience. I think that’s what most of us sort of envision, it’s just like, “I have this emotion, I don’t want it, so I’m just going to get rid of it. I’m just going to amputate that from my experience.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, sounds nice.

Hayden Finch
Probably not an achievable goal, so it’s more helpful to figure out, “How do I have that feeling, that ‘I don’t want to’ feeling, and put that in my pocket, carry it with me, but continue to choose my behavior in the direction that I want it to be?” So, it’s making this distinction where, “I can have that feeling but choose a behavior that’s incompatible with it, so I can exercise, or do this documentation, or go through the mail, even though I have this feeling that I don’t want to. I’m just going to put that in my pocket, carry it with me because I can’t get rid of it, and then do the behavior anyways.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. Yeah, understood. Yeah, the feeling is there, it doesn’t just disappear at will, but what is possible – it sounds like you’re saying, tell me if I’m accurate – is that with a high percentage, now, you tell me, Hayden, is it 100, is it 90? With a high percentage, with practice, and mastery, one can, with a high percentage, say, “Duly noted, I-just-don’t-feel-like-it emotion. I’m going to put this aside and proceed, regardless.” Is that accurate?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, and I love the way you just did that. You talked to the feeling, and that’s helpful, right? What that’s doing is taking the feeling from being, like, enveloping you, and you’re putting it out in front of you, and you’re speaking to it as if it’s something separate, because, in effect, it is, and you’re saying, “Hey, feeling, I hear you, I see you, I’m going to validate you, but I’m not going to let you make the decisions for me because you are separate from me. So, yes, I’m going to acknowledge you, say duly noted,” and then continue in the direction that you want to go.

This, of course, yes, is more difficult in real life than I’m making it sound, and it requires a lot of, like, emotional skill, but you can learn that, those skills, so you can learn that and you can improve those skills over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s really nicely said in terms of talking to the emotion, and “I hear you” validating. I think I’ve wrestled with this in my own journey with regard to emotions, is if folks say, “Oh, you know, Pete, emotions have information. Be curious about them.”

And I think that’s probably generally good advice for most people but, as a podcast host, I am pathologically curious, I’d say, in terms of…or a good distinction I’ve gathered is that emotions cannot be solved but rather felt, in that they have information but sometimes that information isn’t really relevant, or novel, or actionable, like, “Oh, I’m angry about this thing, which is a lot like this thing that’s happened before and is likely to continue.”

It’s like, “Yeah, that’s true. Yup, that much to be done, so duly noted. Thank you. Thank you, anger. We’re going to go ahead and do this other thing now.” Or, that’s how I’ve come to terms with things. What is your professional opinion, Doctor?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, for sure, emotions exist for a reason. Like, humans have evolved with emotions inside of us for a reason. Like, evolution tends to get rid of things that aren’t particularly helpful, and so humans and lots of other animals have emotions, so we have to believe that that’s there for a reason, because emotions are somewhat metabolically expensive in your brain, so, again, they must be serving a purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, true that.

Hayden Finch
And so, yes, we do want to pay attention to our emotions and try to figure out what they’re telling us, and, at the same time, what they’re telling us does not need to necessarily dictate our behavior. In a perfect world, that’s why we have emotions because, for example, if I see a snake, that’s going to automatically, without me even thinking about it, motivate my behavior to get away from that snake.

And it happens so quickly that it’s life-sustaining, that I’m moving away from that snake before I can think about, “Should I? Is that snake dangerous? Is that one poisonous? Is that one going to bite me?” We don’t have to do all of that. We’re just already moving. And that’s really helpful, and those are the reasons that we have emotions in the first place.

But, in our human lives where it’s not all…like emotions aren’t always triggered by things that are life-threatening, we have to be a little bit more thoughtful about the behaviors that are following our emotions. There’s a natural behavior attached to every emotion. So, if I’m sad, I naturally kind of want to hide and just slow down. If I’m anxious, I kind of naturally want to plan and worry.

And that can be helpful in certain contexts but we just have to ask ourselves, we have to pause on that emotion, and say, “What is this emotion trying to tell me? And is this one of those contexts where I need to do exactly what it’s telling me to do? Or, is this one of those tricky contexts that I actually need to go in the total opposite direction?”

Pete Mockaitis
Hey, I like that a lot. Natural behavior, and then we assess that, like, “Hmm, interesting suggestion you have proposed here. Let’s consider, is that the optimal move?” Okay. Well, so, Hayden, just kind of rounding out the why before we dig into the nitty-gritty hows, you mentioned it can be possible to practice to have a very high percentage of “Duly noted, I-don’t-feel-like-it, and we’re going to proceed, regardless.”

Could you also share with us a particularly inspiring story of someone you’ve seen really turned it around in terms of they had some procrastination that was causing some challenges, and then they just really came out the other side, and were taking care of business?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, I have a woman I used to work with that, again, very high functioning. She’s an attorney in a pretty prestigious position, and have obviously been very successful her whole life. She was very successful academically and, honestly, in everything she ever did. Like, she’s just super bright and driven, but part of her success was because she would pull all-nighters to get her briefs written, or her motions written, or whatever, and she was kind of constantly asking the court for extensions because she just didn’t have the time to finish some of the things that she needed to write for the court. And that became problematic, as you can imagine.

Pete Mockaitis
The judges are tired of that.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, they kind of catch onto this, and they’ll put some limits on it. And so, overcoming procrastination became important for her because like, she’s not 20 anymore, like pulling all-nighters is not necessarily a great way of living your life as an attorney, and asking the judges for extensions is not super helpful either.

And so, we worked for a long time on setting up some systems in her life that are going to support her moving up deadlines and being able to work on things earlier, but mostly we were looking at what are the emotions that drive the procrastination. And for her, it was a lot of distraction. It was a lot of distraction by other things that were also interesting, or overdoing it on one brief that then made it so that she couldn’t work on another one.

So, kind of like you, she’s just super curious and would do too much on one project and then procrastinate another project because of that. And so, we worked a lot on kind of figuring out emotionally what’s going on here. So, curiosity here is driving some of the procrastination, and being able to work with that so that she could set that curiosity aside, say, “Yes, duly noted, I’m very curious about this project, and I actually need to shift my focus to this other project that I’m a little bit less curious about.”

So, doing that kind of emotional work in addition to really setting herself up with some good systems for prioritizing tasks and subtasks, and knowing really what the priorities are, and how to manage her time so that she can get everything done on time. And now she holds very few all-nighters, or like less of an all-nighter, like, “I’m going to be able to sleep for two or three hours tonight instead of zero hours,” which was a significant progress.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. All right. So, I’m inspired, I’m motivated, let’s dig into some of the means by which we win against procrastination. So, we talked about it’s really much about emotional management as opposed to just time management. So, could you orient us, you’ve got a procrastination cycle, how does this work?

Hayden Finch
Right. So, this cycle kind of starts with the idea that I’m going to have a thought about working on something, “Oh, I should open the mail.” And then some things are going to happen after that thought. And those thoughts that come up after you have that initial thought, that’s what, ultimately, is going to determine whether you are successful at following through with opening the mail or you defer to a different task.

And so, that interim space is really super duper important. So, I think about working on a project, so I think about opening the mail, and then I have this feeling, this, like, “Ugh, I really don’t want to. That’s kind of boring, or there’s a lot stacked up, or I don’t know what some of it is, or it could be bad news, like I could have some bills in there I can’t pay.” There’s some feeling that comes up. And then I want to get that feeling out of my body as quickly as possible because we don’t like feelings.

So, I’m just trying to get rid of that feeling. And the quickest, most effective way to do that is to just say, “You know what, I’ll do that later. I’m going to go over here and I’m going to go get a snack, or I’m going to play a video game, or I’m going to work on a work project that’s also really important. I’m going to go do something else.”

And as soon as I make that decision to go do something else, that feeling goes away. And that is really reinforcing, or in other words, kind of addictive to our brains, that relief from that anxiety that we felt or whatever that kind of feeling was, that relief from that feeling is kind of what makes us do that. And because our brain figured that out, that that felt good to get that feeling out of our body, it’s going to do that the next time too.

So, like, “Oh, I got to get around to opening that mail. Oh, yeah, I really don’t want to. Oh, there could be bills in there that I can’t pay. Oh, you know, I’m going to work on this other thing. Oh.” That relief, again, your brain learns that relief feels good, and it’s going to encourage you to do that every time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. It’s not so much that doing the other thing is just orgasmically pleasurable in terms of, like, “I’m being deluged with dopamine because this snack is so amazing, or this video game is so good.” I love that distinction you brought there in terms of we’re addicted to the relief, like, “I was feeling yucky, and then I felt un-yucky, and, oh, that’s real nice,” even if the alternative isn’t all that amazing.

Hayden Finch
Right. Yeah, even just less yucky. If I feel 2% less yucky doing this other project, then that’s a 2% gain for my brain, and, “Ooh, that’s better, so we’re going to move in that direction.” So, yeah, our procrastination doesn’t have to be just something that we actually enjoy or want to do. It just has to be incrementally better than what we otherwise would do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I really like that a lot. And so then, okay, so that’s sort of the cycle. And you say it’s the thoughts we have that determine which pathway we’re going to end up going down. So, can you give us a demonstration? We heard some of the thoughts that don’t take us where we want to go. What’s the flipside of that?

Hayden Finch
Right. So, that would be a lot like what you demonstrated. So, here I am, I have this thought, like, “Oh, I really need to get to that mail. Like, oh, gosh, there could be some bills in there that I can’t pay. And there’s so much stacked up, I feel so guilty about just not being good at this, and there’s just a mass of mail. Okay, yup, yup, there is that guilty feeling, there’s that anxiety. Yup, there it is. Duly noted that this feels bad.”

“I can actually feel bad and do this at the same time. I can feel guilty about this and open the mail at the same time. Those are not mutually exclusive. So, here I am, I’m going to put that guilt in my pocket, and I’m just going to carry that with me, and I’m going to feel guilty while I open the mail. And maybe I don’t commit to opening all of it. I’m just going to open up a couple pieces of mail. That’s what I feel like I can commit to today. And so, I open a couple of pieces of mail, and then I move on.” And so then, I’m going to feel some relief after that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.

Hayden Finch
And that feels good to our brains too. So, now I’ve actually done some work, and then I feel relieved, and that’s kind of the process that we want, is that relief to come after engaging with the task rather than before.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, that’s really nice. That’s really nice. I think I heard an interview with Dr. Andrew Huberman in which he suggested that whenever there’s a means by which we can very easily acquire feeling good, whether that’s alcohol or nicotine or porn or whatever, there’s a risk that addiction and not a great cycle can begin there, as opposed to what you’ve laid out is that sounds like what I’m picking up.

It’s like, here, we’ve got a choice in terms of which pathway are we going to go down. And in so doing, which behaviors are going to get reinforced. Is that accurate, Hayden, that if we do choose to procrastinate this one time, we’ll be more likely to procrastinate next time? And, vice versa, if we do choose to do the unpleasant thing, we’ll be better able to do the unpleasant thing next time? Is that accurate or am I reading too much into it?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, right. So, your brain is paying attention to these reinforcement schedules, and it is noticing that, “I avoided the task, I decided not to open the mail, and I felt better.” So, in this case, avoidance is being reinforced. And, in general, that’s kind of not what we want to happen in our lives. But if, instead, I actually engage with the task, maybe not completely but in a way that feels manageable for me today, then my relief comes from engaging the task rather than avoiding the task, and that is what we want to see more of.

And the more you do that, yes, you’re right, the more you do that, the more resilient you become. And so then, what feels manageable today, which is opening two pieces of mail, like, down the road somewhere, I might be able to open ten pieces of mail, or maybe even feel capable of approaching the entire task.

So, we want to start where we’re at, and then, as we kind of build some resilience to that where that starts to feel easy, then open that up a little bit so that we actually can do more and more, and tolerate more distress.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. So, we talked about the cycle and we talked about prioritizing. Any other just absolutely core themes, principles, practices that make a world of difference in terms of getting better at not procrastinating?

Hayden Finch
One thing that comes to mind is this idea of motivation, and I hear that come up a lot in my clinic about, “I’m just not motivated to exercise,” or, “I’m not motivated to write my notes, do my documentation,” “I’m just not motivated to work on this project.” That comes up a lot as a factor that perpetuates procrastination.

And so, we really have to rethink motivation in this context. And there’s a lot floating around the internet, so your listeners have probably encountered this, that motivation is fleeting, it’s unreliable, it’s definitely not something that we want to rely on to motivate behavior. Like, we don’t. We want to choose our behavior, whether we have motivation or not, because this misconception that, “If I’m motivated, then I can take action,” but it’s actually the reverse, “If I take action, and then I start to see results from that, then I may feel motivated down the road.” But that’s neither here or there.

In overcoming procrastination, motivation doesn’t even really need to be part of the equation. We just need to focus on tolerating the distress, the emotional piece, and then choosing our behavior that’s aligned with our goals rather than what we feel like doing or not doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, motivation, fickle, fleeting, and so it’s not essential to have but it’d be nice to have. Are there any things that we can do to, over the long term, build up more? I guess, is it just doing that path that brings about more resilience will also yield more motivation? Or, is it just like “Can’t count on it. It’ll come and go, and just move on”?

Hayden Finch
We certainly don’t want to count on it but definitely there are things that we can do to enhance motivation. So, these are things like reminding ourselves why, “Why is it important to go through the mail? Why don’t I just want to let this accumulate?” And if I have a good compelling reason that this is an important task to do, and I remind myself why it’s important, then I’m probably going to feel more motivated to engage in it, or, in other words, I’m going to feel more motivated to push through that “I don’t want to” feeling.

So, importantly, that “I don’t want to” feeling is probably still going to be there, but it’s a little bit easier to put that in your pocket and carry on when you have a compelling reason to do that. So, reminding yourself, like, “What are my values? What’s important to me? Why am I trying to do this?” that can be really helpful for being able to push through that discomfort.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Hayden, do you have any thoughts when we talk about the why? I think I’ve historically viewed the why as some grand ennobling purpose that just inspires and is maybe even extra fun to say and articulate, versus the why could, in fact, be pretty mundane, like, “Well, if you don’t open your mail, there could be some nasty bills that you haven’t paid and your credit score will go down, and you’re going to have to pay more for your next car payment, or mortgage, or something.”

