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Feb 17
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1033: How to Build Your Social Confidence with Susan Callender

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Susan Callender reveals the critical mindset shifts that lead to greater charisma and confidence.

You’ll Learn

  1. Six steps for overcoming shyness 
  2. How to quickly curb nervousness and anxiety 
  3. The small shifts that improve your professional presence 

About Susan 

Susan Callender is a success coach and founder of Social Confidence Pro, where she runs The School of Social Mastery. She helps sharp, high-achieving yet socially reluctant professionals polish their people skills and step into the spotlight. Through her school and coaching, she helps chronic overthinkers create a bigger impact and add more value to the careers they love. Susan shares her expertise as host of the Social Skills Mastery podcast, transforming clients from Boston to Bangkok and beyond.

Resources Mentioned

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Susan Callender Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Susan, welcome!

Susan Callender
Pete, I am so happy to be on your show. Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, we’re happy to have you. We’re talking social confidence. That’s a hot topic listeners care a lot about, and you are the social confidence pro, so it’s like we’re a match made in heaven.

Susan Callender
I am. I love what I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to hear the tale of how you were going to be on CNN and then you just walked off the set. What’s going on here?

Susan Callender
Well, I identified as a shy person, and, momentarily, for that interview, which happened during the Democratic National Convention back in 2004, I thought that I could get over shyness for a few minutes for an interview.

And so, I walked in blindly to the interview. They were putting on my mic, fixing my hair, the reporter’s talking to me, and my mind is spinning and racing, and then they went, “Five, four, three…” and I pulled off the microphone, and I said, “I cannot do this. I’m so sorry. I’m so embarrassed. I should have never done this in the first place,” and I walked off the set.

And the most surprising thing, Peter, is that was an embarrassing moment, but it was not even my worst embarrassing moment. I am so glad to be where I am today and holding out my hand and bringing along other people, other professionals, other business owners that find themselves in that situation. There’s hope for you. There was for me, there is for you, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes, I like that a lot. Not that you experienced a deeply painful situation, but that you use your pain to help others, as well as this notion, I think sometimes people think, “Oh, you know, charismatic folks who are just great on camera or great on stage or great at speaking, they’re just kind of born that way. That’s sort of their personality.” But here you are with an experience that says just the opposite. You’ve experienced a personal transformation here.

Susan Callender
I did. What I realized, and that was one of the catalysts for my doing what I do now, and that was realizing that, “Oh, I call myself shy. I call myself an introvert. Who first called me shy? Oh, it was my mom protecting me, letting people know, ‘Oh, it’s okay, she’s hiding behind me, she’s shy.’” And then as I grew up, when I was in school or in a play, when people saw me being very hesitant, I could then express, when I was eight or nine years old, “I’m shy. I just can’t do it.“

But then this is what happens. One day you’re in college, and then one day you’re 35 and you’re still shy, but now people aren’t relating to it anymore because you’re a professional. They expect you to show up and speak up and add value and do your thing, and that’s where it becomes really difficult. And that’s why I do what I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you there in terms of, at some point, the expectations get upgraded and you got to upgrade with them.

Susan Callender
You do, and that’s where I realized, Pete, that it’s not so much the label. It’s the identity. So, you can give a person conversation starters, that’s the most popular thing that I do. People want to know what to say, “What do I say?” I’ll have people line up after a conference, or in a conference room at an office where I’m doing a presentation, and all the quiet people will say, “But what do I say? How do I start a conversation? What should I say to that person?”

But it’s not the words. It’s who you are being. So, I can give you the most interesting conversation starters, but if you still identify as an introvert who really hates small talk, you are still going to be an introvert who hates small talk who happened to have a conversation for one minute. You’ll revert back to who you believe you are. So, what I help people do is to create a new social identity where they can truly fully express themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing and cool, and I’ve heard that that’s a powerful tool for folks trying to make any sort of transformation, like, “I am not going to try to work out but who I am is a runner or a fit person or a triathlete or whatever,” like adopting that identity can really move people to do things differently and to perform better. So, that sounds pretty handy. But, Susan, how is it done?

Susan Callender
Well, it’s done by really priming your brain. So, what I’ve created is a social priming system, and the social priming system is a type of mental rehearsal for social interactions. So, I use the acronym SOCIAL, and what I help people to do is just move through all of those different iterations of how we see things prior to doing them. I’ll give you an example, Pete.

You don’t get lost going to work, because you see it in your mind first. You see your route. But we think for some reason, because we see people performing with social ease, those outgoing people, the people who find it easy to make a conversation, we assume that they do it without practice. We see everything before we do it.

So, with social priming, S is, first, just to settle down. Calm down, take a few deep breaths, and really just find that place within yourself where you really want to do well. Let’s just set this up as a networking event. You’re attending a networking group for the first time. You won’t know anyone, but you know, for professional reasons, you really should be there.

Then O is for observe. Just really look at your current emotional state and just notice, “Do you have any anxiety? Do you have any resistance? Why do you have that anxiety?” That anxiety came from a thought that you have about the situation. What if you changed that thought to, “I’m really looking forward to meeting new people in my field.” It will change how you feel.

And then what we want to do is just create a specific social scenario. Imagine yourself walking into the venue. What’s the first thing you’re going to see at a networking event? Perhaps a name tag table. Visualize yourself walking up to that table. If there’s a person standing behind it, prior to saying, “My last name is…” or just looking for your name tag, visualize yourself, prime your brain to say, “I’m going to say hello to that person and tell them how glad I am to be here.”

When we go through steps like this, Pete, these things happen because we’re priming our brain for exactly what we want to happen. We do the same thing in presentations. And then we just want to immerse our brains in how we want to feel in that moment – confident. We want to have positive outcomes for this interaction.

And then we make it animated. That’s the A in social. Just play through the scene like you’re having conversations, like you’re going over to the bar to get a drink, like you’re going to stop by the hors d’oeuvres table and grab a cube of cheese or a little bit of hummus and pita, and you’re going to turn and find a single person or a person who was alone, and you’re going to walk over to them and mention something about the gathering.

Don’t walk over and say your name first. Because nobody will care who you are until they feel comfortable with you, then they’ll remember your name. And so, just start with something about the setting that you’re in, something about the event that you’re attending.

And then, finally, L in social is for just linking the great feeling that you have with this to any positive situation that you want to have. So, when you click that link, you will know that, “This is how I want to feel in social settings,” and that just seals the deal for you. Then you can do it again, and again, and again.

Pete Mockaitis
So, with the link, can you expand on that a little bit more?

Susan Callender
Well, it’s like an anchor. So, the anchor is, “I just did this. I was able to visualize what I wanted to happen. I was able to just settle my nervous system. I was able to calm that anxiety. I questioned where that anxiety was coming from. Why would I feel nervous? I am a very smart, driven person. I have the degrees, I have the skills, I have the credentials. These are my people. Why would I feel nervous? I’ve said words before. I have introduced myself before.”

Pete Mockaitis
I bet you have.

Susan Callender
“I can say words again. I know how to ask for a drink. I know how to introduce to people. All of these things.” When we take ourselves, Pete, out of ourselves and think about the other person, we are so much more calm.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really cool. With the link is not so much, I think we have a tendency to hurry on to the next thing, it’s like, “Well, let’s see if there’s anything interesting in my phone now,” as opposed to linking that experience to, I guess, a new identity there in terms of, “Yes, this happened. This is an experience that just unfolded,” and to sort of sit in it, steep in it, marinate in it, and let your brain link these connections.

Susan Callender
Celebrate the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And it’s funny, I’m zeroing in on the cheese cubes, one, because perhaps I’m already ready for lunch, and, two, it really does animate the A there, the scene in terms of when your senses, what can you see, what can you smell, what can you taste, and makes it all more real and grounded as oppose to the soft languages of ideas, idea things, like, “Oh, some people might not like me.”

It’s like, okay, that’s kind of fuzzy and broad and vague as opposed to a cheese cube, “It is orange. I can visualize it on a little white Dixie plate or whatever, a toothpick, and then I’m there and the mental rehearsal seems all the more genuine and powerful.

Susan Callender
It truly does. And that will help your listeners connect to whatever event they are attending, whether it’s taking place in the workplace, or if they have to go outside, or if they’re taking a client to lunch. Bob Proctor had a very popular quote, which was that, “If you could see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.”

It’s so true. We’ve gone through all these little iterations in different ways before, but rather than just having your mind go blank with fear, say, “I’ve done this before.” And then at the end, give yourself, when you get back in your car, a little, “Woohoo! So glad I did that. Yes! I knew I could do that.” That just reinforces that. That’s just another type of anchor. “Yes, I can do this again. I’m going to sign up for that other event that I see noted at the end of the month.”  That’s where that momentum comes from.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. I dig that a lot. Let’s talk about the observe the why. I can get into a trap emotionally with why, as I feel a thing and then I say why. And, sure enough, I’m able to generate so many reasons why I feel that, and then I’m almost, like, finding an argument or justification and support for the very thing that I would prefer not to be feeling. Can you give us some distinctions and pro tips on how to do the observe step optimally?

Susan Callender
We all have some resistance in us for whatever reason, “Well, I don’t want to go. I’d rather go to the gym,” “I’d rather go home and walk my dog,” “I’d rather just scroll Instagram,” or do whatever it is that we do these days because we’re so accustomed to being alone. It’s so easy to be alone. Why do we do this?

We do this because we are professionals. We do this because we’ve put in that time and we want to be known for what we know. And the more we stay alone, the more we work hybrid or work from home or do not have all the opportunities that we used to take advantage of, to get to know people, to be seen and to be heard and to be understood for all of the value that you have to offer, well, just take a look at that and observe who you’re being.

Do you want to manage your professional image, or do you want others to manage it for you? Others managing it for you might mean, “Oh, she doesn’t really talk to anyone,” or, “She’s probably not going to show up,” or, “I don’t think that I’m going to ask her because she’ll probably say no, and we really need panelists for next week, so I’m going to go to somebody who I have a feeling will say yes.” And all it takes from you is, “Uh, yes, sure, I can do it,” because you know you can.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s how we do the identity piece. I’m curious, with regard to the settle down, any pro tips on doing that well?

Susan Callender
What we should take more time for is deep breathing. At any point in your day, when you feel just even a pang of nervousness or anxiety, just stop and take four to six just deep breaths in your nose, slowly out your mouth. It is incredibly calming. And in those moments, your brain will have clarity. Clarity that it could not have, that was not possible when your mind was racing.

You are in control. Do not think that some outside factor is in control of you. And once you realize that, it’s so empowering. It stops the limiting beliefs in their tracks, and increases the empowering beliefs that you have the capability to do anything that you want to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, deep breathing. Any particulars on how one breathes deeply to be most effective?

Susan Callender
I practice something with my clients that is called box breathing. And in that, you close your eyes and just picture a cube. And you can, let’s say that we’re going from the bottom to the top on the left-hand side, and I might say to them, “Let’s breathe in with a four count, going from the bottom left to the top left. And then do a six count, blowing out through your mouth going across the top of the cube. And then a four count, going down the right-hand side of the cube. And then a six count, exhaling through your mouth, going across.”

And even if we’re doing it like at the end of their workday, it just helps them to separate from anything else that’s been going on, or if it’s at the start of their day, or at their lunchtime. It helps you to create space between what you thought was so unbearable, or stressful, or somebody needling you, or somebody not allowing you to, or in your mind, to not show up as your best because you’re so focused on them.

And it just helps you to separate from that and realize that you are your own entity, your own being. And then we can begin. Then we can have a great session. And I can do that either whether it’s one-to-one or in a group. We’re all the same in that way. We like to think that we’re different but we’re not.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then when you’re in the midst of building your career and developing these skills, what are some practices you suggest for folks, day in day out?

Susan Callender
What I say often is that if you want to be a big deal, you have to act like you’re a big deal. You have value. You are valuable. People want you right now, without question. Somebody right now needs exactly what it is that you have. They’re looking for you. They’re waiting for you. You have to show up. There is no one who is better than you. They just do things differently. But you have your place and you have to claim it.

So, act like you belong and people will treat you like you belong. And then you’ll start to have fun, and then you’ll start to go out more, and then you’ll start to speak up in meetings more, because you realize that people do listen to you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, tell me, any other top tips, do’s, don’ts?

Susan Callender
One would be just making sure that you are in control of your professional presence. And so, that means that you want to pay attention and be in the moment. Stop your mind from overthinking and racing ahead and wondering if you’re going to say the right thing, and just get present and pay attention, and don’t try to think of what you’re going to say. Respond to what’s being said to you. So just presence is so important.

And then your body language, being authoritative and approachable. And that could be as simple as just standing with your weight even on both feet, and then being mindful of your space. If you are speaking to one person, or a table full of people at a conference table, or a room full of people, make sure to connect.

So, with one person, eye contact. With a number of people at a conference table, make each word that you say, connect that with eye contact with each person at a table. If you are answering a person’s question, don’t just look at that person because everyone else will tune out unless you connect with them. So, use your space wisely. Make sure that people can hear you and that they know that you want to be heard.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Any final thoughts?

Susan Callender
What I know for sure, Pete, is that when you change or improve your social skills, whether it’s getting over social anxiety, nervousness, unnecessary worry, overthinking, everything in that realm, it changes your life forever. You can’t unlearn these skills.

And I know that these are not things that you’ve just been dealing with for the past few months or years. For the most part, it goes back to formative years, before the age of seven, middle school years, maybe early college, and then we think that it’s our life sentence, but it’s not. It can be changed.

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

Susan Callender
“You don’t have to be great to start. You just have to start to be great.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Susan Callender
Right now, I’m rereading something, and I do have a tendency to reread things that I love, and that is The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Susan Callender
I journal every day, every morning.

Pete Mockaitis
That kind of sounds like a favorite habit as well. Any others?

Susan Callender
I wake up and I just find ten things to be grateful for every morning, and that’s definitely the habit, yeah.

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

Susan Callender
Act like you belong and people will treat you like you belong.

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

Susan Callender
I would love for people to go to SocialConfidencePro.com/breakthrough, where I have a social identity shift breakthrough series that they will find very helpful to start speaking up and standing out.

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

Susan Callender
Allow people to be seen, take the focus off of yourself and greet people. Make eye contact with them. Do not focus on your needs or your fear. Just make someone else’s day. And when you notice that look in their eye, that smile that they give you back, you will then see just how powerful you are.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Susan, beautiful. Thank you.

Susan Callender
You’re welcome, Pete. It was my pleasure to be here.

Feb 13
0

1032: How to Find Yourself and Create Your Ideal Life through Rebellion with Graham Cochrane

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Graham Cochrane discusses how to stop living on autopilot and start making progress towards your ideal life.

You’ll Learn

  1. The problem with autopilot and “the logical next thing”
  2. The five-part REBEL framework 
  3. The magical time frame for goals 

About Graham 

Graham Cochrane is a 7 figure entrepreneur, TEDx and keynote speaker, and bestselling author of How To Get Paid For What You Know and Rebel: Find Yourself by Not Following The Crowd (2024).

He is the host of The Graham Cochrane Show, a top .5% ranked podcast globally, where each week he helps people create more money, margin, and meaning in their lives. With over 14 years of online coaching and content experience, 700,000 YouTube subscribers across his channels, and having built multiple 7 figure businesses that require less than 5 hours of work per week to run, Graham is a leading voice in the life-giving business movement.

His insights have been regularly featured in national media outlets like Forbes, CNBC and Business Insider.

As a coach and dynamic keynote speaker he can help any success-oriented person who feels stuck, exhausted, or disappointed, leverage their true identity to experience clarity, confidence, and make life and business more effortless through utilizing his signature REBEL framework.

Resources Mentioned

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Graham Cochrane Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Graham, welcome!

Graham Cochrane
Good to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Graham, we are talking about being a rebel, finding yourself by not following the crowd. That sounds cool. Can you tell us about one of your most rebellious decisions and how it worked out for you?

Graham Cochrane
I think the one that changed sort of the course for me was when I lost my job in the middle of the Great Recession. It was 2009, we just bought a house, we just had our first baby, we just moved a thousand miles away, and I lost my job, and I just didn’t want to go back to any job. I had floated for a few years, and I think I made this subtle agreement with myself that I’m going to do whatever it takes to find—it wasn’t that I didn’t like working.

