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Jan 08
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926: The Five Codes that Make and Break Trust with Jeremie Kubiceck

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Jeremie Kubicek shares how to end misunderstandings with the five codes of communication.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The root of every misunderstanding
  2. The simple trick to consistently meet people’s expectations
  3. How to repair damaged relationships  

About Jeremie

Jeremie Kubicek is a powerful communicator, serial entrepreneur and content builder. He creates content used by some of the largest companies around the globe found in the books he has authored: The 100X Leader; 5 Voices, 5 Gears; the National Bestseller, Making Your Leadership Come Alive; and The Peace Index. His new book, The Communication Code, co-authored with his business partner, was released last November.

Jeremie is the Co-Founder of GiANT, a company that certifies coaches and consultants that serve companies and their employees. Jeremie has started over 25 companies while living in Oklahoma City, Moscow, Atlanta and London.

Resources Mentioned

Jeremie Kubicek Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Jeremie, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Jeremie Kubicek

So good to be here. Always good to be with you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I want to hear about your book The Communication Code. You’ve done a lot of research on humans, relating, communicating, interacting. Any particularly noteworthy discoveries or learnings you have on all these lately?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yes, I do. In fact, we basically have a tool that we’ve used for eight years in our GIANT business, our community. But I’ve just done a lot of research around the idea of, “Why do people miscommunicate? And then, “How does miscommunication affect relationships? And what does it actually do?”

And so, the big aha that Steve Cockram and I had in this is every communication has an expectation attached to it. And every expectation has a code word, a clue. And if you can figure out the code word of what the other person is inferring or expecting, you’ll unlock that communication, that transmission of communication will get unlocked.

And when that happens over and over again, you’ll build healthier relationships, you’ll build more camaraderie, you’ll lower miscommunication, which will impact the other person. And so, how many people have relationships in their life?

Pete Mockaitis

I do.

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, everyone. And how many want those to be the best it possibly can be? Well, if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be good if you knew what the code words were? And wouldn’t it be great if you could figure them out before they told you, or the other person could tell you what the code word is? And that’s what we figured out.

We saw, like, “Oh, my goodness, there are five code words. If you figured out those five code words, it will unlock that communication, that one transmission of communication, which could then unlock the relationship.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s so cool. And what’s coming to mind for me is I remember I had a really sweet woman, and mentor, her name is Marilyn Holt. Shoutout to Marilyn. And she just thought it would be kind of fun to get some students together to meet up with this billionaire friend of hers. She just thought, “Oh, I think you’ll probably learn some things from him, have some fun.” She’s like, “Hey, Ron, I think it might be great to get some students that I’m working with together to meet with you.”

And so, he just said immediately, “What do they want?” And she said, “You know, Ron, I’m sorry. You probably have everybody always wanting something from you. We just thought it’d be fun to get together and see a little bit about your story and journey, and have a cool experience for these kids.” Like, “Oh,” so he’s like surprised, like, “Oh, yeah, okay, let’s do that.” Because we do, we have this expectation which is formed by any number of things, and part of it could just be what most people tend to want when a stranger is calling up a billionaire.”

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

And he’s like, “Oh, that’s probably what these guys want, too, is something in the world of what I could do for them with, I don’t know, jobs, or internships, or investments, or something.”

Jeremie Kubicek

And, in our case, we figured out this the really hard way. Steve Cockram is my business partner, he’s British. I was in London, we were meeting, I had just celebrated closing a strategic partnership, it was a pretty sizable partnership, and I was super excited about it. And I’m like, “Dude, we got to go to lunch. I’ve got so much to share.” That was a code, that was a clue, of like, “I want to celebrate.”

We get to lunch, and I start sharing the details of what I was excited about. And, again, I’m expecting celebration, high five, “Let’s have a great time. Let’s celebrate in this for a minute,” and he begins to critique. And the critique was, “Well, why did you do it that way? That’s not how you said we were going to do it. And what about this? And didn’t they provide this? And haven’t you…?” And I start turning green and red, Hulking out.

And, all of a sudden, I’m like, “What are you doing? Why can’t we just celebrate?” and I freak out. And he’s like, “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to celebrate?” I’m like, “Wasn’t it obvious I wanted to celebrate?” And what we realized was, in this whole encounter, that Steve’s tendency is to critique in the form of collaboration. He wants to collaborate but it can come across as critique. My aha was I wanted to celebrate, or I wanted to at least clarify beforehand, and that was the game that we’re playing. I was trying to express my celebration, and he was bringing his full critique, and we missed, and we realized, “Oh, my goodness, how many times does that happen?”

So, I took this executive team recently through this exercise. They’re all married. I said, “Think about your spouse and what they tend to communicate, and what do you receive, and what do you communicate, and what do they receive?” And eight out of eight missed it. They wanted different things, “I want care,” or, “I want you to clarify.” “What do you get?” “I get critiqued or collaboration” “I want collaboration and celebration but I only get care and I don’t really need that.”

In each case, they missed. So, then I reversed it, and I said, “What about you? What do you tend to do to them? And what does your spouse want?” And only seven out of eight were wrong. One of them got it right. My point was, “How many people are missing it every single day?” So, what happens when you miscommunicate? You begin to put up walls. You begin to move back. You pull away. You begin to infer, “Oh, yeah, you know, Pete. That’s just how he is.”

And then we work around people because we know how they’re going to respond. And then, over time, relationship expectations go down. You begin to not expect much and just kind of live with it.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. It is funny how we do make these assumptions, like, “Wasn’t it obvious I wanted to celebrate?” And it’s obvious in our own minds and yet we can get it wrong all the time. So, lay it on us, you’ve got five flavors here, each one starts with the letter C. Can you start by giving us what are those five C’s?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, so celebrate is the desire to express what you’re excited about. Care is the need for wanting to make sure that you’re taken care of. And clarify, clarity is really to clarify, “Is this what you’re saying, Pete? Let me make sure before I go in another direction. Let me make sure that I understand what you’re saying.” And then collaborate is the idea that you want me to help you. We want to work on this together. And then critique is you’re going to hold something up, I’m going to make it better. I’m going to show you where it’s wrong so that it can be right.

So, if you think about those five, that most of our interactions, the expectations are tied to those. So, if I’m going, like Steve example, I wanted to celebrate, and I wanted him to either clarify but he said, “You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you just tell me?” And I’m like, “Why didn’t you just get it? It was obvious.” So, in this case, now I will go to someone, like in that case, I would say this, “Hey, Steve, I am so excited. I want to celebrate a few things. So, today is all about celebration, but then if you don’t fully get it, clarify. Ask me any questions. That’d be awesome.”

And I’ve given him two codes but the main one is, “I’m here to celebrate.” Or, he might come to me, as he does often, he goes, “Hey, Jeremie, I want to collaborate. I really value your input on such and such. I know you care for me. I’m not really here to celebrate. You can clarify if you want, but I really want to collaborate.” I’m like, “Cool. Got it.” So, now, I’ve been given the open door. I’ve been given the code word, and so I should be able to meet expectations. When we don’t meet expectations, that’s when all friction comes into relationships.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, this is good. And so then, collaboration, it seems like…well, I guess they’re all pretty big categories. Collaboration seems like just about anytime we’re trying to do a thing, it would fall into the collaboration zone, like, “I want to sell you something,” or, “I want to buy something from you,” or, “I want to figure a thing out together.” Then all that’s in the collaboration zone.

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s right. And it doesn’t have to be so rhythmic where you have to say it every single time. You get good at it over time. I can now figure out expectations. By even asking a few clarifying questions, I can figure out what they need. But sometimes with my wife, we’re set in a hot tub and we’ll talk at night, and it’ll be like, “So, what do you need tonight?” And she’ll be like, “I just need you to listen.”

That’s care. Got it. That means she doesn’t need my critique, she doesn’t need any collaboration, she doesn’t want to celebrate. She just wants me to listen. That’s care. So, showing her care is different. Now, her showing me care might be a little different than hers. I need to talk out loud so I need her to listen in a different way, so there’s nuances to it but we get the gist of it.

But to start out, Pete, if you and I were in a meeting, you’re like, “Hey, Jeremie, I really trust you. I’m almost finished with this presentation. Critique it, man. Blow holes in it so that I can make this really, really tight.” Great. You gave me the communication code to know what to do.

Pete Mockaitis

And it is so handy when you know. It’s funny, I think critique is among the most dangerous. It’s like, “I am not looking for a critique.” And we’ve had some other guests say that one of the best things you can do when you’re offering feedback is to, first, ask for permission to provide some feedback, or I guess you’re getting clarification there.

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s like, “Oh, you know, I’ve got some ideas for improvement. Would you like me to share them?” And then for the other person really has permission to say, “You know, not today. We’re not in the headspace for that, but other days you are.” And it can be so valuable. Like, when you’re really wide open for it, it’s so huge.

I’m thinking about I was listening to Mr. Beast, the famous YouTuber, as to how he got so huge. And he said, “Oh, I had a number of friends and we would always just get together. We would just roast each other’s videos.” And I like he used the word roast because roast is sort of like a funny thing, comedians do a roast. So, it almost sounds fun and celebratory, and yet what it consists of is being told all the things you’re doing wrong in your videos and how you can make them much better.

And so, you’re right. If you’re not feeling that, it’s just like you’ll get way mad. You’ll get way mad at that person, like, “Hey, shut up, jerk. I’m out of here.”

Jeremie Kubicek

It’s not helpful. Right, because what happens is critique is different than being critical. Critical is when it’s negative, “So, you’re against me.” Well, if we’ve done communication really well, if we’ve used a communication code, we’ve built up really good communication, expectations are being met, that means I trust you. I know that you’re for me, you’re not against me. If I know that you’re for me, I’m probably going to be more open to your critique than if I feel that you’re against me, it’s going to feel like you’re critical and you’re always critical. So, constructive criticism, those words don’t go together.

It also, though, plays out to different personality types. So, we have something, I think, last time I shared on the five voices, which is our personality system that is so, so scalable and potent, but we have thinkers and feelers. Well, thinkers, the thinker voices are going to be pioneers and guardians. They’re going to be way more open to critique than the feelers, the nurturers, the connectors, some of the creatives, because they live in logic, and they live in just the thinking mindset, so they’re fine, “Sure, shoot holes in it.”

So, they go, “Hey, what do you think of my idea, Pete?” and they shoot holes in it, and they go, “Okay, great.” They leave and then they come back, “What do you think now?” “Oh, it’s great.” “Perfect. Thank you.” The feelers take an idea, and they go, “Hey, Pete, what do you think of my idea?” and they put it right over their heart. And, all of a sudden, you shoot at it, and then there’s blood, and they’re like, “Oh, dude, why did you put it over your heart? What were you thinking? Move it.”

And so, the feelers have a harder time, and I’m one, have a harder time. We have a hard time with anything that feels negative towards us. So, that means we have to really build up the right rapport, the right relational trust with another person, and that takes time. And that’s what we’ve done, is we just built tools that make leaders more relationally intelligent so that they can not miss. They can actually hit what the expectations of the other person are.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Jeremie, this is sort of your knack, is you present something, it’s simple, it’s like, “Well, of course. I should just do that and we’ll all be better off. Cool. Cool. Cool.” Tell us, Jeremie, what are some the nuances, or the tricky parts, or the sticking points, like, “That sounds easy enough. How about we all just go do this, declare what C we’re in, we’re looking for?” Where do things go wrong?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, it goes wrong because you need to think about your past. Every single person has a past with you. So, what’s it been like on the other side of you for the last five years or the last 25 years? So, it’s one thing if you’re like, “Oh, great. Figure out a new technique. Here we go,” and I start practicing it on someone. Like, well, wait. They’ve experienced you in a negative power test. They’ve experienced your domination where you brought low support and high challenge to them. You’ve been critiquing them for 15 years.

You can’t just change overnight. You actually have to get through a process of like, “Oh, my gosh, Pete. I’ve read this book, and I think I’ve realized I’ve been dominating. I didn’t mean to. I’ve been critiquing the entire time. I’m so sorry.” Stage one. Stage two is, “I’m going to practice The Communication Code.” But you’re going to have to do it for a long time for them to realize this is the new norm.

Because if you’re in a negative power, if you’re in a negative situation with someone, then it’s been an abuse of power, an abuse of your personality, abuse of your communication style, and that’s worn the other person out, and maybe their walls are so high. So, you got to let them drop their walls a little bit so they’ll actually begin to trust you again. That’s a nuance that people have to realize. If they want to experience true relational change, then they have to go back in the past and clean it up, which can be hard.

Pete Mockaitis
So, could you maybe give us a sample of what that conversation might sound like in practice?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah.

Jeremie Kubicek

“So, Pete, man, I’ve been reading this concept called The Communication Code, and I think I’ve realized in the first two chapters, it talked all about the negative power test. I think sometimes my personality is so overbearing that I feel like I probably don’t give you the chance to breathe or talk, or I think I’ve noticed also that you probably feel my critique more than you feel my celebration. Is that true?” And then I give you a chance to share.

And if you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s it.” It’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry, man. I probably didn’t realize that was just naturally happening. So, if you’ll give me a chance, I’m just going to work on some things. So, I’m going to ask you a question whenever we get together. What do you need right now? Do you want celebration? Do you want care? Do you want clarity? And then I’m going to start there. If you want me to collaborate or critique, I’ll let you tell me but I’m going to try to work on clarifying first or celebrating a little bit even though I’m not very good at it.” That’s an example.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Yeah, that seems like it’d be lovely to hear on the receiving end of that.

Jeremie Kubicek
That would be nice.

Pete Mockaitis

You might be met with some skepticism, like, “Okay, Jeremie, let’s see how long this will last till you’re onto your next flavor of the month.” So, you might get some skepticism but it’ll be a hard time imagining a strong negative reaction. There’s a scene from Brooklyn Nine-Nine which cracks me up where they get an amazing new captain that they’re skeptical of, and they say, “Oh, she wants to meet with us and talk about our goals and our strengths. Like, what’s she up to? This can’t be good.”

And so, that makes me chuckle in the professional development space. But tell us, how are some ways that might be perceived negatively that we should be on the lookout for?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, so it’s what you said, it’s being consistent. Consistency is the key to great leadership. If you’re consistent, and people know this isn’t the flavor of the month, this is something that you’re doing, and then you’re using the language consistently, then you’re going to probably work around it. We use language and tools at GIANT that get embedded in the water system. And over time, it creates common objective language versus subjective, subjectivity.

And that common objective language is a real source of help. So, that’s what we’ve experienced is if you can do that really well, just by practicing, that’s it. Just keep being consistent. And then, over time, it will break the other person down, and then they’ll start using the language. And it’s not crazy, right? We’re saying people have expectations. What if you met their expectations? See how that relationship will change.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, all right. Well, I’m curious then, if folks feel a little weird using the lingo, it’s like, “Jeremie, do I have to use the words care, celebration, collaboration, critique, and clarification? It doesn’t feel like me.” Are there any other ways you recommend flexing or adapting it?

Jeremie Kubicek

So, the way that I do it, I do it now. I’ll meet with somebody, and they haven’t read The Communication Code, or they don’t know the language. I’ll just ask, like, “Hey, can I ask you a few clarification questions?” if I feel like it needs to. And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” “Great. So, in this case, are you saying this or this? Because I want to know, do you want me to…? Like, I’m ready to celebrate. Or are you looking for me to collaborate?” So, you can naturally weave it in almost like a decision tree, “Are we going to go left or are going to go right?”

So, by weaving it in naturally, it didn’t have to be crazy. If you sense someone just needs you to listen, you don’t have to say, “Do you need me to care?” You can just say, “Hey, do you just want me to listen? Would that be the most helpful?” “Yeah, it’d be great.” Because you have to train other people because they’re not used to sharing expectations either. Think of it, most of us don’t know how to share our own expectations. So, you have to give expectation and you have to pull expectation, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to get people to do.

Pete Mockaitis

Now, I’m curious, when you mentioned one flavor of caring is listening, are there a few core subtypes or subcategories you might put in each of these?

Jeremie Kubicek

It’s based on personality. So, like a pioneer, which is a thinker, they would be someone, like in a Myers-Briggs, an ENTJ. They’re very type A driven, care for that person. It might mean that you’re listening to them and being a sounding board, and giving them a chance to vent or share their frustration. It’s getting the poison out so they don’t blow someone else up. That’s actually showing care.

Very different then to a nurturer because they want you to care for the things they care about. So, it’s just the idea of understanding care. And in the book, I go through each chapter. So, care, if you don’t know how to care, and here’s all the nuances, here’s all the subparts of care. The same with celebration. If you don’t know how to celebrate, what is a celebration? What’s it not? It’s not people looking for a parade. Just teaching people how to do these things that aren’t natural.

Pete Mockaitis

I’d love to get your hot take on sort of a couple of these details in terms of what is something that’s really high impact for folks, and that they tend to get wrong a lot?

Jeremie Kubicek

It’s interesting, and I think if you’re listening to this, you probably know this too. It’s almost like this Brooklyn Nine-Nine thing. There’s a cynicism that’s in culture. And when people hear buzzwords, they’re like, “Oh, he wants to celebrate. Oh, what does he want? Does he want us to throw…?” And they go off on these long tangential misnomers. And it’s like, “No, the guy wanted to high-five.”

So, here’s what we realized. There’s a custom communication code. There’s a general communication code, “Okay, hey, I want to celebrate or care, whatever.” But when I’m talking directly to Steve, for instance, and he’s talking to me, I can now tell him exactly what I want. Whenever we meet, “I want some care because you live across the pond. It can feel transactional if we’re only doing Zoom. Let’s text each other. Like, how is your weekend? How is your sports teams?” It’s just that we’ve been business partners for 10 years, so let’s make sure there’s some camaraderie. That’s showing care for me.

Then I want to be able to celebrate. But when I celebrate, I don’t want to celebrate me. I want to celebrate us. So, it’s nuanced, it’s specific of each word. I want to celebrate the whole dream team, the Avengers we’ve put together. I’m not looking for a personal celebration. That’s the way I roll. So, that’s what it means to being in third, and fourth, and fifth.

He did the same thing, he goes, “Jeremie, I want to collaborate with you. I want you to know you have freedom every single time to collaborate, which means I want to collaborate with you, too.” So, we went through each of them and we actually created a custom communication code. Oh, my goodness, the depths of like, “Oh, that’s what you want.”

So, now, imagine every marriage, every partnership, every friendship, every coworker, those that you spend the most amount of time with, let’s say the top three to five people. Imagine if you knew the custom communication code for everyone of those people. The chances of you communicating well will go up. The chances of your relationship to thrive goes up.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s intriguing. And I’m thinking about with my wife in terms of critique. It’s like there’s a time and a place and a zone in which I really am, I’m eager, I’m hungry to hear, to learn, to understand. And I’ve even asked explicitly, directly, “What can I do that will help you feel most loved?” which is funny because that’s me. That’s my heart as a husband and as a strategy consultant at the same time.

Because it’s true, “We have finite time, energy, attention, resources, like I really do want to know what’s going to have the most bang for the buck, but it’s because I care about you, not because I’m an optimizing robot.” So, there are times in which I’m really hungry to know that, and there are times in which, like, “You know what, I’m really not in the mood to hear that right now. I don’t recall asking for your input on how I made this popcorn.”

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s right, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, yeah, I guess there’s an example right there with my communication code for a critique, is I don’t want the critiques to come unexpectedly, impromptu, out of nowhere. I want them to come in a, “Hey, let’s do some reflection about where we can improve and grow and do better.” And then it’s like, “Game on, yeah.” I’m anxious, I’m raring to go in those contexts. But when I’m thinking about something else, I have a set of expectations, I’m quite irritated by it.

