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Feb 12
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1128: How to Develop and Maximize Every Voice on Your Team with Jeremie Kubicek

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Jeremie Kubicek shares his innovative 5 Voices framework for empowering teams and maximizing potential.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why people development often fails
  2. How leaders unintentionally silence their best people
  3. Warning signs your team’s in the pit of despair

About Jeremie 

Jeremie Kubicek is a globally recognized speaker, author, and leadership expert dedicated to helping leaders multiply healthy influence and self-awareness. As the co-founder of GiANT Worldwide, he equips leaders and organizations to build cultures of trust, peace, and performance through practical systems of people development. 

Jeremie is the author of Making Your Leadership Come Alive and The Peace Index, and co-author of The 100X Leader, 5 Voices, 5 Gears, The Communication Code, and the newly released The Voice-Driven Leader: How to Hear, Value, and Maximize Every Voice on Your Team.

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Jeremie Kubicek Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jeremie, welcome back!

Jeremie Kubicek
Pete, always good to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s great to have you again. I’m excited to talk about The Voice-Driven Leader and people development stuff. And I got to know right from the get go, chapter one, why people development typically fails. Lay it on us, Jeremie. Why?

Jeremie Kubicek
Because we all know, it’s boring. It doesn’t really work. It’s developed in the wrong way. But, really, the main reason is because it’s driven from one voice to everyone else. It’s not hyper-personalized. And in today’s world, like, imagine if you could actually draft books, content, training, all based on the other person, not on you, we did it. Imagine that, and that’s what we’ve done. We built The Voice-Driven Leader to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, so let’s expand a little bit on about why it fails. You say, and I don’t know how much that was in jest because we both love developing people.

Jeremie Kubicek
No, it’s true. I think what I’d say is this, there’s a difference between development and training. And training is what most people will think of when they think, “Oh, I’ve got to go watch a course,” “I’ve got to go sit in a training session for a day.”

But the actual process is apprenticeship. And apprenticeship is a lost art in America. It used to be a thing. In industrial revolution, “Hey, if you’re a mason, we’re going to brick a wall.” There’s still masons, and there’s still HVAC, and there’s still all these people who do trades. Trades know what apprenticeship is.

But most of us haven’t experienced it like, “Okay, Pete, you’re going to come watch me. Just watch. Now, you’re going to watch me and help me. And now you’re going to do it. I’m going to help you. And now you’re going to do it. And we’re good, right?” And that’s apprenticeship. That’s the full development.

But in the computer age, it’s not like, “Hey, Pete, watch how I do this text message. Watch me do email. Do you see how I did that?”

Pete Mockaitis
“That was great.”

Jeremie Kubicek
It’s harder to do apprenticeship in the technological world. So, development suffers because we think we’re developing people by sending them to watch courses or do trainings. But it’s not necessarily the pathway, like a journey. And that’s what we’re trying to reinforce.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I think that is well said in terms of you can learn some best practices, some how to use a piece of software, some tips and tricks, stories of experience, but there’s a giant zone of learning that is like, “No, we just got to get into it, experience some stuff, and talk about it, reflect on it, and see the nuances of the itty bitty details.”

Jeremie Kubicek
Yeah, and it’s really, really like, “All right, you’re on my team.” It’s tied to, “Where are we going? Do you have role clarity? Do you know where we’re going? And do you know and understand my expectations of the job?” So expectations are a massive part of creating awesome jobs, like development of people.

You have to be developed through expectations, “Okay, Pete, this is where I want you to be. Here’s where you’re at right now. We just onboarded you. In the next month, all I want you to do is be with people, spend time,” you know what I mean? I’m laying out the expectations.

What do most people get? “Hey, man, here’s your desk. Here’s your manual. Watch a couple of these videos. See you later.” And then they get thrown in and then people start faking it, acting like they know what they’re doing. And then, all of a sudden, once they figure out that they don’t know what they’re doing, then they try to hide it, and then eventually they end up in this thing that we called in the book, we call the pit of despair.

And the pit of despair, let’s say you have thousand employees, you probably have 20 people who come and clock in in the morning, and they go, everyone goes to their workstations, they go down in the basement into the pit of despair, and they get down there, like, “Hey, man, how long you been down here? Yeah, who pushed you in? Oh, Tom? Yeah, Tom is a jerk.” And, all of sudden, everyone’s talking about Tom.

And it’s this pit where people literally, everyone’s working around these employees. But it’s what it is. It’s just unclear plan, unclear roadmap, and unclear expectations. And then the leader is not taking the time, not giving the vision, not actually doing the apprenticeship process.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. Well, then is that what you would say is the core thesis behind The Voice-Driven Leader or how would you articulate the big idea?

Jeremie Kubicek
Part of it. Okay, so here’s the big idea. If you know who you are, is number one, know who the other person is. And when I say who, we say actually by personality, using the 5 Voices. So if you know who you are, using the 5 Voices, know who they are and their voice, then know where do you want to take them, what’s the journey they’re on, and then what needs to happen to get them to the next level.

So, you have the foundation stage, which is onboarding. You have the immersion stage, which is the development in their role. And then you have the empowerment stage. Now that means, “Good job. You’re doing it. I’m helping you.” Then there’s a multiplication stage down when they get really good at their job.

So a great leader is going to know who they are, who the other person is, and where to take them. The crux of it is, because of AI, we’ve built now 5 Voices AI. So if I know that I’m a connector, let’s say I know that you’re a creative. Well, a creative is going to go through that process completely different than a connector would and completely different than a nurturer or a guardian or a pioneer.

So if I know who you are, now I can speak your language to help you really understand and become competent in your job and your work faster. And so, here’s the core crux of the book. If I speak your language to develop you more than forcing you to only speak my language, then the chances of you developing are ten to one. And that’s it. Like, when I lived in Russia, I learned Russian versus forcing them to speak English. I had a lot of influence.

[In Russian] ”You speak Russian, yes? Do you understand? A little bit?” 

Pete Mockaitis
You sound influential.

Jeremie Kubicek
So now all of a sudden, if I speak Russian to someone, and they’re Russian, they’re like, [In Russian] “Oh, mother of God, do you understand?” And now I’m connecting with them because I’ve chosen to speak their language and go toward them not forcing them just to go to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so we’re going to talk about these five voices. And so, Jeremie, help me out. In the universe, I mean, you’ve been around the game. You’ve been around the block. So, you got your Myers-Briggs, you got your DISC, you got your StrengthsFinder, you got your Enneagram, you got your Working Genius. So, can you help position for us, how do the 5 Voices sit in the universe of different ways we might categorize humans?

Jeremie Kubicek
So let’s go with a couple. Working Genius and StrengthsFinders are not necessarily personality. They are the strengths of a personality. So they’re not really personality assessments. Okay, so let’s separate those two out. Myers-Briggs, DISC, the Big Five, those are true more personality assessments. The problem is that they don’t scale very well.

So, you can meet with someone, and go, “Oh, yeah.” I get all excited, “You’re an ENTJ?” And then it’s like, “Well, what does that mean?” Like,  “Man, I don’t know. But it was great. Yeah, you should do it.” Or, “I’m a high D,” “High I,” or, “I’m a seven with a wing eight,” or whatever it is, it doesn’t produce.

And so, people then feel locked in. Like, they feel like, “Oh, so you’re just telling me who I am, right?” So the 5 Voices are like, “No, you’re all five voices, and a 13-year-old can get it.” So what we did is we took the best of Carl Jung and the best of the Big Five, and we built a system that was simpler to understand so that inside Google, for instance, we’ve worked with them for years for seven-eight years.

Inside Google, they’re like, “Oh, I’m a connector.” I don’t have to go, “I’m an ENFP. I’m a high I with a D, you know?” And so, the speed of scale and then the sustainability of the 5 Voices stays a lot longer than any of the other voice languages because it’s just simpler.

And then we added 5 Voices AI to it, and now it’s like a joke, “Oh, my gosh, we’re doing things with it that are so innovative.” And I’m biased, obviously, of being a co-creator of it with Steve Cockram, but the 5 Voices is just simpler and it stays longer.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say with AI it’s a joke, what exactly do you mean?

Jeremie Kubicek
I mean, it’s dumbfounding because now what happens, if you’ve already taken the assessment, 5 Voices AI, you’re already in my algorithm. You’re already in my AI, in my world so it already knows you.

So, if it knows that you’re a creative connector, and I go, “Hey, help me do a performance review for Pete,” it already knows and it’s going to do a different performance review for you than it would for a nurturer.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear what you’re saying. Like, in the universe of what large language models happen to be good at, reconfiguring words in different sorts of ways, when you’ve got your arms around five really distinct, different vibes with detailed explanations of what those are, you can find an extra layer of translator tool at the ready to make it super easy for you.

Jeremie Kubicek
That’s it. And, like, I got an email from someone on my team the other day, and I didn’t get it, and it said, “Remember they’re a guardian-pioneer,” and I put the email in and it dissected it as a guardian-pioneer, and it translated to go, “Here’s what it is saying to a connector.”

And I go, “Great. Write back to him in his language,” and it built an email. It wasn’t just “Create an email for me.” It was, “Create an email that’s customized.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s handy. Yes. And I guess, as you can feed that upfront context, you can give thousands of words of useful, clear context to the AI about, “What do I mean by pioneer? What do I mean by connector?”

Jeremie Kubicek
Well, it already does it. It already does it for you. You don’t have to feed it anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we don’t now because you’ve built it out. Yeah. Okay. Understood.

Jeremie Kubicek
So, all you have to do is take the assessment. And if you take the assessment, it’s free, 5Voices.com, you can take the assessment and you sign someone else up and they take it. But then the 5 Voices AI now becomes the piece that it’s, like, with my wife, the conversations are completely different because what I’m doing is it’s, like, honoring the other person because I’m walking a mile in their shoes.

I’m trying to understand their context versus, “Man, that guy just drives me crazy.” “Well, yeah, because he’s a guardian and you’re a connector. You’re nemesis voices.” So now it de-complexifies it. Is that a word?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Jeremie Kubicek
But it basically takes it to the point where it’s so much more palatable to know what to do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, we’ve been throwing these words around a lot, so we’re going to have to hear, what the heck? What are they? What is a pioneer, connector, etc?

Jeremie Kubicek
Okay, so there’s five words in there. The five main categories of personality, we put them in the lower voice first. So the quietest voice is a nurturer, 43% of the population, 70% are female, so they’re going to show up in stay-at-home moms, teachers, nurses, it can be anything, okay? But that’s where they aggregate, and they’re always wanting to make sure everyone’s taken care of. So they want peace. They’re the relational oil inside organizations.

The creative is second, 9% of the population. And they are the most future-oriented, but they’re extremely quiet. They’re still introverts, but they love to add to their blueprint that’s in their brain, but they have a hard time getting it out to someone and they don’t want to throw their ideas before swine if someone doesn’t value or see it. So they’re, oftentimes, the most misunderstood because people don’t know what they just said or what they’re thinking.

Then another 30% is the guardian. The guardian are logic, black and white, A then B, then C, then D, and the 70% are male, they’re accountants, they’re soldiers, military, they’re police, firefighters. They love structure and order and grids, and it’s just that order, right?

And then the next batch is the 11%, the connectors, which are like me. They’re like bees, they pollinate, they take ideas and people, and they always have a guy, “What do you need? I got a guy.” “Oh, yeah, you need to meet so and so.” And they love to connect people to aspirations.

And then the last 7% are the pioneers, and they’re like generals, and they allocate people and resources to do big things. And so, their whole thing is, you know, “Move out of my way. I got it,” or they’re always thinking about winning and are very strategic in that regard. So, a lot of them are executives because they get hired to win. And so, oftentimes, you’ll have an immature executive do a lot of damage. And so what we do is we dissect.

We have all five of these, but there’s 16 variations of the five. So, like, you can be a pioneer-connector, a pioneer-guardian, a pioneer-creative. So, that second word kind of frames the personality, but there’s five categories that make it simple enough for everyone to understand.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. And these terms are kind of, like, is it fair to say, “How you’re wired, what you’re drawn to, what you find motivating, interesting, exciting, care to do, gets you fired up”? That’s like, “What you’re about.”

Jeremie Kubicek
That’s right. It’s your nature. But your nurture, meaning we can be all five. That’s the beauty of the 5 Voices. There’s no labeling. So it’s, like, “I’m all five of them. I can play guardian if I have to, but it is my fifth voice. It’s the one I’m consciously incompetent at. It’s the hardest one for me, but I can play it.”

And that’s the beauty of it is you can go in and out and it gives grace to people versus going, “Oh, you’re a seven. Oh, yeah, you’re a seven with a wing eight, and I’ve got you locked in.” And people don’t want to be labeled because, actually, we’re way more complex than that.

And then if I know I’m a connector and I know I’ve got a guardian that just started my team, and he’s onboarding, well, you know what his expectations of onboarding are, “I need to know exactly what to do. I need to check things off. I need to feel success along the way.”

So, that’s very, very different than if I brought a nurturer in. If I brought a nurturer in, “Tracy, welcome to the team. So excited to have you.” It’s going to be different.

And so, what happens then, why most jobs aren’t as fulfilling is then people join teams, and it’s like, “Well, Tom is not very good at onboarding. Tom doesn’t think about the other person. It’s just like, ‘My way or the highway. This is what we do. This is how it works. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.’” And that doesn’t work in today’s world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Well, so then once we have a little bit of a sense for, “Okay, this is where I fall and I understand where other people fall,” like what are some of the top implications? You’ve got something called the development square, for example.

Jeremie Kubicek
Yep. So you, now, have to know, “What does development look like? What do we hope this person becomes?” So you take their job description, you then add to it role clarity, “What does winning look like? What do we need to develop in you, intellectually, relationally? What specifics do you need to kill it?”

And then you’re going to apprentice. I’m going to actually have you apprentice with someone. So, it’s the idea of slowing down to speed up. Because a lot of times, a lot of leaders, a leader is two things. They have to perform while helping people perform.

So, we use the Sherpa mindset, the Sherpa model, because the Sherpa on Mount Everest are the best example of leaders. They are amazing leaders. They have to climb at high altitude in dangerous positions and be healthy while helping people climb. So, if you’re listening to this and you’re a leader, give yourself one through 10, how’s your performance right now? We call it a Sherpa assessment.

Like, “I’m an eight.” “Okay, great.” “Well, how’s your leadership?” “What do you mean?” “Well, how are you leading other people while you’re performing?” And, oftentimes, this happens a lot, climbers are put in the Sherpa position, but they don’t know how to lead other climbers.

So, you’ve got an eight-two. They’re an eight in performance and a two in leadership, but we’re afraid to lose them so we put them in a management position over other people. And, all of a sudden, no one wants to work with John. John doesn’t want to lead anyone, and then give it a year and his performance is a six and his leadership is still a two. So he went from an eight-two to a six-two and everyone else wants to leave the team.

So, ultimately, we want leaders who are like a seven-eight or an eight-eight, an eight in performance, an eight in leadership all day long. Now you have proper Sherpa. And that’s, ultimately, what we’re trying to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you’re speaking their language. And then what are some of the other top dos and don’ts for that developing?

Jeremie Kubicek
Yep, so we’re onboarding, we’re building an onboarding plan and we know what that plan is. Now, once we’ve done that, now we’re immersing them into their actual role and we tell them ahead of time, “We know this is where other people have failed.” So we create a role clarity so they know exactly.

And then we’re keeping them from that bottom right-hand corner of that pit of despair. And we’re being aware that they could get in the pit of despair and they oscillate over it. And we want them to get fully into the empowerment stage where they are consciously competent. They know what to do, they know how to do it, they know what success is like.

And then there’s another trap on the other side. So this one trap pit of despair is insecurity. The other trap is called the green room, and it’s oversecure, overconfident. The green room is meant for people on stage. It’s meant for people who are about to go up on stage, and they have snacks in there and it’s comfortable and it’s nice.