And so, I think I’ve gathered that that’s a perfectly valid why that can nudge you and get the results even if it’s not all that inspiring and pretty.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be anything that you’re going to…that’s going to be tweetable. Like, it doesn’t have to be. Like, it can just be, like, “I need to get this stuff off the counter. That’s just an important thing to do, just clear this up so that’s it’s just not taking up space.” Or, also, it’s not taking up brain space, “Really, I keep having to think about the freaking mail, and that’s a silly waste of brain space, and so I’m just going to go ahead and do this so I can clear that up to think about things that I’m actually more interested in.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And so then, the why can be either carrot or stick, it can be pain or pleasure. Okay.

Hayden Finch
Right. Yes. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And then I’m thinking, once we’re actually started which…well, maybe let’s talk about that. So, I’m thinking about Dr. Timothy Pychyl, I don’t know if I’m saying his name right, but he wrote another book about procrastination which I thought was pretty good. But that was one of the themes over and over again, it’s like, “Just get started,” which, in some ways, is, I don’t know, felt like an oversimplification, like, “Oh, you’re procrastinating? Well, just get started.”

But, on the flipside, it’s like, “But, no, it’s true. If you could just get like a minute or two into it, magic happens.” Can you comment on the “Just get started” concept?

Hayden Finch
Super important because that’s where the emotion, that’s your choice-point, like, “I have this emotion, and I have a choice to either avoid it or to tolerate it. And if I can just get started, every time I just get started, that is me tolerating that emotion even if I only get started for two pieces of mail. I’ve tolerated that emotion for longer than I, otherwise, would have, and that is a step in the right direction.”

And, typically, once we can overcome that first hump of the emotion, it’s kind of downhill from there. It’s a whole lot easier. It’s that first step that is the most difficult. And so, yeah, there’s some truth to that, that if we can just get started, and there are lots of ways that people have come up with how to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Do tell.

Hayden Finch
And if we can just do that, that tends to help us down the road. It tends to help us continue the task longer.

Pete Mockaitis
Hayden, you said lots of ways, and I can’t let that go. What are some of these ways?

Hayden Finch
Well, like, with the mail example, right? I’m just going to commit to doing a little bit of the task. So, if I can break this big task into something smaller, “I’m going to unload the dishwasher. I’m just going to put away the forks,” or, “I’m going to do the laundry. I’m just going to fold the towels today.” If we can break it down to just one thing, that’s one way to get started. So, we’re not committing to doing the entire thing.

Or, commit to a certain amount of time, “I’m just going to do this for five minutes, and then I’m done after that. I’m only committing to five minutes of this hard thing, then I’m done.” Or, a renewable strategy, “So, I’m going to do this for five minutes, and then after five minutes, I’m going to ask myself whether I want to continue for another five minutes,” and then kind of having that renewable engagement with the task.

And so, there are lots of ways like that, that essentially, come down to breaking that task down into a small-enough component that it feels manageable. And that maybe, like, what’s manageable for you at the moment, if it’s something you’ve been putting off for a long, long time, that may be, “I’m just going to put one fork away, and that’s all I can manage today. Like, that’s just where I’m at, and that’s totally fine.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s so good. And it’s so funny that state of mind. I’m thinking I’ve had times where I’m looking at a kitchen island just full of junk. We got mail, we got trash, we got recycling, we got laundry, we got a car seat, because it’s big and convenient, it’s right there, so we stick things there. And so then, it’s overwhelming, it’s like, “Oh, there are so many things.”

And it’s funny, sometimes I will do a little bit and I’ll feel exhausted, like, “Ah, that’s all I can muster. I put the car seat on the stroller, which makes a lot more sense for it to be, and that’s good.” And other times, I do that and then I behold the wake, the space, that has been cleared, beautified, liberated, from that action. And I find it to be beautiful and inspiring such that I keep going.

And maybe this is just a fancy way of describing what motivation feels like in practice. But, Hayden, it’s just a mystery to me, is, why is it sometimes I take the path where it’s like, “Ooh, that was great. Let’s keep going,” and other times, I go, “Ugh, that was exhausting. Let’s stop”? What’s behind that?

Hayden Finch
Well, it’s a lot of things. Sometimes it comes down to emotional energy. We have a certain amount of emotional energy, and some days you’ve probably already spent a lot of your emotional energy on, “I didn’t sleep all that well,” and, “My boss was mad at me,” and, “I got in trouble for this thing,” and, “This project isn’t working out the way I want it to,” and, “There was no toilet paper in the bathroom.”

And so, by the time you get around to just cleaning off your island, like, “Ugh, I just put the car seat away,” is all you can muster. But other days that are going pretty well, you might have enough emotional energy to actually do the entire project. So, it just kind of depends, I think, a lot on kind of what’s already been stocking up for you in the day or the week or whatever time is leading up to that task.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s say we did get started, mission accomplished. And then distraction appears, maybe it’s from the phone, maybe it’s from a knock on the door, “You got a minute?” or any number, or just our own internal thoughts, like, “Ooh, it’d be fun to go on Facebook right now.” What do you recommend for sticking with it once we’ve started?

Hayden Finch
Well, obviously, if you’re a person who’s prone to distraction, then you want to do the normal things to limit distractions. You’re going to leave your phone somewhere else or turn it off. You want to shut your office door. You want to take all of those steps that we all know we ought to do. I have nothing revolutionary to add there about limiting distractions. So, if you’re prone to distractions, you certainly want to do that.

And I think we have to be honest with ourselves about what we’re distracted by. So, if you’re distracted by your phone, you’re getting on social media, you’re checking text messages, or whatever, then your phone needs to go. And, also, I think we just kind of need to be honest with ourselves about how long we’re able to work before we take a break.

And we need to kind of schedule in some breaks, and that can get your key for people to, in terms of coming back from a break. But everyone needs breaks to just kind of refresh our energy and our focus, so we have to be thoughtful about that. But, certainly, limiting distractions is important, and setting ourselves up with systems that are going to help us with the distractions that you don’t normally think about.

So, you were mentioning getting distracted by your own thoughts or ideas. And so, one idea there is to keep a list where you can follow up with those ideas. So, right now, I am working on this memo, and I should not be getting on Facebook to look at the events that are going on this weekend. That’s a distraction. I’m going to write that down so that once I’m done with my time commitment to this memo, I’m going to follow up with the Facebook idea.

Or, I’m going to follow up with, “Oh, yeah, I want to do Wikipedia, that thing, like I’m going to follow up with that later because I’ve got a list. I don’t want to forget them so I’m going to make a list of them, but kind of having the discipline to, not right now, and just put that away,” which, again, is going to bring up some emotions, like, “I really want to get on Facebook. Oh, I really want to, like I’m really curious about that thing.” We have to tolerate that distress of postponing that experience until later.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. Thank you. Hayden, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Hayden Finch
I don’t know if I’ve said it, but like the emotional piece is super duper important. Yeah, I think it’s, like, I know, I’ve sort of beaten that dead horse, which is then my intention because I think that people continue to try to overcome procrastination again and again and again, and they’re trying similar strategies and not finding progress.

And I think it is because a lot of people are neglecting the emotional piece. So, that really has to be your focus, is trying to figure out that arch of your emotional experience. So, I think about doing something, I have this emotional experience in response to it, and then I choose my behavior accordingly. When you can master that emotional arch, you are going to make so much more progress in overcoming procrastination.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Hayden Finch
There’s this author and finance expert named Nathan Morris, and he has this quote, like, “It’s not always that we need to do more, but rather that we need to focus on less.” And I find that pretty inspiring. He talks about kind of editing your life frequently and ruthlessly.

And, for me, being the person that I am, who’s like prone to anxiety and perfectionism and doing more, more, more, it always feels like if I just do more or work harder, then I will get to my destination. But I think there’s a lot of truth in what he’s saying, which is, like, we just need to focus on less. Like, choose the priority and focus on that, and then that’s where success will come in.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Hayden Finch
There’s this study where they had human subjects at a starting line, and they had to walk to a finish line, and along the way, they had to pick up a bucket. And they’re going to encounter one bucket sooner, and then there’s another bucket kind of closer to the finish line. And they can choose either one, they just have to walk with a bucket from start line to the finish line. And so, rationally, what we should do is, like, pick up that second bucket that’s, like, closer to the finish line, and just walk from there to the finish line.

But actually, people tended to pick up that first bucket and then walk farther with this heavy bucket to the finish line. And what I love about that study is that it sort of highlights how irrational human behavior is, that we will, in some cases, do more work for no good reason. Like, obviously, in that case, just pick up the second bucket and we won’t have to carry it farther. We are predictably irrational, and that’s why psychology is so interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so funny, and I guess we have all of our own little reasons for that. It’s like, “I’m going to show this bucket who’s boss. I’m a tough guy. I can handle carrying a bucket the whole way, so I’m going to do it. This is boring, so carrying a bucket makes it a little more interesting, so I’m going to do it, I think.” Yeah, okay. And a favorite book?

Hayden Finch
Sophie Mort, who happens to be a friend of mine, wrote A Manual for Being Human, which I think is revolutionary because you know how people is, “Oh, there’s no manual for, like, being a human. There’s no manual for figuring this out.” Well, she, like, literally wrote the manual for being human in this space in psychology and mental health. And it’s a great read for people trying to figure out how to manage mental health and really thrive in life.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Hayden Finch
I love Google Reminders. I think that is such a big help in my life for trying to keep me on track so that I don’t have to keep it all in my head. But I can just set up reminders to remind me to do stuff every four days, or every six weeks, or whatever it is. Love that tool.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Hayden Finch
My sleep schedule is definitely number one. I am very rigid about my sleep schedule. I protect sleep at all costs. I am headed to bed at 8:20 every night. I sleep by 8:30, so that when my alarm goes off at 4:45, I am well-rested and ready to go. I think that is the secret to just about everybody’s success, is making sure you protect your sleep schedule.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really connects with folks, resonates, they tweet you?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, it’s got to be that. Like, it’s not time management. It’s emotion management. And once people get that, which it makes sense, but once you get that in real life, once you experience that, like, that unlocks everything. And, really, honestly, when it comes to mental health, that’s kind of the bottom line with everything. It is emotion management more than what you would typically think of, “How do I overcome depression?” Well, you manage the emotions and separate your behavior from that.

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

Hayden Finch
My website is HaydenFinch.com. There, you can learn more about The Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety, you can contact me and work with me directly, or find links to the books I’ve written on the psychology of procrastination, or habits, all there at HaydenFinch.com.

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

Hayden Finch
Yeah, I would say, based on that quote that I just made, it’s not about doing more in life, that’s not it. It’s about editing your life. So, find something to edit to create more space because more space in your life is going to be a greater ability to stay in the driver’s seat and manage those emotions that are going to come up. You need space to be able to do the emotion management piece.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Hayden, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and very little procrastination.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, thank you. I’ve enjoyed this and, hopefully, that will help your listeners be awesome at their jobs.

Feb 23
0

842: How to Thrive in High-Stakes Situations with Carol Kauffman

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Carol Kauffman says: "If anybody is going to get in your way, please don’t let it be you."

Carol Kauffman reveals her secrets for finding your calm in the biggest moments.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The super question to ask yourself dozens of times a day.
  2. How to avoid being hijacked by stress.
  3. How to find the best approach in any situation.

About Carol

Carol Kauffman is known internationally as a leader in the field of coaching. Carol works extensively with global CEOs and their teams, also serving as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, visiting professor at Henley Business School (University of Reading, UK), and a senior leadership adviser at Egon Zehnder. Marshall Goldsmith named her the #1 leadership coach, and Thinkers50 ranked her among the world’s top eight coaches.

Resources Mentioned

Carol Kauffman Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Carol, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Carol Kauffman
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m super excited to talk about your latest, Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High. But, first, I need to hear about your first job with a violent horse. What is the scoop here?

Carol Kauffman
Oh, okay. That’s my very first job was a pooper scooper, yeah, because we had an illegal kennel in our home when I was growing up, so imagine having 30 dogs, and I’m not understanding why 101 dalmatians is unusual. So, yes, my job was to, one, do pooper scooper, but also was to let the dogs out in the correct order.

So, we’d have two whites, two browns, an apricot, and chocolate, and then you do it again and again and again, and everyone just thought it was the same jobs, the same dogs. So, that was the beginning of my life of crime. The violent horse thing happened by accident, where there was just this beautiful white horse of every girl’s dreams, and I walked in because I was taking horseback riding lessons, and there was a lesson going on.

And I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in there, so I just sort of walked in, and there was a window and a bucket in front of us so I had to turn my back to the horse to look outside to make sure my lesson wasn’t happening. And what I didn’t know was that according to Monty Roberts, who was the original horse whisperer, when you have a naughty horse or a violent one, you turn your back on it by 45 degrees, which is exactly what I had done.

And when I did that, the horse came over and started befriending me. And then that was the beginning of learning about, first of all, nonverbal behavior, and how to relate to animals that everyone is scared of. But if you treat them right, they befriend you rather than attack you, which is what he did to everybody else.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful to pick up from an early age. Good stuff.

Carol Kauffman
That was wonderful, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, talking about your book here, Real-Time Leadership, is there a particularly surprising or counterintuitive discovery you made along the way here that really struck you?

Carol Kauffman
Well, that’s interesting. Probably the one thing, I’m not so sure it was counterintuitive, but what’s really striking is how a split-second intervention can make a big difference. And that’s almost cliché but it’s really powerful when you see it. So, I can talk about that a little bit. Marshall Goldsmith has kind of gone crazy with one of my questions, but it is really amazing. If you stop and make a space, even very quickly, it can be really powerful what happens as a result of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I just have to know Marshall went crazy with one of your questions. What was the question? And in what way did he go crazy?

Carol Kauffman
I’m not going to tell you, sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Carol Kauffman
So, the question was, it was New Year’s one year, and you know how we all have the “What I’m going to do…” like my New Year’s resolution is always, “What am I going to do?” and this year, I’m like, “Really, I’m just going to do the same resolution, and it’s going to last six weeks and then be gone again.” So, the question came to me, instead of what I want to do, it was, “Who do I want to be right now?”

So, I’d love for you and people listening to try it and ask yourself that question 20 to 80 times, like today or tomorrow, like, the waiter is slow, and you’re really hungry. Okay, who do you want to be? Maybe someone has given you a project that they’re working on, and it’s really subpar, and you really knew they could’ve done better. Oh, at that, who do you want to be?

Or, you’re giving someone a report you’ve written, okay, who do you want to be? So, that is this very split-second kind of course-correction question. And why Marshall loved it is he felt, I’m not entirely sure why, but he felt…what he says is, “I’ve read 500 books on Buddhism and this is the best description of mindfulness I’ve ever heard.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There you go. Grab that quote.