Actually, I liked being in an office with people. It’s just I hadn’t found what was the right fit for me, and so I made the subtle decision to not take any job, or not even go look for a job. I was going to find a way to create an income the way I like to do it, doing things that were interesting to me so I could show up as my highest, best self.

I didn’t know if this was going to work. I didn’t know that you could create an online business, which is what I ended up doing. But that subtle decision of, “Nope, I’m not going to go get a job. I’m not going to even interview or apply,” and I got a lot of flak from family members, you know, the whole, “It’s the holidays. Hey, so how is applying for another job going?”

We were on food stamps for like 18 months, “So, are you applying for a job?” and I’m like, “Nope.” And it was hard because I wasn’t even confident in my decision but that was probably one of the most rebellious moves that, really, for me, shifted the course of my life and got me into entrepreneurship and content creation and writing books and speaking, stuff I would never have pursued had I never made that decision. So, yeah, I’m glad I did. I was scared out of my mind when I was doing it.

Pete Mockaitis
And you talk about living life on autopilot as well. Is that, in your view, kind of the opposite of rebelling?

Graham Cochrane
Yes. So, when I talk about being a rebel, I don’t know what comes to mind for you when you hear the word rebel. Sometimes it’s like James Dean.

Pete Mockaitis
Like Star Wars.

Graham Cochrane
Star Wars, yeah. It’s like either James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause,” with a red leather jacket, or it’s Star Wars because you’re a cool guy, and you appreciate the Rebel Alliance.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know if that makes me cool.

Graham Cochrane
In my book, it makes you cool, Pete, and my daughter, too. But, yet, rebellion seems like a bad thing but it depends on what you’re rebelling against. And what I’m rebelling against, and what I encourage people to do in the book, is to rebel against conformity, which is just going along with what everyone else is doing.

Unless you have looked at what everyone else is doing, and the path it leads to, the destination it leads to, and decided that’s exactly what you want, then you’re actually in good shape because we’re in a current, we’re in a stream, all of us like that stick in the stream, and the stick doesn’t have to do anything. It’s going to end up wherever the stream takes it.

And I think that’s where conformity is taking us somewhere, the way we think about how we spend our time, how we think about family and marriage, how we spend our money. We’re just doing what the culture at large is doing. Or the little microculture of your friend group, your family members, your church, whoever you hang out with is kind of affecting you because we all kind of gravitate towards what everyone else is doing.

And so, to me, a rebel is just saying, “Hey, I don’t know if I like where this is going. Let me just step out of the stream for a minute, look around at the sort of core areas of life,” your work, your finances, your relationships, your health, your spirituality, the way you spend your time, “Do I want to go somewhere else?”

And so, to be a rebel, by definition, is to do the opposite of what other people are doing, but maybe the opposite is the best thing for you, and maybe the best thing for them, and they might be inspired to join you, eventually. But, yeah, that’s what I’m encouraging people to do, and it’s a very personal decision because what’s rebellious for you might be different than for me.

But it’s really lifestyle design, it’s being intentional with your life, and having the guts to do what you need to do for your life and your family even if it’s not what everyone else around you is doing, or even the ones who love you say you should do, because they just want to protect you and keep you safe, but we don’t want to be safe. We want to flourish.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of good wisdom there, for sure, because we can just get swept up, go with the flow, and end up where everyone else ends up. And if you’ve thoughtfully, clearly, carefully examined, it’s like, “Yes, that’s exactly where I want to end up,” well, then, cool. Just enjoy the ride, I guess. But, often, the problem is it’s not where we want to end, and we haven’t taken the time to really examine the situation.

It’s funny, I remember, I had… it was almost like an epiphany. So, I was in my business, doing things, making decisions, and it’s almost like I had just sort of the default assumption, and maybe this came from my finance classes, I’m like, “Of course, the purpose of the firm is to maximize shareholder wealth.” But then it was almost like revelation, like, “You know what, I don’t actually have to always choose the thing that makes the most money.”

Graham Cochrane
Bingo.

Pete Mockaitis
“I get to choose what’s the money target is. And if I want to do other things just for the fun of it, I get to do that. I’m not like the CEO of a publicly traded corporation who has duties and obligations, fiduciarily, in order to perform for these shareholders, so, no.”

And making a given podcast episode may or may not be profitable or modestly profitable but it’s cool and fun and interesting, and people appreciate it, and it opens up cool other opportunities down the road, and it’s just something I love doing, so I’m just going to go ahead and keep doing that, and that’s okay. And I think it’s so funny, I think about going with the flow, I’m thinking about fitness context now, and I’ve gotten sucked into this, too.

I think there’s science that suggests that when you’re pumping iron, you’re lifting weights, it liberates some more determination within you, just like feelings of that. Has that been your experience, Graham, in the gym?

Graham Cochrane
Oh, yeah. You’re like, “I can do this. I can do more. I’m going to do more.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. But, yes, that determination is almost affixed to the nearest thing in sight, which is more weights, but I could go ahead and apply that liberated determination to something else, and I have often been guilty of overdoing it. Like, every workout, I want to set a record, and that’s not the best plan, it turns out, as I’m 41 years old.

Graham Cochrane
No, you hit 40, you got to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, I’m hearing you, like it’s quite easy to get sucked into an autopilot, go with the flow situation in all kinds of contexts. Could you illustrate this for us in the career space?

Graham Cochrane
Just in general, related to that, too, like there’s a lot of reasons why we go with the flow. Some of it is because we want to be accepted by the group and there’s sort of that subtle pressure. But, honestly, Pete, we’re just tired, too. We’re tired at the end of the day, especially if you’re in a job or career that’s frustrating, and then you’ve got a family. It’s a lot of responsibility so you’re just tired at the end of the day.

We end up abdicating our decision-making to what everyone else is doing, “Well, how do they manage their money?” or, “What kind of car do they drive?” or, “What kind of vacations do they take?” We just sort of abdicate. And I think we do this even in the career space, too, because it’s just easier than taking the effort to think because we’re just, honestly, exhausted.

I think, in the career space, we’re kind of like sheeple, you know, we’re kind of like guided around since we were kids in the school system where we’re told what to do, and people have studied this at length, but think about just the context with which we came out of the school system, was we don’t get to decide what grade to go. You go to the next grade, assuming you passed.

And you take the exams and you do the things they want you to do, and you might get some autonomy in middle high school where you could pick some electives and some classes. And then, if you do go to college, you get more autonomy getting to choose. But do we really choose the major we want or do we already get to that point of, when you’re 18, some people know what they want to do when they’re 18?

A lot of people, they’re just so young because there’s a million things you could do. Like, I’m multi-interested, multi-passionate, and even multi-gifted at things, which is confusing, it’s like, “I could do this. I could do that.” And so, I think, at 18, you don’t really know, so a lot of times we see these studies of people, really, at the end of the day, picking the major that makes them the most money.

It’s almost like a decision-making filter, “Well, I don’t really know what I want to do. So, what’s going to make me the most money? I’ll do that.” Engineering, or finance, or whatever it is, and so they pick it, and then it carries on until that leads you into what jobs to apply for. And then what jobs you’ve had, well, that’s the experience you have. And you are kind of trapped, unless you say, “You’re never trapped.” Unless you say otherwise, you are kind of already in this flow of just, “Well, this is the next logical thing.”

And what I want people to do, especially with the book Rebel, is to not do the next logical thing just because it’s the thing in front of you, because it might be the right logical thing if you’re in this career and you’re at this age or this stage or have this resume. But is that, to your point about your business, is that what you want to do? Is that what would actually fill you up?

My premise is that we’re all wired a specific way, and the frustrations in life come when we’re living out of alignment with our design, out of alignment with the way we’re wired. So, don’t fight the way you’re wired. There’s a way for you to actually flourish in your career in the workspace by being authentically you, but you’ve got to do some of that research to figure out who you are, what dreams light you up, what you actually want.

And once you get some clarity and a vision, it kind of makes the decision-making filter a lot easier now, like, “Okay, I could take this next job opportunity, absolutely. And it would mean this, this, these pros. And it would mean these cons, but now it’s not just a list of pros and cons.”

“I have a destination I’m trying to get to in life in terms of how I want to show up, what I want life to look like, and I can just ask ‘Does this job opportunity lead me closer to or farther away from that destination of the amount of time I want to have with my family, the way I want to feel, the type of people I want to work with, the types of projects I want to work on?’”

Some of the best people in an organization get promoted to managing other people, and now they’re no longer doing the thing they’re really good at. They’re just managing people, which is a different skill. We need good managers, but it’s not fulfilling anymore, it’s like, “I get paid more but I hate what I do because it was more fun to do the craft or the thing and work with the people than being the boss of them and not getting to do it myself.”

So, it really comes down to knowing who you are, what you want, so that you can better say yes to the decisions and advancements, or even going backwards a step if it means more fulfillment.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. I think my dear grade school principal was awesome, and I was too young to notice or appreciate how wonderful she was. But then I learned that, later on, she took a new role as a guidance counselor at another school. And you’d think, “Oh, wait a minute. Aren’t we going backwards? The principal is the boss of the guidance counselors and everybody. Isn’t the next step from principal, like, superintendent?” But I think she had a doubt, it’s like, “Hey, this is the part of the job I like the most was when I got to really kind of enter in students’ lives and see what’s up,” and that’s a beautiful thing.

Graham Cochrane
Oh, that’s real. That’s literally my uncle, well, he did the opposite. He was an elementary school principal and loved it and was so beloved in the Princeton school system at a school for many years, and he was so good that he got promoted to assistant superintendent, and eventually superintendent for all public schools in Princeton, New Jersey, and he was great at it, but it killed him.

Like, to the point when he retired, he had to, like, just chill for a year, he’s 50, because his adrenal glands were blown because he’s putting out fires and dealing with angry parents, and he’s like, “All I cared about was curriculum design for kids so they would actually get it and learn and flourish, and I wasn’t even hanging out with kids anymore. It’s, like, why did I do that?”

It’s a mixed bag because he got to have a lot of influence in some regards, but the natural path upwards isn’t always the most fulfilling path.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, dead on. And then, it’s funny, like those forces, in terms of, like, “Hey, it’s the next logical step,” so there’s that, you’ve got friends and family congratulating you, supporting you, like, “Oh, my gosh, wow. They’re going to give you the assistant superintendent job. That’s so cool. Congratulations!” So, you got that going.

You see dollar signs, like, “Ooh, there’s all sorts of things I’ve wanted to buy for some time that I’ve been postponing. Hmm, they could be mine now.” And so, there you go, those forces, you’re in a groove and they incline you to just take one more step in that groove, whether it’s right or wrong.

Graham Cochrane
Yeah, and that’s a great point. The groove and the step is, like, neutral. And sometimes group-think and where a culture is going isn’t neutral, that’s a topic maybe for another day, but it’s, like, a lot of times, these innocuous decisions of like, “Sure, yeah, I’ll take that promotion. Sure, we’ll do that. Sure, well, there’s nothing inherently harmful about it.”

But what’s harmful is stacking your life with those types of decisions because, then, you get to the end of your life, and you’re like, “Was that really me?” Like, I said something in a session with a coach I had one time, that’s like, “I don’t think the real Graham has come out to play yet.” Like, I’m still trying to discover who is the real Graham. If I’m not doing what others want me to do, if I’m not doing what I think I should do because I hold myself to a high standard.

But, to your point, where did those “shoulds” come from, “You should do this. You should show up in this way”? What would happen if I really figure out who I was and actually showed up in the world that way? What decisions would I make?” And it would ruffle some feathers at first, but I think there would be this beautiful freedom of, like, “Man, this is who I am. This is what matters to me and I’d be able to operate within the confines of the real world with a lot more clarity and confidence and joy,” and I think that’s missing in most people’s lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I’m also thinking about, like, those voices in terms of any number of things, like buying a house or doing any kind of a deal. It’s sort of, like, everybody’s incentives are for you to go ahead and do that. It’s like the agent and the lender and all the powers that be, and it sort of takes a lot of gumption to be like, “You know what, this is not the right one after all. Sorry, everybody. Deal is dead. Hope you’ll find another one.”

Graham Cochrane
Yeah, and then a lot of us don’t want to do that because we don’t want to disappoint people. Even if we don’t say that out loud, that’s functionally what we’re doing, like, “Gosh, we’re already this far, and it would just be a mess,” and you’re in that current, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Well, let’s zero in. So, you said “I don’t feel like the real Graham has shown up to play yet,” a sentence that I think coaches would be fascinated to hear, it’s like, “Ooh, we’re getting somewhere now. Oh, yeah, let’s dig in.” So, if we find ourselves in such a spot, how on earth do we find the real Pete, the real Graham, the real person to liberate?

Graham Cochrane
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, in the book, I walk through a five-part framework. It spells the word REBEL, so it’s easy to remember, R-E-B-E-L, and it’s a linear path, there’s exercises and processes for each one. But the first step is the R, to resolve to dream again. So, my premise is that the first way to figure out who you are is to get back in touch with what you dream about, or dreamt about, what you want, what you desire.

I think that dreams are clues, they’re data points to the way we’re wired. They don’t tell us everything about us but they’re a great starting point. So, I walk people, in the book, through a 50-dreams exercise, and this is a fascinating exercise. Some people find this pretty easy, and some people find this incredibly frustrating. It probably depends on your background and your personality.

But the process, and you could do this this weekend, is sit down and write down 50 things you want. If you get stuck, one way to think about it, I love Tim Ferriss’ question, “If you were the smartest person in the world, and it were impossible to fail, what would you dream of doing, being, or having?” Those are the three categories, “What would you dream of doing, being, or having?” if you knew it was going to work out, and you just start to write.

There’s usually five to ten that will come to people pretty quickly that are already there, top of mind, you’re thinking about them. Maybe it’s, “We really want to buy a house,” maybe it’s, “We really want to take a trip to Mallorca,” I don’t know. But you really have to keep going to 50 because it starts to get deeper to the ones that are dormant, buried, maybe you haven’t thought since you were 10, that you’re not creating a bucket list of, like, “I’m going to do all 50 of these things,” although you certainly could, or become all 50, or have all 50.

It’s more about getting intel on yourself of, like, “Oh, wow, yeah, when I was 10, I wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. That was a dream I had,” let’s say. And, oh, by the way, real-life Graham still wants to be in a Star Wars movie. That’d be super dope. What does it tell me about myself? And maybe we don’t know yet but there’s something about the playfulness of being in a movie, of acting, then something about movies, in general, maybe something about the movie industry.

But it tells you a little bit about yourself, and you’re just letting yourself get familiar with yourself again, starting with desire. I think everything in the world is created through desire. I think nobody invents something cool, or writes a book, or builds a business, or has a family, or does any charitable work without any desire first. We’re desire beings. We’re not like avoid-punishment beings, although that can work for a time.

But what drives humans forward is the desire for something. And so, the desire is the starting point, and I want to know what’s behind that. And so, I get people to go through that exercise, and there’s more steps in there to sort of zero in on what to do with those things, but it gives you a high-level 30,000-foot view or airplane-view of who Pete is, who Graham is, based off of what he desires.

And I really do think that doing this exercise, judgment-free, which is the hardest part, is to make sure that you’re not: A, no one is going to see this, it’s just you and yourself; B, we tend to judge ourselves. So, if you find yourself wanting to write down, “I would really love to have a Ferrari,” and you’re like, “No, that’s dumb.” Like, bro, you and you know that you wanted to write that down. Just write it down, there’s something about it. Whether you have the Ferrari or not, maybe it’s you really enjoy cars, maybe you really enjoy speed, maybe you really enjoy high-quality things, and it just tells you something about yourself.