And employees, sometimes the boss, the leader can put an employee in the green room because they’re the teacher’s pet, like, they’re killing it, “Hey, Pete, you don’t need to read that. You don’t need to do this doc. You’re good. You’re good.” And then other people see that you’re the teacher’s pet, right?

Or the employee puts themselves in and they’re like, “Oh, I’m all that. Oh, yeah, I’m really good.” And then they don’t go to the next stage, which is multiplication. Or, the guardian-nurturers, they put themselves there because they’ve already learned something and they don’t want to learn anything new because now they’re in conscious-incompetence again.

So, ultimately, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get people like a Monopoly board all the way around, to now multiplication. And multiplication is, “Help me build this culture. Help me build this team. Or, take my job because I’m going to move up. And I’m moving up, and now, Pete, you got to do my job.” And so, now I’m transferring, intentionally transferring knowledge, wisdom, skills.

So, it’s highly, highly, now you have to know the 5 Voices but we teach it and you get in it but once you get it, it’s now like everything slows down. You ever hear that in the sports when, at the NFL level, like everything slowed down. Leadership slows down once you once you figure out The Voice-Driven Leader because now it’s like, “Oh, my goodness, I’m not manipulating people, but I am, literally, proactively speaking their language and I’m seeing them grow.” And it’s completely different than a traditional leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’re saying it slows down in the sense that you are suddenly seeing another layer of opportunity, connections, implications.

Jeremie Kubicek
Leadership, growth, yeah, like communication is better. The relational trust goes up. Alignment, you actually can get alignment with people when you speak their language.

So I was just with one of my guys, we’ve launched a new company this week, it’s called Workplace. Just a short example of it. We built a culture ticker, just like a stock ticker, where we can take Teams or Slack, and we basically analyze all the signals that are going on, and it gives a real-time burnout score, a real-time psychological safety, a real-time culture score by the minute with no surveys. It’s called Workplace.io.

Well, in that, the CEO, his name is Bronson. Bronson is a pioneer-creative, so I know what he’s working on is launch week. I know where his brain is. I know how he’s thinking. I know how he needs data to go and process, so this week wouldn’t be, “Hey, I got an idea.” Not helpful for Bronson.

So, I sent him a simple email over the weekend for him to digest some ideas I have for some of our larger enterprise accounts. And so, then he calls me, he goes, “Hey, I need three or four more days.” “Great.” Then when he’s ready, he’ll then go, “Okay, here’s what I learned. Really helpful data. I added it with this. I think this is really helpful. That was really helpful work. Thank you.”

Well, I’m just playing a founder role like, you know, he’s running the company. But my point is, because I know who he is, I’m not disrupting him. I’m actually feeding what he needs and how he needs it because I know how he’s wired.

Now imagine doing that with your kids, your wife, and your key partners and employees. It changes the dynamics so the drama goes away, and then there’s so much more fun. It is so much more fun to work and you can be awesome at being a leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, could we maybe have an example of going through the foundation to immersion, to empowerment, to multiplication? I like the, “I do. You watch. I do. You help.” Sort of, can we see real time what that might look like in terms of building a person up?

Jeremie Kubicek
Yeah. So, Robert, a CEO, Robert has a smaller team of about 20 people. He’s bringing a new person on board. He’s a pioneer-guardian, his tendency is kind of harsh and like, “Hey, read it. If you can’t get it, we’ll find someone else,” but he’s working on it. So he’s trying.

So, he now knows he has to slow down. So, his first step is he knows himself now well enough that he can blow people up. So, he then hired someone. They took the assessment at 5Voices.com, he found out he’s a creative, so he goes, “Okay, he’s a creative,” but he’s actually a creative-connector, and there’s a little more detail, but creative.

He’s like, “I don’t know how to deal with the creative. What does a creative want?” So he goes to AI, and he goes, “5 Voices AI, how do I build an onboarding plan for my new employee? He’s a creative connector.” “Well, don’t forget, you’re a pioneer-guardian. Your tendencies are going to be this. What he needs is this.” So now it laid it out for him, “Great.”

He then has his assistant, true story, so I know this is going on. He gets his assistant, his assistant takes care of all the details. Creatives want to know the, “Why are we doing this? What’s the big picture?” “Hey, this is what we need you to do. This is why we do these things.” So, she preempted a lot of that. Gets him going and then he laid out a very clear pathway.

So, he made it through the foundation stage. Now he’s into immersion, “This is what we expect your role to be. We have another person that’s just in your same role. We want him to be your mentor-buddy, to walk through so you can ask any questions along the way. We’re trying to accomplish X, Y, and Z by this point. I need a report done.” All the details, the expectations.

So, then that person became the buddy. Well, that person was a connector. The other person, connectors are really good at translating for people. So, that creative was going to the connector going, “No, no, no, that’s not what Robert means. You’re hearing it like this, but he really means this.” So it helped in that process to have that person translating.

So, all the way through, well, there was a couple of moments when this creative was getting to the pit of despair and you could sense it in, like, they were starting to pull away, they were starting to get sarcastic and snarky and using their stress behavior. It was kind of starting to come out, a little Hulk activity.

And so, the pioneer didn’t know what to do. He actually came to me. I was playing a guide Sherpa for him. We built a little game plan.

But we used the common language and we keep everything above, not below so that no one is hiding anything. So, now we’re at a process where this person made it through the pit of despair. Now he’s just in empowerment. And it’s not started yet, but we’re about to start the multiplication process, because this guy’s really, really good and really can see the future.

But it took a while for people to understand what he was trying to say. So we’ve been having to translate with the other executives and the team what he’s trying to say. But now people are seeing the gold and they’re starting to utilize him a little bit more. So, he’s not ready for multiplication yet, but he’s set squarely in the empowerment stage.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when it comes to this pit of despair, are there any top principles that are swell for avoiding it and pulling out of it?

Jeremie Kubicek
So, when you see it, it’s basically insecurity. People are starting to work around them. It’s obvious they don’t know what they’re doing. So, you have to use shared language and you have to start with vision again.

And use the language, “Pete, it seems like you’re in the pit of despair. You may not claim that you are, but it feels that you are. So let’s go back through the basics.  Here’s the vision, long term. Here’s the short term. I need to do a better job as a leader to have more time with you, so we’re going to schedule more formal time. And then, informally, I want you to go spend time with so-and-so and so-and-so.”

And then I’m going to encourage you but I’m going to give you specific encouragement like, “I really see the work you’re doing. You’re doing great here, here, and here. Now, where do you need help for me? Where can I add value to you?” And now you make it about you, not them. And so now, all of a sudden, I’m pulling, I’m going, “So, I’m going to be here to be your Sherpa. So, what do you need?” So, that usually would work.

Now, if someone gets into the pit of despair, here’s what I would tell you, in all the years of doing this, 12 years of doing this, we can’t think of any stories, we couldn’t think of any experience where, if anyone truly is in the pit of despair, they usually don’t make it. They usually are asked to leave or they choose to leave. So that’s how dangerous the pit of despair is.

So, with the book, the whole idea is how to avoid the pit of despair at all costs. Don’t get in it. Because you’re so demeaned and your insecurity is so high and the trust level from all the other employees is so low that people tend to not make it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so maybe a better question is like, so what’s the red alert, “Warning! Warning! Approaching pit of despair,” sudden redirections necessary?

Jeremie Kubicek
Each voice has stress behaviors, so we talk openly about it and we have a whole chapter on the stress behavior. So, for each voice, a nurturer is going to start withdrawing big time, and they’re going to start clamming up and they’re going to start, “You don’t need to hear from me. No one would need to hear from me.”  A lot of insecurity.

The creative is going to start Hulking out if people don’t get it, and there’ll be these moments where they just blew up and no one understood, or got really sarcastic and snarky. The guardian is going to start interrogating people, “Well, why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t know that. I thought that…Well, when did this report come out? How did we even…?” and they start this inquisition because they’re feeling like they need to prove themselves.

The connector will start cyberwarfaring and subtly slandering the boss, not to their face, but they’ll like, “Hey, Tom, how you doing, man?” And then behind the scenes, “Tom is a jerk. God, this guy, this is the worst leader I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen anyone this…”

And then the pioneer, they’ll like bulldoze people. The pioneer are rarely in the pit of despair. But if they get in, the stress behavior is like, “Move out of the way. I got it. I got it.” And they just do it all. And they just bulldoze everybody. So, those are some examples of, you’ll know it by their stress behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you’ve got a tantalizing tidbit about how most leaders unintentionally silence their best people. How does that happen? How do we not do that?

Jeremie Kubicek
Because most leaders are so fixated on making the donuts, doing the work, the performance, on one side, that they might not be thinking like a Sherpa of getting everyone else. Their people are a nuisance, more than that’s their job to get everyone to the next level. So, they’ll then revert back to default setting is, “Do it my way or the highway. This is how I am. Why can’t you get it? Seriously, why don’t you figure this out?” Versus, taking time.

It’s like training a dog, right? Most people who have ever had a dog, it’s so hard the first three four or five months. And then if you do it well, you’re going to be so glad you did. It’s awesome in year two, three, four. But if you never took the time to train your dog, that dog is the dog from hell, and no one enjoys the dog, even people who come over, right?

So, it’s the same with employees. I’m not saying they’re dogs, but it’s simply the idea that we have to take the time to train them.

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

Jeremie Kubicek
No, that’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, can we hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jeremie Kubicek
Yeah, so I am a massive Will Rogers fan. And so, it’s actually not a quote, it’s his quotes. There’s such veiled wisdom inside the humor that it’s just really fun. So I’m a major Will Rogers fan.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jeremie Kubicek
Heroic Leadership, Chris Lowney. He’s a friend, a good guy. It’s basically how the Jesuits changed the world for 450 years, how they changed the world in Asia and around the world. It is the most fascinating, without technology. And how did they stay aligned when they were all sent out and all around? And he does a brilliant job. So, if you’re a leadership nerd, it is a brilliant job to show how values actually work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Jeremie Kubicek
Favorite tool that I’m using right now, it’s my tool. It’s called “The Peace Index.” And it’s, basically, I use it almost every day, but it’s how to quantify peace and understand chaos and where you’re not at peace. And it dissects purpose, people, personal health, provision, and place. And it reveals chaos and it reveals whether you’re up or down. And it’s a fascinating process. That’s another book of mine, The Peace Index.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Jeremie Kubicek
Every afternoon, I took the Jesuit examine model with “The Peace Index” and I basically do this habit at 5:30 every day. I do, “What was I grateful for today? What was awesome about today?” I just highlight it in my brain, “Where was I not at peace today? And where was I off?” And I dissect it so that I keep really small accounts. And then, “Am I ready for tomorrow?” And that’s it. That’s all I do.

And it’s a summary at the end of the day. But what it’s done for me, over the last five, six years now, is I don’t talk to my wife about negative things anymore because they just kind of dissipate because I keep such small accounts that I’m dealing with, like, when I’m not at peace and I’m working on it every afternoon. And it doesn’t build up anymore like it used to.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Cool. And is there a key nugget you share that folks really seem to connect with and quote back to you often?

Jeremie Kubicek
One, I say is, “Call people up, not out.” And if you want to get the best out of your people, learn how to call up, not out. And it makes a big difference.

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

Jeremie Kubicek
JeremieKubicek.com. You might have to put that in the show notes, Pete. It’s just Jeremie with an IE. And if you want to take the 5 Voices, just go to 5Voices.com. Take the assessment, it’s free. It’s really fascinating. Obviously, you can go deeper if you want to add the 5 Voices AI. You have to pay a little bit, but I think it’s dying $10 a month, not $20, and you get AI as well. So, if you actually want a cheaper AI, do the 5 Voices AI.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jeremie, thank you.

Jeremie Kubicek
Good to be with you, Pete. You’re amazing. Thanks, man.

Feb 09
0

1127: How to Look and Sound Confident Even When You’re Not with Montana von Fliss

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Montana von Fliss shares her expert strategies for appearing more confident, no matter what you’re communicating.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to override your critical self-talk
  2. The #1 habit most communicators neglect
  3. Three simple tips to upgrade your presence

About Montana 

Montana von Fliss is a keynote speaker, public speaking coach, and CEO of Montana & Co., where she and her team help people deliver the best presentations of their careers. Her TEDx talk How to Be Confident (Even If You’re Not) has 3M+ views. With 17 years coaching at companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, and 30+ years as an actor/director, Montana teaches speakers to show up with clarity, presence, and real confidence.

Resources Mentioned

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Montana von Fliss Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Montana, welcome!

Montana Von Fliss
Hello. Pete, hi! Thank you so much for having me!

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. It’s great to have you here. I’m excited to talk about confidence. Tell us, you’ve done a lot of coaching with a lot of people. Is there a top thing about confidence that has really surprised you and your clients again and again?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, that confidence is not an innate trait. You don’t have to be born confident. It can be learned. It is a skill that you can practice and learn.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That is encouraging. I guess that’s what we’re trying to do here. Otherwise, it’d be a very short interview, Montana.

Montana Von Fliss
I think so.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s learnable. Cool. All right. Well, so I’d love to hear perhaps an inspiring story of just that, someone who was not so confident, learned the things to do, did those things, and walked out much more confident.

Montana Von Fliss
I think I’m a great example of that. I certainly wanted to be on stage. From a very young age, I wanted to be an actor, and that was the path that I went down. But I also almost always felt nervous stepping on a stage, sometimes downright terrified, really. And yet I just kept doing it because I loved everything about it.

So, I just kept doing it, sort of stubbornly just kept doing it. And I am the poster child for, if you just keep going, keep practicing, keep giving it a go, keep going up for that next time at bat, you will improve in many ways, really, but certainly, I think, in terms of confidence.

And I can tell you a very specific story about how I sort of figured out a little hack to how I could reliably give myself the confidence I needed to get on big stages.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so you’re feeling nervous. What happened next?

Montana Von Fliss
Well, at first, I just white-knuckled it like, “Uh, I don’t like this feeling. We’re on the roller coaster, but I guess the show’s about to start. So here we go.” And I just sort of would get through it, I guess. I didn’t have a plan. I just thought, “This is terrible.” And then, life would move on, and I would try to push it down, stop it from happening.

But over time, I just kept sort of banging my head against that wall, so to speak. And I came to this realization, like, “Well, that’s not working. So what else could I try?”

And I realized that I was memorizing my lines, I was working very hard on what I was saying out loud. So when I was an actor, those were memorized verbatim scripts, right? If I was a presenter or a speaker in a professional context, then I was writing those words myself and I was spending time crafting that narrative. But I wasn’t spending any time writing, crafting, exploring, playing with the narrative I had in my head, right?

And the moment I decided to apply what I do for my out-loud text to that inner text, everything changed. I was like, “Wow, you can do this? You can go in there and sort of tinker with how you talk to yourself?” And that began this really great ever-evolving, it’s still evolving for me, grand experiment in how you talk to yourself and how you can change that up and how much it really matters in terms of the result in your performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, thinking about the lines that you’re saying to yourself and then proactively reshaping them so you’re not just the actor, but the playwright. Nifty. Could we hear some examples of some common inner texts or lines that you said to yourself frequently and what you decided to substitute in, in the edit?

Montana Von Fliss
Absolutely. So, a common one for me was, and still sometimes is, something like, “You better be perfect. Don’t mess up. What if they find out that you’re not very good at this, that you’re not the person to listen to on this topic?” Definitely a lot of thoughts like that. “Don’t mess up,” a lot of things like that. And sometimes even kind of ugly or darker ones, like, “What if they don’t like you?” which is interesting.

But, anyway, I’m sure people can relate to whatever your own little unhelpful thoughts that come in. So, those would come in. And again, normally, I think I would just sort of be in the grip of these thoughts, like they would sort of take over and then, at some point, I would just walk out onto the stage with these thoughts running.

Now, still a win, I walked out onto the stage. But once I started making my own silent script for the moments before I stepped on the stage, then I would have an answer available to those sentences. So, for example, when I would hear something like, “You better be perfect,” the moment I became aware that I was getting that old message again, I would say, “Oh, I hear you. Thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me.” That’s a new one. I’m slipping in there, “Thank you.”

