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May 26
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770: How to Become the Manager that Your Team Wants with Russ Laraway

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Russ Laraway reveals how being a great manager is simpler than you think.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The key to sharing feedback that actually works
  2. How to get your manager to manage well
  3. Why you need to “prioritize prioritization” and how to do it

About Russ

Russ has had a diverse 28 year operational management career. He was a Company Commander in the Marine Corps before starting his first company, Pathfinders. From there, Russ went to the Wharton School, and then onto management roles at Google and Twitter. He then co-founded Candor, Inc., along with bestselling author Kim Scott.

Over the last several years, Russ served as the Chief People Officer at Qualtrics, and is now the Chief People Officer for the fast-growing venture capital firm, Goodwater Capital, where he is helping Goodwater and its portfolio companies to empower their people to do great work and be totally psyched while doing it. 

Over his career, Russ has managed 700 person teams and $700M businesses — facing a vast array of leadership challenges along the way. He’s the author of the book When They Win, You Win: Being a Great Manager Is Simpler Than You Think.

Resources Mentioned

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Russ Laraway Interview Transcript

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

Russ Laraway
Thanks a lot for having me, Pete. How are you?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m doing well. How are you?

Russ Laraway
Great. Great. No complaints.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, I’m eager to get into your wisdom. But, first, I think we need to hear a story of a fifth-grade Russ winning a big prize. What’s the story here?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, I was watching cartoons after school one day on one of the UHF channels, which, for those that don’t know, your television, when it didn’t have cable or Roku or Netflix, your television had maybe seven channels. So, I was watching Channel 48 and they said that, “If you could answer the following riddle, you could win a shopping spree at Toys ‘R’ Us.”

And the riddle showed a picture of The Pink Panther. I don’t know if you remember The Pink Panther, and he was ice skating. And the riddle was, “The Pink Panther is skating on a pink blank.” And I was in fifth grade and I figured out that he was skating on a pink rink. I wrote that down, sent it into the TV station. And out of a couple hundred thousand entries, I was one of three kids who won a shopping spree at Toys “R” Us.

Pete Mockaitis
Hundreds of thousands of people got ranked and it didn’t occur to me immediately.

Russ Laraway
Well, I promise you, if you saw the picture, it would’ve been pretty clear, yeah. A couple hundred thousand entries, I don’t know how many of them were correct but there were a couple hundred thousand entries, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, congratulations. And that was, apparently, pretty memorable for you. Anything that you got there that was a really treasured item in your youth?

Russ Laraway
Oh, yeah, Atari 400. Yeah, I’m super dating myself with this story. But an Atari 400, I was able to get a bunch of games. It was a little weird. You couldn’t just run down an aisle. I think people imagine you can run down an aisle, just have your arm out and just scoop things into a cart. So, I won a one-minute shopping spree. There were two one-minutes and a two-minute. I won one of the one-minutes.

And I actually had to go around beforehand and pre-staged the items that I wanted. And so, we sort of identified an Atari 400 and then I just pulled it off the shelf a little bit, and some of the games and different things. So, I just kind of focused. And you had to get an item and then run back to the starting line with each item. So, you’re doing line win sprints.

And so, that’s how they, I guess, managed the cost a little bit because, in the end, the way I left Toys “R” Us that day was they rang us up, and then Channel 48 paid for the bill. It was like 500 bucks. So, you couldn’t just…the instincts everyone has to optimize a shopping spree, they figured them all out and made sure that I had to identify the things I wanted beforehand.

But the Atari 400, I mean, hours and hours of fun with my friends playing all the games, and that’s when the games were first starting to become higher quality at home, and so it was awesome. It was awesome. Atari was a big part. A big part of my youth.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, knowing what you want in advance is going to be one of our themes here on sort of both sides of the management equation with your latest book here When They Win, You Win: Being a Great Manager Is Simpler Than You Think, and we’re going to talk about how that’s handy for more than just managers, so thank you for that. So, lay it on us, for starters, what’s a particularly surprising or fascinating discovery you’ve made about being a great manager?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, it’s actually that managers are systematically failing and, despite the mountains of content, books, podcasts, articles, they’re not getting any better. And I defend this pretty heavily in the book. And, by the way, I’m confident that your listeners aren’t going to have a lot of disagreement with that idea. Most of them are having actually quite a bad experience with their managers, almost guaranteed.

And so, I had this idea, Pete, hopefully, you’ll indulge me. I have a little fantasy. And the fantasy goes like this. Don’t worry, it’s G-rated. The fantasy goes like this. I get to sit down a few of the luminaries who create content designed to help managers be better at their jobs. I get to sit them down each, one on one, and I ask them a simple question, I say, “How does your stuff, whether it’s your book or your podcast, your article, how does your stuff contribute to making each manager in the world great?’

And then the fantasy continues. They’re going to use a bunch of different words but I suspect they’re going to…

Pete Mockaitis
Synergy, engagement, dah, dah, dah.

Russ Laraway
Yeah. Well, engagement is a really big deal. We can talk about that. It has a very strong relationship with business results, not attrition or retention stuff. That’s a symptom. But, actually, like quota attainment, or earnings per share, or operating margin. All these things have a very strong relationship with the psychological measurements, employee engagement but let’s come to that in a sec.

But you’re right, what I think they’ll say is something like this, “It’s akin to going through a buffet-style lunch line, and you’re at a leisurely pace, you have your tray on the rails there, and you’re moving from left to right, let’s say, and you take a little from one section, maybe we’ll call that the Simon section, and then you move to the next section, maybe the Brene section, I don’t know. And then we go to the next section, and maybe it’s the Kim section and kind of off you go. And then you have on your plate, ideally, a nutritious meal that allows you to solve all of your leadership problems.

The problem I think, though, is for the typical manager, it doesn’t feel at all like a leisurely trip through a buffet-style lunch line. Instead, it feels like they’re hogtied in the center of a middle school cafeteria while a multi-thousand-person food fight is transpiring, like broccoli hits them on the head, mashed potato sliding down their cheek. By the way, worse, even if they are going through that lunch line at a leisurely pace, they’re not choosing the chicken breast and broccoli they need. They’re choosing the cheesecake and cream puffs and chicken fried steak that they want. It’s a process heavily fraught with bias.

And so, I think, practically, the proliferation of content about how to be a great manager is actually confusing managers, and what is missing from the entire corpus, in my opinion, is really the willingness to put the leadership standard you are prescribing, whatever author, podcaster, whatever, up to measurable account. Good leadership should measurably and predictably deliver happier employees at work and better business results. And, ultimately, that’s kind of the book that I wrote, what’s exactly the book that I wrote. Does that help, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Got you, yes. Okay, happy employees and better business results. And so, when you say managers are failing, what are the sort of core evidence or proof points that we’re looking to say, “That’s not happening”?

Russ Laraway
Yes. So, I’ll use a little bit of research to make this point. First is that Gallup, this is actually a 2013 study from Gallup. It’s called the State of Global Engagements, and I get to talk to the guy that did this study. His name is Larry Emond. And they found that managers explain 70% of engagement. And what that means is, in very large datasets, when you observe a positive variance from the average in employee engagement, 70% of that variance is explained uniquely by commensurate variance in manager quality.

So, if engagement is higher, managers are better. If engagement is lower, then the average in that spot, managers are worse. And so, even if you want to arbitrarily discount that to 50%, not that we have the credentials to do that, but that still means everything else you’re doing to try to affect employee engagement, this magical measurement from IO psychology that predicts results, everything else is worth less than half of the investments you make in your managers, 70%, less than half is 30%, the remainder.

If we arbitrarily discount it to 50%, I don’t know why, but we just do that, it’s everything else you’re doing is worth half of your investments in your manager. It’s pretty clear, managers are holding the keys. So, in either case, the research finding or our arbitrary discount. But here’s the thing that will kind of blow you away. Global employee engagement is 15%, that’s 15% out of a hundred. In the US, by the way, it’s twice as good and still terrible at 33%.

And so, you just have to put these two data points together. The manager drives employee engagement, and employee engagement is terrible around the world, and it’s pretty obvious that managers are systematically failing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. I hear you. From that data picture, there you have it. So, then what are the primary drivers of the disappointing manager performance?

Russ Laraway
That’s a great question. What, ultimately, we uncovered, and this was sort of a, call it a four-year long project while I was working at a company called Qualtrics. We were able to take a theoretical leadership standard, and really what I mean by that is a set of behaviors, and we were able to determine the degree to which those behaviors affect employee engagement.

And so, how we did that was every quarter, when we measured employee engagement at our company, we also measured something called manager effectiveness. And we did that by asking employees only, not 360, just the employees, the people who do the real work, the people we’re all fighting to attract, develop, and retain, the people who are being led, we asked them if they observed these behaviors from their manager in the last quarter, a specific set of behaviors. It’s about 12 questions we would ask them.

And it turns out, when you ask questions like that in a certain way, you can actually measure, basically, how frequently the managers, and individual managers, are exhibiting the right behaviors. And then once we have that measurement, we can actually just drop it into like a statistical package and correlate it with both engagement and hardcore results, like quota attainment, contract renewal, all these things. So, that’s what we did.

So, a couple of the behaviors that are highly correlated with employee engagement, the mostly highly correlated behavior is actually specific praise for good work. And so, the question might be, “How often does your manager give you specific praise for good work? Very often, often, etc.” And so, we give the manager credit for either one of those top two choices – very often or often – is kind of how you do it.

And so, the reason why that’s a big deal, though, is from a management perspective, it’s not being a cheerleader. A cheerleader is on the sideline, cheerleaders are pompoms, and they say, “Good job.” And I think to people that sounds like praise. It’s actually about coaching. Coaches are on the field or at least on the sidelines. It’s energetic. They’re right there and their entire job is to help people be more successful.

And in the book, I call it continue coaching, which is being very specific and sincere about what people should continue doing so that they have the best chance of repeating the things that are working. So, whether it’s the work products they’re producing, the customer service ticket, or the marketing copy, or the code they’re writing as a software development engineer, that’s the work. And the behaviors, our core values that our companies often define, the behavioral standards. And it turns out, it’s actually really important to be very explicit and clear about what people are doing well because it gives them the best chance to repeat it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that sounds sensible. And then when we say very often or often, are those defined in the eyes of the employee being managed?

Russ Laraway
Yes, eyes of the employee being managed.

Pete Mockaitis
They say, “I say that often, not very often, and that’s what we’re running with.”

Russ Laraway
Yeah. Yeah, that’s the most important perspective. And it’s irrelevant if the manager disagrees with the employee. If the manager is like, “Well, I do this all the time.” If you’re not doing it in a way your employees are hearing, then you’re actually not achieving. That’s why it’s so important to only evaluate the manager along these lines from the perspective of the employee.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and the employees, I assume, are genuinely reasonable, like, “Well, no, I mean, I went four hours without you giving me specific praise for my good work. That’s not very often.” Okay, well, that makes sense. Can you share with us a couple more sort of big drivers here?

Russ Laraway
Yeah. The next biggest one is about soliciting feedback from the team. So, it turns out nobody wants to go to work and not be heard. And the idea here is have you ever heard of the HIPPO?

Pete Mockaitis
The highly paid important person?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, highest paid most important person or what I call the most dangerous person in the room. Good companies are trying very hard to limit the degree to which the HIPPO, the highest paid person in the room, the degree to which their perspective ultimately drives the decision or the outcome that we’re trying to get to because that person is usually actually pretty meaningfully disconnected from the facts on the ground, and they’re not usually in any real sense more likely to come up with the best idea. It’s a very wisdom of the crowd kind of idea here.

And so, it turns out that a couple things become true when the manager regularly asks for input from people on the team. First is people feel heard. A big topic today is inclusion. If you want to talk about everyday inclusion, it’s this one sentence, “Every voice is heard including my own.” So, the first thing we do is we now give…this is their team too. It’s not just your team. It’s their team too. So, the first thing we do is give the folks on the team a voice in where we’re headed, what we’re trying to do.

The second practical outcome is the results are better. The research is crystal clear. Diverse perspectives deliver better outcomes. And diverse has a lot of lenses, one of which is making sure every single employee’s voice on the team is heard before we do something important, every single voice is heard when developing our team’s direction. And this gives people a degree of ownership over what the team is trying to do.

And so, Peter Drucker said, I can’t quote it exactly, but one of his landmark kind of insights was that people are far more likely to pursue a course of action enthusiastically when they have had a say in creating it. And so, that’s the idea here, is managers that do a good job of inviting diverse perspectives, inviting challenges to the current state, challenges to their own perspective, challenges to the leadership standard, challenges to how they’re behaving, those teams thrive and those employees tend to be significantly more engaged than the teams where the managers don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s good. Can we hear a third key driver here?

Russ Laraway
Yeah. I’m trying to pick the best one. So, another one that has a very strong relationship with engagement is actually the other side of the first one I mentioned – praise – which is actually improvement coaching. So, praise is about coaching people on what to continue. Improvement coaching is about what to change with one simple idea. It’s not to kick you in the shins, it’s to help you be more successful.

Pete, if you’re the guy like me who starts off this conversation talking about this lunch line metaphor as a way to express the complexity being thrown at the average manager, then you have to be the guy who tries to simplify the job. And I’ve kind of done that work and I’ve come up with a job description that I believe fits every manager in the world from the CEO of Google or IBM, all the way down to the frontline manager at Jersey Mike’s for the sandwich line.

And that is your first obligation is to deliver an aligned result. The word aligned does a ton of work there. But aligned result, meaning the results your team delivers are aligned with what the company is trying to get done. And the second is to enable the success of the people on your team. And success is short term and long term. In the short term, your best tool for enabling their success is coaching, both continue coaching so that they know what to repeat, but also improvement coaching so they know where they can be better.

And, again, you coach on work products, “How could this code have been a little tighter?” “How could the copy have been a little clearer?” “How could you have more efficiently or effectively solved that customer’s problem?” That’s the work. And then the behaviors tend to be things like core values, like transparency, or justice, or one team, “How well did you behave in alignment with our standards?”

And people are always running a little bit afoul of our standards, and it’s okay. Like, we’re not perfect. We’re all humans. And the best managers know that they need to not only offer continue coaching but they also need to offer improvement coaching. And these two things together kind of round out our top three drivers of engagement, and it makes sense because they’re your two best tools for enabling people’s success: coaching them to be better and coaching them to continue the things they’re doing well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so, within this coaching, I would love to hear what are some best and worst practices on both sides of that conversation? I guess one worst practice is just forgetting and not doing anything, but, additionally, what are some top do’s and don’ts to be on the lookout for there?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, let’s start on the continue side. If it’s okay, I want to tell you a little story. Cool. So, I used to coach little league baseball. By the way, if anybody wants to become a better manager in the span of about four months, go coach youth sports. And before our season kicked off, we were impelled actually to go to a seminar by the Positive Coaching Alliance. This is a nonprofit, really good organization, works at the professional, college, high school youth levels.

And this seminar lasted all day. It turned out to be a great use of a Saturday. The Positive Coaching Alliance prescribed five-to-one praise to criticism. Five to one. Now, it’s important, so that’ll be five-to-one continue to improve. What’s important to realize is they didn’t say infinity to one, which is what a lot of people hear when you say five to one, and they didn’t say five to zero, like everyone gets a trophy. It’s five to one.

And so, practically, what I did with this was I started something called the book. It’s a very clever name because it was literally a book, it was a lab book with graph paper, where I would just write down the things the kids did well. It started with being on time to practice. We all know if kids are late to practice, it wasn’t probably the kids’ fault. They don’t have a driver’s license. It’s their parents’ fault. So, we didn’t get on the kids’ too hard for that but we certainly recognized the kids that were on time. It included counting loudly during stretching.

And, by the way, when that gave way to the kids like not really doing their stretches well, we got clear on the standard for a good hamstring stretch, and we wrote that down. And this carries all the way through to fielding a ground ball correctly, “Move your feet. Center the ball on your stance. Get your glove in the dirt. Cover the ball with your throwing hand. Move both hands the fastest line possible to your shoulder. Step with your back foot. Step with your front foot. Fire over to first base. That’s how you field a ground ball and then throw somebody out.”

And so, what I would do is, halfway through practice, or at the time, if I thought the kids were kind of lagging, or they were losing focus, or they weren’t hustling as much, we’d call them in and we’d read from the book. And I’d hold it up like Simba, and sometimes I’d even sing, like, “Nants ingonyama bagithi baba sithi uhm ingonyama,” and they loved it. They were nine, ten, and 11-year-olds. And I would just start reading off what they did well.

Pete Mockaitis
By name.

Russ Laraway
By name, yeah. On time to practice, and then boom, “Miles, Starks, Caden, Jimmy, Tara,” and we’d just kind of go all the way down. And then we do it again at the end, and sometimes I’d reinforce it with a little article on the team website that night. And what’s most interesting about this, I think, is that it’s tempting to think, “Well, that’s just something that works on kids.” But they’re not. They’re just small people. They’re not some unique other thing. They’re just small people.

And the big insight here is for the workplace, to translate this to the workplace, is in order for us…here’s the mistake people make on continue coaching. They say, “Good job.” That is not helpful. That’s what you say to your dog, that’s not what you say to the people you work with. Being specific about what was good is what really counts. That’s what helps people know what is working. And in order to be specific, Pete, you have to be very clear about what the standards are around here. I couldn’t have been specific about fielding the ground ball correctly if I couldn’t communicate the actual standards for fielding a ground ball.

So, that’s the biggest thing people get wrong, and after a while, people just tune you out. You sound like a cheerleader. You don’t sound like a coach when you just say, “Good job. Well done. Way to go, team.” Enthusiasm is fine. It must be accompanied by specifics about exactly what was done well and why it matters.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. And so then, it’s interesting, you talk about little people. A question I’m having here is what is too small a thing to provide for continue coaching? Like, you showed up to work. I mean, I love praise and enthusiasm but I just want to make sure how small is too small? Or, like when is it veering into insincere or patronizing? Or, like, “Okay, dude, yes. I’m going to show up to work and I’m going to check my email. I feel weird that you are praising me for this.” I don’t know, where’s the line?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, totally. The answer lies in this five-to-one prescription. I think if we were to start offering continue coaching or praise in the way you just described, I think we very quickly get to like 500-to-one. And so, that’s your guideline and it gives you a feel for what’s too big or too small. But here’s a really simple prescription, and, by the way, you don’t even need to be a manager to use this.