Carol Kauffman
Yeah. So, that is really powerful. That’s probably one of the most powerful things that I think comes from the book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s good. That’s good. Well, I visited Marshall’s home, and it’s cool to see all the Buddhism stuff, so, yeah, maybe that’ll be inscribed somewhere in there over time. All right. Well, let’s hear about the book Real-Time Leadership. What’s sort of the big idea or main thesis here?

Carol Kauffman
Okay. Building off of that, the book, I love the quote by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, which is, “Between every stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom.” Okay, so that’s good, making a space. But then, like, what do you do with that space?

So, the entire book is if you can stop and create a space, instead of having your default reaction or your automatic reaction, and you make a world of choice there, what we then do for the whole book, which is, as Marshall says, “It’s dense in a good way,” we literally go through, “What are four sets of things you can do when you’ve made space that are going to help you towards optimal performance but also towards being a better human being?”

So, it’s make that space for choice, and then have an idea of, like, what to do in that space.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, could you share with us an inspiring story of someone who did just that, maybe in a particular high-stakes, high-risk situation, or habitually, and saw really cool results from that?

Carol Kauffman
Okay. I think the first example that comes to my mind, now this was someone who wanted to be a CEO but it applies in any difficult interview that you’ve had. So, he was in front doing the first two days, the first day of the interview. He was really convinced that what it was he really needed to do was wow them. So, he didn’t make a space to consider if that was true or not. So, he was giving them lots and lots and lots and lots of information, and I think we all can do that when we’re applying for a job.

And we think that they just want to know how much we know, so we spit it all out. But he saw that he was sort of losing the attention of people, and then they were getting restless. And so, he just did more of it, and, finally, it’s crashing, and he just sort of tries to maintain good posture and dignity, and walks out. And, like, what is he going to do the next day.

What did he get wrong? That’s when we talk about. We have this acronym M-O-V-E, and the M stands for being mindfully alert. And mindfully alert to, “What are the external demands you need to meet?” In this case, he wanted the job, etc. “What are the internal challenges you have so that you’re able to meet that demand? And then, how do you need to relate to people?”

What happened was he left, then he called David and me, but also the head of the non gov committee, the nominating governance committee, called and said, “We think he’s out. We had somebody else.” So, then we talked to him, and really said, “Well, what is it that you’re really trying to do?” And that’s a question we don’t ask ourselves enough, like, “What are we actually trying to do? What’s your reflex? And can you make space and think about it? Like, hold on, what do you really need to accomplish?”

And in his case, it was to be making a connection with the board so they would feel safe putting him into this position, and to also take their perspective. So, his perspective was, “Let me throw a bunch of things at you.” Their perspective is, “How many things can I absorb?” So, one of the things about it is,  “How can you know what you need to do? How can you know who you need to be?”

And in this case, he had a lot of emotion regulation and was able to change course the next day, and he was able to also transcend his ego, so he could see, “Oh, I did that, and that’s on me, not on them.” And then he could interact with them differently. So, that’s one of the kind of core concepts of the book, and of Real-Time Leadership, and it also works at home, by the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear that story as well.

Carol Kauffman
Okay. I love this story. My son, Michael, who’s now a mechanical engineer, when he was 11, I walked into the dining room and there’s this, like, unholy mess on the dining room table. I walked in, and he says, “Okay, I’m done with my homework. Can I watch TV now?” Okay, so now remember the three dimensions of leadership: what do we need to do, who do I need to be, how do I need to relate. And we are leaders at home. We are leaders with our peers. We’re leaders in lots of ways.

So, the first question is, “What do we need to do?” And the reflex is, “Get the homework done.” So, you go over and, like, for instance, this unholy mess and there’s scribble marks everywhere. And I was working on the book, I thought, “Wait a minute. What is my actual goal here? Is my goal to just get this homework done? Or is my goal to help him learn how to be disciplined? Or is my goal to have him love learning? Or is my goal having him watch his parent be chill and talk with him under stress so that he can be more like that? Like, what is your goal?”

And we just assume it’s like, “Get the homework done,” the reflex. So, we’re saying, “Stop. Make a space.” Okay, so there’s that. Then, well, who do I want to be in that moment? It’s at the end of the day, have I done enough investing in my own emotion regulation so that I’m able to stop as opposed to, “I’m tired. I’m cranky. I don’t want this”? So, that’s my internal development.

And then, “Okay, what’s the best way to relate to Michael at this moment? Is it to get really involved and help him get the homework done? Is it to give him space? Is it to be nurturant? Or is it just pause and not do anything?” And that’s actually the second part of the model about your options. But, actually, the hardest one is to do nothing, particularly when you’re triggered and annoyed.

So, I, like, stop and did nothing for a moment. And when you do that, it’s sort of like it mimics in the shower or when you go running, and an idea hits, but if you can just pause, see what comes to you. And what popped into my head was a question. So, I just said, “So, Michael, I want you to ask yourself a question, and then, depending on the answer, you can go watch TV. I want you to just look at this and just ask yourself, ‘Am I proud of my work?’ And if you’re proud of your work, you can go watch TV.” And I left the room.

And he maybe spent two or three extra minutes taking a look at it and decided that he was proud enough and he maybe did something, but it had an impact on him in terms of me in that role, giving him space, trusting him, and then giving him an opportunity to be self-motivated.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what happened in the end?

Carol Kauffman
Well, he stayed there about two or three minutes, and did a little bit. Then he went in to watch TV, but I have to say it did something very good for our relationship. And even today, now that he’s a grownup, he’ll often call me for coaching. And very often, he’ll ask me something, and I’ll say, “Okay, as your mother, the patent is yours, throw somebody else under the bus? As a coach, let’s think through what’s your real goal here now that you have got this patent and who you should share it with?”

So, I think that’s probably the big takeaway is it really helped our relationship, and he is a very much self-motivated learner.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s hear these four steps, the MOVE framework, M-O-V-E. Can you walk us through each of them?

Carol Kauffman
Yes, I can. Okay, so M, I’ll name them and then go through, and then you can sort of decide which one that our listeners would be most interested in. So, M is to be mindfully alert, O is to be an options generator, and there’s an article on that in Harvard Business Review this month.

Then V is to validate your vantage point. And E is you engage and effect change. So, we did a little on M already. So, M is being mindfully alert, mindful in terms of not prejudging things, alert like an athlete. Very agile, aware of what’s going on, and being able to respond. And a big part of that being the three dimensions of leadership that I talked about, “What do I need to do? Who do I need to be? How do I need to relate?”

Now, the options generator is when I work with people, and, again, this can be top of the house, this could be me, this could be you’re writing a report, you could be a novelist, you could be an engineer, anything. For any challenge, I want you to have four options available to you. And the options really stem from evolutionary theory and our four reflexes, which are fight, flight, freeze, and befriend.

And we all kind of have a natural one. Lots of us are naturally we sort of lean in and engage. Others of us kind of like look back and take the overview. Others go to nurturing, and others go to sort of reflecting. And we talk about these as the four stances. So, what is a stance you can take? And we translate that into, in a situation, “Do you lean in and really engage?”

You can engage with enthusiasm. You can engage with an edge. You can engage like a Rugby player or a ballerina. But do you lean in? Or, are you able to also make the choice to lean back, kind of look at the overview, get on the balcony, think about the data, rational-think it through, and then proceed with that?

Then the third one is leaning with, and that is sort of caring. And the idea of someone has done something to help you, you want to help them. Or, on a bigger scale, it’s your culture. But that third way is being nurturant. And the fourth way is to not lean at all. And that is when something is thrown at you, “Do you have the capacity to tolerate the silence? Do you have the capacity to not be triggered and just sort of stay in your space?” So, that’s the options generator.

The validate your vantage point, 75% of business failures are due to overconfidence, so you’re not validating your vantage point. And we have a number of ways to figure out, “Is my vantage point accurate? If I was going to see something incorrectly, what is it that I’m most likely to do? How does my personality impact what I see?” bunches of stuff, and then unconscious bias as well.

So, mindfully alert, options generator, validate your vantage point, and then how can you engage and effect change. And for engage, it’s really like, first of all, how do you just really connect to the people that you are leading? And it doesn’t mean you’re their leader, you can be their colleague but you’re trying to get something done. How do you send the right signals, hear back what people are reflecting to you, and then adjust?

And each one of those are all ways to make space. Like, you’ve got that space, what do you do with it? And you can take yourself through the M-O-V-E to get a sense of what’s the best way to proceed right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool. And I’d love it if you could share with us a few examples that illustrate that very clearly, “Oh, here we are being mindfully alert, and then generating options, and validating the vantage point, and engaging and effecting change.”

Carol Kauffman
Sure. I’m going to hop into one of my examples of the lean in and lean back. And when I came up with the idea, I was coaching this guy that I call Max. And Max, his very dear friend had become his boss, and this relationship had just gone to hell in a handbasket. She was micromanaging him. He had a whole fund that was going to be used for one thing, and she actually took it away. And it was so bad that at the end of the day, he would say, “You know, I would only make appointments for her at the end of the day, sort of immediately go home and have a martini.”

Okay, so lean in. So, he had, like, “I need to manage this,” blah, blah, blah, and I’m, like, right there with him. And he then says, “After she micromanages, and this and that, and then she starts confiding in me and telling me secrets, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, like, she’s a sociopath. Like, this is so manipulative.’”

And just as I’m about to go with that energy, I’m like, “Stop. Make a space.” So, this, really, you can use this just for yourself as a coach as well as in a leadership position. So, I stopped and thought, “Okay, let’s lean back.” So, I then said, “So, Max, let’s pause for a minute. What might be going on in the overview? Like, what’s the bigger picture here?”

And then he could see how the leadership team over her was really, really coming down on her, huge pressure, and that, in fact, she was kind of passing that along because she was under such intensity, but it helped him to kind of be able to chill a little bit. Then I thought of the next one, which was, in this case, don’t lean.

I was actually afraid to ask him this because I thought he would get mad at me, which was, I said, “So, listen, Max, you get your way in the end, and you even got all your funds back. Why is her behavior even bothering you?” And that was sort of a curve ball question for him, and a good one for us to ask when we’re activated to really go, “Wait, why is this bothering me? Does this really need to bother me? Do I need to be triggered right now?”

That takes me back to, “Who do I want to be right now? What am I really trying to accomplish?” So, all of this, you can see they’re intertwined. But then, okay, so he’s like, “Well, that’s interesting.” And, again, it helped him make a little more space. Then the last one with him was to think about leaning with. And so then, I said, “So, listen, she used to be, like, one of your good friends, and you’re describing all this pressure that she’s under. What if your goal…” okay, remember the external goal, “What if your goal in the next time you met with her was just for her to feel better at the end of the meeting?”

And that was just a real shocker for him, and he remembered, “Oh, right, we used to be friends, and she’s under so much pressure.” So, what you could see was, if we linked this together now, so those were the four stanzas, but you can see how it’s connected to “What do I need to do? Who do I need to be? And how do I need to relate?”

But also, we were also secretly doing vantage point because it’s like, “Wait a minute, you have this perspective, your point of view is that she’s doing this on purpose, and that she’s something that rhymes with witch, and that this is, again, volition on her part, and it’s about power.” And his anger and his triggering had really clouded his thinking.

And we all fill in the dots with our hopes and our fears, and he was then able to see more clearly. And then, in terms of being able to engage and effect change, in this case, it was just, “Okay, I just want to engage with her as a human being,” and it got much better for a while.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, thank you. Well, now I’d love it if you could maybe share a top do and don’t for each of the four steps in the framework? Like, “Hey, when it comes to being mindfully alert, you probably want to do this, you probably don’t want to do that.”

Carol Kauffman
Okay, so here it is. Let’s say I’m going to have a difficult conversation. What do I want to do? What do I not want to do? So, if I think about being mindfully alert, and I’m about to have a difficult conversation with someone, first question is, “What do I really want to accomplish? And then what do I not want to accomplish?”

So, in this particular situation, someone had cost me a massive amount of stress and finances, and I was aware that when I was thinking about the conversation, part of me just wanted to, pardon the expression, just wanted to put her nose in the pee-pee, I mean, “Look what you did to me.” And it’s like, “No. Like, what really needs to be done now and what really is the ultimate goal, not what is it that’s going to make me feel better in this moment?”

So, do make a space to think about what you really want to do. In that case, for a difficult conversation, go back to the homework example, so there. And then, “Who do I want to be?” Well, what you want to be able to do is remember your strengths. You don’t necessarily want to, like, dive into all the ways you’re inadequate. It’s like, “Yeah, okay, I’ve got a lot of flaws but here’s the things that I do need to do right.”

Then, in terms of, “How do I need to relate?” what you want to do is what I call the platinum rule, and you do not want to do the golden rule. So, the golden rule, it’s a fairly low bar in some ways, which is, “Okay, so, Pete, we’re in a situation, and it’s, like, I should treat you the way that I want to be treated.” But what if it what works for you is not at all what works for me?

Let’s say I’m a super extrovert and you’re an introvert, and you’re having a hard time with something. Well, as an extrovert, I might think, “Oh, Pete, you need a pep talk, and this, and that, and this, and that,” and inside you’re going, “Oh, dear Lord, just leave me alone. I need to think.” So, you don’t do the golden rule, give to others, treat others as you would want to be treated. You do the platinum rule, which is treat others as they would want to be treated. So, that, if we just go through the M, those are some do’s and some don’ts.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then with the O-V-E?

Carol Kauffman
Okay. So, with the O, what you want to do is remember you’re being mindfully alert. What you want to do is choose. So, when it comes to leaning in, even that tough conversation or you’re leading a merger and acquisition, like, “Do I lean in and get tough? Do I lean back and get the data?” So, the point is be aware of your default, that’s the do. The don’t is automatically go with your default because it’s the easiest thing to do.

So, be aware of what the four stances are, and then challenge yourself. So, you may be someone, for example, that when you do something, you like to go big, and you like to go fast, and you want to get it done. Well, like lean in, it’s like, “Well, wait a minute. What would it look like if I went slower and I was more careful?”

So, the point for me isn’t that you do the one that say, “I might think is better.” It’s that you could really visualize, “Here’s four different ways. I could go in strong, do something big. I could go in more gentle and do a series of smaller things. I could think about people first and not the outcome. And I could able to be more reflective.” So, I want someone to know what the four paths would be like and able to make space to choose.

So, the do is know the range of how you could be, and the don’t is go with your gut automatically. Although, sometimes going with your gut is the right thing to do, but it should be choice and not automatic.

Pete Mockaitis
And then when it comes to validating, are there any favorite approaches that could give you a boatload of clear validation or invalidation of your hypothesis for what’s up here?

