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Sep 17

1181: Finding the Hidden Networks that Multiply Opportunities with Ethel Mickey

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Ethel Mickey reveals how the everyday relationships we foster, both in and out of work, shape who gets ahead.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why networking by the books leads to nowhere
  2. Why certain “time-wasting” interactions are actually critical
  3. The right and wrong ways to build visibility

About Ethel

Ethel Mickey is a sociologist who studies why inequality persists in workplaces that claim to fix it. She is an assistant professor at California State University, San Bernardino and a faculty affiliate at Stanford’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. Her research—and her book Networking to Nowhere—reveals how everyday workplace relationships quietly shape who gets ahead in tech.

Resources Mentioned

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Pete Mockaitis
Ethel, welcome!

Ethel Mickey
Thank you. Happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am excited to chat with you. You had a very intriguing pitch. And I want to know, right at the beginning, why do some people seem to get opportunities effortlessly while others seem to do the right things but struggle to get ahead? What’s going on here, Ethel?

Ethel Mickey
Well, my argument in my new book that’s out, Networking to Nowhere, is that we really need to look at the ways in which people are networking, engaging in their relationships, both inside and outside their companies, and thinking about “How are opportunities flowing through relationships in ways that are often invisible but can create really unequal outcomes, specifically thinking about for women compared to men?”

Pete Mockaitis
How does that go down?

Ethel Mickey
Yeah, so I’ve become really frustrated by how much career advice aimed at women, essentially, boils down to them needing to do more. So they should network more, they should speak up more at the table, find more mentors, promote yourself more.

And so the puzzle for me, I really wanted to know whether women weren’t really doing enough or whether there was something else going on. So what I’ve done, I spent several months inside a software company doing research, and I saw that opportunities often travel through, like I said, these relationships that are largely invisible.

So who knows about a current job opportunity? Who gets recommended for that job? Who had someone willing to advocate for them? And I got to thinking, you know, “Maybe women don’t need to network more. Maybe we need to understand why the networking they’re already doing doesn’t produce the same opportunities.”

And as a woman myself, I recognized some of these dynamics in my own career. I could see how easy it can be to internalize this message that you just need to network harder, when the more important question may be whether you’re being included in the relationships that carry opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, the relationships that carry opportunity. That does seem like it could certainly be a missing key if you’re doing some networking stuff that doesn’t seem to be materializing into outcomes, results, opportunities that you’re after.

Could you give us a few examples just to paint the picture of what are we talking about in terms of these exchanges and these relationships where opportunity is flowing and others are missing out on?

Ethel Mickey
So I’m going to talk about a few people from my research. All of the names that I use are pseudonyms to protect their identities and maintain confidentiality. But let me talk to you about Heather. She’s a white woman. She’s been working in the legal department of this software company for about six months.

So she’s relatively new, she’s just starting out her career, she’s in her late 20s, and she does aspire to move up into management, but she realizes that she’ll probably have to leave the company, her current employer, in order to move up the ladder. And this we see is common practice in tech as well as other industries.

So when I asked her in our interview, “How do you approach networking?” she takes several minutes to rattle off all of the events that she regularly attends, the various professional groups she’s involved with, and she tells me that her idea of successful networking is to go to the event, make three connections, and start three conversations on LinkedIn afterwards.

So it’s this very kind of pragmatic, logical approach. She has a game plan and she sticks to it through all the events that she goes to. She also tells me that she volunteers, she’s on the board for a community nonprofit, and she views this as an extension of her networking because she’s meeting people in the local community.

And Heather is not alone. A lot of the women I talk to attend conferences, trade shows, seminars, meetups, and express this idea of the power of the potential of networking events, this kind of you-never-know attitude, that if you happen to have a chance encounter with the right stranger, that that person is going to propel their careers.

So, Heather, by all accounts, is following all of the conventional networking advice that were given, but she, at the same time, as we continued talking for over an hour, could not point to a single encounter at any of these events that led to a concrete opportunity for her.

So I want to compare Heather to Chris, who’s one of her colleagues at the same company. He works in the HR department. He’s in his 40s, also relatively new to the company. And he came to the firm after being laid off from his previous employer.

So he tells me he hasn’t had a real job interview in over 17 years. And I found this fascinating, “What do you mean you’ve been working in tech and you haven’t had an interview in 17 years?’

And so he tells me, for his current job, that he was hired through a Barstool interview. And so what does that mean? He said he asked his buddy who he knew that worked at the company to grab a drink with him. His friend not only coached him on the application, but also put in a good word with the hiring manager.

So Chris went through the formal route to apply for that job, but by the time he accepted the offer, the company had elevated the title and pay level of the original position. So we see here two different approaches to networking with two different outcomes.

And the point, I want to be clear, is the man isn’t doing anything wrong. The point is that she was working harder at networking, Heather, that is, but he was benefiting from relationships that already existed rather than trying to tap into these potential, maybe, relationships that you could meet at hypothetical events.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that makes sense. But I think there could be all sorts of corollaries in terms of how folks want to. It’s funny, people have mentioned, “Oh, you want to grow your podcast? Well, be a guest of the podcast. That’s what you got to do. Sure.” And so that is a winning approach, yes.

But it’s all about, “Well, how well does that podcast audience fit your podcast audience and how large that podcast audience?” Because you may very well be a guest on 50 podcasts and see very little benefit, versus you could be on one podcast and it’s just, like, quadruples listenership.

Or people will apply to 400 jobs on LinkedIn Easy Apply, and they say, “Oh, shucks! You know, the market is brutal. I applied to 400 jobs and saw nothing.” And others will, you know, have a dozen conversations and say, “Oh, cool. I got three interviews. All right, we’re cooking here.”

Ethel Mickey
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think when we’re talking about the most valuable connections that we have, it’s people with access to opportunities. And so even if people, women, men, are engaging in these strategies to try to edge out the competition and get ahead, if they’re located in these places, in their workplaces where they don’t have visibility, they don’t have access to folks that have the best information or the ability to put you on a high-status project, then all of your efforts are sort of moot.

And so understanding the ways in which your workplace is organized, where you fit in that workplace, and how to then kind of broker relationships across your immediate circle can be really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so tell us then, if going to the networking events and setting a goal and meeting three people and having a follow-up and adding them on LinkedIn is not the way, tell us, how do we do effective networking that brings about the opportunities?

Ethel Mickey
Yeah, so the networking, I find, that actually changes careers doesn’t really look like networking. It comes from these relationships that already exist. So we can think about, you know, reconnecting with former colleagues.

Former colleagues can speak to not only your personality but your performance. So how were you as a colleague? How did you manage deadlines? What were you like to work with? These are some of the most valuable connections that we can have, professionally speaking.

Volunteering for cross-functional work might not feel like networking. It actually might sound like a waste of time if you’re getting asked to do something that’s not part of your immediate job description.

But thinking about building relationships outside of your immediate circle, outside of your team, gaining that visibility, building relationships with people who you’re working alongside and might vouch for you down the road, I think, that can be a really useful strategy.

And the people in my research that do that kind of cross-functional work, it’s typically the men that I see doing this, are able to better position themselves for leadership when it comes time for a promotion, And I think also helping other people before asking for help.

And so thinking about investing in a relationship, not networking events. Investing in people and thinking about, you know, don’t wait till you need a job, don’t wait until you want the promotion, but stay in touch with with former coworkers. Cultivate relationships with people who have visibility across the organization and really don’t assume that great work speaks for itself.

So making sure people outside of your immediate manager or supervisor knows what you’re contributing. A lot of this, too, can happen through more informal gatherings. So I see in a lot of what I study that it’s a quick conversation over coffee. It’s grabbing lunch.

It’s going to a ball game after work where people are able to, kind of, more casually say, “Oh, this is what I’ve been working on. Here’s kind of a puzzle that I’m troubleshooting. What ideas do you have?”

And so if invitations to those kinds of informal gatherings aren’t coming your way, what are some ways to create your own opportunities to build relationships? So sending out invitations yourself, or organizing a lunch group, starting a cross-team discussion group, whether that’s in person or online.

So some of these are are ways that we can think about the right way to network, which, as you notice, I said nothing about events and conferences.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it’s intriguing because, in a way, I can, hey, I love going to events and conferences myself, and it’s a different feel, you know? I mean, you are meeting people and you are broadening your horizons.

But, in some ways, it’s a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder, to really get enough of a connection, a vibe, a shared understanding of another human that you encounter, even if you are cutting loose, you know? You’ve got a session, then you go to a dinner, and then there’s cocktails afterwards.

Even if you had a few good hours with folks, which is kind of as good as it gets, really, in my experience when it comes to relationship-building at conferences, it’s kind of hard for them to have a real sense of, “Boy, you know, Ethel is just awesome to work with. Boy, she is so sharp. She has a gift for this.”

Like, it’s hard to get to that point with people in those contexts. And that’s what I’m hearing, what I’m picking up from what you’re saying is, and that’s really what the impression that we need to leave folks with for opportunities to flow our way.

Ethel Mickey
Yeah, and I also enjoy conferences. I just got back from a really big one in New York City. And I see a lot of value in going there and exchanging ideas and presenting my work to an audience who ask really smart questions.

And so there’s a kind of engagement that can happen in these settings that is super valuable for us, professionally. But I will say I don’t approach conferences hoping to find the connection that will make or break my career.

And, you know, I’ve talked to people who are hiring at conferences. It didn’t really matter. They didn’t quite remember that five-minute conversation where maybe we exchanged business cards or connected on LinkedIn.

But I don’t want to devalue conferences altogether. To tell a story from this last conference I was at, there was someone who came up to me after I presented, and we had a very quick exchange, and they were very excited about the work I was doing, and there was some overlap thxre with our ideas.

And I said, “You know, follow up with an email to me and we can keep the conversation going.” And, you know, this person did follow up and wrote a really thoughtful email to me. It was clear they had read some of my research, which is like the biggest form of flattery, but they were asking smart questions that made me think differently.

And you know what? I’m going to remember this person now. And there was an opportunity that came up just recently, and I couldn’t do it. And I put this person’s name forward because they seemed like a good fit.

So there is a way to work the conference, but thinking about maybe the steps that happen afterwards or how thoughtfully you’re engaging with these kind of one-off chance encounters might be something to rethink.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, please, share with us your favorite moves you’ve heard of people doing in terms of really developing these relationships that make things happen for you.

Ethel Mickey
So I distinguish between two types of networking in my book. And the one that we’ve really been talking about I call strategic networking. And this is really doing it by the book. So everything we’ve been talking about, like the conferences and making sure you collect a LinkedIn contact after the conference, really thinking more of a quantity over quality approach.

But I want to distinguish that between what I call strategic socializing. And this is where folks, and I find that it’s typically men that do this. But strategic socializing is where you kind of blur the professional and personal relationship. So you’re thinking about building friendships with the people you work with, maintaining those friendships, socializing with them outside of normal work hours.

So some of the primary ways in tech that guys especially would be connecting and building relationships is through things like sports, whether that’s fantasy sports leagues, going to sports games, also video games.

They had video game leagues, they’d go to Marvel movies together, ski trips, golf outings, a lot of these things that kind of seemed what the women would actually describe it as a waste of time, like, “I don’t have time to do all of this, and I don’t want to hang out with my coworkers after work.” But the men would say, “I’ve met some really smart people that have opened up doors for me through these opportunities.”

So if we’re thinking about like the different types of networking, that’s sort of the categorization that I put forward and think about, you know, “How do we leverage some ties that we already have, reconnect with folks that maybe have gone dormant? And think about is there something we can do to connect on a personal level?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really interesting perspective – the perception of an activity as a waste of time versus not. Because, in a way, it’s very misleading because a networking brunch sounds so productively effective and important as a thing one should do, like, “Ooh, yes, yes, I’m looking to expand my network. And this is an event for this explicit purpose. This is a great match. Let me go.”

As opposed to playing video games together sounds like, you know, we’re just goofing around, and I guess, in one way, you are. But in another way, the extra relaxed, diffused nature of such activities, it makes it feel all the more like real friends, you know?

Ethel Mickey
Like, authentic.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking about, yeah, real friends versus deal friends, or friends of utility versus true friends. It’s, like, if you’re doing a thing together, it’s almost like part of our lizard brain is just like, “I must like this person. We are friends. We belong to the same tribe, community, posse, grouping. We are bonded by this thing more so than we were both at a networking brunch together.”

Ethel Mickey
Yeah, I think what you’re talking about, it’s like part of human nature. And there’s a whole wealth of social science research that shows that we gravitate towards people who we view as similar to ourselves.

So that could be shared interests, like, “Oh, you like golf? I like golf. You like video games? I like video games.” It could be identity-based. So when we walk into a space, you know, perhaps I’m seeking out other women, I’m seeking out people who I view as at my same age or career stage.

I’m a working mom. I love to connect with other working moms. And this is just part of how we are as people. We bond really quickly when we can swap stories, exchange experiences. It fosters this sense of ease pretty immediately, trust and communication.

So none of this is inherently bad. In industries like tech, where we see who holds the leadership positions and the power is drastically skewed towards one group, if the men are just gravitating towards other men, then we get this situation where all of the information that’s happening over these kind of informal golf outings or hitting up the bar after work just kind of circulates in the same circles.

And so women continue to be excluded and are left out of these interactions and they’re left out of the information loop.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, if anyone’s listening to this and they’re thinking, “Oh, my gosh, this is happening in my world,” tell us some of your favorite tactics, moves, events, invitations that you recommend folks proactively rock and roll.

Ethel Mickey
One thing I do caution women against is believing that they need to network exactly the way men do. Men’s networks often develop organically through workplace cultures that have historically centered men, as I’ve been talking about. And so simply copying these behaviors doesn’t necessarily produce the same results.

One of the biggest takeaways from my research is that women shouldn’t just try to network more. They should intentionally cultivate a community of strong ties. So I encourage people to think of building a career ecosystem rather than just a contact list.

And think about every relationship doesn’t have to do everything for you. I think we put a lot of pressure on finding a mentor that can, you know, solve our whole career and figure everything out for us.

But, you know, maybe you have one person in your ecosystem who’s a sounding board. Another might be a sponsor for you. Another might introduce you to people you want to collaborate with. Another might simply be the person that reminds you you’re not alone in your workplace.

And so together, these relationships, this collection of relationships, can create resilience for us. And if the informal networks don’t naturally include you, don’t network harder. Build your own circle of trust.

So we see that women absolutely benefit from building relationships across the company that I studied, including building relationships with influential men. But what my research also taught me is that having a strong community of other women provides something different, and that’s a reliable source of peer mentoring, honest feedback, and advocacy.

So that doesn’t replace your broader network, but it makes it much easier to navigate some of these dynamics that we’ve been talking about.

Pete Mockaitis
Within this ecosystem, can you lay out a few of these key roles you want to try to fill out?

Ethel Mickey
Sure. So, you know, I could talk a little bit about my own circle that I have built. And, you know, I have a group of women at different career stages that I regularly stay in contact with.

So we’re not talking about a lot of people here because you want the touch points to be more frequent. So there are folks that I have that are reviewing the work that I’m doing. They’re reading a research paper, they’re talking through an idea with me, and they’re really, like, my ideas person.

I have women at other career stages a little bit ahead of me who will write letters of recommendation and serve as a reference for me. They’ll open doors for me when they can.

And then there are other professional relationships I have that do, you know, kind of merge into friendships where it’s, like, “I need advice and you know me as a whole person outside of just the work I do. And can you advise me based on what you know about me?”

So we can kind of think about, you know, building this team, like a board of advisors, if you will, that each have their own different roles and different areas of expertise when it comes to supporting you.

