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Oct 10
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1001: Transforming Relationships by Overcoming Self-Deception with The Arbinger Institute’s Mitch Warner

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Mitch Warner reveals how we end up sabotaging ourselves and how you can overcome these obstacles to strengthen relationships and your leadership as a whole.

You’ll Learn

  1. How “the box” limits your perspective and opportunities 
  2. The tell-tale signs self-deception 
  3. How to make people feel safe to share their perspectives 

About Mitch

Mitch Warner is a bestselling author and Arbinger managing partner with a background in healthcare and organizational turnaround. Mitch is the co-author of Arbinger’s latest bestseller, The Outward Mindset. He writes frequently on the practical effects of mindset at the individual and organizational levels as well as the role of leadership in transforming organizational culture and results. He is an expert on mindset and culture change, leadership, strategy, performance management, organizational turnaround, and conflict resolution.

Mitch is a sought-after speaker to organizations across a range of industries, bringing his practical experience to bear for leaders of corporations, governments, and organizations across the globe. Specific clients include NASA, Citrix, Aflac, the U.S. Army and Air Force, the Treasury Executive Institute, and Intermountain Healthcare. Mitch carries his first-hand perspective as a proven leader into his speeches and facilitation, dynamically bringing Arbinger’s concepts and tools to life through his powerful stories and hands-on experience. His audiences leave inspired to improve and equipped with a practical roadmap to effect immediate change.

Resources Mentioned

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Mitch Warner Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, welcome.

Mitch Warner
Thanks so much, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am so excited to be chatting with you today because Leadership and Self-Deception is one of my favorite books of all time, and I didn’t know who I could talk to on the show about it because the author is just The Arbinger Institute. And so, I was like, “Who? I don’t know, I guess.” And then you show up in my inbox, that it’s like, “This is the coolest thing ever.” So, thank you and welcome.

Mitch Warner
Thank you. Yeah, I’m excited for our conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. Well, maybe just to back it up a smidge, what is The Arbinger Institute? And how does a whole organization write a book?

Mitch Warner
Oh, great question. The Arbinger Institute is an organization that helps other organizations transform their culture. And the way we help people transform their culture is by helping people transform their people, specifically, at the level of mindset. A lot of people think about transforming a culture or transforming people in terms of behavior, “Okay, well, here’s what people are doing. Let’s fix that. Let’s get people doing something different than they’re doing today, and then we’ll get a better result.”

And our work illuminates the fact that every behavior that people are engaging in is driven by how they see. It’s driven by their mindset. And so, our work is to help organizations transform at the level of mindset. And then when that happens, people start behaving differently and they get better results. And so, the books that we write, including Leadership and Self-Deception, as well as the other books, are all deeply informed by the work that we’re doing with clients.

And that’s not one person. That’s a whole team of people that are going in to help organizations do the work of transforming their results. So those stories are coming through our team from our clients, and they inform everything that we do. And so, while we have teams of people that actually write those books to share those ideas more broadly in the world, we write them as an institute because we are an institute, and it’s really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And the book doesn’t read as though a piece of writing by committee. It is riveting and lovely, and transformation. That’s something we’re all about here. So, could you kick us off perhaps with a really phenomenal story of folks being transformed by some of these principles? Could you walk us through a person and what went down with regard to what they were thinking and doing and the new ideas that got in their head, and the new things they did, and what happened?

Mitch Warner
One that comes to mind is a leader named Louise Francesconi. She ran a 17,000-person division of a very large organization, and she decided that she was going to own the cultural transformation that she knew had to happen inside of the organization. And it was actually an organization that, when we started working with them, had been newly acquired, and she was put in charge of this division.

So, you got these two different groups of people, and these two groups of people are trying to come together, and they realize that they have to cut a significant amount of money. In fact, $100 million was the task of this newly combined leadership team. We’ve got to cut a $100 million dollars from the business, and we’ve got to grow the business at the same time.

Well, they’ve been involved in the work of cultural transformation that Louise wanted to own inside of this division, and so they just called and they said, “Hey, how would we leverage these ideas that we’ve been working with to tackle a really complex problem like that?” And we said, “Well, we’ll come and we’ll be on site as you do that.” And they came together in the typical way, “All right, let’s cut $100 million,” and Louise set it up in what she thought was the right way to set it up, “All right, everybody come, you’ll all present what you’re going to do to contribute to this big goal.”

And we all know how people show up like that. People are territorial, they don’t want anything to be cut from their area of the business, they kind of present something that’s perfunctory, but you just know you’re never going to get there in this way. Everybody is really just thinking about themselves. They’re coming to that with what we call an inward mindset, “I’m not malicious, but I’m definitely not focused on my impact on other people. I’m focused, really, on how this is going to impact me.”

And they got to a point about halfway through the day where they just realized, “You’re not going to make this happen.” And so, my colleague at Arbinger’s took Louise aside, and said, “Hey, would you mind if I just help shape this meeting?” And she said, “Sure, be my guest.” And he said, “Okay, we’re going to take two hours.”

Now, out of an eight-hour day, that’s a lot of time. But he said, “We’re going to take two hours. And I just want you to pair up with someone else in this room, and you’re going to spend the first hour just explaining to your counterpart all the things that you’re working on, all the things that you’re wrestling with, the things that you’re struggling with. And we’re going to do that for an hour, and then you’re going to spend the next hour just coming up with any way that you could help the other person that you’ve been learning about save their money, not cut their money, just save their money.”

And it was like magic. You had people who were now alive to the people around them for the very first time, really, and going, “Oh, my word. I didn’t realize that what you were trying to do in this organization was so important and how hard that is, but how critical it is, too. Here’s ways I think I could help you save that, that critical piece of the business.”

And it got everybody so far outside of themselves that they started to come up with, on their own, ways that they could help the other people in the business save their money. And as a result, they found redundancies and ways that they were costing themselves, the business, more than they needed to so that they got to cutting a $100 million dollars by the end of the day, and not one person had to lose their job in the process. It was stunning.

And I think about that experience often because it just illustrates what happens when people get outside of themselves, when they just start thinking about, “Hey, who are the people around me? What are they trying to accomplish? What could I do, given the resources that I have, in order to help people be more successful?” And you don’t have to be a leader to work that way. You can be anyone in an organization.

And I’d say that the people in organizations that are most valuable to the organization, doesn’t matter what role you sit in, whether you supervise people or not, are the people that think that way. They just figure out how to get outside of themselves and go, “How do I help other people accomplish their objectives given what I can do?” They’re the magic in an organization.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds cool. And I’m not going to try to lean into my Bain strategy consulting background, but I’m so curious about these initiatives that saved a hundred million without losing any heads and people feel good about. So, could you give us just one example of an initiative that someone came up with, like, “Hey, this would help you save money,” and someone receives that and says, “Why, thank you,” as opposed to, “Back off, pal”?

Mitch Warner
Well, the first thing that happened in that room is one of the people stood up and said, “Based on what I’m learning from the person that I’ve just been meeting with,” in a serendipitous way. It wasn’t, you know, “Okay, you meet with you, you meet with you.” It wasn’t like that. “It was just the things that I’m learning about this person, I actually think that I should be reporting to that person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Mitch Warner
That was the first move that happened in that room. And, look, that doesn’t happen in organizations. It doesn’t happen in meetings like this. No one raises their hand and says, “You know what? I think I should go down a rung in the ladder in our org chart.” That doesn’t happen, but it does when a person says, “You know what? We could succeed if all of the things that I’m doing, which in, a Venn diagram, really overlap with this other organization, if all those things were consolidated.”

And what they saw is that there were facilities, there was equipment, there were processes that had significant redundancy to this other department. And so, from the perspective of this person, they couldn’t say, “Well, I think you should report to me.” They just said, “You know what, for the good of this organization, I could report to you. And if we did that, if we consolidated into one unit instead of two different departments, we could get rid of all of those redundancies, work our teams in the same facilities, on the same equipment, with the same process.” That got them to their first seven million.

But, more importantly than that, it put in motion a domino effect in that room where people realized, “Hey, being part of this company means I don’t have to protect myself. In fact, I can figure out things that I could do that are so innovative because they’re no longer filtered through the lens of self-protection or self-advancement.” When it gets to that point, oh, my word, you can accomplish anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it really is beautiful. You said that doesn’t happen, it does sound almost like miraculous or spiritual, and they’re like wisdom traditions that are speaking of these matters associated with putting others, being in service of others, and kind of losing your ego and these kinds of things. So, I want to talk about the particulars of the individual mindset at length. But, first, I want to hear, in an organizational setting, how do we start to get the memo that, “It is, in fact, safe to do this, and I am not going to get my head chopped off if I lower the defenses”?

Mitch Warner
That’s a really good question, and that’s a question that is easier, I think, if you’re a leader to say, “How do I send that message?” If you’re not though, then it will feel risky. Let’s just be honest, it will feel risky to say, “You know what? I’m going to step out and I’m going to do the kinds of things that I feel would have the highest and best impact on the people around me. And it might mean that I forget some things about the past that I’ve used as justifications for why I haven’t done that to date. It might feel risky. because of where we’ve been.”

But the funny thing is, what I’ve experienced is, that people that take what feels risky, that step, discover that that’s the thing that actually propels their own success. You can’t do it. Here’s the irony about it. You can’t do it to improve your chances of succeeding as an individual. It’s just that I’ve seen that that is the natural outcome. It’s the byproduct.

When people step out and say, “You know what? Let me take a risk and just let me see this person as a person. What are they trying to accomplish? Let me adjust something.” Everybody is going, “That’s what we need in the organization. Those are the kind of leaders we need.” It’s just what I see.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that is really beautiful. And I’m thinking about it even, I’ve witnessed this, even in, like, super transactional situations, like there’s a sales meeting that’s occurring, there’s a person that wants to sell something and a person that might want to buy that something. And I’ve seen this a few times when on, as the seller and the prospective buyer, when the seller says, “You know what? Given what you’re describing, or what I’m seeing here, what I have to offer isn’t right for you right now.

Like for a roof, “First, you’ve got to handle that masonry situation, or the roof I’m going to put on there isn’t actually going to keep the water from leaking. So, I don’t do masonry, so you’ve got to handle that first, and then maybe I could help you out afterwards.” Or, it was a digital marketing agency that said, “Hmm, you know, what we’re really good at is promoting this other kind of a result, and we don’t actually have the experience to get a bunch of email addresses associated with this consumer base, and so we’d really be just rolling the dice. And I don’t feel really comfortable putting your money at risk that way.”

And then that same person said, “Pete, I think you should absolutely hire this company.” And we did. Because that builds such tremendous trust that, putting your own self-interest aside, your short-term, immediate self-interest aside, built such trust and good recommendations and vibes, and I think they got more out of it as opposed to trying to grab the deal in front of them.

Mitch Warner
You see that all the time. I mean, is there any role in your life where you’re not more successful if you’re trusted as an advisor by the people that you’re trying to help or serve? I mean, whether you’re a leader, and the people that you need to be seen as a trusted advisor by are the people you lead, or you’re a salesperson and you’re trying to get people to buy, or you’re a parent and you’re trying to help younger people develop into better people. I mean, it doesn’t matter what your role is. And you see that all the time.

And sometimes it looks exactly like you’re saying, “You know, I don’t have the solution for you but I think I know who does. Let me help you get connected with that person.” I remember a dear friend of mine was a leader in a sales organization, but said, “You know, I was in the middle of this transaction. It was the end of the year.”

“I had my quota, and I knew that I had to get this deal over the line in order to meet my quota, and so I pressured this client that I had to get this deal over the line and it wasn’t in their best interest because I was trying to get them to buy in bulk something that they should really have amortized over multiple years when they actually would use this product.”

And the client actually called him on it, and said, “Hey, just so I’m clear, are you doing this for you, or are you doing this for me?” And it was so convicting that, all of a sudden, he realized, “Yeah.” And in that moment, he had this choice, and the choice was, “Am I going to be honest and be just human with this other human being, or am I not?” And he made the choice to just do what he felt was risky, and he said, “To be honest, I’m doing this for me, and I’m so sorry.”

And the interesting thing is that, while he adjusted the deal and he missed his quota, that client was a client for years, far longer than that contract would have been, whatever he was trying to sell. I mean, we got to be honest, sometimes we do take short-term hits by doing the right thing, but ultimately that’s where our success really lies. Those clients, they stay with you forever. There are so many examples of that.

And it can even be as small as, you know, a friend of mine, a colleague, was delivering an Arbinger workshop. And in the middle of this workshop with a client realized that they were bugged with some of the people in the room that were kind of resistant.

Mitch Warner
They were frustrated, they were annoyed with these people in the room, and they realized, “Oh, my word, I have got to make a decision. Do I keep going knowing that I’ve been irritated or do I own that fact, given that it’s a reality?” And they came into the room, they took a break, came back to the room, and they said, “I have to take ownership. I’ve gotten annoyed with some of you that are resistant, and it’s kept me from getting curious about what are you so resistant to. Can I just…?”

And, all of a sudden, the room changed and people said, “Well, this is what we’re resistant about.” And for the first time, that person could facilitate the workshop that they were there to facilitate because now they’re working with actual people. It felt risky, but the truth is it unlocked the very thing that they were there to do. And I think that’s the irony that you and I are talking about. Whatever feels risky, turns out will unlock the very thing that gets us the result that we’re there to accomplish in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, I love this stuff because it grabs the heart in terms of what is being a human about and, like, we got jobs, and we do them, but sometimes it could feel like they are just, like, “Follow the processes. I am a robot executing value-creation activities,” right? But when you speak about this stuff, and I read Leadership and Self-Deception, it comes alive in terms of we are human beings who have values and feelings about stuff.

And, sure enough, it does work out often, not always, that when you step up and are courageous, you take a risk and call a spade a spade, say what’s really going on, and compassionately listen to another person’s point of view, cool stuff happens. I remember, this is the weirdest example, but I was in high school and there was a girl, and we were kind of dating, kind of not, we need to DTR to find the relationship better, I guess.

Anyway, and so it was the weirdest situation, a fun bunch of friends, and we got in this weird little argument and it’s like we were litigating, like, who did who wrong in the course of this semi-romantic relationship. And so, we were sort of arguing in front of the jury. And we weren’t really getting anywhere, and then they left. It was just the two of us, I said, “Hey, yeah, I actually didn’t know you felt that way about this thing. I’m really sorry. And I wasn’t trying to do this. Tell me more about that.”

And it was amazing how it just totally shifted the view, it’s like, “Are we litigating or are we trying to understand, like, the other person and where we come from?” And it’s a totally different energy, and it might be, “soft” or “touchy feely,” but it is effective in terms of, “Okay, this relationship is restored, there’s trust, and we’re off to the races, moving and making things happen.”

Mitch Warner
Somebody once, who experienced this work, said, “Oh, this is soft like a brick.” It hits you and it’s at the core of our relationship. So, to the degree that we believe that relationships actually are what’s driving results, whether it’s in a personal relationship with a partner or it’s in an organization. If you believe that relationships drive results, then what unlocks those relationships is critically important.

And what you said, I think, is so interesting, this litigating who’s right and who’s wrong. In the book, in Leadership and Self-Deception, this whole idea of self-deception that gets in the way, we say sometimes there’s a risk of calling a spade a spade. Usually, the risk is calling myself a spade, when I am a spade, when I’m not seeing clearly. It usually never helps to call someone else a spade. Let them find out the truth about them. But, for me, in a situation where I feel a need to litigate, to justify, it means that something is off. It means that something is wrong and I know it.

I know it at such a deep and professional level that I’m really good at hiding it from myself. I mean, imagine that you and I work together, and I come across a piece of information and I think, “Oh, my word, this would be super helpful for Pete.” The straightforward thing to do would be to just share it with you. But if I betray my own sense of what would be helpful to you as a person, who has needs and challenges and objectives, who’s real to me, just a person that I’m working with, if I go against that sense, if I betray my own sense, then all of a sudden, I need to feel justified for that betrayal.