There’s a phrase that is perfect for all of this, “Do you know what I love about…?” That’s the phrase. So, what does that sound like? “Do you know what I love about the way you ran that team meeting?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Do tell, Russ. I’m all ears.”

Russ Laraway
Or, “Do you know what I love about the way you showed up in that team meeting?” “Do you know what I love about the way you created that analysis? I loved the way you put in sensitivity in all the key variables because we don’t know what the future will look like, and that allows us to have an understanding of what the boundaries might be.”

“Do you know what I love about the way you ran that customer meeting today? It was carefully how you listened to their needs and made sure to tailor our message to it.” These are the kinds of things that reinforce for people what they should be doing.

Showing up for work, like things that are table stakes like you described, the kinds of things that if you don’t do, you just sort of get canned. Yeah, let’s stir clear of those. You’re exactly right. They become patronizing. But the thing you have to remember is the people on your teams are doing a lot more well than they’re doing poorly. And my evidence is you’re not walking around firing everybody.

And so, start calling those things out. And if you do things in general terms or unthoughtfully, you’ll run into the risk you just described. If you do things carefully and thoughtfully, you not only help people reinforce what they’re supposed to be doing, but you actually demonstrate that you recognize what they’re doing.

Like, how many times have you heard people say that their boss has no idea what they do? It’s like it’s an illness. But if you are regularly feeding back to people that you saw what they did, liked what they did, and why it matters, they can never hold the perspective that their manager doesn’t know what they do. So, it’s more of those kinds of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so you’re a buffoon but you know what they’re doing.

Russ Laraway
Yeah, you can still be a buffoon, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so now you got me thinking about I like how that five-to-one grounds us there in terms of the goods. And I’m sure this is going to vary quite a lot based upon the nature of your relationship with the employees and the work and various spans and layers. But if I’m thinking five-to-one, do you have a sense of the range of like, I don’t know, the daily or weekly volume or monthly volume of coaching? Like, is there an amount that’s too little or too much?

Russ Laraway
Yes, probably the both. And too little is easy. Here comes your sixth month review and you’ve received no coaching at all. That’s too little. I actually think I get this question about too much a lot, and I think it’s actually a phantom problem. I think almost nobody’s at risk of over-praising. I really don’t. I know that in theory or conceptually or before they get into it, like as they listen to this prescription, because I get this question all the time, they believe there’s this big risk of over-praising, and it’s just very unlikely.

But the mental model I’d use, Pete, is so I mentioned six months, it’s perfect. Sixth month reviews happen. How often do you get your teeth cleaned, out of curiosity?

Pete Mockaitis
Not quite every six months but my wife once tweeted, “Getting my husband to go to the dentist is like pulling teeth.”

Russ Laraway
That’s a great tweet.

Pete Mockaitis
So, once or twice a year-ish.

Russ Laraway
Okay. It should be, I think, ideally, it should be four times a year.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that true?

Russ Laraway
That’s how often I go, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. Well, the insurance only covers two in the US.

Russ Laraway
Oh, then maybe I’ve got that wrong. Let’s just call it two since that seems to be what we’re both settling in on.

Pete Mockaitis
Gee, Russ.

Russ Laraway
Well, I’m a hyper…I create plaque very, very well. I’m talented at making plaques so I got to go a little more often. But besides the point, it’s a long period of time. How often do you brush and floss, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, every day. Well, flossing is not every day but brushing definitely is, and flossing happens…I don’t actually have a good number for you.

Russ Laraway
It’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
More than I go to the dentist. I floss more than I go to the dentist but not every day, yeah.

Russ Laraway
Yeah, all good. And so, let’s see what happens. That trip that you hate making to the dentist, does it go better or worse if you haven’t brushed and flossed the previous time period?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s definitely better when you do it. You get less disappointment, judgment, time scraping.

Russ Laraway
Time scraping, which is, we agree, the worst. So, this is the mental model for coaching. You want to be way more on the brushing and flossing cadence, which might be a few times a week. Sometimes if the situation calls for it, we could be in for a couple of days but you’re on the field. Just imagine an athletic coach, if you can. If you watch sports, or if you’ve played sports, or if you’re at least a little familiar with sports, hopefully that covers everybody. The coach, it’s energetic and it’s constant, and it’s both things. It’s how you can be better, what you should continue, that was well done, here’s why.

So, it’s more like brushing and flossing and less like going to get a root canal, which, by the way, the root canal is a practical…it’s on the same evolutionary path if you don’t coach every day. If you don’t brush or floss a day, a root canal…

Pete Mockaitis
It’s coming your way.

Russ Laraway
It’s coming your way. That’s right. PIPS is coming your way.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, got you. Thank you. So, I like that. So, there is a wide range but this is the ballpark we’re talking about. And I don’t know if you know, it sounds like you do from Qualtrics and your research, like do we know roughly what proportion of managers fall into the camp of near-zero coaching or don’t know what their employees are doing?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, I think at Qualtrics, our managers were very good because, first, we selected them for their leadership disposition not because of their tenure or because they were good individual contributors. So, we had a really positive selection bias that they were at least mentally aligned, if not skillfully aligned, with how we wanted them to lead.

Then we explicitly taught them the leadership standard. So, select, teach. Then we assess them from the perspective of their employees, and then we coach them. So, that’s STAC, select, teach, assess, coach, so we could stack up a bunch of great managers. Our managers actually got measurably better over the four years I was there and we added 500 managers.

So, our managers were, because of a very intentional approach, we knew that they were holding the keys. And we knew as a group of humans at the company, they were holding the keys. And we knew that if they led our people better, they would be more likely to create the circumstances under which people could do great work rather than destroy them.

And so, our data is heavily biased towards strong management, and the company’s engagement was always high 80s, like extremely high. And the company is now, by the way, sixth straight beaten Rays, as a publicly held company. Our managers are creating the circumstances under which people do incredible work that shows up in the company’s results. So, that was Qualtrics and it’s biased in a very positive direction.

Yeah, if global engagement is 15% and in the US it’s 33, still really, really bad, this strongly suggests that the overwhelming majority of managers out there, they’re not actively coaching their teams, they’re not giving praise for good work, they’re not engaged in people’s long-term career aspirations, they’re not crystal clear on exactly what is expected of the people on their team.

They don’t co-develop the team’s direction with the team members. Remember, it’s their team too. And so, I don’t have a number for you, Pete, but I can tell you that the evidence, the engagement evidence strongly suggests most managers aren’t even doing the basics.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then I guess if listeners who are managers, you start doing that, that’d be great. And those who are not yet managers, and they say, “Hey, you’re right, Russ. My manager doesn’t know what I’m doing. I’d like for that to start.” Any pro tips or how to broach that conversation or what could be done for the individual contributor who’s in that spot?

Russ Laraway
Yeah. So, I have a little, a couple prescriptions in the book that I think would work well here. The first one I have is called…I call it coaching the boss. And so, for managers that, for example, don’t proactively ask for input from their teams, recognizing this isn’t really sustainable for anyone, most people don’t like to be in a team where their manager won’t hear them, I created a little prescription for how to proactively surface some feedback to the boss. And, again, usually more.

It’s not hard to tell the boss when they’re doing well. It’s much harder to tell the boss when something on the team, or the boss themselves, is doing poorly. And so, that four-step process is, first is manage your risk. And what I mean by that is if you work for a retaliator, just end of process. You’re done. Like, if they don’t like to hear, if they tend to behave poorly after someone tells them, “Things could be better around here,” just polish up your resume, find a new boss. Life is too short.

But most managers actually aren’t retaliators. And so, the first thing to do is what I call gather your boss’ unique contexts. So, a lot of times an employee is really sure they’re right; and they’re not. They have a valuable perspective that’s actually likely closer to the facts on the ground but being right, possessing truth in the workplace is like a really high bar. Like, my truth is not the truth. It’s the sort of the idea.

And so, instead of going in being sure you’re right, the first step is actually to gather your boss’ unique contexts, which means don’t assume your boss doesn’t know anything about the topic at hand. Instead, assume they know something and then try to pull that out of them. And what you might learn is your boss is not paying attention to this for really good reasons. You might learn that your boss is like really blind to the problem and their sort of lack of attention is unintentional.

And you might learn that they know exactly the nature of the problem and they’re just specifically deprioritizing it for following reasons. You could learn any of those things. But before you go in there, guns a-blazing, sure you’re right, actually go in and find out what your manager knows and how important they think this thing is.

And so, that’s kind of the first step. Well, first step was manage your risk, second is gather your boss’ unique contexts. Now, with their contexts, if you still think it makes sense to share what you see, which is a reasonable thing to conclude, that’s the evaluation you have to make. And so, now you have to make a decision, “Okay, I think I want to share this.”

And I think the third step is ask permission, which might sound like this, “Okay, boss, I think I see things a little bit differently than you do. Are you open to hearing that?” A very large percentage of the time, when presented that way, they will say yes. If they say no, go back to the polish-up-your-resume step and go find another boss because who wants to work for that person? That person is an ass-clown manager, for sure, and our mission here is to rid the world of ass-clown managers. But most managers will say yes and actually mean it.

And now that they’ve said yes, I believe step four is it’s Nike, you just do it. You got to do it. Now, you’ve got an obligation. The team will be better, the manager will be more successful, you are likely to be more successful, and so now you have, I think at this point, you’ve gone through the steps carefully. Now, you have an obligation, I think, to deliver the hard feedback to the manager. But you’ve gone about it in a very high-quality way. You haven’t assumed you’re right, you asked permission, and now it’s time to give the feedback.

So, that’s a way to start a positive cycle with the boss, where maybe your voice will get heard more often. Do that once or twice, maybe the manager starts to come ask you because they know you’ll shoot them straight. Maybe they start to ask other people on the team. You could actually jumpstart a culture of a manager listening to their people by running this process a few times with your manager.

Pete Mockaitis
Inspiring. Thank you. You’ve got a turn-of-a-phrase I must dig into, that’s a bit of a swift transition here, “Ruthless prioritization.” Where does this fit in to being a great contributor and manager? And how do we do it well?

Russ Laraway
Yeah. So, I’m going to guess that a lot of your listeners are kind of high-performing types. And if I may, I’m going to say your listeners are a bunch of Lisa Simpsons.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah, plays saxophone.

Russ Laraway
Do you know who that is?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, The Simpsons. She’s a high achiever in school and her activities.

Russ Laraway
Boom. Lisa Simpson, as you correctly indicated, is bright. She’s polymathic. She’s got a lot of interests. Plays saxophone, like you mentioned, and she’s ambitious. And so, I’m guessing you know your listeners well. You allowed me to know them well before I interviewed. I walked away saying, “That’s a bunch of Lisa Simpsons.” So, that’s one part of this prioritization problem. And I’ll get to the problem in a moment.

The second part is the environments we find ourselves in. I’ve been at large companies and small companies, hyper growth, not that, and what is common in almost every workplace I’ve been in is there’s some chaos. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing all the time, things are moving very quickly.

Pete, it turns out, when you put Lisa Simpsons into those environments, it creates a prioritization problem. And what I mean by that is you have the kind of people who are interested and capable of doing a lot of things, and an environment that has ostensibly a lot of things to do, and then those Lisa Simpsons might just try to do it all.

And that is a very, very…that’s a fast-track to mediocrity. So, prioritization is an exercise in subtraction, not addition. It is about learning how to say no politely, which I offer a prescription for in the book. You have to say no politely, that’s the key. And I have this little inequality that I offer, which is three is greater than two is greater than four. Now, does that sound right to you?

Pete Mockaitis
Not from a strictly mathematical perspective, but I’m hearing you when it comes to prioritization. Keep going.

Russ Laraway
If you have more than three priorities, you have none, and that’s how I can say three is greater than two is greater than four, and that’s for a day. And for a week, it might be five. I’ll allow five. And so, here’s what this looks like, practically. On Monday, the first thing you should do, before you look at email, before you get involved in any projects, write down the five most important things you need to get done that week given the goals that your OKRs or the goals you have for yourself that quarter.

And then each day, ideally, including Monday, write down the three things you’ve got to get done that day. Three things you’ve got to get done that day. and these things can adjust a little bit. But, again, given the goals you have for yourself that quarter, try to be specific and use that to hold yourself accountable. Your priority list is not a task list. Those are really different ideas. Task lists are not prioritized nearly exclusively.

Constrain to the three most important things you’ve got to get done that day. And it’s okay to check those, “Hey, boss, these are the things I think are most important for me to get done this week. Do you agree?” And then even give your boss maybe a chance to affect that list. Sometimes it’s things, because they’ll change it quite a bit, and maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but you can negotiate. It’s better to have their buy-in than not.

But that’s what ruthless prioritization is. It’s remembering that if you have more than three, you have none. Prioritization is an exercise in subtraction, not addition. And, ultimately, it’s about learning how to say no politely.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And these three things, it’s so funny, I can bundle…I’m a master of bundling things big and small, so if I don’t want to do the hard decision-making of ruthless prioritization, I’d be like, “Oh, podcast stuff is one of my three important things today,” but that’s actually six things underneath there. So, any guidelines in terms of what constitutes a thing or how big or small a thing can or should be in a day?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, actually a really good insight. So, what you just talked about is something that I cover a bit in the book but I pull from another source. A guy named Dr. David Rock who wrote a book called Your Brain at Work. And this guy has got a PhD but what he does is he consumes a lot of research about the brain, and then he smartly applies it to the workplace.

And so, he has a funny phrase called “prioritize prioritizing,” and that sounds silly but it’s actually quite useful. And the reason is because, as you suggested, prioritization is a very prefrontal cortex intensive process, meaning it is very hard work. And if you don’t know, your brain consists of obviously a number of parts, but two main ones. It’s your sort of hindbrain, which is literally in the back. It’s your brain stem, your amygdala, the part that controls emotion and fight-or-flight type responses. It’s strong, it’s old, and it’s efficient at processing glucose and oxygen.

Your prefrontal cortex, really what makes us human, that’s your problem-solving, logic, reason. It’s really small, sadly, for us. It’s weak and it’s relatively new. And it’s weak in terms of processing glucose and oxygen. By the way, they don’t work together. So, if you’ve ever said, “I was so scared I couldn’t think,” that’s a true statement. That’s your hindbrain overwhelming your prefrontal cortex. But, nonetheless, we only have so many repetitions for our prefrontal cortex in a day.

People like Mark Zuckerberg, for example, wears literally the same outfit every day because he takes one decision off the table, and he knows he’s only got so many good decisions, which come from your prefrontal cortex, available to him. Kim Scott who wrote Radical Candor does the same thing. She wears these coral-colored sweaters and blue jeans every single day, with a white T-shirt, to take one decision off the table.

And so, people are inclined to avoid the hard work of thinking about their priorities for a day. And so, David Rocks says, “You actually have to prioritize prioritizing.” So, the first thing to do, before we get into what’s good or what’s bad, is you have to carve…like, I used to carve out time, do not schedule time. I’m an early bird, so I would carve out from 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. every day to make sure I did this well, and on Mondays for the week and each day.

And, in fact, when we hit the pandemic, my team and I, we set up a process in the Slack bot where at midnight, whatever time zone you’re in, the Slack bot prompted you for your top three priorities for that day. And we would each add them in so we could observe each other’s priorities.

These are meaningful chunks of work. So, podcast stuff, you’re right, would be a bad one but a better example would be maybe last week, on Monday, maybe one of the things you needed to get done was, at least, skim my book in preparation for the interview. That’s a very tangible example. By the way, you know the interview is coming next week, “Russ is going to be on next Thursday, and so I’ve got to, at least, get through this book conceptually, if not in detail.” I’m letting you off the hook because I’m the slowest reader on the planet and I know I couldn’t pull it out in a week.

So, that might be a very specific example. You know you’ve got to interview me. You know you’ve got to prepare. And your number one sort of tool to prepare would be the book. And so, that’s a very specific example, contemplates sort of what you’re trying to get done in the future, and that’s much more tangible. And, by the way, it answers two really important questions, “What?” and “By when?” The “Who?” is implied. An action item in life always answers those three questions, “Who will do what by when?”

If you’re writing your own priorities down, or thinking about your own priorities, the who is implied because it’s you. But what and when should be very clearly implied. And so, this can be a catchall, like podcast stuff is not particularly useful but the specific stuff you got to get done, given the interviews you got coming up the following week or the following month, whatever it is, those specific items, those are the things that you have to prioritize, and don’t do another thing until you’ve knocked those most important things out.

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

Russ Laraway
Yeah, I think we covered it. That was a really good interview, Pete. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. All right. Well, how about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, “Success comes when opportunity meets preparation.” And the reason I like this quote is because you’ve heard people that are a little too self-assured, a little too “I’m self-made,” and not really accounting for the advantages they might’ve had in life. On the flipside, you hear people that are excessively humble, like, “Oh, I just got lucky.”

Neither of those people is accurate, I think. I think that, for all of us, it’s important to be aware that our success is really a function of a little bit of luck and a little bit of skill. And you put in the work, you try to develop your skills, you try to be ready, and when those lucky opportunities emerge, you’re a little more ready to seize them. And I think it presents a virtuous cycle.

But this sort of what I hammer with my kids, actually. It’s not your innate smarts. Calvin Coolidge has an incredible long quote on this, “It’s not your innate smarts, it’s not just your talent, it’s not your station in life; it’s your grit, your resilience, and your willingness to put in the work.” And then, in turns out, the more work you put in, sometimes the luckier you get but, still, there’s a lot of luck involved. So, success comes when opportunity meets preparation.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Russ Laraway
Yeah, my favorite book for a long time has been A Separate Peace by Jonathan Knowles. I had to read it in high school, and it really moved me. It’s a dark story set at a private school, and the characters are really phenomenally well-developed archetypes. But, for me, the book, I can’t give it away, but the book shows very clearly consequences for small actions. There’s a moment in the book where there’s a very small action. It’s well-known in literature, it’s when character A jounces the limb, that’s the phrase used, and everything that happens from that point after is really dark and bad.

And I always loved that book because I think it’s important for many reasons. It’s taught in many high schools for a reason. But this notion of the kinds of consequences and accountability that can be huge for even some of the smallest actions, I think, is an important thing to take away. So, yeah, I’ve loved that book for a lot of years. And, I guess, now that I think about it, it’s still my favorite.

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

Russ Laraway
Yeah, pretty easy, Pete, www.WhenTheyWinYouWin.com, probably the easiest way to get in touch.