Pete Mockaitis
Now when you say group and team and board of advisors, are they talking to and knowing and meeting each other, or rather it’s a collection of individuals that your relationship is with each of them individually?

Ethel Mickey
That’s a great question. And I hope I’m not throwing too many metaphors out there. It could be both. I have both. I have a group that I meet with kind of bi-weekly, and it’s a writing group, it’s a check-in group, it’s an accountability group, and we all know each other and we all support each other.

But then I certainly have other folks on my board of advisors, if you will, who aren’t part of that circle, but I’ve connected with them through other jobs or through other research teams. And we stay in touch and it’s more of a one-on-one relationship.

I think, in most cases for people, these relationships will be one-on-one. But we see that a lot of companies have affinity groups or ERGs, employee resource groups. So these might be ways to think about, “How do I build this kind of ecosystem within structures that are already in place?” in your company.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to know, do you have any favorite ways you like to reach out? We talked about mentors. And so some folks suggest, “Don’t come on so strongly,” like, “Will you be my mentor?” But rather, you know, ease into it, like, “Hey, I’d really value your input on this thing.” So how do you imagine making the approach, building these relationships and understandings?

Ethel Mickey
You know, maybe I’ll tell a story about someone else that I interviewed from the tech company, and he was an engineer. His name was Rohit, he’s an Indian man in his 40s, and he had a really successful trajectory pretty rapidly. So he got promoted, I believe, within just four months.

And so when I asked him, you know, “What do you credit to this rapid acceleration?” he talked a lot about these little projects that he would take on, often as favors, taking things off his boss’s plate. So he didn’t consider his boss a mentor yet but he was being very strategic about building personal relationships with high-level people.

And he was thinking about, you know, “How can I take something off of your plate, be useful to you, you get to know me, you get to see the kind of work I can do beyond my job description?” So he was building visibility, building connections, building a positive reputation as a helpful person.

And when he got promoted, his manager said, “I couldn’t think of a better person than you.” And not only did he get the promotion, but they built this relationship that was built… it eventually became built on reciprocity where they were exchanging information, they were leaning on each other to complete tasks and hit their deadline.

So that could be a way to think about maybe not something we think of as networking, but by going that sort of extra mile, it creates that visibility and those connections that can turn into something more.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like what you’re saying there with regard to the taking on little projects, doing favors, being proactively helpful. And you said the very thoughtful email message you got, in which that person had read your research meant a lot to you.

And I’m thinking about, I think, Tim Ferris had some tips in terms of, if you want someone to mentor you, like, take massive action on whatever they recommend, like, “Oh, hey, thanks for that book recommendation. I read the entire thing and here are my summary notes.”

And maybe that feels over the top but it could also send the message, “Oh, wow, when I share some advice, input, perspective with this person, they really run with it. This is sort of a good use of my time.”

And so I’d love to hear more about what are some of the moves in which you apply effort that dazzle and delight someone you’re trying to build a relationship with?

Ethel Mickey
You know, it’s interesting that we’re talking about mentorship because I actually think this is bleeding into sponsorship, and sponsorship can arguably be more effective or important, especially if we’re thinking about trying to network to climb ladders, right?

So there’s networking that we do if we’re looking for a new job and we’re thinking about “Who’s outside of our company? How do I know more people in the industry?” But I also write and think a lot about how networking is just part of the everyday work we do because work is so relational, especially in an industry like tech where work is structured around teams.

A lot of times, evaluations are done by peers. So we’re thinking about building relationships and reputations in our own companies to survive. And so when we’re thinking about sponsorship, it’s not just having someone guide you. It’s having someone who will say, “I know her and she’s excellent.”

And I find that women often do have mentors, but men are often more likely to have sponsors. And so, you’re asking for examples, like thinking about becoming known before you need something.

People remember generosity, they remember competence, and they remember reliability far longer than those one-off networking conversations. And I would encourage people to be really careful about what kinds of projects they’re taking on or what kind of extra work they’re doing.

So to give you some examples, there was one woman I interviewed who was really aspiring to become a VP, and by all accounts, she was entirely qualified for it. She had been at the company longer than almost anyone I had met.

She was a director. She had all of the credentials. And she was taking kind of the same approach to these little extra side projects, but the work she was doing was, like, really invisible.

She wanted to train new hires and create curriculum for them. And so what ended up happening was she was spending more time with very entry-level people, which she viewed as a waste of her time. And so I repeatedly heard women express disappointment over the lack of credit or lack of visibility that they needed to further advance.

Some women took on planning the company retreat, and that’s important, but it’s not going to be visible in the same way as pulling off a last-minute favor that your boss needs to hit a deadline that he’s going to report to the executive team.

So I do want to caution like what kind of extra work are we doing and being really thoughtful about it, but also ensuring that credit is being given to the work we do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s come up in a previous conversation about, you know, promotable work versus not.

Ethel Mickey
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And so you can be a super friendly, helpful team player who pitches in and assists with all kinds of things. And that is, hopefully, noticed and appreciated. But depending on the people and the personalities and what folks really value, it doesn’t get you anything but more remorse when they fire you, you know? It’s like, “Oh, I feel really bad firing them but I’m still going to fire them during the layoff season.”

Ethel Mickey
Well, I always say if you do that grunt work really well, you just get more grunt work, right? Because they’re like, “Oh, you’re so good at party planning, like, you should plan the next one.”

And it’s like, well, then you get into this cycle where you’re stuck and you’re not doing work that you find meaningful. It’s not getting you positioned to move your career in the way you want.

And, you know, I saw this a lot with women who were engineers and highly technical, and they kept getting pushed into more people management jobs and roles. And these weren’t necessarily jobs that they wanted or were trained to do, but they kept getting asked to, “Hey, will you will you manage this person? Will you mentor this person?”

And before they knew it, they were, you know, either a project manager, a product manager, and they were kind of looking around, like, “How did I get here? Like, I want to be a developer, I want to be an architect, I want to code things, and now I spend my day managing personalities.”

So we do have to be, yeah, mindful of the types of tasks that we’re being asked to do and what we agree to.

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

Ethel Mickey
So I think that I want it to be clear that understanding some of these dynamics that I’m talking about isn’t discouraging, and, particularly for women. I know your audience has a lot of women who are navigating careers, and I hope that the information and that my research can be liberating in the sense that, once you realize that careers are built through these trusted relationships rather than constant self-promotion, you can spend your time much more strategically.

And for leaders, those who are in a position to maybe serve as a sponsor or serve as a mentor, this can be a reminder to really think about and take a look at who’s getting included in those informal interactions. Who do you just kind of automatically gravitate towards? And maybe is there someone that’s been inadvertently pushed to the sidelines?

So thinking about who gets included in those interactions where trust and opportunity are built. So understanding how opportunities actually flow can allow us to invest our time differently and, hopefully, more effectively.

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

Ethel Mickey
So my favorite quote is from Grace Hopper, who is, or was, a trailblazing computer programmer, and she said that, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is we’ve always done it this way.”

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

Ethel Mickey
So I want to talk about Mark Granovetter’s “The Strength of Weak Ties.” And so folks in sociology, but also management, know about this research, which shows the value of our weak ties. These are those one-off connections that can often create new kinds of information.

This idea, if you talk to a friend of a friend, you might have access to different information than if you talk to your best friend or a close family member. You’re kind of expanding your network in those ways. And I bring that up because what’s fascinating is that my research found a little bit more of a nuanced picture.

So these weak ties might help you access information, but many of the jobs and promotions that I observed actually came through these trusted relationships that we’ve been talking about. That’s people who are willing to put their own reputation on the line by recommending someone.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Ethel Mickey
One of my favorite books is by a sociologist, Lauren Rivera, and it’s called Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs. And this is just an excellent, well-researched book that shows how hiring an elite industry.

She looks at banking, she looks at law firms. It’s often much more social than we admit. So it’s not just about credentials, it’s about, “Who is a good fit? Who is familiar to us?” We’ve talked a lot about who’s familiar and how that can create trust.

But when that’s used in hiring, it has profound implications for inequality. And my own work extends that conversation by asking, you know, “What happens after people get hired? So how do relationships inside workplaces shape who’s getting opportunities like promotions and recognition?”

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

Ethel Mickey
So this might seem kind of cheesy, but my calendar. You know, relationships don’t maintain themselves. I try to keep track of birthdays. I schedule reminders on my calendar to check in with people who matter to me, professionally, every few months.

So that board of advisors that I was talking about, I have calendar reminders to send them a note, see how they’re doing. And, you know, I also find voice notes remarkably effective at keeping in touch. They feel more personal than a text or an email, but it’s not as big of a lift as a phone call or hopping on Zoom.

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

Ethel Mickey
I’d say the goal isn’t to know more people, it’s to know people well enough that they’d confidently say, “You should hire her.”

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

Ethel Mickey
So my website is EthelMickey.com.

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

Ethel Mickey
Think less about expanding your network and think more about strengthening the one you already have. Don’t measure your network by how many people know you. Measure it by how many people have seen your work and would enthusiastically recommend you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Ethel, thank you.

Ethel Mickey
Thank you.

Sep 14

1180: How to Communicate Like a Pro in the Age of AI with Matt Abrahams

By Podcasts No Comments

Matt Abrahams explains the pitfalls of outsourcing your communication to AI—and how you can use it to enhance your communication instead.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why polish is no longer an advantage—and what is
  2. The many ways AI can hurt or help your communication skills
  3. How “Costco credibility” helps you win more

About Matt

Matt Abrahams is a leading expert in communication with decades of experience as an educator, author, podcast host, and coach. As a Lecturer in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, he teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting. He received Stanford GSB’s Alumni Teaching Award in recognition of his teaching students around the world. 

When he isn’t teaching, Matt is a sought-after keynote speaker and communication consultant. He has helped countless presenters improve and hone their communication, including some who have delivered IPO road shows as well as TED, World Economic Forum, and Nobel Prize presentations. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award-winning podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart The Podcast. 

His previous book Speaking Up without Freaking Out: 50 Techniques for Confident and Compelling Presenting has helped thousands of people manage speaking anxiety and present more confidently and authentically.

Resources Mentioned

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Pete Mockaitis
Matt, welcome back!

Matt Abrahams
I am thrilled to be back with you. We had such fun last time. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, thank you, and kudos on all your success in terms of the book and your podcast. It is just blowing up and you’re appearing in big arenas digitally, and so I just think that’s so cool. So kudos, the good word is getting out and you’re getting out some more good word with an updated edition of your book.

Matt Abrahams
Thank you. Yeah, it’s all exciting. The goal is to help people feel more comfortable and confident communicating and it’s always great to have conversations on the topic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so Think Faster, Talk Smarter. We’re coming out with a fresh edition and, apparently, this AI business is fairly consequential when it comes to communication.

Matt Abrahams
I’ve heard. I’ve heard. Do you find you use AI to help you in your communication?

Pete Mockaitis
Selectively. I use it a ton for research and I love that. I cannot tell how many times I’ve said, “Show me human randomized control trials on the impact of X on Y,” because I was like, “Get right to the real science of the stuff,” as opposed to, you know, what random influencers are saying. And then follow up questions.

So I think that I’ve been having too much fun using AI for research. And with communication, I do it pretty sparingly. It’s usually, like, I’m really kind of stuck, “I want to make this email. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to be kind of assertive.”

But the blunt answer is like, “Hey, this is our agreement. Read it,” you know? But, “What’s the nicer way to say that?” So I find it helps when I have some emotional hang-ups with my language to just be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s just the easy words to use. Yeah, go ahead and do that,” you know?

Matt Abrahams
And I think that’s a wise way to use it. Use it as a check on tone, as a check on vocabulary, again as a partner, not necessarily as the drafter and originator of the information.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I’ve heard that said very well. And we had Jeremy Utley, understandably.

Matt Abrahams
Ah, Jeremy is a good friend and a colleague. He’s awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, he really nailed it. I don’t remember if this is his words, or if this is from Brendan at The Leverage Class. We’ll put links to all of this stuff, to think of AI as a sparring partner instead of an oracle, or a teammate instead of an oracle. And that’s been very helpful.

Matt Abrahams
Yes, that’s exactly right. That is Jeremy’s language for sure. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So that’s handy. So that was one of the reasons you thought, “Hmm, a fresh edition of this book is warranted already,” because it’s not that old. But lay it on us, in terms of your view of AI and how it’s impacting communication and professionals.

Matt Abrahams
Right. So AI gives us an opportunity for all of us to be perfect and polished in our communication, and that’s a problem. That’s a problem because it brings to us what I’m calling an authenticity crisis, where we never truly know if what somebody says is their own thought process, is the result of that, or if it’s something AI created.

If you think about it, communication is the end stop of a whole bunch of thinking that happens. Critical thinking is important and critical in our communication. And if we can never truly know if what somebody is saying is theirs, then we’ve got an issue of authenticity.

So much so that companies are requiring in-person interviews again because we want to make sure no Cyrano de Bergerac is going on, people looking at the screen or getting advice in their ears. Universities like where I teach are bringing back blue books. You and I both remember putting pen in the blue books to answer questions because we’re just not sure.

So we need to, I believe, in a world of AI where polish and perfection are just a few keystrokes away, being able to demonstrate that we’re human and we have thought through our information is critical. And I believe, while AI can be incredibly helpful in being a sparring partner, in helping us think through our audiences, in testing our reflexes around certain types of communication, we want to make sure that we avoid just relying on it for all of our communication.

And there are things we can do to signal that we are actually human in our communication. And that’s really what this chapter, the new chapter about AI is all about.

Pete Mockaitis
And this signaling, I’m imagining, is more sophisticated than removing em dashes.

Matt Abrahams
It is a little bit more sophisticated. If you think about it, I believe that in a world of AI, the ability to speak in the moment, on your feet, and be responsive in an agile, appropriate way is the thing that will set those who are expert apart from those who aren’t.

And so there are things that we can do to signal that. So, for example, we can connect what we’re saying to our life experience. So I could say, “You know, when I think about the answer to your question, it reminds me of a time when…” and then we tell that story.

Or we could, in our communication, tell how we are feeling in the moment, like, “That question really makes me ponder or question this approach.” And it is through those little tells and reveals that we actually show that we are thinking in the moment, that this is us live processing.

And that makes a difference because it allows us not only to demonstrate proof of human and proof of thought, but it’s endearing and connective instead of just rote recitation that many people are relying on.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right. And I like that so much because that’s very simple, clear, and direct and the AI doesn’t tend to share with us its emotional reaction because it doesn’t have emotions, nor does it share its personal background history stories because it doesn’t have those either. And so that’s very simple right there.

And I think you really nailed it with regard to our live conversational exchanges, quite an impact in how folks judge us because if we look at any number of artifacts, whether that’s documents, reports, spreadsheets, whatever, it’s like before, I mean, we even see this in our business with the hiring for podcast production services.

Before we say, “Okay, well, we’ll ask all these questions, and if they can answer them, then they must be pretty smart.” And then now it’s like, “Well, we can’t do that anymore. It’s because they can just get those answers readily.” And not because the test has been published somewhere, but because ChatGPT can handle it, no problem.

And so you’re right, if the artifacts aren’t telling the story that I’m highly competent, then one of the few things we really have left is the live conversation in which we’re showing off how we think and what we can do.

Matt Abrahams
Absolutely. Communication is about connection and is demonstrating thought and empathy. And those are things that are difficult to do with AI. Again, AI has a place in our communication. I truly believe it can help us be better.

I talk about the empathy paradox. If I need to have a conversation with you, Pete, where I really want to make sure that my messaging aligns with your way of being in the world, I can work with AI in advance and have it help me think through ways of approaching you that might be different than I would normally approach other people. That’s great and that’s a useful tool.

