This Podcast Will Help You Flourish At Work

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

Mar 23
0

850: How to Reinvent Yourself in Life and Work with Joanne Lipman

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Joanne Lipman says: "Everybody else’s journey looks so nice and neat, and we feel like we’re the only ones who are a mess, but, frankly, we all go through that struggle."

Joanne Lipman reveals her strategies for reinventing how you live, work, and lead.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How struggle makes you better.
  2. Three tricks to make any transition easier.
  3. How to take the most efficient brain breaks.

About Joanne

Joanne Lipman is a pioneering journalist and the author of the No. 1 bestseller THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: What Men and Women Need to Know About Working Together and NEXT! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. She has served as Editor-in-Chief of USA Today, USA Today Network, Conde Nast Portfolio, and The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal, leading those organizations to six Pulitzer Prizes. She is also an on-air CNBC contributor and Yale University journalism lecturer.

Resources Mentioned

Joanne Lipman Interview Transcript

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

Joanne Lipman
Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom of your book Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work but, first, I just got to know, you have had such an impressive career in the heights of senior journalism.

Pete Mockaitis
So, given your perspectives from having worked in journalism for a long time, what can you tell us about humanity, those of us here who make and choose to consume the news? What have you discovered that most of us don’t know?

Joanne Lipman
One of the things that I’ve discovered is that I really, really, really respond and appreciate the audience, the people who are listening. I think that our best insights come from when we’re talking to lots of people, when we’re out and about, when we also listen to people throughout the country. I think that one of the issues that we’ve had with trust in media is the idea that there are…we have media centers on both coasts.

We don’t have as much national media in the middle of the country, and I think it’s really important to have people represented in the newsroom from every community, from different localities, different genders experiences, socioeconomic backgrounds. And that, to me, is what builds trust in the news. And, to me, that’s the most exciting part of being in the newsroom when you’re surrounded by people who come from all different perspectives, and everybody brings something else to the party, which is, I think, helpful for all of us.

Pete Mockaitis
And then what happens when that’s not done, in terms of what’s the vibe or the impact?

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, I think there’s been some legitimate criticism that we’ve had too much sort of parachuting in. So, you’ve got your…because media is, and this is a whole other conversation, but media is under pressure, financial pressure, and there’s been a lot of cuts to journalism jobs. And, as a result, what sometimes ends up happening is there’s a story somewhere where there’s not a big news organization, and one of the big national news organizations, we call it they parachute in. Like, it’s every presidential election, there’s 50 big-time journalists who descend on Iowa and go to a diner.

Diner journalism is not great journalism. What you really want are the people who live there to be the reporters, to tell you to really understand what’s happening on the ground. And I think this is a reason why the media has – and this is all legitimate criticism – missed a lot of the rise of populism, the rise of Trump, certainly, but also just sort of through the last 20 years, the rise of the Tea Party. There’s a lot of really smart, informed people throughout the country whose voices are not heard.

And I think anything we can do to elevate those voices and have a broader perspective about…and an on-the-ground perspective of what’s happening. This is actually one of the great things when I was working with Gannett, which owns over a hundred local newspapers, and it was fantastic to be able to have when there’s an earthquake, a fire, a natural disaster, a shooting, to have local reporters who are on the ground who understood the community, and it really helps to understand the whole country. We’re a very diverse place with lots of perspectives and we need to understand ourselves better.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now can you tell us your book Next! what’s the big idea here?

Joanne Lipman
Sure. So, Next! it’s the power of reinvention in life and work, and I’m so excited about this book because it grew out of what we are all going through right now at this moment, which is we’ve had three years, we’re at the three-year mark, which is crazy, from the start of the pandemic, and the entire world was sort of upended.

No matter what you do or who you are, your life was upended, and it really got so many people rethinking, “What are our priorities? Am I in the right job? Is this the career I want? Is this the life I want? Is this where I want to live?” So many questions, and it occurred to me very early in the pandemic that we’re all going to have to figure out what’s next.

And so, the big idea is I wanted to help people to navigate big changes, navigate change in how we live, how we work, how we lead, and really to help people to move toward finding their real purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so when it comes to doing that, you’ve got a reinvention roadmap. Can you walk us through how that works?

Joanne Lipman
Sure. So, I’ll tell you a little bit about what the reporting was. When I started reporting the book, it was so interesting. I was looking for stories of people, and I did hundreds of interviews, there’s tons of research, scientific research in the book Next! And what I started with was talking with people who had already gone through these major transformations in different ways.

Some had had huge career changes, like one of my favorites. A guy named Chris Donovan who spent years, decades, as a telephone repairman but he secretly would, like, doodle pictures of shoes. And at the age of 50, left the phone company, went back to school, and now is a couture women shoe designer who was named Best of Boston, Boston Magazine, best shoe designer. It’s a beautiful story.

I found all these wonderful stories where people had these amazing transformations, but then what I did was I went back and talked to the academics, the researchers, who study these different kinds of change. And what was so fascinating was I talked to people who had gone through very different kinds of transformations, some were career, some were people who came back from, like, huge failures, some were people who had had trauma in their life, and some were actually people who had these grand aha moments that just changed their life.

So, these all seemed, on the face of it, to be very different kinds of transformation. And then I went and talked to these academics. There’s different academics who study each kind of change that I’ve just gone through, and they all walked me through sort of the steps of transformation, and they all used different words, different language, but they were all describing the same set of steps. And it was such a revelation to understand how this works.

So, they’re basically there’s four steps that pretty much everyone will go through. So, the first step, like, I will tell you the four steps, what we call them are search, struggle, stop, solution, and I will walk you through them. So, the search, almost everyone who I spoke to, no matter what kind of transformation they went through, they actually started before they even knew they started. They started moving in this direction, they started collecting information.

So, if you think about someone who changes careers, that is somebody who maybe has a hobby, or a side hustle, or even just some random interest that just grows and grows. I talked to everybody from James Patterson, the mega-selling novelist, who spent 30 years at an ad agency. He was actually at an ad agency, and he wrote books on the side, some of which got published, many of them kind of did not do well. He was, like, finding his voice, but he was working toward it.

The shoe designer I mentioned was doodling shoes. One of my other favorites was a bank economist. He worked for years, for decades, at JP Morgan, and he had a weekend house. And on the weekend house, it was a farmhouse, and he leased out the land around it to a cattle farmer. And when the cattle farmer died, he just bought the cows, he said, “I just thought all they do is eat grass. It doesn’t really take any work.”

Well, fast forward 20 years later, the guy is a full-time cattle farmer. He used to be a Harvard-educated economist, and now he’s, like, a guy who gets up and shoos the cows from one pasture to another and could not be happier. So, anyway, that’s the search, that people start moving in that direction. The struggle is very often particularly with careers, this is true. You leave one identity behind but you haven’t quite gotten to the other.

There’s a wonderful professor, Herminia Ibarra, who studies career transitions. She calls this the liminal period. It’s where it’s an uncomfortable period where you’re still haven’t quite figured out the future but you’re escaping the past.

The third step, which not everyone goes through but very often they do, which we call the stop. Very, very often, I found that there is a moment, and it’s either you choose it or it chooses you, where you just stop. So, where it’s either you’re banging your head against the wall and you can’t figure out that next step, again, uncomfortable, or, in some cases, for example, the shoe designer who I was mentioning, what prompted him was he got struck by cancer.

He had prostate cancer, and it was one of those moments where he said, “Wait a second. I’ve got to stop and think. Is this the life I want to have? Or, is this the life that I need to follow the path that I think I was put on this earth to do?” and he had that stop. And so many people do. And, by the way, if you talked to creativity researchers, people who study that, this is why we all have those aha moments.

I bet you’ve had this, right, where you wake up in the middle of the night, or you’re in the shower, or you’re going for a run, and suddenly you have that aha moment. It’s because you’re puzzling through something, and you can’t quite figure it out, and then what ends up happening is you have to put it out of your mind, you have to shut off the conscious thinking about it, and that’s what allows all these sorts of random thoughts in the back of your head kind of coalesce in your subconscious and then emerge as this aha moment.

So, there’s your stop. And then that is, again, what takes you finally to the solution. So, these four steps are very common to every kind of transition, and I found that very, very encouraging to understand how that process works.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Yes, very much. And that struggle, it’s interesting that notion of identity. So, our identities are often quite wrapped up in our work careers. Is that a finding you saw again and again?

Joanne Lipman
A thousand percent, yes. Very often, somebody said to me, “You are, like, your title, and when somebody takes that away from you, you lose that title, people are really lost.” There really is an issue with, there’s an Atlantic writer who calls workism, which is it’s almost like a religion where we are so focused on work, and it is so much of our identity, and when that goes away, it’s very hard to come back.

But that struggle is also sort of the pathway. It’s really uncomfortable. What I found almost universally is when you’re going through that struggle, whoever it is that’s going through that struggle, you think you’re the only person in the world who’s dealing with that. You feel like, “I’m a loser, and everybody around me is getting ahead, and they’ve figured it out and I haven’t.” But it is actually a universal feeling.

And it’s also where the really, really important work gets done. It’s not necessarily fun but it’s helpful to know that, first of all, everyone goes through it, and, secondly, it is actually where the most important part gets done. And I think one of the issues that we have in this, with society at large, is we have this sort of fantasy of instant overnight success, overnight transformation, and it starts from childhood with Cinderella, and then it goes to adolescence with Superman and Spiderman, and then it goes to adulthood with American Idol.

And then we hear these amazing stories, like John Legend was a management consultant, and now he’s a superstar. And Mark Zuckerberg was a college kid, and now he’s a tech billionaire. We hear these stories and it just seems so far from our own experience. It just seems like it’s impossible we shouldn’t even try because we’ll never get there.

And it’s really a damaging myth. It’s a complete myth that the important thing is we all need to go through that middle period. It’s really important, great work is being done in that middle period. We all go through it. And so, again, it’s something that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you mentioned John Legend, a management consultant to music, and I remember when I was making my transition, I was in management consulting at Bain. And I remember when I was sort of an odd duck, like people typically didn’t believe that company to go be speaker-author-people. So, I did feel that discomfort, it’s just like, “Oh, so what do you do?” I was like, “Oh, I’m a speaker and an author, and I’m kind of still figuring it out. My market is in topics and audiences, but I was a consultant at Bain.”

So, it’s like, “But I’m not a loser, I promise.” I don’t know, it’s like that insecurity that I had in that moment, it’s like, “I’m still figuring out what the heck that I’m doing here, but before I had a pretty prestigious role, so don’t think less of me.”

Joanne Lipman
Everybody. Everybody has been in your position because so many people, they meet you and they’re like, “Okay, what do you do?” and it leaves you tongue-tied. I’ve experienced that myself. I ran a magazine that closed, and then I was meeting people, and they’re like, “What do you do?” I’m like, “I used to…” What do you say, right? It’s a very awkward situation.

I have a whole chapter, by the way, on what I call necessity entrepreneurs, which is women, people of color, and, increasingly, Baby Boomers, people who are actually being squeezed out of the traditional workforce or the traditional jobs, and very often end up with far more fulfilling careers, actually, as a result. But the women who I talked to, in particular, said, “You feel invisible.”

There’s a fabulous woman I talked to who had a big consulting career, and left to raise her children, and for 12 years, she was out of the workforce, and she said, “These 12 years of feeling invisible, it’s tough. It’s tough.” I do love, by the way, that LinkedIn now allows you to have that career gap as, like, a legitimate part of your resume because I think those are…these career gaps, we’re increasingly in a nonlinear world with careers, which is so much about what Next! is about, is this sort of nonlinear life and how do you navigate the nonlinear life.

And we see it with Boomers, and now we’re seeing it with the younger generation, which they expect to have, 10 or 12 careers in the course of their working life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now you got me intrigued. So, LinkedIn, so gaps, you have the option, you have a start date and end date for things that don’t have to overlap within the programming. Is that what you’re saying?

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, exactly. And it’s made for people who have career gaps or people who maybe dropped out of the workforce, paid workforce, I should say, because they’re still working, but paid workforce, you know, they raised their kids or for other reasons, they take care of older relatives, for whatever reason it is. And I think that’s incredibly important.

I also think that there’s an increasing recognition that during those gaps in paid employment, there’s a lot of learning that’s going on, and there are a lot of people who I’ve talked to who had these wonderful career transitions because of what they learned during these gaps in their careers. The woman who I just referenced, who said she felt invisible for 12 years, she poured her energy and her business skills into community issues.

So, the zoning board, and getting a playground by the school, and getting a stop sign, and joining the PTA. All these kinds of things, civic engagement, and she met a lot of women like herself. Ultimately, what this woman did was she did two things, which is so awesome. She started a nonprofit that she is now the CEO of, that is expanding nationally, called The Acceleration Project. Its volunteers like herself and other moms who had big careers, and they mentor local business owners to help them with things like marketing and finance.

She did that, and then she was elected mayor of Scarsdale, New York, her town, and she now gives speeches all over. And she told me when she gives these speeches, she says, “When I talk about my career path, it sounds like it was so intentional, and that you can tie it up with a bow. But, frankly, when you’re in the middle of it, when you’re in that struggle,” she said, “you have no idea where it’s going.”

And this is sort of that myth that we were talking about. Everybody else’s journey looks so nice and neat, and we feel like we’re the only ones who are a mess, but, frankly, we all go through that struggle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we touched on a number of stories as examples here and there. Could you walk us through a story from beginning to end that you find the most clearly illustrative of these stages, “Hey, here’s the search, here’s the struggle, here’s the stop, here’s the solution”?

Joanne Lipman
Yes, okay. So, there’s a fabulous woman who I met, named Marla Ginsburg. So, Marla Ginsburg was a big-time television executive, and she had a great job, and she told me this story about how she got a promotion, she moves to California, gets the big house with the pool, and the nannies for the kids, the whole works, then comes a writers’ strike, and she loses the job.

And so, now she has to think about, “What am I going to do next?” And she says the only thing she can think of is she was always really interested in clothing design, and she’d always hoped to be, in her dream, her dream life was to be a television host. And she said the only problem was she didn’t know how to sew, she didn’t know how to design, and she’d never done television.

So, she, though, was in this struggle phase of, like, “What do I do next?” As she said, she was over 50 in a town that really prizes youth. Her old life, she could see, was fading away but she was in the midst of this struggle, saying, “How do I get to this new life?” And so, she went out, she bought a sewing machine at Sears, she Googled how to use it, and she Googled how to sew.

She Googled everything about design, she starts trying to put together these designs, and then she’s learning, she’s struggling, she’s hoping to get to this next step, and then she gets slammed again, that her son gets ill, he needs treatment. She no longer has insurance, and it’s one of those stop moments. He goes overseas, where her ex-husband is, to get treatment, and she follows.

She’s in a bar department, and this was her stop. She’s struggling, and now this is a dead stop. She is only there to be there for her son. And she said she was all alone, like while he was getting his treatments and such, she’s all by herself and she’s in a new place where she doesn’t know anybody. And she says, “You know, for some reason, during this moment, it was a dead stop, and yet,” she said, “my creativity just flourished.”

And she had all of these ideas about creating new designs and new ways that she could…she thought about the women who could use the designs for, particularly women in her age group, over 50 kinds of women, and she said it was the most creative period of her life. It was an amazing thing. Thankfully, her son recovered. She came back to the United States, she found a manufacturer, and fast forward to today, Marla Ginsburg is one of the biggest stars on Home Shopping Network.

She has a line called MarlaWynne. And PS, she is the face of MarlaWynne, so she, actually, made both of her dreams come true. She’s a clothing designer and she’s, essentially, a talk show host because you can find her on TV talking. And she’s awesome on TV talking about her designs. And it was an amazing thing to see for someone who went through such a struggle and had that stop that was just forced on her that was just horrendous, and yet that was…everything that happened to her was what allowed her to be what she considers the best expression of herself as a clothing designer and being on television.