Jeremie Kubicek
That’s right. Yeah, you just said it. And the better you get at it, the more you try, it becomes natural. It doesn’t become so rhythmic. And so then, it just kind of weaves itself in. And then sometimes I’ll say to my wife, “Hey, remember I’m needing a little clarity before a critique.” So, now I’m just giving a little hint, like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Okay. So, let me ask it again.”

Because, again, it comes back to, “Are you an external processor or an internal processor?” So, that you’ve got extroversion and introversion, you’ve got thinking and feeling. All of these dynamics are at play between two people. Add in kids, add in a team, now the complexity is there. And if you can create common language, and you start realizing every communication has an expectation, and every expectation has a code, “Got it. What is the code?” Solve the code, solve the relationship.

It does not always work out that way when it comes to mother-in laws, or people who have narcissism, or other issues, but it’s still the idea that it makes relationships better.

Pete Mockaitis

And I like the way you said that in terms of, “Hey, it’s a reminder. I’m looking for this and then that,” which comes across as much more friendly than, “Um, I think what you meant to say was this.” It seems like you can provide that input in a very gentle, kind, friendly, non-accusative kind of a way which will, hopefully, be received fairly well most of the time, I’m guessing.

Jeremie Kubicek

Totally. That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Jeremie Kubicek

I think we’re great. It’s been fun to be with you, Pete. Appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah. You, too. All right. Well, let’s hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jeremie Kubicek

“Don’t despise small beginnings.”

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jeremie Kubicek

I’m doing research right now on fear-based performance. And what fear-based performance does inside teams, organizations, but also fear-based living, and what it does to your body, and where most of our health problems are coming from, from heart attacks, to arthritis and so forth. It’s very interesting.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Jeremie Kubicek

The book I’ve re-read, it was The Second Mountain by David Brooks. It was a really good book. The concept is there’s a first mountain that everyone is trying to climb. And most people, once they get to the top, they’re like, “Was that it?” And then there’s a second mountain. It’s maybe my age. I’m 52. I believe that 55 to 72 are the influence years of life. For a productive individual, those are the most influential years. So, I’m preparing for that 55 to 72 run. And The Second Mountain gave me a really good context for that.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite tool, something you use that helps you be awesome at your job?

Jeremie Kubicek

I do this thing every day, it’s called The Examen. I do it at 5:30 every day. On the way home, usually from work or wherever I’m at, and what I do is I do three things. I look backwards, and go, “What was I grateful for today?” I’ll text that person usually. Second, “Where was I off? Where was I not at peace today?” And I radically go after it, “What was my tendency? What’s my pattern here? What happened? Why did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

And by doing that, I’ve figured out I have 32 tendencies, and they’re interesting. Being defensive, oversharing, tendencies to namedrop, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what it’s done for me is it’s allowed me my evenings to go better because I keep short accounts, and I don’t let things build up any more like I used to.

So, every single day, I’m kind of like, “Yup, good. I’ve put that to bed.” And then I think about my schedule the next day, “Am I ready for it and prepared for it?” That’s the last thing I do. So, that has helped me tremendously be at peace at night, sleep better, I wake up more energized. That’s my tool.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, it’s something I always say to people, and it’s really about limiting beliefs, and it’s, “Who says you can’t?”

Pete Mockaitis

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

Jeremie Kubicek

JeremieKubicek.com. J-E-R-E-M-I-E-K-U-B-I-C-E-K.com. That’s my speaking site. Or, GIANT Worldwide, so GiantWorldwide.com is what our main business is.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, I think for each of you who are learning today, it’s like realize communication is a process, it’s a journey. It’s not a one-time transaction. If you want to get really, really good at it, you’ll start to think about the other person more than just yourself. What is it that they need right now? What are they wanting? What’s the expectation? Use the code words. When you do, you’ll start seeing breakthroughs happen. And just keep staying consistent at it, and that’s what I’m excited about.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Jeremie, thank you. This is fun. I wish you many lovely communications decoded.

Jeremie Kubicek

Thank you, mate. Appreciate you, Pete.

Jan 04
0

925: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Feeling Guilty with Dr. Aziz Gazipura

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Dr. Aziz Gazipura explains the dangers of people-pleasing tendencies and shares actionable steps for overcoming it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The massive costs of being a people-pleaser
  2. How to not feel guilty when saying no
  3. A surprising strategy to build your discomfort tolerance 

About Aziz

Dr. Aziz is a clinical psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on social confidence. In 2011, Dr. Aziz started The Center For Social Confidence, which is dedicated to helping everyone break through their shyness and social anxiety.

Through confidence coaching, audio and video programs, podcasts, a detailed blog, and intensive weekend workshops, Dr. Aziz has helped thousands of people all over the world increase their confidence and lives out his mission: To help every person who is stuck in shyness liberate themselves to pursue the relationship, career, and life they have always dreamed of.

He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Candace and son Zaim.

Resources Mentioned

Dr. Aziz Gazipura Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Could you kick us off with a dramatic tale about the dangers of people-pleasing?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah. Well, I don’t need to make anything up here. And it’s the kind of, like all good dramatic stories, it’s a slow build, where maybe it’s like imagine a character in a movie where they go out and have some drinks, and they really like it, and it just seems like a good time. And then, flash forward many years later, and they have the shakes in their hands because they have to have a drink of alcohol. And that’s actually what niceness is like, or people-pleasing, specifically.

So, you basically make a choice to not be yourself in order to smooth things over or be liked or be accepted. And maybe a classic tale would be you did it when you were young, you did it to fit in at school, you did it to fit in with family. And that was not all horribly off-kilter then. But then I talk to, man, dozens of people every week, where now they’re 37 or they’re 43 and they’ve done pretty good, like inauthenticity and fitting in works. It’s this somewhat adaptive strategy, but it works the way that that drink worked to take away your anxiety, but it doesn’t actually give you what you really want.

I was just speaking with a woman just two days ago, she’s about mid-40s, successful in her career, has a family, has a husband, and feels incredibly lonely, and doesn’t even really know what to change out there anymore because, “I have all the things.” And she’s lonely because no one, not even her husband, really knows her. And that might not sound bad. Some people might hear that and say, “I’ll take the family and the money and the career, and then I’ll be fine.”

But actually, when you get there, and you don’t feel like anything out there is going to change it, and inside you feel profoundly lonely, it’s a story of a lot of suffering. And it’s a story that hundreds of millions of people live out, and feel like they’re the only one, but they’re not.

Pete Mockaitis

So, can you make that all the more real and clear for us? To feel like no one really knows you, what might be some examples of the false impression others on the outside have in contrast to the reality that is within?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Well, the impression people have on the outside is what you learned will keep them close to you, and it might be different. And I call them the roles that you’re going to play. So, at work, you have a certain role that you play, “I need to be confident-sounding, in charge, certain with my partner. I need to be pleasing. So, what do they want me to be? I’ll agree to things that I think that they’ll want me to agree with. I’ll focus on the things that they want. We’ll talk about what they want.”

“I also know that they don’t like it if I’m irritable, or if I’m sad. So, I’m going to downplay that or hide that.” And that’s true for friends as well, “I got to be up. I got to be on. I don’t want to be boring. I don’t want to be a sad sack. I don’t want to bring people down. I don’t want to burden people with my feelings, and my woes, and my problems.” So, therefore, at work, you’re going to be that way. And inside you might feel nervous, you might feel insecure, you might question yourself but you don’t show any of that.

And that, people can tolerate a certain amount of inauthenticity at work. But then where it really starts to get to them is when they can’t even be themselves around their friends, their loved ones, their family. You got to hide it and pressure yourself, and so you can’t reveal that you’re feeling sad. You can’t reveal that you feel like something is missing. You can’t reveal any of these things. And that’s where the loneliness comes from for people.

And it might not be these big dramatic things, like, “I can’t reveal that I’ve secretly wanted to leave.” Even just, “I am feeling sad today,” and it’s so simple but it’s a world of difference when you have to keep it all inside, all hidden. And sometimes people, really good pleasers, and I know this because I lived this for many years, you’ll even hide it from yourself, “I’m not sad. Everything’s okay. I just have a stomach ache. I just am tired.”

And it becomes this vague thing that you don’t even know. You don’t even know where you are in all of it because then it’s scary to know what that is and maybe share it with others.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, this loneliness, what are the knock-on, follow-on consequences of that?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

There’s a variety of different studies around loneliness, but loneliness is pretty much associated with all negative health outcomes and a much shorter lifespan. That’s like the big hammer, right?

Pete Mockaitis

Yup, dying.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

And quality of life, but sometimes people hear that, and like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s about everything in life. Too much peanut butter kills you. You got to live.” But actually, not only is it a shorter life, but let’s just talk about the quality of life. And there’s the longest study in the history of human psychology, it’s decades. It’s been going so many decades that they’re now the second generation of people.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, Waldinger.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

This is the one done with Harvard students, yeah. And the short version is, it’s relationships. That’s what makes us feel good in life, that’s what makes us feel happy in life, that’s what protects us from hard times in life. And not just you got somebody in your house that’s your roommate. No, we’re talking about confidantes, real relationships, people where you’re in life together.

And so, the loneliness, the cost is you don’t have that, or you have a very limited amount of that, and that is the biggest determiner of true success, which, for everybody, I don’t care what they value in life. True success for everybody is actually to feel rich inside, like feel full of success, of love, of meaning, of resources. And so, you can have external success and feel empty inside, and not have the thing that we all really want, which is those real connections with people.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

But other than that, it’s great that we should just keep doing it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, can you give us a ray of hope then, an inspiring tale of a people-pleaser reformed?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, the ray of hope is people-pleasing is not who you are. It’s a pattern that you run. And that’s fantastic news because any pattern that you run you can change. It’s an active process, it’s a verb, like walking or eating. And so, you can put down the fork and no longer be eating. You can put down the people-pleasing pattern and no longer be pleasing. And you can still be very loved by more people than you could ever need to be loved by. And you could be more boldly yourself and actually enjoy who you are and stop trying to be somebody that you’re supposed to be for others.

And I think this is the biggest risk, this is the leap of faith, and that’s why I think people who read my books or work with me because there’s some part of them that says, “That sounds a little too good to be true. You’re saying I can be me, and have love, and belonging?” And the good news, the ray of hope is absolutely yes, and it’s on the other side of that risk, the other side of what we fear, which is, “If I’m really me, everything is going to fall apart, and no one’s going to love me.” But that’s the whole source of the problem to begin with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, warm, loving relationships, longer life, higher quality of life, that sounds swell. And then your organization is called the Center for Social Confidence. Tell us about what that confidence picture looks like on the other side of the people-pleasing.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yes. Well, there is the outer layer, which I think we all may be focused on at first, which is, “I want to be more confident.” What does that mean? Well, that means I can be more bold, I can walk up to people and talk to them, I can initiate conversations, I can network with people, I can just walk into a room and not feel afraid of what people are going to think, I can really just be myself. That means more power in leadership, and influence, and impact.

You can share your idea more directly, more broadly. You can advocate for something. You can advocate for yourself, for your ideas, for your team. Also, that shows up in relationships and love. You can go approach someone that you really are drawn to, who you really want to spend your time and your life with, and you can let them actually see and know the real you. So, those are the outer observable effects.

And then the inner effect as a result of that confidence is that you feel like you belong in this world, and that sense of insufficiency, not enough-ness, and all the scarcity, there’s not going to be enough love, there’s not going to be enough people, like, that dissolves. And that is worth way more than all the promotions, and all the dates, and all the stuff but sometimes we have to start with that outer stuff, and then realize, like, “Wow, me just really feeling that peace inside, that is worth its weight in gold.”

Pete Mockaitis

Well, that does sound absolutely delightful, yes. So, lay it on us, how do we pull this off? I imagine it’s easier said than done.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura
Yes. So, the good news and the bad news. The good news is this is all possible, the ray of hope stuff we were just talking about. The bad news is you probably are going to feel like you’re going to die on the way there. That’s all. But it just feels that way because, let’s rewind, what is people-pleasing? People-pleasing is a survival strategy that you picked up that’s based upon an idea, a conclusion, that’s not even true. But the conclusion you came to is, “I’m not okay as I am. There’s something just me as I am being totally lovable, I don’t buy it.”

Maybe someone told you that. Maybe you interpreted that. Maybe someone wasn’t there for you. Maybe you were abused. I don’t know, but there is some messaging that you picked up, and you’re like, “Wow, just me being me is not enough, and so now I have to do something. And what I need to do is I need to observe you, and if I can keep you happy, then you’ll probably stick with me. And I got to observe if you’re upset, and make sure that I don’t do the things that upset you. I got to see what makes you smile, and make sure I do more of those.” And now a pleaser is born.

And so, it’s rooted in fear, in the fear of abandonment, fear or not surviving, “Because I’ll be left, I’ll be lost. So, now I’m going to live that out for much of my childhood but as a personality, as a whole life strategy.” And so, why it feels like you might die is because it triggers this kind of fight-flight survival response inside to challenge you, which is why most people don’t.

But if you get up to that, like, fed-up point enough, and you’re like, “Well, I don’t want to keep living this way. All right, let’s take the leap,” you don’t stay in dying forever. You don’t actually die but it feels very ungrounding because there’s a sense of certainty and familiarity in that way of being, and you are going to challenge that. That’s why most people don’t just say, “Oh, I’ll do it,” and then actually execute on it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, so then what does the execution look like in practice? What are the step-by-steps? Do I just go give people a piece of my mind, Dr. Aziz, “Let me tell you what I really think”?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

So, I have two books on the subject. One is called Not Nice and the newer one that just came out is called Less Nice, More You. And I talk about the pendulum, where people who have been overly passive and pleasing at some point can swing, “Now, I’m going to let the world have it,” and that’s okay.

Maybe that’s a phase to go through but, ultimately, there is a set point that’s much more effective. And I think the key steps from a higher level are these. Number one, you have to decide that you no longer want to be so people-pleasing and nice. And that might seem like a strange step, but it’s like, “Isn’t that what we’re talking about?” Well, no, because many people have a lot of their identities wrapped in, “But being nice means I’m a good person, and I don’t want to be a bad person.” No one wants to be a bad person.

And so, the first thing we need to do is we need to upgrade our understanding of being people-pleasing is not the same thing as being kind, or generous, or loving, or whatever it is that you actually value as a human. And that people-pleasing is more of a compulsion and not a choice, and so you have to be giving, you cannot say no, and that can be very detrimental.

So, someone is struggling, you take an extra hour to support them seems kind, right? The nice person and the people-pleaser doesn’t have that choice, so they could be being eaten up inside. They’re all stressed.

Pete Mockaitis

Eaten up inside and bitter, they’re like, “This jerk is always hogging my life.”

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

“I got too much on my to-do list.” So, now you’re talking about resentment. So, the compulsion part of it, the “nice” person feels like they have to. And any time we feel like we have to do something, and we don’t want to in that moment, that’s a formula, a human formula for resentment. So, now we’re going to start that.

Now, the kind choice is like, “Okay, this person wants this. Do I want to give it? Does it feel right to give it?” And it doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. Your kid is sick or something is happening, and you’re just like, “You know what, but it feels right, it feels like I want to do it.” Then you do it, and you say, “I want to give it.” Then we won’t feel resentment.

Kindness, true kindness leaves a glow inside, you’re like, “I feel good about that.” Whereas, when we’re like, “I couldn’t say no. I mean, look at them, they need me.” And the nice person likes to create this elaborate world in which everybody is super dependent, like, “They would die without me. They would be, oh, my gosh, if I left this partner, or this boyfriend, girlfriend, they’d be devastated for years,” and they don’t even see how it’s a little bit of a…it’s a way that we’re trying to get some sense of significance, perhaps.

The truth is that people have many ways to meet their needs, and you’re just one of them, and you’re not the only one. So, yes, that’s exactly what you’re talking about. That’s the stew of resentment that can form. And so, back to this first step of, “I need to decide I’m not going to be so nice and pleasing” is actually an important first step because, otherwise, we remain in this pattern where this is the only way to be, this is the right way to be as a good person, everything else is bad. And then we will perpetuate that indefinitely.

Pete Mockaitis

And that decision, boy, it just seems like the distinctions and the commitments are so myriad in terms of the boundaries that we’re down with, in terms of “I am committed to doing this and being generous or loving in these domains. And I’m not so much down to do these other things.” It really kind of feels like we got to go, behavior by behavior, or relationship by relationship, when  we determine what that decision really means in practice.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura
Yeah, that’s a great point. And, yes, it is, and there’s a shortcut to doing that, which is it can be distilled into one question, which is an extremely liberating question but it also, if you’ve been living a people-pleasing life, can make you very uncomfortable. And the question is, “What do I want? In this situation, what do I want?”

And even just asking that can push a lot of the buttons for someone who thinks that that’s selfish, “Your life shouldn’t be about what you want. That’s the problem with the world, is too many selfish people.” But actually, we’re just talking about asking the question. You might still choose to say, “Well, what do I want? I want to not take care of my son.” “Well, he’s five and he needs someone tonight. So, you’re going to find a way to work with it.”

So, it doesn’t mean you instantly just, “I do whatever I want. I don’t even care about anyone.” It’s like, no, but you start that behind that question is not just the data of the answer. It’s actually caring about yourself just like you would with someone you love, “What do you want, honey? It doesn’t mean you get everything you want, but I want to know. I want to know. Maybe we can work with it. Maybe we need to compromise here. But what do you really want? And what do I really want?”

I was just talking with a friend earlier today, and he has some friends visiting out of town, they said, “Hey, we want to come have some dinner with you.” And he’s like, “Oh, that sounds good.” And then they’re like, “Oh, also, we’re flying out somewhere the next day. Can we spend the night at your place then we’ll go to the airport?” And he said, “Well, let me talk to my wife and we’ll make sure.”

So, he’s about to go talk to his wife, and he’s like, “Hold on a second. Before I even talk to my wife, what do I want here?” And that’s such so small, we could just steamroll right over the moment and go on with our lives, and that might seem so trivial but, man, you add up those trivial moments, that’s your whole day, that’s your whole week, that’s your whole life.

And you might say, “Well, that’s horrible. How could you not have your friends stay the night? They need a favor. What a bad friend.” Ah, now we’re looking at the roles of the rule of friend, and many people have extreme rules, “You must always say yes to a friend.” But instead, if you tune in and say, “You know what, it feels kind of, I don’t know, confining.” And he got curious about himself, “Why? Well, I was just hoping to have the one evening a week that I can spend with my wife, one on one. She’s so busy. I’m so busy. I just don’t really want to give that up.”

So, now all of a sudden, we discover that the saying no there is actually a loving act for himself, for his wife, for his relationship, so we’re prioritizing something else. We would not even discover that. Now he’s trying to please his friends, so he says, “Yes,” and then he’s feeling maybe his wife is going to be upset with him, so he’s trying to please her. And then the whole evening, he’s just anxious and secretly resentful, which is a disaster.

So, yes, we want to go, day by day, decision by decision, slow down and start to really ask, “What do I want here?”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. And what’s interesting is by surfacing that, and if you do make the choice, and maybe, well, one, I think that can generate kinds of creative options that you didn’t even think about to start with, it’s like, “Hey, you can come over between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. and, yeah, it’ll get you to the airport on time.” And so, there it is. So, you had your cake and eat it, too.