However, if I just outsource all the most difficult communication I have to have, a bad performance review, or a breakup, or something of that nature, you know, empathy is a muscle. You need to train it. And if I just outsource it, I can have empathy atrophy. And that concerns me greatly, especially for younger generations who haven’t had to have those difficult conversations in the first place.

So we do need to take the time to really think through our communication, leverage AI appropriately, and then make sure we demonstrate that this is our own work. You and I grew up going to school where you had to show your work, and this is part of how we do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us some stories that illustrate what you’re seeing with regard to empathy atrophy, or the landscape of us human thinkers, empathizers, communicators, and how we’ve already been influenced or altered by AI?

Matt Abrahams
So let me start with a story that I actually start the new chapter in the book with. And this happened to a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine. Like me, he teaches communication at the university level.

And he was applying for a new job. And he had a bunch of stuff going on in his life that was difficult for him, and so he prepared with AI. So he created answers through AI for questions he knew he was going to get asked. He memorized them. He had them up on the screen when he did the the Zoom interview.

And in the midst, you know, he gave good answers to questions that were prepared. And then the follow-up or the surprising questions he completely floundered on. And it was because he hadn’t done the necessary thinking through process to help himself be who he really was. I mean, he was eminently qualified for that job. Absolutely. He just had not prepared properly.

And this is happening all over the place. An investor I talked to, worked for a VC firm, I coached for a while. And he was promoted because of how good he was as an analyst. He was an amazing analyst. He relied on AI almost extensively to help him with the communication, the slides he presented, the documents he created.

And he was promoted to an investing position where he actually had to engage in conversation, give difficult feedback. And he was woefully inadequate because those communication skills that his leaders, bosses saw in him were not truly his. And he was in a position that he did not do well.

And it took a long time for him to get to a place where he could deliver at the level both his bosses and he expected of himself. So these are the ways that we’re seeing this over-reliance on AI manifest itself. Not to mention the times where people just jump to it whenever there’s a slightly difficult conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so, Matt, give us some step-by-step goodies that you recommend in such a world.

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, so a few things I’d recommend that people do. One is, as you are crafting communication to leverage the skills that AI can bring to you, the help, use it, as you mentioned, as Jeremy likes to talk about, a sparring partner.

So, for example, if I know I’m going into a job interview, I can have it present to me questions that I try to answer. Not like the person I talked about, to memorize the answers, but just to get through the pattern recognition of answering questions and, “How do I start?” It’s an agility drill. Athletes do a tremendous number of agility drills. AI is a great tool for that.

If you’re going into a meeting with a bunch of different people, assign AI different personalities, the skeptic, the supporter, and talk through with the AI what you would do and how you would respond. Again, helping you with pattern recognition, helping you expand your repertoire of communication in the moment. These are ways to leverage the tool to help.

And then when you’re actually delivering the communication, lean into the things that make you human. Share your in-the-moment feelings. Stop worrying about saying “um” or “ah” too much. These are things that we do in our normal everyday communication that help us connect.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Okay. Well, so as we’re implementing these pieces, do you have any pro tips, do’s and don’ts along the path?

Matt Abrahams
So it takes time and it takes practice. I mean, the only way you get good at communication is three things: repetition, reflection, and feedback. So you need to get the reps. So if you want to figure out how do you incorporate AI into your communication or improve any communication, practice. Try it.

Do different things. Explore. AI can actually help you. You can say, “How can I use you to best help me in this circumstance?” Or, “How have others used you to help?” So you have to get the reps in. You then have to reflect.

One of the big challenges I have with my students is they’ll get information out from AI and they don’t take that extra step to reflect on the quality, the sourcing, or even, you know, “Is this helpful to me and what can I learn?”

There are ways, and I actually use AI in my classes, have my students use AI to help them. So they might, in preparing for a big presentation in my class, put in an outline and ask AI to make certain parts more concise or make parts more engaging. And then I force them to think about and talk about what the suggestions were.

Not that the suggestions the LLM created are correct, but, “What is it doing in this moment? And can you make a choice to lean into it or perhaps do something else?” So it is repetition, it is reflection, and then feedback. And you can use AI to help you give feedback. You can record things, upload it, and have it give you feedback.

But ask other people, as a result of whatever preparation you’ve used with AI to give you feedback, are you starting to sound like AI? A fascinating research recently released shows that our language choice, the words we’re choosing, is beginning to sound more and more like that that comes from AI. So we have to be careful.

If we all start using AI so much, we’re going to start to sound like AI and lose our way of expressing ourselves. The words we use reflect the thoughts we have and the way that we connect. So, to me, the answer to your question is repetition, reflection, and feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m intrigued by when you said, upload the recording and have AI provide feedback. As far as I know, I hope you’re about to blow my mind with something new, no pressure, as far as I know, they can transcribe that and then give you feedback on the words. But are we also getting feedback on the vocal pitch, intonation, the pacing, like the pausing?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, there are tools out there that leverage AI that do that. And some of the LLMs generally available have features as well. So, yes, it can talk about intonation, filler words, words of hesitation. And, again, this is all information that can be helpful to you, not to say that what the AI says is correct or perfect, but it’s information for you to reflect on and try and experiment.

A lot of successful communication is about A-B testing, trying different things out, getting feedback. I think real human feedback is essential, but also leveraging tools to help can be a good thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, no, I’m right with you with regard to the sparring partner idea and then the reps, and just as a tool for reflection as well. I remember I was working with someone who’s trying to improve on sales, and she was sending the whole transcript of the sales conversation, you know, through the AI and say, “Hey, I’d love your input on, like, what went well, what could have gone differently.”

And, again, none of us viewing it as the oracle of the almighty sales guru who has all sales knowledge, but rather by saying stuff back, you then have the opportunity to respond. And sometimes the response is, “No, you’re totally off base. That was exactly the right move.”

And then, ideally, you talk to an expert as well who will give you feedback in terms of it’s like, “Well, no, actually, the AI was on the money,” or, “No, it’s more nuanced than that,” you know, whatever. But just having something come back at you, just like hitting a ball against the wall, enables you to reflect on that and send the ball back to the wall. And in so doing, you’re getting better at hitting the ball with a bracket.

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, in all the work that I do, I get to travel all over the place, helping people and working on communication skills with people. You know, people define success of communication is survival, “I got through it. I’m done.” And they leave and they don’t think about, “How can I do it better? What did I learn?”

So this colleague who’s, you know, feeding things into a system, that’s a great way to start that process. But you then have to take it to the next step, and say, “Well, what could difference look like? How could I do this in a different way?” And that’s how we improve, and that’s how we all can get better. So that reflection step is really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. And tell us, what are the tools that will also give us feedback on our pitch and pacing in a presentation?

Matt Abrahams
Well, there are many of them that exist, and everybody has to find their own that works best for them. I mean, I don’t want this to be a sales pitch for my stuff, but one of my students, upon graduation, created an AI coach version of me.

So I tried to get ChatMatt as a URL, but you can actually talk to it and feed in vocal cues and clues, and it’ll give you feedback on things like pitch and rate, etc. So there are tools out there that do it that can help you. But, again, communication is not all just that. It’s the constellation of everything that you do, and the rehearsal, the practice, the thought process, that’s all what’s critical.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, that’s kind of you to not want to turn this into a pitch session, but feel free. So ChatMatt…

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, it’s a thing. Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
…will provide feedback on my pitch and my pacing in addition to my words.

Matt Abrahams
Absolutely. And it’ll give you feedback on lots of other things. If you’re struggling asking your boss for a raise or you have to raise an issue in a meeting that might be sensitive. My wife actually prefers to talk to my chat bot than to me. She said it actually listens better than I do.

When it was first coming out, we tested it with my two 20-something kids. Believe me, they put it to the test because we didn’t want it teaching bad things or inappropriate things. And with my younger son, the tool actually made him feel guilty.

He asked some silly question and it said, “I am a tool for serious communication development. When you’re ready to work on something serious, come back.” I thought that was lovely. We encoded guilt into it.

So it’s a tool that it’s been trained on my teachings, my work, and again, leveraging AI, I hope, for a good purpose. Literally, the way it’s designed, and again, this sounds too sales pitchy, but there’s a phone number you can call, like you’re calling a friend, and when you call, it will connect to the AI coach once you’ve signed up and everything.

And you can literally just have that, you say, “I’m about to walk into the room. I didn’t expect my boss’s boss to be in there. What’s something I can say that…?” you know? And it’ll respond in my voice. And so trying to use AI to help bring communication to the moment where people need that communication coaching.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good. Well, now you’ve got a fun term, you say old-school AI, which is authenticity and influence. You shared with us a couple quick tips in terms of making something all the more authentic and you. Anything else you’d add about influence in the age of AI?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, absolutely. So in a world of AI, what becomes really important is the emotional connection. When we go to persuade people, it is really important that we not only persuade on facts and figures, which are important, but we also think about the emotional connection and component of our communication.

And that is something that is uniquely human. And we have to think about, “What is that emotional connection? How can I address and make that move forward?” And so we have to be thinking about that aspect as well.

So when it comes to persuasion, you know, some of these key elements we’ve known for millennia. It’s facts and figures, logos, it’s emotion, pathos, and it’s your credibility, how you show up in the background that you have.

I like to distinguish when I teach credibility to my MBA students, there’s what I call career and college credibility and Costco credibility. And career and college credibility is what most of us think about. It’s what’s on our LinkedIn profiles, on our resumes, on our vitaes.

But Costco credibility sometimes is more important. When you go to Costco, they give you free samples of food. Why would they do that? It’s not a great business model unless, when you try the food, you like it and then you buy it. They’re showing you the value.

So career and college credibility, really important. And AI can help you perfect that. But your lived experience, the showing of your credibility, that’s where you can really lean into this emotional connection.

You know, it’s one thing to say, “I won the Sales Person of the Year Award five times in a row.” It’s another thing to say, “Here’s how my sales methodology worked in this particular session, and this is what helped me close the deal.” Very different way of communicating your credibility.

So it’s thinking about the emotion, it’s leaning into the lived experience of your credibility, that’s the old-school influence piece that really makes a difference. And when you partner that with some of the things AI can bring to you, can make a really powerful combination.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that a lot. The ‘show me’ instead of ‘telling me’ of it, and the Costco sample concept. As we speak, I’m looking at my sound absorbing panels in the studio. And I ordered them from Music City Acoustics. And the way they got me was I was just looking up some YouTube video, like, “Okay, so how do I think about echo in this room? And what do we really need to do with that?”

And they showed me this detailed use of a software program and a microphone to calibrate it, to figure out the decay rate of different frequencies, and I was like, “Okay, this guy is a super expert on room echo maybe more than anyone that I’ve ever encountered, and he’s, you know, less than an hour away in Nashville. We’re just going to go ahead and hire them.” And that was that.

Because you get sound panels from a lot of places, but these folks are going to optimally size and place these bad boys better than I could possibly understand.

Matt Abrahams
Absolutely. And that experience you had influenced you, and that makes a big difference. Showing, it really does help.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Matt, tell me, anything else we really should make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Matt Abrahams
The one thing that I heard the most when I was traveling all over the world is people said, “How do I deal with conflict that sparks in the moment, you know, all of a sudden, you’re having a conversation, and somebody gets upset?”

So I added a whole chapter in the applied section of the book, talking about this, how to manage conflict in the moment. And it really boils down to just some very straightforward, simple practices. First, you have to acknowledge what’s happening, right? You don’t have to agree, but you have to acknowledge, “I hear, Pete, that you’re bothered or upset or passionate about that issue.” Name it.

And then give somebody room to actually state their position. We often go into defense mode and we assume that anybody’s position is equal in valence and significance to ours. And so we have to really listen and understand, and maybe even explicitly say, “How important is this to you?”

I’ll give you an example. My wife and I learned from some friends of ours a long time ago to do this. If we have a potential disagreement, the very first thing we’ll do is we’ll say, “How important is this to you on a scale of one to ten?”

And if you have a partner that you can trust, this is a wonderful way to diffuse conflict. So let’s say my wife, we agree we’re going out to dinner, but she says she wants Mexican food and I would like Chinese food. Potential conflict.

But if she says, “Hey, Mexican food is a three,” and for me it’s a seven, then there’s no conflict. We make this assumption that our partner or partners that we’re struggling with see the world and have the same level of import to whatever it is we’re discussing that we do.

So you have to acknowledge, you have to listen, you have to ascertain priority, “How important is this?” And then you have to do the hard work of figuring out, “What are the ways that we can work together to consider this, knowing that it’s about collaboration and not about competition?”

And so if we can do these things, all of a sudden, in the moment, spontaneous conflict and challenge can be managed much more directly. And then you can rely on some of the tools and tips that I’ve shared with you and others that are earlier in the book around, “How do you structure your information?” You don’t just ramble and list things.

You might use a structure like, “What?” “So what?” “Now what?” “What?” “Here’s my position or my suggestion. So what? Why it’s important and how I think it’ll help us. And now what are my suggested next steps?”

So in any spontaneous speaking situation, you have to deal with mindset and you have to deal with messaging. So the mindset is acknowledging, listening, understanding the prioritization. And then the messaging is taking whatever solution collaboratively that you come up with and packaging it in a way so somebody else can say it.

So, sorry for the long-winded answer, but that’s also another important part of this update and, really, a significant part of how we get better at communicating.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that’s very helpful and needed, and that’s a nice move in terms of, “How important is this to you?” And, indeed, you would have to have some trust because, then, I guess you could win every time, like, “Nine. This is nine-level importance.”

Matt Abrahams
Well, with my kids, everything is a ten. Everything with my kids, that’s a ten. So you have to calibrate. You have to calibrate, but it makes a big difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. And I also want your take, in terms of in the heat of the moment conflict, I think those are very great. Maybe you’d say, top down perspectives in terms of the issues, and how important they are, and thinking about them logically and rationally and not jumping to conclusions about, “Oh, they’re really mad, and they must have it this way,” you know? So very wise.

I’m curious about some of the, maybe, bottom-up perspectives of just keeping your cool in that moment. Any pro tips there?

Matt Abrahams
Right. So it can be really hard. We can be emotionally triggered very easily around something that’s really important to us. There’s a whole bunch of other factors that could go into it. If we’re tired, if we’re coming out of, you know, the fourth meeting, this is the third thing that didn’t go well today.

So the ability, and this comes from mindfulness training, the ability to acknowledge, “This is how I am feeling,” gives you a little bit of space to do something about it. So rather than being absorbed by the feeling, say, “This is me feeling frustrated.” “This is me feeling really sad by what the person just said.”

By saying those words to yourself, you give yourself a little bit of psychological distance so that you can do something. It gives you just a little bit of space. Also, if you can do something physical, ground yourself, feel the ground through your feet or your shoes, touch something. That gets you out of that emotional state so you can make a more rational decision.

Now I am not saying that emotions are bad. They are very important. Emotions signal that something needs to be done. But, at the same time, when emotionally triggered, it can hamper or actually lead to bad communication. So we need to actually give ourselves a little space.

And maybe the best thing for me to do, Pete, is to say, “You know, that comment was hurtful. And I need to take just a little bit of time before you and I can come back and talk about this more.” Taking that time out for yourself will help you tremendously. It’ll help you get your thoughts ordered. It’ll help you sort through the emotion. And it, ultimately, will help you deliver a better message.

So, you’re right, emotions loom large and we have to be prepared for those, and we have to just name them and maybe do something physical to help give us just that little bit of space.

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

Matt Abrahams
“No matter where you go, there you are.” It really helps to remind me that the place I need to be at this moment is right here and with the person or people that I’m with, instead of the three other things that I could, should, would be doing. It makes me chuckle a little bit because it’s a little, you know, it makes a lot of intuitive sense, but it’s also very memorable.

