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Dec 23
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528: Building High-Performing Teams through Psychological Safety with Aaron Levy

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Aaron Levy says: "The right type of leader you can be is actually just being yourself."

Aaron Levy discusses how to encourage your team to give and receive more honest feedback.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The deciding factor of high-performing teams
  2. How to make feedback less intimidating
  3. Four ground rules that allow teams to thrive

About Aaron:

Aaron is the Founder and CEO of Raise The Bar, a firm focused on helping companies address the problem of millennial turnover.

Aaron is an ICF Associate Certified Coach, a Thrive Global contributor, an 1871 mentor, the Co-Director of Startup Grind Chicago and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. He has educated, coached, and consulted over 5,500 business leaders, helping them to define goals, create action plans, and achieve sustained success.

Aaron is on a mission to transform the manager role – by empowering each manager with the tools, skills, and training to be leaders of people who unlock the potential of their team.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Aaron Levy Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Aaron, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Aaron Levy
Thanks for having me on for a second time, Pete. I’m really happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’m happy to have you. And another fun fact we learned about you is you take some cold-water plunges in the wintertime. What is the story here?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, it’s been the last couple of years. My coach for his 60th birthday said, “For my birthday, you’re going to come plunge with me in the lake.” And I swim with him probably May through August, September, early October. He said, “We’re going to go for a plunge in November-December.” I said, “What?” He said, “It’s for my birthday.” I said, “Okay. You only turn 60 once so we’ll do it.”

And we got in, and we plunged, and it became one of those things that is there’s not really much better way to start the day than plunging into Lake Michigan and getting this just cold but also really refreshing feeling. So, I try and do it a couple of times a week and go in for a couple of minutes so I don’t get hypothermic, and it’s just a really nice refreshing way to start the day.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny you used the word nice because it sounds like torture to me. Explain.

Aaron Levy
Well, it is a little bit painful and it’s a mental challenge, and I think that, also, what’s interesting about it, as someone who does triathlons and racing, that whole sport is a mental challenge, and so you kind of love once you get into the water, it’s all leading up to it, but then once you’re in and you’re shoulder deep in water, everything slows down, and you can slow down your heart rate and your breathing. You just calm down. And you don’t want too calm in there for too long but you definitely calm down for a minute or two. It’s the leadup that’s much more crazy, I think, than the actual plunge.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I was going to say, are you sure that sensation isn’t you dying?

Aaron Levy
No, I’m not entirely sure it’s not me dying. We’ve done it enough times where we’d play with that, like, “Okay, at two and a half minutes at this temperature, that’s too much time.” Like, your whole body chatters for 30 minutes afterwards, “Okay, I was in there a little too long.” So, we learned to figure that out on our own.

But it’s just one of those things that’s really refreshing. And people ask me, “Well, what’s the science behind it?” And I say, “You know, the science is hit and miss. There’s cryotherapy, professional athletes going in ice baths after sporting events or races, and so it’s kind of following along that path. It’s very similar to that, but I’m not going to claim I do this for science. The reason I do it because it’s exhilarating, it’s fun, and it’s refreshing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing and it’s come up before, so thanks for indulging us there. I want to say congrats. You have completed your book Open, Honest, and Direct: A Guide to Unlocking Your Teams Potential, so that’s cool. I think I want to go deep on a particular vein of it, but maybe you could give us sort of like the broad zoomed-out message, sort of what’s the main thesis of this opus here.

Aaron Levy
Yeah, the main thesis is that it takes work to lead people, and we are usually promoted into leadership roles because we’re good at doing what we’re doing, not because we’re good at leading people. And so, the path that this book takes is actually it takes all the steps we work with leaders on, is, “What does it take to be an open, honest, and direct leader? How do you listen? How do you ask powerful questions? How do you create this base for psychological safety to occur? And how do you ultimately realize…?”

I think one of the hardest messages of the book to realize is that feedback is a gift, and the act of giving it, even in a critical conversation, or sharing something that just might not feel good to share because you might be worried about hurting somebody else’s feelings, actually might be the best thing that that person needs or you and your team need, or all of the above need.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, boy, there’s lots to that and it certainly resonates and rings true. So, I want to talk in-depth about psychological safety, which is a theme that’s in the book and in your work. And so, first, how about, just so we’re all on the same page, can you define that term for us and why does it matter?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, the way I think about it when we think about psychological safety is it’s the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up, raising questions, concerns, or mistakes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Aaron Levy
I can give you more of an analogy though if that helps as another way to think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we’ll take it.

Aaron Levy
So, the way I tend to think about it is imagine you’re walking through, you know, you’re trying to not be sure who you can say what to. Like, this person, if you say that to, they might blow up at you. This person you say that to, they’re going to respond to it in a different way. This person is going to be passive-aggressive, and it’s like you’re walking through a field where there’s a series of landmines all around you and you’re not quite sure where those landmines are.

And so, you’re walking through the field slowly, unsure of what you say, and if you do it the wrong way, or if you say it with this tone, or if you email it in that way, that you’re going to get punished, or humiliated, or put down. And it’s just not hyper-efficient. It’s actually the opposite of efficiency because you’re slowly walking through that field as opposed to, in business, what we really want to be doing is moving at a rapid pace together towards the same direction.

And so, the lack of psychological safety is like you’re walking through a series of landmines.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that is a nice, well, maybe not nice, it’s a clear and illustrative metaphor, maybe kind of a spooky one as you really put yourself in the position. And so, I hear you that the belief that you’re not going to be ridiculed, etc., that sounds like a pleasant thing to be going on. But there’s really some excellent science behind psychological safety and the results that that unlocks for teams. So, can you refresh us on that as well?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I think the most interesting thing about this came when I started to look at Google’s Project Aristotle. And when you look at Google’s Project Aristotle, it’s really a study where Google said, “Hey, we want to figure out what are the key ingredients for a high-performing team, what makes teams perform well.”

And their initial hypothesis was, “Well, it’s the right mix of people with this personality style and that personality style. We have the right mix of introverts and extroverts. We have the right mix of talent.” They thought that was the case. But when they did their research and they looked at teams within Google, but they also looked at meta analyses of other studies on teams, what they found was their hypothesis was totally wrong.

And two of the most important factors to drive high-performing teams had nothing to do with the people on the teams at all. Initially, I was baffled, and then after I had a chance to kind of absorb that and think about that concept, the performance of a team has nothing to do with the people on the team at all. The cool thing about that is that means that you, as a leader of a team, actually have the opportunity to impact the performance of any team that you’re working on immediately.

And the two factors that show up and came out of this Google Project Aristotle was the need for psychological safety in the workplace and also clarity. Both of those things combined, “Clarity on where we’re going, how we’re working together, and safety, and I feel comfortable in my ability to do what I need to do to work.” And that might mean asking a question without thinking it’s a stupid question, that might mean challenging my boss because we need to challenge his idea and not just accept the norms. That’s actually what drives team performance.

So, it’s not really a thing that we talk about in our leadership training, or with our clients, or in any of our work as a way to just feel good. The reason we talk about psychological safety is because it is one of the top factors which drives team performance and better outcomes within a business.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, it’s really interesting how I can really think about all kinds of conversations where there’s really some interrelationship there, which means psychological safety and clarity, because you might be afraid you’re going to be ridiculed and, thusly, you don’t ask the clarifying questions necessary to arrive at your clarity. And, in reverse, it’s like if you don’t feel clear about where you’re going, you’re feeling kind of anxious and edgy, like, “I hope this is maybe the right thing,” like the whole time that you’re engaging in conversation and hunker down and doing your work solo.

Aaron Levy
The balance and the play between the two are so, so important. And I say any great leader, their role is to provide context and clarity. Clarity on where we’re going, what we’re doing, how we’re going. And context as to why we’re doing it. But the underlying thing in that is, all along that way, people need to feel safe.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then let’s get into it. The psychological safety, how is it earned and gained and built? And how is it lost in terms of sort of real-life day-to-day exchanges, interactions?

Aaron Levy
Yeah. At the highest level, it is gained and lost through consistency. So, if you are not consistent in the way you show up, Pete, as a person with your family, with other people, they won’t know what to expect from you and, thus, psychological safety is lost. However, if you’re consistent in the way you show up, you are setting yourself up to say, “I know if I do this, I’m going to get this response.”

So, what you’re doing is you’re setting yourself up for psychological safety. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to guarantee you’d give it if you’re consistently yelling at people when they ask you a question. That’s not psychological safety, but it’s consistency in a few things. And so, I share consistency at the start because that’s probably the most important thing to remember. It’s not, “I just try, I’m going to share a couple of things that we talk about doing.” But it’s not trying to do one of those things or two of those things once in a while and seeing how it works. Psychological safety is created over a long period of time where you’re consistent in the actions that you do.

And so, one specific example of that is when you give feedback in person, right? And when I say in person, I don’t mean literally it has to be face-to-face with the other person. It could be over the phone or via a video chat. What I really mean is not giving feedback via Slack, via Instant Message, or text message, or email because it’s just not the highest fidelity mode of communication.

The best example I think about is, it’s like if you ever have that text message where you’re texting with somebody, and then you feel like they might be frustrated, and the text bubble comes up, and it seems like they’re about to text too but then it goes away?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Aaron Levy
And that’s the worst. “What’s happening is? Is he mad at me?” and then you go into the office and it’s your boss. So, you’re looking for your boss, and he walks in, and he walks right by you, you’re like, “Wait. He’s definitely mad at me. I’m in trouble. I did something wrong. I must’ve said something wrong in his email. What’s going on?” You build this whole story.

Little did you know, as you’re building that whole story, is you’re reading this feedback via text message, which isn’t a high-fidelity mode of communication, you’re building a story that he or she is mad at you for something that happened in the text message. But, really, they were just going from one meeting to another, and in between meetings, they really had to go to the bathroom, so they don’t even see you. They just walk straight to the bathroom.

And when we don’t give feedback in person, over the phone, or via a video chat, we’re losing that level of understanding the situation and we build a story around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, this reminds me. This has come up once before on the show. If you’ve seen the Key & Peele text message confusion sketch, it is priceless. It’s not quite safe at work because of the language, but it’s hilarious and illustrates that point, how we can sort of read things in and misinterpret, and when folks truly have completely different intentions and things that they’re trying to communicate there. Okay, that’s one practice then, is offering feedback in a live, real-time environment.

Aaron Levy
Here’s the tip around that, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Aaron Levy
If an email or a text message is taking you more than five minutes to craft, like you’re typing it and then you delete because you’re like, “Oh, that sound passive-aggressive.” Typing it in again, deleting, you’re not really sure how to respond? Don’t send the email. It’s called the 5-minute rule. Just pick up the phone and call the person, or walk over their desk.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And what I love about that, I guess the nuance to that 5-minute rule is it’s not so much you have a lot of content to share. I guess if that’s the case, I’d recommend Loom. I love that screen recording stuff. They need to sponsor the show one day. Anyway, I love Loom for screen recording instant videos, so sharp. But it’s taking you more than five minutes not because there’s a lot of in-depth content but because there’s some emotional stuff there, “Ooh, I don’t know if that’s going to land this way. Hmm.” Like, those are the things that are making it get stretched out.

Aaron Levy
And that emotional stuff isn’t going to be conveyed well via email.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Aaron Levy
So, don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m with you. I’m with you. Okay, so we got the sharing. That’s one consistent action you recommend for building the psychological safety is sharing those feedback points in real-time live environments, in person or in Skype or something, or phone. What are some of the other key consistent things that make all the difference in building up psychological safety?

Aaron Levy
Avoid using absolutes like “always,” “never,” “can’t,” “won’t,” “don’t.” The truth is when you use absolutes like that, it just adds a layer of judgment to a situation that likely isn’t true and will most often lead to someone else being defensive on the good side or the bad side, “Pete, you’re always late.” You might look at me and say, “Aaron, I wasn’t late for this meeting and I wasn’t late for last meeting.” And I’d have to say, “Oh, you’re right. Pete, three meetings this week that you’re a part of, you were late.” That you can’t deny, but always late? That’s just probably not true.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’m right with you there. And so, it’s also a bit more honest. I’m thinking about the book Nonviolent Communication now.

Aaron Levy
Oh, amazing book.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of just it’s an observation as opposed to judgment, and there’s a huge distinction and ways that you can sort of drift on over into the judgment territory and be evaluative in use of one of those absolutes. It’s so funny, it’s tempting to use an absolute about absolutes, “Never use absolutes.” Oh, no, I just used an absolute.

Aaron Levy
I was about to say every time. Most of the time when I deliver this and share this with leaders, in my head I’m having this dialogue of, “Watch out for the absolutes, watch out for the absolutes. They’re going to catch you in an absolute.” Because it’s such a big part of our language and the way in which we communicate, we communicate through themes and stories that we see on TV and in the world, and we communicate through absolutes. And both of those actually limit the truth of what we’re trying to say.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Well, keep it coming. Keep it coming, Aaron. What else, career practices?

Aaron Levy
What else? One of my favorites is simply be specific. Share what actions worked or didn’t work when you’re giving someone feedback. So, don’t share who they are or who they aren’t, right? “You need to care more.” “What do you mean I need to care more? What tells you that I’m not caring enough?” And when we break this down with leaders as they start to share this in our trainings, and they say, “Well, what tells me that they don’t care is the last email that they sent to a client had three spelling errors in it.” Okay. So, instead of telling your employee to care more, which has a lot of judgment, has a lot of weight, just tell them that what you expect of them is to send client emails without grammatical errors in it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that because, well, one it’s just very specific and actionable, and you can run with that and be enriched as a professional by hearing and adapting to that feedback. I would love to get your pro take on it in terms of do you want to share the context associated with the why behind that? Because, in a way, that might sound evaluative and judge-y.

So, I would say, “Hey, please make sure that you double-check your email so that you don’t have these sorts of typos go out. I noticed in this email these three typos. And my concern is that can create the impression that we are sloppy, or inattentive to detail, or rushing over on our side.” So, in a way, I’m giving you some context and some why behind my request. In another way, it sounds like I might be into evaluation, judging territory that they might trigger defensiveness. What’s your take?

Aaron Levy
“Well, so you did it twice unknowingly, so I’m going to give you a little bit of a reframe, take it or leave it. One of the things that you did, even at the start without noticing likely, was I want you to double-check your emails.” That’s assuming that whoever sent that email didn’t double or triple, quadruple-check it. I’m someone who can triple-check an email and still have plenty of grammatical errors in it. And so, I could look at that and hear what you say just from the start, and be like, “Well, I did.”

So, here’s a reframe of how to say it, “The expectation is, when you have a client email that goes out, it has zero grammatical errors. The impact of having grammatical errors is they think small errors means we have errors in other things that we do and it decreases our chance of working with them again.”

So, your ask was, “Hey, can I share this specific feedback and can I give a little bit of the impact of this specific impact?” Yes, you can totally give the impact of this specific feedback. I would just make it as insular as possible. What I mean by that is, as you and the experience focus, as opposed to saying, “When you do that, everybody on the team gets pissed at you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Aaron Levy
“When you send that email, the impact is I don’t trust that you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do,” right? That is my judgment and evaluation, but, hey, I asked you to do something and send an email on time or send an email with no errors, and you sent an email late with errors. Now, I don’t trust that you can do what you say you’re going to do, as opposed to the rest of the team was pissed off at you. Because that is throwing too much judgment out there to the group.

And I know this sounds like nitty-gritty if you’re listening to it. As much as you can think of, “How can I just be specific about what actually didn’t work and the honest impact of it?” The honest impact is, “We’re worried that we might lose a client when we send them work like this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Yeah, I like that in terms of it’s clear, it’s like, “This is the expectation for these underlying reasons or philosophies,” and then it gets more personal in terms of, let’s take a look at this example email, and let’s hear that part of the conversation.

Aaron Levy
Yeah. And so, sometimes with feedback, you don’t need to give the impact because they get it. it’s just especially when you do it in the moment or timely. It doesn’t need to be spur of the moment but it should be within one to three days. That’s one of the other things that’s really important. If you give feedback a week, two, three, six weeks, a month later, the person might not even remember what it was about, “What email are you talking about? What did I say in that client call? What did I do in that meeting? I didn’t even notice.”

When you give it in the moment, or within a couple of days, people are able to observe, understand what they did, and change it. So, if someone on your team is a salesperson, and they made a mistake in a sales call, and you wait two weeks to tell them about the mistake, how many sales calls are they going on making the same mistake over and over and over again?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, and it just doesn’t feel so great. I’m thinking about reviews in particular. It’s like surprises on the review that might happen nearly a year after the fact, it’s like, “What?”

Aaron Levy
Here’s the analogy I play with that just because it’s almost stupid-funny when you think about it. Think about Tom Brady and the Patriots, and I say Tom Brady not because I like Tom Brady but because he’s one of the more recognizable football players, athletes in the world. So, he gets into the huddle, there’s two minutes left in the game, and he’s getting the play calls into his helmet from his coach, and he’s talking to his teammates, and he’s hearing what’s going on, and he lets them know the play, and they all break and they spread out into the field, and he sees the defense, and they’re moving around, and his offense is looking at him.

And then he sees this wide receiver, and he’s not in the right spot. And he looks at him, he goes, “Oh, I don’t know. Should I? Well, we’re going to have a review of the game on Monday. Maybe I’ll tell him to move over on Monday. You know what, we’re almost at the end of the season, we’re going to do our annual reviews at the end of the season, so I’ll tell him that he’s not in the right, or I could just send him an email, too.” We would think that’s ridiculous. That just doesn’t happen. Tom looks at the guy, and he says, “Move over!” He might even say, “Move…” insert swear word “…over!” And the receiver doesn’t think twice of it, he needed to know how to be in the right spot so that they could move forward towards a common goal together efficiently and effectively.

Yet, in the workplace, we do that. In the workplace, we say, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just send him an email. Well, I waited too long to send that email, so I’ll tell him when he have a debrief on this client. Well, I didn’t do it then because we didn’t have time, so I’ll just do it at the annual performance review.” That’s not helping anybody grow. That’s not being consistent. And so, one of the really important things is actually just to be timely when you give feedback so they know when to expect it.

