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Nov 27
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918: How to Think and Innovate Like a Genius with Paul Sloane

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Paul Sloane discusses how to become more innovative and effective by adopting different styles of thinking.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The top question to ask when problem-solving
  2. The simple trick for improving your memory
  3. How to build rapport with anyone with one phrase

About Paul

Paul Sloane is the author of many books on lateral thinking and the leadership of innovation.  He graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Engineering. He had a successful career in sales at IBM before becoming Marketing Director and then Managing Director at the database company, Ashton-Tate. He was subsequently the VP International and CEO of software companies. He now speaks and consults on lateral thinking and innovation with corporate clients.

Resources Mentioned

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Paul Sloane Interview Transcript

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

Paul Sloane
Peter, I’m delighted to be on the show.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m delighted to be chatting and I am excited to hear about some of your wisdom you’ve collected over a whole career with 17 books, talking lateral thinking, being more brilliant. So much good stuff. But first, can you tell us the tale of how you met Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney?

Paul Sloane
Well, no great tale to tell, really. I took my granddaughter to school one day, to primary school, and it was a private primary school in Sussex in England. And as I was walking through the carpark, a man said hello to me, and I said hello back to Sir Paul McCartney, whose daughter went to that same school as well. So, that was good.

And then a friend of mine, he sponsored The Rolling Stones. He worked as a managing director of a big mobile phone company, T-Mobile, and they sponsored The Rolling Stones on some of their major concerts. And we got to meet them, and I shook hands with Mick Jagger. He’s really quite tiny and frail. I thought he’ll never last the concert. And then he came out and he performed, and he was just brilliant. I’ve seen Paul McCartney perform, too. And they’re two of my great heroes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s cool. All right. Just right place, right time.

Paul Sloane
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, now I’m intrigued here. You share some of your best thinking and about thinking. Have you made any particularly striking, surprising discoveries about us humans and how we do our thinking and problem-solving over the course of researching this in your career?

Paul Sloane
Well, I wouldn’t claim anything innovative or profound, actually, but I think that the most important thing I’ve found is that people think in very predictable ways, and they think in grooves, and they tend to use the same kind of thinking, the thinking that has served them well up till then. And I think it’s like a tennis player who’s got a very good forehand but they don’t have a very good backhand or they don’t volley very well. But if they play every shot with a forehand, they can be competitive.

And we’re a bit like that. We might use critical thinking, or we might use logical thinking, but not use creative thinking, or lateral thinking, or emotional thinking. But because we go through life making decisions based on the thinking style which has suited us, we get through it. It’s competent. But if you want to be outstanding, if you want to be an outstanding tennis player, you have to develop drop shots, you have to develop your backhand, you have to go to the net, you have to volley, you have to smash. And you need every shot in the book.

And to be a great thinker, to be a great, really, effective person at work, you need a variety of styles which suit different situations and different challenges. And that’s what I address in my book How to be a Brilliant Thinker. And what I’m really saying is you need to develop your skill at visual thinking, at mathematical thinking, at logical thinking, at creative thinking, at lateral thinking. A whole range of different thinking styles will make you much more competent and effective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us, perhaps, any interesting studies or data or cases you’ve seen, inspiring tales of folks who have upgraded, transformed their thinking capabilities and seen cool results from it?

Paul Sloane
Well, I’ve got some personal experiences of my own where I’ve changed style, and I deliberately try to enhance that. So, I worked for IBM, I went through IBM’s sales training and management training, and had a successful career in sales and management. And then I got headhunted and joined a software company as marketing director, and I was in charge of a team of bright, enthusiastic, young people but they were chaotic. They were charging all over the place, doing all sorts of undisciplined things. And I thought it was my job to manage that and to bring IBM discipline to the place.

And one day, on a car journey, a managing director who was a very experienced guy, said to me, he said, “Paul, you’re too tough on your people.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, you’re telling them what to do all the time.” And I said, “Isn’t that my job?” And he said, “No.” And he was right, and I was being too prescriptive in my approach, and not really empowering people and challenging them to come up with their own solutions.

Whenever somebody came to me with a problem, I’d say, I’d come up with my idea, which was often a good idea, I’d say, “Try this. Do it this way,” and telling them how to do their jobs and, in a sense, micromanaging them, and it wasn’t a good style. You don’t develop people with that sort of leadership management style. And I’d like to think that I changed, and it was like St. Paul on the road to Damascus moment for me, that I realized that I was being too prescriptive, and I needed to be more empowering and trust people.

And if somebody comes to you with a problem, instead of saying, “Here’s what you should do,” the right way to handle it, I think, is to say, “What ideas have you got?” and challenge them to come up with ideas first, and prompt them to think about different approaches and explore possibilities with them. And maybe, eventually, they’ll go with your approach, maybe they’ll come up with a better approach themselves, but that will help develop them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And in sort of the language that you’re using with different styles of thinking, how would you articulate what was your previous thinking approach in those exchanges versus your new approach?

Paul Sloane
I’d say my previous thinking approach was command and control as a style, which is a management style which is effective if you’re running a junior team, an inexperienced team, an ineffective team, people weren’t doing very well, command and control is sometimes necessary. But I think, what I would call lateral leadership is where you don’t lead from the from the front, you lead from the side as a collegial leader, and as a colleague, you empower people and trust them. And if you trust people to succeed, you have to trust them to fail as well, and you have to let go. And that’s a different thinking style and a different management style.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us then what’s the big idea, the core thesis, behind your book How to be a Brilliant Thinker?

Paul Sloane
It’s about that. It’s about adopting different styles, deliberately developing different styles of thinking, and choosing a style which is appropriate for you and for the moment. And to be really successful at work, to get promoted, you need to be good at managing people. And if you’re a very good data analyst, or a very good programmer, you might be using a lot of logical skills, a lot of rational skills, but you’re not using emotional skills to relate to people, and understand them, and persuade them, and motivate them.

And you’ll never get promoted unless you learn those emotional-thinking skills, emotional intelligence, as well as logical intelligence. And if you want to be a successful marketer, you have to use creative intelligence and lateral thinking, to be able to think of innovative radical ideas. So, you need this whole range of skills to develop your thinking, and that’s the basis of the book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you lay out for us this menu? You’ve used a number of different categories or types of thinking: the emotional, the lateral, the creative, the logical. Can you lay out what are the different types of thinking in your typology? And how do you define them? And how do you improve them?

Paul Sloane
So, just to read some of the titles of the chapters, “Consider the opposite,” “Confront assumptions,” “Analyze problems.” So, I built quite a bit of problem analysis, and formal problem analysis, critical thinking, asking questions, thinking in combinations, parallel thinking such as de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, so parallel thinking technique.

Thinking creatively, thinking laterally, how to think what nobody else thinks, how to evaluate ideas, how to make difficult decisions, how to develop your verbal thinking so you can express yourself clearly, how to develop your mathematical thinking so that you can actually use mathematics as a tool, gets with probability, think visually, develop your emotional intelligence, how to be a brilliant conversationalist is one of the chapters in the book, how to win arguments, how to ponder, how to maximize your memory, how to improve your memory, how to tell stories, how to think humorously.

So, these are some of the chapters in the book I talk about common thinking errors and ways to boost your brain, and games to help you think better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us perhaps what are the most common and destructive errors in thinking that you see professionals make? And how could we go about preventing that from occurring?

Paul Sloane
Well, there are a lot of errors or a lot of cognitive biases and errors, but I think one of the big things that hold us back is making assumptions. And the lateral thinker challenges assumptions all the time, and the command-and-control leader, the conventional leader, the conventional person makes a lot of assumptions. And the older you are, the more experienced you are, maybe the more intelligent you are, the more assumptions you make every day. And we see it time and time again of people being taken.

Literally, thousands of people lost billions of dollars to Bernie Madoff because they assumed he was a genius, and they assumed that he could give higher than average returns to investors year after year after year, and they made the wrong assumption. People assumed that Elizabeth Holmes was telling the truth when she said at Theranos that she’s got a much better method of analyzing blood, and it was a fraud.

Collin Powell, and the USA, and lots of other countries assumed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but he didn’t. Wrong assumptions lead us down wrong paths all the time. And lateral thinkers, creative thinkers, endlessly curious and always prepared to ask a question, and to analyze the evidence, and they believe in evidence, they believe in experiments, they believe in real-world data.

They don’t believe in conspiracy theories. They don’t believe in models. They believe in experiments and finding out and challenging assumptions by asking fundamental questions, basic questions, is one of the central tenets of lateral thinking and of my books.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Could you share with us perhaps a professional example in the workplace where you think this is happening all the time, folks failing to challenge assumptions, and some assumptions that might well need to get challenged?

Paul Sloane
Well, you see it all the time with, and it’s so easy to see in hindsight but when you’re involved in a business meeting, there are all sorts of assumptions going on, and those assumptions frame the whole view of what’s possible and what’s not possible. I want you to imagine that you work for Encyclopedia Britannica and it’s 1990, and you’re in a meeting, and they’re talking about how they can increase sales.

And you said, “Just a minute, let’s look at the assumptions we’re making here. We’re assuming that people want to buy books, and that these books contain curated knowledge, which is provided by experts and edited by experts, teams and teams of experts, and that they’re expensive, and that we go out and sell those books. And we assume that that’s the best model.”

“What if we could create a model which is completely different where we didn’t pay experts at all. We got people to contribute to the encyclopedia themselves, and we got volunteers to edit it, and we gave it away virtually for free?” And if you’d made that suggestion, it would’ve been a career-ending suggestion, I think, with the company because people would’ve been horrified that you even thought that because it challenged all the basic assumptions on which the business was built.

And yet Wikipedia is that model. They don’t use paid experts. They use volunteers to write the articles, and edit, and manage, and curate all of that knowledge and expand it all the time. And it works, and they give it away for free. And that model, a completely different business model, totally destroyed Encyclopedia Britannica’s previously highly successful business model.

If you were working for a taxi company, and thinking, “How can we do things better?” you would never have thought of what Travis Kalanick thought when he said, “Let’s create a taxi company without a single taxi.” It’s an app. And it all does is it puts people together, those who want a taxi ride and those who are prepared to give somebody a ride in their personal car for a small fee. He created Uber which became worth $60 billion, and it’s a taxi company without a single taxi, and it challenged all of the assumptions that taxi companies are based on.

Same with Airbnb. They’re a hotel company that doesn’t own a single hotel room. So, lateral thinkers, creative thinkers, are prepared to challenge the basic assumptions that everyone else in the room takes for granted and assumes is a given and must be obeyed.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. In each of these examples, we had an established entrenched player, or system, and then there was an external disruptive force that operated without those fundamental assumptions. And I guess I’m curious, in terms of cognitive biases or whatever the word is at play here, in each of those instances, the folks at the hotel chain, a taxi company, at the Encyclopedia Britannica, have a deeply invested interest in continuing to do things the way they are, “Hey, I have a fleet of taxis,” “I’ve got a beautiful set of many large, expensive, gorgeous hotel buildings,” “I’ve got decades of sales that I’m beholding in my Encyclopedia Britannica.”

And so, in some ways, if they disrupted themselves, maybe they would be in a better position and sort of leading the charge. But how do you recommend when we are entrenched in our ways? And it’s almost like, I think, in many ways, we believe what we want to believe, and we want to believe, at Encyclopedia Britannica, if we’re there at that time, that we can continue doing the cool thing we’ve been doing and keep this gravy train rolling and growing.

And so, how do you think about that, that notion of we tend to believe what we want to believe as opposed to what is true?

Paul Sloane
Well, you’re actually right. We tend to believe what we want to believe, but it’s more insidious than that because the customers mislead you. One of my favorite books is by Clayton Christensen, it’s called The Innovator’s Dilemma. I don’t know if you’re read it, but in there, he says, “What stymies great companies is that they make the mistake of listening to their customers,” and I nearly fell off my chair when I read that because I was always taught that you have to listen to customers, and you have to please customers, and that’s your purpose in business is to find solutions that customers like.

But he gives countless examples, particularly from computer disk drives where the leader at each generation was misled by customers who said, “We like your product. Give us more of what you’re doing, only better, faster, cheaper in green, or in German,” or whatever. Customers always want incremental innovations because they don’t understand radical innovations. A customer will never indicate a radical solution to you.

And if somebody else who comes along with a radical solution, and, initially, the customers rebuff it, and the next time they rebuff it, and then they rebuff it, and then, eventually, they all move over to it. There are some early adopters and then the late majority, and then everyone moves over. And the previous incumbent gets wiped out. But they were doing a single right thing, they were listening to their customers, they were following their customers.

An example I give is this. Say, you were making spectacles in the 1950s, and you said to your customers, “How can we make our service better to you?” They might’ve said, “Well, a scratch-proof lens would be good,” or, “A plastic frame would be good,” or, “A flexible frame,” “A different type of glass,” “A shaded glass.” What would they not have asked for? Not one customer in 10,000 would’ve said, “I want you to create a piece of glass that I stick on my eyeball every morning.” Contact lenses.

Not one customer in 10,000 would’ve said, “I want you to cut through my eyeball with laser beams to change the geometry of my eyeball.” Laser eye surgery. And because you’re thinking spectacles, you’re thinking physical things. The companies that are selling spectacles weren’t selling spectacles, they were selling better sight. And another way of getting better sight is with contact lenses or with laser eye surgery. But no spectacle manufacturer would ever have conceived of those ideas, and no customer would’ve indicated that.

And so, it’s very difficult, and very often it’s the outsider who comes up with a radical innovation. And I’ve written about this many times in my blogs and books that it’s the outsider that tells that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that says a lot in terms of, it’s sort of backing up, zooming out, and getting to the fundamentals can help open up a lot of this stuff. In the Encyclopedia, it’s like, “What are we really trying to do here? We’re trying to give people a broad set of knowledge about a broad set of things. Okay. Well, there’s a lot of ways we can pull that off.” Or, “We’re trying to get people from point A to point B.”

Paul Sloane
As you say, you’ve got this inventory, you’ve got all this stock, you’ve got this history, you’ve got momentum, and the question they should ask is, “What is the problem that we are solving for customers? What is the customer problem that we solve? And is there a better way to solve that problem?”

The taxi driver, they’re providing a journey for the customer. That’s what they’re providing. The hotel chain Marriott is providing accommodation for a night. And Encyclopedia Britannica was selling access to knowledge. And in each case, if they thought about that in terms of “What is the fundamental product or service we’re providing? What’s the problem we’re solving for customers?” they might’ve stood a chance, though still unlikely, of conceiving an entirely different way of solving that problem.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Thank you. All right. So, a common thing we got to do is challenge assumptions. One way to do that is to ask big questions about the fundamentals that we’re delivering. What’s another major thinking error that is rampant in professional environments that we should tackle next?

Paul Sloane
Well, another big problem is confirmation bias where we look for evidence that supports our hypothesis, what we believe, and we discount evidence which contradicts what we believe. And we see this time and time again. We saw it with COVID, we saw it with the people who believed in vaccines and don’t believe in vaccines, and the people who believed in lockdowns and don’t believe in lockdowns, and they would find selective evidence that supported their viewpoint.

Occasionally, the people that didn’t believe in vaccines would say, “I heard about a chap, and he took the vaccines, and then he fell very ill, and that shows they’re not suitable.” And it’s one example out of thousands and thousands. So, confirmation bias where we look for evidence that confirms our beliefs, and we don’t allow our beliefs to be challenged. The question I often ask people is, “When was the last time you changed your mind on a really serious issue?” And most people don’t change their minds ever.