Carol Kauffman
Yeah, so the don’t is don’t assume you’re right. Also, don’t assume you’re wrong. Don’t assume. Start out with, “This is what I think,” and then allow yourself a moment and space, and say, “Do I actually agree with myself? Am I seeing clearly? Do I have rose-colored glasses on, charcoal glasses on? Am I near sighted or far sighted?”

So, for example, near sighted, if you’re in a sort of subject-matter-expert role, you can see things up near really, really well but you may not have the hundred-mile view that a CEO does. But then, let’s say you’re CEO and you’re far sighted, but there’s stuff going on right under your face that you don’t know, you can’t see up close very well. So, it’s knowing what your strength is and how to balance it.

And then a big one for validate your vantage point is, again, know, “Do I tend to doubt myself too much? Or, do I tend to be overconfident? And then, what are my biases? And how can I begin to know what I don’t know that I don’t know?” The answer is ask people a lot and get over yourself. So, I would say that was the V. And the big thing is we do connect the dots with our hopes and fears.

So, one of the guys who helped with the book, my co-author, David Noble, was friends with him, was a retired four-star general. And I didn’t even know there weren’t a lot of four-star generals, he’s like, “Carol, there’s only been one five-star general,” which I didn’t know, like Einsenhower. There’s like two four-star generals. Really nice guy, really like small and very, very pleasant. But he’s like, he would be in charge of the Iraq theater, and he’s like, “You want to fight the war you have, not the war you want.”

And so, bringing that down to us, is we want to be reality-based with what’s really going on, not with our wishful thinking, and not hijacked by our fears. So, that’s sort of the V.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then with engaging?

Carol Kauffman
With that, what you want to be able to do is send clear signals. And a big mistake we make, personally, one of my favorite mistakes because I make a lot, is I believe I have been achingly clear in what it is I’m asking, and others aren’t. So, I think I’m being very clear on my intent, and I now know that my automatic belief when I engage is I’ve got to be very clear on communicating my intent.

So, one example that we see a lot with leaders is they tend to think people can read their minds. Like, I’m having a meeting, so you and I and a couple people were having a meeting, and we’re brainstorming. And then I’m just stunned when I find out that you went out and did all those things because, hey, we were just brainstorming, but I wasn’t clear about that signal.

I didn’t say, “Hey, we’re just brainstorming now. For Pete’s sake,” pun intended, “For Pete’s sake, don’t go out and do anything. This is a brainstorm.” And how to kind of sign-post so people aren’t running around. But it’s amazing how unclear you can be when you think you’re being clear.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s a lot of good stuff, Carol. Tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Carol Kauffman
At the end of the day, what I’m really hoping for is that this material doesn’t just help you at work but it helps you at home and it helps you step into all that you can be, that it really can help you become an extraordinary person, and for you not to put blocks in front of yourself. As I say, if anybody is going to get in your way, please don’t let it be you.

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

Carol Kauffman
Well, of course, there’s the stimulus and response one that I really love.

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

Carol Kauffman
Ahh, so much. The one researcher that I love is a man named Richard Boyatzis, a neuropsychologist at Case Western Reserve. And you should get him on your show some time. What he’s done is really looked at what part of our brain is activated when we’re in an interaction. And, basically, it’s every interaction is neurological, that you’re activating the threat or the reward system of the other person.

And that’s the sympathetic is the threat, and the parasympathetic is the reward system. So, in any interaction, that’s going on. And if you want to have a positive influence on someone, you will activate the parasympathetic nervous system. So, even if they’ve messed up, you’ll say, “So, listen, we really wanted to do this, and this, and this, and we kind of missed it, but let’s figure this out together. What still went right even though…?”

So, how do you really create this very active psychologically safe and caring environment? And then when you do that, you can then challenge people with them still staying safe. So, it’s a combination of Richard Boyatzis’ and Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School. And she’s the one who’s done all the psychological safety work. And those two sets of research, I think, really guide me, they guide me a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Carol Kauffman
Favorite book, I’ve got a gazillion favorite books. For some reason, the one that I really loved recently was I read the book Circe. I can’t remember who wrote it now. It’s just a fabulous, fabulous rendering of the gods in a way that you’d never be able to think on your own. I’m also reading, of course, there’s Thinking, Fast and Slow with Danny Kahneman, and that’s one is great. And then the ones by Marty Seligman. Those are probably the ones that got me on this path to begin with. And I love historical novels. I’m reading historical novels all the time.

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

Carol Kauffman
I have a bunch of mantras. This one that really helps me a lot is, “I’m not in control of my destiny but I am in control of my probabilities.” So, “What is it that I can do to increase the likelihood that I’m going to be able to achieve what I want?” Not, “Am I going to achieve what I want?” because that’s linear and true success is much more kind of uncertain and nonlinear. So, that’s something that I keep in mind a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Carol Kauffman
A favorite habit. Probably the favorite habit is what I was talking about earlier of asking myself, “Who do I want to be right now?”

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, are there any other super questions that you go to a lot?

Carol Kauffman
I’ll tell you one that I really, really like, which is this. Say you’re thinking of doing something, if you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you want to do?

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Carol Kauffman
Yup. And one of the things we ask in the book a lot is something we call the ten of ten question, which is, “If I’m going to do something, if I was a ten out of ten, what would it look like?” And then I’d ask myself, “Okay, on that scale, what am I now?” Let’s say I’m a seven, and then the important question is to ask, “What am I doing right that I’m not a six or a 6.5?” And then, “What could I do over the next eight weeks to get from a seven to a 7.5?”

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a favorite quote of yours, something you share that really resonates with folks, they quote frequently?

Carol Kauffman
Well, I like some of my own quotes. I have a bunch of things called Carolisms. So, one of them is, “If anyone is going to get in your way, please don’t let it be you.” The, “I’m not in charge of my destiny, but I am in charge of my probabilities.” And what is the other? I guess it’s just people often ask me to give talks on confidence, and I say that’s fine except I don’t believe in it.

So, the other one is “Confidence is irrelevant. What matters is your purpose and what you’re trying to do because confidence is simply a pleasant subjective emotional experience, and it is not a requirement to do anything at all.”

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

Carol Kauffman
If you remember my name, Carol Kauffman, two Fs, one N, you can just Google me, Carol Kauffman, CarolKauffman.com. And if you’d like to buy the book, Amazon hardback, just Google “Real-Time Leadership,” and it’ll get you to Amazon.

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

Carol Kauffman
Make sure that whatever you’re doing, you really want to be doing it from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Carol, this has been a treat. I wish you many great winning moves.

Carol Kauffman
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, that’s the recording. Thank you.

Feb 20
0

841: How to Get Creative on Demand with Baronfig’s Joey Cofone

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Joey Cofone says: "Creativity is not about creating. It is about combining."

Joey Cofone shares what it really means to be creative and why everyone can be creative in any role.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why creativity isn’t just for the “creatives”.
  2. Why we shouldn’t shy away from our fears.
  3. How to come up with ideas on the spot.

About Joey

Joey Cofone is the Founder & CEO of Baronfig, an award-winning designer and entrepreneur, and author of The Laws of Creativity.

Joey has designed and art directed over 100 products from zero to launch. His work has been featured in Fast Company, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Bon Appétit, Quartz, Mashable, Print, and more. Joey was named a New Visual Artist and, separately, Wunderkind designer, by Print magazine. He is also a 1st place winner of the American Institute of Graphic Arts design competition, Command X.

Joey strives to make work that appeals to curious minds—work that’s beautiful, smart, and communicative. He believes that design is the least of a designer’s worries, that story is at the heart of all tasks, and jumping off cliffs is the only way to grow.

He lives in New York City with his wife, Ariana, and his dog (and writing buddy), Luigi.

Resources Mentioned

Joey Cofone Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Joey, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Joey Cofone
Hello. Hello. I am psyched.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m psyched too. I want to know so much about your insights, creativity, Baron Fig. I have one of your notebooks on my desk.

Joey Cofone
Surprise.

Pete Mockaitis
It was there before I knew I was talking to you.

Joey Cofone
Watching it the whole time.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I wanted to ask you about your hobby of playing video games but then I learned that you almost died in Tennessee, so I think we need to hear both of these tales. What’s the story here?

Joey Cofone
I did almost die in Tennessee. We discovered this before recording when I said, “Where are you?” and you said, “Tennessee,” and I said, “I almost died there.” And that is because I went hiking the Appalachian Trail when I was 20 maybe, 21. I was in phenomenal shape. I’m not in bad shape now but I was in killer shape then.

And so, it was just me and a buddy, went on the mountain, not underprepared. I will say we did our homework. However, we missed a spring, did not get water, the sun started going down, we became disoriented mentally and then, of course, disoriented because we couldn’t see anything, started not making sense, and we literally had to hang on to each other.

Two very large dudes, walking hand in hand like we were walking down the aisle, all the way through the mountains until we found water. And then we had to sit there and watch it boil before we could drink it. It took, like, 30 minutes to boil this on this little tiny thing. Anyway, I did almost die because I was about to lie down and give up.

And my friend, who is now the COO of Baron Fig, Jay, was there to give me his last little bit of water, and say, “We got to keep going, man.” So, I almost died in Tennessee, but here I am today with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, what a guy.

Joey Cofone
He did. It was his last sip of water and he gave it to me.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful.

Joey Cofone
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m also thinking about Jeff Boyles, how you could’ve cut that 30 minutes way down.

Joey Cofone
Oh, man. You talk about waiting for a pot to boil, man, I thought it was a lifetime, and then it was the best-tasting water I had ever had in my life even though it was scalding hot.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s good stuff. Good stuff.

Joey Cofone
Yeah, it was good.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m glad you’re alive and made it out of Tennessee.

Joey Cofone
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And I also wanted to hear about you and video games. Some say they’re a waste of time. You, well, I want to know what you think, but that’s what you like to do, and you are a thought leader in the realm of creativity. So, I’d like to guess that there’s some sort of a connection between video games and creativity, but you tell me.

Joey Cofone
Sure. I would consider myself a thought leader in video games, as a consumer. I’ve been talking about video games and pro video games since I started Baron Fig, and have been interviewed all over the place, and that’s about just over a decade now. So, gaming has become significantly more mainstream in that time but, in my lifetime certainly, gaming has been viewed as a nerdy guy who sits in his parents’ basement type of activity for quite a long time. And only in the last, let’s say, five-ish, seven years has it become really, really mainstream, so I’m glad about that.

I personally prefer XBOX but I’ve owned them, played them all, and I think what’s beautiful about games is that it is, to me, and I’m going to say this, I think it is – ooh, it’s going to hurt too because this is going to come hard – but I believe it is one of the pinnacles of creative expression. And I say that because in a video game you have music, you have visual art, you have programming, you have storytelling, you have a host of other practices, cinematography, all coming together to not only tell you a story like a movie would or a book would, but put you in the center of it.

So, yeah, I love gaming. And if you’re going to sit in front of the TV, you might as well interact with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I don’t find that statement to be controversial to me at all. Once, I took a look at what’s really going on in terms of was it the Unreal engine or some of the cutting-edge stuff, it is spectacular what is now possible visually. And then I saw, in the pandemic, I was watching, this game is called “Detroit: Become Human” which is fascinating. Fascinating stories.

And I was just watching the game play because I didn’t have my console yet and I was sick with COVID and nothing else to do. And then I saw some of the making of it, and it was nuts. This composer was just talking about how he invented new instruments in order to get the sounds he was going for, for each of the key characters, to really capture the emotional essence. And it’s, like, wow, that is hardcore.

And those millions of dollars spread across a huge staff really is exceptional in terms of many layers of creativity. So, yeah, that makes sense to me.

All right, we’re talking about creativity. You’ve learned a whole lot about it in your years in your career. Can you share with us any particularly surprising, counterintuitive, extra-fascinating discoveries you’ve made about creativity during this time?

Joey Cofone
Oh, my goodness. It is a boatload or, I should say, a book-load, there are so many. I can start with one of the most profound things that I discovered. Before that, let me tell you why I think creativity is so radically important and where it originated for me.

In the introduction to my book, I explained where creativity entered my life. So, it was first grade, seven years old. I walked into the classroom thinking it’s just any other day. Teacher hands out a worksheet. It has a cartoon worm on it. All you got to do is color it, cut it out, put it on the board. No problem, like every other Monday. But this Monday was different because I decided I wanted to have the best worm in the class. So, I get down, I put my arm around my paper, I take out my big-ass box of crayons, and I go to town. And I am thinking, “This is the greatest creation of all time.”

I cut out my worm, I walk up to the board, and I stopped dead in my tracks because, as I look there, on the board, all the other students who have put theirs up, even though it’s different, they color little dots here, maybe one is a little more red, a little more blue, they all feel the same. And so, now I’m like, “I can’t put my…” Little Joey is like, “There’s no way I’m putting my worm on this board. I cannot be one of many.”

And I don’t know where that came from that day but I went back to my desk, and I sat down, and I was about to cry. And I had my head in my hands, I was hiding because I didn’t want anyone to see how upset I was. When I looked down, and what do I see, but the shards of paper that I had cut out the worm. So, I’m taking a look this, crying, and a lightbulb ticks, and I realized I can use them.

So, I draw a microphone, a boombox, and a necklace, cut them out, put them on the worm, put that on the board. Now, the whole class walks up, the teacher gets up behind me, the assistant teacher comes up, and everybody is looking at my worm, and they go, “This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen,” and they’re all shocked.

It was in that moment that I became addicted to creativity. Literally, that feeling, I just wanted it all the time throughout my life. And so, now as I got older and I started Baron Fig and we made all this cool stuff, and then it became time to write a book, and I thought to myself, “You know what, that’s my personal experience. But how can I inject something really profound and extremely objective into the book?”

And so, I discovered what became the cornerstone of my desire to pursue this, which is NASA did a study that found that 98% of five-year-olds are creative geniuses. Okay, 98%. Take a guess what percent it goes down to by the time we hit adulthood.

Pete Mockaitis
Two percent.

Joey Cofone
Two percent. Nailed it.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent.

Joey Cofone
Somebody did his homework. And so, I realized that, “Wow, this is not an accident.” We are systemically doing a very good job at reducing creativity where it goes from 98% to 2%. And so, now I have my experiences, I have a reason to write this book, put them together, and here we are. And so, that was the very first thing that I encountered about creativity that I thought was incredibly interesting and profound.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so creativity, it seems like a cool good thing. Like, sure, yeah, better be creative than not creative. I’d love to get your hot take in terms of, for your average professional who’s interested in being more awesome at their job, let’s say they would assert, “You know, I’m not really in a creative role. I don’t sort of invent new stuff. I don’t have to come up with catchy ad campaigns. I just manage projects and interact with folks and go to meetings, and make my PowerPoints and do my analyses, and keep things humming along, and, hopefully, get some improvements in our operations here and there.” What’s the case for why creativity matters to such a person?