On our team, one of the things we do is we have a feedback debrief in between each workshop that we do. I actually have to send one out to the group on the last workshop that I did yesterday and the day before to say, “Here’s what worked. Here’s what didn’t.” If I only sent an email out when things were going really well, or when things were really bad, then people would be afraid when they got an email from me, and they’d say, “Oh, no. Is this…what did we do wrong?” But the consistency is each session that we have, each week that we do it, people will know, “Here’s the email. You know to expect something that worked, something that didn’t work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s huge and powerful. And I’m thinking about this football analogy in terms of, yeah, you’re right, that would be ridiculous to think about giving feedback in that way. I guess I’m also thinking about my experience of when I’m working with sort of creative types, like, “Hey, we’re making a logo, or we’re doing whatever,” I find it so interesting is when I share feedback in terms of, “You know what, that white space, it just seems like it’s so tight, it’s kind of uncomfortable, whatever.”

And it’s funny because sometimes I think that I sound kind of weird talking about design-type things, or art-type things, or I was talking to my audio people, it’s like, “I think my voice sounds a little robot-y at times. I don’t know if it’s being processed in a certain way.” And so, they appreciate it, like, “Oh, that’s great. Thank you. Yeah, I’m really going to dig into that.”

And so, as opposed to I guess that it’s just rare that I work with someone in my kind of creative capacity and they get really defensive or angry or irritated, like, “How dare you? You don’t sound robot-y. We mastered your voice perfectly,” or, “You don’t know jack about logos. What I made is excellent.” What do you think that’s about in terms of the mindset if it’s a football player or a logo designer versus an office professional? And why sort of feedback is often not given the same way and often not received the same way?

Aaron Levy
Well, I think you’d find it interesting if you go to that same logo designer and sit in in one of their internal meetings or discussion with a boss about a project, because I think it’s not that certain types of people do or don’t do it. I think, yes, that does happen. It’s also the culture and the team by which we operate and agree to do it. And so, it’s kind of part of the agreement with the client if you’re doing something creative with them that there’s going to be a bunch of iterations in the process, right? Iteration is part of the process.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go, yeah.

Aaron Levy
Yet, are we agreeing to iteration when we’re determining the next steps to go forward or the strategy as a business, or when we’re trying to figure out how to be better at sending client emails? Are we agreeing to iteration? And that iteration, that understanding that there’s a back and forth, that’s how you get to the best possible outcome that you need feedback from all points of view and different perspectives to get to the better outcome is something that is often missing.

And that’s also why when you’re able to create psychological safety, that’s one of the things that drives team performance. It’s what’s missing from a lot of teams, is the ability to feel like, “I can give that feedback and can say what needs to be said even if I’m a first-year person in this company, and I’m saying it to the senior director.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I like that a lot that it’s sort of, like, “Are we agreeing to have these iterations?” Like, “Is there an expectation of iteration?” Oh, is that trademarked yet, Aaron?

Aaron Levy
It’s not. It’s not. It’s a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s see, maybe it needs to be, one of us. Is there an expectation of iteration or is there not? And so, if someone is sharing something and they kind of think, “Well, hey, I’m a genius. I’ve got it figured out and this is the way forward and what we’re going to do, and you all need to respect that.” And then they get challenged, like, “Oh, hey, what if we did this?” Like, “No, Aaron, actually, I’d like to do it the way I said I wanted to do it,” like a little snippy there. It’s like, “Oh, okay. Note to self: Don’t speak up. I don’t feel psychological safety.”

And then, yeah, I think you’ve nailed it there. It’s, “Do we or do we not have an expectation of iteration?” And I think, for the most part, it’d behoove us to have that about most things. Is that fair to say in your view?

Aaron Levy
I’ll give you the way in which I think about it. I go on a daily basis to meet with new groups of people and do, we’d dive into trainings. And most of the time, they’re 20 or 40 hours over the course of 6 to 12 months, but sometimes it’s just a day, or a day and a half, or it’s an hour. And even in that amount of time with a group that I’m just working with the first time, I create a set of agreements with them and we establish agreements for how we’re going to work together in this room.

And one of the agreements, to what you said, Pete, is do the next hard thing. And what we mean by do the next hard thing is challenge yourself, get out of your comfort zone, speak up, try things out and make mistakes, challenge me. And so, in doing that, the expectation is someone to raise their hand and say, “You know what, Aaron, I disagree with you.” That’s what we look for because that’s how you breathe and grow great learning and great development. It’s how you process information. It’s not supposed to all be clean and logical. It’s supposed to be a little bit messy.

And so, when you ask, “Is that something that should happen all the time?” Yeah. Let me just extrapolate. If I’m doing that in an hour of session with a group that I’m meeting with once, imagine what you could benefit from if you’re doing that with people you work with on a daily basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so what I’m loving here is that you’re so gung-ho on these agreements. I’d love to hear what do you find are some of the top agreements that make a world of difference in unlocking high performance?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I think the number one agreement that makes the world of difference in high performance and also, in my mind, just the world a better place, and the way in which I describe it is it’s called embracing a beginner’s mind. And I go back to this quote by Gino Wickman from the book Traction where says, “The mind is like a parachute. It has to be opened for it to work.”

And if we’re not coming into a room, a situation, an environment with our minds open to different possibilities, then we really have a narrow perspective. And when you have that open perspective, it just creates so much more possibility, so much more growth, so much more learning, so much more development, so much more opportunity.

And so, that is the key indicator of success with employees on my company, with leaders that we work with, with clients that we work with. If they have that, which we seek out of all those different constituents, then success will be there, and high-performing teams will thrive if you have, at least, a beginner’s mind. So, a beginner’s mindset is the biggest one in my mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s a great one. And lay on another one or two for us.

Aaron Levy
Yeah. Act with authenticity and humility. The way in which I describe this is it’s almost like you can sit back in your chair and you can finally take a breath. You don’t have to put on a mask of the work you. You don’t have to be the leader that has all the answers. You don’t have to be the Steve Jobs who is brash and rude, or the Bill Gates who is measure three times then cut once. The right type of leader and the right type of contributor you can be is actually just being yourself.

Trying to be somebody else, being inauthentic, people see through that. We’re trained at understanding and seeing facial expressions and emotions, whether we know we’re trained or not, we’ve been doing it since we’re little kids before we could even talk. We can understand facial expressions and body language.

And so, when we’re inauthentic, it feeds and it breathes to other people. And so, being authentic, and humble, too, not just braggadocious, but also humble and having some humility to how you show up in this world is one of those things that is just freeing. It kind of unlocks and releases this mask that a lot of us tend to put on when we go into work and want to be awesome by trying to be awesome, as opposed to being ourselves, embracing beginner’s mind, doing the next hard thing, and doing the work.

Pete Mockaitis
Good stuff. Aaron, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I would say one of the agreements that I constantly bring up is assume positive intent. Oftentimes, when we’re in the workplace, we can read an email or a text message, we go, “Oh, why did she…?” And think that somebody else is out there trying to hurt you, and we constantly go like it’s a battle, like people are trying to hurt us, that we’re working with.

The truth is that most people are just trying their best to do their best. And they might’ve made a mistake, they might’ve done something to really just figure something out, and if we can assume that everybody is doing their best, assume positive intent, it’s going to make the team that you work with a lot happier to be on.

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

Aaron Levy
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.”

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

Aaron Levy
I’ve really enjoyed the Bloomer’s experiment. Do you want me to dive into it or just a high level?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear a sentence or two and the setup and the results.

Aaron Levy
Yeah. What they did was they looked at a group of students and they randomly assigned certain students to be high performers or bloomers, and another group of students to be non-high performers. They just picked them out of a hat basically. They didn’t tell the students that they were labeled as high performer or not but they did tell their teacher.

And as they looked at the course of the year and saw what happened, what they realized was the people labeled as high performers dramatically outperformed, statistically significantly outperformed, the non-high performers. And what’s interesting is, again, the students didn’t know. But who knew? The teachers.

And what the teachers did, subconsciously, is they gave more energy and attention and focus. They actually just spent more time listening and hearing those students that they thought were high performers. The coolest thing about this, to me, is the question that comes out of it, which is, “What if we treated everybody like a high performer? What would be possible then?”

And so, that’s something I keep in my mind and have our leaders think about, “What if instead of treating your high performers like high performers, what if you treated the other people in your team like they have the opportunity to be high performers? How much better would they do? How much more would they grow? How much better would your team do as a result?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, this reminds me of – what’s that educational teacher movie, Stand and Deliver?

Aaron Levy
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And Jaime Escalante, he says that students will rise to the level of expectations. And I think there really is some truth to that. Thank you.

Aaron Levy
You’re welcome. Totally. Yeah, thank you for asking that. That’s just a fun one that I’ve really enjoyed lately.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Aaron Levy
I’ll go with a recent book that I just really, really enjoyed, which is Give and Take by Adam Grant. I took a while to read it because I thought I knew what it was about, it’s about givers and takers. But it’s just diving into it more. It talks about, really, the way in which we show up with other people and what we get when we give.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, I like the way you said that. It took you a while to read because you thought you knew what was in it. I’m in the same boat. So, I’m putting you on the spot. Can you share with us an insight that you didn’t have until you actually read it as opposed to just thinking you already knew it?

Aaron Levy
Yeah, I’ll share one insight. It’s actually from a study by Elliot Aronson, it’s called The Pratfall Effect. And in it, what came out of this was, as a giver, or just as a person, you don’t always have to have the right answer, you don’t always have to be perfect. Actually, what the studies show is you’re liked more if you make some mistakes, if you screw up a little bit. As long as you’re still seen as competent, if you screw up a little bit, you’re seen more as human and so people like you more.

So, if you’re a lawyer who has a stutter, that actually could improve your likelihood of winning a case. And so, that’s just something I wouldn’t have imagined was in Give and Take, and it was. And the way it was explained and shared and the stories behind it, Adam Grant is awesome. I’m just a really big fan of the way he thinks about the workplace, the way he thinks about people, and the way he shares stories.

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

Aaron Levy
So, I have been using, just lately, honestly, lately, the Google Tasks button. And so, Google Tasks is on my phone, Google Tasks is on my calendar and on my email, and it’s just really easy to just put things in a checklist. For a while, I would email myself, “Do this, do that,” and I’d had it come to my inbox after out for a day with 20 emails from Aaron to Aaron that just has a different task, and it was silly. And so, just compiling them in a simple to-do list. The thing I like about it is in the place I work so it comes up right in my email.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Aaron Levy
Meditating.

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

Aaron Levy
Feedback is a gift.

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

Aaron Levy
They can go to RaiseBar.co or the book website which is OpenHonestandDirect.com. On there is a whole toolkit of some of the tools we actually talked about today.

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

Aaron Levy
Yeah. Pick one thing from today’s conversation and practice it and aim for consistency over the next week. So, just one thing that you took away, whether it’s waiting five minutes and having a phone call as opposed to drafting an email, or it’s practicing avoiding using absolutes. Work on being consistent on just one thing, that’s my call to action for people listening.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Aaron, it’s been fun once again. Keep up the good work and keep raising the bar.

Aaron Levy
Oh, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Dec 20
0

527: How to Boost Energy through Greater Mental Clarity with Chris Baréz-Brown

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Chris Barez-Brown says: "You'll be amazed where your brain can take you."

Chris Baréz-Brown shares high-impact approaches to boost your energy for more fulfilling workdays.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The surprising root of our energy problem
  2. The tiny change that massively boosts productivity
  3. A powerful way to lower stress and find clarity

About Chris:

Author and global event speaker, Chris has over 25 year’s experience in coaching, and counts multi-nationals such as ITV and Sky amongst the clients he’s helped transform their business, from a personal level up. He has interviewed senior business leaders including Apple’s Steve Wozniak and regularly coaches on leadership style at global events like Leadercast.

Chris recently created a new social enterprise programmed called Talk It Out, which has been proven to help reduce stress levels and increase self-awareness.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Chris Barez-Brown Interview Transcript

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

Chris Barez-Brown
Hey, it’s absolutely a pleasure to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am so intrigued. You have taken the bold step of naming your business Upping Your Elvis. Please explain.

Chris Barez-Brown
Yeah, usually it raises an eyebrow or two to that. So, the name was actually inspired by Bono. So, when he was doing his third-world debt campaign, he used to want to go in organizations and work with and play really fast. So, he used to ask what I think is a great question, he just asks people, “So, who’s Elvis around here?” Now, if you ask that question, people are going to always answer it because what you’re really asking is, “Who here is a bit of brown, a bit of a maverick, they get stuff done, they got loads of energy about them?” And they love every minute of it. Now, I fundamentally believe that business needs more Elvis now than ever, and I know that we’ve all got a bit more of Elvis to bring. So, that’s what we do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. Well, energy, I mean, hey, I’m all about having more of that. Can you paint a picture for us, what’s sort of the current state when it comes to energy levels in the workplace? And, yeah, what’s to be done about it?

Chris Barez-Brown
Well, I think the biggest problem is that we’re just not designed for business, and business is not designed for us. So, if you think about the way that we’re programmed, yeah, we’re designed 50,000 years to be hunter-gatherers on the Savannah and, therefore, we’ve got quite interesting programming as far as our brain is concerned, the way we react to stuff.

The business world in which we live right now is changing so quickly and it’s very hard to keep up with the dynamism of what’s going on when we are 50,000 years old. And, therefore, we have a few problems, like we don’t like change, we can’t focus for more than 90 to 120 minutes a day deeply. We’re not actually designed to sit down. We’re designed to move.

A lot of our design is making sure we have habitual patterns and routines we do every single day. And if things are changing fast, we’ve got problems. So, I think we’ve got some work to be done on our energy because we’re just not dealing with the way the business is speeding up.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Well, so then maybe to paint a picture in terms of what’s really possible for us, could you maybe share a tale of someone who wasn’t feeling it so much, they didn’t have a whole lot of energy, but then made some changes and has been enjoying the fruits of those labors?

Chris Barez-Brown
Yeah, so I was working in Basille last summer and a guy came up to me, and he said, “Chris, you’ve changed my life.” And I’m like, “Good. That’s a wonderful thing to hear, but can you give me some details?” And, basically, I haven’t seen him for three years. And when I was working with him, I shared how I manage my time and he had basically taken the principle of that and applied it to his.

It tells the story that basically he works in drug development, which is obviously quite a big job, it’s very complex, lots of moving parts. But what he did was he just stepped back from it and realized there’s two main things that he does. The first thing that he does is he spends lots of time doing deep thinking, and it’s all creative, it’s analytical, it’s looking at lots of data and working out what the answers are. And it’s quite cerebral stuff.

The second thing that he does is he runs lots of things internationally. Now, what he was doing before he met me was mixing those two functions up throughout the day, but actually they need two quite different energies and quite different approaches. So, what he now does is he walks the dog first thing in the morning, and I think this is a key thing for us all to do. Go outside, spend some time in nature thinking about, “What is your big thing you need to deliver that day?” Because if you don’t work that out when you wake, it ain’t going to happen. So, that’s the first he does.

The second thing he then does is he spends the morning at home doing that deep work, the thinking analyses, all of that great stuff, and then he goes into the office and he spends the rest of the day doing things. He reckons he is 500% more productive as a result of it and a lot happier because he’s not scrapping around so much trying to make different energies meet when it’s almost an impossible task. So, that’s a simple example of how a very easy behavioral practice can change the way we work.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. And so then, what do you think are the key reasons behind why these little changes make all the difference? Five hundred percent, I mean, that is substantial.

Chris Barez-Brown
That is substantial. Well, it’s all about really having great awareness of what makes us tick and how we function. And, actually, with awareness, it comes in very, very simple things, but we do them every day all the time. And the fact that they are things that we do repetitively, such as have meetings, learn and get feedback, think creatively about stuff. It’s stuff we’re doing on a daily basis. If we get just 10% better at doing those, there’s always an exponential impact over a whole year. So, I’m a massive believer in little things that you do every day that make a difference rather than the big, tricky, complicated things that actually a lot of the big change programs are focused on over the years.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’m with you there. And I’m intrigued by one of the little changes you’ve been exploring lately. You’ve got a Talk It Out program. Please explain. What is this all about?

Chris Barez-Brown
Yes. So, Talk It Out is a creative exercise that I first wrote about in my first book in 2005. And we’ve taught it to thousands of people and it’s great for getting insights and ideas. So, basically what you do is you grab a buddy and you go for a walk, and one of you just talks flat out about whatever it is that you’re trying to work on while the other person just listens. Now, if you do that fast enough and long enough you run out of conscious story and then you start to get into your subconscious. So, it’s great for an unearthing more of your creative genius.

Now, we’ve done that many times for ideas and creativity, but time after time people are coming back and saying, “I’ve got great insights, I’ve got great ideas, I’ve got more clarity. But you know what, I just feel better.” So, we’ve realized there was potentially some therapeutic benefits to this so we’ve researched it with the University of Bristol, and it turns out, to no surprise, it reduces anxiety, it increases happiness, and as a lot of people described, it just feels as if a weight has been lifted off their shoulders.

So, the way that we’ve been thinking about it with the University of Bristol is we’re great at looking after our bodies with exercise and nutrition. This is a very simple thing you can do for your mind to make sure that, with all the complexity and demands on our attention, we just get the focus of the right stuff, and we give ourselves a chance just to breathe a bit more.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly, that sounds great and that’s really intriguing. So, you say after the first few minutes. Explain. We sort of drain the conscious stuff, and then we’re into new territory. How does that work exactly?

Chris Barez-Brown
Yeah. So, if anyone says to you, “So, how’s life?” you will tell them the conscious story, and it’s a story you would tell your family, your friends, it’s, “Oh, work is okay. It’s a bit busy, dah, dah, dah. The house is fine. It’s great to see the kids. Boom, boom, boom.” It’s that kind of conscious story. Now, as long as you’re telling that story, you are stuck in that 5% to 10% of your conscious brain.