They might change their mind as they say, “What meal are we going to have tonight?” but they don’t change their mind on a big issue, “Are we supporting the Democrats or the Republicans?” They’re tribal. And once you get into one of those groups, then they go to websites and media sources which support a certain viewpoint, and they don’t absorb information from other websites or media sources, which would challenge their viewpoint. And that is a great enemy of thinking, and of diversity, and of innovation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, confirmation bias is all over the place, it’s problematic. How do you recommend we combat it?

Paul Sloane
By asking questions, by deliberately being open minded, and force yourself to be open minded. I gave a TEDx Talk on “Are You Open Minded?” And if you go on YouTube and search for Paul Sloane TEDx, you can see it. It’s only 13, 14 minutes but it’s had a tremendous number of views. And in it I talk about this whole concept of everyone thinks they’re open minded but most people aren’t. Nearly every one of us has blinkers, to some extent. And I talk about ways to tackle it.

And one way to tackle it is to deliberately go to the opposite end of the spectrum. If you normally watch CNN, watch Al Jazeera instead. If you normally take The Times in England, take The Guardian. So, deliberately go to channels and speak to people who will give you a different perspective. So, that’s one of the approaches.

And another is to just do something different every day to deliberately break the routine, whatever routine you’re in, whether it’s the way you go to work, or where you sit, or whatever you do, deliberately do something different. Introduce the random deliberately into your life. If you go on Wikipedia, and you look on the left, there’s a random article of the day. If you go there, you’ll learn something new that you didn’t know, and it will give you a slightly different view of the world.

So, there are these techniques that you can use in terms of deliberately displacing yourself. You tend to mix with people who are like you. I said to my wife the other day, I said, “I met an interesting new chap at the golf club.” And she said, “Let me guess, is he white?” “Yes.” “Is he your age?” “Yes.” “Is he a golfer?” “Yes.” “Is he middle class?” “Yes.” “He’s not new. He’s exactly like you.”

And she’s right. I’m mixing with people who are like me. And you’ve got to deliberately step outside that comfort zone sometimes and mix with people who aren’t like you in order to understand their perspective of the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. One of your chapters, you talk about thinking humorously. What’s the value in that? And how is it done other than just, well, laugh?

Paul Sloane
Well, humor breaks barriers, and humor is very useful. In my talks, I do a lot of serious talks, but I very often start with a joke or I put some humor into the talk in order to leaven it, in order to lighten it, in order to have some light and shade. Because if you just concentrate on the heavy serious stuff all the time, it’s oppressive for the audience. And if you can mix in a little bit of humor, it makes you relatable.

And as a person in the office, it makes you more popular. As a manager, if you use humor, but not sarcasm, not cynicism, but if you use gentle humor, it makes you more interesting and approachable, and I think humor is a very useful thing in life, and it can diffuse tension in a lot of situations as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And any pro tips on how we go about thinking more humorously?

Paul Sloane
Some people say, “I can’t tell a joke.” But everyone can tell a joke, and everyone can learn some funny things, and everyone can read humorous articles and humorous writers, and learn some of the techniques that they use in order to just put a little bit in there. And the people you follow on Twitter or Facebook, there are some people who are witty and write funny things, and some people who don’t and write very dull things.

So, focus on the people who are interesting and witty, and sometimes repeat some of the things they say, but give acknowledgements, say, “I read this today, and so and so said this,” and then repeat a witty from someone else. You don’t have to be original. You don’t have to come up with all the jokes yourself in order to be a funny person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And one of the ways you mentioned thinking was visually? How is that done?

Paul Sloane
Well, some people are visual thinkers. They think in terms of pictures. And one of the exercises I do in my workshops where I run a brainstorm is the random word. And you have a challenge, whatever the challenge is, “How can we improve productivity? How can we cut the project lead times? How can we save costs in terms of our recruitment?” whatever it is, and then you take a word at random from the dictionary, and then you get some associations of the word. And then you try and force an idea based on the word which would solve the problem.

And you’ll come up with a stupid idea, a stupid idea, a stupid idea, and then, occasionally, you come up with a really creative idea. And people don’t believe that until they see it and it works. And I demonstrate it in my TEDx Talks, so that’s another reason to watch that on YouTube. But you take the dictionary, you open it at random, and you just take that random noun, and off you go. And if the one word doesn’t work, you just go on and find another one, and you’ll never run out of words in the dictionary.

Now, that method works but sometimes I do it with pictures instead. I take random pictures: a picture of a cathedral, a picture of a candle, a picture of a dog, a picture of a polar bear, a picture of an iceberg, a picture of fun fare, anything, and I got a whole range of random pictures. And then you put the random picture up, and you say, “Right. What ideas does that picture give you in terms of this challenge?” And some of it works much better with a picture than with a word. Some people work verbally and some people work visually.

And I think if you choose those different styles, and you try thinking in pictures, thinking in cartoons, thinking in storyboard in terms of something written, it can sometimes be much more powerful and a much better way. If you’re trying to communicate ideas, then words are fine and PowerPoint is fine, but images can be so much more powerful. And images, people like video, they like image, and it can be a much more effective way of getting a message across. So, if you’re not using visuals at the moment, visual thinking, then you’re missing a trick.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s clever and I like the random prompt, like a dictionary word or previously the Wikipedia random article. I’m thinking about if you want images, I guess you could go to Google and I’m Feeling Lucky, and then images, and you’ll get any number of things.

Paul Sloane
Exactly right. You will.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, you’ve got one of your final chapters, Games for Brilliant Thinkers. I like games. What do you recommend?

Paul Sloane
Oh, I love all sorts of games, and some games are very logical. I play chess very seriously. I like chess, that’s very analytical and logical but I like lateral thinking games. There’s a game called Codenames where you have to find connections between words to suggest links to your partner in that game. That’s very good.

I like Sudoku. I like Monopoly. I like Cluedo. I like all of those, but a whole range of games. Poker is a great game too, though it’s a dangerous game because you can lose a lot of money at it. But all of those things are great, I think. Let me see, what did I say in terms of games for thinkers? I said Chess, Scrabble, Monopoly, Bridge, Cluedo, Backgammon, Poker, Dingbats, or Rebuses, as they’re called. Riddles are visual word puzzles. Articulate!, Trivial Pursuit, all of these are good. Pictionary, Charades is a lateral thinking game. We have to think of strange connections to get your message across.

And, of course, lateral thinking puzzles of which I’ve written several books, of lateral thinking puzzles, and they are things where you get strange situations, and then you have to ask questions, and you get yes or no answers from somebody who knows the answer. And that forces you to think laterally because, typically, you get stuck and, typically, you make the wrong assumptions. And it’s those wrong assumptions that hold you back so you have to test all your assumptions with the questions you ask in a lateral thinking puzzle.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And you also have a chapter called Maximize Your Memory. Tell us, how is memory still important nowadays with all of our technology, and resources, and AI, and Google Searches, and Wikipedias?

Paul Sloane
Well, you’ve got access to all those things but when you meet somebody, an employee at work, you need to remember their name, and you need to remember their wife’s name, if they work for you, or their partner’s name, and maybe their children’s names, and some issues, things that are important to them, and you can’t just go to your phone and look it up. So, remembering people’s names, have you read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie?

Pete Mockaitis
Yup.

Paul Sloane
It’s a classic book in 1930s. And one of the things he said is, “Use people’s names.” And what I would recommend to you, Peter, is that you use people’s names, and people like to hear their name. And that’s an example of something memory is really important, and you need to work on memory. There’s lots of minor things you can write down but there’s some important things you have to remember, and the techniques,

You’re driving along, suddenly you think of something, an urgent job you’ve got to do when you get to the office, you need a way of remembering those, and that’s one of the techniques I teach in my memory course, which I do, where you make a huge visual story about the things you’re trying to remember, and you exaggerate them, and you make them very vivid and very colorful and very dramatic. And then you can remember that story when you get home, and you can remember to do those things, which would otherwise just go straight out of your mind.

So, memory is important and everyone wants a better memory, and people always complain, as they get older, their memory is going and all the rest, but we can all memorize a lot more and remember a lot more things, and I show people different ways to do this with memory pegging and the virtual journey. So, when I give a talk, I’ll stand up and speak for 40 minutes at a conference without notes but I’m doing it with a virtual journey where I go through a particular route.

And in each place on the route, I’ve posted a picture, or a person, or an image of something which I want then to talk about. And I take that journey and I remember the items. The virtual journey is one of the techniques which I describe in the book and on my workshops.

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

Paul Sloane
Well, there’s a couple piece of advice I would give to people, to your listeners, and a powerful piece of advice which I wish I’d known sooner. Here’s one, and this is a phrase which you can use to get people to like you, and it works. It works with any person at any level in the organization. You’ll get your boss to like you, you’ll get your coworkers to like you, you’ll get your kids to like you, you get your partner to like you. And this is the magic phrase. Are you ready?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Paul Sloane
What you say is, “What I really like about you is…” Now, even if there’s 10 things you don’t like about your boss, there’s something about him or her that you like. You have to admit they’re really good at this. So, you say, “What I really like about you, Peter, is you’re always clear and to the point,” or whatever it is.

People like to be praised, and you can always find something good about anybody. So, if you say that, it’s demonstrated that people’s opinion of you goes up. They like you more. They’re softened to you. They’re warm to you. So, the next time you’re with somebody and you want to just improve your relationship, say honestly, and you can always do this sincerely because there’s always something about somebody, no matter how strange or odd they are, there’s always something about them that they’re good at.

And say, “What I really like about you is X.” So, that’s one tip I would give you. Another tip I would give, if you’re a manager, and this is so powerful, it’s wonderful, I was taught this on at one stage and it made a big difference, and it works for a manager, in particular, but it will also work for anybody. If you’re manager, you take your staff one by one, and you sit down with them, and you say, “I’m going to ask you two questions and I want you to give me honest answers here.” And they say, “Yes, fine. I’ll do that, boss.”

And you say, “Here’s the first question. What am I good at?” And, typically, they’ll tell you what you’re good at, “You’re very clear and you’re very decisive, and so, and so, and so.” And then the follow-up question, which is the key question, you say, “Where could I improve?” and then you shut up and listen. And you can’t disagree with them. You can’t say, “No, you’re wrong.” You could say, “Give me an example. Give me a for instance,” but you listen and you say thank you.

And because you’ve asked them the first question, what you’re good at, then it enables to answer the second question. If you start with the second question, it doesn’t work because they’re inhibited from giving you any criticism. People don’t like criticism. But because you’ve asked the first, they can balance it by saying, “Well, an area you could improve is X, Y, Z.” If you it with all your people and they come up with similar areas you can improve, you’ve learned something very, very valuable because you’ve seen something about yourself that, otherwise, you would never see.

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

Paul Sloane
Peter Drucker said this, and I sometimes open my talks with this. He said, “Every organization must prepare for the abandonment of everything it does.” And he said this way back in the 1960s or ‘70s, and he didn’t say every organization has to improve or have to change a bit. He said, “Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does.” And that is so powerful, I think, and so challenging for many people to take that on board, that I think that’s a very, very powerful quote.

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

Paul Sloane
Well, I would say Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, and the research he did there is very powerful, which shows how leading companies miss innovation because they are so committed to their existing methods and their existing customers. And he brings forth a lot of evidence to support that in his book.

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

Paul Sloane
I would say de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is one of my favorite management tools because it forces you to consider a proposition from several different perspectives, six different perspectives, it’s with the six hats. And it overcomes the big problem we have in meetings, which is “I like my idea. I don’t like your idea,” and the “I am right, you are wrong” thinking.

And with de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats,” everyone is forced to look at the thing, the proposition, from six different perspectives, including the yellow hat where everyone has to say what’s good about the idea. Even if you think it’s a lousy idea and it comes from your worst enemy in the whole organization, you have to say, “Well, it would do this. I have to admit, this is a benefit we’d get from it.”

And then the black hat, where even if it’s your idea and you love it, and you think it’s a great idea, you have to find fault with it, and you say, “Well, one drawback or one danger would be this,” and everyone has to wear the same hat at the same time. And as a thinking tool and a management tool, and a tool for improving decisions in meetings, it’s immensely powerful.

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

Paul Sloane
One of my favorites is “Implementing best practice is copying yesterday. Innovation is inventing tomorrow.” That’s one of mine. “Beware of successes. It’s a terrible teacher” is another one. I would say, “Ideas are the lifeblood of the organization. Don’t be the clot who blocks the flow of ideas.” And there are many people who block ideas and say no to ideas very quickly because most really clever original ideas sound crazy when they’re first articulated. So, there you are, three.

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

Paul Sloane
Well, I’m on Twitter @PaulSloane. I’m on LinkedIn, you can find me, Paul Sloane. My website is DestinationInnovation.com. And if you just type in DestinationInnovation.com or Paul Sloane TEDx, you’ll see my TEDx Talk, and I’m on Amazon as well, of course, so you can find my books on Amazon.com or any other Amazon.

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

Paul Sloane
Well, I would share with you the best piece of leadership advice I ever got, and this is so powerful. This is worth the price of admission on its own. This is just seven words and it’s really, really important for leaders but it also applies at other levels of the organization but particularly for leaders. And it goes like this, “Only do what only you can do.”

There are certain things that only the leader can do. Only the leader can praise people in the group, only the leader can hire new people, only the leader can work on strategy and direction. And there’s lots of other things which, as a leader, I was spending time on – firefighting and fixing problems, and things I should’ve delegated, and things I should’ve just ignored, and focus on the leadership tasks only.

And if you focus on the things that only you can do, then they’re the most important things that you should be focused on. So, only do what only you can do. And that applies whether you’re an artist, a musician, a creator, anything else, but particularly if you’re a leader.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Paul, thank you for this. I wish you much fun and brilliant thoughts.

Paul Sloane
Pete, I’ve enjoyed it, and we could go chatting forever but, yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Nov 20
0

917: Training Your Mind For Better Focus, Energy, and Willpower with Oren Jay Sofer

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Oren Jay Sofer shares how to engage contemplative practices to improve your focus, energy, and quality of life.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The five-item list that will help you focus better
  2. How to be unstoppable in the face of procrastination
  3. The three-second trick for boosting energy

About Oren

Oren Jay Sofer teaches meditation and communication internationally. He holds a degree in comparative religion from Columbia University and is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner for the healing of trauma. Oren is also the author of several books, including the best-seller Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication and his latest book, Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices toMeet a World In Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. His teaching has reached people around the world through his online communication courses and guided meditations. A husband and a father, Oren lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he enjoys cooking, spending time in nature, and home woodworking projects.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Oren Jay Sofer Interview Transcript

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

Oren Jay Sofer
Thanks, Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I believe something has changed since the last time we spoke.

Oren Jay Sofer
It certainly has.

Pete Mockaitis
And you’re a proud father now. Tell us the tale.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. Well, my wife and I are both in our 40s, and she came to me a couple of years ago, dropped the bomb, and said, “Hey, I think I want to have a kid.” And I said, “That’s different.”

Pete Mockaitis
Different?

Oren Jay Sofer
Well, different than where we were when we got together 10 years ago. Yeah, so I’m a meditator so I told her, “I love you, and that’s important to me, and this is not a small decision, so give me some time to think about this.” And we talked it over, of course, but I sat quietly with myself and I listened deeply, and I really asked myself, “Is this something that I’m willing to do?” And this image came to me, Pete, of a door opening. And I thought, “Yeah, I want to walk through that door. I want to see what this aspect of life is like. I’m here to learn. And what better learning than bringing new life into our world.”