So, so many stories work out in that manner. It’s been pretty amazing to speak to so many of these people from different walks of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is a lovely story, and it’s cool to see the pattern and the life cycle there. Could you share with us some mistakes, things not to do when we are thinking about making a switch and reinventing?

Joanne Lipman
Yes. So, one thing is if you read all of the traditional business books, they will tell you, you have to have the goal in mind and work backwards. So, if you read like Think and Grow Rich or any of these books that have been around for many decades, that’s how they lay it out but, in fact, that is a myth also. Almost all of the people that I spoke to, some had a goal in mind, but many of the people that I spoke to kind of had the sort of circuitous paths. They would never imagine that this is where they would end up.

And so, one thing is to really keep an open mind. One of the best examples of that, sports fans will remember Len Elmore, who was on the Knicks and on the Pacers and various other teams, big basketball star in the ‘80s. And Len, after he retired, he actually went on to Harvard Law School, he’s had an illustrious career both as a commentator and also practicing law and management in sports.

And his stop was he turned 65 years old and he just had this just series of terrible things. He was hospitalized, and he had a terrible illness, which he had a heart attack. He was let go from his sports commentating job. So, he’s 65 and, suddenly, he’s done all of these, had this great career, and, suddenly, he’s like, “Wait a second. Who am I? What is my identity? What can I do?”

And he said, “I felt like I had so much more to offer.” And he said, “You know what I did, instead of saying ‘Here’s where I want to go’” he said, “I sat down and I actually wrote down what are all of the skills that I bring to the party. And then I looked to see what are opportunities I never would’ve thought of that my skills matched.”

And guess what? He ended up being, now, and he is currently a Columbia University professor, which is not the career he ever thought he would end up in when he was playing for the Knicks, but all of his skills, the fact that he had this law degree and had practice, and the fact he was interested in social justice with athletes, and his knowledge of sports management, all of it rolled into becoming a professor and a scholar, which is, again, not where he thought his career was taking him.

And we saw that a lot, but there are also things that you can do, which perhaps we want to talk about. Things that you can do to help figure out where it is that you want to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing. Let’s hear it.

Joanne Lipman
Yeah. Well, there’s a number but I’ll just mention three. So, the first is there is a concept that is called possible selves. This is a concept in psychology, a couple psychologists actually coined this phrase, and it means you’re imagining who you might be, who you might become. And that is something that a lot of people sort of felt was very helpful.

James Patterson told me that while he was an ad executive, he imagined himself as a bestselling novelist. It was the kind of thing, it seemed like a far-off dream. Marla Ginsburg did the same with thinking about being a clothing designer. But just imagining it isn’t sufficient. You actually want to do something. So, you want to either take some action as in a hobby or something.

But the second thing that I would say, because this ties in with this first idea of possible selves, is talk to what we would call, I’m calling an expert companion. Expert companion is somebody who knows you really, really well, who can reflect back to you what are your strengths that you may not even be aware of. Again, I saw this very frequently with people who, they’re so close to their own strengths that they don’t even see that they have them.

And then the third thing I would say is reach out to your network, particularly weak ties and dormant ties. And I think you’ve talked about this on the show before. Your most helpful career advice very often will come from, not from your direct circle – you kind of all know the same things and the same people – but from somebody who either you lost touch with, or somebody who you know tangentially. There’s been a lot of research that’s been done on this over the past 50 years. And for people who switched careers, the majority will tell you, it came through weak ties or dormant ties, people who you lost touch with.

There was a really cool experiment that was done fairly recently where executives were asked to reach out to try and solve a business problem that they had by reaching out to someone who they hadn’t spoken to in at least five years. And the results were quite remarkable. They were like, first of all, they got better advice than they got from their inner circle but, also, they just found that it was really gratifying to reconnect with these people.

And they also said, “It was also quite efficient because they could kind of pick up where they left off,” so you didn’t have that sort of awkward get-to-know-you kind of thing. They could kind of dive right into it. So, it was really a win-win for everybody.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very cool. Well, Joanne, tell me. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, you know what, there’s two things I want to mention, actually, that I came across that I think can be really helpful to people. I know you’ve done some shows about burnout. There’s a lot of burnout in this particular moment, and I think it is with the pandemic, it really did get people to rethink and reprioritize. And one of the things that I found, and I found this to be true in the research as well as with the people I talked to, is listen to your gut.

If your gut is telling you you’re not in the right place, listen. It turns out there’s a lot of research behind gut instinct, and very often your gut instinct is correct. And I would also say give yourself a break. This is also so important. When I talk about that stop phase, sometimes it was somebody who either shows to take a career break or had one forced on them when they were, let’s say, laid off.

And every piece of research will tell you that when you take that break, it is a way for your brain to reset, but also when you’re not so actively thinking and focusing and losing sleep over trying to solve a problem, that is when your brain is at its best. When the thoughts that are swirling around in your head can coalesce into some fabulous new idea.

And, by the way, and I think a lot of listeners probably know this, but you cannot say it enough that it’s so important, even during the course of your day, take a walk, take a break. One of the great pieces of advice I got was what we call the 90-minute rule. And the 90-minute rule is if you’re working on a project, you focus intensely on it with no distractions for 90 minutes. So, you turn off the cellphone and you don’t look at your email, you just focus on whatever you’re doing, this task at hand, for 90 minutes. But then, after 90 minutes, you must take a break.

And it doesn’t matter what you do during your break. You can go for a run, you can eat something, you can do whatever you feel like doing but you have to take that break, and then you can do another 90-minute segment. And you can do about three of these in one day and get far more work done than if you just, like, sit at your desk and stare at your computer for eight hours.

There’s the famous research that was done that Malcolm Gladwell popularized about you need 10,000 hours, but the professor who actually did that research on the 10,000 hours, that was only one piece of what makes you an expert. The other piece of it was exactly what I just talked about, which is that his research was on violinists that needed 10,000 hours to be an expert. But what these violinists did is they practiced for 90 minutes, they took a break, they practiced for another 90 minutes, and they did it no more than three times a day. So, it’s so important to take that break to allow your brain to reset.

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

Joanne Lipman
Absolutely. I don’t know who said this but I repeat it almost every day, which is, “If something is bothering you, and it won’t matter five years from today, it doesn’t matter now.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And we heard about a favorite study, so how about a favorite book?

Joanne Lipman
So, favorite book, my favorite book of all time is Anna Karenina. However, I would say there’s a book that I absolutely love that I highly recommend called The Eureka Factor, and it’s by two academics, John Kounios and Mark Beeman, who are the reigning experts on aha moments, why they happen, and how you can have more of them.

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

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, one that I came across while researching the book is a CV of Failure. And I found that people who are highly successful, some of them, there’s an academic who I met along the way, who, she said the best thing she ever did was she sat down and created a resume, not of all her great successes, but of everything she failed at, every research project she didn’t get, or grant she didn’t get, and every rejection she got.

And she said it was really helpful in helping her understand, first of all, all the amazing things she tried, but also it helped her understand where her strengths were, and it actually led her to a different field of research. So, I love the idea of a CV of Failure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Joanne Lipman
My favorite habit is definitely the 90-minute rule that I referred to earlier. I use it every day.

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

Joanne Lipman
Yes. Yes. I was once asked, “What advice would you give to your younger self?” and I said, “Exhale.” I hear that all the time. All the time. The idea that we get so caught up in our careers, and we worry so much about the future, and just if you exhale.

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

Joanne Lipman
My website is JoanneLipman.com, and you can find Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work on Amazon or anywhere where you buy books.

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

Joanne Lipman
Two things related. First is if you have a hobby or an interest or something that you think possibly you might be interested in, take action, learn about it, talk about it, follow somebody in the field. And second, and so related to this, is be open to the unexpected. You never know where your interests may take you. And for the people who I interviewed for Next! so many of them ended up in places they never dreamed, and they’re so much more fulfilled in their careers because of it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Joanne, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and many quality reinventions.

Joanne Lipman
Thank you, and you as well. This has been a terrific conversation.

Mar 20
0

849: How to Build Better Teams through Better Inclusion with Sally Helgesen

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Sally Helgesen says: "It’s easier to act our way into new ways of thinking than to think our way into new ways of acting."

Sally Helgesen provides practical ways to foster solidarity and inclusion rather than division.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The merits of true inclusivity.
  2. Why it pays to give the benefit of the doubt.
  3. How to manage your triggers effectively.

About Sally

Sally Helgesen, cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership, is an internationally best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach, honored by the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame. Her most recent book, How Women Rise, co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith, examines the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women, and its rights have been sold in 22 languages.

Her previous books include The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, hailed as the classic in its field and continuously in print since 1990, and The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, which explores how women’s strategic insights can strengthen their careers. The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, was cited in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and is credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business.

Resources Mentioned

Sally Helgesen Interview Transcript

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

Sally Helgesen
Thank you, Pete. It’s wonderful to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your book Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace. Well, Sally, I’d love to kick it off by hearing about a particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made along the way when it comes to this inclusion stuff since you’ve been studying it for quite some time.

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, Pete, I’d say the thing that most jumps out at me is that the approach to inclusive culture that’s taken in many organizations, which focuses on unconscious bias, is possibly the least effective focus that we can take. And I know a lot of people have been through unconscious bias trainings, and sometimes they can stir real insights, and sometimes they can make us pretty angry, but whatever the response, they usually don’t lead us with much of a path forward to creating more inclusive relationships, getting along better with people we perceive of as different from ourselves, or creating inclusive teams or cultures in the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, that’s intriguing. Let’s dig into that. And maybe, first, just to make sure we’re all on the same page with regard to terms. What do we mean by being inclusive, fundamentally?

Sally Helgesen
I think an inclusive culture, whether it’s a team, whether it’s an organization, whether it’s a community, we always know it because it is one in which the largest possible percentage of people feel that they are valued for their potential, not just their contributions, so they really feel seen and feel as if they are part of a ‘we’ not a ‘they.’ So, it’s a real cultural belonging in that sense, and that’s why it’s kind of the acid test. If you have a culture and people talk about the organization, say, or the team as a ‘they,’ you can be pretty sure that they’re not perceiving it as inclusive.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful, or corporate, or ‘they,’ it’s like the other folks.

Sally Helgesen
Yup, exactly. So, there’s no possible way that the person who’s using the word ‘they’ perceives themselves as really seen or valued, and so that’s how we know.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, fundamentally, what are some of the key drivers that get in the way of having a real big ‘we’?

Sally Helgesen
A lot of times people are concerned about, or shy about, or fearful of saying things, for what they might imagine would offend somebody who they perceive as having a different background, different values, people across gender, race, age, ethnicity, etc., so people may feel and sort of do a self-censuring so they don’t really feel like they’re being themselves when they’re talking to people who they perceive as being different. And then the other person picks up on that and recognizes that they’re rather stiff because of this perception of difference. So, that’s one of the things that can get in the way.

On the other hand, another thing that can get in the way is we can have an awareness of what someone else might perceive as problematic. So, a lot of it comes down to both of those situations I’m describing, is trying to read other people’s minds and figure out what they might be thinking. Much better to be really transparent and to just ask questions, “How do you like to be spoken to? How do you like to…? What enables you to bring your best talents to work? What talents do you have that may not be viewed? Is there anything that really upsets you when people say it?”

Those kinds of conversations are really helpful at building relationships across boundaries in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you say something that often is not getting the job done is unconscious bias training. Could you paint a picture for what does unconscious bias training look, sound, feel like in practice so folks can sort of recognize that, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I did one of those a few years ago”? And then why isn’t it getting the job done?

Sally Helgesen
Well, what it looks like in practice often, and, of course, there is some unconscious bias training is more effective than others, but, basically, what it looks like is people being asked, either through a test or through a conversation to understand where they might have biases, prejudices, beliefs about people. It can be anything. It can be gender or race, but it could also be people with tattoos on their necks or whatever it is.

So, something that really tests and helps you identify what your beliefs are is where it’s focused. And that can be fine as far as it goes, but there’s no how there, there’s no, “How do you move forward from that?” As someone I worked with once said, “It’s all aha moment, and no ‘now what?’ We don’t know how to proceed.”

And what I’ve tried to do in Rising Together and in the work I’ve been doing, generally, for decades is focus on the how, what are the practices. People perceive us based on our behaviors not on our biases. Really, whatever happens to be running through our heads at the time, that’s how they’re impacted, that’s how they’re affected.

So, I think a stronger approach is to start by practicing more inclusive behaviors with people. It’s also easier to, as I like to say, to act our way into new ways of thinking as opposed to thinking our way into new ways of acting, because once we try out something, we may learn something about it. And so, then we’ll think, “Okay.”

Well, for example, you might think, “Well, this person seems to be this way.” And then you have a conversation with them, and you realize that your presumption was wrong. But if you were trying first to address what was in your head, what your thoughts were, you wouldn’t have any evidence to begin changing.

So, it’s interesting that we seem to often get it backward. We think we need to change our minds so that we can change our behaviors rather than change our behaviors so that we can change our minds.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is powerful, Sally. And I was just about to ask, if some folks have had the unconscious bias training, and they had the aha moments, but not the ‘now what?’ I was just going to ask, so folks have determined, “Okay, I’ve got some unconscious bias against people with tattoos, or trans people, or Trump voters,” I mean, you name it, you have some unconscious bias about any grouping of folk. What is the ‘now what?’ And maybe it sounds like your answer is maybe don’t even bother to think yourself into new ways of acting. Is that fair? Or are there some useful thought-to-action approaches as well?

Sally Helgesen
No, I think it should be action to thought rather than thought to action. It can really keep us stuck because when we’re thinking, “Well, what about this person? Or, what if they…?” etc. So, I would really recommend in those situations going to action. We’ve all had this experience where you go into a store and it looks like you’re going to have a slightly hostile encounter.

So, you practice being almost aggressively nice to that person. You act as if you never noticed any hostility from them. You act as if they were treating you superbly, “Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that,” without being too sucky-up but acting as if you don’t notice that they’re treating you in a slightly disrespectful way.

Often, not always, but often they will kind of…you’ll be cuing them, “Oh, yeah, you know, I am a nice person. This person, okay, they seem to be responding to me in a positive way.” And nine times out of ten, they’ll switch their response to you. I know, I’ve watched this be true throughout my life. Somebody’s water is dripping down from their bathtub in an apartment above mine, and I know it’s because they were having kind of a lost weekend, and I knock on the door, and say, “I can’t believe you would…” and all that kind of stuff. Well, it’s going to escalate.

If I go up there and trying to diffuse the situation by giving them the benefit of the doubt, “I’m sure you didn’t realize this but the water in your bathtub overflowed and it’s doing whatever it is. And I’m sure this isn’t something that you had any awareness of,” then they’ll, “Oh, well, okay. I’m so sorry,” etc. We don’t do this, and part of the issue in the workplace today is people are kind of primed to be on the search often for microaggressions or, “Does that person think…?” or, “What about their response?” and so we’re not accustomed to diffusing those situations. We feel like we have to react to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was going to ask specifically about getting people a benefit of the doubt. I think most folks are, generally, familiar with what that phrase means. But could you expand upon, in practice, what are the thoughts, the assumptions, the practices, that one embodies when they are just habitually giving people the benefit of the doubt as their default way of being?

Sally Helgesen
Well, I’m not advocating passivity because passivity, when we do that…what I’m really talking about is being able to write a script for yourself. Okay, somebody, let’s talk about gender. So, a woman thinks, “Oh, men just can’t listen to women.” She feels unheard in a situation, “Men just can’t listen to women.” If we just kind of passively accept that, or grab a friend and complain, “I can’t believe that guy. Men can’t…” etc. that’s not an approach that’s going to be helpful.

But often, just saying, “You weren’t listening to me. Men can never listen to women,” that’s not a good path forward either. So, we want a way to give that person the benefit of the doubt. So, in our head, we can write a script, “You know, maybe he couldn’t hear what I was saying because there was noise in the room,” or, “Maybe I didn’t phrase this using language that was that familiar to him. I think I’ll give it another shot.”

