This Podcast Will Help You Flourish At Work

Each week, I grill thought-leaders and results-getters to discover specific, actionable insights that boost work performance.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

523: How to Create Lasting Behavioral Change with Dr. Kyra Bobinet

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Dr. Kyra Bobinet says: "Mindlessness is the new mindfulness."

Dr. Kyra Bobinet explains how to close the gap between intention and behavior to form better, lasting habits.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Powerful behaviors that build life-changing habits
  2. Just how long it takes to form a habit
  3. Quick ways to ease stress and anxiety at work

About Kyra:

When it comes to health engagement, Dr. Bobinet has 5 words of advice: be caring, authentic, and useful. As the CEO-founder of engagedIN, Kyra devotes her life to helping people crack the code of how, what, and especially, WHY we engage.

Kyra has founded several healthcare start-ups, spanning behavior health, population health, and mobile health. She has designed behavior change programs, big data algorithms, billion dollar products, mobile health apps, and evidence-based studies in mind-body and metabolic medicine. All of her designs, whether for at-risk teens or seniors, are rooted in the belief that true caring is our greatest value.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, Sponsor!

Dr. Kyra Bobinet Interview Transcript

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

Kyra Bobinet
Absolutely. So much fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom because you’ve spent a lot of time studying something that I’ve wondered a lot for quite a while, and, apparently, it’s called the brain behavior gap. Can you first tell us what is that?

Kyra Bobinet
Yes, sir. So, everybody will recognize it as, “I know what I should do but I don’t always do it.” And that’s the difference between what you know what you should do, your brain, and what you actually do, which is your behavior. And it’s kind of this fun, humorous aspect of being a human that we all face this issue in trying to get ourselves to do things that we don’t end up doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I have wrestled with this question ever since I remember in high school marching band, and toward the end of the summer, we had what we called band camp, which the movie American Pie has ruined the idea of band camp for people. But, anyway, we’d spend just about eight plus hours a day, Monday through Friday, for a couple of weeks just working on the marching and the playing, and I thought, “Man, we made a huge amount of progress in terms of putting that show together,” and I think, “Boy, what can I accomplish if I could just hunker down and work that much solo on something?” And I still don’t I’ve cracked the code on how to actually do that.

Kyra Bobinet
Oh, dear, yeah. It’s such an interesting thing to listen to people’s stories of trying to sequester themselves there. It’s almost like a runaway dog running away, your puppy, it’s like, “Come back, come back,” so it’s really crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so tell us, what makes it difficult and what should be done?

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah. So, the reason why this happens is we have, basically, two gears you can think of it in our brain. One is our fast brain I like to call it. It equates to Daniel Kahneman’s work on System 1 thinking. All the autopilot, all of the mindlessness, all of the stuff that happens by habit and without thought, that’s kind of fast brain. Think of tying your shoes, brushing your teeth, yadda, yadda. And then there’s this slow brain which is the sort of ideals, the problem-solving, the hard kind of mechanics, and decision-making, and willpower, and all that juicy stuff, but that’s in short supply. So, if you were to take a ratio, the fast brain is like 95% of what we do, and the slow brain is about 5% of what we do.

And so, oftentimes, the slow brain gets its ass kicked by the fast brain, and we’re just doing the normal distraction things or the things that feel good right now, the immediate gratification, and the slow brain just doesn’t have a chance. So, everything that we deal with as behavior designers, and that I’ve learned to do with behavior change, is to work with those two gears and get them to align.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. And so, I guess I’d love to hear maybe a story associated with someone who had something they knew they should do but weren’t doing it, and then they enacted some approaches to see some cool results there.

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, absolutely. The general principle that people can take away is make the good stuff faster and make the bad stuff slower. So, one of the amazing stories came out of Google where they had an M&M problem, and they offer a lot of free food, and there’s even jokes here in Silicon Valley about the Facebook 15, or the Google 15, almost like in college when you gain 15 pounds because you have so much free food and just endless trough of food.

So, they were having this problem with M&Ms, and they decided that they had to create some barriers, some friction, if you will. And so, they took them from eye-level bowls that were open with a big scooper, and they put them in jars, closed them up, and put them down by your knee caps. You had to kind of squat down, which a lot of people weren’t willing to do, and then monkey open the jar, and get in there, and then they had like a little tiny scooper.