Now, we know that there’s so much processing that’s going on in our subconscious. Actually, if you want to tap into what really makes you tick, tapping into that subconscious is the way forward because there’s a lot of stuff that’s going there that’s beneath the surface, that it often takes the way we think and the way that we feel without us being aware of it. So, if we can flush that out, we will start to understand what’s really going on for us, and rarely is it the conscious story. It’s usually some stuff that’s a bit surprising, it’s hidden away.

By bringing it into consciousness and by bringing it into the light and talking about it with somebody else, we can look at it in the cold light of day and then deal with it, and say, “Well, is this something that I want more of in my life, the less of in my life? Is this something I need to fix? Is it something that I just need to live with?” But if you leave it just in the subconscious, you’ll never know. You’re just often walking around, going, “There’s something bothering me but I don’t know why?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. And so then, that’s intriguing because you have that dedicated time. And you recommend a specific amount of time. How much is it?

Chris Barez-Brown
I do. So, the whole process, we pack away in an hour, but you do 20 minutes each way and, obviously, there’s little setup beforehand, and then after 20 minutes you just need to land where you’ve got to, and then you swap over, you go the other way. And the beauty of it is, if you do it with a buddy, you both get a chance and, therefore, there’s a real connectivity that comes from that.

And one of the biggest issues we’re going to be facing over this planet over the next 20, 30 years is actually loneliness. And loneliness has a massive impact on our wellbeing. And what we hear time and time again from people doing Talk It Out is, “Yes, I feel better. My anxiety has dropped. I’ve got more clarity but I also then feel so alone.” And that’s the beauty of, therefore, doing it in a partnership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then, let’s hear it. So, we got 20 minutes of each side, and then some setup. And so then, how does it go down? Is it just sort of like, “Okay, you talk, Chris,” and then away you go or are there some prompts, some structure? How does it go down?

Chris Barez-Brown
Well, so we’ve got some digital stuff that people can access online for free just to teach them how to do this because this is a charitable arm so we’re trying to get this out to as many people as we can. So, it’s all structured. If people want to check it out, you can find out on TalkItOut.org or Upping Your Elvis, there’s information about it. It’ll just give you a little setup.

So, if you haven’t done this before, it’s good to just get a warm up in. If I’m facilitating a session, I’ll often get a pair just to go for a quick one-minute walk in either direction and just rant about something just to get used to walking and talking. You then come back and then at that point, you set them off and you’re taking turns, say, “Whoever wants to go first, rants.” They can talk about any aspects of their life.

The key thing is it’s something that is on their mind. It might be health, it could be relationships, it could be work, but the key thing is they shouldn’t be filtered. They’re just talking flat out and as honest as possible, and actually with a bit of pace because you don’t want to talk too slowly or you don’t run out of conscious story. So, that’s the brief, it’s as simple as that.

Now, their buddy, their brief is great because all they’re listening for is changes in energy. So, if the person talking slows down, speeds up, gets stuck, starts swearing, those are the things that are interesting. So, we pick up on those energetic changes really well. We’re not listening to everything that’s said, we’re just looking for the energy changes. And those are the things that give us a clue that they said something interesting because that’s how the subconscious talks to us.

So, when you stopped after 20 minutes, your buddy just goes, “Hey, here’s a few things I noticed,” and they just play it back. They’re not advising you, they’re not coaching you, they’re not telling you what to do, they’re just saying, “Look, I just thought these may be interesting.” And then you have a chance to land it. And, invariably, when people land it, they’ve definitely got more clarity.

If you rant for 20 minutes about your life, you will get more clarity. A lot of people get some key insights into things that are holding them down and actually blocking their energy. And a lot of people come away just going, “You know what, I’ve got some actions from that. This is what I’m going to be doing differently from today,” which I think is a pretty productive use of 20 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say land it, what precisely do you mean there?

Chris Barez-Brown
Well, the challenge with doing any subconscious exercise, and actually the same could be said of dreaming, we often wake up in the morning, we’ve got this dream in our heads, and we go, “Wow, that’s amazing. I have to tell my friends at work.” We go to work and we can’t remember anything because, actually, when you’re in the subconscious, by definition, that’s not part of your conscious activity.

So, what you need to do when you’ve gone through this rant is make it conscious. So, you, therefore, need to listen to your buddy, what insights they’ve had from your rant, and then you’ve got a chance just to articulate where you’ve got to, “So, after just doing this exercise, what I’ve realized is this, or what I’d like to pay attention to is this. This is the headlines of my output.”

And, actually, by articulating that, it helps you access it, sorry, plumb it, write it into your memory so you’ve got something you can work with into the future. So, it’s as simple as that. It’s just a simple way to make sure you are using the insight that you’ve got.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you say you can talk about anything just so long it’s something on your mind and you are talking completely honestly, so then I guess I’m curious, have you started to notice some themes in terms of…? Because it’s kind of unique, frankly, to have the opportunity to rant about something for 20 minutes without interruption.

Chris Barez-Brown
Sure. Yeah, it is.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I can how there’s some therapeutic benefit to that. So, when people are handed this opportunity, what do you find are some key themes that get talked about and maybe are suggestive of we need more opportunity and environment to be able to discuss these things more frequently?

Chris Barez-Brown
Well, there are the classics that come out. So, being overly busy and not really living life as much as people want to, not tapping into their passions, people still talk about work-life balance quite a lot. There’s a fair amount of people who are looking for more meaning in their life, which is an ever-present one as it should be.

Most people just tend to find there are certain elements in their life that need a bit of order. We have a lump of people that come around going, talk to me saying, “Hey, I’ve got a problem with a relationship,” and it’s very top of mind, and they get straight into it, and they find that that works. Interestingly, a lot of people go and say, “Well, I just talk about life.” They don’t know what their issue is they want to crack, but the subconscious will help them get there.

So, as they talk, it changes topic to topic to topic until they find the thing that’s got some energy and then they go deep. So, it’s interesting the way the brain works, right? It kind of finds the true blockages and the true things that hold us back if you let it off to lead long enough.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Well, so then, I’m curious, if we don’t have Chris and company facilitating these sessions, how do you recommend we get started in enjoying some of these benefits on our own?

Chris Barez-Brown
Sure. Well, I would check out the digital support that we’ve got on the website, so Upping Your Elvis or TalkItOut.org. It’s got everything there. It’s got instruction videos, it’s got a little step-by-step guide, but it’s incredibly easy. There’s lots of things I’ve taught in my life that needs manuals and training and practice, this is not one of them.

We are all brilliant at walking. And guess what? We can talk while we walk. In fact, most of us talk much better while we walk because we process kinesthetically. There’s a great research study by Stanford that shows that when we walk in our natural gait, our creative spikes by up to 60%, 6-0 percent, and that’s because we are accessing our subconscious.

So, we’ll often find, when we’re walking, we just get more clarity and more things come out, so there’s not a great deal to it. The important thing is, and this is the golden rule, whilst you’re talking and your buddy is listening, your buddy just listens. That is the golden rule. As long as people are doing that, it’s good. If they start chipping in and having a conversation, which is really tempting, you’ll not going to get the depth and it’s just chat. So, beyond that there’s very little you can get wrong. Just have some fun with it and you’ll be amazed where your brain can take you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that seems like a powerful approach to boosting energy certainly. What would you say, in all of your research and experience and working with clients, etc., are some of the other really big high-leverage activities you’d recommend folks engage in to boost that energy?

Chris Barez-Brown
That’s a great question. We just spent the last year doing what we call energy experiments where we will do ourselves what we hope what our clients will do. And we’ve done everything from using different kind of strategies for sleep, fasting, some fitness stuff, digital detoxes. And, interestingly, there are some of those that just resonate more than others, one of which is a morning routine.

And morning routines, I don’t know what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years, but I had no idea of the power of a morning routine. And yet the more I research it, the more I realize all my heroes and heroines were already doing it just quietly but the secret is now out. So, my belief of why this is so important is when you wake up, it is the one time of the day that you own. Now, that is the moment that actually is, as long as you stay away from your phone and you don’t look at anything digital, you have a chance to get your energy right.

So, we’ve been doing some experiments with some very simple things as part of a morning routine, one of which you’ve got to hydrate when you wake up. So, we wake up very dehydrated, so drink a pint of water with some sea salt in it, high-quality sea salt because you need the electrolytes to take it on, and you should do that on waking.

Keep away from everything digital, get your heartrate up, just a little bit of exercise, and then I think sitting outside, as I mentioned with the guy walking the dog, and just getting clear on what your big thing is, is just an invaluable thing to do because you know autopilot is going to kick in, you know you’re going to get caught up in busyness. But if you get that direction right first thing in the morning, at least when it does, you’ve got a chance and you’ll succeed and achieve something useful.

So, that is one I absolutely love and that’s where we get uniform feedback that that is super useful. But a personal passion of mine, and I’m going off of one slightly, is cold water immersion. I don’t know if you’re into that, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’ve heard of it, and I’ve seen it. Tell us more.

Chris Barez-Brown
So, I go into it through Wim Hof, the Dutch guy is known as Iceman a few years ago, and I live by the sea so cold water is not hard in Britain. But the benefits of getting into the sea, especially around December, like it is now, just seems to be fantastic at doing all sorts of things for you. Very, very good for you physically, very good for you also mentally, I find. It tends to clear things out, makes you incredibly present, but it’s an extreme one, Pete. So, I’m not going around making my clients do that. It’s one that I personally really enjoy. If I start the day with a jump in the sea, I know I’m going to be fizzing.

Pete Mockaitis
Hotdog. And, now, so I guess I’m thinking about motherly wisdom, “Oh, don’t get super cold. You’ll get sick.” That does not happen to you?

Chris Barez-Brown
Well, no. I mean, it’s actually good for your immune system. So, by exposing yourself to cold, chances are you’ll get less sick. I know lots of people that do it every single day of the year, that it’s almost a religion to them, and they are the fittest people I know. You rarely see them with a cold, you rarely see them run down. So, no, I think quite the contrary.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, so we’ve got a few of them, a few of those approaches, so we got the morning piece, we got the hydration, we got perhaps a dip. Once the morning has passed, so what are some of your top recommendations for keeping energy flowing the rest of the day?

Chris Barez-Brown
Sure. So, there’s a couple of, I think, ignored moments. Well, one is lunchtime. It’s amazing how many people work through their lunch and they don’t take a break. Our lunchbreak is the equivalent of five weeks holiday a year, and yet people just keep working through it. And five weeks holiday, I think, most people would really relish so we should take that. And it’s important because it’ll help us reenergize but, actually, we can use that time really well for us. We can do stuff that fill us. So, we can learn something, we can connect with people, and give ourselves a boost again for the afternoon.

Personally, a little bit of exercise is great at lunchtime. So, using the lunch also to reflect on the morning and then set an intention for the afternoon, I think, is a very clear thing to do. I’m also, and I have to confess, Pete, I’m a cheeky napper, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Cheeky?

Chris Barez-Brown
Yeah, I sneak off and have a little sleep when I can in the afternoon. And what I learned from Nick Littlehales, a sleep coach, is that we’re not designed to be monophasic in sleeping. So, this whole idea of having eight and a half hours every night in one big block is not the way we’re designed. We’re actually designed to be polyphasic, i.e., we’re going to sleep more than once in a day. And, therefore, if you feel as if you need a little top-up, a little nap during the day is actually what our body often craves.

So, I’m a big fan of actually going away, just having a little quiet time just to refuel. In fact, I had one just about an hour and a half ago. And I’ve been working about 11 hours flat out, I’ve been up very early this morning, had lots of stuff to do, and I just need a little boost before I talk to you. So, a little nap and here I am.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, thank you and you sound great, and energetic, and more. Well, tell me, Chris, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Chris Barez-Brown
Anything else I want to mention. Well, I think, as I said at the beginning, the whole game here around energy is threefold. Number one, it’s about awareness. We need to understand what makes us tick, and actually learning the way our biorhythms are like, and when we have our peaks and when we have our dips, and what we can do to play with those, I think, is really, really important.

I think, then, understanding how that’s kind of deployed on a daily basis to make sure that the leakages don’t happen through excessive meetings, through spending far too much time in the weeds, answering emails, all those things, is key to our success. So, awareness and topping up, that’s one and two really important, but the deployment is the thing that, I think, makes all the difference because it’s so easy these days to just wake up and be buffeted by demands. And learning how to manage things so you’re working on your agenda is the key.

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

Chris Barez-Brown
I suppose one of my favorites is, “Not everything that counts can be counted.”

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Chris Barez-Brown
I like that one. I like that one because, in my business, I’m sure you come across the same thing, it’s all about ROI. Everything is about the number. It’s all about the money. And yet the stuff that makes people tick in organizations is the stuff that you can’t count. It’s about joy. It’s about love. It’s about the stuff that brings people to work to do extraordinary things. There’s nothing to do with our salary. And I find that in every walk of life, not just in work but in homes and in life. And I think we need to remember sometimes, not everything is about spreadsheet.

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

Chris Barez-Brown
I presume you’ve read Lost Connections, the Johann Hari book. There’s so many studies in there. And I know that the book is all about depression and anxiety, and how you can find hope, but I just think it’s like a manifesto for living. It’s got so much stuff in there that basically can help us have an insight and to have every day work for us.

And there’s one piece of research in there that just pretty much slayed me. If you are intensely lonely, the impact on your body as far as cortisol and adrenaline, is the equivalent or more of being hit in the face by a stranger. And when you hear facts like that, and you start to think, “Well, what are we doing to help people get that connection?” I think that takes me to quite profound places and it makes me think that actually we need to do much better work on this planet and within organizations to get them to hook up on stuff with meaning.

So, that was one that certainly had a big impact on me.

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

Chris Barez-Brown
One of my favorite tools, and this isn’t directly for my job, is my guitar. It’s not that I go on stage and play it, that’s certainly not what I would make everyone do. But I travel quite a lot, and what I find is that 20 minutes of playing my guitar in my hotel room is the best way for me to get my energy back. It takes me to a different place, it de-stresses me, there’s a creative output, and, therefore, it helps me get in the right place to do the work the next day. So, I would say my favorite tool is my guitar.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite habit?

Chris Barez-Brown
I would say being outside with my dogs is my favorite habit. So, I’ve been out with them three times a day. Each time I have gone out with a headful of stuff. Each time I’ve come back with it nice and clear again. And walking in nature, playing with dogs who love you beyond your worth, and just remembering the simple things in life, I think, is incredibly grounding.

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

Chris Barez-Brown
I suppose the one thing that seems to connect with everybody, that they sometimes forget, is that a third of our days on this planet are work days. And if we’re not loving every minute of it, it’s a terrible waste of life. And I think sometimes people forget the joy and the playfulness of the work that they do, and it becomes way too serious. And, often, when people connect to that statistic, they go, “Oh, fair point. Fair point. Am I making sure I’m properly living my life through my work? Or is it just a way of paying the bills?”

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

Chris Barez-Brown
Yeah, come to the website UppingYourElvis.com or Barez-Brown.com got all the information on there. And if anyone wants to play with us on Talk It Out, and help us get out into the world, we’re doing it all for free. We just can’t do it on our own. So, any partners who want to play, we are here with open arms.

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

Chris Barez-Brown
You know, I think the key thing is that when you get your energy right, which you do through morning routines and looking after yourself and clearing your diary and making sure you’re working on the right stuff, I think it’s then incumbent upon us all to be more kind. So, my challenge would be, once a day, grab somebody in your life, and just tell them what you love about them. And I think what you’ll find, if you do that, you’ll get so many benefits.

Number one, your relationship with that person will get better. Number two, it’s karmic so you will find that you will get a little bit of love back, which we all need. Number three, what you’ll start to find is that you’ll program your selective attention to see just more good. And I think that’s a great personal benefit and you’re doing that will make the world a bit better. So, find one person per day in your life, it could be a work colleague, it could be a family, your friend, say to them what you love about them, and your day will be that much more shiny.

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, thank you for sharing the good word. And good luck in all the ways you’re upping your Elvis.

Chris Barez-Brown
It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Pete. It’s been a real joy.

Dec 18
0

526: How to Write Faster, Better with Daphne Gray-Grant

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Daphne Gray-Grant says: "If you can't get yourself closer to the mindset of your readers, then your writing isn't going to be as effective with them."

Writing Coach Daphne Gray-Grant offers practical tips to accelerate and improve your writing.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The biggest mistake people make when writing
  2. Why outlines don’t work—and what does
  3. Top do’s and don’ts for engaging writing

About Daphne:

Daphne Gray-Grant grew up in newspapers: her parents owned a struggling weekly where she worked from the age of 16. Eventually, she left the family business to become a senior editor at a major metropolitan daily. After the birth of her triplet children in 1994, she became a communications consultant, and writing and editing coach. Author of the books 8 1/2 Steps to Writing Faster, Better and Your Happy First Draft, Daphne has been coaching writing and blogging since 2006.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Daphne Gray-Grant Interview Transcript

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

Daphne Gray-Grant
Thanks for inviting me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to get your take, I understand you’ve been working as a writing coach for the past 25 years, but it sounds like you hated writing until 20 years ago, so the first five years, I guess, were not pleasant. What’s the story here?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, the story is I kind of grew up in the newspaper business. My parents owned a weekly newspaper and I worked there as an indentured servant for many years. And then, when I left, I went to join a large metropolitan daily newspaper, and I was just so anxious to get out of the family business. I didn’t pay too much attention to what I was walking into.

And, actually, it was good in a lot of ways. They hired me as an editor, which was a job I was born to do. I’m just a natural editor. I started editing when I was in high school. I would edit all my friends’ papers. I loved editing my own work, other people’s work. It just didn’t matter. I just loved editing and I was really good at it.

So, I got the job at this daily newspaper, and they mostly had me edit. But every once in a while, they would ask me to write something and, oh, my gosh, that was terrifying because I hated writing. And I was in a room, and in those days, newspapers were much bigger than they are now, so there were about a hundred people. All these grizzled veterans who would sit and bang away at the keyboard and produce copy in 10 minutes without blinking an eye, and I would be asked to write, I don’t know, 500 words, and I would sweat over it, and I hated it, and I found it so difficult that I just really didn’t enjoy it one iota whenever I was asked to write. So, I would dash back to the editing job as fast as I humanly could.