Then you go to the person and you say, “I noted that you didn’t seem to hear what I said in that meeting, and I figured it might be helpful to you if I were to rephrase it,” and then you do that. Well, usually, they’re not going to say, “No, I didn’t hear what you said because I wasn’t interested,” or “because I have a terrible time hearing women.” Generally, they’re going to say, “Oh, okay, thank you.” Then you have a way to begin a constructive situation. So, it’s neither defensive nor is it passive.

Now, what is so remarkable, and I’ve used this in coaching for quite a while, what is so remarkable about this technique of writing a new script is that it is effective whether or not we believe that person really earned the benefit of the doubt. If we think that they might have intentionally said something to us in a way that bothered us, or if we think this is part of a pattern with them that they never really listen to us in a fruitful or effective way, even if we think that, if we write that script and then act as if we believe it, it will usually serve us better than the stock response or negative script that we’ve been invested in, in the past.

It will usually serve us better and it will also give us a path to potentially building more of a relationship with that person where they could serve in some way as an ally for us, and we could serve as an ally for them. So, it’s very effective even if we don’t necessarily buy it. And knowing that you don’t necessarily buy it is where part of your power lies in doing this because it’s not a Pollyanna, “Oh, they must be a wonderful person even though…” It’s a very realistic testing and probing to see, to discern an alternate path so that you can connect with that person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s beautiful. Thank you. Well, now I want to hear, in your book Rising Together, you identify eight common triggers that undermine our ability to connect. Could you first define what do you mean by trigger? And then could you give us the quick rundown of each of these eight?

Sally Helgesen
Sure. What I mean by trigger is any situation or stimulus in our environment that stirs an emotional response in us.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is this a negative emotion response?

Sally Helgesen
It can be a negative or it can be a positive response. It could be positive as well as negative.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, “I’m delighted by this.”

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“You triggered delight in me, Sally.” Okay.

Sally Helgesen
Wonderful, Pete. I’m so glad to hear it. So, they can be negative or they can be positive, but it’s the negative ones, obviously, that are more likely to undermine us in the workplace, so that’s why I’m focusing on triggers that can often stir a negative response. But what’s important to recognize is that they’re environmental. They happen in the environment so we can’t really control what triggers us.

They lie outside our circle of control, if you will. We can only find a more effective way to manage them than we may already be doing. So, I think we waste our time by trying to create an environment in which we are shielded from any potential triggers, and that’s what’s happened to a lot of younger people coming into the workplace because, in their colleges and universities, there’s such an emphasis on trigger warning, etc.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, really?

Sally Helgesen
Guess what? Our environment is always going to give us trigger warnings. What we need is to understand an effective way to address them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you then share with us some of these common triggers?

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, a couple of them that really stand out, one is visibility, which we don’t necessarily think of as a trigger but it really can operate, and it can operate in a number of ways. Number one, we can feel triggered by people we feel are very good at being visible, “Oh, he’s such a showboat. He’s always talking about himself. He’s that kind of person. I’m a wonderful person. I’m not like that.”

Or, we can just simply feel triggered by our own lack of visibility, “Oh, nobody ever notices me. I guess I’m just not the kind of person who grabs attention. Oh, well, I know that I’m a good person, and this, that, or the other, couple of my friends like me,” but we’re being triggered by that, by that reaction. Or, we can, if we are really good at it, and I’ve seen this with senior executives I’ve worked with, if we’re really good at it, we can be triggered by people who are not good at positioning themselves to be visible.

We think we can dismiss them, “Oh, well, he’s not a player. He’s not very good at bragging on himself or tooting his own horn. He seems to have some moralistic inhibition against doing it, so I’m not going to waste my time with him.” I heard that a lot from people who are good at it. So, it can trigger us in all kinds of ways.

But, here, you see this is a really good demonstration of how triggers work. What they do is they stir up a kind of automatic or stock response in us, “Well, he’s a showboat. I don’t want to be like him.” And I’ve heard people say this for years, “Yeah, well, if I act out like that jerk down the hall to get noticed in this organization, no, thank you.” Why is he a jerk, because he gets noticed? Maybe learn from him.

So, they stir up a stock response, and then that response keeps us from being able to think of a more positive way to address the situation, “Hmm, okay, I see that I am being triggered by that person’s skill at getting noticed. I wouldn’t necessarily want to use the same techniques, but I think that there is probably something I can learn here. Maybe I’m going to start watching him and thinking about how I might rephrase things he says in a different way, a way that’s more comfortable for me.”

“So, for example, if he’s saying, ‘Well, I had that client eating out of my hand,’ we might think, ‘Okay, that’s helpful.’ Maybe it would be more useful for me to phrase it, ‘Well, that client and I really bonded together.” But it’s helpful to understand and watch what he’s doing in a constructive way so that we’re rewriting that script, “Hey, here’s someone I can learn from.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful in terms of the notion of our automatic response, and it just closes down the whole universe of possibility and opportunity. And I think we do this all the time with so many things.

Sally Helgesen
We do. We do.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell us, Sally, what are some ways to catch ourselves in the moment regardless of what the trigger is?

Sally Helgesen
Well, I think, number one, when we recognize ourselves going into telling ourselves a story that’s kind of negative and defensive, or telling ourselves, in particular, a story that’s very self-serving about who we are, “Well, I’m not the kind of person who would ever…” The minute we hear ourselves telling ourselves that kind of story in our heads, we should recognize that, “Ah, okay, I’m probably being triggered.”

“Now what is triggering me here? In this case, it’s the fact that I feel that that person is better at getting noticed than I am. Okay, that’s triggering me. How could I rewrite this or take a different path of action that would be more helpful to me, that would serve me better and might also help me figure out a way to connect better with this person instead of, judgmentally, dismissing them?”

So, defensiveness, judgment, self-serving narratives, these are all keys that we are being triggered. And if we want to address them, we should take heed and then think about how we might more skillfully and usefully respond.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so given those things to be on the look out for, could you share with us another one of the common triggers called ‘that’s not funny’?

Sally Helgesen
‘That’s not funny.’ Exactly. These are triggers that are based around humor. And humor has become, I think, are really challenging thing to deal with in today’s workplace because people have different perceptions in terms of what they think is funny. Also, jokes, especially jokes that would’ve been acceptable and thought of as sort of fresh and interesting a number of years ago, now have a way of giving offense to a lot of people. And that has made humor, to some degree, really challenging in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Sally, could you give us an example of a joke or piece of humor or reference that might’ve been fine and dandy five to ten years ago, and now is, ooh, risky business?

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, any joke that has to do with gender, lots of jokes that were in the workplace – I don’t want to necessarily repeat them right now – that had to do with women who were sort of hot quantities or a presumption that men were always trying to seduce women in one way or another, those kinds of jokes. I came of age; I was in the Mad Men era when I started working. I worked in advertising and it was really like Mad Men, and there were all kinds of stuff that, today, would get somebody fired on the spot that was happening.

So, there are a lot of people who kind of come from that era, or just a bit afterwards, when it was sort of rock and roll time, and anything would go. And there could be jokes about who somebody picked up at the bar last night. Well, that’s fine, that was then, but now that’s going to rile up a lot of people. Anything that pertains specifically to someone’s looks or appearances is really out of bounds. Even very simple things.

Like one example I give in the book, which is a classic sort of golf joke where the husband comes home, and the wife said, “Well, how did it go?” And he said, “Well, it was fine until the sixth hole when Charlie had a heart attack.” And the wife says, “Oh, poor Charlie. What happened?” And he said, “Well, he expired on the sixth hole, so it really was a drag after that because it was all hit the ball, drag Charlie, hit the ball, drag Charlie.”

I heard this joke told probably far too many times at various conferences in Palm Springs, right up through the ‘90s into the end of the last century, as it were. And people would always laugh, depending on if the joke teller, number one, was skilled in telling it, and, number two, if he had a high-enough rank in the organization, everybody would yuck it up. But today it wouldn’t work.

For example, a lot of younger people would think, “How is this relevant? It sounds like the wife is at home waiting for the husband to come back from a golf game. This isn’t a situation I identify with.” Or, people who had had a relative who had a heart attack would be prone to think, “Well, that’s not funny.” That wasn’t how people thought 30, 40, 50 years ago. It just wasn’t.

So, people need to be a little more careful but, very importantly, we cannot ban humor from the workplace. We absolutely can’t do it. It is one of the most important qualities that helps people bond and create relationships, and it makes work more fun, so we can’t get into a very uptight situation where we’re constantly scanning the room to think, “Who could this offend? Who could this offend? Oh, better not do this. Oh, better keep my mouth shut.”

Much better is to create an environment where we look at things that are obviously meant to be offensive, and there are a lot of them, and things that might misfire a little bit, like that ‘hit the ball, drag Charlie’ joke. They might misfire, somebody thinks, “Wow, so and so just had a heart attack. How is that going to play with them?”

And we need to be, I think, a little less hard on people, unless we perceive that they were really trying to be provocative and offensive. It’s also important to try to find the humor in situations rather than dragging in jokes, because jokes rely for their power on their capacity to be provocative and, to some degree, outrageous. They cross boundaries. That’s what they do. That’s where that sort of twist that makes a joke funny comes from.

And so, having an awareness that, “Let’s find the humor in our situation,” in self-deprecating humor, making fun of yourself, not too much, but enough when something goes wrong, when you say something stupid, that is especially effective if you’re in a position with some degree of power.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Sally, we talked about a few behaviors and habits that are great in terms of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and watching yourself and your triggers, and if you’re just riling people off, and constructing self-flattering narratives that are defensive left and right. Are there any other key inclusive behaviors that make a world of difference for folks in organizations?

Sally Helgesen
Oh, certainly. One of the things that I really heard a lot about when I was working on the book was the power of nominating other people for awards. And one of the women I interviewed, she said, “I really learned a lot about creating allies from a much older executive when I was very early in my career. And this executive came up to me, and he said, ‘I am trying to see if I can get a certain number of nominations for some big award in the industry.’ And he said, ‘I’m wondering if you would nominate me.’”

So, she said she was shocked on two fronts. Number one, she said she was shocked because she didn’t know that that’s how it was done, that people who got awards often lobbied for it. She said, “I just thought they got awards.” She said, “I never really thought it through.” She was early in her career at that time.

But she said, “I was also astonished that someone who was at such a senior level would ask someone junior like me.” She said, “Again, that really, really…I didn’t know you could do that.” She said it made her very aware that this is something that you can do that earns you tremendous gratitude from your colleagues. It’s not only agreeing to nominate them but volunteering to nominate them, “You know, you’ve really been in this job, and I saw that…” whatever it is, whatever entity it is “…is taking nominations for people who are outstanding in our sector. I thought that I might nominate you. How would that be?”

Well, this is something that people really, really respond to. And, again, I think it’s important to recognize that this is something that we can do really early in our careers. We can also ask people what would be helpful to them. And, again, we can do this even if we’re very junior in our career. We can recognize that part of our job is always going to be trying to make our bosses, our leaders, the people we work for, part of our job is making them look good, so we can be clear about this.

So, we can say, “I understand that I want you to look good in this initiative. Is there anything I can do that would be especially useful to you in letting the people in the organization know what a terrific job our team is doing, and, therefore, you, as our team leader.” So, asking a question like that can really be eye-opening and it does a couple of things.

“You solicit my ideas for how you could be helpful,” but it also suggests to the person that you say that to, that you really understand how things work in an organization, and that you’re not naïve about it. You understand and accept that part of your job is making them look good. So, that kind of puts you on a different footing than you might’ve been before.

Of course, there are plenty of things senior people can do as well, “What talents do you have that you feel you may not be using? Do you have any skills in this job that you would particularly like to develop? Is there anybody you would like to meet that I might know who could be helpful to you in the future?” Those kinds of questions, we don’t ask those kinds of questions enough wherever we are in our careers.

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

Sally Helgesen
A couple of things I do want to mention is it’s very hard to try to identify when we’re being triggered and then think of a different path of action. And we will always be more successful at it if we are bringing other people along on our journey. This is part of this theme of asking, of saying, “You know, one thing I’m really trying to work on…”

Fairness is a trigger in the book we didn’t talk about, “One thing I’m really trying to work on is coming to a better understanding of what is fair and what isn’t fair in this organization because I realize that I often think something is unfair but it may not be as unfair as I think it is, or I often recognize that something is actually much more unfair than I was thinking it was. Can I bounce my ideas off you once I have a perception about this and kind of get your thoughts on it?”

So, it’s a kind of seat-of-the-pants pure coaching where we engage other people in our own development. In this case, our development as we try to think about what undermines us in terms of building strong relationships really broadly.

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

Sally Helgesen
I think a favorite quote of mine, because it’s one that I use virtually every day, and I referenced it a bit earlier, comes from the really terrific old self-help book by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And it was, “Always seek to discern what lies within your circle of control, and to align it with your circle of concern.”

In other words, don’t waste your time trying to address whatever concerns you but you can’t control. And, in fact, probably don’t spend too much time being concerned about it if you can’t control it.

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

Sally Helgesen
I would say that the research done by Daniel Kahneman, who basically invented the whole field of behavioral economics, about how people don’t always, or even often do what really serves their own long-term interests, that we’re often a lot more irrational and reactive in terms of how we respond to everything, ranging from how we manage our financial lives, to the decisions we make about where we live or how we interact with our families, that we often make decisions that don’t serve our own interests.

And I think this work was so important because it brought a whole recognition of the fact that humans are not as rational as they imagine themselves to be into the discussion. And, in fact, that’s really influenced a lot of my thinking about how triggers operate. We tend to be triggered by things and respond in ways that do not serve our interests.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Sally Helgesen
I think my favorite book, in fact, I know this because I start most of my days reading it, is Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, which translates as a manual for power. It is a complete listing of deeply counterintuitive insights about the nature of power and how we use it, especially in the RW Wing translation. I find it a fantastic way to begin every day. Real insights into human behavior and how to understand human behavior but also use it in ways that serve what we’re trying to be and contribute in the world.

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

Sally Helgesen
What I use to be awesome at my job is basically Word documents. I’m a writer and my preferred method for communicating with the world is, and always has been since I was a little child, writing. And I find Word such an improvement upon typewriters, and that sort of stuff we used to use to erase words on typewriters. So, I just absolutely love it and couldn’t live without it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Sally Helgesen
My favorite habit, I think, is my ability to admit vulnerability. When I don’t have a skill, when I’m not good at something, I don’t try to cover it up. And I think that really helps me. I deal with a lot of things all day long, and if I had to spend energy trying to pretend I was good at what I’m not good at, I don’t think I’d have much success.

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

Sally Helgesen
I think it relates to something that I said earlier, that it’s easier to act our way into new ways of thinking than to think our way into new ways of acting. Since my work has been focused upon the ‘hows’ for the last 35, 40 years, that really resonates with me. I think we want to act in thoughtful ways, learn from how we act, and then let that shape what our opinions and our views are.

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

Sally Helgesen
Well, to my website, SallyHelgesen.com. And I’m active on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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

Sally Helgesen
Yes, I do. Being awesome at your job requires a little bit of humility, a little bit of willingness to recognize when your stock responses do not serve you, but it doesn’t require self-effacement. We should never equate being humble with being humiliated. We can be humble and acknowledge what we need to learn without beating ourselves up or telling ourselves a negative story about who we are or what we’re trying to do in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sally, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in rising.

Sally Helgesen
Thank you, Pete. Thank you so much.

Mar 16
0

848: How to Quickly Grow and Future-Proof Your Career with Jason Feifer

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Jason Feifer says: "If you only focus on what you already know, you will only be qualified to do the thing you’re already doing."

Jason Feifer shares the simple things you can do today to set yourself up for a more successful tomorrow.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The mindset that helps you uncover hidden opportunities.
  2. Why real growth happens outside your role.
  3. The biggest career mistake professionals make.