And how do I do that? I create a world where it’s okay for me to have treated you as less than a person. And so, I might see you as competition, I see you as a threat. Only one of us could get the promotion after all. Or I see you as lazy because, if you didn’t come across this information on your own, that means that you’re probably not doing your job. Or I see you as incompetent, or I see you as stupid, or whatever the case might be, and I see myself as all the opposite of those things.

And now, there’s this whole narrative in my head. You’re not even aware of this Pete, but I’ve got this narrative in my head of why it’s okay for me to be the way I am with you. And why do I need that? It’s because I’m actually not okay with the way I’ve chosen to see you. And I’ll invite you to be exactly what I say I don’t like. I’ll invite you to be all of those things, because if you are, then I’m justified in how I chose to see you. You’ve got this whole human dynamic that came about and I’m litigating that in my own head, but it all stemmed from me.

And I think the hopeful thing about that is, given the fact that I’ve deceived myself, I can also reclaim the truth, just like you did with that girl you were dating in high school. In the moment, at any time, we can go, “Wait a minute. That’s been my impact? I’m seeing you now again? I’m so sorry.” If I can let go of all of those falsehoods, then we can just be truthful together again. We can be human together again. That’s, I think, the hope of it. It’s both how scary it is, the way this snow-balls, but how easy it is to reclaim the relationship that we can have at any moment if we choose to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Mitch, you’re saying so much good, wise stuff. And in the book, there’s an expression they use a lot, and I hear it in my own voice, in the voice of the Audible narrator, when I’m doing it, it’s like, “You’re in the box!” So, Mitch, tell us, what does it mean to be in the box versus out of the box, metaphorically?

Mitch Warner
The box is this metaphor for that distorted way that I’ve come to see the world that gives me justification for my own self-betrayals, the way I’ve chosen to see other people falsely. So now, I’ve got this distorted view of you and me. It’s two-sided. I can’t see you in a less-than way without seeing myself as superior, or vice versa if I get justification that way.

You can imagine a version like that, right, “Oh, my word, I don’t have any privileges here, and I’m new to the team, and Pete is so connected, and he’s so much smarter than I am, he’s so much more gifted than I am. He probably came across this information years ago. If I could go to him now and share this.” So, now I’m worse than, you’re better than. It doesn’t matter which form that takes, it’ll look different depending on how I get justification in any relationship.

But that distorted view, it’s like living in a box. I no longer see reality. I’ll only see the things about you or me that reinforce that false self-image and that false image of you that gets me justification. Because more than I want you to change, more than I want the relationship to be healed, more than I want to work productively to save our family, or our company, or our community, I want justification. And I won’t just carry that distorted, I won’t just live in that distortion of a box with you. I’ll carry that around in a new situation.

I’ll walk into a meeting, and you’re not even there now, but I’m so invested in this view of myself that, “I’m so smart and capable and noble, because the worst thing that you can do when you work with someone like Pete is spoon-feed them information. So, I’m doing the very best that I can, that I’m smart, I’m capable, I’m more capable.” I walk into a meeting and people are presenting ideas. I’m carrying this box, this distorted view of myself into that meeting.

If you were to ask me, walking in then, “Hey, Mitch, what kind of leader are you? What kind of contributor are you? What kind of team member are you? Are you the person that needs to have all the best ideas?” I say, “No way. I’m the kind of person that likes ideas no matter where they come from.” But if I’ve got a view of myself that I’m really smart and capable or whatever that case might be, and then I share an idea and it gets shut down, somebody says, “Oh, you know what, Mitch? I’ve tried that in some other organization. It didn’t work very well. I think we could do this though.”

If I didn’t have this box, if I wasn’t living in this distorted reality, I’d go, “Oh, awesome! I’m glad you’ve tried that. All right, how do we do what you’re suggesting we do? Let’s mobilize around that.” But if I’m living in this box, if I’m carrying this distorted view of myself and others around, all of a sudden, that idea that might save our team, that’s a threat. It’s a threat to my self-image. I experience this all the time at work, but also at home.

You know, I’ve got this image that I deserve to be listened to or whatever. All of a sudden, I walk into situations with my kids. I’m not seeing them. I’m not even seeing myself. I’m just in this distortion field because I need to feel justified for that distorted way that I’ve chosen to see them and me, and now I’m not interacting with what they say. I’m interacting with threats to this self-view that I’ve got that’s so important to me, because at least if that distorted view of myself and others is correct, I’m justified in not seeing the people around me. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely, it does. And this idea is so big and powerful and transformative when you get your arms around it. And so, I mean, I’ve read the book, and if folks haven’t, I just want to make sure they’re not like, “What are they smoking? This is some trippy stuff.” Could you give us some super common examples, like we see all the time in terms of how folks find themselves, deceiving themselves, and then getting into trouble, like the top one or two or three things that occur perhaps nearly universally to humans interacting with other humans?

Mitch Warner
Well, look, there’s a thousand examples of how self-deception shows up in my life, but I won’t see them because self-deception, by definition, is a lie I’m telling to myself. So, what’s odd about that is I can’t see the lie even though I’m the liar because I’m so invested in believing that it’s the truth. In fact, my own emotions will tell me that this is the truth.

So, one of the easiest ways to see it, where self-deception is showing up, and self-deception, let’s just be clear, it’s just the problem of people having problems and not knowing that they have that problem, which would be easy to fix if we’re like, “Hey, Mitch, by the way, the way you’re talking to your kids right there, that’s going to alienate your kids. Is that what you want?”

Or, “Hey, Mitch, the way that you’re showing up in this meeting is actually going to have people resisting your idea instead of embracing it.” Or, “Hey, Mitch, the way that you’re avoiding this conversation with this employee over there, you’re talking to everybody about them instead of talking to them, your team member, that actually will exacerbate the problem. It’s going to keep going rather than get better.”

I mean, it’s like the most basic things that we can see if we’re not the person in the middle of it. And this would be easy to fix if you could tell me, “Hey, Mitch, by the way, the way that you’re talking to your kid is probably going to alienate them.” It’s not just that in self-deception I can’t see it. It’s that I resist that possibility, “Well, do you see how they’re talking to me? How else am I going to get through?” or, “Do you see what this employee is doing? They never listen to other people.” Whatever the case might be, but we don’t see it.

And you can look anywhere in your life where people are creating problems for themselves and they don’t notice it. They can’t tell. So how do I discern it? How do I know where this is happening in my own life? I have to look for the red flags of this box. And the red flags are, “Are there people that I’m blaming for my situation, for my experience? Am I horrible-lizing any people in my life? Am I seeking allies? Am I talking to people about other people? What might that signal?”

You said I litigate. I do that in my own head, Pete. I lawyer up. I find myself driving home from work and I tell myself this story. It’s like I’m playing out this courtroom scene, and I’m creating this case for why I’m right. Even the feeling that I’m right might be an indication that I could be telling myself a story here and it may not be the full truth. I could be self-deceived.

Those telltale signs, it might be that I exaggerate values, “Well, you know what? This is fair.” I wasn’t thinking about fairness when I was just working with someone else. It’s when I betray my own sense of what other people need, and now I’m in this distorted box where I’m looking for justification. Actually, that word itself, wherever I feel justified or I’m looking for justification by talking to others and gathering allies for me, that’s a pretty big red flag that there’s a reason I’m trying to feel justified, and it’s because things aren’t right as they are.

So, I just say look for those instances. Look for those instances where I’m experiencing any of those red flags, and then ask myself, “Is it possible that this isn’t fully the truth?”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Mitch, if I could put you on the spot, hardcore, could you share with us one recent instance in which you caught yourself caught up in this?

Mitch Warner
Oh, absolutely. I found myself with a team member here at Arbinger, one of the senior leaders, and I realized that I had had conversations with this person repeatedly, where I saw problems around what was happening inside of their team. And when they would ask me, “How are things going?” I would kind of dance around it, and I was talking to other people pretty straightforwardly about the problems that this person was creating for me and what I thought was for the company.

And then, finally, one person said to me, “Hey, what do you think it’s like for that person when you have conversations that aren’t really straightforward?” And in the moment, I realized I’m actually sabotaging this person’s success because I think I might want them to fail. Otherwise, why would I not tell them what I’m seeing if this could cost them their success?

And the reality is, I wanted to be justified. As long as they were behaving in these ways, then I was okay talking about them as a problem, seeing them as a problem. What you do with that, that’s where it can feel risky, but I always finish those conversations where I then step forward and say, “Hey, you know what, I haven’t been telling you the truth about what I’m seeing that’s problematic on your team or in you.” And it was an incredibly healing experience.

And what I saw in that conversation was all the ways that I had been creating problems for this person. So, yeah, it happens. I’ll be honest, Pete, those discoveries happen at least weekly, sometimes daily, where I realize I’m not real with other people, and I need to be in order to do my job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Mitch, I appreciate that vulnerability and sharing a lot, and I think that’s powerful context right there in terms of if you catch yourself doing this, that doesn’t mean you’re very bad and very wrong and “Shame! Shame!” It means, “Hooray, you’re engaging the stuff correctly.” And in so doing, you’ve illuminated a pathway to improving your relationships and your results, and even, I’d say, your very character and the rewarding-ness of life itself, if I may be so bold. And that’s awesome. And so, it’s encouraging to hear you, the almighty managing director of The Arbinger Institute.

Mitch Warner
Oh, no, no, no.

Pete Mockaitis
That you, you too, realize you have these discoveries frequently, and I think that’s just a good message for anyone who starts going down this road, and is like, “Geez, I am a real jerk.” It’s like, “Well, we all kind of are. And it’s nice that you’re identifying specific opportunities for improvement, and you’re going to be on a nice little upward character trajectory with better relationships and results to go with it.”

Mitch Warner
Look, the only thing that qualifies any of us at Arbinger to do the work that we’re engaging is that we see it all the time in our life. It’s just constant. I’ll just say one thing about this process. There’s two ways to go about trying to improve myself. One is a project that’s really about me improving, “I want to be free of the box. I want to be a person who’s not self-deceived.” That’s great, but I just find in my own life that that never actually gets me where I want to be in the relationships that matter to me.

The other way I get there is I just go, “Man, what’s life like for this other person having to live and work with me when I’m like this? What are they trying to accomplish? What are they trying to achieve? What are their needs and challenges and objectives? What’s life like for them?” And then when I focus on that, all of a sudden, I can see clearly, more clearly than I can when it’s just a self-improvement project, the ways that I’ve been getting in other people’s way, and then I just respond. When I do that, things get better, faster than when it’s a self-improvement kind of project. You know what I mean?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that sense of conviction and what’s life like. And I think that’s a superpower question right there because, to even face that question soberly and honestly, it takes courage. Like, just the thoughts you’re willing to entertain in your own head, it takes some courage, like, “You might not want to do this when driving because the temptation is immediate.”

Like, “Well, they’re wrong!” It’s like, “They deserve it!” It’s almost like there’s a little monster that’s just, like, trying to run. Like, “No, no, no! Don’t look here, don’t look here!” when that is exactly the place that needs to be looked. It’s like, “What’s life like? Oh, it probably kind of sucks. It probably feels very unsettling to be on the receiving end of this day after day after day.”

And then to just internalize what you hath wrought, the pain and destruction that you have brought on to others hurts. But I think that’s a great sign that you’re growing in self-awareness and compassion, and it’s kind of like the immediate precursor to breakthrough.

Mitch Warner
Absolutely. And if you get there, if you find yourself able to begin to see, “Oh, my word, this is what I’ve wrought. This is what life, I think, is like, having to live or work with me.” Go share that with the person. Go tell them. We call this at Arbinger, “Meet to give.” So often we meet to get, “What would it look like if I just met to give?” And I say, not, “Hey, here’s some changes I think I can make.” You should share that. But, first, tell the person what you’re seeing that you weren’t seeing before when you started to think about what life has been like for.

And I’d just be that clear, I’d say, “Hey, you know what? I wonder if we could have a conversation, because I’ve been thinking about what life has probably been like for you having to live or work with me. And, look, I don’t know if this encapsulates all of it. I’m actually curious about what exactly it’s been like from your perspective. But just sitting there, trying to think about what it likely it’s like, I think it’s like this.”

“And as I think about your objectives, I think your objectives are this. I think this is what you’re trying to accomplish. And here’s how I think I’ve been making that harder, and I just got to own that. I am so sorry. But I’m actually curious. Is that right? Are those the challenges? Are those your objectives? Or what would you add?”

Going to someone, and saying, “Hey, tell me how I’ve been a problem for you,” don’t expect anything from that conversation. Don’t expect someone who you’ve had friction with to be like, “Oh, well, great. Actually, this…” They won’t tell you. You haven’t created a safe enough space. You haven’t demonstrated enough interest in figuring out that, and being willing to own it. But when you do that, even if you don’t have it completely right, all of a sudden, they say, “Oh, actually, yeah,” or, “Well, kind of, but it’s actually a little bit more like this.”

And all of a sudden, you start learning and you get curious, and you say, “Okay, tell me more about that.” That process of just owning it, showing that you’ve been doing some thinking, showing that you’re curious about what your impact has been, that does more to change a relationship than probably anything else you can do. I would say that nothing changes in an organization, nothing, until the relationships between the people that have to work together, transform.

And nothing moves the needle more in transforming those relationships than people doing the work to think about their impact, and then going and honestly sharing that and owning it, and then getting curious about how they might have been wrong around that, and finding ways to help. You offer, “Hey, so, well, given all that, I think I could do this. Would that be helpful?” And they’ll say, “Oh, actually, yeah,” or, “Well, it’s a little bit different.”

It’s no different than the conversation you should be having with family members, with siblings, or a partner, or your kids if you’ve got kids. It’s exactly the same. Just try it. Go meet to give with the people in your life and do the work in advance, and then own it honestly. You’ll be amazed at the transformation that that will begin to put in motion.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Being on the receiving end of that is, like, it could be like startling. It’s like the end of “A Christmas Carol,” like, “What happened to Scrooge? This is amazing! A Christmas miracle!” Beautiful stuff. Mitch, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Mitch Warner
No, I just say don’t think that this is some theoretical thing. This isn’t. This is the way that we work when we’re at our very best selves. We’re just honest. We see each other as people. We’re outward. We take responsibility. And to the degree that you can uncover the places where you haven’t been telling the truth about how you’ve been creating challenges you haven’t seen, that move will do more to set you free to do the kinds of things that you want to see in your life that will propel your success in any relationship than, in my experience, any other work that you could do. So, just jump in, take the next step.

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

Mitch Warner
There’s many, but one of the ones that I personally love comes from Abraham Lincoln, when he said, “I don’t like that man. I should probably get to know him better.” I mean, it’s not terribly profound, except it is. If there’s people in my life that I’m resisting or struggling with, what would it mean if I just got to know them better? What would it mean if I just went and met to learn with that person?

I keep that in mind every time I think, “Man, I don’t like that person. I’m bugged,” or, sorry, irritated. “I’m experiencing friction. Maybe I really need to get to know this person better.” And the truth is every time, that’s unlocked something new for me.

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

Mitch Warner
Oh, great question. There was a study that was done by McKinsey a couple years ago. It was this longitudinal study over many organizations that found something that I have found in our work with organizations. What they found is that organizations that identify and address mindset at the outset are four times more likely to succeed at changing whatever they’re trying to change in the organization than are organizations that just bypass mindset change and go directly to behavior change.