And so, that’s one example of kind of putting friction in between you and the autopilot that will probably not serve you. So, whether that is the snooze alarm, some people have a real problem with hitting snooze. And so, how do you create that friction for yourself to not hit snooze? Do you move the phone away, your alarm with your phone on it, away from you further? Those kinds of things. And people, once they understand how this works, they get really creative. It’s just amazing to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love that on so many levels. When you said M&M problem, I was thinking of the rapper, I thought, “Are they playing Eminem too loudly? Oh, no, no, the chocolatey treats that are high-calorie. I can see it.”

Kyra Bobinet
He’s brilliant. He’s absolutely brilliant.

Pete Mockaitis
No, I think that’s quite brilliant in terms of making them hard to access. And I’ve done that before in terms of if I’ve got a six pack of delicious beer and I want to drink it more slowly, I just try to really put it deep in the back of the fridge so I have to be pretty motivated and committed to kneel down and reach through and make it happen. And, sure enough, it makes the six pack last more days.

Kyra Bobinet
Exactly. Out of sight, out of mind.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s great and very well-articulated to make the good stuff faster and the bad stuff slower. So, that’s reshaping the environment. And I’d love it if you could give us a few more examples of some smart moves that have helped people out.

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, absolutely. There’s this concept called The Ulysses Contract, and this is from a colleague of mine, David Eagleman, who’s a neuroscientist at Stanford. And he actually talks about this with respect to getting yourself to do the thing. The Ulysses story is very famous in The Odyssey, where he, basically, is on a ship and he really wants to hear the siren sound so he has his sailors lash him to the mast of the ship so that he doesn’t jump overboard which is what the sirens make you do, and then he stuffs all of the men, the sailors, with wax in their ears, or cotton, I can’t remember, and so they can’t hear the siren sounds. They’re navigating the ship and he’s able to enjoy the music without that.

So, what Dr. Eagleman talks about is, “How can you put yourself in a situation where you absolutely have to do the thing?” So, oftentimes, when people purchase something, a cruise or a trip maybe that makes them take vacation because they’re really bad at taking vacations or taking time off. Daddy-daughter dates, even date nights with your spouse, those kinds of things are kind of these Ulysses contracts. They’re things that, once you commit to them, you put so much into it that you have a disincentive to bail out, in that way you kind of prevent your future self from making the wrong choice.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking if we zoom into workplaces and professionals, how have you seen some additional approaches play out in that particular context? So, we’re at work, we want to do more of the good stuff, less the bad stuff. What have you seen work out well for folks?

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, absolutely. So, all of us have had this what we’ll call phantom invites that we put on our calendar, right? I call that behavior fantasy, where you have a standing promise to yourself in the future and you just shoot right through it. It’s just so many times you break up with that promise with yourself so that it doesn’t actually even get your attention anymore. All of us have that, whether we put workouts there, or go to sleep early, or only work on the report until here, or even start, like procrastinators like myself, starting something is the hardest thing to get yourself to do.

So, you’re kind of wrangling yourself into that. There’s a number of different strategies, so you can actually create social accountability, which is kind of a consequence. If I tell somebody to hold me accountable, I set a deadline for that person then there’s a social element, and our brains are extremely social so we will, most times than not, get that done or get close to that deadline that we set for another person because we’re obligating ourselves, again, in the future in that kind of Ulysses contract way.

Another thing that people do is create a reward system for themselves. So, that could be an emotional reward, that could be giving themselves a treat of some kind. Hopefully, it’s not going to work against your health in any way. But if there’s something you’ve been really wanting to do, a freedom, a delight, just a little celebration that you want to send that signal of dopamine and even oxytocin, which is another reward chemical, to your brain by really making it a point to celebrate and create a reward system at the end, much like you would train an animal.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, please, share some examples of great rewards and celebrations. And we had BJ Fogg on the show earlier who had some great perspectives on this, and I think it warrants some elaboration. So, we want to be careful that it doesn’t sort of work against other goals, like, “Oh, it’s going to be a delicious Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup,” or something, I don’t know, with high calories. But what are some great rewards and celebrations you’ve seen really work for some folks?