So, if you give yourself the freedom to go through this 50-dream exercise, it’s shocking how many people have gone through it, grown men, kids, that all have been weeping because it’s like, “Oh, man, I forgot that I want this thing,” or, “I’ve always wanted to do this, or go here, or experience this.” And they start to get familiar, reacquainted with themselves a little bit. It doesn’t solve everything or tell you everything about yourself, but it’s where you start.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. And what’s so cool is that it can just lead into so many interesting pathways. Like, for a Ferrari, what it’s about is like being able to experience the very finest craftsmanship of a thing, maybe. And then that just sort of opens up all kinds of things, “Well, what could I experience that again? Oh, maybe the best possible flashlight. Well, one of those $200 flashlights that police officers have that look amazing, I want to get that one.”

And so, that’s so small scale but, in so doing, it feels like you’re already entering into a different kind of a vibe or groove or energy or flow in terms of how you’re approaching life and what you’re getting after.

Graham Cochrane
Yeah, that’s a great point, Pete, because most people go into personal development, or this kind of self-inner work out of a place of, “I got to fix myself. I’m a mess or I have this problem.” And, yeah, you might have a mess, and you might have problems, we all do, but when you bring that energy as the first energy, like, “Oh, God, I suck. How can fix myself?” you’re never going to have curiosity, you’re never going to be imaginative, these parts of your brain that you really need to write and create new neural pathways.

So, I love starting with desire and dreaming also because, to your point, it starts with a great vibe of like, “Oh, yeah, man. I always wanted to have a basketball hoop in my driveway when I was a kid but I never did. And you know what, even if could go to the gym and play basketball, I’m just going to go get one, not even just for my kids. Like, for myself because I think it’d be really cool.”

It just gets you in a place of playfulness, and then judgment goes down, walls go down, and now you can actually think creatively as opposed to, like, “Oh, I can’t do that. I shouldn’t do this.” Like, there’s so many guardrails we put up because we’ve already blocked ourselves from opportunity because we just aren’t being creative and let ourselves think that way.

But this type of exercise, I think, puts you in a beautiful headspace where you can, at least, get curious even if you’re like, “I don’t know how any of these is going to happen. That’s okay,” but at least get in touch with what drives you, what desires you had, have, would have if you let yourself think about it, and you might be surprised.

You won’t be surprised by some of the things on the list, you’d be like, “Yup, I’ve always wanted a beach house,” “Yup, I’ve always wanted to live in this country for a month, but, man, I forgot about that or I hadn’t thought about that or articulated that in a certain way,” and it’s really instructive.

Pete Mockaitis
And I love your point when you said, with the basketball hoop, it’s like, “Oh, I could play basketball at the gym.” I think it’s very common for our little brains to fire off resistance of just, like, instantly kill that dream, it’s like, “Oh, that’s not really practical. Like, I already have a gym membership, and buying a basketball hoop is sort of unnecessary use of money.” It’s kind of scary how fast that brain could immediately terminate that. Any pro tips on that?

Graham Cochrane
That, I think, is the default wiring of so many of us, especially in America and in the West, we’re like a society that’s kind of built for what’s productive and efficient and makes sense. And by that means what makes money or saves money, because we kind of worship the dollar in a weird way. I don’t think every culture is this way.

But if you grew up in a culture like America, then you’re swimming in the thinking, so, yeah, that’s like, “That’s not practical. That’s a waste of money. Or, if I did it, it feels a little risque.” Even if it’s a $200 purchase, it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, like what’s the point? I already have a basketball hoop.” But, at the same time, there are so many things that we do.

We’re so confusing and so hypocritical as a culture. Some of these we’ll buy and do that don’t make sense but we just do them because we want them. And so, I just think that’s okay. I think it’s okay. Like, the work we’re doing here, again, is private, it’s just you and your journal or your Google Doc. You’re just trying to get better in touch with, like, “Hey, I’m not saying I’m going to go buy a basketball hoop, or a Ferrari, or I’m going to pull my kids out school and we’re going to move to the Caribbean, like whatever. I’m just going to get curious. Like, oh, this would be cool.”

So, for example, two summers ago, I took my family to Puerto Rico. We stayed there for three-four weeks in the summer. And we’re in this really cute town, Rincon, like a surf town, we took some surfer lessons, and people are really cool there, and it’s really laid back, and I was like, “Yeah, what would it be like if we moved to Puerto Rico?”

And I got some friends that live in Puerto Rico, and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, bro. Like, 4% taxes, like all these entrepreneurs that are getting crushed in the mainland States.” So, I was joking with my wife, it’s like, “Babe, we could move here. We would save a crap ton of money, just operating the business out of Puerto Rico. It’s awesome, the beaches.”

And my kids and my wife know now that, like, when daddy says that or mommy says that, like, we’re not, “This is what we’re doing.” Nobody freaks out. We just play the game of, like, “Oh, I wonder what that would be like?”

And it just gives us the permission to dream a little bit. And whether we move to Puerto Rico or not, there’s something about when we were there, that we like, about the lifestyle, about it wasn’t glitzy, it was chill, the people were nice, the access to the beaches, tropical vibe. And so,“Okay, how can we incorporate that in our everyday life more often? And let’s just tuck that nugget away. There’s something about that that we like,” and we let ourselves play.

And I think that’s a muscle you flex because now I know more about myself. I don’t have to execute on it. I don’t have to sell everything and move to Puerto Rico. There’s no red flags here. It’s just an exercise of dreaming and stretching your imagination.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. Well, we talked a lot about step one. Could we hear the rapid version of the E-B-E-L of REBEL?

Graham Cochrane
So, the first E after that is to establish the outcomes you want in life. So, you dream, that’s the high-level dream. And if you go through the exercises, there’s kind of a way of narrowing it down and getting more intel on some of those dreams, and now you know a bit about yourself. But next is really to get a vision for your life. And I think the most useful question here, and I stole this from Rich Litvin, who’s a friend and coach of mine, because it was the most useful exercise for me.

Pete Mockaitis
The Prosperous Coach.

Graham Cochrane
Yup, he wrote the The Prosperous Coach, great book. And the question is this, so I’ll do it with you, Pete. So, imagine we bumped into each other three years from now, and we’re at a conference or on a plane, and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, Pete, I was on your show, like, three years ago, and I haven’t seen you since. How the heck are you?”

And you tell me, “Graham, this has been the best three years of my life,” and I’m like, “Oh, dude, that’s awesome. Like, tell me about it. What has happened?” This is the exercise, what would you have to say to truthfully tell me that it has been, past tense, the best three years of your life?

And whatever comes to mind is what you write down, “Oh, gosh, well, if it’s been the best three years of my life, this happened,” or, “We did this,” or, “I got rid of that,” or, “I moved here,” or, “My kids weren’t yelling at me anymore,” or whatever it was. Like, you just write it down – life, work, money, health, whatever – and, all of a sudden, you had this magical list that tells you something.

One, things you really value, and you might’ve gotten some inspiration from your 50 dreams list, but, two, the three-year mark is the magic for me, and that’s what I love about Rich’s question is, people have 10-year goals, and I’m a planner. Like, I’m high futuristic on the StrengthsFinder, that makes sense to me. But even for me, it’s hard to motivate me 10 years down the road, plus I’m going to be a totally different person in 10 years.

Like, I don’t know about you, Pete, but 10 years ago, when you were 31, I’m sure you’re totally different person and so much has changed in those 10 years, and it’s hard to predict. So, I don’t love 10-year goals because it’s easy for them to disappear. One-year goals are great for motivation. I love New Year Resolutions but they’re hard to completely change your life and hard to sustain because there’s like too much pressure on the goal to happen this year.

But three years is like close enough to my current day and season of life that I can kind of imagine my kids’ age, what’s happening, there’s already some season I’m planting that will harvest in the next couple of years. But, also, you and I both know, we could do a lot of damage in 36 months. We can completely transform our bodies in 36 months. You can completely transform your marriage in 36 months, your career. You can do a lot in 36 months.

And so, I think that three-year span is a magical timeframe. And so, this is the part in the process of, like, “What do I really want to be true in three years?” and seeing that in front of you. It’s so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Let’s hear about the breaking negative thoughts, habits, and patterns.

Graham Cochrane
Yup, you got it. B is break the negative thoughts, habits, and patterns. We do an inner story audit so you’re getting clear on your dreams and vision. But the thing that blocks people from actually living the vision, even if they have one, is the story they tell themselves. So, we do what I call an inner story audit, and we kind of quiet that internal default narrative that’s drowning out your intuitive sense and the guiding force that wants to lead you where you want to go.

Once you do some of that inner work and break some of that down, now you’re freed up to make some changes. That’s where the second E comes in, and that’s where we engage in rebellious new behavior, and this is just life changing. I walk you through the life change formula, which, real quickly, the way I look at life changes – belief, think, feel, do.

So, change your beliefs, change what you think about all day long, changes how you feel in your emotions, which, ultimately, changes your actions. And action is what changes your life, but it all starts with belief change, so we walk through that. That, and sort of setting up your days and your weeks, and pursuing the vision.

And then, finally, the L is the hardest part of the process for me, personally, and that is to let go of other people’s opinions and the outcomes we already established in step two. So, you hold them loosely.

Pete Mockaitis
That does sound hard.

Graham Cochrane
Yeah, you create a vision, you live intentionally, and, ultimately, since we can’t control the future, and I don’t think anybody that tells you they can is telling you the truth. You have to live open-handedly, like, “Hey, I’m going in this direction. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out, so I’m going to be really open-handed about it and enjoy the journey, knowing that I’m orienting my life to where I want to go, but I have no idea what it’s going to look like specifically.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so if we do have some people-pleasing instincts, and that is tricky, to let go of other people’s opinions, any pro tips there?

Graham Cochrane
Yeah, I have people walk through creating personal values, or family values if you have a family. I find this actually incredibly useful. My wife and I were sitting on a back porch of this mountain house in Colorado on a vacation, and we were just journaling, and talking, and reading, and praying, and dreaming, and we just started talking about family values.

I said, “We’ve never really written down family values. Do we have family values?” And we went through them, and like, “Well, what are we valuing in our family intuitively without even articulating it?” And we realized there were five core things that we saw as patterns in our family, that they’re the Cochrane family values, and we wrote those down.

And having those written down, even on like my phone or a Notes app, all of a sudden, made a lot of these decisions or other people’s opinions about what to do or what we should do, very simple, we’d be like, “No, this is what we value as a family, so we’re going to do this or we’re not going to do this because we’re going to prioritize this over this.”

So, I think having at least personal values, like five to seven, can make, when other people have their opinion, you can go, “That’s cool. I received that.” Even if it’s your mom or your best friend, and say, like, “I received that but these are my personal values. I’m going to hang onto these, and they’re going to kind of anchor me in the direction I need to go.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I love it. And you’re right, it can really accelerate things. What comes to mind, it’s so simple, but as an example of a decision, I had a buddy, and his brother, his family was trying to figure out, “Oh, should we join a club baseball team?” And it was just like all his friends are doing it. He really likes baseball, and it was just like, “Well, you’re not going to be getting a baseball college scholarship, and it’s going to be a ton of travel and expense and going all over the place, so we’re not going to do that.”

It was just like what I thought, “Oh, man, that’s going to be a really tricky decision.” It’s like the family was able to render it like super quick just because, “Having some fun baseball times doesn’t jive with our family values and what we’re up to, and for another family it might,” but you have those up front.

Graham Cochrane
Dude, such a great example. Yeah, that’s a great example. Yeah, dude, that’s real for us. Like, my daughter, she was doing dance for so many years, and she wanted to do competitive dances. It’s the same version as that, a lot of travel, lot more nights of the week. And she kept asking to do it, and we kept saying, like, “One of our family values is being home for dinner as a family every night, or most nights out of the week. And if we make this decision, then it interrupts that family value. You’ll be around maybe one night out of the week.”

And at the time, she’s like 11 or 12, and we’re like, “This is going to be the rest of your childhood.” So, it was tough for her, and we actually let her try it for a season so she could sense the feeling of it because she really felt called to try. And so, she tried it, she’s like, “Dude, yeah, we never have any time together.” We’re like, “That’s what we’re talking about.” So, it was easy for her to say, “Not worth it. Fun but not worth it because it conflicted with a value we had.”

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, tell me, any final things you want to share before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Graham Cochrane
Yeah, I would just say, like, this whole process, so trying to find yourself and be a rebel and do all this inner work, what I think I love about this, and a lot of people miss this, and I try to bring it home at the end of the book, is the whole point of doing this, it’s ultimately not about you. It’s for you, it’s a gift for you, and it feels so good.

Like, I’m always in the process of trying to let the real Graham come out to play and become more my true self. But ultimately, I think the reason you want to find yourself and become a rebel and live your authentic life is because someone else needs you to be you. 

You were designed on purpose for a purpose, and if you don’t show up as fully you, you can’t be the person they need you to be. We’re trying to be who we think we should be but, ironically, if you just be yourself, then you will have more impact and be able to serve more people in your sphere of influence because the real you is coming out to play.

So, that’s what I would just say, is do this work at some point. Whether you do the book or not, just do some of the exercises we talked about today because other people are depending on you, and it’s so much fun when you get to be fully you and it makes a difference in other people’s lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now can we hear a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Graham Cochrane
My friend Rory Vaden has this great quote, and it’s stuck with me, “You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.”

Because you know those problems, you know those pain points, and you can speak powerfully into it, and that’s who you can mentor along the way. And I just love that line.

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

Graham Cochrane
It’s either Harvard or there’s another review, but it was a study of impostor syndrome on professionals, doctors, lawyers, finance people, that 73% of people in this so-called white collar high-professional jobs view themselves as an impostor, they don’t belong there.

I think it’s fascinating to me because I think, as a human nature, I’m like, “I’m not good enough. I shouldn’t have gotten this job. I don’t really know what I’m doing. I hope they don’t find out.” And I think that’s just very encouraging because it shows that all the people that you think are impressive, they’re actually like scared out of their mind to be doing what they’re doing half the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And a favorite book?

Graham Cochrane
The Go Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. It’s a little parable about generosity changing this salesguy’s life. It’s just a beautiful book with a beautiful principle that’s very applicable, and anybody can benefit from it. You can read it in like an hour.

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

Graham Cochrane
I use Riverside. We’re using Riverside right now.

Pete Mockaitis
We sure are.

Graham Cochrane
I use it to film everything for my video podcast, to doing interviews. It’s just so helpful for all kinds of stuff, and it’s cloud-based and you can use AI to edit stuff. This is so fun.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Graham Cochrane
This is more of a process also, and that would be the 80/20 Rule, Pareto’s Principle. I’m always looks at “What is the 20% of the things I’m doing that are giving me 80% of the results?” Not to be more efficient to be a robot, but to realize, “Where is the waste in what I’m doing or how I’m doing? Could I get the same result or almost the same result with one-fifth of the effort or one-fifth of the time, and to free up my time and effort to double-down on that or do something more creative?”

So, I’m always using the 80/20 Rule, or 80/20 principle, as my favorite habit for just about anything in life.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people really connect and resonate with; they retweet and they Kindle-book highlight and all the things?

Graham Cochrane
A lot of people, lately from Rebel, have been resharing the frustrations in life come when you’re living out of alignment with your design. And I think there’s just something there of like, if you’re frustrated, there’s external frustrations, nothing you can control, I get that. But a lot of our frustrations are self-caused, and it’s worth figuring out, “How am I wired? How was I designed? Because if I can figure that out and live in alignment with that, 99% of those frustrations go away.”

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

Graham Cochrane
@thegrahamcochrane on Instagram is the only place I hang out online. Otherwise, GrahamCochrane.com for all the latest content, podcasts, and you can hang out with me there.

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

Graham Cochrane
Find someone to serve. Find a coworker, a boss to serve. Find out what they need. This is taking the Go-Giver principle, and just see if you can take something off their plate this week. These are tasks or a job you can take off their plate, like no strings attached. Don’t even mention, “I just want to do this for you.”

And only do it once. You don’t have to make it a habit. Just go give somebody something asking for nothing in return, and see if you don’t create more of a connection or a relationship that leads to other things down the road.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Graham, thank you.

Graham Cochrane
Dude, thank you, Pete. This has been fun.

Feb 10
0

1031: Mastering Virtual Communication with Andrew Brodsky

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Andrew Brodsky shows how to sharpen your virtual communication skills.