When I saw that study, I thought, “Oh, my word, here is independent research that just validates the work that we’re doing every day.” You’ve got to begin with mindset. Going to behavior won’t work because every behavior is an outgrowth of mindset. So, if you can master that, you can change anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Mitch Warner
Two that I keep coming back to, one is Insanely Simple. It’s a really powerful view into the work at Apple to get to simplicity, and what that can mean in your organization or in your own work as an individual. What would it look like to get to real simplicity? And the other one is called Creativity, Inc. It’s the Pixar story, and how that team of people was able to unleash creativity by really overcoming ego and seeing each other and their customers as people. We use the Adobe suite constantly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you or The Arbinger Institute shares that really seems to connect and resonate with folks that gets quoted back to you often?

Mitch Warner
When you think about a job, whatever your job is, with an outward mindset, there’s a particular pattern. Sometimes when we think about a job, we think, “Well, here’s all of my tasks, here’s my objectives,” the kind of things you could put on a job description. But when you’re really outward, you don’t start with what you do. You start with what other people need to do, who depend on you in the way you go about your work.

My manager, my customers, my co-workers, my direct reports if I’m a leader, if you start there and just see people, what are they trying to accomplish, then you will find the most innovative, powerful ways to adjust what you’re doing every day to be more helpful to them. And the truth is, there’s nothing that anyone does in an organization that’s not intended or designed to help someone else.

So, when you unlock that, that, “My job is to help other people accomplish their job better, so it’s in my power to figure out the innovative ways to change what I do moment-to-moment to be more helpful,” and then measure that impact. Go check in and say, “Hey, I changed this? Was that helpful? I’m thinking of adjusting this. Would that be helpful?”

You can remember that with the acronym SAM, see others, adjust efforts, measure impact. Employees that do that are the most valuable employees in the company. And so, I’d say that’s the thing people walk away, remembering day to day. The way to stay outward, the way to not get bogged down in self-deception or lies I’m telling myself, is to just orient my work every day, what I’m doing moment-to-moment in an outward way. See others first, then adjust my efforts and measure impact.

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

Mitch Warner
Just come to our website, Arbinger.com. We’d love to have a conversation with you, figure out what are your challenges, what are you trying to accomplish. There are tons of resources there that can help you get started on this journey to living and working with an outward mindset. Or, go online and buy our books. You can go to Amazon. You can go to any other retailer. Pick up Leadership and Self-Deception and see what that unlocks for you in your own work. Wherever you are, whatever you’re trying to accomplish, pick up the book, we’d love to hear from you about it.

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

Mitch Warner
I’d say, going back to what we were talking about, Pete, go and meet to give with the people that you have friction with. Just do that work. If there are people in your life that you’d actually just like to improve the relationship but there hasn’t been friction, I’d say go meet to learn. Just get curious. No other agenda. You could do this today.

Pick someone in your life. It could be someone in your family, it could be someone that you work with every day, and just say, “Hey, I’d love to just learn more about what your needs and your challenges and your objectives are. Would you be willing to just let me get curious about those for a minute? I’d love to learn more.” You’d be amazed at what that would unlock. Meet to give, if there’s been friction. If there are people in your life you just love to have a different relationship with, go and meet to learn.

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, this is powerful stuff. Thank you. I wish you many, many happy days and minimal self-deception.

Mitch Warner
Thanks so much, Pete. It’s been great to be with you.

Oct 07
0

1000th Episode Special!

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Pete and the team celebrate 1000 episodes with the help of some extra awesome guests! Thank you to all our listeners for making this special milestone possible!

We’re so glad to have you all, and we hope you continue to be enriched by the episodes to come!

Episodes Mentioned

ADDENDUM: Episode 479 with Anne Grady was mistakenly attributed to another person. 

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Oct 03
0

999: How Perfectionism Holds Us Back–and What to Do About It with Dr. Greg Chasson

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Dr. Greg Chasson reveals the double-edged nature of perfectionism—and provides expert strategies for managing it.

You’ll Learn

  1. How perfectionism differs from high standards
  2. How inefficiency can make you more effective 
  3. How to deal with another perfectionist at work 

About Greg

Dr. Greg Chasson is a licensed clinical psychologist, board-certified cognitive-behavioral therapist, Associate Professor, and the Director of Behavioral Interventions of the Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders Clinic in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. Over the past two decades, Dr. Chasson has provided cognitive-behavioral therapy for clinically severe perfectionism and has owned and operated two mental health practices.

As an active scholar, Dr. Chasson has authored or co-authored more than 70 scientific publications and one academic book (Hoarding Disorder: Advances in Psychotherapy – Evidence-Based Practice). He also serves as the editor of the scientific journal and the behavior therapist, and he has served on the board of directors for a variety of professional non-profit organizations.

Resources Mentioned

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  • Jenni Kayne. Use the code AWESOME15 to get 15% off your order!

Greg Chasson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Greg, welcome!

Greg Chasson
Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m so excited to hear about some of the wisdom you’ve got for us in your book, Flawed: Why Perfectionism is a Challenge for Management. But first, I think we need to hear a demonstration of your beatboxing skills and a segue for how that relates to perfectionism. No pressure.

Greg Chasson
Well, I think it relates to perfectionism in that I stink pretty badly at beatboxing, so it’s a bit testing my perfectionism at heart. Are you really putting me on the spot for this one?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, I’m curious.

Greg Chasson
All right, I am warning everyone, it is not amazing, but here we go. I don’t know how good that sounds on a podcast, but there you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m fired up. I kind of want to hear the other lyrics that are kind of getting integrated from there.

Greg Chasson
Yeah, I’m not Rahzel by any stretch of the imagination, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think you said something there, and I think it’s my own experience, is that it could feel good or even therapeutic for me to do something I’m terrible at and feel okay about being terrible at it in terms of my own relationship to perfectionism. Is that a common thing?

Greg Chasson
Absolutely. It’s a tremendous exercise and it’s something that I think there’s a spectrum of it. You can do things in a goofy silly way, getting on the dance floor, and just being a total goofball and not really caring, or if you do care, doing it anyway, how badly you’re dancing. You can take those principles to a place like work and, I like to say, make mistakes on purpose.

And that is part of the way that I approach perfectionism based on some of the research literature and the treatments that we do for people with really severe cases. But the principles also can really trickle down and be useful for people that are experiencing some levels of perfectionism that might not reach that severe level but still has an impact on their life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s cool. And it’s interesting, Greg, when you say severe cases, I think a lot folks will say, “Oh, I’m such a perfectionist.” Could you paint a picture for what a severe case of perfectionism really looks, sounds, feels like in practice?

Greg Chasson
I’m really glad you asked that question because a lot of people don’t really understand what perfectionism is. They sometimes even think it’s a good thing or kind of a cute thing. They might even answer their interview question, “What’s your greatest weakness?” they might say, “Perfectionism.” And, truly, when you see some of the most severe cases, it will change your perspective on what perfectionism is.

I run a clinic at the University of Chicago for behavior therapy for OCD and related conditions. Now, real quick, not all people with OCD have perfectionism, and not all people with perfectionistic tendencies have OCD. So that’s an important distinction. There’s a nice Venn diagram overlap there, and that’s why I see a ton of cases of perfectionism at the severe level. Because when it gets severe, it becomes paralyzing.

People can’t get their work done, their procrastination becomes profound, they’re constantly checking and rechecking and seeking reassurance, thereby sucking in everyone around them, causing resentment and frustrations. So, it really can become very toxic and debilitating to the point where people can’t even get through college or hold down a job.

Pete Mockaitis
My goodness. Okay, so then let’s talk about that Venn diagram overlap between obsessive compulsive disorder and perfectionism. I guess I could see a little bit because when I imagine OCD, I think about, it’s like, I have to triple check, quadruple check, “Did I turn off the oven?” or “Have I arranged these things in just the right way?” or “I just have a feeling, I may know it’s not rational, but if I don’t lock this four times, something terrible might happen.” So that’s what I think of as OCD.

And you could tell me, you’re the expert if that’s an accurate picture of it. And then perfectionism seems, I could see a bit of that overlap in terms of, “Oh, I need to make sure this is just so, or I have a great deal of anxiety about it not being so.”

Greg Chasson
Yeah, you characterized OCD very well. And, really, OCD is defined by two things: obsessions and compulsions, which is inherent to the name. Obsessions are just thoughts, images, or impulses that pop in your head. They feel really alien to you. They feel like they’re trespassing. They’re inconsistent with how you see yourself, your sense of self, your values. And so, in that sense, they’re very distressing, and because of that distress, people do things to try to bring that distress level down. They try to calm themselves and get relief. Those are the compulsions, which I call safety behaviors and lump them into one giant category of compulsions and avoidance and escape behaviors.

These behaviors are done with a function of calming yourself because of your obsessions. And so, when you look at perfectionism, you can see overlap with OCD in the cases in which people are having these intrusive thoughts about needing to do things just right, in just the right way, or getting a just right feeling where it needs to feel just right, or they worry that they’re going to get something wrong even though they know it’s not that important or that they did it correctly, that they’re worried about it anyway and they’re almost obsessing about it.

And when it really feels excessive and inconsistent with what you want to be thinking about and doing, and it’s causing you to do all of these compulsive behaviors, like checking and reassurance-seeking and internet researching, and it really can look a lot like OCD.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, I think you’ve painted a picture for what a maybe severe or clinical kind of picture looks like. I don’t know how you define it in terms of a continuum or spectrum in terms of, I think some would like to say, “I’m perfectionistic and it’s a good thing…” but I guess they would define that differently, “…because I have a high standard of excellence and I demand it from myself and from others.” Can you help draw a real clear distinction or guideline for, “Okay, yeah, that’s cool, but here’s where that’s problematic and/or dysfunctional”?

Greg Chasson
So, I think it’s an excellent question, “How do you draw the line?” And I think it’s important to note that perfectionism is not the same thing as high standards or high expectations. Perfectionism is characterized by two primary things. One is excessive expectations. So, these are expectations that most people would find to be beyond what is reasonable or is feasible.

The second piece is that you have a certain level of rigidity to your thinking. You have a hard time being flexible and shifting your gears and moving from one thing to another and being nimble and adapting, and other synonyms that I can’t think of in the moment.

But the idea is that you have those two things together and it’s a really, really problematic recipe, because you have people who are just continuously trying to reach for things that are not feasible, maybe even impossible, and they have a hard time shifting gears when the feedback is telling them, “Look, this is not possible.”

And so, they’re just constantly hitting their head against the wall like a hamster on a wheel. And it’s really very different than having high expectations because high expectations, in and of themselves, are perfectly fine. I would never tell someone not to have high expectations. It’s really the rigidity around it, and then are those expectations unreasonable and infeasible?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that definition a lot in terms of that combination, because you may very well be trying to do something cool, innovative, never before done, and it’s like, “This may very well be impossible, but we know that going in, and if we discover that it’s impossible, we’re not going to flip out about it. We’re just going to say, ‘Oh, shucks. I guess the way we were pursuing that just isn’t going to work. We’re going to have to try something very different in order to pull off this never-before-accomplished thing we’re after here.’”

Greg Chasson
Totally. And so, what you’re describing is the very essence of innovation and risk-taking, and I think perfectionism stifles that more than just about anything. It really puts a dead stop to creativity and innovation and smart risk-taking. In fact, when I give talks to organizations and groups, or even patients, who are struggling, they really struggle with this sort of term that’s been floated out there called “fail forward.” The idea of, “It’s okay to fail. Take those failures and grow from them, do it quickly, and do it a lot, and move forward, and learn from it.”

The problem is, I’ve learned, that nobody knows what “fail forward” means in terms of how to implement it. No one knows what to do in order to fail forward. They get the concept, but it feels almost like a hollow cliche because there’s no framework. So, I think I’ve drawn on from a lot of the perfectionism research literature and some of my clinical work to really develop, I think, the foundation of a fail-forward framework that just hasn’t been explicated yet.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, we must hear that. But first, maybe just to continue getting the context. In your book, Flawed, could you give us sort of the big picture, main idea?

Greg Chasson
The book’s main idea is pretty simple. Perfectionism is not your friend, and it’s not great for your business. It’s not great for your teams. It’s not great for the bottom line. It’s not even great for the culture in which your teams are working. It really has an adverse impact on all of those things, and it’s not to be underestimated. I think we don’t really keep a great eye out for it. And, in some ways, I think the culture and the company environment and the messaging reinforces perfectionism instead of tries to reduce it and open the floor for innovation and creativity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then it’s not just an individual problem, but rather it’s a problem across the whole organization, workplace management. Could you maybe paint a picture for how you see that showing up frequently, or if there’s any numbers on just how pervasive and damaging this is to kind of get our arms around the problem?

Greg Chasson
I don’t have data on perfectionism in the workplace, but I can tell you that perfectionism in the population at large is increasing over the generations. So, we’re seeing this increase, I think, it’s in large part because of the achievement culture that has kind of sucked us all in even from childhood. And I think we see some of that extend into the company culture, and the sort of mentality give it your all.

And there’s this fear of making mistakes and not doing your work properly and costing the company, something like costing them money or costing them reputation, and then really worrying about your own status at the company, “Am I going to get fired? Am I going to be seen in a negative light?” And so, there really is a messaging that you can use in your workplace that I think allows people to feel a little bit more open to taking those risks and to making mistakes instead of, essentially, being closed off to those opportunities.

Think of a marketing team with a sales team, and they’re basically creating a whiteboard of all the most impressive sales numbers and sales people for that month, like a star monthly whiteboard, where they go through and they celebrate the top sales and the top salespeople.

The problem with that is that there are going to be people who work their tail off, and perhaps it’s because they didn’t have the right circumstances or they didn’t have the right resources to get the job done, to get on that winner’s list, but they might feel particularly demoralized by the fact that all this praise is being thrown at somebody else and not themselves.

And that really, I think, reinforces an environment of perfect performance that I think can be demoralizing for a lot of people, and that’s not to say incentives and praise is entirely bad. But I think what it does, yes, Pete, I think you have to be careful in terms of how it’s communicated in that kind of environment. 

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love to dig into some potential solutions and tips here, maybe both at the individual level and in the organizational managerial level. I’m curious, you mentioned in terms of perfectionism, you’re worried about perhaps losing your job “If I don’t do this just right.” And I’m thinking of a buddy of mine who worked at SpaceX, and so Elon Musk, really, is pretty hardcore and fires people kind of a lot.

And so, part of me thought, “Huh, maybe that is a completely valid, rational fear, or maybe it’s not.” Because I, too, have had the fears that, “Oh, the worst could happen,” but they were not. So, any pro tips on how we kind of get anchored into reality, and if we are catastrophizing, get back in a good spot?

Greg Chasson
I think it’s important to recognize that you’re not going to have all the information you need to be able to understand the situation, and that sometimes you’re going to have an accurate reading of the situation. If you’re working with Elon Musk and you think you might get fired, you might be right. This is the reality of the world. You can’t always predict, and in a lot of ways, anxiety and control go hand in hand.

I think control tends to be highly overestimated. People with anxiety overestimate their control, and so they’re constantly trying to do things to take over the situation and make sure that they can predict what’s coming next. And the problem is most things aren’t predictable or controllable, and so you end up with a lot of anxiety, especially over things that you can’t control.

And I would tell people, use your values as a guide in the situation, figure out what’s really important to you, and then use that as an indicator of which things to take risks on and which not to take risks on, and understand that a risk is a risk for a reason. You might be wrong and be comfortable with the possible end result. If not, then I would be very careful even doing it in the first place. So, I wish I can say that everyone is catastrophizing in these situations, but that’s not true.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think that sounds very wise in terms of, like, “You’ve done this before, Greg.” Anxiety and control going hand in hand, and a desire to predict what’s going on or to control what’s going on when you can’t. That feels like a potential Holy Grail right there, is if we can develop some comfort and peace with just the hard reality that many things are outside our control, and the future is kind of unpredictable, and we could just kind of do our best to influence things, and the chips will fall where they fall, and then to become okay with it. That sounds like an amazing mental health place to be. If we’re not there, how do we get there?