And then when I left the newspaper business to have my children, I didn’t go back. I went back briefly after my mat-leave and then decided, “No, I need to get out,” so I left. And I should say I’m a mother of triplets, so having a child was a bit of a big deal. I was having three children, not only one, and so I left the newspaper business and I decided to be a freelancer. And when you freelance, you have to do whatever is sent your way.

And so, I had to do a certain amount of writing, and I just hated it. I found it so difficult and time-consuming and horrible that I kind of took myself aside, looked myself in the mirror, and said, “Daphne, you have to stop doing it this way.” So, I spent about a year researching, talking to people, reading books, exploring everything I could find about the writing business until I could figure out a way I could do it that made it enjoyable. And once I’ve done that, then I started coaching other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a very intriguing opening there, so I’ll bite, Daphne. So, what’s the trick? What was the missing element that makes writing enjoyable?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, I think there are two things. The biggest thing I found is that many people, me included, by the way, many people mix up the different steps of writing. So, they will write a little bit and then they’ll edit. Or they will start to edit while they’re writing, and that is just a really, really bad thing to do because what happens is that we have different parts of our brain that are good at different tasks. So, there’s a part of our brain that is really, really good at linear logical tasks like editing. And then there’s another part of our brain that’s really good at creative tasks, like writing.

But if you try to write with the editing part of your brain, the job is going to be horrible and very slow and painful, and that’s what I found I had done for many years. I was trying to write with the wrong part of my brain.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s resonant and I think I’ve discovered this when I wrote. So, I’ve written two books, not super relevant to being awesome at your job so I don’t bring them up very often. But when I was writing them, I very much experienced that notion that the whole brain space associated with what’s conducive to generating a whole bunch of words versus what’s conducive to making those words make sense and be sharp are quite different.

And so, I even noticed, like, if I had like a beer or a Red Bull, you know, they’re drugs, they would impact my brain in such that, hey, one beer was great for me drafting words and then not feeling so worked up about them and critical. It lowered my inhibitions of what I was putting on a page. I guess some writers have taken that too far historically, so careful, yeah.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, Ernest Hemingway had something to say about that. He said, “Write drunk, edit sober.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. And I would say, hey, even edit caffeinated. It’s like you’re super sharp, it’s like, “Hmm, yeah, I don’t know about that word there. It’s sort of hopped up.” So, well-said. It’s tempting at the same time though, it’s like you see something that’s bad and you want to almost jump in to fix it immediately, “Oh, I can’t let that exist.” So, what’s going on psychologically? We probably heard this advice before, “Hey, draft first then edit later,” but we don’t do it. What’s that about?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, a great many of my clients struggle with this because I’ve worked with people, I work with professional writers, and I work with a lot of academics, I work with anyone who wants to write something. But the academics, in particular, have a really hard time letting go of something that they know is wrong in the page, and they can’t trust themselves to fix it later. But what do you say to them? And this does seem to help if they really think about it, is that if you edit while you are writing, you are making a decision to do something at the worst possible time because when you’re writing, you have done your research, you spent a lot of time thinking about what it is you’re writing. You’ve done the writing yourself, for goodness’ sakes, so you are maximally different from your readers.

So, your readers are coming to your finished project cold. They haven’t given it the thought you have, they haven’t done the research you have, so they’re going to have different questions and different ways of looking at things than you do. And if you can’t get yourself closer to the mindset of your readers, then your writing isn’t going to be as effective with them. So, if you edit while you write, you’re way too close to the material to be an effective editor.

Pete Mockaitis
Daphne, that just makes so much sense to me. I love it. I’m 100% convinced by that argument. Thank you. Cool. Well, so great perspective right there. So, separating, I guess, the task, the writing piece from the editing piece is key to making things more enjoyable. And what else?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, another thing that I promote with many of the people I work with is mind-mapping. Have you ever mind mapped, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I have but I haven’t used any of the cool software. My handwriting is a bit atrocious.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Oh. Well, you know what, you and I were separated at birth because my handwriting is so bad, I mean, I say my handwriting makes it look like I’m an arthritic 93-year old. But if you stop worrying about the quality of your handwriting, you’re actually way better off mind mapping by hand than you are with software because there is a certain mindset that you want to be in when you’re mind mapping and that is the creative part of your brain. And that’s why I so strongly suggest that people stop outlining because outlining sticks you in the linear logical part of your brain, the part of your brain where you want to research and edit, but not the part of the brain where you want to write.

And mind mapping, on the other hand, puts you in that creative space. And so, what you need to do is you need to relax. When I’m mind mapping, I like to visualize myself lying on a hammock in the sunshine. So, that’s the kind of relaxed, easygoing, devil-may-care attitude you should have when you’re mind mapping. You don’t want to be anxious about it, you don’t want to be stressed, you just want to be very relaxed. And people who are sitting at a keyboard aren’t nearly as relaxed as people who are sitting on a couch, or in a bed, or somewhere where they can put their feet up and really relax. That’s the type of place you want to be when you’re mind mapping. Not at a keyboard.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, I also want to get your take. I think with my poor handwriting, part of it is when I look at mind maps, well, one, it looks so cool, and gorgeous, and illustrated, and multicolored, and lovely. And, two, they’re just sort of a lot of stuff there in terms of I feel like I got to go get tiny on my little 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper in order to fit it all onto that page. And so, doing my poor handwriting compounded with tininess.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Oh, it gets even worse, yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “What did I even write there?” So, help me out, Daphne, what do we do?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yes. So, what I would say to you is, first of all, start with a bigger piece of paper.

Pete Mockaitis
So, just buy 11×17. All right.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Eleven by seventeen or go to Michaels craft store and get yourself some unprinted on newsprint, or go to a butcher and get some butcher paper, and stretch it out over the biggest table in your house or in your office or at a library, and make the mind map as big as it needs to be for you to feel comfortable and for you to be able to write in a size that allows you to read it easily and it allows your wrist not to feel seized up.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. All right. Permission received and granted. All right, so cool. So, get a great big paper. I love it when the solution is to buy something, Daphne, because it’s so much easier than changing my activities and behavior, so cool. So, buy something. And what else?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, the other thing I would say about mind mapping, people often like the idea of it but then they get to the reality of it and they don’t quite know how it works, how it transforms from a mind map into a piece of writing.

One of the things that happens is that people sometimes get stalled with mind mapping because what I say is that you should take your piece of paper, whatever size it is, turn it sideways, it’s really important that it be sideways because that opens up all sorts of room around the side of the page which we’re not used to, and so that’s inherently liberating or freeing to us, and it allows our mind to understand that it can go off in a bunch of different directions, which is great.

Write a question in the center of the page. So, don’t just write a topic. Most of the books on mind mapping are by a guy named Tony Bazon, very smart guy. He’s written something like 49 books on mind mapping so he’s probably the worldwide expert on it right now. But he says to write a topic in the center of the page.

I disagree with that because I found with the people I worked with that if you write a question, it’s going to be much more provocative to you, and you want to provoke your brain, you want to be able to have so many ideas that they’re spilling out of you and you’re having a hard time keeping up with them. So, questions will help you do that. A mind map should take somewhere between three to five minutes to do, so it’s not time consuming.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah, it’s really fast. It’s really fast. And the other important thing is not to edit yourself while you’re mind mapping because what happens is people will come up with these interesting crazy ideas and then they’ll start to second-guess themselves, they’ll say, “Oh, do I really want to write about that? Does that make sense here?” Don’t allow yourself to question yourself that way. If an idea springs to your brain, write it down. Don’t ask yourself whether it makes any sense, just write it down.

So, I have an interesting story about this. A number of years ago, I got a call from a Canadian copywriter. I didn’t know him, but he phoned me to thank me for my little booklet on mind mapping. My newsletter, you’ll get a little booklet on mind mapping. And so, he did that because he had been approached by a big-named publisher and invited to do a book on copywriting. And he was concerned, quite cleverly and rightfully, I thought, that he was, essentially, a freelancer, he had a lot of clients, and he was worried that if you signed up to do this book, he was going end up leaving his clients in a lurch, which would not be good for his business in the long term. So, that’s why he Googled to find out about writing faster, and that’s how he found me.

And he got my booklet on mind mapping, and so he decided, “Oh, if I can mind map my book, maybe I can write it fast enough so that my clients won’t get neglected.” So, he did that. And one day he was doing a mind map for a particular chapter on copywriting, remember? And the idea of making pancakes sprung into his brain. Now, it’s not that he was hungry at the time, just copywriting, making pancakes, something connected there in his brain, and he thought, “This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Pancakes have nothing to do with copywriting,” and he almost didn’t write it down, but he heard my metaphorical voice, because we hadn’t met at this point. He heard my metaphorical voice at the back of his brain and saying, “Don’t second-guess yourself. Write down everything.” He wrote it down, and it became the organizing metaphor for one of his chapters.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And it’s wild how sometimes those things make all the difference. I’m thinking about Mawi Asgedom, our guest from episode number 1. One of his most resonant pieces of creation ever was talking about the turbo button with playing video games. And so, a lot of his work is for youth and teenagers, and it’s a very powerful metaphor in terms of folks who want to dig deep and find the ability to take some action, and kick it up to a higher level, and they play video games, and so it’s like, “Oh, the turbo button.” It really just connects and resonates, versus that’s also easy to discard.

Like, I was thinking about playing video games, and the turbo button on the controller, say, “Now that’s dumb.” You might discard that quickly. But that’s helpful in terms of hearing when you make the mind map, it doesn’t take that much time, and the crazy ideas that you get might just be the winning ones that enrich things.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yes, exactly. I mean, the thing is that when you write, you need that creativity. That’s what you want. That’s what we’re all hungry for. And the problem is if you compare the act of writing from an outline, which is so dull and boring and feel so obligatory and horrible, compare that to the act of mind mapping, which is fun and interesting and fast. And what I say to people is when you’re mind mapping, what you’re looking for is what I call the aha experience.

So, the aha experience is when, all of a sudden, you’re overcome with the desire to write. The, “Oh, yeah, now I know what I want to say.” And it’s like your fingers are itching to get on the keyboard. And when that happens, I say, you should start writing right away whether your mind map is finished or not because the sole job of a mind map is to inspire you to write. And once you’re inspired, it’s done its job so don’t stop writing because you haven’t finished your mind map. It’s not an outline. Just because something is written on your mind map doesn’t mean you have to use it. And just because it’s not written on your mind map doesn’t mean you can’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is handy. Well, Daphne, you got me all worked up. So, let’s talk about, so specifically in the context of work, professionals, and that stuff. So, they might be already objecting, the listeners, in terms of, saying, “Well, I’m not writing a really cool novel, Daphne. I’ve got to put together a report, a proposal, a tricky email.” So, does that change the game at all with regard to mind mapping or the process?

Daphne Gray-Grant
You know what, I have to say it doesn’t because I do these presentations on mind mapping quite regularly, and I have a little slide in my PowerPoint deck that says it works equally well for nonfiction. I have never written a word of fiction in my life, and I use mind mapping every single day. All I write is nonfiction, and I use mind mapping every day.

Here’s another interesting story. A number of years ago, I had to do a series of articles for our corporation, and they were super short. They were 175 to 225 words max, so really short, fast, mostly easy to write. And I had kind of a working rule in my mind at the time, which was that if my article that I was writing is less than 500 words, I didn’t need to bother with a mind map. So, there I was with this working rule that I didn’t need to bother with a mind map because the article was only 175 words and, honest to goodness, I had such a terrible time with this article. I spent more than an hour on it, which is embarrassing to me because I’m a pretty fast writer now, and, “What, an hour for 175 words? That’s crazy.” And I couldn’t get the piece finished.

So, finally, out of sheer desperation, I decided to do a mind map, and the mind map took me less than three minutes to do, and finishing the story took me less than five minutes once I’d done the mind map. It was just like, “Oh, now I know how to solve this problem.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is fascinating and so compelling, in fact, I want to dig deeper now into the mind map, so thank you. All right. So, you get a big space, and maybe 11×17, maybe it’s a butcher block paper, but it’s something, at least if you have my problem, 11×17 doesn’t cut it. So, you turn it sideways, you put a question in the middle. And then what do we do? What are some of the dos and don’ts here for flowing from there?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Okay. So, I just want to emphasize that the paper really does need to be turned sideways, that matters. And I say this because I regularly lead workshops, and there’ll be a hundred people in the room, and we’ll do a mind map together, and then I’ll tell them, “Here’s a topic. I want you all to do a mind map on your own.” And then I’ll walk around the room, and I’ve told them three or four times that the paper needs to be turned sideways. And, sure enough, out of a hundred people, five will not have the paper turned sideways. So, that’s a really important thing to do.

The next thing, put a question in the center of the page and draw a circle around it. Something about the act of drawing a circle is like completing your thought, and say, “Okay, yeah, so I’m signed up for this.” So, you draw a circle around it. And then the next thing that comes to your mind, write it down on that page, draw a circle around that, and link it to the center idea, to the center question.

And then the next thing that comes to your mind, write it down on the page and link it to either the center idea if that’s what inspired it, or to the first child of the center idea. So, you want to kind of link these ideas with lines. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
It does. And I tell you what, it really reduces some of my resistance. Because when I looked at finished mind maps, one, they’re gorgeous with the multi-colors and the illustrations, and it seems so darned clear in terms of, “Oh, yes, these are some of the subcomponents of whatever.” It’s like, “Okay, like they’re showing off.”

But as you described it, it’s a way easier in terms of, “I’m going to be having random thoughts. I’m going to write them down, and then I’m going to link them.” And so then, I guess I wonder if, so in the case of the pancakes. So, they have that idea, and then it doesn’t seem to connect to anything, what do we do with that?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, you just let it sit there for a while and you keep mind mapping. You keep mind mapping until you have, what I call, the aha experience. And I just want to back up and address something you said a minute ago or so, Pete. If you could see my mind maps, you would understand how truly ugly mind maps can be.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you, Daphne.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Mine are hideous. I have horrible handwriting, I sometimes use colors if I’m really desperate to inspire my brain, but mostly I just use a pencil, and my mind maps look terrible, they look boring, and my handwriting is hard to read. But guess what? They still work.

Anyways. So, what you do is you keep mind mapping for three to five minutes until you have the aha experience or run out of things to say. And if you run out of things to say without having the aha experience, well, then you do a second mind map, and you take that first mind map and you use it to identify a different question to put in the center of the page for the second mind map, and then you spend another three to five minutes doing the second mind map. And if you don’t have the aha experience at the end of the second mind map, guess what I’m going to say? You do a third mind map.

And if you don’t have the aha experience at the end of the third mind map, then you do a fourth. And if you don’t have the aha experience at the end of the fourth, then you do a fifth. You just keep doing that until you have the aha experience. It’s really pretty simple. And people sometimes are a bit horrified when they don’t understand that a mind map is three to five minutes. So, in 30 minutes, you can do six to 10 mind maps really easily.

And, honest to goodness, I have known people who will sit and stare at a blank screen for 30 minutes. Doing the mind map is way more fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, so while I’m thinking now, I’m thinking about one of our producers, Marco, shout out, he’s great. And so, I’m wondering if we’re doing some work associated with, hey, let’s just say it’s this very interview. We’re going to distill it, summarize some of the finest nuggets for distribution to our email list. I’m thinking someone is doing that kind of writing work, a summary of something. In a way it doesn’t require a sudden jolt of inspiration, or maybe you would disagree. I’d love your take on that. If our work is associated with summarizing or answering a series of questions in a proposal or an email, how do mind maps serve us there?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah, so the thing about mind mapping is it’s a really useful flexible technique that can be adapted to a great many uses. So, I know one thing, I like to use mind mapping for if I’m planning an event or a party, mind mapping is the best thing to use because you’re allowed to let your mind go off in any direction. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to plan an event or a party, but one minute you’re thinking about drinks, the next minute you’re thinking about decorations, the next minute you’re thinking about who’s going to be invited, then you’re thinking about music. There’s so many directions you can go in and mind map is just very flexible. It allows you to note all those things down without contorting your mind into twisted positions like you have to with an outline.

So, it would be very useful for, say, as you said, if you wanted to write a summary of our call today, yeah, mind mapping would work really well for that. It would be really, really easy and, you’re quite right, if what you’re aiming at is a summary, then you don’t need the aha experience for that. You just need the main points noted down.

Pete Mockaitis
But you’re saying that it can be valuable in the sense of just seeing what left to mind in reflecting upon this conversation or transcript can generate some thoughts there in terms of that’s something that’s worth mentioning. And then, as you draw the connections, you could say, “Oh,” and then there might be some sub-bullets in that, some piece of the summary, so understood. So, not looking for a jolt of inspiration, but doing so can still give us some benefits associated with getting some organization and seeing what really is worth mentioning and pops there.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Absolutely. And I know some university students who like to take notes with mind mapping. Now, I’ve never had the nerve to try that myself but the people who do it swear by it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s maybe the first context I’ve heard about mind mapping, I thought, “That just kind of sounds hard.” Okay, cool. Well, thank you. You have made me a convert after some mind mapping skepticisms. So, okay, cool. There’s so much I want to talk to you about and, wow, where to go? All right. So, let’s say let’s talk about work, and usually I hit the why point earlier in the interview but we’re having too much fun. So, tell me, so if you’re not in a creative career, like you are an engineer or a project manager, can you make a case for just how important is it to write effectively? Like, is an expense report that’s not super succinct and brilliant in its writing, just fine, what’s the benefit and how do we think about what’s good enough?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, I think most people probably underestimate the impact that their writing has on others. As a society, we’re extremely judgmental. And I try to be very careful and respectful when I read other people’s writing, but I know there are some people that they see someone who has spelled “its” when what they should’ve said was “it’s,” they’re going to make all sorts of assumptions about the intelligence and the education level of that person. And those assumptions may be totally wrong.

One of my children is severely dyslexic. He’s incredibly smart, really, really gifted actually, but if you read his emails or his writings, he’s quite careful now, he works professionally and he uses software to check his spelling and all of those kinds of things, but it’s taken him a number of years to get to that point. And so, people are often judged quite harshly by their clients, by their bosses, by their coworkers based on how well they write.