Kyra Bobinet
Yes. So, the best ones are in context, meaning that they’re related to the actual effort itself. So, if you are trying to get something out on a deadline, then to basically build in a lazy day for yourself the next day. And in most cases, and in most workspaces, you can kind of take it back a notch for a little while and go for a long walk, or take a little extra time, or even do something different on your break if you have a really rigid break system timing-wise.

So, those kinds of things where you feel like you’re free, and you’re in control, and you’re the boss of yourself, and you’re not really tying yourself to the dutifulness which so much of us do at work, as being dutiful to others or to your team, and, really, just doing something nice for yourself. And I think it’s the hardest thing in the world for people to do to really have a moment of selfishness that really helps to signal to themselves, “Hey, I’m here for you and I’m taking care of you.”

And that, really, I find in all the people that I interview in research, they really stop rebelling against themselves when they have those little treats that they give themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, so we talked a bit about behavior change and shaping the environment. Let’s talk about, specifically, habit formation. You talked a bit about the celebration-rewards piece. Could you maybe orient us to the overall science behind habit formation?

Kyra Bobinet
Yes. So, this is super fascinating. I started out in workplace stress reduction in one of the programs that I created. I created a mindfulness program that was kind of the first in class when I was at Aetna and has since kind of been taken up by Headspace and Calm and some of these apps. So, those are all really great and I’m still a proponent of mindfulness. But I find that unless I can make something as mindless as tying your shoe, it’s not going to survive your modern life.

So, we have a new model we need to really follow of behavior change, which is habit formation, vis-à-vis unstoppability, being unstoppable, being the ability to just keep going and going and going. And one of the things I found in my research on habit science is that there’s a new area of our brain that’s been characterized called the habenula, and that’s a mouthful. But it’s, basically, in charge of two things. One, it is a detector of you thinking you failed. So, if you think you failed, I could throw you in an FMRI machine and this part of your brain will light up, right?

So, the second thing that it does, if it lights up, if it gets turned on like that, is it kills your motivation to try again. And this, to me, was shocking and kind of the reason why you see people do really, really well in terms of changing their behaviors, they set goals, they track them, they do all these things, and then, one day, including this happened to myself, including one day you just stop doing it. And I had patients like this, and I would say, “So, what happened?” And they would literally blink and look at me blankly and say, “I have no idea.” They don’t know how they go there because it happened subconsciously so the person doesn’t even consciously know that they lost their motivation. They just don’t do it.

And so, one of the things with habit formation is that if you practice, and if you practice and practice, you’ll find something that you can get to go. You can close that brain behavior gap, get yourself to practice, and practice, and practice. And as the brain responds to that repetition, what it does is it creates almost like a highway. It lays down the asphalt so that you can drive even faster. So, that behavior goes faster and faster and faster, and it becomes part of your fast brain, that autopilot mindlessness area that we talked about at the beginning. So, that, to me, was just amazing and shocking, and so it completely changed the paradigm of how to change a behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I think there are all sorts of implications there, the habenula, you’re thinking you failed so it kills your motivation to try again. I guess I’m imagining then, one implication may be that you want to maybe reduce the size of the thing you’re trying to habituate so that you don’t fail, you keep on winning again and again and again, and building that highway. Is that accurate?

Kyra Bobinet
You know, that’s the safest thing, and I know BJ, who’s one of my mentors, is really into making it small. I do think that you can really get a higher percentage of shots on goal if you start with small. But I’ve seen people start out with something big if it works for them. To me, the thing I’m drawing from the science these days is what matters most is if you find the thing that turns you on, and that works for you, that fits into your life, no matter how big or small it is, usually it is small especially with somebody who’s a little shaky in their confidence in that particular area, which is what BJ is really good at. It’s just like getting that wheel to turn in people, and simplifying it, and making it tiny. He calls his program Tiny Habits even.

So, I do believe that that’s a really good kindergarten place for everybody to start safely, but I also noticed in my own research that the more important thing that we found is something called the iterative mindset, that we’re calling the iterative mindset, because we found people who changed their habits, big habits, big lifestyle habits against all odds, but they did it by finding their experiment, by looking at it as an experiment, and then iterating or tweaking and tinkering with it until it worked for them. So, maybe you can kind of see that as a small change too.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, and while we’re talking about laying the highway, I guess maybe I’ve seen all kinds of different ranges quoted in different places. But how long does it take to form a habit? Is it 28 days? Is it 66 days? Does it depend, and what does it depend on? Can you lay it down for us?