Greg Chasson
I think that’s exactly right, and it goes in multiple directions. So, I think anxiety is the misperception of having more control than you really have. Whereas, I think depression is the misperception that you have less control than you really have. So, people with depression often don’t think that they can do much to control the situation. They end up getting hopeless, when, in reality, there are some potential things they could do. It just doesn’t feel that way.

Whereas with the anxiety, they’re misperceiving their control. They think they have more than they really do. And so, you really have the seesaw going on, and in the end, both of them are illusions of control. And so, really, we just need to make sure that we’re not letting control, control us. And how do we do that? That was your question.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Greg Chasson
And, really, I think it is, again, I’m going to keep talking about this, figuring out what are the things that are within your power. Those are the things that you then need to check in with yourself about. And then even though you may have the power to change them, that’s not where the story ends. The story then continues with, “What is worth my efforts? What is worth the attempt to control?” because not everything is.

I have something that I call the emphasis framework, which has three different levels: emphasis A, emphasis B, and emphasis C. And this is really a framework for understanding effort allocation for tasks. So, if I want to do something perfectly, give it my all, 110%, that’s emphasis A. Emphasis B is to just get it done, just the get it done strategy. Doesn’t need to be garbage, doesn’t need to be perfect, doesn’t need to be amazing, doesn’t need to be beautiful.

And then there’s emphasis C, which is not to do it at all. And you might think, “Well, some of those sound better than others. Emphasis A obviously is better than B.” Actually, I take a step back and I’m agnostic to that, judgment free. Because there’s a time and place for all three of those. Emphasis A certainly makes sense if something is very important to you.

Maybe you’re getting married and you want to plan your wedding day. It’s super important to you and your family. Maybe you’re studying to get into law school, and the LSATs, the entrance exam, is really important to you, so you want to put in an emphasis A effort.

Emphasis C is also a totally legitimate strategy. And I never, ever answer the customer satisfaction survey at the end of my call with AT&T. I just don’t because it’s just not important to me, right? I’ve used my values as a judgment call. And so, that was a strategic selection of Emphasis C to protect my time and my resources.

Now, to be honest with you, Emphasis B is what most things warrant most of the time. Not everything can be that important to you at all times and really gets and deserves all of your attention. It’s just not sustainable. And the problem with perfectionism is that people with perfectionism try to emphasis A everything, and what happens is that you can’t do that.

So, what ends up occurring is that they attempt to emphasis A everything and it ends up pushing things aside, and so they end up emphasis C-ing things because they can’t get to it. And so, essentially, their perfectionism has selected their priorities and chosen for them rather than their values.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, that’s powerful. This reminds me of insights from our previous guest. David Allen says you could either handle things when they show up or when they blow up, and/or if you don’t, you’re going to just be dealing with whatever is latest and loudest.

Greg Chasson
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, like the AT&T survey, that’s there, that’s there right now, they’re asking for it right now, “Oh, okay,” you know, and so you didn’t actually make a choice. It just sort of you happened to be in a spot where they asked for a survey, and you did it. And you could make that choice in terms of, “You know what, I am all about everybody I encounter having the opportunity to learn and grow and improve every time, and so this is in accordance to my values, doing this survey.” Or, you could say, “No, that’s my value, but I don’t think they’re ever going to use my survey, so I will achieve that value better by calling a friend instead with that time saved.”

Greg Chasson
Well said.

Pete Mockaitis
And then we also had a guest, Morton Hansen, who said, “Do less than obsess,” which I think is so perfect in terms of those few things that are emphasis A. And then I guess you’re just going to discover naturally that we’ve got some just hard boundaries in terms of my time and my energy and my availability and my duties and responsibilities. It’s, like, “There’s only so many hours of brilliance I have available to deploy in a week. So where are they going to go?”

Greg Chasson
And, especially for someone that might be in the sandwich generation, dealing with kids and parents, juggling a job and family, I mean, this is a tough life sometimes. There’s a lot going on. It’s hard to keep up and you have to be judicious about where you allocate your time and energy. And that’s the problem with perfectionists. They have a really hard time doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, but I think it’s so liberating if you sort of define that up front and in advance. I remember one time, I think I was in college, I kept getting in the habit of picking too many goals or tasks on the to-do list for a spring break, or a summer break, or a winter break, and so I just list all the things I just felt like I had an expectation to do them. But then at the top of the list, I wrote, “I am in no way committed to achieving all of these things,” and I felt amazing. It’s like, “Okay, this is just a menu of things I might choose to do, and that’s fine, and it feels great this way.”

Greg Chasson
I would maybe even say that you got more done than you would have had you not.

Pete Mockaitis
I think so, yeah.

Greg Chasson
Right. Because it puts you in a much better mindset. This is the thing. I call perfectionism the irony problem, because the more you try to perfect something, the more you end up kind of ruining it and making it not perfect. I have a story I tell about when I was a kid where I was working on a picture of Spider-Man, drawing Spider-Man, and he has this really very specific web design on his costume.

And I would just keep trying to get this right, and I would sit there and just erase time and time again, and I was so frustrated. And by the time I was done, I had completely destroyed this picture, completely annihilated it. I mean, Spider-Man looked like he had spaghetti arms by the time we were done. And it was a perfect example of how perfectionism is so ironic.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. All right, Greg, any other top pro tips, do’s and don’ts on perfectionism at the individual level before we shift gears to the managerial level?

Greg Chasson
Yeah, make mistakes on purpose. I use a framework called exposure therapy, which is a terrible name but it really is a gold standard treatment. It is highly supported by the research literature. It’s extremely effective, and you could use the principles to fight perfectionism. And this really requires you to, in a systematic way, face some of the things that are anxiety-provoking about not being perfect, and often that is making mistakes.

And so, I will have people make mistakes on purpose, and I know it sounds ludicrous, but I will start somewhere doable, and these will be smaller mistakes from our perspective, maybe not from the perfectionist’s perspective, and they might do something, like sign off their name with a typo, or send it to the wrong Jim in Accounting, something to that effect, and sitting with the anxiety that they really botched this up, and that they have to learn that they can tolerate that anxiety, that they won’t crumble. And maybe also learn that it’s not as catastrophic as they thought it would be.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. and I’m imagining all the ways that could actually be kind of fun, and you could start with like the lowest of stakes, like you’re at a restaurant, and instead of ordering a chicken sandwich, you asked for a “sicken chandwich,” you know, just like mixing up a couple letters, completely inconsequential, and then just sort of go. Is that your recommendation, sort of tiny bit and then a little more, a little more, a little more, a little more?

Greg Chasson
Yeah, that’s a great example. The problem is, the person with perfectionism typically doesn’t find it particularly fun or enjoyable. They tend to be pretty upset about these kinds of things because, to them, this is their worldview. We might find it fun because we realize that the stakes are just not what they think that they are. Whereas, they’re in that world and they’re really struggling. But I do think that starting at that level, that kind of mistake is what I’m envisioning.

I’m not expecting you to go accidentally take $20 million from your company and throw it in the garbage. That’s not what I’m talking about. These are things that are relatively tiny from most people’s perspective, but from a perfectionist’s perspective – which is hard to say really fast, 10 times, perfectionist’s perspective – I really think that you can loosen up their thinking. It’s about that rigidity. It’s about the risk-taking and fighting that fear of failure and learning from it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Understood. Anything else at the individual level you want to make sure to mention?

Greg Chasson
I think it really just takes a little bit of collaboration and making sure that the person has some insight around their perfectionism. It can be sometimes difficult to approach an individual with perfectionism and have that conversation. This is probably the number one question I get, “How do I approach so-and-so with this perfectionism?” And in an organization, you have to be careful right because it’s a different setting than if this was a friend or a romantic partner or a teammate. It’s a little sticky.

And to approach them, I often tell people to focus on the distress. Don’t focus on what you think is ridiculous about it, or that they’re not understanding, or that they’re being rigid. Instead, focus on the fact that they are probably suffering at some level with anxiety or frustration around the worldview that they have just been pounded with since they were a kid, feeling like they can’t take a breather, they can’t stop. They have to do this perfectly. That almost always comes with tremendous anxiety. And so, being able to tap into that and say, “Look, this anxiety, you don’t have to experience it like this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, so now let’s think a little bit about some management, or team organizational level things. What are some top do’s and don’ts there?

Greg Chasson
I think the top do is to make sure that you’re communicating what perfectionism is, and I would do this very explicitly. I don’t know that I would do this in a subtle way. I would recommend talking about perfectionism and fear of failure, if you need to use language that’s a little bit more understandable, and talking about how that kind of a culture can really lead to stagnation, and how, “Here are the things that we encourage in our workplace.”

Taking calculated, intelligent risks, get the support of the people, talk it over the risk and what it might mean, but don’t hesitate if it’s actually an idea that could lead to the latest innovation and could take this company to new heights. So, I really think that this failure fear is something you could address very specifically in an employee handbook or in your mission statement or values, and you could really hammer it home.

Of course, that would then need to be embodied in your behavior in the organization. I think everyone can sniff out a perfunctory mission statement or value and it doesn’t actually translate. But if you could actually translate that with the way that you are responding to people’s mistakes, encouraging them to take big leaps, these are the kinds of things you can do at the cultural level that I think would help protect against perfectionism.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’d also love your view in terms of in a world in which we have public recognition, like, “Here’s the top five sales people,” or whatever, how do we think about that in terms of providing…? In some ways that incentivizes competing against your teammates and colleagues, and sometimes folks find that quite motivating, “I want to win and be number one.” But maybe that is problematic, and even more so for perfectionists. How do you think about motivating, recognizing, and these kinds of things?

Greg Chasson
Yeah, great question. It really depends very much on the individual, at the individual level. For some people, that kind of system really can motivate them and move them forward, especially if they’re flexible in their thinking and anti-perfectionistic, because they’re not always going to meet every goal. They’re not always going to be the top. And if you’re not, you need to be able to pick yourself up quickly and try to learn from it and go do better.

The perfectionist really struggles with this. They really struggle with getting positive feedback. They might be told that they’re the best at what they did this month, but they will find a way to not be happy with it. It’s part of the perfectionism is that they’re generally not satisfied with their performance. They’re the type of student that will argue when they got a 99% on an assignment instead of a hundred.

And so, when you have these kinds of public displays of who’s done the best in a way that you think will motivate your employees, it very well could motivate some, but the perfectionist is in the corner beating themselves up, even if they’re number one on the list. So, it really isn’t a one-size-fits-all, and I think it’s really important for people in management and leaders to understand that not everyone is going to respond well to that kind of a mechanism, and that you might need to be a little careful about tailoring it to that perfectionist in the corner.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, then what might be some superior ways if we have a mix of perfectionists? And maybe I should have asked this earlier Greg, what proportion of us, U.S. professionals, are, in fact, perfectionists?

Greg Chasson
A very difficult question to answer because it depends on how you define that and where you draw the line. I’ve seen estimates from a quarter, 30%. I’ve seen some samples up to 80, 90%. I think the one thing I could definitely say with longitudinal data is that we are seeing an increase in cohorts over time. So, there is something going on that is making us more perfectionistic over time in terms of cohorts.

So not that I’m necessarily getting more perfectionistic over time, but 18-year-olds are getting more perfectionistic over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Okay. Well, so if we operate with that assumption that in a team situation, perhaps a quarter plus of folks are perfectionistic, how might we want to do some managing and some communicating differently? One thing was to be just very explicit, it’s like, “This is what’s going on.” And then how about some of the day-to-day stuff in terms of how we interact with folks?

Greg Chasson
So, one thing that I recommend is something that would drive people bonkers, but I think it really could be useful for reinforcing a flexible mentality in the workplace. So, if you’re in a work setting where people are extremely stuck on routine, everything is the same every single day, “There’s this task A, task B, task C,” and it’s sort of done in the way at the same time every day, I tell people to use a random work schedule to get people loosened up and flexible and learn that they can pivot and adjust.

So, when someone comes in at random, you pick which tasks they do in which order, assuming that that’s feasible or possible. Sometimes you task-require one is done before the other, but you can sort of randomize this in a certain way. And the bottom line here is to really reinforce this idea of flexibility. The more you can do things that push this idea of flexibility and get them to practice, the more, I think, you’re going to benefit from people being nimble and being willing not to get stuck on the hamster wheel.

Pete Mockaitis
You know what’s funny, Greg, is I’ve done that in my own world, just with my own to-do list with a roll of the dice, and I actually find I liked it because it just sort of eliminated the, “Huh, what should I do next? Well, maybe this or maybe I’m feeling a bit more energetic around here.” It’s like, “No, we just cut through all of that. Number six, okay. Doing number six.”

Greg Chasson
Exactly. In one chapter of my book, I call it process paralysis. It’s when perfectionism really gets a hold of the process, the planning. So which steps do you do in which order? And how do you be efficient versus not getting stuck being inefficient? And so, you get stuck on this, and it really could become paralyzing. And what I talk about is sort of the flexibility of sometimes you choose to be inefficient on purpose just to get it done, just to move forward.

And this is where I use that emphasis framework. Instead of emphasis A, the planning, sometimes you just got to emphasis B the daylights out of it, and like you said, roll dice and see what happens and go for it. And I think if you can start to do that more and more, you will start to loosen. Your rigidity will start to loosen. And I think if that culture is put forth in the workplace, you really can support people who are really working on that.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear some of your favorite things?

Greg Chasson
Yeah, a couple of things, if you don’t mind. The first is something I didn’t get a chance to talk about, which is other-oriented perfectionism. This is where you tend to project your perfectionistic standards onto other people instead of yourself. And I dedicate a couple of chapters to this, both in terms of how to deal with a coworker who has other-oriented perfectionism and also how to deal with a boss who might have some perfectionistic tendencies.

Now, I really focus on something called “moralism” because sometimes our perfectionism really gets us stuck on morals. “That person is being immoral,” and you end up really getting stuck trying to correct people based on what you think is correct and moral or not moral, and it really can look self-righteous, and that is another problem that we see in the workplace.

This is the person in your workplace who you find is obnoxious or policing people based on what they think is correct or okay, and that moralism sometimes can come from a place of perfectionism. And so, I often encourage people in the workplaces where I give talks or I train, is keep an eye out for some of these scenarios where you have this toxic interpersonal dynamic. There could be perfectionism at play.

The second piece that I would like to add here is that perfectionism is not all bad. I want to be very clear. I would not recommend ridding perfectionists from the workplace. I want to highlight that perfectionism comes with some tremendously positive characteristics. Now, I personally don’t think that those characteristics depend on you also being perfectionistic. So, I think you could work on your perfectionism and not lose all those positive qualities. But there are things like loyalty and conscientiousness.

And if there’s one ingredient I would want in one of my employees, it’s conscientiousness. Honesty. They tend to have some honesty that you might not find in other people. They’re detail-oriented. These are some great characteristics that you want in your employees. They’re the hardest working people that are on your teams.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t bring that up because I don’t want people to make this a witch hunt. I would absolutely hire a perfectionist, and my goal would be to leverage their strengths and to work on helping them with their difficulties.

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

Greg Chasson
I think my favorite quote really is about control. Shocker, right? It really is this idea of breaking the illusion of control, that we need to see when control is actually controlling us, because that’s when we need to do something about it.

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

Greg Chasson
Some of my favorite research is around this idea of doubt and uncertainty, which is very close to this concept of anxiety and perfectionism. And there has been a ton of research that shows, and I love this, it’s so paradoxical, the more you check something, the more you doubt it. You know, checking the stove that we turned it off, or checking that we didn’t make a mistake, or checking that we pushed record on our podcast, these kinds of things actually make us doubt even more than have we not checked in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Greg, this is so meta in real time, but when you said record on the podcast, I did check, and then having checked, I felt less sure than I did before you even mentioned it.