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

Russ Laraway
So, when I was at Google back in 2005, I noticed pretty quickly that we had a lot of really new, really young managers who were, nearly by definition, unskilled because they were new, there wasn’t really a training program, and they were young. We were growing so fast and giving people huge amounts of responsibilities.

And I noticed that even when the managers would fail to exhibit some of the most basic behaviors, that their teams still often delivered. And it occurred to me that the reason for that was that our average talent level at the company was so incredibly strong that they would actually often cover up for the inadequacies of many of the managers.

And I wondered, “Is that replicable? How valuable is it to know what to expect from a manager, or what is expected of your manager, by their manager, and to drive your behaviors even when the manager is not giving you everything you need or want, can you, nonetheless, figure out what is probably expected and deliver in alignment with those things, and almost cover up for your manager’s own inadequacies?”

I think it’s a really interesting framing and there’s lots of places you could go to learn what the kinds of things that might be expected of a manager, like, for example, When They Win, You Win, is a great place I recommend to start. But I think you’re not a victim; you’re a player. Victims are powerless; players are powerful.

And if you’re not getting everything you need from your manager, and you’re feeling like they’re not invested in your success, you can actually kind of take the bull by the horns and change your trajectory with that manager. So, that’s my last call to action.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Russ, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and many wins.

Russ Laraway
Thanks. I really appreciate it, Pete. Back at you.

May 23
0

REBROADCAST: 399: Maximizing Your Mental Energy with Isaiah Hankel

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Isaiah Hankel highlights the importance of your mental energy, the best time to use it, and how to protect it from the people and things that drain it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The little ways we waste our limited mental energy
  2. How to tactfully deal with people who drain your mental energy
  3. How to gain more energy by closing mental loops

About Isaiah

Isaiah Hankel received his doctorate in Anatomy & Cell Biology and is an expert on mental focus, behavioral psychology, and career development. His work has been featured in The Guardian, Fast Company,and Entrepreneur Magazine. Isaiah’s previous book, Black Hole Focus, was published by Wiley & Sons and was selected as Business Book of the Month in the UK and became a business bestseller internationally. Isaiah has delivered corporate presentations to over 20,000 people, including over 300 workshops and keynotes worldwide in the past 5 years.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Isaiah Hankel Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Isaiah, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Isaiah Hankel
Great to be here, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into the goods, but first can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up on a sheep farm?

Isaiah Hankel
It was rewarding. Some days it didn’t seem like it, but the one day that always stands out in my memory when I’m asked that question is a day that came every year as a sheep farmer, which is when you would shear the sheep.

Pete Mockaitis
I thought you were going to say that. What made that day special?

Isaiah Hankel
It was just a good insight into sheep behavior and as I learned later, human behavior, because sheep were very responsive to two things, carrots and sticks. It’s one of the many places where we get that phrase, having people respond to carrots and sticks, because humans respond to those two things too.

Pete Mockaitis
You mean literally feeding them a carrot and using a stick?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, yeah, it’s literally with the sheep and usually not literally with the humans.

But with the sheep to shear them, it’s a painless process, but you have to get a large herd of sheep, in this case it was usually 80 to 100 head of sheep, into a funnel essentially with a very narrow opening where only one sheep could fit at a time.

You would think this would be very hard to do, but sheep operated through a herd mentality. What that means is that you could walk behind them with a couple of sticks, bang those sticks together, they’re also scared of everything, and they would go running in the opposite direction. If you just bang the sticks behind them and if ahead of them was the funnel with the large gate that they would be funneled into, they would run right into it for you.

Then just to get them to go that last few yards, to get them to go one-by-one through that gate, you would just tease them with carrots held out in front of them, they’d walk right into the sheep shearers arms. You’d have to wrestle some of the larger ones sometimes, but in most cases carrots and sheep, carrots and sticks would do the trick.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, generally speaking, when sheep are sheared or shorn—

Isaiah Hankel
Yes, shorn.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it enjoyable, like, “Oh man, that was really a weight off,” versus like, “No, this is my precious fur?”

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, in the reverse order though. They’re at first scared of the buzzing sound and they’re scared of everything, but then it doesn’t hurt, they’re relieved, it happens in the middle of the summer. They’re very happy afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I imagine that right after the shearing, the times are good on the sheep farm. You’ve got a bundle of cash coming in.

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, times were good. As a farmhand you don’t get paid too much, but you did get paid quite a bit more on that particular day. It was always a sense of reward after working hard with your hands. Looking back, it’s some of the most enjoyable work that I’ve done, somewhat ironically.

Pete Mockaitis
We’re not going hold that against you to any of your colleagues or collaborators, like, “I’d rather be with sheep than you guys.”

Isaiah Hankel
It just made you very present. I think in today’s world behind screens, it’s hard to get present like that in the same way. I think you have to do it much more deliberately now.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. Well, you talk a little bit about some of this in your book called The Science of Intelligent Achievement. What’s sort of the main thesis behind this one?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, this book is about how to protect your mental energy and then what to do with your energy after you have protected it, after you stop doing the things that are depleting you on a daily basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, that sounds important. Can you sort of lay out that importance, like why do we need to protect our mental energy? Isn’t it going to be fine? Or what’s the attacker that we are defending against?

Isaiah Hankel
It’s usually people, but it’s a lot of things. I think the best way to frame it, and it’s kind of how the book starts out, is mental energy is your most valuable asset.

We usually hear that time or money is your most valuable asset, but we can quickly disregard these as being your most valuable asset because most people, just as an example, certainly in the US, have both a phone and a watch or a Fitbit. These things can do the same thing in terms of telling time, but we buy extra things for little features that we don’t really need. If you’re not buying that argument, go see how many pairs of shoes you have.

When it comes to time, how much time have you spent watching or re-watching your favorite movie or your favorite TV show or watching a YouTube clip? It’s not so much time that’s valuable. Maybe you were exhausted at the end of the day. You just wanted a feeling of comfort. You watched your favorite movie over again. Again, these can be disregarded pretty quickly, especially when you start comparing them to mental energy.

The last one that’s very popular today because we hear quotes like, “Your network is your net worth,” and all these feel-good relationship quotes about your relationships. We think, “Okay, well, it’s just about how many people you know? How many people will give you value for the value that you give?”

What we do there is we eliminate yourself from the equation. We forget that “Oh, I have to have enough energy to stand on my own two feet and enough energy to produce and provide value or enough energy to be present and be the kind of person other people want to connect to.”

We’ve all bought things we didn’t need. We’ve all spent our time on things that were a waste of time. We’ve all wanted to add more to relationships, wanted to give more, but were spread too thin. The limiting factor is actually your mental energy. How much mental energy do you have? You can think about it a different way. How many attention units do you have?

I think a lot of people try to reduce it to something that’s physiological, “Did I get enough sleep? Did I eat?” That’s really what controls my attention. There’s a little bit more to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well so now I’d imagine that that might be sort of the starting point of the funnel, if you will, in terms of just how much mental energy you have to work with. But then it gets frittered away and unprotected. Could you lay out what are some of the biggest drains on our mental energy and how do we prevent those from being drains?

Isaiah Hankel
Great question. Let me tell you how much or how little you actually have to start every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh do, thank you.

Isaiah Hankel
If you get five or six rounds of rapid eye movement sleep, REM sleep, then your willpower levels, your attention units, whatever you want to call it, your mental energy is going to be restored if – of course a lot of people don’t sleep as much as they should today. But if you get that amount of REM sleep, you start out each day with about 90 to 120 minutes of peak mental energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh boy.

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, that’s it. That’s according to several studies. It’s been printed in the Harvard Business Review and of course a lot of primary peer-review publications. 90 to 120 minutes, so two hours tops and that usually strikes within an hour or three of waking up for most people, so right in the morning.

Then if you think of that as like your ten out of ten mental energy time. Then you have about an eight out of ten mental energy for maybe three to five hours during the day. Everything else is much lower. If you start thinking-

Pete Mockaitis
Like four?

Isaiah Hankel
Like four, exactly. Four or five.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow.

Isaiah Hankel
If not lower. If you start thinking what you can actually get done in a month, gets reduced pretty quickly to okay, let’s say you’re just doing what you do during those two peak hours and you have okay, during a work week about ten hours. Think about it, most people that go to an office, what’s the first thing that you do during that time?

Pete Mockaitis
They’re going to get the coffee, check the email.

Isaiah Hankel
Exactly. Scan some email. Then you look at the news. Then by the time you’re done with the news and email and chatting with your colleagues, you are out of your peak mental energy state. It’s very easy when you’re feeling good, your mental energy is peaking, you have your first cup of coffee, you get kind of chatty, to just diffuse and spend all that mental energy.

Here’s the key. I didn’t even mention this yet, during that 90 to 120 minutes, you are four to five times as productive as you are out of that peak time.

Pete Mockaitis
Four to five times even as compared to the level eight energy time?

Isaiah Hankel
Four to five times overall compared to the rest of the time during that day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, wow.

Isaiah Hankel
So time is relative. You can produce four to five times as much work during those peak mental energy, but again, most people don’t protect it—or we didn’t mention meetings. You’re in some nonsensical meeting, listening, some meeting that can probably be done in seven minutes and you’re spending an hour there.

These are just some of the ways that people are diffusing their peak mental energy during the day and why it’s important to start scheduling your day around these peak hours.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I’m wondering, you mentioned it hits during the morning, is that pretty universal regardless if you are a night owl or an early bird?

Isaiah Hankel
Good question. The night owl is a bit of a myth. I think it’s around one or two percent of the population actually is biochemically a night owl, where this peak mental energy is at night. A lot of people just like to think they’re a night owl because it lets them procrastinate during the day. But there are outliers of course in all sets of data.

One very easy way, and this would kind of be considered a meta-analysis, not really a peer-reviewed study, but it’s of yourself and you’re an n of one or a sample size of one, is to just take your phone and jot down every hour of the day from the time you wake up to when you’re asleep, so six AM, seven AM, eight AM, and just type down on top of every hour, and you can set an alarm on your phone or your Fitbit or whatever, how you are feeling in terms of your mental energy on a scale of one to ten.

What you’ll find over the course of even four to five days is you’ll start to see a trend. You’ll start to see – you’ll probably start maybe at a six, maybe a person starts at a four. Then pretty quickly you’re going to climb up to a ten. Then your tens are going to be in a row. You’ll have one or two in a row. Then it will go to about an eight.

Then you’ll have lunch. Then there will be the afternoon dip, which is a real thing. You’ll kind of drop to maybe a five or a four. This is what I’ve seen very, very commonly. Then maybe you’ll peak for one or two hours at six or seven after that. Then you’re right down to a four for the rest of the day. Something like that. That’s a typical curve. A lot of it has to do with your cortisol cycle in your body too.

Once you do this for a few days though, you can see, “Oh wow, these are the two hours of the day where I am peaking. What am I doing during those hours?” You start to rearrange your day in pretty simple ways, so you’re using those hours for the things that are most important to you, your career, your personal goals strategically.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that sounds wise. I am all about that. Then I’m curious, when it comes to those, if it’s two hours, do you recommend doing two hours straight through or like having sort of a power brief rejuvenation in the midst of it?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, exactly. One thing you can do is go for a walk. You can go to the gym in the middle of the day if you can get out, just some people walk around the office. But if you do get the blood flowing during that dip, then you can get your mental energies to start to climb again. That’s really the key here is you have control over this.

That question is exactly what you need to be asking yourself. Okay, I usually dip here. Maybe instead of going to the gym in the morning, I can try to go to the gym or get some activity or go for a short run or whatever might be possible in my work life to bypass that dip and at least maintain maybe a six or seven during that time.

The key is just kind of restructuring your day for your peak mental energy or to keep your mental energies peaking rather than just letting them fall wherever your activities in the day fall.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us some examples for you or those you work with in terms of what are some great things that you might really try to slide into the peak mental energy times?

Isaiah Hankel
It comes down to every person’s individual goals. One thing that I started doing once I realized that this – when I started seeing this data and I wanted to publish my first book, is that I started taking my lunch break very early.

I started peaking around ten AM. This was when I would get up around six or seven. I’d peak at ten AM. I would be on from about ten AM to about twelve noon. During that time I could write at least five times as much as I could during any other time of the day. What I did was I started taking my lunch from ten till eleven AM, some cases eleven to twelve, and I would go somewhere and I would write.

I got my second book done very, very quickly because of this. If I had not done that, it would have taken me at least four to five times longer. That’s one example.

A lot of people have a goal to start their own business, but they struggle to get a business proposal on paper. They struggle to take that first step. They struggle to do all kinds of strategic things for their life that if they were just using their peak mental energy like 15 minutes a day, they can make real progress on.

It doesn’t have to be right in your peak time. If that’s just an impossibility for you, can you get up 15 minutes before your kids get up? Can you get up an extra 15 minutes early even if that’s like your 7 time, when you’re at a 7 out of 10 and use that time to do something strategic for your life, where you’re really moving the needle on your long-term goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I really like that idea in terms of those things that are important, but you’ve been having some trouble getting movement on. That seems like a perfect combo for, “Ah, a peak mental energy time is what needs to be allocated here.”

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, ideally I’m thinking of the four quadrants of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, not urgent but important. That would be the idea stuff that you’re using your peak mental energy time for. Every once in a while it might be important and urgent, but at least you’re always doing something that’s important during that time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. It’s key to do the scheduling and to be strategic about how we are deploying it. Then beyond that, what are some ways that our mental energy gets zapped over the course of the day?

Isaiah Hankel
Once you have your map there and you know when your mental energy is peaking, now start asking yourself what gets in the way of your mental energy or start tracking during the day. Maybe take a couple of notes underneath that list that you’re creating for four or five days and make a list of when you’re feeling the most drain. Who did you just interact with? What did you just do?

Everybody is different. One draining activity or one draining person for me might be different for you. What you’re going to find is that there are certain people that really drain your energy, certain interactions, certain types of interactions

Maybe sometimes with your boss it’s okay, but other times it’s not. If they had a conversation with you during this time right before lunch when they’re hungry, it’s not good, so you can start avoiding that.

Maybe every time you have a conversation with this person, they’re really dramatic and they suck you into their drama and you’re like, “Oh wow, this is usually happening during my peak mental energy, like I’m responding to some text. I’m going down this rabbit hole. If I just stop responding to this person, it goes away.”

Maybe it’s an activity that just completely drains you, you really dislike doing, not something that’s important, that’s hard to get started that you need to do, but something that’s lifeless and just pure busy work that’s not really moving you forward, something you can outsource to somebody else or delegate at work.

Start asking yourself, “What are the activities I can get rid of, the things that are really draining me?” What you’re going to find more often than not is it’s people and that you’ve done a really poor job of being selective and deliberate with the people that you’ve allowed in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, intriguing. So being mindful and aware of the different people and how that’s impacting us with the energy certainly. Then any pro tips for dealing with that, like, “Oh, it looks like these people are sucking the energy and I’d like to minimize my exposure?” How do you do that with tact or grace?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, I call it going on a relationship fast. An important caveat here, just like with food fasting, we used to think, oh, if you fast for two weeks, this is somehow good for you. It can be very bad for your body. You don’t drink anything, don’t eat anything for weeks, very hard on your organs.

But we do know that certain types of fasting can be very, very good for your body, intermittent fasting, fasting certain types of food like not eating grains for a period of time or not eating dairy for a certain period of time or limiting foods one by one to see what you might have a food allergy for. All kinds of fasting that once you get more strategic with it, can lead to big insights and big benefits.

Same thing is true for relationship fasting. The problem is that we’re all so connected to our networks and we all have been bombarded with especially in today’s over connected world, that connections are important. You need to have as many Facebook friends as you can. Not just Facebook though, you also have all your other social media connections.

Not just online, because those aren’t your real relationships, you have to go to a bunch of conferences and you have to listen to every single podcast out there and you have to read everything possible. This stuff is good, but are you being deliberate? Are you choosing to read and to consume and to connect with people that are making you better or do you really have no filter? How deliberate are you being?

One good way to answer that question is to step away temporarily, not forever, but for a few days. Step away from your relationships. Of course you have your kids, your wife, etcetera. It’s going to be individualized for everybody.

But there’s probably a group of friends or at least one friend that’s coming to your mind right now as you listen to this that you’re asking yourself, “Does this person really make me a better person or a worse person? How do I usually feel when I interact with them? Is it just competitive? Are they a friend who’s really kind of an enemy?” There’s only one way to find out. You have to gain distance. Emotional distance will provide clarity.

By going on a temporary fast and doing it in a tactful way, you don’t just say, “Ah, I’m not talking to you anymore,” or “I’m in a relationship fast. Can’t talk.” You instead say, “I’m going to be taking some time to work on an important project. If you don’t hear from me for the next couple of days, I’ll get back to you on this date.”

You step away. You implement some of the things we’ve been talking about here, spend some more time on your personal goals, what you’re doing and all of that will become more and more clear as you kind of de-clog your life here with this temporary fast. You’ll gain some real insights by doing this.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lovely. I also want to get into your take on being busy is a bad thing. What’s that about?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, busyness, and we hear this a lot. It’s almost overused. It’s a badge of honor and people think, “Oh I don’t want to be busy for busyness sake, but I still want to be busy. There’s so much to do today and things are so competitive in my career,” or if I’m an entrepreneur I’m trying to get ahead in whatever way. We can just start filling our calendars and what we’re doing with a lot of stuff without evaluating whether or not it’s impactful.

It’s actually very simple to figure out if something’s impactful, you just need to find a metric, some unit of measure where you can determine whether or not you’re moving closer to the overall goal, the reason that you’re doing that activity or further away.

Most people never do this because they never carve out time during their peak mental energy to have the mental energy to draw those conclusions. They’re so busy that they just keep going onto the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, hoping subconsciously that one of these things is somehow going to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Some day one of these things is going to fall into place. They’re going to arrive. Somebody is going to discover them. The boss is going to say, “I see all the work that you’ve done. This is the one thing I’ve been waiting for you to do. Now I’m going to make you a millionaire.” They all have this kind of like hazy, fuzzy, “this is why I’m working so hard” lie going through our head at all times.

If you get honest with yourself, you’ll realize like I stay so busy because a) I don’t want to confront whether or not what I’m doing actually matters because maybe it doesn’t matter and maybe that means that I don’t matter right now, which is not true. It just means what you’re doing doesn’t matter. And b) because I think if I let go of something, if I stop doing it, what if that’s the key to my success? What if that’s the one thing or the one connection that’s going to make me successful?