And from a less judgmental point of view but from an effectiveness point of view, if you are someone who is trying to sell something to other people, if you don’t know how to write a good petty email that grabs the interest of the person and doesn’t wear out their eyeballs or test their patience, you’re going to be less successful as a salesperson.

So, it’s all about communication, and that’s really one of the key skills in our society. So, if you feel uncomfortable with writing, or if you hate writing, or if you procrastinate about it all the time, then, really, it’s worth taking a look at those natural tendencies you have and trying to make writing more of a friend to yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly, that’s compelling. And so, let’s talk about some of those bits on if we’re writing email, we want to grab attention. What are your pro tips there?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Oh, okay. So, the first is make sure your subject line says what the email is about. Oh, my goodness, I find it so frustrating because I use my email as a kind of a filing system, and I will remember, of course, who sent me an email about something, but then I’ll type in their name in that little search bar and I’ll get the last 200 emails from them. And I’ll look at the subject line, and I have to open every flipping email to find the one I want because they don’t have a subject line that made sense, that relates to the content they put in the email. So, you’re going to be far friendlier to your clients, to your bosses, to your coworkers if you make sure the subject line really expresses what the email is about.

Another thing I would say is that many people don’t indent frequently enough. So, I have so much experience in the newspaper business, I am accustomed to indenting every couple of sentences. And when I get an email that’s, say, 500 words long with no indents, it makes my eyes bug out. And so, frequently what I will do is I will send the email to myself again, and I will just add a bunch of indents because, frankly, I don’t want to read something unless it’s indented.

Now, one of the problems many people have is that they were wrongly persuaded by their Grade 10 English teacher that there are some very important, hard-to-understand rules about what constitutes an accurate and effective paragraph. I just say throw that stuff out the window. Paragraphing is a visual aid. When you have lots of nice white spaces where people can rest their eyes when they’re tired, they’re going to be much more enthusiastic about reading what you have to say. So, just arbitrarily put a new paragraph every couple of lines or so. It’s going to make your writing look much less intimidating.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I’m on board. And so then, I also want to get your take, when we are in the editing phase, boy, what are some the top mistakes or words and phrases that need to go because we could be much more concise without them? If you can sort of…this is your license to rant, Daphne. So, top things you see all the time that need to go or get fixed pronto.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Well, I think the number one thing, for me, is that most people write sentences that are way too long. And this is particularly true in corporate environments. I’ve worked with a lot of engineers, and engineers, by and large, write sentences that are far, far, far too long. So, there’s been a lot of research done on sentence length, and one of the things I can tell you, a metric I can give you, is that the optimum sentence length, as an average, is 14 to 18 words.

Now, that might sound pretty short to you, but understand that when I say that, I’m using the word average, so I’m not saying that every sentence should be 14 to 18 words. I’m saying that it’s perfectly acceptable to have the occasional 40-word sentence but you need to balance it off with some one- to five-word sentences. And as long as you have that balance, then it’s going to be very readable to your readers. But if you don’t have that balance, they’re going to have to work way, way too hard to read it.

And so, what I often suggest to people is that they use some software that is downloadable on the internet, some of which you can pay for, most of which you can get for free, or at least use some form of it for free, that will automatically calculate your sentence length average, because you don’t want to have to do that kind of counting yourself manually. That would be way too much of a drag.

So, the software I recommend, there’s one called Count Wordsworth, and that’s free. You just copy and paste your text into the box and hit, I can’t remember what the button says. It might say process or something like that. You hit the button, and then underneath, the second measurement will tell you what your sentence length average is. And if it’s greater than 18 words, then understand that you need to go back to that piece and you need to shorten some of those sentences.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I also have been using the Hemingway Editor as well.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Oh, yes. You know what, I want to rant about the Hemingway Editor.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, then take it away.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Okay. Well, the Hemingway Editor is really fun to use and I promoted it quite heartily for a number of years. But then I eventually realized that the Hemingway Editor makes every long sentence a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
It highlights it. You feel like you have to do something about it.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yes, yes. And, in fact, every long sentence is not a problem. In fact, it’s more of a problem to have too many sentences that are exactly the same length. So, writing is a form of music in a way. If you take some writing and you read it out loud, you’ll hear that it has a natural rhythm, and you want a sense of rhythm in your writing. And if you write all your sentences to be exactly the same length, that’s going to mess with your rhythm. So, that’s what happens with people who pay too much attention to the Hemingway Editor.

Now, the Hemingway Editor is really good at a couple of things. So, I would say ignore what it says about sentences that are too long, so those are the red and yellow measurements, but really pay attention to the green ones because that’s the passive voice. And passive voice, where you hide the actor of the sentence, so I’m going to explain this slowly and clearly because a lot of people don’t understand passive voice. It’s not a test.

Pete Mockaitis
The passive voice is used by many.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yes, it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Zing. Okay, go ahead. Take it away.

Daphne Gray-Grant
So, my favorite passive sentence is “Mistakes were made.” So, that was said by a number of presidents on both sides of the aisle, and, basically, it’s kind of a term that allows you to hide who was doing the mistake-making. So, that’s one reason why you want to avoid passive voice. But the other is, if you think about it, the world’s best writing allows the reader to form visual images in their own mind’s eye. And if you refuse to give people a visual image or the subject of the sentence, then that is going to make it really hard for them to form those visual images. So, it makes the job of reading much harder for the reader if you have too many passive voice sentences in there. So, that’s the main reason why I suggest turning them into active voice.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I am well on board and I’m impressed with your knowledge of Hemingway, that off the top of your head you knew the green was the highlight they use for passive voice.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah. The purple one is quite good too. That’s words that are unnecessarily complex. So, my hobby horse is “utilize.” Why does anyone say utilize? “Use” is a perfectly good three-letter word.

Pete Mockaitis
I got a kick out of it in consulting. There’s a lot of “leveraging” going on. Instead of “using”…

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah, I know. I know.

Pete Mockaitis
I think leveraging really does have a nice meaning in particular contexts associated with, “Oh, when we use this thing, we can do so much more than when we didn’t do this thing, just like with a big lever.” But it can very quickly get overused.

Daphne Gray-Grant
For sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, please, any other rants in terms of big mistakes that happen a lot that need to stop?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Oh, just let me think for a second. Sentences that are too long, passive voice. Oh, you know what? This is a really good one. Words ending in T-I-O-N. So, words ending in T-I-O-N, like creation, they take a perfectly good verb, create, and they turn it into a noun. And so, once you have that noun, then you have to add another verb to the sentence because it’s not a sentence without a verb, right?

And so, usually, to deal with those T-I-O-N words, you have to use a really boring verb like is, or was, or has, or have, and that’s going to make your sentence far wordier than it needs to be, so that leads to longer than necessary sentences. And verbs like is and was and has are hard to visualize so they don’t give you really interesting sentences. So, one of the things I like to do, if I’m editing something for someone, I will type T-I-O-N in the search box and I’ll go through the piece, and I will justify every word ending in T-I-O-N or I’ll change it if I can.

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

Daphne Gray-Grant
Oh, I can’t think of anything else right now.

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

Daphne Gray-Grant
One of my favorites, all-time favorite quote has been attributed to at least six people. So, without really knowing who said it, here goes, “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at 9:00 every morning.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve looked that up before because I think there’s so many variations too, and it’s like, “And I make darn sure it strikes at, you know, this time.”

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah. I always attribute it to Peter De Vries but then I found out that William Faulkner and Somerset Maugham said something almost exactly the same. So, I’m clear about saying it’s been attributed to at least six people now.

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

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah. So, many of the procrastinators I worked with give me lots of reasons for delaying writing. And one excuse I hear quite a bit is perfectionism. But 30 years of research and hundreds of studies have shown that that is not actually true. So, one of the big researchers on this topic is a professor in the Netherlands named Henri Schouwenburg but for anyone who doesn’t want to read peer-reviewed journals, you can learn about it in a plan English kind of way in a book by Piers Steel called The Procrastination Equation.

So, what that research shows, is that you’re not likely to be messed up by perfectionism when you’re having a hard time writing. What you need to do is turn off your phone, stop checking Facebook, stop worrying about whether you really know how to write, and just start writing.

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

Daphne Gray-Grant
Can I give you two?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Okay. Well, for someone at a typical job, I highly recommend the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. So, what I like about this book is it explains how to build good habits and get rid of bad ones. But, more importantly, to me, as a writing coach, it’s one of the best-written books I’ve ever read. It’s so engaging and I love the way that he reports on science through the lens of storytelling. So, I just couldn’t put it down. Really, really great book.

The second book I want to recommend is aimed at grad students and people who work in academic settings, and that book is The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. So, this book presents a really compelling argument that most academics spend far too much time writing and instead would be more productive if they curtailed their writing time. So, I really love counterintuitive arguments like that, and it’s a fast and easy read, and I recommend it to anyone who feels they’re spending too much time in writing and, particularly, if they’re in academic.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite tool?

Daphne Gray-Grant
For me, that’s the Pomodoro. Are you familiar with the Pomodoro?

Pete Mockaitis
Is that the 25-minute timer?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Absolutely. So, ample things I’ll say about the Pomodoro. The idea is that you pledge to spend 25 minutes on a particular task and you do it without interruptions. So, you don’t allow other people to interrupt you, and one way you can do this is to wear headphones even if you’re in a big open-area office. If you put headphones on, most people won’t bother you, and you have a timer operating while you’re doing this.

Now, when I started the Pomodoro about 12 years ago, I think, now, I thought the idea of a noisy timer was the kookiest thing I had ever heard so I didn’t do it. And then I had a friend who started the Pomodoro at the same time. So, we used to meet for coffee once a week. And we started the Pomodoro, we met for coffee a week later. And I walked into the coffee shop and she reaches into her purse, and she pulls out a timer in the shape of a chicken, and she was so excited and delighted by it. I just looked at her in horror and said, “I can’t believe you’re doing that. How can you write with that thing making a noise?”

And she looked me in the eye, and she said, “Oh, I find it a comforting wall of sound.” And something about the poetry of that phrase kind of appealed to me so I decided to try it, and I went and found a timer. I’m just going to play it for you right now so you can hear. Do you hear that?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah. So, I work with that going all day long. So, I go from one task to the next, I have a little day plan on a clipboard beside my desk, and I will spend 25 minutes writing something, doing something, editing something, with that timer going. And I find the timer really, really keeps me focused. And when I had a hard time writing initially, I found that maybe the timer just occupied enough space in my brain to make me forget about how much I hated writing and just allowed me to write without worrying about that. But I find the noise really helpful, very, very productive.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And we had a previous guest, I think it was Rahaf Harfoush, who mentioned she likes listening to white noise from the Star Trek: The Next Generation Engine Idling, and so I hunted it down on YouTube and, sure enough, I really like it because it kind of reminds me as a youngster I liked the show, and it just sort of is comforting in terms of, “Oh, all those interesting people in that Starship, you know, this is what they hear all the time in their fictional world.”

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah, indeed.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Daphne Gray-Grant
I think, you know what, it’s my…I don’t even know what to call it. Every morning, the first thing I do is I have a little chart in Microsoft Word that has all the day divided by half hours. And before I start my work, I plan how I’m going to spend each of those half hours. Actually, it’s only, each of those is 25 minutes because I take a break of five minutes between each task.

So, I have found that I probably tripled my productivity by doing this, and it’s a really, really great habit, and I don’t feel comfortable now until I have a daily plan. And once I have the daily plan, I can look at it and I can see I’m going to get everything accomplished during the day, and that gives me a sense of comfort and ease that makes my work day possible.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Daphne, I’m also intrigued by this in terms of sometimes I really like to hunker down for an hour, an hour and a half, uninterrupted. And so, you’ve got these 25-minute timer, the 5-minute breaks, and I guess right now we’ve spoken for 46 minutes straight. How do you navigate that part of things?

Daphne Gray-Grant
So, you’re entered in my little calendar, actually, for two 25-minute counts.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we’re almost running out.

Daphne Gray-Grant
I know. You know what, fortunately, I don’t have anything urgent afterwards, so I can play with the calendar a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about is there a particular nugget, something that you’re known for and people quote back to you often?

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yes. I have this expression for what I call the first draft that anyone writes, and that’s a crappy first draft. And what I often emphasize to my clients is that they need to understand the first draft of anything you write should be really bad, and that’s why I call it the crappy first draft. And if it’s not crappy enough, then that’s a problem because that’s a sign you’ve been editing as you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love that.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Yeah, you want a crappy first draft. When people tell me, they say, “Oh, I’ve got a first draft but it’s really crappy,” and I say, “Congratulations! That’s what you want.”

Pete Mockaitis
I really dig that. We had a previous guest, David Kadavy, who, I don’t know if he invented this term, but he refers to the first draft, instead of a rough draft, a barf draft. That’s just very visceral.

Daphne Gray-Grant
That’s good, yes. That’s good.

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

Daphne Gray-Grant
On my website www.PublicationCoach.com. So, that site contains hundreds of articles and dozens of videos on every aspect of writing. And if you go there, then please be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter. It goes all around the world. Just enter your name and your email address on the little form on my homepage, and, in return, you’ll not only get my free weekly newsletter, you’ll also get a free booklet on mind mapping.

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

Daphne Gray-Grant
Indeed. I would say start with a really small habit. So, there’s no time that is too small, even one to five minutes a day is enough to begin writing. Focus on the habit rather than the end product, because once you have a habit in place, you can achieve great results.

Pete Mockaitis
Daphne, this has been lots of fun. I wish you lots of luck with your writing and your coaching of writers, and all your adventures.

Daphne Gray-Grant
Thanks so much, Pete. Great talking to you.

Dec 16
0

525: Delivering Presentations with Presence and Confidence with Christine Clapp

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Christine Clapp says: "The speech isn't about you. The speech is about doing something for your audience."

Christine Clapp shares best practices for preparing and delivering engaging presentations.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The most common mistake in presentation preparation
  2. The five S’s of confident speakers
  3. How to eliminate filler words

About Christine:

Christine Clapp is the author of Presenting at Work: A Guide to Public Speaking in Professional Contexts and the president of Spoken with Authority, a Washington, D.C.-based presentation skills consultancy that includes a team of six expert coaches. Through training programs and coaching engagements, Christine and her team help professionals at law firms, corporations, associations, and non-profit organizations build the confidence to connect and the capacity to lead.

Christine holds two degrees in communication: a bachelor’s degree from Willamette University, and a master’s degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. She also taught public speaking to undergraduate and graduate students at The George Washington University for thirteen years.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Christine Clapp Interview Transcript

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

Christine Clapp
Thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was intrigued to learn that your family is on a mission to visit all 60 national parks, and you’ve got almost a third of them down already. So, what’s the story here and which one is the best?

Christine Clapp
As a family, we started going to a few national parks and then we read about someone who had made it to every single national park, and we thought, “That’s a really great goal because getting to them requires that you go to different parts of the U.S.” and we thought that that was a laudable way to see the country and expose our kids to some interesting and beautiful sights and different people because we’re based here in Washington, D.C. and there’s a lot more to the U.S. than Washington, D.C.

And so far, I have to say my favorite park would be…it’s tough because I like different parks for different reasons. This last summer we went to Isle Royale National Park which is technically in Michigan but it’s very close to Canada and Lake Superior, and it was great because there were so few people there. You have to take a boat or seaplane to get there. And when our seaplane landed, we got a personal tour and briefing by the park ranger, and it was very different than going to Yellowstone or Glacier where there’s mile-long lines to get into the parks in the summer. So, I have to say that was great.

And then another one, we went to Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota a few summers ago and it’s really beautiful. It’s definitely off the beaten path and I think not many people get there but it’s worth seeing. It has some incredible hikes and wild horses and longhorn steer and bison. It was great.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool. That’s really cool. I’ve got a posse that they’ve sort of found their favorite spot and they return there every other year for camping. It is in the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho and, wow.

Christine Clapp
Nice. That’s fantastic. Yeah, I’m actually from Washington State, so this summer we’re going try to go to Mount Rainier, North Cascades and maybe hop down in Oregon. I’m blanking on the big…oh, Crater Lake. So, maybe we’ll get a chance to swing through Idaho and go to that National Forest, you said?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. It’s a good spot. We mostly just sit around in beauty.

Christine Clapp
It sounds lovely.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, so let’s talk about when you are not isolated from humanity and instead are presenting. You wrote a book Presenting at Work, and I was intrigued by the subtitle, A Guide to Public Speaking in Professional Contexts. And I want to get your take, how do you think about how speaking at work differs from other kinds of public speaking?

Christine Clapp
That’s a great question. I think the differentiator here is not between work and home, but it’s differentiating among the type of communication you do at work, or it’s a lack of differentiating. Many times, when we work with professionals, they were introduced to them and they say, “Oh, it’s really nice that you do public speaking training and coaching, but I’m not a public speaker.” But this is an individual who has phone calls every day, who leads meetings, who briefs clients, who gets asked by their director or partner about a project that they’re working on. They might give a training program or a webinar. They might speak at a professional association, and perhaps they give a toast at their company party yet they don’t think that they’re “public speaker.”

And our argument is that every conversation you have at a networking event, or at the watercooler, or meeting, or phone call, or someone popping their head in the office, those are public speaking situations at work, and there are ways that you can improve your performance in all of them. We also believe that if you aren’t working on improving your performance in those day-to-day conversations and meetings and briefings, it’s really hard to have the experience and to do well when you have those high-pressure, high-stakes, once a year, once in a career presentations that you have an opportunity to give.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that makes total sense. And you’re right, when you think of public speaking, that can create a picture of, “Oh, I’m on stage and there’s a giant crowd,” and away we go, dramatic TED Talk, keynote is unfolding. But, yeah, it’s certainly much broader than that in terms of perhaps more day-to-day encounters. Well, I’d love to get your take maybe if you can orient us to perhaps a story. Have you seen a client have a dramatic transformation and how did that go?

Christine Clapp
Yeah. Well, I would offer up that I myself was someone who was a terrible public speaker, so anyone who’s out there feeling like, “Oh, this woman, Christine, she has always been a great speaker, and I can’t take her advice because she’s naturally gifted and that’s just not something that I’m good at.” I want to let all of you know that I, too, struggled as a public speaker. It was something I was very uncomfortable with.