Now, sometimes you can’t but then I guess if you do choose to make a sacrifice on behalf of another, I think you can do so all the more eyes wide open, it’s like, “I am choosing to do something for this other person, knowing it’s inconvenient for me, but because I value this relationship more than I value binging Netflix, or whatever I was in the mood to do that evening.”

And then, as you said, there is sort of a glow. You can feel good about that choice. You made a values-driven decision and chose that which is good in your value system above that which is expedient, and you did so, knowing full well the consequences that could flow from it.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, I love that nuance. And sometimes people hear this, and they think you’re going to become this very stingy person, not just with money but with your time. And that’s actually not the case. It is very much more intentional and you’re linking it with your values. My younger son, who’s eight, we eat a pretty similar breakfast every morning. And one of the ingredients is from downstairs, and he doesn’t like to go downstairs because he’s afraid of whatever, monsters. That’s what lives when you’re eight years old, that’s what lives downstairs in the basement, is monsters.

And so, there was this time when we were trying to help him face his fear, but that one was just so kind of just an uphill battle, and I was like, “You know what, as a loving act, I’m really okay just going downstairs to get the thing. I’ll help him fight his fears in other places, and he doesn’t need to tackle every fear because his dad freaking is obsessed with confidence.”

So, I just decided that, and it’s this kind of sweet act of generosity. He’s not going to be eight years old forever. And when he’s a big hulking teenager and could care less about going anywhere in the house, then that’ll be a sweet memory.

And so, you can actually be really loving and generous in all these different ways. It’s just not coming from this pressure that you have to or else. I think that’s the biggest freedom.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, walk us through the next steps.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

All right. So, you’ve decided, “I don’t want to be nice,” and then you start to ask yourself, “What do I want?” Then the next step is going to be you do the things that are “not nice.” And that might be saying to your friends, “Hey, I’d love to see you. You guys can come. We’ll get some dinner. It’ll be awesome. And then you’re going to be staying near the airport or something. I want to have the evening to myself with my wife. It’s our one night and I really want to preserve that.” And it’s, “Oh, my gosh, so you’re saying no in that situation.”

Yeah, another not nice thing might be to inconvenience someone by asking them for something, “Can you help me with this?” or, “Can you do that?” There’s disagreeing with somebody, “Ooh, that’s real unpleasing of you.” So, maybe you have a different opinion, it’s relevant to something in business, a decision, whereby it feels high stakes and it’s important to share it.

It might even be just a different idea or preference that doesn’t even seem that important to share but you just share it instead of smiling, and saying, “Oh, yeah, me, too. Me, too.” You’re like, “Yeah, I actually like the person that you seem to dislike. Hmm, that’s interesting.” So, whatever it is, it’s just a small smattering of the potential behaviors of you being more you, more authentic, more real, more bold.

That’s all the “not nice” behaviors. And every single one of those is going to produce probably some level of anxiety at first because that’s me being testing out what could happen, which is going to be some sort of calamity, “If there’s conflict, the relationship is over. If I say no, the person is going to never do anything for me ever again. If I ask for what I want, they’re going to hate me.”

So, we have these dramatic predictions, and we test them out. And it’s a form of exposure, really, like behavioral training where we need to do the steps, which tends to bring about the discomfort. And then there is another step about working with that, but I’ll pause there to see if there’s anything you wanted to ask about this step.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. That’s good. And what’s funny, though, is the asking for help, we think that’s not nice or imposing or burden, yadda, yadda, but, in reality, when I’m asked for help, I often am delighted to be trusted, relied upon, to be confided in on the matter, and I really like it. And I guess not all the time. Some things are like, “I really don’t want to do that.”

But I think that’s interesting that sometimes these not-nice behaviors are, in fact, what people really value. Maybe some people don’t get people who disagree or challenge them enough.

So, it’s interesting what we think might be not nice could, in fact, be just what the doctor ordered on the other side of the table.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, and that highlights something really important, which is this strategy of people-pleasing is not a very well thought out effective model of human relations. It’s like, “This is the best predictors and most intelligent, socially intelligent model I can…” No, it’s a cautionary model. It’s, “Hey, any of those things might be a problem so don’t do any of them. That person might respond well to that but they might not, so just, no, don’t.” So, it’s not a very sophisticated or intelligent interpersonal model. It’s just safety-oriented.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, thank you. You got some more steps?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yes. So, after you spoke up, you did the thing, and you’re freaking out inside, then it’s time to do the work, which is to upgrade something inside of yourself. That’s where the real transformation is going to occur. People think the real transformation comes from the action, which is part of it, but then we have to upgrade, otherwise we just keep beating our head against the wall. And you can leave that situation, you say, “Oh, I feel so guilty I told them no. I’m so bad.”

If you just grind yourself through that meat grinder for two days, and then you come out of it, you haven’t probably really learned anything. And so, the next time someone asks you for something, and you think, “I should say no because that’s being less nice,” then you might remember the meat grinder, and you’re like, “I don’t want to do that.” And so, then you probably just go back to the old pattern.

So, to really change, after we say no, and then all that stuff starts to come up, then we get to upgrade our map of relationships. And there’s one that I really love, which is I call your bill of rights, so what you’re allowed to do, and the rules, basically. And so, when you feel really guilty, you can examine it, and say, “Wait a minute, what rule did I break? What did I do that was so bad there?” “Well, you said no to people.” “Okay, so what’s the rule?” “You should never say no.” “Well, to who? My friends?” “Yeah, you should never say no to your friends’ requests.”

“Okay. Wow, that’s a pretty extreme rule. Is that how I’m going to live my life? Are there some downsides to that one?” And then we upgrade with much more healthy, and nuanced, intentionally chosen approaches to life, rules for life. So, for example, you might say, and this is where the bill of rights is, “I have a right to say no to requests.” And that might sound like a simple statement, but if you really start to believe that and live that, that’s a whole different life, not just in terms of the behaviors but how you feel on a daily basis.

I don’t think we can totally upgrade these in a vacuum, where we just sit down with a sheet of paper, and we upgrade our bill of rights, and then we venture forth into the world, and everything is perfect. No, we kind of have to go through this process where we take the action, we feel bad, and then that’s the motivation to say, “Whoa, it’s time for something different.”

But if we do it, and we change, and we upgrade, it’s like a step-by-step. It’s almost like pulling out the faulty coding of the pattern and putting in a new coding, new software, that runs so much better. And it’s the software of more authenticity, more boldness, more actually being you in the world. And it turns out to work a lot better on your system than the nice people-pleasing software.

Pete Mockaitis

And it’s interesting, it seems like those exposures, those reps, really do build up over time when you work through those steps. I suppose I am a people-pleaser myself, and I’ve just sort of gotten clear that I’m disappointing people every day. Like, there are people, maybe this very minute, Dr. Aziz, someone might be unfollowing this podcast or unsubscribing from the Gold Nugget newsletter, which I don’t recommend taking those actions. But, nonetheless, they are taken.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Someone out there. There’s a loose cannon out there.

Pete Mockaitis

By the hundreds, by the thousands, and so this happens. And so, what’s empowering is to just, for me, as I just sit with that, it’s like, “Yeah, I have displeased someone, and that’s okay. I have not sinned, I have not violated my values, I have not been, I don’t know, fill in the blank: selfish, greedy, lazy, any number of things that seems to kind of be at the core of a lot of this, is we have these value judgments associated with what you’re calling rules. It’s, like, “I feel bad, therefore, I must’ve done something bad. So, I’ve done something bad. I’ve broken a rule. What was the rule? Oh, wait, that rule is kind of ridiculous. Huh.”

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, and there’s what I found, and one of the reasons why when I work with people, and the main ways that I work with people, is in a group environment is because we can identify that rule, and think, “That seems kind of intense,” but it has such momentum of history that I find a lot of this is almost like we’ve been running a propaganda campaign inside of ourselves for 20, 30, 40 years.

And when you’ve heard something for 40 years, it doesn’t matter what’s true or not. It’s hard to challenge. I was working with a gentleman in the program, who has had a hard time, even his relationship with his wife, he’s saying, “This is what I’d like to do on a Saturday.” “I don’t know if I want to do that. Here’s what I want,” like basic stuff.

And so, it almost felt like for the first couple of months he’s in the program, he was, “Hey, it’s okay for me to ask for what I want.” And in some part of the lecture, I’m like, “Of course. Of course.” And then he looks, like, around the room, and like, “Is it really okay for us to do that?” And we need to hear that, we need to get reinforced from outside.

And, hopefully, it’s just reinforcing some new beliefs that are just more sane and healthy. And I think that’s really a key thing to come back to, is, “Hey, is the way I’ve been living really serving me? Is it serving others? Is it really? If I’m getting burnt out, and hurting inside, and experiencing all these mind-body issues, and pain, and illnesses, like is this really how it’s supposed to go?” And I would challenge that, I’d say, “We’re not meant to live and help others at the expense of ourselves.” I think there’s really a beautiful, a much more abundant, win-win way of going through life.

Pete Mockaitis

That is beautiful. And I’m wondering if you recommend starting, if it feels scary, starting big or starting small? Like, “Asking my wife what I want to do on a Saturday,” in that example, is it that you recommend that you have, I mean, a small request might be…?

I guess I’m thinking small might be like you can give a lot of advanced notice. Like, let’s say on a Tuesday, you say, “Hey, honey, I think it’d be really fun on Saturday if we got lunch at Jimmy John’s.” Like, “Okay, that’s an inexpensive restaurant. It’s four days notice. It’s lunch, not dinner. It doesn’t seem as big, primetime of a meal.” So, I’m wondering, is your professional advice to start with some of those smaller, non-pleasing moves or requests, or to go for the bigger ones right off the bat?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

I would say both are beneficial and it’s going to be based upon your discomfort tolerance, which, by the way, is akin to a muscle that is worth building, and you will build it by doing this. And so, if one is going to just completely blow you out of the water, because our goal here is sustainable. Think of it like strength training over many months, and so you don’t want to go to the gym and just blow yourself out where you can’t work out for three weeks. So, maybe you do the lighter weight at first, then it’s a little easier, and that’s great.

You start to build momentum, and success builds on success, so you have a couple wins, and you’re like, “Well, that didn’t go so bad, so I think that’s a completely valid approach.” And if you want to go faster, you feel like, “I have been in this cage for so long that I’m just ready to do whatever. I got to get out,” then you might feel excited and exhilarated as you really test the edge quicker. But I don’t think there’s one approach that’s better or worse.

Pete Mockaitis

You say discomfort tolerance is a muscle, when we work that muscle doing exactly this. If people-pleasing is a diagnosis, that is apt for you. Are there any other pro tips you have on building the discomfort tolerance muscle? I’ve been into cold plunges lately, so if you can justify me that I’m not a weirdo, and this is actually super beneficial to all sorts of elements of my life, I’ll receive that, Dr. Aziz. But, is cold plunges one of the activities that increases the discomfort tolerance muscle? Or what are some of the other top prescriptions here?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

As a matter of fact, the cold plunge is.

Pete Mockaitis

Thank you for that.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

It’s actually cold showers for clients that I work with. And I, about six to eight months ago, invested in an actual cold plunge to take my cold to the next level. And there’s a lot of physical health benefits to them but, honestly, the biggest draw for me is that discomfort tolerance. It’s a training, it’s a visceral training to go into the uncomfortable every day, or however often you do it.

And the cool thing about discomfort tolerance is that it actually does generalize. So, if you took a cold shower that morning, and then later in the day, there’s an opportunity, someone at work is sharing an idea, and you have something you want to add to it, and you’re like, “Well, actually, I think this. I don’t know if they would think that that’s disagreeing, or I’m not sure.” And that back-and-forth kind of hesitant energy, when you’re in the cold shower, about to go in the morning, you’re like, “Uh, should I go into it?” you’re like, “Ah, let’s just…all right, here we go.”

And whatever that is, that ability to go into discomfort, and then withstand the discomfort, it translates because the circumstance might be totally different, one seems physical, one seems social, but on a physiological level in your nervous system, discomfort is discomfort. And when you increase your capacity to do it, you can actually transfer it.

And so, yes, physical feats of discomfort, whether it’s a cold plunge, or just going doing, you know, people will take the elevator instead of the stairs when it’s two flights of stairs. There’s just this unconscious addiction to comfort that we’re living in. So, finding ways, I’d say once a day, on purpose, you could go do a wall sit where you sit against a wall with your back against the wall, and your legs, or your thighs are at parallel to the earth. Hold that for 60 seconds and you’ll be quivering.

Is that going to make you ripped? No, but it’s saying, and it’s all about the framing of it. So, right before I go into a cold plunge, I remind myself, “This is going to make me stronger.” So, it’s framing. It’s the same thing with the wall sit. I’m not doing this just to build muscle or something. I’m doing this to say, “Hey, I can do things that are uncomfortable,” and that will exactly translate over.

And then, of course, there’s dozens of opportunities in your interpersonal social life. And how do you find them? You just know. We all have a radar going on all the time, and saying, “Is that going to be comfortable or uncomfortable?” And most of us are using that radar to say, “Well, if it’s uncomfortable, then go the other way.” And what we actually want to do is you don’t have to go crazy with this. It’s all in the dose. You don’t need to go insane on your dose of medicine here, this discomfort medicine. But a daily dose, even if it’s small, will radically accelerate how quickly you can make these changes in your life.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Well, this one I like, this is Tony Robbins, “The quality of your life is directly proportional to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably tolerate.”

Pete Mockaitis

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

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Ah, favorite has got to be The Boulder Study of Back Pain of 2021. There’s a book called The Way Out by Alan Gordon where they talk about it, but the Boulder Back Pain study was done to compare back pain treatment, treatment as usual, medications, physical therapy, and then also something called pain reprocessing therapy, which is treating the back pain with the mind and emotion, which has been fascinating for me with my own history of back pain and chronic pain, as well as nice-people developing pain.

There’s a whole chapter in the book, why it’s not nice about that. And so, randomized, controlled trial, gold standard evidence that we can use these mind-body approaches to not just reduce but completely transform back pain is revolutionary for the chronic pain world, and something I’m really excited about getting out into the world in a big way.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

There’s one I’m reading right now that I really enjoy, it’s called Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt, and I’m finding it really refreshing for how to reclaim your focus and your time.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite habit?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

It’s the best and the worst, it’s the cold plunge.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yes, go to DrAziz.com, that’s D-R-A-Z-I-Z.com, and the goal is for there to be a wealth of resources for free. So, there’s a podcast on that page, under the Resources tab. There’s also a mini-course, a video mini-course called “5 Steps to Unleash Your Inner Confidence” also for free. I have a YouTube channel, you can get a link there as well from the Dr. Aziz’s homepage.

So, lots of resources for free. And then if you want to take things further, we have some training courses, and I also work with people in a 12-month life changing yearlong program. So, however far you want to go, I’d love to support you. And if you just want to start with the free stuff or get a book, that’s a beautiful way to really learn that there’s a pathway. There’s a proven pathway out of this stuff, and I’m here to help as many of us as we can to get across that.

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. Aziz Gazipura

Yes. Whatever is going to make you the most awesome at your job is also the thing that’s probably either scary or uncomfortable. It’s, like, really practicing that boldness and facing what we fear will not only produce just beautiful results in your career but will also make you feel good at your work, you’ll feel way more engaged.

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Dr. Aziz, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and minimal people-pleasing.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Thank you, Pete. What a fun and interesting and dynamic interview. Really appreciate it.

Dec 21
0

924: Enhancing Your Most Valuable Career Asset: Coachability with Jacquelyn Lane

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Jacquelyn Lane shows why being coachable is the key to career progression–and how to improve your coachability.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The 4 key elements of coachability
  2. How to reframe how you view feedback
  3. What to do when you’re running low on motivation

About Jacquelyn

Jacquelyn Lane is the president of the 100 Coaches Agency, codesigner of their proprietary curation process and relationship-first philosophy, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Becoming Coachable. She has been with 100  Coaches Agency since its founding and is a critical pillar of the 100 Coaches Community. Jacquelyn comes to the world of executive coaching through her previous roles in the energy industry and lifelong commitment to improving the lives of all people by elevating the quality of leadership.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Jacquelyn Lane Interview Transcript

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

Jacquelyn Lane
Thanks so much for having me, Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of the wisdom you got in your book Becoming Coachable: Unleashing the Power of Executive Coaching to Transform Your Leadership and Life. But first, could you open us up with a really powerful story about how being coachable was really impactful for somebody?

Jacquelyn Lane
One of my favorites is of our friend Hubert Joly. And Hubert Joly was brought in as the CEO of Best Buy at a time when Best Buy was fully expected to go bankrupt. I’m sure a lot of people remember Circuit City had gone out of business just a year or two before, and Hubert was one of those people who had just come from McKinsey, he’d been a McKinsey consultant and then he’d been the CEO of another company called Carlson.

This is self-described, by the way. He described himself as being someone who had all the right answers, who knew how to do things, and that was a lot of his job, especially as a consultant, was to be the person with the answers. But he realized very quickly with Best Buy that he didn’t have all the answers and that he was going to need some help.

Luckily for him, he had Marshall Goldsmith as his coach at the time, and they decided to go against some of the conventional wisdom, which was, at that time, to cut headcount, to right-size the company, reduce expenses, and try to save it in any way they could. But, instead, he realized that the frontline workers probably had some answers.

So, he says his favorite thing that Marshall taught him was that he would go into a store, and say, “Hello, my name is Hubert Joly. I’m the CEO of this company and I need your help.” And in that moment, he became very open to other people having the answers, including, again, these frontline workers, people that he wouldn’t normally have gone to. And they did have a lot of suggestions for him about how to compete with Amazon, and what they were hearing and seeing from customers.

And, ultimately, he took their feedback and advice. He right-sized the company, or actually they didn’t actually reduce any headcount because Hubert came up with a term, he said, “We can’t afford to reduce heart-count. And heart-count is really the heart of our company. That’s how we’re going to turn things around.” And it was this amazing story where, over the course of, I think, five or six years, the company grew 330% at a time when the S&P 500 remained almost flat.

So, it’s this amazing turnaround story all because he was open to being coachable, leaned into the process, and made real change.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, “I am the CEO and I need your help.” That sounds about as coachable as you can get right there in terms of “I am almost desperate in terms of, seriously, you’ve got the stuff.”

That’s awesome, Jacquelyn, about the Best Buy CEO there.

I’m curious if you have another story about someone who’s perhaps more in the middle of their career.

Jacquelyn Lane
So for the sake of anonymity, I’m going to change some details of the story and just say that this is a mid-level leader at a major manufacturing company. And, we were approached about finding a coach for him.

There were some things that he was struggling with, where he just wasn’t listening to feedback particularly well. Some people on his team were either a little bit afraid of him, certainly intimidated by him, just had this attitude that he knew best. And, I remember when we talked to the head of HR, and she told us about him, she mentioned that this is a great guy that we would love to see promoted in the organization, but the reality is he’s burning people out.

And he’s making a little bit of a hostile work environment for them. And so unfortunately, if these things don’t change, this could be the end of his career. Right? We may need to actually get rid of him. Even though we would love to be able to promote him. Because we think that he could be someone who, let’s say, could be a major executive in the future.

And, she was skeptical, certainly, that he was going to be open to being coached. But again, he really started leaning into that process and recognized that he had to make a change. And he got excited about the process of making a change. Because he started working with a coach who was really fantastic and I think inspired him and painted this picture for how life could be different.

And so they started working on some things together. And amazingly, within three months, he got one promotion. And that was great, and they came back to us again, and three months after that, so six months have elapsed, and he got a second promotion, and they said, the head of HR said, “You would not believe the transformation, not only has he completely changed the way that he interacts with his team, they’re all, gelling as a team so much better, and it’s so much healthier, but he attributes all of this change and growth to getting a coach, and so the entire organization is now saying this is an amazing transformation.