That’s just never true. There’s always other opportunities, but if you’re not measuring what you’re doing, you have no idea if you’re getting closer or further away or if it’s impactful. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, how intelligent you are, you can’t hit a target you don’t set.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. All right. You set the target and you are I guess mindful of the metrics and how different activities are moving that. Could you recommend what are some key metrics that folks have found open up a world of clarity about whether things are really worth doing?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, sometimes it’s easier than others. If you’re starting to write your own book or start a business, whatever, you can literally just count the words that you’ve made progress on in your book or count the chapters or in the business proposal, count the section.

If it’s at work, there’s likely some KPIs that are being measured for you by your manager. Maybe ask. Maybe evaluate and make a list of all the activities you’re doing at work and look at them to see what you are doing them for, like, “Why am I doing this? What does my manager want to see from this? Is this activity helping me gain any revenue for the company? Is this activity visible?” Optics matter. “Is it visible for my manager? Are they actually even seeing the result of this? Is it producing anything?”

Use that data too to go to your manager or your boss and say, “Hey, I’m doing this, but we’re not measuring anything. There’s no KPI. There’s no metric. Can we either set up a metric or can we cut this because it doesn’t seem like it’s impactful?” Just asking yourself why am I doing this, what is the result that it’s bringing? Once you get to the result, and you have it backed up with a why, you can determine the metric.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. You’ve got so much good stuff. I’m a little bit jumpy.

Isaiah Hankel
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
But I can’t resist. I want to know it all. You’ve mentioned that other people’s opinions, you liken them to an infection. What’s the story here and how do we I guess inoculate ourselves?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, I always think of the movie Inception, where once something is suggested to you, it’s very easy for it to get implanted in your mind and then to grow and then eventually you think it’s your own idea and you execute on it. Now you’re chasing a goal that was suggested to you by somebody else without even knowing it. In the book it’s called the power of suggestion. It’s a real psychological phenomenon.

For example, you come into work and somebody says to you, “Hey, how are you feeling? Are you okay?” Then a little bit later a second person comes to you, maybe it’s just you didn’t comb your hair that day or whatever it is, and they say, “Are you feeling all right? You look a little disheveled.” Now by noon you’re going to go home sick because you think you’re sick and you’re not even sick. Just a very simple example.

We’ve all had something like that happen to us where somebody says something and then now it’s in our mind usually in the form of a question. Maybe they didn’t realize to do it, but that’s how powerful the power of suggestion is.

There’s a lot of studies that have shown that opinions travel through social networks just like the flu virus. The same kind of epidemiological studies that are done for the flu virus, they’ve done for opinions and for moods, emotions and they travel through these networks so that one negative person can have a drastic effect on hundreds if not thousands of people. One person’s opinion can do the same thing through the power of suggestion, through a variety of other means.

You really have to be careful. Anytime somebody gives you an opinion, especially an unsolicited opinion, you have to save yourself. What I do is I say, “I reject that.” Even if you’re just saying it under your breath or in your mind, you reject it. That’s not true because of X, Y, Z. Otherwise you’ll notice that these opinions will start setting up a camp in your brain. They’ll start forming limiting beliefs, limiting stories because our brains are wired to do that.

We have a negativity bias. We hear an opinion, we look for the negative information in that opinion, we set up limitations, and we set up negative stories in our brain to protect us from negativity.

There’s a part of your brain called the amygdala where information flows through it at a rate 12 to 1 compared to positive information. It flows through it right to your long-term memory banks so that negative information is stored 12 times faster and more securely than positive information.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s striking. That’s quite a multiplier. When you say, “I reject that,” can you give me some examples of maybe things recently that you heard then you’ve decided to proactively state out loud or internally, “I reject that.”

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, it sounds a little bit silly, but it was as simple as the example that I gave you. Sometimes somebody said, “Do you feel okay?” or “You look a little tired,” “I reject that. I look wide awake.” Right? I will literally say that because otherwise it can start to stack on you. Or somebody says, “You don’t really seem like you’re making progress in this area.” “I reject that. I’m making progress here, here and here. Then here’s also where I’m going to work to make even more progress.”

It’s not about putting blinders on. It’s about framing things differently. I heard it said recently that no frame, no gain. You have to choose how you frame things in your own mind.

There’s something called defensive pessimism, which is really important. I’m not about, again, putting on rose-colored glasses, being overly optimistic. You have to look at the data and look at what’s going on. That’s what defensive pessimism is. You say, “What could go wrong here?” You figure it out and it actually makes you more successful. It’s not about that, but it’s about you choosing how to frame things that are best for you, not letting other people frame things for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Talking about I guess disproportionate mental weightings, how’s that for a segue?

Isaiah Hankel
….

Pete Mockaitis
You mention the Zeigarnik Effect. I may be butchering that pronunciation. But it’s pretty intriguing. Can you unpack that for us?

Isaiah Hankel
The Zeigarnik Effect is – now you have me saying it too. It’s an effect that-

Pete Mockaitis
Zeigarnik.

Isaiah Hankel
Zeigarnik. I think I’ve had to look up pronunciation of that about 15 times. This is an effect that makes an open loop in your brain very hard to let go of. It’s why open loops, things that are kept in our working memory can have a drastic impact over our performance. The psychologist who came up with it was obviously called Zeigarnik. Now I can’t say it ….

Pete Mockaitis
Zeigarnik.

Isaiah Hankel
Zeigarnik. Bluma, yeah. He was a psychologist who noticed that a waiter had better recollections of unpaid orders. I’ve been a waiter and I know this. When you have an open table, it’s very similar to having an open thought or an open loop or a cast that’s not done in your mind. That’s how this effect was discovered.

Imagine you’re a waiter or maybe you’ve been a waiter or a waitress before. I used to waiter at a restaurant called Dockside in …. Great job. We had about five to six tables in a section. If there was a certain number of tables full, let’s say all six tables are full. They’re all eating. All six tables are on my mind all the time. I want to keep them as happy as possible because I want a tip.

If I’m asked at that time anything about the people at those tables, I have an amazing memory of those people, what they ordered, what’s going on. However, as soon as a table gets their check, they pay, and they leave, as soon as that happens and I clear out the table on the computer, if I’m asked the same set of questions about that table, I can’t remember anything. Because now the table is closed, the loop is closed, the task is closed and my brain dumps it from my working memory.

That’s the effect. Most of us walk around with hundreds of open tables in our mind at all times. We wonder why our mental energy is so dissipated. One of the most important things you can do and this is from a book, a famous productivity book called Getting Things Done.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, David Allen episode 15. Woot, woot.

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, there you go. Just make a list of all the open loops in your mind. Spend an entire day or spend – what I did is I spent three or four days during my peak mental energy times making a list of every open loop, everything from ‘I want to paint the garage one day’ to ‘I want to pay off my house’ to ‘I have this entire list that I need to get through that’s on my desk.’

We talked about collecting every inbox, which can be virtual and physical now into one place, putting it in a giant to-do list and getting all of those loops down on paper. That’s the first step to getting them out of your working memory.

Once you get them down, you’re going to have at least 100 if you do it correctly. I would say if you’re over the age of 25, you’re going to have at least 100.  Once you get them down, you’re going to be like, “I can’t believe I was holding on to all of this in my working memory this entire time.” You’re going to feel this huge sense of relief.

Then when you go through the list, if you can start crossing stuff off, if you can do it in two minutes – this is going back to the getting things done rule – just do it. Or there might be a lot of things where you’re like, “This is not happening. This is off the list completely.” Then you can file other ones into like a someday maybe file on your computer.

Then the rest of the things that you actually need to get done, you can probably get it down to in my experience a list of 100 to maybe 30 items. That’s it. Again, all of that’s relieved from your working memory. All those loops get closed. Your energy will go through the roof after this process. But again, most people never do it. Why? Because they’re too busy doing stuff that’s not important.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, another fascinating implication of the Zeigarnik Effect in terms of our memory for these open loops is I think showing up in terms of storytelling. This is reminding me of another great author, Robert Cialdini.

In his later book Pre-suasion he figured out how he can really engage in his classroom if he posed a bit of a question or a mystery like, “How is it that this tiny organization was able to grow and overtake this huge organization in marketing or sales or whatever over four months. It wasn’t this. It wasn’t this. It wasn’t that.” Then they’re like, “Well, what was it?”

I think the same thing happens in a TV series or some of these true crime podcasts, where we’re doing an investigation over time. It’s like the brain wants that closure and you’re so intrigued and it’s so top of mind that sometimes you’re not even really enjoying watching the TV series or listening to the podcast, but you’ve just got to know what happens to these people.

Isaiah Hankel
Yes, you want to close that loop. Yeah, you’re right. Everything from marketers to entertainers have known this for a long time. I know one particular marketer that sends an email every day and at the end of it, it’s like, “And tomorrow I’m going to tell you about X, Y, Z.” Curiosity is a very powerful way to create an open loop and keep yourself or what you’re doing, or what you want to be on somebody’s minds on their mind.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, talking a little bit about these different factors in terms of protecting your energy and prioritizing and not being too busy and focusing on the right stuff and closing loops and getting it all out of there. I’d like to get your take on non-negotiables and how this can be a productive means of achieving some of these ends.

Isaiah Hankel
One of the best ways to not allow a loop – one of the best ways to close a loop is to not allow a loop to be opened in your brain. One of the best ways to do that is through non-negotiables.

People have a hard time saying no today. I struggle with this. I think a lot of us do, especially people who are – people that like to seize opportunities. You want to get stuff done. You’re a doer. You think the more yes’s I commit to, the more likely I’m going to be successful, the faster I’m going to be successful. But really it’s the opposite.

I read it in a book, I think it was by Tim Ferris that said you have to move from throwing spears to holding up a shield. This transition point comes at a various stages in your growth of your career, your personal growth, whatever it is.

But you have to be very cognizant that “Should I stop throwing spears at this time? Is it time to stop trying to throw everything against the wall to see what sticks? Has enough stuck that now I need to start holding up the shield and I’ve got to start saying no? I’ve got to say, ‘I just don’t do that.’ I’m not taking on any more projects until this date. I’m not staying online past eight PM anymore, non-negotiable. This is my morning routine that I’m going to execute every single day, non-negotiable.”

There’s real power in that. The power is that you don’t allow extra loops to get open. You don’t allow extra stuff to start stealing your attention and draining your mental energy. You’ve taken a stand to protect your mental energy in a formidable way.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. I’d love to hear what are some non-negotiables that have been really powerful for you and those you’ve chatted with about the concept?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, so a couple I just said have been really powerful. Bookending my day is really important. I have a non-negotiable that at this time I’m offline and I’m home with my family and I’m present with my kids. The end. No matter what I can get done at that time, that’s just the way that it is. It actually makes me work a lot faster and really makes me prioritize a lot more carefully.

Same thing in the morning. This is the morning routine that I’m doing every single day. I have one that’s like a ten-minute routine that can be done anywhere, if I’m traveling – no matter where I’m travelling, etcetera. That is what I do. Then I have certain key days too, like on this day, this is the day that I do calls on, client calls. Only on this day, non-negotiable, no other days. It’s got to be fitting on this day.

If you can set up a few of those – I call it bookending for a reason. But if you can add bookends and a couple of bookmarks to your days and weeks, it gives you a structure and it acts almost like a tripwire to make sure that you’re saving a certain amount of mental energy, otherwise things will just continue to swell and go towards disorder. It’s entropy. It’s just going to happen. This is again kind of a tripwire to prevent the entropy from getting out of control.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess, I’ll ask it later, but instead I’ll ask it now. These ten minutes, what are you doing with your ten minutes there?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, good question. What I try to do and what I’ve noticed is if I can do something physical, if I can take in some information, then if I can put out some information, I feel really good. What I do kind of changes, but one thing I’ve been doing recently, I’d say for the past six months, is I would get up and I’ll do a little bit of core work, stretching, core, just get a little bit of I guess mobility work in, very little. I can do that in a couple of minutes.

I’ll meditate, again, for a few minutes. I will pray for a few minutes. I will read a couple of books that are usually set up into either like a devotional or a book that has really short chapters. Then I’ll do an entry in a gratitude journal. I’ll write a little bit.

This is all really kind of in ten minutes. It’s about a minute or two a piece. It’ll swell if I have more time. It can swell up to like 30 minutes, but at least I’m getting each of those in in a minute. Then finally I’ll do something, I usually will row or could be something with like a kettle bell, just to get the heart rate up a little bit before having lemon water with Himalayan pink salt.

Pete Mockaitis
Himalayan pink salt. I’ve heard of this. Tell me. It’s supposed to be special somehow.

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, I got hooked on it. I did a podcast with Onnit and I started watching a lot of their content before to prepare just like I do with your stuff. Yeah, it came up. It’s supposed to be really good for cleaning out your adrenals among other things.

Pete Mockaitis
More than any other salt?

Isaiah Hankel
Not just the salt, but the lemon water with the salt. Maybe put a little bit of apple cider vinegar in it. The Himalayan pink salt has a lot of – not chemicals, but like phosphorus, sulfurous, really good – I’m forgetting the name right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Minerals?

Isaiah Hankel
Minerals. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Feels like a word that might apply to salt. I’m just guessing.

Isaiah Hankel
That you can’t get from your normal table salt.

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

Isaiah Hankel
I would say really take seriously figuring out when you are peaking and be greedy for that time. That is your time. That is your essence. What you do during that time is who you are and who you’re going to become.

I think happiness, if that’s your pursuit that we’re all going towards, you have to realize that happiness is doing. Happiness is not just who you are. We all have a being and that’s important, but it’s also doing. We live today doing so much that we don’t think enough about what we’re doing, those activities. If you can own one or two hours during your peak time, you’re going to own yourself.

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

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, this is one I have on my desk. I think for me it’s always been kind of a good mantra that’s kept me focused. It says, “I do not fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me that’s pounding saying, ‘keep going.’ Someone must be on top. Why not you?”

It might sound too intense for some people. That’s a quote from Patton, but basically it means fear is not the problem here. Failure is not the problem. Apathy is the problem, not caring, not trying to be the best that you can be. That’s what you should be afraid of.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. How about a favorite study?

Isaiah Hankel
Favorite study. Man, I had like three or four and I didn’t decide on one. One that I really like going back to what we talked about today is the study showing people’s performance during those peak mental hours. If you think about it, it’s really showing that time is relative.

How can a being or person during these set times get so much more done than outside of those times. It’s like you’re a different person and your brain is a different brain during those times. It’s something that I don’t think enough people have thought about it. We’ve just scratched the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s possible when we start tapping into human performance through the protection of mental energy.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Isaiah Hankel
Favorite book. Fiction or non-fiction?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ll take them both.

Isaiah Hankel
Fiction, I really enjoyed Fountainhead. I read it when I was young. It’s one of the things that inspired me to start my own business to even write a book instead of just going and doing what I was told in academia.

Non-fiction, so many things. The one that I read recently that I think really spoke to me and I read like three times is Relentless by Tim Grover. What I like about it is there’s people who start their own businesses. They’re very driven. People always talk about the dark side of being driven and how it’s bad.

He kind of flipped it and said, “No, this is very good and some of the best things that have ever been created and the people’s top performance and just a variety of things are because of this.” I really enjoyed it.

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

Isaiah Hankel
Something that helps me be awesome, I really can’t get enough of these new Apple pods because I do so many calls and I dictate so much that it allows me – one of the things that I do when I have a little bit more time in the morning is I like to wear a 40 pound weight vest and just go for a walk and listen at like two times speed a podcast like yours or a book. Then I have a dictator that I’ll dictate into. The pods makes all that possible.

Pete Mockaitis
So it’s a separate device that you’re using for the dictation?

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, exactly. Because that way I don’t have to stop listening to the book and I can just rant into this. A lot of is just pure nonsense. I’m like, “Oh that’s not really a good idea,” but sometimes there’s these gems that comes out of it. Once I started using two devices for that it was a lot different because otherwise I’d have to stop my phone, what I was listening to and dictate on my phone, etcetera.

Pete Mockaitis
What is the dictation device of choice that you’re using?

Isaiah Hankel
I can look it up real quick here. It is Sony ICD-PX370 mono-digital voice dictator.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the ICD-PX gem.

Isaiah Hankel
I was going to say, you might know that.

Pete Mockaitis
I actually don’t. Do you just keep it via audio or does some transcribing get into the picture?

Isaiah Hankel
No, I would love to know if there’s a better transcription device out there. Well, I use Rev.com. I’m guessing you know what that is. But no. The transcription devices that I’ve seen are highly complex, where you’ve got to have CDs and you have to – no, I wish it transcribed. I don’t think it does.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, how about a favorite habit?

Isaiah Hankel
Favorite habit, getting up at five AM more than anything else. This is something that like a lot of habits, you have to gently move towards. I for the longest time, for years, I wanted to joining this quote/unquote five AM club back when I was waking up at like eight AM. I’d set my alarm for 5 AM. I’d do it for like a day, maybe two and then crash and burn and give it up for a week and then two weeks later try it again.

What I finally did was I just started like 10 – 15 minutes at a time over the course of a week. Every week I’d get up, I’m serious, like 15 minutes earlier and slowly over the course of that 18 months, I’ve been able to start getting up at 5 AM. It’s just a beautiful time because you can shift when your peak hours happen.

I get up now and then very early when nobody else is up and there’s no calls or meetings or anything, I have my strategic time where my mental energies are peaking. It’s empowering to feel like you’re ahead of other people, even though there’s all kinds of time zones and I’m on Pacific Time, so I’m actually behind. Yeah, that’s by far my favorite habit.

Pete Mockaitis
But you’re also into sleeping a lot it sounds like.

Isaiah Hankel
Yes, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So when do you go to bed?

Isaiah Hankel
I track that and I go to bed at eight PM. I have to because I track it on a Fitbit, which I know is not the most accurate, but I do know – as long as you’re using the same scale, it’s apples to apples. I know what I trend at and how much sleep I need a week. I stick to that.

On a Fitbit, I have to get – I’m actually a pretty light sleeper, so I’ll be awake about an hour every night, at least according to my Fitbit. I know I need about 7 hours and 45 minutes almost on the nose in terms of averages for the week. I make sure that I get that. One of the ways that I have to do it is by going to bed at eight, so I get it.

Pete Mockaitis
So that’s 7 hours 45 minutes of actual sleep time, so the 9 hours of in the bedtime.

Isaiah Hankel
Exactly, so 7-45 plus the one hour, yeah, so it’s right around 8 to 5 yeah. ….