Joey Cofone
Well, for two reasons. Number one, everything you mentioned actually requires creativity.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Joey Cofone
The idea that creatives are people who make visual pictures or music or something is a common belief but is totally absurd. Creativity is simply the practice of ideas. And when you take and use your ideas, it’s self-expression. So, anytime you’re working on a spreadsheet, or you have to give a presentation, or you have to do a little project management, you are exercising your creativity. This is not a robot. This is not an automaton. You actually have to think about it and come up with a result, and that’s creativity. It doesn’t have to be some grand expression of it.

Every day, we have over 6,000 thoughts, for example, and the idea is that if you are…How do I say this in a way that doesn’t sound silly? If you are an intrepid person, which I hope you are, working on those 6,000 thoughts to make them even better is not only a good idea, it’s kind of a no-brainer to me because, to answer your second reason, is because, as an adult, it is proven that you are, number one, more happy if you involve creative exercises in your work, and, number two, you make more money. Like, statistically, you make 13% more than people who do not integrate creativity. And that’s just for adults.

Organizations, because I want to tie this all together, organizations who integrate creativity are more productive and they have higher revenue growth. So, as an individual and as a group, it is a no-brainer.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s say we say, “Ooh, I’d like to be in the integrate creativity camp, and see that 13% pay bump and more cool benefits,” can you paint a picture for what that looks like during the course of my work day of, “I’m a person who is integrating creativity” versus “I’m a person who is not integrating creativity”?

Joey Cofone
Yeah, it depends on what it is you do, and what it is you feel challenged by in your experience. For example, I’m a designer so that’s a little bit more obvious, but I don’t do design things all day. The last three weeks, for example, I set up a really complex notion series of documents that basically tracks out the company’s operating and how everybody is related to the projects that are going on. No one would look at that and go, “That’s some traditional creative stuff, bro.”

But it is, of course, creative because you have to problem-solve. So, day to day, it depends what you’re doing. But if you are taking in inputs and then assessing an optimal way to execute something, that’s creativity. It doesn’t have to be any more complex than that.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s what integrating creativity looks like, the 13% bump up camp. And then how does one live their work day without integrating creativity?

Joey Cofone
That’s a good point. It’s when you just take what’s given to you and you don’t do anything with it. You just are literally, as someone would call it, a paper-pusher, or you are not trying to make this better, you are not trying to improve in any way upon the processes or the deliverables or the requests that are handed to you. You simply process as if you were a fax machine or a typewriter or something. You get an input and you put an output. The only thing you’re there for is to execute it rather than assess and optimize and then execute.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I guess I’m thinking about some roles…it’s funny, these are the very jobs I don’t like in terms of I have a spreadsheet of somebody’s hours, and I need to turn that into an invoice to say to somebody, “Pay me. Okay, so there’s, I guess I have to copy, paste, double-check, email.” Okay. Although, I could certainly integrate some creativity there in terms of, “Surely there’s a way I can get some automation going with this.”

Joey Cofone
I was just going to say that.

Pete Mockaitis
“Maybe I can do a research if there’s a software program that can do this, or a little bit of Visual Basic replications, VBA code to accelerate this. Do I want to use a sort or do I want to use a filter in terms of amending these spreadsheets?”

Joey Cofone
Precisely. And now you’re getting it because when you say it that way, it is a no-brainer, of course, that folks who do the latter, and say, “How can I automate this, or optimize it, or change it in a way where it actually takes work later even if it’s a little bit more work now?” they get paid more. It’s obvious. But, believe it or not, a lot of people don’t do it. The majority, unfortunately.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, I can’t believe it. Ooh, geez, when you say majority, it sounds like you’ve got some hard data. Bring it, Joey, what’s the state of the world in terms of folks integrating creativity?

Joey Cofone
I mean, 98% of folks don’t. That’s where we’re at.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, they’re not geniuses according to the NASA situation.

Joey Cofone
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you mentioned the part about us systematically crushing the creativity and folks just they age. Do you have any idea for what are some of the drivers, the forces, the principles behind that?

Joey Cofone
Yeah, I do. It’s unfortunately the way we educate our youth is the systematic destruction of creativity. So, it is no wonder that, at five years old you peak, and then you go down. And five years old is when you start school. There are three reasons, primarily, that creativity decreases, things that we teach our kids.

First is that authority, like teachers, principals, deans, and so on, that they’re unquestionable. Well, that’s just not true because those people weren’t always in charge. There are other folks in charge, and those people had to supplant those folks, and so on and so forth. And so, it teaches us that you have to do number two, which is man-made rules have to be followed to a fault. And that means that whatever someone says goes, and you are taught not to question it.

And then the third and the most damaging of all is that the end is visible from the start, Pete. And this is terrible that we teach our kids this, but we teach the end is visible from the start. Now I’ll bring that down to earth. When you are given a book in third grade, and you have to read, I don’t know, Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. And then you know, in two weeks, on Friday, you have to hand in a five-page paper about the plot and my thoughts, including a synopsis.

Cool. Okay. Well, I know everything I have to do before I do anything. Same thing in math, “Solve these ten proofs, hand them in.” Same thing in science, “Read this chapter and build a volcano.” Whatever it is, we are always taught to know the end before we start. Then we go to work, and then in work, our bosses tell us what to do and lay it out so that we know what we have to do before we start.

The problem is we are never taught to deal with the unknown. We are never taught to start without knowing where it could end up. And because of that, people have, unfortunately, more anxiety than ever before, and can’t deal with the curve balls of life. And that’s just a metaphor for creativity, was to make something you have to not know exactly where you’ll end up.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, this anxiety, can you unpack that mechanism or link there? Because we see the end before we start, we are more anxious…

Joey Cofone
Because we don’t, yeah. So, essentially, the modern society right now – what did we have – we had the agricultural age that lasted a long time. Then we had, fast-forward to the industrial age, the information age. Those happened fairly quickly. However, our human instincts, our programming, lags behind by tens of thousands of years. We don’t just evolve, unfortunately, as fast as society changes.

So, what happened back in the day is that when you had fear, ten thousand years ago, 20,000 years ago, that was because it was your body and your instincts making you move away from something that could kill you, the unknown, “Don’t go into that cave because you could die. Don’t go into this unknown land because we don’t know who’s there and defending it.” Fear was a tool. We still have fear but we don’t have life-threatening experiences anymore.

So, this fear, that is a natural part of our programming, is making us move away from things it thinks we can die. In reality, we cannot die in that regard. What happens nowadays is, instead of death, it’s just your ego is bruised, or you’re embarrassed, or you screw up. And so, because of that, this fear that is still a part of our lives, in this totally evolving social structure and the way we go about doing things nowadays, we still feel fear.

And that leads to a ton of anxiety because we have fears, “But I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” And then we’re taught not to know what the unknown is. And so, when you combine all that, it’s a beautiful recipe for a ton of anxiety.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. So, in a world full of unknowns, when we’ve only been trained and built up our capabilities in a world where the outcome is known in advance, we are sort of ill-equipped for the realities that we are in.

Joey Cofone
Exactly. And then you combine that with the fact that our instinctual reaction, fear reaction, is not really serving us the way it used to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. Well, let’s get some more creativity flowing. I’m curious, when you mentioned assigning, I think about work in a way that the end is not known before you start, with the difference when you’re making a request of someone, or of yourself, instead of, “I want to find a specific app that does thing,” so we’ve sort of narrowed it to we’re looking for a software application, to, “I need to find a solution which will enable me to pull off this outcome.” Is that sort of the idea, is we keep it open-ended, like, “It could look like any number of things that delivers the goods”?

Joey Cofone
Sure. You’re even already moving probably too far down the line in many cases, where someone comes up to a problem that they haven’t encountered before, and they haven’t even sussed out that they need to find a piece of software to solve it. It is just a bit of a shock and an anxiety-inducing moment, and that’s where we get fear.

And so, actually, fear nowadays is a positive rather than a negative. Thousands of years ago, fear was something that said, “Danger! Danger! Don’t go that direction.” Today, fear, if you are tuned to it, is a, “Hey, man, go in that direction.” Because you’re afraid, you have identified a boundary, “If you go in that direction, you’re able to break a boundary.” Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Joey Cofone
When I was, I think it was 13 years old, I was sitting in a parking lot, McDonald’s, with my uncle, and we always used to go in together, and have a Big Mac each, and it was a wonderful time. On this particular day, Uncle Ralph decides, “Joey is going in alone.” And I said, “I can’t do it.” And he said, “What do you mean you can’t do it? It’s right there. Just walk in. Order it. You’re a big kid.” I was six foot.

And I said, “I’m afraid.” And I was honest with my uncle. And he grabbed me by the shoulder, and he looked me dead in the eye, and he said, “Because you are afraid, now you must do it.” And sure enough, I went in and I did it, and I never forgot that. And it took me a long time to parse what he meant, but it meant that my fear was showing me a limitation, and when I was able to overcome it, I was able to expand the boundaries of my capabilities.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good stuff. And I don’t think it’s that uncommon. I remember, in high school, there would be times when you meet a group of people, it was like, “Oh, should we order pizza?” And maybe a third of the people in the group were genuinely uncomfortable picking up the phone to call the place to order the pizza. You don’t even have to look at them in the eye. And I found that it’s probably worse now, I’m guessing, in the year 2023, as compared to back in the day for me.

Joey Cofone
Pete, it is bad now. It is bad now. I don’t want to call anyone out but I have experienced people who are close to our age who still won’t pick up the phone and make a call for something simple. Just like saying, “Hey, what time are you guys open to?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Maybe this is why DoorDash is really doing so well because you don’t have to interact with a human but you still get to eat what you want without moving. It’s a winning offer. All right. Well, let’s talk about this book here, The Laws of Creativity: Unlock Your Originality and Awaken Your Creative Genius.

You got 37 of these laws. Can you list some of them, maybe the top three, four, five that you think are just transformational for a professional who wants to be more awesome at their job, things you can do that don’t take a whole lot of time, effort, energy, pain, and sacrifice, and yet liberate a lot of good creative juiciness?

Joey Cofone
Oh, sure. I can name 37 of them that are really damn good but, since you’re limiting me to a few, I will, I suppose, choose. I’ll tell you right now that Chapter One: Be weird, it’s the law of expression. And it is chapter one for a reason. And it is simply stated, embrace the parts of you that’s called weird. Don’t hide what makes you different. Allow them to flow to the top and be seen.

Now, what does that mean, Joey? That means that, you know how when you grow up, and your parents tell you that you’re really a unique butterfly. And then you get a little older and you realize everybody tells their parents that, and then you don’t feel so unique when you have the same problems and the same challenges that everyone feels, and you kind of feel like you’re not unique at all. Well, actually, you are incredibly unique. They were right.

As what my geometry teacher in high school, Mr. Allen, would say, “Right answer, wrong solution.” They were just saying it because it’s an encouraging thing to say, but, actually, you are incredibly unique. So, Pete, give me three interests that you have. Give me a favorite book, a favorite movie, a favorite video game, or just a…Now, if I say favorite, it might be too much, so just name one you like of each of those three things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, sure thing. For a book, well, right now I’m reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which is thrilling.

Joey Cofone
So am I.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Joey Cofone
How about that? That is wild. That is the book I’m reading.

Pete Mockaitis
I encountered it in an episode of “Wishbone,” the dog, if you watched that show. When I was 12 years old or so. I was like, “Well, that book is awesome.” And so, now, decades later, I was like, “Maybe I’ll go ahead and read that.” And so, that’s fun, about halfway through. No spoilers. So, that’s cool. For a game, boy, from my childhood, “Master of Orion.” You conquer the galaxy. Very strategic kind of form, the way I think, actually. So, we had book, game. And what else?

Joey Cofone
I would say movie.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s go with Batman, “The Dark Knight.”

Joey Cofone
Ooh, okay. So, we have “The Count of Monte Cristo.” What was the second one?

Pete Mockaitis
“Master of Orion.”

Joey Cofone
“Master of Orion.” I never heard of that one, man. “Master of Orion.” I’m writing these down. Good stuff. And then “The Dark Knight.” Okay. Cool. So, these are three things that you like. And now you have a lot of interests, we’re just going to take three. And let’s say, in each of those categories, we limit it to a thousand.

There are, just in those things, there is a billion permutations, okay? If there’s a thousand options of each. That means that, right away, if you can combine “The Count of Monte Cristo,” the “Master of Orion,” and “The Dark Knight” into something you create as really strong influences, you go from one in eight billion to one in one billion, okay? To one in eight, I’m sorry. My wife always says…

Pete Mockaitis
So, eight humans on the planet who…

Joey Cofone
That have this combination. You go from, I’m sorry, one in eight billion, to one in eight. Pretty interesting. Now, let’s add a fourth thing. Let’s say, what’s a TV show you like?

Pete Mockaitis
“Breaking Bad.”

Joey Cofone
“Breaking Bad.” Walter White.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it kind of dark, I think. It’s like I’m really a friendly person.

Joey Cofone
Oh, all these are like dark. Okay, so with the fourth added, permutations go up into trillion, and now you have 127 times the population of earth. When you put those four things into what you do, you become incredibly unique, and you’re way more than just four things, and there’s way more than just a thousand options. So, you can imagine the actual permutations, and when you get the stuff you like into what you’re doing, it is incredibly unique.

So, let’s take me, for example. I really like philosophy, I really like writing, and I really like the blank page. So, what did I do? I took philosophy, I took writing, and I added narrative, and the blank page, aka notebooks, and I combined those into a brand called Baron Fig that didn’t do notebooks the way I did before, and put it on Kickstarter, looking for 15Gs. We did $168,000 in 30 days, and this was 10 years ago before Kickstarter was a big deal, and that is rise and fall. And people loved it.

And to this day now, Baron Fig has, from that one product that we started with, the notebook, we now have made over 115 products, we ship in 95 countries, we have hundreds of thousands of customers, and we partner with incredible people like Netflix, James Clear, Roxane Gay to make wonderful things. And it is because I started by taking the things that I really liked and figuring out a way how to meld them together.