In fact, when my dad wrote a holiday letter when I was in second or third grade, he had a line in it that I was doing well in school and thriving, but a book report was a skill that I had yet to master. That prospect of doing a felt board presentation on a book I read as an eight-year old was overwhelming to me, and that’s something that dogged me in elementary school, in middle school, in high school.

And when I got to college, I was interested in the major of rhetoric. I went to a small school in Salem, Oregon and it’s only one of three universities at the time that had an undergraduate degree in the study of persuasion, which is rhetoric. And I was really interested in it but I almost changed my major when I found out that you had to have oral communication proficiency, which meant that you had to do the debate team or do public speaking as a course for a semester.

And that experience was something that, being forced to do, I decided to do debate because I thought it’d be less painful than doing a semester of public speaking class, and I went to two debate tournaments my second semester of freshman year, and I lost all 12 of my first 12 debates. I didn’t even win one. No one even slept in and I didn’t win by default. And it was humbling, and it was frustrating, and it was eye-opening because I knew it would always hamper my leadership potential no matter what career path I went down.

So, even after losing all 12 debates, I decided to come back my sophomore year and continue debating, and I did and I worked very hard. And my coach, I think, was somewhat surprised and impressed that I came back for more. I had a great partner. I had great coaches. We had state-of-the-art VHS recording technology in our debate lab and we could video-record and review our debates, and it was a great learning experience.

By the end of the year, my partner and I had qualified to go to nationals, and we even advanced to the elimination rounds of the tournament. So, that experience and continuing to debate regionally, nationally, and internationally throughout the rest of college, and going from being terrified and unsuccessful to having fun as a public speaker and a moderate level of success, it really did change my life, and it’s something that I knew I wanted to do for other people for the rest of my life. And that’s the best thing that we get to do is we get to work with individuals.

Most of the people we do work with are really bright subject-matter experts. They’re smart, they’re driven, they’re capable, they have great things to share. They’ve just never been taught how to share it in a public speaking setting, whether that’s a small group, or a large group, or even a one-on-one conversation with a client or a colleague. And that’s where we come in, and it’s really fulfilling to see them come into their own and become more confident and capable as speakers and leaders.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is really cool. So, let’s hear it. So, how is that done? If you find yourself terrified or at least just quite nervous when it comes to thinking about a presentation coming up, how do you, I guess, in that moment and then maybe prior to that moment, do the things you need to do so that it can become an enjoyable experience?

Christine Clapp
Well, we recommend that people take a three-pronged approach to becoming a better public speaker and presenter. And the three prongs are the long-term strategy, the midterm strategy, and the short-term strategy. If you think about the long-term strategy, you need to gain experience as a speaker. That might mean volunteering for more roles at your organization. And if you’re not finding in your current job that you have those opportunities yet, we encourage you to find opportunities through volunteer work that you may do. Maybe you’re involved in a religions institution where you can do public speaking.

But another great place for anyone across the U.S. or around the globe is Toastmasters International. Toastmasters is a public speaking organization. It’s a nonprofit. It’s a great place to find an audience if you want to get better as a public speaker. So, the long-term, we need you to get out there and do it because you’re not going to get better by thinking about it, or reading about it, or watching videos about it. You have to go out there and do it.

In the midterm, one of the big failures we see for most speakers is they don’t spend enough time working on their presentation. We talked earlier about these TED-style talks when you’re on a stage with a microphone, something like TED, a conference presentation, or a big product launch, that type of thing that a thought leader might do, that is going to take two to six months to prepare.

For many professionals when they’re doing an important briefing, doing a job pitch, if they’re going to a new position, or becoming partner or director at their firm, that’s something that’ll take one to two months. And for the more day-to-day type communication, speaking up in a meeting, doing a briefing on your monthly report, speaking to the board of directors at your organization, those types of presentations we recommend that you’d have at least one to two weeks to get ready for, and depending on how long it is, perhaps even longer. So, the midterm, you have to plan enough time to work on your presentation.

We also recommend doing 60/40. And my good friend Susan Trevor has recommended this, and I would recommend that everyone follow the 60/40 rule, which is you want to spend 60% of your time practicing your presentation and only 40% of the time on putting together the content. Most people spend 90% of the time putting down, doing research, writing things out, doing slides, and they spend very little time saying it out loud. And that’s why most people are really nervous and why most presentations fall flat. You need to put your content together, and, as you rehearse it, you will improve the content, but you also improve your familiarity and your dynamism as a speaker. So, that’s the midterm.

And then for the short-term approach, we recommend that everyone has a pre-speaking routine. Every person’s will be different, but it’s to think through, “How many hours of sleep do I need the night before my presentation? How do I stay hydrated? What do I eat to feel my best? What kind of exercise do I do in the morning of my presentation? Or, do I do yoga, or practice meditation, or mindfulness practices? When do I do my last run-through of my presentation? Do I need to talk to my mom or dad or my best friend on the phone to pump me up? Or do I have a passage of scripture, or a quotation that makes me feel great, or a playlist on my music?” Everyone needs to find out how they can be at their mental and physical best in the day or two before presentation, because if you’re not feeling well, you’re not going to present well no matter how much time you spend in the long-term or in the midterm.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, there’s so much good stuff there. So, thank you for bringing it. So, that 60/40 rule, that’s interesting. I do not do that, and I’m a professional speaker, in that I’m paid to keynote dozens of times. I guess I’m really intrigued by that because, in a way, I think it’s awesome in terms of, it’s like, yeah, you’re right. The 90/10 ratio of people doing right now with content to practicing is not serving them well, I think, particularly, if you’re feeling nerves.

So, that 60/40, do you recommend that for nervous people or people doing a first speech or speech they’ve done before? I guess what context do you think, and maybe I’m just hyper-fixating over this number, that’s a weakness of mine, in what context do you think the 60/40 rule is perfect and where might you want to edge those numbers in one or the other direction?

Christine Clapp
Yeah. We recommend the 60/40 rule for people who are newer to public speaking and people who are more seasoned speakers but are speaking on a topic that is fresh. So, maybe those are the numbers this month are fresh, or this new research is fresh. So, the reason why 60/40 is really helpful is that your brain will always go to, “What do I say?” before it can have bandwidth of, “How do I say it dynamically?” And until you have that repetitive practice, and for most of our speakers it’s six rehearsals out loud, six sticks. And when people get to the six rehearsals, things stick, it gets very easy for them to remember.

And the first few rehearsals for most people, you get a little bit more awkward, and stiff, and you have a hard time getting things off your tongue. But, for whatever reason, I’ve never found any research to explain why, but for most speakers, six times is when you achieve fluidity with the material and you can be in the moment. Sometimes people say to us, “If I rehearse, I don’t feel present. I’m better and I’m more myself if I’m winging it.”

But the fact is that is if you practice enough, you get over that hump of becoming awkward and a slave to your notes, and you really understand the material, and you barely have to glance at your notes or your slides, and you can be in the moment, and you can be funny, and you can respond to your audience, and you can do all the things that great speakers do.

You talked about being a keynote speaker, the fact is, is that if you talk about the same topics regularly, you’ve already done those six rehearsals. You’ve probably done it hundreds if not thousands of times. So, as you do get, like you and me, when we do similar trainings and programs, yeah, we tailor them, but we do have those core modules that we’ll follow through, and we’ve done them so many times and we can be present and in the moment. Whereas, someone who is newer to speaking, or has a new set of material, you have to do those six rehearsals until you get comfortable.

And I would argue that standup comics and trainers like you and me, most of us, we will beta test our new products, our new presentations, or our new jokes on audiences before we put them out for primetime, and it’s partly because of that. You need to get through it six times because you don’t know what people are going to laugh at, or how they’re going to react, or what stories are going to fall flat until you do those six rehearsals.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very well-said. And I really am resonating there in terms of that hump, it makes total sense in terms of folks saying, “Hey, I feel unnatural.” It’s like, “Well, yeah, you’re in that kind of weird in-between zone. You’re going to feel unnatural. But if you get on the other side of that, then you’re going to feel even more natural than you would had you done zero because you’re able…” That’s what I find is when I’m liberated from having to remember my content, it’s just like the whole universe opens up. It’s almost like The Matrix, you know. It’s like, “I can look at you, I can listen, I can read the room,” as opposed to, “Okay, what was the next thing I was going to say?” It changes everything.

Christine Clapp
Exactly. Yeah, one of the things we also recommend that speakers do is to avoid, whenever possible, scripting their presentations word-for-word because that makes people get tied up in the specific wording and they feel like they have to memorize it word-for-word, which takes way more than six rehearsals to do. Well, that’s what trained actors do and it takes much more than six practices. That’s why we recommend using an outline that’s detailed, that’s well-researched, but that you rehearse it so you can look at the words and phrases on the sheet, and you could talk about their data and tell the stories in a natural and conversational way.

And every time you say it it’s going to be a little bit different. If you have to have a printed-out speech at the very end of your presentation to give to reporters or for the record, this is not a good way to do it, but a few of us are under those types of constraints in our professional lives. Most of us just need to be confident and accurate in having that outline, and rehearsing it is a really great way to get to that being present, and conversational, and also being able to react to the audience in real time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s dead-on. I think there’s something to be said for, perhaps, memorizing the killer line or two.

Christine Clapp
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I was just talking to an audio engineer today, and he said, “It’s not about the wand. It’s about the wizard.” I was like, “Oh, that’s so good. Tweet that.” So, mostly impromptu, or not impromptu, mostly kind of extemporaneous. You got your outline and then you got your couple winner lines pre-memorized perhaps.

Christine Clapp
I absolutely agree. We have a method to outline presentations, we call it the sandwich structure methodology. And we recommend, it’s on our website, SpokenWithAuthority.com, we have under Resources our speech outline tool. It’s free. Anyone can check it out and put in your content and kick out a PDF or print it off on a piece of paper. And we do have a space at the top of the paper and the bottom of the paper, we encourage you to try to keep your ideas on one page so that you’re not scripting, and that you’re thinking in terms of your arc of the story of the presentation and how all the pieces fit together. But we do have space on that piece of paper to write your opening line or two and your closing line or two.

And I don’t disagree with you on hitting other key phrases or lines in a memorized way, but the beginning and end are really important, and it’s where a lot of speakers fall flat. The introduction is when people decide if they’re going to listen to you or not. It also happens to be the one minute when people are the most nervous. Most people get into more manageable level of nervousness after the first 30 to 60 seconds of a presentation. So, we encourage you to write it out, make it really good, really catchy, and memorize word-for-word so that you can be on complete autopilot when you’re looking out into the room, at the conference table, or on the webinar, or on the stage and looking into the audience. You can deliver it really well.

And then if you completely freeze and have that moment where your mind goes blank, you can just read it off the sheet of paper, and the content is still there, and then you can get into that more extemporaneous conversational delivery in the body of the speech. And then we have at the end, places to write that last line or two, your close. In business, we oftentimes have to ask for business, or ask for the next steps, or where we’re going from here. If you don’t think about how to do that, you’re going to miss out on really crucial opportunities to advance whatever project you’re working on, but also your career.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Thank you. Let’s talk a little bit about some of those pre-speaking rituals. You gave a nice little lineup there. Could you share, what are those that you have found come up the most often for people, or you’ve seen have had the most dramatic calming effects?

Christine Clapp
The most helpful thing to do, in my opinion, for the broadest number of speakers, right, everyone is unique, but over 11 years in doing this work, one of the things that seems to have a really great effect on people who are presenting to help calm them down and to prepare them to present is to do some variation of warming up their body and their voice. And there’s a lot of different ways to do this. You may have learned something in theater that works for you, or debate, or in some other situation. But your body and your voice have to be warm in order to do your best.

We think about public speaking as being a really physically-exhausting and difficult thing to do. It’s hard to speak loudly. It’s hard to have big open gestures. It’s hard to be enthusiastic and to avoid saying uhms and ahhs, and to make eye contact. It’s hard to do that for five minutes or two hours, however short or long your presentation is. So, it’s just like running a marathon or a 10K, you don’t want to walk up to the start line completely cold.

So, some of the things we recommend you do is do some exercise in the morning, whatever that is for you that makes you feel your best so that your body is physically warmed up. You can also do some stretches. It helps to really work on the shoulders, neck, and jaw because that’s where people have the most tension as speakers. When we get nervous, our shoulders go up, it causes our larynx to come up in our throat. Our voice gets high, it gets tensed. It’s hard to project, it gets higher and softer and faster. And by relaxing the shoulders, it allows you to get to the deeper part of your voice, slow down your rate of speaking, to breathe more comfortably. So, working on the breath, the body, and then the voice. So, working on vocal warmups. And if you’ve ever watched The Anchorman, you know some of them, red leather, yellow leather, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I was just thinking of that. Was it the bishop, butt-less chaps, or…

Christine Clapp
They’re great. We have our own whatever tongue twisters you know. We have some in our book, red leather, yellow leather. I’m encouraging you to repeat them four or five times. You want to speak lowly, loudly, slowly, and also clearly where you’re articulating and really moving your mouth and lips, and hitting every sound, stretching out your vowels, when you do your tongue twisters to do that. And that can help counteract that tendency to have the shoulders up, the voice high, and the rate fast when you first start.

If you start a presentation in that manner, it’s very hard to reverse it, so you have to start shoulders down, voice at a nice part of its range, and slow and crisp, and that’s much easier to maintain throughout.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, you mentioned five secrets of speaking with confidence, and each of them starts with an S, the stance, sound, smile, silence, sight. I thought I must hear a little bit about each of these.

Christine Clapp
Yeah, absolutely. Those are the five S’s and this is relevant whether you’re in your first day in your job or you’re going to retire tomorrow. These are important in every interaction in a workplace situation. Your stance is your body language, and we recommend that you try to have your body open. So, if you’re sitting down, to try to avoid crossing your arms at your chest which can come across as closed. And if you’re doing a formal presentation, coming around the lectern rather than standing behind it so you have more physical presence, or perhaps it means just when it’s your turn in the meeting, perhaps try standing up rather than sitting down. So, just having physical presence is about your stance.

Sound is about your vocal presence. So, we talked a bit about that just now about being low, loud, slow, and clear. There’s a piece called “How the Voice Persuades” and it talks about how being louder makes you more persuasive. And this is something that Aristotle and the ancient Greeks were telling us back in the 5th century BCE, but now we have empirical evidence, from a quantitative survey, that supports their recommendations. So, we want you to have that loud resonant voice so people can hear you and so that you are perceived as being more confident persuasive.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that resonates in terms – huh, resonates, it’s so meta – in terms of if you’re kind of soft. There’s a Saturday Night Live, I think with the Shy Ronnie with Andy Sandberg, he’s supposed to be a hip-hop guy but he’s really barely getting a word out there.

Christine Clapp
Kind of like Justin Timberlake?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so it’s like a joke, like, ‘Ha, ha, ha,” like that’s not going to work in that stage environment, and it’s also you’re saying, we’ve got the wisdom from the ancient rhetors as well as new science on this. So, I’m hearing that many of us could afford to be louder than we’re being right now. How loud is too loud and how do we assess that?

Christine Clapp
In all of the speakers who I’ve worked with, 99.9% of them are not too loud. We have a distorted perception of how loud we are. We also have a perception of how enthusiastic we are. We think we’re so much more loud and enthusiastic than our audiences perceive us to be. And one other thing about volume to think about is in the workplace or in the society at large, about one in ten individuals over 18 has hearing loss. When you get over 55, that goes up to a much higher rate of individuals, so you might have three in ten individuals who have hearing loss. And when you get to folks who are in their 60s and 70s, so some of the leaders of our organizations, people are working longer and are active and they’re participating in the workplace, the number of people who experience hearing loss is really significant.

I’m happy to share some numbers that we have with you all. But it’s a matter of people being able to be included in your conversations. And if you’re ever given a microphone to present at an event, always take the microphone. You may not know why you’re given a microphone, someone may have hearing loss, or it may be something that they absolutely have to have to participate. So, when you say, “Oh, I’m fine. I can speak loudly,” it’s like you’re saying, “We shouldn’t have a ramp out front for people in a wheelchair.” Like, you can’t see people who are hearing impaired so you should always speak loudly and always take the microphone.

So, there’s body language, there’s vocal presence, the last three are smile, silence, and sight of the five elements of your executive presence, your professional presence. Smile is your enthusiasm, and we don’t recommend that you smile when you’re delivering bad news, but we do recommend that you speak with enthusiasm and passion whenever you’re communicating, and that you show appropriate facial expressions to whatever you’re communicating. You always want the verbal and nonverbal to match, because when the verbal and nonverbal conflict, people get confused about what your message actually is, but you want to make sure that you’re showing energy, passion, and enthusiasm whenever you’re speaking, and smile is our shorthand for that concept.

Silence is trying to avoid filler words uhm, ah, like, you know, so, kind of, sort of, okay, right, and, between every sentence. These are words and phrases that make us look less polished and concise. They also can be distracting when we use a high degree of them, 10, 12 per minute gets to that point where people are conscious about it and they start to count them.

And then, lastly, is your sight or eye contact. One of the reasons why we encourage people to avoid scripting is we don’t want you to read. Being able to look at people is so important to build rapport, whether it’s with a colleague or client, and you have to get those eyes out of your notes. So, having words and phrases that you’ve rehearsed provides the setting. And then when you look up, you should hold your gaze, and this is for the U.S. or Western Europe.

There are cultural distinctions with eye contact, but a three-second eye contact, one, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, three, Mississippi, before blinking or looking away is absolutely appropriate in a U.S. or Western European or North American context, in a business setting, in a conversation, or even personal setting. And most people, they might hold their eye contact one to two seconds, so having that long eye contact can help establish your level of confidence and rapport with your listener.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a nice lineup there. And so, I’d love to get your take when it comes to those vocal pauses. It is so funny, I find that mine evolved over time in terms of I think I’ve eliminated a fair number of ahs, uhms, likes, you knows, and then I discovered from my coaching work, I tried to seem less, I guess, in-your-face or confrontational so I found myself saying the phrase “I would say…” and then I caught myself saying that a lot when I was a guest on an interview, and I thought, “That makes me seem less authoritative and confident about that response. Like, this is just my opinion as opposed to some empirical fact, data-driven research.” I just said you know. Now you got me hyper-aware. So, how do you recommend folks work on purging those vocal pauses from their speaking?