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I hear you. Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Isaiah Hankel
A particular nugget?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, just an articulation of your wisdom that folks say, “Yes Isaiah, that was so moving and brilliant when I heard that from you.”

Isaiah Hankel
Yeah, I think it comes down to the relationship fast. Most people don’t give themselves permission to do this because they think they’re being a bad person or they’re going against – we hear words like anti-social. I know it’s probably easier for me because I’m an introvert, a non-shy introvert if you’ve ever read Susan Cain’s Quiet.

But you have to be okay with being alone. If you’re not, you’re never going to really know who you are and you’re never really going to know the power that you have in your own mind and what you can do with that power of being your mental energy and what you can produce with it that will make the world a better place. If you really care about other people, you’ll figure out who you are and you’ll spend some time on your own in a relationship fast, a temporary one doing that.

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

Isaiah Hankel
Go to IsaiahHankel.com. That’s probably the easiest. Or actually the easiest is probably HankelLeadership.com. They can read some extra articles there and get a couple free chapters of the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge or called to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Isaiah Hankel
Yes, make your list of every hour that you’re awake for three days at least. Just record, scale it one to ten, what’s your mental energy. There’s going to be some great insights there. Then try to find one hour, one peak hour to protect. Do whatever it takes to protect that hour. It will change your life.

Pete Mockaitis
If I could just get a quick follow up there, when you say one to ten, could you orient us a little bit? How does a ten and a nine feel and how does a five feel and how does a one feel?

Isaiah Hankel
Great question. It’s going to be, of course, subjective, but the great news is it’s just you. You are the only subject, so it’s okay to be subjective in the sense – and you’re looking at a trend. If you do this in three days and your tens are all over the place, that’s a concern. You’re going to need to do it for a little bit longer.

But if you go for three – four days, like when I did it the first time in about, yeah, three – four days, I saw a very clear trend that a ten was at about the same time every day, right around that ten AM.

For you, you can always go back and say, “Oh, now that I’ve done this for a few days, this wasn’t really an eight. This was my ten.” You’ll gain clarity as you move forward. The key is just knowing, if you want to know in practice, what are those times when you seem really, really sharp, like people are asking you a question, you’re not really delaying in your responses, you’re flying through emails very, very fast. You feel like you’re in a flow state. If you haven’t read the book, it’s by Mihaly Csik-

Pete Mockaitis
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Isaiah Hankel
There you go. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I practiced that one.

Isaiah Hankel
A lot of word challenges today. Called Flow. Read that book. Anything that makes you present and sharp, that’s the feeling that you’re going for. When does that happen?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Isaiah, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for taking the time and good luck with all you’re up to.

Isaiah Hankel
Thank you Pete. Great to meet you and great to be here.

May 19
0

769: How to Command the Room, Connect with Your Audience, and Close the Deal with Laura Sicola

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Laura Sicola breaks down the communication tools and techniques for building a strong presence and delivering maximum impact.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How you’re introducing yourself wrong—and how to do it better
  2. The magic words to capture your audience’s attention
  3. What it really takes to persuade your audience

About Laura

Dr. Laura Sicola is a leadership communication and influence expert, speaker, podcast host, and author of Speaking to Influence: Mastering Your Leadership Voice. Laura’s TEDx talk, “Want to Sound Like a Leader? Start by Saying Your Name Right,” has over 6.6 million views. As founder of Vocal Impact Productions, her mission is to help leaders master the Three Cs of Vocal Executive Presence so they can COMMAND the room, CONNECT with the audience, and CLOSE the deal. 

Resources Mentioned

Laura Sicola Interview Transcript

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

Laura Sicola
Hi, Pete. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to get into your wisdom, and I love your TEDx Talk is called “Want to sound like a leader? Start by saying your name right,” so I just got to start right here. Are we saying our names wrong? What’s going on here? And how do we say it right?

Laura Sicola
The funny thing is that most people, how often are we frustrated because, number one, we say our name and then people keep us asking to repeat it, or they just keep saying it wrong where we feel like nobody seems to get it right, or we listen to the way other people introduce themselves to us and it goes in one ear and out the other, and then we feel stupid because we don’t really remember what their name was and we’re trying to figure out how to address them without saying, “It’s you, right. Yeah, you over there”?

So, the challenge is that the way that we usually say it, it’s an issue of speed, of rhythm, and of pitch, and that’s like the big trifecta. And when we do those in the way that most people do them, it’s too fast, it’s all in one slur, one giant blur of sound, and we tend to ask it like a question, which is just weird. So, most people, if you’re going a round robin or doing little networking events or whatever it is, people will say things like, “Hi, I’m Laura Sicola, blah, blah, blah,” and people, by the time you…

Pete Mockaitis
And you said, “Hi, I’m Laura Sicola.”

Laura Sicola
Right. Exactly. And then you go from there into your company and into whatever else. And by the time people even realized that you spoke, they already missed it. It was just way too fast. So, what we want to do is, number one, slow it down because, even if your name is something like Bob Jones, it may be simple but it’s not predictable so you got to get people’s brains a chance to catch up with their ears, number one. So, we want to slow it down to a pace that may actually feel awkwardly slow, uncomfortably slow to you to say because you’ve said it like a gazillion times. They’ve never heard it.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to pause right there. I think that’s perfect because I catch it even with myself. Maybe listeners have picked up on this after 700 episodes. There are some phrases I’ve said many times, like “Do check out the show notes and transcripts and the links we reference. Drop on by to AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep.” And so, I have to check myself, it’s like, “Okay, hey, Pete, you’ve said it 700 times but the first-time listeners is like, ‘Wait, where do I go for all that stuff? Wait, what was in there? That’s kind of a lot of stuff.”

Laura Sicola
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s likewise with your name, you said it many times, it’s boring, you don’t have to think, versus we have a natural tendency to slow down when we’re exploring sort of new territory, like, “What novel original sentence am I going to speak now real-time? We don’t know. I’ve got to kind of think about it a little bit versus Pete Mockaitis.” It’s like, “That’s my name. I’ve said that. Yeah, they’re perfect.”

Laura Sicola
Right. Exactly. My five-year-old loves the book “Pete the Cat,” so, as far as I was concerned, that’s what you just said, you introduced yourself as Pete the Cat.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the shoes, yeah.

Laura Sicola
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I know that one. Cool. So, speed, slow it down.

Laura Sicola
Slow it down, number one. And, number two, is breaking it up. We tend to blur it altogether as if you’re saying your first name and your last name. It should be clear that there were actually two names articulated, so we need to pause in the middle. And it doesn’t have to be a long break but there just has to be enough…if you were typing, you’re not going put an entire tab or this space, or line breaks in between your name, but there should be a space bar.

Pete Mockaitis
So, not like James Bond?

Laura Sicola
Right. That was a little bit easier because of all the consonants in the middle, but, really, no, actually, it shouldn’t be. James Bond. And he was, “Bond. James Bond.” He really does it slow. That’s a whole different ballgame. If you want to be Roger Moore, or Sean Connery, or somebody, we’ll talk. So, we want to have that little break, “Laura Sicola. Laura Sicola.” Try yours.

Pete Mockaitis
Pete Mockaitis.

Laura Sicola
Yup, and that’s good. So, you did something really important there. You aspirated the T on the end of Pete. You put the “th,” that little pop of air in it. Most people would swallow or do what, I’m a linguist, what we would call not releasing the T, and just say Pete instead of Pete, and then the T kind of slurs in with the M, and it’s like, “Is it Peep, like the Easter Peeps? What’s the last sound there?”

And if it’s a name, Pete is a very common English name, assuming you’re speaking to other English speakers who are comfortable with that name. It may be more intuitive but you never know who does or doesn’t pick up easily what you’re saying. So, we want to make sure that we’re being generous in our articulation and in our clarity so that whoever we’re talking to can easily hear and say, “I got it. Okay, Pete.” So, popping that T was a really great gift that you gave to them, yeah.

And then now your last name is a little bit less common.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. Lithuanian.

Laura Sicola
So, that one, I would slow it. Lithuanian, you say? Is that what it is?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Laura Sicola
Very cool. So, then I would slow that one down even more because there’s a lot of syllables and there’s a lot of consonants mixed into the syllables that are not predictable or, for most people, intuitive or expected combinations of contrast. So, try that one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Pete Mockaitis.

Laura Sicola
Mockaitis. So, I’d slow it down even a hair more – Mockaitis.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Laura Sicola
Because it’ll feel weird to you but it won’t sound weird to anybody else.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Pete Mockaitis.

Laura Sicola
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Laura Sicola
And then the last one is the pitch piece. And we tend to go into this up-speak, into this questioning tone at the ends of all of our phrases and sentences, especially when we’re in what I like to call mental-list mode. So, if you’re introducing yourself, people will say, “Hi, I’m Laura Sicola,” question, “and my company is Vocal Impact Productions,” question, “and I’m in Philadelphia and I do executive coaching.” And it’s like, “Nyah, nyah, nyah,” and we just glaze over. When we start hearing that, “I’m just going through rote motions over and over again. I’m not really present to what I’m saying or who I’m talking to or if this really matters.”

So, what we want to do instead is, when we say our first name, assuming we’re going to do both, our first name goes up, which is like saying “And there’s more. I’m not done yet,” and then put that teeny weeny little break in the middle, and then glide down on the last name, like saying, “And now I’m done.” There’s the period at the end of my sentence.

So, instead of asking my name like it’s a question, like, “Hi, I’m Laura Sicola, I think?” we want to go, “I’m Laura Sicola,” up and down. Try it.

Pete Mockaitis
With my name?

Laura Sicola
Yours or mine, whichever makes you happy.

Pete Mockaitis
Laura Sicola.

Laura Sicola
Great. And yours?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Pete Mockaitis.

Laura Sicola
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe a little slower. It’s so funny, Laura, it’s like you’re shaking my world. It’s like, “I think I know how to say my name.” You’re like, “Okay now, you’re almost able to say your name.” It’s like, what is it, the legendary NCAA basketball coach would say, “We’re putting your socks on. Like, that’s what we’re going to work on for the next hour, is putting your socks on because if you do it wrong, you can get a blister and that’ll impact your…” It is like, “Oh, seriously?” Like, “This is a basketball,” like go into the fundamentals, actually, really makes an impact over time. Like, you’re nailing and mastering them so well, it makes an impact.

Laura Sicola
And that’s the hardest thing. My world in leadership communication and influence coaching is so much of it does have to do with the voice and how your message lands with both how you frame it, what you say, and how you say it matter. And, in a way, so many people feel like they never realize what bad vocal habits they’ve just fallen into over the years. They’re totally unaware of it.

And then when they become aware of what those habits are and they can identify them, they can say, “All right, I want this to happen. I want to go from doing this to doing that,” but it’s weird because it’s almost like, “Well, why can’t I make myself do this?”

I did an exercise, and I’ll encourage everybody out there to try this. Listen to the outbound message on your voicemail, the one that you leave for everybody who calls you, the one that says, “Hi, this is Laura Sicola. I’m not available. Leave a message, blah, blah.” Most people use up-speak in leaving that list because they’re in mental-list mode, “Hi, this is Laura Sicola. Sorry, I can’t take your call, but if you leave a message and your number, I’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as I can.” It’s like, “Nye, nye, nye.”

And so I say go back if you did that, re-record and put periods at the ends of your sentences, “Hi, this is Laura Sicola. Sorry I missed your call. Please leave me your name and number and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” So, there are sentences, there’s periods in there, you sound more declarative, not uncertain or completely disinterested.

And I did this with a room full of people, and they’re re-recording on their phones, right then and there, their new message, and, all of a sudden, I hear this one voice in the back just blurting out, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe I just did it again.” Like, we’re so used to…we don’t realize it’s muscle memory, the voice muscles that we use in our throat. We’ve never thought about how to consciously use them before so we try to retrain them.

It’s like taking a baseball player and trying to teach him how to play golf or play cricket. Same sort of idea, right? Hold the stick with two hands and hit the ball and make it go where you want to go. You may know it but it doesn’t happen the way we’d like it to, automatically. So, that’s a lot of what we’re working with people on, is how to regain control and adjust so that what you’re saying lands with the weight that you want it to have, and leaves the impression that you want it to make.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Well, thank you, Laura. All right. So, I wanted to start with saying our names right and then we went into some key principles associated with how our voice sounds. But I’d like to zoom out a little bit and talk about executive presence. Like, this stuff is one component of that. How do you define executive presence?

Laura Sicola
Well, it’s such a big construct. There was a great report that came out a few years ago by the Center for Talent Innovation on executive presence, and they did a great job of surveying hundreds of senior executives, CXOs, from, I forget, how many different hundreds of companies in the US, to try to operationalize that.

And what they found was that it’s a combination of three things, primarily. The way you show up, the way you look, your appearance is a small component. That’s the least important one but you do have to show up dressed for the part, looking the part, to some extent or other. Communication skills is the second main pillar, and what they referred to broadly as gravitas.

And having gravitas is a combination of everything from “Do you have enough technical expertise to know what you’re talking about? Do your words have teeth? Like, if you say that something is going to happen, are you willing to stick to your guns even if what you say is unpopular, even if there’s pushback? Or, if whatever deadline passes, and you’ve said ‘This is the consequence,’ will you actually execute that or do you sort of let things slide? Do you have that internal strength? Are you willing to speak truth to power, telling people maybe what they don’t want to hear even though you know it’s the right thing to do?”

So, these are a lot of the many components but that internal fortitude is a big piece of it. And, to me, my only complaint, frankly, with that…I understand what they were trying to do but with that report, is that they separated gravitas and communication skills because I don’t understand how you can demonstrate gravitas without communication.

Because if you’re going to sit there and say, “This is what has to happen. And if not, then this is the consequence for it,” but you sound like you’re kind of unsure, or you tend to fry out, or you’re going to back down, or you kind of mumble as you’re talking, then you can levy the, I’ll use the word threat for lack of a better word in the moment, but whatever it is. Who’s going to take you seriously? You sound like a marshmallow, like a doormat, so automatically it’s hard to respect you if you don’t really sound like you respect yourself.

So, okay, but those were the major areas they talked about. The gravitas and the communication skills are really the big buckets.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, could you share with us a cool story of someone who really dramatically upgraded their executive presence and got some cool results? I guess I’m always thinking about the skeptic who has towering skills and, I don’t know, problem-solving or coding or whatever they do, and think that this might be soft or fluffy or whatever. Like, can you share some cool story of what you’ve seen transpire or, if you have it, any cool studies, data, research that shows that this makes a transformative impact on your career?

Laura Sicola
One example is where I was working with the SVP of finance for a big Fortune 500 company, and he was the heir apparent to the CFO role, understanding that it would probably open up in maybe two years, give or take. But the board said to him, in no uncertain terms, “Look, when you talk, frankly, we don’t understand you, so fix it or, when the spot opens up, we’re going to find somebody else.”

Now, that’s pretty darn straightforward, unambiguous. So, we had to look and say, “Well, what is it about the way he shows up because he certainly knows his stuff? There’s no question about his technical capacity.” But we did some digging and we realized it was a number of things. Number one, in his delivery, he talked so fast, he blurred through everything. There was no editorializing when he talked. There were no stories told. He went way too deep in the weeds and the board was glazing over at a certain point. There were so many different elements.

Even things like he could’ve said, just hypothetically speaking, “Last year, we exceeded revenue projections by 25% or we missed revenue projections by 25%,” and you couldn’t tell the difference. Like, if you blurred out that one word, the verb missed versus exceeded, no one would’ve been able to guess which one it was because his delivery was always identical, and that’s an issue.

Pete Mockaitis
That really resonates. And I’m thinking about that even with slides in terms of like we just got a bunch of data but the headline doesn’t say. I’m thinking about a time where I had a partner, we were starting an online math tutoring company, and we were checking out a conference so we get No Child Left Behind money, like, “Oh, what’s the story here?”

And so, someone was giving a report on all the tutorial providers, like, “Okay, inside scoop. What’s the deal here?” because we were at the early stages. And nothing about the intonation or the headline gave us the main message. It was a bunch of data, like, “Here’s all these providers and here were their scores before and after, and dah, dah, dah.” But I guess it was because they didn’t want to say the unpleasant news to everybody, it’s like, “Almost nobody’s getting meaningful results for these kids. Like, almost nobody. And the one out of 20 might’ve just gotten lucky with statistics.”

And so, it was startling to me in terms of, well, lack of slide headline, lack of intonation, lack of explicitly saying it, words being faster and running together, and, well, it’s unpleasant and it’s frustrating. And it makes me trust that person less. I was like, “Do you not know what that means? Why are you not telling it to us directly and clearly?”

Laura Sicola
Although, I wonder if because that’s such a…it was such negative results that they were trying to blur through it and hope you wouldn’t figure it out for yourself because he didn’t really want…

Pete Mockaitis
“We all might be fired shortly based on what I’m revealing to you today.”

Laura Sicola
Exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“So, let’s hurry it along.”

Laura Sicola
Right. Right. But that’s important. If you’re looking to…I mean, what is influence? Influence is about having an impact on the way someone thinks, feels, and responds verbally or behaviorally, and changing or helping them to make decisions moving forward, etc. The board of a major company is somebody that you want their buy-in. You need them to be on board with whatever you are talking about and if you want them to get to say yes more often.

Everything that I do is about mastering the three Cs: helping people to learn to command the room, or, more often than not nowadays, command the screen; connect with the audience; and close the deal. And being able to do those, command the room, connect with the audience, and close the deal – closing the deal means just getting to yes, moving the needle, continual forward progress not just sales or something – but you can’t do that if you can’t inspire them, if you can’t get them to feel something and have their brains connect with their hearts, connect with their ears.

And so, even things like editorializing, and when I say editorializing your data, it could be things like you’re looking at market projections and you could say something along the lines of, “We find this encouraging,” or, “We’re pleasantly surprised with this,” or, “We want to bear this in mind,” or, “We’re going to keep an eye on this because…”

Those are implicit editorializing terms because they let the audience know, “Okay, I should be happy about this, optimistic,” versus, “Hmm, this is a cautionary tale. Okay, a note to self. I want to be wary of where this is going.” It plants an emotional positive or negative bent in me, and I use that then as my filter through which I’m going to be interpreting everything else that you say on this topic until you indicate otherwise.

