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Jan 23
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833: The Four-Step Process to Influencing People and Decisions with Andres Lares

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Andres Lares reveals the surprising psychology behind decision-making and shares a four-step process to influence others.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to tap into the hidden driver behind most decisions
  2. The critical steps that set you up for greater influence
  3. What to say when you’re losing the other person

About Andres

Andres Lares has been the Managing Partner and CEO of Shapiro Negotiations Institute since 2017. Prior to this role, Andres served various roles including Chief Innovation Officer where he led the company’s development of technology and content. For over a decade Andres has advised professional sports teams in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL on contract negotiations, trades, and other critical negotiations. He has been featured in publications including HBR, Forbes, CNBC, Entrepreneur, and Sports Business Journal.  Andres guest lectures at conferences and institutions around the world and teaches a course on negotiations at Johns Hopkins University.

Resources Mentioned

Andres Lares Interview Transcript

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

Andres Lares
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to hear your insights on persuasion. Could you kick us off with a particularly striking, fascinating, mind-blowing, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made in this domain? No pressure.

Andres Lares
Yeah, no pressure, huh? So, yeah, this is kind of like if I give this up and there’s no really reason to listen to the rest of the podcast…

Pete Mockaitis
Keep it short, yeah.

Andres Lares
Exactly. So, people would be done in one minute. So, there is one thing that really struck me. So, when we got into this, I’ve been doing this for about 12 years now, and pretty early on, the thing that struck me and sticks with me is, essentially, kind of a quote that we use in our trainings that’s been around, really, since Aristotle. He was kind of teaching this many years ago, and perhaps not enough people listen. But it’s that, “People make decisions emotionally, and then they justify them rationally.”

And that has really stuck with me. We have done an enormous amount of research that indicates that is definitely the case all over the world, regardless of culture and language and everything else, so that really has stuck with me. So, that’s it, we’re done, we can pack up and go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really want to dig into that. So, I’ve heard that and that seems sensible. Can you unpack that with some of your research and some examples of what that really sounds like in the internal dialogue and practice?

Andres Lares
Yeah. So, really, where does it come from? And, really, where it comes from is kind of heuristic, all the shortcuts in our brain that we take because we have to. And so, there’s a lot of this that’s covered in one of the books that I have enjoyed, and it has impacted the most ever, is Thinking, Fast and Slow, and no surprise it’s a Nobel Prize winner that wrote it.

And another that would’ve won one if he was around, but it was one of those things that, because there’s so much that we have to compute in our brains in a short period of time, we really, essentially, are struggling and taking as many shortcuts as we can. So, what does that look like? So, I’ll give you an example that we often talk about.

So, this is a study done many years ago, and, actually, you know what, there’s a couple. So, the best one, I’ll shift gears here and convince myself of another one. So, here’s a perfect example of a shortcut and how emotions drive things. So, many years ago, there’s a study done at Harvard, and it was at a library or, essentially, where folks didn’t realize what was going on but it was a study that people were in a copy machine, a line to the copy machine.

So, again, just the context here, a line to the copy machine, you really are doing nothing else while making copies. Well, in this study, they basically had actors approach real people and ask three different ways in order to butt in the line. So, the first was, “Can I go in front of you?” and so that was the first thing they asked.

The second one, they said, “Can I go in front of you because I’m in a hurry?” And the third one, they said, “Can I go in front of you because I’m in a hurry? I need to make a lot of copies.” So, that’s the three, so you’re asking someone. So, now, the percentages here will tell you how long ago this was. I don’t think they would stand at the time. But, in the first example, basically just asking to go in front of you, 60% of people approved.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so nice of them.

Andres Lares
I know. And so, that’s how I know this was not done recently. In the second, they literally said, “Because I need to make copies,” and 93% of people let them in front. And then when there’s kind of a reason that was a little bit more reasonable, which would be the fact, “I need to make a lot of copies. In addition, I’m in a hurry,” it went up only to 94%.

So, what’s happening there, right? Just simply the word because, and someone sharing a reason with you, is enough. It’s compelling enough for your brain to think, “Oh, yeah, that’s probably a good reason. Then go.” Even the actual reason itself rarely even matters that much. Now, you can’t always do this, and there’s different circumstances will provide different results.

But similar studies have been done all over the place and with adjustments of all types, and there’s always that aspect where our brain is taking that shortcut and it almost doesn’t matter what comes after the word because, “I hear because, there must be a reason. It must be good. Go ahead.” And so, as an example, and there’s millions of them where people make emotional decisions.

And I’ll give you one more that I particularly enjoy. This has been done with jellybeans and things like that. Imagine this big jellybean, one of those where if you pick the number of jellybeans in a container, you get a prize. Imagine that. And so, they said, “You have a choice, in this one there’s 10 jellybeans and one is red. And if you picked the red one, so one in ten chance, you will $100.” In another one, they said, “Look, in this case, there’s a hundred jellybeans. Eight of them are red. If you pick a red one, you’ll get a $100. Which would you choose?”

Now, most people, more than 50%, again, all over the world, will choose the second. Now, why did they choose the second? The first one has a 10% chance. The second one has an 8% chance, eight out of 100%, one out of ten. But what happens is, well, one is kind of a denominator issue where the math may be a little bit more complicated for folks in the moment. But the second is, emotionally, they feel like they have eight cracks at that red jellybean to make the money rather than the one crack.

And so, that feels more important than the denominator, how many jellybeans there are, and so they pick it. So, those are two kinds of very different examples of that at play.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, now I’m thinking about counter examples just to put this to the test. I think I’ve often been in a situation where I do exactly that. I want something or I don’t want something, I just like something, I don’t like something, and then I find a way just to rationalize it afterwards. Sometimes, what’s interesting, I find that I fail.

Like, for example, when I saw the…it took me a long time with the iPad. I said, “Okay, I’ve had some good experiences with Apple products – the iPhone, the iMac, the MacBook Pro. I like all three of them. I really see their place in my life. But for the longest time, the iPad is just like, “I don’t see how I need this. I have got a laptop which can do just about all those things and more.”

And so, I think I went for years without an iPad. Friends, roommates, others had iPads, loved them, and I kept looking at it, thinking I wanted it but it just didn’t click for the longest of times. I guess I was not able to martial the logical reasons until I had just enough experiences of being on a plane and not being able to open up my laptop all the way to actually be able to view it and sit it on the thing, because I’m a tall guy, and try to get it a comfortable angle.

And then I thought, “Well, okay.” And then I think there are some lower price options, it’s like, “I don’t need the newest one, and, yeah, I’ve got a birthday coming up.” So, the things all kind of align. But I found that intriguing that. You tell me, am I abnormal or is there a certain threshold that has to be met here? It’s like, “I could have desire but be unable to bring enough logical justification,” even though I’m so good, I think, at rationalizing and justifying a lot of things in order to get me to do the thing that I want or don’t want. What’s going on on the second layer here?

Andres Lares
So, when I hear that story, my first reaction is, “It was the emotion that drove you.” So, what I hear in that story was, “It wasn’t until I was cramped like this in an airplane where I was thinking, ‘What am I doing here? I’m on this four-hour flight across the country, and I can’t do anything. It’s frustrating,’” whether you want to watch Netflix and just relax or you want to get some work done.

And that’s the moment where kind of how you felt in that moment was the true compelling kind of emotion that enabled you to get the iPad. In my opinion, that’s part of what happened there because that’s really what drives it. And then you can justify, “Okay. Well, iPad is the best because I’m an Apple user and it’s going to sync in very well,” or whatever.

Then the logic will kick in and kind of work through all the details. But that first desire, or that shift from desire to actually doing it, I think that probably happened on an airplane where you said, “Enough is enough. I need this thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
That is interesting. I guess I thought when the iPad was first unveiled, I had some desire, like, “Ooh, that looks cool and shiny. I like it. I want it. But I don’t really need it. Where does it fit in into anything?” So, I guess maybe, in your model, what’s happening here is I have insufficient desire until I had a new emotional experience of, “I’m very uncomfortable in this seat and want to have more comfort in the seat.”

Andres Lares
So, it’s interesting because I think that is a none kind of money version of what we often see, which is that folks will want stuff. There’s something that you want that’s got some strength. But avoiding something you don’t want has even more strength, and that happens with money, right? So, we see someone, $100 for sure versus 50% chance to win 200 or zero. Mostly you will pick 100 because what happens is they miss out. And it happens even more strongly if it’s a loss.

And so, I think what’s happening there is the fact that, “Hey, this thing is shiny,” whatever you want. The thing that’s compelling but the level of how compelling it is when you actually then face a negative emotion, where it’s like, “This is really frustrating, and I could get rid of this frustration if I bought a tablet, and that tablet happens to be an iPad,” I think that’s the one that’s going to be more compelling, which is why that happened. And so, when it’s nice and shiny, that’s compelling but it’s typically not as powerful as the other.

Pete Mockaitis
And then I’m curious about sort of business-to-business type decisions. Like, I think, in a way, at least if you are a director at a publicly traded corporation, for example, you have a legal obligation to look out for the shareholders’ best interests. And so, it seems like there are some solutions that, it’s like, “Oh, this should produce ROI.” So, in some ways, like we’re really “supposed to” think extra super duper logically about the financial logical consequences of a thing. Are emotions still running the show here, too?

Andres Lares
So, I mean, yes, but there are some things that remove some of that, right? So, for example, if you’ve got a decision that takes a long time. So, the longer you put something through a decision-making process, and the more people are involved, although group-think does happen, but more people, more time. There’s a bunch of these variables that will do that, so in the moment.

If you think about…let’s move to a totally different world. Let’s go to a grocery store, and that’s another example, the grocery store. Why is it that there’s gum and snacks while you wait to pay? So, those gums and snacks are also in another aisle but they’re bought significantly less. But in that moment where you’re just waiting and you’re sitting around, it’s going to take three more minutes, which feels like 15 where you’re waiting for the next person to pay, you make this kind of emotional decision of, like, “Oh, yeah, this is what I need.”

And so, what happens is I think that’s kind of taking advantage of that. Now, over time, if you saw that in the aisle, you wouldn’t have gotten that piece of gum, or you wouldn’t have gotten that candy bar. And the same thing would occur with corporate decisions. If you’re the director of the company, if you make a decision over a couple of weeks, it’s less and less emotional. Now, emotions are still at play.

I remember kind of finding this stat which still shocks me to this day that the first and last, as far as like those two, typically, in an RP type process where it’s a little bit informal, or in a fully informal kind of bidding process, the first and last are selected more than 50% of the time, even when there’s more than four or five vendors. So, it’s imbalanced in the first and last. And, again, that’s another way where we’re emotional beings, and the first sets the tone, the last is the one we’re most likely to remember.

And so, the first sets the tone, and others don’t necessarily stack up to it, or they say some things that are unique, or the last does something that’s impressive in any way, they’ll last with us, and you pick them. But it’s unbelievable that you may not be picking the best partner for your company. You’re literally picking who went first or last potentially. And even worse, we don’t know it. And even if we do know, we often can’t do anything about it.

Now, of course, there are ways. So, writing things down, decision-making processes, taking time to digest and think through it, creating a criteria, there’s things you can do but it is amazing how emotional we are as beings.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is so shocking and striking, I almost feel to construct a counter narrative that explains it, such as, “Well, the first person, they really got their act together. They got some hustle. That is a high-performing organization that moves quickly, and that’s an advantage so they deserve stuff. And the last folks, boy, they really put some fun into this. They took their time. They did their research and their homework and their preparation. And so, the first and the last may disproportionately, in fact, be superior potential partners.” I might be stretching here, but that’s where I kind of go.

Andres Lares
In the cases where there’s no choice, I think we see it happen too, but it happens just about everywhere. So, another one is called the winner’s curse often. So, if you think of like a bidding system, typically the person…and this happens in sports. We do a lot of work in sports. And if you think of an athlete goes to a team, oftentimes, and this happens in baseball perhaps in more than any other sport. It’s okay, you’re willing to pay $10 million a year for 10 years.

I’m willing to pay more, if you’re willing to pay more, then you go back and forth. Then you find the person that wins is, essentially, cursed because they win, by definition, by overpaying for that player. And so, again, and that’s typically emotional. When we’ve been in the trenches with teams, that is because they get caught up in the deal making, or because it is a blurriness, it is an emotional piece because, I would say, 99.9% of the time when we meet with the teams and we’re kind of involved in these kinds of decisions, they have written down a number as a walkaway that’s lower than they end up paying.

So, they end up going well above what they said they would, what they think is reasonable, and so that is where the justification comes in. “Oh, I am going over but things have changed,” you know, fill in the blank. Now, of course, there are times when things have actually changed. Maybe you start a negotiation early. Now, five other players get signed, now the market has moved up. That, of course, is a possibility.

But very rarely is that the reason that’s happening. It’s deal fever. We’re in it, we spent so much time, and there’s a sunk-cost fallacy, “I’ve spent this much time on it. It’s only this much more,” and that’s where the justification comes in and, really, it becomes more emotional rather than if you’re objective, you’d say, “Look, the max I was going to pay is probably ten years, 10 million a year, and it’s better for me not to do that than it is to pay more.” We just very rarely come across that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Andres, we’re having so much fun jumping all around the psychological world here. Maybe let’s get to the fundamentals here. Your book Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions, we’ve already got some tasty tidbits from it. But what would you say is the core message, thesis, big idea of this one?

Andres Lares
So, it’s a four-step process to influencing others.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Just like you said.

Andres Lares
Exactly, that’s it. Build credibility, engage emotion, demonstrate logic, facilitate action. So, really, it’s building credibility, people will not care if you’re not deemed credible. Think of a toothpaste commercial. Every toothpaste commercial has someone whether is or looks like a dentist, that’s because they don’t have credibility without that kind of the dental-looking attire. And so, that’s an example, and a crude one, but it is an example.

Then engage emotion. As I talk to people, people make decisions emotionally, and then they justify them rationally. Then comes demonstrate logic. Now, of course, there is a time and a place for logic. So, it isn’t that you just never do it. It’s that you typically and most compellingly do it after you build credibility and engage emotion.

And then, finally, the fourth is facilitate action, which is if you can think of all the situations where you say, “Is this a good idea?” and your teammate says yes, your colleagues say yes, “Okay, are we going to move forward?” “Yes, we are.” And then, all of a sudden, you check in two weeks later and nothing has happened. I think just about everyone can relate to that.

And so, facilitate action is about creating an environment where it’s as likely as possible that the behavior that you want to be taken will be taken.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, it sounds good to me. Lay it on us then, let’s say we want to do some great persuading, can you maybe give us some example demonstrations for how we’d step through each of these pieces from building the credibility to engaging the emotion, to demonstrating logic, and to facilitating action?

Andres Lares
Yes. So, let’s try to pick something that potentially anyone can relate to. So, you’re working with a colleague at work, so potentially, let’s say, they’re not necessarily someone above you or below you. They’re kind of a lateral position, and so, hopefully, this is generic enough that it works for everyone. So, the first thing is you want to think about, “Okay, do I have credibility with this person? I’m trying to convince Pete to do something, okay, so how am I going to do it? Well, first is, does Pete know who I am? Does he think that I’ve got good ideas? What is his perception of me?”

And so, let’s assume that it’s a neutral perception. Met a few times and not much there. So, the first I think about, “How do I build credibility?” So, the build credibility might be simple things. So, spending time with someone, unless you actively do something very negative. Generally, spending time with someone helps you to build rapport, trust, and credibility.

But also, you can give yourself a few things. So, when you bump into Pete, and there’s an opportunity to say, “Hey, I thought of you the other day when I read this article. I’ll send it to you by end of the day tomorrow.” That’d be an example of manufacturing an opportunity where you, in this case, you should genuinely have thought about the person and think that article might make sense. And then I sent it to Pete in the time that I said I would.

Well, now, you’re starting to create not only that connection based on thinking of the person, but also a sense of reliability, “I said I would do something by end of the day tomorrow, and I did.” So, you can do a few of those things, and you start to get the ball rolling. And, of course, any time you drive value, you write good ideas, things they can nibble on at work, anything that is important and valuable to the other party would help build credibility.

So, then comes emotion. So, let’s say, in this case, you’re working on a project together, and, again, to pick an example most people could relate to, Pete has this as priority seven and I have this as priority two. And so, my job is to try to convince you to bring it up to maybe not two but certainly higher than seven.

Well, then you think of, “Okay, what’s the emotion that we’ll trigger?” So, let’s pick two examples. Well, one would be achievement, “Pete, this is one of the reasons I asked you in particular to kind of be involved in this project is because I know that this is going to get a lot of attention for the senior leadership team, which is a really important project.”

So, this was done very well. Again, it has to be true. This is genuine. If it’s disingenuous, then please don’t use the model. But if you go back to that, okay, so if that’s the case, and there’s a sense of achievement, doing a good job in this, and that includes time, but also high quality, a sense of achievement that it’ll be better for everyone, and so that could be an example.

Another one could be fear, the other way, “So, I’m a little bit worried, Pete, that we’re a little behind schedule. Being behind schedule right now is not a big deal, but if we were to end up being late, I think this could be a disaster for both of us. I saw one of our other colleagues late two months ago on a similar project, and they ended up getting…” fill in the blank, right, as whatever the repercussion would be.

So, that would be an example of fear or achievement. There’s a lot of them. Then the next might be demonstrating logic. So, there, what is the logic you could say? So, “One of the things that I’ve found is, because we’re currently meeting once every two weeks, by the time we actually get to the next meeting, we’re forgetting what we covered. So, I think rather than doing it once every two weeks, and this will take eight weeks to get these meetings, if we were to meet a couple times in one week, I actually think we could pump it out faster.”