You know, it’s like my anxiety or whatever, trying to protect me, “Thank you. That is not my measure of success for this presentation. My measure of success is have I helped at least one person in this room?” Now that came out of me setting the silent sentence, the intention, that what I want to do with this presentation is help at least one person here today, right?

So, that was me sort of sitting down and, like, rewriting that silent narrative in my head and having that little silent script ready so that, when that ugly unhelpful thought came in, I actually had something there, memorized, practiced in the script.

Now, sometimes it turns into a little dialogue where it will go, like, “But, but, but have you thought of this? What about this other fear? Excuse me, what about tripping? Have you thought about tripping? Have you thought about what if the tech doesn’t work?”

At first, that kind of bummed me out, that like, “Ah, my little trick didn’t just make anxiety, you know, poof and disappear.” But then I realized, after watching Inside Out 2, seriously, I realized, “Well, what if all the emotions, including anxiety and fear, are on my side? They’re there to help me. So it’s just doing its job, right?”

So it says, “Be afraid of this thing.” And I go, “Thank you. Thank you so much for trying to protect me,” which, by the way, that immediately starts to change the relationship, “I’m doing this.” And then I say, I sort of take back my power by saying, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I am going for the goal of helping at least one person here.”

It usually doesn’t go, “Oh, okay, cool. You got this.” It usually goes, “But, but, but how about this?” And I go, “Thank you. I hear you. And I’m going to keep walking to that stage because I really want to help that person who’s out there waiting for me, right?”

So I, generally, have to insist gently, kindly, with gratitude, insist that I’m going to do the thing that I set out to do. And that, I have to be honest, I’m still shaking, like the adrenaline burst has already happened. The fear chemicals have been released. So I’m still shaking. I’m still sweating.

I’m still having those thoughts of like, “Well, why don’t we just run away instead? Wouldn’t that be better if we just didn’t do this?” And I just have to gently, almost like a parent talking to a child, like, “I hear you that you want to do that and we’re going to do this other thing instead. You are going to wear your jacket as we go out into the snow, yeah?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I like that a lot, the assertive, decisive, clear word to yourself. And I think that, just at the gym this morning, I was sort of annoyed by some things that are on the TV. I don’t even remember what it was. It was like an advertisement or a program that I just thought it was a waste of time, unnecessary, distracting, and irritating. I’d rather just not have all those screens going, you know?

So there was something going on. And I could go down a loop of, “Oh, why is this like this? I don’t like that. That’s so annoying. Why don’t people…?” you know, whatever. Just a whole whiny interrogation that doesn’t really lead to insights.

And I just found myself saying internally, “I refuse to spend a second attending to that.” And I did. And it was like, “I’m just going to look not at those screens, but elsewhere,” and it was a much more enjoyable experience. So I love that, that it’s decisive, it’s assertive, and you call the shots, you have the authority, and you take it and you deploy it with a definitive statement.

Montana Von Fliss
That’s a great example. And that, to me, was revolutionary. You know, realizing that, at any moment, I have the power to make a different choice and, especially, I have all the choice in the world about how I talk to myself. And how you talk to yourself really matters, and we do it all day long, right? Pick up glass. Take sip of water. We’re really good at following our own instructions.

But the trick is sort of noticing that and then going, “Oh, how would I like to maybe tinker with that?” especially if it’s not working very well for us, right? And I think that is not necessarily a new idea, the fact that we can edit our self-talk, we can practice positive and constructive self-talk.

But the idea that I’m adding to it is, “Why not put it in the script?” Like, it’s the silent part of the script before you begin speaking, or perhaps it’s in the pauses in between, or really anytime you need it, but put it in the script and practice it as much as you’re practicing the out loud bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that a lot.

Montana Von Fliss
So it becomes part of the script. It becomes default. It becomes part of you, just as easily as you can rattle off, I don’t know, the three points that you’re deciding to speak for this communication. You’re also just as able to access that silent instruction that is more constructive and is setting you up for where you want to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear about practicing it, what does that look like in practice, the practicing of the internal dialogue?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, so, I mean it when I say it’s the silent part of the script. So, actually, write it down in your script or however you keep your notes. I put it in parentheses myself, just as a signal to myself that it’s an internal thought. It’s an inside voice rather than something I intend to say.

And so, whatever kind of notes you use, that can be, you know, the little speaker notes in PowerPoint or that could be, like, sometimes I’ll write it down on a sticky note and tape it to my monitor if it’s a virtual presentation. But, certainly, it is part of the script such that every time you run it, every time you practice it, you will start with a silent sentence, and then go to the out loud part.

So, an example of that, you know, mine, I have several. Now, the one that I mentioned in my TED Talk is, “I invite you to be here with me while I am here with you so that I can help you to the best of my ability.” Now, that’s long, but I’ve said it so many times that it’s just right there for me. Sometimes I will collapse it and just say, “Invite and help.” And it does the job for me because I have it so ingrained and such a habit, and it brings all the goodness.

Lately, I’ve been loving the silent sentence, “Let’s grow. Let’s grow.” So short, but it’s got the “Let’s,” which got the invitation part built in, which I love. And then “Let’s grow,” right, it reminds me that we’re both learning. I may be giving the presentation, but I’m learning, too, as we’re doing this and we’re partners in this, yeah?

So, the way that that might look, I’ll have, “Let’s grow” at the top of my script. So, inside my head while I’m doing a rehearsal or practice run, right, it’ll be something like, and this is the silent part, I would say, “All right, I invite you to be here with me while I’m here with you so that we can grow and learn together.” Or, perhaps it’s, “Let’s grow. Hi, my name is Montana Von Fliss. Prepare to be amazed,” or whatever my intro is, right, that I say out loud.

So, it would, literally, if someone were watching me, it would look like me looking around at my imagined audience. Then they would hear me say, “Hi, my name is Montana Von Fliss,” etc. Yeah, so it might not look like much, but what you’re doing there is you’re saying that silent bit in your head, the silent part of the script, you say your out loud part. And then when you go back to start again, you start with that silent sentence.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool, in terms of thinking about integrating the silent sentence in any place you are doing a meeting, a speech, a presentation, or just, like, a one-on-one conversation with someone that you’ve done some prep for because it’s part of it and it’s to yourself and then it shapes what follows. And I just think that’s a cool thing where you might integrate in all kinds of conversations. And I think that’s really nifty.

Montana Von Fliss
Absolutely. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I was curious to hear with practicing internally, if what I imagined was when you said you’re in your internal script, you might go with, “Oh, what if I mess up? You better be perfect.” And then you have your response that you’ve practiced internally, which is, “Well, hey, I succeed if I’ve transformed just one person,” or that kind of a response.

What’s funny for me is, I think, because I’ve been there, and then I’ve had the worry. I’ve had the response about one person. And then I’ve got the counter response like, “Well, Pete, if there’s 300 people in this audience, and you’ve only transformed one people, then 299 people have wasted their time. And that’s really a failure for what you have done to all of these people.”

So, not to diminish that very powerful, hopeful, useful thought, but when the brain is in scared, anxious zone, or just snippy, grumpy, and goes there, do you practice the counter counter-response, or do you just redirect like, “Well, we’re doing this now”? Or, how does that work internally and how do you practice that?

Montana Von Fliss
I always have a counter response, but it usually stems from what my base thought or my initial silent sentence was. So, for example, if my silent sentence is, “I’m here to help at least one person in this room,” and then the counter thought is, “Yeah, but it’s a failure if you don’t help the other 299.”

I’d say, “And I said, I want to help at least one person. Everyone is invited to this information and these new ideas. But my personal goal is that I want to reach that one person who gets me, who needs to hear what I have and really plugs into my way of looking at it.”

So, do you hear that counter response is really just an emphasis of my original thought?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you and I just wonder about, and maybe I’ve just got a nasty mind.

Montana Von Fliss
No, keep going. I love this. Keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
But I can counter, counter, counter the response is like, “Well, your goal is lame and you should raise your standards.”

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, you can totally, oh, man, have I had all of those thoughts, “Your goal is lame.” Yes, you might, “Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for helping me to think of that.” And I would say, “I’m making a doable goal. And if I get more, then I have a higher likelihood of success.” And that helps me, right, to go, “Oh, I can get at least one person.”

The other thing it helps me to do, and I might remind myself of this if I’m having this little internal talk, is it always helps me to think of, regardless of how many people are in the room, it helps me to think of the power of one-on-one communication. Like, I do better in one-on-one communication. So I’m going to borrow that superpower of mine, and I’m going to activate it by thinking of this as a one-on-one, even though everyone in the room is invited, right?

So that is part of what I’m doing, is getting the best out of me by thinking of it this way. So we’re going to keep going with the idea of, “I’m going to help at least one person,” so I can activate that one-on-one communication style. And I also know, like it might go, “But, but, but, but,” I also know that I can’t control other people. I can only invite them. So all 300 are certainly invited to the information.

But I know that I’m very achievement-oriented. So if I make it a doable achievement, meaning, like, this is a goal that I am more likely to attain then I do better. That’s another part of just knowing myself and knowing what motivates me, right? So I might say, “I’m just making an attainable goal for myself. All 300 are certainly invited.” Does that make sense? Does that help?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, thank you.

Montana Von Fliss
Like, I mean, and I go on, like I have conversations with myself, or, I don’t know, my other selves. They could be my other selves, maybe my younger self. It could be my anxiety or fear, but I have full-on dialogues. So, don’t be surprised because it makes sense that it wants to continue to bargain with you in this way.

Like, because imagine you’re walking into a burning building, right, and you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to go save my Macbook in that burning building,” and your fear is going, “Don’t go into a burning building. Don’t do that. You could die. Don’t do that.”

Imagine if you just went, “Hey, it’s cool. I got this.” It wouldn’t stand down. It wouldn’t say, “Oh, okay.” It would keep trying to stop you because that’s its job is to keep you safe. And going up to speak in front of many people, and it activates a similar sort of fight or flight fear mechanism in us, right?

So it’s not unusual for it to keep fighting, to keep you safe, keep you from going on that stage. It’s just, “Do you have a prepared sentence and sort of the surrounding logic that you wholeheartedly believe in to respond to it in that moment?”

And I have found that it works best when they are tied to what you care deeply about, like, “Why are you doing this?” And even sometimes, “Why are you here on this planet? What is your purpose on this earth?” Like, I feel genuinely, I am here, in part, anyway, to help others be able to step on a stage, and to feel a little bit of ease, maybe even just find a process and a way to manage through it so that they can do it more effectively, right?

So when I attached to that in my own personal example of, like, “I’m just here to help one person,” that’s activating something extremely powerful in me. I will walk through hot coals, Pete, to help you for your next presentation. Like, that’s just how I’m built.

So, when I remind myself of that in that moment of extremis, in that moment when I’m sort of hijacked by fight, flight, you know, that fear, it acts like this override switch and I will do it kind of no matter what, is how it feels. And so, when you dig around for that for yourself, you’ll sort of know it when you feel it. Like, “Why did I say yes to this presentation? Well, my boss told me so.”

But then dig further, “Well, I like keeping my job. I like feeding my family. Well, maybe that’s it. Maybe the image of my little daughter is the thing that pulls me onto that stage or up in front of that group of people.”

Maybe you’re like me and you really love helping people, you love sharing information. Maybe it’s like problem solving. I love sharing a solution to a problem that you might have. Like, that just lights me up. Like, problem solving and puzzle solving, yeah?

When you find out what that is, that has energy, huge energy. And when you get that, like, you grab it, you write the silence sentence down, you practice it, when that voice that wants to argue with you comes in, I promise you, if you’re attached to that deeper why, you will have all the right answers to, essentially, redirect yourself to what your priority actually is in this moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so we’ve covered the internal dialogue. Excellent. How about practicing the actual external speech?

Montana Von Fliss
So practice is probably my best piece of advice as a speaker coach. It’s also probably my most ignored piece of advice. And I understand. I don’t feel like practicing pretty much ever, but I just learned as an actor, that was my first profession. I learned through that job that practice is everything. Practice is how you get ready for any type of performance, speech.

And, by the way, we already know this. We apply it easily to something like if you want to learn a musical instrument or if you want to learn a sport, right? We never go, “Okay, everybody, we have a big soccer game on Saturday. So let’s all go home and just think about how we’re all going to do well on that day, right? And then see you on Saturday,” right?

No, we would practice it as much as possible. We’d practice specific plays and all sorts of things. And yet, when it comes to public speaking, presentations, for some reason, we don’t automatically apply that. And I’m not exactly sure why, but that is another thing I’m here to tell the world. Truly, the best thing you can do is practice.

So, what that looks like is actually standing up, saying it out loud, running through your script, however you have your notes, have those up, run through your slides if you have them, imagine the audience, invite them in, make it all be like it will be on the day. If you’re going to be seated, if it’s something like a virtual presentation, open up whatever virtual platform you’re going to be on and be seated how you’re going to be seated.

Test your tech, but also run through your presentation out loud as if the audience is there. And that’s what it looks like. Really actually doing it. It’s like if you were going to learn the piano, you would actually play that piano. You would play it, right, to get better at it, to prepare for that concert on Friday.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. And so, that’s the practicing of the external speech. And just a side note, I remember we had Diane DiResta some time ago on the show, and I said, “How much should we practice?” And she gave a very definitive answer, “Six sticks. Do the whole run through six times.” It’s like, “All right, that’s very precise.” What’s your hot take on how much practice is the right amount?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, it’s different for everyone, but I’ll tell you what I do. If there’s a presentation coming up for me in about a week, I will start practicing once a day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s about six, seven. Yeah, that’s about six or seven times. There you go.

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, so I definitely agree with that advice. So a week or two before, put it in your calendar. Practice a little bit every day. I would do, personally, I would do a full run through every day. I would also take the intro, like whatever that is for you, could be like the first 30 seconds or so, and your final sentence. So those two bookends. And I would run those three times in a row out loud, multiple times a day from wherever.

So, like, if you’re in the shower or cooking dinner or exercising. Because if those are strong and ready and available to you and they’re really boiled down and just exactly what you wish to say to tee up the entire communication, as well as to close it out strongly and stick that landing, oh, my goodness, that is so effective. So effective. So that’s how I would practice.

And then you have to figure out how to make yourself do this. And that goes to digging into, like, what motivates you. And you can go back to that great recent episode you had with Chris Bailey. I loved that one about figuring out how you particularly are motivated through your own principles and your own levers.

And so, what is that for you? And then build that in. So maybe I don’t get a second cup of coffee until I do my run through. Maybe I go, “Oh, I’ll just do five minutes.” And then, of course, I end up doing 15. Whatever that is for you to get you to just do it.

Pete Mockaitis
In a way, that’s the mini game or challenge in and of itself. It’s like, “What needs to happen for me to do it? Okay. All right. Well, let’s just do that real quick. All right, now we’re set.” As opposed to just getting in a loop of, “Oh, I don’t want to. That sounds hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s boring. There’s a really great show I want to watch.”

You know, it’s sort of picking a new question, a new game, it’s like, “All right. Well, what’s it going to take to do this shortly? Coffee might be the answer. It could be something else.”

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, what is your driver? And, really, you are the only one who knows that. I know some people also feel kind of funny either seated or standing up in their office or wherever, by themselves running through it. Like, that can feel silly or strange to them, especially if they don’t have a lot of performance experience.

And I get that, right? But you just have to kind of get over it. Just do it a couple of times and get over it. Because, again, doing the thing is how you will get better at the thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Montana Von Fliss
So that means doing it on your own. I will say, like, whatever kind of little ladder you need, like what is the smallest step you can take, and then slowly work up that ladder. So, for example, maybe you just do your intro and you’re all really like, “What do I want to say? It’s kind of…No, maybe I should sit and write it out and just think about it a whole bunch.”