We’re interested in being coached as well,” and she said, “But the other thing I didn’t tell you six months ago when we first talked was that there was someone else in the organization that had a very similar situation, and it was very clear that he could also benefit from some coaching, but he didn’t really want to get a coach.”

And so unfortunately now, six months later, not only has this other guy gotten two promotions in rapid succession, but that other guy is no longer with the company.  So, I think that’s a great example, too, of someone who, who leaned in and the difference that it made for them, for their life, and for the entire organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And then I’m curious then,  what would be an example of a behavior that someone starts or stops doing and discovers from a coaching kind of a process that  can make a big impact in terms of changing the trajectory from gonna get fired to gotta get promoted?

Jacquelyn Lane
For this gentleman, he was originally all about himself. He cared about his own role and positional power and authority. He was very proud of the life and career he’d built for himself and was vocal about that. And again, the attitude was, like, “I’m in this for me.”

And the major change was that he realized he was not going to be a leader without followers. That he needed to change his perspective into serving the people who reported to him, and to removing obstacles from their path, putting their needs first, not, you know, understanding how they were feeling, understanding the culture of the team and the organization, and just, and, the funny thing is, of course, by shifting his perspective away from himself and towards other people, he created so much more for everyone.

He created a healthier work environment for them, but he certainly created more for himself, since he did get those two promotions in rapid succession. So, it’s just amazing that that one shift can have such a profound impact.

Pete Mockaitis
How prevalent is coachability in this day and age in the workplace? And how do we measure such things?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. It’s funny, I think of coachability as being very much a spectrum. It’s not quite as binary as coachable or not coachable. I think we’re all coachable to some extent. And do I believe that there are people who are truly un-coachable? I’m not totally sure, the jury is out for me there but that’s part of why we used the word becoming in the title of our book Becoming Coachable because it’s always this journey of becoming.

So, it’s not as common though as you might think for people to really understand what that means or how to lean into that process. Coachability is a word that’s being thrown out more and more these days, especially I hear in the world of executive search and other companies that are looking to identify successors to major C-suite roles. They’re asking, “Is this person coachable?”

So, it’s becoming more and more requested, more and more looked for, but I would say most people, maybe half of the people we talked to at the 100 Coaches Agency are ready, willing, and eager to lean into the coaching process. But I think by the way that we work, and then working with a good coach, they naturally become more coachable and more open to the process. So, if they’re going to get any results by the end, yes, they are definitely a coachable leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I think about the word, and I’d love to hear your definition, it is a spectrum. But, generally speaking, those on the less coachable side of the spectrum, when you offer some input, you’ll hear defensiveness, why that’s wrong, excuses, and more or less the input is one way or another rejected. And versus those on the opposite side of the continuum, when very coachable, would say, “Wow!”

They really think about that, they chew on it, they ponder it, and then they seek to understand it, “Can I have some examples? And then they get after that. And so, that’s how I view the word coachability. Do you have a particular definition that you like?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah. Now, I love the way that you broke that down, Pete, because I agree. It does have a lot to do with the way that we respond to different stimuli. It’s a mindset and some of these behaviors. Certainly, we can get into some more of that. So, to understand what coachability was and what that meant, my co-authors and I decided to talk with a lot of the people that are within the 100 Coaches community and just hear their thoughts.

Because, again, over and over and over we heard the same thing, that the best coaching engagements are with people who are coachable, that that’s the major differentiator. And so, we started digging into this, trying to understand, “What does that really mean? What goes into coachability?” And there were four key elements that came up as common themes repeatedly.

And that’s being open to change, open to feedback, open to taking action, and open to being held accountable. And if a leader can do those four things, then they most certainly are coachable.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And do you have a sense from your research, just what kind of an impact on career trajectory do we have if you’re highly coachable versus not so coachable?

Jacquelyn Lane
I think it has an amazing impact on someone’s life and career. And that was one of the most surprising findings as we were really researching and writing this book was that the leaders who are the most coachable, they go on to be some of the most successful leaders.

And the reason is if you are a leader who’s open to change, open to feedback, open to taking action, and open to being held accountable, then those are all qualities of great leaders. And so, it has an enormous impact on their career trajectories, where they can go, and the type of impact that they can have on the broader world around them.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, going meta for a moment, talking about coachability, are there some beliefs you had about coachability that you used to have but you’ve since abandoned or changed those beliefs?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, I used to believe that coachability was a little bit more binary. I did really believe, for example, that some people were beyond being coached, that they were not coachable. But really, if you are willing, I think that’s kind of the first word, willing or open, then you can be coached. But I would say a lot of people have disbelief at first, and I think a little bit of skepticism is common, and maybe even wise.

But if you’re willing to suspend disbelief for just a little bit, lean into the process, and recognize that none of us do this alone, that we all need support in some form or fashion, then that really begins us all on the process of becoming coachable.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to maybe step into the shoes of someone who might be on the lesser side of coachability or might have some valid concerns or skepticism, and say, “Hey, I think I’m coachable. It’s just that most of the feedback I’m getting is from total idiots who are way off base.” How do we discern that, Jacquelyn? Like, maybe we’re getting some garbage feedback or input coaching, or maybe we’re being super defensive and resistant about it, and we got to look in the mirror. How do we make that judgment call and discern and disentangle that?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. And maybe it’s some of both, it probably is. Most people are not very skilled in giving feedback or not trained in that. And, similarly, people are not really skilled or trained in how to receive feedback, so it’s no surprise that it’s a little bit messy in that area. I find that acceptance is a great first step. Just hearing it for what it is, and Marshall has this great simple rule, he says, “No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what the feedback is, whether you agree or disagree, it’s glowing or it’s horrible, just say thank you and only thank you.”

Because if you respond to a first piece of feedback, and you say, “Wow, that’s so great. Thank you so much for that feedback. That’s fantastic.” And then the next piece of feedback that person gives, you say, “Hmm, okay. Thank you. I’ll think about that.” And then the last piece of feedback, you respond and say, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true,” or, “I don’t know if that’s on base.”

Well, what you’ve done right there is you’ve graded the feedback. You say, “I agree,” “I’m not sure,” and “That’s horrible.” So, A, C, and F as if you’re going to give letter grades for that feedback. And that actually makes people less likely to tell you things that you don’t want to hear. So, the best thing to do, and maybe it’s a little bit unnatural at first, the best thing to do is to say thank you and just thank you, nothing else. And that really begins that process.

But, of course, once you receive that feedback, it’s time to chew on it a little bit. Again, this goes back to what I’m saying earlier, maybe just suspend disbelief for a moment, just sit down, think about it, ponder it maybe overnight, sleep on it. And if it still feels like it was completely off base, it’s still telling because they still have that perception of you.

And so, if only for that reason, it’s very interesting to note. And they’ve given you a great gift by telling you what they really think. So, at the end of the day, if we can just change our relationship with feedback and see it as the gift it is, I think we’ll respond much better.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s well said, Jacquelyn. And feedback, really, is a gift, and that’s almost cliché, it’s like, “Oh, feedback is a gift. I’ve heard that.” But I think I’m realizing just how wisely true it is because, one, it takes a risk for someone to share something with you, particularly if it’s challenging, as opposed to, “You’re great, Jacquelyn.” “Well, thank you. That’s awesome.”

Jacquelyn Lane
“Yeah, I feel good about myself.”

Pete Mockaitis
But if someone gives you a critique, they’re really putting themselves out there, and they’re taking a risk for your benefit, maybe. And there are some sociopaths out there from time to time who are not doing it for your input. They love to watch you suffer. That happens, unfortunately, but for the most part, people who are helpful do share, they are doing so at a risk, or a cost, or some discomfort to themselves for your benefit, and it truly is a gift.

And it’s funny, in the world of podcasting, I’ve been really just going dorking out on stats lately, and I was looking in Apple Podcast and this thing called Followers, and just how, over these years, I have had thousands of people go through the effort, which isn’t that easy, to do several taps on Apple Podcast and click unfollow the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast, which is heartbreaking.

Jacquelyn Lane
What a shame.

Pete Mockaitis
But not once has someone said, “Pete, I’ve decided to unfollow your podcast, and here’s why. There are four things that you’re doing with your show that really aren’t working for me, and so I thought it might be helpful for you to know about them.” That’s never happened once. And, likewise, I think in our own lives and professions, there are lots of people noticing lots of things we’re doing to our detriment that are harming us and our ability to get where we want to go, and are not opening their mouths when we are just blindly stumbling in the dark, fundamentally unaware of these pieces of input that we need.

You got me on a soapbox, Jacquelyn. So, where feedback is a gift, I don’t think it’s just a cliché but it is a profound truth that we reject because it usually sucks to hear.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. And, again, we’re not trained at how to give or receive feedback very well. Again, it’s one of those blind spots in our education system. You would think that somewhere along the way, we would learn this but, unfortunately, there’s not a great system yet. And so, of course, I think of myself, anytime when I was working in corporate America, if someone said, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” What was the first thing I did? I immediately buckle up and I prepare myself to go to battle, or to be told something really abysmal.

Like, I have a physiological reaction to hearing the phrase, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” I think a lot of people do because we don’t normally call positive feedback, feedback. We usually call it a compliment or praise. And so, usually, when people say, “Can I give you some feedback?” they’re really meaning, “I want to give you some constructive criticism.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. They rarely say, “Hey, I want to give you some feedback about that report you gave me.” “Okay?” “It was perfect in every way. Do every one just like that, please.” It’s usually not what comes after that sentence.

Jacquelyn Lane
Correct. So, I really would love to rebrand the word feedback in that way, and start using it in both a positive and constructive way. But Marshall gets around this by doing what he calls feedforward. So, Marshall says that the word feedback, kind of by definition, is referring to something in the past. Feedforward is about, “What can you do differently looking forward?” So, that’s another way to frame it that just kind of naturally, by construction, feels a little bit more positive and a little bit more constructive.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the feedback receiver, and say, okay, fair enough. There’s a baseline physiological reaction in which someone is giving us feedback, we don’t like it. So, that’s sort of there. Can you share with us, is there a way we can learn to love it?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah. Again, I think this is a training exercise that we all go through, and I will certainly speak for myself, and say that I work on this all the time. Of the four elements of coachability – change, feedback, action, and accountability – feedback is the one I struggle with the most. And it’s some of my own, again, experiences in corporate America and my own relationship with that word.

But it’s this constant exercise that I have to make with myself to say, “Feedback is a gift. Feedback is a gift. I’m going to remind myself that this person is sharing really valuable information with me, and this is for my ultimate betterment. Whether it’s something I can improve, a way that I can grow, or simply understanding how it is that I’m perceived in the world, that is a wonderful gift to receive.”

Because, again, none of us do this alone. And especially for people who are in leadership positions, we need the reflections of other people. And it becomes so much more difficult for leaders to get feedback, especially, because there are some real and perceived power dynamics that are at play. So, especially for people who are leaders, we have to be constantly asking our team, asking the people around us, “What can I do better? What can I do differently? How can I serve you?”

And I find that people, they’re often a little shy at first, but that feedback has been just so rich, and has allowed me to grow exponentially faster than if I didn’t have that in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And it’s interesting when you mentioned these senior executives, it’s rarer and rarer, and harder and harder to get. I’m reminded of a friend of mine who’s a relationship therapist say that she’s given some tough feedback to some big-deal corporate executive folks and they love it, like, “Wow, nobody gives me this sort of perspective on how my behavior is problematic. Nobody, except you, relationship therapist.” And they eat it up. So, like it’s rare but, boy, they’re open to it and it’s hitting the mark.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I love that they’re hungry for it. I think that attitude will take us so far. If we’re hungry for it, if we’re asking for it, I find that that is really positive. That’s another thing that’s helped me. Because when someone says, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” That’s feedback you weren’t expecting. But when you ask for feedback, “Hey, do you think you could tell me how I did in that presentation? Do you think you could tell me how my latest podcast appearance was?” then the feedback is solicited and expected, and I find that I am much better prepared to receive it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. So, being open to feedback, we shared that key part of it is just embracing that mindset, feedback is a gift, and returning to it. Likewise, for the other open-to’s – open to change, open to taking action, open to accountability – are there any master paradigm shifts or perspectives that really open that opening all the wider?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I think, for me, the other big one is change. And that is the reason that open to change is the very first in our construction, is that, really, everything is changing. And we find so many people have this idea of control, or that they want other people to change, “If only other people would become coachable. If only other people would change their perceptions of me. If only other people would make changes, then my life would be better.”

But I think the call is to look at ourselves, first and foremost, and especially for those of us who are in leadership roles, to really lead by example and be open to making changes ourselves. And the way that we live that and the way that we communicate that with other people has enormous ripple effects.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s say that maybe I want to be open to change, but I’m naturally not. It’s uncomfortable. I’ve got a good groove going. I don’t want to rock the boat, but I know I should be more open to change in order to unlock new business of opportunity and goodness. So, how do I shake myself up?

Jacquelyn Lane
Again, I think it comes back to that idea of awareness or openness, and that’s part of why we use the word open to, to describe every element of coachability because we find that just that openness makes such a difference. But, again, the idea with change is recognizing that if we’re not getting better, we’re getting worse. I don’t think, especially with so many things changing in the world around us, I don’t think there’s any such thing as just staying in the same place.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you expand on that? If we’re not getting better, we’re getting worse. Can you prove it?

Jacquelyn Lane
So, I think of a few different executives we’ve seen over the years, and again that was roughly the attitude they had, they said, “Oh, I got here because of my skills, my merit, my natural personality and gregariousness, or my innate leadership skills. And I’m pretty satisfied with the life and the career I’ve built for myself. I think I’m doing pretty good. I don’t think I need any support. I think I’m going to stay here.”

And I get that to some extent, but the reality is the company continues to grow and to change. The person they’re married to continues to grow and to change, and, ultimately, that person gets left behind. And I have seen them be blindsided by both a company that has decided they’re no longer really serving the needs of the organization, and how that’s evolved, or a spouse who decides, “You know what, this just really isn’t working for me anymore.” And so, I think there’s an openness to reinventing ourselves because the world around us is not staying still.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. In some ways, that’s self-evident, and yet, if you really stop and ponder these implications, it is just a very tidy logical argument. Your surroundings, environment, world, profession, everything is changing. If you are not changing, then, by definition, you are fitting worse than you used to. And by that measure alone, you are worse.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. That’s correct. Yeah, if you have certain skills that got you here today, by tomorrow or next year, those skills will no longer be enough.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you put a loss frame on it, it really sort of sparks the motivation.

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think to myself of the example of professional athletes. No professional athlete could possibly consider themselves at the very top of their game without, at least one, and probably multiple coaches, because they recognize that even if they’re the best in the world, if they’re not still consistently pushing the limits and getting better, and working with someone who can see them from outside themselves, then they’re not going to stay in that number one spot very long.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. Okay. So, we talked about openness to change, open to feedback. How about open to taking action?

Jacquelyn Lane
I think this one, it feels the easiest in some ways, or at least the easiest conceptually, where you can express being open to change and open to feedback, you can talk your way through those things, but action is where the rubber meets the road. So, in our example of, let’s say I want to get in shape. I can express that I’m open to making a change in my life or my lifestyle, and I can hear some feedback and some ideas from the people around me about going to the gym, or getting a trainer, or changing my diet, or any number of things.

But when it comes time to actually do the work, am I going to show up and go to the gym, and put in the reps, and do it again and again and again and again? Because, let’s be honest, change is hard. But it only works if we work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. No doubt. So, if we’re feeling lazy, do you have any words of wisdom to spark us into getting going, taking that action?

Jacquelyn Lane
Again, for me, this is where I find that I need support, I need a coach. And now, a coach can come in a lot of different forms. Certainly, this can be someone you hire as an executive coach, or a life coach, or any number of different areas and specialties that exists out there. And there are some great agencies and organizations that help people find the right coach or the right resource for them.

Or, this can be a friend, a close accountability partner, a peer that you work very closely with. In some cases, it can be a supervisor, kind of depends on the relationships that exist in someone’s life. A mentor is similar, not quite the same thing as a coach. But depending on some of those different relationships that exist in your life, you may be able to find that support that helps you remember your goals and actually take the steps to achieve them.

So, for me, again, using my own example of I want to get in better shape, I had to hire a personal trainer. New Year after New Year, I was committed to getting in better shape, and the gym was crowded, I came up with too many excuses, I can’t get up early, I don’t want to do the work. But it wasn’t until I started paying money to a personal trainer, and I knew I was going to be paying the money, whether I showed up or not, so I might as well show up. And that was what I needed to really make the change, take the action, and make it stick.

Pete Mockaitis
Jacquelyn, I really appreciate you sharing that and the humility there because you are a high-powered, high-achieving, very capable woman.

Jacquelyn Lane
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Your accomplishments, your credentials are plentiful. And you want to be in better shape, and yet you were unable to accomplish that for yourself for years until you hunkered down and parted with money to have someone assist you in the matter. And in my experience with personal trainers, no offense to the personal trainers listening, it is less about their deep expertise in anatomy, physiology, and movement, and more about the fact that they make you do the thing that gets it done.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I could not agree more. And I’ll give you another example. So, Marshall Goldsmith, who’s my co-author at Becoming Coachable, I’ve spent a lot of time with Marshall. Marshall is, by most people’s accounts, the number one coach in the world, and has been for decades. He invented a lot of the tools that we use for coaching today. And Marshall literally pays someone to call him every single day for the last, I don’t even know how many years, to ask him his daily questions.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. We had Marshall on the show, and we discussed that, and I love that, so underscore there. So, a key to taking action is perhaps having another human being help you to take that action.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that kind of says that we’re already talking about your fourth open to, accountability. What do you got to say about this?

Jacquelyn Lane
The key idea behind accountability is you want to make the change lasting. So, accountability is especially pertinent if you have reached a certain goal. Again, you’ve gone to the gym, you put in the reps, so taking that action and the accountability are intertwined.

But then, at some point, I think when I’m no longer working with that personal trainer, am I still going to maintain the habits? So, I’ll give you another example, I was working with a personal trainer for about a year and a half. Again, got in great shape, I had a great relationship with him, and I was seeing him twice a week to go to the gym. But when I stopped working with him, there was a moment in time where, again, I kind of fell off the bandwagon. I stopped working out and I got really frustrated with myself, and I realized it’s because I needed accountability.

And so, my husband actually became that accountability partner for me. So, now, twice a week, we have it on the calendar, and we’d go to the gym together. If my husband does not go to the gym with me, I don’t go to the gym. Period. And I consider myself a pretty motivated person, and yet I’m so good at finding excuses why I can’t, “Just too busy,” “I got to send that email,” “I got to call that person,” “I got to clean the house.” But there’s something about having an accountability partner, be it a coach, a trainer, a friend, who just says, “No, we’re going to do this,” makes a world of difference.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Jacquelyn, tell me, any other critical do’s or don’ts you want to make sure you put out there to help people become more coachable?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah, I think the big thing is to remember why we’re doing it. Why does any of this really matter? And I think the answer that we came to in writing this book is, yes, being coachable helps us get more from our coaching. We have goals and ambitions that we want to meet, and that’s great, and those are important. But it’s even bigger than that. It’s not just about having a better life. It’s not just about becoming a better leader. And I agree that becoming a better leader is a great thing as well.