“So, rather than our estimation of 20 hours total, we could probably do it in 10 or 15. Would you be open to considering something like that and we’re kind of done it faster for both our sakes?” So, something like that would be a logically compelling argument, that, “Hey, I’m going to save you time and more efficient and get this off your plate faster, so you can get to other priorities.”

And then, finally, facilitate action might be to provide them with options. So, providing with options could say, “So, two ideas that I have are, one, do you want me to do this piece and you do that piece? Or would you prefer the other way around, I focus on this priority, focus on that part? What would you prefer?”

And you, ideally, be offering a set of options, and you might be thrown a third, but you’re willing to accept any of them, so they’re all acceptable to you, but that way the person feels, and do in fact, have some control over the result because we surely know that when you come up with a collaborative solution, they’re more likely to become committed, rather than if I say, “Hey, Pete, here’s what I need you to do, and here’s when I need it done by. Please go and execute and come back here when you’re done.”

So, that would be a bit of a generic example but, hopefully, give you some sense of how those four phases would come into play.

Pete Mockaitis
I appreciate that, yes. Well, now could you maybe give us a couple of top do’s and don’ts within each of those domains? So, when it comes to building credibility, for example, what are some great things we can do versus not do? In your book, you’ve got a few sections, “The Influencer’s Toolbox.” I love toolboxes, so if there’s anything that’s leaping to mind that’s extra handy, lay it on us.

Andres Lares
Yes, so do’s and don’ts. So, I’d say for credibility, the do is…well, something else, some of the don’t is, “Do not skip this step, this is potentially the most important step.” If you think of kind of your life right now, and how much you get bombarded with messy, whether it’s emails at work or calls and spam calls, and all the stuff that’s going on, it’s easier to just ignore something than it is to deal with it.

So, credibility is the thing that stops you from ignoring it. It’s what cuts through and it helps to cut through the clutter, if you will. And so, I think I see this a lot in…we’ll take away a little bit from kind of the job piece, and I’ll go to sales for a second. This is a perfect example in sales. Often, I see a rush through to get to sale, and they skip the personal, the credibility-building, the trust-building, they get right to the sale.

And so, what happens is when you miss that first part that even allows you to get there, so people just don’t care, “You’re just selling me something, and I don’t want to be sold to. I want to be part of the buying process.” So, the credibility piece is the don’t is don’t skip it. It can be easy and oftentimes you wonder, “How important is this?” Well, it’s really important.

For emotion, as far as do’s and don’ts, so it’s got to be, I think, the don’t again would be it has to be genuine. And so, really, the emotion is about thinking about, “Okay, what is…?” So, here, for example, we’re doing fear and scarcity. I’ll give you an example of a don’t would be, although it can work, it’s sleazy and doesn’t work long term, that’s why you see at commercials late at night, “This deal is only good for the next 15 minutes. If you call now, you get three easy payments rather than four easy payments.” It’s that constant.

Now, the thing is, where most of us are far enough to know that once this commercial ends, this commercial will run again tomorrow night, and the next night, and the next night. It’s a fake exploding deadline. And so, I think there, when you think of fear, when you’re thinking of scarcity and those things, especially if they’re negative, it’s got to be genuine. In that example I gave, the consequence. It has to be a real consequence, that actually you saw someone faced because your credibility will be lost if it’s made up. And so, it’s a don’t again in emotion.

And then for logic, I think do tell stories. The best way to communicate evidence, logic, data. Oftentimes, when I’m doing this big chart and graph, and that is helpful, it’s important for visual learners but then take the extra step, tell a compelling story of how that potentially helped another client, or why you should get a raise, or whatever it is. But if you can tell a short and compelling story to communicate the same message as you could be sharing in another way, you will be more effective in the former.

And then, finally, facilitate action, I would say some do’s are consider providing options, for sure. And then, well, the one other thing is consider a safety net. So, safety net meaning, again, I’ll go to the crude late-night informercials because they use a lot of psychological warfare on all of us, but it’s the money-back guarantee.

And the constant of that is, “How many people actually buy that product and then send it back?” Very, very, very small number of people in almost all cases. But just the mere fact that if we purchase it and we’re not satisfied, we can then send it back. That makes us more comfortable to purchase it in the first place.

So, an example in business, certainly sometimes there can be a warranty of some sort. That’s an example of almost any product that’s sold in the B2B space or B2C space, but if you could remove some of the risks for another party, you’ll make it more likely that they move forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, I also wanted to get your take on some body language pieces. Are there any really reliable cues or indicators that we can feel somewhat confident about when we notice, and what do they mean?

Andres Lares
So, what I’d like to do is slightly tweak that, if you’re okay with this, and say the thing that you can count on is to only make decisions when you’re getting a consistent message from the body language. So, that’s the only thing that’s reliable. What do I mean by that? I cross my arms like this while having a conversation. Technically, that is not the best sign, but on its own, it means nothing. It happens to be particularly cold in this room, and so that could be just literally a physical response that I’m being cold.

But, now let’s take me crossing my arms like this, turning a little bit away from you, so I’m actually facing another direction, and, potentially, say, I slow down my smiling and now start having facial expressions that are more neutral or potentially negative, then you can really start to read into that. That’s kind of a pattern at that point.

And so, what you want to see is consistency with the tone, what’s being said, and the body language. And if there are more than one, typically two or three that tend to lean negative, you want to change what you’re saying, change the environment, ask a different question, think of another approach, whatever it may be.

But I would say, so the do’s and don’ts, the do’s is look for consistency, look for multiple things that point in the same direction, negative or positive. Lots of smiling, open hands, leaning in would be the positive. Crossing arms, turning away, less smiling would be the negative ones but you want those to be consistent and multiple if you’re going to read anything into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, in terms of a real-time adjustment we might make, what are some of the options there?

Andres Lares
So, two of the most common, one is kind of, “Oh, did I say something … Do you have any questions? Did I say something that maybe was off a little bit?” And so, in my opinion, lots of people recommend that. I think that can be something that is doable but that can take a lot of confidence. It’s almost like calling someone’s head on it, “Oh, no.” And there can be a little bit…but that is something that people do.

But generally, I would say is try to ask a question or try to change where your conversation is headed. So, I’ll give you an example, potentially, this would happen. Let’s say in an interview. Let’s say you’re in an interview for a job, and so you see that, someone has crossed their leg, turns away, and starts, all of a sudden, you see eyebrows changed a little bit. It’s a little more negative. Then, whatever you’re saying you might try to finish it kind of rather quickly.

And then, seeing that, “Pete, I’d love to tell you more about that, but I did have a couple questions for it, if you don’t mind. Is this a good place I can ask you some,” and then say, “Okay, tell me more about…” then fill in the blank of questions you have ready. “So, you were saying something,” or the opposite. If you’re asking a lot of questions and the person’s kind of doing those negative things together, they may be signaling to you the fact that, “You know what, you’re kind of done asking questions. Now it’s my turn. I want to get to know you, and it’s been too one way.”

So, essentially, what you’re reading is whatever you’re saying or doing in the moment, they’re not particularly appreciating, so any pivot from that, and then see how the body languages react. After a minute or two, are you still seeing that negative body language? One other thing I would say, and this gets into NLP and things that are a little bit less science-based or that are a little bit more controversial. But there definitely is growing evidence that you can do something that is called mirroring, which should be to try to also move towards the body language that is more positive and they’ll kind of follow you.

So, for example, if I noticed that you’re tilted a little bit this way, and you’re kind of leaning back a little bit, I would first mirror. So, I would tilt a little bit the same way, I would try to speak at the same pace as you are, so whether it’s a lot faster and then really, really fast, or slower. And then what I would do is, over time, over the next few minutes, I would start to kind of tilt my head this way, I would start to lean in, I would start to open my body language.

And so, what you can do is you can also shift that way. So, not only what you’re saying and the tone of your delivery, but if you actually mirror their body language that’s potentially negative, in particular in this case, and then start to move towards more positive body language, they should follow you.

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

Andres Lares
I think a few that come to mind. So, one I particularly like that one of our facilitators often says is, “Much is lost for the want of asking.” So, to remind us that if you don’t ask for it, you can’t get it. You don’t always get what you ask for, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get it.

I think there’s another one which is often attributed to Epictetus. I’m not sure if, necessarily, it was in fact him or not, but it’s, “God gave us two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak.” I think that is a good reminder, and just kind of the value of listening, asking questions and listening. So, I like those.

And there’s one more. Harry Truman, I believe is credited with this, but it’s, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that really counts.” And I think that one is brilliant. So, those are three that come to mind. You asked for one, I gave you three. I hope that’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Andres Lares
So, I would hate to kind of duplicate but I’d probably go back to the copier study, the jellybeans study, some of these. Those were the originals and they were done the first time, and I find it particularly interesting that was done 20, 30, 40 years ago, in some of these cases, and so much has changed in the world but they continue to be…when they’re redone and adjusted, they continue to have the same results. So, all those, kind of reminding us of human nature and how if often doesn’t change.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite book?

Andres Lares
I would probably go back to Thinking, Fast and Slow. I think from, certainly from a nonfiction perspective, that would be my number one. It’s a big read, but really an incredible one.

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

Andres Lares
For the personal side, I’ve got family all over the world, and friends all over the world, so I cannot live without WhatsApp. From a professional side, any good calendar app. Currently, it’s Google Calendar, but that is another one that I can’t live without.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Andres Lares
It would probably be playing hockey. So, I play hockey every Monday night, been doing it for years. Awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a key nugget you share with folks that really resonates with them; you hear them quote it back to you often?

Andres Lares
So, yeah, I would say one, and this is more on the negotiation side and the influencing side, but it’s, “Negotiation is a process and not an event.”

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

Andres Lares
So, we’re not as active as we should be on social but we do have a bunch, you know, LinkedIn, Twitter, all the usuals. But I would say probably the website, ShapiroNegotiations.com, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions. We’ve got a blog that’s weekly that goes out there, too, that deals with job-related issues plus things you might do, buying a house, buying a car, lots of B2B stuff as well. That’s our focus, so feel free to reach out.

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

Andres Lares
For me, it’d be having a process. I think one of the things that I’ve appreciated in this journey that I think when we go out and train and coach folks, we often will learn as much as they do just from the way people do and kind of the best practices. But I would say the concept of having a process for persuading others, for often negotiation, communicating, has really kind of increased my performance.

And I would say it’s something that I’m so excited about. And so, I would challenge others to, when it’s say to say, “I don’t have the time,” or, “I’m just going to wing it,” to prepare and follow a process to do it, and you will definitely be more successful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. This has been fun. I wish you much luck in all of your persuasions and negotiations.

Andres Lares
Well, thank you for having me. I hope it’s helpful to folks as they do a great job at their jobs, and, hopefully, this is helpful there.

Jan 19
0

832: How to Restore Yourself from Burnout with Dr. Christina Maslach

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Leading burnout expert Dr. Christina Maslach shares the fundamental causes of burnout and what individuals and organizations can do to fix them.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why burnout isn’t just an individual problem
  2. The 6 key areas of job mismatch that cause burnout
  3. What to do when you’re burnt out 

About Christina

Dr. Christina Maslach is Professor of Psychology, Emerita, at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the most widely used instrument for measuring job burnout, and has written numerous articles and books, including The Truth About Burnout. In 2020 she received the Scientific Reviewing award from the National Academy of Sciences for her writing on burnout.

In 2021, she was named by Business Insider as one of the top 100 people transforming business.  She also consults on the identification of sources of burnout and potential interventions.

Resources Mentioned

Christina Maslach Interview Transcript

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

Christina Maslach
Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m pleased to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to talk about your latest work, The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs, which I understand is hitting lists which is really cool. Congratulations.

Christina Maslach
Thank you. Thank you. We’re very thrilled.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to ask, I understand that you didn’t set out to become a burnout expert, yet you ended up one. What’s the story here?

Christina Maslach
Yeah, burnout found me rather than the other way around, I think. This was back in the 1970s, I had gotten my PhD, I had gotten a job at UC Berkeley, and I wound out to start doing research. I had been doing laboratory research on emotion, and when I got to Berkeley, they didn’t have a lab ready for me to use, so I thought, “Well, I’m going to go out and talk to people who deal with the…” you know, I was thinking about, “How do you deal with intense feelings when it’s important for you to be calm and cool and do your job? And how do you understand all that?”

So, I started talking to people that I thought might experience this on the job, and give me some ideas that I could then test out in my research. And what would happen, so I was talking to people, what we would call now first responders, people working in the ER, police people, social workers, teachers, and so forth, and as we finish up the interview, I was often asked, “Could I tell you some more things that you haven’t asked me yet about my job?” And I’d say, “Yeah, sure. That would be great. Sure.” “It’s confidential, right?” “Yeah, yeah.”

And they started telling me other things about the work that I hadn’t really understood or heard about in the same way. And after a while, I began to hear the same kind of rhythm, the same kind of pattern, the same kind of story from people from very different kinds of occupations. And I’d asked them, “Do you share this with…?” They’d be, “Oh, God knows, no.” “Yeah, but how do you talk about or think about it? Is there a name?” “Oh, I don’t know,” kind of thing.

So, I tried finding concepts in the research literature that I thought might be relevant, like, “Dehumanization and self-defense where you treat people like objects rather than human beings, so was that it?” “Oh, no, no, no, no.” “Okay. Well, medical sociology talks about detached concern that you have to have when you’re a healthcare provider and working with a patient. You’re concerned but you also have to sort of back off and be not too involved.” “No. Well, I don’t know how you…no, no, no.” “Okay.”

So, then the second serendipitous thing happened, and that was I was at a dinner for new people to the Berkeley campus, and I was chatting with the people on either side of me, and one of them was a woman from the law school. I ascribed a little bit about what I was doing to her, and she said, “Oh, my God, I don’t know what you call it, but in legal services poverty law where I just came from, we call it burnout.” And I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting.”

So, then when I ended the interviews, I’d ask, “What about dehumanization?” “No, no.” “Detached concern?” “Uh-uh.” “How about burnout?” “Yes, that’s it. That’s it. That’s the word.” And so, it just became something that I just got intrigued by because not only…so that was where the word came from, or people resonated to it, and said, “Yes, that captures what I’m going through and feeling.”

But people would get angry as they talked about things. They would cry sometimes when they talked about things. It was clearly something that was really, really important for people. And I kept thinking, “I’m stumbling across something that I hadn’t been prepared for but this seems like it deserves some more attention. I got to find out what’s going on here and see if I can understand it better.”

So, the first paper I ever published, I couldn’t get published in an academic journal because they thought it was pop psychology, but I ended up publishing it in a popular magazine at the time called Human Behavior. And, at that point, it went, what we would say today, viral. This was before internet though, so I was getting sacksful of mail in the department office from people saying, “Oh, my God, I’ve read your article. I thought I was the only one. Let me tell you my story.”

And so, it just exploded at that point in terms of people being interested in the phenomenon, or saying, “I know what this means, and I want to share that with you as well.” So, it’s just sort of grabbed me along with everything else I was doing in research and just decided, “I need to study this some more and figure out what’s happening. And if we can learn something about it to prevent it, or help people deal with this, then that would be a contribution that would be important to make.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is a very rich story. Thank you, Christina. And I’m thinking about almost like how, etymologically speaking, I’m thinking that they say someone, like, discovered The Beatles or whatever. Well, The Beatles were talented, they didn’t invent The Beatles, but someone kind of realized, “Oh, this is a thing,” and made it huge.

And so, in effect, you are sort of the equivalent discoverer of burnout, maybe not so much like, “Go figure, this is a phenomenon that affects humanity,” but rather, “Oh, we have some themes and some language, and poverty law,” huh? I guess that’s where the origin story. I never knew.

Christina Maslach
That was one. But actually, if you look more broadly, I mean, that was my personal origin story, it’s that other woman. And, in fact, I did an interview with her, which was amazing and I’ve cited her as well because she was so thoughtful about all this. But if you look at the word burnout, it was appearing earlier. There were burnout shops in Silicon Valley in the ‘60s, ‘70s. There was burnout in engineering language.

I’m the daughter of an engineer who did work for NASA on rarefied gas dynamics, and rocket boosters burn out, and lightbulbs burn out, and ball bearings burn out. So, there’s a much longer history that goes before anybody was connecting it to something about the job. So, even the word stress comes from physics, engineering kind of stuff. And the load you put on like a bridge and under, what conditions will the bridge handle the load or will it break, or some sort of thing like this?

So, I’m actually not the discoverer of the word. I certainly discovered people who were applying it to their job experience but there’s even a novel Graham Greene wrote, A Burnt-Out Case back in 1960, I think it was, or ’61, so there’s longer routes.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, my wife and I met at a book club that was reading a Graham Greene book. Fun fact. Well, let’s talk about burnout. Tell us, you’ve had a role in popularizing the term for usage in humans in relation to their jobs. With all this research and history, any really striking discoveries you’ve made about burnout that are maybe not so well understood or counterintuitive to folks?

Christina Maslach
Yeah, that’s a good question because I think, for a long time, and certainly still now, the really dominant response to burnout is to say, “What’s wrong with the people on the job?” It’s looked at as an individual problem, a weakness, an illness, a medical condition, and so somehow, you’ve got to be cured or treated or send off to a doctor or a psychiatrist, “What’s wrong with you?”

And often, the solutions when you ask the question, “Who is burning out?” are, “Well, what do we do for our people? Maybe we take Fridays off, or we’ll shut down the company for a week, or maybe we need to do some other kinds of things,” and it’s fixing the people. Actually, what you’re doing is focusing on the effects of burnout but you’re not looking at what’s causing it, and that’s a different question. That’s, “Why are people experiencing this?” not just who they are but “Why?”