I would recommend instead, just say it. Say it imperfectly out loud. Say it to the cereal boxes. They are rather – what – non-judgmental. And then after you’ve done that a couple of times, move to some art on the wall. Go to a lovely piece of art. A little more judgment there. Say it again. Then move to a beating heart, right? Do you have a pet? Say it to them. Start with the cat, then move to the dog, right?

Or, the other way around, maybe start with the dog with a little more love and acceptance, then move to the cat, then move to a human, a human being who loves and trusts you would be a good choice, I would say, right? And then maybe a dry run with your colleagues and then the wider audience.

Somewhere in there, by the way, too, you have a video camera in your pocket. Video yourself, watch it back. And I know everybody at that moment goes, “Ugh, that’s the only one, Montana, that I am not willing to do.” And I hear you and I want to tell you, every human, I believe every human feels that. Pretty much everyone feels that, “Ugh, I don’t want to watch myself, whatever that is,” that kind of discomfort.

It might feel a little funny, but wouldn’t you rather see it in advance and be able to have the opportunity to make an adjustment before you share it with a wider audience?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, a lot of good stuff there. Excellent. Thank you. Well, you also mentioned in your TEDx Talk, we’ve got five techniques to appear confident even if we’re not feeling it. We talked about the silent sentence and some purposeful practice. Can you give us a quick pro tip on energy levels, strategic pauses, and confident body language?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, well, they’re two sides to the same coin, right, if you want to look confident, sound confident, be confident on a stage. One side that we’ve spent most of our time on so far is about sort of building that confidence. You can’t always have or make yourself have a feeling, but you can invite it, right? And that’s what the silent sentence is about.

The other side of that coin of confidence is how to look and sound confident regardless of how you’re feeling, regardless of how much sleep you got the night before. And that really comes through the physical and vocal choices that you make on a stage, whether it’s virtual or in person, because we read a lot about each other based on our body language, facial expression, vocal dynamics, all of that kind of stuff, right?

So, the cool thing is that knowing that, that we read so much about that and that we can’t yet read each other’s minds, so we won’t ever know if you are actually nervous as a speaker, unless you show us or tell us. So you can use these three tips to look confident, regardless. And that is number one, turn up the energy and speak up. Number two, pause like a boss.

Number three is walk in there like a superhero. Stand in superhero. Sit like a superhero. How would a superhero sit, you know? And so, that first one is volume. Speak up. It’s hard for a lot of people to do that, truly, especially if they have maybe some cultural, different cultural background, or sometimes some stuff from childhood with parents who thought you should be seen and not heard. There’s a lot in there.

But I will tell you this idea. First of all, if it’s on a scale of one to 10, just shoot for a five. Just one notch up. That’s all you got to go for. You don’t have to shout. In fact, you know, unless you’re on some keynote stadium, you really don’t. Please don’t shout. But just turn it up one notch maybe or shoot for that five.

And the other thought there I find helpful is it really makes your audience feel more comfortable. So, for example, if I walk out and I’m like, “Hey, Pete, my name is Montana, and I’m going to give you this awesome tip about how to be better at your job,” you’d be like, “Okay, no thanks,” right? And that’s just for the most part volume.

If I move from, that was down here, maybe like out of three, and you move it right up here to a five, suddenly, it sounds prepared, confident, like I want to be here. And that doesn’t mean I actually feel that on the inside. You might be feeling hungry or tired or nervous, but if you raise the volume just a bit, they will never know. They will never know. How cool is that?

Pausing. The second one is it takes some practice, but it’s a totally learnable skill, and it sounds so confident. Just think about any great leader, any great speaker. They can pause like a boss. And it is the antidote to verbal filler. If you video yourself and watch it back, if you actually do that tip and you, “Uh-oh, I’m doing all kinds of ums.” A few ums, who cares? But if you’re doing ums every time there’s a pause or between every sentence, just pause instead, take a breath instead. So powerful.

And the third one is body language. And, I mean, that encapsulates a lot, like how to master confident body language. But that’s why I say just walk in there like a superhero, because it sort of does it all, right? It’s better eye contact. It’s a more commanding posture rather than like a closed body language, making yourself smaller or crossing your arms in front of you. It’s more open body language.

And it’s also a vibe. It’s a vibe of, like, “Yes, I got you. I got you.” And all of these, again, might feel a little funny or uncomfortable if they’re new to you. But if you really focus in on what will make the audience feel more comfortable, then you find you might be able to do these. You might have more incentive to do these, I should say.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Can we hear a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Montana Von Fliss
I have one from the Dalai Lama here. And it says, “If a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there’s no help in worrying. In fact, there is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” Thank you, Dalai Lama.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, and a favorite book?

Montana Von Fliss
A recent book that I absolutely loved. Let’s see, my certainly my favorite book from last year was James by Percival Everett. It is a reimagining of the story of Huckleberry Finn from James’ perspective. Brilliant.

But I also love, this one is a little bit more in line with what we’re talking about, my personal Bible is called Art & Fear, and that’s by David Bayles and Ted Orland. And it’s all about how to deal with perfectionism and not let that stop you and how to just practice even when you’re not feeling like it. It’s wonderful. Check it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that seems to really resonate with people, you hear them quote it back to you often?

Montana Von Fliss
Oh, yeah, “Pause like a boss.” T-shirts have been made.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful.

Montana Von Fliss
People love that one. But also I get, “Confident Captain” quite a bit, “Montana, I’m going to be the Confident Captain.” And I’m like, “Yes, do it.”

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

Montana Von Fliss
They can come to my website, MontanaVonFliss.com, sign up for the newsletter, and get just monthly tips and offers for free coaching from me. Also, all the socials if you like to consume great tidbits that way. And I have just started a YouTube channel. So if you like watching helpful videos that are also fun and entertaining, come find me there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Montana, this has been fun. Thank you.

Montana Von Fliss
Thank you so much, Pete. This is really great.

Feb 05
0

1126: How to Build Connection and Understanding through Excellent Listening with Katie O’Malley

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Katie O’Malley reveals her three-step listening method that fosters greater trust, connection, and understanding.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why attention is so quick to drift—and three ways to pull it back
  2. What most miss with active listening
  3. Why shared experiences don’t build connection—and what does

About Katie 

Katie O’Malley is an Executive Coach and Leadership Educator with twenty (20) years of professional experience serving the nonprofit, education, and corporate sectors. Across these workplaces, Katie noticed her strengths and values consistently steered her toward the support and development of others. 

Since 2018, Katie has worked alongside hundreds of individual, team, and organizational clients as the Founder and Principal Coach of (en)Courage Coaching. Established with the noble mission of providing exceptional, financially accessible coaching services to Chicago area professionals, (en)Courage Coaching has grown to support individuals and businesses from around the world.

Resources Mentioned

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Katie O'Malley Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Katie, welcome!

Katie O’Malley
Thank you so much for having me on your podcast today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I’m excited to be getting into it. You call yourself a professional listener, which is a great role. Can you tell us something surprising you’ve learned about listening over the course of your professional listening career?

Katie O’Malley
I think one of the most helpful things that I learned is that our brains move entirely too fast for the person who is speaking to keep our attention. And so, we are already at a deficit for being able to stay focused and attending to the person who is speaking because the rate at which we speak versus the rate at which we process information is like a tricycle going up against an F1 race car.

And so, even just knowing there is a misalignment in the pace of speech and the pace of processing of our brain can be really helpful in just folks saying, “Yeah, I am going to not be able to necessarily stay focused on what someone is saying unless that is my intention when I am starting out in the conversation.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, the tricycle versus the race car, so our brains are the race car, because they can go way faster than the person we’re speaking to, listening to, is the tricycle. Now, it’s interesting how you might assume, it’s like, “Oh, great, that means we’re like overqualified. We got more than enough to get the job done,” but that’s actually counterproductive for us. Can you elaborate?

Katie O’Malley
For sure. The first time I read that, I started laughing as soon as you brought that up because I’m like, “This should be so easy. We should be able to understand and hear everyone perfectly,” and yet, look at where we’re at in the world and we can hardly attend to ourselves, much less fully attend to another person.

And so, what ends up happening is we will lose the thread on what someone is sharing with us really, really quickly. And it is hard to pull ourselves back into the conversation without them saying something really surprising, without them saying, “Hey, are you listening?” or using our name. Those tend to be the three things that’ll pull us back.

But, generally, if we are listening, for example, to our parents or our friends and they’re going on with the long form version of the story, those things aren’t necessarily happening. And so, what I encourage folks to think about is what I call the AIR formula for listening.

And it’s an acronym. A stands for attention, I for intention, R for recognition. And it’s a methodology you practice while you are actively listening to be able to fully understand, not just hear, what someone is communicating with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I, certainly, shortly want to go into the attention, intention, recognition framework in some detail. And I guess I’m just curious about this bandwidth point a little more. It’s funny how, well, first you mentioned the name and it is so true. Like, I’ve been in conversations with only a few people in my life actually use my name frequently when I’m speaking to them.

And every time it’s like, “Huh? Huh?” It’s like, “Huh? Yeah?” It’s almost like being called in class, like, “Oh, what did they just say? I better really zero in.” So there’s a freebie extra tip right there. We’re talking about listening, but, hey, you want people to listen, say their name a lot. That works.

So, with this bandwidth point, it’s funny, I’m thinking about like YouTube videos now with regard to many of them, we’ve got multiple camera angles. We’ve got quick cuts. We’ve got like extra footage. We’ve got maybe sound effects, “Oh,” and little emoji things popping up to greater or lesser effect.

And it’s sort of funny, it’s like that is almost necessary. Me just sharing a perspective for 15 minutes is not optimized for retention in the algorithm.

Katie O’Malley
It’s so true. And it’s a bigger part of the attention economy that we currently inhabit, right? So companies are no longer just mining for our dollars. They’re mining for our attention and for our time. And in order for them to keep our attention, they need to do exactly what you were describing. And we actually have to, in some ways, resist that.

So to choose what it is we’re going to attend to every day, and I think part of that starts with the human who is right in front of you, not the screen, not the big screen, not the laptop screen, not the phone screen, not the smartwatch screen, but the actual human who is in in front of you, and starting to practice and build reps around listening in that way.

Because we were… And stop me if you had a different experience in K through 12, but growing up we were taught to read, write, complete math problems all the way up to calculus proofs. But no one ever taught us to listen, even though teachers and parents were constantly saying, “Listen up. Pay attention.” No one ever taught us how to actually do that effectively or to control our brains for long enough to be able to choose what it is we would tune into and tune out of.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you mentioned teachers and parents teaching. You had a beautiful story about your mother teaching you a lesson about listening. Can we hear it?

Katie O’Malley
Absolutely. So, taking you back to, gosh, 1993, I’m 11 years old, Northwest suburbs, outside of Chicago. And it was after dinner. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. And I think this is important, drinking a Crystal Pepsi, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I remember those. Can you still get that? I liked that. I think it’s been gone for years or decades.

Katie O’Malley
Yeah, they discontinued it in pretty short order.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a darn shame.

Katie O’Malley
She was drinking a Crystal Pepsi, flipping through a magazine like Better Homes and Gardens, and I’m on our landline phone that is corded into a wall, and everyone can hear my conversation, right? There’s no privacy as a child in that way, really, back in the the ‘80s and early ‘90s and I was on the phone for about an hour. It was like my after-dinner activity with my very best friend, her name’s Jenny.

And got off the phone after an hour, hung up the phone, and within seconds of me hanging up the phone, my mom very calmly said, “You’re grounded two weeks starting tonight.” And I was just beside myself. I was a good kid. That was the first time I had ever been grounded. And, Pete, I didn’t even know what it was for.

And so, racking my brain, “Did I swear or curse on the phone? Did I tell Jenny a secret I wasn’t supposed to tell her? Was I gossiping or speaking ill of someone?” And I couldn’t find where the issue was. And I said to my mom, tears in my eyes coming down my cheeks, and I said, “I don’t understand why I’m grounded. What is this? What happened?”

And she goes, “You were on the phone with your ‘best friend’ for an hour, and you talked about yourself the whole time. You talked about your day at school, your activities after school, what you had for dinner, what you’re going to have for a snack. You didn’t even pause long enough for her to interject. And you didn’t ask a single question either. And that’s simply not how we treat people in this house. So you’re grounded for two weeks starting tonight.”

And I’ve never forgotten that. It was so powerful because it bumped up against my identity of being a good, caring, kind human. And I had let her down, which all of this was new, I had never really done before. And what I think made that moment even more impactful was she was battling colon cancer at the time and passed away just about a little over a year later.

And it’s one of those last moments or memories that you have with a parent. It kind of gets imprinted on your brain and on your heart. And ever since, it’s just if I’m going to move through the world as the type of human my mom would have wanted me to grow up to be, listening has to be a part of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is powerful. Thank you for sharing.

Katie O’Malley
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s beautiful, and what a legacy, to see that many thousands of folks listening better as a result of that imprinted moment and her conviction and example. So that’s beautiful stuff.

Okay. Well, so then, listening seems like a friendly, kind thing that our mothers would like for us to do. And it seems like something we “should do.” But could you expand for us, what are the concrete benefits of upgrading our listening from whatever is the norm in this day and age to a masterful level?

Katie O’Malley
Yeah, so benefits include, first, really, when we listen, it’s not just about the other person. It’s about us. And so, there is, to some extent, a level of self-development that is happening even while you’re attending to another person and what they’re saying.

But by attending to them through actual listening, not just performing listening, which is active listening, which is something most people know about. And it’s a little bit like you’re doing right now for folks who are listening in. Nodding your head, making eye contact, kind of mirroring my body movements. That is active listening, but that’s a performance. That’s the thing that keeps our busy brain occupied long enough to actually start to focus on what’s being said.

So let me back up, though. The other benefits include, we are so isolated and lonely and starved for real human connection right now. And I think some of that started happening right around 2013, 2014, when Instagram started to pick up speed, kind of doubled down in the pandemic.

But as a result of that, folks have lost the ability to connect with one another and know how to really connect and tolerate the discomfort of, “I’m not sure what this person is going to say and I’m supposed to have a response,” because that’s how we’ve been socialized to respond when someone finishes speaking, not just continue down the path of learning more about them.

And so, iIf we’re able to do this, what the benefits include are greater connection because we have greater understanding with somebody else. We’ve given them dignity from listening, which I also think is something that is missing in our day-to-day adventures in the world, whether online or in real life.

And then also trust. Social trust is so low right now. And you can take just about any community, trust in schools, trust in families, trust on your team, and in your workplace. If we want to get back to a place where we understand and trust each other enough so we can connect, listening has to be forefront of that equation. And it’s just not yet.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, so this framework – attention, intention, recognition, AIR – let’s hear the rundown. How do we do it?

Katie O’Malley
So the way I encourage folks to think about this is applying it almost in, like, a double helix way. Like, DNA has those two strands that are wrapping around, and we are applying the AIR formula to our conversation partner. Simultaneously, we are applying the AIR formula to ourselves. And so, I’m going to go through each bit of it so we can talk about what that looks like.

A stands for attention. And I always say listening is a function of attention. We can’t listen unless we are at attention. And this is where active listening is actually very valuable and doing the things that I previously described, which is very apparent to the person who is talking. And it encourages them to keep sharing when you’re nodding, making eye contact, mirroring body language.

But we also need to be attending to ourselves, because we are the ones that tend to get in the way of our ability to really hear and understand someone when we’re listening. And so, what I encourage people to think about when you’re attending to yourself, scanning your body for what’s coming up.

Are you feeling your heart start to race when somebody shares something? Are you getting goosebumps when they communicate something that is really inspiring to you? Are you attending to the fact that maybe you floated away for a minute and weren’t paying attention anymore? And what caused that?” And starting to look for patterns in your brain and your body to be able to say, “These are kind of the tripwires that get me out of attention on what’s going on instead of staying focused on the person.”

And I also share one of the very best ways to do that. Put your phone on do not disturb. Put it on airplane mode. Mine has been in that setting for the better part of a decade, much to the dismay of friends and family. But when I am with them, there’s nothing that they appreciate more than me being fully with them. And so, they also understand when they can’t get a hold of me for three, four, six hours at a time, they get that same attention when I’m with them. So that’s A.