But engaging in this process and becoming coachable also makes us better human beings. We learn how to interact with the world around us better, to see ourselves reflected in the feedback of other people, and so we start to see our place in the world, and our impact in the world, in a more accurate way than if we just see things from only our vantage point.

Have you heard the many eyes theory? So, it’s like when a school of fish are swimming, and it looks like the whole school of fish just moves around obstacles, or again a shark will swim into the school of fish, and they will seem to disperse and rejoin. But it’s this idea of many eyes, that a single fish actually can’t function very well on its own. It’s more susceptible to predators, which is why they end up staying in schools.

And, in fact, they kind of have this mind that melds in a way where there’s these theories that the fish see through the eyes of the others, that they become aware of things in a way that they could never do on their own. And, similar, when we become coachable, that we can experience life through the many eyes. And, ultimately, the power of that is that in understanding the impact we have on people and on the world around us means that we can live more flourishing lives, we can have more flourishing communities, better flourishing families, our companies, and certainly ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Jaquelyn’s about to share her favorite things, and one of my favorite things are our sponsors: Today, Stanford Continuing Studies and UpliftDesk.com.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
One of my favorite quotes attributed to the Buddha is that, “A single candle can light a thousand others and never be diminished.”

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I am really loving this study currently called “More in Common.” It talks about how much commonality we have with people even on opposing sides of the political spectrum. And if we can just learn to remember the things that we have in common instead of our differences, how much more powerful we can be as a collective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jacquelyn Lane
My current favorite book is David Brooks’ new book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. I think it is the most important book written this year. I highly recommend it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, right now, it’d be hard to say I don’t love ChatGPT. That has been my go-to for a number of different use cases, and I’m sure everyone is coming up with creative ways to use it. We certainly are over at the 100 Coaches Agency as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let us know, Jacquelyn. It’s so funny, when I play with it, sometimes I’m annoyed and frustrated, and other times I’m amazed. And so, it’s just I’ve yet to really get clear on the boundaries of, “This is what this is amazing for, and this is what it’s totally terrible for.” So, tell us, what do you think it’s amazing for?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, I am currently using ChatGPT where I’ll tell it, “You are a world class therapist, or a world class coach. Here’s what I’m struggling with, or here’s what’s going through my mind. What would you advise me?” and just asking it for some ideas. And I can even instruct it, “Ask me a few good questions,” and I’ll answer those questions, and then the cycle continues.

So, it’s a really powerful thing if I want some quick feedback or some quick ideas to, essentially, stop looping and get out of my own head. I found that that’s really powerful. Great for summarizing content, especially on notes from a call or anything else, and putting together action plans and next-steps. It’s been really fantastic.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I do find that the idea that’s resonated with people has been the third section of our book, which is called “To what end?” and that’s where we talk about human flourishing and the power that great leaders can have on the world. It’s really this aspirational and inspirational idea. We’d love to hear what people think about that.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I would send them to, you can go to 100 Coaches Agency, that’s Agency.100Coaches.com. Or, you can go to BecomingCoachable.com. Of course, you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Jacquelyn Lane. And please connect. Let’s stay in touch.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I think just keep that growth mindset. Keep an open mind. Stay humble. Stay hungry. Ask for feedback. You can’t go wrong with any of those.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Jacquelyn, thanks so much for this. I wish you much fun and much coachability.

Jacquelyn Lane
Thank you so much. Right back at you, Pete. Thank you.

Dec 18
0

923: How to Upgrade Your Influence and Persuasion with Michael McQueen

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Michael McQueen reveals the keys to persuading even the most stubborn minds.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why data and evidence don’t change minds
  2. How to sell change to anyone
  3. A surprising way to make people more agreeable

About Michael

Michael McQueen has spent the past two decades helping organizations and leaders win the battle for relevance. From Fortune 500 brands to government agencies and not-for-profits, Michael specializes in helping clients navigate uncertainty and stay one step ahead of change.

He is a bestselling author of ten books and is a familiar face on the international conference circuit, having shared the stage with the likes of Bill Gates, Dr. John C. Maxwell, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Michael has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people across five continents since 2004 and is known for his high-impact, research-rich, and entertaining conference presentations. Having formerly been named Australia’s Keynote Speaker of the Year, Michael has been inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Michael McQueen Interview Transcript

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

Michael McQueen
Thank you so much. Happy to be able to spend some time chatting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your book Mindstuck: Mastering the Art of Changing Minds because that’s one of my favorite things to dork out about. But first, we got to hear the story of you meeting Bill Clinton when you were 17. What’s the tale?

Michael McQueen
I was 17, there was a group of us Aussies who were being sent to New Zealand for the APEC Summit, which is the gathering of political and business leaders, and we were part of this random youth delegation and had these name badges, like our little code, our security code no really knew what it meant. So, we could just basically sneak into any event, which was awesome.

And so, I snuck into one of the press conferences and I was probably about 15 meters or about 25 feet from Bill Clinton as he gave his address to wrap up the summit, and I’m surrounded by Secret Service agents, and I’m like, “This is cool and I shouldn’t be here.”

And so, it was one of those cool experiences where I feel like if you walk into a situation with certainty, it’s amazing how people don’t ask questions. And I think being 17 probably helped, but, yeah, it was a very, very cool experience.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you actually interacted with him?

Michael McQueen
Oh, no. There must’ve been about 60 Secret Service between me and him. And, in fact, I remember standing there as his motorcade arrived, and just being stunned. I think we counted like 14 armored cars, and I’m like, “How do you get all of that kit to the other side of the world?” I was in awe of the logistics involved in this. But, yeah, I was closer than anyone else pretty much. All the other fancy delegates were all sitting a lot further away. So, I certainly was in the wrong place but it was very cool.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like there is a mind-changing or influence, persuasion lesson right there when you marched in there with confidence, like, “Of course, I belong here. I’m supposed to be here.” It kind of works sometimes.

Michael McQueen
It certainly does. I feel like it’s this blend of humility and certainty. I feel like if you can nail that in life and in any role, it’s amazing how the doors that will open. Like, walking with that sense of, “I’m not embarrassed to be here. I own my space but I’m going to be courteous and polite and open to what other people are doing and saying.” It’s amazing. I feel like that’s sort of been my life.

Like, I started professional speaking full time at age 22, so I was pretty young. And so, trying to hold your own space and have credibility required that mixture of certainty and humility. And I feel like that’s worth a treat over the years.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Michael, could you kick us off with an extra-fascinating story that tees up this wisdom you’ve got for us in your book Mindstuck?

Michael McQueen
So, I was speaking at an industry association conference, all about disruption and future trends.

And I’ll never forget, at the end of the session, during the lunchbreak, this woman walked up to me at the back of the room, it was a big Hilton ballroom, and she was, and I can picture her now, she was the picture of exasperation. Like, I remember speaking with her, and she said, “I get it. I’m so on board with what you shared. I know that if we don’t change in my company, we’ve got like fight out of the game. Like, I’ve tried so many different ways to try to wake them up to the reality but they’re so fixed and so stubborn.”

And she’d been doing all the things that we’re told to do in all the books but it wasn’t working. And so, essentially, that was the moment where I’m like, “I want to delve into that and look at why is it so tricky to change people when they’ve got a very fixed mindset or stubborn mindset.”

For many of the listeners, some of them have been in leadership, and I met a lot of them. So, if you’re going to manage up, as well you’ve got to try to influence up, as well as influence in a parallel way and in your teams, and so that tricky thing of, “How do you persuade others when they just don’t want to budge?”

So, essentially, this book came from that one story, that one experience where I’m like, “Why don’t smart people change even when they want to and know they should? What causes us to get stubborn?” And that sort of led to the entire process of this book coming together.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, she had a deep frustration that she knew it, “We’re in trouble, and I’m telling them we’re in trouble but no one’s having it.”

Michael McQueen
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
And that is a common experience that many people have from high stakes to low stakes, it’s like this answer is so clear but you’re not having it.

Michael McQueen
I just didn’t know what to tell her because I felt all the things that she’d done is what I would, I guess, advise, generally, but I didn’t really know. And that’s essentially what kicked off this process, I’m like, “I want to have better answers. I want to have stuff that’s useful for clients.”

Because I feel like if I go in and help an organization, or help a group of leaders figure out what’s changing, what their strategy needs to be, the job is only half done if I don’t give them the tools and the techniques to bring people around them on the journey of change with them. And that’s, essentially, where this book has landed.

And I think the challenge is many of us have an idea about what it takes to persuade others that’s about 300 or 400 years old, and this notion has been around since the early 1600s, and it’s this idea that was typified by a guy named Francis Bacon. And Francis Bacon was one of the founding fathers of the enlightenment, and his big idea was that humans are, essentially, reasonable, and if you just give him enough evidence and enough logic, eventually, they’ll see the light, they’ll come to their senses, and they’ll change their mind.

And that whole idea shaped the next 300 or 400 years of academia, of education, of the way we do public policy, and it would be nice if that’s true but it’s just not. And what we’ve found in the last few years is actually the opposite is true. The more evidence and the more data you give to someone who is locked in a certain way of thinking, the more they dig their heels in as opposed to opening their minds up.

And so, we give them all the rational evidence, we’re like, “How can they not see this?” And the harder you push, the more they dig their heels in and the more stubborn they become. And so, that’s a dynamic that’s so tricky to navigate, and that’s really what I want to, hopefully, help readers with this book do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Michael, that’s a fascinating assertion. Can you share with us the most compelling evidence that confirms that’s, in fact, true? It’s like, “More good evidence does not help. In fact, it often hurts.” Lay it on us.

Michael McQueen
We’ve seen that play out. So, when you expose people to ideas that are unfamiliar or inconvenient, the stuff we just don’t want to hear, we’ll do a couple of things. One of the things we’ll instantly jump to is denial, like, “This idea, I just don’t want to hear it. I would like to think that seeing is believing.” And it’s not true.

If you’re exposed to stuff that you don’t want to see or hear or understand, it’s amazing, your cognitive abilities to just ignore it, or deny it entirely, or you get defensive, you go on the attack sometimes. The big thing we see people do, and this particularly happens in political discourse, and you see this on social media all the time, is they defer. So, they’ll look at, “What are other people like me think about ideas like this?”

And so, there’s almost that sense of tribalism that comes into play, like, “Is the idea from someone that’s on my side or my team, someone I would naturally agree with? Or is it from the opposition?” And it’s almost like we would dismiss the idea if it comes from the opposition as opposed to someone that we like. And so, rather than actually engaging faithfully or honestly with an idea, an idea worthy of consideration, it’s like we want to know who shared it first. That’s the first port of call.

And so, that’s tricky in an organization because sometimes the best and most innovative ideas will come from places where you wouldn’t expect it, and that’s often where innovation emerges. And yet we so often see that stubbornness comes because, like, “Well, how would you know? You’ve only been in the organization for three months,” or, “You’re in the wrong sort of department. You’re not in a department in the company that’s responsible for that sort of critical thinking. You’re in accounts. So, how could you have an idea that it’d be worthwhile considering?”

They’re the moments we miss the best ideas and the best thinking because we’re stubborn and we have an assumption about where the best ideas will come from.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Michael, there’s a lot there. That rings true experientially. I’m curious if we have any cool scientific evidence as well, whether it’s, I don’t know, fMRI scans or fascinating social psychology experiments.

Michael McQueen
One of the most formative ones, and it’s a bit dated now, was what we saw happen with people who wanted to believe that weapons of mass destruction had, in fact, been found in Iraq. And so, back when that was all playing out, they actually exposed people to fake newspapers or fake evidence of that.

And so, when people were already predisposed to wanting to believe that was true, the part of their brain that essentially was a confirmation dopamine release, it’s like, “Yup, absolutely. I already thought this was true. Now, I’ve got evidence to back up what I think to be true.” When they then said, “Actually, sorry, this was actually a fabricated news story. It’s part of an experiment. This is actually not true. We haven’t found the evidence of weapons of mass destruction,” what’s interesting is what people then did is their brain, essentially, went into hunker down in defensive mode.

And so, it’s like they weren’t even able to be willing to consider other things that might challenge what they assume to be true. It’s right across the ideological spectrum.

These same things have been played out. We’ve seen studies where if it’s genetically modified crops, or nuclear power, you’ve got people who might be on the left end of spectrum who would just be as unwilling to listen to really good evidence and really good data. If you look at what happens in their brain scans, the same dynamic evolves. And so, we’ve seen this played out.

In fact, there was a great UCLA study a few years ago that actually measured the response times of people when they’re exposed to information that they just didn’t want to read or hear. In other words, it’s typically political. So, what they found is people responded far more quickly when it was information they didn’t want to hear. In other words, there was no genuine consideration involved.

And so, they’re far more willing to think about and mull over stuff that, initially, they agreed with. It’s almost like they thought they were being objective but, actually, they were reacting in a far more impulsive way, particularly if it was stuff they didn’t want to hear, which indicated that actually there was not a lot of real thought going into it.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of the reaction times, with what we hear, that’s we agree with versus disagree with, are we a smidge slower or faster? Or is it just massive, like triple, quadruple? Like, what’s sort of the magnitude of the difference we’re looking at here?

Michael McQueen
I think the difference in times is somewhat significant but it’s more about the way our bodies respond to information that we don’t want to hear. So, not only do we react more quickly, in other words, we don’t really consider, but also that sense of we actually get a dopamine release, we get a hit. And so, I think the bottom line is it’s not about just how quickly we respond but it’s about the type of response we have.

So, when we’re exposed to things that we don’t want to hear, not only is it a quick response but it’s a shutting down response, it’s a defensive response, it’s a, “I don’t want to hear this. I want to deny reality.” And yet, when we’re exposed to something we do want to hear, or agrees with what we agree with, not only is it a slower response, but there’s also that sense of we get joy out of the fact that this is confirming something we believe to be true.

In the book, I look at the two main thinking systems or engines that we use, and this will be similar to some things that people have read in other books.

So, the two minds that I look at are the inquiring mind and the instinctive mind. So, the inquiring mind is the part of our brain, or the part of our mind, that lives in the front of our brain, the frontal lobe. It loves logical, linear, reason, thought. It loves evidence. It loves data. This is the part of our brain that Francis Bacon was speaking about.

So, if you look at some of the research from Zoe Chance, who’s a researcher at Yale, she would suggest that we only use our inquiring mind, part of our brain, for like five to ten percent of our thinking. So, where does the rest of our thinking happen? It happens in a part of our brain I refer to as the instinctive mind. And that’s the bit of our mind that’s typically associated with the limbic system. So, in our brain, it’s located near the top of the brain stem.

It’s where our tribal instincts live. It’s where we process emotion. It’s also where the fight and flight reactions tend to reside. So, the tricky thing is if we’re doing 95% of our thinking in our instinctive mind, when you’re trying to change someone’s mind, the question is, “Which mind are you trying to change?” because most of us try to change the instinctive mind, which is where stubbornness lives, but they’re actually using techniques or tactics that appeal to the inquiring mind. They’re using evidence and logic and data, and those things don’t work. We wonder why we feel like we’re hitting our head up against a brick wall.

And I think that’s one of the key things, is that the instinctive mind would rather feel right than be right, and that’s a really difficult dynamic because you’re trying to, essentially, challenge people to do something that is uncomfortable. It’s an inconvenient truth you might be exposing them to. And so, therefore, a lot of the book looks at, “How do you communicate that in a way that doesn’t trigger that defensive response?”

And that’s a skill in and of itself, because if you approached persuasion the wrong way, the right message delivered by the wrong person at the wrong time, will be the wrong message. And so, a lot of persuasion is about trying to find the right time, the right tone, the right posture, with which you can present ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
This is so powerful. And, for me, even personally right now, I had a number of discoveries recently that just blew me away in terms of, so, for example, my sleep has been a little weird. So, I’ve got a full-blown sleep study done, and then they told me that I had sleep apnea. And so, here I am, I was connected to all of these wires and medical technology, all these things, there’s like a full-blown neurologist from Vanderbilt is telling me this.

So, you’d think they would know, you’d think we could probably bank on them. And you know what my first response was, I actually said in the little health chat platform, “Could you show me the footage?” And it took me another day before I realized how silly I was being. They’re measuring all of these things associated with my brainwaves and my breathing and my blood oxygen with a full-blown award-winning sleep laboratory, they give me the assessment, and I said, “I don’t believe it. I got to see the video footage.” And so, I was like, “Never mind. Just tell me what I have to do.” And so, that was surprising to me.

Michael McQueen
In that point, if they had given you the answer you wanted to hear, you would’ve been like, “Bring it on. Awesome. No need to ask any more questions.” It’s like you wouldn’t want to see the footage at all if it was information you wanted to hear. And Daniel Gilbert, who’s a psychologist at Harvard has this great story. He says of like what you’ve described there is the same dynamic that many of us approach the bathroom scales in the morning with.

Like, if you go to the bathroom scales and they give you the number you’re hoping to see, or hoping to get, you’re like, “Brilliant. I’ll get off quick as I can, straight into the shower, get on with the day. It’s a good day.” But if you get on those bathroom scales and it’s not a number you want to see, it’s amazing how you start to bargain with reality, it’s like, “Oh, maybe I put too much weight on one foot or the other. Or maybe I need to hop off and get back on again. Or maybe the scales aren’t sitting flat on the tiles or they need to be recalibrated.”

It’s like we set the burden of proof so much higher for information when it doesn’t match what we want to hear or learn. Whereas, when it matches what we want, it’s like, “Brilliant. Ask no more questions.” And so, that’s so much of how we respond to life, and that’s certainly your experience there, but that’s for so many of us, so many of the things that we have to make decisions about. And so, persuading people in a work context particularly, like you’ve got to take that into account.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny how, for me, I just had all these associations, like, “Oh, sleep apnea is for super unhealthy people. I’m not overweight and I go to the gym. Surely, someone would’ve made me aware of this over the course of my life if I just stopped breathing in my sleep,” but, yeah, I was incredulous.

And then a similar situation, I was talking to a physical therapist about some foot pain, and he’s like, “Okay, well, how about we do some one-legged calf raises?” And so, I did and I was getting fatigued in about 12 of them. He’s like, “Okay, so that’s what’s going on. You’ve got some weakness in the calves. We look for about 30 or 40 of these.” And I was like, “You’re telling me the average American male is capable of doing 30 to 40 single-leg calf raises?” Like, “Well, yeah, that’s the standard.” I didn’t believe him. I, straight up, pulled up the scientific journal article, and it’s like, “Wow!” So, it’s just mind-blowing.

And, in a way, this has been a huge upgrade in humility for me because it’s just like, “If I don’t know what’s going on in my own body, like how could I purport to be the authority on, say, a news item in a foreign land that I’ve never been to, and say, ‘Well, this is what’s really going on with the conflict of…’?” Like, what do I know? I don’t even know my own body.

Michael McQueen
Yeah. And I think what this speaks to is one of the most important dynamics we’ve got to take into account when trying to persuade someone to think differently, and this is where doctors who do this well, any medical person you engage with, those two things will last a while. If they approach it well, what they do is they allow you to preserve dignity or save face in the process of having to upgrade your beliefs or upgrade the way you see yourself.

This is where that reflex to get defensive tends to kick off when we feel like we’ve been cornered, or we’ve been embarrassed, or we’ve got no ability to maybe change our mind without thinking we have to acknowledge we were an idiot or we were wrong beforehand. And I think that’s what we so often do. We don’t allow or give people grace or space to, yeah, change their mind while still preserving their dignity and their ego because that’s so many of the reasons.

You have that conversation with someone at work, and you’ve made the case about why things need to change, what they need to do, and even if they agree with you, deep down often they’ll still do is dig their heels in because it’d be like they don’t want to feel like they were told, or they don’t want to feel like it wasn’t their idea. And this is, like, it can feel a bit childish at times but these are actually techniques.