And when you look at “Why?” then you’re looking at, “What’s the causal factors?” And it turns out that burnout is a stress response to chronic job stressors that have not been well-managed, so it’s a management issue. It’s like there are stuff on the job, chronic. The important part about that is it’s most of the time it’s high frequency, it’s a lot. It’s always there. The stuff that wears you down. It’s the pebbles in your shoe that are always getting in the way and making you uncomfortable and posing little obstacles to just getting the job done on time and do it well.

And what we know about stress and coping is that it’s much harder to recover from chronic job stressors, or chronic stressors, period, than it is for what we call acute stressors, occasional, “Oh, we’ve got an emergency,” “Oh, there’s a little crisis,” but then we recover, get back, ready to go again, and get a good night’s sleep, etc.

So, what happens with burnout is that it’s not just stress, the exhaustion response, and people often use the word burnout to mean just that, “I’m so tired. I’m burned out.” No. Burnout is when you’re not only stressed and exhausted, you don’t have energy to do anything more, but you are becoming incredibly negative, hostile, cynical, “Take this job and shove it.” So, the whole job situation, the conditions, the people, the things you have to do, are really…you are getting very negative about that, and doing the bare minimum rather than trying to do your very best and still get a paycheck and get out of there.

And a third component intertwined with all of this is you may begin feeling negative about yourself, “What is wrong with me? Why am I here? Maybe I made a mistake going into this kind of career. I’m not proud of what I’ve done. Maybe I’m not really good at this. Why should I do it?” So, when you get that trifecta, that triumvirate of the exhaustion of stress, the cynicism about the workplace, and the sense of your job ineffectiveness, that’s burnout. That’s when you go numb. That’s when you start having other health problems. That’s when you quit, or figure out, “How can I hang in there?”

And so, the quality of performance of the work that you do is going downhill, and you’re not being really much good to not just the people on the job, but your family or friends or anybody else, so it can have rippling effects to be on the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s how we know we got it, or in it, or in the midst of it, that’s the view. So, what are the root causes?

Christina Maslach
Well, what we have found, and when I say “we,” I’m talking also about my co-author on the book, Michael Leiter from Canada, but also researchers around the world who have been doing work on this that led to the World Health Organization recognizing job burnout as an occupational phenomenon. And what we have found is that there are at least six areas in which the match, or the good fit, between people and their job are really critical.

If there’s a better fit, better matches, then people are more likely to be engaged with work and satisfied with it and feeling good about it. If there’s really big mismatches, gaps, between people and the job, then they are more at risk for burnout. So, the six areas are, and they’re not in order of importance at all, they’re probably just in terms of how well known they are.

One is workload, and, there, the mismatch is high demands but really low resources. You don’t have enough time, equipment, colleagues, information, whatever it is, to get the job done and meet the demands. But often, more important is the second area, which is control, how much say, discretion, autonomy do you have to do the job the best way possible, to course-correct if something unexpected comes up.

And when people talk often about their workload, they’re saying, “It’s an uncontrollable workload. I don’t have any say about how much I have to do and when and where, and dah, dah, dah.” So, control is important. Third area is reward, and what that means is positive feedback when you do something well. So, it could be salary and benefits, but it’s also social recognition, that people recognize, thank you, pat you on the back, say, “Wow, you really saved that meeting with that client. That was really good. Or, maybe you could give me some tips on doing this.” So, you’re getting a sense that you’re doing a good job, people know you are, and you have new opportunities perhaps.

The fourth area is the workplace community, and that means all the people whose paths you cross in some fashion during your work, and are those relationships one of trust, mutual support, that we figure out how to get together on the same page, we have different points of view, we help each other out, we mentor each other, we have good times and celebrate when things go well.

Or, we work in what is often called these days a socially toxic workplace where you don’t know the other people well; they’re aiming to throw you under the bus before they do anything that’s helpful for you or you for them; there’s bullying, there’s harassment between people on the job; incivility, people not treating each other well. And we have seen that area of socially toxic workplace is really growing even before the pandemic.

The fifth area has to do with fairness. Whatever the rules, whatever the policies, whatever the practices, are they fairly applied equitably? That people who did something special, get the next opportunity, or the office with the window, or promotion comes fairly, as opposed to people who are unfairly cheating the line to get ahead, brown-nose the boss, the goodies go to the wrong person, the award process here is rigged. The people who really do something special never get recognized, that kind of thing.

And that can build a lot of the cynicism of burnout, if you feel that you’re working in an unfair place. This is where, by the way, discrimination lives, where glass ceilings are. It’s not a fair environment in which people are moving ahead. And, finally, the sixth area is values, also talked about as meaning. And I think, more recently, people have said purpose. But it’s the sense that I’m doing something that is important, makes a difference, I’m proud of the kind of work I do, the values of the organization where I am are in line with what I think is right.

Or, for burnout, I’m in a job where there are ethical conflicts where I’m being pushed to do things that I think are wrong, or not to say something when I see something that should be reported because it is illegal, or doing things that’s just so go against my values, “This is not why I went into medicine. I’ve got to get out of here because it’s not just about making money. I want to be in a place where I’m really helping people. That’s why I want to do this kind of work.”

So, those six areas can give you a sense of what’s working well, but also what things are not working so well. And those can then give you some thoughts about, “Okay, how do we make that a little better? How do we deal with the chronic stressors in fairness, or values, or reward, or whatever, and improve the condition so that people are going to thrive in that workplace rather than get beaten down?”

Pete Mockaitis
And what have you found to be some clever, best practices, or approaches to bring matching back-in-action, maybe either on the employee side or on the employer side?

Christina Maslach
Both. Rather than making an either/or, which is a tendency people have, “Is it the job or is it the person? Is it the boss or is it the employee?” It’s both/and. All of them. And in many ways, when it says that job stressors have not been successfully managed, it could be managed by the individuals, by the team, by managers, by professional organization.

There are a lot of ways in which things could be altered, or changed, or ideas can be proposed that, “How about we do it this way? How about if we redesign intake so that we don’t have this kind of problem that we all complain about? Maybe it would be better if we…or, no, how about if we do it this way, which would be a rotation? Well, how about if…?”

But come up with ways of identifying the chronic job stressors and what are the various options that we could do to get rid of them, modify them, make them less intense in terms of negative outcome? There’s a lot of ways of doing it. We have a lot of examples throughout the book in the six areas, saying, “Here’s what different kinds of places did and tried to improve the match there.”

And one of them involved fairness which, when we did an assessment, this was an organization that had about 800 people, and it wasn’t workload, it wasn’t reward. To the surprise of the C-suite, it was fairness, and they’re saying, “What do you mean? People think we’re unfair?” And they were looking and asking people, “What’s the problem?” They found one thing that everybody hated, really hated, and that was the distinguished service award that got you an extra little bonus check. And it was kind of like, “Wait. Money and it’s unfair?” It was unfair because people said, “The wrong people get that award.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Christina Maslach
“They haven’t done anything special.” They didn’t get a promotion so they went to their supervisor, and said, “Can you help me out?” “Okay, I’ll give you the award instead.” Or, went to the leader of a team, and the team members who actually did all the work of the special thing don’t get anything, just the leader. I mean, there were like 50 reasons why the award was considered so unfair. People hated it, didn’t want anybody to know that they might be nominated for it.

So, once that was kind of we presented the results of it, and said, “This is what you guys said,” they put together a group, a taskforce with people from different levels of employees in different units to work on it and come up with a better solution. The first thing was to point to the CEO, and say, “Fix it,” and he said, “I didn’t know we had a problem. You better help me figure out what to do.”

And it was not easy at first, there’s all different kinds of things you have to consider and come up with, but they came up finally with a proposal for how to do…how to really recognize people who’ve done something really special, and it was voted on and put in. And when we went back a year later to do some follow-up interviews, because we were following people over time, that fairness issue had dropped out, because people said, “Okay, now we’re doing it right.”

And also saying in the interviews, “And if we could fix that, guess what else we could fix?” It built hope, optimism, “Hey, we could actually think of ways of making our working life better by identifying the problems and doing something about it.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Well, that’s really counterintuitive and good to know that your intentions might be nice but, in practice, things can get abused, such that that recognition harms more than helps.

Christina Maslach
Yeah. And fairness, if you think about it, it’s a really important core psychological need, social psychological need that we all have, everybody, human beings. We want to be treated fairly in life. We wanted to be treated fairly in court, for example, legal system. Even if we end up not winning a case, let’s say, in the legal system, if we feel we’ve been treated fairly then we’ll be okay with it.

Or, for example, just to take it back to a small example from my own career. I teach a lot of students in classes, and sometimes a student will soon come in, and say, “Oh, I think I got an unfair grade on the test, or on the paper, and I think I need more points.” And I’ll set up a process, and other people do too, “We’ll get somebody else to do a new grading not knowing what the original one was, and whatever that second grade is, it could be better, it could also be worse. And you can lay out what you think entitles you to a better grade on that.”

And then you let them know, “Here’s what a second independent person said,” it could be me, the teacher, as opposed to my teaching assistant, and then it’s kind of like, “Oh, okay. Got it.” “This is why you didn’t get the full thing here,” or, “Yes, we should’ve given you more recognition of what you did.” But the fairness of the process is critical, that it’s not being biased, that it’s not being slanted in different ways towards some people and not towards others and that kind of thing.

So, the kind of fit that we’re talking about here is a more psychological fit with these core needs, like fairness, belongingness, psychological safety, much like we have always been for many, many years. We’ve always been concerned about the fit physically between the body, the human body, and the chair you sit in, or the computer station. And we’ve redesigned those so that you don’t blow out your fingers and wrists with carpal tunnel syndrome.

So, it’s like recognizing that the human body functions best if supported in certain ways, and how do we change the environment to better fit and support the body doing whatever the work is. What we’re finding is the same principle exists when what are the things that make people feel competent, and getting better at their job, and feeling like they’re a part of a good team, and being treated fairly. And those matter a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So much good stuff. Thank you. So, I’m curious, if one finds one’s self burnt out, what do you recommend the very first steps, one, two, three, about where to go from there?

Christina Maslach
Well, I think one of the first steps is to realize that you may not be alone. There may be other people who are having similar issues or problems or whatever. So, part of it is to find out a little bit more about, “Do other people share some of these responses to these chronic job stressors?” If you’re the only one, then it may suggest to you, “This is not the place for me. I better go somewhere else.”

But if there are other people who are also, it doesn’t have to be burned out, necessarily, but are also struggling with the same, “Ahh, we don’t have the things we need to do the job well,” then it’s a way to sort of shift from me to we, and say, “How can we do this better?” People often ask, “Do I have to go to my supervisor or manager and say I’m burned out, and can you accommodate me in some way?” And I’m saying, “No, because I think that’s just going to make it more your problem and stigmatize you. That’s not the way to go.”

But if we could say, “How do we put in a process for our unit, our team,” or whatever the sort of reasonable grouping is here, “to handle some of the problems we’re all feeling about an unfair procedure? How could we make it better?” That’s a different question than, “What’s wrong with you?” or, “What’s wrong with me?”

So, having a little bit more of a social power somehow, or to ask that as part of the regular meetings we have, “Do we have something where we can kind of periodically check in, like having an organizational checkup instead of a medical checkup? How are we doing? Are there any signs of problems coming along? The world is changing, do we need to actually rethink the jobs a little bit because we’re not quite on?”

So, having a focus on, “How do we make it better?” actually allows for more thoughtful action and collaboration and customization to actually improve the job conditions. And that’s ultimately what will prevent burnout rather than just helping people cope with it, because coping doesn’t usually change the sources of the problem.

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

Christina Maslach
I think just to sort of re-emphasize the point that burnout is as much about the job conditions, the social environmental conditions as it is about the people who are in those conditions doing the job, and we have to look at both. Getting a better match, a better fit can involve changes, redesign, thinking new things on both the person side and the job side. And, particularly, if it’s things that are affecting more people, a lot of people, it’s important to look at that.

What we have seen recently in, say, Gallup polls, both for this country and for globally, is that the vast majority of workers say they are not engaged with their job. It used to be about, oh, about 30%. Only 30%. I always used to wonder about the other 70. Now it’s dropping down to 20%, globally, people are not engaged. So, it’s like you don’t have to focus on the extreme opposite engagement of burnout. People all along the middle of that continuum are also not so happy with their work.

So, the idea of, “How do we make the job better? How do we evolve?” We didn’t see COVID coming maybe but we had to adjust to that. But in five years, the world probably is going to be different from what it is now. We’re still going to have to adjust and figure out, “What do we not need to do? What could we do differently? What is the most important stuff? And what are things that…? How do we just kind of rethink this job and not just keep doing it the same way it’s always been done?”

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

Christina Maslach
I think one of the things that has always been important for me is something that I think I learned being raised in a Quaker tradition, and it was not what my parents had been raised as but it was something that they chose at that time. And one of the things about that is that the sort of the general beliefs about other human beings are the assumption that there is always some good in everyone, and your job is to look for it and make sure, whatever you can do to help it blossom even more.

And so, rather than just sort of saying, “Oh, these people are not good. They can’t do the job. They’ve got a problem, dah, dah, dah,” saying, “Wait a minute. There could be ways in which they could be really valuable assets,” and you invested in them and hired them. And, “How do we make what they’ve got to bring, come out and really make a good contribution on that?” And it may be different in different kind of cases but I think that basic philosophy of always looking for what’s good in people is something that has always been a part of my research and teaching.

And so, it’s like, “How do I, if I learned something, if I found out about something, how do we pass it on and make it usable so that things can get a little bit better?”

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

Christina Maslach
I think of, in my own work, some of the interviews that I’ve done with people that have really just completely changed what I understood and thought about the kind of work that they do.

And I had one person who, when he saw…he was a practicing psychologist in a mental health clinic in the Midwest, and he read the article I wrote in ’76, the first article in the human behavior, as I said that somehow was generating all kinds of attention. He wrote me a letter that was one of the most beautiful letters and completely grasped everything about burnout that I could ever imagine, way better than I could even think of with all the data and stuff like that.

And he just kind of put it all in these beautiful amazing words, which I have then quoted in my books and everything since then. And one day, there was a knock on my door, and it turned out it was this man who had moved out to the West Coast, had decided to get his PhD, he had a Master’s but he was going to get a PhD, and go into practice, and he has become an expert on treating people and helping people deal with burnout issues.

And not only has he become a lifelong friend, he is a musician, and we share jazz music. He has concerts and all those kinds of things. And he is someone who had been at the darkest point of burnout and ended up having a life that was really great, overcame all these things, and was able to make a good life and to help other people better understand what they could do about it.

So, knowing those kinds of stories, what’s possible, it’s just really…that kind of thing really has given us a much better understanding of what burnout is all about.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Christina Maslach
When I was young, my friends and I became enamored of Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, and it’s been interesting because it’s always been there’s something happening, and there’s clues, and you’re trying to figure out what it is, and can you come up with a solution, and come out with an answer that might prevent bad things from happening.

The other thing I would say is that, again as a young child, somebody gave me a children’s book of archaeology, and I fell in love with archaeology. And, again, you’re looking for clues, you’re trying to understand how people lived in earlier years in different places. And I discovered later on in life that Sigmund Freud was a great admirer of archaeology, so I thought, “Oh, okay, this is good.”

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

Christina Maslach
Well, I don’t think of it as a tool but I think of it as a critical thing for what I do, and that is getting at least one other pair of eyes on what I’ve written. We haven’t got a tool yet that really quite does it, but it’s like a really good editor, a colleague, somebody with a different point of view, who kind of looks at your writing, and says, “Have you thought about this? Why don’t you say it this way? I don’t understand that example.” And then talking with them about how they’re seeing it, and what I said, and what I’m trying to do, and maybe it’s not coming across clearly and stuff.

So, I just find that kind of interpersonal sharing of work, and having different people weigh in on, and giving me feedback is probably the most important thing that I’ve had in the work over the years.

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

Christina Maslach
I would point them to my website at the University of California Berkeley in the psychology department. And there is a listing there, I’m now an emerita professor, which means that I’m retired but I’m still actively involved. And so, that would be the psychology department at UC Berkeley. Also, I would recommend the Healthy Workplace Center at UC Berkeley.

I’m a researcher affiliated with that, and I’ve learned a lot more about the workplace because, in that center, Interdisciplinary Center, I get to talk to architects, and designers, and economists, and all kinds of other people who each have a different kind of perspective and point of view and contribution to make to what the workplaces look like, and how they function, and how they go about doing the kind of work that they do.

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

Christina Maslach
I would say that the challenge is really to see this as a continuing process of, “How do we get better at supporting people doing the kind of work that our society needs?” And I think this is a particularly important challenge now because I’m hearing about all kinds of people who are leaving jobs. They are not going back into nursing or being physicians. They are not going back to teaching.

We need teachers, we need doctors and nurses, in terms of our health and wellbeing.

So, the challenge of designing a better workplace is the answer to burnout rather than trying to figure out what’s wrong with people who get too stressed and burned out by the job. There’s a larger lesson of, “How do we…” how can I say this, “…get the best return on the investment that we make in people and their contributions to all of our society?” And that means really focusing on the environment and the job conditions in that situation as well as on the training and the feedback and stuff as well for the individual employees.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Christina, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun and very little burnout.

Christina Maslach
Thank you. I wish the very same to you and everybody else. That’s a great way to end.

Jan 16
0

831: How to Manage Multiple Projects without the Overwhelm with Elizabeth Harrin

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Elizabeth Harrin lays out the five critical steps to making the management of multiple projects more manageable.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The easiest way to make managing multiple projects manageable
  2. How to ensure follow through when you’re not the manager
  3. How to strike the right balance between time, cost, and quality

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Harrin teaches people how to juggle multiple projects so they can meet stakeholders’ expectations without working extra hours. She is a project management practitioner, trainer, mentor and founder of RebelsGuideToPM.com. 