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

Matt Abrahams
I’ve been talking a lot about language and framing. And so my favorite framing research is very simple. These researchers went to a group of people and said, “Imagine you have a terrible disease. We have a potential cure. It has a 67% failure rate.”

They then went to another group of people, just like the first group, and said, “Imagine you have a terrible disease. We have a potential cure. It has a 33% success rate. Would you like to take it?” I hope you agree, a 67% failure rate, a 33% success rate is the same thing. Yet dramatically, people take the treatment, the imagined treatment, when it is framed as something positive.

And I’m not saying this means you should always frame things positive. What I’m saying is we need to think about how we use language to help us. I’ll give you an example. I work with a lot of people pitching ideas. You can frame a pitch as a problem that you are solving or an opportunity that you’re going to capture. You get a choice.

And you have to think about, “Which way will work best for my audience?” And here’s where you can test it out on people, or you can use AI to help you think through your audience, “Are these the kind of people who are more problem-focused or more opportunity-focused?”

But the way we use words to help us move people in the direction we want to, really, is something I’ve been focusing on a lot lately.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is intriguing, and I actually want to dig into this a little bit more.

Matt Abrahams
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I would imagine, you tell me, since you’ve lived it with so many clients. My hunch is “the problem we’re solving” frame works better if the investors are folks who care passionately about that specific issue, like, “Hey, you know what, my child had that problem. Wow, yes, I am touched and moved and would love to be a part of solving that,” versus if they’re just, you know, money-hungry and return-maximizing investors, “Oh, yeah, let’s talk opportunity.” That’s my guess. What’s the reality, Matt?

Matt Abrahams
I think your intuition is probably right. If people have a connection to an issue, a problem, that framing it that way works. The breakdown that I, typically, see and talk about is, when you have people who you’re communicating with, who are deeply in the depths, the belly of whatever the topic is, people who are deeply financial, people who are highly technical, people who are very scientific, they tend to like to solve problems.

When they were in school, they did problem sets. They didn’t do opportunity sets. So framing it for the way they are in the world, their background, works. But when you’re in sales, when you’re in marketing, when you’re in senior leadership, often it’s about the opportunities that lie ahead.

So I think it’s multidimensional. I think part of it is people’s backgrounds and just how they are in the world, but also, their connection to the topic also makes sense to me. I just am not aware of any research that bears out your hypothesis, although, to me, intuitively, it makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Matt Abrahams
The book I’ll share with you, from my dear friend Patricia Ryan Madsen. If you don’t know Patricia, you should get to know her. She wrote a book called Improv Wisdom. Very short, little book. It’s about how you can apply improvisation principles to your life.

So it’s not about getting up on a stage and trying to be funny. It’s about, “In my everyday life, how can I leverage ideas from improv to help me be more responsive and to be more connected and communicate better?”

It’s a lovely book. I mean, this is a book that I return to and I think everybody should give it a read. It is fun and helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Matt Abrahams
I’ll give you an app because I use it all the time. And, again, I’m not trying to sell it, although, I have. It’s called Superhuman.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. I use it all the time.

Matt Abrahams
Yes, it is great. So you know the power of it. It allows me to be more efficient in my written communication. And I am at least 30-35% more effective in my emails, of which I get hundreds, and it helps me be smarter in the way I communicate. So that is probably the most useful tool that I have.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so funny, Matt, we usually have to keep the fast phase fast, but you’re just so intriguing here. So I love Superhuman because, one, it’s a blazingly fast interface. And it really kind of subtly trains you to use those shortcut keys.

Like, “Hey, these are here. Go ahead and use them. You know what? You’re right.” So it’s super responsive. The shortcuts, I’m grooving in with them. Oh, I like the split inboxes. It can identify a pitch roughly with AI so that they’re just in a separate tab of pitches. So I just go forward them to all of my team. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! But tell me, what are you finding transformational about Superhuman?

Matt Abrahams
So I, as a teacher, pretty regularly, send out very similar messages to people, and they have a feature called Snippet, and it allows you to, very quickly, send out similar emails. That’s the one that I rely on a lot as well.

And their built-in AI, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used the built-in AI to help me find like, “Who is that person I talked to in an email three years ago?” you know? And it used to be I’d scroll through my sent folder and try, I might misspell their name. So those are the two features beyond what you have said that I use.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I guess that semantic piece really can come in handy. It’s like, “I don’t remember the key word we said, but it was a guy trying to sell me a thing with a video a couple years ago.”

Matt Abrahams
Thing, yeah, three years ago.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like enough of those, you know, very vague descriptors chained together. It’s like, “Oh, I can work with that.” And then it’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s the one. Thank you.”

Matt Abrahams
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Matt Abrahams
This is going to sound funny, but I play darts. So I have an outdoor dartboard, and every day I try to go out. I’ve done martial arts for a long, long time, and as part of that, I took up archery and I found it very calming to focus.

Unfortunately, my wife won’t let me shoot arrows in my house, or around my house, and the archery range is a little farther away. And I found that throwing darts is helpful as well. It helps me be very present, it helps me focus, and I kind of have fun doing it. So that’s a habit that I’ve been enjoying recently.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks, they quote back to you often?

Matt Abrahams
The one that I think most recently and relates to the new edition of the book is, “You can prepare to be spontaneous.”

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

Matt Abrahams
I would point them, first and foremost, to FasterSmarter.io. FasterSmarter.io is the source of all of the resources and the show, Think Fast, Talk Smart that I host. I’m a big, big user of LinkedIn. Happy to have you jump on there. And we have a newsletter you can sign up for at either FasterSmarter.io or on LinkedIn, and would love to connect with people in any way.

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

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, so I challenge everybody to take a moment to work on and reflect on your communication. I’ll tell you a practice I do. Every night before I go to bed, in my journal, I will write one thing that went well in my communication that day and one thing that didn’t go as well.

And then every Sunday, I go back and review for three or four minutes, and I make a plan for the following week of how to improve something that I was not pleased with. And that act of doing that makes a huge difference. I’m not saying I’m a great communicator, but I’m a much better communicator because of that.

So I challenge everybody listening to spend some time just reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, either in your communication or others, and think about how you could change your communication for the better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Matt, thank you.

Matt Abrahams
Pete, thank you. This has been a wonderful pleasure to come back and chat with you. Thanks.

Sep 10

1179: Dr. Martin Seligman on How Agency Propels Flourishing

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The father of positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman, discusses how to harness the hidden engine of human progress: agency.

You’ll Learn

  1. The key concept that determines whether we give up
  2. The building blocks of human agency
  3. How to find your human edge in the age of AI

About Martin

Martin Seligman is the most influential psychologist in the world and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Positive Psychology Center. A former president of the American Psychological Association, he earned his BA in philosophy from Princeton and his PhD in psychology from Penn, and holds ten honorary doctorates. His research—from learned helplessness to learned optimism to prospection—has reshaped how science understands human well-being. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Flourish, Authentic Happiness, The Hope Circuit, and Tomorrowmind.

Resources Mentioned

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Pete Mockaitis
Marty, welcome!

Martin Seligman
Good to be here, Pete. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about agency and just to talk with you. You’re kind of a big deal, a legend, if you will. And I’d love it if you could kick us off, as the so-called father of positive psychology, is there a particularly fascinating and surprising discovery you’ve made about us humans in all your research and writing and speaking and work that just really sticks with you time and time again?

Martin Seligman
Yes, and it’s the basic theme of my new book. And the discovery is about, “When do we give up, not try? And when do we innovate?

I started out 60 years ago working on helplessness, and I asked, “When do people give up? And when are they resilient?” And what I found to start with is when people believe that nothing they do matters, that’s when they give up. The psychological state is the key to it.

And then I asked the question, “Well, when do we innovate? When do we not give up?” And what I found was that, when we believed we were agents, when we believed that we could do it, that was the key to success and to not giving up.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s the big differentiator is the belief. If the belief is, “Yeah, there’s nothing we can do. You know, it is what it is. I’m kind of stuck,” then, we’re not going to do anything, versus, if we believe we’re agents, we have the capability to change the trajectory of things.

Martin Seligman
Yes, so the beliefs you have at work and at home are crucial to whether or not you give up and become depressed, or whether or not you succeed and innovate. So it’s those beliefs and how to change them that are the key to success and failure.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m always intrigued when we discuss beliefs because there’s mountains of research, and you’ve done a lot of it, in showing that, “Hey, beliefs, they make a big impact in terms of how we perceive things, how we feel about things, what decisions we make, what behaviors we engage in or abstain from.”

And I guess I’d like to think and hope that my beliefs are accurate, real, true reflections of the world reality as it is. And yet, I’m sure I don’t have it perfect. So I guess I want to start there is how do you think about belief and truth?

Martin Seligman
Crucial question, Pete, and I’ve worked on it all my life and I’ve got a whole bunch of things to say about it. First, before modern psychology came across, people believed that it was the external circumstances that caused you either to give up or to innovate and succeed.

But let’s look at external circumstances and their relationship to belief. So take your 11-year-old son. He strikes out at the end of the little league game and the team loses. Well, the objective facts, the truth is that he struck out. Now what caused him to strike out? Was it a bad call by the umpire? Was it that he is not a good hitter and gave up? Was it because it started to rain that inning?

So reality is very often dissectable into what really is the cause, and that’s very hard to know. But it turns out, if you’re a depressive or a pessimist, someone who’s inclined to fail a lot, you will choose the most pessimistic possible causes.

On the other hand, if you’re an optimist, and we’ll talk about that at some length, you’re going to pick out the causes of that reality that are most likely to cause you to try and to innovate. So so-called reality leaves us a lot of room for what’s true behind it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. There are immovable facts in terms of what transpired, and yet the cause of them, we can point to all sorts of things, and whether we’re optimistic or pessimistic, we’ll reach different things. Well, now when you say cause, now I’m starting to think about this Robert Sapolsky determined biological stuff.

And not to go deep into that whole philosophical perspective, but I do want your hot take. In some ways, the view that our behavior is biologically predetermined feels like the opposite of agency. Is that how you see it?

Martin Seligman
Not at all. And let me give you an example at work that’ll help us think this through. Friday, noon, you open up your email and there is a message from your boss which says, “Come see me at 4:00 o’clock.” Okay, that’s the reality. Now, what is your reaction to it and how do you spend the next four hours? Now that’s not predetermined.

So let’s work this through. And this is a very important exercise for your viewers, by the way. It’s called, put it in perspective. And it’s how thought intervenes between the so-called reality, the 4:00 o’clock meeting you’re going to have with your boss, and what’s going to happen in the next four hours.

So the first thing we do, and what’s going to happen to you first, is you are going to make the most catastrophic interpretation possible, “Four o’clock, oh, my God, I’m going to be fired.” And, in fact, when we do this with people at work, we have people tell us at some length about the most catastrophic explanation, “I’m going to be fired.”

Okay, what’s the best thing that this meeting could be about? Well, we have people go into that and they’ll say, “The boss loved my memo and I’m going to get a raise.” Okay, tell me at length about that. Okay, now what’s the most realistic, likely outcome at 4:00 o’clock? “Well, it’s probably that the boss read my memo and she’s got some reservations about it but she wants to see what the economics of it are going to be.”

Now, the reason that’s important is it illustrates the reality here, what seems to be determined is you get this frightening memo, but how you spend the next four hours and how up for this meeting you are with your boss depends on your ability to make the most likely explanation and plan for it.

So it’s not helpful for people at work to say everything is determined, particularly because you’ve got a lot of choice in how you see so-called reality.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. And so then, if we are latching onto the most likely scenario, then I suppose our natural behaviors would be, “I’m going to get those numbers together so I will be prepared to answer those questions effectively.”

“And, in turn, the boss thinks I’m great and prepared and smart and a capable contributor, all kinds of good things,” as opposed to, “I was just worrying about things for four hours, in which case I am not so prepared for an economic discussion.”

Martin Seligman
Yeah, if, indeed, you spend the next four hours under the influence of the most catastrophic interpretation, you’re going to be depressed, defensive, and passive. To the extent you spend those four hours thinking about, “Ah, well, the boss probably has some reservations about my memo and is going to want to know its economic implications,” you’re going to plan for it. You’re going to be agentic.

So it’s absolutely crucial that you make the realistic interpretation. But, in fact, we’re bad weather animals, and the most catastrophic interpretation of bad events is built into us by the ice ages. And, indeed, a lot of my book is about the long history from the ice ages to AI and how it impacts agency and our belief that we can do it or our belief that we are helpless and we should just give up and let the world take over.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So take us a bit on this historical journey and unpack it for us, please.

Martin Seligman
Well, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my 60 years of writing and research. So what I’ve done most of my life is actually take people in the here and now, people at work, look at the way their optimism and pessimism functions and move from pessimism to optimism.

And what I had found, Pete, over many years, and the whole field of cognitive psychology found, is when we believe we’re not agentic, when we believe we can’t achieve what we want, that’s when we give up and that’s when we’re depressed.

But, most importantly, if you look at people who succeed at work, people who beat depression, people who are resilient, these are the people who believe, “I can accomplish my goals now, I can accomplish them in the future, and I’ve got a wide range of goals.”

And so where I was before I started to look at history, Pete, psychology had become pretty convinced that there was this important notion of agency in modern times, and that it had three components.

The first was efficacy, and that meant, “I can get my goal here and now.” The second component was optimism, which is, “I can achieve my goals far into the future.” And the third component was imagination. So that’s what was established as something you should have.

And so I began to ask the question seven years ago, “Is this true throughout all of human history? What is its basis? And what is the implications in the far future with AI and human agency?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s intriguing in many ways, just like that 4:00 o’clock scenario you presented us with. I suppose we could take AI or anything throughout history and have a very unpleasant or pleasant view of each of those dimensions.

Like with AI, it’s like, “Oh, it’s so cool. I’m empowered to do things that could be new and powerful and tremendous. And I could invent new things. I could automate things. I could explore domains I never could. I could have custom software. I can save money, make money, have boring things automated.”

Or, it’s like, “Oh, the robots are going to take all our jobs. We’re all screwed. We’re just going to have to crawl into a hole and try not to die.” I mean, I suppose I can have high or low efficacy, optimism, imagination with regard to about any environment or development in the world.

Martin Seligman
Well, before we do AI and ask the question, “Is AI doom or is it the best thing for human agency that we ever came across?” I want to do ancient history with you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Martin Seligman
It’s what really informs who we are. So let’s go back to 3,000 years ago. I looked at four different civilizations – the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Chinese, and the Persians. And if you look 3,000 years ago, there is no progress going on in any of those civilizations, 3,000 years ago.

And, very importantly, they don’t have the words for agency. They don’t have words that mean, “I can do it.” And, in fact, when they use those words, it’s the gods who are doing it. All four of them. Something miraculous happens in all four of those civilizations over the next 500 years. It’s called the Axial Age.

This is the age that the Buddha and the prophets and Confucius all come around, four different civilizations. And 500 years later, they’ve suddenly got the words for agency, they invent words that weren’t there before, which mean that human beings can do it.

And so, for example, if you take the Greeks, 2,500 years ago, they have no words for human beings achieving things. And then 500 years later, they’ve got words like akrasia, which means weakness of the will. So they can now distinguish between a person knowing what’s right and still failing to act. So they have notions about human action.

So what occurs in all four of these civilizations is we finally get the words for human agency. And when we get new words, that’s when we can act on those words. So, historically, going back as far as writing goes, when it starts, humans don’t have agency. The gods do it.