The question is, “Do you want to make a difference or win the argument in that moment?” And if you want to make a difference and see progress, sometimes you’ve got to actually approach this far more strategically and allow for people’s ego because deep down we’ve all got one.

Pete Mockaitis
So, lay it on us, how do we play the game just right in terms of we are trying to change some minds? What are the most impactful practices and tactics and tips you got for us?

Michael McQueen
Well, the first thing that we need to bear in mind is, “What is it that causes people to be stubborn?” And it’s fear. But fear plays out in a way that most of us don’t expect. Because we’ve been told for years that humans are naturally afraid of change. That’s actually not true. Humans are not inherently afraid of change. What we’re afraid of, and this is the key distinction, is loss.

So, the moment that change is associated with a sense of loss, and that can be a loss of dignity as we’ve talked about, maybe a loss of certainty, or loss of power. The moment those things feel like it’s going to be a loss, that’s when we dig our heels in even if what’s been suggested to us feels like a good idea. And so, therefore, rather than trying to sell the benefits of change, we’d be better to minimize or lessen the loss.

And so, a lot about that is allowing people to feel at the end like their dignity is intact or preserved, that they have psychological safety to change their mind without feeling like they’re an idiot, but also giving people that sense of agency or choice, that they feel like they are in the driver’s seat. Sheena Iyengar, who’s a professor at Columbia, says the way the human mind works is that we equate choice with control. So, the moment people feel like they don’t have options, they’ll push back even if the idea suggested to them is a good one.

And so, there’s so much about realizing, “What is it that causes this sense of stubbornness?” And often it is that fear. In fact, one of the dynamics I look at that really plays into this is something I call psychological sunk cost, and most of us are familiar with economic sunk cost, that idea of, “I’ve spent so much money and so much time on this one idea, or this one course of action, even if I know it’s not going to work, and a better option has emerged, I’ll stick with the original one because I’ve spent so much money and time.”

We do the same stuff with our mindset and our thinking. We’ll stick with ideas or beliefs that are no longer serving us and actually might be working against us. When we’ve invested so much of our time and money and our ego, our reputation in them is advocates for those ideas, there’s that sense that we’ll actually allow our past decisions or thinking to sabotage our future. And so, bearing in mind that sense of psychological sunk cost, we need to be careful and allow people to change their mind, again, without feeling embarrassed but also feel like they are the ones in the driver’s seat of that change.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you give us some examples of that in practice? So, let’s say you’re the neurologist, you’re going to break it to me, it’s like, “All right, Pete, we found out you have sleep apnea,” in a way that invokes all of these principles well.

Michael McQueen
Yeah. A good place to start would be to ask questions. So, your sleep doctor could say, “Now, have you heard much about sleep apnea? What do you know about it?” And you would then share what you know about sleep apnea, which is it’s old people, it’s overweight people, it’s all the things that, in your mind, that’s your imagined reality.

And your doctor will go, “You know what, that’s actually pretty common. Most people think that’s not uncommon at all.” So, you’re preserving dignity. In other words, you’re not wrong, you’re not weird, but what you might be surprised to learn is that, actually, there’s a lot of people who have that. And even if that doctor could share a story about an ultra-fit person who’s even younger than you…

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, show me an Olympic Gold medalist, please.”

Michael McQueen
Correct. Suddenly, you’re like, “Oh, okay. Now I can change my thinking without being embarrassed.” So, that’s one way you can do this. Another really simple way you can affirm people’s autonomy or agency and their dignity is by asking for their advice, asking for their input.

In fact, there’s some great research I came across in the book that looked at if you want to get a new project pushed through at work, and you ask your boss to give advice, even if you know already, like how it’s going to look, what the pricing point or the pricing model will be, or the design for the brand, or whatever it is, by asking your boss for advice and giving their input, typically, they’ll often land in a very similar spot to where you’re going, even if you incorporate just a few elements of what they’ve suggested, they’re going to be, I think, like 50% or 60% more likely to say, “This is a great idea.”

Whereas, if you go to them with, like, the lock and loaded proposal, what’s their first thing, they’re going to start picking holes, they’re like, “What about this? And I don’t know if you’ve really considered this perspective,” because it’s not their own idea. And so, even just by giving people that chance to give advice or input, it can make a huge difference and them feeling able to embrace an idea that they actually know to be good, being you gave them the ability to acknowledge that in a way that they feel safe, psychologically safe in doing.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny because, in some ways, it’s hard to know what someone’s issue, beef, defensiveness, hangup is in advance, but you gave us some categories there in terms of loss, loss of power. Give us some more categories and maybe how we might deduce what the potential hangup that gets people not wanting to listen to what we got to say.

Michael McQueen
Well, I think one of the key things we got to be aware of is if people think an idea is so unfamiliar in that that they’ve got no common reference point with where they’ve been, how they’ve thought, who they are, and what you’re wanting them to move towards, there’s a lot of uncertainty involved in that. And so, trying to find a common frame of reference in presenting your ideas is really effective. In classic rhetoric, they call it the common place, and that’s where you got to start when you’re trying to persuade or influence anyone.

And an example of this would be I was speaking in Hamburg, Germany a few years ago at a global Rotary summit. So, Rotary International, they just do the most amazing things.

So, I was speaking at this conference all about the future of the organization, how to make sure that they continue to stay strong and flourishing. The tricky thing is you look at some of their most mature markets, so certainly North America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, these are markets where the average age of a Rotarian is, like, 75, 76, in some cases, it’s older even. And so, they’re aging out and they realized they’ve got to change fast.

And so, I was, essentially, trying to present a change message to these groups of Rotarians who love Rotary, who love the brand, who are committed to it, they’re all volunteers. And the thing is the moment you suggest change, there’s often that pushback, like, “That’s not the way we do things. There’s a lot of tradition at Rotary,” like a lot of organizations in that same sort of category.

And so, what I wanted to do is find a common place. And so, if you look at Rotary’s core ethos, the phrase that’s been their core message from day one is, “Service above self.” And so, I was able to frame change as that. So, I was saying, “I get it. There are many of our clubs, you’ve got things working the way that you like. You’ve got a certain rhythm and pattern, and almost a liturgy that you have in your clubs, a tradition of the way you go through meetings.”

“But if that means you’re not relevant to younger people, it might be serving your needs and the club you want, but it’s actually robbing the organization of future relevance. Service above self means maybe changing our clubs to be less what we want but more about being relevant to those we’re looking to engage.”

And by starting with something that was common place, “That we all agree that’s the issue, that’s the goal, but actually what we’re doing in practice is we’re creating things that’s more about serving ourselves and our needs as opposed to growing membership,” and that was really effective. Instead of what could’ve been a very prickly situation trying to present change and argue a case for change, then became something different, like, “We’re in this together.”

I saw a similar example recently. One of the things we’re finding in Australia right now is this push to using AI to do marking of assessments in essays, particularly for senior students. But a lot of teachers have this natural resistance, this pushback to using artificial intelligence, it’s like, “No way. We’re people-based. It’s all about humans, human engagement, particularly for marking assessments.”

But I had a really compelling example that really shifted the thinking for one school in particular. They were trying to have this debate of, “Do we use AI or not?” And they used the equity argument, they said, “What we need to be realizing is that in an English essay,” and they actually asked for a show of hands. The English teachers, “When you get an essay, you can tell pretty quickly if it’s a guy or a girl that’s written the essay, can’t you?” And they all, like, raised their hands, like, “Of course. Typically, guys’ handwriting is just woeful. Whereas, the girls have slightly better handwriting.”

And they said, “We’ve actually got often an unconscious bias when we are marking assessments that we’re not even aware of. And if we can make sure AI doesn’t have that unconscious bias, we’ll actually be making assessments more fair, which benefits the students.” And rather than making the case for efficiency or saving costs, when they put it in the frame of equity and student first, it was something that the teachers were already on board with, they were willing to consider it.

And I think that’s that challenge, is “How do we find that common place?” the thing that we’re sharing common as a value, start there with a discussion, and then go from there.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. The common place, what we share, reframing it with a value. That’s awesome. And I remember a time, I was doing a Myers-Briggs workshop for some senior executives at a sausage-casing company. I was very excited because they had executives from all over the world flying in. They’re having their big meeting, and I was a part of it, I was like, “Oh, this is really cool.”

But then there was a crisis in the world of sausage casings. They had a factory with exploding sausages, so I showed up raring to go, and they said, “Pete, we’re so sorry. We’re going to have to reschedule because they’ve got this factory with exploding sausages.” And I was upset, I was like, “First of all, what are you all going to do about it? You’re not on the factory floor. And is this even an executive-level issue? Shouldn’t you have the manufacturing guru?”

And so, I was really sort of, “Hey, man, I came all the way out here. I got things to do. I feel this is maybe kind of rude. I was fired up, I planned everything, so my energy would be just at its peak right when I’m delivering the goods for you,” and then they say, “Well, let’s change everything around.” But she delivered the news to me so masterfully, she’s like, “You know, what you’re going to share is very important, and I want to make sure that everybody can give you their full attention. And right now, we don’t have any of that because they’re all freaked out about these exploding sausages. But I think if we get a chance to address or handle this, and then regroup in four hours, it’ll be great.

So, I was totally cool with it because she reframed it in terms of my value, like I really am all about the impact. And so, that was cool when we hit it from my common place as opposed to, “Hey, look, you’re the contractor, we’re the executives, and we’re going to do it our way.” That wouldn’t land so well for me.

Michael McQueen
And what’s interesting about her is I imagine she would’ve done that intuitively. And the reality is people who are highly persuasive often don’t know what they do that works and why it works. And that’s what I wanted to do in this book is try and decode that because when you look at someone who is highly persuasive, it can be like they’ve got this magic sauce, this ability to just get through to people and diffuse tense situations, and get people on board. You’re like, “How do they do that?”

And so, for those who’ve got that naturally, they don’t even know how it works or why it works, so those of us who are trying to learn, it often can be like very opaque, dark magic almost. So, I wanted to demystify that and make it, like, hopefully, really simple. Like, even some very tactical things that I’ve put in the book, one of them I learned from a guy named Michael Pantalon who’s at Yale University, and he uses a technique they call motivational interviewing, but it’s a little bit sort of clinical in the examples he uses.

So, I’ve sort of reframed that and talked about it as the rate and reflect process. So, if you’re trying to get someone to shift their thinking about an issue or an idea, the rate and reflect process is simply about asking two questions in a very specific order. And I’ve seen this play out beautifully personally in relationships, interpersonal ones, but also with clients as well.

So, the first question you ask is, “Hey, so I’m just curious, from one to ten, how likely or willing are you to…?” and then fill in the blank. So, I get them to say, “Give a number between one and ten, how open are they to your idea or perspective or the thing you’re asking them to consider?” And often, if they’re stubborn or resistant, they’ll give you a two or a three. Very few people will give you a one or a zero. They want to, at least, appear to be a little bit open minded but they’ll give you maybe a two or a three, and that’s okay.

What you do next is the second question, it becomes, “Hey, so I’m just curious, how come you didn’t give a lower number?” And in that moment, the whole deal changes because now the focus isn’t on, like, “The eight or the ten reasons I don’t want to change, or I think what you’ve suggested is rubbish,” it’s like there’s a part of me, even if it’s just a small part of me that thinks there’s value in what you’re suggesting, and that’s where you start the conversation.

And, I saw this play out in a personal relationship. Recently, one of my best mates, like a group of us fled away for a weekend and one of the guys said, “Hey, so let’s have an honest conversation, just go around the group. I’m curious, like one to ten, how your marriage is going?” So, went around the group and everyone shared their numbers, like, a really vulnerable honest insight into life for them at the time.

And the last guy in the circle is one of my best mates, and he said, “Ah, yeah, probably like a three out of ten right now,” and he started to get quiet, upset, and just share some of the stuff that was going on. It was pretty heavy stuff. So, we spent, like, 40 minutes just chatting about that as a group and encouraging him and hearing him out. But it was this really negative spiral, it wasn’t going great.

And so, I’m like, “I’ve got to turn this around. Maybe I’ll try one of the techniques from the book but just in an organic way so it doesn’t feel like I’m turning it into a teaching exercise.” So, I was like, “Hey, I’m just curious, so you said you’re like three out of ten. How come you didn’t give a lower number?” And in that moment, like everything changed. It was like I was speaking to a different person who was in a different marriage because he’s like, “Well, not everything is bad. There’s some great stuff. Like, we make a great partnership as parents.”

Like, in that moment, it didn’t negate all the other stuff we talked about but it shifted the frame, and that was focusing on what were some of the good things, and then building on that. And it was just one of those moments where I thought, “This stuff really works. Like, it can change the entire direction, the flow, the momentum of a conversation if we use these techniques well.” This is as useful in a marriage, or a partnership, relationship at home where we’ve got kids, or work, but it’s really designed to be pretty practical. That’s my goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, we previously interviewed David McRaney who talked about this kind of an approach utilized in street epistemology and other contexts.

And I think it is super effective in that it goes directly to the person’s personal stuff in terms of it’s like we go right to, “Hey, I made an honest assessment, and it was the totality of the evidence on one side was considered.” And you’re asking, “Hey, go ahead and read that forth for me. All right.” So, it’s very efficient.

I think that something about the one-to-ten scale in conversation can feel, to me, a little bit like, I don’t know, clinical or, “We’ve put you into a survey box form,” and I just sort of don’t like it. If someone says that to me, not like I’m going to throw a fit or fall into a rage, but just like, “Ugh, I don’t like this question and how we’re talking here.” I don’t know, it almost feels like a little bit dramatic, a little bit dehumanizing, depersonalizing. Is there another way I can get the magic without the numbers?

Michael McQueen
It can feel very formal. I think you’re exactly right. You need to choose the right relationship to do that. So, if you’re speaking to, like, a superior, who might be three or four levels higher in the company, and you’re in their office, say, “So, I’m just curious, from one to ten…” that probably wouldn’t go down great. So, there are certainly environments where that will work but others where it won’t.

But I think one of the most effective things that will work across the board is to really start trying to build high trust, high affinity, and that’s regardless whether you’re managing up or managing down. So much of influence or persuasion has got to start with trust and that sense of affinity. And this goes back to what Aristotle talked about two and a half thousand years ago. We got logos, pathos, and the big one was ethos. Ethos was that argument by character, or argument by credibility and trust.

And so, the person who’s done the best research in this over the last few years, I think, can be worth listeners checking out is a guy named Paul Zak. And Paul Zak has looked up, particularly how we build trust with other human beings and why that trust becomes the key foundation for influence. And so, what’s interesting is we look at what builds trust with other people, it’s actually really simple stuff. It can be as simple as us just being really upfront and self-deprecating, being very vulnerable, very authentic.

But, also, one of the things that Paul Zak’s work has looked at is the importance of synchronicity, getting in sync with the people you’re trying to influence. I’ve heard over the years, and you probably heard this, too, like, “Match the body language with the person you’re speaking with. If they cross their legs, you cross your legs. And if they scratch their ears, you scratch yours.” To me, I’ve always felt that’s very contrived and very icky, really. It had never set well with me.

And I was chatting with Paul recently, I said, “How do you do synchronicity in a non-icky way?” And the thing that he said I thought was so interesting is if you’ve got a high-stakes conversation, one of the best things you can do is go for a walk with that individual. Because what happens when you’re walking side by side with someone, eventually, you’ll match their cadence and their pace. You get in sync with them. And in that moment, they will be far more open to communicating with you rather than if it’s opposite each other at a board table or a coffee table.

And I actually saw this play out recently with a client who had a high-stakes conversation the next day after the event I was running, and I’ve shared this research about going for a walk and how powerful that can be for disarming tense situations. And she tried it, and emailed me the next day, and she said, “The difference this made was massive. Like, the other person went into this discussion ready for a fight, ready for a debate. And the moment I started walking, it just changed the entire tone.”

And so, a lot about this is just, “How do we build that sense of we’re on the same page together, not trying to combat each other, or beat each other in an argument but we’re trying to make progress together by sharing different opinions?” And so, I think the importance of building affinity, that is not so clinical. It’s actually something anyone can do. And self-deprecation, self-disclosure, incredibly powerful. In fact, one of the studies I love that we’ve got in the book was one from Kip Williams, who’s a social psychologist.

He did an analysis of legal cases, and looked at, “When was the moment when a jury turns to favor one side’s argument over another?” And what he found was typically was when one side, one attorney, came to the table sharing all the weaknesses, the things that might give the evidence that worked against their case.

Pete Mockaitis
I can see the procedural television scene in my mind’s eye right now, Michael, “Look, my client is a dirtbag, but being a dirtbag’s not a crime.”

Michael McQueen
But that whole thing, like the moment they do that, and the key was you have to acknowledge if there was information that didn’t sort of make your case for you, actually worked against you, you have to acknowledge it before your opponents had a chance to bring that up because what it did in that moment is that it disarmed the jury. Instead of sitting there, listening for all holes in your argument, it was like, by being upfront, just like, “Hey, you know what, this is not cut-and-dry black-and-white. There’s nuance here, but even with that nuance, I want you to consider our case.”

It presented you as a fair-minded, open, objective, honest, trustworthy person. And we can all do that. Like, the reality is life is nuanced and complex. And one of the best things we can do is when we’re approaching other people, acknowledge that, call it out. And something about that posture disarms the other person. It means you’re far more likely to have a fruitful conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Michael, tell me, any other valuable gems you got to drop on us before we shift and hear about your favorite things?

Michael McQueen
Well, I think the gem that I love, I came across recently in an interview with Gretchen Rubin, and she was talking about the importance of listening. It only occurred to her recently, and she shared this in the interview, she said, “There’s something about the fact that the words listen and silent are made up of the same letters.” She said, “I can’t believe I never noticed it before but that’s actually profoundly insightful.” And it is.

And I feel like so much of what we do when we try to go in and change people’s minds is we go in with our arguments without actually having taken the time to listen and genuinely understand maybe what those points of resistance are, and where the other person is actually coming from. And I think that’d be the last encouragement I give, is that the truth is people who are listened to are far more likely to listen. And so, do we actually give people the dignity of our attention? Do we listen to them long enough to understand their perspective before we go in trying to change their mind? So, that’d be certainly one encouragement I’d give.

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

Michael McQueen
One of the quotes I came across writing this book that was most impactful for me was from Andy Stanley who’s a leadership expert.

He said, “In any relationship, when one person wins, the relationship loses.”

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

Michael McQueen
Yes, one that I came across, actually, from a university back in Australia, named Monash University, what they did is they got a series of students, so university or college students, to put on some headphones and listen to a standup comedian. So, the first group listened to the standup comedian, and it was just the audio track of the comedian. And what they’re looking for in the experiment was the levels of laughter, so how they engaged with the content. And so, the researchers were monitoring that, the volume of laughter, the intensity of laughter.

The second group listened to the same standup comedian set but with canned laughter over the top. And, as you would expect, the laughter increased because that’s just the way canned laughter works, that’s not particularly earth-shattering. What’s interesting is the next group, the audience that were listening to who are laughing at canned laugh, they described a persona, an identity.

So, as those who are listening, in this third group, said the people who are laughing are actually just like you. They agree with you politically, for instance. The laughter increased significantly. Now, as you can probably guess where this goes next. The fourth group were told the people who are laughing at that standup comedian were people they wouldn’t agree with, they were from the other side, the other end of the political divide.