Pete Mockaitis
And to your point about people appreciating it so much that you’re with them, I have heard this comment made about a number of famous people. And, let’s see, I’m trying to, and I think there was a pope, there was a saint, there was a president, you know, there was a celebrity. And folks were stunned by this mesmerizing power they had, it’s like, “It’s like he was just with you.”

And it’s funny because, in a way, it doesn’t seem like that’s that extraordinary, and yet, apparently, it really is because people are struck when it occurs, particularly if it’s by someone who is of elevated stature, we’ll say. It’s like, “Oh, I am so lowly and they are so important, and they gave to me this gift of their full attention. And I was awestruck by that.”

Katie O’Malley
Our attention is a currency to spend, just like our money. And I think we have two of them right now. We have our money, and we have our attention, and so your point is spot on. And even if it’s just two folks having a conversation, and you’re able to do that for somebody, that’s how starved we are for attention from another human, is that that will stick with you much longer than most anything else that might happen to you in a day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and talking about tripwires, let’s see. Well, it’s funny as it’s so meta. We’re talking about attention. You mentioned it’s like a double helix. And then I was transported back in time to high school in which I was looking at a spread in my biology textbook about the double helix and the just amazingness of the process of DNA transcription and translation.

And the first time I learned about that, I was like, “Holy smokes, this is for real. This happens all the time, constantly in our bodies? This is so complex and information rich and miraculous and crazy.” So, anyway, that has very little to do with the conversation we’re having now. The revelations of biology from Pete in high school.

And so, I was there for, I don’t know how many seconds, more than three, and so let’s talk about that. When you’re attending to yourself and other, there will be times in which you are drawn elsewhere. What do I do with that?

Katie O’Malley
Every time, Pete. Every time you’ll be drawn elsewhere. Everytime.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, every time. So what do I do with that?

Katie O’Malley
Every time. I do this for a living. It happens.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what do I do with that?

Katie O’Malley
The very first thing is that your brain needs to know you’re going to do something with that thought or that you’re going to stay on that path. And so, when I was in graduate school and training up to be a therapist, it was one of the first things they said to us, “Every session you have, your brain is going to go somewhere else. It’s not going to be on your client for 52 and a half minutes, or whatever insurance companies pay for now.”

And that’s okay. That’s normal. That’s how we’re wired. But you have to do something with that thought. And the very best thing to do in that moment, jot it down, write it down. And if you can’t do that, then almost silently talking to yourself, saying, This is important to me, and I’m going to come back to it later. But this person is more important right now.”

And just practicing the compassion of you’re not going to stay focused on the person the whole time. You know this is coming. It’s going to happen at some point. The goal is how quickly can you become aware of it and come back into the conversation? That’s the goal, to reduce that time footprint you’re away.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s intriguing. And I liked what you said about the note. We can write it down or you can sort of mentally write it down. And I’m thinking there are so many like memory tricks associated with forming associations. So, maybe it’s like, “Hey, next time I sit at my desk, I’m going to create a mental imagination association between sitting at desk and, whatever, the DNA double helix or whatever.”

And so, then you’ve effectively “written it down” in your mind such that you feel like you’ve got the permission to let go of it all the way.

Katie O’Malley
Exactly. And it could even be as easy, Pete, as saying, “Gosh, Pete, the double helix is important to you. Be sure to come back to it after this conversation. That’s enough.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Cool. All right. So, attention, it will certainly slip. We become aware. We note. We return. Understood. How about intention?

Katie O’Malley
Yeah, intention, this is the one that’s really tricky, especially for those of us who have been socialized in America and in our culture and in our society, where extroversion and speaking is prized over folks who are more introverted, quiet, not always using their voice, right?

But what I always say is communication has not taken place if the message was not received by the other person. So you can talk faster, you can talk louder, but if the other person isn’t attending to you and trying to understand, communication hasn’t taken place.

So, with intention, within the AIR formula, it’s your constant. It’s never going to change, whether you’re in a boardroom or at the baseball field for your kiddos. Your intention is always going to be to do your very best to understand what is being shared with you and not fall into the trap of trying to respond, debate, win someone over with your perspective.

Because I think and believe we’ve been so socialized to drive toward a singular outcome or result in a conversation that we’ve missed the point of most conversation is about exploration and learning. And if we can shift our mindset, and this is where the intention is internally, to, “Did I learn something?” instead of, “Did I convince Uncle Pat that he’s wrong about this particular piece of news or information?” that cuts down on 90% of the roadblock to be able to listen to understand.

Pete Mockaitis
That makes a lot of sense because it’s a much more achievable objective to learn something and understand someone than it is to convince or have a brilliant rebuttal because that will necessarily require substantial cognitive attention to formulate, as opposed to, “Oh, I’m going to understand this person and learn,” then naturally, your brain is pointing itself at them and, hence, facilitating listening.

Katie O’Malley
Yes, exactly. When we try and figure out what we’re going to say next before the other person has even finished speaking, we’ve missed out on some really good information, and probably information that could connect us, right?

And there are moments where moving from a stance of dialogue to debate might be required in a courtroom or in a negotiation. But even then, when you’re demonstrating an intent to really understand somebody, it is very difficult for them to show up in a defensive way.

What usually ends up happening is then they’ll mirror us and try and give us the same space and reciprocity that we gave them. So, after they finish sharing and then you do the recognition part, which we’ll talk about in a second, you can then say, if they haven’t already invited you to, which they already probably have is, “I’m wondering if I can share my perspective on this or my experience with this.”

Because, so often, too, even if it’s not contentious or a debate, where people will default to is, “I’ve had that same experience. I am going to tell them about my experience so that they can now understand a part of me so we can connect.” That’s not connection. You haven’t given them the full dignity of their own experience by recognizing and giving them the dignity of really being seen, which happens in the last part.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s hear about this recognizing and dignity.

Katie O’Malley
Yeah, recognition. So I’m sure you’ve probably heard this, “Therapists get paid to just sit there and nod and listen,” right? Listening is a very active brain activity if you are doing it right and doing it well.

And the goal is to help the other person make meaning of what they’re sharing, help them feel seen and heard, and that you’re making the attempt to understand by offering recognition and by – how do I want to say this? – bearing witness to that moment of their life. We’re social creatures. That’s all we want is to know that we exist and we matter in this realm that we’re living in.

And so, an example that I’ve given before is, your kid comes home from school. You just logged off of back-to-back-to-back Zoom meetings for the last nine hours, and you asked them how their day at school was. They’re telling you, whether or not you’re actually listening and trying to make meaning of it for yourself or for them, might depend on the day.

But what I encourage people to do is be able to summarize what you’ve heard, share an observation of something regarding their body language, their facial expressions, their energy, and finally reflect a feeling back to them.

So it would sound something like this, “Wow, it sounds like you had a very full day at school. But I noticed your face light up when you talked about the experiments that you ran in science class. That experience must have been really interesting for you. Can you tell me more about that?” And just see where they take it, right? Instead of, “Yeah, that sounds like a school day.”

Pete Mockaitis
“That was your school day.”

Katie O’Malley
“Let’s get your shin guards on and hop in the car.” And sometimes people will say, “Katie, I don’t have the time.” I’m like, “Well, you have the time while they’re talking to try and process the information in a new way, and then share back a different sentence to them.”

And they can be telling you about the next thing as you’re getting them ready to go to their activity or do their homework or whatever it might be. And the same holds true with colleagues, partners, friends, it’s just, “My only goal, summarize or paraphrase what I’ve heard. Let them know that I’ve seen them and offer a reflection of feeling.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And what’s interesting about that, it’s so funny, I think that I can sometimes be a little reluctant to do a reflection of feeling or to even say people’s names for whatever reason.

Katie O’Malley
It’s vulnerable, that’s why.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s sort of like, “Well, okay.” Well, lay it on me, Katie, what’s going on? It’s vulnerable for me to say your name?

Katie O’Malley
Because then my attention is going to be directly on you. That’s a choice you’re making.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that’s true. And I am almost a little nervous that if I say a name, it might come across, it’s almost like aggressive or demanding or my tone, because the name is such a special word to us, that my tone might not match how someone wants to have their name said. It’s like, “Actually, the emphasis is more of a KAY-tee as opposed to a kay-TEE. So, Pete, if you don’t mind.”

But great thought. I mean, there’s some counseling in action a level deeper, so there’s vulnerability there. And I think there’s also vulnerability on the emotion side. It’s like, “Ooh, I don’t want to say the wrong emotion,” because it’s like, “You idiot. Did you…? Where were you? Like, why would you take that that way?”

And yet, I think, in practice, and tell us if this is the case, Katie, in practice, I think even if you get the emotion wrong, people appreciate that you identified there was something noteworthy going on there. It’s like, “No, science wasn’t interesting. It was horrifying. Dissecting this animal? Ugh!” You know, it was like, “Oh, well, it was certainly something, and I noticed that it was something,” so you still kind of get some points for that.

Katie O’Malley
You do. And the opportunity to clarify, right, and to keep that person engaged, you’re absolutely right in that you’re going to reflect the wrong feeling. Just accept it. You are at some point. But the purpose isn’t to get the reflection of feeling right. It is one of the most high-level complex skills to be able to practice as a therapist or counselor and get that right.

But what it does is, to your point, shows the other person that you’re making the attempt. And then what they get to do is clarify that for you. And they’re willing to do it because they understand that you’re really making an attempt to understand them, and they’ll keep going. And this is what builds trust and connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’re right. And I’m thinking about my own experience in therapy contexts with therapists who are supposed to be the best at this, to have misidentified my emotion. And I never walked away thinking, “Oh, my, what a hack.” It advanced the conversation, like, “No, I wasn’t angry. I was scared.” It’s like, “Oh, well, that’s still rich, fertile ground for us to continue pressing into.” So it was valuable having even the wrong emotion reflected.

Katie O’Malley
Because it gives you the opportunity to really consider what you were feeling in that moment. And that’s the piece I think we so often forget as humans, is that we are feeling beings that happen to have a helpful thought every once in a while. But we really fancy ourselves as these incredibly cognitive, thoughtful beings that happen to have a feeling every once in a while.

And the moment that somebody helps us go there, we’re able to reconnect to our own humanity and develop a deeper sense of self-understanding, which, again, vulnerable but also incredibly valuable and a conduit for building trust.

Pete Mockaitis
And a follow-up question, you said it’s, generally, not ideal to share, “Hey, I had that experience, too,” but rather to finish fully listening to the other person and then perhaps asking for that permission. So, it’s interesting the way our free associative brains, particularly this mind, for sure, if someone says something, it sparks something, and then I’m excited about it. And it’s like, “Oh, I could share this because it feels connective to me, but it may not feel connective to them.” Do you have any pro tips for how do I navigate this domain?

Katie O’Malley
One of the things that I think is really important to remember about experience. It is not the shared experience that actually connects us. It is the shared emotion as a result of that experience. And so, oftentimes, because I am a very enthusiastic, energetic person, and I struggle with this when someone shares an experience and I’ve had a similar one.

What I’ll say is, “There’s something I want to come back to but, first, here’s what I heard. Am I following? Am I tracking?” And then it’ll be that invitation again from that person, “Oh, what was that thing you wanted to share?” And you can say, “Oh, I had a similar experience to you in this particular domain. For me, it kicked up a lot of worry and anxiety. But, for you, seemed to kick up excitement. Can you talk more about that?”

And, again, going back to that reflection of feeling piece. And it’s not so that we can diagnose and pathologize folks, but that is where true connection happens. Because to recognize the feeling that we’ve had around an experience, requires us to be vulnerable and access that, to then be able to reflect it back to somebody else and share that is what creates the connection and invitation to keep going a level deeper.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really good distinction. It’s the shared emotion instead of the shared experience providing the connection. So, if you had an experience and then that happened to me, too, it’s almost like, “Okay.” It’s like, “That’s not doing much for me.” But it is when it’s like, “Oh, yeah. Emotionally, you really understand.”

And in a way, it could be a completely different experience, but it’s a shared emotions. It’s like, “Ah, yes. I, too, was very excited about an opportunity that, unfortunately, did not come to pass. And so, I know, I’ve experienced that disappointment vibe and then it almost makes you wonder about blah, blah, blah.” Like, “Yes, exactly, that’s how I feel in this moment. Thank you.”

And so, I hear what you’re saying, is that that’s much more connecting there, and to wait instead of like, “Well, back to me and my stuff.”

Katie O’Malley
Exactly, because then it’s very clear to them you haven’t been listening. You went off into your own little world of your experience instead of staying with them in that moment.

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

Katie O’Malley
I did a TEDx Talk on this back in June, so you can give it a Google, the, “Attention We Give: Lessons From Listening for a Living.” Test it out. Practice some self-compassion. You’re not going to be great at it when you start. Nobody is. But when we put in the effort to do this for others, it’s only going to enrich our relationships and experiences as we move through the world.

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

Katie O’Malley
One of my favorite quotes is, “Chance favors the connected mind,” to be able to seize an opportunity, right, because you’ve done the work of reflection and self-understanding to know that this is an opportunity for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I was taking that a completely different way in terms of, when you’re making connections in your mind about a thing, and you encounter stimuli in the context of having reflected upon that thing, it serves as an idea, or inspiration, potential solution, and it feels like a huge lucky break.

Katie O’Malley
Yeah, that, too.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, multiple, multiple layers there. Okay.

Katie O’Malley
Multiple interpretations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Katie O’Malley
Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut.

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

Katie O’Malley
I love a notebook, a good notebook, and a pen. There’s nothing better than the mind-body connection of writing something down instead of letting AI take our notes for us.

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

Katie O’Malley
“We are humans that happen to work. We are not workers who happen to be human.”

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

Katie O’Malley
EncourageCoaching.org, or you can find me on Instagram, encouragecoachchicago. Great to go there if you’re ready to rage quit your job, for some funny content or cute videos of my dog.

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

Katie O’Malley
Get on the listening train and pick one of the elements of the AIR formula this week to practice just one at a time and stack it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. 

Feb 02
0

1125: How to Reclaim Your Presence, Increase Your Influence, and Build Relationships that Last with Ravi Rajani

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Ravi Rajani shows you how to build meaningful relationships, one conversation at a time.

You’ll Learn

  1. The Three C’s of building trust
  2. What makes people say, “Tell me more”
  3. Why compliments come across as insincere

About Ravi 

Ravi Rajani is an international keynote speaker, transformational coach and LinkedIn Learning instructor, with over 65,000 people having taken his courses on Conscious and Charismatic Communication. Widely seen as one of the world’s top communication experts, mission-driven leaders, entrepreneurs and organizations such as Oracle NetSuite, T-Mobile, and Sherwin-Williams have engaged Ravi to help them and their people become masterful communicators so they can build meaningful relationships that amplify revenue growth and cultivate a culture of trust.

Off stage or camera, Ravi lives just outside of London, UK, with his wife, son, daughter and furry little West Highland Terrier. He loves the movie Limitless, a good stand-up comedian and a quintessentially British suit.

Resources Mentioned

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Ravi Rajani Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ravi, welcome!

Ravi Rajani
You nailed the name. You nailed it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I practiced.

Ravi Rajani
First, there wasn’t even, like, “Cut. We’re going to have to run that back.” You nailed it. And because of that, I’m feeling good, I’m feeling great.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, maybe that’s our first communication habit, perhaps, for limitless influence right there, say people’s names right.

Ravi Rajani
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom about relationships, the communication, and influence. So could you kick us off with a particularly surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made about us humans and communication over the course of your career studying this stuff?

Ravi Rajani
The one that rings the most true for me right now is us humans spend a lot of time trying to be interesting versus leading with trying to be interested in the human being opposite us.