An author of seven project management books, Elizabeth prides herself on her straight-talking, real-world advice for project managers. She uses her twenty years’ experience doing the job to help people deliver better quality results whilst ditching the burnout through her community membership programme, Project Management Rebels.

Resources Mentioned

Elizabeth Harrin Interview Transcript

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

Elizabeth Harrin
Hello. Thank you for having me on the show.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom but, first, I think we need to hear a little bit about your ritual involving the song “Firework.” What’s the story here? 

Elizabeth Harrin
Well, when I go live on a video or something like that, I feel like I need to get into the zone. And having that break between just doing my emails or whatever I was doing before, and focusing on showing up and being present in the moment, I do that with music. So, I play a song and I just got stuck on Katy Perry’s, so I play that to get into the right frame of mind before going live and talking to people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, “Firework” is actually a really fun tune, and I love the metaphor at the beginning, like, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?”

Elizabeth Harrin
Absolutely. Drifting around, isn’t that what every project manager feels like at the beginning of a new piece of work, and you have got no idea what you’re supposed to be doing?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Elizabeth, you’re a master of the segue and tying it together. All right. Well, I want to hear a little bit about Managing Multiple Projects. You’ve written the book on it. Could you kick us off with a particularly surprising or counterintuitive or extra-fascinating discovery you’ve made when it comes to managing multiple projects?

Elizabeth Harrin
I think one of the things that surprised me was I did a survey to get some numbers, a bit of research for the book, and most people are managing between two and five projects, and that doesn’t sound like very many, but having to constantly switch between work does create that overhead, and workload is the biggest cause of burnout. So, if you can’t manage that workload effectively and switch between all things you’re juggling, it can be really quite difficult.

And the most surprising thing for me about that survey, and the results I got back when I was interviewing people for the book, was how sad it is that people are feeling so unhappy about the work that they do. And the verbatim comments were, just shocked me that people show up to work, they want to do the best that they can, and they’re not in environments where they can do that.

And I felt that that was something that we need to change in the world because we all need to be happy at work. We spend so much time there, it’s not worth doing things that we don’t enjoy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Elizabeth, that is powerful, and thank you for sharing that. That really does connect emotionally in terms of overwhelm, burnout, sadness. When you say verbatim comments, are there a couple that have lodged into your brain and haunt you, that you could share to tee up just what we might be able to escape here?

Elizabeth Harrin
There was a comment from a woman called Kimberly, and she wrote, “I work in a fast-food project management environment that expects a sit-down service.” And I thought, “Don’t we all?” So many people must feel that they’re in environments where you want to do the best quality work you can, and actually it’s got to be a quick turnaround. There has to be speed and shortcuts, and we have to apply all these hacks just to get through the day because we don’t have the time to focus on the people that matter and the work that matters.

And so, that analogy about feeling like you’re in a fast-food environment but all your customers and the work that you want to be able to deliver, you won’t be able to provide this five-star dining service. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And it’s really funny, and I have felt both of those work desires. Sometimes it is a blast to just shred through a lot of stuff at medium quality and high speed, and just enjoy the thrill ride, like, “Woohoo! Look at all these things checked off and out the door. That’s really cool.” And other times, you really do want to be, I don’t know, sort of like an artisanal, craftsmanship, bespoke, excellence, maximum beauty, maximum quality, and what’s challenging is often you don’t get to choose.

Elizabeth Harrin
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“That might be your mood but what’s required is this.” And if they require both speed and excellence at the same time, yeah, that’s a tricky one.

Elizabeth Harrin
It’s a tricky one, and people end up working longer hours. That was certainly my experience when I went back to work after maternity leave and was in this situation where I was managing multiple projects myself. My choices were do things less good, to a less quality standard, or work longer hours. And neither of them really appealed to me in terms of wanting to be the best professional that I could be and do good things in my career. So, I had to start rethinking what work meant and how I could work more productively because the tools I had only gave me those two choices, and that wasn’t good enough.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful and it sounds like some of your thoughts made it into your book, Managing Multiple Projects: How Project Managers Can Balance Priorities, Manage Expectations and Increase Productivity. If you could give us the key thesis or big idea behind the book, what is it?

Elizabeth Harrin
I’ve put together a five-part model that helps people break down their work, structure it differently, and then keep all their balls in the air. Although, the thing I would say is that no book will ever tell you there’s a one-size solution that will fit every need, so it’s written very much from a perspective of, “Here’s a ton of different tools and techniques that you could try. Test them out in your work environment. Find what fits your working style,” because everyone is different, aren’t they? And everyone’s work environment is different. But, broadly, with a few tweaks, hopefully, you can make the work a little bit more manageable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds exciting. Could you share with us a case study or a particularly inspiring story example of someone who was able to upgrade their managing multiple projects game to see great results?

Elizabeth Harrin
Yes, I can. I do a lot of mentoring as well, so a lot of the people I talk to will pick and choose a couple of different things to apply. I can give you my own example and then I can share some examples from other people. The thing that made the biggest difference for me is the first of those five steps, which is working out what’s in your personal portfolio. So, what was the totality of my workload? Because I had three or four projects that I was managing, but also, I was mentoring my colleagues, I was organizing events at work, I was having to turn up and deputize for my manager at different meetings.

And all the other things, they never really make it into your mental to-do list because they’re the stuff you jot down on a Post It note and you never find the time, really, to put those on a project schedule or anything. They’re just expectations. So, when I had a complete picture of all the things I was responsible for, I then got a big shock about how many hours that actually equated to within a week, and being able to then have an intelligent conversation with my manager, and also to plan my own time, it became a lot easier because I had full visibility.

And I think that’s something that I know from teaching about managing multiple projects, that other people have take away as well, just that realization of all the extra things that we’re expected to do, whether it’s time sheets, or finance reporting, or organizing a party for the end of the year celebrations, whatever it is, all of those things take time away from us being able to deliver the main part of our job, the projects that we’re working on.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I’m thinking about mandatory trainings, I’m thinking about the sort of meetings, I’m thinking about email. Email is tricky because, on the one hand, are these emails about your projects. Well, then I guess, in a way, that time might get counted. Or, are the emails about everything else from the CFO and the CEO and this and that cross-functional group here and there.

Elizabeth Harrin
Yes, team meetings, briefing your colleagues, all that kind of stuff. So, that personal portfolio step was really helpful for me. And one of the other things that I talk about in the book is dependency management. So, how do you work out how your work interacts with other people’s work, and how each of your projects interact with each other?

And I can tell you about Robert, who told me that once he’d planned out those different dependencies between his workload, he felt that he already knew that in his head. But having plotted it out and writing it down in a matrix, he could then use that as a communication tool to help other people in the department understand how their work impacted other people.

And that was valuable then because he could use that to help people talk about, “When does their work need to be done? What’s going to happen if it’s late? This is the implications for these people or this team or that project.” And they could talk about how they could help each other, make sure all of those expectations were met.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, lovely. That is handy. And so, just like a snazzy chart graph, flowchart, bit of graphical loveliness?

Elizabeth Harrin
You could do it that way. I just wrote it in a spreadsheet. I’m very good at simple things. So, the spreadsheet is a list of all my projects, a list of all my other responsibilities, a list of the way that my work interacts with other people’s work. The way that we did the dependency matrix was we had a list of projects down the side, and then a list of the same projects across the top.

And where they met, we could say, “Well, does this project have anything to do with that? Does this piece of work have anything to do with that team?” And you could sort of write in the box, “Yes, we need to be aware of this,” or, “Yes, we have to do that before this one.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, those are handy right off the bat. And could you share, when it comes to managing multiple projects, there are many books and works and tools and trainings on project management, and your corner of the project management universe, managing multiple projects, is distinctive. Can you share with us, what are some of the key differences, distinctions about the game when you’re managing multiple projects versus one super project?

Elizabeth Harrin
I think the biggest challenge for me is having different stakeholders, more stakeholders. If you’re managing a big gigantic project and it’s taking up all of your workload, then you’ve probably got quite good relationships with the people that you work with because you’re with them every day, working with them every day. The team might be large, and I’m not saying there’s not a lot of people and relationships to manage, but there’s one common goal that you’re all working towards, which is delivering the project, and you’ve probably got experience of working with them on a regular basis.

Now, let’s say you’re managing four projects. That’s four potentially quite separate, different teams, each of who want a piece of you at some point in the week, and you’ve got to switch between managing their expectations about how important their work is because not all projects are the same level of importance. Someone has to work on the stuff that’s low importance. And it might be that someone wants more of your time than you can actually give because you’ve got other things to do in your week as well.

So, I think those relationships are probably the hardest thing and the most different thing about managing multiple strands of work rather than just managing one. And that could be managing four different clients. If you’re in a client-facing role, maybe you’ve got four different clients, maybe you’ve got four different internal projects but, ultimately, the more people you have to work with, the harder, I think, the job becomes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then, now could you share with us, you mentioned at the very beginning that burnout, sadness, overwhelm stuff, do you have any strategies, specifically, that are targeted toward the internal game, our emotional landscape?

Elizabeth Harrin
I would say having boundaries is probably the most important thing because often, when people give us work to do, there is the expectation that we have the time to do it. And because we are good employees, and we don’t want to rock the boat, we say, “Yes, of course, I can take on that extra piece of work. When would you like it done by?”

And I think having mental boundaries around, “How do you accept new pieces of work when it’s within your gift to be able to do that?” Are you going to make the point about saying, “Well, I can do this but it will mean I’ll have to stop doing something else. I can do this but not by tomorrow because I’m working on something else. I can get it to you by Friday. Is that okay?”

And having that kind of sense of protecting your own time and your own mental health so that you’re not saying, “Yes, I can do everything, of course. Just lay it on me, and I’m just going to stay up till midnight and be at my keyboard all night.” By being aware of what your own limitations are and how many hours you’ve got available, what else you’ve got going on, planning out the next couple of weeks, you can start to think about, “If I say yes to this, and I have to because my boss is asking,” let’s be honest, you haven’t really got a lot of choice, “How can I make this fit? Whatever help do I need? How can I have that conversation?” And I tend to default to the, “I can do this, and this is when I can get it to you.”

There’s another tool that I can share, if you like.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, please do.

Elizabeth Harrin
One of the things that has helped me has been the two-week look ahead. So, I will take a point in the week where I’ll look at what’s coming up in the next fortnight with the team, to say, “Okay, what do we know about the next two weeks? Who’s got holiday? When have we got big meetings that we need to prepare for? What deadlines do we have?” and then nothing really surprises you, or you’ve built in a little bit of time to be aware of the things that are coming up, so if you do get a surprise, it doesn’t throw your whole schedule off because you’ve already built in some resilience for what you know is coming up.

That’s been really helpful for me because it also means that I can look ahead in terms of just how busy I’m going to be. So, you talked about protecting yourself and being mentally ready to be busy and juggle all these things. If I know I’ve got another week coming up in the future and it’s very busy, lots of big meetings, high stress, I can prepare for that because I can make sure that I’ve got things for the children’s lunchboxes in the freezer, I can make sure I’ve got childcare organized, I can make sure I’m not booking any late-night social events for me that week.

Or, if I am, I’m planning the next morning so that that’s easy. And so, I’m trying to holistically look at work is coming up and what that affects me, how that affects me personally so that I can be more prepared to show up ready to work.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. Okay. Well, let’s dig into your five key concepts. They each start with P, which is handy to remember: portfolio, plan, people, productivity, positioning. We’ve already gotten a couple tidbits for each. Could you perhaps give us a quick definition or articulation of the concepts, and then perhaps a top do and don’t within each of the five?

Elizabeth Harrin
Okay. With portfolio, I talk about having full visibility of the work that you’ve got on the go at the moment and the things that you’re responsible for. So, my top tip for that is just to take an hour, perhaps even less, and just look through whatever notetaking tool you use or your notebook or the notes you’ve got on your phone, and try and write down everything that you are currently working on, looking at how much time does that need to take per week.

And I know working out hours is very difficult, so what you might want to do is just think, “It’s a big thing, a medium thing, a small thing. That’s good enough for this exercise.” And then that’s the portfolio piece done. It gives you a good sense of what’s going on. The thing not to do is to keep that information to yourself. Use that as a talking point tool with your manager and with your team to say, “Look at all these things I’ve got on the go. Can you help me prioritize so that I’m focusing more of my time on the things that really matter to the organization?”

The plan step is about scheduling, working out when you’re available to do things, and the tip I have for that is to look at all the different projects you’re working on, and then look at where they’ve got their big milestones, when are they going live, or when do you have a big meeting about them, and then plot those on – again, I did it on a spreadsheet – because then you can start to see, “Oh, project number one and project number four have very similar schedules.”

“Maybe we could work on them together and maybe there are some benefits in looking at how we can streamline and combine the work, if it makes sense to do so, so that we’re not doing everything twice.” With that you’re going to need help from other people. So, again, the tip not to do is to try and do that alone. Other people will have a different insight about what’s important and what’s coming up on a project schedule, so it’s worth involving the rest of the team in your planning.

The people element of the model is all around working with others, as you guess from the name, and that is to do with thinking through how you use other people’s time. So, my suggestion there, if I have to give you one thing, would be to look at where you can combine meetings. And I can tell you about a time I did not do this.

I went along to a meeting with my project sponsor, my main manager I was working with on that piece of work, and I was all ready to talk about one project, but he was also involved in another project, and he asked me questions about that one and I wasn’t ready to talk about that, I didn’t have any of my notes, so I baffled, made episode, went along, and got through it. But it made me think, actually, other people are working on multiple things, too.

And to them, they might have multiple things they want to ask you about, so let’s try and combine the communication so that we’re only contacting people once rather than contacting them multiple time about each different thing that you’re involved with because you then help them manage their time as well.

With productivity, which is the fourth P, it’s really around managing your own time, thinking through what works for you, what productivity tools and techniques you want to use, and how you can help other people in your team be productive as well. The thing not to do with that is to get sucked into the latest shiny tool or what’s working for your colleagues because, in my experience, everybody has quite different ways of working to the best of their ability.

For me, I’m very much a pen-and-paper person. I do use electronic tools for project scheduling and task management and all that, but I always have pen and paper as well. Whereas, I know people who would never write anything down. So, you need to find out what works best for you and then use that in the way that you work.

Positioning is the last P. It’s also the one that’s the most convoluted because I kind of have to find the P that fit it, but it’s more around, “How do you set yourself up for success? So, what does the environment look like?” So, this is all around checklists and templates and processes, and what can you change in your environment to make life easier for future you.

So, one very simple thing to do would be to think through, “What do I do on a regular basis? How much time do I spend thinking about that? Would it be easier if I just had a checklist or a work construction or something like that? Then, if I’m not here, someone else can do it, but, equally, when I need to do it, I can make sure I just wheeze through it. I don’t have to worry about any of those steps.”

And I wonder if this is part of me getting older, but I used to be able to hold a list of things in my head. Now, I struggle more to think about the different steps involved in every process and making sure that nothing gets forgotten. So, anything that can be written down and templated just saves you time in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to the holding in the head, I’ve really noticed that. It’s a little bit of a stressor in terms of, I guess, maybe the psychologists would call it our working memory capacity. That might not be right construct but something like that in terms of there are so many things we can put there, and then when we try to push it for more, I actually feel sort of stress signals popping up.

And so, what I find interesting is if there is a task that is already somewhat stressful, or I’d be prone to procrastinate on because I’m worried I might screw something up or overlook something, make a mistake, or it’s just unpleasant for any number of reasons, having that checklist in place is very satisfying because it’s like I can free up all the potential stress associated with thinking and remembering the steps because they’re just there, and I can feel a little bit of fun momentum associated with, “Okay, I checked this piece of a checklist. It only took 30 seconds but I did it, and it’s checked. And now momentum is there visibly on the page before my eyes.”

Elizabeth Harrin
Exactly. Who doesn’t love ticking a box on a spreadsheet, right, to say it’s done, cross off that task on your to-do list? Project managers love that kind of stuff. And it’s exactly true, and it gives you a better-quality result because you’re not going to forget things. You’re going to go through a set of steps. And, honestly, the first time I did it, my checklist was a bit rubbish, and as I went through the actual task, I went, “All right, I have to do that as well. Oh, I’ve forgotten to involve that person.” So, you just add it on and it becomes checklist version 2.0, and you keep improving and iterating as you go. But the next time you have to do that, you don’t have to think so hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, now just a couple follow-up questions across some of these five Ps. I’ve had the experience, and apparently there are some psychological truths or principles that suggest that we humans have a real hard time, in fact, estimating how long something is going to take. Is that your experience? And what can be done about this challenge?

Elizabeth Harrin
Yes, that’s very much my experience. It’s really hard to estimate. And a lot of what we do is knowledge work where we’re thinking of things or changing something, and we probably haven’t done that before, so you don’t even have past projects where you can go back and say, “When we did it the last time, it took us this long, so, therefore, we can just use those estimates.”

Sometimes that’s because organizations don’t really capture the data in a format we can go back and use again but, also, it’s because people suffer from optimism bias. And when we think, “Oh, yeah, we can do that in four hours,” meanwhile forgetting about the fact that we all need toilet breaks in the day, and to take calls, and to check our emails, and to turn up and do other things.

So, my suggestion for people who are struggling with estimating is to think about how many hours you’ve got in the day, and then to schedule yourself and other people in your team, or have conversations with other people about what’s realistic for them to do, but only think of yourself as available 80% of your time because that then gives you time for those team meetings, the mandatory training we talked about earlier, and taking phone calls on things that are completely unrelated but still relevant to your job, and then you’ve got a bit of a buffer in your day.