Christine Clapp
Yeah, it is really important, and I’m glad you brought up that notion of qualifying what you’re saying because it is important to avoid and understand that can undermine your credibility. It’s also something that we see more commonly among women than men. Some of those patterns they come up in oral communication but also written in email communication, especially when people say, “I think we should do this,” instead of, “We should do this,” and also, “I just wanted to see if you could…” instead of saying, “Can you please…” or, “Please do this.”

And I’m glad that you mentioned it because I do think it’s important especially for junior and mid-level professionals to be aware of those kinds of constructions that might limit their leadership potential or their perceived level of confidence. But the way that we recommend that people avoid filler words is that they put their lips together and pause. One of the reasons why people use filler words is because they’re uncomfortable with silence which is, again, something that’s culturally situated and it’s not that way in every culture, but in the United States and Western Europe there generally is a distaste for silence when you have the floor, whether it’s in a phone call, or negotiation, or presentation.

You have to have silence though. It’s really important. It allows you to breathe. It allows you to avoid those filler words that can be distracting, annoying, or undermine your credibility. It also provides people a moment to catch up with your train of thought. If you are speaking to an international audience, and there is a translator, those pauses are really important so that a translator can catch up, or an interpreter if you’re speaking to individuals who are hard of hearing. So, those pauses are really, really important.

Putting your lips together is something that feels awkward. It doesn’t look awkward to people who are listening to you. And a way that we teach our clients to get in the habit of putting their lips together where there’s a comma, where there’s a period, or they don’t know what to say next, whether it’s they lost their train of thought in a presentation, or they’re asked a question off the cuff and they need to think of a good response, is we do the handclap toe tap technique. And this is something you could do when you’re practicing to give an update in a meeting or to give a speech. We want you to run through a couple times on your own so you get more fluid with the material, then you can do a handclap every time you get to a period or a comma. And every time your hands clap, your lips go together. And that’s when you’re practicing gets you into the habit.

And then from a handclap, you go to a toe tap, so you have an audible sound of your toe hitting the floor when your lips are together. And then when you’re in a meeting or standing up giving your presentation, you go from the handclap to the toe tap to just scrunching your toes in your shoes and grabbing the floor, and it allows you to remind yourself to do something when your lips are closed to have those pauses, but no one can perceive it unless, of course, you’re wearing flipflops at work but that’s another situation to discuss for a later date.

But it’s the idea of taking one habit and giving yourself a less-problematic habit, which is the same strategy that people use to stop smoking. So, you might go from smoking to the Nicorette patch, to the Nicorette gum, to a regular gum, and you have gone from one habit to the other. That’s the same thing as the handclap to the toe tap to the scrunching your toes when your lips are closed, and it’s a process. Just know that when you’re tired, you’re going to use more junk words. The fewer rehearsals you’ve had the more junk words you’ll use. If you’ve had a drink at the company party, you’ll use more junk words in your toast than if you gave your toast before. Yeah, that’s why we have the one glass of champagne. Well, you never want to take a microphone after one glass.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there’s so much rich stuff here. Christine, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention for professionals before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Christine Clapp
Yeah, I would recommend that no matter what space you’re in, no matter how technical your work is, remember that being a leader in your organization or your industry will require presentations, whether it’s to ask for money to do your research, or whether it’s to pitch clients for new business, or whether it’s to garner votes to be in a position that you are on the ballot for. It’s not something that anyone in a leadership role can escape. And I would also argue that why would you want to escape public speaking? In the sense that if you have great ideas, public speaking is, in my opinion, the pen and the microphone, those are the two most powerful ways of sharing those ideas.

And I think, as we move to more and more video, and people consume information in shorter and shorter spurts of time, and we have better internet and bandwidth, I think we’re going to see more and more of the spoken word than the written word as a way that people learn, so don’t shy away from public speaking. You will need it for your leadership journey.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Christine, let’s now hear about some of your favorite things. How about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Christine Clapp
“Do or do not. There is no try,” I think is a great quotation because you could practice and put things on the backburner forever, but when you’re 85% ready to give a presentation, go do it. It’s never going to be perfect. There’s never a perfect speech, there’s always three speeches. There’s a speech that you plan, there’s a speech you give, and there’s a speech you wish you would’ve given, and they’re never the same. So, just go out there, do the best you can, and embrace it in its imperfection.

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

Christine Clapp
Yeah. Well, I mentioned earlier that the ancient Greeks had this in the 5th century before the common era. If you aren’t familiar with Aristotle, his treatise on rhetoric is the foundation of modern-day persuasion. It is not an empirical research document. It is in the humanities but it’s the root of the principles that we do our empirical research on in persuasion and communication today, much of it. So, I would have people learn about ethos, pathos, and logos, and artistic proofs, and inartistic proofs, and get a good grounding in Aristotle, and from there start looking at some of the present-day empirical research on the areas that you’re interested in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite book? I guess Rhetoric is one of them.

Christine Clapp
Yeah, Rhetoric is one of them. Yeah, it’s not a super easy read but definitely worth checking out the concepts. People think that it was an unfinished work of Aristotle, which makes it a little bit harder to read than some of his other work. But if you can get a concise summary of the points in it, that’s very useful.

Other books that are more recent other than ancient Greek treatises, I would recommend a couple. So, a few of my favorite books are Resonate by Nancy Duarte.

Pete Mockaitis
We just had her on the show recently.

Christine Clapp
Did you, really? Oh, that’s so wonderful.

Pete Mockaitis
She’s great.

Christine Clapp
Yeah, she’s great. So, I listen to her podcast episode, and also read her book Resonate. She also has a book called slide:ology that’s great. Another one that I would recommend for folks who struggle with vocal quality, there’s a book called Full Voice by Barbara McAfee. Another two that are in the same genre but are both worth reading, there’s Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo.

Pete Mockaitis
We had him, too.

Christine Clapp
Oh, he’s great. Yeah, and his perspective is you need to identify ways that you can draw from a TED-style of speaking and bring it to the workplace because everyone in your audience at work has been watching TED Talks at home and on their coffee break, and the see them at conferences and learning events. So, if you’re not borrowing the trappings for your report to the board, or for your briefing, or your educational program, they’re going to see a disconnect between you and leadership.

And then another one is Chris Anderson, the TED Director, his book is called TED Talks which is also another great book on the TED style but it’s more focused on speakers who are looking to do a TED-style talk, which is something that’s becoming more and more common at conferences. So, many of the speakers who we are working on TED Talks now, they’re subject-matter experts who are at their association or their industry conference, and they’re doing a 20-minute TED-style presentation. So, a lot of people who are listening might be thinking, “Oh, I’m never going to give a TED Talk.” But, actually, you might because it’s a format that’s becoming more and more popular and used in more and more settings.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Christine Clapp
Our favorite tool is our outline tool, the sandwich structure outline I think is a really great plug-and-play methodology that anyone at any point in their career can use to make their presentation more cohesive, more powerful, more well-structured, and to support that dynamic style of delivery that will keep your audience engaged.

Pete Mockaitis
And I also want to get your take, when it come to favorites, is there a habit that you maintain that helps you be more effective?

Christine Clapp
I am a runner. I’ve been running since, so, about 15 years now. I started when I was 25. I used to work on Capitol Hill, and some of my officemates said, “Hey, why don’t you run on our office’s Cherry Blossom 10-miler Team?” And I signed up, and I never thought I could do a 10-miler. And I started training in January where I ran one minute, walked one minute. And by the time April came around, I ran this 10-mile race. Then I continued running with these same friends, and they said, “Well, if you could run 10 miles, you can run 26.2.” And I thought, “Oh, whatever.”

So, I kept running with them and, sure enough, I got to the 18-mile run, I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to sign up for Marine Corps,” and they said, “You did 95% of the training. We have one more long run, do it.” So, I did, so I have been a long-distance runner. I’ve ran 10 marathons. I don’t run the long distances anymore because I have an eight-year old and an 11-year old, so I spend my Saturdays at flag football and soccer, and that’s what I choose to do with that time, but I still do run three or four times a week for a couple of miles, three, four, five.

And I think it’s just a great way to decompress and to deal with if you have a big presentation. For me, it helps me get rid of that nervous energy, helps ground me, and I think helps keep me healthy and sane. And, for me, that’s, I think, one of the reasons why. It seems weird, running shouldn’t help you do more, but I feel it helps ground me so that I am able to produce more and do more as a professional. So, whatever that outlet is for you, find it.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with your listeners, your clients, they repeat it back to you often?

Christine Clapp
I think one of the secrets of public speaking that our clients have an aha moment with is that it’s not about you, it’s about the audience, and that comes straight from Aristotle. When we go into public speaking situations, the reason why people are nervous is because they’re thinking, “I’m going to do this wrong. I am going to be judged for this or that, or the slide is wrong, or I’ll forget.” It’s all about how they perceive the audience reacting to them, “Me, me, me, me, me.”

But the speech isn’t about you. The speech is about doing something for your audience. And if you can keep that in mind, that it’s about helping them, it doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. It takes the stress away from being perfect because even Carmine Gallo or Nancy Duarte, they’re wonderful speakers and they have so much to give, but their speeches aren’t technically perfect. They’ll have a few junk words, or their gestures might be lacking here or there, but that doesn’t matter because they are giving you something really valuable in terms of information. So, it’s not about being technically perfect. It’s not about you. It’s about giving something and focusing on your audience.

The other thing is that when I started doing this work 11 years ago, I started training and coaching, people didn’t have iPhones, people didn’t have Wi-Fi, people didn’t have laptops in the office. And giving a presentation, if people came to your conference and were listening to you, or in the meeting for your update, they were your hostages, they had nothing else to do. But, now, you not only have to be engaging them from daydreaming, you have to be better than the Worldwide Web and every email that they have in their inbox.

So, I think that the bar has gone up in terms of how much you need to engage your audience and think about them and what they need, and it’s reduced even further the amount that people pay attention to. No one has ever been critical, but now the speaker is almost irrelevant because we have so much other stuff going on when we’re listening. So, the real challenge of speakers is not being judged, but it’s about thinking about the audience and trying to get them to stop playing with their dang phones and laptops while you’re presenting.

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

Christine Clapp
The two places where people can learn more about us are SpokenWithAuthority.com and also PresentingAtWork.com is the book. I’m also on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you look for Christine Clapp, you will find me if you’re interested in connecting on one of those platforms and staying in conversation about presentation skills and public speaking.

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

Christine Clapp
My goal to you is to think about a big win that you could have in a year. So, I told you the story at the beginning of this interview about how it took me one year to go from being a zero in 12-debater to going to nationals in my debate. And while I don’t expect many of your listeners will be going to nationals, my question or my challenge to each one of them is to say, for you and where you are in your career today, what is nationals for you? What would a really big-deal presentation be for you in December 2020, by then?

So, think big and then start thinking about what you need to start doing in January, in February, in March, in April to get yourself ready for that speaking role. And if there’s any way my team and I can support along that journey, by all means, please let us know. We’d love to help.

Pete Mockaitis
Christine, this has been a treat. Thanks so much for bringing the goods, and keep up the great work.

Christine Clapp
Thank you so much.

Dec 13
0

524: How to Build Rapport Quickly with John DiJulius

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John DiJulius: "The greatest gift we can give others is the gift of attention."

John DiJulius shares his expert tips for quickly building lasting emotional ties.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Four touchpoints that effectively build rapport
  2. The subtle ways you’re killing the conversation
  3. How to go from indifferent to curious

About John:

John is the authority on World-Class customer experience. He is an international consultant, keynote speaker, and best-selling author of five customer service books. His newest book, The Relationship Economy: Building Stronger Customer Connections in The Digital Age could not be timelier in the world we are living in. John has worked with companies such as The Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Nestlé, Marriott Hotels, PwC, Celebrity Cruises, Anytime Fitness, Progressive Insurance, Harley-Davidson, Chick-fil-A, and many more.

Items mentioned in the show:

Thank You, Sponsor!

  • Honeybook. Save time on the admin of your business so you can do more of what you love. Get 50% off your first year at HoneyBook.com/awesome

John DiJulius Interview Transcript

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

John DiJulius
My pleasure. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to hear, first of all, what’s the backstory behind you failing gym class in high school?

John DiJulius
You know, I was a very small, have not developed yet, and went to a high school that produced a lot of NFL athletes, and I was like 4’11”, maybe 85 pounds, and so I just decided I didn’t want to go in the locker room and change every day. And what I didn’t know was when I didn’t change into my gym uniform, I didn’t get credit for the class, so at the end of the year I flunk it and had to go to summer school for gym.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I imagine there were many days which you were wearing the wrong outfit.

John DiJulius
I would just wear my dress clothes every day and I didn’t realize I was getting like a not-attended, like absent.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s wild and no one would give you a hand-up, “Hey, John, so you know, I see you physically present but you don’t get credit for today because of what you’re wearing,” but rather they just fail you at the end. Boy, I think that is like I’m thinking about Kim Scott of Radical Candor now, who we had on the show, talking about how when people get fired because they never got goof feedback along the way to improve their shortcomings and blind spots. Boy, here that is a very dramatic instance. But you bounced back, I’m glad to hear.

John DiJulius
I did okay. I did okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, so I want to hear, you are talking a lot these days about building stronger customer connections in the digital age. Could you lay it on us, what are some of the benefits associated with face-to-face connections and this old-school stuff when technology is running the show it seems most of our communications?

John DiJulius
Well, yeah, it’s back to the future today. It’s ironic that the disruptor today in business is good old-fashioned relationships. And there’s a seismic shift happening in the world today with all the benefits technology is bringing us, it’s coming at a significant cost, and that cost is human relationship, which is vital to customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and just overall happiness personally and professionally. And today’s illiterates are those who have an inability to make a meaningful connection.

And so, the best companies are competing in the relationship economy where the primary currency is the emotional connections made with customers, employees, and vendors that make your brand the brand that people can’t live without and, ultimately, help make you price irrelevant.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds great. So, could you share with us some of the most, I guess, hard-hitting research data studies associated with the observation of this phenomenon?

John DiJulius
Yeah. Well, first, by year 2025, there’ll be more machines in the workforce, and robots and artificial intelligence will be capable of doing every job that we’re currently doing from lawyers to judges to driving to construction, from doctors to nurses, to something that, I just got an email last week. It was a little unsettling that there’s artificial-intelligent brothels. I’m not endorsing, I’m not recommending…

Pete Mockaitis
Well, the oldest professions taking over there.

John DiJulius
Right, right. I’m not judging, I’m just reporting. So, it literally is doing everything and you’ll never have to see another human being, I guess, if you choose as long as you live.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the prediction is by 2025 machines will be doing every job that humans are doing, although I imagine they’ll be doing many of them poorly based on what I’m seeing these days.

John DiJulius
Yeah, and not every job, but capable of doing every job and that more machines will be in the workforce than human beings.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about that? So, tell us, how does the human connection help in that context?

John DiJulius
Well, as a result of living in the touchscreen age, and the touchscreen age is not generational specific, we have grandparents using devices and we have five-year olds on iPads, but as a result, our social skills, our people skills are an all-time low and this is causing many negative side effects.

They’ve also said that there’s a term called digital dementia where doctors have done brain scans of heavy users of digital devices and they look similar to patients who’ve sustained brain injuries. So, we’re relationship disadvantaged today, and the leaders out there of businesses need to understand that it’s our problem to fix. We can’t skip this generation.

And so, the companies that the pendulum has swung so far over the high-tech low-touch or no touch, people, consumers, you, me, we’re starving to be recognized as a person with a name, and technology is not the enemy. Using it to eliminate human experience is. So, companies, the best companies are finding ways to marry the digital with the human interaction that allows technology you use to do the most basic necessities, freeing up your employees to do what’s most important: that’s building the customer loyalty, that is long-term sustainability for the business.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then, I’d love to get your take, in particular, when it comes to if we’re looking to build some rapport, whether that’s with sort of new colleagues around the given workplace, or with prospects, or customers, or potential partners, just about anybody, what do you recommend for folks who are looking to more conscientiously build more human connection?

John DiJulius
Yes. So, there’s five key characteristics to the art of building relationship, and they may sound, to older generations, like common sense, but we all have gotten away from it and it’s not common sense to younger generations. So, I’ll rattle off the five first. You must be authentic, right? You must have insatiable curiosity. You must have credible empathy. You must love people and must be a great listener. So, all those five. Four of them can definitely be taught and trained.

Now, if you find people that have those, that’s great. But the one that can’t be taught, no amount of training can ever change someone, if they don’t love people. You can’t train someone to love people. So, let’s look at insatiable curiosity. Being an investigative reporter is the best, people dying to learn about others, not only about subjects that interests them but subjects that are unfamiliar.

So, I did a TED Talk called “Meet as Strangers, Leave as Friends.” I don’t think there’s a greater skill that we can work on ourselves or teach at any level from kindergarten to the business world, at home, than the ability to build instant rapport with others, whether that be an acquaintance, stranger, co-worker, customer, you name it.

And so, in doing that, there’s two things we got to remember that everyone we come in contact with has an invisible sign above their head that says, “Make me feel important.” And the greatest gift we can give others is the gift of attention. Now, it’s hard to do that because we’re all genetically coded to be preoccupied, “It’s my flight that got delayed.” “It’s my client that’s upset with us.” “It’s my son that may have gotten in trouble,” right? So, that’s a hard thing to turn off when you speak to other people.

So, we have this great technique that so many of our clients have incorporated and I incorporate in personal and professional. It’s anytime you have a conversation with someone, be it 3 minutes or 30 minutes, you need to focus on the other person’s FORD, F-O-R-D, like the car. And if you can focus on the other person’s FORD, you not only built the relationship, you own the relationship.