You’ll Learn

  1. What your emails and texts say about you 
  2. The PING framework for efficient virtual communication 
  3. Why in-person meetings aren’t always better 

About Andrew 

Andrew Brodsky is an award-winning professor, management consultant and virtual communications expert at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Poets&Quants selected Andrew as one of the “World’s 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40.” He is an expert in workplace technology, communication and productivity and serves as the CEO of Ping Group. Andrew earned a PhD in organizational behavior from Harvard Business School and BS from The Wharton School. He currently lives with his wife and two rescue dogs in Austin.

Resources Mentioned

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Andrew Brodsky Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Andrew, welcome!

Andrew Brodsky
Thanks for having me on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m so excited to dig into some of the wisdom of your book, Ping, and I’d love it if you could kick us off with a particularly surprising discovery you’ve made as you’ve been teaching this stuff, researching this stuff, and putting the book together.

Andrew Brodsky
The most surprising discovery that I’ve seen in my research is that there’s a whole lot more nonverbal information we send in our text-based communication and low-richness communication, like email, instant messaging, than we realize we do. So, when most people talk about it, they’re like, “Well, you don’t send any nonverbal behavior via email,” but we do.

So, typos can relay emotion, time of day a message sent can relay power. There are things like how we interpret emojis is not as straightforward as one would expect. So, there’s a whole lot of other information we don’t even realize we’re sending that other people use to interpret what we’re saying.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Andrew, this calls to mind, have you seen this Key & Peele sketch, where they have an escalating misunderstanding?

Andrew Brodsky
I actually use that clip in my class to teach when I teach virtual negotiations.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent choice.

Andrew Brodsky
It’s one of my favorite ones.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess that’s part of what makes you one of the world’s best business school professors under 40, Andrew. Kudos.

Andrew Brodsky
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
So, absolutely, so that’s intriguing there in that there is more that we are sending. I guess we don’t even know that we’re sending it. And then I guess there is still the risk of misinterpretation of those signals, like, “Oh, he sent it at midnight, therefore, this means that,” whereas, that assumption or interpretation could still be off, but some kind of thing got embedded by the time itself of when it was sent.

Andrew Brodsky
One of my favorite studies that researchers have on this, they use an example or metaphor to describe this process. So, what they do is, basically, tap a song out on your desk with your fist, and then imagine what, if you were to tap it out to someone else, what are the odds they’re going to guess it? And most people guess really high percentage. But in reality, very few percentages of people get it right.

The reason being is that when we tap out the song on our desk, we hear the music in our head as we’re tapping it, so it seems really obvious to us. The problem is, when someone’s listening to it, they’re not hearing that same music. They’re coming from their own set of assumptions, interests, and they’re like, “I don’t know what song it is.”

And the same thing happens with our email. When we’re typing out emails, we hear the emotion in our head as we’re typing it, so it seems really obvious to us. But the thing is, when someone else gets it, they’re not hearing the same emotion. For instance, if a boss sends a sarcastic email, they need to be humorous to their subordinate.

If they have an anxious subordinate, they’re going to be like, “Uh-oh, my boss is mad at me, or being condescending,” because they’re coming from somebody that’s very different. So, we all read information, whether it’s emails, or instant messages, with our different tone, so we gotta remember that they’re not hearing the same music we are when we’re writing this stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a beautiful comparison point in terms of what’s in our head and what we’re actually transmitting that can go there. And it’s funny, my kids, we just got a keyboard, and they’re experiencing this right now, and they sort of spontaneously played the tapping game, and they were flabbergasted of their own discovery and how their sibling was unable to pick up on the cue, because, indeed, all you have is rhythm when you’re tapping as opposed to pitch, completely missing that I was doing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” because there might be multiple things that would have somewhat similar rhythms.

So, that’s fantastic. Well, so we’re going to dig into a little bit of the pro tips, the do’s and don’ts, and the best practices. But I would love to hear, maybe, just what is at stake here in terms of whether we master this stuff or we limp along and do okay with it, like the average professional?

Andrew Brodsky
So, I’m guessing everyone who’s listening has seen some email from some executive gone viral that’s extremely embarrassing, or those videos during COVID of executives, like, doing a horrible job of laying off people. Like, we’ve all seen these things go crazy viral. But those are the mistakes we generally think about when it comes to virtual communication. Those like big ones that went viral, but there’s a whole lot of other interactions that are meaningful.

They don’t have to go viral for it to impact yourself, your relationship, your career. So just every day, how are you presenting yourself to your boss, to your clients, to your teammates, is meaningful, and these things add up. And, especially when we’re interacting virtually, and we’re not standing in front of the other person, communication serves an important role. So, there’s our work, and in most cases, there’s not objective measures for work, whether you’re in accounting, human resources, whatever else. Most of our jobs don’t have 100% clear objective metrics.

And then on the other side, it’s on evaluating that. And also, it could just be a simple conversation between two people, and they’re trying to evaluate how engaged you are. And the thing is, they’re making subjective evaluations of this, because there’s just no objective way to evaluate most of these things. And the filter between your actual work, your effort, your engagement in conversation, and their evaluations is your communication.

So, that is what drives how people perceive these things. So, making sure you can communicate effectively across any mode has been shown to change outcomes everywhere from building trust, to how productive, or how high a performer you seem, how good of a leader you are, how good your outcomes are in negotiations. These things are impactful because that’s what drives perceptions, often so more times in reality than the actual work or effort you’re putting into the situation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really rings true. And we, humans, are not perfectly rational. There’s an understatement for you, Andrew, it’s so fascinating, and maybe you can share the actual science behind this to make it all the more real. But I find that our moods, emotions are not giving us reliably accurate information, you know?

And I’m not talking about, like, major sort of mood disorder diagnoses or anything. Just like terms if we are feeling cranky on one day and see the same stimulus, as we’re feeling well-rested and chipper on another, what we interpret about the stimulus is totally different, even though the objective reality or forecast is unchanged by our internal mood states.

And so, then, if there’s little things we’re doing that are annoying people with regard to our use or lack thereof of emojis, our grammar approaches, single spacing, double spacing after a period, the quality of our lighting or camera or microphone, any of these things that don’t really matter do impact the recipient’s mood, and then their evaluation or judgment of you, like, how competent and sharp you are as a professional.

And so, I’ve seen this on both sides of the table. And I’d love it if you could share, is there any super compelling research that shows just how powerful these effects can be?

Andrew Brodsky
Yeah, and there’s a ton of things I talk about in my book that, in theory, we shouldn’t have to do, but we all make these judgments of people, even though they’re not really rational. So, one of the good examples is when it comes to video calls, and, you know, we talk about email and instant message, let’s move to video.

There’s been a bunch of studies about video interviewing, and they show that eye contact during video interviews is significantly related to how the interviewer evaluates the interviewee. But here’s the problem, when you’re face-to-face, it’s very easy to maintain eye contact because you’re staring at the other person’s eyes.

For most of us, when we’re doing that on a computer, we’re staring at their face on the screen, so we’re actually making eye contact. But if you’ve got a laptop, if you’ve got a monitor set up where your webcam is above your monitors, for most of us, it looks like we’re looking downward, or we’re looking to the left, or to the right, because we’re looking at the person’s face on our screen as opposed to the webcam, which is kind of dumb because we actually are making eye contact, but to the other person, it looks like you’re just kind of looking off.

So, they might make assessments that, “Hey, this person’s not really engaged, or maybe they’re reading from a script, or they don’t care, or maybe they’re just looking up recipes for dinner tonight.” Whereas. in person, we don’t even have to make those guesses because we can see they’re paying attention. So, there’s like this dual problem virtually where they have to guess more because they can’t see what you’re doing because you’re not in person.

And then you’re trying to maintain eye contact, but it doesn’t necessarily align with your webcam. For this, there’s a bunch of easier and some harder fixes. So, just dragging your video call screen up to right under your webcam can be really useful for aligning. There’s more complex things. You can get a standing mount webcam that stands in the center of your monitor, or maybe just hanging webcams that you can actually stick onto your monitor. But just being attentive to these little cues virtually can be really, really important, even though, honestly, it shouldn’t have to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. No, that’s so well said. And if I could just throw out one more tip. I use, this is a fancy setup, podcast or life, but this, it’s a teleprompter, which is also a display, the Elgato prompter. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Andrew, but I’m looking right at you always because it is a display showing up in the teleprompter mirror immediately in front of the camera lens so that’s, I think, the ultimate.

And I’ve heard people as they talk about reviews of this product, they are amazed at their communities, “It’s like you’re looking right at me. How are you doing that?” And so, I’ve been sharing this with a sales consultant. Because I imagine, if it matters in video interviews, it probably matters in sales conversations too.

Andrew Brodsky
Oh, yeah. I’ve got a more low-tech option myself. I just have a webcam stand that is bendable, so I put it right in the center of my screen. I’m a little less intense with it, but it’s the same thing, because this way, I can look at you and I’m looking at my webcam simultaneously.

But, yeah, these things matter everywhere because, I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of like, we feel like we’re on a video call and we feel like someone’s not paying attention to us, and in many cases, they’re not. But this gets back to my point that I was saying, is the way people make these judgments is often more about how you’re communicating acting as opposed to what the reality is in some cases.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is powerful and eye opening. And if you could please share with us the eye contact video interview study, we’ll absolutely link in the show notes. That’s good stuff. And tell us then, are you aware of any cool stories of a professional who really took some of these principles and tips with gusto, and saw a cool transformation when they implemented them?

Andrew Brodsky
One of my favorite ones was an organization I consulted with recently, so this is a large Fortune 100 tech org, and they were having a big problem with communication overload. They had hours and hours of meetings, they were doing emails, like all night long, and it was creating a lot of stress for them. So, one of the things I approach with them is trying to have more structured conversations within teams about “How can we communicate better?”

And there’s some interesting research, for instance, that fits into this about the email urgency bias. And what that research shows is that, when we receive an email, we expect that the sender thinks we’re going to respond, or they want us to respond quicker than they actually care about. So, for instance, if you sent me an email, you probably think, “Ah, if he gets back to me a day, that’s okay.” I get the email. I’m like, “Oh, here’s an important podcast host. I need to respond within 30 minutes,” right? And I think that’s what you’re expecting from me.

And the problem with that is it creates a stress. It creates this feeling of needing to check your email all the time so that we’re interrupting our work, we’re interrupting our time with our family, and it creates all these different issues. So, what I did with a number of teams there is I had conversations with them and said, “Okay, amongst your team, let’s figure out, what medium has what response time? So, as a team, what response time do we want for email? What response time do we want for instant message? If there’s an emergency, how do we do it? Do we do it via text message? Do we do it via an urgent tag on one of these things?”

And in those conversations, as a result of that, they were able to get more focus time because they weren’t constantly having to check their communication and interrupt what they were doing. And multitasking is one of the worst things you can do for your productivity. And just like one related study to this is there’s some research that shows it can take up to a minute after each email to get back in the zone of work.

And it doesn’t sound like a lot to say, “Oh, it takes a minute to get back in focus.” But if you’re like me and sending like 30 or 60 emails a day, that’s like half an hour to an hour each day of just getting back in focus for the tasks. So, by enabling them to better chunk their communication without having to actually constantly be checking email and instant message, they ended up having a lot more time for work, they were more productive.

One of the team leaders came back to me afterwards, and was like, “My family hated me because I was on my smartphone all night long. And now I finally get to enjoy my family time because I know, if there’s an emergency, I’m going to hear the text chime, and I do not have to look at my email or instant message anymore whatsoever during the night, because we’ve actually made the implicit more explicit.”

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful. And I have ran seminars where I have seen similar results with teams, so I will just put a big check mark on that one, is this assumption about the expectation that is far from reality causes all these angst and interruption and unnecessary multitask and unpleasantness. And it is such a wave of relief for folks when you can have that conversation, like, “Oh, wow, I don’t have to do that? This is amazing.”

So, that’s a great feeling and liberates all kinds of good stuff. Well, that sounds like a master key right there, Andrew, with this stuff, is, “Hey, how about we get aligned on what our expectations and preferences are with regard to how we’re using all these tools?”

Andrew Brodsky
And it’s great, because on the back-end, too, someone’s not taking two weeks to respond to your email because you said, “As a team, hey, we’re going to respond to every email in a day or two.” So, it kind of not only gives us more time to focus. We don’t have that dangling email for over a week because we said, “You need to respond at least a day or 24 hours, even if it’s, ‘I’m going to get back to this by X date,’ so we’re not left wondering.”

And when it comes to virtual interactions, silence is a whole lot more awkward than it is in person because we don’t know what’s going on in person, if they’re clearly thinking. Virtually, we don’t know if they just deleted our email. We don’t know if they don’t care at all. So, having those norms, and then at least within those norms, having a set of practices where we send something within the given time to say, “I’ll get to this by X,” really helps erase all that ambiguity that can harm relationships very seriously in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Cool. Well, how about you take us through your favorite tools and tips for how we do all this stuff masterfully?

Andrew Brodsky
Sure. So, my favorite tool is the framework that I made for this book. So, whenever I read a self-help book, a business book, personally, I really like when there’s a framework because there’s often so many suggestions that I never remember all of them. So, in writing my own book, I did what I like to do, and I need one. So, for my book Ping I’ve got the “Ping” framework.

P for perspective taking, I for initiative, N for nonverbal, G for goals, and all the recommendations and research in the book fits into these four things. So, for instance P for perspective taking, this is the idea that when we are engaging in virtual communication, we tend to end up more self-focused because we’re maybe just looking at text on a screen, or even if we’re having a video call, they’re a small square on our screen as opposed to this big person standing in front of us, so we’re less focused on how the other person’s going to react, how they might think.

You would say things online often that you wouldn’t say to the person when you’re right in front of them because you’re more focused on how they’re going to react when they’re standing physically right in front of you. So, it’s really important to take a moment and try and think about how might someone see this from their perspective.

And going back to that emotion research, one of the good recommendations that came out of that is, if you take your message and read it in the exact opposite tone out loud than you intended. So, if it’s a sarcastic message, read it as serious. If it’s a serious message, read it as sarcastic out loud. Suddenly, people tend to be much less likely to be overconfident about how clear their message is. When they do that, they realize, “Oh, wow, my message is not as clear as I intended it,” and they fix it.

And then I for initiative. The idea here is you need to think about, “What can I add back in here into this mode that might be missing?” So, an example I give in the book of this is small talk. Many of us hate small talk, and for good reason, it’s not productive. And research shows that small talk decreases productivity. But it does have a benefit.

Small talk improves trust. And the reason being is we trust what we know. If I know nothing about you, if I don’t know about your family, what you do for fun, what your hobby is, I don’t feel like I have an understanding of you, so I don’t feel like I can trust you. Small talk is one of these ways that helps us feel like we get to know somebody else and we trust what’s familiar.

So, finding ways to add in a little bit of small talk into your virtual communication, whether just a couple lines of email, asking them, you know, “Hey, I know you mentioned you’re going on a trip. How did it go? Here’s what I did,” can be really, really useful for building that trust, if that’s your goal. I’m not saying write 10 paragraphs of small talk because everyone’s going to hate you for it and it’ll backfire, but the idea here is a little bit of this stuff, taking the initiative to add those things back in, can be incredibly useful.

And the nonverbal behavior, just being attentive to all the different cues you’re sending, and we’ve talked about a bunch already. So, eye contact during video calls, typos, emojis, which I can talk more about if we want, all these different cues and understanding, “What information am I sending without potentially realizing?”

And then, lastly, G for goals. I wish there was, I could just say this is the best mode of communication. There’s one mode to rule them all. It would be a very short book if I did. But the best mode really depends on what your goal is. So, let’s say video calls, for instance. There’s this big debate – cameras on, cameras off.

And my answer to that, when executives or teams or anyone else asks me about that, is it depends on your goal. So, research shows that having your video on can be useful for building relationships, for showing engagement, because it shows, “Hey, I’m listening. I’m paying attention to you.” But on the other side of that, there’s Zoom fatigue or video conferencing fatigue, where research shows that being on video can be really exhausting.