The other big challenge with estimating is that people often approach estimating, thinking that they’re only doing this one thing, whereas, in real life, we’re probably juggling multiple different strands of activity or many projects, and switching between projects also cause us some time. So, time blocking has helped me.

Blocking out some time, a few hours to work on a particular thing, or an afternoon to do a particular type of task, and talking to our colleagues about best ways to get things done, what productivity techniques work for them, how do they organize their time, when have they got holidays coming up that they might need to do more things beforehand to hand over, and that might make them less available for your project because they’re supporting something else is just a lot about talking.

And I think contingency as well. Do you think that would be useful?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Elizabeth Harrin
Yeah, contingency is a buffer time. People often ask me, “But how much contingency should I add to this estimate?” or, “I think this task is going to take five days, but what’s reasonable contingency?” And I tend to, “Contingency should be something that’s based on uncertainty.” So, if you’re not really sure and you’re just guessing, you want to slack on a bit of extra time. Quite a lot probably if you just don’t have the information to make an accurate guess at the moment. But if you’ve done the work before, or you’re quite confident in how long things are going to take, you could probably get away without adding a lot less extra time.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. That makes sense in terms of the variable driving whether you want to add more or less contingency is uncertainty because we just don’t know, so let’s play it safe by having some more in a high-uncertainty zone. So, let’s say that the uncertainty is small, you’ve done it before, but it’s a little different. Do you have a go-to percentage that you utilize?

Elizabeth Harrin
I like 10%, I would add 10% extra on. There are lots of estimating models, so if your organization is quite mature in the way that they approach time tracking and estimating, then there’s a lot better ways to do it than just to add on 10%. But if you are just working on something yourself without an awful lot of other guidance from a project management office or anything like that, then give yourself a bit of a buffer, and 10% seems to cover most scenarios.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when it comes to the people side of things, when you’re in the tricky position of having to lead without the authority, like you own the project but you don’t own the employees, you have to do the stuff to make that proceed, it could be a tricky spot to be in. Do you have any top tips beyond being considerate in leveraging their time, of being extra influential, persuasive, to have people to say yes, and, in fact, follow through with their stuff?

Elizabeth Harrin
In my experience, I think it helps to tell people…well, to not tell people, to invite people to participate and explain the reasons behind why their participation is valuable. People like to do things because there’s a reason behind, not just because they’d been asked. So, the great thing about projects is that often there’s a change or a benefit that’s coming at the end of the work. Projects sometimes have bad outcomes, like, “We’re closing down an office, so we’re making your department redundant,” or something like that.

But, often, we’re trying to do something that will be beneficial for the organization and bring about something that’s good. So, if you can tie their contribution into the vision, or the bigger picture of why we’re doing the work in the first place, they can draw those lines and make the connection between how their contribution matters. That can be quite a powerful way of helping people to feel motivated about doing the work in the first place.

The other thing that works is allowing them to set their own deadlines. So, if you go to somebody, and say, “I need this by Tuesday,” their instant reaction might be, “Oh, I can’t do that. You can’t tell me what to do.” Whereas, if you can say, “We need this piece of work done, and your boss has suggested that you’re the right person to do it. How do you think…how much time do you think this might take?”

Obviously, this is not a conversation you’d have in three sentences, but you’d sit with them and explain what the requirements are and help them see the bigger picture of the project as well. And people can then say, “Well, if I need to involve this person and do this and work with that, then I think I could probably get that done by a week on Tuesday.” And that’s the date that goes in your project plan.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re trying to do projects is they make up all the deadlines themselves. In fact, I’ve sat in a room with senior managers, and they’ve drawn out a project plan on a whiteboard, and said, “Right, that’s what we’re going to do.” And I thought, “But none of the people who are actually doing the thing are in the room.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “You don’t know what it takes.”

Elizabeth Harrin
“You just don’t know. Why are you making this stuff up?” And then, of course, you just caused delays later because you’ve set expectations that are unmanageable. So, using other people’s expertise, and tapping into what they know, and trusting them to suggest the right timeframes can help. And I feel I’ve gone off the question now. Did I answer the question?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no, it’s all juicy stuff in terms of you cast the vision for, “Okay, this is how things can be better when the project is done and how you’re contributing to that.” But the deadline-setting stuff, I think, is handy in terms of thinking like there might be a date by which it’s extra valuable to have this done, like, before the tradeshow, or the big meeting, or the big conference. So, that’s, I guess, would be nice to have it done, and executives can determine that.

However, I’m thinking about this is maybe the first project management lesson I learned I thought that was really useful – was it the triangle? You can probably describe it better, Elizabeth, than I can. What’s the time management or the project management triangle?

Elizabeth Harrin
We talk about the iron triangle, the triangle of constraints, of balancing time, cost, and quality. Although, the thought process behind that has moved on a bit now, and we don’t just use time, cost, and quality as a measure of success. But in terms of talking to your stakeholders, your colleagues, and your project sponsor, and your boss, it is really helpful because you can say, “Well, I can deliver to this level of quality, and it will cost this much and take this long.”

And then they could say, “But I want it faster. I can’t spend that much money. I want it cheaper.” And then you can adjust the corners of the triangle, and say, “Well, if we want it cheaper, it will have to be less quality, or maybe it will take longer because we’ll use cheaper resources to do it. Or, if you want it to take less time, it’ll probably cost more because we’ll throw more resources at it. We might be able to maintain quality but we might have to take a few things out of the project scope and maybe add those in as a phase two later, but then we’ll hit the deadline.”

So, it’s about balancing all these different success criteria. And that’s a really helpful point that you’ve put out there because you need to know what people feel is important, and maybe it’s the deadline, maybe it’s, “Do what you need to do but get it done by the tradeshow.” I worked in healthcare, and I was on a project once, and people didn’t really care about when it got done. Well, that’s not true. They did care when it got done, but what was most important was that when it was delivered, it was good quality.

Elizabeth Harrin
And if that took a couple of extra weeks, then a couple of extra weeks didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. They just needed it to be good. So, some people will say the date is important. Some people will say, “You’ve got a ceiling on this much money that you can spend,” or, “This quality criteria has to be met,” or it might be something like sustainability, customer satisfaction, or some other kind of measure that they think is important. And if you know that, then you can make all of your decisions based around, “How do we get to that?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is powerful to see what is the priority there. And when you say quality, I think my own synonym for quality is how much good stuff, in terms of we can have more…it’s almost two dimensions, like a scope thing in terms of how excellent is the thing and how many of the things are there. Like, if we’re doing a bunch of home renovations, it’s like, “Okay, you want 30 updates across the kitchen and the bathrooms and whatever. And so, we can sort of do fewer of those updates, or those updates could be chintzier, or we’re going to have to have more people working on it, contractors, etc. which will come with the paying for it, or we just take more time to do it.”

So, I think that has been handy for me as I think through stuff, and I get stressed out, like, “Uh-oh, how on earth….?” This feels bad to say but I guess it’s real and something has to give somewhere or else we will be those sad, burnt out, overwhelmed people, is that usually what I sacrifice is quality. It’s like, “All right, well, it’s going to be worse.” But because my quality expectations are usually so insane, we sent you a microphone, so I’m told that no one else does that, and I thought, “Oh, really? They probably should,” but whatever.

So, I’m able to back it up, it’s like, “Okay. Well, we’re just going to allow that, and it’s good enough for 98% of the people who are encountering this thing that I’m making, and I’m just going to have to take a breath and live with it, and that’s fine.”

Elizabeth Harrin
And that’s very much the case at work, isn’t it? There are some things that you absolutely have to get perfect. And if you’re a lawyer writing a contract, you can’t just go, “Oh, well, it’s 80% good enough.” Your client is not going to live with that. But if you’re drafting an internal document just for review to brief your colleagues on something, you know, I prefer not to send out things with typos, but if something did slip through, no one is going to die. It will be fine.

And if it means that you get it out the door at 5:00 o’clock, and you go home on time, and you have a life instead of sitting there stressing about every full stop, and staying at your keyboard till 7:00, because I guarantee that half the people who read that document won’t even notice whether a full stop is there or not. 

Pete Mockaitis
I really like what you said there about no one is going to die, and that is a perspective I’ve come to again and again, because it’s true. There are some things in healthcare, in transportation, in military, police, and other fields where it truly is life and death. The quality of your work will make that impact. And many other times in the land of spreadsheets and memos, it’s usually not.

And so, I find that quite comforting if I’m getting a little bit too worked up about something, is to recall that no one will die no matter how horrible an episode we produce, Elizabeth, although you’re doing great. So, that’s cool. Well, now tell me, Elizabeth, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Elizabeth Harrin
Something that you can do to start managing your multiple projects more effectively is to think about how you can group them into different buckets. So, if you do a couple of things for one client, or you’re leading on a couple of initiatives for one particular department, how can you bring those things together to streamline the communication, try and have meetings where you cover multiple things in one go instead of scheduling lots of meetings about the same thing?

So, looking for connections between the work you do can make it feel a lot less overwhelming. If you’ve got 15 things on the go, for example, that’s 15 things you have to think about. But if you can put them into buckets, and you’ve got five things in each bucket, then you’ve only got three things to think about, and it could be around the solution that you’re building, the person you’re doing it for, the type of technology that’s in use, the date it’s got to be finished by. It could be anything. But if you can group the work, I found in people I worked with have found that it relieves some of the overload because it gives you a way to think about things at the next level up.

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

Elizabeth Harrin
The quote that I have on my wall is from Francine Jay, and it says, “My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.”

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

Elizabeth Harrin
I like the copy machine study by Ellen Langer, which is about providing a reason for why we want people to take action. When people know there’s a reason, they’re more likely to do the action that we want. 

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Elizabeth Harrin
If I was on an island, I’d be taking Les Miserables. I really love that book by Victor Hugo. If I was choosing a business book, I’d choose Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers by Anthony Mersino, which really changed the way that I look at our profession.

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

Elizabeth Harrin
I use a tool called Infinity for task management, and a Maltron keyboard to help me type more easily.

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

Elizabeth Harrin
I do Pilates once a week. I think I need to have that time just to be focused on me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers and listeners, and they say, “Yes, Elizabeth, you’re so right when you said this”?

Elizabeth Harrin
Maybe communicate more than you think you have to.

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

Elizabeth Harrin
You can find me on LinkedIn and on all the normal social media channels. And you can find out more about project management at my blog, RebelsGuidetoPM.com.

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

Elizabeth Harrin
I would say to remember that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. So, if you want to just organize your work in a different way, just do it. Most managers want action and results, and they don’t really mind how you get there, as long as you get there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Elizabeth, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck with all your projects.

Elizabeth Harrin
Thank you for having me on the show.

Jan 12
0

830: Lessons Learned from the World’s Longest Scientific Study on Happiness with Dr. Robert Waldinger

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Dr. Robert Waldinger breaks down key insights on happiness gathered from the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The top stress regulator—and how to cultivate it in your life
  2. Two big happiness myths to debunk
  3. How to foster warm, authentic relationships with one question 

About Robert

Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents.

He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. Robert is the co-author of the book The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study on Happiness. 

Resources Mentioned

Robert Waldinger Interview Transcript

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

Robert Waldinger
I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Bob, I’m so excited to hear about your wisdom from your research project, as well as you’re also a Zen master. How does one become a Zen master? What does that consist of?

Robert Waldinger
A lot of meditation and a lot of training. It was years and years of training in Zen.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, who bestows the title of Zen master? How does it…? I’m thinking, like, a chess grandmaster, like I know how that works. But how does one become an official Zen master?

Robert Waldinger
Well, there are no points involved.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Robert Waldinger
Zen is essentially an apprenticeship, and so we end up studying with teachers. I studied with a teacher and, eventually, she gave me authorization to teach. It’s called Dharma transmission. And now I’m a fully transmitted Zen teacher, a Roshi is what it’s called.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s just so fascinating. I took one class on Zen Buddhism in college, so that’s the extent of my background, but it was fascinating. I’m curious, any particular insights that you found.

Pete Mockaitis
That was transformational in a very practical sense in terms of, “Huh, I am more effective and happier because of this perspective or insight or discovery”?

Robert Waldinger
Probably the biggest insight for me has been that everything constantly changes. And, on the one hand, that may sound trivial but, on the other hand, when you really sit on a cushion hour after hour, and you watch all the things that come up in your mind and then pass away, times when you start to get furious, or are euphoric, and then in a moment it’s gone, it really helps you to notice that some of the things we think are so terrible and are always going to be that way, never stay around that long. Similarly, a lot of the joys pass away, and that it’s a helpful perspective to realize that everything comes and passes away.

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful. And I heard someone once asked Daniel Kahneman something like, “What’s a huge insight everyone needs to understand?” And he said that, “Nothing is as important as we think it is while we’re thinking about it.” And I see a little overlap there, it’s like, “Whoa,” because when you think about something, it is the thing, like, “These drapes, that is absolutely mission critical,” for example, but, really, it doesn’t matter.

Robert Waldinger
Exactly. We have a saying “Don’t believe everything you think,” that one of the things you see when you meditate a lot is how the mind just makes up stories. We’re just constantly making up stories about the world. And we need to do that in a lot of ways to get through. Like, I had a story that I was going to come talk to you right now, and that’s helpful because it got me to get here for you and for us to have this conversation. But many of our stories are just completely out of touch with what’s real. And the more we can have perspective on that, the less we suffer and the less we make other people suffer.

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful. We had a great conversation with Rene Rodriguez who talks about framing and storytelling, and it’s powerful to convey a message to somebody else but it also really shone a light on, “Whoa, we’re telling stories to ourselves as well all the time.” And the stories we choose and entertain and give airtime to in our brains really affect the way we see things and feel about things. And it’s powerful stuff.

Robert Waldinger
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Bob. Well, we’re already starting deep, so I think that’s a good backdrop for talking about your latest book The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study on Happiness. And I’m excited to chat about this because I’ve read a few articles about this study. Could you, first and foremost, orient us, what is this legendary study?

Robert Waldinger
It is the longest study of adult life that’s ever been done, the longest study of the same people as they go through their whole lives. So, starting with a group of teenagers in 1938, following them all the way through adulthood, into old age, almost all have passed away, and now we’re studying their kids, and their kids are mostly Baby Boomers. So, now, it’s been two generations, thousands of people.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I understand that we have two populations; one, Harvard undergraduates, and, two, folks in a more disadvantaged community situation. Could you expand on that?

Robert Waldinger
Yes. In fact, there were two studies and that they didn’t even know about each other when they both started in 1938.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, how convenient.

Robert Waldinger
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Same year?

Robert Waldinger
One was started at the Harvard Student Health Service. It was a bunch of Harvard undergrads, sophomore, who were chosen by their deans because they seemed like fine upstanding young men, and it was to be a study of normal young adult development. So, of course, if you want to study normal adult development, you study all white men from Harvard, like it’s the most politically incorrect research sample you could possibly have.

But at that time, that’s what they chose. We’ve since expanded, brought in women. But then the other study, the other group was a group, as you said, of boys from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. They were all middle schoolers at the time in 1938, and they were studied because they came from some of the most troubled families in the city of Boston.

And the question that the researchers had, also at Harvard, was, “Why is it that some kids who grew up in families that looked like they are destined to fail, grow up with two strikes against them, how do these kids stay out of trouble and stay on good developmental paths? What are the factors that foster resilience even in the face of so much disadvantage?”

And so, that was the question guiding the inner-city group study. And then, eventually, those two studies were brought together, and now these two groups and their children are studied together.
Pete Mockaitis
And so, can you give us a little bit of a summary statistics, if you will, in terms of “We’ve seen a number of outcomes”? And it looks like you have the luxury of attracting tons of different options associated with income and health and death. So, I’m curious, just how much of a difference does having that leg up with Harvard make in terms of wealth and health and whatnot?

Robert Waldinger
It makes a big difference in wealth, certainly. It makes a big difference in health, we think, because the Harvard men were more educated and they got the messages sooner that were coming out that smoking is really bad for you; alcoholism and drug abuse, really bad for you; exercise, hugely important; getting preventive healthcare, hugely important. So, they got those messages.

And what we found, actually, was that 25 of the inner-city men, 25 out of 425, actually went to college and finished college. And those men lived just as long and stayed just as healthy as the Harvard men, and we think it’s not because they had college diplomas. It’s because, first of all, they had the support growing up to get to college and stay in college, and because they had the education that they needed to keep in mind some of the things that were going to set them up for a good health as they went through life.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, so that’s one fascinating little nugget right there, and you got lots of them. So, Bob, I’m going to put it in your court, you’re going to be our master curator here. Could you share with us some of the most surprising, fascinating, actionable discoveries that have come about from this research?

Robert Waldinger
One great big one that, at first, we didn’t even believe, what we found was that the people who had the warmest closest connections with other people stayed healthy longer, they lived longer, and they were, of course, happier. So, relationships with other people were a huge predictor of health as well as happiness.

We didn’t even believe it because we thought, “Well, we know the mind and the body are connected, but how can having good relationships actually get into your body and change your physiology?” So, we’ve been studying that for the last 10 years as other groups have as well. And, as I said, we didn’t believe that at first, and then other research studies began to find the same thing.

And when different research studies all point in the same direction, that’s when you start to have more confidence in your research findings that it’s not by chance.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember reading an article, I guess that was your predecessor George Vaillant running the study, when interviewed, said that a key takeaway is, as he put it, “Love. Full stop. That’s what it’s about.” I think The Beatles and wisdom traditions have been sharing this message for quite a while, and now it bears out in a long-term study hardcore.