About Jason

Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine, a startup advisor, host of the podcasts Build For Tomorrow and Problem Solvers, and has taught his techniques for adapting to change at companies including Pfizer, Microsoft, Chipotle, DraftKings, and Wix. He has worked as an editor at Fast Company, Men’s Health, and Boston magazine, and has written about business and technology for the Washington Post, Slate, Popular Mechanics, and others.

Resources Mentioned

Jason Feifer Interview Transcript

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

Jason Feifer
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom of your book Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career. But, first, I think we need to hear a little bit about you’ve been living without a sense of smell even way before COVID made that a more common thing for people. What’s the story here?

Jason Feifer
Yes, I felt like people were stealing my cool, fun fact when everybody started losing their sense of smell. The story is that when I was in college, I was dating a girl who had a very, very good sense of smell and taste. And for the first time in my life, she started asking me questions, like, “What herb is in here? Did you taste the rosemary in that?” or whatever, these questions nobody asked you when you’re in high school.

And I didn’t know what she was talking… I just didn’t know what she was talking about. I had no idea what she was talking about. And we realized maybe something weird is happening. So, we did a taste test, which was that I closed my eyes and she fed me different flavors of ice cream, like chocolate and vanilla and whatever, and they were all exactly the same. I had no sense.

And this was not a new thing, this was just the first time that I’ve realized that I had no perception of this at all. I’d gone through my life, up until that point, not aware that I was not perceiving things the way that everybody else in the world was. And I’ve since gone to a taste and smell clinic and done a lot of research into this and found that just an endless variety of things can impact your sense of smell, everything from nasal polyps to a brain tumor.

In my case, it was probably head trauma as a child. I fell out of a stroller when I was very little. This was what my parents told me as soon as I told them about this.

Pete Mockaitis
But they didn’t tell you before, Jason. They’re holding on that under the vest until…

Jason Feifer
Well, you know, it wasn’t that relevant a piece of information many years later. It was just I fell out of a stroller. I was in traction, apparently, but life moved on so I wasn’t aware of it. But once I told my parents the leading causes of this are…if something has come and gone, you can’t find some other active medical issue.

The leading causes of this are head trauma, chemical exposure, or an upper respiratory infection that just happens to get up into your olfactory nerve. My parents said, “Oh, my God, the head trauma.” And so, now we probably know. And, in the meantime, everything tastes exactly the same to me, which is it tastes like nothing.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. So, I’m curious then, before you realized that this was going on, did you have any differentiation between, “I’m eating steak,” versus ice cream. I mean, there’s texture, but, like, the taste was just about the same to you?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, but I didn’t know that it was supposed to taste any different. You’re wearing glasses right now, and I wear contacts, which means that there was a time in your life where you put on glasses for the first time. Do you remember that time?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Jason Feifer
Do you remember your experience of that?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it was fun, it was like, “Oh, wow, it’s like all the font became semi-bold. That’s kind of nice.”

Jason Feifer
Right. I remember the first time I realized two things. One, you can look at carpet and see individual fibers and, two, you can look at trees and see individual leaves. That was more information than I was ever getting before and I didn’t know that the average person got that information. And the same is true with this. I just didn’t know that this information was available to other people.

I thought, when people talked about flavors, they were talking about such insanely subtle differences between things that I probably just didn’t care about them. I didn’t realize that they are fundamentally different. And I still don’t really understand what it means. Like, wine is a funny thing to me. Every wine is exactly the same to me. So, I don’t know what people are talking about when they take a sip of wine, and they list off all these notes. It’s a complete foreign experience.

Pete Mockaitis
And I guess wine might also be the same to you as tea or water.

Jason Feifer
More or less. So, wine has alcohol, and you can feel the alcohol. So, there’s something that’s a little different there. And there’s a little quick science lesson, which is that, so let’s say wine, let’s say you take a sip of wine. This happens, functionally, simultaneously, but the first thing that happens is that the wine will hit your tongue. And that is the sensation of actual taste, which is just sweet, salty, sour, bitter. It’s just categorical.

Then odor molecules from the wine go to the back of your throat and up, and they’re read by your olfactory nerves, which is what controls your sense of smell. And that is actually what creates the sensation of flavor. Flavor is you smelling something inside of your mouth, basically. So, I can get sweet, salty, sour, bitter because my tongue works just fine. The problem is olfactory nerves so I can’t get flavor. So, it’s the difference between chocolate is sweet but it is not chocolate, and, therefore, vanilla and chocolate and strawberry ice cream are all exactly the same, they’re just sweet.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Jason, it seems like you have adapted and functioned well despite this challenge. Kudos.

Jason Feifer
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And, boy, what a metaphor, the idea of putting on glasses for the first time or realizing that your perception is different when it comes to other folks are picking up on flavors. Can you give us, we’ll put you on the spot, a segue for some lessons that are also similar, relevant, comparable, to those found in your book Build for Tomorrow?

Jason Feifer
It was a great setup for a segue, and I’m happy to take the challenge. So, I would say the transition here is that there is a way of learning how to think such that you see doors where other people see walls, in the same way that I saw blobs of green until I see leaves. And this isn’t, fortunately, something that you need to go out to a doctor to see, and it’s also something that everyone has access to, unlike me who cannot fix my sense of smell, because what it really requires is an understanding that we spend too much energy debating whether or not something should happen when it has already happened.

We spend a lot of time and energy trying to hold onto what we were comfortable with, and then trying to push back against inevitable change. And that’s counterproductive because if the change is happening then we have to deal with it. And the thing that I have learned from spending so much time, years and years, with entrepreneurs and innovative leaders is that there is a way to think about this experience.

There is a way to recognize your transferrable value. There’s a way to understand that the things that are in front of us are opportunities that when something changes, it just doesn’t change for us, it changes for everybody, which means that we are actually now in a situation where other people need new things, and we can rise up and serve them, and be the person who solves their problems.

That if we’re working in a job, that we can spend a lot of our energy figuring out how to be good at that next job even if we don’t know what that next job is. That the more that we build into the way that we just run our lives, the reality that a lot of the things that we do are going to change, the more we can start to prepare for it, and, ultimately, open up opportunities in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. And I love that notion of seeing doors where everyone else sees walls. And, boy, we talked about high school, this just brings me back to a high school memory in which I was in an organization that’s called the National Honor Society, and I think I was a junior, and we did very little in this organization, which I saw it was kind of silly. It’s like we’re honored, it’s like okay. But there’s supposed to be, like, service and such.

And I remember the advisor asked, “Who would like to organize the clothing drive?” and then nobody was volunteering. And I heard, “Who would like to be the National Honor Society president next year?” because it’s like, “If we do almost nothing, and then you do the one major thing that we do, then, in an election sense, you would win that.”

And at the time, I was very, I guess, ambitious, and resume-conscious, and thinking about college applications, and looking amazing, all that stuff, so, for me, that represented an opportunity, and I was sort of surprised that nobody was interested in it, and I felt like I needed to. And maybe I was a sophomore. I felt like I should hang back and let the upperclassmen take it but then nobody did after about seven seconds, I was like, “Well, I’m taking it now.” I raised my hand and, sure enough, I became the president.

Jason Feifer
Congratulations.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Yeah, I don’t know how much of a difference it made in my grand scheme of trying to look super impressive on applications or whatever, but I think that goes to show that I’ve had other times where I was at a podcast conference and someone showed me their app, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, your app shows how many people are subscribed to a given podcast within that app?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” “Well, that means I could use these data to extrapolate against known podcasts audience sizes to estimate the size of any podcast, which is massively valuable when you’re assessing opportunities.”

And so, I think that really resonates in terms of when you see a door where other see walls, I have had those moments, like, I see something other people don’t see, and because of that, cool things are opening up. So, lay it on us, Jason, how do we get there?

Jason Feifer
How do we get there? A lot of different ways to get there. Those are good little stories. Let’s start with this. This isn’t something that you just do all of a sudden. This is something that you build towards. These are habits and ways of thinking that help you operate, make decisions, do something now that’s going to pay off tomorrow. I’ll give you a couple ways to think about it.

Number one, we’ll start with this. We should all be doing something in our own work that I like to call work your next job. And work the next job is this. Look, in front of you, Pete, in front of me, in front of everyone who’s listening to this right now, there are two sets of opportunities. You can call them opportunity set A and opportunity set B.

Opportunity set A is everything that is asked of you. So, you have a boss, and that boss needs you to do things, and you show up and you’re evaluated on whether or not you have done those things well. that is opportunity set A, do a good job. Opportunity set B is everything that’s available to you that nobody is asking you to do. And that could be at work, you could join a new team. You could take on a new responsibility.

It could also be things outside of work, like listening to podcasts then you decide to start your own. Whatever the case is, here is my argument to you. Opportunity set B is always more important. Infinitely more important than anything else. And the reason for that isn’t opportunity set A, doing the things that are asked of you, is unimportant. It is important. You have to do it or you will get fired. You need to earn money, but opportunity set B is where growth happens.

If you only focus on what you already know, you will only be qualified to do the thing you’re already doing, but opportunity set B is where growth happens. That is where you start to lay the foundation for payoff that you cannot even imagine, and you don’t need to know what the ROI is on it. You should just be doing things because you find them interesting, informative, because they create new skillsets, new opportunities, because you’re thinking about, “What do I need to learn? And have I learned it yet?”

I’ll give you an example for myself. When I was at Fast Company years ago, I was a senior editor at Fast Company years and years ago, and a senior editor is something of a misnomer. It just means you’re kind of a mid-level editor, and my job was to be on the print magazine. I was a print magazine editor. And then the company brought in the video department, launched a video department. Nobody asked me to be a part of this video department but I volunteered to stand in front of the camera and see if I could be a host, see if I could host some shows.

And I had some kind of raw instinct on it, and the director really helped me hone it, and I got good, and I wondered, “What is the point of this? Why am I doing this? Is someone going to offer me a television show?” No, nobody offered me a television show. But I learned a couple of really valuable things. Number one, I learned to talk the way that I’m talking right now, which is to say to be animated, to kind of fluctuate the way in which I’m louder and then I’m softer, and I’m just trying to keep your interest.

Also, I learned how to be good on camera, how to move, how to think, how not to say uh a million times, and that then translated into a bunch of other skills like standing on stage. And, as a result, years later, when I was interviewing to be editor-in chief of Entrepreneur magazine and I’m talking to the president and CEO of the company, one of the things that they really liked about me was that I could represent the brand well, that they knew that, in hiring me, they had a face of the brand who could go on TV and could go on stage, and that helped me get this role.

And then, once I got this role, I started getting invitations to come speak on stage and make money doing so, and now that’s a really nice business for me. All of that I attribute to standing in front of a camera at Fast Company when nobody asked me to do that, and to just start learning. I was working my next job without having any idea what that next job was. And you, right now, have that opportunity in front of you. There are things available to you, nobody is asking you to do it so you have to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool and beautiful. I guess my first thought in terms of that being challenging is there are a billion potential things you could go do.

Jason Feifer
Sure, there are.

Pete Mockaitis
So, how do we figure out which of these things are particularly worthwhile for us?

Jason Feifer
Well, the answer is that you cannot know so you’re going to have to take some bets, and you’re going to treat them as experiments. And this is important because something that we do too often is we think of every new thing that we try or do as a full commitment and, as a result, we don’t do them often enough. I was talking to two people who really informed my understanding of this. One is Katy Milkman who is at Wharton, and then Annie Duke who also has a Wharton connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Two fun guests of How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Jason Feifer
There you go. Well, I shall remind perhaps your listeners of things that they said, but Katy told me, we were talking about change and how to manage change, and I said, “What is the simplest thing that somebody can do?” And she said, “This is going to sound kind of like a pat answer, but the answer is experiment.”

And the reason for that is because most people do not. They think that everything that they do has to be a full-time commitment, and, therefore, they’re afraid to try it in the first place. But if we just go into everything, thinking, “This is an experiment, and I’m going to run it for a couple days, a couple weeks, a couple months, and I’m going to see if it gives me something.”

Well, then, you know what, even if it doesn’t work out, even if it’s not all that compelling to you, it is valuable. And it’s going to be valuable because you’re going to have treated it like an experiment, which means that if it doesn’t work, it’s not failure, it’s data. And that is a much more constructive way to think.

Annie, meanwhile, Annie has this great book called Quit, about why quitting is a great decision-making strategy. And she told me, and this really snapped this into focus for me, she said, “Look, imagine that you had to marry the first person you dated. What would you do? The answer is you would never date. You’d just never do it because you’d be afraid of making that commitment.”

The reason why we’re able to find the person who is right for us, hopefully, is because we are able to quit lots of other people before. We try and then we quit. And Annie said, “You have to just think of that for everything. We date ideas. We date projects. We date jobs. And we’re going to quit the ones that don’t work.”

So, to your question, “How do we figure out which ones to pursue?” I always start with, “What is compelling to me? What excites me? What builds upon, in some ways, the skills that I already have but takes me in a different direction? How do I think vertically, basically, instead of horizontally?” Entrepreneurs, I found, have this really magical way of thinking, which is vertical thinking, which is to say, “The only reason to do something is because it creates the foundation upon which the next thing can be built.”

Whereas, most people, myself included for a lot of my career, really think horizontally, which is to say I do something and then maybe I move along and I do something unrelated, and then I move along and I do something unrelated, and that doesn’t build, that doesn’t give me an ever-growing foundation so that I can level up, so that I can do more, so that I can accumulate people and connections and skills and insights that are, ultimately, all going to power whatever the next thing is that I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. Vertical thinking, yeah. Can you give us some examples of that in practice? So, you shared your instance of communication then getting on camera. Any other examples to make that vertical thinking concept land for folks?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, sure. So, here’s something really simple. For years, my career has been in media. I worked in a number of newspapers and then a number of national magazines, and now I also make podcasts, write books and stuff, and I run a national magazine. And throughout much of that time, I really thought of myself as mostly a servant to the task.

So, when I was at Men’s Health, for example, I would write about this thing, and then I’d move along and I’d write about that thing, and anybody who I met along the way is sand through fingers. You meet people and then you move along. And when I got to Entrepreneur, I started to realize I am meeting all of these people and I’m not taking any care to how they can be part of an ever-growing and useful network because I’m going to be doing things in the future, not now, but in the future where maybe I need these people.

And, like, for example, a book. We’re talking, we’re sort of prompted by that I have this book Build for Tomorrow come out, and I knew, years from now, I will have this book and I will need as many people as possible who like me, and who have audiences, and who I can call upon. And so, if I’m thinking vertically, what does that mean?

That means that I must accumulate, that the reason to do something is because it is going to build a foundation upon which the next thing will be built. Every little interaction that I have can be part of that. I created a spreadsheet; it’s called Good Contacts. Everybody I meet goes in it. Everybody. It’s a Google Sheet, and it has a million tabs in it – investors, media, entrepreneurs. And I’ve been doing this for years and years.

And when I launched my book, the very first thing I did, or months before, was I went into this sheet, and I started going through everybody. Rather, years before, I kept going through that sheet and I would reach out to people and I would check in with them, and I would say, “Hey, I loved that thing you just did.” “Hey, is there anything that I can help you out with?” Why? Because when you gather people, the last thing that people want is to only hear from you when you need something from them, so you got to be warm, you got to treat it like a real relationship.

And this kind of thing is something that I now try to apply to everything that I do, which is basically, “How can I use today for tomorrow? What is it that I have right now, what thing am I building, what thing am I thinking about, what do I have access to, how can I make decisions where I’m putting my energy towards setting myself up for tomorrow even if I don’t exactly know what I need tomorrow? But what I do know is that today is an opportunity to do that, and I want to be mindful of it?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. Well, now, I’m shifting gears a little bit, when you talk about change, you mentioned there’s four phases of change. Can you give us that overview picture and some pro tips on what do we do to change well?

Jason Feifer
Yeah. All right. So, here’s the theory that I came up. I came up with this theory that change happens in four phases: panic, adaptation, new normal, wouldn’t go back. Wouldn’t go back being that moment where we say, “I have something, some new and valuable that I wouldn’t want to go back to a time before I had it.”