So, F, family. Are they married? Do they have kids? How old are their kids? The O, occupation. What do they do? What’s their title? Who are they doing it for? R, recreation, that’s some of the hottest buttons that people have. What do they do with their free time? Are they runners? Do they go to hot yoga? Do they coach little league? Whatever that may be. And then D stands for dreams. What’s on their bucket list? What’s their dream vacation? What is their encore career?

So, all of our clients have incorporated FORD into their daily interactions. They collect this in a non-soliciting way and they have it in their CRM system, they have pads that remind it, and it’s just a great way to build that emotional connection of what’s really important to people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you mentioned 3 minutes, so maybe we can run some demos here. And I’d like to hear both in terms of you’re just meeting someone for the first time and, I guess, you’re reconnecting, like, oh, you bumped into someone, it’s been a few months since you’ve seen them, and we’re having a chat. So, can you show us how it’s done, John?

John DiJulius
Yeah. So, Pete, where are you at today?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m in Chicago.

John DiJulius
In Chicago? Okay. So, we’re having a similar weather. I’m from Cleveland so we’re both from the Midwest and it’s cold out, it’s snowing here. But are you originally from Chicago?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I grew up in Danville, Illinois about three hours away, but I’ve spent almost my whole life in Illinois.

John DiJulius
Good. Good. You have family? Kids?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. We got two kids under two right now.

John DiJulius
Under two, both of them?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

John DiJulius
Oh, so you’re sleep-deprived.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, my wife more so than I am as a saint as she is, but, yes, I’m feeling it a bit as well.

John DiJulius
Congratulations. How long have you been married?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, in fact, today is our three-year anniversary.

John DiJulius
No way. And that’s why we had this call to celebrate.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s December 3rd at 3:00 p.m. Central in this moment that we’re recording. That’s kind of wild, John.

John DiJulius
December 3rd, 2016 you got married.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

John DiJulius
That’s awesome. So, usually, whenever you start off with anyone, you just kind of catch up, you find some common ground, but it’s important to focus on them and find out what their hot buttons are and, obviously, where they come from, their family. If we had more time while we’re doing this, we’d get in to how you got into what you’re doing now, and that’s a great story.

So, listening is great and doing research for this book was painful because I realized how many things I was doing wrong. So, I have some conversation nevers and always. So, some listening is, if you have some questions and you don’t ask two to three follow-up questions, odds are you aren’t really paying attention, right? You should have a four-to-one ratio of questions asked versus answered.

There’s a myth that being a good listener is like being a sponge, and they say that’s the farthest thing from the truth. Being a sponge is you’re just talking away and once in a while just saying “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” They say that’s not being a good listener. Being a good listener is being a trampoline. And so, a trampoline is asking more clarifying questions and helping and heightening the energy of what the person speaking is doing.

So, there’s a lot of really cool things. I’ve got some really painful things I stumbled on was don’t ask a question because you’re dying to answer it, right? So, it’s like, “Pete, tell me what you did this week. Oh, good, good. You know what I did?”

Pete Mockaitis
“I was skiing. It was awesome.” Yeah, I hear you.

John DiJulius
Right. Don’t finish the other person’s sentence. And I’m that I’m really guilty of that I never thought it was a bad thing until I read about it is stealing someone’s thunder. And so, the example I read about really made me realize I do this all the time, but I did it with good intentions. So, you might have an employee that was off last week and they’re like, “Peter Jr., what did you do on vacation?” And young Peter says he took his wife and their two little ones to Disney, and he’s so excited he wants to tell you about it, and you interrupt him by saying, “Oh, my God, I love Disney. We actually have a house there in Orlando.”

And originally thinking that would show some commonality but you just stole his thunder because what could someone possibly tell someone about Disney who has property there, right? So, just being more attentive to not one-upping or grandstanding and just letting the other person have their moment.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really nice thought. I’m thinking almost like a game of chess, not that we’re trying to dominate the other, but you want to think about what that does open up in terms of moves after your move. So, you might mention, “Oh, hey, it’s common. I’ve got a home in Orlando.” But if you think about that for a moment, it’s like, “What options does that leave this person? Very few.”

So, yeah, I dig that. Thinking back to the demonstration there, so it seems like we’ve gotten into the family side of things. But I’d love to hear us unpack the full demo of we’ve got occupation, the recreation, and the dreams.

John DiJulius
And so, dependent on the scope, the dynamic of why we’re meeting, why we’re talking, right? If it’s a social thing, then you have at it with the FORD. But if it’s maybe a sales call, or a business call, you obviously want to hit one or two of those. You typically don’t have time to hit on four unless it really gets off, and it also depends on how well we know each other.

So, if we’re brand-new and you just started, you just kind of want to, again, start off, that’s how I start up most calls first time is, “Where are you calling from? Oh, Chicago. Tell me how your year is spent.” I find out something that you like, and your kids, then why you got into the position, whatever that position is. And then I use that information later on.

Now, there’s also times when you go out with your significant other, and her husband, and that’s a completely different, you know, you got two hours. I will just drill that person for two hours and just learn as much as I can about them. And, again, another painful thing. Thirty years that I learned from the research in my book, 30 years ago if you couldn’t talk to me about my two subjects, and that was all I was interested in, which was basically baseball or customer service, then I don’t want anything to do with you, right?

My wife said, “Hey, we’re going to go out with Joann and her husband,” I’d be like, “Oh, God, no. Oh, I can’t sit through another night with them.” And that was solely my fault because I was only interested in my thing. But I’ve learned, through what’s called insatiable curiosity, to become an investigative reporter, and just really pick someone’s brain. And you might find out obscure things that you might not be interested in, he might be interested in fly-fishing, and you dig deep why, like, “How did you get into fly-fishing? And, to me, that seems a little boring.”

And at the end of the conversation, three things always come away. One, I really see why that person likes, let’s say, fly-fishing. It doesn’t mean I have to go out and do it tomorrow, but from his passion, or the way he talked about it, the benefits, now I can see it. Number two, which probably most is important, he really liked talking to me, which means I win points at home with my significant other, right?

But here’s the strangest thing. This always happens. I’m sure it’s happened in your life, six months later I’ll be in CEO’s office trying to close a sale or something, and there’ll be a picture of him fly-fishing on his wall. And because of that conversation, I can have a more educated conversation and make a connection easier than if I never had that connection.

So, I mean, there’s so many benefits but there’s things like we find out from our clients or acquaintances that they’re running their first marathon this weekend, or they’re going to Maui, and you could do so many things with that. If it’s a good client, we’ll have a bottle of wine and cheese waiting for them when they get into their room. So, there’s just so much. We’re just circling back two weeks and finding out how their trip to Maui was.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And so, I’m curious, when it comes to – huh, curious about curiosity – so now, I guess, I think where the rubber really meets the road is you’re chatting with someone, they say something, you have no interest in that thing whatsoever. What do you do with your brain to stir up some of this interesting curiosity when you’re not feeling it in the moment?

John DiJulius
I train myself because you just got to be, called, investigative reporter. You want to find what makes them tick. So, if it’s important to the other person, find out why, and that’s where the beauty, that’s where the magic happens because, again, when you first tell me…so, I’m being transparent here. But what’s your recreation? What do you like to do with your time off, when you’re not changing diapers?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, why don’t we say tabletop games, shall we? I’m thinking about Monopoly at the moment.

John DiJulius
Okay. And so, that’s not something I personally, I wouldn’t say this, I personally don’t play games and so I would just explore, “How did you get into this? Is it something that started as a kid?” And I would just ask four or five questions to try to get you to explain that is. Again, depending on the situation, if we have a 15-minute call then that wouldn’t be something. But something that I can feasibly do.

Everything has an angle because what would get someone to love tabletop games? There’s a story there. And, usually, if it’s something they’re passionate about, they like telling that story. Most people don’t ask them about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I think this might be a great example, and you can very candidly tell me what’s going on in your brain because you’re not going to hurt my feelings. It’s okay if you walk away still not giving a hoot about tabletop games or Monopoly but I think that’s a cool start. So, here we are, I’ve shared something that isn’t that interesting to you, but let’s say we have the time. So, where would you go from there?

John DiJulius
So, yeah, what tabletop games? And you said, like, “Monopoly.”

Pete Mockaitis
Sure, let’s say Monopoly.

John DiJulius
Yeah, is this something you do, like, regularly? Is it something like you get people around? How often do you do this and with whom?

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, you know, it’s been a while. I remember the peak Monopoly occurred in the winter breaks of high school and college where my crew – shout out to Ronnie, Kevin, Brent, and Kate – for the most part, we would be the ones who’d come together and maybe just play three, four games in a night, so no joke, five, six, seven hours of Monopoly.

John DiJulius
That’s what I was going to ask you, how many hours. So, that’s like equivalent to what people are doing today with binge-watching an episode or something.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

John DiJulius
But I gotta believe that was like some of your best memories and bonding and hilarious stories that came from that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, it’s funny. Indeed, we had all kinds of dorkiness came out because we play pretty strictly in terms of official tournament rules, 32 hours, 12 hotels, none of this silliness.

John DiJulius
You guys were serious.

Pete Mockaitis
We want to keep to roll the dice briskly so we could finish the games, most of them we finish under 90 minutes because we were kind of moving with it, and all kinds of little, I guess, subcultural things emerge like when all 32 houses were bought up and then someone landed on another property, had to have a big payday, then we’d start chanting, “Sell houses! Sell houses!” because we were all excited, “Now, we got a chance to buy some houses because this guy has been hogging them, and he just got a painful rent payment that will force him to liquidate some of his houses,” and so there’s like blood in the water and we all got fired up over it.

John DiJulius
So, do you ever have reunions with Ronnie and the gang?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it happens here and there, but it’s a little bit tricky in terms of us being located all over the place.

John DiJulius
Can you play virtually?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’ve looked into this and the answer is kind of. I haven’t found like the ideal platform that is reliable and honors true tournament rules, but there’s some stuff out there, yeah.

John DiJulius
You know, one thing I’m curious about, again, I’ve never had the patience to sit through a full game of Monopoly. But my son did buy me a Monopoly board, or they made me, or something, last year, a Monopoly board, like around our family so the houses would be different vacations. It’s really cute. It was all personalized. But I gotta believe that doing something that much, what was the lesson, the life lessons that you applied to business or whatever? I mean, there had to be.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny. Someone wrote a whole book called Everything I Need to Know from Life I Learned from Playing Monopoly or something like that. And Brent bought me a copy, so that was nice of him and so there’s all sorts of bits there. And perhaps the biggest one, I think for me, is that there are times in Monopoly and times in life where the value of something really changes in terms of in the early game, we have lots of cash and no properties, so the value of property is high relative to the cash. And so, I would be willing to buy almost any property from someone at 20%, 30%, 50% markup in the early game.

But then, later on, when people have their monopolies and they’ve got sort of excess property, they very much want to liquidate that into cash so they can acquire houses to turn it into a deadly zone. So, I find that interesting, is how sometimes the value of something really does shift based on your context and how sort of abundant versus scarce something is relative to the other stuff. So, sometimes I think, in life, you might have an abundance of time, or you might have an abundance of money, and you have one and not the other.

College, plenty of time, not so much money. In certain jobs, I’m thinking about Wall Street bankers right now, plenty of money, not so much time. And then it changes what you’re willing to pay for something, whether in terms of hours or dollars.

John DiJulius
Yeah, I got to believe it also maybe add a cautionary to, “Do I really want this? Will this really be that important to me in 18 months or however long that is because things change so rapidly?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally.

John DiJulius
Very cool. Very cool. Well, I still got to believe the best thing that came were just the memories, the conversations, the digging at each other that close groups of friends do when you get together, that all comes back.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Perhaps the most legendary one was we hosted a Monopoly tournament at the high school just because we had various student leadership positions and said, “Well, we like Monopoly, and this is what we feel like doing.” And I was helping at another table with a rules dispute and my buddy, Kevin, whispered to this, like, 10-year old girl who’s at our table, “He’s winning. You should trade that to me.” And when I turned my back, the trade had been done, I was like, “What happened?” And Kevin went on to win the whole tournament, and he’s featured in the yearbook and I consider it stolen.

John DiJulius
That’s so funny. That’s funny. Well, very good. Now, I’m intrigued to play Monopoly the next time someone pulls it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. All right. Well, thank you for indulging me with that extended demo. Well, you’re right in terms of the rapport in that the more you get people, I guess, I’m not looking at your face, but I’m hearing your voice, but I guess it’s just very natural that as you steer me towards positive experiences, and I am sharing them with you in a current experience of conversation, I naturally associate you, John, with pleasantness and, thusly, I like you more.

John DiJulius
Exactly. Who came out of the original Bible, the How to Win Friends and Influence People, whatever the order is, by Dale Carnegie, and he, in there, says, “You could talk to someone for an hour about them, and they won’t ask you one question about you, but they’ll walk away saying you are the greatest person ever even though they couldn’t tell someone why.” But, exactly what you just said, they’ll just associate you with that fondness, and they were able to talk about, you know, there are certain things in my world that you don’t want to ask me unless you have two hours because I’m going to tell you, I’m going to get all worked up, and my voice will start cracking, and you’ll be like, “Whoa, whoa,” right? So, finding people’s hot buttons is the single best way to create an emotional connection.

And then doing something with that. Taking three minutes on Google later and seeing if there’s any digital Monopoly things, and you send that email to Peter, saying, “Peter, have you seen this?” It literally takes three minutes, and whether he has seen them or he hasn’t, he’s going to be shocked at the time and thoughtfulness that that person, who he barely has a relationship, thought of, and it’s not just about making a sale.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true, yes. And if you did find it, I’d be really tickled. If you say, “Hey, Pete, it turns out like the 1996 PC version enables you to host something on a something, so you can get your friends together, and it will work just the way you want it.” Like, “I never would’ve guessed that that 1996 whatever would do the trick.” And then I’d be thinking about you forever. So, that’s cool.

Well, so, tell me, John, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

John DiJulius
No, no, no, that’s it. Just love the relationship economy and, like I said, it’s back to the future. It’s what is missing from our society today, and people are starving to be recognized as a human being with needs, and fears, and things to celebrate, and achievements, and all those things. And the ones that are giving it to them are building that customer and employee loyalty.

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

John DiJulius
Something that pops up in my phone every morning at 6:00 a.m. is “Act as if today is the day you’ll be remembered for how you treat others.” I love that. That’s very important to me.

Pete Mockaitis
That is lovely. Thank you. And how about a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

John DiJulius
You know, I’m just coming from writing this book. There were just so much research. One of my favorite aha moments was a scientist studied the human brain and found out that it took the human brain a minimum of 0.6 seconds to formulate a response to something said to it. And then they studied hundreds and thousands of conversations and found the average gap between people talking was 0.2 seconds, one-third the time the human brain will allow. And so, really, don’t have that answer, don’t be just waiting for him to come up for air, listen to what he’s saying, pause, process it, and then move on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, boy, that is so reassuring in many ways for me because sometimes it’s like there is that first half second, I guess, before the 0.6 seconds has fully come online then you have a thought, where there’s silence and they almost sort of expect you to say something, but you don’t yet have that thing. And just to know that, “Hey, it’s okay. It takes about 0.6 seconds on average.” And, really, I think it takes about, in my experience, four or five seconds before people say, like, on the phone, “Hey, Pete, are you still there?” so you have time to pause and think.

John DiJulius
Oh, I have a hard time with that, when people do pause too much. I always check my phone, I think I dropped the call, and I’m like, “Something is wrong,” because I’m not used to a pause.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And something else, you can just inhale for a while. Yeah. Well, that’s a great stat. Thank you. How about a favorite book that you love?

John DiJulius
I’ll go with the most recent one that I just read, and that was From the Ground Up by Howard Schultz, the former CEO Chairman of Starbucks. It’s his third book. I love every book he’s written, and each better than the previous, and just a great story of his life, and why he created one of the most social-conscious companies in the world, and it’s really inspiring to me.

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

John DiJulius
You reminded me in one of your emails–Evernote. I love Evernote. I am a to-do crazy person so I like how that works. In all my devices–iPads, phones, computers–it’s always synced. And then what I like about it is my own to-do list in there, the way I sort it. I sort my to-do that I can only have three urgent, that’s all I’ll put on there. I can never have more than three, and that means I can’t go home today, go to bed, whatever that may be, unless I get those three done.

And then I have six important, maximum six, and then the rest are want-to-do, need-to-do, and that can be unlimited. But I’m always working from that urgent three and then the six important. It just keeps clarity that I’m always joined with what I need to do before what I want to do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite habit?

John DiJulius
Just trying to build a relationship with myself. MSA is a thing that’s a real thing – mental stimulation addiction. And that just means that we’re so used to using our devices, and I’ve gone to the doctor’s office and be waiting to be taken, and I’ll check my phone and all the apps and news and ESPN and social media, all that stuff, and I’ll put it down, and within 15 seconds, without thinking, I do it again, and like, “What could it change in that 15 seconds?”

And so, they say because we’re outsourcing our brains to devices, our brains are extra thin and we have a creativity crisis. We aren’t innovative like we were generations ago. So, I’m trying to build in boredom into my life where that’s when your brain sits idle. We all say we get the best ideas when we take showers. Well, I don’t take enough showers so it might be even like when I’m getting a run or exercise in the morning, instead of listening to a podcast or ESPN like I like to a couple of days a week, I’ll listen to nothing. And it’s strange at first, but I’ll tell you what, when I get back home, I have to find paper and pen because I had so many ideas that came to my head.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Thank you. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you a lot?

John DiJulius
I think probably the one, the quote I said earlier. A lot of people like that, the “Act as if today is the day you’ll be remembered for how you treat others.”

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

John DiJulius
TheDijuliusGroup.com or they could email me at John@dijuliusgroup.com.

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

John DiJulius
Yeah. Just go out and build relationships and the rest will follow. I don’t believe in networking. I’m not a good networker. I never have business cards on me but I do believe in building social capital. And stop networking in a traditional sense and just meet and build relationships where the relationship itself is its own reward, and the rest will take care of itself.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, John, thanks so much for sharing the good word, and good luck in all your relationship-building.

John DiJulius
Thank you and good luck to you with your bride and your two young ones.