And, of course, I had a lot of reservations and fears that I talked through close friends with who are parents, which was very, very helpful. One of my biggest fears was the state of our world and what does it mean to bring a new life in right now with so much changing so quickly and unraveling. And one of my good friends, who’s a social justice activist, an organizer, and has been for many years, who cares deeply and has thought very deeply about these issues, and as a parent, said to me, he said, “You know, Oren, I don’t think the world is going to be worse off for you having a child.”

And that really shifted something in me. It made me realize, “This could be a contribution rather than a drain on our society.” So, yeah, I’m now the proud parent of a 13-month-old baby, and we got through the first six months, which were really hard, and just delighting in him and learning so much from him every day, and really feeling like all of the meditation practice I’ve done has positioned me really well to be a dad and to meet this new being, and help him learn about our world.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful. Yes, I was just about to ask about those practices being helpful as I have read a book entitled, I’ll paraphrase a smidge, How to Not Lose Your Poo-Poo with Your Kids because that’s a common situation, Oren.

Oren Jay Sofer
Indeed.

Pete Mockaitis
And have you found that your years of practice have resulted in less of a tendency to be reactive and yell or lose it or otherwise react in a way that you’d rather not?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yes and. So, absolutely, there’s no question in my mind that the many years of meditation I’ve done, and really training myself to be aware of how I’m feeling and what’s happening in the moment has allowed me to make different choices, to notice when I’m getting reactive or frustrated, and ask for help or shift gears. And being a parent has pushed my edges unlike anything else.

Alongside all of the joy, it’s been incredibly humbling to see my patience run out at 3:00 in the morning with a screaming baby who doesn’t want to change his diaper, or feeling sleep-deprived and just not having anything left. So, I feel also this immense appreciation and profound respect for my own parents and for parents everywhere. It’s just been staggering to see how much time and energy and love it takes to keep a little human being alive.

Pete Mockaitis
Amen. Well, good to know that even the most contemplative among us can have that occur.

Oren Jay Sofer
Well, I’ll add one thing that’s been really huge, Pete, which is that I don’t beat myself up for it. When I slip up, when I lose my patience, when I get frustrated, all of the years of training and practicing kindness, and being with the harsh inner voice in my head, has shifted how I relate to myself and my difficulty so that when I act in a way that’s not aligned with my values or my intentions, instead of beating myself up, there’s a sense of tenderness and acceptance for my limitations, which is such a different place from which to learn and grow.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, as opposed to the scolding, like, “Okay, that was not what I was going for. All right. Let’s see what needs to change here and try to do better.” Okay. Well, you’ve got another opus coming out here, Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. That sounds big. Tell us what’s the big idea here?

Oren Jay Sofer
It is big. The big idea is that, so in the last 10, 15 years, meditation and mindfulness have kind of taken certain sectors in the public conversation by storm, and for some people that’s great, and for other people meditation is not something that’s interesting, it doesn’t work for them, and I respect that. So, the big idea here is that meditation is just one form of what is known more broadly as contemplative practice, which is essentially anything that cultivates reflection, awareness, and connects us with our sense of purpose and meaning in life.

So, the analogy I like to use is just like, say, lifting weights or strength training is one form of exercise, meditation is one form of contemplative practice. So, if you came to me and said, “Well, I don’t like to lift weights so I’m not going to exercise.” We would say, “That’s crazy. Why don’t you take a walk? Why don’t you bike? Why don’t you swim?”

So, in the same way, there’s this whole array of ways to strengthen our inner life and build more inner resources that’s much more varied than meditation. And my book is really about, “How do we broaden our scope and use the time that we have in our families, at work, on the planet, to develop this amazing set of powerful qualities we possess?” Like, energy, concentration, joy, patience, resolve, even things like play and rest. All of these are like different notes in our repertoire, and we can learn how to play them when we have the right tools.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. More energy, more concentration, more resolve, that sounds lovely, like a limitless pill going on. So, I want to really dig into the menu of this contemplative practices, but, first, I’ve got to hit it. Oren, can you share with us the evidence, the research, the basis by which we can claim that, indeed, pursuing some of these to-be-mentioned contemplative practices will boost energy and concentration and resolve, and other positive inner resources?

Oren Jay Sofer
I’ll give you a few datapoints. So, first, the whole field of positive psychology is based upon what’s known as Hebbian neuroplasticity, which was discovered by a man named Donald Hebb in the 1970s which essentially proved that our brains are not fixed, that both the structure and the function of our neurology can shift through repeated practice.

And what’s cool about that to me as a meditator is that modern neuroscience has borne out what contemplatives and mystics have known for millennia, which is that our inner world isn’t fixed, that it’s malleable, and what we do, how we act, and think, and speak every day affects it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, neuroplasticity…?

Oren Jay Sofer
Essentially, the phrase that a lot of people have heard is neurons that fire together, wire together. The more you do something, the better you get it, and that includes being frustrated, irritable, petty, and it includes being patient, kind, and generous. So, this is the underlying kind of property or principle why all this stuff works.

Okay. Then, if we look at specific qualities, we can see both that there’s a neurological basis for them, and that we can enhance and cultivate them. So, take a quality like generosity. A lot of different opinions out there about human nature, and several studies have shown that toddlers, two years old, can and do exhibit generosity.

So, one study that kind of blew me away, toddlers who have, like, a favorite teddy bear and who are really to it, like if you take it away or if it’s missing, they’re going to be inconsolable. When they’re put in a situation, and there’s a stranger who appears to need some comfort and consolation, that toddler will offer their favorite teddy to that stranger. So, there’s generosity, there’s empathy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as you say that, I’m just tearing up because, I guess, I got three young kids myself but that is a very beautiful point of evidence. And then I’m also thinking about Anne Frank, in spite of everything, I still believed people have a good heart, so the teddy bear sharing, when it’s near and dear to them, at such a young age, that strikes home.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. And as parents, I’m sure you’ve seen it. I was sitting on the couch the other day with my young son who just turned one, this was actually before he was one, and he was nibbling on a little piece of apple, really enjoying it. And what does he do? He takes a few nibbles and then he offers it to me and puts it in my mouth, and then he takes it back and nibbles a little more, and then he offers it to me.

So, one of the other things that we’ve seen in research on pro-social qualities, like empathy, like generosity, like compassion, like gratitude, is that while there is an innate neurological basis for these qualities, they also need to be strengthened and cultivated. So, we enter the world primed to have these incredibly powerful nourishing qualities for ourselves personally and for our society, but they need to be encouraged by the adults around us.

So, something like compassion can either grow and flourish based on the kind of mirroring and experiences we have as we grow, or can atrophy. One of the examples I like to use, just to come back to studies and research, and this is more of an analogy, is we know that the human organism is born with the capacity to learn any language on the planet. Our neurology is primed to learn any sound and grammar. We can learn any language.

And in the same way, I like to suggest that our hearts are primed to experience and know all of these beautiful capacities, like kindness, patience, courage, curiosity. And the question is, “Do we get the chance to learn them and develop them?” And at any point in life, we can tap into these and strengthen them. It’s kind of like having a high-fidelity stereo, and being able to adjust the treble and the mid and the bass so that we can really enjoy the music as fully as possible.

In the same way, do we have access to all of the potentials in our hearts? And are we able to kind of play all those notes in our lives, and experience courage, and ease, and wonder, and contentment, even forgiveness or wisdom? These are all things that we can grow and strengthen through choosing where we place our attention, which is really where the journey begins, and looking at how we use our attention, and what is competing for our attention in our world today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, these are big, beautiful, powerful ideas. And so, first, I’m going to go mercenary on you, Oren, it’s like, “Oh, that all sounds nice for mankind and the world, but how does it make me awesome at my job, Oren?”

Oren Jay Sofer
Absolutely, yeah. Well, as you point out quite appropriately, we spend an outsized amount of our time at work, and so how we work is really important. Our experience of our job, our coworkers, our self, isn’t fixed. It’s influenced not only by the external factors, many of which as we know are outside of our control. It’s influenced by what we bring to it, how we pay attention, and how we do our work every day.

So, using these skills, we can develop a different relationship with our work. We can learn to be more effective, to have more of a sustainable energy than this burst of energy and burning out, to have more focus and concentration rather than being scattered all the time. We can learn to really enjoy the aspects of our job that we like and get the most nourishment from them, which then creates a positive feedback loop where we have more energy and meaning because we’re focusing on that.

And, of course, this isn’t to kind of ignore or avoid the difficult things or the things that don’t work, but it’s to ensure that we’re not missing the good aspects of our work and our job and the people around us. And the more we’re able to develop the skills of attention, the more available we are for joy and goodness in our lives and our work, the more effective we can be because we’re not wasting precious time and energy reacting, we’re not stuck in stories from the past, we’re not pushing against things that are beyond our influence to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And, again, having that initial energy, concentration, and resolve can just be huge in terms of when, in some ways, that makes all the difference in terms of every minute or hour you’re spending on doing something, the work product will be high or low quality in large part based on how much quality energy, concentration, resolve you can give to it versus how likely you are saying, “Ah, maybe I’ll just handle some easy emails instead because I don’t have the energy, concentration, resolve to power through this tricky, ambiguous, frustrating, and high-value piece of work.”

Oren Jay Sofer
Right. And the beautiful thing about it is that when we’re able to marshal our resources in that way and really dig into a project, guess what, we get to celebrate and rest afterwards. We get to feel that sense of ease and satisfaction in knowing, “I knocked out the most important thing on my list today, and now I can breathe more easily.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Oren Jay Sofer
Brings rewards in the moment and in the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
And I suppose there’s little doubt that if you do something, you get better at that something, if it’s like playing golf, or juggling, or chess, or pumping iron, lifting weights, so we can see, or running, “Hey, I see improvements however I’m measuring that,” in terms of the chess rating, the bench press, 1 rep max, the balls not dropped, or the continuous minutes of juggling, whatever. There’s a means by which we do a thing and then we can see and measure progress.

Could you give us an example of a measure, whether it’s a measure of energy or concentration or resolve, and the protocol, or the program, the workout regiment, of contemplative practice? And what sorts of lift is seen after having engaged in that?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. So, my focus is through experience. I’m an empirical person so my work is based on my own training and the students/participants that I work with in my retreats and workshops. All this stuff is supported by the neuroscience, but just to be clear and upfront, that’s not my focus or area of expertise. So, let’s talk about concentration, and I’ll talk about it from a personal experience perspective, both in myself and in working with hundreds, if not thousands, of people practicing these skills.

So, the first thing, if we want to be able to concentrate better, the first thing to do is to understand what’s meant by concentration and how it arises. So, oftentimes, we think of concentration as a kind of force your mind to stay with something. And that can work for a little bit of time as driven by willpower but eventually we burn out because it’s not sustainable, and it’s a certain kind of brittle concentration. If something interrupts us, we lose it very quickly.

So, the kind of concentration I’m talking about, I might call stability or a collected mind. It’s really akin to what’s known in the research as a flow state. We’re present, we’re connected, we’re flexible, and we have access to all of our resources. We’re not straining, we’re not tight, we’re not burning up energy unnecessarily. We’re in a relationship with what’s happening. This runs counter to so much in our world and our society today, which is pushing us to be distracted, to multitask and fragmenting our attention.

So, what we’re doing with concentration is we’re regathering our energy, our attention, and learning to channel it in the direction of our choosing. So, how do we do that? How does this concentrated, gathered flow state arise? Well, just think about the last time you were really focused in a relaxed way, reading a book, playing a sport, working on a project. How did that come about? Well, you were probably really interested. There was a natural curiosity. You were probably somewhat relaxed, you’re able to drop into the moment, and you were clear about what you were doing and why. You have certain clarity of intent.

So, these are the factors that we want to get familiar with and learn to cultivate in our life and in our work, “Am I interested? Do I know why I’m doing this? Am I connected to that? Can I relax a little bit?” And that begins just by relaxing the body, just by attending, “Is my jaw tight? Am I clenching my fists? Can I relax my belly a little bit?” and then making a really clear and focused decision, say, “Okay, this is what I’m working on right now.”

And, of course, there’s lots of obstacles that are going to come in and try to throw us off. So, for me, concentration did not come easily. I remember, say, being in college and reading the same paragraph over and over and over again because by the time I got to the end of it, my attention would’ve wandered and I needed to start back over at the beginning. And I’ve seen through all the work that I’ve done with meditation, with mindfulness, I could put my mind to something and it’ll stay there.

So, the other skill here that’s really helpful that I want to offer to folks is being aware of the challenges or the hindrances or obstacles to concentration, and this is a really great tool to use when working on a project, to have a little checklist to run through, and just check and see, “Are any of these five things present? And if so, can I shift my focus into these qualities I’m working on, of interest, relaxation, and clarity?”

So, the first two are wanting and not wanting. So, really getting caught up in wanting to get somewhere, or craving something, or feeling irritated, aversive, not wanting to do this, wanting to get away from something, these will zap our energy and distract us. The second two are about energies. So, either feeling sleepy, lethargic, or feeling restless, anxious, too charged up, “So, I just want to check. How’s my energy? Am I sagging or am I kind of a little hyperactive?”

And then the third is doubt, and this one’s the real killer, “Am I doubting myself? Am I not sure I can do this? Am I undercutting my work here?” So, just being aware of these, just checking in and seeing, “Are any of these present?” already starts to shift the inner landscape. It’s when we’re not aware of these things that they really clobber us and drive the show. So, even if, say, we’re a little bit tired, if we’re aware of that, just that awareness starts to bring more energy.

Or, if there’s some doubt present, as soon as we see it, we’re like, “Oh, wow, look. I’m doubting myself. I’m worried I’m not going to be able to do this or it’s not going to be good.” Just that awareness is already stepping outside of the doubt a little bit. Checking on each of those can give us more access to concentration when we’re working on a project.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you say there are five things on the checklist?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yup. Wanting and not wanting, so this is about craving and pulling away from things, like, “Oh, I can’t wait to get to lunch,” or, “When am I going to get to the movie tonight and go on that thing?” It’s like, “Well, that’s tonight. Can I focus on what’s happening now?” Or, “Oh, God, I’m so nervous about having to present this. I don’t want to do that,” and so worry, we’re resisting something. It’s like, “Well, that’s not now. Let’s just focus on the project. Let’s just be here with what’s happening right in front of me.”

So, just being aware. It’s like when you walk outside of your house, or apartment, and you want to dress appropriately, you want to know what the weather is like. Same way, you sit down to do a project, you want to be prepared to work with the internal weather. Like, what are the conditions that are going to try to throw you off? So, if it’s going to be really cold, you want to bring a parka. If it’s going to be really wet, you want to bring a raincoat.

In the same way, if you’re working with sleepiness and you’re feeling really lethargic and doubtful, it’s like, “Okay, how can I psych myself up? How can I access a little bit more energy? Sit up straight. Take a deep breath. Turn up the lights. I’m feeling doubt. Reflect on the things that I know I’m good at, all the times in the past that I’ve really come through.” One, we need to know what might interfere, and then, two, we need to meet it, we need to work with it head on and address it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And so, when we have not wanting, what do you do with that? So, the awareness itself is helpful.

Oren Jay Sofer
Right, the awareness itself is helpful. Not wanting is usually about avoiding discomfort. So, it’s just based on biologically and the pleasure/pain principles. So, you want to look for, “Where is the unpleasant thing that I’m avoiding?” We’re often not aware of the unpleasant feeling that we’re trying to get away from. So, look for that unpleasant feeling, and then feel it.