And this came out of pre-pandemic. I had come to this conclusion that the most successful people that I met were also the most adaptable, and I wanted to understand what it was that they were doing and how they were thinking. And then the pandemic was a really fascinating experiment because what happened was you got to see everybody go through the same change at the same time and then radically diverge.

And some people moved forward, some people reinvented, others tried to cling as tightly as possible to whatever came before and whatever they felt like they were losing. And I wanted to understand what it was that the people who were moving fast and forward were doing and thinking. And they’re doing a lot of things but I’ll start by sharing this one.

Most of us make a mistake, and the mistake that we make is that we identify too closely with the output of our work or with the role that we occupy so that if someone came up to you at a party and asked what you did, your answer would be one of those two things. It would either be a thing that you make or the role that you occupy. And that’s fine, that makes sense. I would do a version of that, too, but it creates a problem.

And the problem is that those things are easily changeable. And if we anchor ourselves too deeply to the tasks we perform or the role that we occupy, then when those things change, and they will, then we will not just experience a change to our work; we’ll experience a change to our identity. And that’s what creates a total sense of disruption and panic. So, what’s a better thing to do?

Well, look, there’s a lot of talk, Simon Sinek had Start with Why, and then everybody talks about why, and I’ve always found that to be, honestly, a little bit of an abstract concept. And what I came to realize is that I think what we need is a mission statement in which every word that we select is carefully selected because it is not anchored to something that easily changes. What does that mean, abstract?

I used to identify as a newspaper reporter. Then I identified as a magazine editor. I stayed in jobs, newspaper jobs and magazine jobs that I disliked for way too long, becoming way too bitter. And the reason I did it was because I was a newspaper reporter or I was a magazine editor. The very idea of leaving those jobs and, therefore, giving up that identity was too challenging, and, therefore, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bad situations.

Now, I have a sentence for myself, and that sentence is this, it’s seven words, “I tell stories in my own voice.” I tell stories. Story is a really important word for me. And the reason for it is because it is not anchored to something that is easily changeable. I don’t own Entrepreneur magazine, my boss can call me at any time, he has my phone number, and he can fire me. He could do it right now. And if my identity is “I am a magazine editor,” then I am one phone call away from losing my identity. That’s a terrible place to be.

But if I can think of myself as I tell stories and then in my own voice, that’s me setting the terms for how I want to operate, that’s me at this moment in my career. Well, now, when something changes, I have an understanding of the transferrable value that I have. I understand what I am, and I understand what I’m good at, and I know that it is not dependent upon one way that I used to do it. And when we have that understanding of ourselves, what we’re really doing is liberating ourselves from being stuck in one mode, in one job, in one task.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued by that notion, in your own voice. I’m thinking about Entrepreneur magazine, Fast Company, Men’s Health, each of them – well, you tell me, you’re the insider – has some guidelines, I imagine, associated with their voice, their tone, their style, their flavor. Are you able to tell stories within your own voice at each of these different outlets?

Jason Feifer
Well, I wouldn’t have said I tell stories in my own voice when I was at Men’s Health, and, really not even at Fast Company because I was at a different stage in my career at the time. The mission statement should evolve. When I was at Men’s Health, for example, I was in my late 20s. It was my first national magazine job. I worked at a couple local newspapers and a regional magazine before that.

Pete Mockaitis
And you had a shredded six pack.

Jason Feifer
And I had a shredded six pack, and I only ate vitamins. And I got there and I was, at the time, I was guided by this thing that I’m still, in many ways, guided by, which are these two questions, which is, “What do I need to learn? And have I learned it?” And so, I arrived at Men’s Health knowing what I needed to learn.

I needed to learn how to edit at a national magazine level, and, in particular, Men’s Health was really good at a kind of editing called packaging, which is lots of little bitsy items. It was very hard because you had to convey a lot of information in not a lot of space. And I wanted to get good at that. And a couple of years in, I had done it.

And so, when I asked my questions, “What do I need to learn? And have I learned it?” the answer is, “I knew what I needed to learn and I’ve learned it. It’s time to get the hell out of here.” But I’m not interested in what else someone tell me that I have to. Like, I need to go. And I did. I’ve never once in my career, and this is not career advice, you choose your own path.

But I’ve never once, like, gotten a job offer and then come back to my boss, and be like, “Oh, I got this job offer. Can you give me more money?” No, because when I’m out, I’m out. It’s time to go learn something else. That’s the thing that matters most to me. So, back then, I was writing in the Men’s Health voice, and the Men’s Health voice had a very, very particular style and a particular tone, and my voice was subsumed into that voice. But I also was younger and I didn’t have a stronger voice, and I didn’t have a stronger perspective, and I didn’t have something to tell people myself.

At Fast Company, it was roughly the same thing. I found a voice there but it’s very different from the voice I have now. I wasn’t as confident in it and I was still learning. I took that job because there was something else that I wanted to learn, which in that case was feature editing and feature writing and then eventually also video.

And so, I wasn’t really ready to speak in my own voice until much later in my career. Back then, had I gone through this exercise, and I hadn’t because I still just thought of myself as a magazine editor, I was anchored to my tasks, but back then I would’ve said, “My job is to be a good magazine maker.” The thing that I do is I take magazine jobs and I write really good stories and I edit really good stories. It was very limited because that’s how most people think.

Most people think that the thing that they are is the thing that they do. And it wasn’t until much, much later, after I’d gone through a lot of disruption in my own career, and I was trying to figure out how to feel a sense of ownership over myself, because when you’re just at the mercy of a company that you work for, you don’t have a lot of ownership over you.

But if you can spend some time thinking about what you are separate from that, and what value you have that can be brought to many different places, and people are lucky to have you, you start to feel more of a sense of ownership over yourself. I think that’s really important. And this exercise was a way in which I got there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, when you talked about the exercises and the reflections and the key questions, any other powerful practices that help serve up these insights?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, I’ll give you another exercise to run yourself through, which is “What do I have? What do I need? What’s available?” I like the word available. Let me tell you what that was. Okay, my first job was at The Gardner News. I don’t even know if it still exists, but at the time it was like 6,000 circulation daily newspaper in North Central Massachusetts. I was a general interest reporter, fresh out of college, $20,000 a year.

And I hated that job. I hated it. And the reason I hated it was because I had these large ambitions and they were not being met, and I couldn’t figure out the pathway to meet them. I was at this tiny little paper, I wanted to do bigger work, and I couldn’t articulate it, and I didn’t have access to it, and I was really frustrated.

And as a result, I was taking the wrong path, because I was blaming the people I was working with for, like, holding me back. They weren’t holding me back. I was holding me back. But eventually I did this thing that I wasn’t doing it so consciously back then. But now that I look back upon what I did and kind of come up with a little framework, I realized that what I did was that I asked myself these three questions, which is, “What do I have? What do I need? And what’s available?”

So, break it down for that experience. What do I have? I have a job, and it’s not a very satisfying job but it is a job doing a thing that I want to do, but what I want is to work in a much higher level. What do I need? Well, the problem, if we’re being realistic, is that I don’t have the experience to prove to anybody at a higher level that they should hire me. I have nothing. I have nothing except for this small credential, which is that I’ve worked at this tiny newspaper, which The New York Times is not going to take seriously if I go apply in The New York Times.

What do I need? What I need is I need more experience and I need to work with editors who I’m going to be able to learn from because right now, I’m at a tiny little newspaper, and my peers are not much more experienced than I am, and I’m not learning from them. So, I need access to talent, and I need to be able to prove myself at a higher level.

What’s available? Well, this is the hard one because you can’t answer it with a fantasy. It’s not “What’s available is, ‘Oh, why don’t I just apply for dream jobs.’” It’s not “What’s available is, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll just kick the can down the road and we’ll try to figure it out in a couple of years.’” No. What’s available right now? Like, literally, if you’re stuck, something is available to you right now. Something. What is it? Find the door where you’re looking at a wall.

And, in my case, in that particular situation, I thought, “Well, okay, nobody’s going to hire me, The New York Times is not hiring me, but there’s another way in.” And the way in, in my industry, this is freelancing, which is to say that a lot of what you read in newspapers and magazines are written by freelancers. They’re independent contractors who generally pitch a single story and an editor had said yes to it, and then they go out and they report to that single story.

I thought, “Why don’t I start doing that?” So, I quit. I quit that first job and I just started cold-pitching. And I was going to them instead of waiting for them to come to me.

And, as a result, after many, many, many, many months of pitching and getting rejected or ignored, I got a piece in The Washington Post, I got a piece in The Boston Globe, and I started to build this freelance career that, ultimately, allowed me to prove to other publications at a much faster clip, that I could work at their level. And that was what ultimately helped me build the career that I have. It’s what jumpstarted things.

And I look back on it now, and I say the reason I was able to do that was because I thought through that transition, because I didn’t stay at that job. What I needed to do was figure out what was available to me, realistically so, and then put myself in a position to go get it.

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, I love that notion associated with it’s kind of like you’re stuck, but then something is available, and it’s the freelancing. And I’m thinking about someone else, actually, she was on the podcast, Kristen Berndt, her dream was to do, like, baggage operations for airports, which is fun, like, that’s her thing, and yet she had no opening there. She just literally started a blog all about this.

Jason Feifer
I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, there’s one approach. You do some writing, either for the publications or on a blog or social media, LinkedIn posts, whatever, a podcast. You create some media such that it’s like, “Oh, look, this person is an expert and can do some stuff that’s good.” What are some other approaches if you feel kind of stuck? Like, what’s available is sort of hard to see from where you’re sitting.

Jason Feifer
And it started by asking, “What do I have and what don’t I have? And what don’t I even know I need?” I don’t know if you remember, but Donald Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense during the George W. Bush administration.

And, in the leadup to the Iraq invasion, a reporter asked him something, and he responded in this crazy, like, lyrical weird poetry thing that people made fun of him for, which was that he said, “There are known knowns. There are known unknowns. And there are unknown unknowns.” And people thought that was nonsense and it made for late-night joke fodder, but I was curious about it because I thought, “That’s not something that you just come up with on-the-fly. That has to be from something.”

And it is. It’s from a thing called The Johari Window, which is a self-assessment test, popularized in the 1970s, that then became very popular in military circles. It was actually a pretty useful way to evaluate a situation, “What do we know? What do we know that we don’t know? What don’t we know that we don’t know?”

And I realized that if we do a version of that for ourselves, we’d run ourselves through a little test like that when we’re feeling stuck, as you would ask, we get some interesting stuff. You can ask yourself, “What do I know that other people know?” All right, you’re at a job, you’re stuck, you’re feeling stuck, “What do I know that other people know?” “Well, here are the things you know.”

“What do I know that other people don’t know?” basically what is your competitive advantage. What are you really good at that maybe other people aren’t? “What do other people know that I don’t know?” Well, now, you can start to look around. You can see that people who maybe were your peers had taken radical interesting shifts, and they’re now doing interesting things. You can see that people are in fields that seem really intriguing to you, that you think you would be good at but you just don’t know that much about, and maybe it’s time to ask them.

And now the most terrifying question of all, of course, is, “What don’t I know that other people know? What am I not even thinking about? What am I not even looking at? What am I not even seeing?” And that should drive you to start to talk to people to explore what they have done, what path they took, what risks they took, and what were calculated risks that maybe seem crazy to you but actually seem pretty logical to them.

And what you’re doing, just to go back to Katy Milkman one more time, is you’re bridging what Katy told me, is called the false consensus effect. False consensus effect means that we tend to think that other people think exactly like us, and, therefore, we don’t think to use them as resources. But it turns out that people think pretty differently than us.

And when we ask them what they have done, and how they have done it, they will reveal to us all sorts of insights that we weren’t aware of. And those things can help us start to illuminate some of those unknown unknowns. And that will give you the path forward that you aren’t seeing right now.

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

Jason Feifer
Yeah. I was interviewing Ryan Reynolds for Entrepreneur magazine, and we were talking about the career shifts that he’s made. He’s gone from acting into business, there’s a number of them. And he told me, “To be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad.” And I love that because it’s true, because we often assume that if we’re not good at something at the beginning, it’s because maybe we’re not going to be good at it.

But what Ryan is saying is that the difference maker isn’t whether or not we’re good at something at the beginning, but rather whether or not we’re willing to tolerate being bad long enough to get to good. That’s the thing that weeds people out, it’s that most of us aren’t able to tolerate that discomfort. But the ones who are, are the ones who get there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Jason Feifer
I, as a kid, read Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, which was a memoir. And the thing that mattered most to me about it was that it was written in a style and played with language in a way that I didn’t know was possible. And the things that I love consuming the most are the things that show me that the boundaries are not where I think they are. And that was, I think, the first time that I consumed something that really showed that to me.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something that helps you be more awesome at your job?

Jason Feifer
This is not going to be an exceptional tool, but I will tell you the thing that I live by, which is the native Reminders app on the MacBook and on my iPhone. They sync so that I can add something on the Reminders app on my phone, and there it is on my computer. And I look at that thing every 10 minutes, and every time somebody tells me something, it goes on there. And as I’m half falling asleep at night, I think, “Oh, crap, I didn’t tell that person that thing,” and it goes on that Reminders app, and I couldn’t leave home without it.

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

Jason Feifer
Yeah. I do a lot of speaking, and so I travel around and I talk to groups. And the thing that people always come up to me after my talk and tell me is their mission statement, the thing that I shared with you earlier. I have a whole exercise for how to get there, and I walk people through it. It’s in the book.

And afterwards they come to me and they tell me their mission statement, or they email me afterwards and they tell me their mission statement. And I think the reason they’re doing that is because it feels like a breakthrough when you’ve done that for yourself, and they just have to share.

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

Jason Feifer
I would point them to a couple places. Number one, my book is called Build for Tomorrow. I’d love for you to check it out. Also, you’re a listener of podcasts, I am a maker of podcasts. I have a podcast; it’s called Help Wanted.

I co-host it with Nicole Lapin, who’s a bestselling finance author. And what we do is we take people’s problems, often they’d call into the show, work problems, career problems, and we talk it through them in real time, or at least we take their questions, and then Nicole and I debate them and come to the right answer. And our goal is to help you build a career in a company you love, and you should check it out. It’s called Help Wanted.

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

Jason Feifer
Yeah, I’m going to tell you another quote, and I want you to spend time with it. And the quote is this, this is something that Malcolm Gladwell told me. We were talking about how he decides what products or what projects, rather, to take on. And he told me that he really pushes against trying to think of himself too narrowly, and to think of his voice and style and the things that he does too narrowly. And the reason, he said, is because self-conceptions are powerfully limiting.

Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting. That’s basically my call to action to you, is to consider what your self-conception is, and how that is limiting you because, the thing is, that if we define ourselves too narrowly, we turn down all the amazing opportunities around us that don’t meet that narrow definition. But what happens if we loosen the grip, that I think is where growth happens.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jason, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun as you build for tomorrow.

Jason Feifer
Hey, thanks for having me.

Mar 13
0

847: How to Enhance Your Team’s Greatness through Coaching with Sara Canaday

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Sara Canaday says: "Anyone can be a good coach. … with the right tools, understanding the core skills that it takes and how to sharpen them."

Sara Canaday shares the essential skills that help managers level up their leadership and engage employees.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The surprisingly simple principles of coaching well.
  2. The two types of coaching and when to deploy each.
  3. A step-by-step guide to coaching effectively.

About Sara

Sara Canaday is a leadership strategist and award-winning author who helps arm professionals with the practices and strategies they need to make the critical shift from informed to influential, from doer to driver, and from manager to leader.

When she’s not speaking or working with her clients, she’s cheering on her son’s football team or hiding new shoe purchases from her husband and 20 year old daughter.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

  • BetterHelp. Discover your potential with online therapy. Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/awesome

Sara Canaday Interview Transcript

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

Sara Canaday
Thank you for having me back. I’m glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear your wisdom about coaching but, first, I need to hear the story. You became a Cupcake Wars judge which was a longtime dream of yours. What’s the story here?