And it’s kind of like leading the witness in a court of law. You want to lead your audience to where you want them to be because people will listen to data and they’ll look for information in data that reinforces what they already feel and want to believe.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Yes. I think about the boardroom situation, “We feel and want to believe that we are unstoppable and we’re growing and taking market share, and innovating and getting into new stuff, and winning, winning, winning. That’s what we want to believe.” And so, it’s interesting, now, sometimes you have to tell them that the opposite is true, “This initiative sure didn’t work out the way we wanted it to.”

So, is it ideal, then, to have your vocal emotional stuff reflect that just straight up, naturally, authentically? “Hey, unfortunately, adoption of this new product has been a lot slower than we had any budget for.”

Laura Sicola
I’m going to give the most unpopular answer ever, which is it depends. And it’s not to say that you shouldn’t be authentic, let’s put that out there for starters. But to take something out of a context, or where there’s nothing else around it, it’s hard to give a definitive yes or no on that. So, my answer would be framed more around, “Well, what other information is necessary to understand why that occurred? Or, what do we learn from it? Or, what do we need to do as a result of it?” There’s too many other pieces.

What is constant though is that when we have to give bad news and something we think there’s going to be blowback on, it’s still really important, and this goes back to the executive presence piece and the gravitas piece, “Can you own that data or are you shrinking away from it? Are you willing to…the buck stops with you,” assuming it does.

And often the way that our voice, when we’re nervous about something, for example, our body, our voice will throw us under the bus and just telegraph those nerves something fierce. But you would never walk into a board meeting or a pitch or whatever else it happens to be, and preface verbally by saying, “Hey, everybody, I just want you to know I’m really intimidated right now because I’m afraid you’re not going to like what I have to say. Okay, thanks. Just wanted to get that off my chest. Okay, let’s proceed.” Like, nobody in their right minds would articulate that thought.

So, similarly, and it’s not that you’re being inauthentic if you don’t confess that upfront. It’s just, no, that’s not a very smart move. So, similarly, when you’re sharing that news, if you are kind of hesitant in your voice or in your body language, or you’re frying it out, or maybe there is that up-speak again, which is like saying, “Is this okay, right? You’re not mad, are you?” as you’re inflecting the various points that you need to do.

And, guys, by the way, I know this sounds like valley girl kind of a thing, and that’s where most people’s brains go as far as the image that that kind of vocal tonality pattern conjures, but a Y chromosome is not a vaccine against up-speak. Guys do it just as much as women do, older and younger, you just don’t realize when you’re doing it so you want to be mindful of it.

Pete Mockaitis
And I thought your listing example was perfect, like, “Yes, we can drift into that up-speak when we’re in a list context and not even notice it because we’re thinking about the next thing on the list.”

Laura Sicola
Exactly. Exactly. Because your brain is one step ahead of your mouth, and that’s a really dangerous place to be because, when you think about it, there’s, more often than not, we do go into list mode. If we were to think of what constitutes a list. Well, maybe you’re going over your PowerPoint slide and there’s five bullets. Well, there’s your list. Maybe you’re giving an explanation for something and there’s two, three, four, five reasons and you’re going to go through those reasons one after another.

Maybe you’re explaining something and you’re giving steps, you’re giving instructions. Well, what are your steps that you’re giving? Maybe you’re just introducing a guest on a podcast or in a conference, or to speak to your group or your organization. Well, you’re going to go through their bio, and there’s this point, and this point, and this point.

And even if it’s just a matter of it’s your turn to talk, you’re in the meeting, and you want to give your idea, and there’s a number of elements that you want to include before somebody else cuts you off. Whatever those elements are that you want to include in your answer, in your brain it’s all one answer but it’s really multiple factors that you’re trying to share. And as you go through each one, there’s a very good chance that you slide into that up-speak without even realizing it because your mind is thinking, “Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma,” instead of “Period. Period. Period.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. All right. Well, let’s talk about these three Cs. Command the room, I’d love to know how this is done because, Laura, I think in my own life experience, in high school and college, I commanded the room quite frequently, and then I think I got a little spoiled with doing keynote speaking, and coaching, and podcast interviewing in which it’s like we zoomed it down to one person who…or like in the coaching and podcast interviewing space, one person who’s very interested in like the thing that we’re doing here. While in keynoting, it’s like it is very rude for you to be chit chatting while there’s a dude on stage, although people still do it.

So, I don’t know, it’s like somewhere along the lines, I’ve noticed my room-commanding has diminished maybe just in different rooms that I used to be. But what is the alchemy that’s behind the commanding of a room?

Laura Sicola
I think it’s a number of things. Number one is confidence. You have to show up in a way that says, “I’m here,” and not in an arrogant sense, let’s be clear on that. Confidence is a gray scale. We’re not sliding into arrogance but it is about being comfortable in your own skin, being comfortable in your own shoes, being ready to share what it is that you need to share, and ready to listen to what other people need to share, but holding your ground and having the facial expressions, the body language, the voice so that whenever you…

From the minute that you begin, and even before you begin, you look like you intend to be there, and that you’re comfortable and you’re ready and you’re not cowering from it or, otherwise, hesitant to step up and own your space. And I think a lot of people are really not confident doing that, even virtually. So many people, and I know we’re recording this without video, but I would ask everybody else out there. When you see yourself on camera, is there an invisible line drawn across the middle of the screen and your head is on the bottom half and the top half is ceiling or sky? If so, you’re not commanding the screen, you’re not taking up the space. The screen is owning you instead of you owning the screen.

And those little details have a lot of impact in so far as how people perceive you, whether or not you project authority. When you project authority, when you project confidence, before you even open your mouth, it predisposes people to lean in or lean out, to give you the benefit of the doubt or not with regard to what you’re going to say. There’s a whole training that I do, a full half-day intensive on virtual influence, which is all about how to own the screen even when you can’t see anybody else, and they’re going to see you but maybe two weeks later.

You talk about the keynotes and things, and it’s often hard when you’re doing a conference presentation for a virtual conference and they tell you, “We’d like you to speak for us and we want you to pre-record on Zoom and send it to us a couple of weeks in advance, and then we’re going to upload it and launch it live during the actual conference, but it’ll be pre-recorded.” So, my job is to talk as if I was in front of a live audience even though it’s just me and the dot, that little lens.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a new verb.

Laura Sicola
Yes, right because there are rooms a lot bigger than this. But that’s hard to do. Most people are not good at commanding their space, virtually or in person, and that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s interesting, what’s resonating for me now is I’m thinking about the mysteries, like, “I seem to be commanding less in the rooms,” I think part of it is we talk about being comfortable in your own skin. I think that there can be, like literally, any number of little things that make us less comfortable in our own skin that are not even emotional, like, “This shirt is a little too short,” “My skin is literally itchy and needs some lotion,” “I didn’t get quite a good night’s sleep with the kiddos romping around the bed,” “Wow, it’s way hotter here in Tennessee than it is in Chicago,” or whatever.

Or, it’s sort of like, “I’m so used to speaking at sort of a lower volume now because we don’t want to wake up a child. We don’t want to wake up that child.” It was so funny, when we had some guests over, it was like, “Wow, these guys talk loud.” It’s like, “No, I think they probably talk normal but we’ve been doing so much quiet talking in this home that that’s sort of shifted it.”

And then it kind of shows up in terms of, “Folks are not quite giving me…I don’t have as much, I guess, commanding, like market share of eye contact,” if you will. It’s like I have less of that, it’s like, “Oh, they’re looking elsewhere. Or, someone else said almost the same thing that I said and now it’s hilarious or intriguing? But it wasn’t what I said. Huh, usually it’s the other way around. What’s going on here?”

Laura Sicola
Yup, and it is harder, I think, in the virtual world because, depending on what platform you’re using, if it’s Zoom or Teams or GoToMeeting or Google Meet or something like that, some of them make it much harder to look at or near the camera and still see everybody else’s face at the same time. Some people have multiple screens so your camera’s over here to the left and all the screen with everybody’s faces are on the right, and it’s like, “Well, am I looking at you or do I need you to think I’m looking at you even though I’m technically not.” It makes it a little bit more confusing there.”

So, there’s all sorts of strategies to use and head trash that we need to take out about our own discomfort and being in the virtual world but it can be really confusing. But standing your ground and, if nothing else, not showing, not telegraphing that discomfort, even if internally you are a little awkward feeling, that shouldn’t be the first impression that people get.

You know how they say dogs can smell fear? I think people can “smell” when the presenter or the speaker is feeling awkward or uncomfortable, and they sense it instantly, and they go, “Oh, boy, this person is not even confident in what they’re saying. All right, how can I multitask because this is going to be painful to listen to? I already don’t want to listen to it, so let me check my email while they’re talking.” And I think it’s really important to command that attention.

The difference between command the room and connect with the audience, and not to segue between them, but commanding is really capturing people’s attention and maintaining it. And connecting with the audience is being able to establish a rapport where there’s this mutual sense of “I understand you and you understand me.”

And that creates a fabulous current for us to continue the conversation in a really productive and constructive way that leads to the ability to then close the deal or to get to yes, figure out what our next steps should be, and move on from there. But the commanding the room piece is really critical because that’s step one.

Just by example, I did a training the other day for a client, probably Fortune 100, and there were about 50 people on the call, and I was the second presenter of the day, and they had multiple back-to-back speakers. The team had been having a conversation about whatever topic first. And when I got on, they introduced me, and I started, and, fortunately, they all had their cameras on so I could see their faces.

And within about two or three minutes, one of the guys unmuted and he chimed in, he said, “I’m sorry, Laura. Could I just ask, what are you doing with your voice? And are you going to cover how to do that because all I know is when you started talking, I sat up and I paid attention, and I find myself just focused? So, I need to know how to do that. Are you going to teach us how to do that?”

That was a great example of the effect that, A, using your voice well, and, B, an illustration of commanding the room, or commanding the screen, commanding the space. That’s what can happen when you do it effectively. Someone inherently just sits up and takes notice because there’s something in your presence that compels them to do so.

Pete Mockaitis
Great. That’s just so experiential, real, practical, tactical, right, like you can get your arms around that in that if you’ve been on conference calls, it happens that some folks are just talking “Nrrggh,” and it drones into nothingness. And then there’s a new speaker, and then you’re with them. And so, we’ve covered a couple of the ingredients, but could you lay it out, Laura, like, what are the top variables that are easy to adjust that put us in the “We are listened to” column?

Laura Sicola
Yeah, absolutely. One thing that I think the world must absolutely do when you’re in the virtual space, you need a better microphone. I mean, look, even to be on this podcast with you, you’re like, “If you don’t have a microphone, I’m going to send you one.” I have my good podcaster mic here.

But most people just use whatever is the default microphone that comes embedded into their laptop or other device, or they maybe use the earbuds that come with your phone, or worse, they’ll use the microphone that’s embedded, maybe if you’ve got one of those peripheral Logitech cameras that sits on top of your screen, or AirPods. Look, I’m an Apple girl

When I’m jogging, love my AirPods but Steve Jobs and I, in the afterlife, we’re going to have to have a conversation because it is very clear that the microphone on AirPods was an afterthought. For $179, those devices make music sound great to you. They don’t make you sound good to anybody else. And most people in the virtual world, sound like this.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.

Laura Sicola
It’s like they’re in a tin can. It’s like they’re in a fog or under water or in a cave. I hear all sorts of different descriptors. And when most people sound like this, and then you talk, and suddenly your voice cuts through the fog, it’s like, wow, all of a sudden, your eyes, your pupils dilate, you find yourself sitting up, you’re suddenly focused. If you were multitasking, you do a quick little pivot, little jolt, and say, “Wait, what was that? What’s going on? I feel like I need to hear this. This feels and sounds important.”

Where you do not want to be is on the other end where someone else is talking, like you and I are, they’ve got a good strong voice, they’re using their microphone, or they’ve got a decent microphone. You don’t have to spend 500 bucks on a microphone but you should spend 100, somewhere in there at least.

And at that point, if everyone else sounds like this, and then you start talking and you sound like this, that’s a very bad place to be because what the immediate response that the listener has, “Ugh, that sounds awful. It’s too much work. I can’t be bothered. Don’t make me work just to understand what the heck your words are, much less what they mean, and whether I like them or agree with them or what my response is going to be. If you’re going to make me put in extra effort just to understand your words, I can’t be bothered, it’s unpleasant, I don’t want to. I think I’ll multitask. Let me know when you’re done.” That’s exactly how people react.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think about just basic likability. Like, there were times, I remember I would do like 10 hours of coaching with folks over Skype, and those who had better microphones, it’s like subconscious or maybe not so subconscious, I liked them more because just the way our emotions get linked up, firing together, wiring together. It’s like when I have a positive experience of any sort, in this case just how sound feels in my ears, I associate pleasantness to you. And when I have the opposite, I associate unpleasantness to you. and that’s the only way anybody ever interacts with you is with your horrible audio quality. It’s bad.

So, Laura, I really appreciate you hitting this because I’ve had some guests who are like, “Well, my microphone was fine for all these other podcasts.” And I don’t want to be like, “Well, I’m better than them, it is not up to my standards.”

Laura Sicola
Can I tell you, Pete? I have had so many both clients who I’ve trained and coached and done all sorts of workshops with on this, and my podcast guests because in my podcast, I interview only senior leaders of larger organizations, for profit, nonprofit, otherwise. And during our prep call in advance, we’ll go through the technical stuff, and I’ll let them know before our podcast, before we do the actual interview, “I need you to get a different microphone.” I’ll give them recommendations or whatever. And they’ll often say to me, “Well, nobody’s ever told me I had a problem with it before.” And I’m going, “I know because you’re the boss. Who’s going to stand up to you and tell you that you sound like…” well, fill in the blank.

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re Mr. New York Times bestseller,” like it took me a couple hundred episodes before I had the cajones to be like, “Yeah, this isn’t good enough for me. Step it up.’”

Laura Sicola
Yes. And so, here’s the thing, and this, we’re going to go right back to that executive presence piece. Some of these podcast guests that I have on, they don’t know me from Eve. They may not have heard of my show previously or whatever, before they’ve agreed to be on it. And so, without me having a very strong reputation with them as of yet, for me to come right on and say, “All due respect, Mr. CEO, CTO, CIO, whatever you are, you need a better microphone.”

And for them to say, “But nobody ever said it before. It’s always been fine,” for me to say to them, “With all due respect, as far as I’m concerned, that microphone doesn’t do you justice, and I won’t launch my episode with you if it’s not going to do you justice because that’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to my listeners, and it’s not good for me. We want to make sure that all of us are really pleased with how this reflects on you and your brand. And if I sound like this, and you sound like this, that harms your brand, and I would never do that to you as my guest.”

For me to be able to stand there and look at them in the face, and definitively state, “Yes, you make a billion times more money than I do. Yes, you run a company that’s a billion times bigger than mine. Yes, blah, blah, blah, but I’m telling you what’s what. And understand that I’m doing this for you in service to you, in your best interest so that we both have a better quality.” They, suddenly, are like, “Okay, I didn’t know who you were but, suddenly, I’m listening and I respect you for having that.”

There was this, I want to say, Pete, an insurance company who was on my show a little while ago, and my proxy, who’s the one who connected us in the first place, he reported back to her afterwards when we’ve had one of these little “Come to Jesus” meetings as far as the equipment is concerned. And it was really funny, he said to her, she reported back to me afterwards, he said, “When we talked, Laura corrected me. Nobody corrects me. I kind of liked it.” And I just burst out laughing because it’s like people have to tell you the truth. Can you speak truth to power? And most don’t.

So, if you can, people are suddenly like, “Okay, you’ve got…” I forget what word you used, cajones or something along those lines, “…but you’ve got them, and I respect that.” And we want that respect. Can you speak truth to power and own it respectfully but own it?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I didn’t know if I was going to venture into such a delicate territory, Laura, and I wouldn’t want to be judgmental, but that is what that makes me think. And you said it explicitly, it’s like, “Nobody ever corrects me.” It’s like, “That is kind of culturally problematic in terms of you being able to lead with maximum excellence if there are whole channels of information and feedback that you’re not getting.”

And it’s not that it’s necessarily that person’s fault, it’s like, “Oh, you must not be very welcoming or inviting or friendly.” You’re the boss, it’s like, “Hey, not my place to let you know your microphone sucks, dude.” So, it really does take quite a concerted effort to get that stuff to come to the fore. But I think that is telling.

I had a good friend who once said, “It is a shame…” “The people who don’t receive feedback are the ones who embarrass themselves in American Idol auditions. No one let them know, ‘You’re not ready yet, hon. This is going to take some time before the big stage.’” And whether the embarrassment is in front of a TV audience or just a lot of slightly worse than optimal meetings, it happens.

Laura Sicola
It does. It does.

Pete Mockaitis
Commanding the room, microphone, feedback. Cool. Cool. How do we get the connecting with the audience?

Laura Sicola
It definitely depends on who is the audience and what kind of connection are you looking to make. So, there are many different ways that you can do it. Is it a matter of using some humor? Is it about storytelling? Is it about using examples? So, there are certain programs that I do, my virtual influence training or speaking to influence training. Those are, I call them off-the-shelf programs, and I’ll go in, I’ll do those trainings in all different companies but it changes.

For example, if I’m doing the training for the women’s initiative. If it’s a room full of women, I’m going to tell different stories than I would tell, to illustrate the same point, than I would tell in mixed-gender company just because there are certain things that, in a room full of women, you can talk about certain things and not worry about making guys uncomfortable, and we’ll throw ourselves under the bus and we’ll all laugh together because we know it’s a shared chick thing.

Or, I’ve done talks, for example, to Pan-Asian employee resource groups, and I lived in Japan for a number of years, so sharing the experiences of working in that US-Asia connection, or speaking in different languages and whatnot, those are experiences that will connect with them, and they’ll look at me and say, “Oh, okay, so you’ve got a white face but you do kind of get that it is a little bit different.” “Yeah, I do.”

And so, storytelling, or even things like what we call matching and mirroring. If I’m talking to somebody and I get the sense, if I’m working with a client and they’re really kind of slow and hesitant and they’re clearly uncomfortable, it’s not that they’re uncomfortable sharing something with me maybe, but it’s just a situation that they don’t know what to do with, and they’re really just unhappy and frustrated and kind of sad about this, they’re sharing it with me. I’m not going to share, or I’m not going to respond to them with the energy that I just went through that whole thing about microphones on. That would be overwhelming.

So, I’m going to sit back in my chair also, if I see that they’re sitting back, and I’m going to mirror their tone, their volume, their intensity, their pitch levels, and their speed or how often they pause. I’ll suggest certain things but I want to empathize with them and to make them feel comfortable. And if I match and reflect that energy back to them, they’ll be able to receive it better. If I came right at them, like, “Why are you worrying about that? That’s crazy.” No, that’s going to shut them down because it’s overwhelming. They’re not in that emotional space.