Robert Waldinger
Well, that’s what’s cool about this. Our clergy could tell us this, our grandparents could tell us this, for centuries back they’ve told us this, but the science now says, for those of us who are skeptics and want some data, the data really shows that warm connections with other people make a huge difference in our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s dig into this then, warm, close relationships. What’s constitutes warm? What’s constitutes close? And how do we get more of those going in our lives?

Robert Waldinger
Yeah. Well, first of all, let me say it doesn’t have to all be close, and we can talk about that later in terms of the different kinds of relationships. But what we’ve been finding is that everybody needs at least one person who has their back, and that’s not always the case. So, when our original guys were asked, “Who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared?”

Some people could list several people they could call. Some people couldn’t list anybody, not a soul on the planet. And some of those people who couldn’t list anybody were married. So, what we know is having that sense that there’s somebody there who will be there when you really need them, that that’s an essential component of wellbeing that it makes the world feel safer.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Robert Waldinger
And one of the things that we’re finding is that this seems to have a lot to do with good relationships helping us manage stress. If you think about it, life is full of stressors. You have young kids. I imagine you have stressors every day, like, “Oh, no, this is happening. Whoa!” And when I have something bad happen in my day, I can literally feel my body start to get revved up. I go into fight or flight mode. My heart rate goes up.

And that’s okay. We’re meant to respond that way when we have stressors. But then, when the stressors go in the body, it’s meant to come back to equilibrium. And what we find, if I have an upsetting day and I have somebody at home I can talk to, or someone I can call up, and they’re a good listener, I can literally feel my body calm down when I talk to them about my day.

What if you don’t have anybody in the world? What we think happens is that those people who are lonely or socially isolated stay in this chronic flight or fight mode. And what that means is they have higher levels of circulating stress hormones, they have higher levels of chronic inflammation, and that those things actually wear away your coronary arteries. They wear away your joints. They break down different body systems. And so, we think that what’s so valuable about relationships is that they are real stress regulators.

Pete Mockaitis
Someone once told me I listened for differences or disagreement, and so I think that makes total sense to me. I guess I’m thinking, in the hierarchy of stress regulators, I suppose there are any number of practices from deep breathing to mindfulness, to yoga, to exercise, to hobbies. Do we have a relative sense that are relationships sort of the ultimate stress buster? Or, is it comparable to, I don’t know, if this could be measured, like, how does having a great friend or partner you can rely on compare from a stress-relieving asset perspective to a good exercise or mindfulness routine?

Robert Waldinger
I don’t think anybody has done those comparisons exactly but there is a little bit of evidence there. So, they did a big analysis of lots of studies of loneliness, and they found that the experience of loneliness, if you’re chronically lonely, it’s as bad for your health as smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day or being obese. And what we know is that, on average, about 30% of people will tell you they’re lonely.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay, so that tells me, if you have a good smoking buddy, and you only smoke two or three…just kidding. Just kidding.

Robert Waldinger
And you eat a lot of Big Macs, yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that is handy. Okay. So, relationships, huge. And then zooming into professionals and being awesome at their job, I understand there are some takeaways associated with some drivers of differing income levels. What’s the story here?

Robert Waldinger
Yeah. So, we’re always asking the question, “Does money make us happier?” and people have actually started to study it. Like, how much does our happiness go up as we make more money? And it turns out that, yes, in recent years in the United States, your happiness goes up until your basic needs are met. So, until you reach about $75,000 a year in average household income, until you get to that point, your happiness keeps going up as you make more money.

But once you get to that 75k and you keep making more money, you hardly get much of a boost in happiness at all. What that means is that once our basic needs are met materially, more money doesn’t make us happier.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good to know. Good to know. So, there’s the impact of money on happiness. If I’m flipping it around, what are the drivers that you’ve discovered within this study that tend to explain or point to earning more money even if, as you just said, it’s not necessarily going to make us happier?

Robert Waldinger
Well, we don’t find greater happiness or greater unhappiness. So, earning more money isn’t bad. It just doesn’t make you happier. You just have more money. And so, the difficulty is that, as you might know, when they survey young people, like people on their 20s just starting out, and they say, “What are you going to prioritize as you go through your adult life?” most of them, the majority will say, “I need to get rich.”

So, we’re giving each other the messages all day long in the media that, “Boy, if you buy this car, you’re going to be happier,” “If you buy this kind of pasta and serve it to your family, you’re going to have the best family dinners ever.” There are just all these ways in which we are given the messages that if you buy the right stuff, if you have enough money to buy all the right stuff, you’ll be happier, you’ll have a better life. And it turns out, that’s not true.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, money doesn’t do it, more so warm relationships does it. And then there’s also the associations with the warm relationships, people who have them also earn more money.

Robert Waldinger
Yes. Well, it turns out that if you have better relationship skills, you’re more successful at work. So, they studied this where they’ve put people on teams, and they say, “Which teams perform best?” And it’s not the teams that have the highest collective IQ, it’s not the smartest folks. It’s often the most emotionally attuned and skilled folks because they cooperate better, they are more relaxed, and, therefore, more creative, they’re more engaged in their work, they’re less competitive.

So, what we find is that this thing we call emotional intelligence, which involves having better relationship skills, it’s hugely predictive of how well you do in your work life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, tell us, we have some do’s, cultivate close relationships; we’ve got a don’t, don’t chase maximum money, what are some other top takeaways in terms of folks who want to be happy, successful, flourish, be awesome at their job? What are some of the top things that you recommend they do do or don’t do based on these insights from the study?

Robert Waldinger
Well, one is, don’t expect to be happy all the time. We can get the impression, like when you look at social media and you see what we all present to each other on social media, like, me on a great vacation or about to dig into a great plate of food, it can look like I’m happy all the time, like I’m always having a party.

And what I can tell you from studying thousands of lives is that nobody is happy all the time. And that’s useful because it can seem like other people have it figured out and I don’t, and that turns out not to be the case, that everybody has hard times, everybody struggles with things. And I say that because it can help us feel a little less like an outlier when life isn’t always happy.

The other thing we know is that relationships are not always warm and harmonious. Now, you might be the exception, and you and your partner may never argue ever or disagree ever, but I’ve never met a person who’s in a relationship like that, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Robert Waldinger
So, what we know is that all relationships have conflicts and disagreements. That’s not a problem. But what matters is how we work out our disagreements and if we can find a way to work disagreements out so that we come away feeling okay with each other and like nobody has lost and nobody has won, that’s a big help. And to know that as long as there’s a kind of bedrock of affection and respect, that relationships are quite solid even when we argue with each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s expand on some of these best practices then when it comes to these warm close relationships. It’s okay to have some conflicts, some disagreements, but we fall back on having a fundamental foundation of respect. Got it. What are some other things that make all the difference in terms of cultivating these warm close relationships?

Robert Waldinger
Yeah. Well, one thing probably is curiosity. Like, to be genuinely curious about somebody else is a great starter for a relationship. So, let’s say there’s somebody at work and you noticed something on their desk and get curious about it, it gives somebody an opportunity to talk about themselves. It gives you an opportunity to get to know them in a way you might not otherwise.

And it’s not just in starting new relationships that curiosity helps and we do love to talk about ourselves. It’s old relationships. So, you know a coworker, or you know your partner, you think you know everything there is to know about them, but actually you don’t. And it turns out that when we start taking each other for granted, we stop paying attention to who the other person is as they grow and develop. So, if you can bring that sense of curiosity back to an old relationship, that can really liven it up.

One of my meditation teachers had an assignment for us once. He said, “As you sit there, doing something routine or talking to somebody you’ve talked to a hundred times, ask yourself this question, ‘What’s here now that I’ve never noticed before?’” And when you do kind of come with that mindset, it can get really interesting really fast.

Pete Mockaitis
“What’s here now?” You mean when you say here…

Robert Waldinger
Like, “What am I noticing?” So, I’m going to go have dinner with my wife, that we’ve done that for 36 years, lot of meals together. So, what if I come with that mindset? Like, what’s here right now in our discussion? Or, how is she right now that I might not have noticed before? Like, if I’m looking for something new, I get really curious, and that can set me up in a whole different way than, “Ah, yeah, I know what she’s going to say. We’re going to have the same dinner we always have, the same conversation,” right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s good. Our brains love that novelty stuff, and so that really seems to unlock a lot of cool motivation-y dopamine-y…is that a word, dopamine-y?

Robert Waldinger
Dopamine-y? I like that.

Pete Mockaitis
In the mix. Very cool. And so then, we can do that in our work relationships, and there are some really cool research associated with the power of having warm close relationships at work, in particular, as well. Could you expand on that?

Robert Waldinger
Yes. The Gallup organization did a survey of 15 million workers around the globe, all ages, all cultures, and they asked the question, “Do you have a best friend at work?” And what they meant was, “Do you have somebody you can talk to about your personal life at work?” Now, many CEOs then, “That’s a distraction. You don’t want that kind of socializing.”

Well, it turned out that only 30% of workers said they had a friend at work, but those workers were seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. They were better at engaging customers, if they were customer-facing. They produce higher quality work. They were happier in their jobs, and they were less likely to leave their jobs because the job wasn’t as interchangeable because they had a friend there they wanted to see.

And the people who didn’t have a best friend at work, so seven out of ten people, they were 12 times as likely to be checked out of their work, to be disengaged.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, there you have it. Okay. And I also remember that alcohol was something that came up in the study as being potentially quite destructive. What is the takeaway here?

Robert Waldinger
Big time. Alcoholism, that means abuse, dependence, it destroys people’s families, it destroys their work life. So, the people who became alcoholics, in our study, had marriages that fell apart. Half of the marriages that ended in divorce had one or both partners stuck in alcoholism. And what we found was that the people who were abusing alcohol chronically had a downward trajectory at work. They couldn’t perform well. They didn’t get promoted. Even if they didn’t get fired, they plateaued pretty quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so how do we make sure that doesn’t happen to us? I mean, you enjoy a beverage from time to time. Any pro tips? Because if you’re watching people year after year after year, that’s an interesting vantage point in terms of, “Huh, this is kind of creeping in there.” And I guess, one, how do you precisely measure that? Do you ask them, “How many drinks do you have?” Or, are there any warning signs? So, if we enjoy a happy hour, how can we make sure we don’t lose control, slipping away over the decades, and fall into this category?

Robert Waldinger
Yeah, key questions. So, we measure it in different ways. So, one way we measure it is, “How many drinks do you have?” And for men, two drinks max a day is all that really is okay for your health. And for women, it’s one drink because, physiologically, they process alcohol differently. But another way to think about this, if you’re just kind of thinking, “Am I drinking too much?” is to ask the people who care about you. Ask them if they’re worried about your drinking.

Do you feel guilty about your drinking? Do you try to cut down and have trouble? Do you find that it’s getting in the way of your getting up in the morning and making it to work or making it to your parenting activities, or whatever they might be? If it’s getting in the way of your life, then it’s probably a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right, Bob, anything else we really should know about this study, its insights, and being awesome at your job?

Robert Waldinger
I think just to think about work as not so separate from the rest of your life but to really let yourself say, “Okay, how could I enjoy myself more at work? Particularly, how could I have better connections with other people because I’ll have more fun at work if I do that?” Sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no problem. Okay. Well, then, now I’d love to hear a little about your favorite things. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Robert Waldinger
Yes, there’s a quote by Joseph Campbell, he’s the guy who wrote a book called The Power of Myth, and he was like a PBS guy. And he had a quote that I love, which is, “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on somebody else’s path.” That has really helped me. When I keep thinking, “Oh, I really should do that because everybody else is doing it,” or, “That’s what seems to get the most applause,” it’s really helpful to be reminded that, “You know, everybody is doing their own thing. Everybody is taking their own path through life.” And I’ve seen that studying these lives over decades.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, next, I want to ask you about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research. You’re intimately involved in a legendary one. Any others that leap to mind?

Robert Waldinger
Any other research that leaps to mind?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that you think is super cool.

Robert Waldinger
Yeah, when we asked people how they spend their discretionary income, so you got all your needs met, and then you have some income, what are you going to do with it? And are you happier if you buy material things or if you pay for experiences? And paying for experiences could be tickets to a basketball game, or taking your family on a trip, or it could be anything but experiences. And what they find is that the people who use their money to pay for experiences are happier and they stay happier longer than the people who buy material things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And a favorite book?

Robert Waldinger
Favorite book. Well, actually, one of my really favorite books is so old school. It’s Pride and Prejudice. I just love that book. Another favorite book is The Overstory by Richard Powers. It’s about ecology but it’s a really cool novel. And there’s a book by a Zen teacher, Barry Magid, called Ending the Pursuit of Happiness.

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

Robert Waldinger
A favorite tool is serving lunch.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Robert Waldinger
People really like to be fed and they loosen up and they get more creative when they’re sharing a meal.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you are the lunch provider.

Robert Waldinger
Yup, for my research group, and they love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, I want to know what sort of lunches we’re talking about here.

Robert Waldinger
Oh, we get takeout, we get Mexican, we get Thai, we get healthier stuff, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Robert Waldinger
Favorite habit is going for a walk every day, and looking at simple stuff, like trees.

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

Robert Waldinger
It’s a quote from a 19th century writer. He said, “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I just saw that written in some random decor somewhere. I don’t know, but I like that.

Robert Waldinger
Yeah, yeah, because it’s like it doesn’t look like it from the outside, but everybody has got stuff.

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

Robert Waldinger
Well, to our book, so TheGoodLifeBook.com, you can order the book but, also, to our website. There’s a website about the study, it’s AdultDevelopmentStudy.org. And there you can read some of our highly technical papers and learn more about the study.

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

Robert Waldinger
Yes. Think about somebody you’d like to connect with more at work, and reach out to them and ask them to have coffee, take a walk, do something. Reach out. Make a commitment to do that tomorrow. And just notice, it’s a small decision, and notice the ripple effects. Notice what comes back to you from that small action.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Bob, this has been a treat. I wish you much happiness and goodness in life.

Robert Waldinger
And you, too. I envy you having small kids. I miss that time. My kids are in their 30s and they’re wonderful, but I really miss the time when the kids were young.

Jan 09
0

829: How to Write so People will Read with Casey Mank

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Casey Mank shows how to make your writing more effective by making it simpler.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why writing matters tremendously—even when you’re not a writer
  2. How to make your writing more powerful in three steps
  3. Why people aren’t reading what you write—and how to fix that

About Casey

Casey has taught in writing classrooms for over 10 years, most recently at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and School of Nursing and Health Studies. She has taught writing to professionals at organizations including Kellogg’s, MasterCard, Sephora, the Aspen Institute, Viacom Media, the EPA Office of the Inspector General, the PR Society of America, the National Association of Government Communicators, and many more. Casey serves on the board of directors at the nonprofit Center for Plain Language and is proud to have helped thousands of writers get to the point and reach their audiences with greater impact.

Resources Mentioned

Casey Mank Interview Transcript

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

Casey Mank
Hi, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to talk about writing well. And I learned that even though you do a lot of great teaching of writing, you don’t actually like writing. Is this true and can you elaborate on this?

Casey Mank
This is true and I also think it’s really important I try to tell people this as much and as often as I possibly can, actually, because I think one of the many misconceptions about being a good writer is that good writers are the people who love writing, that it comes naturally to you, you’re born with it, it’s an art, it’s a gift, it’s an inborn talent.

So, sometimes people will say, “Oh, well, you must just love writing,” or, like, “You’re a writer,” and I’m like, “Who are they talking about? Are you talking about me? I don’t love to do this. Writing is hard. It’s not fun to write or edit.” So, I think it’s important that people know, even though I teach this stuff, I think I’m pretty good at it, I can be effective at it, I don’t enjoy the process of writing stuff. I, too, find it kind of hard and unpleasant.

So, it’s important to us to always teach people that writing is something that can be very quantified and very strategic and just about getting the job done. And, in fact, I think writers who are able to see it that way, are often much more effective. Sometimes when I meet people in the course of my work who say, “Oh, I love writing,” those are the people that want to include a lot of extra flowery language and end up with bad business writing, ironically. So, that’s what that means to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Casey, I really love that and find that encouraging because there are times in which I have writing that needs to be done but I am not feeling it, and so sometimes I will procrastinate because there are times that I do feel it but noting that, “No, it’s okay for this to be hard and unpleasant. That’s that.”

And I don’t remember who said it, this quote, was it David Allen or someone who says, “I don’t enjoy the process of writing but I very much enjoy having written,” like you’ve accomplished that thing, and you’re beholding the final product, you go, “Oh, nice.” And so, that’s a good feeling.

Casey Mank
Absolutely, yeah. And if people like writing, that’s great, but I want the people that don’t like writing or never feel motivation, to also know that they can just do it in a workhorse way and it can have great results for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, inspiration landed. Thank you. And can you tell us, in a business context or for professionals, just what’s at stake as to whether one writes fine, okay, versus masterfully, like in the top one, two, three percent of business professionals? How much does it matter?

Casey Mank
Absolutely. So, the important thing to know about writing is that we’re all doing it, and we meet a lot of people that might say, “Oh, I’m not really writer. I’m not in a writing role at work,” but it doesn’t matter what your job is at work, at some point you need to put the things you’ve done and communicate their value in writing.

So, if you are a researcher and you have to write a report, if you’re a salesperson and you have to send sales emails, like, even if that’s not what you think of as your main job, at some point you’re conveying the value of the work you do in a written format. So, actually, when people read the way that you described what you do, if you’re great at what you do, you’re the best, but your writing isn’t very good, they tend to judge your competence if you don’t know you on how you describe what you’ve done.