And anybody could do that, and you could do it on a big scale, like creating a company, you can do it on a small scale, like creating a presentation. But when you put yourself into your things, and as cliché as it sounds, when you be yourself, it becomes incredibly unique.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that makes sense mathematically. And I guess the holdup is just that people feel uncomfortable being weird, they think they’re going to get a social reprisal of some sort, like, “Ugh, okay.”

Joey Cofone
Pete, well said, dude. Well said. That is the chapter one, is that the problem is weird, the word itself has been weaponized. When we think about it, you are in grammar school, and, “Hey, don’t eat with the weird kid,” or you’re at work, “Don’t have lunch with the weird person.” “Okay, cool.” It’s literally weaponized and it ostracizes the folks in our bubble, in our everyday life, who are different than the rest. And the message it’s saying, the subtext is, “Be like us and conform.”

Now, here’s the really crazy thing though, and this is why the chapter is titled “Be weird” is because inside our bubbles, we force everybody to conform. However, outside of our bubbles, we absolutely celebrate and worship weird people. And I’m going to name a few people, these are not necessarily that I worship or care about but they’re good examples. Lady Gaga, weird, not in my bubble. We love her. Johnny Depp, weird dude. Jack Sparrow, super weird. Freaking love that. Elon Musk, Kanye West, so on and so forth. We celebrate weirdness as long as it’s not in my bubble. And so, when I say…

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re making me uncomfortable now that I have to live within you, but you’re being amazing in this in  the world that I’m enjoying consuming from afar.”

Joey Cofone
Right. So, I’ll end this by saying those folks inside our bubble that people are going, “Hey, don’t sit with that weird guy. Don’t talk to that weird guy,” what I see is the bravest person in the room because they’re the ones, despite being ostracized, are letting themselves be themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very beautiful. And I do love reading about the weird things that folks do. I heard Bill Gates when he was a youngster, he’d just be in his room for a long, long time. His mom would say, “Oh, Billy,” I don’t know what she called him. Let’s pretend it’s Billy, “Oh, Billy, can you come on down,” and he’d say, “Mom, I’m trying to think,” like he’s just faking for a long time. He still does. He thinks weeks or think weekends, where, “I’m just going to be completely silent and read a bunch of things that are stimulating and useful for my creativity.”

Or, the dude. Hey, you’ve been a game guy. This guy in Japan, I forgot his name, he is one of the geniuses behind Mario and many other super franchises.

Joey Cofone
Miyamoto.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go. Apparently, he just carries around with him a tape measure, and has people guess the length of different objects, he’ll say, “Hey, how long do you think this is?” Like, “I don’t know, seven inches.” They probably use metric over there, centimeters. And so, you check it out, and you thought, “Boy, that’s weird.” And yet there is a little bit of a connection, it becomes like, “Oh, well, so part of your whole genius is representing things in a confined space, the dimensions of a screen or a video game.”

And so, that kind of fits that, it goes down like that. So, it is really fun for me to see the weird things people do. One weird thing I do…Look at you, Joey, you’re already liberating me.

Joey Cofone
Go for it. Let your weird out.

Pete Mockaitis
As soon as I will think of just the most wildly inappropriate thing to say or do in a given situation…

Joey Cofone
And see how people react?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And, in a way, that really does support my strengths in terms of I am pretty good at formulating words that work and people respond to because I’m also good at identifying the exact wrong thing to say. But someone walks in the steam room, I don’t know, this is weird. Let’s say I’m in a sauna or steam room, and so when I’m about ready to get out, if someone just gets in, and I think, “I don’t want to get out immediately because I don’t want to hurt their feelings.” I guess I’m really considerate, not that they care. But the weird thing I’ll do is I’ll think of the exact opposite of that.

Joey Cofone
You scoot next to him?

Pete Mockaitis
And, like, they walk in, and I just sigh, and say, “You know what, F this. I’m out of here.” So, that’s weird and ridiculous.

Joey Cofone
That is ridiculous. I like it.

Pete Mockaitis
But in doing this all of the time, one, it keeps me amused and lighthearted and entertained, but, two, it does kind of hone one of my strengths, which is communicating stuff to folks in a way that’s effective, in terms of I’m effectively trying to learn something with interview questions or I’m effectively trying to persuade, and that’s just, I think it’s funny. Like, the weirdness often, but not always, has relationship or overlap into strengths, genius, giftedness.

Joey Cofone
It does. It does. I like to acronym things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, let’s do it.

Joey Cofone
If you’re like, “Hey, I’m going to go to the store,” I’ll be like, “H-I-G-T-G-T-S,” and I try to do it as fast as I can, and I have no idea why, but I used to be really good when I was a kid. I would go to bed, acronym-ing every sentence I did. And, lo and behold, like I became an English major, and then I wrote a book, and I think it all kind of ties together the ability to dance around words and letters, and be comfortable with them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. Well, that’s just one law, be weird.

Joey Cofone
Yeah, let’s do another one. I think there’s a powerful one that people are always like, “Man, that makes so much sense.” So, creativity, what is the…? I forget, what are they called? What is the base word of creativity?

Pete Mockaitis
Create?

Joey Cofone
You got it, but you don’t create in creativity. It’s a complete misnomer. It’s ridiculous. Unfortunately, people do think that creativity is creating. It’s not and it sucks because that means people don’t think that they are creative when, in fact, they are. It’s just expressing yourself. So, the law of connection addresses this.

And it says, base concepts can neither be created nor destroyed. They simply merge to form new combinations. Creativity is not about creating. It is about combining. And then I give some examples, and I’m going to give you a few examples right now. The iPhone combines a computer and a phone. The Avengers combine the allure of the gods and the relatability of everybody people. Pokemon, the number one franchise on planet Earth, combines our love of pets and our fascination with fantasy worlds.

Pete Mockaitis
And I would say in collections, too. We like to be collectors.

Joey Cofone
Absolutely. It’s multidimensional for sure. I just base it down into something that you can parse. When you ask…now, I call it the grandparent test, which is when you say, “Hey, grandma or grandpa, what is Tesla?” And they say, “Oh, those are those cars with batteries.” Well, you just figured out exactly the two things that someone combined to make this new thing. Or, Instagram is photography and messaging, so on and so forth.

And so, the number one thing to take away is that when you are being creative, really, you are taking things that exists and just mushing them together. And it’s a much more palatable way of saying, “Hey, maybe I am creative. I do that all the time,” rather than thinking you are creating from scratch because that’s not real.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that sinks. Well, I’ll put you on the spot, Joey. So, your notebook, I’m holding one. What was the genius of combination that went down here?

Joey Cofone
Great question. The genius of combination is that I did not care about the question you just asked. So, it’s the first thing people say, “What’s so special about your notebook?” I don’t know, Pete, what’s so special about Starbucks’ coffee? Does anybody care? No. It’s the brand. It’s the differences, the story that a brand is telling.

So, when I started back in 2013, and all these notebook companies were telling people about the GSM of the paper, and how hard it was pressed, and if it’s soft – what do you call it – textured or smooth. I didn’t say any of that stuff. What I said is, “We made a really damn good notebook because it’s really, really important that you have a place that you can trust to put really important thoughts, because we all put a lot of really treasured ideas into our notebooks.”

When we’re journaling, our deepest thoughts go in there. When we’re brainstorming on a project, something that we’re really excited about, and that we cherish, and that we can see the future, goes in there. A notebook holds so much that’s important. And when I started Baron Fig in 2013, that’s what I spoke about.

Sure. Sure, I made a high-quality notebook. The paper is better than any other notebook. I made a binding that I actually patented that opens totally flat. And I made a cover with cloth that no one had done at the time, and the bookmark is much more high quality. But who cares? At the end of the day, no one is like, “Man, look at that. Look at that bookmark quality.” Doesn’t matter.

I made them good, but the point is I want you to go to our website, I want you to see that the product and the people who created the product speak to you as a human being that puts important things down on paper, that you care about, and that respects it. And that’s what we did, and that’s why we’re still here 10 years later selling notebooks.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Joey, I’d love to also get your take, let’s say you’re in the heat of battle, it’s time to create, there’s a proposal to write, a thing to make, and you’re just hitting a wall, you’ve got “writer’s block,” or artist block, or just things aren’t firing the way you’d like them to be and have fired historically. How do you get into the groove, the mode, the mojo, the vibe, the flow to make it happen?

Joey Cofone
Good question. I do 50s or 100s. What are they, Joey? Another good question. Fifties or hundreds is you list 50 or 100 ideas about something pertaining to the thing you’re trying to solve. And now here, the real twist is you’re going for quantity. You don’t judge. If it makes sense, you do it. So, I don’t know, if I’m writing or if I want to do a limited edition pen, I just got to write down 50. I don’t care if one is…I’m just coming up with it now.

A green pen, it’s called the pickle edition. Oh, a TV remote control edition. It has a sticker that’s a remote control that you slap on your forehead. Oh, let’s do the forehead edition where you roll the pen on your forehead and it creates really smooth feeling. They’re ridiculous ideas but they solve, even if they’re not good. And so, what happens is you detach yourself from the expectations of the outcome when you do these.

Pete, you’ve heard of the phrase quality over quantity?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Joey Cofone
Now, very common and it makes sense. You want one nice thing over a bunch of mediocre things, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Joey Cofone
Totally fair. Problem is that phrase speaks to the destination, to the end. That’s like me saying, “Hey, Pete, go to the gym. Be strong.” And you’re like, “What do I do at the gym?” It skips over the middle. So, I’m going to rephrase it for us. Quality over quantity but quantity begets quality. And so, when you do a lot, you end up getting good. No one ever does their first shot on the court, or their first swing of a golf club, or their first chapter of a book, and says, “It came out perfect.”

Yet, when a lot of people who are uninitiated with doing some type of expression like that jump in, they get really upset that they didn’t succeed on the first shot, and that’s just ridiculous. Focus on doing a lot and the good stuff will come.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you.

Joey Cofone
Thank you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Joey, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Joey Cofone
No, I am an open book, man. How do I like to say it? I’m at your service.

Pete Mockaitis
You open and you stay flat.

Joey Cofone
I do stay flat. Patented, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Fashion. All right. How about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Joey Cofone
Favorite quote is without a doubt, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates.

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

Joey Cofone
Favorite study is, huh, probably Schrodinger’s cat comes to mind just because it’s so misinterpreted. When he pulled that exercise, he was actually proving a point how silly it is that you could think that the cat is alive and dead at the same time. It was like a joke. But now people use it to prove that it’s a possibility, which is so ironic.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Joey Cofone
Favorite book, besides The Laws of Creativity, is The Phantom Tollbooth. Are you familiar with it?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Joey Cofone
The Phantom Tollbooth is a kids’ book, and it is about a kid who goes into a world of total creativity and playfulness, and the language and the pictures, and it’s absolutely great. You should read it once a year every year so it reminds you in 120 pages what it’s like to think with a kid full of wonder.

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

Joey Cofone
Coffee. Is that fair?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Joey Cofone
Love coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Joey Cofone
Favorite habit is I do at least one pushup every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m intrigued. Does it often turn into more than one?

Joey Cofone
It does often turn into a lot more. But the idea that I only need to do one is great. Then I do pushups, then I do some squats, then I do some lunges, and then I do some pullups on the pullup bar. And then, huh, wow, that pushup turned to a lot.

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

Joey Cofone
Well, I gave you my favorite one, which is quantity begets quality, so I’m going to stick with that.

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

Joey Cofone
Go to JoeyCofone.com, and you will find all that you need.

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

Joey Cofone
Well, actually, yeah, I have a call to action. If you go to my website, you could take my free email course which will give you nine of the laws that you can judge for yourself whether you think you have it right about creativity or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Joey, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun and creativity.

Joey Cofone
Pete, thank you, man. It’s been a pleasure. And, everybody out there, thank you for listening. I hope you have a beautiful day.

Feb 16
0

840: The Science Behind Strong, Lasting Friendships with Dr. Marisa G. Franco

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Dr. Marisa G. Franco says: "People like you more than you think, so assume people like you."

Dr. Marisa G. Franco reveals how to harness the science of attachment to foster deeper relationships at work and in life.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three types of loneliness we all experience.
  2. Why work friends are critical to your wellbeing.
  3. The six practices that help you make and keep friends.

About Marisa

An enlightening psychologist, international speaker, and New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Marisa G. Franco is known for digesting and communicating science in ways that resonate deeply enough with people to change their lives. She works as a professor at The University of Maryland and authored the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends. She writes about friendship for Psychology Today and has been a featured connection expert for major publications like The New York Times, The Telegraph, and Vice. She speaks on belonging at corporations, government agencies, non-profits, and universities.

For tips on friendship, you can follow her on Instagram (DrMarisaGFranco), or go to her website, www.DrMarisaGFranco.com, where you can take a quiz to assess your strengths and weaknesses as a friend & reach out for speaking engagements.

Resources Mentioned

Dr. Marisa G. Franco Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Marisa, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Marisa Franco
Thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Marisa, I’m so excited to get into some wisdom about friends but, first, I got to hear, I understand you are a polyglot. Tell us, what languages do you speak and how did you get to learn them?

Marisa Franco
Yeah, I speak Italian because my dad is from Italy, so he sent me to live there for half of fifth grade. I speak Haitian Creole because I taught in a social work school in Haiti for two summers, and that’s where my mom is from. And I speak some Spanish, still working on the Spanish thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, so half of fifth grade was enough for you to learn Italian for life?

Marisa Franco
Well, I then came back and took Italian in middle school for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, and went back to study in Florence.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, there you go. That’ll do it. I’ve got a five-year old and a three-year old at home, and so we’re thinking, “Just how much and when is the ticket for language acquisition?” My wife is big on them, knowing French because she studied abroad in France and then knows some. So, yeah, that’s the whole story.

Marisa Franco
That’s awesome, so valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, another thing that’s valuable is friendship. How’s that segue, Marisa?

Marisa Franco
Good job. Good job.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. I’d love it if maybe, first, before we talk about the how of friendship, can you tell us why are friends important? And maybe that question doesn’t even need to be asked but some might say, “Hey, you know what, popularity contests are over. I’ve got my family and my coworkers. We get along well enough. Isn’t that enough, Marisa?” What would you say?

Marisa Franco
Well, I would say that friends actually make your relationship with your relationship-partner better. So, research finds that if I make a friend, not only am I less depressed, my relationship-partner is less depressed. Women who are friends with women are more resilient to issues in their marriage when they have friends. When people are in conflict with their spouse, it basically alters their release of the stress hormone cortisol in problematic ways unless they have quality connection outside the marriage.