Instead of trying to get away from it, which wastes a ton of energy and distracts us, take a deep breath, and go, “How bad is this right here and now? It’s a little unpleasant. Okay. So, how does it feel? Is my throat a little bit tight? I feel a little bit shaky, a little queasy in my stomach, a little pressure in my chest? What is it? What is it that I’m so afraid of?”

“Not in my mind, that’s the picture, that’s the thoughts, that’s the story. What is it I’m reacting to in my body? And if I can just feel that a little bit, it starts to settle because now I’m not running away from the demon in my mind. I’m actually meeting what’s real and true in the moment.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s go more into not wanting. And maybe we can even go live, a demo. Let’s say there is a task I don’t want to do. Well, let’s pick a specific one. Let’s say, “Get some transactions categorized and organized into spreadsheet and sent off to the accountant.” You go, “Ugh, I don’t want to do that. And, often, I end up doing it very close to the deadline because I don’t want to do it. And, apparently, the Post Office is very full in April 15th so I’m not alone.” So, help me out there. So, here I am, I’m thinking, “Ugh, I don’t want to do that.”

Oren Jay Sofer
So, with anything we’re avoiding, there’s two essential kinds of strategies we can use to shift that. Let’s start with one we’re already talking about, which is turning towards the avoidance directly and engaging with it. So, the first step is what you already, which is to recognize the avoidance. A lot of the times, when we’re avoiding something, we haven’t even done that.

We’re not fully conscious that we’re avoiding it. We’re just kind of pushing it away, which means our attention is split, there are some underlying anxieties, so we need to develop enough self-awareness to recognize, “Wait a minute. Something is bugging me.” And then to really be honest with ourselves and acknowledge, “I don’t want to do this.” Okay, that’s the first step.

Then turn towards it inside. Take a deep breath and feel, “Okay, what does it feel like to not want to do this?” It feels, I don’t know, frazzled, you tell me. When you don’t want to do your taxes, when you don’t want to do that. If you stop and you take a deep breath, what’s the actual experience in your body, the sensations?

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s a cool distinction right there. So, we’re focused on bodily sensations as opposed to emotions, like, angry, sad?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, that’s it. It’s going to the root level. So, the first level is going to be the thoughts, it’s, “I don’t have the time,” “I hate doing it,” “It’s too much to do.” Okay, then the next level is the emotions, which is, “I feel overwhelmed,” “I feel annoyed,” “I feel frustrated,” “I feel anxious.” We’re still, to some degree, on the conceptual level. In order for the patterning in our nervous system to start to shift and to have a little bit more flow and wiggle room, we need to engage on the level of sensation which is what’s actually driving us.

So, to feel in your body, “Okay, yeah, how does this actually feel?” And one question, so not everyone has quick easy access to their sensations, one great question to ask yourself is just, “Where in my body do I feel this? Like, is it in my throat? Is it in my chest? Is it in my belly? Or is it somewhere else?”

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s funny, I’m having a hard time with this. I think it’s like, “Ugh!”

Oren Jay Sofer
So, it’s kind of all over.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I guess if it’s not in my toes, it’s not in my calves, but it’s like, I don’t know, my neck and upper torso, it’s like instead of being filled with a zippy, “Hey, let’s dance a jig and sing a song in joy,” it’s like the opposite of that.

Oren Jay Sofer
It’s like a wet noodle.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s like flopping, “Ugh!”

Oren Jay Sofer
So, this is great. This is great. So, we experience our bodies and our emotions and sensations in different ways, and sometimes an image is how it occurs to us. So, it’s kind of that deep sigh and that gesture you made with your shoulders and your torso in this kind of flapping wet noodle. So, what happens when you just take a moment, don’t have to be with it forever. This is the fear, it’s like, “If I feel this, I’m going to get stuck here.” To just take one moment to feel that on its own terms, the wet noodle, the kind of flappy and just, “How bad is it?”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s kind of like being bored.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, it’s just what it is.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not horrible, it’s just not fun, it’s like, “Okay, it’s just a flavor of boredom.”

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. So, you look the demon in the face, it’s like, “Oh, this is what this is.” That takes some of the wind out of its sails. It undercuts the source of resistance that’s driving it. Now, the other key strategy here, the other side that we need to work with, is the motivator. So, why is this important to you? What is this going to give you if you do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Gives you relief and keeps me out of jail.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, gives you relief, gives you more time and energy to focus on other things that are important to you, and there’s a sense of a weight lifted, I’m imagining, when it’s done. So, now take a moment to just focus on the experience of relief and that weight lifted, and how good that feels. That can be what you want to navigate towards, like, “This is why I’m doing this.” So, you work from both angles, you kind of unplug the part that’s blocking you.

By feeling it and looking it in the face, “Okay, how bad is this? How uncomfortable is this, this thing that I’m avoiding?” And avoiding it actually gives it energy. To resist something, you’ve got to grab it first, you’ve got to pick it up. And when you pick it up, you actually give it energy. So, when you turn towards it, you’re just like, “All right, let’s just feel this. Let’s just see what this is.” Now, you’re not feeding it anymore, and it can start to peter out.

And then on the other side, “Why do this? What’s this going to give me? What’s important about this to me?” This is one of the things I talk about in the chapter on energy. One of the most sustainable sources of energy is willingness, knowing why we’re doing something. There’s tons of things in life we don’t like to do but if we can connect with the fact that we’re choosing to do it in some way, even if it’s, “You know, I don’t want to have the IRS come and take my house away,” or, “I don’t want to go to jail,” or, “I don’t want to get a speeding ticket so I’m going to drive the speed limit.” It’s like when we’re aware of why we’re doing it, we can tap into a different source of energy.

I think it’s really important, Pete, to get familiar with how it feels when we’re not avoiding something and we’re in alignment to really notice not just your thoughts and your emotions but, again, how it feels in your body, to feel connected and clear about what you’re doing and why. The more familiar you get with that experience, the more awake and aware you are, when you feel connected and aligned, the more quickly you will notice when you’re not.

It’s like developing a little bit of a baseline or a reference for, “Oh, yeah, this is what it feels like when I know what I’m doing and why, and I’m connected to my purpose, to my resources.” Then when you’re suddenly avoiding something, when you’re procrastinating, when there’s some resistance inside, we get really good at just kind of pushing through or pushing that away because it’s uncomfortable.

You’ll start to notice it more and be able to make different choices, and recognize, “You know, I’m doing the dishes right now. It doesn’t help me to not want to do it while I’m doing it. Like, I might as well just take a deep breath and relax, feel my feet on the ground, enjoy the warm soapy water, and clean the dishes.”

Or, “I’m taking my kid to music lessons right now. I’m not at home working on that project, even though I want to be. Like, let’s just relax and enjoy the time in the car.” We get the signal of the resistance when we notice more what it’s like when it’s not there, and then we can use whatever tools or resources we have, as we talked about through that resistance, to put it down.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Oren, this is huge and beautiful. Okay. So, we talked about some of these approaches to deal with we don’t feel like doing stuff and boosting resolve. I was going to go to energy next, so you gave us a tip right there. We tapped into the willingness and the underlying why. Any other perspectives on bringing about a greater energy?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, absolutely. So, energy is huge. We have limited energy in our lives. And I think that the dominant culture in the modern world is this kind of all or nothing approach to energy. It’s this kind of extractive, get as much as possible, as fast as possible. We use caffeine. We tend to push past our limits and burn out. So, how do we develop more sustainable energy?

So, willingness, knowing why we’re doing something is one resource. Another really important resource for developing more sustainable energy is starting to tune into the cycles of activity and rest. So, everything in life moves through these cycles: the seasons, the night and the day, even our breath. All of the time, there are these cycles of doing and then being, doing and then being, but the pace of our lives and the level of stimulation we’re exposed to on a daily basis tends to mask that, and we get disconnected from it.

So, just starting to pay attention to when we’re busy, and then noticing, like, when you complete something, celebrate it, take a pause for a moment, breathe out. After you send an email, instead of rushing onto the next thing, “Great.” It doesn’t have to be long. I’m talking about, like, three seconds. That’s going to boost your energy because, instead of just pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, we get the cycle. We do something and then we breathe out, and then we do something, and then we breathe out. We’re starting to feel this rhythm and it happens on a moment-to-moment level, it happens through the course of the day. That’s going to help us develop more energy.

One more tip I want to give on energy, and this one’s the real tricky one because it’s counterintuitive. If you want to use energy more effectively, initially, and this is just initially, slow down a little and try to feel more how you are working. Okay, I’ll tell you a short story. When I was in my 20s and just starting to learn to meditate, one of the meditation teachers I was training with pointed out, “Pay attention to how you brush your teeth, and just notice how you’re holding the toothbrush.”

And I noticed I had this kind of death grip on the toothbrush. I was squeezing it so hard when I brush my teeth, I was, “Why am I so tense brushing my teeth? I can actually relax. I can just hold the toothbrush with just the right amount of force, and then brush my teeth that way.” So, if you want to move an object, if you position your feet slightly apart, one in front of the other, and you bend your knees, you’ve got a lot of power.

So, balance and alignment conserve energy and create leverage. So, we can translate this into our work. How are we actually doing our work, both in our body and in our mind? Are we gripping that toothbrush really hard? Like, are we sitting at the keyboard with our shoulders hunched up and our jaw tight? Or, are we able to kind of relax, settle back, feel a sense of balance inside, an alignment, a clarity of purpose, and do things one at a time?

So, we take this kind of physical analogy and translate it into our work, into the relational space, instead of raising your voice and shouting and making a big scene, we can be more powerful if we speak at an even volume and a steady pace, and say what we need to say. So, there’s a sense of the more we become aware of how we’re using energy, we can start to channel it in more effective ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Oren, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to share before we hear a couple of your favorite things?

Oren Jay Sofer
I think one of the principles, Pete, that runs throughout the book that I want to make sure we cover here because it shows up really in any area that we’re trying to learn or grow is this principle we find in a lot of different fields, from performance to trauma healing, which is called strategic discomfort.

So, it’s knowing how much challenge is the right amount. And I’m sure you’ve covered this with other guests in other ways, right? It’s like if we don’t challenge ourselves at all, we just stay comfortable and we don’t learn and grow. But if we take on too much, we end up feeling overwhelmed and either collapsing or burning out.

So, whatever the skill is, whatever the resource or capacity is we’re trying to develop, whether it’s resolve, patience, energy, or this kind of foundational skill of choosing where we place our attention, we need to use some wisdom and ask ourselves, “What’s needed here? What’s the right amount of friction and tension and challenge for me to grow beyond my edge?” And that’s a skill, that’s a tool that we can use in all different areas of our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how do I assess that and get the right answer?

Oren Jay Sofer
Ask yourself this question, “What’s needed right now?” Not too much, not too little. We need to listen. We need to actually take a step back and check. And if we do that and we listen, and we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll know. So, whether it’s wanting to exercise more so that we have more energy in our lives, circling back to energy.

Of course, we didn’t talk about the fundamentals, like eating healthy, getting enough exercise, drinking enough water, trying to have healthy sleep, hygiene. Like, these are the foundations of energy. So, there’s an assumption that we’re attending to those things. But, say, you’re wanting to exercise more, it’s like, “What’s a reasonable goal?” and setting your aim on that, not overshooting because then we end up not doing it and giving up, and not undershooting because then we’re not actually challenging ourselves.

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

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, I thought about this. There are so many great books out there but one that came to mind that I read a few years ago that I think really puts us in touch with the preciousness of our time here is the book When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. He was a doctor who wrote about the end of his life as he died from cancer. A really beautiful short moving book.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite quote?

Oren Jay Sofer
This is from James R. Doty, a book called Into the Magic Shop, “It can hurt to go through your life with your heart open but not as much as it does to go through your life with your heart closed.”

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share in your courses, your books, your body of work that people really love, resonate with, and quote back to you often?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, I really think it’s the sense of we’re always practicing something. How we live every day is how we will live every day. And as you said, you’ve kind of alluded to earlier in the show is practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So, be careful and clear about what we’re practicing every day. We have this immense capacity for goodness, resilience, and empowerment in our lives if we know how to develop it every day. So, we can use our time to develop these amazing resources and be a real source of change, and goodness, and joy to the people around us.

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

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, my website is probably the best place, OrenJaySofer.com. Also, active on social media @orenjaysofer.

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

Oren Jay Sofer
I love that question. I would say step outside of your habits and the negativity bias, and focus on the ways that you do contribute in your work and in your life. When we really notice and pay attention to the ways we contribute, we feel more energy, we experience more joy, we have more fulfillment, and it makes us more effective. It will also guide us to make better decisions about how we spend our time, what we do and don’t do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Oren, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much courage, love, and integrity.

Oren Jay Sofer
Thanks, Pete. You, too. It’s great to see you again.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Cool.

Nov 16
0

916: Six Principles for Writing to Busy Readers with Todd Rogers

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Todd Rogers shares powerful writing principles to help capture your busy audience’s attention.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why people aren’t reading—and what to do about it
  2. The critical question that will improve your writing
  3. The simple trick to get people to respond to your request

About Todd

Todd Rogers is co-author of Writing for Busy Readers, and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is the faculty director of the Behavioral Insights Group, faculty chair of the executive education program Behavioral Insights and Public Policy, Senior Scientist at ideas42, and Academic Advisor at the Behavioral Insights Team.

Todd co-founded the Analyst Institute, which improves voter communications, and serves on its board. He also co-founded EveryDay Labs, which partners with school districts to reduce student absenteeism by communicating with families, is an equity holder and serves as Chief Scientist.  Todd received his Ph.D. jointly from Harvard’s department of Psychology and the Harvard Business School.

Resources Mentioned

Todd Rogers Interview Transcript

Todd Rogers

Thanks, Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it’s fun. I saw you have the book Pre-Suasion on your bookshelf, and then we had a moment of discussing how we both love Dr. Robert Cialdini, who we interviewed on the show and which was one of my favorite guests ever partly because we wanted him for so long. But you actually got to collaborate directly with him. Tell us the tale.

Todd Rogers

Well, I read his book Influence: The Science of Persuasion in undergrad, and I was like, “This stuff is cool.” And not too long after college decided I wanted to get a PhD in work, just like that, and so he was always on my mind. And then as I got to know him as a social psychologist and behavioral scientist, eventually, a few years ago, he and I had been talking about a project for a while, and he asked if I wanted to collaborate with him, with Jessica, my co-author on the book that I hope we’re about to talk about.

And I actually got choked up on the phone call when he asked if we would collaborate with him because I just felt like it was full circle that he was a real inspiration for why I’m doing a lot of this stuff. So, yeah, so it was really cool. We did a paper on how to respond to attack ads, and the psychology of how to respond to attack ads when your attacker is louder and dishonest. I don’t know where, we just came up with that.

Pete Mockaitis

So, it’s like if I’m running for office.

Todd Rogers
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, just for my future reference, should that be coming down the pike for me, how do I respond to louder and lying attack ads?

Todd Rogers

I haven’t thought about this paper in a little bit but the basic idea is that you often respond to an attack by countering it, you say, “That’s not true. I did not crash my car while drinking,” and so on. And then, in a way, it reinforces the underlying message, whatever the attack was, let’s say I was falsely accused of drunk driving and getting into a car accident.

And so, Bob had this idea that is just brilliant, obviously, was what you should do is, instead, say, “When my opponent says this, know that what they are really doing is deflecting from the fact that they have broken the law in so many other ways.” And so, what you do is you create a different association so that whenever the attack comes, people cognitively associate it with its own response.

And so, it’s called the poison parasite. You sort of parasitically attach the response so that whenever they reuse the image, or the phrase, or the whole idea, it automatically, through memory, what’s called conditioned association, it automatically makes accessible its response that negates the attack.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, that’s just handy to know for future reference.