Sara Canaday
Oh, yes. Well, okay, so before anybody gets too excited, I didn’t actually appear on the Food Network show by the same name but what I did do is, for my birthday, I had my husband recreate the show right here in my home. So, we invited, I want to say it was, eight couples, and part of the invitation meant you had to show up with a homemade, not store-bought, from scratch cupcake with a Texas theme, or something that’s inspired from the year of my birth, the year I was born. And so, these cupcakes were going to be judged on taste, theme, and presentation.

Pete Mockaitis
And how many people did you get to sign up for this punishment, Sara? “Show up with some work and I’ll judge you.”

Sara Canaday
Every single couple came with cupcakes. One couple’s daughter ended up making them, they admitted it to me. Some couples had a blast doing this on their own together and were extremely competitive, I couldn’t believe it but, nonetheless, I got to sit and taste eight different cupcakes and judge them. And so, hey, I may not have been on the actual show but recreating it was just as good if not better.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, fun, I’m glad that worked and good birthday memories there.

Sara Canaday
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Way to do it up as opposed to just like, “Oh, I guess we’re going to go to dinner…”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“…for my birthday.”

Sara Canaday
We did something different.

Pete Mockaitis
Nifty. Well, let’s hear about your latest book Coaching Essentials for Managers. Any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while putting this together?

Sara Canaday
Well, nothing extraordinary other than I’ve had people tell me that it is a really good handbook more than just a book. It serves as a guide. There’s a lot of how-to’s in there. There are powerful phrases you can use to kind of get you off center under varying circumstances of coaching. There’s a coaching prep sheet that you can use before a coaching session so you can feel more confident with the process.

And then there’s a myriad of actual scenarios that you can read about so that if something similar happens, you have a way to navigate the conversation. So, it is a book but most people tell me it’s like a nice handbook, like a guide.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, what’s the main idea or key takeaway or thesis here?

Sara Canaday
Well, I think the main idea is that anyone can be a good coach. I think we used to think that a good coach is somebody who’s really charismatic, and they know how to be uber patient, and they just have this knack for more of a counselor-type approach, and that’s not true. Again, with the right tools, understanding the core skills that it takes and how to sharpen them, anybody can pursue coaching today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And we talked about the book title there says, Coaching Essentials for Managers: The Tools You Need to Ignite Greatness in Each Employee. You say anyone can coach. Any thoughts for non-managers in terms of, are there particular skills or tips that you think would be resonant for those folks who don’t yet have direct reports reporting to them?

Sara Canaday
Absolutely. In fact, I am working on a course right now for LinkedIn, and the title is Peer Coaching, and it derives a lot of the same applications and concepts and skills from leadership coaching. So, the very types of attributes and formulas that work for leader-to-employee coach also work for peer-to-peer coaching, and that’s becoming a really growing trend in corporate today.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And so, with peer-to-peer coaching, is it sort of like we switch off in terms of, “Okay, you coach me then I coach you”? Or, how does that go down?

Sara Canaday
That’s exactly right. And it can be a pair, a partner, of coaches but oftentimes it’s a group of about four or five people together that peer-coach each other. And so, there’s a streamlined approach, certain questions are asked, “Bring your latest challenge to the group,” and everybody gets their turn, and then peer coaches are listening not to fix – this is the hard part, it’s just like a leader with an employee – resists moving to fix-it mode right away.

But they’re listening to ask the right questions so that that person that has a challenge can put more structure around their thinking so that they can reflect on what exactly they want to have happen, and then they move in to potential solutions based on what they’ve already tried, based on what the potential roadblocks are or facets that are part of the issue.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’ve had really cool experiences with peer coaching. I did the first course in the Co-Active Coaching, the CPCC folks, and I was amazed at, okay, none of us were coaches yet, certified. We’ve done the first course out of, like, six, I don’t remember, and yet folks are having these wild breakthrough conversations with tears and whatnot, it’s like, “Huh.”

To your point about anyone can coach, it’s true. It doesn’t take a superhuman with crazy almost psychic-like empathy skills but rather it’s just, hey, you’re paying attention, you’re equipped with a few tools, and you have just a modicum of patience and good listening and discipline and humility to not try to make the mistakes that really shut down a conversation that’s going somewhere, and away you can go.

Sara Canaday
Yeah, it is amazing. And it’s hard because, for leaders especially, and any high-achievement professional, we’re wired to fix. And coaching, you have to sort of sit on your hands because you want right away to say, “Oh, either that happened to me,” which isn’t very helpful. It can be but to say, “Oh, that happened to me and this is what I did,” it doesn’t let the person you’re coaching reflect on their particular situation because what you did to solve something may not even be applicable or work for them.

And you have to just be patient with asking the right type of questions, open-ended questions not yes-or-no questions because you won’t get anywhere with those. So, absolutely, anybody can do it but it does take discipline because of the way we’re naturally wired.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share with us what’s at stake, or what’s possible, or what’s at risk if we are coaching well versus not well or not at all, or being coached well, or not well, or not well at all?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. Well, this is interesting because when I was writing my book, I did a lot of research around different statistics because I wanted to compel readers about the advantage of coaching.

Pete Mockaitis
As many businesses would start, yes.

Sara Canaday
Yes. And so, there are numerous studies that show that well-coached individuals are higher performers, are more productive, and they’re more engaged. Now, that seems to be a benefit for the leader and the company, but from the employee’s standpoint, there were other studies, Gallup being one of them, that found that when employees were well-coached and they felt like a leader had their progress and best interests in mind, that they were much more loyal and they didn’t feel that they had to look elsewhere to grow and for opportunities.

And I think that latter part is probably what’s going to get people’s attention because, right now, we all know that retaining talent is a challenge. And what studies have found, multiple studies, is that what people want more than a larger paycheck is the idea and the feeling that they’re progressing. And let me just say, that progression doesn’t necessarily mean an advanced position.

And I say that because I think that’s why leaders tend to hesitate to do what I call developmental coaching, which is more about, “How do I help you get more of what you want and do more of the work that you want to do?” Because I feel like, “Well, I know there’s no position for me to advance them to, so why am I going to start this conversation if I can’t promote them?” But nothing is further from the truth here, in that those conversations aren’t strictly about advancing and getting a new role.

They’re about sharpening new skills. They’re about maybe getting a broader network, being introduced to more people. Maybe they’re about taking on a project where they can shine a light on something other than what they typically do. So, there are a lot of things leaders can do to help people feel like they’re progressing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so let’s hear about that. We talked about developmental coaching. You say we’ve got two types. We got performance coaching and developmental coaching. Can you expand upon what each means and the difference between them?

Sara Canaday
Of course. So, performance coaching, for many people, they think in terms of short term. It’s any conversation that points towards helping the employee improve their performance, meet performance expectations. Whereas, developmental coaching is more future-oriented, and that serves to help and support an employee who wants to grow and develop.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so then, do you recommend both or one under certain circumstances versus one is more appropriate for another context?

Sara Canaday
I absolutely recommend both. I think a natural cadence with a leader and an employee, or peer to peer, is there are going to be situations that call for both. If you’re having regular one-on-one meetings with your employees, sometimes you’re going to talk about missing a deadline, and what may have caused that. And so, that’s performance coaching.

But other times you’re going to circle back to, “Hey, I noticed that in your individual development plan, you want to get advanced knowledge in Excel, you want to learn how to do pivot tables. Where are we on that? How can I help you?” Two different things but both are scenarios that are perfectly within the realm of happening to the same individual in the same month.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then you’ve got a five-step model we’re going to chat through. But, first, could you share with us are there any key guiding lights, fundamental, essential principles that we should keep in mind if we think, “Yeah, coaching, that’s something I should do more of or I’d like more of”? Are there some must-remembers before we dig into the one, two, three, four, five of the five steps?

Sara Canaday
Well, I think it’s a little bit of a mindset shift because those of us who are in corporate for years may have seen coaches or coaching reserved for individuals who weren’t performing at their best. So, instead of it being a positive, it was almost a negative. So, that’s number one. Now, coaching is, in some cases, reserved for those who are being groomed for the next level. So, it can be absolutely a positive thing.

Also, performance coaching, to me, does not include corrective action, so I just want to make that clear. If you were to read and go through any of my literature on coaching, some people may think, “Okay, what’s the deal here? This sounds a little too soft.” Well, that’s because I’m assuming that this is not corrective action. You’ve not coached the person multiple times before on an issue. You’re not to the point where you need to think about whether this is even the right fit for the person or whether they need to move on. So, coaching is not corrective action.

Coaching is a conversation. At the heart of it, that’s what it is. And it is a way for you to partner with the employee and discover mutually what the issue might be, and then co-create potential solutions to rectify, to close gaps, to move forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. Understood. And so then, you’ve got your five-step model for coaching. Can you walk us through each of the five steps?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. The first one is what I call just assess the situation, and that can happen before you even have the conversation. So, whatever data you have, let’s say it’s performance coaching, let’s say you have monthly reports of somebody in a call center, and you’re able to see from the reports how many calls they’ve taken, how many calls they kept in queue, what was their hold and wait times, whatever it is you’re measuring, and/or you’re collecting feedback from others who are on a project team with that individual, or somebody has come to you with feedback.

That’s part of the assessment but it doesn’t end there. You’re continuing to assess it at the first conversation because one of the first things that I always recommend is that you get the employee’s perspective of the situation. Even if you feel like you understand it, you know it, it’s pretty clear, I would say give that person the opportunity to share their perspective.

So, the question goes, “How do you think that meeting went yesterday? Tell me about the project. What’s new? Do you have any concerns? Where are we on this initiative? Is there anything that’s making you uncomfortable?” So, you’re starting to get their perspective so you have the entire picture instead of jumping to any conclusions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So, that’s one, we assess the situation and then, two, we generate ideas.

Sara Canaday
Generate ideas, right, and this is the co-create part. I think this is another reason maybe leaders hesitate is because they’re like, “I’ve got a multitude of things happening, I’m not sure I’m going to have the exact answer for what’s plaguing this individual or what’s keeping them from meeting these goals at my fingertips, so I’m a little intimidated.” Well, you don’t have to have the answers.

You simply ask the person, “What could you have done differently?” You might have ideas but that’s how the conversation continues. Or, you say, “What might be missing? What’s keeping you from showing up as your best self or for meeting these metrics? What do you think is keeping you?” And even if they don’t have any idea, you come to the table, “Do you feel knowledgeable about the products that you’re selling? Do you feel that you can manipulate all the platforms within a given phone call? Is that what’s plaguing you here?”

So, you come up with solutions together of how to move forward, to get the performance on track, or to help the person feel like they’re progressing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And to your previous point associated with not leaping in and saying, “Oh, this happened to me and this is what I did,” you also talked about co-creating. How do we do that dance associated with we’re not jumping in and doing the idea generation, we’re prompting them? How does that work?

Sara Canaday
Yeah, and I’m glad you asked me that because I will say that true coaching that uses what you have heard as the Socratic method, which is asking question after question, “So, what did you do? So, how did that make you feel?”

Now, I’m going to go on record here saying that if I were to be graded as a purist on coaching, I probably would not do very well because I think there is a point at which once you’ve asked the questions and the person has explored, and you can tell they’re really kind of at a loss, then it’s okay to step in with, “Hey, are you open to hearing what I think might help?” or, “Are you open to a suggestion about how to move forward here?” And then it’s perfectly okay to give your suggestions.

I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying don’t start there. Give the person an opportunity, but then it’s perfectly okay to say, including, “Here’s what’s worked for me in the past.” The point I was trying to make before is that we tend to get caught up in the story, and that’s what I mean by, “Oh, that happened to me,” or, “Oh, well, why did you do that?” “Oh, and then what did he say?” because then we start going backwards and we spend too much of our time in the story and not enough time moving forward in the coaching process.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the third step, develop an action plan, how is this done?

Sara Canaday
Again, together. More than anything, you encourage the person, once they’ve decided how they’re going to move forward, “Great. Who can be of most help as you do that? Can you think of anybody who can help you with that?” or, “When do you think you’ll want to have this done by? This has been on your individual development plan, I see here, for eight months. If you want to get it done this year, let’s put an aggressive timeline in here. What do you think of that?”

So, again, you’re holding them accountable for their own action process but you’re giving them some nudges, some support, and you’re challenging them at the same time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the fourth step is provide support. What does that look like?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. So, anything you can do, if you can introduce them to somebody who knows a particular skill or can help them get exposure to a project that has more of the type of work that they want to be doing, then make the connection. If you have access to budget that can be given to them to take on a course, if they need to spend more time with you going over some of their decks for presentations because you found out that they go into too much detail, again, not necessarily a performance issue, maybe a career development issue.

Smart as a whip, know their stuff inside and out, but maybe they’re used to delivering presentations to technical-only professionals, and you want to help them present to non-technical. So, maybe it needs more of your time to go over some of their presentations and give them feedback. Any way you can support them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And the fifth step, follow up?

Sara Canaday
Yes. And this is like anything else, it’s like having an accountability partner. This is why the peer coaching works so well. You are the person that’s going to help to ensure that there’s follow-through but it also shows on your end that this wasn’t a gratuitous conversation, that you actually do care, and you are going to move forward helping the person see that these things happen for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Sara, can we maybe do a demonstration roleplay in which you coach me about a thing?

Sara Canaday
Certainly.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s say I find myself procrastinating on processing my email inbox, and I’ve got a backlog that piles up, and I don’t like it and other people don’t like it. So, where shall we begin?

Sara Canaday
Yeah, and not probably an uncommon scenario, especially as people’s projects get, you know, we get more projects and they get exponentially bigger. So, I think I would start by saying helping you be more open with what may be going on, “So, tell me how the projects are going,” and that’s when you can say, “They seem to be fine but I feel like people’s expectations of me maybe are not the typical what I’m used to. I feel like things are falling through the cracks.”

Again, I’m just going to explore, “What do you think might be going on?” And that’s when you can say, “I feel like my inbox is always full. I can’t keep it up.” My question would be, “So, what kind of organizational productivity system do you have? Do you have a certain cadence to how you handle your emails? Tell me about how you organize your work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing. So, I’d say, “I use the Superhuman email app. I do it when I have a free moment in between things and that’s maybe the extent of my organization in the email world.”

Sara Canaday
Great. Well, for most of us that may have worked to a certain point, but when we get under pressure or when the workload is even more heavy, those moments are fewer and far between, and we find ourselves behind. So, what could you do differently? What do you think you could do differently if just reserving for when you’re free to get to those emails? Any other thoughts about what might be helpful for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I suppose real time needs to be allocated for them, and the amount of time that they have been getting has been insufficient to bring it to zero. So, one way or another, I guess more time needs to go there. I guess I’ve just been reluctant to do so because it’s not interesting and I’m not sure it’s going to be value-added relative to the other things I can be doing.

Sara Canaday
Well, I see your point. We get a lot of emails that aren’t necessarily germane to what we’re doing right now, and it can be frustrating. But if you were to do that, what would that look like? Would it look like in the mornings? When are you at your best, most productive, most efficient?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is in the morning, and I guess I’m wondering if email deserves my best or I should give it time that is my worse, or middle ground. We had Carey Nieuwhof on the show talk about either sort of green-zone times, yellow-zone times, and red-zone times in terms of your energy, attention, focus, motivation, oomph going on.

And so, yeah, that gets me thinking maybe I need to figure out, “Hey, email doesn’t deserve my best time but it needs some time, and so here is the time in which I am medium-functioning in terms of I can be motivated enough to answer these emails but not feel like I’m casting my pearls before swine, or wasting the most precious gold of the day on sort of the administrative feeling matters but still reach that inbox zero which feels so freeing, and feels like I’ve got a lot of mental space when there’s not a big load of emails waiting for me.”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, I hear you. I’m with you on that. I am almost too distracted during the day when I know my emails are piling up. There’s this anxiety, this anxiousness that I know it’s there. And so, I’m all for using your most productive time early in the morning.