Similarly, on the flipside, if you came on and you were super high energy and looking forward to talking about these kinds of topics, and I said, “Well, okay, so executive presence has a number of factors that are important. Let’s talk about them,” your audience will be like, “Oh, my God, talk faster. Why?” It doesn’t match well. There’s no flow. It’s blocky, your speed, and then my plodding pacing going through it. So, that’s another way to connect with the audience.

And it’s not about imitating, it’s not mimicking, it’s not faking or being somebody else. We all have what I’d like to call a prismatic voice, meaning that if you think about your wardrobe, like if you’ve got your buttoned-down shirts, you’ve got your polos, you’ve got your sweatshirts, you’ve got your tux, you’ve got your all different range of things, but it’s only your wardrobe, but you have the presence of mind to be able to decide, “Today is the tux. Tomorrow for that event is the gym shorts. The day after that is just the business casual kind of khakis and whatever else.” It’s all you but you know when to adjust.

Similarly, the way that we speak, we have our…and this is my coaching voice, my authority, my trainer, my public-speaking kind of voice. But, to your point earlier, it sounds like you’ve got a couple of little guys at home. I do, too. This is not my mommy voice. He’d stop playing with me. It doesn’t make sense but I’m also not going to talk to you in the same voice or the same style, the same manner, that I use when I’m playing with my five-year-old because you would not believe that I was an executive coach at that point. It wouldn’t quite be congruent.

But it’s not that one is the real me and one is the fake me. They’re both real me. Just like you change how you dress your body, you also change how you dress your message through the way that you speak. And that’s why I like to call it the prismatic voice because the same way you’ve seen those little crystals that hang on a window, and when the sun hits it, the rainbow hits the floor on the other side.

You are the white light and you have all those rainbow colors inside of you. Maybe I’ll call this podcaster voice my red, and I’ll call my mommy voice my green, and I can shift because I know it’s better for him if he hears more of my green. He’ll connect with me better. It’s better for your listeners, for my listeners, if we talk more in my red. It’ll just resonate better. It’ll allow them to accept my message more easily. So, having that facility to style-shift in a way that’s appropriate but still authentic, that’s really important. And that’s what allows you to connect with your audience.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And when it comes to closing the deal, how do we do that?

Laura Sicola
It starts with listening and really understanding what they want, what they need. And these three things, the command the room, connect with the audience, and closing the deal, they are mutually reinforcing. It’s not necessarily sequential. But closing the deal simply means getting to yes. And when you understand what someone else’s priorities are, what their pressures are, what they’re up against, what they want, what they like, what they need, and try to help them understand your side as well, but most importantly, letting them know that they have been heard.

And identifying whatever steps need to happen that is in service of both of you, that’s where you’re going to get the first yes. It may not be an ultimate, conclusive, comprehensive, sign-the-contract yes or deal that you’re closing, but it will be a matter of “Do we agree on this point? If so, okay, let’s go on to point number two.” There’s a little mini-deal that should close but it starts with listening and reflecting back, letting others know that you’ve heard them, and being able to share your information in a way that they can then hear you and moving forward from there.

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

Laura Sicola
I think just knowing that authenticity is so important but there’s a huge misnomer, a misunderstanding about authenticity. And that is that authenticity is not a black-and-white, on-or-off construct. As I mentioned with regard to the prismatic voice, we have a range of style. I mean, the learning curve, by nature, means stepping out of your comfort zone.

So, if you’re learning maybe, look, I am a, we’ll call it a recovering academic. I was a professor. I was in the world of academia. Now, I do executive coaching. That’s a big shift industry-wise. The way I talked there, the way I wrote there didn’t translate to the corporate world so I had to learn to change my vocabulary a little bit, change the kind of stories that I told, change the way that I write in order to be able to connect with this new audience that goes back to step two, how do you connect with them.

And at first, it felt awkward because it had beaten into my skull for a decade and longer in the ivory tower about how to write to be taken seriously in that world. And now I was being told, “No, you can’t do that anymore.” That felt very awkward to me initially. And it took a little while for me to let go of as much as I needed to.

So, to be able to accept and strengthen, or stretch, that new style, the learning curve was awkward. It felt uncomfortable but it wasn’t inauthentic because, the fact is, that was a new community. I wanted to be understood by the new community, which means I needed to learn to speak the language of the new community, just like if I wanted to learn to speak Spanish or learn to speak Japanese. It’s going to feel uncomfortable but it’s not inauthentic. It’s just a matter of strengthening the muscles until it becomes second nature.

If my intention and my desire to connect with that group is authentic, then the discomfort of the learning curve is also authentic. Embrace that. That’s different from if you’re trying to act like someone else to make them like you, trying to pretend that you’re someone you’re not in hopes that they like you. That is inauthentic. That is a whole other ball of wax that we’re not getting into today. But accept that learning curve by nature is uncomfortable, and that is also authentic, and it’s okay to accept that as long as there’s forward progress. So, that’s a really important final point, I think.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Laura Sicola
Yes. I think one of the most valuable and important pieces of advice that I received early in my career; it was actually from my father. And I was right out of college, I was sending in, starting out my early career in teaching public schools. My father had taught public schools for, at the time, 25 years or longer, and he always seemed to have it under control. And I said, “Dad, how do I get the kids to respect me?” And he’s the one who said, “Laura, you can’t demand that the students respect you. You have to command it with your presence.”

And I didn’t totally understand it at the time, but over time, it really sunk in, and that became the foundation for everything that I teach and that I coach in my new role now, or more recent role in executive coaching, in leadership communication work. You can’t demand respect. You have to command it with your presence. That’s the key.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Laura Sicola
Okay. So, I’ll give two. A fun one and a serious one. Let’s start with the serious one, Psycho-Cybernetics, there’s a mouthful for you, by Maxwell Maltz. It’s an oldie but a goodie. But, boy, if you really want to dig into what motivates people, what help you change, what makes you do what you do, where do you get stuck mentally, and how is it possible to get out your own way, it’s an amazing resource. It’s not a light read by any stretch of the imagination, but if you’re willing to dig in a little bit, it’s powerful.

On the fun side, there’s a great book called Life is Magic. Life is Magic is by Jon Dorenbos, who, he was recently a finalist on America’s Got Talent. He was also a former Philadelphia Eagle, a long snapper, for a decade or so, for football fans out there. But he’s an amazing magician, and he went through massive crises as a child. Talk about heavy. His father murdered his mother when he was 12. That’ll send you off in a tailspin early in life.

But his whole focus is about not letting adversity define who you are or who you become. And how he wrestled with all of this and how he took that in and used it, and a bunch of other challenges along the way as well but he used it to help him become a pro football star, help him become a star on America’s Got Talent. And he’s funny and he’s inspiring, and he’s smart, and he’s just great life lesson.

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

Laura Sicola
Oh, microphone. I think that goes without saying. And the one that I’ve got is the Shure SM7B. Just know, that anybody out there, if you are going to look into it, it also requires another 500 bucks’ worth of other devices to make your microphone talk to your computer because it’s got an XLR cable not a USB. So, lots of fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is a good one. I also have a Shure. It’s a BETA 87A. The SM7B people love to comment. I almost expected you to say it, “You know, every word of Michael Jackson’s Thriller was recorded on a Shure SM7B?” It’s like, “Yeah, I know. It’s come up about a dozen times.” But I’ve seen the Pope using this one, so I think…as well as American Idol people. I think they like it because it rejects background noise, which is great. No one knows when that train goes by. Thank you, microphone.

Laura Sicola
Right. Well, the SM7B is definitely not a good American Idol…it’s not a good handheld by any stretch. It’s a big clunky thing.

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

Laura Sicola
It’s the name thing. It really is about how to say your name right. It’s amazing. Of all the things that I’ve taught, the TED Talk is about eight years old now, give or take, and for the almost seven million people who’ve watched it, I can’t tell you the number of people who I have met, and I use that little example in a lot of teaching and training and speaking engagements where people will come up to me later on, and say, “I just want you to know, I saw your TED Talk,” and that’s what they’ll quote.

Or, they’ll see me in a conference, and years later, they’ll reintroduce themselves to me, and say, “Wait, wait. I want to say it right. My name is so and so, so and so.” And they always want to get…or they’ll introduce me to somebody else, “Hey, I want you to meet Laura. This is Laura…oh, wait, no. It’s Laura Sicola,” and they’ll all just mock me right back to myself, which is great because you know it sticks, and that’s the key. How do you make it stick? When you speak, you want it to stick in somebody else’s mind. Follow that pattern and your name will stick in the other person’s mind.

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

Laura Sicola
They can certainly go to the website, which is VocalImpactProductions.com. If you’re curious about the podcast or my book, you can go to SpeakingToInfluence.com, and always, of course, connect with me on social media at Instagram, Twitter, whatever, but LinkedIn is really my main one. Please go to LinkedIn. Look me up, Dr. Laura Sicola. And if you reach out to connect, please mention that you heard me here on Pete’s show, and that’s the most important part because I connect with people when I understand why they want to connect.

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

Laura Sicola
Yes. Record yourself. And it can be when you’re on the phone with somebody else, it can be when you’re on a Zoom with somebody else, you’re on with your computer. Take your phone, and just record yourself talking in whatever little nugget that you contribute to the conversation or if you’re presenting, record yourself for a minute or two.

Go back and listen later and ask yourself, “Does this sound like I wanted it to sound? Did it sound in my head the way it sounds on the recorder? And what didn’t?” Because, inevitably, something will stand out to you that will make you say, “You know what, that didn’t land right. That’s not how I wanted to come across.”

The video camera, the recorder doesn’t lie. It does add 10 pounds, but beyond that, it doesn’t lie. It will reflect back to you exactly what everybody else heard, and help you understand why perhaps what you think you said is not what they thought they heard. And that is powerful information in your own professional development.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Laura, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck in your speaking adventures.

Laura Sicola
Thank you so much for having me on, Pete. It’s been a real fun conversation with you.

May 16
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768: How to Embrace Generational Differences and Resolve Conflict with Chris De Santis

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Chris De Santis shares helpful insights about each generation and how to work more effectively across ages.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to turn generational friction into an opportunity 
  2. How to give feedback that works for every generation
  3. How to motivate people from every generation 

About Chris

Chris De Santis is a speaker, author, consultant, and most recently podcaster specializing in Management and Organizational Development issues and interventions. He specializes in assisting individuals or groups in identifying and overcoming obstacles to effectiveness. He brings with him thirty-eight years of experience in training and development. He has an undergraduate degree in business from the University of Notre Dame, a graduate degree in Organizational Development from Loyola University in Chicago, an MBA from the University of Denver, and previous work experience in manufacturing, professional services, and not-for-profit environments.  

His book, Why I Find you Irritating: Navigating Generational Friction at Work, will be available in May 2022 but until then you can listen to his advice podcast, “Cubicle Confidential” along with his co-host, Mary Abbajay. He resides in a quiet corner of Lincoln Park in Chicago. 

Resources Mentioned

Chris De Santis Interview Transcript

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

Chris De Santis
Thanks, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, first, I think we need to understand you and your history with improv classes. What’s the story here?

Chris De Santis
Yes, yes, yes. I moved to Chicago probably…I live in Chicago, if anybody’s interested, and I moved into an area called Old Town about, oh, 30 some years ago, and I had some friends in the city. And Old Town is the heartland of Second City, and so I was told, actually, a good way to make friends was to take improv classes.

And the other reason was I’m a little bit of a…I have a bit of stage fright issue, and so I was told this might help me with that. I ended up taking improv classes from Paul Sills. And if anybody’s listening, Paul Sills is the son of Viola Spolin. And if anybody knows who that is, Viola Spolin wrote improv in the theater, and that’s sort of the basis for Second City.

So, I had access to one of the gurus of the time, although I never quite leveraged it to the degree he did, but I ended up teaching a while at a local theater here, too, so it was a very fun experience. I recommend it to anyone who’s introverted.

Pete Mockaitis
That is fun. I did a Second City five-day intensive improv class once, and it was a lot of fun. And I remember saying, telling my friends, “Oh, it’s nice. I feel like it loosened me up.” And my friends said, “Did you need to be loosened?” Well, compared to my…

Chris De Santis
Did you do a show? Did you do a show afterwards?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, well, not like with a big old audience but it was just sort of I think, the dozen of us doing our thing.

Chris De Santis
The games.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Chris De Santis
I love the games. Really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s fun. Well, now, I want to hear a bit about your book Why I Find You Irritating: Navigating Generational Friction at Work. What’s the big idea here?

Chris De Santis
Well, the whole point of this book is really to understand the differences between us. And so, in that sense, in fact, the title’s curious because I had submitted 37 titles to the publisher.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow. I love it. That’s what we do.

Chris De Santis
And this is the one they liked.

Pete Mockaitis
We get tons of title options and they choose the best one every time. Thank you.

Chris De Santis
And so, they liked this because I think it really makes the point that we are, in some way, irritated with others across one difference that we recognize, this is one of those difference that we readily recognize, and we ascribe it to them as if they’re at fault and we, of course, are not, meaning that we’re the objective view of reality. And so, what my book goes on to talk about where this comes from and the repercussions of this, and then what to do about it in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. Well, so we’re talking about generational friction, and this is always a delicate matter because I think, Chris, there’s probably no way around it. We’re going to be making some generalizations here. Is that fair to say?

Chris De Santis
Yes. Well, that’s part of what I talk about in the book, but humans do that, humans generalize.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess, first of all, how do we define the generations? And are we coming at it from a US-centric base here or is it kind of global in applicability?

Chris De Santis
Now, you’re making some very good points because when I speak to this topic, I have to go through a whole series of caveats, to your point. The first one being you generalize or I generalize, and I’m not describing humanity. I’m describing some actions of a normative group in the middle class in the United States of America who conform to certain experiences at certain times that sort of shape a perception.

So, in that sense, it is a smaller subset. It is not global even though, it’s interesting, I’ve spoken around the world on this, oddly enough. I’m always amazed I’m invited anywhere but I had talked about it. And so, when you talk about it globally, you have to say some of these things but, still, even having done that, they still see differences that correspond to the American experience, which I think is interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, Chris, so we’re going to do some generalizing. First, we need to define some terms. Generations, how do we name them these days and what is roughly the median age of a person representing each generation, say, in summer 2022 as we record this?

Chris De Santis
Yes. So, if we go with Boomers, you know where that came from “baby boom,” so everyone knows that one. There was a great number of us born in that window of time after the war, and that would be that 65 or 67-year-old today in the median group, and we’re retiring out, about half of us are retired. Gen X got its name from the book. There was simply just one book written about them. They fly below the radar quite a bit, and, of course, their median age, according to what we’re playing here, is around 45 to 47.

Then the next crowd, Millennials, had a different name. They were originally in the literature for a while. They were Gen Y because Gen X, Gen Y but that never caught on. And I think that they responded much better to, or it was foisted upon them, the idea of a Millennial simply because of the turning of the century, the millennium.

And now, we have Gen Z, which were called Zoomers or the Zoom generation, but I think that fizzled as well by virtue of the fact of Zoom. And so now they’ve gotten the Gen Z moniker, again, because they’re going in sequence. And the next generation, interestingly, these new kids, they’re calling Gen Alpha because they’re starting it again, but I don’t think they’ll have a name until they define who they are, and then we’ll lay a label on them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, Gen Z would be about 18-ish to 22.

Chris De Santis
18-ish, right.

Pete Mockaitis
Your fresh recruits.

Chris De Santis
Exactly right. They are in the workplace right now. They’ve just entered.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, there we go, four generations. And so, you say…well, I guess, we’ll go into particulars in terms of frictions but maybe just to cue us up with some intrigue, is there a particularly surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made as you dug into all this stuff associated with generational friction?

Chris De Santis
Well, what I came to, not necessarily conclusion, but one of the things I did notice that I thought was really a shaping aspect of this is, it’s not just the flashbulb memories that you have that sort of shape you, it’s also the parenting model. It’s how you were parented affects how you interact with others. So, I’m a product, as a Boomer, I’m a product of sort of a permissive authoritarian parent so I sort of had to get in line with things.

And so, if we think about of a Gen Xer, these are those latchkey kids. And so, they had more of a permissive sort of a sensibility about how they interacted because they basically are far more independent on their own. Millennials are part of what would be concerted cultivation in terms of how they were raised, and I will call that an engaged-discuss model. They’re always engaged in discussions as to what they should or need to do.

Gen Z has a variation of that model called co-piloting. The point being here is that those needs or the expectation of dialogue is what they bring into the office. Yet, in the office, they are not necessarily expected to engage in dialogue but, rather, to be subject to the authority of the people that are in charge. And the people in charge often view this as a challenge when they say, “Well, what about this?” and you’re going, “Whoa, I just told you what to do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, there we go, we’re getting into the meat of it – an expectation of dialogue. Sometimes the younger generations may expect some more and the older generations think that’s not necessary, “I’ve already told you that,” and so that can create some friction on both sides.

Chris De Santis
That’s exactly right because the other thing about the young is interesting, to a great degree, and if you’re around parents, and I try to observe parents sort of surreptitiously when I’m with people, is that they negotiate more with their children as opposed to demand they do something. So, there’s a discussion, of course, that’s inherent in the negotiation.

And I think the young now are excellent negotiators and they bring that to any conversation they have, and we, in management, or if you’re in a management position, you’re not open to a negotiation when you’re telling somebody to do something but it comes off very strangely in terms of my expectation. If I’m a young person, my expectation, “Why wouldn’t I have this dialogue?” Conversely, “Why are we having a dialogue?”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And that’s so funny, I think, because I’ve got a three-year-old and a four-year-old right now…

Chris De Santis
You have young children, yes?

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I really go…I guess I go both ways in terms of like I don’t like to yell.

Chris De Santis
No, and you won’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Because they get sensitive and really sad really fast, I was like, “Oh, I was just trying to make myself heard because you seem to be sort of in your own world over there. Now, I feel like I’ve overdone it because you’re getting all sniffly.” So, yeah, but at the time it’s sort of like, “There’s no need for us to be discussing. You do what I say.” And other times, at the same time, I want them to be kind of creative and free and expressive.

So, it’s funny, here I am, I guess a Millennial, in this schema, and I am in the midst of it right there in terms of when I say, “Get in the car right now, Johnny,” versus like, “Well, hey, it’s getting to be about that time, you know.”