You’re staring at yourself. You’re observing all your nonverbal behaviors. It can be really energy depleting and that gives you less energy in the meeting, less energy afterwards, could lead to burnout. So, there’s these pros and cons. But if you think about it this way, if your goal is to show engagement, build a relationship, camera on. If your goal is to save energy to be able to focus better, then camera off is better.

So, maybe cameras on is better when you’re interacting with someone you don’t know really well. But when your team already has strong impressions of each other, we already know everyone’s engaged, we already have good feelings of each other, and having our camera on or off really isn’t going to change those things for a one-off meeting. It might be better for us all to have our cameras off so we can focus more on the task at hand.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And you mentioned multitasking being bad news, and my understanding of the research is that if the multitasking is really close to mindless, like, “I am also walking on a treadmill,” or, “I am also folding laundry,” or, “I am also tidying up some of these items on my desk, like the pen goes in the pen drawer, the cups can be gathered and placed to the side.” Like, my understanding of these matters is that you’re actually not having a cognitive deterioration when that is the case. Is that accurate?

Andrew Brodsky
I would say it’s better for some people than others. So, there’s a personality trait like multitasking ability, technically, where it works better for some than others. In some cases, communication can be mindless, but in many cases, the communication is involving something that you’re not immediately working on, so your mind has to switch to a different task in the meantime.

So, it’s not like you could be doing your emails while you’re simultaneously brainstorming something unrelated altogether. If you’re really, really good, maybe you can, but for most of us, it kind of interrupts that process pretty badly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. And when I said mindless, I was referring to the secondary activity, the walking your feet on a treadmill is the mindless piece.

Andrew Brodsky
Oh, of course. Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Such that it’s quite possible to pay attention well if the secondary activity is not communication-related and doesn’t take much conscious attention whatsoever. Is that a fair way to think about multitasking?

Andrew Brodsky
Oh, yeah. And one of the, I think, funnier, more absurd examples I get is, you’d be surprised how many executives have told me that they email from the toilet, where they’ve basically got their smart phone there and they’re taking out their communication. A little bit less exercise fun than being on the treadmill, but, yeah, I mean, I guess you get the job done there, right? So, yeah, so using those times otherwise, like if you can get some physical activity in, that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and that’s kind of how I think about the cameras off-on exactly as you’ve well-articulated in terms of, it is more tiring, it requires more of me, but perhaps if we are building the relationships, then that’s a great use of energy from the team is to do just that, versus, it really would be nice if we gave people a little bit of a break and we’re able to handle a little bit of the things simultaneously so long as they’re not messing up their ability to concentrate.

Andrew Brodsky
That, and if the only way you can keep your team’s attention is to forcing them to keep their webcam on, you’ve got bigger problems than that. You should be having deeper conversations about “Why is our team engagement low? How can we increase it?” If the only way you could do it is forcing people to keep their cameras on, you’re basically fixing the symptom rather than the cause, and you’ve got an underlying team problem there, and you are kind of treating the team more like children in many of those cases, where there isn’t that added value.

And, again, that’s not to say there aren’t situations where having camera on is really useful. I use it for teaching, especially when meeting new people, it’s really important, but there are many situations where it just isn’t adding value and it can really take away from the interaction.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that’s powerful. Thank you. You’ve got a perspective on strategic silence in meetings. What do you mean by this and how do we do it?

Andrew Brodsky
So, strategic silence can be useful in a whole lot of situations. So, negotiating is often a fun one in these scenarios where silence is this great thing where it causes other people to fill the air. We feel a bit awkward during it, especially during virtual meetings, too. So, if you’re in this situation where you’re hoping someone’s going to disclose something, letting them do some of the talking and just being silent can be really useful. You don’t want to go to an extreme about this.

The other thing, too, is it becomes, in some ways, easier to speak over each other in certain modes of communication. So, some people will say, “Oh, video is pretty much the same as face to face.” And what I’ll say is, “Well, there’s pros and cons to each. There isn’t one better than the other.” But one of the things that happens with video is there’s often this slight lag, you know, we’re talking like milliseconds here.

But the problem with that slight lag is that research has shown that it messes up conversation turn-taking, where you kind of have these more awkward silences, you kind of interrupt each other more, so sometimes having a little bit more of a pause can be useful in video calls just to make sure you’re not constantly interrupting the other person, especially if you’re somewhat of a fast talker like myself.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. And are there any common things that we’re all doing wrong and we should just fix it?

Andrew Brodsky
I think there’s a lot of things I’d say we’re all doing wrong, myself included, but the biggest one that I would say is that we often don’t take the time to stop and think, “Am I approaching this communication the right way?” We’re so busy and overloaded with meetings, with emails, that we don’t pause and say, “Should this really be an email or should this really be a meeting?”

And this lack of mindfulness is one of the main factors that drive people to have hours of wasted meetings each week that should have been email. And on the other side of that, too, that people often forget is there’s a lot of emails that probably should have been meetings. So, like this interaction we’re having now, you’re asking me a bunch of questions, I’m fairly talkative, so each answer is like five plus paragraphs.

If you’d emailed me these, I would probably take days writing up the answers, editing them, crafting them, but we can have this conversation live in under an hour. So, emails can also be really unproductive too in certain situations. But people just do whatever has been done, “So, we always have a meeting for this, so we’re going to do a meeting,” or, “We always have email for this, so we’re doing email,” or, “It’s already an email conversation, so I’m not going to ask to switch to phone saying, ‘Hey, can we get on the phone for a second just to resolve this?’”

So, taking that moment to think, “Is this the right mode and am I using it in the best way possible?” Even though you’re taking some time and losing some productivity to engage in that thought process, it actually saves you a ton of time in the long run and can really help improve your relationships in the process.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that. I also want to get your hot take on these AI meeting tools, the transcribing, the summarizing, what are some pros and cons here?

Andrew Brodsky
When it comes to these AI tools for, let’s say, summarizing for now is what we’re focusing on, I think, again, it kind of cuts both ways. It’s awesome being able to have a summary of the meeting afterwards because it frees your mind up from having to worry about every single thing that’s being said in the meeting. You can focus on the conversation and you can go back afterwards.

The problem is that there’s research on something called cognitive offloading, which is this idea that when we offload tasks to technology, so we just have the technology do it for us, we tend to remember them less and we tend to learn from them less. So, if I have one of these tools summarizing every single meeting, so I’m not making a point of remembering what was said, for the most part. I’m not writing down the notes myself that helps me increase my memory, and I’m probably not even checking those notes afterwards because I know they’re available somewhere.

Then some client comes to me and asks me about something we talked about three weeks ago, but I’ve had tons of meetings since then, and because I wasn’t as focused on remembering what happened during that meeting, I don’t have a good answer. So, we can end up becoming a bit lazy mentally as a result of this.

So, the trick is finding that right balance where you can use them as a resource, but you’re not cognitive offloading so much that you’re not using your brain’s memory or storage itself. You’re only using your computers in that situation. So, you want to get that nice middle ground of using both your brain’s memory and your computer’s memory for storing what was in the meeting.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, that is a great principle to bear in mind, in general. When we do cognitive offloading to the machine, we learn and remember less, and I think that applies to so much stuff – your GPS, the calculator. I was watching a chess YouTuber, international master, Jonathan Bartholomew, and he said, “I always recommend you analyze your chess games yourself first before you make the computer do it in order to learn more.”

And so, I think, boy, you could apply this in many, many contexts, so that’s a nice little master key right there. And I’ve also observed, sometimes these meeting recorders continue recording when some people have left and, oopsies, the parties did not intend the other people to hear that part of the meeting. Oh, my.

Andrew Brodsky
Yeah, there’s definitely been a number of those communication whoopsies. There’s always the funny one, I’m seeing a CEO get up and, suddenly, they don’t have pants on during the call, accidentally. Like, that’s the good meme, right? That started with the naked shorts hashtag, I believe, that actual example there.

So, these virtual communication blunders, in many ways, can be more problematic because virtual communication is just so permanent. Whereas, if all this stuff happened in person, there isn’t going to, generally, be a record of it. So, virtual communication is great because that record’s there when we need it, but, unfortunately, often it’s there when we don’t want it to be there as well, which is part of why it’s so important to get this stuff right.

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

Andrew Brodsky
The big thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is artificial intelligence and actually writing your communication for you. So, as opposed to just summarizing meetings, do you just have it write your emails for you? Do you have it write your messages for you? And in my view, artificial communication can be really useful for the brainstorming, helping to edit, but I, generally, recommend to others that you do want to make sure the communication is your words because most of the time no one’s going to figure out you’re using AI, but they might one time.

Maybe it uses the word you don’t, like, elevate. Maybe you would talk about something in person. Maybe they mentioned they had a car accident the past weekend, and then you just copy and paste an AI email that starts with, “I hope you had a great weekend!”

Pete Mockaitis
“Do you remember what I told you about my trauma?”

Andrew Brodsky
Exactly. Exactly. And the problem is, if there’s one slip-up and they realize that you’ve been using AI for communication, their assumption is going to be, “Well, they’ve been using it every time I communicate with them.” And then their next question is going to be, “Well, why am I even communicating with this person?”

So, there’s such a risk of removing yourself and your own words from the communication that even one slip-up could really, really massively backfire. But I do think this human component of communication will continue to be incredibly valuable, at least for the jobs that require humans in them. If you’re required to be in that job, then people are going to want to communicate with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. This has been my AI thing over and over again. It’s, like, AI can be a handy tool in the drafting phase, like, “Ooh, there’s a great word or phrase or sentence here and there.” But, oh, man, you are asking for trouble if you just outsource the whole of anything to AI without some careful checking, editing, curation.

Andrew Brodsky
Exactly. And AI is never going to know everything that you know, at least until we get to that distant future’s phase, maybe where we get brain chips and all that, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, brain scanning.

Andrew Brodsky
Yeah, I think we’re a good aways away from that and from people actually being comfortable with that, even if for some reason that tech companies can get it to work. But the idea here is it’s just not going to know everything you know, so it won’t know everything you know about the other person, it won’t know everything about your goals that you want to achieve, so it just won’t be able to do this as well as you can. And the relational risk of over-relying on these things can be really, really severe.

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

Andrew Brodsky
I’m kind of a cliche one. I like the Golden Rule. So, “Treat others as you would like others to treat you.”

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

Andrew Brodsky
It’s one from the ‘60s. It’s about the pratfall effect. This study involved people listening to quiz show contestants, and they had someone get all the questions right, and they had someone get a bunch of questions wrong. The person who got every question right, people rated them as really competent, but not very likable.

It’s like that kid in middle school who was raising their hand all the time and got everything right. You thought they were smart, but kind of everyone hated them. It’s also why I didn’t have too many friends in middle school. But there was a third condition in this study where they had the person get every question right, but they spilled coffee on themselves, and that person was rated as just as competent as the one who got everything right, but just as likable as the person who got some questions wrong.

And the idea here of this is that making mistakes in not your domain of expertise or work expertise can make you seem more human and more approachable. So often at work, we feel this need to put our best foot forward or best face forward, but the key findings from the study is that makes you feel unapproachable, especially if you’re a leader or a manager.

And, actually, showing that, “Hey, I’m a human, I make mistakes,” especially in areas where they don’t matter, so it doesn’t make you look incompetent, can be a really good way for making you seem warmer and more likable in the process. So, don’t try and hide your true self in the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m thinking, as a callback, when you’re doing a video interview as a candidate, make sure to spill a beverage.

Andrew Brodsky
I might not do it in that short of an interaction, especially when you’re low power, because I think in the video interviews, they’re searching mostly on confidence, at least in the early rounds of them. But if you’re in a later round, you are kind of with a group socializing, one of those situations, that might be a better situation to try and pull one of those things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’m sure we’ll make enough mistakes without having to engineer beverage spills along the way. And a favorite book?

Andrew Brodsky
So, my wife was an indie fantasy author, and so I’m biased. I like her stuff better. So, my favorite book of hers was one called Hex Kitchen. H-E-X K-I-T-C-H-E-N. So, it basically took Hunger Games and “Magic” and “Hell’s Kitchen,” and it was a magical cooking tournament. And for me, getting to read fantasy is just such a nice escape, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I leaned on her expertise in helping to write my book so that the stories are a bit more fun. Because me as an academic with bland lame writing, having her on my side was just incredibly useful in the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And a favorite tool?

Andrew Brodsky
My favorite tool probably is one that I don’t necessarily want to admit fully, but it’s probably the undo send function in email, and also the delay delivery function in email. At least for the latter one, I’m not as embarrassed about that one. But I like using the delay delivery one often because I sometimes will just try and knock out all my emails, like at one or two points of a day. And by delaying it and communicating a little bit more frequently, or seeming I’m communicating other times, or it can make me seem more present.

So, as opposed to all my emails going to my boss always only at 10:00 a.m. and never going at any different hours for instance, it might make me look like I’m not doing anything the rest of the day. So, sometimes I’ll strategically have my emails go at different times of the day to be like, “Hey, I’m here all the time.” And if I was giving recommendations to managers, I would talk about how to avoid those biased evaluations.

And this stuff is called productivity theater, and I talk about in the book, but the idea here is, unfortunately, human beings like theater, so knowing how to perform in it can be incredibly valuable to making sure that you’re achieving your goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Andrew Brodsky
Going on hikes. There’s a good research that shows just going outdoors, especially when you’re sitting at a computer, and having physical activity can be one of the best ways to disconnect.

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

Andrew Brodsky
When it comes to virtual communication, don’t underestimate the value of removing visual cues. This is what I would call the in-person default bias, where we assume in-person is best, and we compare everything to in-person, but there’s a whole lot of advantages to not meeting in-person, to not having video on, that you can leverage by using email and text-based communication better, the least of which is getting rid of tons and tons of unnecessary meetings in the process.

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

Andrew Brodsky
So, you can check out my LinkedIn, Andrew Brodsky, you’d find me over there pretty easily. And then if you Google me, you’ll find my website as well where you can reach out to me directly.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have any final challenges or calls to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Andrew Brodsky
Yeah, I would say try and think about your communication overload, and not get caught up in it, and take a step away for a moment and try and engage in some meta thinking, a level above, and think about “How can I do this all better?” As opposed to just accepting this stuff as a fact of life and a fact of work, think about “How can I improve my communication habits in ways that will make me more effective and make me happier in the process? Is there ways to do this that I won’t feel as stressed out and I can actually enjoy it more?”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Andrew, thank you.

Andrew Brodsky
Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Feb 06
0

1030: Building a Career that Lights You Up with Mary Olson-Menzel

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Mary Olson-Menzel reveals her strategies for aligning your strengths with career opportunities that excite you.

You’ll Learn

  1. How
 to discover what truly lights you up
  2. Effective LinkedIn outreach approaches
  3. The key thing that grows careers

About Mary 

Mary Olson-Menzel, bestselling author of What Lights You Up?, is a career expert and executive coach with 30+ years of leadership experience. As CEO of MVP Executive Development, she helps individuals and organizations unlock their potential through her compassionate, results-driven approach to “Humane Leadership.” A member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches Community, Mary is dedicated to guiding leaders toward greater success and fulfillment.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Mary Olson-Menzel Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mary, welcome!

Mary Olson-Menzel
Thank you, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about what lights us up and how to think about that for career and more. So, I have to open up, Mary, with what lights you up?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Writing the book lit me up, for sure. But really, really helping people find what they love to do, find what lights them up, helping them elevate their leadership in the world, is what lights me up, along with my family.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you’ve worked with a lot of folks, executive coaching and looking at career matters, any big surprises or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about us humans when it comes to this sort of thing? What do you know that we don’t and should?

Mary Olson-Menzel
One of the big things, Pete, is that people think that your pedigree is the only thing that matters, right? My degree, my work experience, everything else. The truth is who you are as a human being and what you bring to the table, the energy that you bring to the table, matters even more than your resume and your pedigree and all the degrees in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I think that really resonates and makes a lot of sense And I just love that the book title, the question, “What Lights You Up?” So, pedigree doesn’t matter so much, and what we bring to the table matters a whole lot. Could you share with us, why the title “What Lights You Up?” What makes that a super central and important question to address, as opposed to a nice to have somewhere in the mix?