Kyra Bobinet
Well, Pete, I just so happen to be nerdy enough to know the answer to that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, please.

Kyra Bobinet
Actually, you know, about four years ago, I asked myself that same question, and I had my neuroscience team really, really scrub the scientific literature and put together a model based on the evidence that was there. So, actually, it takes one full year to fully, what’s called myelinate, which is that pavement in the brain that makes it superfast, electrical signal can go way faster, for a new habit to form, and that’s with fairly, daily, if not multiple times a week, repetition of that habit.

And so, what happens when you have a highway after about a year is that you’ve got now two copies of the same behavior. You have the old copy of, in my case, I used to go through the drive-thru all the time as just an easy way to get a meal, and as I broke that habit, my competing habit, my adult one-year old habit, was to cook at home for my kids. And once you have that cook-at-home thing, you can still go through the drive-thru, you still have that old highway. And most people don’t understand it. It’s not that they’re not patient about building the new highway, it’s that they make the mistake thinking the old highway is in disrepair.

Pete Mockaitis
So, a full year. Interesting. And so then, I imagine that’s like a full-blown highway and myelination is there. Kind of intermediate step before that or how do you think about that?

Kyra Bobinet
Right, there’s hope. There’s hope, Pete. Yeah, so what we know from the science is that around eight to ten weeks there is this kind of automation that starts to kick in, so it starts to feel easier and easier, more automatic. And then over the time that you do it, you’re basically sending so many signals to your brain of, “Hey, this is my new normal,” that your brain makes it feel more comfortable.

So, over the course of that year, you’re going to get more and more comfortable, it’s going to become more and more you as opposed to not you, and it’s going to get more and more automated, you can  use less and less brain energy to make it happen. So, that’s where the mindlessness really kicks in. To me, we should all be looking at mindlessness as the goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s fun. It’s a fun when you think about that mindlessness, which almost sounds like a bad thing to be avoided. And, today, mindfulness is everything. Obviously, mindlessness is the thing to pursue but it makes sense in this context, and I appreciate that. So, very cool. Well, so then, I guess there’s many, many habits one might choose to build. I’ve heard some cool research or thoughts on keystone habits, you know, habits that can sort of unlock a whole lot of great results. Tell us, when it comes to a well-designed life, what are some of the habits that tend to really do have some powerful ripple effects?

Kyra Bobinet
You know, the more I do this, and we’ve been building a software around this, and what we’re finding is that it is literally a matchmaking exercise between that person at that time in their life based on everything they’ve tried before, or they’re burnt out on, and what they’re open to, and what can kind of reengage them, and then what excites them, what fits their life, what fits their schedule. It is almost like that old adage where you’ve got a floating circle in the ocean, and an ocean turtle, a sea turtle, just happens to pop up their head right in the middle of that circle. That’s kind of how bullseye it has to be.

And so, I think that right now what we’re facing is, “How do we sift through all of the millions of options in any particular topic area and really find the thing that works for us, that works for me right now that’s going to, again, turn me on, that it makes sense to me, and it really is interesting to me?” And just having that, I call it, seeking behavior is the most important thing it seems.

And there’s another neuroscientist that I really admire, he passed away a couple of years ago, named Jaak Panksepp, and his conclusion was that there were seven emotional channels in the mammalian brain, we’re mammals. And he noticed that the number one most dominant emotion was seeking, seeking behaviors. So, think Google, think online shopping, think looking for a mate, looking for a job. That power of that looking is itself very therapeutic and positive for us.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, that feels like another hour of conversation right there. Wow!

Kyra Bobinet
We’ll get a part two.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the seeking is the strongest of the seven, and it just seems there’s a lot of implications to that. What do you think are amongst some of the biggest when it comes to folks who are trying to become awesome at their jobs? If the seeking behavior is among the strongest of those seven emotional channels, how do we make that work for us?

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, I mean, obviously, the tribe that follows you is of that ilk. They’ve already won that particular contest because they’re seeking, they’re taking in new information, they’re leaning into more and more answers for them, and they are perusing all the wisdom that you’re sharing on this show and the people that you bring on this show. So, basically, they’re locked in there. I think just hearing it might just be another validation of that. Keep doing that, you’re on the right track. That’s exactly what we all need to do.