If you don’t know you, and they’re just reading this like lackluster description of what you’ve done or what you’ve produced, and the way you express yourself isn’t clear, it’s not confident, whatever, they’re thinking, like, “Well, I bet this person isn’t great at their job.” And that might not be true, but actually it’s like fumbling in that last mile when you’re conveying the results of all your great work can be huge.

Pete Mockaitis
That is very well said. I’ve heard it said that there’s research suggesting people judge the effectiveness of a leader or professional who’s leading a meeting based on how well that meeting is going, just because that’s what’s visible, it’s like, “Okay, there you are leading the meeting, this meeting is going poorly, you must not be good at your job,” which is maybe fair or unfair based on any number of dimensions.

Much like with the writing, I find that there’s a number of Amazon products, I’ve had this experience, where I see something, it looks pretty good, it’s like, “Oh, okay, this looks like just what I need. Okay, that’s a good price. Oh, it looks beautiful. Oh, it’s got 14,000 reviews and they’re averaging like 4.7 or something. Okay, this looks great.”

But then when I see that the English is off, it’s like it’s not quite right, and it’s like nobody would say it that way.

This is about a Renpho Cordless Jump Rope. It says, “With a cordless ball, a rope jump can easy to change into a cordless model imitating skipping with a real rope without actually needing to swing a rope. The low-impact equipment offers people who don’t have a large room to work out a way.”

It’s like, okay, there’s a couple moments in there, it’s like, “That’s not right and smooth as…” And so then, I begin to wonder, “Well, if things are fuzzy here when you’re trying to sell me, like where else have they cut corners in terms of like the manufacturing, or the safety, or the quality, or the durability?” When that may be a completely unfair judgment, it’s like, “Hey, this was written by someone in China, maybe his English is not their native language, and they did their best and it wasn’t too bad,” but I’m like, “Hmm, I don’t know about this jump rope anymore based on what I’ve read here.”

Casey Mank
Absolutely. Doesn’t it make you feel like the person who wrote that has never seen a jump rope in their life?

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe.

Casey Mank
And you start to feel suspicious about their expertise about jump ropes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it does. And so, I guess that can be fair, it can be unfair but, nonetheless, it’s a reality in terms of people are judging us based upon the quality of our writing, whether it’s in an email or a PowerPoint, it’s there, and so, okay, I’m with you. We got to take care of some business.

Casey Mank
That’s absolutely right. Yeah, and whether it’s true or accurate or not, it doesn’t matter. You’ve already created that impression in that person’s mind, and their ideas about you, their expectations, their perception of your personal brand, it’s really in a split second that that stuff can happen when they’re reading what you’ve written about your work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so then, you’re on the board of an organization with a really cool name, the Center for Plain Language. Tell us, what is this organization? And what is plain language? And how do we do that?

Casey Mank
That’s right. Well, so our hope as plain language experts, and I will happily tell you more about it, but our hope would be that the name that we give to anything would be completely self-explanatory. So, what do you think the Center for Plain Language does?

Pete Mockaitis
I think they work with people and organizations to facilitate more plain language being used in documents and websites, etc.

Casey Mank
That’s exactly right. That’s what we do, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m really down with that vision. Likewise, Casey, I want to put you on the spot, what do you think the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast is about?

Casey Mank
I think you all genuinely have a really plain language title for your podcast because it instantly tells me that it’s going to be, when I listen to it, it’s going to teach me how to do my job better. And then, if I dig into the details a little bit, I would start to find out how exactly that’s going to happen, but it’s very self-explanatory, which we love in plain language.

Pete Mockaitis
I do, too. I do, too. So, is there a bit of a process in terms of certain steps or best practices by which you arrive at plain language?

Casey Mank
Absolutely, yeah. So, you want to start out when you’re writing anything, and plain language really did start with a lot of government writing, a lot of sort of manuals, legal documents, things like that, but I believe it can be applied to anything. So, start out with whatever document you’re crafting, you’re going to think about not yourself, not your organization, not the information you want to include, actually. You’re going to think about the person who’s going to use this document.

So, yeah, get to know them, we start with them. Think about the person who’s going to use this. Think about exactly what they already know, what their top questions are, and what they need to do. So, whatever you’re writing, I don’t care what it is, what do they need to do once they read it? How are they going to use it? And then, you design your document. There’s a lot of best practices that we get into around how things look, how usable things are, how easy they are, and then, of course, the readability.

So, plain language people tend to think it’s going to be about, like, short sentences and easy words. That’s only half of it. The other half is actually a lot of UX design, so making documents really easy and fast to use. And I’m happy to direct your listeners to where they can learn more of all those best practices but then the key to really close the loop on all of this is you made some assumptions about your audience in the beginning, you tried your best to do great design, very readable writing.

But at the end of the plain language process, you must test your assumptions. So, this is really like the key piece that most people want to ignore, they’re like, “Well, I thought about my audience. I think I know what’s going to work for them, and I think I did it,” and then they kind of like hit send on their document, hit publish on their document, but in plain language content, you have to test before you finalize.

So, you get a couple people, you show the document to them, you say, “Read this,” then you take the document away from them, and you say, “What did you just read?” and they explain it back to you, and you get invaluable information from that. You make changes based on what they missed, what they misunderstood, what they thought was the most important thing but it wasn’t what you actually wanted them to focus on. You make changes and then you actually finalize. So, that’s kind of the plain language process in a nutshell.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot, and I think you’ve absolutely nailed it in terms of the final step. I think it’s taking me a while to get here, Casey, but I’m firmly here now. There’s no substitute for that. It is irreplaceable. It is mission critical when it counts. Like, if you’re writing, the thing that you’re writing matters and you want it to have an impact as opposed to, “Hey, this is a joke,” a joke to some friends. Even then I probably want to have an impact, I want them to laugh, but if they don’t, it’s like, “No big deal.”

But I remember just recently, I was writing an Evite invitation for our son’s baptism, and my wife went in there and she said, “Oh, I think made me think that, and this made me think that,” and then so she changed some things. And I think it takes a bit of humility to understand that that is absolutely necessary. It doesn’t mean that I’m dumb or wrong.

And, at the time, I think I was looking at a lot of other editing things in my life, and I was actually just so grateful, I said, “Thank you, honey. This is exactly what has to happen, and there is no other way.” I kid you not, I said those words to her, and she’s like, “This is kind of dramatic, Pete. Okay, sure, no problem.” So, yeah, it just has to happen.

I think that about when I’m looking at instructions for things, like how to build a piece of furniture or a toy assembly, whatever. I do, sometimes, have that reaction, like, “Did you actually test this with anybody? Because I don’t think I’m the only person who would find that very confusing, and I’m assembling this all wrong and feeling great frustration that I have to then undo it, and then redo it again the opposite way.”

Casey Mank
Absolutely. I can’t emphasize enough, there’s no substitute for that. Whatever you think you know about other people’s reaction, you don’t. They’ll always surprise you. And this doesn’t have to be expensive. There are really expensive and elaborate user-testing focus groups and stuff that you can do with the help of an expert, but you can also just pull in, like, your cousin, your mom, somebody down the hall from you at work.

My business partner has several siblings and we have them test sometimes the worksheets and stuff that we use in workshops, and they’ll say, like, “Oh, I really noticed this,” or, “I really was distracted by this,” and we’re like, “What? That? We weren’t even thinking about that when we made the worksheet.”

And so, it’s like you can’t get around your own bias as the author of all the stuff you know and all the stuff you want to happen, so, yeah, it’s invaluable but it doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. It can be informal. You can just ask a friend.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so you mentioned there are some principles that make all the difference in terms of readable writing and the user experience dimensions. I’m guessing it’s kind of like the visual type stuff.

Casey Mank
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you lay it on us here in terms of what are some of the biggest principles that make all the difference?

Casey Mank
Yeah, absolutely. So, if I had to pick, I’ll do maybe like a big two for each of half of this equation because I think two things is always enough for people to learn and remember, in my opinion.

So two big ones for the information design piece, which, you’re right, that’s all about how things look, how easy they look at a gut reaction. So, when people first interact with a document, they’re not beginning by actually reading the language. They’re looking at it as a whole and they get a really, like, instantaneous impression, just like a gut reaction, “This looks easy,” or, “This looks hard.”

So, one of the fastest things you can do to make any document look a bit easier to your reader, which invites them in and makes them think, like, “Yeah, I can deal with this document. It’s not going to overwhelm me,” is just to put more empty negative space on the page. So, you don’t want to hit people with walls of texts. My own personal, if I’m editing something and I see a paragraph that’s going over about four lines on the page, I start to get nervous because when paragraphs get longer, what people do is they just skip the second half of the paragraph.

They read the first line, they think, “I think I’ve got it. I think I know what’s in here,” and they just skip it. So, unless you’re perfectly comfortable with that information being skipped, which is okay, that’s a choice you could make as an editor, but if you’re sitting there thinking like, “No, they will read this,” I have bad news for you, they won’t. They’re not going to read a super long paragraph in most cases.

So, that’s one of the quickest things you can do, is just break up your chunks of information into smaller pieces so they don’t look so visually overwhelming to the reader. And then the other one I would do at the kind of visual level is bottom line up front. I don’t know if you’ve heard this acronym before, the BLUF, it stands for bottom line up front.

Whatever it is that you came to this document to tell your readers, you need to get it really near the top in almost every type of business writing or utilitarian writing. So, this is really different from the way we learn to write in school, it’s also very different from what we learned about good storytelling, so we’re not leading people on. We’re not raising their anticipation and then leading them on a journey of discovery, and then telling them the takeaway at the end.

In plain language writing, it’s like, “Here’s the takeaway. Here’s what you’re going to find in this document.” There’s no mystery. There’s no unfolding of a piquing the curiosity and then taking them on a journey. You’re just telling them what they’re here in the document. And then, actually, if they want to dive into the details and the background and how you got here, that stuff comes after, and they can read it or not. So, thinking about kind of flipping that on its head.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, do we want to use this in all contexts? Or, if we’re about to say something super unpleasant or controversial or that we anticipate our audience is going to vehemently disagree with us about, do we want to still do the bottom-line up-front approach?

Casey Mank
So, there’s a lot of different scenarios I could imagine for this, but my first instinct in a blanket kind of way would be I would do a BLUF there and say, “I’m about to give you some difficult feedback,” and then maybe you can…like, I’m not saying you would start your communication with just like, “Your presentation was horrible,” not like that.

But I would let them know immediately. Say, they’re opening an email, a message, a memo, whatever, they’re going to see, “I’m about to give you some feedback, and we can talk about it more.” Don’t make them think, like, “Oh, wow, why is Pete emailing me today? Maybe he just wants to say hi,” and then they’re like going into the experience not knowing what’s about to happen. Let them know why you’re here right up front. That’s what I would say for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s a story on the user experience. And now how about sentence readability?

Casey Mank
Yeah, absolutely. So, there’s a ton of things that you could avoid and cut out of sentences to make them easier. If people want to go down that rabbit hole, you can check out PlainLanguage.gov. It’s the government’s free resource on plain language, and there’s many things you can do at the sentence level. But the biggest two that are going to impact reading difficulty at the sentence level are sentence length and complexity, and then word choice.

And I think the word choice piece is probably the one that people expect, they’re like, “If I’m using these big difficult words, these jargony terms, that’s going to be hard for people,” but they don’t always remember that just the length and complexity of a sentence’s structure is the other half of the readability formula. So, those two things together will impact the most.

And I think that’s especially useful for people to keep in mind if they must use some difficult terminology because a lot of writers that I work with, they’re like, “Oh, I have to use these science terms, or these fintech terms, or whatever it is. I can’t get rid of them so my writing will never be easy.” But you can still make your sentences shorter, more declarative, more simple, and that will offset the impact of having to use some of those big words or specialized jargon.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, what kind of sentence lengths are we talking about? Like, is there a rule of thumb in terms of these many words is getting long?

Casey Mank
Sure. So, after about eight words, sentence comprehension tends to start dropping off. Now, that’s a very short sentence, so we would never recommend that every sentence be eight words but you actually want to think about how much of the meaning of your sentence can people find in those first eight words. That’s one thing we teach people. Is the main noun and the verb of a sentence happening within the first eight words?

And then think about at least varying your sentence length. So, can you throw people a couple of eight- or ten-word sentences in the mix in between long sentences, so it’s not just long sentence after long sentence?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then I’m curious about sometimes it feels like is the word appositives, hmm, that feels fancy, from English class, if there is a phrase that’s hanging out there? So, for example, if I were to say, “Casey Mank, board member of the Center for Plain Language, suggests using sentences around eight words.” Like, that appositive phrase “board member of the Center for Plain Language” in my brain it almost feels bucketed together as one thing. But does that count? How does that count in our word count within sentences?

Casey Mank
Sure, yeah. So, in that example, you are throwing a block in between the subject and the verb.

Pete Mockaitis
I did. Guilty.

Casey Mank
So, yeah, even though it might seem short, your reader’s brain is unconsciously looking for that structure, “Casey Mank recommends…” whatever you said I recommend in that example, and that’s what they’re looking for. And when you put extra words in between the subject and the verb, you do create complexity that readers who have a lower literacy level, maybe English isn’t their first language, they can get a little bit lost there.

So, again, the recommendation in plain language isn’t that you never have a sentence like that with the appositive, as you described it, but rather that you don’t have tons of those, that you vary it up sometimes. So, yes, in answer to your question, you are making it more complex by including that because you’re separating the noun and the verb, so some readers will trip over that a little bit. And you could make it into two sentences, “Casey Mank is a board member at the Center for Plain Language. She recommends…” whatever you said that I recommend.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I love that notion of the two sentences. I remember when I took the GMAT exam, there’s a section called “Sentence correction,” and most of those sentences were long and nasty monsters. And I kept looking for the option, “Split this terribly difficult sentence into two sentences.” There never was an option. It was more like, “Which one is technically correct? Ah, got you.”

And so, yeah, I think that’s often one of the best solutions. Can you share with us any other common fixes that just solve for a whole host of sins?

Casey Mank
Yes, so there’s one other one that we really like. So, breaking things into two sentences is number one. In fact, when we get to the grammar section, that is literally number one. That’s what we start with because it solves a lot of things, like you said. Another one, if you want to get a little deeper into sentence structure, would be try to steer away from starting sentences with caveats or exceptions, which is really common in business writing.

Like, if you start to look for it, you’ll see it a lot where people will say, “Not only is this A but it’s also B.” And that little added structure, things like that, or, “After considering all the factors and…” whatever, like, including all that background information at the start of a sentence, that is really difficult because you’re actually delaying when your reader can get to the main subject and verb of the sentence by a lot.

And we have some great examples of this. I wish I had brought one because if I try to think of one on the spot, it’ll be a train wreck, but it’s like you’re asking people to hold all these relationships in mind when they don’t even know what to apply the relationships to yet. So, in plain language writing, you want to start with the simple statement and then build the exception on after that, because it’s easy to apply an exception to something but it’s harder to keep an exception in mind as you’re waiting to figure what it will apply to. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Very much. Very much. Okay. And so, then we got our principles, the word choices. Tell us, are there ways that we quickly measure this? Is the Microsoft Word Flesch Kincaid readability the thing? Or, how do we assess whether or not, broad scale and automatically, our sentence length and complexity is too much or our word choice is too complicated?

Casey Mank
Absolutely. So, plain language folks in particular have a complex relationship with those readability formulas because none of those formulas are perfect, and they don’t kind of replace your human good judgment. So, some plain language specialists really like them. Others feel like they oversimplify things too much.

Sometimes, like if you’re using a Flesch Kincaid tester, and you take out the period at the end of a sentence, it will change the reading. But for a human reader, it wouldn’t really change the experience of like seeing a bullet point that had a period versus no period, something like that. So, they’re not perfect. We love them as, again, not a be-all-and-end-all of readability, but just as a way to get some kind of objective measurement or feedback.

We often show them to writers, we’re introducing them for the first time, and they’re maybe really shocked to find that their writing at like a postgraduate level in a document that, because they are a specialist in whatever industry or niche they’re in, they think this is just like a normal document, but it’s actually incredibly difficult for someone in the general public to understand.

So, we love them for almost the shock value of writers getting to see what level they are truly writing at because they often don’t know. And then just as, again, to see if the edits that you make are making a difference, it’s nice to see that number go down from, like, grade 12 to grade 10, and say, “Okay, I did make a difference with my edits.” Because sometimes you’re moving things around in your writing, and you’re like, “Is this getting better or worse? I can’t even tell.”

So, we do like them. We use them. There are a ton of other tools I can recommend if you’d like to get into that now.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, please do.

Casey Mank
Sure. So, we do love Flesch Kincaid, and, as you mentioned, you can enable that in Word.

WebFx.com is another one that we really like for that. You can test texts based on a lot of different readability formulas. It’s really good. There are two other tools that I’ll recommend. These are all free, by the way. One is the Hemingway app, so it’s a style editor. And important to note, it’s not a proofreading software, so don’t assume that things are correct if they’ve been through the Hemingway app. It’s only showing you style elements but it’s really good at catching lengthy difficult sentences, and it will also give you a grade level as well.

And one other that I really like is called the Difficult & Extraneous Word Finder, that’s the name of it. I know it’s kind of a silly long name. The website looks like it’s still from 1990 but it actually still works. And it actually tags the words in your document based on how rare they are compared to most people’s core vocabulary.

And that part is okay but what I love about that tool is actually the long-word finder because it can just help you notice, like, “Wow, that’s a big word. Is there an easier alternative that I could swap in?” So, those are some automated tools that we like.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those are handy, beautiful tools. And now I want to ask about tools along the lines of Grammarly and into the future of artificial intelligence, GPT-3, Jasper.ai. Like, what do we think of all that?