Mary Olson-Menzel
What lights you up is so meaningful because it’s really truly about what drives you every day. What gets your head off the pillow? What are you passionate about? Where are you finding purpose in your life? And, to me, that all encapsulates your inner light and really what it is that makes you happy on a day-to-day basis in your work.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it’s almost like, in some ways, your play, your fun, can speak to your destiny, for good or for ill, and I thought, “Oh, that’s maybe a little heavy-handed.” But I’m going to lay it on you, Mary, who wrote the book What Lights You Up? what do you think of that?

Mary Olson-Menzel
I love it. I mean, because what lights people up is different, right? And so, what we really need to think about is, “Where is our sweet spot? What is it?”

There’s a term, Pete, that I love called Ikigai, and it is the Japanese word for the intersection of this, it’s basically a Venn diagram of “What’s your passion? What’s your purpose? What are you good at? And what does the world need?”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, we had the CEO of Korn Ferry, Gary Burnison, on, and he was speaking to a similar thing with regard to, if you really know what your strengths are, what your purpose is, what makes you happy, then if you’re happy, you’re probably motivated. And if you’re motivated, you’re going to outperform.

And I was like, “Okay, well, here’s a guy who’s got a vantage point on careers and talent and progression,” and that seems to resonate and synchronize with these very same concepts. It’s like when you’re into the thing, you pour yourself into that, and then you get good at it, and then you’re distinctive, and you can really kind of build a career, a brand, a reputation, a legacy from that.

Mary Olson-Menzel
Absolutely, and it’s so true. When you’re into what that thing is, you start to feel like you’re in the flow. You know, those moments when you feel like you lose track of time, you lose track of everything because you’re so into what you’re doing, and you’re so excited about it. So, that is what we want more of for everyone. Because what we want is for people to be able to amplify and elevate their own natural gifts in order to make the workplace a more enjoyable place to be.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And could you share with us a story of someone who, maybe they were in a career that was not lighting them up, they did some introspective research to discover some things, and then rejiggered their activities and the job role they were in to see cool results?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Absolutely, there are so many. Part of why I wrote What Lights You Up? is because I developed a 10-step pivot program to help people do exactly that. And so, the myriads of stories are so much fun, but I really like this one. There was a media executive in New York City who was at a crossroads in her career. And she kept looking at all the usual places, right, other media outlets, everywhere else.

And I said to her, “I challenge people to tap into ‘What is it that they’re passionate about? What are their side hustles? What are their hobbies? What are they doing outside of work that’s getting them excited and lit up?’” Well, she was really into horses. And so, we went down this whole path where she said, “Gosh, you know, I mean, if I really didn’t need money, I would just work with horses.”

And I said, “Hold on. Listen to yourself. Maybe there’s a way that you can work with horses and make money and use your existing skillset to do it.” And so, she ended up pivoting into a role up in Saratoga Race Course, where she was the head of marketing and media relations for Saratoga Race Course. She did all kinds of really cool programs with the horses.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool. And I love that notion that, in terms of the flow, you’re getting yourself lost in it.

Okay. Well, can you walk us through the process, the steps by which we determine this?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Yes. Well, first, you have to take a good look in the mirror, really, really get very, very clear on who you are and what stage of life you’re in, and what you need from that stage of life. We’re all in different spots. We could be just starting our careers and we need to make money, and we just want to make enough money to travel and go out and have a couple drinks on a weekend, but then your stage changes.

There are other stages where you get married, you start a family, and your needs in your career change. So, it’s about getting very, very clear into where you are at this moment in time, what it is that’s making you happy currently, and then starting to think about, “Wait, am I where I want to be in life?”

And if you can answer “Yes,” well, that’s great. Then let’s just look for ways to keep growing and keep going down a path that you already have started that is really great for you. But what if your answer is no? If your answer is no, then it’s really about thinking, “Okay, what’s working in my life? What’s not? And how do I change that? How do I create a roadmap for what could be next?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. And so then, any other key questions that you find super helpful at this stage of the game to elicit insights?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Absolutely. There’s so much that you can start to think about at this stage of the game. You really tap into, “Where are the moments in my day when I’m at my best?” From there, you really think about, “Okay, where are the moments in my day that are draining my energy?” We all have them. Even those of us that love what we do, there’s moments or there’s tasks in our day that drain our energy.

And so, really starting to think about, “Okay, where can I go from here? How can I get more of what it is that I like, what it is that I enjoy, and also what I’m good at? Where can I make the biggest difference, not only in my career and how I feel about it, but in the world?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then what’s our next step?

Mary Olson-Menzel
The next step is to dust off that resume and start getting really very serious about updating the resume, updating your LinkedIn profile, thinking about who you’re going to reach out to in your network, because you cannot do it alone. You have to tap into your network and the people around you. And in the book, I say, “If your inner light is your superpower, your network is the super-highway that’s going to get you your next job.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, in the course of resume and LinkedIn tweaks, any top tips or tricks, do’s or don’ts, things that you see again and again and again that we should all just be doing or not doing?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Yes. Stop stressing about the resume, number one. The resume is kind of now what I would say your calling card. It’s that little thing that’s going to get you in the door so it has to tell a story, yes, the story of your career. It has to be clear, concise, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. And so many people get so stressed about their resume that they lose sight of the fact that this is only one piece of a job search.

So, take the pressure off yourself on the resume. Make sure that it’s clear, concise, easy to read. The average recruiter spends six to ten seconds looking at your resume, so it just has to be eye-catching, clear, so that it catches their eye, because then the next thing they’re going to do is go to your LinkedIn profile. And your LinkedIn profile, these days, as of 2025, is exactly where it’s at.

This is where people are networking, this is where people are finding jobs, and this is where hiring managers and recruiters take a deeper dive into who you are as a human being and what your professional profile looks like.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us more. LinkedIn profile, content, conveying who I am as a human being, how does that work?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Okay. Well, you have all of the information from your resume on LinkedIn, so you’re transferring all that data to your LinkedIn profile. But what LinkedIn does is it takes it up a big step further. You’ve got your profile picture, you’ve got your connections, you’ve got what people are saying about you, you’ve got all kinds of different things that you can put on your LinkedIn profile to make it very robust, to kind of give a fuller picture of who you are as a professional, who you are as a human being. And then, even more importantly, once you’ve gotten that all set, the next thing is to engage on LinkedIn. And so, that is really a very, very important part, starting to put your thoughts out there, professionally, not politically, hopefully, not in other ways, but, really, professional thoughts, like, “Oh, I saw that Google is doing this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Then engaging with other people. So, Pete, if you put something really interesting out on LinkedIn, I’m going to like it, I might share it, and I might even repost it with my thoughts. So, this is where you’re starting to create some momentum, positive momentum, with the algorithms of LinkedIn so that more and more people are noticing you on there.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you said don’t do the politics. When you said who I am or who you are, and LinkedIn is sharing this, I guess I’d love some more of your perspective on that with regard to what belongs there and what doesn’t. Because I think who I am, I think is much broader than the career business-y facet of Pete Mockaitis. But, in your view, is LinkedIn then for more than just the job career business-y part of a professional?

Mary Olson-Menzel
It has become a little bit more than, which is actually kind of nice, in my opinion, because when you’re looking for a job, when you’re living out there in the world, you are not just what you do. You are a whole human being, and so I think that’s the really important part. I mean, I have shared things about my kids on LinkedIn.

My mom passed away last year. I shared a whole post about her and how she inspired me in my life.

So, it has become a little bit more personal, which is, I think, really great, because I think it just shows the kind of person that you are with the things that you’re sharing. You do run the risk, though, of unconscious bias from a hiring manager if you start sharing things that are too personal.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us an example of what’s too personal?

Mary Olson-Menzel
I tell most people to stay away from politics and religion on LinkedIn. That is much more for your own private conversations or other kinds of conversations. I think that when you’re sharing things on LinkedIn, it’s really about amplifying and elevating who you are as an executive, who you are as a professional, but also who you are as a person.

So, if you can keep it with a more productive and positive spin, what you’re sharing, or from a learning, “I went through this really hard thing, and this is what I learned from it. I want to share this with the rest of you so that you all can learn from this, so that you don’t have to go through this hard thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. All right. So, we got our introspection, we got our resume in LinkedIn, looking fabulous. What’s next?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Next is reaching out to that network to start having conversations. And the one mistake, there’s many mistakes, but one of the top mistakes that a lot of job seekers make is that they just look for the openings. So, I’m going to use Google as an example again. Pete, you want to go get a job at Google? You’re going to look for, what does Google have open? What are they hiring for?

And in my book, I basically say flip your job search inside out. Don’t just look for the openings. Don’t just scroll on Indeed or scroll on LinkedIn. Start to create a target list of companies that you’re inspired by, a target list of companies that feel like companies that you might want to work for. And I put those companies into three categories that I call the three Ps.

One is your usual prospects. Like, our friend from New York City in media, she was looking at usual prospects just in other media and entertainment companies. The next category is your pivots. She could have taken those media tools and skills that she has into environment where she could have done something really interesting but then she really was focused on her passions, and that’s the most fun area to focus on. That whole area is like, “Hey, if I can make money doing something I’m passionate about then I’m winning.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, cool. All right. And so, any pro tips when we’re doing this reach out? What do we say? What do we not say?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Yes. So, you’ve got the target list of companies, that’s the place that you start. And so then, you go on to LinkedIn and into your network, and you say, “All right, who do I know that works at Google? Who do I know that…?” For Google, I’m just using them as an example today, but, “Who do I know that works at Korn Ferry? Who do I know that works at 3M?”

Whatever is on your target list, starting to look into your network, and say, “Okay, who can I talk to that’s working there or that knows somebody who’s working there?” And then that’s when the very warm connections start.

Keep it short because people’s attention spans are not very long these days. Stay really, really focused on, “Hi, Pete, I’m very interested in talking to you. I’m in transition and I’d love to hear what the opportunities are at XX company.” Simple. And if you have mutual connections, “Hey, Pete, I’m connected to you by Joe. Joe says great things about you and thinks we should talk.”

Keep it so simple. Because, immediately, they’re going to look at your LinkedIn profile and check out who you are anyway, so you don’t have to give a lot of words into who you are and what you’re looking for. Just, “I’m looking for my next career adventure, and I’d love to talk.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And what’s our next step?

Mary Olson-Menzel
The next step is having the conversation. You can do it, obviously, in the good old-fashioned way of a phone call. You could do it on Zoom. You can do it on Teams. You could meet for coffee. But just remember that people are busier than ever these days, so ask for 15 to 20 minutes of their time. And if it goes longer, that’s just a bonus. It means you guys are clicking.

But 15-20 minutes just to connect, and then talk to them about what they’re doing. Just be curious, I mean, curious about human beings, curious about what they’re doing, curious about what it’s like to work at that company. And then when you’re wrapping up the conversation, number one thing to never forget is to ask, “How can I help you in return?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. And then, while we’re asking them questions, are there any key pieces of insight or questions that are super powerful that you recommend to try to include within that conversation?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Definitely delve into what the culture is like. You want to make sure that that culture, of whatever organization that you’re targeting, is a good fit for you and for what you want out of the workplace. But also try to ask them to introduce you to people, “Are there three people that you could introduce me to or three names of people that I should be reaching out to, to get some help?” And then, of course, always ask, “What are the next steps?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, after you’ve had these conversations, what’s next?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Well, then you hope that Joe, our friend Joe, who connected us, will say, “Well, great. You know what, Mary? I’d love for you to come in and talk to the hiring manager. I know that we’ve got open positions in this, this, and this.” And then if you’re lucky, sometimes it’s a much longer game than this quick and this what’s next.

But if you’re lucky, you get in, do an interview, and then you tell your story, and that’s where the magic happens. The resume just tells me who you are, but the way that you would tell your story is what’s going to draw me in and want to hire you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how do we do that well?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Well, we start at the beginning. People, just remember this. Literally, don’t start from where you are currently. Start at the beginning because the brain is wired to listen to a story that’s in chronological order, “I started at undergrad here. I did this.” Talk about the transitions to, for example, I worked at Tribune Company in Chicago for almost 10 years.

The transition of why I left Tribune Company was because we had a job opportunity in New York. So, make sure that you’re not only talking about your accomplishments, but also the ways and the reasons that you left one particular job to go to another one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, let’s say that conversation went smashingly well, and we have an offer. What now?

Mary Olson-Menzel
What now? This is fast forward career coaching. I love it. So, what now? You’ve got an offer on the table and you really have to think about, “Okay, is this offer…?” Yes, it’s amazing, you’ve gotten this far, “But is it an offer that’s going to work for me and my stage of life right now?”

So, you really want to weigh out all of your options with the offer. Is it compensation-wise what I want? Is the quality of life that I want going to be there? Is the culture that I want going to be there? going to be there? Where are the growth opportunities? Where are those? How can I make sure that I have forward momentum once I get into this job?”

And then, benefits package. All of it falls into a whole package for the whole person. And, once again, you are a whole person who’s negotiating a whole package for your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. And so, when it comes to the negotiation, do you recommend we go ahead and do that?

Mary Olson-Menzel
That’s a tricky one. There are ways to negotiate, but you don’t want to push so hard that you turn them off and potentially rescind the offer.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Mary Olson-Menzel
Yeah, I know. This is it. The stakes are really high. You’re at this point, and so you have to know exactly where you can negotiate. There are a lot of hiring managers who will tell you, “I mean, you’re at the top of my salary band, and this is as high as I can go.” All right, well, then you’re not going to negotiate on the salary, but you can potentially negotiate on the softer things, like maybe more paid time off, maybe a little extra vacation time, maybe a sign-on bonus, maybe they’ll pay for you to go get your graduate degree or pay for some professional training. Those are all negotiables that will help you get to a better place where you feel really good about the offer package.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then, in terms of the actual dance or conversation, are there any things you recommend, magical words or phrases that we do say or we don’t say?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Well, I think the number one thing to think about is gratitude. Gratitude is everything when it comes to a negotiation, but also, when it comes to life. I mean, truly. I think that if you come to it from a place of appreciation, “Thank you so much for this offer. I am really excited to start at this company. I just have a few questions. Is there any room to move on the salary? Is there any room to negotiate something else?” So, coming from that place of appreciation and gratitude and really helping them understand that this is a place you want to work and you want to make it work for both of you.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. So, you’re just asking about the flexibility. And that’s sort of an interesting question in that, I suppose, it’s in the employer’s interest if they really want you to be honest. Because, I mean, if you just wanted some savings, you’d be like, “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. No flexibility whatsoever,” you know? Rigid as a bar of iron.

Mary Olson-Menzel
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
However, hopefully, you’ve got them really, really fired up for you, in particular. And I guess it also varies a great deal in terms of, it might not even be very emotional at all in terms of, “Well, actually, no. This compensation package is standardized across all of North America, and so that’s kind of what it is.” So, “Okay, glad I asked. Now we know,” and you can sort of make the thumbs up, thumbs down decision on those terms.

As opposed to, I’ve heard other people say that they just have carte blanche authority to give a 10% salary increase to anybody who bothers to ask without approval from anyone higher up. It’s like, “Oh, wow. Well, that sure sounds like if that’s a semi-common policy…” you tell us if it is, Mary, “…then I should probably make sure to ask.”

Mary Olson-Menzel
You know, Pete, you brought up the most important thing – honesty from day one. Truly. So, when you start going through the interview process, a recruiter or a hiring manager is going to ask you, “What are your compensation expectations? What do you want to make? What do you need in this job?” And, hopefully, both sides are being very, very honest and upfront so that there are no surprises by the time you get to that point.

And, by the way, I can’t remember who said this recently, but they were saying, basically, it was an actor who said, “I’ve got this magic word is, ‘Thank you so much. By any chance, can you do this? By any chance, can you do this?’” So, you’re not saying, “I demand,” “I want.” You’re saying, “Hmm, is there a little wiggle room here? Is there a chance that this can go up 10%?”