Now, for credit, Dale Carnegie said something along the lines of, to be interesting, be interested. And I do find that the more conversations I have with others, especially in the noisy world we live in today, which can create a lack of clarity and all of the side effects that manifest as a result of that, we can be busy, we can be running from meeting to meeting. And as a result, we lack presence.

And when we lack presence, we can often revert to, “Okay, reactive behavior.” And the way I look at reactive behavior is pulled from the spiritual wisdom of Kabbalah, which is any behavior that is grounded in lack, scarcity, or fear. So, me, meeting you, and leading with my accolades, awards, and credentials would be a form of reactive behavior. And that’s me trying to be interesting in the hope you will find me interesting.

But, actually, what I really should lead with is asking impactful, meaningful, and genuine questions. For me, I found that to be one of the most impactful ways to begin building rapport and meaningful relationship. But what about you, because you’ve had a lot of people on this show? What have you seen?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, I think that’s a really fun and solid one right there. And I liked the part you said about trying to be interesting. The word trying, just sort of the effort level required because it’s, in some ways, it’s much simpler to make eye contact, ask some questions, as opposed to, “Oh, yes, I was studying for my sommelier exam.” It’s like, “Oh, that sounds hard to, like, do stuff to be interesting.” Whereas if you’re just interested in people, then that’ll get the job done easier and feel better to them.

Ravi Rajani
Right. I mean, isn’t it hard to figure out what somebody cares about if you are dominating a conversation, doing all the talking?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Ravi Rajani
And, really, when we figure out what somebody cares about in this season of their life, that builds a beautiful foundation for a meaningful business relationship, and in life as well. But, yes, my friend, I subscribe to what you’re saying. I subscribe to what you’re saying.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, so you got this book, Relationship Currency, what’s the big idea here?

Ravi Rajani
Well, the big idea is that, in a world obsessed with automation without intention, conversations that lack connection, and also growth without introspection, leaders, teams, entrepreneurs, and professionals are really engaging in short-term behavior that kills our long-term reputation.

And what I believe, more than ever before, is what we’re craving is human connection. We’re craving human connection, and we’re craving real relationships grounded in trust. And this book teaches five habits which will help people communicate in a way that builds trust in a conversation and earns meaningful relationship so they can receive more of what they desire in the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds handy. Tell us, what are a few super common short-term behaviors that kill long-term relationships that you see all the time?

Ravi Rajani
Well, tell me, I’m curious, from your perspective, in the arena of business, what is your pet peeve when it comes to conversations which you know are grounded in, let’s go back to the concept of reactive behavior, lack, scarcity, fear, short-termism?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, the first thing that comes to mind for pet peeve and business conversations is customer service things, in terms of, if I’m making a call to a company because I have a need, then it’s pretty drastic, right?

Like, I couldn’t ask the AI chat bots. I couldn’t find it on your website. I even used the Google and site colon website name. I mean, I need to talk to a real human who knows something about the thing by the time I call. And yet, they’re going to every length possible to push me away from having a real human who knows the stuff, talk to the thing.

It seems frequently. And, of course, some businesses do this excellently, but that was my first thought. Like, I saw that I had a package that couldn’t be delivered because they had to have a signature. I saw the email just before we got here, I was like, “Oh, boy, that’s going to be a process.” It’s, like, I think that’s probably my top pet peeve is that.

Well, if you talk about short term behavior, I guess it’s a matter of the organization, because I’ve worked with call centers before. The organization is looking to minimize costs as much as possible in terms of, like, dealing with all those customers and their issues. And so, yeah, the biggest pet peeve is customer service interactions with businesses.

Ravi Rajani
Isn’t it funny that when a company is trying to reduce costs, they forget at what cost? And it’s funny, you know, Pete, I had this experience just recently. So, I bought some electrolytes and amino acid supplements from a company here in the UK six months ago. And I recently realized, I was like, “I never received that package, yet they said it was delivered.”

So I dropped them an email, thinking that, “Nothing’s really going to happen here, but let’s see.” And it was incredible, the service. A human on the other end, emailing me fast, saying, “Hey, we want to make this right. This didn’t work out. Fill in this form really quickly, we’ve done most of it for you. We’ll get one out to you.”

Literally, I filled that form out two days ago and the supplements arrived today. And they’re like, “We’re really sorry for your inconvenience.” I’m now a customer for life. But I went into that being skeptical about if I would be a customer again. Within 48 hours, I’m now a customer for life.

And it’s so funny how these imperfect moments are actually gifts and opportunities for connection. Yet, as a society, we run away from imperfection. But actually, to be perfect would be denying our humanity. It’s just a funny world we live in.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And, well, now I’m thinking about business in terms of, if you look at, in the universe of sales and marketing, folks can spend great sums to shout out to the universe, “Hey, somebody, maybe, please pay attention to us,” and they’re delighted if, I don’t know, one in a thousand people who hear an ad, you know, click or take some sort of an action.

And then, yet when you’re actually in there, it’s like, “Here I am. I showed up. I gave you money. I could be delighted and won over forever.” It’s like, “Nah.”

Ravi Rajani 
Right? The best way to explain it, as I see it through my lens, is nightclubs. Back in the day, nightclubs were a thing. And you would see certain nightclubs, the queues would be, it would feel like a mile long. You’d look at it and you’d go, “Damn, Pete, that looks awesome.” You wait in the queue for one hour.

Pete Mockaitis
“It must be cool if there’s a line.”

Ravi Rajani
It must be cool. It must be great. There’s a line, it must be good. One hour goes by, “Oh, it’s cold outside. But you know what? It’s going to be worth it.” Two hours goes by, you get to the front, and you’re like, “Oh, yes, I’m about to go in,” and you get there, it’s empty. The service is subpar. The drinks are awful. You see what I mean?

And I feel like we live in a world where we are prioritizing width over depth. We really are. And a big part of this book is coming back to a world where we prioritize depth.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I think that example is fun with regard to, you said there’s a line and then you get in and it’s empty, you’re like, “Oh, wait,” because then you know, and I remember there was a bar when I went to college, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, there was a bar that pulled this stunt all the time.

And it just made me hate them because as soon as you enter, it’s like, “Oh, I guess I was lied to. You were not actually at capacity. You just wanted to deceive us, you know, to create an illusion.”

And I think that it’s quite common to have just little…It seems like, in marketing, for example, we’re not outright lied to, but we’re misled. It’s like, “Okay, technically your AI software product can sort of, kind of, do the thing that you say it can, but, really, it doesn’t actually save any time for the purpose for which you’re marketing it in a real-world scenario.”

So I feel, like, that’s the case with a lot of things, it’s like, “I’m not getting a full-blown lie. Like, being told yes when it’s really no. But there’s key omissions that allow me…” there’s probably a great word for this. Is it dissemble? I don’t remember the word. To be led, to be very deliberately said a number of things that lead me to infer that which you want me to infer, though you know it is not entirely true. There’s got to be a word for that.

Ravi Rajani
There must be. I mean, I don’t have one for it, but what is coming up, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
But it ain’t honest. It ain’t honest, it ain’t candid, it doesn’t make me trust.

Ravi Rajani
Well, the key word there, like you said, trust. So how I see it, is trust, yes, is a buzzword overused by politicians, business leaders, companies, marketers, the list goes on.

But I’ve been really thinking for some time about, “How does one establish trust?” And when I tapped into my intuition, my story, and my experiences, I came up with something called the three Cs, the three C’s of trust. And when we earn that, we’re to earn trust, so the first C is connection. The second C is character. The third C is competence. So let’s take a look at each of them.

So connection, for me, is the emotional glue that forges a bond between two human beings. Then you have character, which is the invisible values which travel with your energy, verbal communication, and nonverbal communication. And then, we have competence, which is one’s ability to signal their ability to solve somebody’s problem and, ultimately, increase or decrease their credibility stock.

And we live in a world where, “Okay, I’m going to connect with you. I’m going to pitch you the right story.” “Great, I’m bought in.” But now, like you said in your example, I haven’t really received what I paid for, per se. So, actually, I don’t believe you have a character of integrity. Done.

Now, even if you connect with somebody, and they can solve your problem, but they have a shady character, are you going to be in business with them for long? No. Even if you connect with somebody and they’ve got great character, but they’re just likable, but they can’t solve your problem, that’s only going to get you so far. I mean, you could play this in several ways, but you see where I’m going. You really need all three singing and dancing at the same time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. It’s catchy, easy to remember, and it’s in order. It was like, first, “I like this guy.” Second, it was like, “Okay, it seems like they’re being straight and direct and following through, just like the way they said they would. And sure enough, they’re getting it done nicely. I like what I see in terms of the product service delivered on the other side. That’s cool.” So you’ve also got five communication habits. Could you run us through these?

Ravi Rajani
Yes, so habit one is transform your story. Habit two is ask conscious questions. Habit three is unearth your charisma. Habit four is tell stories that inspire change. And habit five is become the trusted guide.

Pete Mockaitis
I love this. Now, can you tell me, if I develop and do these five things well, what will happen for me? What kinds of results? Could you share a cool story to illustrate?

Ravi Rajani
Magical things, Pete. But the way I see it is, when one is able to embody these five habits, and by the way, it doesn’t happen overnight. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts, magic bullets, quick fixes. This is a process where you ascend the competence ladder until you get to unconscious competence.

But really, the outcome of this is, once again, being able to build a meaningful relationship through communicating for trust, and the outcome being, yes, increased revenue, yes, leadership growth, but a culture of trust and an environment where people actually want to belong, which is important.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds good. Well, can I hear a story of someone who did just that, that they saw a transformation when they started doing this stuff?

Ravi Rajani
Okay, let’s talk about a specific transformation that happened to me. Let’s talk about this, okay? So, this, by the way, connects to habit number three, which is unearth your charisma. But let’s start with this.

So I believe that we have charisma all wrong in society. I believe I had charisma all wrong for many, many years because I used to think, Pete, it was about receiving accolades, awards, being the smoothest talker, being in the spotlight, etc.

Now, I’ve got to thank my younger self for doing the best he could with the awareness that he had at the time, but how I look at it now is an innate superpower that allows somebody to feel significant in our presence, meaning communicating in the way that makes somebody feel like they matter.

And inside of the book, something I talk about is how imperfection equals connection and how it can break down barriers. So get this, I can’t remember the exact year, but I have a feeling it was like summer ‘22, summer 2023.

But, anyway, I’m on a Zoom call with the COO of a SaaS company headquartered in Singapore. Now, he had heard me speak, you know, a couple of months back, Pete. So, he has some context on me. I had very little context on him.

So we kicked off the call. We get the corporate niceties out of the way. And I see a picture in his background, and I thought, “Okay, what a beautiful opportunity to build rapport.” So I say, “Oh, hey, man, that picture over there, oh, that’s an incredible picture of your daughters over there. How old are they?”

Thought nothing of it. I hear a pause. And he’s confused. He looks back and he looks at me. He looks back again, but this time his head is stuck looking at the wall and I’m thinking, “Is this dude going to turn around?” And he slowly turns his head around, but this time he’s smiling like a Cheshire cat, and he says, “Ravi, that’s not my daughter. That’s my wife.”

Okay. So I’m squirming, right? I’m squirming like a looney tune, and I’m thinking, “I’ve blown this. This sucks, oh, my gosh. That’s all folks,” right? That sort of energy. The best thing happened. It instantly humanized the conversation. It instantly broke down barriers, and that conversation went on for an hour long, an hour plus long. And we really deeply connected.
And here’s what happened at the end. He said, “Hey, I’d love for you to come in and deliver a storytelling workshop for our sales and customer success team. Are we doing it?” I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” And here’s the thing, here’s what I find, Pete, is so much of the time through life, we try and deflect imperfect moments, cover them up, already shy away from owning our mistakes.

And I’m finding, more so than ever before, that when you feel or see a mistake appearing, pause, smile, and say, “This is a gift. This is a gift,” and use that imperfect moment as an opportunity to showcase your humanity, because, otherwise, we can just end up being corporate robots.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s well said because it feels so rare that someone, especially if you’re proactive, in terms of, like, if they let you know about the mistake in advance, like, “Hey, just so you know, unfortunately, we made this mistake. We’re so sorry. Here’s how we’re going to fix it.” You’re almost taken aback, like, “Oh, okay. Well, understood. Thanks for letting me know.”

And then it’s like, “All right, I know this person is not trying to hide something.” It’s a good feeling. So, lovely. I hear you that that is a great trust builder and we can feel better about mistakes as a result, as they come about. Well, could you then share with us a couple of your top tips or perspectives for putting these five habits into practice?

Ravi Rajani
Yeah, you know, each habit has a practice. And the idea is, when you engage in the practice, you’re engaging in a new behavior, which substitutes an existing behavior. And when you engage in that behavior long enough, what will happen, a proportion of those behaviors will turn into habits, hopefully positive habits, which point towards the North Star that you care about in this season of your life.

Now, one of the most popular practices sits inside of habit two. So habit two is about asking conscious questions, Pete. And, by the way, when I say conscious, what I’m talking about is asking questions that are grounded in positive intentionality.

Now, when I say positive intentionality, there’s a difference, Pete, between me asking you a question because I’m secretly trying to lead you to a product or service that benefits my bank balance at the expense of yours, versus asking you a question that’s designed to actually get to the heart of your truth. So that’s really what we’re talking about here.

Now, there are different types of conscious questions that I teach, but one of them I’d love to share now is empathetic questions. Now, empathy, a bit of a buzzword, let’s be real, so let’s define it. How I see it is being interested in what somebody is emotionally invested in, in this season of their life, aka, as we said at the top of the show, caring about what somebody else cares about.

How do we show that? Because I can tell you, Pete, “My friend, I care about you. I care about what you care about.” And it’s like, “Okay, cool, show me.” How do you show somebody without shoving it down their throat? Well, I’d like to introduce you to what I call the what, feel, who method.

So picture this. Okay, you’re a leader. You’re busy. It’s a noisy world. Meeting to meeting to meeting and you’re late for a follow-up meeting with a new team member. You walk into the room, you slam the door, you’ve got a sandwich in your mouth and you say the following words, you say, “Ah, hey, Pete, how are you?”

Harmless, but here’s my truth, they’re lazy. That’s lazy. It’s unintentional. It’s unintentional and it’s lazy. What we’re looking to do is build depth and intimacy in a relationship. So the what, feel, who method. Instead, what I could say is, “Pete, the last time we spoke, you mentioned that you and your wife were moving home, but you were feeling super stressed because your daughter was feeling really unhappy about the change. How has she settled in?”

All of a sudden, you are sharing a story with me about how things are in your personal life. I’m showing you that I care about what you care about by remembering what’s important to you in this season of your life, moving home, how you felt about it, stressed, and who it’s impacting, your daughter. I’m showing you that I care, that I have empathy without shoving it down your throat.

Now, that is, for me, anyway, so much more potent and powerful than, “Hey, how are you?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s good. And it’s interesting how it’s easy to do and it’s easy not to do exactly this, because you’ve heard that’s what’s going on in someone’s life, and yet, in the course of living our own lives, when we re-encounter that person, it just doesn’t seem that top of mind.

But it’s quite possible to, I don’t know, take notes, have a pause before you begin the conversations, to say, “What is probably important to this person right now in the background?” It’s like, “Oh, of course. Well, they had that big date, you know? Their kid went away to college.”

And so it’s, like, it takes, for me at least, a stop-and-prompt-myself moment to actually execute that because I have found myself in so many conversations, where someone brings up the thing that they brought about their life that they had brought up previously. It was like, “Oh, jeez. Duh, I should have asked you about that.” So, yeah, it’s easy to do, it’s easy not to do.

Ravi Rajani
It is. My question to somebody who’s feeling that way is, “If it was working for you, you wouldn’t still be listening. You wouldn’t still be listening to this part of the show.” So, I often feel there can be resistance around trying something new.

And here’s what I would say to the listener is, look, this is my truth. It doesn’t have to be your truth, but try it on for size.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you get pushback when you suggest people do this? Because it sounds like, “Duh, of course, we should all do this, but we just forget. So maybe be conscientious and thoughtful about not forgetting.” But are you telling me people say, “Oh, Ravi, I could never do that.” Like, what’s that resistance sound like?