For example, I know some people do their best writing or their best strategy-thinking, but I like your idea of at least giving it the medium productivity action so that you can get through it, and you can get through it efficiently but that it also leaves what energy you do have left for the day without that that being that sort of taxing feeling that you’ve got this hanging over your head.

And let’s not forget, you’ve got other people who, for whatever reason, may be waiting on your response for their own production. And so, I would just say think of that, too. You may see this low-value administrative but there may be a couple of key emails in there that need your attention and that others are waiting on. And so, from that standpoint, I think it’s important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. So, that makes sense to me in terms of it might not be my number one thing, but other people maybe their number one thing is hearing from me so they could proceed. So, just in terms of being a good citizen and team player, I can sacrificially and generously do that for them in the hopes that, hey, we all reciprocate and it works out for everybody.

Sara Canaday
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I’m thinking maybe 4:00 p.m. might be a good time to put in half an hour a day on the emails, and that should probably get us close to zero if I’m doing that with consistency.

Sara Canaday
Great. Pete, when do you think you can start that?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, probably today.

Sara Canaday
Wonderful. Why don’t we reconnect in a couple of weeks? I’ll be curious to see how that’s working for you, and happy to help you if it doesn’t seem to be moving the needle forward. We can maybe come up with other solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good deal. All right. So, there we have it. We assessed the situation, we generate some ideas, we developed an action, we have some support – thank you – and the follow up. Nifty. So, any reflections on your end on the roleplay?

Sara Canaday
One thing I always say as a primer to coaching is that you have to know your employees, and there has to be some semblance of trust and rapport. You can’t skip that when you’re coaching. In fact, I tell a story of trying to help somebody better connect with their project team, and I did what I tell people not to do, and I jumped to the fix-it mode, and I said, “Well, why don’t you start meeting with them individually?”

And that suggestion failed miserably because, A, I didn’t ask her for more questions, but, B, she didn’t know them very well. And so, when she started asking questions, there was almost a kind of look on their face like they didn’t trust her or they weren’t sure what her…

Pete Mockaitis
“What are you trying to pull here?”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, “What’s your M.O. here?” So, this is just a good place to bring up that we’re just doing an on-the-spot, we’ve known each other through professional as colleagues through the years, but we don’t work together. I don’t know what makes you tick on a daily basis necessarily. And so, I would hope that that conversation was a little more refined based on knowing you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay.

Sara Canaday
I could’ve said something like, “Oh, yeah, Pete, I know how much you like those emails.” It could’ve been funny, but it would be a way to build rapport and get you to see that I’m just not going to be rigid about getting your emails done. I’m going to try to approach this in a way that works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. And then I’m curious, when it comes to coaching, any super favorite questions, words, phrases that often yield goodies on the other side?

Sara Canaday
Most of them are open-ended, for one. If you asked, “How is the project going?” “Good.” You’re just not going to get much, right? But if you’re really conscious of asking, “Okay, so what might make you more comfortable with this solution?” that kind of question, you can ask individually or to a group that you’ve just announced a new project or initiative.

And, to me, that gets the meeting after the meeting out in the open, or it gets your coachee to tell you something that they would’ve walked away saying, “Ugh, easier said than done. I knew she was going to suggest that.” But if you asked that right then and there, then you’re peeling back the onion layers and you’re getting to more efficient information.

Maybe you say, “I don’t necessarily see it that way. Can I tell you why?” That’s very different than saying, “I don’t agree,” because you’re putting the person at the defense. Whereas, in the other case, it’s a little disarming. You just don’t see it that way. It doesn’t mean it’s an indictment against them or their idea. You just don’t see it that way, “And can I tell you why? I want to offer another kind of angle here.” So, those are just some examples of open-ended questions.

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

Sara Canaday
No, other than the book has several pages of good, powerful phrases or questions. So, they don’t always have to be a question. It could be, “Tell me more,” which is not a question. But if anybody is interested in those types of tools, the book is full of them.

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

Sara Canaday
My favorite quote is “Please be responsible for the energy you bring into this room.”

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

Sara Canaday
Well, this probably has to do with coaching and it has to do with leadership, but it was done by the Journal of Economic Psychology, and there, there were a group of researchers that wanted to study the optimal strategy for goalies, soccer goalies, and blocking penalty kicks.

And what they found, after watching hundreds of videos and speaking to expert coaches and goalies, is that when goalies stay in the middle of the net, they block the ball 33% of the time. When they move to the left or the right, it goes down by half, 14% on the right, 13.3 on the left. Point being is that we, as leaders, as professionals, I think, sometimes mistake motion for meaning, and we have a bias for action.

I get it. I’m a work in progress on that. And that study, to me, sort of highlights this idea that we would really benefit from taking more pauses, more pauses to think strategically, more pauses to coach our employees, more pauses to reflect.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Sara Canaday
Favorite book, it just came out. It’s called The Chrysalis Code: Becoming the Type of Leader Other People Want to Follow by my good friend and colleague Ron J. West.

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

Sara Canaday
We talked about this the last time. I’m going to say it again. LinkedIn, huge tool for me. And then I’m going to throw in a few personal ones that save me time. Amazon, I don’t know what I would do without it, it’s kind of scary, because when I need something, I don’t have to run out to OfficeMax or fill my day with errands on top of work. My fingertips right there. And, similarly, Instacart, which is not everywhere but a lot of places. And I can imagine, with three kids, this would be a boon for you, but getting my groceries delivered is hugely helpful.

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

Sara Canaday
Well, it’s a word that I didn’t know of until, I think, a year or two ago, and I read about it in one of Adam Grant’s posts. And, apparently, I’m a precrastinator. So, it’s the opposite of a procrastinator. I actually do things really far in advance, and that has served me very well because I guess my years in corporate, I knew that fires would always have to be put out. And so, when I have the time, I would get projects done early so that I wouldn’t feel as overwhelmed when things popped up that were not planned.

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

Sara Canaday
I mentioned one earlier that I think resonates with leaders, which is this idea of mistaking motion for meaning, and that’s probably the key one lately. Ever since COVID, I think, I find that people are just…they have no buffer time between any of their meetings, and no time to actually make connections and put things together, and be creative and innovative.

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

Sara Canaday
I’d point them to my website, SaraCanaday.com, and there’s no H in Sara, and Canaday is just like Canada but with a Y at the end. Or, LinkedIn, of course.

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

Sara Canaday
I do. I would say make one final or baby step toward this idea of coaching. It doesn’t have to be, “Okay, I’m going to coach somebody.” Pick a meeting this week where you’re just going to intentionally ask an open-ended question, or you’re going to intentionally paraphrase so that you can actively listen, “So, what I’m hearing you say is…” or, “Let me see if I got this right.” So, those are the things that are really important in coaching. So, just pick one aspect of coaching, and pick a meeting where you’re going to try it on.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sara, this has been a treat. I wish you many good coaching sessions in the future.

Sara Canaday
Thank you. It’s been a treat to be here.

Mar 09
0

846: How to Elevate and Empower Teams to Reach Their Full Potential with Robert Glazer

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Robert Glazer says: "Organizations should focus on making their people better, help them build their capacity holistically."

Robert Glazer shows how to build your team’s capacity and empower them to reach their full potential.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to cure exhaustion in teams.
  2. The simple trick to making difficult conversations easier.
  3. How to influence company culture without a leadership position.

About Robert

Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a global partner marketing agency and the recipient of numerous industry and company culture awards, including Glassdoor’s Employees’ Choice Awards two years in a row.

He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today and international bestselling author of four books: Elevate, How To Thrive In The Virtual Workplace, Friday Forward, and Performance Partnerships.  He is a sought-after speaker by companies and organizations around the world and is the host of The Elevate Podcast. He also shares ideas and insights around these topics via Friday Forward, a weekly inspirational newsletter that reaches over 200,000 individuals and business leaders across 60+ countries.

Resources Mentioned

Robert Glazer Interview Transcript

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

Robert Glazer
Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into the wisdom of your book Elevate Your Team but, first, I got to hear, it’s been a couple years since we last chatted.

Robert Glazer
It’s been a pandemic.

Pete Mockaitis
That it has. Tell me, any particularly wild adventures, learnings, surprises in your life over the last couple of years?

Robert Glazer
It’s just been such a supply and demand see-saw that it’s been nothing like my career. I’m someone who likes to plan long term, and in the business and think two, three years ahead, and it’s just been three to six months is kind of as far as you can look. I would say the biggest thing was we were a fully virtual team for 12 years coming into COVID, and we hit it at times and it wasn’t something that we were really public with, and then it’s just everyone was like, “Oh, you’ve done this. How do you do this?” I ended up kind of writing a book around it.

So, that was a little bit of a whirlwind going from sort of keeping the fact that we were fully remote a little bit on the downlow to sort of becoming an exemplar and speaker and author around it. And, by the way, I just talked to a large company this morning, I mean, two, three years later, people still haven’t figured out what they’re going to do with this, and it’s pretty interesting to me.

That and figuring out the strategy where they kind of have a strategy but they haven’t supported it. And this company was saying they have all kinds of rules for remote work that no one has actually read or adheres to.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally. And I remember even before the pandemic, there were debates in terms of, “Oh, so and so is moving, and they want to move work remotely,” and they’re like, “Oh, well, we don’t allow that.” Like, even then I was sort of, well, I’d been working self-employed remotely for a long time, and so I thought that was really a head scratcher, like, “If this person is excellent and they want to stay working for you, I think you should accommodate that.” That’s my bias.

Robert Glazer
So, here’s my favorite thing, and I was doing a keynote yesterday morning, and I have this slide that I used for a long time and I wasn’t going to use it, but it was David Solomon of Goldman Sachs in January 2021 saying that, or January 2022 saying that “Work from home is an aberration that they’re going to cure as soon as possible, and it’s like this horrible thing that needs to be fixed.” A week later, Goldman announces the best quarterly earnings in the history of the company with everyone working remote.

So, now they forced people back in the office, Goldman’s earnings come out last week, they’re the worst in, like, 20 years and they missed earnings. They’re down 60%. It’s a disaster. It’s just so funny. It’s like what actually…well, does it matter where and how people…Now, look, I am not a, “Everyone should be remote.” I think if you’re Goldman and you’re pitching an IPO, I think that people should come in for that pitch. But if they’re crunching the spreadsheets for 16 hours getting ready for a thing, like, did they need to come into the office that day for that?

But I do think there are things that you need to be in person, you need to be in the office, so I’m not an absolute on it, but I thought the paradox of those two, like statements and results, were really interesting, telling people the thing that was an aberration was the thing that just made your company the most money in its history.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Robert, that’s what I love, your perspective, you’re juxtaposing things, bringing together connections, distinctions, wisdom so it’s a hoot to be chatting again. And you got another work here, it’s called Elevate Your Team. What’s the big idea here?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, I wrote the book Elevate, it was about this concept of capacity-building and how to use that to make yourself better and help train leaders, really, to be better. And a lot of the stuff that we were doing over the years, I realized was the same framework around, “Well, how do you take that same capacity-building framework to an organization? So, what does it look like for an organization these days?”

And, look, it’s better to be lucky than good, and this book is coming out when the playbook of just burn through people and grow your business is just not going to work anymore. People are too tired around, “How do you grow a business on the backs of your people?” And by growing your people, I’m not saying, “We want to grow this business, and it sort of chews out people.” So, it takes that same spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional framework, and says, “How do you apply these principles to the organization rather than to the individual leaders?”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, for folks who didn’t catch the last interview, I recommend you do. But could you give us a bit of a refresher? We talked about capacity and building, and capacity-building, can you give us definitions of synonyms for what we’re talking about here?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, capacity-building is just a method. I always say that the long definition is the method by which individuals seek, accept, and develop…seek, acquire, and develop the skills and ability to perform at a higher level. Simply, it’s how you get better. I think it’s a process of how to get better and there’s four pieces.

Spiritual capacity, which is understanding who you are, and what you want most, your values and the standards you want to live by. Intellectual capacity, which is about how you improve your ability to think, learn, plan, and execute with discipline. That’s kind of your personal organizational operating system. Physical capacity is health, wellbeing, and physical performance. And emotional capacity is a few different things. It’s how you react to challenging situations, your emotional mindset, and I think the quality of your relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, in order or a team to flourish, well, I won’t steal your thunder, but it sounds like is it fair to say your thesis is you got to be building this capacity, growing in these domains in order to flourish as a team, an organization, a business without…?

Robert Glazer
And a human, yeah. So, the take on this that I have that’s a little different is I think organizations should focus on making their people better, help them build their capacity holistically not to just be good at their job today or the best robot for the assembly line, but how do you make them better at work and better in all aspects? At the same time, better father, mother, spouse, otherwise.

Because I think a lot of the things that people struggle with in work or a lot of their growth areas are the same outside, particularly with people working from home. It’s not like you wake out of bed cranky and tired and exhausted, and jump into work and are a totally different person. You’re going to be the same person. I find people that are organized and disciplined and have routines at work have them at home. They tend to really go hand in hand.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you share with us in terms of what’s the state of team capacity-building these days? How are we doing with these principles, generally speaking?

Robert Glazer
I don’t think well because I think that people are really burnt out, and they’re burnt out from two years of a global pandemic and the bounce back and all the changes, but that one implies that a lot of these things are out of whack. They’re not clear on what they value and what they bring to the organization. I think one of the things that make people stay and interested and growing as an organization, whether it’s intellectual, a lot of learning and feedback, and they’re seeing how they’re growing an opportunity.

We know people’s physical capacity is very diminished right now, so how can the organization help that, not hurt it? Like, how do you get people a break and some rest and get them recharged? And then again, I think that, particularly now, where you’re in an environment, again, where you have some layoffs and otherwise, psychological safety, becomes a big part of that.

Like, I know leaders struggle with, someone said to me yesterday at a keynote I was doing, one of the questions was, “Look, our industry, rough time, bad year, probably some layoffs, otherwise. Like, what do we tell people?” I was like, “Well, tell them the truth. Tell them where your parameters are, where you need their help, what you’re going to do. Communicate with them well because there’s going to be another company that are going to tell every people everything is fine, and it’s not. And they’re really going to lose the trust of those folks.”

So, I think people, when they know the truth and the reality, they’re happy to stay with something. I think it’s when they don’t feel like they’re being told the whole story that you have problems.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you share with us a fun story, a true story, with regard to a team who really saw a cool transformation when they did this capacity-building stuff, they took it seriously, they implemented some goodies, and they saw great results?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, I’ll give you some individual examples. So, one of the things that we do with all of our leaders is that we…and I’m going to give you two examples, I think from spiritual and intellectual, to talk about. We help our leaders figure out their personal core values because our belief is there’s no acceleration partners type of leader. The best leader is going to be authentic, and we want to help them figure out what do they value, what are they good at. Like, what are the natural things?

And the first time we did this, and people figured these things out, they actually kind of wrote it up, they went back to their teams, and they said, “Look, I really learned all these things about myself. This is how I kind of show up as a leader. This is what you can expect from me. This is what I need from you.” And three to six months later, we’d measured their performance before that offsite and we did all that and after, and really everyone improved dramatically. I just think their connections to their teams went a lot higher.

Again, example of intellectual capacity, learning feedback, so we will do a training where we model fake conversations between employees and their managers, kind of rip from the headlines. So, we’d sit down and say, “All right, Pete, you’re…” so the crowd knows both sides of the story, the crowd watching this, but we give you a narrative, “Pete, you just started today, you made some mistakes in the first couple months, but you think you’re doing great, and you want to get promoted.”

And then there’s Carly on the other side, and Carly has a card that says, “You meet with your employee Pete, and you just don’t think he’s going to make it. He has not the right attitude. He’s made a bunch of mistakes. He doesn’t seem to be getting it, and you need to sort of, like, let Pete know that this might not be the best place for him.”