And if they can, hopefully, they’ll be honest with you, and say, “Yes, absolutely,” and then they just made your day and you made 10% more that year. But if they can’t, they’re going to be honest with you, too, about that. And then you’ll start to be able to see where the negotiation space is.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. Well, let’s say, “Hooray! A deal is made. A job offer made. A job offer accepted,“ any pro tips for the first weeks and months?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Yes, lots. So, the first 30, 60, 90 days of your tenure at this company are so important. You really, really want to become a sponge, you want to become a student of that organization, and you want to work side-by-side with your boss, with HR, to make sure that you’re meeting all the key clients, key stakeholders, and making sure that you’re having one-on-one meetings with these people so that you’re getting to know all of the people that are going to be surrounding you on a day-to-day basis.

And in What Lights You Up? I have a whole sheet of talking points to have those meetings, like, “Tell me about a typical day. What’s a day in the life for you? What keeps you up at night, Pete? How can I help with that by coming into this role?” All of those things, “How can we best work across departments?” You shouldn’t just be meeting with people in your department. You should be meeting with other departments, too, so that you can see where there’s room for cross-departmental collaboration.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And, tell me, we sort of walked through a process timeline. Are there some things you recommend that we just do always outside of when we’re specifically thinking about maybe a new opportunity or a transition, but just a regular wise thing to do to keep our careers and trajectories sharpened in a great spot?

Mary Olson-Menzel
Well, always remember that your career growth is in your hands, so don’t always rely upon your boss or the people in the organization to be constantly looking for opportunities for you. You’ve got to be open to those opportunities and be looking for them, and have it be a conversation with your boss too. So, one, never stop growing once you’re in that role, but also even if you’re so happy in this role, make sure that you’re keeping your network strong. Make sure that you’re having a friend at another company every once in a while.

Make sure that you’re watching what’s going on with other companies so that you’re not only growing within your own organization, but you’re creating a presence around you that can support you if, all of a sudden, the worst thing happens and you get laid off the next day. You want to have that network strong all the time.

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

Mary Olson-Menzel
Yeah, I would just reiterate that. Be open to the opportunities that are around you. Be open to conversations around you. Become a student of not only the industry that you’re in, but a student of life. Be curious about what’s going on around you, and just remember that you can focus on what lights you up. You can focus on what makes you happy. And I’ve seen thousands of my clients do it, so just don’t lose hope.

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

Mary Olson-Menzel
One of my favorite quotes is “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what one’s destiny is, and then to do it,” and that is by Henry Ford.

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

Mary Olson-Menzel
I mean, I’m really kind of loving Mel Robbins right now. She’s just written this book called Let Them. It’s “The Let Them Theory.” And it’s all about how other people are going to do things that maybe you don’t like but you don’t have control over that. All you can control is what you react and how you react and what your mindset is. So, in life right now, somebody’s doing something you don’t like? Let them. But you can control how you react to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Mary Olson-Menzel
One of my very favorite books is a book called Leading with Gratitude by two of my fellow Marshall Goldsmith “100 Coaches” colleagues, Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick. Just a great, great book, all about bringing gratitude into your day-to-day life and how it just changes everything.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Mary Olson-Menzel
My favorite tool that anyone can have access to is one called StrengthsFinder. And you can get it on Amazon, you can take the test, you can get your top five strengths. But what I love about it most, Pete, is that it throws away the notion that we were talking about earlier that, actually, that your CEO of Korn Ferry was talking about.

When you’re leaning into your natural gifts, you can amplify everything you’re doing. When, in America, companies many, many years ago would be like, “Well, Pete is a really great interviewer, but how good is he at finance? Maybe we should send Pete to some finance classes.” No, Tom Rath just blows this out of the water, and says, “No, let’s just continue to amplify our own strengths so that we can continue to get better and better at what we do and what we’re good at, and looking at our own natural gifts and bringing those to the workplace.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Mary Olson-Menzel
My favorite habit, which has become a must-do most days, is, as soon as I get the kids off to school, I do a quick meditation, and then I get into a Peloton workout. And that, before I’ve started my day, work can go off in different directions, and you can be fighting fires or doing whatever you have to do all day, but I already know that I’ve gotten my kids off to school safely, I’ve grounded myself with a meditation, and I’ve taken care of my body so that I have more energy for the rest of the day with my clients.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with clients and readers and audience members?

Mary Olson-Menzel
I really think that my favorite quote from the book, is it’s imperative to work, to keep the lights on in your house, but it’s even more important to keep the lights on in your heart and do what you love. Because when you’re doing what you love, you’ll get hired faster, you’ll get promoted faster, you’ll make more money, whatever money is to you, whether that’s time or cash or whatever, and the byproduct of being happier.

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

Mary Olson-Menzel
They can connect with me on LinkedIn, as I said. It’s the best place to connect. Mary Olson-Menzel at my LinkedIn profile. You can also go to MaryOlsonMenzel, all one word, dot com, for anything you need to know about the book. And then for any work that we do is MVPExec.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?

Mary Olson-Menzel
There’s no better time than today to start doing it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Mary, thank you. I appreciate this and wish you the best.

Mary Olson-Menzel
Thank you, Pete. It’s been fun.

Feb 03
0

1029: How to Tell Stories that Inspire and Influence with Anjali Sharma

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Anjali Sharma reveals why some stories fail to influence or inspire—and shares her top tips for creating stories that do.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why “amazing” storytelling isn’t the end goal 
  2. The critical question that generates more effective stories 
  3. Why to think like a journalist–not a novelist 

About Anjali 

Anjali Sharma is the Managing Director of Narrative: The Business of Stories. Anjali works with private and government organisations to determine what their individual and unique business challenges are, and by incorporating Story Skills, she crafts individualised solutions to help solve those challenges. 

Anjali has helped companies to increase Staff Engagement and Performance, increase Client Satisfaction and Sales, define Company Values and effectively Position Brands by embedding Story Skills into their organisations. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Anjali Sharma Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Anjali, welcome!

Anjali Sharma
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to chat storytelling. And I’d love it if you could kick us off by telling us a particularly surprising or counterintuitive discovery you’ve made about us humans and story over the course of the last 20 years.

Anjali Sharma
I think the most wonderful thing about storytelling is that, no matter where you go, there is room for storytelling everywhere, whether you go into someone’s life, whether you go into someone’s work, whether you go into relationships with your family, but the most effective storytelling is the one that actually really deep dives into a particular domain.

What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that what I used to think, roughly about 12 years ago about storytelling is, storytelling is everything, it’s everywhere, and that was the beauty of it, but it was also the disadvantage of it, because you could start telling stories to people who work in corporations, which is where I largely kind of played the work that I do, and they would be like, “Yeah, it’s a great story, but how does it matter to me?”

So, I think the hyper-target-ness of the story is what makes it resonate, where people listen to it, and go, “Oh, my God, that’s exactly what happens to me.” That thing that people say can only come when you really target the story to the audience that you’re telling the story to. Stories are great, but the best storytellers know how to flex their narrative according to who they’re telling the story to. So, I think my biggest discovery was that.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, could you give us a really quick example of what’s a generic story that’s not really going to “wow” someone versus what is that same story sound like in a micro-targeted way?

Anjali Sharma
Okay. So, I think I’d like to sort of make a little correction to that because, even though the story can go “wow,” we don’t tell just for them to be like, “Wow.” We want people to get up and take an action, and it is not necessary that whatever I will say “wow” to, I will actually act upon. I’ll demonstrate this to you.

So, say I want people to challenge the status quo for better innovation, and I say, “You know, we must challenge the status quo,” and I tell them the story of the founder of Body Shop, Anita Roddick, and Anita Roddick tells this story. She’s no more, but when she was around, she told this story to a magazine interview in which she says that, “When I was all of 12 years old, I remember the day when my father passed away, and my mother, in the house, was cleaning the floor, and there was this bucket of dirty water next to her.”

“And she looked quite sort of anxious and stressed, but a large part of her anxiety and stress was coming from the fact that my parents didn’t get along with the local priest, and she wasn’t sure that my father was going to get a Catholic funeral or not. And a few minutes later, the doorbell rang and my mother opened the door, and the priest was standing there. And the priest looked at my mom and said, ‘You’re very lucky. We’ve decided to give your husband a Catholic funeral.’”

“And my mother picked up the dirty water and splashed it onto the priest. Now when you’re brought up with a mother like that, you would challenge status quo.” Because for her, as a Catholic, it was right to get her father to get that funeral. It wasn’t a favor that the priest was doing.

Now, a lot of people get moved by that story, and they go, “Wow,” and “Amazing.” But as soon as you walk out of that place where I have told you the story, you’re walking out with a colleague of yours, you would say, “It’s a lovely story, but if I did that to my boss, I just, you know, I don’t think I’ll have my job. I’ll lose my job,” right?

So, a lot of the stories get, like, “Amazing,” but they don’t get an action in the right direction. Therefore, you have to choose the story very, very correctly because a job of a corporate professional is to remember that, more important than the re-marketability of the story, that this is an amazing story, is the resonance of the story. Resonance of the story will drive an action. Remarkability will give you claps.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. That’s a really handy distinction, and I think it’s possible to go a whole lifetime without making that distinction because the claps feel good, you say, “I’m a master storyteller. People, they cry, they applaud, they tell me I’m amazing.” If you’re a speaker, they keep telling their friends, “And I keep getting booked.” But in terms of, if you’re being after a specific activity or action from your audience, that’s not adequate.

Anjali Sharma
Certainly. So, my success in a corporate world is not determined by the amount of claps and tears I get in a boardroom. It’s determined by how I moved people to take the action in the right direction and how much innovation we get, how we enhance the productivity, how we motivate people to come up with the best possible campaign next. So, I think that’s a very important distinction. You’re absolutely right.

Pete Mockaitis
And then I guess, specifically that context, in terms of if you’re just looking to make phenomenal content that gets a lot of podcast downloads or even if it’s like a full-blown movie or something, then a wow can be fine. But if we’re after a particular action on the part of the people we’re telling it to, then, yes, that’s one key thing to look out for, is, “Can they receive that? Is it relatable?”

So, lay it on us, how do we go through a process by which we can craft stories that are effective at bringing about the action-taking we’d like from the people we’re telling the stories to?

Anjali Sharma
So, we’ve kind of, over the last 12 years or so, tried to make this approach extremely practical, simply because of the reason that, if I walked into a corporate boardroom and I asked people, or into any workspace and asked people, it’s like, “What is it that is your biggest challenge?” almost everyone will say time, right? 

The really traditional format of story and the creative format of story that actually relies on high character, high emotions, kind of built over time, you write, you go away, you let your creative juices flow. In corporations and workplaces, we don’t have time. So, the way I look at it is like this. Before even you tell a story, I say to people, the audience that you’re talking to, first determine, “Are you influencing them or you are inspiring them?” Those are two very different things. I mean, if I’m going to be speaking to the board or I’m going to be speaking to the senior leadership team. I need to influence them. But if I’m speaking in a town hall and getting 450 staff members to join an AI-upskilling program, then I need to inspire them.

So, the key way to differentiate whether I’m inspiring or influencing is, “Am I asking these people to take an action that affects many people? Or am I asking them to take an action that just affects them?” If it is affecting many people, like, “Let’s adopt that, buy that new technology,” it’s going to affect many people. That’s an influence decision.

But if I’m asking people to go and join this one-week upskilling AI hackathon that we’ve got, then that’s an individual’s decision that I’m going to go and join it, right? It’s a little bit like getting people to be fit, getting people to read more. These are individual decisions. I’m not disrupting an ecosystem. It’s my individual decision. Those are primarily inspirational messages.

So, very simply, “How do I target the story right?” You first think, “Am I influencing? Am I inspiring?” If I’m influencing, I’m asking people to take an action, make a decision around things that sort of influences, has an effect on many people. But if it’s an inspirational message, it’s likely to be an individual who’s going to have to take that action.

Okay, once I’ve determined that, very simply, I go, “If it is inspiration, then I have to give them a nudge to a new identity.” Because what we often do is we give people goals, but I learned this from James Clear in his book, the Atomic Habits, and then I’ve brought that learning into storytelling.

When we talk about goals, for example. Writing a book is a goal. But why do people write a book? Because they want to be called authors. That’s a new identity they want for themselves. Running a marathon is a goal, but being called a marathoner is an identity. People want to be known like that.

So, when you are developing an inspirational message, you have to give nudge to a new identity. If I bring it down to the corporate world, I’ll give you another example. When I bring it down to the corporate world, we worked on a program back in 2016 where we were asked to build a story around a factory that was going to become a smart factory with automation, robotics, etc.

And the whole proposition of that story was productivity, and I was like, “This is not going to work for people on the ground. This is not inspirational for them,” right? So, we built a new identity for them – supervisors of robots. Because somebody’s got to program them, somebody’s got to charge them, somebody’s got to roster them, and “Do you want to be the supervisors of robots?” And that was inspirational for them.

So, that’s how you kind of look at an inspirational message. And then when you come towards the influence style of messaging, I think your hyper-target-ness comes from, really, looking at three areas. Most messages that are influential have a story that anchors on time, which is efficiency. So, can you make a proposition for being more efficient? Or, they come to an image or a reputation, which is, “Can this story help build better image or a reputation?”

And then, lastly, if you’re working for a profit-making company, which most people are, “Am I able to, through this story, save money or make money?” So, I often joke around and say, “What is the TIM you’re angling?” T-I-M, you know, time, image, money. So, if you want influential stories, story that influences, then time, image, money are my anchors. But if I’m building an inspirational story, then a nudge to a new identity.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think this is a fantastic distinction between inspiring or influencing. And I’m reminded of, I think in my early days, I was doing consulting for a strategy consulting firm, Bain, and we would make these slides that were so dense with numbers, numbers, data, charts, all this stuff, and effectively we were influencing corporate executives and boards in terms of, “Take this course of action and you will see tremendous profit.”

Like, that was always, we talked a lot about our story, “What’s our story?” And, basically, that was always the story, like, “Hey, do this thing we say and you’re going to make a lot of money, if you boil it down.” And so, those slides had a whole lot of data, a whole lot of charts to paint a compelling picture that was, “Hey, here’s the proof, here’s the evidence, here’s the argumentation like a debate, that this is, in fact, the optimal pathway relative to your alternatives.”

But then, at the same time, on my downtime, I’d be watching TED Talks, and I think, “Man, their slides look so much cooler and more beautiful and inspiring than what we do.” I felt like we were sort of we spent all the time with these slides, and I thought they don’t feel as awesome as the TED Talker slides, “What’s up?”

And I think this is a really handy way to think about it. It’s like, we are attempting to accomplish completely different objectives. If you trot out 20 fancy data charts to your TED audience, they’re like, “Yeah, okay. That wasn’t very much fun for us. Thanks.” And vice versa, if I just showed a picture of a seed in a hand to a board, it’s like, “All right, I hope you’ve got some data coming because this isn’t going to cut it for long.”

Anjali Sharma
Exactly. Oh, my God, you sort of distilled it beautifully. And I love the fact that I have taken you back to some time in your career because that is exactly what resonance is. I’m reminding you of an experience you have already had. And when that happens, you know that what I’m saying is resonating with you. So, you’re absolutely right, the objectives are very, very different, and that’s where the hyper-target-ness works really well.

I’ll add one little piece of information. There’s always this sort of war between the technicality of what we do and the emotions that are embedded in the way we communicate. And what I have learned is that time, image, and money, although seems like a sort of a very transactional way of influencing. In fact, rooted in it is an emotional thing.

Look at that boardroom and see all those people who are seated there. Their next career move depends on whether they are making that company efficient, whether they’re making that company profitable, which is money, and whether they are protecting the reputation of the organization or not, or they’re building the reputation of the organization or not.

So, I used to think, “Why is it so transactional and so dry and distilled in influence area?” But then when I started looking at the people sitting there, I was like, “No, this is also emotional because their next career step is dependent on those three things. So, their connection comes from that.

Leaning upon the definition of connection from Dr. Brene Brown, the exchange of energy that happens when people feel seen, heard, and valued.