Ravi Rajani
Well, the resistance doesn’t sound like that. It’s a lot more subtle, I find. And it’s not necessarily related to this specific practice and habit, but, in general, what I find is when the cost of making change outweighs the cost of just staying as is, aka, the status quo, people are happy to sit in the status quo. So when you introduce something new that challenges their way of doing things, their viewpoint of the world and belief, you can often get resistance, right?

And it could be through disengagement in a workshop, you know, a corporate workshop where somebody may not have actually paid out of their own wallet to be there, right? Their leader’s paid, they’re getting told, “You should come in here.” They’re like, “Ah, I don’t want to listen to this. I don’t want to try this,” or whatever it could be, “I don’t want to try something new.”

And really, what we’re, I believe, anyway, that we’re selling, whether you’re selling a product, a service, an idea, or a vision, you’re actually selling change. You’re asking somebody to depart from a current set of behaviors and adopt new ones. And that is hard. If change were easy, my friend, everybody would stick to their New Year’s resolutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, I’ve also got to hear, you’ve got a tip for pitching yourself in 12 seconds. What’s the story here?

Ravi Rajani
Oh, gosh, where did you get that? Where did you get that? That’s brilliant! Where did you get that from? Is that AI?

Pete Mockaitis
We stalked you for hours. We stalked you for hours before we have this conversation.

Ravi Rajani
Did AI stalk me or something? Because that’s brilliant.

Pete Mockaitis
No, human beings.

Ravi Rajani
Wow, I like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Shout out to my team, yeah.

Ravi Rajani
Kudos. Kudos to the team. Okay, cool. So there’s something I don’t even talk about in the book, but it’s something called the magnetic message. And some of you will be thinking, “What are you talking about?” Let’s take it back to when Steve Jobs first released the iPod.

Now, he didn’t come out on stage and pitch the features and the functionality of the product. No. He did something different. He said something along the lines of, it’s like having a thousand songs in your pocket, “Rah! Rah!” That’s the crowd going wild, right? And it became viral worthy. I don’t even know if virality was a thing there, but if it was, he would have gone viral.

Now, that’s a metaphor. What I’m talking about with the magnetic message is something which embodies that energy, but through an analogy. So, a couple of years back, I was working with a SaaS company in the US, and for one area of their business, they worked with product leaders. And if I had to describe what they help them with in one word, it would be innovation.

But they can’t go to events, well, they can if they want to, I wouldn’t suggest it, but they can’t really go to events and say, “Well, we help product leaders with innovation,” right?

Or, we can’t say, “Well, on this one fine day in 2006, our founder…” like you can’t lead with a story. We need to earn the opportunity to share a story. So how do we do that? By sharing a 12-second magnetic message, aka, an analogy.

And one that I came up with for this team is, “So, you know how Blockbuster struggled to innovate and just allowed Netflix to crush them? Well, what we do is help product leaders prevent their company from becoming the next Blockbuster.”

Pete Mockaitis
I love that Blockbuster example because it’s really emotionally resonant and reminds me of Vince Gilligan, who’s my favorite show is “Breaking Bad.” He’s got these high-concept pitches, like, “Breaking Bad” is, “I’m going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface.” Or, “Pluribus is the most miserable person on earth must save the world from happiness.” And it just makes you go, “Huh, what? I got to know all about that.”

Ravi Rajani
Isn’t that brilliant? Like, that’s something that punchy, because you are really, what you’re trying to do is earn the following question, “Tell me more.” You know, I worked with a hotel, a large hotel group last year, and they were thinking about how can they pitch their wedding venues.

And one thing that we came up with was comparing it to flying on a first-class flight and how everything is taken care of so you can focus on the journey, really, and the thing that really matters the most. And we created an analogy around that, that’s sticky. It’s universal. It hits.

And, really, with that Blockbuster analogy, what it’s really grounded in is something which every human being can relate to, which is a fear of being left behind. Nobody wanted to be left behind in the tribe back in the day, right? So a fear of being left behind, a lack of evolution, we can all relate to that. So. for me, anyway, that’s how I look at it, often entering a conversation with something like that.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right. It’s like… It’s the difference between conceptual, theoretical, talking about something versus, “Oh, yeah, I understand.” It’s, like, we’re connecting to stuff that’s already nicely lodged in our brains and has some emotion. Like a product manager is like, “I don’t want to be like Blockbuster,” you know, or, it’s like, “Oh, I remember Mr. Chips and I remember Scarface, and, whoa, that’d be a crazy transformation,” right?

So, we’re sort of latching onto some embedded emotional associations and language that’s really meaningful. Whereas, sometimes, when I see kind of corporate speak is sort of like, “Well, we provide a diverse array of advisory services for the mid-tier business leaders.” It’s like, “Huh?” As opposed to, you know, “We make sure you don’t run out of cash.” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, we’re worried about that. That sounds helpful. Tell me more.”

Ravi Rajani
I hear you, my friend. And I also feel as though there is a journey with that. Often, we have to start with the corporate spiel to get to realize this is not connecting to eventually get to something which is a little bit spicier. So what else you got up your sleeve, because that was a good question? What else you got up your sleeve? I’m curious now.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. I would like to hear about your thoughts on compliments and awkwardness.

Ravi Rajani
I love how you say awkwardness, okay? Here’s how I see it. So, interestingly, there’s a dude called Professor Norihiro Sadato. And in his piece of research, he found that when we receive a compliment, it actually activates the same part of our brain that lights up when we receive a financial reward. Cool, huh?

So compliments are great. Compliments work, but don’t be Mr. Creepy and start giving too many compliments, inauthentic compliments, inappropriate compliments, and say, “Yeah, Ravi told me to do it.” Don’t weaponize what I’m about to share. Okay, disclaimer.

So I could say to Pete, “Great presentation. Good presentation.” Great intention, but the delivery lacks, once again, intimacy and depth. Or, I could say, “Pete, that was one of the most impactful presentations I’ve heard at this trade show, literally all day.”

“In the first three minutes, when you shared that personal story about imposter syndrome as a new CEO and how you overcame it, wow, that was super powerful. And you know what, funny enough, you’ve actually got me thinking about how to use more personal stories in my own presentations. Thank you for that.”

So, the difference there is what I called the ASI framework. The second compliment had authenticity, specificity and impact. Authenticity, what I’m talking about here is leading with a genuinely positive observation. S is specificity, so avoid being generic. And I is impact, sharing how this specific moment has impacted you personally.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That’s all the difference between great speech and the real deal. That’s good. All right. Well, tell me, Ravi, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Ravi Rajani
I’m very excited about the audio book of this book. I don’t know why I just felt like saying that. But anyway, hit me with these questions. You’ve asked incredible questions today. So I’m looking forward to some curve balls.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Well, it’s pretty straightforward. Tell me about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Ravi Rajani
Okay, so are you a Christopher Nolan fan? Batman? I mean, Batman?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Among the best. Among the best.

Ravi Rajani 
Incredible. Incredible. So, Bruce, aka Christian Bale, is on his jet with his butler, Alfred, and he says, “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy. And I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I’m flesh, I’m blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed, but as a symbol, as a symbol, I can be everlasting.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Ravi Rajani
Let me give you one which I haven’t finished yet, but Essentialism by Greg McKeown. So love the idea of less is better.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Ravi Rajani
I’ve recently been digging deeper into Claude AI and I’m liking it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Ravi Rajani
Telling stories that inspire change, aka, habit four inside of the book.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that folks really connect and resonate with and they end up quoting back to you often or retweeting, etc?

Ravi Rajani
One I’m hearing recently is, I’ve heard recently, was “The depth of your questions dictates the depth of your relationships.”

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

Ravi Rajani
Where I hang out the most right now is LinkedIn. So what I’d love to know is, if you are listening to this right now, drop me a DM and let me know what impacted you the most in this episode. I’d love to know.

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

Ravi Rajani
Well, if you are looking to be awesome at your job, I’m biased, but I will say learning how to communicate with influence should be high on your priority list.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Ravi, thank you.

Ravi Rajani
Thank you, my friend.

Jan 29
0

1124: How to Build Hope and Combat Burnout at Work with Jen Fisher

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Jen Fisher discusses the strategic value of hope—and how leaders can harness it to improve wellbeing and transform the workplace.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why hope is a valid strategy in the workplace
  2. How a few words can kill or build hope
  3. How to counter your brain’s tendency to be overly critical

About Jen 

Jen Fisher is a global authority on workplace wellbeing, the bestselling author of Work Better Together, and the founder and CEO of The Wellbeing Team.

As Deloitte US’s first chief wellbeing officer, she pioneered a groundbreaking, human-centered approach to work that gained international recognition and reshaped how organizations view wellbeing. 

Jen is also the creator and host of The WorkWell Podcast, a TEDx speaker, and a sought-after voice at events like Workhuman, SXSW, Milken Global Conference, and Happiness Camp. 

At the heart of Jen’s work is the knowledge that hope is not just a feeling—it’s a strategic imperative. She helps leaders harness hope as a catalyst for cultural transformation, guiding them to reimagine work as a force for human flourishing. She lives in Miami with her husband, Albert, and their dog, Fiona.

Resources Mentioned

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Jen Fisher Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jen, welcome!

Jen Fisher
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom and to hear about hope. Could you share with us, for starters, an extra surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made about hope as you’ve researched it?

Jen Fisher
I would say that hope is not an emotion, which most people think that it is. It’s a cognitive process. It’s not whimsical. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s not positive vibes only. As a matter of fact, many, many times hope is hard. And I would also say that hope is a daily practice and, obviously, I believe that hope is a strategy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so it’s not an emotion, it’s not positive vibes only, you said it’s a cognitive. Well, what is it exactly?

Jen Fisher
So, what the research shows, so C.R. Snyder is kind of the original, if you will, godfather of hope research, and what he and so many others have found about hope and why many of us say that it is a cognitive process and that hope is a strategy, is because real and realistic hope actually requires action. It requires three things from you.

It requires you to identify and set a goal, so to know where you want to go or know where you want to be. It requires, and this is perhaps the most important, that you identify multiple ways or pathways in which you can reach that goal. And so it’s not just one, it’s multiple ways. And then the final thing is that it requires you to understand and to know what your agency is in reaching that goal. And so, what is your ability to actually do something to get from here to there?

And so that’s why it requires action and what makes it a cognitive process and what makes it a strategy is because you actually have to not just think about it, not just put good vibes only out into the world, or say, “I’m going to win the lottery,” but you actually have to do something about it and you have to have the ability to do something about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so it requires setting a goal, identifying multiple pathways, understanding our capabilities and how this is viable. And so, if I’ve done those things, I’m having an experience as a result of having done so. Is that what we’re calling hope?

Jen Fisher
That’s what we’re calling hope. That is what hope theory says. And I will tell you what hope theory also says. Hope theory and hope does not guarantee success. And that’s why I say hope is hard, right? Because sometimes you do all these things, you have all of this hope, and then things don’t work out the way that you want them to.

But I think what’s really great about hope is, you know those multiple pathways that you identified? If you start down one path and it doesn’t work, well, you’ve already identified other ways in which you can reach your goal so you don’t get stuck.

You kind of say, “Okay, well, that was interesting. It didn’t work. But, look, I have these other ways in which I can potentially reach this goal.” But hope does not guarantee success. Hope will let you down but it is still critically important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, if I do those things, I’m having an experience that you call hope, but it’s not an emotion. So I don’t know if you want to get all dictionary or textbook-y, but so then what precisely is hope?

Jen Fisher
Hope is a strategy. It’s a cognitive process. It requires that process in order for it to be hope. When it comes to emotions, hope can spur positive emotions. It can create positive emotions. It can also potentially create negative emotions, but hope itself is not an emotion.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if I set a goal, I’d identified multiple pathways, I understand I’ve got capabilities that could get her done, but if I still have a lot of doubt and pessimism and think, “This probably won’t work,” do I have hope?

Jen Fisher
You could, yes. I mean, look, I think those things can coexist. I would say, what makes hope unique is that it requires you to take action. So you could be pessimistic or you could believe that it’s not going to work, but if you’re still taking action towards the goal on the off chance that it could work, then, yeah, you do have hope.

But, look, I think hope can coexist with doubt. Hope can coexist with hopelessness. Hope can coexist with despair. It can coexist with other things that are seemingly its opposite, just like many things. Most things in our life can coexist with other things that are seemingly its opposite, but what hope requires is action.

And so, if you were moving towards that goal, regardless of whether or not you think it’s going to work, you do have some hope that it’s going to work. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be moving, continuing to move towards that goal because what’s the point?

Pete Mockaitis
And so, can you tell us, maybe, what’s the opposite of hope or how prevalent is hope at work?

Jen Fisher
Well, I don’t think that hope at work is very prevalent, and that was the reasoning and the rationale behind my book. I proffer in my book that I actually believe a lot of what we are seeing and talking about and experiencing in the workplace, when it comes to workplace burnout, is actually an epidemic of hopelessness.

And so, hopelessness exists when you don’t believe that tomorrow can be better than today, when you don’t believe that your actions or what you’re doing matters, or when you don’t believe that you are valued in the workplace. And I think that those are experiences that, unfortunately, a lot of people have, which drive workplace hopelessness.

And I think we often look at that as disengagement, we look at that as burnout, but I actually think that it’s hopelessness. It’s people kind of throwing their hands up, and saying, “Well, nothing I do matters,” or, “Nothing here is ever going to change, so why even try?” And in my experience and my conversations with many, many people, that seems to be the sentiment of what is happening.

And so, I think kind of this opposite, if you will, of hope or hopeful workplaces is workplaces that are hopeless or disengaged or there’s just a lot of people, you know, quiet quitting, pick your favorite buzzword about what’s going on in the workplace today, and I think you can link a lot of that back to people are just kind of feeling hopeless.

And that ties to why I say hope is a strategy because, when I talk to leaders, when I talk to anybody who is trying to effect big change or change at all in the workplace through workplace transformations, leadership changes, strategy changes, all of this constant change that’s going on in the workplace, and they say, “Really, Jen? Like, really, you want me to create a hopeful workplace? You think that hope is a strategy?”

And I say, “Yeah, I do, because good luck with your strategy if nobody believes in it, if nobody gets on board, if nobody thinks that your strategy is going to make tomorrow better than today, then you’re not going to achieve your strategy, because you have to be able to bring people along with you.”

And that’s why I’m not saying hope is the only strategy, but I’m saying that hope is a strategy because people need to feel hopeful about where they are and where they’re going in order to really show up and be engaged and innovate and do all the great things that we want people to do in the workplace, but they’re just not feeling it right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, if we think about hopelessness then, it sort of sounds like, from that angle or facet, hope seems to be sort of like a set of beliefs. Is that fair to say?

Jen Fisher
Yeah, I think that’s fair to say.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so in that sense, then if hope is a set of beliefs, then that set of beliefs would certainly be bolstered by doing just those things – set the goal, identifying multiple pathways and understanding your capabilities and how those can flow into making that unfold. Very cool. Well, maybe could you give us a story perhaps of someone who wasn’t feeling so hopeful, but they adopted some of these approaches and saw a turnaround?

Jen Fisher
Well, I think that probably the easiest story would be my own story and why hope has become so important to me, part of my leadership ethos, how I lead, but, quite frankly, how I live my life. And so, if you rewind where I was 10, 11 years ago, I was in a state of complete burnout. And this is before we were talking about burnout and well-being in the workplace in the ways that we are now.

And so, I didn’t know what I was experiencing. I knew I was struggling. I worked in a high-performing organization. I looked around, everyone around me seemed to be doing just fine. So I just kept telling myself, “I’m going to push through. This will eventually go away if I just keep pushing harder, pushing harder, pushing harder.”

Well, that never works. It might work for a period of time, but that never works. And so, ultimately, I ended up completely burnt out to the point where I had to take a leave of absence from work. I had to really focus on getting healthy and well, both mentally and physically. And part of that recovery for me, actually, was seeking out professional help, going to therapy.