And what was interesting is the level of laughter of those people listening to that standup comedian was actually at about the same level or a thatch lower than the first group where there was no canned laughter at all. And so, it’s almost that the moment we thought other people are laughing at something and they weren’t like us, they weren’t from our tribe, it’s like, “I can’t laugh. Even if I think the joke is funny, I will not laugh because someone who’s not like me thinks this is funny.”

And I thought it just really showed how powerful those tribal instincts are, and it’s often how dangerous in terms of the way we think, the way we approach ideas that can be.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Michael McQueen
On Being Certain by Robert Burton. And it’s a book looking at this notion of what Robert Burton calls the feeling of knowing, “How do we get to the point of certainty where we just know something to be true but we don’t know how we got there?”

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

Michael McQueen
There’s one called SaneBox. And SaneBox uses AI to, essentially, curate your emails so that you can make your inbox far more manageable.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Michael McQueen
Daily habit for me is journaling, an old-school journaling like with a pen and paper.

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

Michael McQueen
Yeah, one would be something I encourage people to do, which is to unsell instead of upselling your ideas. And it’s sort of goes to that thing we talked about before of being self-deprecating, and what’s the posture with which you share ideas. And so, for instance, if you preface an idea you’re going to suggest to someone with, almost this notion of, like, “Hey, I’m maybe way off here. I’m not sure,” or, “This is just my sense on things.”

It’s amazing how by sort of underplaying it, you encourage the other person to lean forward and be more willing. Whereas, if I’m, “I’ve got this brilliant idea. Wait till you hear it.” What do people instantly do? They get defensive. And I find that even from a speaking perspective, I’ll get speaking inquiries, and if I’m not the right fit, sometimes I’ll say to a client, “Hey, you know what, thank you for thinking of me but I actually don’t think I’m the right fit for your brief but I can think of another speaker who’d be great.”

In that moment, like it’s phenomenal how it happens, they’ll start and say, “No, no, no, we think you’d be brilliant. Here’s why.” They’ll start selling themselves to you, I’m like, “Well, we were going with this conversation where I had to sell myself, and now it’s flipped.” There’s something about just personally not being too needy, just like being really open and honest, but also unselling rather than upselling, it changes the entire posture of the conversation. I find that unselling versus upselling frame really helpful.

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

Michael McQueen
So my website is MichaelMcQueen.net. We also have a website for the book, which is Mindstuck.net. And one of the tools I’d encourage people have a look at on there is a thing we call a book bot. And so, it’s an AI bot using ChatGPT tech, and, basically, we put the book into a ring-fenced version of ChatGPT so you can ask the book some advice.

So, if you’ve got a situation at work, or in your personal life, you can put in as a question, it’ll search the content in the book and come back with advice or coaching as to how to persuade or shift the dial. So, if people have a look at Mindstuck.net and there’s information about the book bot on there. So, check that out. That might be useful.

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

Michael McQueen
I just think I’d be mindful for all of us, and I put myself in this category. Like, who do you find hard to listen to? How often do we get to that point where we find it difficult to take on an opinion that is uncomfortable or outside the box for the way we see the world? And deliberately try and expose yourself to people who just think really differently to you. There’s such value in that. And as uncomfortable as it can be, bear in mind that that posture of curiosity and humility, that’s how we think best, that’s how we learn.

And so, I’d just encourage people, look at your sphere of influence. If you’re surrounded by people who sort of think the same way you do and have the same perspective on life you do, that should be a bit of a red flag. Try and really keep your inputs as diverse as possible. That’s the best way to think well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Michael, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun changing minds.

Michael McQueen
Thank you so much. Lovely to chat.

Dec 14
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REBROADCAST: 357: The Six Morning Habits of High Performers with Hal Elrod

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Hal Elrod says: "Be at peace with where you are and take steps every day to get where you want to go."

Miracle Morning author Hal Elrod condensed the six habits of the most successful people in history into the SAVERS acronym and describes how they changed his life—and how they can change yours, too.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Approaches for silence that generate new ideas
  2. How NOT to do affirmations
  3. The impact of tiny amounts of exercise

About Hal

He is one of the highest rated keynote speakers in America, creator of one of the fastest growing and most engaged online communities in existence and author of one of the highest rated, best-selling books in the world, The Miracle Morning—which has been translated into 27 languages, has over 2,000 five-star Amazon reviews and is practiced daily by over 500,000 people in 70+ countries.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Thank you, Sponsors!

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Hal Elrod Interview Transcript

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

Hal Elrod
Pete, I’m feeling awesome at my job of being a podcast guest right now, so ….

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, well you’re off to a great start with the enthusiasm.

Hal Elrod
You got it.

Pete Mockaitis
I also hear that you’re enthusiastic about UFC. What’s the story here?

Hal Elrod
Yeah, it’s kind of funny because I’m the most non-violent UFC fan I think that there is. For those that don’t know, UFC is Ultimate Fighting Championship. If I would have ever turned on the TV and saw two guys fighting, I don’t think I ever would have gotten pulled in.

In 2004 I think it was, I just turned on the TV on Spike TV and the reality show The Ultimate Fighter, which for those of you who don’t know, this is actually how the UFC turned – they were a failing company and they turned themselves around by putting fighters in a reality show.

It was like the Real World meets UFC fighting, where fighters lived in a house together for six weeks and they competed in a tournament, where they’re fighting each other and they’re sharing rooms with each other. I got really connected to the storyline of the fighters. Then I actually cared about what they were going to do. Then fast forward, I’ve been a fan now for gosh, 13 years or so.

Now it’s just two people that are – the people that compete in the UFC, they have to master seven or eight different fighting disciplines. There’s no other sport – in basketball, you just master basketball. In UFC, it’s you’ve got to be proficient, not proficient, you’ve got to be excellent in wrestling, and excellent in jiu-jitsu, and excellent at karate, and excellent at boxing, and excellent at all these different styles.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched a full hour of UFC programming before. I’m impressed by what these athletes do. They are fit – in great shape. I just hurt watching it, so I think I turn away. It’s like, “Ow,” then I find something else.

These athletes – you literally at the top level, in the UFC essentially, you’ve got to be as good as Michael Jordan at basketball and while you’re as good as Jordan at basketball, you have to as good as Tiger Woods at golf and – these guys train, they’ll train – they’re basically train 12 hours a day, 6 to 12 hours a day. They’re training – Monday they do wrestling for 3 hours, then they do boxing for 3 hours. Then Tuesday – it’s just crazy to have to train not just one sport, but 7 or 8.

Pete Mockaitis
That is why their physiques are striking. It’s like that person is among the fittest that I’ve beheld.

Hal Elrod
And their cardio, to compete at that level and do that.

Yeah, the funny part is I’m non-violent. A lot of times in a match it will get too violent for me. I love the sport. I love the storyline. I appreciate the athletes, but yeah, when it gets bloody and stuff, which it does sometimes, I’m like, “Ah, ….” It’s funny, I’m a huge fan, but I don’t like when they hurt each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. It’s funny, that’s sort of like – that’s kind of one of your things is you are such a positive guy and talking about sort of potential and possibility and how to unlock that largely in terms of getting the momentum going through morning routines. I’d love it if you could give us maybe the short version of your incredible story about how you got into morning routines to become such a believer. What happened in your life that sparked this?

Hal Elrod
Yeah, I usually frame the story by saying I’ve had a few rock bottoms in my life. Those kind of, each one was the catalyst for a different component of my life’s work today.

Let me start by just saying to define a rock bottom, it’s something that we’ve all had. In fact many of them will have more of them. I define a rock bottom as simply a moment in time, moment in your life, a moment in adversity that is beyond what you’ve experienced before.

I don’t compare one person’s rock bottom to another and say, “Well, mine’s worse than yours or yours is worse than hers.” It’s relative to who you are at any given moment in time.

When I was in elementary school and my girlfriend broke up with me, we had been going out for two weeks that was a rock bottom for me. I was heartbroken. I couldn’t imagine going to school any more, like life was over relative to who I was at the time.

The major rock bottoms I had when I was 19 years old I was one of the top sales reps for Cutco Cutlery. I never considered myself a salesperson but a buddy got me into – “Give this a chance.” I’m like, “Eh, I’ll try it just to get you off my back.” Ten days into the career I broke the company record. That sent me on a path of oh, maybe I’m not this mediocre person I’ve been my whole life. Maybe I can do something extraordinary. I went on to break all these records.

A year and a half into the company that I was working with then, I was giving a speech at one of their events. After my speech driving home in a brand new Ford Mustang – I had bought my first new car a few weeks prior – I was hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 to 80 miles per hour. Then my car spun off the drunk driver, another car hit me from the side, directly in my door at 70 miles an hour and instantaneously broke 11 of my bones.

My femur broke in half. My pelvis broke three separate times. My humerus bone behind my bicep broke in half. My elbow was shattered. My eye socket was shattered. Ruptured lung, punctured lung, ruptured spleen, so on and so forth. I actually, clinically, I was dead. I clinically was found dead at the scene. I died for six minutes, was in a coma for six days and was told my doctors that I would never walk again.

Came out of the coma and three weeks later took my first step and went on to fully recover and walk again. That was really – the turning point for me there was – or I decided maybe I’m meant to do more than just stay in sales because I was going to stay with the company forever. I loved the company. I decided I had to do more.

I had always wanted to be a professional keynote speaker, Pete, because I had been speaking at all these conferences for my company. I thought man, I would love to do this for a living. There are these people like Tony Robbins and you see all these – this is what they do. I would love that. It would be like a dream come true.

I had this kind of – I don’t know if you’d call it an epiphany or just a realization – I thought maybe that’s why I’m going through this experience. They say everything happens for a reason, but I’m a firm believer that it’s our responsibility to choose the reasons. It’s not predetermined. It’s not fate. It’s not out of our control.

Something bad could happen, you can say “This happened because life’s unfair and there is no God.” You can find all sorts of reasons why everything happens or you can say what I did, I went, “Maybe I’m supposed to learn from this and grow from this and take this head on so that I can learn how to teach other people to take their adversity head on.” That’s what I did and I launched that into a speaking career.

Then fast forward and kind of bringing it to what led into more morning rituals, in 2008 when the US economy crashed, I crashed with it. I lost over half my coaching clients, I was a coach at the time, half my income in 2008, couldn’t pay my mortgage, I lost my house, I cancelled my gym membership, my body fat percentage tripled in six months. It was just this real six month downward spiral.

A sequence of events led me to go on a run and listen to an audio from Jim Rohn.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Jim Rohn. The musical—

Hal Elrod
The great Jim Rohn.

Pete Mockaitis
I love the music in his voice.

Hal Elrod
Yeah, absolutely. Jim Rohn, this is the quote that he said on that run. This quote came to my life faster than I ever thought possible and it really is the catalyst for the Miracle Morning. He said “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become.”

In that moment I went, I’m not dedicating time every day to my personal development, therefore, I’m not becoming the person that I need to be to create the success that I want in my life. I had this epiphany that I’ve got to go figure out what the world – I’m going to run home and figure out what the world’s most successful people do for their personal development.

I’m going to find the best personal development practice in history of humanity or best known to man and I’m going to do that. And I didn’t know what it was going to be. I ran home and I Googled best personal development practices of millionaires, billionaires, CEOs, Olympians, you name it.

And I had a list of six different practices. They were all timeless. They had all been practiced for centuries. I almost went well, none of these are new. I think we’re really conditioned in our society to look for the new, the new app, the new movie, the new season on Netflix. We want new, new, new. We’re all new.

Pete Mockaitis
And you’ve got to update the app like every month.

Hal Elrod
Yeah, exactly. I almost dismissed these. I was like, ah, these are timeless. It’s almost really silly. When you really translate it you can say these are the practices that the world’s most successful people have been doing for centuries. I want something new. It makes no sense.

The epiphany I finally went, wait a minute. This is what successful people do. I don’t do these. Then the real epiphany was which one of these am I going to do and then I went wait, what if I did all of these.

What if I woke up tomorrow morning an hour earlier, because that was the only time I could figure out in the schedule to add an hour. I was working all day trying to not lose my house, which didn’t work. I lost my house. But I was just trying to stay alive, stay afloat. I didn’t feel like I had any extra time.

Even though I wasn’t a morning person I thought if I want my life to improve, I’ve got to improve. I’ve got to wake up an hour earlier and I’ve got to do one of these six practices. The epiphany was what if I did all of them, what if I woke up tomorrow morning an hour earlier and I did the six most timeless, proven, personal development practices in the history of humanity.

I woke up the next day, I did them. I sucked at all of them. We can talk about what the practices are, but I didn’t know how to do – one is meditation. I didn’t know how to meditate. I didn’t know how to do any of these things really well. I was really terrible at all of them.

But one hour into it my very first day, my very first hour of what is now called the Miracle morning, it didn’t have a name back then, I felt incredible. I felt confident for the first time in six months. I felt energized. I felt motivated. I felt like I had clarity.

The realization is if I start every day like this, where I become a better version of the person I was that went to bed the night before, and I do this consistently day after day after day after day, it is only a matter of time before I become the person that I need to be that can create the success that I want, any level that I want in any and every area of my life.

I thought it would 6 to 12 months; it was less than 2 months that I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically to committing to running a 52-mile ultra-marathon. I had never run more than a mile before. My depression went away within a couple of days. Because my life changed so dramatically and so quickly, I started calling it my Miracle Morning. The rest is history.

Years later I wrote the book and now it’s this worldwide movement with about a half million people from what we can track every day do their miracle morning and the results are really amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s an awesome story. It makes sense in terms of having engaged some of these practices. I love the gumption, okay, I’m going to do all of them. You put this together into a snazzy acronym, SAVERS, standing for these six steps of silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing, which means writing. I understand you’ve got to make the acronym work, no shame there.

Hal Elrod
It was my wife’s idea for an acronym. I was writing the book one day and I was frustrated. I go “Sweetie, Stephen Covey’s got the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Robert Kiyosaki’s got the Cashflow Quadrant. These gurus always create this memorable system.” I said, “I’ve got these six hodgepodge practices and I didn’t invent any of them.”

She goes, “Sweetheart, why don’t you get a – calm down first of all,” because I was all stressed, she goes, “Why don’t you get a thesaurus and see if you can find other words with the same meaning and make an acronym?” The acronym is a huge part of it. She gets all the credit for that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I guess along with that then, I’d love to dig into each of these practices and just hear a little bit in terms of what it means then the best practice or a pitfall associated with doing it or an optimal dosage or amount of time to do each of these.

I imagine in many ways the answer is it doesn’t really matter, just do something like that and you’re all good. But if there’s some finer points to maximizing, well, hey, you’re the expert. I want to hear them. Let’s dig into silence and then the rest.

Hal Elrod
Here’s what I’ll preface all of this with. I am a very results-oriented person. A lot of these six practices are taught in a way that’s kind of woo-woo, that makes somebody feel good while they do it, but they don’t necessarily see measurable improvements in their life.

And for me that was unacceptable. It was unacceptable in my own practice, but then especially when I wrote the book I thought, I need to make these really practical and actionable and not just fluffy and airy-fairy and woo-woo. I’ll give a tip on each of these in terms of how do you make it kind of practical and results oriented.

The first S in SAVERS stands for silence. I’m actually really – it was originally meditation. I’m really glad that it became silence because some people, their silence is prayer. They might not want to meditate. Or for me it’s actually a combination of both. But meditation is really the crux. It’s the majority of my time in silence.

If you think about it, most of us, we don’t have a lot of time in silence. It’s usually we’re – it’s kind of chaos from the time we get up, then we’re in the car listening to podcasts or the radio, music, something like that. Then we’re at work with people and on phone calls. There’s usually not a lot of time for kind of peaceful, purposeful silence.

Yet that’s when – when we quiet our mind, that’s when our best ideas come. We tap into our inner wisdom. We tap into the wisdom of – if you want to get woo-woo for a second – the universe or higher intelligence, whatever you want to call it, God.

But meditation, the way it’s been taught, people often – they’re taught to clear your mind. Most people, they can’t do that or it’s very challenging and it takes somebody years to get where they can actually do that. Well, for me, I want results. I will use my meditation as a way to set the mindset for the day.

I’ll look at my schedule and I’ll go “Okay, what do I need to accomplish today?” It depends on what’s on the agenda. I just finished writing a new book. When I was working on that book, every day, every morning, I’d meditate before I’d write and I would go, “Man, I need ideas.” I need some content for today. I would set my intention for the meditation.

My intention would often be “Okay, what am I working on? What chapter am I working on today? I need ideas for this chapter.” I would just set that as an intention. Then I would meditate. I would always have my notes app on my phone in front of me with my timer going for ten minutes usually is what I meditate for.

I don’t think there was a single day where I wasn’t flooded six ideas, where I would pause the meditation timer, I’d open up the note tab and I would write an idea. Then I would go back to mediate and then I would just sit there.

Here’s the difference, I wasn’t trying to think. When you force thought, you don’t usually get your best thought. It’s in those moments – that’s why when we’re in the shower, not even thinking about something, we have our best ideas. When we’re falling asleep, not even thinking about something, we have our best ideas.

This is a way to engineer that space for you’re tapping into your genius every single morning so that you bring those ideas and that clarity into your day. That’s one way to meditate.

Another way to do it is sometimes I might have a speech for that day and I go “I need to feel confident. I’m speaking.” I will literally just affirm things while I’m in my meditation. I’ll just affirm things like what did I do today – I chose three statements.

I’ve been having some cognitive challenges because I just went through – I just finished cancer. I beat cancer, but I still have chemotherapy ongoing for maintenance and it really – the effects to your cognitive ability are really damaging. They call it chemo brain. They kind of laugh it off, but it really – it’s a very real thing what it does to your brain. I’ve had a lot of trouble with my memory and this and that.

This morning I just meditated on saying “I am brilliant. My brain is brilliant. My memory is excellent.” I forgot what the third one was. Anyway, the point is use meditation not to remove thought. You can. Sometimes I’ll meditate in that way where I just try to get a state of being really loving and peaceful.

But ultimately I typically will have a specific result that I want to generate internally, either mentally or emotionally, and I will set that intention going into the meditation. I will use the meditation actively to do that. I will think something over and over and over while I deeply feel it in a way that will serve me for the rest of the day. Any questions? Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Can you give us a sample of your internal dialogue of going over and over and over again?

Hal Elrod
Yeah, that was the one today. Here, I’ll bring it up real quick.

This morning I went “My brain is brilliant. My memory is excellent. My heart is pure.” I just affirmed that. What’s interesting is we’re about to get into the A of SAVERS, which is affirmations. But I often will combine the SAVERS.

For example, when I get to the E in SAVERS is exercise, while I’m exercising, I’ll often do the V, which is visualization. I’m then making that mind-body connection and leveraging the power of both simultaneously. I’m also being efficient with time.

“My brain is brilliant. My memory is excellent. My heart is pure.” That is an affirmation, but I will meditate on that affirmation and then kind of get the benefits of both.

Sometimes I will – I have pictures – I’m in the room where I do my Miracle Morning right now. I have pictures of my children, my family, my wife up along the wall. Sometimes I will just look at those pictures and just maybe look at one. I’ll look at my picture of my daughter like I am right now and I’ll just internalize the gratitude and the love that I feel for her. Then I’ll close my eyes and I’ll just meditate on that for a minute or two. Then I’ll go to my son.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say meditate on that, you’re just sort of experiencing that.

Hal Elrod
I’m just feeling it.

Pete Mockaitis
As opposed to letting your mind chatter in any direction.

Hal Elrod
I’m just deeply feeling it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Hal Elrod
Yeah, I’m just deeply felling that emotion. Yeah, that experience.