When those people sit in that boardroom and you tell them a story that anchors itself on time, image, and money, they feel seen, heard, and valued, because that is what their job is all day in and out, to make more profit for the company, to enhance the reputation image of the company, and to make sure they’re efficient all the time. An inspiration, a nudge to the identity, new identity, is what’s the connection for the person who’s listening to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really resonant. And it’s funny, like if you apply the same sort of debater, data-driven argumentation approach to be very compelling about a thing they don’t care about, and I’m not making value judgments either way, but if a board doesn’t care a hoot about climate change or whatever, and you have just fantastic statistics about the carbon emissions of a thing and how this pathway will be so much better, you may have proven that point excellently in terms of that’s a rock-solid, logical approach, but you haven’t hit upon a thing that they’re emotionally invested in, you’re not going to be successful in your attempt to influence.

Anjali Sharma
Hundred, hundred, hundred percent. You know, Pete, you’ve taken me back to 2018, when I went to Hiroshima, Japan for 18 months to make another semiconductor factory have increased level of diversity. So, Japan, obviously had a huge amount of skill shortage, I mean, still does, but that was becoming a huge issue at that time. And this factory was originally owned by Japanese owners, but an American company took over.

And they soon realized that, “If we don’t get more foreigners working here, if we don’t get more women working here, and if we don’t get younger people working in here, so it’s diversity of three different lenses, we’re not going to have any people, and the factory will have to shut down.” So, there was this whole proposition, imagine, that homogeneous culture of Japan, this proposition of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and everyone used to just kind of roll their eyes and they were like, “Yeah, whatever.”

And I had this vivid memory of one conversation between two senior leaders that I just happened to hear, who said, “Great, now we can make a compelling case of diversity, equity, and inclusion, but we still don’t get what is its connection to the performance?” And I realized, “Oh, my God, like, what they really care about is the performance of the factory,” and then we have to find a way to connect the DEI proposition to the performance of the company.

And when we started to kind of figure how diversity, equity, and inclusion will help the performance of the company, every boardroom eye was curious, eager, willing, because it connected with them, and there was a direct correlation. We just needed to surface that and anchor the story in that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think I’ve learned that lesson a few times in terms of, “No, this is what you should care about. This is what is right and good and proper.” Like, that really falls flat, it’s like, “Okay, well, now I feel judged and I guess I don’t, so I am bad,” and I’m thinking about another manufacturing situation.

I was once doing a Myers-Briggs training for some executives. I was very excited because, like, we had these executives. There was their big meeting where they had flown in from multiple continents, and I was a part of it, like, “Oh, wow, I feel like I’m big-time now,” kind of early on when I was independent in my career.

And they had this situation, they manufactured like sausage casings. And, apparently, one of their major production facilities was having a real big problem at the moment, where there were sausages exploding left and right, which I thought was sort of a funny thing to imagine, “Oh, another exploding hotdog!” you know.

And so, they were all kind of consumed with this mentally, and I was like, “You know, isn’t that kind of a manufacturing issue. You should just kind of let them handle it. This is, like, your big executive meeting. This seems weird. And I feel inconvenienced because I’ve trucked it out here and I’m ready. I’m fired up and ready to go.”

And I thought it was so brilliant the way their VP of Human Resources reframed it for me, she says, “You know, this stuff here that we’re doing is important, and I really want to make sure that the whole team has all of their attention and focus on this, as opposed to this manufacturing issue. So, it’d be great if you could come back in two hours and then we’ll have it as sorted as it can be, and we’ll be able to give you all of our attention.”

I thought, “This woman is a master, because I’m annoyed, I’m frustrated, I don’t like rescheduling the thing. I’m fired up, energized, perfectly caffeinated, raring to go.” But then she turned it around to the thing that I cared about was having a productive, engaged, transformational session, and, “How, in fact, if you just do this thing that we want, then you’ll get that.”

And I heard a quote, which I love, which it said, “Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have it your way.” And I was like, “Okay, yeah, she just did that to me.” And we had a great session and the sausage factory, I guess, got sorted out, all is well. And so, you nailed it. Like, if you are making a super airtight logical case about a thing they don’t care about, you’re not going to get very far.

Anjali Sharma
And the tricky part is to really figure out “What do they care about?” Because, in your head you can think, “Oh, of course, everybody should care about DEI and climate change, and it affects our planet.” Yeah, sure, everybody should, but tomorrow morning when they get a call from their boss, nobody’s going to ask them about the diversity level. They’re going to ask about, “Where are we sitting in terms of performance?”

Like, even with the whole ESG bit, I have to be very honest. Every time I work on a narrative, and we come to the S part, which is the social impact part, the reason why the teams are really motivated is when they recognize that they’re not going to get investors if they don’t work on this. So, in some ways, it is an institutionalized forced change. So, how good it is that we have to think about diversity under social impact of ESG, the S part, because now, if we don’t have a good ESG report, we’re not going to get investors?

So, it’s like, there’s this term I heard many years ago, intrusion of inclusion, like you really make sure that it happens by systematically creating things that are institutionalized. You cannot escape those. So, I think more and more that I do this work, the more and more I realize that, yes, we all want to be good, but what we’re worried about is just getting through today. And if we want to get through today, in the way the ecosystem is built, then we have to really find the right framing and the right positioning and the right target of the story, or else it would fall on deaf ears.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so understood. And so, we have a huge distinction about “Are we trying to inspire or influence?” And we got to really get after a thing that they care about. So, can you walk us through sort of step-by-step or what are the key actions or processes we go through in order to do just that?

Anjali Sharma
Yeah, so I’ll pick it up from before. So, you sort of think influence, inspire, you think, “Okay, I need a story that I can anchor on time, image, money, or I need a story that can actually invite them to being, have a nudge to the new identity.” Now, here’s one thing I want people to remember is that, for a very long time, what we have understood for storytelling to be is either a marketer’s take, or a very big sort of stage sort of style of storytelling.

But when you are standing in the boardroom, the kind of storytelling that works in corporation has to have a little bit of a journalistic take into it. So, my invitation to all people who work within, who are actually trying to use stories in day-to-day work is to have a slightly journalistic take of storytelling. Now let me elaborate this for you, and then I will demonstrate for you.

So, what do journalists do? They go into the ground, they find the stories, and then they bring them out, and then they tell you, and then they make a point, or whatever is happening, they bring that out into the open, they bring it out to the surface. Now, a lot of people will try to find stories on the internet, from TED Talks, and try to tell all these really big types of stories which will never work.

Journalistic storytelling requires for you to actually get your hands dirty, go in, into the grounds, the coalface, and actually find stories that can actually help you make a point that you want to make, or sometimes they even change the point you want to make. You think that’s the point you want to make, and when you start having those conversations with people on the ground, you realize, “Oh, my God, what I thought was all along wrong.”

So, here’s an example of a journalistic story. So, once I’ve said that my audience are inspirational, so I will say, “You are the workers in this factory that are going to become a smart factory. I invite you to become the supervisors of robots.” Now at this stage, they’ll be like, “Hmm,” so it’s relevant for them, but it’s not yet resonant for them. It’s, “Okay, here’s something for me. You’ve opened with that positioning. I like it, but tell me more.” It’s not going to stop at that. A nudge to the new identity is the beginning of it.

Then, when you tell the story, here’s the story I found from the ground, and I built it for a CEO president, and he told: “Now, what do I mean by being supervisors of robots? Now, many of you in the audience today actually work within the factory, helping with taking things from one end of the factory to the other end of the factory.”

“Let’s take Maria, for example. Maria has been with our company for about eight years now, and Maria is in the audience. And when she joined us eight years ago, her job was to take a trolley, put in the semiconductor chips, and move them from one area to the other area.”

“Now, this may sound simple, but we all know this is a highly sensitive product, and it has to be done very, very carefully. So, it takes time and she moves the products carefully to the other side and downloads them for whatever other activity that needs to be done with them before they’re ready.”

“Now when she joined us eight years ago, she would on an average do eight rounds in an eight-hour shift. She’d go from here to there, here to there about eight rounds or so. Now, today, it’s the same Maria, it’s the same factory, but she’s having to do many more ups and downs, close to 24 ups and downs in a day. That’s three times more. Why is that? Because the demand for semiconductor chips has increased.”

“Semiconductor chips are everywhere. In our passports, there’s a semiconductor chip. When there is a finger scan somewhere, there’s a semiconductor chip everywhere. They’re everywhere. So, the demand increases, our workload increases.”

“Our workload increases, we are not allowed to have a bigger factory, we are not allowed to hire more people. Within the same factory size, within the same number of people, Maria is now being asked to do a lot more. And this trend of more and more and more and more will not stop. So, what are we going to do? What we are going to do is we are going to tell Maria to stop doing this work of picking up products from one end and moving them to the other end.”

“Instead, we’re going to get an AGV vehicle, which is like a robot, to do that, and Maria’s job is going to be the supervisor of that vehicle and make sure that it is rostered, it’s charged, it does the work that it does.” Now, this is a journalistic style of storytelling, because I’ve gone and found it on the ground, and when people are listening to the story, they’re going, “Yeah, exactly. That happens to me all the time. I have to move things so many more number of times. Like, I’m a human. How much more can I do?”

It reminds them of their own experience, so the resonance starts to happen here. The positioning and the anchoring of supervisor of robots brings relevance. It does not bring resonance. It’s when the combination of relevance and resonance happens, influence takes place. So, what is journalistic about it? Journalistic is that I didn’t get that story by just sitting in the boardroom and having a conversation. I got the story because I went on the ground, I chatted to people, “Talk to me about your day-to-day work.”

I can’t even tell these people, “Tell me a story,” because if you ask people, “Tell me a story,” then people think that I’m asking them to be Clint Eastwood. So, you have to have a very specific style of getting moments out of them and then be able to sense-make and put them into a structured way and give people who work in these organizations, who need to inspire or influence people, a language which will move people into the right direction.

Now, this is not a story which will make people go, “Wow, what a story!” What this would definitely do, it’ll remind many of those people who are sitting in the audience going, “That’s exactly what happens to me. That is so true.” That is so true doesn’t mean it’s factual. What it means is, “It resonates with me.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I like that journalistic frame, because that helps a lot with regard to, we’re not trying to blow minds, necessarily, by making like a James Cameron epic film situation, so it’s not the Hollywood style, nor is it are we trying to be sort of the great American novel style but we’re being journalistic. And just the same way that we have a fascinating, riveting, impactful sort of news article or documentary, that’s kind of what we’re going for here with regard to our actions, our discovery, our presentation.

And we can feel great about the success if they are nudged toward that identity, as opposed to they are telling everybody they have to check out your YouTube channel.

So that’s a great lens, the journalistic lens. Tell us, do you have any top do’s or don’ts in terms of executing this in practice?

Anjali Sharma
I think the first thing is that, whenever you stand in front of your audience and you start speaking, you have to have earned the right to be there. This is not, “I’ll get GPT to come up with something for me.” I mean, of course, you can take GPT’s help to refine it, but the moment I start speaking about Maria’s story, straight away, the audience know that I have done the due diligence of going to them, at the coalface, chatting to people, and finding out what’s going on.

So, I always say to people that, “Don’t sit in the boardroom and just don’t chat there. Don’t think you know what it is. Get down, and talk to people and figure out.” I think that’s the first thing.

The second thing I would say to you is that please relieve yourself from the pressure of trying to come across as an amazing storyteller, because people are not interested. In fact, if you get told that you’re an amazing storyteller, then that’s the wrong outcome of your communication. What you have to be able to hear from people is, “You made a very relevant point. I’m going to do what you said. I think that makes a lot of sense.”

Moving people in the right direction to take an action is a better judge of how effective you were versus the claps that you get and versus how you get. If you get complimented on your being an amazing storyteller, that means the focus was you and your flamboyancy, not the point you made. So, if someone says to you, “What an amazing storyteller you were,” like, “Thank you. What did you get out of that? Like, do you think you’re going to take the action I was asking for?” Figure that out. So don’t feel that pressure.

And I think the third thing I would say to you is. When looking for a story, yes, you have to be journalistic, but also remember the kind of story that works in a corporate space is a story that happens all the time. In other words, a high-frequency story, not a low-frequency story. So, a pilot lands a plane in the Hudson River has happened. But if I told that story in a corporate boardroom, then people would be like, “That’s great. Never going to happen to me.”

But if I told a story about us not using a tool that we have to update our learning and development plan, and then not getting the promotion that we wanted because, on the dashboard, it didn’t seem like you were updating that so people didn’t know you’ve done all these things, all these courses and workshops etc., then a lot of people will go, “Oh, my God, that happens to me all the time.” So, high-frequency.

The founder of Google said this, “If you can find a problem that people face multiple times a day, you have a billion-dollar business.” Now when you take that saying and put it into the world of storytelling, if you can find a story, the problem that you talk about in that story, people experience many times, you  have a story that will resonate a lot.

So, resonance is more important than remarkability of a story. So, don’t pressurize yourself at trying to find a story that is amazing because, most likely, that will get you claps but will not get you the action. So, look for a story that happens all the time. So, I think those three are probably practical ones to follow.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really doing the trick. And you’ve finally put to words why I get a little bit skeptical and I don’t tend to dig presentations or stories that lean a lot on legends of business, like, “Here’s what they do at Amazon and at Disney and Netflix. And Steve Jobs said and did this.” It’s like, “Yeah, okay. Sure, these people are genius, high performers, and they did a cool thing, and maybe there are some things we can learn from that. But it doesn’t resonate with me much,” and I think it’s for these exact reasons.

One, they haven’t journalistically done the work to see, “What are we actually struggling with here?” And secondly, they’re low frequency matters, like, “Yes, introducing the iPhone was really cool. That was a historic technological moment, and that happened, and now it doesn’t happen that often.”

Anjali Sharma
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, I think it’s just, you know, resonance only happens with things that happen all the time, because those are our daily experiences, things that kind of resonate with us. Yeah, I mean, like, we love Steve Jobs, and we love his ability to orate, but, you know, it’s available, but it’s not accessible. His style is available for us to view, but it’s not accessible for us, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally, “Just be like Steve Jobs, guys. That’s all it takes. Come on!”

Anjali Sharma
“What’s wrong with you?” Yeah, so that’s the hyper-target-ness. So, everything we’ve spoken about is about that really, that hyper-target-ness of a story, really looking at it from that lens of critically thinking it through and really trying to understand that it’s so easy to become a victim to this big style storytelling, “When I was born or when I started my career, oh, my gosh, you know, it’s like…” nobody really cares about that. Only your mom is really interested in listening to what happened to you, but we don’t really care about that.

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

Anjali Sharma
I can never say the full thing because it’s really long, but I’ll tell you which one it is, and you’ll be able to find it very easily. I think there’s this quote, where it sort of says, “When you lose the grip, you slip into a masterpiece,” which I really, really like. But the reason why I love that quote so much is because, after working in this space for more than a decade, my style in the beginning of working was very systematic, it was very structured, and it was very effort-filled. And then came a point somewhere, three, four years ago, where that system, that structure was like that intentional approach was so embedded in me that if I sort of knew the direction.

I could kind of maneuver within that, but that’s the only part. To become effortless, you have to put in the effort first. And telling someone who’s just, like, a couple of years into a certain domain, a specific domain, to just lose that grip is not the right thing.

But I think there comes a point where you start experiencing the magic of all that is in your subconscious, all that is embedded. So, I think that’s one of my favorite quotes, to put in so much effort into what you do, that it becomes so effortless. 

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

Anjali Sharma
So, if you are interested in storytelling, learning how to be better at it in a corporate space, the thing that helped me gain mastery in that, more than reading, writing was actually the fact that a system, a system for success that actually forced me to do the necessary work in this space.

If you want to gain mastery, then make a decision on what are you going to not just do, which is within you, but how are you going to put yourself out in the world in that domain. When you do that, you actually start becoming really, really good at it, whether it’s a video, whether it’s a blog every week, whether it’s a little thing you’ll come up with. If mastery in this domain is your aspiration, then a promise to the world that I will show up in this manner every week is what you need to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Anjali, this is wonderful. I wish you many beautiful stories.

Anjali Sharma
Thank you for having me and having this wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed how quickly you grasped everything I talked about, distilled it, and repeated it back to me, which was really nice.