So, basically, I think we’ve always needed an entire community to feel whole. And when we put all our eggs in one basket with one person, it harms us and it harms our relationship with that person. There’s even three different dimensions of loneliness which really reveal this. So, there’s a form of loneliness called intimate loneliness, which is the desire for connection with people you feel really close to.

But then there’s also relational loneliness, which is the desire to connect with someone kind of as close to you as a friend. But then there’s collective loneliness, which is this desire to be part of a group of people that’s working toward a common goal. And so, you could experience any of these types of loneliness, which means you could have found your soulmate as a spouse but still feel like you’re lacking that larger community that’s working towards a common goal, for example.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s really good. Thank you. Being self-employed and working from home or an office by myself, that’s a nice distinction, for me in particular, because it’s like, “Okay. Well, hey, yeah, my wife is great. That’s cool. And I got friends, and that’s cool.” But, yeah, sometimes it does feel lonely even though I’ve got a great team spread across the world doing their thing. We’re in different spots and, yeah, you can feel that sometimes.

Marisa Franco
Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. And I think the other reason that we feel lonely when we’re not around different types of people is because we have a restricted relationship with ourselves. Like, each person brings out a different part of us. So, when you’re around the same people, the same person all the time, it’s like, “I only experience a certain side of me.”

Like, let’s say I’m really into gardening, and the couple people that I interact with all the time, nobody’s into that. That part of me begins to wither until I find someone to connect with, who has that shared interest, wherein we can talk with depth about that, I can bring out that side of me. And so, the more that we embrace diversity of community, the more that we feel more full and more whole.

And there’s also research that finds that the larger your social network, the more long you will live. And, actually, how large your social network is predicts how long you’ll live, even more so than your diet or how much you’re exercising.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. So, how large do I want to be?

Marisa Franco
Well, there’s a lot of complexities to that question because, obviously, you want very quality connections. Quality is very important. So, if it’s like I’m having this large network and I don’t feel quality connection, or I’m having a network that’s so large that it feels like I can’t invest in one person, then that’s not good. So, there’s a bit of a balancing act.

But the other thing is that our desire for a larger social network tends to change throughout our life. So, around 25 is when most of us have, like, the highest number of friends, and that’s because around that age, a lot of us are expanding our sense of identity. And, again, friends help expose us to new things, new information, help us feel different sides of our own identity.

But as people get older, they tend to want to think about how much time they have left, and spending it very intentionally with people that they feel deep quality connectedness with. So, they tend to kind of prune their friendships and be very selective about who they hang out with. So, I would say it also depends on your stage in life, what you might be drawn to and what a good size in terms of, yeah, the amount of people that you keep in your inner circle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And can you share any research associated with the value of friends for being more awesome at your job, or friends at the workplace?

Marisa Franco
Absolutely. So, interestingly, there’s a study that looked at workplace fulfillment, and the number one factor that predicted how fulfilled people were at work was their sense of relatedness, which is like their sense of connection with the people around them, how much they feel valued by the people around them. And that’s, like, quite striking because it means that you could be doing a job that you really love but if you don’t feel like you have good relationships, your sense of fulfillment will not quite be there.

There’s a factor outside of your work that you’re doing that really is deterministic for your sense of happiness. And I think, often, when we’re choosing careers, we’re so focused on, like, “What exactly am I doing?” and we’re less focused on, like, the culture, and whether people feel valued, and whether people feel connected, even though it’s really, really important.

Other research finds, for example, that lonely employees, they miss work, more work, they report having poor performance, they report thinking about leaving their job more. And so, when I do speaking engagements on connection and belonging at work, I talk about this phenomenon that I call the employee myth, which is the sense that we go to work and we are no longer human, and we don’t have these human needs, and we’re just like clock away at our computer, and our employee identity replace our whole human identity.

And it’s just not true. Like, the same needs that we have outside of the workplace are the same human needs that we have within the workplace. And one of our greatest human needs is to feel connected to other people.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay, so that’s a nice juicy why. I also love to hear, thinking over the course of your career in researching friendship stuff, any particularly shocking, or counterintuitive, or extra-fascinating discoveries you’ve made that really left an impression with you?

Marisa Franco
Yes. So, in general, everyone has this negativity bias, which means that we tend to remember negative information more than positive information, it registers more with us. And that, when we’re making predictions, we tend to be inaccurate and often cynical because of our ability to remember this negative information.

So, what that means is that, for example, there’s a study that finds that when strangers interact, they underestimate how liked they are by each other. And the more self-critical you are, the more pronounced this liking gap is, the more likely you are to underestimate how much other people like you. And I think sometimes we think our critical thoughts are the truth, when the study finds that they’re really distorting the truth.

And so, one, I think a really helpful note for people when it comes to making friends is to remember that people like you more than you’re assuming. People are probably a lot more open to you and open to your friendship and connection than you might think.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is nice. “I’m more charming than I think perhaps, statistically,” if I’m the average and not an egomaniac or a narcissist. Okay. Cool. All right. So, then your book Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends, what’s the big idea or core thesis here?

Marisa Franco
The core thesis is that how we’ve connected has fundamentally shaped who we are. Our personalities are fundamentally a reflection of our experiences of connection or lack thereof, whether you are trusting, open, cynical, aggressive, guarded. Like, all of these things are predicated on your experiences of connection.

Whereas, who you are then affects how you connect. So, it’s not random how you connect with people. These people that have had a history of healthy relationships, they’ve developed a set of assumptions about the world that facilitate them continuing to make healthy relationships. And so, those are what’s called securely attached people, they have this history of healthy relationships, they go into new relationships addressing the relationship in very healthy ways.

Whereas, those people who have relationships that are more difficult or unhealthy in the past, they may have internalized a set of assumptions about the world, like people are always going to abandon you, or you can’t trust anybody, which then inhibit and impede their ability to continue to form relationships with people, so those are the insecurely attached people.

And so, my Platonic is kind of about “How can we all develop more secure attachment in our friendships?” Because, I want to say, sometimes I share this attachment information, and people are like, “Well, good for those people that have healthy relationships. Where does that leave me?” So, I like to make sure I tell people, “You can absolutely change your attachment style.”

The book is actually about how you could change your attachment style in relationships with friends. And all of us can learn to build those secure relationships with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, attachment style, that phrase is bringing me back to college psychology and talking about what went down with babies. Is that what you mean by attachment style? Or, how are you…Could you give us the rundown of the maybe typology of attachment styles?

Marisa Franco
Yes. So, the babies are right, the baby thing. So, this idea that in your early relationships, how your parents interact with you, or your caregivers, created this internal sense of assumptions about how everybody interacts with you.

And so, if your parents were sort of like overbearing and not responsive to your needs, like you kind of pulled away and you need alone time, and they would kind of bother you and not really respect your boundaries, you might have become anxiously attached, which means you always feel rejection and abandonment from other people because your parents weren’t necessarily attuned to you and your needs, and might’ve been kind of hot and cold with their ability to give you love.

Whereas, if you are avoidantly attached, that means that you had parents that kind of suppressed all feelings, like encouraged you to be strong, and take care of it on your own, and encouraged you to be hyper-independent. And so, you learned that if you try to be vulnerable with people, they will not be there for you. So, you are someone who goes into your friendships unemotionally, and you tend to not put much effort into friendships because you don’t trust people. So, you put low effort, low reward.

Whereas, the secure attached people, they had the good-enough parent who was responsive to their needs, who tried to show them love, and let them express emotions. And these securely attached kids, which were about 50% of us, but the rates of secure attachment have been going down, they go on to have these assumptions that, “People will love me,” “I’m worthy,” “My needs matter. Other people’s needs matter too,” and so they go on to build healthy relationships.

But it’s kind of more complicated than that, like there’s all of these intervening things that can happen that can alter your attachment style, like your relationships since your parents, whether you had one person outside of your household who made you feel really secure. So, I say that because I’m, like, you don’t necessarily have to go home and blame your parents because it’s quite complex how attachment styles develop.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, those are the three primary flavors there. And so, how do we know which of the three is predominant within us?

Marisa Franco
Yeah. Well, I do have a quiz in Platonic but I could tell you some of the attributes that we tend to see. So, anxiously attached people, they tend to think their friends don’t really like them. They tend to form friendships very quickly because, again, they’re afraid people will abandon them so they want people to show their level of investment very quickly. They tend to overshare almost to test people, “Will you kind of abandon me if you know all these things about me?”

They tend to, yeah, be very comfortable with vulnerability. They tend to be very self-sacrificing in their relationships because they feel like, again, “If I bring up my own needs, you’re going to abandon me,” kind of passive-aggressive because they have that fear of abandonment. Kind of how I describe them is high effort, low reward. Like, they’re putting a lot of time and effort into their relationships, their relationships are important to them, yet they aren’t getting that same reward.

There’s the sense that their relationships are very fragile. And that’s because, anxiously attached people, again, they think people are going to abandon them, so they tend to think they’re being rejected even when they’re not. And so then, they’ll sort of pull away or act out, act aggressively, like not really respect people’s boundaries as a way to kind of sooth their own fears of rejection.

Then you have avoidantly attached people. They are not putting much effort into friendship. They are not initiating as many friendships. They’re more likely to ghost on their friends. You could describe them as, like, loners where they might have a big group of friends but it’s very shallow. The other attachment styles are attracted to vulnerability.

The avoidantly attached person is not, sometimes put off by the vulnerability of other people. They tend to focus a lot on work and less on relationships. So, the avoidantly attached person is low effort, low reward. They’re kind of taking themselves out of the game. You’ll hear them say things like, “I don’t trust people. Like, people can’t be trusted.” That’s their big issue. They think, “If I get too close to people, I’m just going to be harmed and hurt, so let me just keep my distance.”

Then you have securely attached people who I call the super friends. Research finds that secure attachment is related to initiating more friendships, your friendships being more sustainable. Securely attached people tend to address conflict but in very healthy ways where it’s not an attack. It’s, “These are my needs, these are your needs. What do we do, moving forward?”

They are comfortable with vulnerability but they build it more gradually. They’re giving towards their friends, they’re loving towards their friends, but they don’t sacrifice their own sense of self. Like, if it’s like, “This is really depleting me,” they’ll always try to find that balance where, “I want to show up for my friends, but I also want to show up for myself at the same time.”

And so, in some ways, securely attached people really humanize everyone they interact with. They allow everybody to kind of be an individual. Whereas, anxiously attached people, they’re seeing rejection everywhere. They’re kind of imposing that template onto people. Avoidantly attached people, they’re opposing the template that other people are not trustworthy.

So, for example, there are studies that find that if you try to be loving towards an avoidantly attached person, they will assume that it’s because you want something out of them. And so, secure attachment just, like, gives people the flexibility to tell their own stories because they don’t have this wound from the past, that they’re always ready to happen to them again.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s interesting, and as I think about my own experience, we’ve got our own sort of emotional rollercoaster highs and lows, and moments of stress, and sleep deprivation, versus enthusiasm and openness. I think when I’m at my worst, I just don’t…and the thought of going to some event, for example, or joining some people at a social thing, I think, “Yeah, I just don’t expect the people I encounter there to be very interesting or fun.” Does that fit into a category or am I a unique special flower?

Marisa Franco
Well, it could be attachment but that’s also a symptom of loneliness. And I don’t know if this applies to you or not, because, yeah, you could tell me. But I know that when we are lonely, for example, it’s not just the feeling. It alters how we perceive the world, where we perceive social interactions as less enjoyable. Because, basically, what happens when you’re lonely, if you think about this from an evolutionary perspective, when you are lonely, you are isolated from your tribe, which kept you safe from dangers in the African savannah.

So, when we’re lonely, our brain is like hypervigilant for signs of negativity. Like, lonely people think they’re being rejected when they’re not, they report less compassion for humanity, liking their roommate less. And so, when you’re in a state of loneliness, fundamentally, you want to connect but you also are convinced that if you do connect, people might harm you or reject you, like not physically but just, like, reject you. So, there’s this kind of conundrum that we have when we’re lonely, where actually loneliness is also related to wanting to withdraw from people.

Pete Mockaitis
So, with these wounds, it sounds like a lot of them have to do with family, parenting, childhood stuff. Are there other categories of wounds? I’m thinking about being dumped, for example.

Marisa Franco
Ooh, it hurts.

Pete Mockaitis
What are some of the other kinds of big places where these wounds can come from?

Marisa Franco
I think our brains are really good at learning. And what that means is that if we go through any experience of rejection, bullying is a big one, isolation for a temporary period of time, it can really leave an imprint on us because that’s a form of learning. Your brain is like, “Let me prepare for this happening again. I know what to do,” and all of those things.

So, I think sometimes we think we get over things from our past and we just move on from them, but it’s actually more typical for them to kind of stick with us because our brain is trying to kind of learn from them, and for us to continue to face them or to continue to see them in the future as we move forward in our relationships. Again, it doesn’t have to be something huge.

It could be like a breakup that was really hard can shape your experiences of grief moving forward, or an experience of, for example, social anxiety is related to your experiences in adolescence, and then you’re having social anxiety later in life, or your experience of loneliness as a child can predict your experiences of loneliness in adulthood.

And so, there’s this way that it gets…I mean, I don’t want to be bleak about it because I certainly think there’s ways to get off the trajectory, and to heal from these things, and to, instead, experience growth from these things, but, at the same time, I think people that feel like, “Oh, I’m still struggling with this thing from my past,” I just want to say, like, “Oh, that’s also pretty normal because we’re humans and we’re really sensitive to how we’re coming off socially, and it’s a way for us survive.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk about some of these things. You’ve got six proven practices for making friends. Can you walk us through them?

Marisa Franco
Of course, yeah. So, these six proven practices, I read all of the research on…not all of it, a lot of it. I can’t say it was completely exhaustive. But, yeah, a ton of research on what predicted who made friends and who didn’t. And I came up with these six practices, these people that embrace these six practices were just more likely to make and keep friends.

And so, they are taking initiative, vulnerability, authenticity, showing affection toward other people, being authentic, and harmonizing with anger, which is learning how to work through conflict well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, thinking through these six practices, could you expand on them and share a particular action that is really fruitful within each of the practices?

Marisa Franco
Absolutely, yeah. So, initiative, I think one of the biggest takeaways there is that friendship doesn’t happen organically in adulthood, and people that think it does are lonelier over time. Whereas, people that see it as taking effort are less lonely. And so, the takeaway here is that if you want to make friends, you are going to have to take initiative and not be passive, which just looks like, “Hey, it was so great to meet. I love to connect further. Could we exchange contact information?”