Todd Rogers

Yeah, that’s not what we’re talking about but it’s cool. It’s cool how memory, like you can associate things to other objects so that when those objects come up, they bring to mind other things. And so, instead of responding directly, which is you should keep repeating their phrase, and say, “When they use this phrase, think of this. When they use this phrase, think of this.” And then whenever they use the phrase, it becomes self-negating.

Pete Mockaitis

Fabulous. Thank you. Well, we are talking about your book Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World. And I’d love it if you could share with us – having studied reading and writing for so long – can you kick us off with a particularly striking, surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made about this stuff over your career that really sticks with you?

Todd Rogers

It’s a really high bar but I will start with something that, after saying it, is obvious but is underappreciated. No one is reading what we’re writing. That’s a place to start. Everyone is skimming. Everyone is busy, and their goal, when they read anything we send them, is to move on as quickly as possible, so quickly that very often it means moving on before even understanding what we’re saying.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, that sounds true. I guess in our heart of hearts, if we don’t want to believe it, “Well, surely, my trusted colleagues and collaborators, who value my input, are carefully reading,” do you have any striking datapoints or studies that underscores this?

Todd Rogers

We’ve a ton of randomized trials where we test different elements of writing to see whether people are actually reading it. So, let me just do one. One of the principles in the book, the book is called Writing for Busy Readers, and one of the principles is less is more. And we do a whole series of these experiments, I’ll just describe one, where someone is sending a message, in this case, it could be fundraising messages, it could be like sign up for registration of a webinar, it could be fill out a survey, it could be respond to me about a time.

We’ll do one where I was emailing 7,000 elected school board members. We’d written a web crawler, I was surveying them. And it started with a bunch of gratitude expressions and respect, “Thank you so much.” Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis

“Thank you so much for serving the youth and shaping the future generation.”

Todd Rogers
You got it, Pete. It sounds like you could’ve written it where you just dictate this, but it turns out that was all useless but you got the spirit of it. So, along “Thank you. You’re so important. You’re doing great stuff. And you are. It’s a really hard job. Nobody likes you because you’re making hard choices. Thank you. Will you please fill up my survey?”

And in the other condition, we said, “I’m a professor,” same first sentence, and then deleted all the gratitude, “Please fill up my survey.” And the important thing is we had a couple hundred people read both versions and predict which one will get more responses. Literally, almost everyone, 93% of people think that the more deferential, longer message will get more responses. But consistent with literally every experiment we’ve ever run on this topic, the shorter one was substantially more effective, in this case, twice as many respondents when we eliminated all the extra words.

Similarly, I read an experiment with a large federal political committee. I’m not supposed to say which party but one of the big parties in the United States, and there aren’t that many, and they were sending 700,000 donors an email for fundraising with six paragraphs. I just said, “Let’s arbitrarily delete every other paragraph so it doesn’t even make sense anymore. So, we just went from six to three by just randomly deleting paragraphs. People read them. They agree it’s incoherent where we cut every other paragraph. Still increases donation by 16%. One principle is less is more.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Wow! Oh, I can see why we all, why you and I both love Bob Cialdini, and I love everything you’re saying – data-driven and impactful. Wow! So, you said almost nothing, “I’m a professor. Please fill out this survey” and that is ideal.

Todd Rogers

Well, yeah, it works like flagging. It is almost certainly better if someone reads all the respectful deferential verbiage, that that is probably more effective if they read it all because I’m showing all the respect. But stage one is, “Do they read it at all?” And it is very common to just deter people from engaging with what we write by just having extra words.

Think about how you go through your inbox. I do these surveys whenever I teach it, it’s like, “Okay, you have two messages in your inbox. One is three sentences, the other is three paragraphs. Which one do you read first?” Everyone reads the three-sentence one. Everybody’s busy, everybody’s skimming, and they’re just doing triage with this like a flood of stuff coming at them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I suppose the exceptions are probably quite limited, like, “I am choosing to read a novel for the pleasure of enjoying reading words and visualizing scenes and connecting with these characters.” There’s that but that’s maybe, is it fair to say, Todd, that’s only when you’re reading novels more or less?

Todd Rogers

Yeah, when we’re reading poetry, when we’re reading The New Yorker, or when we’re reading novels, it’s a different purpose of reading. The kind of writing that Jessica and I are talking about in the book is practical writing. It could be text messaging your parents to coordinate for Thanksgiving dinner. It could be writing to your boss. It could be sending a sales pitch or a proposal to a client. Practical writing that is not recreational, everybody’s skimming. The TLDR version of our long book, which is not that long, is we need to make it easier for our readers. And the easier we make it for our readers to read and skim, the more likely they are to read, understand, and respond.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Less is more, that’s powerful and self-explanatory. You gave us a couple of examples. But tell us, Todd, is there anything else we need to know about this principle to begin putting it into action right away and enjoy its benefits?

Todd Rogers

There are three parts to less is more but I will be very, very brief about it. Fewer words, fewer ideas, which is the hard part. That means deciding some ideas may be helpful but not worth it because there’s tradeoffs. And the third is fewer requests, which I think people don’t intuitively get at first. If I asked you for four things, one, you may postpone doing any of them; two, you’re going to do the easiest one first; and, three, you may just get derailed on the process of going from one to two, and then you just get distracted.

We’ve seen in experiments of all kinds of variety that when you ask for multiple things, you’re less likely to get any one of those things done than if you ask for one thing. And so, again, just like writing, it just requires prioritizing, like knowing what your most important things are, and deciding whether it’s worth the cost of adding more.

Pete Mockaitis

So, let’s say, Todd, I am sending out a sales pitch or I want to persuade you or some other guest to appear on the podcast, I could say, less is more, say, “Hey, I think your book is awesome. Come on to my show.” But I think, as I put myself in their shoes, it’s like, “Okay, who are you? And is your show legit?” So, I got to give them a little more, but do I have an attachment or a link? Or, how do I think about this?

Todd Rogers

There isn’t a single right answer. You know your context, your goals, your audience. That said, you know that I’m skimming. And so, what we say in my lab, and I’m not saying everyone should do it, but in our lab, no email should be more than four sentences. Let me give you context. 

In our lab, it would be like, “Pete,” sentence one, “so fun being on the podcast. Thanks for having me.” Two, “At the end, you asked me a question about this.” Third, “Below, I have more details about that,” or attached, or linked, “Here are more details.” Four, “Let me know if you have any other questions about it.” And then, “Todd.”

Then underneath that, I can have it organized so that it’s easy to skim, and we can use the other principles. But what you don’t want is it to be buried in four paragraphs later, like, “Oh, the details of the answer to your question.” And so, if you’re emailing me, I think probably the optimal way is, like, the first paragraph is some version of it’s three sentences or two sentences, being like, “Admire your work. We’d love to have you on the podcast. Details of the podcast are below. Lots of great people have been on it, including our mutual friend, Bob Cialdini.” And then below, it’s like, “I’m the best. And How to be Awesome at Your Job is awesome, and you’d be more awesome at your job if you’re on my podcast,” or whatever it is.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Cool. So, less is more, fewer ideas, fewer words, fewer requests. Let’s hear the second one, make reading easy.

Todd Rogers

Make reading easy. And that is short words, common words, short simple sentences. The coolest thing that I learned when Jessica and I were writing this book, and I don’t want to speak for her. She, actually, when she talks about it, there are other things that she found to be the coolest things she learned, but for me it was the vision tracking research where when you compel people to read, they go, “Word, word, word,” and you’re watching their eyes, the eye tracking, they go, “Word, word, word, word. Period.”

And then they pause at the period. It’s this thing very creatively called the period pause effect, which is that people pause at the period, and they just sit there, and you may not even notice it, I don’t notice it. I didn’t notice it since I read this stuff. But when you read, you’re just like, you pause there to make sure that you get what the idea was. And very often, you have to go backwards and reread. And that’s because the sentence was kind of complex, and you didn’t really get it. So, it’s cognitively taxing, it requires a lot of effort to read complicated writing with unfamiliar long words. That’s problem one. So, that means people are going to quit in the middle of it.

Two, it’s totally inaccessible to a very large fraction of people when we write in ways that are difficult to read. So, the median United States adult, that means the 50th percentile or if you rank order them on the reading ability, reads like a 9th grade reading level. So, when we write in ways that are complex, we’re inaccessible, unreadable to a large fraction of people. But even to those who are able to read it, the audience that is able to read these complex sentences with unfamiliar uncommon words, for them it’s cognitively taxing, and they’re just more likely to give up and move on.

So, the idea is, again, the easier we make it, the more effective it is, the kinder it is to our reader because we’re making it faster for them and less depleting. It’s also more accessible and inclusive because more people can read our stuff.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, when we talk about long sentences and big words, any particular numbers or rules of thumb you have in mind?

Todd Rogers

No.

Pete Mockaitis

“Twelve words max.”

Todd Rogers

Yes, make it as easy as possible for your reader, and that honestly depends on context, and it depends on what the expectations are. I work with people who write intelligence assessments in the intelligence committee. And I was working with somebody who said that their reports have to be 20 pages, that’s the norm.

You can’t write it shorter than that without looking like you didn’t do your job. And so, okay, well, you can’t make it short. You can make it easier to read so you can write with shorter, more common sentences and words. You can also make it skim-able, which I’m sure we’ll get to as the third – make it easy to jump around.

Pete Mockaitis

Maybe pictures?

Todd Rogers

Yes, if pictures convey it more easily to your reader, then great. Everything is through the lens of, “How do I make it easier for the reader?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Understood. So, next stop, you’ve got design for easy navigation.

Todd Rogers

Oh, right on. We just cued that one up. Nice. I think it flows naturally, design for easy navigation. The idea is – this is going to sound like an absurd sentence but Jessica and I are arguing we focus when writing too much on our writing. And, really, if we take seriously that people are jumping around and they’re skimming and they’re moving on before they even get the main point, then we should design our writing like a map to give headings and guideposts to let people know what’s here, what’s there, and it allows them to jump around and find the parts that they want to dive into and read more closely, and then pop back up like a map, and then navigate.

We’ve run some experiments where we add headings or not to a multi-paragraph message. And in one experiment we ran, it was six paragraphs, maybe seven paragraphs, and we inserted headings or we didn’t after every two paragraphs. Then we looked at whether anyone read anything or acted on anything after the second paragraph, basically after the headings. More than doubled the likelihood of the people got past the second paragraph.

And the idea is just that a sensible person, optimizing with their limited time, for how best they are going to use their next second as they’re navigating their to-do list. If they can’t figure it out, it looks like a wall of text, they’re going to look at it, maybe jump around, and then give up, unless it’s super important to them, in which case, they’ll devote more time. But adding structure, making it easy for people to skim makes it easier for busy readers to get through what we’re writing to them, and helps us be more effective.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, this is bringing me back, talking about easy navigation and the next step, we’re talking about formatting, use enough formatting but no more as your rule of thumb. I’m reminded of back in the day, making a lot of slides at Bain & Company, there was a phenomenon which I kind of thought was fun where they had selective bolding. It’s like customers who had their service requests met the first time were 87% more satisfied, and that part is bolded.

And so, I always read it in my head that way. It’s like, “I’m reading normal words, and now these are bold.” And I thought it was cool because, from a visual perspective, if you were to – we’re talking about skimming – if you were to glance at the slide and read 15% of the words, the bolded ones you will get, “Oh, okay, get it done the first time is a huge deal. Okay, cool. And so, there we have it. Thank you for your selective bolding.”

Todd Rogers

I love it. And Bain is awesome at this. I’m sure if you were a consultant at Bain, you probably went through the training in the first couple of weeks where you each had to make a voicemail and an email, and this is part of their onboarding process. They’re awesome at it. You talked about the selective bolding. I think it makes sense to talk both about design for easy navigation and use formatting judiciously or carefully together.

And the idea is, “How do we make it easier for readers?” And, in this case, what structure and components of structure do we add to our writing? So, here’s one that I love. It’s not going to be formatting but it’s part of designing. I love the bottom line upfront that the US Army uses. It’s called BLUF. For any veteran listening, and I don’t know if you’re a veteran, Pete, but they’re amazing at communications in the army.

And they have a regulation, literally, like a formal reg that demands that any writing in the US Army, first sentence is the bottom line, bottom line upfront. So, if you’re a general writing to an enlisted person, or an enlisted person writing to a general, everyone knows where the bottom line is, it’s the first line. And so, it completely makes it easy to skim. It also disambiguates. That’s a word, we’re talking about writing, so it’s easy.

It also just makes it clear to everybody how we write in our group. And that is especially helpful for lower-status people. Like, an enlisted person writing to a general, completely understandably without clear guidance, would write something like, “You know, I admire your work and we once ran into each other in the mess together. You may not remember me, I’m also from Wisconsin . I just wanted to see if we could have a meeting next week,” as opposed to now, it’s like, “Meeting next week.”

I love that, that makes it easy for readers because they have rules and norms and, in this case, regulations about how we write. That won’t work for everybody because different organizations and different people have different expectations about what a message is supposed to look like. If I wrote you a message like that, where the first line is

“Pete, it was so fun being on the pod. Thanks for having me. I wonder if maybe you could’ve asked this question differently?” and then whatever. Very different than if I was like, “You should’ve asked…” you see having clear norms on how we write. Your question was about formatting and the selective bolding that people at Bain and other places use.

What Jessica and I found is that, in a bunch of surveys, people interpret bold, underline, and highlight as the writer telling the reader, “This is the most important content in this text.” And so, it’s incredible at getting people to read whatever those words are. We do these experiments where we have a sentence that we’re really interested in, and we test people afterwards if they read it.

And when it’s not bolded or underlined or highlighted, nobody reads it, half the people read it because it’s midway through the document they’re reading. And then when you bold, underline, or highlight it, everybody reads it. And so, okay, it’s really powerful, people interpret it the way you would expect they interpret it.

So, then what we do is we use bold, underline, or highlight to draw attention to a different sentence that’s near the one we care about, and everybody reads that other sentence, and it induces, it causes a bunch of people to skip the rest of the text. Because everyone is going fast, and when you tell them, “This is the most important sentence,” it licenses those who are really short on time to just skip everything else, “I got the key information. Got it. Thanks. Ready to move on.”

And so, again, so much of this, there’s tradeoffs. You have to be really careful because people interpret you as serious when you say, “This is the most important thing,” and it licenses them to not read the rest of it.

Pete Mockaitis

Understood. So, it’s very effective, it’s so effective it’s dangerous because if you use it wrong, you’re missing out, “You read the thing I bolded instead of everything. And, actually, oopsies, I didn’t bold the thing that I really, really needed you to read.”

Todd Rogers

You got it. Exactly. Again, like so much of this, these are powerful tools as long as we use them well but they also can go awry.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Another principle you have is tell readers why they should care.

Todd Rogers

It’s a pretty straightforward one.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it’s the first quarter of every nonfiction business book.

Todd Rogers

Of course.

Pete Mockaitis

“This is the most important idea ever.”

Todd Rogers

That’s right, yeah. So, you’re right, and it’s the title of your podcast How to be Awesome at Your Job. Because we are obsessed with randomized experiments, I’ll just show you an illustration. Rock the Vote is an organization that recruits, that gets young people to register to vote, often by having volunteers go to concerts. And they did this experiment where they were asking potential volunteers to volunteer.

And in one case, the subject line was, “Volunteer to register voters,” because from the Rock the Vote perspective, that’s the point. The main idea for Rock the Vote is, “We’re getting people to volunteer to register voters.” They did another condition where they said, “Go to concerts for free while registering voters. Go to free concerts while registering voters.”