And then we watch people have that conversation, and there’s a lot of platitudes, and there’s a lot of dancing around, and now you see why people aren’t on the same page. And we say, “Freeze,” and then we have the team all comment in, and I say, “How many people think that Pete knew his job was on the line?” And 20 people watching will say, “No,” and then I was like, “Okay, what are some different ways you could’ve approached?” and then we’ll have them start the conversation again.

And, again, this is just the thing, “Why do these conversations go so poorly all the time?” Because people don’t know how to do them. And why do they dread? They haven’t practiced them. This is an actual law and order practice, having very common difficult conversations that managers are going to have. It’s not surprising that people aren’t good at something, that they haven’t been trained on, and that they haven’t done before.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s just keep rolling. Physically?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, physically, look, I think you’re putting your money where your mouth is on this in terms of one of the things that we did was we’ve done a couple of fitness contests where… Most companies say they want something and then they incentivize another. They incentivize never leaving the desk, and, “We’ll get you food and we’ll get you your vaccine shot without having to get up,” or all this stuff.

We have said to people on a couple of things, “Hey, we will cover, we will reimburse part of your vacation if you actually take seven days off and don’t communicate with everyone, and actually unplug.” So, we’re again aligning the incentive to that behavior. Similarly, we’ve had fitness challenges where people break into teams during the work day. They have to step aside a half an hour to do anything from walking, to yoga, to meditation, to working out, and the teams get a point and the teams compete, and I think the winners got sort of an Apple watch.

So, again, very different viewpoint when the organization is saying, “Hey, we’re actually compensating you, or paying you, or valuing things that are designed to give you more time, and pay attention to your physical health and make the workplace part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And emotionally?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, example, we’ve always had this employee TED Talks at our organization at our AP Annual Summit, and one year, we decided to step it up. There was a gentleman I knew named Philip McKernan, and he had a program called “One Last Talk,” where people get on stage and they basically deliver the, “What is the one talk that you would deliver if this is your last day on earth?” And these were not, like, he doesn’t let anyone escape with, “Oh, three great things to live a great life.” It’s much more personal.

So, we had a bunch of volunteers, we picked four people, they trained for two months, they got up there and gave these speeches, and there wasn’t really a dry eye in the room. These were like deeply emotional speeches talking about aspects of their lives that many people wouldn’t have known. What was interesting though was that over the next day, the level of sharing across the company, like what people were talking to other people about, making connections, “You are I work together for five years, and I never told you that I grew up in a single-parent household, and I find out the same about you.”

It was crazy watching how that opened the floodgates for people to want to connect on a more human level. And I think, again, that level of vulnerability just leads people to better relationships, more sharing, more understanding other people’s perspectives and where they’re coming from. And, yeah, it was a pretty cool experience.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, it sounds like there is a boatload of approaches, strategies, tools, activities, tactics, interventions, stuff you can do to see some upgrades, some increased capacity in each these domains. I’m curious, are there a few sorts of top do’s and don’ts that you recommend individuals and teams and organizations consider as we’re looking to implement some of this stuff?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, I think that, oftentimes, people try to make too many changes at once. I think people are pretty good with change over time. Similar to New Year’s resolutions, I always say, like, I’m a much bigger believer. If I saw a company trying to do everything that was in this book, I would think their success would be very slow.

I think if they picked a couple things, started doing them, getting traction, and then I think that getting that one percent better each day or week, and getting the compounding effect of that, usually works better than rushing into a bunch of things that you don’t have the time or energy or resources to support.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And are there a few starting points that seem just excellent in your experience?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, I guess it depends on the area. I think if we’re talking about kind of a learning culture, some really easy things that you can do to start just getting more discussion or interaction, a book club, a podcast club, or even the CEO says, “You read this book and we get together, and let’s talk about it. Let’s pick a topic, let’s do a book,” that’s super easy.

Reimbursing people for education and learning experiences, I think that’s something that you can do right away. There’s also feedback, like really working with teams on teaching them how to give feedback, what’s good feedback. So many of these things, I think, we just, again, think that people know how to do.

One of the examples I love and I used in the book is that Scribe, which is a book company that does a lot of self-publishing books, so they actually teach their customers on how to give feedback to their team. And they say something like, “Look, saying you hate this cover is not super helpful to our design team. Saying, ‘This cover is off brand for the colors we like and the imagery I want to use, and I prefer imagery that is more X’ is a lot more helpful.”

So, it’s really interesting, like in that context, they’re even teaching that, how to do feedback. So, yeah, there are so many ways for, I think, companies to improve, but I think focusing on opportunities to learn and learn together is usually a pretty easy one of them.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that notion about design feedback because I always feel ridiculous when I’m sharing my feedback on designs, and yet designers seem to really love it. I was like, “This font makes me feel like a child.” They’re like, “Oh, that’s excellent.”

Robert Glazer
That, actually, right. Well, at least they know.

Pete Mockaitis
I was like, “Really? I feel nutty when I say that out loud.”

Robert Glazer
At least they know what you don’t like about it. That’s fair on that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. Well, there’s two things you kind of touched upon that I think are really juicy, and I’d love to hear all the great, your favorite tools for them. First, let’s talk about exhaustion, when folks are just tuckered out.

Robert Glazer
They’re toast, and if you think they’re going to come in and work 80 hours a week, even if they wanted to, I think they’re toast. And I actually think it’s happening more at the leadership level. The leaders carry the water in that first year in COVID, and they have the kids they’re worrying about and the sick parents, and their teams. And then I think, eventually, carrying all that water has really impacted them, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, if you’re good and exhausted, where do you recommend that we start?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, look, it seems counterintuitive when there’s a lot to do but try to give people some real breaks, whether that is the weekend, whether that is their week vacation, whether that is not worrying about emails at 6:00 o’clock after night. One of the tools that I’ve used for years, and, look, France and some places have taken them to the extreme. I think you’d go to jail if you email people after 5:00 o’clock.

But sometimes, like on a Saturday morning, I love to clear out emails from the week, and I learned when I was CEO that if I wrote someone an email on a Saturday, they thought they needed to respond. And I was often doing stuff after hours because that’s when I had time to doing it. I wasn’t looking for a response, that wasn’t the expectation. So, I learned to just use delayed delivery.

And so, anytime I write something outside of kind of normal hours, I delay until 8:00 o’clock the next work day. The side benefit of this is you can look really awesome and be productive at 8:00 o’clock in the morning when…

Pete Mockaitis
“Wow, Robert has given me six emails within…”

Robert Glazer
Yeah, you can do 7:58, 7:59, 8:00, 8:01, now you feel like a slacker in the morning. But I think people really appreciate that, particularly when you are a leader and you’re emailing other people on your team, they don’t know the priority. People tend to assume that everything is important, and not that just you felt like writing the email to them at that time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or I had a cool idea, and I wanted to get it on paper. And while I was there, how about I copy/paste, send?

Robert Glazer
That’s the other thing I do. I keep a notepad for everyone I meet and I take that cool idea and I put it in the part of the OneNote, and, in that way, I sit down and talk about the four ideas as well so they’re not getting bombarded with ADD at different points of night and day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. So, exhaustion, real breaks, whether that’s guidelines on the email timing or expectations, clarity that we’re not doing stuff over the weekend, or that week vacation is true and real.

Robert Glazer
Yeah. And, look, model the behavior. So, I’m a leader, “I’m going on vacation this weekend. If you need to reach me by an emergency, here’s the thing.” Put it on my autoreply, “Don’t email from vacation.” Because people will do what you say. This is the same over parenting. People will do what you say not what you do. Sorry, they will do what you do, not what you say. I got that backwards.

And that’s where I think it’s really important. If you tell people, “Oh, it’s fine to take a vacation,” but then you say you’re going on vacation, you’re out of office, and you’re emailing all week, what they take away from that is that it’s not okay to take a vacation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I remember when I was an intern, like I got the memo in terms of one the one side, the recruiting teams wanted the interns to have a truly fantastic experience so they go back to their university, and say, “Oh, my gosh, you got to work here.” But then there’s your actual work team, and they wanted useful stuff from you that brought things forward and served the client.

And so, I quickly learned, “Oh, in order to do well here, I need to completely ignore the preference of the recruiting team that wants me to not work much, and work as much as necessary to advance the stuff and have things look great for the team I’m working with. Okay, don’t listen to them. Do listen to them. Got it.”

Robert Glazer
And, look, this is the exact point, is that everyone figures this stuff out because the culture values it implicitly or explicitly. And it’s not like anyone told you this, but you very quickly figure out the rules of the road and what you need to do, and that becomes the default point and behavior. Then you think it’s normal and you teach it to the next person.

I literally had a friend, I think in five years, the people he worked for never let him have a vacation without calling him or bothering him. Like, there are just so many reasons why that’s wrong. It’s actually even bad for the company. Like, give the person a break so they actually feel refreshed in coming back. I think you should want people to have a life outside of work. They will do better work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yup, agreed. All right. Now, let’s talk about the folks having difficulty with real conversations, and you say, “Of course, it’s to be expected. They don’t have training or practice very much in that domain.” What are some great first steps to developing that skillset?

Robert Glazer
Practice. I think, I mean, we collect a lot of podcasts that talk about certain topics, “Hey, how do you have this sort of conversation? How do you have a difficult employee conversation?” I remember when I interviewed Patty McCord at Netflix, who’s sort of was part of their whole culture and the culture deck. She talked about when she was training people to do changes in jobs or whatever, she told them to call their own voicemail, say what they were going to say, and listen to it three times.

Just even some basic rep and practice, talk to other people, there are very few things that when you do it for the first time, have never practiced it, it’s going to go well. I think when you think about, in sports, no one does that. In business, we do that all the time. I wrote a Friday Forward about being a speaker at a conference, and I was sort of the general speaker and there was a subject matter expert after me, and I had checked the timing beforehand, I’d met with the AVP people, I had looked at the thing, I had that on my computer.

He came in with three times the amount of slides as the amount of time, didn’t set up AVP, someone had to do his computer. He had great content but he got pulled off stage because he never went through a dry run or practice, or it just doesn’t really work well to do things for the first time, and do them on stage. You should practice anything that you’re going to do.

In fact, someone was saying, our sales team, one thing that we could do better is, when we go into some big pitches, and we did this years ago in front of an important one, it was like we practiced the whole thing an hour beforehand. And what we noticed was we had some awkward transitions, “Oh, no, Pete, you take that. No, I’ll take that.” And we worked those transitions out during the practice, which having not done it, we would’ve made those mistakes in real time.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to the practice of difficult conversations, it’s tricky because, okay, there’s a person, there’s an issue, and we got to talk about it. And, yet, if I want to practice it with them, it’s sort of already the performance…

Robert Glazer
Well, you got to practice it with other people, not with them. But you could practice it with your manager, you could practice it with a peer. Again, you could practice it with yourself. You could sit down there and record it, and be like, “That sounds not good.” Or, again, you can learn some tools that you can use. So, here’s one that I learned, and I learned through all those trainings.

We know the sandwich concept, right? And if you watch it, it’s so awkward. Like, when someone starts a praise, then I’m going to deliver the real thing I want to say, and then wrap it with praise at the end. And you confuse people, and they’re like, “Wait, wait. Am I being reprimanded?” because it’s like two positives and a negative, but negative was the real reason why you were having the conversation.

The last time I had to have one of those really difficult conversations, I actually picked up a cue from someone else, and I started by saying, “Hey, we’re going to have a really difficult conversation, so I just want to let you know that.” That just totally changes the demeanor to me fumbling around for a minute, and being like, “Hey, Pete, what’s going on?”

So, again, but I had to learn that. I learned that from someone else, I learned that that was a best practice. I applied the best practice and it was difficult but I think it went about as good as it could go. And the other benefit is if you know how to do these things, then you don’t lose nights of sleep beforehand on it.

Like, this is the whole point on capacity. Capacity is not more. When you think about intellectual capacity, it’s like if you have a better operating system, if you know how to do it smarter and faster, it should be less energy. If I had 20 of these difficult conversation things, and I walk into one, it will cost me a lot less energy and grief and all the stuff, like, I will know how to do it. That, to me, is the definition of capacity because it’s getting more done with less resources, not more with more resources.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. So, Robert, this is cool stuff, focus on the organization, the team, the leader level. If we find ourselves individual contributors who would like this stuff to be happening in our organizations but isn’t, what do we do?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, look, you can become a leader in the organization with different ways. So, again, a perfect example, just because you’re an individual contributor does not mean you couldn’t start the book club, or the podcast club, or a class, or help start a fitness competition for everyone at the organization. So, yeah, you want to honor individual contributors who don’t want to be leaders.

I think there’s a difference between wanting to be an individual contributor and not have a big team, and wanting to be a loner and not care about other people at the organization. I think, actually, what would make an individual contributor stronger is the more connection they have to the company overall. So, I think they should look at these things as opportunities.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Robert, anything else you want to make sure to mention?

Robert Glazer
No, the one other thing I will mention is when we talked about the spiritual capacity and the core values of helping your team understand their core values, in Elevate, I did not have anywhere to point people to do this. And so, we started building it out over the years. We started doing it with our team. I turned it into a course.

There’s some information on that in the book but, also, if you go to CoreValuesCourse.com, if you’re interested for yourself or for your team to figure out, “What are our core values?” there’s an actual process that’ll take you through that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds fantastic, and I want to hear more about it. What does the process look like?

Robert Glazer
Yes. So, it goes through a bunch of different behavioral-based questions to figure out, “In different environments in your life, where are you successful or not successful?” And I think when you answer these questions, and you ask to start to pull the answers together, you start to see some pretty consistent themes around where you show up and are highly engaged, and where you are disengaged. And it starts kind of setting the foundation for what your personal core values might look like. And then it gives you kind of a process to suss those out.

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

Robert Glazer
“What the wise man does at the beginning, the fool does at the end.” I’ve always liked that one.

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

Robert Glazer
I was reading about the Dunning-Kruger Effect recently, which was pretty interesting. Dunning-Kruger says that the people who understand something the least often have the greatest overconfidence in their knowledge on the subject. And so, it’s an interesting study in organization or otherwise. Sometimes the loudest voice on something is often the most uninformed.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Robert Glazer
Well, I love Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorite books. The book I give to a lot of people is a book called Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me).

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it.

Robert Glazer
It’s sort of the definitive book. I have it on my desk here on cognitive dissonance. And I interviewed the authors recently. I think cognitive dissonance is so prevalent in everything we do every day, and just understanding that is a huge competitive advantage.

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

Robert Glazer
I don’t think I could live without this tool called SaneBox, which takes your email, filters it out, lets you snooze it to come back. So, it just keeps a lot of email that you don’t need to read out of your peripheral vision. And I remember one time my subscription expired, and like, 300 emails dropped back into my inbox, and I almost had a panic attack. Like, that’s how you know a tool is valuable to you.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Robert Glazer
Well, I like brewing French brew coffee, and it takes five or ten minutes, so I try to time some…I like the concept of habit stacking. So, I try to do something else during those five or ten minutes I wouldn’t do, whether it’s writing in a journal, or stretching, or otherwise, because I can tie it to doing that every day. So, I like the concept of stacking a habit, like something you’re already doing with something that you want to be doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that you’re known for, folks are always quoting this Robert Glazer gem?

Robert Glazer
Friday Forward, I think, is the most popular of all time, it’s called the “BS of Busy.” And I think there are some things in there around many of us are busy or just saying that as an answer to everything, and we really need to understand it’s not a great answer to, “How are you busy?” when someone asks. So, I think we need to move away from being busy to being productive and being fulfilled, and so I’ve talked about that a few different times.

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

Robert Glazer
Yeah, so everything of mine, Friday Forward, books, podcasts, everything is at RobertGlazer.com, including the new book. If you want the shortest path to the new book, it’s EYT, like “Elevate Your Team,” EYTBook.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?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, the final challenge I think would be figure out what is most important to your organization today, and then see how you could be helpful to it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Robert, it’s been a treat. I wish you much luck and elevation.

Robert Glazer
Thank you, Pete.