Greg Chasson
You’re embodying the very research finding that I described. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Greg Chasson
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and it flipped my entire understanding of human nature and biology upside down on its head. And I would say that that book has transformed me more than any other book that’s out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And habit?

Greg Chasson
My favorite habit is something I tell my kids because they have a hard time with it, but having systems at home so that you’re not losing your keys and your wallet because I’m finding them all over my house. I’m sure any parent can understand that. And so, my favorite habit is just having these systems in place so that I never lose my stuff.

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

Greg Chasson
It really is this idea of anxiety being a misperception of control. I know I keep pounding that home. But that’s the thing that has resonated the most with people, that anxiety is overestimating control, whereas depression may be underestimating control. And when you can start to calibrate that a little bit better, you can start to see yourself lift from anxiety and depression.

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

Greg Chasson
I think the best way to get in touch and to learn more about the message that I’m trying to spread, the movement I’m trying to create around perfectionism, is to join my mailing list, which you can do on my website at GregChasson.com. And I’d love to hear from people, so feel free to email me and let me know what you think of the podcast. Let me know what you think of the book and content that I put out there on the blog and the website. And if it’s something of interest to you for your organization, I do love coming and spreading my message and helping organizations get unstuck from their perfectionism and fear of failure.

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

Greg Chasson
Make mistakes on purpose. That’s what I would say. Go and lean in to making mistakes, and learn from opportunity and innovate.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Greg, thank you for this deeply flawed conversation.

Greg Chasson
Deeply, deeply flawed, I’m sure. Thank you very much for having me.

Sep 30
0

998: A Crisis Management Expert’s Guide to Leading Well with Dr. Thom Mayer

By | Podcasts | No Comments

The “Master of Disaster” Dr. Thom Mayer shares his most valuable lessons learned from leading during times of major crises.

You’ll Learn

  1. The critical first step to leading well
  2. The recipe for a great workplace culture 
  3. Why to suck down instead of up 

About Thom

Dr. Thom Mayer is the Medical Director for the NFL Players Association, Executive Vice President of Leadership for LogixHealth, Founder of BestPractices, Inc., Speaker for Executive Speakers Bureau, and Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University and Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke University.

He is one of the most widely sought speakers on leading in times of crisis, patient experience, hardwiring flow, trauma and emergency care, pediatric emergency care, EMS/disaster medicine, and sports medicine. In sports medicine, his work at the forefront of changing concussion diagnosis and management in the NFL has changed the way in which these athletes are diagnosed and treated. His work in each of these areas has resulted in changing the very fabric of patient care.

In 2022, Dr. Mayer helped lead a mobile team to Ukraine, caring for more than 350 internally displaced persons during the current war and training over 1,700 Ukrainian doctors, nurses, and paramedics. On September 11, 2001, Dr. Mayer served as the Command Physician at the Pentagon Rescue Operation and has served on three Defense Science Board Task Forces, advising the Secretary of Defense.

He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, over 200 book chapters, and has edited or written 25 textbooks. His newest book, Leadership Is Worthless…But Leading is Priceless will be released on May 7, 2024 through Berrett-Koehler.

He has won numerous awards, including the ACEP James D. Mills Outstanding Contribution to Emergency Medicine Award in 2018. He has also been named the ACEP Outstanding Speaker of The Year, ACEP’s “Over-the-Top” (three times), and ACHE James Hamilton Award (three books).

Resources Mentioned

Dr. Thom Mayer Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Thom, welcome.

Thom Mayer
Well, it’s good to be here. I’m honored to be among your guests. I really enjoy the work you do.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, we’re honored to have you, the so-called master of disaster. Hopefully, this interview is not a disaster. And to that end, I’d love it if you could kick us off with a riveting tale. Firsthand, you’re in the midst of a crisis, high stakes, life and death situation. Take us into the scene. What went down and what was a key learning that you picked up that’s really influenced some of your work and writings?

Thom Mayer
Well, there could be many of them, but since we’re recording the day after 9/11, I can remember vividly what it was like to go to the Pentagon on 9/11 in 2001. I was summoned there to become the command physician. It was looking at the gates of hell. It looked like a movie scene. Everyone who was there that day felt as I did that, “This can’t be real. How could it be possible that a plane would crash into the Pentagon?” But everyone’s eyes turned to you, because as the command physician, and you wear a bright orange fluorescent vest that identifies you as such, it’s not like you can hide.

And they’ve got eyes on you to figure out, “Doc, is it safe for us to go in the building? Is it safe for us to go in and try to rescue people and to recover those who couldn’t be rescued?” So, it was an honor.

And the next three days were not a blur, as people often see it, but a series of not just snapshots with absolute clarity in terms of what the problems and issues were, but more like a movie on a continuous thread. Eventually, when it was safe, I went into the building with SCBA tanks on our backs and helmets on with the FBI evidence recovery team to survey both the devastation of what had occurred, but also to think about lessons for what that might teach us for the future.

So, most people are sane and run away from the sound of chaos and fire and flames and explosions, but we, I say not just me, but the entire team of 5,000 people were trained and anxious to go in and help. So, we kind of run towards the sounds of chaos.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s quite a turn of phrase, “Run towards the sounds of chaos.” And has that been sort of a recurring theme or lesson or a recommendation you give to leaders and professionals in the midst of them doing their daily work even if it’s lower drama, lower stakes?

Thom Mayer
Yeah, absolutely. And I get this question of, to me that’s an honor and one we should all embrace, and people ask me, “Well, yeah, but, Doc, I don’t get to lead on a national stage, an international stage of crisis, but that’s my point, is all of us lead all day, every day in whatever we do.

So, waiting, I think the word “Someday I’ll be a leader” is a wistful, unhelpful word and phrase. “Today, I am a leader” is a very embraceable phrase and one that everyone, no matter who they are, no matter what they do, certainly you lead when you put this podcast together. But you also lead when you take Joey boy for a walk or calm him down or whatever it is that he needs. As his father, you’re leading him. Just like a single mother leads her family.

So, it strikes me that leading is a truly universal concept and not an aspirational goal. It’s something that we need to listen to, embrace every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Thom, I like that and I resonate with that, and I’m curious if you’ve ever heard pushback. If someone were to say to you, “Oh, Thom, I am the tiniest cog in a grand machine. I have so little influence over…” how do you respond?

Thom Mayer
Well, certainly, I get pushback because, in the book, the title is Leadership Is Worthless…But Leading Is Priceless and that’s contrarian, counterintuitive at a minimum, and if it’s offensive, I don’t mean it to be, but it deserves an explanation. The explanation is leadership is worthless because it’s just what you say, and anybody can say anything. But leading is priceless, precisely, because it’s what you do, and we all do that. So, I do get pushback, “I’m the small cog in a very big wheel,” and my answer is, “But you’re your cog.”

When our boys were younger, Maureen, my beautiful and brilliant wife and I had three boys, now young men, but whenever I was in town, because my job requires a lot of travel, speaking and meetings, things like that, whenever I was in town, I drove them to work in my truck, and when I let them out, I said precisely the same thing, which is, “One more step in the journey of discovering where your deep joy intersects the world’s deep needs.” I swear I said this to them. They prefer to take the bus.

Pete Mockaitis
“Okay, Dad!”

Thom Mayer
Yeah, “Bye-bye. I’ll take the bus today. No, thank you.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Is my lunch here?”

Thom Mayer
Yeah, exactly. But the point is you have to start with your deep joy. Doing this podcast, setting it up, having the guests on that you have is not easy, but it’s your deep joy, and that comes through in every episode I’ve listened to, and I’ve listened to over 10 of them, that comes through. But if you were just showing up and putting the time in, that would show too, and that wouldn’t be your deep joy.

So, when I find people that are not able to embrace the job that they’re doing, it’s usually because they’ve signed up for the wrong job. It’s not where their deep joy intersects the world’s deep needs. And once people understand that and learn that, I think it becomes easier to not aspire to be a leader, but to embrace the fact that you are already a leader, and then to inspire others through what you do and what you say and how you do it.

So, I’m interested in helping people, when they wake up in the morning and their eyes open and they swing their legs around, to say, “Today, I am a leader. How will I lead? How will I exemplify what I believe in, my deep joy, mission, vision, values, true north?” whatever you want to call it, and different of your guests have called it different things, but that’s what needs to be done. And, therefore, the book is not intended as a leadership book. It’s also not an anti-leadership book. It’s simply a book for people who want to embrace the fact that they lead and will continue to lead.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’d love it if you could give us an, maybe, unconventional or striking example of someone who identified their deep joy connecting with the world’s deep need. Because I’m thinking about some folks who are like, “Well, geez, my deep joy is playing this game.” I’m just thinking about my kids.

Thom Mayer

Sure. Sure.

Pete Mockaitis

If I say that to them, “What’s cool?” it’s like, “Well, what I love doing most is playing the snake game on the Apple TV, Dad.” So, that doesn’t really solve a need. But I imagine there’s sort of a process of inquiry and discovery that leads you to discover such intersections. Could you tell us a tale of such a process?

Thom Mayer

I was a football player, and that was my deep joy when I was a kid. And when say kid, all the way through high school and college. I wanted to play in the National Football League. And most people play football in order to go to college so that they can get a scholarship and not have to pay for their education. I was exactly the opposite. I went to college to play football because I was finished with high school, and if I was going to continue playing this game that I loved, I couldn’t go straight to the pros then, you had to go to college.

So, I did. I started when I was a freshman, that was unusual. But about a third of the way through the season, the coach said to me, “Hey, I talked to your academic advisor and you haven’t declared a major.” And I said, “A major what? You didn’t say anything about a major when you recruited me.” “No, no, Thom, you got to have a major, a major field of study.”

So, I chose theology, and became a theology major because I was always interested in how people think and what they do and all that. And, honestly, Pete, it was because you didn’t have to take tests. You just wrote papers and had discussions under trees. So, I thought, “Hey, they’re already paying for my education, how about I don’t work all that hard on the education part?”

And at the end of my sophomore year, my theology advisor and a professor, biology professor, who I had taken a course from. “Have you ever thought about becoming a doctor because you might have more influence as a doctor than as a theology professor?” I didn’t know. A doctor was somebody who sawed up a laceration or stuck his finger some place I didn’t want it, and said, “Turn your head and cough.” But I said, Sure.” I trusted these guys.

So, as a junior, I started taking freshman-level pre-med courses. The first course was Chemistry 101. It went okay, if not great. I got to the first test. It was a hundred-question test, and I opened it up and the first question is “A mole is Avogadro’s number of particles or…” and then five answers, A, B, C, D, E. “Well, who’s Avogadro? I never heard of an Avogadro. He’s got a number. I don’t, a mole? I thought that was a critter that tore up your lawn or something.”

So, I thought, “You know, hey, this has been great, no problems. I wonder if I can…Are we still in drop ag? Can I drop this course? I’ll just go back to theology and football.” So, my answer is I didn’t even read the questions from there on because I figured if I didn’t even know what the first one was. So, I just did A, B, C, D, E, E, D, C, B, A. In football, we call a slant and go route, a sluggo route, and that’s what my answer page looked like.

So, I got to the end, a hundred question, marked it off, flipped the page, but in the back, there was a blue envelope, and typed on the envelope said, “Bonus question. If you get this question right, you’ll get an A in this course no matter what you did on the first 100 questions.” And I thought, “Let’s give it a shot.” So, I opened it up it says, “What’s the name of the man who cleans this room every night so you can have a great place in which to learn?”

So, I walked up to the professor, Keith White, the Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, I said, “Dr. White, this bonus question…” and he smiled, and I said, “You want his first name or his last name?” And he said, “Thom, if you can give me his first name and his last name, I’ll not only give you an A in this test, I’ll give you an A on this course, as long as you show up and as long as you do your work.”

And I said, “Well, Dr. White, what if I can give you his wife’s name and the names and ages of his six kids?” He stood up, took his glasses off, pointed at me, and said, “Thom, if you can do that, I’ll give you an A in every chemistry course you take, as long as you show up and as long as you do the work.” And he was as good as his word and I was too. And so, all my chemistry courses from him, I got an A in. And so, what’s my point?

Pete Mockaitis

If I may time out. How did you happen to know him so well, the person who’s…?

Thom Mayer

Well, that’s the point, that’s the deep-joy point because the reason I knew him so well was, I didn’t even get to the chemistry lab until I had finished all day of classes, all day three hours of practice in football, theology essays, so about midnight I end up showing up in the lab and that’s when this gentleman, who had another job during the day, came to the lab.

So, we got to know each other and got to know each other well in the darkness of the night because his deep joy was not just cleaning that room, but interacting with the very few students. I was probably only one of two in a whole semester. And so, I became a doctor not because I’m smart or intelligent or hardworking, but because of a janitor at the college I went to. His name was Roosevelt Richmond.

But, let me tell you, he came in smiling every day, whistling every day, and he always said to me, “Look at him, he’s got fire in his belly.” And I’d said, “No, Mr. Richmond, I just don’t plan my time all that well.” So, I found that, as a physician in environmental services, janitorial services, I hate that second term. In the hospital, so after a tough resuscitation and there’s trauma, there’s blood all over the place, sure, I thank the nurse, yes, I thank the resident, yes, I thank my colleagues, but I also go over to the environmental services person and say, “Thanks for cleaning this up. We can’t do this without you.”

So, I think as you go through your day, counterintuitively, you’re going to see people that may not have CEO after their name, they may not work and live in the C-suite, but they live in the C-suite of their life, of their family, of their job. And so, a long way to travel to answer your question, but they’re everywhere. The deep-joy folks are literally everywhere, in my opinion.

Pete Mockaitis

That is beautiful. Thank you. So cool. So cool. Well, so tell us then, your book, Leadership Is Worthless…But Leading Is Priceless, we’ve already shared a couple principles and some gems, are there any top things you think most of us are getting wrong about leadership and some key reframes or principles that you just wish the world would internalize?

Thom Mayer

So, I really want people to do three things. Number one, to think about leading, not leadership, but leading, a verb, active voice, the actions, in a radically different way.

Number two, I want them to act on that within a week, because if people listen to this or any of your podcasts, or anything that they hear or read or see, and aren’t moved to action within a week, they’re probably not going to do it. They may be, “Wow, that was interesting,” but if it doesn’t change what you do, so I want you to think, I want you to act.

And the third is to innovate. And the reason we have to innovate, I think, is because the way we’re working isn’t working, or it isn’t working well enough or as well as it could, so that innovation is an iterative process in everyone’s life. But it doesn’t occur at the speed of genius or intelligence or creativity. It occurs at the speed of trust because if we don’t trust each other, we won’t step outside the lines. We’ll be afraid of failure.

And when you begin to look at it that way, the answers are not above us, as most people think. The answers are within and among us. The answers aren’t in the C-suite. The answers are in the We-suite, the people who do the work, no matter what the work is. So, what I would say to your listeners is, the leader you’re looking for is you. It’s already there. It’s not something in the future.

I, personally, think if people call others future leaders, I think that’s absolutely a demeaning thing to say, as if, “I’m a leader but you’re not.” The boss is somebody who thinks that he’s the most important person in the room, but the leader knows that her job is to make sure that everyone else in the room feels that they’re the most important person in the room.

So, that somewhat epiphanous moment, and again, I’m okay with aspirational, developing, emerging, but the idea of calling someone a future leader, within those words, I guess as a theology major, I think all words have meaning but all actions and behaviors have meaning. You’re already there, folks. The leader you’re looking for is you. Just embrace it and, yes, improve it, but live up to what it is you believe in in the first place. Don’t think, “Well, someday in the future, it’ll happen to me.”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Well, it’s funny when you say future leaders, I think I’ve heard that most often in the context of I was a high school student at leadership conferences, of which I was a big fan and attended many. But, yeah, when you say it like that to grown-ups, in the midst of their job, that does feel demeaning. And it reminds me of like, “Oh, I think of you as a child.” But even children, I would say are leading. I’m thinking about my six-year-old Johnny is leading his younger siblings and influencing them in positive, beautiful ways, which is heartwarming to see. So, yeah, aspiring, emerging, but also, yes, here and now.