From a reader’s perspective, that’s a thing they would care about a little bit more. If you focus on what the writer cares about, it’s, “I’m trying to get people to volunteer to register voters.” But from the reader’s standpoint, “Go to a Beyonce concert and register voters” is an entirely different thing. And so, what they found was when they focused on what the reader cared about, they 4X’d registrations.

And the idea is, like you said, it’s the beginning of every nonfiction business books, it’s the title of your podcast, it’s outrageously important and too easily overlooked that when we write we focus on why we care about the thing, and that’s all I care about. As Jessica and I were writing this book, Writing for Busy Readers, we are trying to help writers be more effective at achieving their goals.

In the process, whatever is necessary from the writer’s perspective being the message, we should review that and elevate the parts that we think the reader might care most about because that’ll capture more of their attention, be more likely to motivate them to read and respond.

Pete Mockaitis

It is a tendency. That is, writers talk about what they care about, what they’re into, and then neglect sort of the audience first all the time. And I think I was guilty of that and it was Nick Morgan’s book Give Your Speech, Change the World that really landed it for me in my early days of keynoting, like, “You must start the journey from why to how.”

But I love how so much, it’s so exciting to me, I almost just assume, “Well, of course, we all want to accomplish great things in an organization, and have cool relationships and culture and have fun, and get things, so I don’t even need to mention that. I could just get right into the super cool tactics I discovered,” and that is just wrong.

I have learned the hard way you must tell readers why they should care, or listeners why they should care. Nick Morgan is right. You’re right. And legions of nonfiction business books, publishers, and editors, are not wrong. I might advocate that they shorten the why case a little bit in many of these books, but it absolutely needs to be there.

Todd Rogers

I’ll plus one that shortening part.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Now, let’s hear about make responding easy.

Todd Rogers

Make responding easy is for those of your listeners, and you, who have followed behavioral science. Make responding easy is just about the essence of the greatest hits of behavioral science. If we reduce friction, we simplify processes, if we prepopulate forms, if we make it really easy to figure out what the key information is, people are more likely to get it and respond to it.

Jessica and I have this mantra, “If it’s important for us the writers, make it easy for them the readers.” That’s the thing. If it’s important for us, we want to make it easy for them. Here’s an incredibly micro example that may be familiar to you, and it is way too familiar to me, which is a group email or group text of, “Let’s find the time to meet.” And I’ll often initiate and be like, “Here are six times that work for me over the next two weeks.”

The next person will, verbatim, actually say, “The second and third work for me, possibly the fifth and maybe the sixth.” And then the chain dies. And the idea is that any reader, first, needs to understand what they’re trying to say, but even if they do understand what they’re trying to say, then they need to go, like, keep in mind, first, second, maybe fourth, fifth, and then go back down to mine and see which ones are they referring to, and back and forth.

If it was actually important to you, if you want to make it easy, you’d say, “Time X, Y, and Z work for me. I could do whatever after Z. We’ll call it A, and then go in reverse order.” And like you actually repost them. And the idea is just if we really want to make it easy, if we want people to respond, we’d make it easy, which is instead of having them navigate to figure out what’s going on, you pull it all in one place.

That’s a trivial example. A really important example is…have everybody followed the…anybody remembers in 2000, there was a guy running for president named Al Gore, who’s running against another guy named George W. Bush? And it turns out, it’s one of the closest elections, maybe one of the closest elections in the US history.

Florida swung the vote and it came down to a couple hundred votes. And it turns out that in Florida, there was this thing called the butterfly ballot, not the one that went to the Supreme Court, for anyone who is conflating everything involving that election. It was a ballot that was extraordinarily complicated. I teach it in my class. It was just really hard to follow what button you’re supposed to push to vote for which person.

I’m not even going to try to describe it to you. Like, look it up, butterfly ballot from 2000. But by making it not easy, and it was actually designed by a Democrat who presumably might’ve preferred Al Gore, but it was a Democrat who, in good faith, was trying to help older people be able to read it. So, in order to have giant font, then you’d use both sides of the page. And then to figure out what button to push, it just became like comical how complex it was.

And they think that that led to something like 5- to 10,000 net votes for George W. Bush by accident because people are, like, typed the wrong button because nobody can make sense of it. I say that only as like an extreme example of, like I was talking about, getting people to schedule a meeting. I also want to show, sometimes, this matters for important things too.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s powerful as an example and it cuts through the core of why, “Why does it matter if one is awesome at their job?” The consequences are massive, it’s like, “Someone was not so awesome at designing that ballot, and now we may never know who ‘should’ have gotten elected because of what went down with a butterfly ballot in Florida.”

Todd Rogers

Look it up and get ready to laugh/cry. Just amazing. I didn’t even realize it until we started writing this book because I got it confused with these hanging chads, for those of you who lived through it.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yes, and I’m all about making responding easy, or making whatever behavior you want to occur easy. And this is kind of BJ Fogg Tiny Habits. We had him talking about that in terms of your own personal behavioral design, as well as in your communication. And I hope, Todd, you had an easy time scheduling this interview, collecting the guest FAQ page, and then the scheduling. And we did not have to have any communication whatsoever, in fact.

Todd Rogers

No, it was super easy. That’s the idea, right? Like, you made it so like here. I think you used Calendly or something like that, and it was just like, “Here are some availability. Just choose one.” It was not 17 back and forth emails to find the time that work for us. I’ll go with a more practical one for people who are trying to be awesome at their jobs.

It is estimated that Amazon’s 1-Click purchasing generates billions of dollars in net revenue relative to before they literally patented 1-Click shopping. And the idea is just reducing steps, makes people more likely to follow through. And in that case, it was increasing sales. In the part we’re talking about in the election, it’s swinging the fate of the Republic.

Pete Mockaitis

And I’d heard that they have, in fact, parted with millions of dollars in legal fees defending and enforcing this intellectual property against infringement, like this is dearly precious to them.

Todd Rogers

Yeah, and I don’t think anyone ever had thought that it would be better to buy things with one click instead of five. Like, really, the genius was with coming up with that idea. Who could have ever thought that one? No one could’ve thought of it prior to the geniuses at Amazon, thinking of it. I’m being sarcastic in case anyone was trying to figure that out.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, certainly, just like in general, when things are easier, you get that result. I’m thinking about, occasionally, someone needs to be paid via a cheque. Like, I think I was getting some carpets, I was like, “Oh, a cheque, huh? Well, that’s going to be a while. I got to figure out where that thing is, where the envelopes are, where the stamps are. And now I just really kind of don’t want to because I was ready to go click, click, click. Here’s your money. Thanks for the carpet. But now it might be a good week or two before I get all these components together for you.”

Todd Rogers

Right. And then, honestly, it’s a minute and a half of work but you’re still not going to do it. And it’s no animus. It’s just you’re human and it seems like it’s a pain, and I’d rather watch another episode on Netflix.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, these are powerful principles. Can you tell us are there any specific do’s, don’ts, words, phrases that you also want to make sure to mention beyond these broad principles?

Todd Rogers

The TLDR version of the book, the too-long-didn’t-read version of the book, and of all this work, is that if we make it easy for our readers, they’ll be more likely to read, respond, and understand. It’s also just kinder to them to write in a way that makes it easy for them. That’s the big picture. How you then do that? How do you make it easier for the reader? That’s what the book is about.

And if you can put on the show notes, we have a one-pager, a checklist if people want it. I also, on our website, with a computer science colleague, we trained GPT4 on the principles, and then tuned it for email, so it was pre-imposed with edits, and it’s incredibly good at rewriting your emails so that they’re actually skim-able using the principles, and so you can find that on our website, WritingForBusyReaders.com.

And there’s a Chrome extension and also people use it for their Gmail and stuff. The idea is it turns out the AI tools, the LLMs are very good at learning and internalizing the principles, and with examples, can get better at applying them.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, that’s a plug-in that we use or a series of prompts we feed it?

Todd Rogers

No, it’s just on our website. You can paste an email, hit click, and then it outputs what it would look like if it were written according to these principles. And what’s cool, it’s like a teaching tool. It also is really useful just because these are good ideas but I love it as it brings to life, instead of this, like, “I don’t know how I would apply that to this.” It just makes suggestions, “Well, turn this into a bulleted list. I would start this as a separate paragraph. I would simplify this.” And it doesn’t say these things, it just does them, “I would simplify this sentence.” And the I, I was personifying our AI overlord.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, we tend to do that. All right. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Todd Rogers

There’s this body of work that has just started over the last few years called subtraction neglect, which is that when you ask people to improve anything, this woman Gabe Adams and collaborators at University of Virginia did it. You ask people to improve something, “Improve this itinerary for a trip to Washington, D.C.,” “Improve this short essay,” “Improve this Lego construction item,” people are massively biased towards adding things and we just fail to think to even subtract things.

And there’s this tendency across categories that if we want to improve things, we add. And very often, we can improve, as Jessica and I talked about in writing, we can improve by subtracting but it’s just something that doesn’t naturally or easily come to people’s minds. It’s incredible. It’s really cool research by Gabe Adams and collaborators called subtraction neglect.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah, Leidy Klotz had a book talking along those lines. We had him on the show and, yes, that was thought-provoking. Okay.

Todd Rogers
Yes, Leidy is a co-author on our work.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Todd Rogers

I don’t know about my life favorite but my favorite recent book is called Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka. She founded Code for America. She was the first Chief Digital Officer of the US. And her big thesis that complexity favors the sophisticated, that we have all these government agencies that have these complex systems that are unnecessarily complex, for reasons that are both often policy-driven, and we act like it’s actually implementation, people who are implementing, implement what the policy says, and we should be redesigning policy because, downstream, that leads to actually better use of technology.

But I love the last third of the book is about how complexity favors the sophisticated, which means that when we have complex processes, we deter not randomly, we deter the least sophisticated, the most harried, possibly and often for government services the most who would benefit from some of these things. But we have often, processes that are unnecessarily complex. Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool?

Todd Rogers

I’m going to name two. One is pretty basic and the other is pretty frontier. The basic one, I love my Google Keep, which is just a to-do list keeper that is social and I can share with my wife and family members, and so we update the to-do list. It’s so basic and central to our lives. The more sophisticated, and also your listeners are going to think I’m pretty basic, I love using ChatGPT in all of my life, and I love using GPT4, the underlying tech in some of the apps that we’ve made, because I probably use it several times a day in all sorts of creative ways from editing things I’m writing to generating ideas, to coming up with study materials.

The other day I had it generate descriptions of flowers that might grow on Mars because we’re doing a silly study on what kinds of names people like. So, from both basic, but one is medium to low tech, which is the Google Keep, to the ChatGPT, which everybody would say, but I love the underlying LLM of GPT4, and Bard, and all of LLMs for now. And, again, I just want our AI overlords to know I’m naming them as my favorite.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Todd Rogers

WritingForBusyReaders.com. It has the checklist, the one-page checklist for the principles of how to write more effectively for busy people. It also has the editing AI editing tool for your emails. And it also has a lot of other resources that’s great, like substitution ideas for instead of saying, “The reason is…” you can say “Because…” and there’s a whole set of thousands of word pairs, and you just never use this phrase, always use this one because it’s more concise and more direct. But www.WritingForBusyReaders.com.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Todd Rogers

Yeah. We write all the time. We are all writers. Whether it’s Slack messages, emails, text messages, proposals, reports, we write all the time. We should edit. At a round of editing, whenever we are writing anything, where we ask ourselves, “How do I make it easier for my reader?” How to do that is going to depend on the context, and that’s what Jessica and I have really focused on.

But when you do that, when you edit through the lens of making it easier for the reader, you will be more effective at achieving the goals you have for whatever it is you are writing. In the process, it’s also just kinder to your reader.

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Todd, this beautiful stuff. Thank you and I wish you much good writing.

Todd Rogers

Thanks for having me, Pete. This was fun.

Nov 13
0

915: How to Maximize the Power of Generational Diversity at Work with Dr. Tim Elmore

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

Tim Elmore reveals the keys to transforming generational differences into opportunities for enhanced collaboration.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How generalizations across the generations can be both helpful and harmful
  2. The do’s and don’ts of interacting with each generation
  3. The keys to turning generational conflict into team harmony

 

About Tim

Dr. Tim Elmore is founder and CEO of Growing Leaders (www.growingleaders.com), an Atlanta‐based non‐profit organization created to develop emerging leaders. His work grew out of 20 years serving alongside Dr. John C. Maxwell.

Elmore has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, Psychology Today and he’s been featured on CNN’s Headline News, Fox Business, Newsmax TV and Fox and Friends to talk about leading multiple generations in the marketplace.

He has written over 35 books, including Habitudes: Images That Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes, and his latest, A New Kind of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, sponsors!

Tim Elmore Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

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

Tim Elmore

Thank you, Pete. Great to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom of your book A New Kind of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage. But first, you have survived a plane crash and, somehow, we never talked about that last time. What’s the deal here?

Tim Elmore

Yeah, yeah. Well, I don’t just go around starting conversations with, “Hey, did you know I survived a plane crash?”

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Well, we should have.

Tim Elmore

Well, maybe.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, we’re going to start this one that way, Tim.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, the crazy thing was that was years and years ago, but I was in New Zealand, it was a private plane, I was being flown with a buddy of mine, by a pilot that was not instrument rated, and he was trying to land on a field. I was going to speak at a big youth camp back then 30 years ago, and he wasn’t able to land the plane. He started to come down. The trees or the forest are right here. He realizes he can’t touch down in time before the trees began, so he takes the plane, shoots it straight up in the air.

He says, “Tighten your seatbelts. I got to try this landing again.” But as he’s shooting up into the air, we get about 120 feet in the air, and the engine stalls, and we drop to the ground. So, about 12 feet, or, excuse me, 12 stories we dropped. And Grant, the pilot, went right through the windshield. It was awful.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, my goodness.

Tim Elmore

And the other three of us were beat up and thrown around, our seatbelts broke too, but we all survived. So, it was quite the deal, yeah. But, as you can imagine, I was in New Zealand. I had to get on a plane to fly back home. So, I had to jump back on the proverbial horse and ride again.

Pete Mockaitis

Wow! So, I don’t have a great deal of knowledge of aviation but how common is it to survive that fall that distance? This sounds more or less miraculous, Tim.

Tim Elmore
Yeah, it was. This sounds so cliché but I really do believe in miracles. I don’t spiritualize everything but I think, “My gosh, I’m still around for a reason. I got to make the most of my time.” I think my sense of urgency that I currently experience probably came from knowing at any moment I could be gone, and I want to make the very most of it.

So, I’m loving my family better, I’m about the business of what I do much better and less lackadaisical perhaps than before that time. But I think that’s the good that can come from the not so good along the way.

Pete Mockaitis

Wow! Okay. Well, I am grateful that you are alive and here, and we are speaking again. The last conversation I think was really rich with some juicy stories I thought about numerous times since. This book A New Kind of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage I’ll tell you, I’ll be candid with you, Tim.

I usually shy away from the different generations generalizations content but I was like, “Tim is so darn good. If I could trust somebody to handle this decently, it’s going to be Tim.” So, let’s get some of the tough stuff out of the way. Like, Tim, isn’t this just wild over-generalization? And how is this even helpful?

Tim Elmore

Yeah, I do get that question, so please know you’re not alone at all. And, yet, I think there’s another part of our brain that would say, “But we do realize we’re a little different.” Twenty-somethings are a little different than 60-somethings. But ageism and chronocentrism almost always come up at this point.