Authenticity. I define it in a kind of complex way, which is like who we are without our defense mechanisms. So, our defense mechanisms can really hurt our relationships. Let me define that further. So, let’s say my friend’s kid got into an Ivy League school, my kid didn’t, I feel jealous but my defense mechanism will defend me against that feeling, feeling that feeling.

So, instead of me noticing or acknowledging that jealousy, I say to my friend, “Well, Cornell isn’t really the best Ivy League anyway.” And so, we use these defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from certain feelings at the cost of our relationships. So, I guess the takeaway in authenticity is that what is raw is not authentic, which means the things that you say automatically are often defense mechanisms, they’re not authentic. They’re actually obscuring your authentic feeling.

And so, it can take a while, a pause, to actually understand what you authentically feel if your brain is so quick to try to protect yourself from that feeling.

Pete Mockaitis
And now, well, I’m curious, with this Cornell example, what’s the best way to engage with that person? You are jealous.

Marisa Franco
Yeah, you are jealous.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, the best practice is not to trash Cornell, “Never heard of it.”

Marisa Franco
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
What would be the best move?

Marisa Franco
The goal of authenticity is to be intentional and not reactive. So, intentionality means that you are not letting that feeling control how you act and behave, and you can make a decision as to how you’re acting based off of your values, based off of the needs of the other person, based off of the larger circumstances. It’s like you’re choosing. You’re not being hijacked.

So, for some people, if the jealousy is really strong and they can’t get over it, they can say, “I really want to be happy for your kid, but I’m just struggling because my kid has struggled to get into these schools. So, if I’m not coming off as happy as I would really love to, that’s just what’s going on internally with me.” For other people, they might think, “Well, it’s more important for me to center my friend and her experience of her kid right now, so I’m going to get in touch with the part of me that is happy for them and say, ‘Yeah, I’m really happy for you. Congratulations. That’s really cool.’”

It’s not about a particular response but it’s just about choosing something intentionally that actually reflects you and your values rather than being raw and doing something reactively because there’s a feeling that’s really uncomfortable that you’re trying to escape.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. That’s good. That’s good. And so, authenticity, it’s interesting because the way some people read that word or hear that word, you might be led to, “You must disclose that you feel jealous,” but rather, authenticity can have, it sounds like, many shapes or flavors here.

Marisa Franco
Exactly. Right. Like, people that are authentic are, you think, “Oh, if you’re authentic, you’re only going to think about yourself and your own needs,” but people that are more authentic are actually more likely to consider other people’s needs because inauthenticity is psychologically exhausting so you don’t have the resources to think about other people.

So, when you’re able to just be like, “Oh, this is what I feel. I understand what I feel,” and you kind of clear yourself out psychologically so you can choose and make an intentional choice. Whereas, if you’re always trying to suppress that underlying feeling, it takes a toll on you and you end up relying on some of those defense mechanisms, which is you’re kind of tired so you’re just going into that reactive mode.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, how about vulnerability?

Marisa Franco
Yeah. So, vulnerability, I think the takeaway from that chapter is, as social creatures, we are not strong alone. We are strong through receiving other people’s love and validation, and then internalizing it. So, I interviewed Dr. Michael Slepian who studies secrets, and I found one of his studies that basically looked at who is most resilient regarding the weight of their secrets, they’re least impacted by the secrets.

And he kind of found that it was these people that had told their secrets to someone and received this validating response, who were then best able to cope internally with their secrets. And so his research basically, suggesting that we become strong through being vulnerable with people, and then internalizing their love, and that’s what attachment theory is. These securely attached people who are good at relationships and their mental health is better, so much better, and they’re living longer, they had healthier relationships and they internalize them.

And so, vulnerability is key for our mental health and wellbeing but will also deepen our relationships because we’re social creatures. Whatever we do to better our relationships, often also improves our overall health and wellbeing. So, that’s why we should lean into being vulnerable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then sharing our secrets more often, it sounds like.

Marisa Franco
Yeah, with people that are trustworthy, of course, but, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then anger?

Marisa Franco
So, the takeaway with anger is that often when it comes to friendship, we suppress conflict and we think that that’s a good way to deal with things. And what ends up happening is that we actually just withdraw, we don’t end up dealing with it, we don’t end up getting over it. And so, there’s research that finds that open empathic conflict is actually linked to deeper intimacy. And if you’re avoiding conflict, you also might be avoiding a form of intimacy within your friendships.

So, the takeaway of that chapter is if you have issues within your friendships, like, address them, don’t attack your friends. That chapter really goes into how to address them because it’s not just bringing up the conflict that matters. It’s bringing it up in a loving way. But if you have a problem and it’s causing you to withdraw, it’s a way better option to bring it up with your friends. It might increase your intimacy with that friendship.

And I think sometimes we withdraw because we’re like, “Well, if I bring this up, are they going to abandon me or get mad at me?” But then you end up withdrawing, and it’s kind of guaranteed that the friendship is going to end rather than you at least had a chance if you were able to bring it up with them.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. And so, can we hear the crash course in how to bring things up well?

Marisa Franco
Yeah. So, it starts with framing, which is this idea that we want to make sure that we are introducing the conversation and grounding it as an act of love and care for the other person. So, like, “Hey, I just wanted to make sure, I just wanted to bring this up because I love you and I don’t want anything to get between us because you’re so important to me.”

It’s using I-statements, “I felt hurt when this happened,” not saying, “You’re a bad friend.” Ask perspective-taking, “I was wondering what might’ve been going on for you at that time.” And asking for what we want in the future, “In the future, if this situation comes up, like, maybe we can handle it like this. What do you think about it?” So, it’s collaborative, it’s an active reconciliation rather than combat.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then offering generosity, what do you recommend here?

Marisa Franco
So, I recommend being generous freely, it does build friendships, until you feel like it’s exhausting you and it’s taking a toll on you. And at that point, you need to practice something called mutuality, which is different from reciprocity. Reciprocity is like, “I called you, now you call me.” But mutuality is, “I think about both of our experiences, and both of our priorities, and both of our capacities to determine the appropriate amount of generosity to give in a certain moment.”

So, what does that mean, practically speaking? It means that, for example, like, if your friend calls you in a time of need, let’s say they find out their kid is self-harming or something, it might feel like, “I’m so tired. I want to set a boundary,” but if you take a look at mutuality and you take a step back, and you’re like, “My friend’s kid is self-harming and I’m tired. What is the bigger priority in this moment?” then you might want to get on the phone even if you’re tired.

And so, it’s kind of a different way to think about boundaries, to think about boundaries as more of a mutual act for the closest relationships in your life rather than boundaries as just an act of self-protection.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And when you say generosity, what are the different ways that can be expressed?

Marisa Franco
Well, I really like when we express generosity that reflects our general strengths and talents because I think it feels even better that way. So, what are you good at? Whether it’s art, you can make art for your friends; cooking, baking, doing that for your friends; planning and organizing. You can organize a special day for your friends. Looking up information.

I did a presentation on finances for my friends because I just was really into finance podcasts for a while. So, think about what you enjoy doing anyway and find a way to give it to the people in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then how about giving affection?

Marisa Franco
Yes. So, affection, there’s this study that looked at friendship pairs for 12 weeks to determine what’s going to predict who stays friends by week 12. And one of the most strongest things was how much affection they shared with one another. There’s this theory called risk-regulation theory, which is basically the idea that we decide how much to invest in a relationship based on our view of how likely we are to get rejected.

So, if you want people to invest in you, you have to basically indicate to them that they won’t be rejected. And so, one of the ways that you do that is that you express affection. You tell people, “I value you.” “I’m so happy to see you.” “It’s great.” You greet them warmly when they arrive. You tell them that, “This was something really meaningful that you said, that I continue to think about.” What affection does is it creates safety so people feel more comfortable investing in a relationship with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s a nice six practices there. I’d love it, Marisa, do you have any fun stories or unique ways that folks have done some of this stuff that really sticks with you?

Marisa Franco
I do. So, in my affection chapter, I interviewed a friendship pair that was very close, like they kind of proposed to each other as best friends, and they would cuddle with each other. And I kind of talked in that chapter about the complexities of romantic love that queer communities, there’s this book Ace about asexuality, have pushed us to differentiate between romantic and sexual attraction, that romance is like, “I’m passionate about you. I’m thrilled by you. I yearn for your company.” It’s a sense of excitement about someone.

But sexual attraction is, “I want to have sex with you.” And those two things are distinct, in that it’s actually pretty normal for us to have romantic attraction to friends, and it’s been normal throughout history because, like, early 1800s and before, like people were getting married to people for practical reasons, “Because you’re going to give my family resources.” And the genders were considered so distinct that the idea was you can only really connect intimately to your friends who are the same gender as you.

So, friends were holding hands and writing their names on trees, and writing these deep love letters to each other, and that was all normal. And I think we need to normalize that people have romantic feelings for their friends, which I’m just defining as being really passionate and thrilled by your friend, and very excited kind of like, I don’t know, a fire, having a fire for your friend, people say, “My friend is my soulmate,” all these different things.

And that that is part of friendship, and that, more generally, I think a lot of what we consider normal in romantic relationships could also apply to friendships. There’s no reason why not.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, intriguing, the distinction between romance and sexuality, and, yeah, that’s a brain expander. Okay. And so then, cuddling, writing names on trees. What else?

Marisa Franco
Yeah, writing love letters with each other, sharing the same bed, people used to go bring their friends on their honeymoons, going on special dates together, like all these things that we now consider more typical in our romantic relationships. Like, honestly, for me, my goal is to equalize the value I place on a romantic partner and the value I place on my closest friendships.

And because I understand that the ways that I grew up, and probably most of us have grown up, is that romantic love kind of has this monopoly on love, where the most loving acts we consider only appropriate for a romantic partner and don’t do with our friends even though they could really benefit our friendships and make people feel closer to us and loved and cared for.

So, this came up for me when I was I had a friend coming back from the airport, from a trip to the airport at, like, 12:30 a.m. and I hate staying up late. So, I was faced with the question, this was a friend that I’m close to, and I would love to get closer to, but I was faced with the question of, “Should I offer to pick her up from the airport?”

And I literally asked myself, knowing that romantic love has such a monopoly on love, and we almost have to access our concept of romantic love to access what deep love looks like for a person, that I asked myself, “Would I do this for a romantic partner?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely. Like, I would stay up late and pick up my romantic partner from the airport to make them feel taken care of.”

So, after I realized that, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do this for my friend. Like, I’m going to pick her up at 12:30,” and, yeah, it really benefited our friendship. From then on, she saw how intentional I was about valuing her, and then she, like, bought me a plant after my plants died. And I wasn’t drinking, and she bought non-alcoholic cocktails. It just created this positive upward cycle of closeness and care for each other.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very beautiful. And I guess I’m thinking about, if you watch some, like, History Channel documentaries, it seems like, “Some historians believe that they were gay lovers.” Well, now you got me wondering, it’s like, “Why, are they thinking that because they’re imposing our modern viewpoints associated with sexuality being linked to romance, and really close friendships onto a different century where that was not the case?”

Marisa Franco
Possibly. I don’t want to understate that also that there was this erasure, intentional erasure, happening of LGB relationships at the time, and that was also happening. But I think we can give ourselves room for both things, which is that, yes, these gay relationships were erased from history, but also a lot of these relationships could also have been nonsexual and just very intimate with each other.

Like, for me, there’s this book, there’s this photographer who basically had pictures from around those times when friends were allowed to be more intimate. And I just remember seeing men go to take photographs together with their best friend with their arms around them, or like men of a football team laying in each other’s arms.

And it’s public, it’s like a football team so I don’t think it’s something that’s happening behind closed doors, and people are not ashamed of it either. And so, when you look back at those pictures, you see how, yeah, people were just a lot more comfortable with intimacy within friendships back then.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, Marisa, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Marisa Franco
I guess one of my big tips for people making friends is to assume that people like you. The reason that I share this is because there’s research on something called the acceptance prophecy, which finds that when people are told by researchers that, “Your personality profile indicates that you will go into this group and be accepted,” and that’s a total lie. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because making that assumption makes people warmer, it makes them friendlier.

Whereas, when we assume we’ll be rejected, we actually reject people. We become cold. We become withdrawn. We are giving signals to other people that we’re rejecting them and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where they reject us back. And we also learned about the liking gap, which is people like us more than we think. So, try to remember to assume people like you.

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

Marisa Franco
There’s a bell hooks’ book All About Love, and actually think she quoted this from someone else, but you could find it in the book. And she describes love, and I’m kind of butchering this probably, but, “Love is helping someone express their inner truth or the essence of who they are and the ways that they are living.” That an active love is fundamentally helping people live a more deeply authentic life.

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

Marisa Franco
Research finds that when we predict the impact of expressing affirmation toward other people, we think it’s going to come off as more awkward than it actually does, and we underestimate how good it makes people feel. So, just don’t undervalue the impact of your kindness and your love toward other people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Marisa Franco
There’s this really good book called Attached, which is on attachment theory for romantic relationships.

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

Marisa Franco
I really do use, like, connection skills. I guess, like, as a teacher, I try to say hi to my students. I try to not tell them they’re wrong, but maybe say, “What would someone add to that?” I try to create a safe environment where people feel comfortable engaging, and affirm my students.

Every day, at the end of class, we have an appreciation hat where you share something that stuck out to you that someone else shared, and you give them a little bit of a gift. So, I believe that good learning happens on the backbone of connectedness, and so I try to be intentional about that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Marisa Franco
Oh, exercise. I love exercising, like, five days a week. I started going back to the gym and it just makes me feel so good physically and mentally.

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

Marisa Franco
Friendship doesn’t happen organically. People like you more than you think, so assume people like you.

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

Marisa Franco
I would point them to my Instagram @drmarisagfranco, that’s D-R-M-A-R-I-S-A-G-F-R-A-N-C-O. And my website, DrMarisaGFranco.com has a quiz to assess your strengths and weaknesses as a friend, and gives you some suggestions on how you can improve. And you can also reach out there for any speaking engagements on connection and belonging within the workplace or outside of it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have any key challenges or calls to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Marisa Franco
Yeah. So, one thing that you can do if you want to make friends at work is, and I guess this is if you are hybrid or in-person, is something called reponing, which means varying the settings in which you interact, which tends to deepen your relationships.

So, if you have a work friend that you kind of like, try to invite them to do something outside of work because that’s going to bring up different sides of them and different sides of you, and allow there to be a transition from work-friend to real friends. So, if any of you changes jobs, you have this precedent of hanging out outside of the workplace, and your relationship will be more sustainable.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Marisa, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and many good friendships.

Marisa Franco
Thank you so much for having me.