And, in fact, it should be probably a red flag in that case for this audience that if you stop seeking, maybe look at that. If you get stuck in your career, or in your progress at work, then look at seeking first. Did you lose seeking? Did you lose curiosity? Did you lose spending time wondering about things and opening yourself up? Because that’s where that next round of growth would lead you to.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. Thank you. Well, so I also love to get your take when it comes to automating, building good habits and breaking bad habits. Are there any particular behaviors? You mentioned there’s a matchmaking situation, but any sort of small behaviors you recommend we might start doing right away to make it easier to develop these highways?

Kyra Bobinet
You know, in the habit science, there’s two variables that stand out as the most important. Number one is time, the time of day or the time after or before. Your brain understands time as sequences, like, “I do this before I do that,” you know, “I shower before I get dressed.” And it also understands things in terms of time of, “I do this on Sundays,” time of week, time of day. And so, if you’re trying to do a habit and you haven’t anchored it in time or how your brain understands time, it’s likely going to get lost in the wash of your life and distractions. So, that’s one thing I would say.

The other thing that the science is saying is that location is huge. We also understand, “I do this in my car. I do this at my desk. I do this when I go to the cafeteria.” Those kinds of triggers, they’re called context cues, are the thing that really helps to anchor the habit in space, if you will. So, you’ve got time and space, and then there’s the social element, too, which is, “I do this with these people.”

So, one of the reasons why it’s so hard not to be good, some people call it, I don’t call it that, but at a birthday party to not eat cake when everybody else is eating cake is that your brain is saying, “Oh, I eat birthday cake with other people. I don’t just go to the grocery store and throw it in my grocery cart usually by myself. Happy birthday to me.” It’s very social.

So, those are some three ways that I think if somebody who’s thinking about a habit could strengthen it and could really help them to select the right one for them.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, with all this talk about environment and habits, I’m curious in terms of what have you seen in workplaces are some of the, and I know it’s going to be a special fit in matchmaking, person to person, but what are some of the most prevalent bad things in habits and environments, and good things in habits and environments that you’re seeing in workplaces today?

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, I would say the most troublesome one is the stress habit that gets turned into gossip and toxicity. So, most cultures don’t have, I’ll call it, an anus for the stress that gets built up there. Pardon, I’m a doctor so that kind of word is available to me.

Pete Mockaitis
It might be the first time where the word anus has been uttered on this show. Thank you, Kyra.

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, the listeners are like, “What did she say?” So, yeah, I said anus.

Pete Mockaitis
You mean, you’re screening it out I think is where you’re going with this, yeah.

Kyra Bobinet
I said anus, yeah, exactly. Let’s say it a couple of times. So, yeah, we need some outlet for all the stress and friction. And people are moving a million miles a minute, they’re going from meeting to meeting to meeting, or they’ve got production schedules, or they’re stocking shelves like crazy, whatever your job is, and you are going back to back to back to back. Most people can’t even find time to go to the restroom at their modern work, right?

So, all of that creates all this friction and all of this like angst and rumination that the brain is going through, and then there’s not a real good mechanism that needs to be designed for really, “Whew!” exhale, the anus, you know, pooping, getting it all out. And so, that then turns into backbiting, gossiping, cannibalizing each other, that sort of thing. And so, I would say that what works for everybody is to engineer some downtime in the middle of the day to find ways to give yourself a mental break. And this is where mindfulness comes in really good, and your three deep breaths, and you literally reset your brain. And you just have to remind yourself how to do that or get your attention to remember to do the good thing that you know to do.

So, those kinds of mechanisms, I think, are universal. And then there’s sort of little productivity things that people, I would say there’s different segments of productivity tricks and hacks that people have. There is the procrastinators, like myself, who need to have external deadlines to bump our noses up against. There’s people who are super diligent, who are maybe introverts who need that quiet time away. There’s people who are extroverts who need to go and pull together a bunch of people and talk everything out.

And so, those are some ways that I see are mushy but could be more clarified if somebody were to take the time and kind of almost journal or articulate for themselves, “What kind of person are you? What kind of worker are you? When do you see yourself really shine and really turn on?” And I think that’ll help people understand some of the habits that are maybe positive and maybe toxic for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s lovely. Thank you. And what are some of the most encouraging great stuff that you’re seeing there?