Pete Mockaitis

Chronocentrism, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before.

Tim Elmore
Okay, so let me give you both, real quick, working definitions. Ageism is “Isn’t it true 60-somethings tend to think are like 20-somethings, regardless of the time and history where we are?” You’re more conservative when you’re older, you’re more progressive when you’re younger, blah, blah, blah, and that is true. There is an element of truth in that.

And chronocentrism is the tendency we have, at whatever life station we’re in, to think “We’re right and they’re wrong. The older, the younger. Kids are just fragile snowflakes today,” or, “Those old folks are just dinosaurs.”

Pete Mockaitis

Like ethnocentrism but chrono, time.

Tim Elmore

Exactly. Chronology, that’s right. You picked it up. You get an A on that test.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. I was a Latin student, back in the day. It really expands the vocabulary.

Tim Elmore
It does. I’m sure it does, yeah. So, anyway, all that to say, my goal in this book is not to stereotype but to understand, so I’m trying to help readers. It’s not scientific. In fact, this is a social science, not a science, it’s soft science but it is, I think, a very helpful thing to have a bit of an encyclopedia. If you’re 58, let’s say, and you’re managing a company, and you’ve got these Gen Zers coming in, and you go, “Oh, my God, I don’t understand these kids today.”

To say, “Well, let me help you step into their brain just a little bit. Here’s the narrative that they’ve grown up in. Here’s the wet cement that they were shaped in,” and then to know a little bit. You’re a little bit more informed as you do that interview, or do that onboarding, or do the performance review.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, could you start by sharing with us maybe some differing survey results or researcher studies that say convincingly, “Yup, people in different generations do, in fact, tend to, on aggregate, on the whole, more often than not, think, operate differently in these kinds of ways”?

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, let me just share some really recent data that might be a fun fodder for discussion. When I talk to managers, for instance, at a workplace, and they’re asking, “Well, what should I expect from an interview with a 22-year-old recently out of college?” One of the things that Generation Z brings is a very paradoxical high sense of agency and high sense of anxiety at the same time.

So, the agency they feel, you know what that means, it’s like, “I got this. I can do this,” I think was fostered by the smartphone, “I’ve been looking at things since I was four years old on a tablet, I think I know all that I need to know to do this,” and so a Gen Zer comes in with a high sense of agency. At the same time, however, we all know, I think, that mental health issues are a thing right now for high school students, college students, young professionals; panic attacks, anxiety, depression.

But here’s the irony. I think anxiety was brought on by the same smartphone. So, the high sense of, “I’m in control,” and the high sense of, “I’m out of control,” come from the smart device that, I think, ambushed us and we did not know what it would do, particularly to the younger generations. So, I know it does not fully answer your question but that’s something I think we that are in midlife need to know. It’s going to be a thing.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yeah, certainly there’s no doubt that our upbringings are different. I just turned 40 recently.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Okay. Congratulations and happy birthday.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I remember our home was kind of cutting edge when we had dial-up internet in my youth but I certainly had several years on this planet, which I was able to read, and we didn’t have the internet, so that was a thing that was going on and I could see certainly how that can shape things. But I guess, yes, what I’m really driving at is in terms of maybe incidences of anxiety, depression, or the proportion of people who strongly agree with this kind of statement is wildly different between folks who are 62 versus 22. Can you lay some of those sharp distinctions down for us?

Tim Elmore

Okay, sure. Yeah. Well, let me tell two quick stories that I think will vividly illustrate what you’re asking about. In the book, I talk about Tony, true story. Tony, two years ago, was a senior in college at Ohio University, took a part-time job during his senior year at a paint store, and loved his job, part-time. During that senior year, he also happened to get on TikTok. Of course, he did.

So, he’s on TikTok and he’s now posting videos of himself mixing paints together. He’s very clever, he’s very creative. His account goes viral. Pete, by the time he gets 1.8 million followers, and 37 million views, he realizes, “I should share this with the executives here. We could monetize this.” So, he puts a little slide deck together to make a presentation to the executive team, and he doesn’t get one person interested in hearing from him. He doesn’t get one set of eyeballs to look at his slide deck. Tony did get something, however, that he didn’t expect. He got fired.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Tim Elmore

Yup. So, these older executives were just sure this young kid didn’t know a thing, was probably stealing the paint, probably distracting to the customers, probably doing this on company time, and so they let him go. Well, Tony graduates, moves from Ohio to Florida, now has over 2 million followers, and has started his own paint store.

Pete Mockaitis

There you go.

Tim Elmore

Now, I’m sure there’s parts in the story we don’t understand but here’s one thing I do understand. It was a picture of the wide gap between the older generations that were in charge that had been doing the same for 30, 40 years, and were pretty sure they know what they’re doing. But here’s a young buck coming up, saying, “There’s a new platform that I’m on. Maybe you don’t have intuition on how we could use this. I think I do.”

So, I think, just to answer your question specifically, I don’t think, very often, people over 40 years old realize that the age of authority is dropping in the workplace. The age of authority is dropping. Think about a century ago. The age of authority was very high. In fact, grandma, grandpa, you listened to them because they’ve been around 70 years, whatever they say, man, they collected a lot of wisdom.

Well, today, rapid change happens. In fact, change happens so rapidly that young people are getting things faster than old people, and so they may have…well, first of all, they may be starting a company when they’re 21 years old, but I think we don’t realize that we need both timeless wisdom or timeless insight, and timely intuition.

So, I talk about this in the book. Timeless insight, people that have been around the block a few times can share the stuff they know how to succeed at this company. But the timely intuition very often comes from the young. They can see where culture is going. And like Tony, they may figure out very creative ways to do things differently and capture another million and a half people that the older folks would not have found.

So, I’ll just stop there but that would just be one picture of what I’m talking about.

Pete Mockaitis

That is an intriguing picture. And so, the age of authority, that’s intriguing. Is it, in fact, true that the average age of person promoted to CEO of a Fortune 500 company is lower now than it was 10, 20, 40 years ago?

Tim Elmore

Yes, it is.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. All right.

Tim Elmore

Yeah, so it’s dropping slowly not rapidly because we still celebrate whatever, that stage. And, by the way, you should know, I think you should know, 72% of high school students, public high school students in America, want to be an entrepreneur, seven out of ten. Now, are they all going to succeed? Probably not. But the fact that seven out of ten want to start something more than join something, that tells me something.

It tells me when they look at the current set of jobs or corporations to join, they go, “I want to start my own. I don’t know if I want to join that antiquated, stuffy, 9:00-to-5:00, check in, clock in, deal there.” Now, they may need to learn but I just believe I’ve got to do more listening as I age, not just telling. So, I argue in the book, we need fluid intelligence, that’s our first 40 years, we need crystallized intelligence, that’s our second 40 years.

And right now, we’re colliding more than collaborating in many workplaces. Age discrimination lawsuits are up at Fortune 500 companies, like IBM, Marriott, WeWork. It’s ridiculous.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it the older generation suing or the younger generation suing?

Tim Elmore

It’s both. Think about it. The old are suing the company because they feel like, “You didn’t promote me because you think I’m too old.” But the young are saying the same, “You didn’t promote me because you think I’m not wise enough or old enough. You think I’m too young.” So, I feel for CEOs that are having to call upon their legal counsel to just solve a feud at the workplace when if we were really learning to value the strengths that each generation brought to the table, we could really, really gain from this.

The book was designed really to be an encyclopedia where you don’t have to read the whole thing but you might want to read chapter seven and eight because you need help with Gen Zers and Millennials or whatever, that sort of thing. That’s really what I wanted. Too often, we were not. Well, here’s what I really, really argue for, Pete, all the time.

We’ve got to turn our frustration into fascination with each other. And I believe there’s something I can be fascinated with all four generations at my nonprofit, and the five generations that many people listening right now might have at their organization, but we’re having a difficult time because we speak different languages, we have different values oftentimes.

When you think about the marches that took place in 2020, the protests, Black Lives Matter and so forth, I’m sure there’s exceptions to this rule, but it was mostly the Millennials and the Gen Zers who were marching, mostly, and most of the Gen Xers and Boomers are going, “What? What are you doing? Stop wrecking that retail outlet there,” whatever, whatever. And I just feel like it was a picture of young and old not understanding each other’s mindsets.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, Tim, give us the overview. So, we are almost in 2024 now. Let’s name the generations, roughly how old are they today?

Tim Elmore

Yeah, okay. Good question.

Pete Mockaitis

Just to orient us for starters.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. First of all, we say to our listeners, this is an art, not a science, as I mentioned before. This is not psychology. Everybody has a unique personality. This is sociology. We talk about the narratives of generations. So, the oldest generation, Pete, that might still be in the workplace are past retirement age, typical retirement age, but people are living longer, working longer, so the Builder generation would’ve been born 1929 and 1945.

Many of our people in Washington, D.C. running our country right now are Builder generation folks, okay? President Biden, 81 years old right now. And, by the way, I’ll just share, this is not a partisan statement, but they should be paving the way for the next gen coming up rather than holding on to their office, but that’s the Builder generation. They were called Builders because they built so much out of so little. Think about the years they were born, 1929 to 1945. Great Depression. World War II.

The Baby Boomers come along next, 1946 to 1964, and they were called Boomers because, well, frankly, nine months after World War II was over, the maternity wards filled up. So, 76.4 million people were born in 18 years. That never happened before at all in America. They were called Boomers, or we, I’m a Boomer, we were called Baby Boomers because there was a boom of babies for 18 years.

After the Baby Boomers come the Baby Busters, or Generation X, 1965 to 1982. So, you might be the tail end of that generation. Are you kind of a Xlennial where you’re kind of a Gen X Millennial?

Pete Mockaitis

That’s a hard word to say.

Tim Elmore

Yes, it is, especially for me.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m not going to even try, Tim. You’re bold. Yes, I was born in 1983. And it’s funny, I don’t resonate a lot with either generational description because I’m right on the border.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, social scientists would call you a Tweener. After you’re five years at the tail end of one generation, or five years at the beginning of another, you’re probably going to adopt characteristics of both and neither. And that’s me with Boomers and Xers.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m not a Tweaker but a Tweener?

Tim Elmore

That’s right. Not a Tweaker; a Tweener. That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

Set the record straight.

Tim Elmore

Let it be known. Let it be known. That’s right. All right. So, Gen X was first called Baby Busters because their generation started with the public introduction of the birth control pill, so instead of a boom, it was a bust. If you add the contraceptive, you add on top Roe v. Wade in 1973, you have a shrinking population not a booming population. So, it’s two hills and two valleys. It’s a boom of babies and then it drops to a valley with the Xers.

Another boom with the Millennials who are the next generation coming, so ’83 to 2000, basically the ‘80s and ‘90s kids, and the Millennials are the largest generation in American history, 80 million strong. They’re the number one population in the workforce right now.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m sorry, didn’t you say never before since have you seen such a fertility rate but that’s because we started from a smaller base back in the day?

Tim Elmore

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. I’m with you. So, it’s a larger growth number but it’s a smaller rate.

Tim Elmore

Correct. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m with you.

Tim Elmore

Yeah, yeah. So, Boomers were 76 million, Millennials are 80 million. But then Gen Z follows Gen Y, or the Millennials, and they are really the kids that had been born at the turn of the century, and they have had a very, very different experience. Think about their generation, even though they were just babies, first of all, the century started with the dotcom era bubble bursting.

Y2K, we thought the world was going to explode, and then it didn’t. September 11, 2001 where all parents everywhere got scared to death for their children. Then you had, oh, my gosh, the smartphone being released and growing into a normalized thing.

So, Gen Z would follow the Millennials, the Millennials follows Gen X, Gen X follows Baby Boomers, and Baby Boomers follow the Builders, so there you have it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, you make a point, so we want to turn frustration into fascination. And my buddy, Steve, has strong opinions about Boomers. He’s a listener and he cracks me up, he said, “Hey, so one of your guests said he put himself through grad school with juggling. I thought, ‘Okay, this guy is a Boomer.’” And he’s like, “Boomers, man, they lived their life on tutorial mode. It’s not even easy mode in the video game. It’s tutorial mode where they tell which buttons to push. You can go through grad school and pay for it by juggling? Like, good luck, you’re going to have at least a decade of student loan debt if you tried to pull off an after-school job to fund your stuff.” So, he has some strong views on the Boomer population.

And so, talk to us then about that core, the frustration versus fascination, the conflict instead of collaboration. So, lay it on us, Tim.

Tim Elmore

Okay. Well, first of all, the stereotyping, and, by the way, Steve is probably a great guy, I would call that a stereotype. He may know a case or two or three but I think we lump all older people as they’re all talking about how they walked to school uphill both ways in the snow, that sort of thing. So, Boomers are stereotyped as this dinosaur that has a very, very reconstructed memory of the past that’s getting bigger and bigger every year.

But I tell you what, a Baby Boomer has a stereotype about Millennials and Gen Z, “All the Millennials are narcissistic, and all those Gen Zers are fragile snowflakes,” so we’ve all heard these terms. But here’s what I know about the human brain. I talk about this in the book. Two things. Number one, people develop a little bit like wet cement.

So, when cement is laid, let’s say a new sidewalk is laid in the neighborhood. On day one, you can press your handprint into that sidewalk very easily because it’s wet. In the same way, during the first 20 plus years of our life, the neuropathways in our brain are very plastic. The plasticity is very, very soft and you can learn quick and adapt quick, and it’s just like wet cement.

As we grow older, I don’t want to say it hardens, but a little bit like wet cement, it’s going to take a jackhammer by the time you’re 40 to change that brain, to change your mind over something. And so, in the book, I put a two-page spread that’s a generation chart where I talk about interviews and both qualitative and quantitative data I gathered on each generation, and I gave a life paradigm, a mantra for each one, their view of authority, their view of education, their view of the future, their sense of identity is very different.

The sense of identity for the Builder generation is, “I am humble. My mom and dad grew up in the Great Depression. You were just all humble back then. It was wrong to be anything but humble.” For Gen Z, their identity is very fluid. They may change their gender identity, and it’s fluid.

So, I just think it’s helpful for a colleague or a boss to know, “I just need to know this information to know, not to gasp, when I’m talking to someone from a different generation.” And here’s the other thing I know about our brains. When we see differences, we tend to distress, we tend to avoid. Think about it, Pete, let’s just take you and me.

If you and I didn’t enjoy each other, and you saw me talking with a bunch of Boomers with gray hair and no hair, and we’re all just good old boys talking at the watercooler, you might go, “Hmm, not my people. I don’t think I want to join that kind,” because we know it’s going to take work to really identify with that group of people, and we don’t want to do that work so we find our own people who talk like us, act like us, vote like us. That’s just a natural thing. We don’t want to work. We will find our own people where it’s less work.

And I argue in this book, you get better if you’re willing to do the work to connect with somebody from a different generation. So, let me stop there, let you volley back.

Pete Mockaitis

I think that’s a strong thesis and I think that’s true of so many domains. I guess diversity in every variety, first of all, and then just our general tendency to want to not to work and be comfortable, but also the downside of too much time and comfort results in atrophy and not growing and straightening and sharpening things.

So, with it being said that this is sociology and that these are broad generalizations and exceptions abound there, why don’t you go ahead and share with us some of those tidbits from this table to give us a feel for these pieces?

Tim Elmore

So, I had so much fun going to retirement villages and talking to the Builder generation folks and then collecting some quantitative data and sorting it. But the mantra for the Builder generation, remember, 1929 and 1945, their mantra when they entered the workforce was “Be grateful you have a job,” and that’s understandable, isn’t it?