Five hundred years later, they’ve invented a vocabulary in four different civilizations, which says, “I can do it,” a vocabulary that’s optimistic about the future, in which it’s not the world crushing you, but it’s your will that makes a difference. So that’s the historical background.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating. And, well, Marty, my immediate question is, do we have all the words that we need in terms of your average professional? Are we missing a couple words? And can you give them to us?

Martin Seligman
Well, very important, in modern life, when we get new words, we create new realities. So let’s just take an example, Pete. In my own work, before about 1980, there was no word for burnout. So whenever a patient came to me with what I would now call burnout, I said, “Oh, you’re depressed.” Well, it turns out burnout is not the same thing as depression.

And once we get the word, once we get a new category, we invent new targeted therapy for the newly named condition. So, in modern life, when we get new words, and AI is providing us with not only a whole vocabulary of new words, but a search and accomplishment technology that takes us to places we’ve never been before.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So we’ve got the words and we have a whole word generating machine that does a lot. I guess what I’m curious about is are there, in your experience and research, some key words that most of us don’t know, but would be very much enriched and benefited by knowing?

Martin Seligman
That is really a good question, and the answer is I don’t know. Well, we have a new technology which is enabling us in many ways. You began 20 minutes ago with AI as doom. And having done ancient history with you, Pete, I now want to do the future and the present about AI.

And as you rehearsed, there are the doom-scrollers and the doomsayers have the day about AI. And I’m not one of them. As a positive psychologist, as the founder of positive psychology, when something comes along, I look for the very best it can do. So I’m someone who spends all day with AI looking for what it can do.

So let me go through a couple of things that have been enabled in my life that could not have happened without AI. So it’s very common among the doomsayers to say, “AI is dehumanizing us. It’s undermining how we write. It’s undermining our skills. And, worst of all, it’s undermining our emotional life.” Hmm, well.

Pete Mockaitis
Bummer!

Martin Seligman
I have more love in my life now because of AI. And let me tell you what happened. I have two four-year-old grandsons. I’m crazy about them. But I’m 80 years older than they are. They walk faster than I can run. And I can’t throw a football around with them.

I noticed, by the time they were about two, I was becoming invisible to them. And that hurt. So I went to Anthropic’s Claude, and I said, “Claude, help me write stories in which Max and Denny are the heroes.” So I started chapter one, “Max and Denny visit the haunted lighthouse at Stone Harbor.”

Well, I’m 150 chapters later, I’ve been doing this every day, and I’ve become visible to my grandchildren. They can’t wait to see me and to read to them. And so that’s an instance in which AI, and without it and without the illustrations that OpenAI, ChatGPT provides, I couldn’t have done this. So a lot more love in my life because of AI.

Creativity. Okay, this is the thing I work on all the time, innovation and creativity. And the question is, “Is AI creative?” Well, there are two views of creativity. It’s really, “Who is creative? And what’s the right number?”

So the usual view is the Michelangelo view, that creativity, Pete, resides in your head. And out of your brow, if you’re creative, comes Michelangelo’s David. The unit here is one genius. I actually think that’s pretty rare.

The usual form of creativity that I know is the Wright brothers, or McCartney and Lennon, in which you go back and forth between two people. And that’s the sense in which AI is hugely creative. And it’s actually what I do every day is going back and forth with AI about the edge of science where I am in psychology. So let me give you an example from my new book, Agency.

Chapter eight is about the Chinese. It’s about Chinese agency. Chapter nine is about the Hebrews. It’s about the difference between the Torah, the prophets and writings and the New Testament.

I send this off to my editor, and she says, “Hey, Marty, there’s no transition between chapter eight and chapter nine.” Now I’ve been staring at those two chapters for five years and I don’t see a transition. So I go to Claude, and I say, “Claude, write me a one paragraph transition between chapter eight and chapter nine.”

And what Claude then says is, for the transition, “At the very same time that the Chinese were worrying about the relationship of agency in the individual human being to the state, the Hebrews were concerned and wrestling with a much deeper question – the relationship of individual agency to God.” Holy cow!

Pete Mockaitis
Pretty good. Pretty good, Claude.

Martin Seligman
I’ve been staring at this for five years and it got it just right. So, actually, almost every day going back and forth with Claude Code and ChatGPT and working at the cutting edge of agency and trying to quantify this for black people and white people, women and men, modern China, there’s a new insight almost every day.

So the first thing I said, Pete, about AI is there’s more love in my life. The second is, in what I’ve been doing for 60 years, the cutting edge of psychological science, I have a collaborator that’s more creative than any collaborator I’ve ever had.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, right, with the back and forth process as opposed to expecting it to just be the oracle that shoots out, you know, perfection.

Martin Seligman
Absolutely. So being a pilot with AI, unlike being a passenger, is to be able to prompt back and forth as opposed to expect AI to tell you things. You have to ask the right questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I’m intrigued, and maybe AI is a tool for this end as well, if these associated beliefs are so transformational, it seems we would do well to hold the optimistic beliefs. What are your top suggestions if folks would like to nudge their beliefs, from more of a pessimistic zone to more of an optimistic zone, in doing that successfully?

Martin Seligman
Actually, the answer to that’s pretty well known, and I’ve spent much of the last 20 years answering that. And it’s basically to learn how to argue against your most pessimistic thoughts. So I’ll give you an example.

By the way, Pete, I’m a depressive and a pessimist, and so when I talk about tools that modify pessimism and depression, I not only try these things on myself when they work, but I do large scale studies of them. And I think it takes a pessimist to do serious work on optimism.

So let me tell you what happened at 4:00 in the morning, Pete. It’s about you. I wake up at 4:00 in the morning, six hours ago or eight hours ago, and I say, “Oh, my God, I’ve got my first interview about the Agency book in eight hours. I got nothing to say about this. I’m past my prime. Maybe I should just cancel the interview.” Okay?

Four in the morning, the most catastrophic thought. And, indeed, most people, when they wake up at 4:00 in the morning will be inundated with the most depressing, catastrophic, and pessimistic thoughts. So what did I do?

I opened my eyes and I started to argue against it. I said, “Well, wait a minute. I had a discussion with the New York Times yesterday right at the cutting edge. And I didn’t fail at that. And she really lit up and laughed at my jokes. And last week, I gave a 45-minute speech to 50 of my graduate students and 150 of their parents and kids, and I got a standing ovation.”

So I basically argued against my most catastrophic thoughts. And I argued realistically. So the most crucial tool we have for agency is, first, to recognize the most catastrophic thoughts we’re saying, and then to marshal realistic evidence against them, to treat our paralyzing, catastrophic thoughts as if they were said by an outside person whose mission in life was to make you miserable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s good. Thank you. Oh, Marty, there’s so much good stuff we could cover. Tell me, any critical takeaways you want to make sure people hear about agency before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Martin Seligman
Well, this is a show about succeeding at work, and that’s been one of my main concerns over my lifetime.

And the main takeaway here is something brand new I’m going to tell you and your listeners about. So I’ve been interested in, “What is it not only that people who succeed at work have? But what do human beings have that the machines don’t have and are unlikely to ever have?”

And that’s a really important question because that’s where our cutting edge is going to be at work. So let me tell you what we have and the machines don’t have, and how I got there. So two years ago, the Chinese created a virtual Seligman.

They fed it all my books, my speeches, and you can go to it and ask for advice. And I’ve looked at a thousand of the transcripts now, it gives very good advice. But I was concerned with hallucinating, “When does AI hallucinate?” And I found one hallucination in the thousand transcripts.

Some woman had written in to me, and I gave it to the machine. She had broken her back and she wanted advice, psychological advice about what she could do. So AI, “Ask Martin,” you can do it in Mandarin or in English, by the way, gave her a very good advice.

And in the middle of it, it hallucinated. It said that I had been a consultant to the Reeve Foundation. I’d never heard of the Reeve Foundation. Have you?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Martin Seligman
Christopher Reeves, Superman, broke his back and founded a foundation to teach optimism to people who broke their back. So notice, the hallucination here was right on track. It’s completely false.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, the kind of thing you might do, sure.

Martin Seligman
Very coherent with what I might have done. So I said to Claude, and then to Chad GPT, “Hey, what kind of a machine are you? Are you a coherence machine or a correspondence machine?” That is, when you say something, is it because it coheres with what you already believe or because what you’re saying corresponds to reality?

And Claude said, “Marty, that’s just the right question. I am strictly a coherence machine. I don’t have eyes or ears or hands. When I tell you something, it’s the next most logical, coherent thought I have.” Great Claude. And now I’m getting to what the machines can’t do.

I said, “Tell me the 20 most important discoveries in the history of human science, a good list of 20. How many of those, Claude, could you have done?” It said, “Marty, I could have done seven of them.” I said, “Really?” “Yeah. I could have done tectonic plates. I would have fitted Africa to South America. I could have done Mendelian genetics. That’s just algebra. I could have done Big Bang, which is just a fancy mathematics of explosion.”

I said, “Great, Claude. I’m going to give you eyes and ears and hands. Now, how many of the 20 could you have done?” “Hmm, I could have done 18.” “Eighteen?” “Yeah, I would have discovered the neuron that required microscopes. I have eyes now and staining. I have hands.” “Okay, what couldn’t you have done?”

And now we get to the punchline, “I couldn’t have done Darwin or Einstein because they leapt well beyond the data. Einstein didn’t tinker with Newtonian mechanics. He leapt beyond it.” It’s called abduction, the leap beyond the data. If you’re a coherence machine, what you can’t do is be creative in the sense of leaping beyond the data.

And that’s what human beings have. That’s what you need at work. This is what separates the machines from Pete and me. We can leap to the best explanation. And so the takeaway that I would most want your viewers to have is, when I think about my home life, when I think about work, it’s not the next logical step I want to think about. It’s the leap beyond it, “What’s really going on here? And what can I do that doesn’t become apparent?”

So I think our leap, Pete, what we’ve got is creativity. The technical term is abduction. And I think what we most need at work and in our home lives is better abduction.

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

Martin Seligman
I’m going back seven centuries to my favorite quote. It’s 1365 in Norwich, England, and there’s this woman, a female monk, she calls herself Julian. You have to be a male. Her real name is Juliana of Norwich. It’s the middle of the black plague.

And here’s what she says. She says, “He said not, ‘Thou shalt not be travaileth.’ He said not, ‘Thou shalt not be tempesteth.’ He said not, ‘Thou shalt not be diseased.’ He said, ‘Thou shalt not be overcome, and all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.’”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Martin Seligman
My favorite book of the last decade is Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell, and even the movie that was made out of it. But the book itself, Cloud Atlas, I strongly recommend.

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

Martin Seligman
I want you to challenge your most catastrophic beliefs. You’re going to get into trouble when you believe the most catastrophic things you’re saying to yourself. They are being said to you by an unconscious whose mission in life is to make you miserable. Challenge those catastrophic beliefs with realistic arguments against them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Marty, thank you.

Martin Seligman
Pete, pleasure.

Sep 03

1178: How to Stand Out and Get Hired in the AI-Powered Job Market with Emily Durham

By Podcasts No Comments

Emily Durham reveals the smarter approach to job-hunting.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why “medium is more” when it comes to networking
  2. The keys to opening the door for opportunities
  3. Why AI-generated resumes work against you

About Emily

Emily Durham, better known as Emily the Recruiter, is a recruiter turned career coach and content creator. On her popular social media platform and her podcast, Clock In, she gives real-world advice to help people thrive in their careers. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, BBC News, in the Globe and Mail, and more. She lives in Toronto.

Resources Mentioned

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Pete Mockaitis
Emily, welcome!

Emily Durham
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so jazzed to talk all things work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am jazzed to talk as well about how we clock in, which is a clever little twist.

Emily Durham
Why thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess, you know, clocking in and locking in. Okay, nice. So, boy, the universe of job hunting is full of myths, BS advice. I’d love it if you could give us, right at the top, any counterintuitive goodness that you think we all just need to know, set the record straight up front.

Emily Durham
Oh, I love that. We’re doing no BS right away. I think we need to dismantle the idea that more is more. So applying to more jobs does not necessarily yield more interviews. Reaching out to more people doesn’t necessarily yield really high-value mentoring relationships.

And I think in a world where the economy is rough, friends, we know this, we’re preaching to the choir. It’s easy for us to take advice online that tells us just to double our output, to double our results. And that really isn’t the most strategic way to go about these things.

So we definitely can get those better results and more interviews and get further ahead at work, but the idea that you got to do six times more isn’t always the best. Sometimes we just need to re-strategize, not double down on what’s not working.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So the more is more is false.

Emily Durham
False.

Pete Mockaitis
And that is not the right move. Well, then if more is not more, then what what is more?

Emily Durham
Yes, I wouldn’t say less is more, but let’s say medium is more. I’m fine with that. The idea that, for example, when you’re job-hunting, and you’ll hear this from people all the time, you scroll on TikTok, there it is, they’re telling you just to apply to more jobs.

But the reality is the challenge today isn’t that you need to apply to more jobs. And it’s not that you’re not applying to enough. It’s also not usually that your resume needs a total facelift. It’s often that our resumes aren’t getting opened at the same rate or in the same ways that they previously were.

So, for me, when I’m thinking about the right strategy to get noticed, yes, have a strong resume, yes, apply for great jobs, and use most of the time that you would have spent applying to those next two, three, four hundred jobs, and really over-index on strategic networking.

I’m talking, not reaching out to recruiters on LinkedIn, reach out to the people who are currently in the position that you want, people who are likely to have less inbound messages for those networking chats, going to small scale, like teeny tiny industry local events.

I’m, you know, a Toronto resident. We’ve got organizations like TechTO, Women in Tech Sales Toronto, where you’re able to network on a really small scale and build those meaningful relationships to get you those referrals.

And I know this sounds like a lot more work. It is, but if we just shift, you know, the four hours we’re going to spend a week job-hunting to it being three hours networking, one hour applying, usually that’s going to get you a little bit further ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, that makes sense to me. And I’ve even heard that more might not even be not more, but it could be, in fact, less. How’s that for a clear sentence? What I mean is if you apply to more places, you could actually, in the automated applicant tracking systems world, be doing yourself a disservice because they’re like, “Oh, they already applied here at Facebook or Amazon or whatever. So we’re just going to not pay attention to this one.”

Emily Durham
I do think there’s a lot of fear-mongering with how AI does and doesn’t influence the application process. Like, the reality is – how do I say this nicely? – and maybe I don’t have to.

People can profit off of, you know, making us very scared of how AI is influencing the applicant process. You’ll see people offering sketchy courses who’ve maybe never worked in careers or AI. So I think it’s always important to consider the source to an extent, of course, the more you apply for high-volume jobs, even if a person, you know.

When I was an active recruiter in tech, if I saw a candidate applying to five different jobs with different job descriptions, to me that reads, “You don’t know what you want, or you don’t know what your aligned skill set is.”

But from an AI perspective, it drives me crazy when I hear people say, “I need to AI-optimize my resume and apply to the right jobs on the right AI.”

Like, there is no way to know in a concrete manner how much a company is or isn’t leveraging AI in the top part of your funnel, so when you’ve just applied for a job. Every company is at a different stage, which is why I’m so big on the networking. The one thing we know for certain right now is people’s opinions still matter.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well said. Okay. Well, so your book, Clock In, can you tell us what’s the main idea, the big picture message here?

Emily Durham
Definitely. Clock In is an incredibly practical book. So think of it as a step-by-step guide to doing everything from figuring out why you want the job that you want, if you want that job, and most importantly, how to actually get there through the practical stuff like the resume writing, the LinkedIns, the networking, but also those more social skills, “How do you communicate and advocate for yourself while at times dealing with difficult people?” So it really takes you that full journey.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That sounds handy. Well, tell us, this job market, some would have you believe there are no jobs, we are in dire straits. You can apply to hundreds and you will hear nothing back. Others, I’ve seen get jobs real quick. What’s going on?