Thom Mayer

Well, that’s a great example because, you know, we have three boys, and we now have five grandkids, and they lead. They lead their families. Those other kids, younger kids, look up to them and model their behavior after them. So, Johnny can feel like, “Well, I’m just a six-year-old,” or it can feel like, “Son, I saw what you did. That was incredible. Thank you for doing that. I appreciate that.” Same world but two different worlds altogether, if you think about it in that way.

Pete Mockaitis

So, if we want to think about leading in a radically different way, is that right there, the radically different way, you know, the We-suite, not the C-suite, everyone is…?

Thom Mayer

Yeah, I think you have to talk about, you know, it’s not the C-suite that matters. It’s the We-suite. It’s the people who do the work. There’s a concept that Kirk Jensen, one of my research partners and I coined, called hardwiring flow, and that means hardwiring flow into systems and processes. What’s hardwiring flow? It means stop doing stupid stuff and start doing smart stuff.

Well, who’s going to identify the stupid stuff? I think the people who do the work know what the stupid stuff is. And they also know if we can innovate at the speed of trust, if we can make failure our fuel, they’ll devise the solutions that work best for the customer, for the patient, in my case, in terms of emergency medicine and sports medicine, as opposed to the C-suite.

Now it doesn’t mean that the C-suite doesn’t have an important role, but the role is not making decisions, not devising new solutions, not saying, “Well, leading consists of vision. I’m the Chief Vision Officer.” Well, the people who do the work are the ones who can best see what the vision is for how to improve the work, number one.

But the C-suite then begins to say, “Oh, my role is to create these enzymatic catalytic reactions which allow the We-suite to do their work,” which leads to corollaries, making failure your fuel, number one. Number two, it’s not the words on the walls that matter. It’s the happenings in the halls. As an emergency physician in tough situations, if I got to look up on the wall to figure out what I’m supposed to do, something is wrong.

Pete Mockaitis

“Hang in there,” with the cat.

Thom Mayer

“Yeah, let me figure this out here.” So, I think it’s not necessarily an inversion of the traditional ways of thinking about things. It’s a reframing of what I found the reality of leading in times of crisis to be.

Pete Mockaitis

You say, “Do more smart stuff and less dumb stuff. The people who are closest to the action see what’s the dumb stuff.” And I think that is, boy, in the game of leadership effectiveness, I don’t know if that’s maybe a third or a half of the battle is just creating the environment.

We’ve had Amy Edmondson, who talks about psychological safety and researches it, on the show a couple of times, in terms of, “Do you really have an environment, a culture, systems, processes, incentives, whereby folks are encouraged and freely, safely, are able to speak up and say, ‘Hey, I noticed we’re doing this dumb thing. Maybe we should do this other thing instead.’?”

And then will that be received and acted upon, or will it just be poo-pooed, or just like, “Huh!” Or just ignored, like, “Huh, that’s weird,” or more or less send the message explicitly or implicitly, “Shut up. This is the way we do things around here, and we’re really too busy to worry about this irrelevant little thing that you’ve brought to our attention, little peon.”

So, sometimes it really does feel like that’s the vibe in a lot of organizations and teams and cultures, and I think it is so toxic to our longtime flourishing. But you’re the expert, I’m just the rambler, how do you think about setting up a situation where folks can surface, “Hey, there’s some improvement opportunities, and let’s get after them”?

Thom Mayer

Well, I couldn’t agree more with the way you framed it. I think my friend, Mark Verstegen, who founded what’s originally called Athletes Performance, now Team Exos. He’s the performance director for the NFL Players Association, one of my partners in terms of keeping our players healthy and safe. But he says it well, “Simple things done savagely well.”

And we’ve made life more complex than it really is. In many ways, perhaps because I was a theology major, we’re almost reinventing and rethinking Aristotelian wisdom, and what I mean by that is this. Aristotle famously said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The excellence then is not a virtue, but a habit.

Well, if that’s true, and I believe it deeply to be true, hence, the leader you’re looking for is you, the answers are not above us, they’re within and among us, then we begin to realize that. I hear about culture all the time, “We have a great culture,” and I go to organizations and 50% burnout, and when I talk about accountability, burnout, leaders and leading in times of crisis.

And my answer is, “If your culture is so great, why are 50% of your people burned out?” Because burnout, Christina Maslach is a close friend, and I talked to her many times.

Pete Mockaitis

A guest on the show.

Thom Mayer

Yeah, I listened to that one. It was great, as it always is. But, to me, burnout is simply the fact that you’re unable to feel your deep joy at work, then that becomes just a ratio of job stressors and adaptive capacity or resiliency, another term. We can talk about that if we have time. But when you begin to think of it in that way, and you realize that the culture is created every day by the people who impact the other people in the organization, whether that’s the customer, the outward-facing customer, or the inward-facing customers, the teams, that’s why there’s no leading except with teamwork.

So, the work begins within each of us, but it turns towards teamwork because we work in teams. So, how do you start that? Well, you hire right. I’m a lot less interested in hiring brilliant resumes than I am motivated people, motivated by their deep joy, their passion, their servant leadership, all these terms that we’re used to, easy to say but harder to do.

Because we can educate people. I can make them smarter in whatever, cardiac resuscitation, trauma, sports medicine, and all that. But if they don’t have the passion, if they don’t have the burning desire, if they don’t have the willingness to work across teams, Bill Belichick said famously, “Talent sets the floor of a team, but character sets the ceiling.”

And when we look at the character of people when we hire them, we say, “I don’t want you to just show up for work. I want you to show up for work with passion, with joy, with intensity, and with ideas on how this work could be better.” So, you have your job, but you also have that important job of helping that job be better and easier for the people who do it.

Because, as you know, and you’ve talked about this in the show before, intrinsic motivation is why people do things, not because the boss says so but because they realize this better serves their deep joy, it’s easier for them, and it’s better for the customer or patient or whoever it is that we’re at that job for. So, I think hiring right and creating that culture on day one before they ever come into the organization is critical and neglected in many organizations.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Thom, tell me any other top do’s and don’ts you want to make sure to put out there before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Thom Mayer

What I learned at the Pentagon, I’m asked that question often, “Just tell me one thing you learned at the Pentagon.” And the answer is, “Stop sucking up. Start sucking down.” And what I mean by that is, on day one, September 11th, in the afternoon with the fire raging, there were 32 generals, two-star or above, standing behind me at the Pentagon. Great people, impassioned people, deep joy, saying, “Doc, tell us what you need and we’ll get it for you,” because that was their people inside that burning building.

Now, I could have spent three days, which I did on-site, sucking up to the generals. It wouldn’t have done me any good, and, more importantly, it wouldn’t have done the people I was serving, the paramedics, the firefighters, the structural engineers. So, suck down is what we need to do, and that was the structural engineers, the Army Corps of Engineers, shoring up that building, fixing that gash where American Flight 77 blew through the southwest wall of the Pentagon, all the way into the A-ring, the inner ring of the Pentagon, the firefighters, the paramedics.

And I think that’s true in most organizations. People need to stop sucking up and start sucking down. If you have a bunch of suck-ups, most of us can’t stand that, but that comes when you talk about future leaders instead of “You are leading today. What can I do to make your job better and our customers’ lives, patients’ lives in my case, better?” So, one piece is just that. Stop sucking up, start sucking down.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, when you say, so sucking up, we understand to mean, when you say, “Oh, oh, is there anything I can do for you, sir or madam? I think you’re so wonderful and so smart and so brilliant, and, oh, let me get that for you right away.” And so, we sort of want to take that approach of, I don’t know, deferential-ness, or kindness, service, etc. to serve those who are on lower levels of the org chart so that we see “What do you need? What can I do for you? How can we make your life easier, better, resource you so that you can do what you need to do well?”

Thom Mayer

And you phrased it perfectly, particularly the voice inflection, but that voice inflection, that sucking up, is kryptonite to creativity. Absolute kryptonite to creativity. Because when most people, when most bosses say, “Think outside the box,” they don’t mean that. They mean, “Think inside my box. Think the way I think.”

Pete Mockaitis

“Outside of your box and inside my box.”

Thom Mayer

Exactly. And guess what the boss is thinking. It’s just no way to live. No way to live for the people doing the work. It’s really no way to live for a leader because it’s frustrating. You really want them to, “Hey, blow me away. Give me an idea. Let’s think about how this could be done differently.” Again, contrarian, but I think, in my life at least, it’s been one of the keys to success.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Any other top do’s and don’ts?

Thom Mayer

The leader you’re looking for is you. Everyone in every organization is a leader, number one. Number two, everyone in every organization is a performance athlete, no different than my athletes in the NFL, involved in a cycle of performance, rest, and recovery. Performance, rest, and recovery. And as you know, we’ve neglected rest and recovery, which is part of the reason we have so much burnout and moral injury in our society these days. So, invest in yourself, invest in your team of people.

And then third, the work begins with them. We always start within ourselves. People say, “Well, do you ask people in an interview ‘What keeps you up at night?’” And the answer is, “No, hell, no. I ask them ‘What gets you up in the morning?’ That’s what I care about.” And that’s why I say the work begins with them, but it turns towards teamwork. So, the skills of teamwork, perhaps a future podcast we can do together, but an absolute part of success, personally and within organizations.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Thom Mayer

Well, one of my favorites is Churchill, and it’s not, maybe one you’ve never heard Churchill say before. But in the midst of his prime minister-ship, the Lord Mayor of London had a luncheon for him and his beloved, treasured wife, Clementine, was there with him.

And the Lord Mayor thought he was going to trick Churchill by saying, “Mr. Prime Minister, if you couldn’t be Sir Winston Churchill, who would you choose to be?” And his impish smile, and said, “Mr. Lord Mayor, if I couldn’t be Sir Winston Churchill, I would choose to be…” and he looks down at his wife, and said, “Mrs. Churchill’s second husband.” Isn’t that nice? That’s the way I feel too.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Thom Mayer

Oh, I think all the work done on this. We’re working now on lifespan, how long you live, health-span, how disease-free you are, but we’re doing a lot of work now on joy span, on how the generative joy, the generative nature of creativity, of doing things, not just at your stage and my stage in life, but Johnny’s stage and Joey’s stage so that we nurture that sense of awe, that sense of joy, that sense of we are all creating our own lives and helping shape the lives of others. So, some great research coming out on that that I think is going to help change the way we look at what does a successful life look like.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Thom Mayer

If you said choose one, I’m very impressed with Brene Brown, and I think her work is very, very important work. And if I chose one, I’d probably say Dare to Lead.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Thom Mayer

Oh, I think a smile. When people think of me, I only want them to do one thing. I want them to smile. Now, I don’t have a great smile, but the tool is creating smiles in other people so that when they hear my name, hear my voice, see my face, they smile.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Thom Mayer

Gratitude. I try to get up every morning, and before I do anything else, sit calmly or stand calmly and think of three good things that I’m really grateful for. And I try, during the course of that day, to reach out to whoever or whatever team it was that I thought about and let them know that, because, as one great writer said, “There is silence enough beyond the grave.” I think expressing that gratitude is more important in some ways than feeling that gratitude.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And is there a key nugget you share with audiences or readers that seems to really connect and resonate, they highlight it, they retweet it, they quote it back to you often?

Thom Mayer

Over the course of 30 plus years, it’s deep joy. People say, they’ll come up to me and say, “I heard you speak 20 years ago or 10 years ago or last year, and of all the things you said, the thing that stuck with me is deep joy, deep needs.” So, yeah, people, and you’re probably about to ask me what my deep joy is, and my deep joy is helping other people find and embrace and live their deep joy.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Thom Mayer

Well, the book is available on Amazon and all major websites, Leadership Is Worthless…But Leading Is Priceless: What I Learned from 9/11, the NFL, and Ukraine, because I had the honor of serving there. But my email is the best, it’s just thommayermd@gmail. If I can help you, it’d be an honor. Reach out anytime.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Thom Mayer

The leader you’re looking for is you. The work begins within.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Thom, this has been so much fun. I wish you much luck and joy and goodness in all you’re up to.

Thom Mayer

Thanks, Pete. It’s, as I said, an honor to be on. I appreciate it very much. Give a squeeze to your family.

Sep 26
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997: How to Push Past Self-Doubt and Find the Confidence to Pursue Big Things with Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland

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Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland share insights on impostor syndrome–and more–from their community of thousands of developing entrepreneurs.

You’ll Learn

  1. The mindset shift that stops self-doubt
  2. The three daily questions that build confidence
  3. Why to seek more uncomfortable situations

About Pat and Matt

Pat Flynn is a popular podcaster, author, and founder of several successful websites, including SmartPassiveIncome.com, where he helps people build thriving online businesses. He has been featured in Forbes and in the New York Times for his work. He calls himself “The Crash Test Dummy of Online Business” because he loves to put himself on the line and experiment with various business strategies so that he can report his findings publicly to his audience.

He is also the author of Let Go and Wall Street Journal bestseller Will It Fly?. He speaks on the topics of product validation, audience engagement, and personal branding. Pat is also an advisor to Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building schools in the developing world. Pat lives in San Diego with his wife April and their two children.

Matt Gartland is an entrepreneur, startup advisor, investor and the co-founder and CEO of SPI Media, where they help everyday people become experienced entrepreneurs through community-powered learning, connection, and support. He’s also the co-founder of Fusebox, as well as an advisor at several startups. He’s an expert when it comes to operations, finance, pricing, product development, and customer experience as well as empowering marketing and sales.

Resources Mentioned

Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Pat and Matt, welcome.

Matt Gartland
It’s a thrill to be here.

Pat Flynn
What’s up, Pete? Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m thrilled to have you. I have been such a huge fan of Smart Passive Income for well over a decade. It’s surprising I haven’t tried to rope you in more often.

Pat Flynn
Well, maybe this will be the start of several roping-ins.

Pete Mockaitis
Be careful. Be careful what you promise, Pat. But why don’t you, why don’t we just kick it off? Can you orient us for those who are not as familiar, what is Smart Passive Income, your whole brand, website, channel, thing you got going on?

Pat Flynn
Yeah, I’ll start because it kind of began with me in 2008. I had gotten laid off from my dream job as an architect, and that was the only plan I had was to be an architect, and I got let go in 2008 with the Great Recession, didn’t know what I was going to do. And then through the interwebs, I discovered a podcast that taught me the idea of, “Well, I could start my own online business.” And I was like, “This is insane. Like, I didn’t go to business school. I don’t know how to do any of this stuff, but I had to survive somehow.”

So, I ended up building a website to help architects pass an exam called the LEED exam, a very niched, green building, sustainable design sort of exam, and it did really, really well. In about a year, it had generated over $238,000 in that first year, which was mind boggling. I didn’t even think that was possible, number one. But, number two, I thought at any moment in time, the SWAT team was going at me because it just didn’t feel like it was possible, like, I just I had no idea what was happening.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re making money too easily, “You’re under arrest for easy money.”

Pat Flynn
I was, like, I went to school for architecture, and I’ve spent all this money for schooling, and then here I was just, like, learning as I was going, and doing much better. It just didn’t make sense. Now when that happened, a lot of people were like, “Pat, tell us what happened. How did you do this?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m just to share what I did,” and that’s what I did.

I started a website called Smart Passive Income And then along the way, in 2013, I wrote my first book, and that’s where Matt and I crossed paths the first time because he was helping me edit that book, and I had just such a wonderful experience working with Matt then that we started working a little bit more closely together on projects.