Kyra Bobinet
My heroes these days is a company called Workday, and they do HR technologies, kind of SaaS platforms. But the thing I like about it is that their people who are in charge of their employee wellbeing are focusing on rumination because one of the good things that’s come out of the mindfulness research of late in the neuroscience side is that we know now that if your brain is on loop in an area called, forgive me, dorsolateral PFC, which is prefrontal cortex. It’s basically kind of if you look at your forehead and you kind of go an inch to the right or left, there’s two little areas there that are basically causing you to focus on yourself.

And rumination is, “Oh, did I do that right? Oh, what does she think of me? Oh, am I going to get fired? Oh, when is my performance review? Am I ever going to get rise up in this company? Do I need to look for another job? Does so and so like me?” all that rumination. And what they know, what Workday is dealing with is training programs, and discussions, and wellbeing initiatives to help people deal with that rumination, because that has been tied to, again, going back to MRI studies, to feelings of depression, feelings of anxiety. We have an epidemic of anxiety these days because of the number of triggers our brain sustains that throws us into rumination on a daily basis.

So, I think the modern workplace is really how do we design for freeing ourselves from these brains kind of loop tendency to get into rumination sequences, you know?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Kyra, I’m fascinated by, boy, I’m counting some research associated with how our current levels of anxiety are just like wildly higher than they were a generation or two ago. And so, that’s whole another conversation.

Kyra Bobinet
Well, what are you seeing in that? Because you live this every single day. You live and breathe in this industry and in this area.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think I heard a talk in which someone said that, in particular, I think they were talking about teenagers had levels of anxiety just sort of like normally like in terms of their day-to-day experience that were comparable to, I think, sort of veterans suffering from PTSD. And I said, “What?” And so, that was eye-opening. So, I’ve got two precious kiddos under two right now, and I’m thinking about their future, I was like, “Whoa! What is going on there? That’s intriguing.” And I’ve yet to do my seeking of many answers there. But you brought up something intriguing there with regard to, hey, we have so many more triggers now for rumination that lead to anxiety. So, could you unpack what are some of those big triggers we’ve got now that we didn’t have before?

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah. So, we have so much exposure, right? So, let’s say, take a typical Western person in the U.S. for example, and even before they start their first meeting or activity at work, they have listened to or watched a million things that could’ve triggered an emotion in them. So, all that residue is kind of spinning around in their subconscious, and that’s going to lead to rumination if they do not do something consciously and mindfully about it. So, if they ground out and say, “I send compassion to that war-torn area I just heard about,” or, “I just heard about the fires in my area or a tornado that happened in the Midwest,” or any of those things. Like, it does land in the brain. And even if you think you’re tough and you move on, it mulls around inside.

And so, that’s the kind of fodder or tinder by which this rumination fire just starts to burn, it starts to go and go and go, and it’s subconscious. So, what happens is that you don’t even notice it until maybe, I’ve talked to executives who suddenly have panic attacks on a work trip, and they’re the most solid person in the world, and they’re super extroverted and things like that, but that’s how it’s affecting us. It’s just that constant touch on things you can do nothing about but you have an emotional response to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Part of the mystery is in place there and I appreciate that. Kyra, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Kyra Bobinet
Pete, what I stand for at this point is just making people unstoppable. For me, the most significant thing in my career so far has been really understanding how iteration and iterators never fail, and they’re in all kinds of industries. So, the one thing I really care about is just really helping people to wake up to that fact, the fact about your brain and how it works, and it helps you get around the habenula and all the little things that blow up in your face. And that, to me, is revolutionary in terms of people’s success at work and in life. And I’m just super stoked about that conversation and that concept and people making that their own as well.

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

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah. So, kind of along those lines. I had a mentor and he used to have this really interesting voicemail because I’ll call him sometimes for some moral support, or, “How do I do this?” And his voicemail said, “Hi, this is David. I didn’t catch you right now. I’ll catch you later.” And he said, “Don’t ever give up no matter what you do,” and then he hangs up. And that’s my favorite quote of all time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s lovely. Thank you. And how about a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Kyra Bobinet
So, for me, it is the iterative mindset study that we did. Again, we’ve been building up this research for a couple of years now on the Walmart Project, and we found that this iterative mindset existed in people who succeeded but then we did, we took a huge chance in broad daylight, in front of our biggest customer, it’s the biggest professional risk I’ve ever taken, and we did this study to see if we could get people to adapt this mindset and if it would change their outcomes.