Emily Durham
Like, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that things are peachy. Like, I’m not going to be your uncle at the Thanksgiving table asking you why you’re still job-hunting.

The reality is the market is very hard. Job creation is not booming at the pace that has been projected. In fact, in many states and in many countries, it is flat or on a decline. But I think the messaging here is we need to control what we can control.

I, fundamentally, disagree with the fact that there are no jobs. There are less jobs. There are jobs that are not paying adequately, but there are some jobs available. Where I really like to kind of push people to think through is, number one, “Would a portfolio career be something that could be valuable for you?” Meaning, is balancing contract work, is being self employed, having side gigs, side hustles?

We’re seeing Gen Z pick up a lot of this. Something that can be beneficial, like, to your career overall. but there are jobs available. And I think it has to be a shift less of the what, like, “What jobs are there?” into the, “How do I get recognized for, yes, the more limited jobs, but jobs that do exist?”

And the people getting hired quickly are, oftentimes, especially right now, like, “Take a shot every time I say this,” or like, you know, “Go sip your coffee.” They’re the people who know someone who works at the company. Those are the people who are getting ahead quickly or have a built-in brand presence.

Maybe they post very actively on LinkedIn. They’re active in their community and they’re able to phone a friend and say, “Hey, I’m looking for a gig,” or, “Hey, I saw this job posting.” So that’s really the differentiator.

But I might underline is there are less opportunities that are as exciting and as sexy, and perks of some of these jobs have not been as appealing as they were in years prior, but things always level out because they always do, and we have to focus on what we can control, which is getting what we’re able to get.

Pete Mockaitis
That makes good sense, if I may, when you say it’ll level out, it always does. And I’m wondering, the AI tech bro hype masters would say, “No, no, this time, it’s completely different because the AI is fundamentally reshaping blah, blah, everything.” What’s your read on that in the recruiting world?

Emily Durham
So I think of this often because a lot of the headlines about a year ago were telling us that 98% of jobs are going to disappear with AI.

First thing I have to say is these are all predictions. I think sometimes we hear these predictions and we think that they are like Bible, that it is the truth and it’s 100% going to pan out that way. There’s no way to confirm or deny how much change and what that change is going to look like.

We know AI is reshaping work. It already is. We know that many roles are being eliminated, but we also know that, as many experts are predicting mass job loss are predicting even larger job creation.

And the relationship to AI is a complex and loaded one. I’m not saying that we need to be, “Rah! Rah! AI” in any capacity. But I do think we have seen in history so many waves of the workforce being revolutionized and many industries dying, but ultimately to give birth to other ones.

So I try to lean on the side of optimism until we have all of the information that we know new jobs will, in fact, be created. But we also know that a lot of organizations who’ve reported mass layoffs attributed to AI have not truly replaced full human jobs with AI.

What they’ve done is tried to cut costs to up AI investment, but they’re not truly replacing the roles. And I think that nuance can help us understand where we’re currently at in the cycle. We are not in a space right now where Susie’s job is gone because a robot is fully doing Susie’s job. Like, that is not the headline, I think, people need to be taking away.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And many folks who have done layoffs because of AI have hired them right back, it’s like, “Oopsies!” And well said with regard to we can’t take any prediction to the bank because, fundamentally, no human being knows what’s going to happen, even if they have a very compelling YouTube thumbnail and graphic and strong words with capital letters sometimes.

Emily Durham
Oh, with an underline and then it’s, “Do you want to save your job? Buy my AI-powered course.” And you know what? God bless them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. We got it. Okay. Well, so let’s get into some of the particulars of your approach, but could you first maybe give us a fun success story of someone who did just what you recommended and what happened for them?

Emily Durham
Oh, my gosh, can I give you the best success story ever, because it’s literally my mom. I share this all the time. I think this is, like, the coolest thing in the world. So my mom had worked at the same organization for 20 years. Like, she did the old-school, “I’m staying at this company forever.”

Ultimately, that company ended up selling, and her role got dissolved and she wasn’t ready to retire. So she truly was like, “Well, AI is here. I’m screwed. I’m just learning how to, like, canoodle with this. I’m not going to be able to bring this into the workforce. And who’s going to want to hire a woman in her late 50s?” To which I said, “A smart person is definitely going to want to hire someone with incredible experience.”

So we spent the time doing the table stakes stuff, you know, uploading the resume and making sure the LinkedIn was up to date. But, really, what we focused on was leveraging her previous connections. And I think that was like a mental unlock moment where my mom was like, “Well, I don’t know anyone. It was only the people I worked with.”

And I was like, “Yeah, girl, people who know you’re incredible.” So reaching out to those former connections, reaching out to people who were still with the company, happy clients she had were, contractually, that was a comfortable thing that she could do.

And really just having an honest and vulnerable conversation about where she was at, within seven days, which I will say is kind of bananas quick, she landed an incredible role, work from home, fully remote, doing the stuff that she loves in account management. So leaning into that network, even if you’re not proactively networking necessarily is game-changing.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And the vulnerability piece, I think, is pretty key. Because I’m imagining all kinds of folks that I’ve been a client of, and I just, like, generally, have positive thoughts about. I think about SERVPRO, the restored situation after some water damage and they were great.

And some of the specific folks there, if they called me out of the blue in six years, I’d say, “Oh, hey, Chandler, what’s up? Oh, okay, you need a job situation? Huh. All right. Well, I don’t know a ton about construction matters, but, yeah, let’s chat about it and see what I got in my LinkedIn, etc., you know?”

And I think I would be quite willing to do that and, in fact, I would feel a bit honored and flattered to be asked.

Emily Durham
One hundred percent. And I think this is where networking, like old-school networking tells us, which, in many ways, is still efficient and helpful, that you need to be having a chitchat with someone once a month and it’s formal and it’s structured. And that works at times.

But networking is also like running into someone at a housewarming party, hitting it off, and it’s just adding each other on LinkedIn for a rainy day. This is a bit of an aside, but there’s a wonderful gal who works in the main lobby of a gym that I go to.

She is incredible at what she does. She deals with very difficult people. I’ve walked by her dealing with big personalities. And a couple weeks ago, she reached out to me and was like, “I got to get out of here. Do you know anyone hiring in customer service?” And I was like, “Girl, for you, the freaking world.”

And I think there’s just a power in leading with that vulnerability, having an honest conversation. And we live in a world where more people than not have been impacted by layoffs. So if that is the situation you’re in or you’re worried about layoffs, you have the space to have that conversation with infinitely less stigma than maybe 10 years ago.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot. And I guess there’s a silver lining here with all the uncertainty and the spookiness that I would imagine, and maybe you’ve got hard numbers of outreach results to prove it.

But I would imagine there is a general generous receptivity upgrade amongst folks on the receiving end of such messages, like, “Yeah, I hear it’s rough and I’d like to help, but I don’t know how or where or whom. And here, this lands in my world. Cool. It looks like I can do something to make this spooky world brighter.”

Emily Durham
Yeah, I think there’s an uptick, and this is totally anecdotal, in the receptiveness of a warm lead or a warm connection. So a friend of a friend, or the barista you know at the coffee shop, or the mechanic that helps you with your car.

I really find, in a world where AI and technology has become so paramount and is the headline of almost everything that we’re reading, ultimately, people will always crave connection. And a personal recommendation means so much more in a world where everyone’s cold outreach on LinkedIn sounds the same because ChatGPT wrote it.

So I do think the cold outreach, we’re in a place where it is much more difficult to get a response, but that’s why that warm outreach, whether it’s local events, asking a friend of a friend.

I feel like I keep dropping these random antidotes of just people in my life, but it is that season. My little cousin had texted me and she’s like, “Do you know anyone who works in ‘Insert her industry here’?”

And I, at first was going to go through my LinkedIn and thought, “Why don’t I text my group chat with my girlfriends? Like, surely, someone knows someone.” And they did. So sometimes it’s just enough to reach out to a couple of pals and say, like, “Do any of your cousins work in aerospace engineering?” Like, quick question.

And sometimes the answer is yes. And it’s just finding these low-lift ways to network that don’t feel as structured and formal can help us get a little bit further.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. So that seems to be a huge theme is network, network, relationships, warm intros, make all the difference. So you said there was a bit of an unlock or a shift for your mom. Can you maybe speak directly to folks who, if they have some resistance here, what’s their resistance and how do you respond?

Emily Durham
Yeah, I find the resistance with networking often comes from us feeling like we’re burdening other people. And when you resist reaching out or asking for help, first of all, you are robbing yourself of an opportunity for your own career, which you already know as you’re listening to this.

But I think, sometimes, we forget how much it means to someone to be able to help. Because, especially if you’re reaching out to someone who’s, you know, at least mid-career or above, they, at some point, have ran into layoffs, career hardships, the need for support. They have been the person asking for help.

And you had even mentioned, like you’d be honored to get a phone call from Chandler. And I think we often see ourselves as bigger burdens than we are. People, by nature, I believe, want to help. And when you hold yourself back from that, you hold yourself back from opportunity.

And if the altruistic emotional side does not make you feel inclined to reach out and ask for these conversations, let me ask you this. When you cash that check at the bank, are you going to care that you had to reach out to 10 people on LinkedIn or are you just going to be happy that you got the referral?

My guess is you’re just going to be happy you got the referral. So we don’t need to like the things that we do. We don’t need to like the networking. We just need to do it. And sometimes that’s what it takes to get paid.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is a nice reminder that, and in other ways, you kind of have to pick your flavor of unpleasantness.

Emily Durham
Choose your hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Because you could not do that. Would you like more months unemployed? And maybe you would. Yeah, you’re having the time of your life and you got the savings to support it. Okay. Maybe you’re not in a rush. Okay. Well, rock and roll then.

Emily Durham
Definitely. And I think, too, is that’s why I recommend starting with the people you know, whether that’s in-person, friends, family, friends of friends, just to get that ball rolling and you’ll realize how you’re not a burden. You’re not going to be received like you’re inconveniencing people.

People also have the opportunity to say no or to ghost you if they don’t have the capacity. So people have autonomy to handle how much they do or don’t help. But I really believe, by default, especially people you already know, they want to help.

And, a little friendly reminder, if you’re reaching out to folks who are working at a company you want to work at, y’all do know there are referral bonuses, right?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. We do forget those.

Emily Durham
Yeah, like, you know, for some companies, especially if you’re in, like, the tech banking consulting space, and mid senior role is between $2,000 to $6,000 for the referrer. You’re literally saying, “You can get paid if I get hired.”

So I also think, like you need to remember there are websites like Fishbowl where there are entire job platforms where people are auctioning off referrals, where you can literally purchase someone to refer you to a company. It is financially in the benefit of the person working at the organization for you to get hired.

So just try to remember these little things. And if that doesn’t help, you need to act more than you think. Just do the damn thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Wait, I was unaware that you could purchase referrals into a company until this very minute. Thank you for that tidbit.

Emily Durham
We’ll write that one down.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I suppose, and I guess refer means something different in every context. Sometimes I think that there is an implied, you know, endorsement or vouching for a person.

And I guess different companies probably have their own things set up differently with regard to what they’re asking their employees to do when they provide a referral. It might be just literally just mean contact information, or it might be a strong kind of a endorsement. Is that accurate? I’m just speculating here.

Emily Durham
You are 100% spot on. So there’s really two kinds of referrals. One is a systems-based referral, which is where the company has a website or an internal form where you would simply say, “Hey, I know Susie. This is her LinkedIn. This is her contact information,” and maybe they’ll prompt for a couple of examples of times you’ve worked with Susie.

After that gets submitted, often Susie’s profile has a nice little star next to it that indicates it’s a referral. Now that’s great because, oftentimes, people run additional data and reports to make sure that referrers, or the referrals rather, get contacted quickly. They don’t sit in that black hole quite as much.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your profile is getting reviewed first or really getting reviewed at all. It just guarantees that when they look at your profile, there’s this nice little bonus. But a warm interpersonal endorsement, to your point, is that other end. And that’s what I want us shooting for.

This is where someone, yes, refers you in the system, but then sends a message over Slack, that says, “God, I worked with Susie. She was awesome. Met her at this event. You know, here’s bibbity bobbity boo. Absolutely adored her.” That’s where someone makes a personal connection and goes out of their way to find you in said system.

So although both are great, that real personal connection that really can be established quickly, it doesn’t need to be like a months’ long relationship, that’s the moneymaker.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m thinking about I had a buddy who went deep into, like, an interview process. I don’t know, maybe like interview seven or eight, and it sounded like, you know, he was going to get this thing, and it was exciting.

And then he did not, and it was disappointing and surprising. And they said, “Oh, hey, sorry. You know what? A referral came in kind of at the last minute.” And I was scratching my head a little bit, it was like, “Okay, I know referrals are useful, but, like, at this point, you’re seven, eight interviews in.”

Emily Durham
That’s an executive referral. That was someone’s SVP saying, “You need to hire my nephew.” A hundred percent.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Okay, so the word referral in this context is not a heads up, “But I think this person’s great,” but rather a, “This person from on high has been decreed to be very special.”

Emily Durham
Yes. And most companies, it really depends on your company culture. Most companies a referral is a suggestion. It’s just saying, “I endorse them. You do what you got to do. I’m not influencing your hiring decision.”

But I’ve worked at and worked with companies where a referral from a certain level and above, especially once you start touching C-suite, is like, “All right, well, someone better cook up a job because Billy is getting hired. So we got to find him a home.”

Pete Mockaitis
Which I find fascinating. As a naive idealist who would like organizations to be meritocratic and have people who are awesome at their jobs doing necessary work, it’s kind of a sad comment that this happens unnecessarily.

Emily Durham
Yep, and more than we think.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. But, all right, that’s reality. All right. Okay, so network, network, network, referrals make all the difference. Any top do’s or don’ts you recommend when we’re doing the outreach game?

Emily Durham
Okay, I’ll start with the don’ts because I love to lead with negative and then we’ll be nice and fluffy and positive. Please don’t have AI write all of your outreach. It is so painfully obvious, it comes off very cold, very insincere, and by virtue, you’re going to sound exactly like everyone else, which is the opposite of what we’re trying to go for.

Please don’t place high expectations of response rates, meaning for every 10 to 11 messages that you send, especially on a platform like LinkedIn, expect maybe one response.

And the more senior you get, the less likely you’re getting that response, which is why I’m a big believer in shoot directly for the level you’re looking for or the manager of what you’re looking for versus going to HR or an SVP or someone on that more senior chain of command, depending on where you’re at in your career.

You also don’t want to immediately ask for a favor. Like, please, oh, my goodness, do not reach out and say, “Hey, I need a referral,” or, “Hey, I need this.” No matter what your true intention is, your message needs to say, “Hey, I’ve been really interested in careers at…” insert their company.

“I saw…” insert a few things they listed on their profile, maybe how long they’ve been at said company, their academic background, “I’d love to hop on the phone with you for 20 minutes to learn more about your career if you have time. If not, I’m more than happy to message online whatever is best for you.”

The goal isn’t to ask for the favor. The goal is to get into contact with them. Ideally, in a 15- or 20-minute phone call where you have that honest conversation, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It’s not too honest.

You’re going to be asking two or three questions to them specific to their career, asking, like, “You know, what skills do you wish you had before you moved into this role? Any advice for someone looking to get into this company?” Really use this as a chance to learn from them. And then at the end you have a strong call to action.

And that’s where you say, “I saw this role posted. Do you know who’s running the hiring process?” You’re not asking for a referral, but you’re asking for a referral. They’re going to say, “Oh, yeah, it’s Susie from this team. I’ll connect you.”