I started to speak a lot more on stages, build more of a brand reputation in the personal brand space here. And then Matt and I tied the knot, if you want to call it that, in the late 20 teens, and have been working together ever since, and it’s just been fascinating. So, now we teach people, no matter what level they’re at, how to start a business online. So that’s the quick story from my end.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Pat and Matt, you have built an amazing thing, and I do know firsthand I am a longtime customer and fan, and so I recommend we’ll be linking it in the show notes and whatnot all your goodies. But this is not a podcast so much about creating cool online courses or building a dope YouTube channel, even though you’ve accomplished that.

But I want to talk to you, specifically, about the zone of confidence, imposter syndrome, because that comes up a lot for my listeners, and I know it also comes up a lot for your students, and they wonder, “Well, who am I? Who would ever want to pay money for my course? Or who might want to listen to me on a podcast, or watch me in a YouTube, or pay me hundreds, thousands of dollars for what I know in some sort of a package?”

And so, you’ve helped many people think about this, I think, pretty well and clearly. Not like, “No, you’re brilliant! No matter what you do, it will work and you’ll prosper and get rich!” Nor it’s like, “No, forget it! There’s no chance for you. Forget it! Who are you to say it?” Like, you really do a wise job, I think, of navigating this territory between under- and overconfidence, so I want to hear all about how we do that.

Pat Flynn
Yeah, this is a really important topic. I mean, whether you are going to become an entrepreneur or not, becoming entrepreneurial in the way that you think, in the way that you solve problems, in the way that you feel about yourself is really, really key. Obviously, if you are an entrepreneur and you don’t believe in what you have to offer, you’re not going to do a good job of selling it. Nobody’s going to believe you. And when it comes to the workforce, in your professional career, if you don’t believe in yourself, you’re not going to go anywhere either.

There is selling involved in who you are and the value that you have to offer your higher-ups in which you could provide the company, and those are all important things to understand. Yet, like an entrepreneur, we always get in our own way.

We are often, and this is where my story really began as an entrepreneur, is I had to let go of who I thought I was supposed to be in order to become who I was supposed to become. I had been trained to have everything be perfect. As an architect, especially, it’s like if you don’t build the building well, it could crush people, so you kind of need it to be perfect in the way you design things.

But when it came to being an entrepreneur, you can’t. You have to be imperfect. That’s the only way to progress is through failure and mistakes and learning as you go and figuring things out. And if I had to design my career, like I designed a building, I would still be designing it and not taking any action. But what I learned, and maybe this is where we start, is through all of this, relationships have been so, so key.

Knowing people and understanding what value means to them has been the most important thing to help me get to where I’m at today and will continue to help me as I move forward. It’s all about relationships. So, if you try to go through life and your career all on your own, it’s going to be very, very difficult. But when you start to understand the people part of this, it begins to unravel into a clearer path because, really, it’s about serving others.

And that includes in your work, your clients, obviously, but also your manager or your boss, and understanding what’s important to them and seeing how you might be able to position yourself as indispensable or providing some sort of value that only you can do because, either maybe that’s your expertise, or that’s what you train to do, or you figured something out, that without you, the company wouldn’t run in its optimal format.

So, there’s a lot to unpack here, I’m sure, but for any entrepreneur who knows what they’re doing, it’s about serving others first. And I think it’s the same thing when it comes to building your career. How can you be of service to others? Your value, your salary is often proportional to that.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much. And starting right there with that imperfect, I think that is probably a killer of starting quite often from the get-go. It’s like, “I don’t know how this is going to work. I don’t know if it is going to work. It might be kind of shoddy.” Take us into the right mindset for starting imperfectly. Like, what’s the wrong way to think about it, that’s going to kill any idea or momentum before it starts? And what’s the prudent ideal way to think about imperfection?

Pat Flynn
The idea of imperfection and failure has been ingrained to many of our heads since growing up, “If you don’t get an A, you’re doing it wrong,” or on your tests. It’s, “You have to be perfect or else.” And that’s a very tough position to be in. How could you possibly even learn to explore or try new things if that is the mindset you have going into something new?

You have to have the mindset of failing fast means learning faster. And I think that that is a huge thing to understand. The idea that as long as you understand that there is learning to be had, true failure is giving up, but worrying so much about what the result will be often stops people in their tracks. I make the success my actions, not the result of those actions, because I can’t always control the results. But I can control the actions I take.

And so, if there’s learning on those results, that means even if I fail, I am making progress, and sometimes, yes, you’ll have to communicate this with other people who are around you and other involved parties. But, mentally, introspection-wise, personally, I use to account all of my success on the results that the work that I did do, and that’s a very tough position to be in. Imagine doing the action, and then an algorithm or YouTube or somebody else says, “No, that’s incorrect,” or, “You did it wrong,” even though you know that you prepared yourself to do things correctly.

And so, it’s a very tough mental position to be in to consider your success, the results of what you do, versus, “I did the work. I showed up. I did my best, and I’m learning from my mistakes.” That is a win even if the result isn’t where you wanted it to be because you can’t necessarily always control the result, but you can always control your actions that you take now. The actions that you take today, turn into the story that you tell about yourself tomorrow.

Pete Mockaitis
Tweet that, Pat. That’s good.

Pat Flynn
Yeah, I’ll engrave that one in a wood plaque at some point. But, Matt, I’m curious your thoughts on this too, because you deal directly with a lot of students who are at that level, where they just are getting in their own way and they’re telling themselves stories about why this is not going to work. How do you coach people? You’ve coached several people in our community directly on those kinds of things.

Matt Gartland
I like how Pat kind of phrased it around entrepreneurial and how do we just kind of reframe sort of our headspace and then, therefore, our approach to relationships.

And it’s similar, but maybe a different way of teeing it up, which is not to expect an immediate reward, not to expect like, “Hey, I’m going to do a thing. I’m going to deliver value into a relationship,” especially a new relationship, and instantly expect, like, closing a sale, or getting a yes, or some sort of immediate gratification.

If we can lean into new relationships and be okay with the imperfection of like, “I’m not getting something immediately back,” and being okay with that, and I’m not saying that that’s easy, but just like the reps of practicing that, that is healthy relationship-building.

Like, just invest into them, deliver value, help them in some way, start to earn that trust. That works in any career. That works in a corporate environment, whether it’s with your supervisor or a cross-functional manager or partner or an executive in your company, if you work in retail. All of these different career pursuits and job types can, I think, improve if we initially detach the pursuit of, like, some sort of instant gratification or reward for my actions, and invest more into their success and just value delivery, I think is one of those really healthy, important kind of reframes on building relationships and getting more comfortable and, therefore, less maybe trapped in our own insecurities or imperfections, that headspace is not helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, there’s so much there in terms of I like that headspace is when you are focused on serving and delivering value to the others, by definition, we’re no longer self-centered. “You lose yourself,” to quote Eminem, the best pump-up song ever, before entering a situation. So, you lose yourself and you’re not self-centered, you’re other-focused, giving value, and then a lot of the nervousness disappears. I’d love to hear a bit more about the success comes from the actions, not from the results.

We had B.J. Fogg on the show, talking about Tiny Habits, and he’s awesome. He told me that I was a natural celebrator. And I’m curious, if we find ourselves maybe getting a little bit hung up on the external results, the wins, the validations, the atta-boys, are there any methods or approaches you use to celebrate your actions or to bring your head back into the zone of, “No, no, this was a win, this was victory because I took the action here”?

Matt Gartland
I think that this is a part of the richer story of, like, finding jobs that speak to satisfaction and bring joy to our work

Just like doing good work with good people, trying to help in whatever sort of way that that makes sense in your own definition of an ideal job, I think, is a really kind of motivating force and can help us overcome mistakes and pitfalls and whatnot that will be true anywhere if we’re not doing those things. And, I think Pat said it earlier, like we’re not maybe trying hard enough or leaning into the opportunity to serve people and collaborate with others.

Pat Flynn
Also, I think it’s important, and you’d mentioned this briefly, Matt is the idea of the team and doing great work together with others. And part of a leader’s role, and I think everybody should, and it’s very entrepreneurial to be a leader, to see others who are there who might need your help or guidance, to also recognize the good work that they do. And I think it’s important in a communal situation, especially in a workplace, to recognize those who are doing work that may also often just be overlooked.

I remember when I was working in architecture, there was one person, Adrian was his name, he would always recognize the small things that I did that were good, and that reinforced me to want to do those things and other things even better, and those are things that the project managers would often sort of overlook. And that made sense because they weren’t directly working with me. Adrian was the job captain who was in charge of sort of my work and overseeing my stuff.

But recognizing things that were a little bit challenging, and even if I didn’t do them correctly, the fact that I tried and made progress on those things was good. It helped me want to make sure those things were even better the next time, and that’s really key. And we practice that inside of Team SPI as well, and we try to recognize those in our community at the same time and the good work that they do. Even those small things matter quite a bit.

It’s human nature to want to feel like you’re a part of something, and I think in the workforce that sometimes gets forgotten because there’s a job to do, but it’s still people talking with other people and connecting with other people, and the people sort of component of this is really key. And if you can set yourself up as a leader, which means a few things, being a leader means seeing and recognizing the work that other people do, like I just said.

But it’s also owning up to what your weaknesses are and what your mistakes are, and then seeing how others can fill in that gap, and you all working together toward a greater good or a common goal, or also working on those things that are weaker and just not pretending like you know everything, I think, is important, too. The good leader is the one who’s in the trenches with the community, not the one at the top of the mountain just yelling and telling everybody what to do, in my opinion.

And I think that energy inside of that workforce and that workspace is really important to just to understand. There’s no necessarily a barometer that measures the energy in the room. But there is a feeling, and I think it’s important to keep that as high as possible, the energy in the group.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that a lot, and so props to Adrian. Thanks, Adrian. You’re awesome.

Pat Flynn
Yeah, thank you, Adrian.

Pete Mockaitis
If we’re lacking an Adrian in our workplaces, an unfortunate place to be, do you have any self-talk approaches or strategies? If we may, could we zoom into the conversations that you’re having with yourselves that you find helpful for persisting in the midst of these sorts of situations?

Pat Flynn
I’m reminded of a journal that I used to write in every single day, I did for three years until I moved on to a different system, but it’s called “The 5-Minute Journal.” And “The 5-Minute Journal” is an incredible sort of journal. Journaling is great. That’s a great way to be introspective and to learn and to kind of unpack things that may be happening throughout the day, but I always found that just like blank page journaling was very hard. I’m like, “Okay. Dear, Pat, here’s what your day was,” and then, like, I don’t know where to go.

But “The 5-Minute Journal” is nice because it breaks things down for you. When you start your day, you open this book, there’s already prompts, “What are three things that you’re grateful for today?” And I love starting the day with thinking about gratefulness because, no matter what happens, I know there’s something I can be grateful for, and it changes every day. I might be grateful for the food I have, or the fact that I get to drop off my kids at school every day. Whatever it might be, it changes.

But what’s really nice is at the end of the day, I can look back before I go to bed and I can write three things that I’m proud of myself for actually accomplishing. No matter big or small, I know I made some sort of progress, and it could be as small as the fact that I made my bed in the morning, to the fact that we just finished this million-dollar project and the client loved it. Just to have that documented and to kind of put it on paper allows us to process these things.

And the additional component of “The 5-Minute Journal,” Also asks you, “What are three things that you could have improved on today that you’re going to hopefully improve in the future?” And it might be, “Oh, you know, I was a little bit of a jerk to my coworker today. I’m going to work on that tomorrow. Cool.” “I didn’t work on my health and fitness today. I just ate McDonald’s all day, so I’m going to try to work on that.”

And, again, it becomes a place to document these things, and it’s really amazing to go back into time and read these things, and it kind of helps you remember that, (a) you have all these amazing things to be grateful for, no matter what’s happening, and (b) you are always looking to see how you might be able to incrementally improve tiny habits, just like you said, over time, and that’s one device that I would recommend people check out if you’re into that thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, very good. I think we had a psychologist, Dr. Ellen Reed, saying these exact sorts of prompts so they’re good, they are science-approved that they really do get you into an awesome, what’s the word, it’s like a nice virtuous cycle in terms of, “Okay, we got some gratitude, we got some pride, we got some improvement, and up and up and up and up, and self-confidence rises,” and it’s a beautiful thing.

Matt Gartland
I’ll add, if I can, two additional thoughts on that, I think that’s great. One is to preemptively surround yourself with people when you need them, whether that takes the form of a mastermind group, at least as we think about those in online communities, whether that is a collection of your neighbors in your local community. I’m privileged to have some really awesome neighbors that we’ve gotten close and we hang out a good bit these days.

Or, even a variety of different small kind of addressable groups, because we’re all going to have bad days or bad weeks, and these things are not always, per se, work-driven, or career-driven, like, life of course intersects us all the time.

So, if you can build into those relationships, which kind of, of course now, kind of folds back on the power of relationships and intentionality with which we’re investing value into relationships, then lean on them when you have a low moment and you need some re-encouragement, if it’s a super bad day, because you know that it’s going to come back around. One of those friends and colleagues or partners is going to need that of you.

And then you go through that cycle enough times, you’ll learn one of the most obvious truths ever, which is we’re all going to have hard moments at any scale of success, no matter what number is in your bank account or what size house you live in or all these other maybe, like, attributes of success or claims of success. Like, we all struggle with stuff, and people are people. So, if you can build it with the right people, and if you’re surrounding yourself with people that share your kind of a common set of values, and you nurture into that, that safety net is there when you need it.

Pete Mockaitis
That is huge. I’ve got a podcast mastermind group and a church men’s group and, of course, just friends and neighbors, and it’s huge. So great reminder. All right. Beautiful. So, let’s say we’ve got these foundations in place. We’re going to start imperfect. That’s cool. We’re going to do some journaling and thoughtfulness associated with celebrating the daily successes. We got supportive relationships. Cool, cool, cool.

Well, let’s say, yeah, we’re going to embark upon this thing that we found kind of scary. Maybe it’s a big new project. We’re not sure if folks are going to embrace it at work or it’s maybe our own side hustle, our own project. What are some of your pro tips on taking the first real steps in the exterior world that are likely to be prudent and not too risky, not too un-risky?

Matt Gartland
Especially through the entrepreneurial lens but I think this works in so many other contexts, is to develop a range of skills borne of a range of diverse perspectives, which is in contrast to just being too narrow and maybe even almost too hyper-specialized with one discrete skill or focal point.

With small business, especially if you’re working for yourself and you’re not a venture-backed tech company, then you’re probably doing a lot of this stuff. You’re trying to think about your marketing and positioning. You’re trying to design the product or service. You’re doing fulfillment, like the actual delivery of that work or build that thing. You’re maybe even doing a little bit of sales, business development, building relationships, maybe some partnerships.

And if you lean into that with joy, if you lean into that with like an adventurous sort of mindset, like, “Look, like that’s actually a good thing. If I can develop a broader range of skills that gives me more confidence…” to go back to the theme of confidence, “…and, like, being able to do the thing, whether, again, it’s a side hustle or a small business on my own, or even just a big project at work.”

And there’s a great book that kind of encapsulates a lot of the thinking by David Epstein called Range, and he pulls from a crazy amount of industry and science, and even athletes, professional athletes, to kind of make the case and tell these stories, which is, like, if you can have more range of ability, you can think faster, make sharper decisions, your instincts are improved, you’ll enjoy the process more, you’ll probably have outsized performance as a result, and, therefore, set yourself up for a higher degree of probability for success.

Pete Mockaitis
We had David Epstein on the show talking Range, and it’s good. We’ll link to it in the show notes.That’s beautiful. That confidence often comes from, “Yeah, sure enough, I’ve done this before in a lot of different contexts, and, boom, we got this under control.”