Casey Mank
Yes. So, people often ask us, “Is Grammarly putting you guys out of business training writers?” No, we recommend Grammarly to all our clients. We recommend it in all our workshops as like a final polishing step because Grammarly is really sophisticated now. It can catch a ton of typos, misspellings, wordy sentences, stuff like that.

And what that means to us, this is our take, you can spend less time on proofreading, which a machine can do, and you can save your human brain power for the more strategic questions, like, “Who is the audience for this? What is actually the call to action that I want them to take? How am I going to get them to that step? How is this affecting our relationship?” Those are questions that I still think they’re best suited for a human brain.

The AI question is an interesting one, “How much of that stuff those programs will be able to take over in the future?” But, for now, proofreading, I feel 100% confident, outsourcing a lot of the proofing and the nitty-gritty edits to something like Grammarly. And, by the way, the free version is great. You don’t have to pay for the paid version. Hemingway app can tell you a lot of those things, if you want to use that as a workaround for style.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, then talking about the full-blown artificial intelligence stuff for a moment, I’ve played with it and I’m impressed at what it produces, although it’s not accurate, it doesn’t have any concern for truth or facts, yet it can mimic styles pretty well, I found. And so, I’ve just been scratching my head a little bit, like, “What is the place of this in my writing life? Maybe there’s no place at all, or maybe it’s just to get some opening inspiration to get the wheels turning a little bit.” How do you think about it?

Casey Mank
Yeah. So, I think one thing that could be helpful or interesting there is that people get really stuck staring at a blank page sometimes, not if you have to send an email necessarily but I’m talking more about if you’re writing some sort of content, like a blog or something. You might just be sitting there, staring, like, “I can’t get started.” And we try to teach people ways to just get out of their own way and get a terrible first draft because that’s the thing you need. You need a terrible first draft, and then you can edit.

Actually, all of our writing workshops, it’s a little misleading because they’re actually editing workshops. It’s about how to make something better. It’s not about how to get a terrible draft on the page because, really, you kind of just have to do that. So, I like the possibility that it could produce a pretty terrible block of text for you, and then you could come in. And maybe it would help with some of that writer’s block.

But, on the flipside of that, one concern that I would have is, there’s a really terrible temptation, and we see this a lot with ineffective business writing, workplace writing, to if you have an existing document, and you’re writing something new, and you think, “Oh, somebody already wrote some messaging on that. Let me just copy and paste it. Yay, now I’m done.”

But often, because you’re repurposing it for a different audience and context, it’s not good, it’s not going to work, it’s not going to be effective, and the temptation to copy and paste leads to a lot of bad writing. And when we look at it, it’s like, “Well, who’s the audience? What are you trying to get them to do? Okay, why is this here?” And people will say, “Oh, well, it’s there because it was on the original copy that I got, the source material.” “Well, it would’ve been better if you just started over with the current audience and context in mind.”

So, it worries me that it would encourage people to just say, like, “Look, I have something,” and then the temptation to just kind of keep it and not start over as much as they need to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. That reminds me of when you ask Siri a question, and she doesn’t really have the capability of giving you an answer, but she’s like, “I found this on the web.” And it’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s kind of related to what I’m asking, but it isn’t really the answer.” And so, yeah, I do see that a lot in terms of like the lazy business writing, it’s like, “That’s not really an answer, but it’s tangential to an answer.”

Like, I asked someone, “How do I know that you’re actually going to pay a claim, insurance company, if push comes to shove?” And they say, “Well, we’ve got a great financial rating.” It’s like, “Well, that’s good but that’s not really the answer.” And so, I think a lot of business writing seems to fall into that zone of, “It’s kind of relevant to what we’re trying to do here, but it’s not really a bullseye that we’re going for.”

Casey Mank
Absolutely, the temptation. If you’ve got something, the temptation to copy and paste it is so strong but usually does not lead to the outcome that you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us a little bit about the audience response tone approach. How does that unfold?

Casey Mank
Absolutely. Yeah, so first I have to give a big shoutout to Prof. David Lipscomb from Georgetown University, who is the inventor of the ART tool, which we use. And the audience response tone tool helps you think about that big strategic piece. We start all our workshops, all our coaching sessions with it, and I can tell you that people always want to jump over it.

I’m asking them a question, it’s like, “Who’s going to read this? Who are they? What are they going to do?” And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” “Come tell me if I have a comma splice here.” And it’s funny, like people always want to dive into the editing of the actual content, but if they don’t take…it’s like slow down to speed up a tiny bit and actually think about, “Who will read this? What will they do with it?” If you don’t get those things right, it doesn’t matter how polished your text is, it’s not going to create the impact that you want it to.

So, the ART, I mean, going through the pieces, we hope it’s pretty self-explanatory. So, you already said the piece is audience, “Who is this for?” We encourage people to think as in depth as they possibly can about one reader, so not a crowd of a thousand people, but just one person, even if they’re a representative reader.

And, Pete, you actually do this amazingly well on your booking page for podcast guests. I noticed this. I wanted to bring it up. You say, “Imagine our ideal listener,” and you kind of have this profile for like, “She’s this mid-career young woman, and she’s interested in these topics.” And maybe that person exists or maybe she doesn’t, but I could see her reading that description that you put there. So, that’s so much better than just saying, like, “Listeners from Apple podcast.” That doesn’t help you. Yeah, that doesn’t help you tailor the content.

So, doing something like that, really getting in the shoes of the audience, thinking. I like to ask two questions about the audience, “How much do they know your topic?” You can say nothing or you can say everything, but just know how much they know. And then, “How much do they care?” because people who really care are more motivated readers. They’re willing to put in a lot of effort to make their way through a difficult dense document because they deeply care about the information. People who don’t care will not put in any effort. So, if you don’t spoon-feed it to them, they’ll just delete it, not read it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Casey, I love that so much, and you’ve just answered a mystery I’ve been wrestling with for a while, which is, “How are so many top-selling books about chess so poorly written? How is this even possible?” It’s possible because the person who aspires to improve at chess is highly motivated, more so than I am. It’s like, “This is hard. This is a complicated read. I’m doing something else.” And so, I haven’t advanced as much.

But that does explain much. And then you can find that in all kinds of domains, like people really want to get good at options trading, so they’re reading an options trading blog which is very difficult to read. And, yet, if the folks are thinking about all the dollars they could be printing up with their enhanced options trading skills, they’ll put up with it, so I really like that. Thank you.

Casey Mank
I love that example, yeah. So, I love that example of the chess book. I can only imagine how difficult those are. I can only imagine what that’s like to read. But it’s written by someone who loves chess, and it’s read by someone who loves chess, and both of those people are in agreement that they’re going to put in the work to figure that out.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally.

Casey Mank
So, that’s great. That’s great. But most of the people we’re communicating with in the workplace are not an aspiring chess master. They’re like, “What do you want right now? Why are you in my inbox? I don’t have time to read this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally.

Casey Mank
So, thinking about how much, yeah, thinking about how motivated your reader really is to put in effort. So, that’s the A piece, the audience. The response, you can think in a couple different ways. What are they going to know once they’re done reading? How are they going to feel? And then what are they going to do?

So, important to note that not everything you write has a do piece. Sometimes you truly are just giving FYI, educating people. You’re maybe trying to change their feelings about something but there’s nothing you want them to do when they finish reading. But if there is something you want them to do, “Click this link,” “Donate money,” “Sign a petition,” “Pick a meeting time,” that’s when it becomes really important to make it as easy as humanly possible for them to do that thing because there’s a great chance that they’re going to give up if it becomes hard or confusing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the tone?

Casey Mank
Yup, the tone piece is going to be specific to the audience and the response. So, this isn’t just, “What’s my tone in general?” It’s always context-dependent, which is why it comes last. So, for this particular audience that we’re talking to about this particular topic, and the exact response we want them to do, what’s the tone that’s going to move that audience to that response? So, it’s not just like, “What’s a good business tone?” It’s, “Today, right now, in this document, what’s the appropriate tone?”

We usually ask people to pick three or four adjectives to describe the one. At first, it’s hard to get people to be creative and go beyond, like, informative, clear, professional. Okay, I hope everything you write is informative, clear, and professional. That’s the baseline, but what else? What else can we pull out around tone? And that becomes useful later when you’re editing because you can read every sentence you wrote, and ask yourself, “Is this sentence,” whatever you’re doing, “Is it enthusiastic? Is it cordial? Do I sound expert and do I sound warm?”

You can really kind of filter your entire document through that tone if it’s specific. But if it’s just, “This is going to be professional and clear,” like, it becomes harder to actually make editing decisions based on a vague tone. And last thing about that is it makes it easier for other people to edit your work and give you feedback on your work if you can tell them, “Here’s the audience, here’s the response I want from that audience, and here’s the tone I’m trying to hit. Do you think this document will have that impact and meet those three things?” rather than if you just hand someone you work with a document, and you say, “Hey, is this good?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely.

Casey Mank
Yeah, you’re not going to get helpful specific feedback from them. You’re just going to get them fixing that one semicolon in the bottom paragraph, which isn’t what you really need, so.

Pete Mockaitis
I really love it when…this is, I guess, my sense of humor. I’d like to apply just wildly inappropriate tones to different bits of writing. Like, I saw a cigar catalog once, and it had a lot of things, like, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner. These won’t impress the mucket-y mucks in the boardroom, but under a buck of stick, it’s the perfect yard guard.” It’s like, “Who is this guy talking to?”

And it just cracks me up, and then I just try to imagine taking that tone and putting that on, I don’t know, this podcast, like a podcast episode description for Casey, like, “Wait, what is going on here?” It just feels weird. And, yet, if you’re in the mood to kick back and leisurely select a cigar, it might be perfect.

Casey Mank
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I think that’s good. Well, maybe you can tell me, Casey, I guess the tone that I want is I want folks to feel inspired by a sense of transformative possibility when they read a podcast episode description, like, “Oh, wow, that sounds awesome. I want to know that.” Click play. I guess that’s in the audience we talked about in terms of professionals and such. So, do I just want to use the word inspiring for tone? Or, is there a copywriter word I want to be using for this?

Casey Mank
No, I love that because it doesn’t have to just be a single word, because, crucially, the most important audience for this audience response tone thing is you’re just using it for yourself. This isn’t like a public-facing thing. It’s just the art for you to get on the right page. So, if you want to say to yourself, every time you write the description for an episode, “I want people to feel like, ‘Yeah, I can do this at work,’” that means something to you, and you can use it.

And I imagine you could give that to a colleague, and say, like, “Here’s the vibe I want. Does it come across?” I had one person I work with, one writer, who said, she’s writing an email and people had ignored her instruction several times. And one of the tone things that she told me she was shooting for is, “I’m drawing a line in the sand.”

Now, that is not a single adjective but it meant something to her, it definitely meant something to me, and we kept that in mind, “I’m drawing a line in the sand.” So, if there’s something like that that works for you to think about the tone, I think it’s fantastic.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Certainly. And if it’s just you, the writer that you’re thinking about, then you can say whatever you want. And then, I guess, we do, whoa, it’s like this is so meta, in writing the creative brief itself for your collaborator, you would also be thinking about that audience as copywriter or teammate and their response and tone.

The audience as a copywriter, the response is, I want them to say, “Yes, that sounds like a sweet job I’ll take.” And the tone is, I don’t know, “This should be a lot of fun.” So, cool. Well, Casey, boy, this is exciting stuff. I can dork out forever. Tell me, any other top do’s and don’ts you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Casey Mank
Sure. One writing problem and writing piece of advice that I see a lot and I would love to give people is, you know, because people know what I do, sometimes people in my personal life, my friends and family will say, like, “Hey, help me wordsmith this. I’m about to send something important.” It could be a text, an email, a job application, whatever. Like, “Help me wordsmith this.” And I’m like, “Okay. Well, what are you trying to say?” And they’ll say something to me verbally, and I’ll say, like, “Why don’t you say that?”

And I think people are often disappointed because when they come me, they’re like, “Wordsmith this with me,” and usually I’m just like, “Well, why don’t you just say that?” And I think when people sit down to write, especially professionally, like workplace writing, especially for things that might be important, they go into this weird zone where they just start reaching for all the big words that they know, and like jamming them into sentences, and you get people sending messages, like, “I would love to actualize an opportunity to network with you.”

Like, if you took someone who was really confident and far along in their career, they would send that to someone as, “Hey, let’s chat.” Like, people who actually really know about a topic and very confident, they’d say, like, “Hey, would love to chat.” But people who are right out of college, are like, “I would love to actualize this opportunity to discuss with you,” and nothing signals that you are not confident more than, like, jamming sentences full of big fancy words.

So, I would love to kind of curve that impulse in people. Something weird happens, like they’ll say it beautifully out loud, and as soon as their fingers touch the keyboard, they just kind of like make it weird with all these big words. So, I would love to flag that for people. And start noticing if you’re doing that, stop it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that sounds…actualize opportunity, that really resonates. I’ve gotten a number of emails that folks wanted to explore the potential of creating a collaborative partnership with me. It’s like, “I don’t even know what you mean.”

I think the default responses is just, “I don’t know what this is,” and then move to the next email. And I think that’s sort of an unfortunate reality in terms of when clarity is missing, often the response you get is just no response whatsoever.

Casey Mank
Absolutely, yeah.

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

Casey Mank
Sure. So, this is attributed to Elmore Leonard, who was a novelist and a screenwriter. He did Westerns. And he said, “I like to leave out all the parts that readers skip,” and I’d like to adjust that a little bit for people, which is like try to leave out more of the parts readers skip. I think leave out the parts readers skip, it might sound kind of daunting, but can you just, like, do a little better. I always try to tell people that. Just kick out a few more of the fluffy pieces. So, leave out the parts readers will skip.

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

Casey Mank
Yes. So, we draw really heavily on research from the Nielsen Norman Group, and one of my favorite couple things that people could start with there, I mean, you could read everything on the site and you’d probably emerge as an amazing communicator on the other side of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Sounds worth doing.

Casey Mank
It’s great, yeah. Take a deep dive, but if you want a couple things to start with, I would recommend “The Impact of Tone on Readers’ Perception of Brand Voice,” which is just it really shows some interesting research about how tone impacts people’s reactions to what they read. And then the other one would be “How Little Do Users Read?” It should really get you in the mood for that, like, don’t include stuff that people are just going to skip over.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Casey Mank
Sure. We have a bunch on writing that we often recommend, Letting Go of the Words by Janice Redish, who is a plain language educator, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, Brief by Joe McCormack, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. And then, not a book, but, again, PlainLanguage.gov, free government resource on clear communication. We recommend that almost more than any book.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a favorite tool you use regularly to be awesome at your job?

Casey Mank
So, just the ones that I recommended already would be my go-tos: Hemingway editor, Hemingway app; Grammarly, of course, which we do like and we do co-sign people using people, especially in your emails, it can just fix those typos for you; Difficult and Extraneous Word Finder. Those are pretty much the big writing tools that we like to recommend to people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Casey Mank
Sure. So, I do productivity habit that I don’t think it came from anywhere else. It’s my own thing. You’ve probably heard of like Pomodoro, which I think is 25 on and five off. But when I have a task that I’m deeply procrastinating on, I like to start out by doing five minutes on and five minutes off, which people have said to me, like, “That’s not enough time on.” But it really helps me get into something at first if I think, like, “I’m going to do this for five minutes,” and then I get to watch Netflix for five minutes, because I feel like you can do anything hard for five minutes.

And, usually, what ends up happening is I get into, like, making my PowerPoint or something, and the alarm goes off, and I just snooze it, and I’m like, “No, I’m rolling now. I want to keep working on it.” But for the first, like, getting into something that feels too big or difficult, five minutes on, five minutes off can kind of like get me moving. So, that’s my method.

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

Casey Mank
Yes. So, one that has come up in workshops is, like, “If you’re saying everything is important, you’re saying nothing is important.” And when it comes to writing, that can manifest in a couple different ways but one is, like, if you’re bolding key information and you’re just, like, bold an entire paragraph, you’re no longer emphasizing something.

Or, if we’re working with someone, and we say, “Okay, you really need to figure out what’s most important, and then delete the other stuff,” and they just say, like, “No, everything is important. I need the reader to read every word.” Well, that’s not going to happen, so if you’re saying everything is important, then nothing is important.

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

Casey Mank
Probably connect with me on LinkedIn, or you can email me casey@boldtype.us, and I love to get bad writing of the internet. So, if you are just, like, going about your day in your life, and you see something really poorly written online that’s public-facing, please send it to me. I can use it as befores and afters in my workshops.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Casey, I suppose we should’ve asked, what is Bold Type? And how can you help us?

Casey Mank
Oh, well, okay. Not the bottom line up front at all, huh? So, my company, Bold Type, as you might’ve guessed from everything we’ve talked about, teaches workplace writing skills. That’s the only type of training we do. We do workshops on plain language writing, obviously, email writing, how to edit your own writing, how to give other writers feedback on the writing that they have produced, how to be better at getting feedback on your writing, presentation, PowerPoint writings, and we do some executive coaching as people are moving into more writing-intensive roles at work and things like that as 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?

Casey Mank
I do. For the next week or so, could you try to cut every email that you send in half? And I know that might sound hard, but think about if you’ve ever been asked to write a professional bio for whatever you’re doing, and someone says, “I need a 50-word bio,” and you have to, like, cut your bio down. After you’ve done that, it’s actually hard to go back to the longer bio because you realize, like, “I didn’t need all of this.” So, every email you send, can you take out about half the words? You probably can. That’s my challenge.

Pete Mockaitis
Good. Well, Casey, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun and good writing.

Casey Mank
Thanks so much, Pete. This was really fun.