Or, if they don’t know the person or perhaps they’re not hiring, you can plug in a different call to action. Maybe it’s, “Is there anyone in your network that you think would be worthwhile connecting me with? Is there anyone you’d be comfortable on your team that I chat with to learn more about this position?”

So you ask these questions that sound soft but get you the same result so you don’t come off as pushy. That’s my, like, big do. That’s the big flow I would follow.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. Don’t come across as pushy and I’m thinking about some of the research our guests have done with regard to people not wanting to say no when directly asked, specifically in sort of a live phone call context. So they might just say yes and then do nothing for you because that’s less socially uncomfortable for them.

But I’ve been in that position where, you know, I’ve let them know, it’s, like, “They will not interview anybody who has less than 3.5 GPA. So I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but, you know, you can close this door and go elsewhere and good luck.”

Emily Durham
Well, the honesty goes a long way, but I do think, if you’re getting the sense there’s apprehension on this phone call, send that follow-up email. All it is is a thank you. You reiterate the ask, and that’s really all you can do.

And, again, that’s why like the conversion of how many people you speak to, to how many referrals you get, is ultimately a small number. And that is unfortunate. And I wish there was a better way. There kind of isn’t, right? There isn’t necessarily a better way.

So just getting in the flow of, especially if you’re actively job-hunting, maybe it’s one call a week. Like, that might be enough for you to get in at the right company sooner than later.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, super. All right. So we’ve talked relationships, relationships, relationships a lot. Outside of that, what are the top things you recommend folks do and don’t, again?

Emily Durham
On your resume, please, for the love of goodness gracious, you need more data than you probably have. I can’t tell you how many resumes I see that are, like, either AI slop or so long-winded in their messaging that there is no data to actually communicate the outcome.

And with a lot of the organizations who are using AI to screen these resumes, they’re often pulling AI summaries of your resume in the system. So it’s a quick paragraph that lives next to your name that’s summarizing what you’re working on. And data, oftentimes, makes it in there. So it’s so important to have that data. From a human lens, you’re also able to scan that and see that quite easily on a resume.

I would also say, when it comes to the interview, in an age of everyone reading off of scripts that were written by little teeny weenie LLMs, I want you to be a person. I want you to bring a personality to the interview.

Small talk at the top of the interview. When they ask how you are, give them a little something-something, “I’m great. I just made this new baked beans recipe. I’m awesome. I just did…” insert a neutral thing you can chit-chat about to break the ice. That is something that so many people are missing right now. And it’s feedback I hear from companies I work with all the time.

And when it comes to actually being on the job, this might be like corny old-school advice, first couple months is dedicated to being a sponge. Learn as much as you can. The next couple of months is dedicated to fixing as much as you can.

And, really, the theme of being great in your career is going out of your way to be a kind person, set those boundaries so that you don’t burn out and operate with a lot of humility. Because I will say the companies that I work with, there is a concerning lack of humility, both on the job and in interviews.

Because we’re so supercharged by AI and having the answers, it’s really hard for us to admit when we need more training or when we don’t understand. And I think that is such a valuable superpower. It’s really about that human element. That was so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now you said scripts. Maybe I just need to stop being so surprised, but are you telling me candidates show up with an LLM-written script in their interview and proceed to read it from the paper verbatim?

Emily Durham
What if I said yes and, and the kids have taken it further? Okay, so you’ve got that. That’s like a thing that’s 100% happening.

Pete Mockaitis
This happens, like, semi often?

Emily Durham
Oh, I would argue, and this is data I’m making up, I would probably say depending on your industry, 40% of the time. This is like standard where they’ve got like their pre-prepped bullet points, they’re chatting with you on Zoom, eyes float to the right, we’re now reading a script.

What’s also happening is there are now tools available that plug into your Zoom or whatever platform you’re using, and it is using AI to transcribe the question the interviewer is asking while automatically generating the correct answer in front of you in a teleprompter. And that is happening at an astronomical rate as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, then on the flip side though, you’ll have interviewers who are AI avatar robots saying…

Emily Durham
Gives me the heebie jeebies.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Tell me about a time that you worked on a team in collab.” What? And so it really is like a dystopian “Black Mirror” like situation. Part of me thinks that the world will figure out, any week now that that’s way dumb and to stop doing it. But part of me thinks, “No, the short-sighted efficiency hounds might really double down on this.”

Emily Durham
There was a really interesting thought piece that came out on this, talking about how experts, and they cited no experts, so Lord knows who’s they’re referring to.

But basically how the hiring system is so broken because companies are over-indexing on the use of AI. In response, candidates are, too. Got to fight fire with fire. I’m never going to blame the candidates. But it has basically made first-round virtual interviews meaningless because it’s, essentially, like AI versus AI.

So what some companies have started to do is increase the amount of in-person interviews, because obviously that blocks out some of this. But they’ve also bumped up the amount of live case study or hackathon-style interviews, like circa Silicon Valley 2011.

So I do think we’re going to start to see a rise of like the live case study need to be in-person watch-you work interview, which is crazy because that’s so much more labor for free.

But I do think that bubble has got to pop at some point because it is, when people say an interview is a conversation between two liars, it’s now yes and they’re both like WALL-E the eye robot.

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

Emily Durham
I think that’s all the big stuff. The only thing I like to leave people with is the market is tough, but so are you. So please try to be mindful of what your for-you page looks like. Do not allow yourself to doom scroll into the belief that you are not capable of growing in your career today. You can. We just need to adjust the strategy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Emily Durham
My go-to favorite quote all the time, it’s a bit of a cheesy one, which is, “Be scared and do it anyways.” I’m a big believer in doing before you think. And sometimes you make mistakes and you learn quickly, and other times you stumble into great people or career paths that you didn’t expect.

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

Emily Durham
Another one that I actually just posted about a couple of days ago was specifically a study around how women, the curvier or less thin or “standard-size bodied” they are, the more time they spend at work trying to find outfits to conceal their bodies, and it actually occupies brain space at work.

So women will get up and get dressed and automatically have to think about how they can conceal a body to not be perceived as showing said body part or somehow being sexualized in the context of wearing something like a button-down top, as simple as that may be.

So I find that absolutely fascinating, how bodies, especially, you know, bodies that can be racialized or looked at through the lens of gender, are already things that are conditioned into people getting ready for work. It’s like labor that starts before the clock starts.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Emily Durham
I haven’t finished it, but I’m quite excited by it, is Strangers. It’s going viral right now, which is a sign that Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage. It’s by Belle Burden. I’m only like a third of the way through, but it is a memoir about her relationship, and it’s fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Emily Durham
I’m a Copilot girl. As much as I talk about AI, I do think that the reality is we need to learn how to leverage it to stay competitive with what we do. So I’m big on my Note-Taker function in Copilot so that I don’t have to draft any meeting summaries. I’m really anti-meeting summary right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Emily Durham
I would say doing my makeup. And as silly as that sounds, that is my, like, me time. And I wake up, make my coffee and do my makeup, and I feel like it resets my nervous system before I even check my phone. Like, those are the first two things I do. It’s coffee, makeup, and then I deal with the real world.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that seems to really connect and resonate, you hear folks quote it back to you often?

Emily Durham
I think it’s that all of our jobs, ultimately, are made up and we float on a rock. And all the career advice in the world is fabulous. But, at the end of the day, when all of our lives flash before our eyes, I surely hope 80% of it isn’t you at a cubicle. I hope it’s you with the people you love. So act accordingly.

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

Emily Durham
You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, as well as YouTube at Emily The Recruiter. And you can check out my book and my podcast, which are both titled “Clock In.” If you miss me, everything’s going to be hot pink, so surely I’ll be easy to find.

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

Emily Durham
I think this is the week where you talk to a stranger and ask a stranger for a favor. It could be as small as feedback on how you performed in a meeting or a question about their career. Let’s get used to building community again. And when you ask people for favors, you open up the door for them to do the same.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Emily, thank you.

Emily Durham
Thank you. 

Aug 27

1177: The Seven Shifts Needed to Drive Results and Create Connection with Dr. Michelle Johnston

By Podcasts No Comments

Dr. Michelle Johnston reveals the powerful shifts that help leaders reengage their teams.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to become the leader people want to follow
  2. The two words to cut from your vocabulary
  3. Three simple steps to reenergize any meeting

About Michelle

Dr. Michelle K. Johnston is a globally recognized executive coach, bestselling author, podcast host, and speaker who is challenging outdated leadership methods and championing connection-driven leadership. Her work has earned her recognition as an ABC News Remarkable Woman, a Top Ten Executive Coach, and a frequent contributor on NBC News. 

Michelle is also a distinguished professor at Loyola University New Orleans where she combines decades of research with real-world experience to challenge outdated leadership methods. Her message is timely in today’s AI-driven world: leaders that prioritize human connection will be the ones that attract, engage, and retain top talent while driving bottom-line results.

Resources Mentioned

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Pete Mockaitis
Michelle, welcome!

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Oh, thank you, Pete. Thank you so much for having me on this awesome podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, I’m excited to be chatting about some seismic shifts. Can you tell us, perhaps, an extra surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made while putting this stuff together?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Oh, wow. Okay. So I was just on a virtual call with an organization and their leadership team, and I told them that when I first started writing this book, The Seismic Shift in You of how to be a more connected leader, I thought that it was going to be all about connecting with everybody else.

And what I learned, at the end of the day, is you’re not good at connecting with anybody unless you first connect with yourself. And the most important who is you. So to be a connected leader, you really have to have strict boundaries and to be good to yourself. So that was the biggest seismic shift.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing. Could you share with us a cool story of a client who experienced such a seismic shift?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
So, a perfect example, I’d been working with this executive for a technology company for years, and he would talk about how, out in Silicon Valley, which is where he lives, they would wear, as a badge of honor, the nine-nine-six. And I said, “What is nine-nine-six?” And he said, “We work from 9:00 until 9:00, six days a week, West Coast time.” I said, “Okay.” I said, “How is that working for you?” He goes, “Well, that’s just what you do.”

And so in our coaching sessions, we’d look at his calendar because he was exhausted and totally, totally burned out, and he wouldn’t have time for lunch, or at least he didn’t think he had time. He wouldn’t take lunch. He rarely made time to have dinner with his family. He didn’t get up and exercise or stretch.

And so he was connecting with everybody who wanted to connect with him, but he wasn’t connecting with himself and safeguarding his time. So it took him going to the doctor and the doctor saying, “You are going to die within 10 years. I’m looking at your lab results, unless you get up and you’re good to yourself and you start exercising, you start having meals with actual people,” because his whole job was remote.

He said, “You’re giving away everything, your health, your energy, your relationships, everything that matters to you for what?” So that’s a huge seismic shift. The Seismic Shift in You is about this big mindset shift that if we continue down this long path, this wrong path, of addiction to our phone, addiction to just dopamine hits, addiction to saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” it’s going to come at such a great cost.

So we have to shift from the “What?” the “What?” the “What?” “Next,” “Next,” “Next,” “Next,” and we have to shift to the “Who?” And the most important who is you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Yeah, well, that is a powerful story. And not this is a health or biology podcast, but my curiosity wondered, “Hmm, if one works a lot and has bad labs, and the doctor says, ‘You’re going to die within a decade if you keep doing that,’ what is the mechanism by which that happens? Is it just cholesterol and heart disease or heart attack?” Or, how does that go down?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
So he did not share his lab results with me. I guess, as I’m his executive coach, we, instead, then looked at his calendar and we talked about, “What changes can you make?” And so the first exercise I did with him is, I said, “Write down the most important people in your life, both personally and professionally.” And so he wrote down.

I said, “Okay, now take out your phone and look at your calendar. Are those people on your calendar?” And he said, “No.” I said, “Well, then we have to start there, because everyone else is getting a piece of you except for the most important people in your life.”

So after the first shift from “What?” to “What?” to “What?” and making sure that you’re shifting to “Who are the most important people in your life? Making sure that you prioritize them. They’re on your calendar.”

So, for example, professionally, your direct reports. So a lot of leaders say, “Oh, my direct reports, I love them. They’re so important to me. “Oh, they’ll pick up the telephone and call. I don’t have a regular meeting with them.”

Well, that’s not connection. And that’s assuming that they’re going to pick up the telephone and call. So direct reports, your team are some of the most important people in your life, professionally, so make sure you have a rhythm for them on the calendar.

Your children, right? Your family members. I know when I launched this book last November, I had a big connection launch here in New Orleans. And so about 100, no, 220 leaders showed up and it was a party, it was really fantastic.

So my family was was there as well. My dad, my brother. And after I talked about how, “If your family is one of the most important people, one of the most important things in your life on your list, and your family is not on your calendar, then make sure it’s on your calendar.”

So we went to dinner afterwards, and my 81-year-old dad is like, “Oh, my gosh, Michelle, we need to take a family beach trip together.” We realized we weren’t even on each other’s calendars. We didn’t have a regular cadence.

So what I do when I work with organizations, I work with teams, I work with leaders is, besides having them write down the most important people and looking at their calendar and seeing if those most important people are on the calendar, we create what I call a connection cadence.

So we take the most important people and making sure that you are at the top of the list because the most important who is you. So you and then your most important relationships, making sure that they’re embedded on your calendar and you have a rhythm so that you see your direct reports once a month in a face-to-face meeting.

You go on a family beach trip once a year and it’s on the calendar. And so it’s figuring out who your priorities are, embedding them on your calendar, and making sure you have a cadence or a rhythm so that you have these recurring interactions. And that, to me, is the definition of true connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that seems like a fabulous practice, well worth doing. Okay. And you’ve actually outlined seven necessary shifts. Could you give us the rundown in terms of, “So this is the shift and here’s the one-to-two-sentence definition of what that means?”

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Yes, so I’ll begin with why in the world did I even write this book, right? So The Seismic Shift in You, We had talked about before we started recording, Marshall Goldsmith. And Marshall Goldsmith is my co-author.

And so he and I were in London at the Top Thinkers 50 Award. And Marshall was getting the Lifetime Achievement Award, and we’re listening to all the speakers talk about, “How in the world do we compete with AI? How is AI going to redefine us as leaders? What do we need to do differently? How do we show up differently?”

And every single one of these top speakers in the world said, “We have to lean in with our humanity. And we’re going to have to focus more on relationships when it comes to how technology is taking over the world.”

And so Marshall and I looked at each other, I said, “Well, if that’s not a seismic shift,” because that’s what I do for a living, right? I write about seismic shifts. I said, “This is the biggest seismic shift we’re going to see in our lifetime.” I said, “We need to write a book about it.”

So I ran, I’m a professor at Loyola, and so I ran back to New Orleans, I ran over the Atlantic Ocean, right, back to New Orleans, asked for a year sabbatical to write this book. And when I visited Marshall, and we really started thinking, “What are the seven seismic shifts that are necessary?” here’s what they are.

So number one, I just talked about, shift number one is shift your mindset. It’s shift your perspective so that you’re not waking up every day looking at your phone thinking, “What, what? What? What? What? What?”

Because what Marshall and I found is a lot of those leaders who just focus on transaction, transaction, the next job, the next title, more this, more that, if they just focus on that, they get to the very top of their organizations and then they tell us they’re empty. And they look around and they say, “Why did I do all of that? I don’t feel fulfilled.”

And so when they feel empty, it’s typically because they haven’t focused on what really is meaningful, which are the relationships. So that first shift is from what to who, focus on relationships.

The second shift is in your priorities. Show me your calendar and I’ll show you your priorities. And it might make you really uncomfortable because the most important people in your life are not on your calendar. And you’re not on your calendar.

So that shift three is making sure that you embed those relationships in your calendar. So that when you show me your calendar, you’re like, “Look, the most important relationships, my team, my direct reports, my boss, my family, my friends, all of the people professionally and personally are on my calendar in a rhythm,” then you know that you’ve shifted your calendar.