Pat Flynn
From my perspective, I love the idea of what I like to call a voluntary force function. A force function is something that kind of forces you to do something, and a voluntary one is you put yourself in that situation on purpose. And I have a perfect story to share about when I was still in architecture, where I, in fact, got a promotion and a raise as a result of putting myself in a situation that was slightly higher pressure than I would just be otherwise because I voluntarily put myself into that situation.

So, thankfully, I was with Adrian out in Orlando. We were meeting with the Hilton regional director for all Hilton hotels on the East Coast, so he was like a bigwig in the world of hotels. The division in the architecture firm I was at was hospitality. So, we built hotels, restaurants, that sort of thing, and I was just like the grunt in the room. I was just there to take notes and to follow along. I was sort of almost like intern status even though I was getting paid. It was very early on in my career.

There was a point in the middle of this conversation where they wanted to redesign a lot of the hotel rooms and kind of make them a little bit more modern, and there was a tool that had just come out called V-Ray that was a 3D modeling tool that allowed you to have photorealistic versions. This was early 2000s, by the way, so it was like before all the neat fancy easy-to-use computer-related programs came out. This was like early, early when it came to that stuff.

And the regional director said, “Hey, does anybody know how to use V-Ray in the room? I want to see what these rooms are going to look like before we make these final decisions,” and the room was completely silent. Nobody raised their hand. I had heard of V-Ray before. So, I don’t know what it was in me, I put my hand up and I said, “I can make this 3D renderings for you.” He’s like, “Son, you were in the back quiet the whole time. Who are you?” “Well, I’m Pat Flynn. I’m just a drafter here at MBH Architects.” “Cool. I look forward to seeing those renderings in about a month.”

And Adrian looks at me, he’s like, “Are you kidding me? You don’t know how to do that?” And I said, “I’m going to figure it out.” And I did. I had enough. Like, that was all I could think about because I had so much pressure on me to figure it out that, guess what, not only did I figure it out, I became the example for so many other people in the office on how to use this program. I even taught workshops on how to use this program. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew enough to do what I needed to do to get those drawings out there.

And just last year, I went into my dad’s storage unit because he wanted me to get some stuff out there from the past, and I found those renderings and it just brought back all these memories of the heightened pressure I was in, yes, but just how great it was to accomplish something that I didn’t even think was possible, because I put myself in that little bit of a higher-pressure situation. It’s almost like if you want to learn a language, what’s the best way to learn a new language? You literally buy a plane ticket and spend a month in that country. You’re going to figure it out because you have to kind of thing.

And I think a lot of us often will try to sit in complacency when it comes to our work and our life. Comfort is great, but comfort doesn’t help us grow. All the best and most awesome things happen outside of that comfort zone. So, there might be something in your audience’s head right now that they might be thinking, “Well, what if I were to put myself in that position?” Well, what if? What would happen? And also, what’s the worst-case scenario? Probably not as bad as the best thing that can happen if you take action and you are compelled to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really well said. As I suppose the worst-case scenario is you fire up V-Ray, and you go, “Oh, shoot, this was vastly more difficult than I expected.” But on the flip side, I imagine you’d say, “Hey, I’ve learned new software packages and platforms before, and I am an architect. Though I don’t know it yet, how brutally challenging can it really be?” especially if you’ve got, you don’t need it tomorrow, you’ve got some time on your hands.

Pat Flynn
And it’s not impossible. That’s the other thing. A lot of times we assume things are impossible, or, “I would never be able to do that,” but that’s just a story we’re telling ourselves based on past experiences. But when you break it down to first principles, like Elon Musk does with things, you can eventually build a rocket that can go into space and land itself, which nobody thought was possible.

But you start to strip things down to the absolute truths and realize that, “Well, maybe it is possible and maybe I can do this. And if somebody else has done it before, then it’s absolutely true that it’s possible. I just need to figure it out and talk to the right people, make the right calls, do all these actions that I wouldn’t have normally taken because I wasn’t in this slightly higher-pressure situation.”

And that helped me account for a raise, a promotion. Like, it led all the way to where I am now, the butterfly effect, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that story so much. And, Pat, if we are not so fortunate as to be in a meeting with a bigwig who asks a question that’s just floating in the air waiting for us to grab, any pro tips or fun ideas for how we can bring the forcing situation upon ourselves?

Pat Flynn
It reminds me of Noah Kagan from OkDork. He was number, I don’t know, nine at Facebook or something and then he got fired. But then he wanted to work for Mint.com, and he applied for a marketing position there and he didn’t get it. So, he said, “No, I know I can help this company. I’m just going to come up with a marketing plan and make it on my own. I’m going to write a 10-page report on the way that I would market Mint if I was here. Even though I didn’t get hired, I’m just going to give them my plan because I know it’s that good.”

And he did that. He didn’t have to, but he did, he volunteered to do it, and then they hired him because it just showed that he really, truly knew exactly what he was talking about. So, in a way, it’s an understanding of, “Okay, what is of value to said company, said person, whoever it might be that the decision-maker is, and then giving them that value, like, go and do the thing?”

So, if I didn’t have a bigwig, if I was proactive in thinking about what would be valuable to Hilton or this company or my work at the time, I might have already had that idea to make a V-Ray version of this even if I wasn’t prompted to because it matched that level of “What is value to who is the decision-maker right now?” So, exploring and going out there, and asking and understanding what it means to, you know, a lot of us when we’re working somewhere, we don’t really know how the work we do affects everything else that it leads to.

I think the more you can begin to understand your role in what it is that you do and why it matters, then you can lean into those things that you then bring to the company more than if you’d kind of just did the bullet-point list on your job description.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Pat, I love that so much with the Noah Kagan story. It reminds me, also we had Ramit Sethi on the show talk about the briefcase technique. Like, in an interview, he was like, “Oh, let me show you. I went ahead and did the thing.”

So, what’s cool about that is you combine those elements of, “Okay, but think about a person and what’s of value to them. And, hey, here’s a date in which I’m going to be speaking with that person. Well, hey, it looks like I’ve now got some pressure in terms of a deadline. I should go ahead and make the thing before I meet with that person.”

And, Matt, I wanted to follow up with your perspective. You’ve got some views when it comes to people, relationships, being of value. How do you think about that in a way that’s just been really transformational for you?

Matt Gartland
Well, even in Pat’s examples, like the power of story infused with doing of the thing, I think if you can do both in the right context, that’s a positive double whammy. So, yeah, do the thing, take initiative, but then add a story layer to it. Communicate your thought process. How and why did you come up with, maybe with the Noah example, why did you come up with the type of marketing plan that he did? It’s not just the fact that he did one, but it’s he created a specific one borne of his own creative thinking, his own imagination, his own story.

So, if you can, in your own situation, think about the “what.” The “what” is the thing to do, but also then, like, the “why” in the story, and it kind of brings your own personality into it. That’s how you get sticky. That’s how, like, “Oh, like, Matt Gartland or Pat Flynn,” or, like, your name gets associated with the thing more than just, like, “Oh, this is a nice plan. I’m going to go implement the plan. I kind of forget who actually did it.”

So I’d figure out like what that story wrapper is around the thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’d love that concept of the story wrapper around the thing, it enhances it. I’m thinking back in the day when I was consulting, I had plans to leave consulting and start my own business, and so I had created this savings spreadsheet, just like personal savings of money, like, “Okay, how can I make it so dirt simple to know how much money I should be saving?” And so, I thought, “Okay, just input your base expenses and then see how much do you want to save, by what time. And then here’s how much you have left to play around with.” And so, that’s all I got to know.

It’s like, “Okay, spend less than $80 a day on random fun things, like tacos or whatever, and we’re good.” So, I shared that with a few of my colleagues, and they thought it was cool because they’re consultants and they like spreadsheets. But you’re right, when you added the story around it, it became legendary.

And when I left, and folks were talking about, “Oh, Pete, bye. We’re going to miss you, and your legendary savings spreadsheet will live on,” because there was a story like, “Oh, yeah, I want to leave this consulting and go be a speaker, author, something. I love developing people skills stuff and I’m going to figure that out, and I’m going to need some savings because I don’t know what I’m doing yet.”

Matt Gartland
Yeah, I think that’s exactly it.

Pat Flynn
So good.

Matt Gartland
And maybe as another intersection that’s adjacent to the thought is, “Can you do something that maybe the other person,” or if it is a bigwig, “they don’t want to do or it’s not their cup of tea?” So, like the classic maybe phrasing of one person’s garbage is another man’s treasure, kind of adapting of the metaphor here, but at least in the entrepreneurial world is maybe a better example.

There’s a lot of energy about being a visionary and coming up with ideas and being the idea person, and that’s really important work, to be clear. But, especially, then down the line, though, there’s need for operations and integrations and systems and finances, and all of these other things that come around.

And, at least, if you look at it on paper, if you read a book, maybe like Gino Wickman’s book, Rocket Fuel, as one reference point, there’s a whole other set of value in responsibilities and work to do that. Maybe, like, in this context, a visionary doesn’t want to do, and especially if you are maybe naturally wired to be that person, can you feel out those opportunities to do the other side of the coin, add value in this other way, create an opportunity by taking on an initiative, or lean into an opportunity and create that opportunity for yourself by doing so that kind compliments the other side, compliments the other person or the other team in an organization?

I wouldn’t say force yourself into something that you don’t want to do. That’s not what I’m trying to articulate, but rather it’s, like, if you are naturally gifted and can lean into an opportunity that someone else maybe doesn’t want to do, I mean, there’s an opening right there, and then add together, kind of stack these ideas, find that opening, take initiative to create a thing, put a story wrapper around it. Gosh, I think if you did those three things in combination, that’s a massive winning advantage.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much. And now I’m thinking about my colleague, Anne, at my other company, Cashflow Podcasting, and it’s funny, there’s been a couple of times where I’ve just “vision-arily,” I guess, just thrown out an idea, and then she comes back with such beautifully detailed spreadsheets. I was like, “Hey, I think our website could really be improved here, here, here.”

And then she’s like, “Okay, so here is an in-depth creative brief about all of the strengths and weaknesses associated with our competitors’ page in which they are doing the job better than we are doing, and how I’d like to adapt this and that.” And I was like, “Oh, wow.” It’s, like, I didn’t want to do all that. I just wanted the page to be beautiful and more effective. But then she just did the hustle, the legwork of the detailed bit-by-bit, “This is what excellence can look like,” and it was oh so delightful to me.

Matt Gartland
Yeah, that’s an amazing example. I think that’s spot on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Pat and Matt, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a few of your favorite things?

Pat Flynn
One thing comes to mind when it comes to entrepreneurship, I think it’s important, especially when you want to be a leader, when you want to be a teacher, there’s so much information out there now. Information is now not the valuable thing anymore.

So, we have to think beyond the information or beyond the work that you do, and it’s the brand that you create around the work that you do. That involves how you interact with people, but also that involves what you stand for. What are your beliefs and your values that you bring here that support the company that you work for? Because those are the things that become the people-to-people connection.

We connect with other people, and I think that the more you can show up as a human, and that means taking a position on something, that means taking a stand for something you believe in, that also supports the company’s values, and really kind of not just doing the work that, eventually, and it’s a scary time right now with like AI. AI is going to take a lot of jobs and it’s going to do a lot of work that is just kind of commoditized, and everybody’s doing the same thing.

So, it is the human-to-human interaction that is going to be the differentiator. So, it’s important to work on who you are and how you then can mold into the business that you’re in and to the company that you’re in, in a way that’s beyond just, “Here’s what I was hired to do. Here is the value beyond that that I can bring to the company, the relationships, the energy, the positioning that we have, and the mission that we’re on together.”

And I think it was Zig Ziglar who said, “You can have anything in life that you want so long as you help other people get what they want.” And so, I’ll finish there because that’s one of my favorite quotes and I try to live by that.

Matt Gartland
For me, it’s the notion of letting go, which is kind of ironically, and it’s fun to say, like the first project Pat and I worked on, which is the title of his memoir book. Like, if you want to keep growing, pursuing new opportunities, you’re going to have to let go of the thing that got you there. Like, maybe it’s the job in pursuit of a different job, maybe that requires a small leap of faith.

Whether it’s maybe going out and starting your own business. I mean, any sort of reference point to get to the next thing, and the next thing that is maybe a little more meaningful. It’s not maybe an incremental point of growth. It’s maybe a little more towards exponential. It’s going to take some of that, again, courage, overcoming some imperfection tendencies, and some of the other things that we’ve discussed today, to let go of that thing, even if it’s been awesome and successful, and it’s even a big part of your identity up until this point, especially from a career standpoint, to do something new and exciting, maybe a little bit bold.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now in rapid-fire, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Pat Flynn
“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” Ford.

Matt Gartland
All right. I’ll use “Give to Grow,” which is the title of a friend’s new book that’s coming out all about investing in people, and we’ve hit on some of those themes today. So, give to grow, and good things will happen.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Pat Flynn
Right now, Dark Matter. It’s the latest one that I read, and I don’t read a ton of fiction, and I really loved it. And it’s now, I guess, an episodic series on Apple.

Matt Gartland
All right. I’m a proud father of two little girls, so it’s a parenting book, but The Anxious Generation is just a masterful read for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Jonathan Haidt.

Matt Gartland
He’s a parent. Yes, exactly. And I think there’s just a lot of crossovers into society and how we think about just the intersection of work and life, and mobile devices being at the center of a lot of that. So, it’s a fantastic read on a lot of levels.

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

Matt Gartland
Notecards.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Matt Gartland
It’s just such a great tool. Simple. You can have multiple versions. Carry them with you everywhere. Get ideas down, plot out a plan. So, notecards.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Pat Flynn
For me, kind of similar, Post-it notes. I use it to plan everything, like literally everything. Our brains do a good job of coming up with ideas but not necessarily organized or in the correct order. So, I like to get everything out there using Post-it notes, one idea per note, and then that’s where I rearrange things. I use that to write my books, create courses, outline my YouTube videos, podcast episodes. So, it’s like a notecard except there’s a little sticky edge on it. So, me and Matt are pretty similar in that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Pat Flynn
I think about a few things that I’m grateful for the moment I wake up.

Matt Gartland
Sleep habit is mine. Just when I go to bed and try to get into a healthy circadian rhythm so that I’m waking up as refreshed and as energized as I can be, because if I have that, everything works better throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that you’re known for, a Matt or Pat original quotation?

Pat Flynn
“You got to be cringe before they binge.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that sounds accurate.

Matt Gartland
That’s pretty good.

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

Matt Gartland
So SmartPassiveIncome.com is just our site at large, but as we’ve kind of shared, or at least at the top, the community is the center point of everything that we invest into and care about the most because we know it works. We see it every day. So, you can go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/all-access to check out our All-Access Pass, which is just a perfect kind of on-ramp to all of our work.

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

Pat Flynn
I challenge you to get a little uncomfortable. If you’ve been complacent, but you’ve been looking to grow, where might that next level be in that realm of a little bit of discomfort, one sort of step outside of that comfort zone? I think, typically, when I run this exercise with students, they already know what that is because they’ve been wanting to do it, they’ve just been scared.

And this is just a call to action to go and make that happen because, here’s another quote to finish off that relates to this, that is a Pat Flynn original, “I would rather live a life full of ‘Oh, wells’ than a life full of ‘What ifs’.” Those regrets are going to haunt you, so you might as well take action and see what happens.

Matt Gartland
And I would say, go say hello or introduce yourself to one person that you know that you should know as a part of your network, as a part of maybe even your inner circle, and you haven’t because of XYZ mental figment of your imagination. So, it takes some more courage to do that, but, yeah, go say hello to that person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Matt and Pat, this has been delightful. Keep on doing the great stuff you’re doing.

Matt Gartland
You as well, Pete.

Pat Flynn
Thanks so much, Pete. You, too.

Matt Gartland
Thanks a ton. This was great.