My dad is a perfect example. My dad was born in 1930, so the first decade of his life was the Great Depression, the next five years, World War II, that’s what shaped him. He just passed away in 2020 at 90 years old. He’s frugal, he’s conservative, he’s grateful. And we save the wrapping paper at Christmas, we save every rubber band and plastic bag known to man. We have it up in the attic. You might need it next year. That was what they were conditioned to do. And I love the spirit of that generation, “I am humble. I am grateful.”

The Baby Boomers come along, and I gave the Boomers the life paradigm, as they entered the workplace, “I want better,” because Boomers grew up in a time not of depression but of expansion. Shopping malls were popping up everywhere, McDonald’s was franchising, we had just won, or help to win, a World War. So, America was feeling really great about ourselves between 1946 and 1964.

The Xers come along. I gave the Xers the life paradigm “Keep it real. Keep it real.” So, that was a phrase that actually became a thing back then, mid ‘60s all the way through the ‘70s. But think about, just for a minute, let me teach some history here. Think about the years that that group of children were being formed and shaped before they moved into adulthood.

By the late 1960s, not only was the Vietnam War going on, it was on TV. We could watch it at the 6 o’clock news with Walter Cronkite. And even though LBJ in the White House kept saying everything was fine over there in Vietnam, we started seeing footage that said it’s not fine over there. And then you had the Watergate scandal.

Now we had a Democrat and a Republican both lying from the White House. There was a very real wall that went up in the hearts and minds of American adults that said, “I’m not going to blindly trust a leader.” And even though Gen X was just children back then, they saw a bunch of adults leading them, teaching them, coaching and parenting them, they grew up a little more cynical themselves, “Keep it real. Don’t tell me life is wonderful. Keep it real.”

Millennials come along. Okay, this your generation now even though you don’t claim them, Pete. Millennials come along, and I gave the Millennials the life paradigm “Life is a cafeteria.” Now, let me explain why. This is not throwing them under the bus. My two kids are both Millennials in their 30s. Just like you go to a cafeteria, you grab your tray and your plate, and you make up your meal, a little bit of broccoli, a little bit of roast beef, a little bit of Jello, and you tailor it for your tastebuds.

These young professionals are making almost every major decision of their life as if it were a buffet. Here are some examples. Years ago, my two kids stopped buying compact discs to get their music. Why would they buy a CD? “There might be five songs I don’t even like on that CD. I get one song at a time for my own playlist on Spotify, Apple Music. It’s a buffet. I make educational decisions this way. I graduate high school and go to two or three different colleges for one degree. One of them is overseas.”

And you see this because Millennials grew up in a time of digital customization. As Millennials grew up, the cellphone grew up. As Millennials grew up, the computer grew up, so they were very used to mixing and matching. So, I would say to an employer right now, “Just get ready for a bit of a free agent mindset. You could find loyalty in the Builder generation. Maybe you got to earn it with the Millennial generation.”

Okay, one last one. Gen Zers, oh, my gosh, I love these guys. So, I interviewed middle school kids, high school kids, college students, and young professionals. And as I listened to them, they were all very respectful. Some listeners may not believe that but they really were. They were very respectful but they were very candid. They were raw. And the mantra I gave them, as they moved into adulthood, was “I’m coping and hoping.”

So, think about that. They’re hopeful because they’re young, but right now they may feel like they’re just coping. They’re struggling perhaps with mental health issues. It’s been normalized to have anxiety disorders or maybe just wrestle with anxiety. It’s been normalized to say, “I’m seeing a therapist,” and I’m not putting that down. I’m just saying mental health problems are now a thing.

And if we just laugh at them, and say, “You bunch of fragile snowflakes. Get with it. Just suck it up and do your job,” I don’t think that lack of empathy is going to get us where we want to get to when we want to build some discipline and grit in this staff. So, let me stop. I’m sure you’re thinking something, Pete. I want to hear what you’re thinking.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. I think that’s nice in terms of, all right, so we’ve got five generations, and a little bit of a vibe, and a little bit of a backstory. So, now let’s all crash them together in the workplace. Tell us, what are some of the top do’s and don’ts, maybe universally, and then specifically? I suppose we can have a very long conversation with a matrix, in this context, with this generation and that. So, we can’t do all that but maybe give us some universal do’s and don’ts, and then maybe a couple particular watchouts for areas of collision that are causing a lot of friction at work right now?

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, let me do the areas of friction right now because, listeners, if you’re in a workplace, you’re going to go, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, I’ve seen that.” So, number one, communication styles and mediums are different. You got to bring them together. In fact, I would say in the onboarding process, just say, “We use Slack,” or, “We don’t text,” or, “We do text,” whatever. But everybody’s going to come in based on a familiar source of way of communicating and I think we need to say, “To be together, let’s do this at work.” So, communication.

I think expectations. I have found in my dataset every generation comes in with slightly different expectations. So, I tell interviewers or HR hiring managers, “You need to talk over in the job interview preferences, expectations, and demands because those are going to tell you a lot about whether you can take this person on or not as a team member, and say, ‘You’re going to fit perfectly here,’ or stop the interview right now, and say, ‘I can just tell you right now, that’s not going to happen here. So, let me show you the door, and help you find another job.’”

So, real quick, I’ll make this fast. Preferences. All of us have different preferences. Sometimes there are some generations that will handle preferences as if they’re demands. They’re just something they wish were true but they’ll come in, and say, “I got to have this.” And I would say hiring managers need to say, “Is that really true? Do you have to have this because it’s not happening now? And if you just say, ‘I got to have it’ we can stop the interview right now.” Preferences, however, are only wishes, “I would prefer this to be the case.”

Expectations are stronger. When I began to talk about the expectation of a new potential team member, now they’re saying, “This is what I expect to be happening here. I expect a lot of autonomy. I expect to work from home,” or hybrid, or that sort of thing. But you want to find out, “What are you expecting here? Are you expecting unlimited PTO? Oh, wow, we should talk about that.”

And then, finally, demands. This is absolutely huge. Believe it or not, this is a huge issue that, far too often, we hire, get a year into it, and then we find them out, and it’s not a pretty picture. Demands are what perhaps either a boss or a new team member will say, “I must have this. Like, I want to talk about politics at work.”

Well, I think the wise boss will say, “You know what, we’re not going to stop working to see where we disagree on politics.” It’s my opinion but as I look at the dataset on companies that are thriving, you want to have some liberty but I’m telling you sometimes workers divide over a political issue, and now we’re not even good teammates.

So, that would be one, those three I just mentioned, communication styles. I think feedback, think for just a minute, Pete. How people prefer feedback might be extremely different and it might be good to establish the norms at this organization. For instance, Baby Boomers might still be fine with an annual review with full documentation. Well, Gen Z goes, “Seriously, I’m telling today no. I want multiple check-ins with my boss, and if I don’t get them, I think something is wrong.” And bosses are becoming exhausted because they go, “I can’t do that. I can’t watch over you and say good job, good job, good job,” or whatever, that sort of thing.

So, I feel like just talking about feedback. So, I have an entire chapter I bring up these issues that are seen differently primarily by the majority of each of these demographics and how we might approach them to kind of lubricate the friction.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it sounds like perhaps universal principle with these is to just upfront, in advance, discuss, “Hey, these are sort of our norms and practices, and how we roll, how we do things, what we value, just so you’re aware. You can expect this from us and you probably can expect that from us.” Just short-circuiting the surprises in advance.

Tim Elmore

Yes, exactly. That’s exactly it. In fact, one of the statements that you heard a million times, I say in the book, “Conflict expands based on the distance between expectations and reality.” Conflict expands based on the distance between the expectations of what I expect in this reality. So, real quick, if I tell my wife I’m going to be home at 7:00 o’clock for dinner, and I get home at 7:05, no big deal. I get home at 9:30, it’s a big deal. We have a conversation.

And it’s not because she can’t live without me for two and a half hours. It’s because I created a different expectation that causes friction inside. So, that’s just good behavioral science that I think leaders ought to know, teammates ought to know, and you’re right, talk about it upfront, get it out in the open.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, what are some don’ts, like, “Don’t do this”?

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, I have found that my generation, I’m a Baby Boomer, we tend to just want to tell those younger generations what to do. And so, let me tell you what I’m doing, I’m going to get very personal now, Pete. As a Baby Boomer who’s 63 years old, will be 64 next month, you know how we use that phrase “forever and ever and ever,” “this is a leg you got to stand on”? So, I take the letters A, L, E, G. It’s a simple acronym but I follow it to a tee as I interact with perhaps younger teammates that just do something that I go, “I do not understand what you just did or said or why you did it.”

So, the letter A in ALEG, I want to start by asking not telling. Instead of barking out “What the *toot* were you thinking when you did that?” I want to say, “Tell me what your thinking was. Tell me why you made that decision.” And I need to be genuine about it. Ask instead of tell. When I ask questions instead of tell, they suddenly feel valued rather than condescended to.

The letter L is listen. It does very little good to ask questions if we’re not willing to really listen to them. So, when I ask, they feel valued. When I listen, they feel heard. I believe the statement “Being heard is so close to being loved that, for the average person, it’s indistinguishable.” So, this is an appropriate way just to say “I care about you. I love you. I’m listening.”

The letter E is empathize. So, when I empathize, they feel understood. I want to just say, “Let’s get to the bottom line.” But empathizing means I say things, like, “Oh, my gosh, I had no idea you went through that,” or, “Wow, I bet that made you feel terrible when that happened.” Something like that where I’m not just listening but I’m sharing with them, “I’m really getting you.”

I’m telling you, Pete, if I’m asking, they feel valued; listening they feel heard; empathize they feel understood, now I’ve earned my right to practice the letter G, which is to guide them. As their boss, I might have some guidance but they’re so ready to reciprocate, respect, and listening, and so forth because I’ve taken the time to really listen. Think about a workplace that everybody was standing on that leg, I can’t help but think we just have better workplaces.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes, thank you. You also have a fun turn-of-a-phrase, reverse mentoring.

Tim Elmore

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

What is that? And how do we do it?

Tim Elmore

Oh, my gosh. It’s my favorite activity that I do and we recommend it to different people. So, listeners, I challenge you with this homework assignment. Reverse mentoring is what it sounds like. So, you get two people from different generations, older and younger, doesn’t matter which two but make sure there’s an older and a younger one definitively, and maybe you go to coffee, or maybe you have lunch together, but you swap stories first. You’re going to almost always find common ground when you swap stories.

Then the older person naturally coaches up the younger in, “Here’s how to succeed at this workplace,” but then you switch hats, and the younger is now mentoring the older perhaps on the latest app they just got and we could use it for marketing. Remember Tony, early in the conversation? So, you’re both doing this.

So, I meet with Andrew on a regular basis. I love Andrew. He’s my VP of content and he’s 30 years younger than me. I meet with Cam. Cam is on that content team, 40 years younger than me, recently minted from the University of Michigan. Brilliant guy. I learn every single time I’m with them. We laugh. We hug.

And I’m not saying this is a cheesy syrupy environment but we have so much fun because we’ve all checked our logos and egos at the door and we’re ready to learn from each other, and both are mentoring and both are learning. So, I just think that’s what we got to be like today in this rapidly changing world we live in.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, lovely. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Tim Elmore

Well, in the beginning of the book, I share a really fun quote. My friend Derrick Johnson from Orlando said this and I just love it. Here’s what he said, “If you think you’re smarter than the previous generation, consider this. Fifty years ago, the owner’s manual of a car told you how to adjust the valves. Today, it warned you not to drink the contents of the battery.” And so, I’m thinking, “Oh, my gosh, we’re definitely evolving right now.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Tim Elmore

Way back in 1968, research was done that proved that young people, I think it’s true about all people but back then the experiment was with students, students performed better under a teacher who has high expectations. That makes sense. In other words, when a control group…well, really, it’s two control groups who went in.

But one teacher was told, “These are average students. You can have average expectations.” But the other group, the teacher was told, “Now, don’t you let these kids talk you out of working hard. These are genius kids. They’re brilliant kids. You expect a lot of them,” you can imagine the results. The teacher that expected a lot had grades that were per student a grade and a half higher. But they were told later, after the experiment, both groups were average IQ students but the performance was so great.

Now, keep going. It was in the ‘70s they began to realize that high expectations alone don’t do the trick because some kids feel like, “Oh, you’re expecting too much of me,” and they spiral downward and they give up. It wasn’t until the ‘90s when research came out that showed this, and this is the piece I want everybody to hear.

When a teacher or a leader has both high expectations and high belief, it’s almost magical. High expectation, “I expect a lot of you,” and high belief, “And I know you, and I know you can do this.” It’s just huge. So, that’d be my favorite research that I’m trying to put to use every day here.

Pete Mockaitis

Can you help distinguish between expectation and belief? Because in some ways, there’s a strong overlap, and so I want to get really clear on how they’re different.

Tim Elmore

Yeah. So, I would say they’re cousins but not twins. So, if I only have high expectations of, let’s say, a person but I don’t have high belief, it feels harsh, “You expect a lot of me but I don’t get the feeling you actually believe I’m going to do it. You just demand, demand, demand.” So, high expectations without high belief feels harsh.

High belief without high expectation feels hollow, “You say you believe in me, mom, but you don’t actually expect me to come through.” You see what I’m saying? So, one is about I’m demanding or holding you to a high standard but belief becomes much more personal. So, let me give you the phrase that Ivy League schools found was that magical I mentioned earlier.

Here’s the phrase, and I quote, “I’m giving you this hard feedback because I have high expectations of you, and I know you can reach them.” Do you see how that kind of gets to, “I expect a lot but I know you, Josh. I know you can do this. I’ve watched you. You have it in you to do this.” The research shows effort went up a minimum of 40% all the way up to 320% in males. I think there are a lot of boys that said, “I’ve never had a dad say something like that to me.” So, that’s what I mean the difference between the personalness of belief and maybe the hardness of high expectation.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Tim Elmore

It’s a book by Arthur Brooks, the most popular teacher at Harvard University. He wrote a book called From Strength to Strength, and that book just absolutely lit me on fire. But he wrote another book that I want to push, if you don’t mind. He just published a book called Build the Life You Want.

He wrote it with Oprah Winfrey because she found him, and said, “Arthur, you’re amazing.” So, it’s really about the art of really becoming happier but that sounds so cliché.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Tim Elmore

Well, my name is Tim Elmore, so TimElmore.com. I have lots of free stuff on that site but also if you ever wanted me to come and speak that’s where you would do it. But, also, the nonprofit that I started focusing on the emerging generation and where you can find the book A New Kind of Diversity is GrowingLeaders.com. Thank you for asking that, Pete. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Tim Elmore

Yeah. Well, I would really like you to practice that reverse mentoring I just mentioned because I have found, if I’m willing to do the work, I always come up better. The illustration I want to give you, the challenge is this. If you and I were to hop on a plane and fly, let’s say, to China, we would hop off that plane there in Beijing, knowing we’re going to have to work harder to connect with people here. And we would naturally think that because we’re going, “Oh, my gosh, they speak a different language here. They have different customs here. They have different values here.” Bingo.

Would you interact with somebody from a very different generation, different language, different customs, different values? So, if I’m willing to do the work over there in China, be willing to do the work here at home with that person you’re apt to not spend time with because you think they’re so old they’re worthless, or you think they’re so young they’re worthless, when, in reality, they’re a wealth of wisdom inside, just not the wisdom you have.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Tim, this has been fun. Thank you. I wish you much luck interacting with different generations.

Tim Elmore

Thank you, Pete. You, too. Good to see you again.