And then that brings us to the fourth shift, which is shift your meetings. The way that we’re running meetings now, even when we’re in an actual physical office, most likely you’re on a virtual meeting and we’re finding that you end up a Zoom zombie at the end of the day. You’re totally empty.

You’re like, “Wait, but I had eight meetings today with people, why do I feel like a zombie? Why do I feel so empty?” because we are conducting these meetings like we’re in person, but we’re not in person. We’re just talking at people and we’re not creating intentional ways to connect.

So that fourth shift in meetings is I give you advice in the book of what you can do when you’re running your meetings, your virtual meetings, to build more connection so that people walk away and say, “I not only want to put my camera on, but I want to participate. I not only want to participate, but I really feel good about this team I’m working with,” and then you’re going to do a better job.

And so then the fifth shift is shift your conversations. What we’re finding is people are just, they’re tired of being talked at. They’re being talked at, talked at, talked at. We need to figure out how to lean in and have delicate conversations, have real conversations. “To be clear is to be kind.” That’s one of my favorite quotes from Brene Brown.

And one of the guys, you probably know him, Pete, Michael Bungay Stainier. And he wrote a book called How to Work with Almost Anybody. And I’m asking him, “So what’s the key? How do you work with almost anybody?” He said, “You need to begin every relationship you have, every project you have, with a keystone conversation.” I said, “What’s a keystone conversation?”

He said, “Well, you got to talk about, ‘What are you good at? What does success look like for us on this project or in this relationship? What are we going to do when conflict arises? How will I make sure that I don’t show up as my worst?’” He said, “That’s a keystone conversation.” So we talk about it in the book. We’re not leaning in as much as we need to as humans, having substantial or delicate keystone conversations.

The sixth shift is shift your language. Because each human is different, we tend to use words that erode connection, like, “He’s on the kill list. Put him on the kill list,” or, “You did a really great job, Pete, moderating this podcast, but…” So words like “but,” words like “kill,” words like “stupid,” words like, “I just need five minutes of your time,” or, “Don’t do that. That’s never going to work.”

These sorts of words that we choose, they create this reality that does not promote connection. So I talk about the words to use, rather than saying, “Pete, you did such a great hosting this podcast, but…” Say, “Pete, you did such a great job hosting this podcast. And I’m going to make recommendations of some of my other colleagues who would love to be on. They would be wonderful guests.”

So no “but” use an “and.” Rather than, “That’s never going to work,” or, “No,” say, “Next time, why don’t we look at other possibilities?” So it’s being really intentional with your language.

And then the final seventh shift is shift your energy because, as you know, hosting a podcast, you see people come on all the time, and the best guests have the best energy. So it’s being really aware of your energy and what you bring into each conversation, because even if we’re 5,000 miles apart virtually, energy is contagious.

And so people will turn off their camera and they’ll start multitasking and bring out their phone if the energy is not there and they think it’s a waste of time. So those are the seven seismic shifts to create better connection for better results.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, kudos. Yeah, nice little marathon there, done succinctly. And I hear the flow in terms of, piece by piece, it feels pretty sequential or chronological because, like, you can’t bring the language, the energy, the language, the conversations, the meetings until we’ve got the right people on the calendar in the meetings, you know, in terms of like I’m seeing how that unfolds.

And so, as you lay it out there, it feels very tidy and sensible, and I go, “Yes, that does seem like an optimal means by which we could have some good things flowing in terms of life and purpose and meaning and the humans in it.” What gets in the way?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
What gets in the way is when we just are reacting. When we wake up every day and we’re not intentional. We’re not intentional with making sure that our most important relationships are on our calendar, when we’re not intentional with our health, when we’re not intentional with our energies, with the energy that we bring.

When we’re not intentional with how we run meetings, when you just show up and you react and you’re like an ape, you know, what is it called? You’re in a pinball machine and you’re just bouncing all over the place. That’s what’s not effective.

And so we can’t keep doing what we’ve already done because it’s not going to be effective in this new work. So work is no longer a noun. It’s not necessarily a place we go. It actually is a verb. It’s how we show up, how we interact, how we connect. And we, as leaders, must be much more intentional about how we show up.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d be curious to go a little bit deeper into language and energy. I saw Sam Horn was one of your endorsers on your book, and I believe she had some fun turns of phrase, “words to use” or “words to choose” and “words to lose.” In your experience, what are some of the key words you love to choose and the key words you’d love to lose?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Yes, Sam was on my podcast as well, and I highlight her in the book.

I love how she talks about how important our language is and how our language creates our reality. And the words that we use sometimes, really, it kills our connection with somebody else.

If we’re a “no person,” right, if we’re a “never,” if we’re a “don’t,” that’s all so negative. And leaders, we need to establish and set a tone of possibility and inspire and set a vision. And so we really have to be a bit more positive in the words that we use.

So one of the things that she says is when you use the word just. So if I were to say, “Pete, I just need five minutes of your time,” which is what I would say before I worked with Sam. I thought “just” was fine, “I just need a minute.” “I’m just this,” “I’m just that.” She said that diminishes and that minimizes.

Another thing that you don’t want to do, and you’re going to love this. So I’m a professor at Loyola, and during our last election, I ran over, I had two hours, and I ran down to the Superdome to vote.

And I teach at 6:20 every Monday night, my MBA class. And I was like, “Well, I’ll play. I have two hours.” Well, I didn’t realize, I didn’t expect that it would take two hours. And so I was late to class.

And so class started at 6:20. At 6:40, I’m running into the classroom and I said, “I am so sorry. I’m so sorry I’m late. I’m sorry to keep you all waiting,” thinking that was the right thing to do because I did keep them waiting, and I was late.

And one of my MBA students, a female, actually got up, it was presentation night, and she made a presentation, and she was talking about language that gives away our power. And she said, “Dr. Johnston, you didn’t have to say, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Instead, say, ‘Thank you so much for waiting for me. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for understanding. The line was wrapped around twice around the Superdome. Thank you.’”

She said, “Rather than diminishing your power,” she said, “that sets you up for success.” So rather than saying “just,” rather than saying “but,” rather than saying “no,” “never,” and “I’m sorry,” you want to choose language that escalates and that elevates connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I hear that. And the “just,” it doesn’t seem to provide any benefits.

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Correct. It’s a filler word and it diminishes, it minimizes. You’re like, “Well, why do you just need five minutes of my time, Michelle? Am I not worth more of your time?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah. Or, I’m thinking, “You just need five minutes of my time?” It’s like, “Do you believe that five minutes of my time is not something valuable?” So it’s diminished with a “just.”

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Right, exactly. Exactly. Totally. That’s exactly right. And I never thought of it like that. I never thought that saying “I’m sorry” was a negative. I never thought using “just”… Do you know who really taught me about “but” and not to use the word “but” is Marshall Goldsmith.

So when I was being vetted for the 100 Coaches, I flew out to La Jolla, which is where he lived before moving to Nashville. And it was in the middle of various strains of COVID. And so we walked along the Pacific Ocean, and he just wanted to get to know me. And I just said the word “just.” He wanted to get to know me.

And so he first asked, “Well, tell me about yourself.” So I began with my professional accomplishments. I’ve been at Loyola for over 25 years. I’m a full professor. At that point, I had just finished my first book. And so I was talking about my professional accomplishments.

And he said, “Oh, well done.” He said, “Personally?” I said, “Personally,” I said, “But, personally, God, I didn’t think that I would be a single mom.” And he stopped me in his tracks, in my tracks, and he did this thing that he does to all of his clients. And he goes, “Nah, nah, nah.” And he actually charges his clients $10 anytime they use the word “no” or “but.”

He did not charge me. Instead, he stopped me in my tracks, and he went, “Nah, nah, nah.” I said, “I thought I was just being honest.” Again, I just said “just,” “I thought I was being honest. That’s why I shared that.” He goes, “Try again. And there’s no reason for you to use the word ‘but.’ You’ve had all of these accomplishments and you’re a single mom. And you’re doing the best you can. So let’s try that again.”

So I had to go through it again, “Professionally I’ve done all these things and I’m a single mom. I’ve got this 20-year-old. She was about to go to the University of Georgia, and I’m so proud of her.”

He said the language you use shapes your reality and it affects how others feel about you. Don’t play the victim, “Oh, you know, I never thought I’d be a single mom.” He’s like, “Look, you’re raising a great kid.” So changing that word from “but” to “and” is something that is so important.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m right with you there. I’m also quite the advocate for losing the word “obviously.”

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Oh, that’s a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
It doesn’t give you anything good. It might be neutral and it might be quite negative. And I read “obviously” as, “If you didn’t know this, you’re an idiot.” So it’s like, “Oh, it’s only hostile,” or people just disregard it entirely.

And so you might come away with a zero, you might come away with a negative, but you’re not going to come away with a positive, like, “Ooh, that person is so smart. This is obvious to them. Wow!” That never happens. Okay.

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Great addition. Great addition to the list. You’re right, “obviously” is not a positive addition to any sentence. It’s not. Well done.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear about energy. How do we shift it?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
So I think a lot of leaders are burned out. That’s what I’m hearing, and, particularly, when they’re in charge of meeting after meeting after meeting. And so one of the ways that I tell them to shift their energy is if they’re feeling, at the end of the day, completely wiped out having to run all the meetings, “Why don’t you share the responsibility of running these meetings because that’s a great opportunity to develop your people?”

So, for example, if you meet with your team for a virtual meeting every Monday from 2:00 until 3:00, why don’t you, as the leader of the team, take the first Monday of the month so that you can set the vision, you can set the priorities, share the agenda and just kind of the the cadence of how the meeting is going to run?

And then maybe the second Monday you ask somebody else on your team to run it, and then they can be in charge of the agenda and the priorities. And that’s a way to develop your people. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is begin with a connection question. So, typically, if you hop on a call and you just start talking at people, the energy goes down because you didn’t give them any chance to be a part of the conversation. You’re just talking at people, and that’s when people switch off their cameras and start multitasking.

So in order to keep the energy high, people want to be seen. To me, the definition of connection is five things. Connection is, “Are you seeing your people, making sure that they feel seen, heard, valued, respected, and appreciated?” You, typically, can hit on all five of those cylinders just by beginning with a connection question.

So in your weekly team meetings, just say, “Hey, I’m interested. And how are you all doing? On a scale of one to 10. Let’s go around.” Pete, on a scale of one to 10, how are you doing personally? How is your day going?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m doing a 9.3, Michelle. Thank you.

Dr. Michelle Johnston
A 9.3. Bravo! And you don’t have to go any deeper. I’m not advocating that any leader becomes anybody’s psychiatrist or therapist. I’m not advocating for oversharing at all. It’s just begin some sort of question that shows that, “Hey, I want to know how you’re doing.”

Especially, because in virtual, it’s hard to do that. You don’t have the coffee, you don’t have the water cooler, you’re not walking to the meeting together. You’re just, all of a sudden, popping into this virtual room. So just say, “Let’s go around.”

And that’s a way that your team feels that they’re a part of it. And then if you have a really big team, say you’ve got 50 people, 100 people, one of the ways to promote more energy in these meetings is use the breakout room. Do you use breakout rooms? I try to use them. I love them.

So whenever I’m teaching online, I’ll say, “Okay, here’s the topic. We’re talking about creativity and how to be innovative and share ideas. I’m going to put you all into breakout rooms of three people. I’m going to give you 10 minutes and I want you to generate as many ideas as you can of how to solve the housing crisis on campus,” say, if I’m working with students.

And so that gives them a way to actually share their opinion in a smaller group. It increases and improves their energy, right, because they actually have to participate. And then we come back into the big call, and then there’s a spokesperson and we do shout-outs, right?

So the goal is, in order to increase energy on these virtual calls, is you really want to be intentional with connection. You want to ask connection exercises. You want to put people in smaller breakout rooms where they can speak, their voices are heard.

And then, at the very end, one of the things that you can do is end your meetings with a shout out, like, “Who needs to be shouted out today?” or, “Who needs a shout out?” or , “What sort of gratitude or appreciation?”

We’re just not really taking time to celebrate wins, to celebrate, to show appreciation, to share gratitude. And if we, I believe that if we keep showing up more intentionally and trying to build more ways to connect with each other as humans, then the energy is going to be better in your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, Michelle, tell us, any top do’s and don’ts you want to make sure we lock in before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
I would strongly encourage you on these virtual calls to ask for people to turn their camera on and turn their phones off and try to be present. That’s definitely a do. You want to model the way, right? You want to ask or share your expectations of what you have for your people.

You want to recognize that if you’re having a bad day and your energy isn’t that good, you might just begin the call and say, “We’re going to go around, on a scale of one to 10, because I want to know how you’re doing.” And then you always answer, too, and you be honest.

So another do is be honest as a leader and say, “I’m having a really tough day. My dog is in the hospital. That’s like, I got this dog during COVID. This is my best friend, right? And this is just so, if I’m not on my A game, I just wanted you to know why.”

So being real, showing up real, being honest, sharing that, leaning in with connection, creating more space for connection, that’s where you’re really going to get these seismic shifts that we’re looking for.

Here’s what I don’t want you to do. Act like a jerk boss. I don’t want you to be a military drill sergeant. I don’t want you just to talk at people all day and not make them feel seen, heard, valued, respected, and appreciated, right? I don’t want you to have this toxic culture of fear where people are scared to speak up and give their ideas.

So, again, the opposite of jerk boss, drill sergeant, culture of fear, is to be super intentional by creating connection during your meetings, during your conversations, with the language you use, the language you lose, and then the energy that you bring when you show up.

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

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Stephen Covey, the most important part of communication is how somebody interprets what you say. So the quote goes something like, “The only message that counts is the one that’s received.”

And in this land of, in this era of text messages where tone gets misinterpreted, you can’t just assume that you’ve communicated effectively. So think about “The only message that counts is the one that’s received.”

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

Dr. Michelle Johnston
I think the Hawthorne effect was something that I held on to when I was getting my PhD at LSU, and the Hawthorne effect was at the GE facility in the early 1900s. They really wanted to look at efficiency and they wanted to figure out the most efficient factories.

And they found that when researchers went to the Hawthorne facility and paid attention to the employees, their efficiency went up. So it really had nothing to do with what standards and procedures they were putting in place. It had to do with, “I’m being paid attention to and so I’m going to work harder.”

And so that really was the foundation of all of this research that I’ve been doing throughout my 25 years as a professor is, as a leader, you’ve got to pay attention to your people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
One of my favorite books recently is by Garry Ridge, and it’s in my stack over here. And it’s Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It.

And Garry Ridge was the CEO of WD40. He did a phenomenal job as the CEO for 25 years at WD40, and he was a truly connected leader. And so when he retired and left them in great shape, he wrote a book called Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It, explaining how you need to be a people-first leader.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Asking other people about themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have any favorite ways you do that?

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Yeah, you got to stop talking about yourself.

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

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Yeah, I’ve been so honored to be on NBC News twice talking about connection with Kate Snow and Vicky Nguyen. And it was the quote when I said, “Okay, y’all, pull out your phones, show me your calendar, and I will show you your priorities. And it might make you really uncomfortable.”

And you should have seen the look on their faces, and they both said, “Oh, my gosh, I need to do things differently because I’m not prioritizing the most important people in my life.”

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

Dr. Michelle Johnston
My website, MichelleKJohnston.com. Please holler at me and stay in touch. Connect with me. I want to hear from you what’s working, what’s not working. And let’s build better connection for better results.

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

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Begin your meetings showing your people that you care about them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Michelle, thank you.

Dr. Michelle Johnston
Thank you so much. Thank you, Pete.