And we actually found that we could get them to lose weight at the regular one pound a week, a healthy pace, and that they have habit formation that was statistically significant, and they had mindset formation that was statistically significant. So, to me, that was just delightful and really following the science and reading all of the homework before that really helped us set this up for something that was going to work out.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, that’s powerful. And maybe if we could hear one sentence on how would you articulate, characterize the iterative mindset as oppose to its alternative?

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah. And the credit goes to the MacGyvers of the world. This is something that even though I’m putting language to it, this is found in nature. So, people are just so clever, and it’s so amazing. So, these are people that work for Walmart, lower socioeconomic status, they have every stressor every time and money constraints in the world, family not being supportive of them, and they changed their health, they changed their lifestyle to be healthy against all these odds.

And what they all had in common was this iterative mindset, which is two parts that we can tell. Number one is they see what they’re trying next as an experiment. It’s not like this do or die. It’s not a goal. It’s just, “Hmm, maybe I’ll play with this a little bit. Maybe I’ll practice this a little bit.” So, they see it as a practice, they see it as a non-consequential experiment, that’s part number one.

Part number two is when they need to change something, either because a life disruptor came in, they had to move away from their favorite gym, or their shift changed and they can no longer do what they were doing before, cooking for their kids, whatever, they would iterate. And much like tech here in Silicon Valley, that iteration, that relentless iteration of, “I’m just going to iterate and tweak and tinker until I find the next thing that works for me,” made them different from everybody else because everybody else goes, “Oh, I failed.” Boom! They hit their habenula. Boom! They stop trying without even knowing it. And, boom, they quit, they quit trying. And that is the biggest problem.

And every time I talk to clinicians or people who’ve changed their lives, they recognize this pattern, they’re like, “That’s how I do it.” So, I know that it’s real, I know that it’s natural, I know that it’s not like high academia, but it’s something that everybody can do to make their life better. And, in fact, I haven’t met a single person who has made their life better who didn’t do it in this way.

Pete Mockaitis
Powerful. Thank you. Now, could you share with us a favorite book?

Kyra Bobinet
Yes. So, my favorite book that I read every night with my husband, just one little passage because it’s teeny tiny, it’s called Tao Te Ching with Steven Mitchell as the interpreter. And I just love it because it kind of messes with my sense of reality. It says, “Do without doing.” And that’s just one of those come-ons, that’s like, “What? I don’t understand.” So, I like making myself feel like I’m confused and I don’t really understand this deep profound philosophy stuff, but I still like to take it in and try to chew on it a little bit.

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

Kyra Bobinet
So, for me, I use a couple of things. For my to-do list, I like the Clear app, and I only look at the top three things every day because your brain only understands, so that’s a three. I also have been using Otter lately to write my new book, and that just transcribes all my words because I’m better at talking than sitting down and making myself write, and that’s one of those Ulysses contract things.

And then I also, every year it’s coming up now, I’m going to do another vision board for 2020. So, I actually do a vision board. I do it with just a big Sharpie and a big nice piece of poster board, and I put it up for the year. And pretty much everything that happens in the year follows that vision board.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you frequently?

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, I think that the one that’s been really resonating with people lately is mindlessness is the new mindfulness because we know we’re busy, we know we’re distracted, and we know we have to, if we’re going to change our lives and change our behavior, we have to get it to a mindless state.

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

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah. Well, we have our company website EngagedIn.com. Our product website is FreshTri.com and then my namesake website, you can always say hi to me, DrKyraBobinet.com. I love to hear from people.

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

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, there’s no reason to stop trying, that’s my message is just be unstoppable and get around your habenula. And what I said about the iterative mindset works for you or you need to even tinker or tweak that to fit you or the way you think, do it, because there’s no reason to stop these days. And if you find yourself getting stuck, just shake it off and realize you can iterate your way out of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Kyra, this has been so much fun. Thank you and good luck in all of your adventures.

Kyra Bobinet
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.