And through therapy, that is actually where I was first introduced to hope and hope theory and kind of the processes of generating hope in your life.

And so, the therapist had me do hope theory exercises, many of which I now lay out in one of the chapters, I think it’s chapter 10 in my book. And I spent a lot of time doing that and it was really, you know, kind of, “What’s the next step? What’s the next step?”

And I think that’s also kind of the thing about hope is we tend to think that hope is this big thing that, “Oh, if I just have hope, it’s going to change everything.” Well, hope, it’s not really a fireworks-show moment. It happens in those quiet hours, in those quiet moments, by taking one step forward, and then the next step forward, and then the next step forward.

And that’s what I did, you know? It was kind of each of those little steps that built me back from burnout recovery. And then I learned how to really apply those types of strategies not only into my life, but into my leadership and into my work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I would love it if you could really paint a picture for us, in terms of a scene that’s memorable for you, so we can sort of get a sense for, “Boy, what’s that hopeless Jen look, sound, feel like?” in terms of what you’re doing, what you’re saying to yourself, what you’re experiencing, as opposed to the hope has been restored Jen looking like?

Jen Fisher
So, one of the stories that I tell in the book was really when I was burnt out and kind of the conversation, I talk about it as the conversation that changed everything. And it was a regular check-in conversation with my boss, and I was going down my list, you know, checking things off, giving her all of the updates.

And she put down her pen and paper and looked me straight in the eye and, basically, said to me, “Jen, you’re not okay. And what’s worse is that you’re trying to convince everyone else and yourself that this is what okay looks like.”

And, of course, in that moment, my natural reaction was, “What are you talking about?” you know, the kind of defensiveness, right? And she looked at me and she said, “When was the last time you spent real time with your family without thinking about work?” And I couldn’t give her a good answer.

And then she asked me, “When was the last time you felt joy in your work?” And I couldn’t give her a good answer. And she went on to ask me a handful of additional questions, and I really couldn’t answer any of her questions in that moment or in a way that made me feel good about myself.

And what I will say is she wasn’t judging me. She wasn’t calling me out. She was coming from a place of concern to say, “You’re not okay, and you need to take some time for yourself to get okay.” And as hard as that moment was, perhaps that was the first moment of truth for me. That was the first time that I ever admitted to myself or anyone else that I wasn’t okay, that I was struggling, and that I did need help.

And so, I talk about that as the first moment of hope, because hope requires you to be truthful. It requires you to be honest and to recognize things as they really are. I think a lot of times, when people think about hope being whimsical or wishful thinking, they get that wrong because hope requires you to say like, “Hey, things suck. I’m not okay. I’m in a bad place. What’s going on is horrible.”

Like, recognizing truth and reality of where we really are and then building from there and starting to make that plan, set that goal of, like, “What’s the next step? And what’s the next step?” and create those pathways for yourself.

And so, I would say a hopeful Jen, I mean, there’s tons of stories in the book of just my journey of hope. And I don’t get it always right. I am a person that kind of tends to catastrophize things, and I live with a lot of anxiety.

And one of the things that I talk about in the book, which was really insightful, was a conversation with a friend of mine who knows that I have a lot of anxiety, that I live with anxiety. And she said to me, “This whole hope thing…” she’s like, “…doesn’t that make you more anxious to, like, have so many options, to have multiple pathways?”

And I thought that that was such an insightful question because, typically, people who have a lot of anxiety like concrete things. We like to know the way that it’s going to be so we can stop catastrophizing about all the things that could be. And as I thought about that, I was like, “You know, I think that hope and anxiety are kind of great partners for each other.”

Because what happens to me when I feel stuck or when I’m catastrophizing, I can step back and say kind of like, “What would hope tell me to do?” Well, hope would tell me to understand where I am now, understand how I want to get out of this place, and create those pathways for myself.

And so, instead of staying stuck and staying anxious in a really stuck place, I can identify multiple pathways in which I can get unstuck. And that actually helps my anxiety because it says, “Oh, wait, there’s not just one way and you’re not just stuck here forever. There’s all these other ways in which you can move forward.” So, hopefully, those are kind of helpful illustrations or stories to answer your question.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s great. Thank you. Yes, and, boy, what a blessing to have had that conversation, to have that leader, because I think the vast majority of professionals and humans would not be so direct in terms of, “Oh, you know, I don’t want to be invasive. It’s not really my place. I don’t want to be, you know?” And so, they, “Hey, Jen, you doing okay?” “Yeah.” “Okay. Just checking.” “Well, no, no, no, no, no.” Moving on as opposed to, “Hmm. Well…”

Jen Fisher
Yeah, because it’s uncomfortable.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally. So, I’m curious then in the before times, what do you think are some of the indicators she was picking up on that you were not as consciously aware of?

Jen Fisher
I think one of the things that you just pointed out, right, is that this idea of fine, right? Especially in the workplace when they have conversations with you, “How are you doing?” “Fine.” “How’s your workload?” “Fine.” “How are things at, you know, whatever, home?” “Fine.” So, we kind of build this fortress of fine, and that has become acceptable.

And so why is fine acceptable? When somebody says fine to me, and I probably learned this from her in many unspoken ways, but when I get too many fines right in a row from somebody, that is a signal to dig deeper and be like, “Okay, enough with the fine. Like, how are you, really?” And then it kind of shifts to like, “I’m good. I’m good.” “No, no. Like, I want more than one word. Can you give me six words on like how you’re doing?”

So, I think that that’s kind of what she was picking up on, but certainly, if I reflect back, my emotions were all over the place. I was either really, really high and really happy if things were going really well. If I had a bad conversation or a bad experience or a bad interaction with something, with somebody, my emotions were, like, in the toilet, all the way down.

And so, I was very high or I was very low. There was not really kind of in between, if you will. Certainly, my work product suffered, even though I was working longer hours than ever. The problem is that I was working longer hours than ever and that really affected my work product. I was very reactive. I was also very transactional and task-oriented.

I wasn’t interested in building relationships with my colleagues. I was interested in getting the work done and the metrics associated with those, with getting that work done. And that was uncharacteristic of me. And so, I think, she kind of saw a combination of things. But to your point, there’s not a lot of leaders like that, and so I credit so much of who I am today with her ability to really see me and have the compassion to reach out.

And, of course, at the time, you process that in a whole bunch of different ways. You process it as failure, but I look back on it now and it was one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever given to me. And so, I think I tried to emulate and be that leader and be that person for others now.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, yes. Thank you. Well, let’s dig into some of this hope theory strategy tactic stuff. What do you recommend if folks are listening and they say, “Hmm, I’d like some more hope. That sounds nice”? What are some of the top first things to do?

Jen Fisher
I think the first thing that I recommend people do is do a hope audit, kind of understand where you are when it comes to your own hope. Are you struggling with hope? Are you doing great with hope? How’s your team doing? You can do it at an individual level, a team level, an organizational level.

But I think some of the most, kind of powerful, when I talk to people about hope, ways to assess your own hope, but also what I call hope-killers and hope-builders. And this is really in the language that we use in our lives, but especially in our workplaces and especially as managers of other human beings.

The lessons that I’ve learned is hope-killers are when we say things like, “We want you to bring your ideas. We value innovation. We want to do things differently.” And then somebody brings you an idea and you say something like, “No, that’s not how we do that here. That’s not how we do those things here. We don’t do that.” Or, “We tried that before and it didn’t work.” That’s an automatic.

Those types of things, where you’re shutting someone down, is an automatic hope-killer. What I will say about that is, because my goal is to never make anyone feel bad, that I learned these things the hard way and which is why I’m trying to teach others about it. We say these things as leaders and as managers because we believe that we’re being responsible.

We believe that if we tell somebody, “That’s not how we do it here,” or, “We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work,” that we’re being responsible. We’re being helpful. We’re basically telling them, “Don’t waste your time on that. Like, move on to the next thing, or just do it this way, because we know that it’s going to work and we know it’s acceptable.” You think those are time savers.

That’s kind of the path of least resistance, but it’s really a hope-killer for people because people want to come to work and be creative and come up with new solutions. And most organizations tell them that that’s what they value, but when they do it, then they shut it down.

And so instead, say things like, “Well, we’ve never done it that way. What intrigues you, what interests you, or what excites you about doing it that way?” I think about Ted Lasso, you know, “Be curious, not judgmental,” right?

So have your line of questioning when somebody brings you an idea. Instead of shutting it down, get curious about it, ask them questions. You might still say no, but at least you engaged in the conversation with somebody to understand where they’re coming from.

And that’s what helps us feel like we matter and that we are valued by somebody, not that we execute on every single idea that somebody has, but that we listen to them and that we see them. And that’s what actually creates and builds hope in the workplace.

And that kind of behavior, through the language and the way that we communicate with each other, is incredibly contagious when it comes to workplace culture.

Pete Mockaitis
The language, it is contagious in both directions.

Jen Fisher
In both directions, very negative and positive. Absolutely. Probably negative is more contagious, which is why it’s so dangerous, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there’s a top tip right there, say, “Don’t use hope-killing language.” Do you have some superior alternatives for if someone is mentioning something and you really do have some insight that was tried before and it didn’t go well? I imagine you want to share that information and not withhold it, but you also don’t want to kill the enthusiasm. So, any pro tips for communicating that?

Jen Fisher
There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, we tried something similar and it didn’t work out, but I want to hear from you. Like, what’s your approach? What do you think is different this time? What, in your mind, would make this work?”

And so, that opens up the dialogue for them to share with you what they’re thinking. And then you can have a conversation about it, right? Then you can share your own insight of, “When we did do this before and it didn’t work.” And then you might learn something from them. Maybe they aren’t proposing that you do it the exact same way that you did it before. Maybe it just looks like that on the surface.

And if you immediately shut it down and say, “Oh, we’ve done that before,” and move on, then you miss the opportunity to dig a little bit deeper. And I’m not talking about spending four hours, right? This is a 10-, 12-, 15-minute conversation with somebody that just is like, “Tell me a little bit more about why you think that that’s going to work,” or, “What excites you about this idea?” or, “Let’s dig a little bit deeper,” so that you can understand where they’re coming from.

And you can also share insight of like, “Hey, we did something similar. This is how we went about it. This is why it didn’t work, and this is why it didn’t work. What do you think? Why do you think that your approach is different?”

And so, it’s not about, like I said, it’s not about letting everybody come up with all kinds of ideas and just start running with all of them. But it’s more about, “How do you make somebody feel seen and valued in the workplace?” Because those are the top things, you know, feeling like you don’t matter in the workplace or in life, that is the biggest hope-killer of all, right?

Like, not mattering to somebody or not mattering to where you work, people start to disengage. And so, it’s really about seeing somebody and just having a quick conversation to understand where they’re coming from. It’s not always about, “Oh, we’re going to move forward with this idea even though I think it’s a bad one.”

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Okay. Well, I’d also love to hear some of the other winning bits from this toolkit.

Jen Fisher
I think, something that I like to do, I call hope spotting, right? And so, there’s a lot of negativity in our world. There’s a lot of negativity in our workplaces.

And so, opening up team meetings or starting your own day as an individual, or ending your day as an individual, and actually spotting and calling out and acknowledging instances of hope-building, you know, talking about something that you thought wasn’t going to go well, but it actually went better than you thought.

Like, really identifying the times in your day or in your week where things went well, because we don’t do that. We tend to dwell on what went wrong, who pissed us off, what we didn’t do right, what we didn’t get done. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t, you know, like there are lessons to be learned by mistakes that we’ve made or interactions that we’ve had that didn’t go as well as we wanted it to.

But we spend a lot more time on those things and we beat ourselves up. And so, really carving out a couple of minutes at the end of each day or in the morning, reflecting on the day before, or as you open a meeting, and allow people to spot hope, to say like, “Hey, this happened, and I thought it was great,” or, “I saw Bob showing the new person how to do X, Y, and Z, and that made me feel really good.”

We tend to kind of gloss over those things and we don’t call them out and we don’t acknowledge them. And so, I think that that’s a really important practice that can help people feel hopeful and have positive emotions in the workplace and feel like they’re valued.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I like that a lot in terms of, and that feels distinctly different than, say, a gratitude practice, counting your blessings, like, “Oh, I’ve got a great family. I’ve got a house, you know. I’ve got heat. I’ve got a cozy bed. I’ve got socks that feel great.” Sure. I mean, because we can do those things and those are good and special and shifting the spotlight onto them can be beneficial.

But when you really zero in on, “It went better than you thought it would,” it highlights that same zone of risk and uncertainty where so much of our lives are in these days. It highlights that. And it’s a powerful reminder that, “Yeah, it happens frequently that things work out better than you thought they would.”

So, thusly, perhaps as we’re assessing the probabilities or what’s likely to go down with the next thing, we may just be a bit more balanced in assessing the prognosis of stuff.

Jen Fisher
I love how you summarize that. I think that that was perfect. And that’s why I think hope is a practice, too, right? Because once you start to practice that, that becomes, I wouldn’t say your natural default. Maybe for some people. It’s still not my natural default, but it’s easier for me, right?

Like, I will catch myself going down the path of being like, “Oh, man, I can’t believe I said that,” or, “Oh, that was a really dumb answer.” And when I start to have that negative talk for myself, I’m like, “Wait a minute, what about all the things in the meeting, or the presentation, or the keynote, or the whatever, that went right?”

And so, I start to catch myself more quickly and I don’t follow the negative. And that’s not to say that we don’t screw up. We all screw up, right? Like, yeah, you’re going to say something stupid, you’re going to forget a line, you’re going to make a mistake, whatever it is that your role is, right?

It’s not to say, like those things don’t happen and those things don’t exist. But how do you balance the learning from making mistakes with also recognizing that there’s a lot right that you and others do in the world and calling that out?

Another thing that I really like to do, especially when I’m feeling stuck or, like, when my team is feeling stuck, is talk about possibilities, you know, and kind of do exercises around possibility thinking, right? And so, if I feel really stuck, if I have a problem and I can’t get out of it, or I’m just ruminating on it, asking myself the question of like, “Well, what’s possible here?”

Like, you know, this is kind of that pathways thinking of like, “Where could I go from here? I’m feeling stuck. I don’t want to stay stuck here. So, what are the possibilities here? Like, is this a dead end?” And if it is, kind of accepting that and moving on.

“But if I’m not truly stuck, what are the possibilities and what are the ways in which I can move forward?” And so, that’s kind of a question that I ask myself of like, “Okay, I’m feeling stuck. What are the possibilities here?” And that is a way to generate hope.

Another way, the best way perhaps to cultivate hope is with other people. Hope grows in community. Like many things, hope definitely grows in community, and surrounding yourself with people that support you, and also will hold you accountable when you need to be held accountable is one of the best ways that hope can grow.

And so, when I think about that inside of organizational life, obviously, the best place for that is on your team. But if there’s not people on your team, do you have a friend or two in the organization that you can connect regularly with, because connection is incredibly important for hope?

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, Jen, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a few of your favorite things?

Jen Fisher
No, let’s do it. Like, I’ve talked a lot, but that’s the point, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Indeed, yeah. Can we hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jen Fisher
So, the cover of my book is a butterfly, and that’s a special symbolism to me, but it’s the perfect symbolism for hope. And so, one of my favorite quotes, “If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jen Fisher
I would say Dr. Edith Egers’ book called The Choice.

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

Jen Fisher
I think one that’s coming up lately is a nugget of we would never put somebody in charge of operations or technology or finance that didn’t have operations, technology, or finance experience, but we continue to put people in charge of humans without any intelligence or knowledge or skill on wellbeing and hope.

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

Jen Fisher
The best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn, but my website is www.Jen-Fisher.com. I also have a Substack newsletter called “Thoughts on Being Well.”

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

Jen Fisher
Make hope your strategy or, at least, make hope part of your strategy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jen, thank you.

Jen Fisher
Thank you.