I’ll use meditation a lot. I’m big on gratitude. I’ll often use meditation – I’ll simply take the emotion of gratitude or the experience of gratitude, most people when they experience gratitude, it’s usually at the intellectual level. If you say “What are you grateful for?” they can list things off. They feel it in their head, but there’s a big difference between intellectual gratitude and deep, heart-felt soulful gratitude at the level where it puts you in tears.

I’ll use meditation to try to get there, to try to get to feel that much of an emotion that serves me. Again, the emotion – gratitude is one, it could be confidence, it could be love, it could be whatever.

I do pray. I’m a big believer in the power of prayer. That’s a whole other conversation, but prayer on even the scientific level as well as the spiritual level. A lot of times I’ll use my silence as prayer and I’ll just – for me, it’s very fluid. There is no right or wrong and that’s probably the biggest – here’s the biggest key.

Let me, whether we close with this for this portion, but when it comes to silence, if you’re at all overwhelmed by meditation or anything like that, set a timer on your phone for ten minutes and be in silence for ten minutes, that’s it.

The only way you can fail is if you judge yourself for any part of your experience. If you go, “Oh, I shouldn’t be having these thoughts. Oh, I shouldn’t be thinking. Oh, I shouldn’t be feeling this way. Oh, I shouldn’t have thought of that.” That’s the only way you can fail at silence is to judge your experience. If you just sit there in silence, you cannot help but get value.

Number one, it lowers your cortisol levels. Cortisol is the fear and the stress chemical in your body, the hormone that causes fear, that causes stress. When you sit in silence, it’s scientifically proven – there are over 1,400 scientific studies that prove the benefits of meditation. It’s scientifically proven that when you sit in silence, it lowers your cortisol.

Now, granted, if you are intentionally thinking stressful thoughts, I don’t know that that would achieve that objective. That’s where judging yourself is a stressful thought. But yeah, if you sit in silence, you will lower your stress, you will gain clarity, new insights will come into your mind and you’ll get better with practice.

Your first day in silence is your worst day in silence. Every day that you do it, you’ll stumble upon new levels of consciousness, new ways of feeling, thinking, being that once you grab them, you can then get there quicker, easier, stay there longer. The benefits of spending time in silence will simply be amplified and deepened over time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Then with silence, what makes it silence is just that you’re not actively reading something, listening to something, tapping away on your phone, you are – or in motion, so you are seated and you may have your eyes closed and you’re just sort of letting your own internal self be the focus.

Hal Elrod
Yeah, exactly. I like to sit up straight. I bought a meditation pillow on Amazon a few months back. That’s been big. There’s something about just having a – it was like 29.99 or something – having a spot that I specifically go to meditate. Because before I got lazy in my meditation where I was doing it on the couch kind of slouched over.

If there’s any wrong way to meditate, really the big one is judging yourself for the experience, thinking that you’re doing it wrong. You’re not. As long as you’re in silence, you’re not doing it wrong. If you have a negative thought, just let it pass and focus on something positive.

But if there’s a wrong way to mediate beyond judging yourself, it is your posture. When you sit slouched over, laying down, your breath slows, you’re not – you want to find the balance between relaxation and alertness, attentiveness. Sitting up straight, sitting tall, breathing deeply, being really alert and aware, but very calm and relaxed, that’s the ideal state for that silence.

Like you said, it just means that there’s no stimuli. There’s no stimuli, where you’re not focused on something. That’s why closing your eyes is good. Now there are ways of meditating where you can have your eyes open. Sometimes I will open my eyes and so I’ll look at the pictures of my family or I’ll look at a beautiful picture of a sunset/sunrise that puts me in a really nice state.

But yeah, everything that you said is correct, just doing – by the way, setting a timer is the other piece I was going to mention. You don’t have to think “How long am I doing it? Am I doing it long enough? Should I do it longer?” Don’t be checking the clock, just have your timer set.

That way you know, “I’m free for ten minutes to not think about anything,” or think about, whatever, “I’m free for ten minutes just to sit here in silence. I’m not going to lose track of time because that timer is going to go off when it’s time for me to get up and do my affirmations or whatever’s next in your Miracle Morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Cool. Yeah, let’s talk about the affirmations next in the Miracle Morning. What do you mean by that and what do you not mean by that?

Hal Elrod
I’m biased in that I’m often asked do you have a favorite of the SAVERS and the politically correct answer would be no, they’re all equally important. But the answer is affirmations are my favorite by far.

Affirmations are – first let me just say, I believe they’ve been taught incorrectly or ineffectively I should say by self-help gurus, if you will, for, I don’t know, decades. I don’t know how long. But let me define what an affirmation is then I’ll talk about why they’ve been taught wrong and what I find is the most effective way to do them.

An affirmation is simply a written statement that directs your focus towards something of value. Now, you could write affirmations that were negative, that were not of value. Obviously that’s not an objective of yours. We have written statements that directly focus towards something of value.

The way affirmations have been taught, there are two problems with the way they’ve been taught for decades, I don’t know, centuries, I don’t know how long.

Number one is a form of affirmation that’s essentially lying to yourself, trying to trick yourself into believing something that is not true or is not yet true. For example, let’s say you want to be a millionaire, well, a lot of self-help pioneers have taught, just put the words “I am” in front of whatever you want to be and say that to yourself until you believe it.

You say, “I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire.” But we all know the truth. We know our truth. We’re not a millionaire. We want to be millionaire. We say, “I’m a millionaire,” our subconscious or even our conscious mind is going to go “No, you’re not. You’re lying.” Then you’re fighting with reality, which is never ideal. The truth will always prevail.

You go “I am a millionaire,” and your brain goes, “No you’re not. You’re not even close.” You’re like, “Shut up. I’m doing my affirmations.” Number one problem with affirmations the way they’ve been taught is lying to yourself is not optimal.

The second problem with affirmations the way they’ve been taught is that self-help pioneers have taught you to use flowery passive language. We’ll still on the topic of finances. You may have heard this affirmation; it’s very popular, or some variation of this. “I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance.”

A lot of people say that affirmation and they really like it. I believe they like it because it makes them feel good in the moment. They go, “Man, I checked my bank balance this morning and it was negative, so I need some affirmations to make me feel better. I’m a money magnet. Oh, that feels good. Money is flowing to me effortlessly. All of my financial problems will be taken care of by the universe,” or whatever.

It’s like no, that’s not how money works. It’s not effortless. That’s very rare. Go buy a lotto ticket, hope. That’s not going to happen most likely. The way that money is created is by you adding value to the world or to the marketplace and then you’re compensated for that value.

I’ll give you an example of how to use affirmations in a way that is not based in lying to yourself or in this passive language that makes you feel good at the moment, but takes your responsibility away from creating the results that you want. There’s four steps to create affirmations that produce results.

Number one is, affirm what you’re committed to. Don’t say, “I’m a millionaire,” or not even “I want to be a millionaire,” say “I’m committed to becoming a millionaire,” maybe even add a when, “By the time I’m 40 or 50,” or whatever or in the next 12 months or 24 months, or whatever.

Start with number one what am I committed to. It’s a very different when you affirm something you’re committed to versus something that you think you are or want to be that you know you’re not.

The second thing is why is that deeply meaningful. After you affirm what you’re committed to, reinforce, remind yourself, why is that deeply meaningful to you. If you want to become a millionaire, why? Is it because you want to … financial freedom for your family, because you want to buy fancy cars.

Depending on how meaningful it really is, that’s going to determine how much leverage you have over yourself to actually do the things necessary to get you there. That’s number three is affirm what specifically you’re committed to doing that will ensure your success. What are the activities you’re committed to that will ensure your success?

I’m committed to increasing my income to $100,000 a year and saving 50% or whatever. Get very specific on the activities that you’re going to do. When I was in sales I would affirm how many phone calls I was going to be making every day because I knew if I made that number of phone calls, my success was inevitable. I couldn’t fail. The average … would work themselves out if I made my phone calls every day.

Then the fourth part of the affirmation formula is when specifically are you committed to implementing those activities. When are you going to make your phone calls? When are you going to run every day to lose that weight? When are you going to take your significant other out on a date or tell them you love them or write? What and when are you going to – what are the activities and when are you going to do them?

Those four steps: what are you committed to, why is it deeply meaningful to you, what activities are you committed to doing that will ensure your success, then when, specifically, are you committed to doing those activities. Those are the four steps create what I call Miracle Morning affirmations.

Miracle Morning affirmations are practical and they’re result-oriented and they reinforce the commitments that you need to stick to ensure that you achieve the results that you want to achieve in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig. It. Well, we’re having fun here, but I could get perhaps the one-minute version of the visualization, the exercise, the reading and the scribing?

Hal Elrod
Yeah, I’m long-winded, so thank you for setting me up. I appreciate that.

Visualization, here’s what I’ll say two things on it. Number one is the world’s best athletes, almost all of them use visualization including UFC fighters. There’s a reason for that. It’s they visualize themselves performing optimally and achieving their goals so that they go there mentally and emotionally before they ever step on the court or before they ever open the book or before they ever write.

They’ve already gone there in their mind, so when it’s real time, when it’s game time, when it’s practice time, it’s that much easier to go there.

The other thing I’ll say on visualization is don’t just visualize the end result, visualize – in fact, more important, visualize the activity. See yourself getting on the phone to make those calls. See yourself opening your computer to write those words that’s going to make that into a book. See yourself going to the gym or lacing up your running shoes and heading out your front door, especially if you don’t feel like it or you don’t like doing those things.

See yourself doing it with a smile on your face in a way that’s appealing. When I was training for my ultra-marathon, I hated running. Every morning I visualized myself enjoying running. Because I did it in the morning in my living room, when it was time to run, I actually had already created this anticipation that I would want to do it. Then I actually felt that when it was time to go for a run. That’s the power in visualization.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Now when you say visualize yourself, I’m thinking almost like dreams. Sometimes they’re first person, sometimes they’re third person. Do you visualize, like you’re seeing yourself from a third-person vantage point putting on the shoes?

Hal Elrod
You can do both, but I usually do yeah, first person and then – or no, third person, where I see myself from the outside. I see myself like I’m watching a movie of myself. Part of that movie will involve me looking in the mirror usually. That’s part of it almost always.

Pete Mockaitis
The dramatic montage music.

Hal Elrod
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, feel free to play the music. Literally play that music on your phone while you’re doing the visualization. A lot of people do that.

The E is for exercise. Here’s what I’ll say is that if you like to – if you don’t exercise at all, this applies to you. If you exercise – if you already go, “Dude, I go to the gym after work or on my lunch break or I like to run in the evenings. It’s my-“ this still applies to you and here’s why.

I’m not telling you that you need to switch your gym time to the morning, what I’m telling you is that the benefits of exercising in the morning even for 60 seconds, if you’re sitting on the couch going, “I know I should – I don’t have any energy. I’m so tired,” stand up and do 60 seconds of jumping jacks.

I promise you at the end of the 60 seconds, you’ll be breathing hard. Your blood will be flowing throughout your lymph system. Your brain – the oxygen, your cells will be oxygenated. You’ll feel ten times more awake than you did before you did those 60 seconds of jumping jacks.

I in the morning usually do stretching followed by a seven minute workout. That’s an app on the phone. It’s also on YouTube. It’s totally free. I highly recommend it. It’s a full body workout in seven minutes. It’s fast-paced, so you get cardio as well as strength training, as well as stretching and flexibility. That’s what I recommend in the morning, just a little bit of exercise and –

Pete Mockaitis
What’s the video or app called? The seven-minute thing?

Hal Elrod
7 Minute Workout, number 7 Minute Workout.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s just called 7 Minute Workout. Okay, that’s easy.

Hal Elrod
Yeah, it’s phenomenal. There’s a few different apps. I use the free version. Then the – actually although I subscribe to the monthly version to open up all the different exercises and different workouts and this and that.

But the R is for reading. I don’t need to say much on this is that we’re all, every single one of us is one book away, whatever topic we want to improve in our life, we’re one book away from learning everything that we need to learn to improve that area of our life.

You want to be happy? There’s a book on that. In fact, there’s hundreds. What to have an amazing marriage? There’s a book on that. In fact, there’s hundreds. Do you want to be a millionaire or be wealthy and financially free? There’s hundreds of books on that.

In fact, so I just made a documentary called The Miracle Morning. It reveals the morning rituals of some of the world’s most successful people. In that is world-class entrepreneur Joe Polish.

He said that, he goes, “When I meet someone and I say ‘What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year?’ and they go, ‘Well, I don’t read. I haven’t read a book.’” He said, “It blows my mind that in places where people have access to books and they know how to read and therefore they have access to everything they need to know to transform anything in their life to be at the most extraordinary level they could be,” he says, “It blows my mind that people aren’t reading every single day.”

Why aren’t you reading every day? It could be five or ten minutes a day. It doesn’t have to be a long time. Think about it, if you read 10 pages a day, that’s 300 pages a month. No, no, let’s say 5 pages a day, that’s 150 pages a month. That’s one self-help book a month, 12 a year. You’re a different person.

You’re separating yourself from 95% of our society and you’re joining the top 5% that reads those books because you’re learning everything you need to transform any area of your life. Any questions on reading and then we can dive into the last one?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. No.

Hal Elrod
Okay. The final S is the word scribing. That’s a pretentious word for writing, but I needed an S for the final part of the SAVERS to round out the acronym.

For me, journaling is – this is where goal setting is involved in scribing. That’s under that umbrella. Journaling is what I would – that would be my scribing. I use an app called Five Minute Journal. They also make a hardcover version if you prefer to write by hand. You can also just write freehand on a piece of paper.

The Five Minute Journal, I like it because it’s scientifically researched and it’s very simple and takes five minutes. It’s simply pre-prompted statements or questions. There’s just a few.

In the morning it’s three things I’m grateful for and the three most important things that I need to do today to make today a great day. I don’t know if it’s worded that exact words, but that’s paraphrasing. Of all things on my to-do list, what are the three that will make the biggest difference in my life, my business, etcetera.

Every morning I start by focusing on three things I’m grateful for, which remind me that my life is already amazing. It doesn’t matter what’s going on outside of me if I focus on internally what I have to be grateful for, everything is – there’s always things to feel amazing about. There’s always things to complain about. What we focus on becomes our reality.

I start with gratitude, then I look at my to-do list, I look at my goals, like okay, of the infinite things I could work on today and out of the 20 things that are on my goal and to-do list, what are the three that will make the biggest impact for me right now and move me forward toward my most important goals?

If you think about it, most people we don’t take the time to just get that level of clarity. It only takes a couple of minutes, but it’s a game changer.

Because here’s the problem, most of us are busy. Every day we’re busy. Being busy tricks our brain into thinking we’re being productive. But productive isn’t busy. Productive is busy doing the things that move us toward our biggest goals, our greatest dreams, the life that we truly want to live and the impact we truly want to make.

That simple act of scribing every morning, forcing your brain to clarify it in writing, what are those top three priorities, that is – for me, that’s been a game changer. It’s allowed me to make massive progress on these goals that once were just fantasies that I never even thought – really believed I could accomplish.

Like making a documentary, that was a fantasy. I didn’t know how to do that. Now we just debuted at a film festival. That will come out probably later this year.

A lot of that is because of – it’s all because of the SAVERS. It’s all because of this process reinforcing the beliefs through meditation, through silence, and affirmations, and visualization, and all of these practices all combine to really create optimal physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual kind of capacity every day that will allow you to become the level ten person that you need to be, if you will, on a scale of one to ten, to create the level ten life that you want, that I believe that all of us really deserve.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful. Thank you. Well, Hal, tell me, anything else you want to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Hal Elrod
The point is that the SAVERS, any one of them will change your life, but if you implement – try them all for a month. I would say do the 30-day challenge, the Miracle Morning 30-day challenge, do them all for a month, either 5 minutes each for a half an hour total routine or 10 minutes each for an hour routine.

Then you’ll have real experience to go, “Okay, do I want to keep doing all 6 of these?” Maybe only 4 of them really resonated with you. You only want to do 4. Maybe 4. It could be 5. I don’t know. But try them all and see what happens. It’s pretty life changing.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Now could you share with us a favorite book?

Hal Elrod
Favorite book is – well, it’s this book – one of my favorite books is called Vision to Reality. In fact, let me give you two. They’re by the same author. I just got her new book. Vision to Reality is her first – I think it was her first book. Oh no, it’s her second book by Honoree Corder.

Her new book is called Stop Trying so F*cking Hard Live Authentically, Design a Life you Love, and Be Happy. It’s in my hand right now. I’m reading. I’m about halfway through. I am loving this book. She’s a great author. She’s written like 25 books. Her original Vision to Reality has been my favorite for a long time, but I think the new one might surpass that. It’s called Stop Trying so F*cking Hard.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite tool?

Hal Elrod
Favorite tool would be that app I mentioned earlier, the Five Minute Journal app. That’s one of my favorite. I put one picture every day and it allows me to capture my life every day for the past few years that I’ve used it. Reflecting on that is really meaningful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite nugget, something you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Hal Elrod
The biggest thing is we all usually have this monkey on our back of urgency, like, “Man, I want to be where that guy is or where she is.” “Man, I have all these goals and dreams; I want to be there now.” It creates this feeling of scarcity, where we’re not where we want to be.

What I found, not only in my own life, but studying other people is that any time you find yourself wishing or wanting that you were further along than you are, just realize that when you finally get to the point that you’ve been working so hard for so long, you almost never wish it would have happened any sooner.

Instead, you look back and you see the timing and the journey were perfect. All of the adversity, all of the challenges, it all played a part in you becoming the person that you needed to be to get where you want to go. If you can take that hindsight and bring it into your life now, use that to be at peace.

No matter where you are right now, no matter what’s going on, no matter difficult or whatever is going on, be at peace with where you are, every day, along that journey while you simultaneously maintain a healthy sense of urgency to take action every day to get where you want to go. But don’t get there out of a feeling of stress, and anxiety, and I’m not where I want to be, just embrace where you are.

If you’re alive, you’re perfect. No matter what’s going on around you, all that matters is what’s going on inside you. Be at peace with where you are and take steps every day to get where you want to go.

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

Hal Elrod
Go to MiracleMorning.com. That’s probably the best place. There’s a bunch of resources there. You can put in your name and email and get the first few chapters of the book for free. You can get – it comes also with an audio training for free on the Miracle Morning, a video training for free. Of course, the book on Amazon you can get the audio book, the paperback, the Kindle. That’s probably the best place to buy it.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Hal Elrod
Yeah, here’s the thing, to be awesome at your job, I think to be awesome at anything, it’s really about who you are as a person. There’s so many components to that. There’s your knowledge, your emotional intelligence, your physical energy, the enthusiasm that you bring. There’s many components to who you are.

To me that’s what the Miracle Morning is. It’s dedicating time every day to become better. Not that there’s anything wrong with you, but we all have unlimited potential as a human being, if you want to get better at your job, become a better version of you, dedicate time to your personal development.

Here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be in the morning. You can do a miracle evening if you wanted. Just dedicate that time so that every day you become better than you were the day before. You become more knowledgeable, you lower your stress, you increase your belief in yourself, your confidence. All of the things the Miracle Morning does for you, you do that every day and you can’t help but bring a better version of you to work every single day.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Hal, this has been a real treat. Thanks for unpacking this and giving some finer distinctions. I wish you and the Miracle Morning and documentary and all your up to tons of luck.

Hal Elrod
Pete, man, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me on. For those of you listening, I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for tuning in and please leave a review for Pete on iTunes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.