Chris De Santis
Yes, you are biased towards suggestion than demand. And I’ll tell you another thing that you probably do quite a bit, Pete, that you may not notice that you do is you explain why you do what you do. You explain why you’re doing this. You don’t assume that they’re going to understand that this is a command but rather, “This is why I have to say this to you to do this.” And that’s part and parcel to the expectation that they have in the workplace, too, this whole idea of, what’s his name, Sinek’s book, Start with Why. That’s really what they’re asking, to a great degree, is why.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Chris De Santis
You did this, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, that’s one point of friction is expectation of dialogue. How about another one?

Chris De Santis
Well, again, a lot of this just depends on with whom we are talking about. For instance, this notion of loyalty, which is very interesting. The accusation that we, a Boomer, is far more loyal in our disposition than those who follow. That, of course, I outline in the book, is really about the movement from the company-man experience to a transactional workplace.

And the company-man experience was really one of the assumptions that, “You will work here for the duration. And as a consequence, I will reward you, deferred reward, and that will be rewarded as a pension to some degree.” So, the inference is, “You have this job for life if you do what I want and the way I need it.” Now, what we have done is we’ve moved transactionally, and now it’s a negotiation a minute.

For instance, one of the things that most annoys some Boomers is that when they interview, the young will ask, “Well, what are the benefits? What’s the vacation time here? So, what do I get for this?” And, in my day, that would’ve been seen as “What? Why? I’m offering you a job and you deign to ask me all of these things about the benefits? You’re getting a job.” But they’re saying, “This is a transaction. I’m going to be doing something for you. I expect something in return.” So, it becomes more marketplace-driven.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny because, in some ways, I resist being generalized.

Chris De Santis
No, no, I understand.

Pete Mockaitis
And yet I completely…I, 100%, am down with the transactional vibe. It’s just like, “No, the wealth structures and pensions do not exist, and it is a competitive marketplace, and it’s just economic fact that I have many opportunities available to me, and you have many opportunities of people you can hire. And so, we’re going to see if we have something that works for both of us in terms of this is a role that I think is swell and meaningful and a compensation package that works, and you think I’ve got the skills and knowledge, skills, abilities to deliver the value that you need delivered, and either one of us will walk.”

And so, it’s sort of like, “I don’t think you owe me anything and you don’t seem to…” you being the employer here in this dialogue. I think it’s just a reality we know that an employer will cut us loose at any moment that they feel that it would be more profitable for them to do so and, thusly, I have no…I’ve been self-employed for a long time but I guess that’s sort of…

Chris De Santis
By the way, that’s interesting. I can talk to that as well in a moment, but you’ve said the key here is that this is the new reality. It wasn’t the old reality.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Chris De Santis
Exactly right. So, the new reality has shifted in terms of what you expect in this transaction.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I guess, so my thought is like, I don’t know, when people talk about what’s right or wrong, or sometimes they say, “Oh, we know nothing is right or wrong. It’s just different expectations and generations and how we were brought up.” And I’m thinking, “Well, no, it would be foolish, it would be unwise to operate in a false reality. It’s like one thing doesn’t exists to you so don’t make decisions as though it does or you may get the rug pulled out from under you.”

And I guess I’m a little paranoid about this, Chris, I don’t know. That’s why I went into strategy consulting, I was like, “Develop an amazing skillset so that you can do anything.” And then How to be Awesome at Your Job, it’s like, “Okay, all the listeners, develop an incredible universal skillset so that you’re fine. No matter what the robots do, no matter what your jerk boss does, you are bulletproof because you’re like Liam Neeson with a particular set of skills that make you extremely valuable in any work environment.” You got me on a hot soapbox, Chris.

Chris De Santis
Well, this is the point, one of the points you’re making, the new reality, to your point, Pete, supports this idea of employability, “Look, I have to be employable.” The key. And in defense of the notion of loyalty in the young, they are more likely to be loyal to you, “If you treat me in a way that recognizes how I make the contributions I make, and what I do on your behalf,” and they’re less loyal to the organization which is an abstraction.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay, cool. So, there’s expectation of dialogue, loyalty. Maybe give us one more thing where people differ significantly.

Chris De Santis
Another. Oh, well, I think, actually, as a consequence of the pandemic, one obvious thing where we are differing or we’re furthering apart is where senior management believes everyone should come back, and everyone else believes, “I think I like it at home,” and so we have a huge rift. It’s almost the opposites of each other. When you have senior management, 77% say, “We want them all back,” and the people, basically, young employees in particular who have now experienced this freedom, want to stay free relative to that.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Chris De Santis
You also had said something interesting, Pete, because it’s been bubbling up in each generation, it’s doing a little bit more of this, is that each one is more entrepreneurial than the generation that preceded it. You are creating in your own children the desire to have an independent life. And part of the messaging, you will never say that out loud, you don’t have to say that, but you behave in a way that says, “You can create your own destiny.” And we are really pushing the envelope on individualism and the creation of these independent people. I think we’ll, eventually, all be freelancers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so here we are, we’ve got some points of friction and that show up across generations. What do we do? What’s the best way to navigate them and work peacefully and effectively across generations then?

Chris De Santis
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, part of it has to do is be very clear on your expectations. I think that’s one of the things we don’t do. You see, I’m used to a world of ambiguity. I was raised with guessing right. And if you guess right, you move forward. Nobody actually told me the whys and the whats of things, but rather I’ll know it when I see it, which was a common refrain in management at one point in time.

And so, the young, to a great degree, want to know, really, what the rules are to achieve, “How do I navigate this environment?” I think I kind of use the analogy of video games. They want to know how to get to the next level, “How do you get to next level? How do you do this? How do you play the game?” So, I think it’s very important to share the expectations of how you operate with the people who are making you successful.

So, if I’m a manager, I should be telling you, “This is how I manage. This is what I would expect from you. What do you need from me to achieve here? How do we stay in touch?” those kinds of things. If I may give you a point of contention that’s very trivial but it’s one that comes up is that, “How do we stay in touch?”

I have a person I work with who I’ve used to make videos, and he will only contact me through a text. He will never pick up his phone, and I like it when people talk to me. In fact, I like it when they sort of see me. But, in this case, his mode of connection is a text. It’s not that he’s not willing to talk to me. It’s just how he’s more comfortable connecting with me. So, I think part of this is we have to get aligned who we are to each other, and how do we stay connected.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s say we’ve got a younger person, say a Millennial, who is the manager of a Boomer. So, that happens. Any pro tips when it’s sort of moving in a direction which might be different than what we’re imagining?

Chris De Santis
I think one of the challenges with that is it’s not just the Millennial-Boomer difference, it’s a stage of life difference, meaning that, “Look, I have 35 years of experience under my belt,” let’s say. “You, young whipper-snapper, have only been doing this for three years, and you’re managing me.” I think there’s an ego that steps in here that says, “Oh, my gosh, is this affecting my ego?” through the lens of the Boomer.

I think it’s prudent for the Millennial to draw from the more experienced person’s experiences as much as they can to say, “Here’s what I’d like to do. What do you think on how to do that?” It doesn’t mean that they’re foregoing the decision that they own, but rather they’re drawing from the other person some level of commitment by allowing them to tell them what they do know about this area that could be useful, and then I will fold that in. You see, it’s almost being some kind of combination between deferential and respectful.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, gotcha. Okay. Well, bring it on some more, Chris. Any more tips and tricks, do’s and don’ts in this new generational world? Yeah, we’re collaborating, like watchouts and best practices, I dig it, being clear on expectations. What else?

Chris De Santis
Well, this idea of how we connect. Our methodology of connection, I think, is interesting. One of those is, I’m a Boomer so my methodology of connection is I like seeing you, I’d like to meet you, we’ll meet. This is our idea of networking. Let’s go meet people. Let’s join things. Now, we know that from bowling alone that people aren’t joining anymore. So, in that sense, the methodology of connection for a Gen Xer is not so much that I know you as the person, but I know that you are competent in what you do.

You see, when you’re dealing with somebody in that category, who is I will call a little more private in their revealing of who they are, they reveal more slowly over time. They’re sort of like unfold over time, and they will reveal themselves as the competency of the relationship becomes more solidified, meaning that, “You show me you’re good at something, I’ll show who I am.”

And so, as it relates to that, the young are more open again. The Millennial is, you’ve heard this expression, they share too much?

Pete Mockaitis
Uh-huh, I’ve heard this.

Chris De Santis
Well, I don’t know if they do share too much. I think what we often hear from them is that…or, actually, so there’s commenting about them, saying they share too much. When, in fact, they’re not oversharing; they’re just in the habit of sharing who they are with others, and their methodology of connection is to self-reveal. For instance, you talk to your kids on a daily basis, I would imagine, right?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right, yeah.

Chris De Santis
Right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Chris De Santis
So, if you do, when you talk to your kids on a daily basis, you probably ask them each day, “What did you do today? What did you today?” Do they share that?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s hit or miss.

Chris De Santis
Well, that’s interesting because, normally, and a lot of times, because I overhear…again, remember I talked about I observe these parents, is that they’ll tell what they did today. And I think that gets in the habit of how they reveal who they are to others, and so they’re not necessarily oversharing. They’re finding a way to connect with another, and then their expectation is implicit reciprocity, “I’ve told you who I am. Tell me a little bit about more of you.” So, they’re open to the discourse between us.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Cool. What else in terms of do’s and don’ts here?

Chris De Santis
Okay. I was thinking, “Should I go uphill or downhill with this?” It’s so interesting. I do think that, again, going back to some of this, how we are different, I think one of the things that’s going to be very important going forward is how we decide to mentor. The young want to be mentored in a more deliberate capacity where it used to be more of an organic experience, meaning that I just discover you, and I say, “Oh, you seem to be a young version of me.”

And if we’re going to live in a world that embraces greater diversity, we have to be more deliberate in how we mentor people. But my problem with that is, and here’s where the friction lies, when you use a term like, “I’m assigning you to be my mentee,” Pete, it infers intimacy that we don’t have. And so, in that sense, we should start more from the backend here, just have an advisor to each other that allows us to open up more slowly because I think intimacy is something that is earned as opposed to assumed.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. I hear you. That checks out, like, “This is your protégé, this is your mentor.” It’s like, “Oh, really?” They do tend to, in my experience….

Chris De Santis
And then, again, the other problem I have with that is that they tend to assume that, “Now that you’re my mentor, you are also my sponsor.” And, again, we don’t define these things very well. And a sponsor is different than a mentor. A sponsor, of course, is somebody who’s going to look out for you and get you promoted. A mentor is really someone who’s going to give you advice on what they’ve learned in certain areas where you might seem to have some issues that you want to share in terms of solving problems.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And, tell me, if we do find ourselves in maybe a heated exchange, like we got some real tension, intergenerationally, do you have some tips on how we might navigate that smoothly or cool things down a bit?

Chris De Santis
Yeah, because I think a heated exchange is typically in the area, in my view, because one of the myths about the young is, in general, that they’re very sensitive to feedback. I think that people will say, “I’m not convinced that they are sensitive to feedback. I’m convinced that all people are sensitive to feedback.” And so, in that sense, I think sometimes we give feedback as a conclusion as opposed to the behaviors.

And so, I have no problem with somebody saying, “Okay, Pete, hey, you’re not really doing a great job being a team player.” That’s the headline but you can’t stop there. You can’t just expect the young person say, “Okay, I’ll be a better team player.” Well, what does that mean? So, I think what we have to do is we have to be more explanatory. We have to say what are the behaviors.

And then, because, again, these are children of dialogue, as it were, we should be willing to have a discussion about, “Well, what does that look like? And what are the ways to shape that behavior, or change that behavior? And how do I support that effort? And how do I know it happened?” So, again, we have to move away from just a pure tell model to more of a dialogue model because that’s an expectation, and, quite frankly, it has greater stickiness when you’re in dialogue with somebody.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then I’d also like to get your view when it comes to just sort of motivation, in terms of we hear listeners say, “Oh, you know what, my peers,” or direct reports, or others, “are just not motivated. They’re kind of phoning it in.” Do you have any pro tips, in terms of are there different carrots and/or sticks or drivers that tend to be more compelling for each of the generations?

Chris De Santis
Well, I think part of the key here is that this is where we’re moving beyond the generational differences into more the stage of life, “Where are you in your life? And what might you want then?” And so, for instance, the young are still probably, to some degree, deciding, “Who I will become?” And so, what motivates me is, “What do I want to develop in terms of my skillsets? So, where are my skills? And where do I want to hone those skills?”

So, part of the motivation is, again, this goes back to engaging people, is to find out, well, what they’re interested in doing better, or more of, and trying to find circumstances that you can supply that. That becomes the carrot, as it were. So, I think that works very well. Now, some people want promotions, which I am not convinced everyone wants promotions anymore.

I think, going to your point, Pete, they want to be employable, and they want to develop their skills. The only problem with that is, “When I make you more employable and develop your skills,” people fear that, “Oh, then I’ll lose them to the marketplace.” Well, wasn’t that Ford who said, “Well, the only thing worse than not training your people,” or, “training your people and they leave, is not training your people and they stay”? So, I think we have an obligation.

Now, the other thing interesting about in my generation, motivating us, is to say, to some degree, is, “What experiences do we want to have?” because I don’t know if promotions are part of the package anymore at this stage, but rather also I think we’re in a legacy phase, “What can we give back to others?” We should create circumstances where we can teach those who follow.

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

Chris De Santis
At this point, no. I think we’ve covered this. I like what you’re asking about some of these, the differences between us, and I like your point earlier that, look, you cannot generalize about a whole group. You have to say what group we are alluding to. And this notion of, “What are the norms within that group?” What are the norms we observed?

I think part of the trouble with being young is that the headlines about Millennials are negative. They are the Florida Man of generations because anytime you see Florida Man in a headline, it’s some tragedy that, you know, “Florida Man found starving to death in his own refrigerator.” So, you have these tragedies, and then we start to see these Millennial headlines, and we start to associate that with them, and that becomes self-fulfilling in our perception of them, which is not an accurate reflection of who they are.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that resonates in that, I guess, I don’t even like being called a Millennial.

Chris De Santis
No, it’s unfair.

Pete Mockaitis
Even though I guess, technically, that’s where I’d land, and that’s like I don’t care for that.

Chris De Santis
Well, because, again, how they have labeled you. This is interesting, too, because one of the things about each generation, we’re all a disappointment. We’re not just a disappointment at the same time. Gen Xers were slackers, we were hippies, so in that sense, everyone is a disappointment, and then we outgrow it. The only problem that Millennials have is Gen Z hasn’t stepped in to be a disappointment yet so that you can get some space.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yeah, got that to look forward to.

Chris De Santis
Exactly.

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

Chris De Santis
Yeah, one of my favorites is “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are,” and that’s why this is such a perceptual issue. This was, I think, I can’t think of…how do you pronounce her name? Anais Nin, she wrote the Delta of Venus. Lovely book, by the way.

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

Chris De Santis
My favorite bit of research is a book by a man named Hofstede, and he wrote Cultures and Organizations. And what he did, it was from an IBM study, I think, originally in the ‘70s, and he extrapolated that or expanded that into the different dimensions across national cultures. That was super enlightening because now I see why the French are the French, or Mexico is Mexico, and US is US. Very enlightening.

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

Chris De Santis
I like it when I get free notebooks, you know, those ones you can write in, like that swag. They give you a gift. Because I use those, sort of, to take notes and then I just have a stack of these things.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. And a favorite habit?

Chris De Santis
Habit is reading. I’m a reader. I would have to believe you are as well, to some degree, to do so many of these episodes, but I do try to read a book a week.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And how do you manage that volume? Do you listen? Do you read while doing other things, like exercise? Or how do you…?

Chris De Santis
Well, exercising, actually, I do that while I’m on the bike, but, typically, though I dedicate at least two to three hours a day to read something.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Chris De Santis
I’m okay with that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris De Santis
You have little kids. You can’t do that.

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?

Chris De Santis
Yeah. When I talk about this, because you said it right at the beginning, is, look, when you generalize, the only real truth in what I say, and in my book, is that what is true about…you said it yourself. The thing that is true about you, personally, is what’s true. Everything else I say is really fodder for the conversation or the discussion or the discovery you can make in an exchange with another.

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

Chris De Santis
They can get in touch with me at my website at CPDeSantis.com.

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

Chris De Santis
Yeah, I think I would say this, that, look, next time you see somebody acting strangely, in a way that you will judge them, imagine for a moment that this person is as rational as you are, and what might they be doing that is rational to them. And so, I would just simply say give people the benefit of the doubt.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Chris, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun and peace as you’re navigating generational frictions.

Chris De Santis
Thank you, Pete. And good luck with the kids there.

May 12
0

767: How to Build Tremendous Mental Strength with Amy Morin

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Amy Morin delineates the bad mental habits that are holding us back from achieving our full potential.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three elements of mental strength
  2. The 13 things mentally strong people don’t do
  3. How to more effectively tolerate discomfort and distress in our day-to-day 

About Amy

Amy Morin is editor-in-chief at Verywell Mind, a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and psychology lecturer at Northeastern University. She’s also an international bestselling author. Her books, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do, and 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do have been translated into 40 languages.

The Guardian dubbed her “the self-help guru of the moment” and Forbes calls her a “thought leadership star.”

Her TEDx talk, The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong, is one of the most popular talks of all time with more than 15 million views. She’s a regular contributor to Forbes, Business Insider, and Psychology Today where her articles on mental strength reach more than 2 million readers each month.

Resources Mentioned

Amy Morin Interview Transcript

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

Amy Morin
Hey, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. And I think the first thing that we need to hear about, though, is, is it true you’ve been living on a sailboat for the last six years? And what is the story?

Amy Morin
It is true. So, I guess six years ago, we decided, “Hey, why live in Maine if you don’t have to? It’s kind of cold and dark.” So, we went on this adventure that was supposed to be six months on a sailboat, but six years later, here I am. And it was my husband’s dream. When he was four years old, his bedroom was decorated in a sailboat theme, so he said, “Someday, I’m going to live on a sailboat,” but we realized someday isn’t always promised, so just one random day, we said, “Why not do it?” So, we packed up a Fiat with a dog, a cat, a laptop, and off we went, and here we are still in the Florida Keys on a sailboat.

Pete Mockaitis
So, as we speak, you’re on a sailboat?

Amy Morin
I am, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t see anything rocking.

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, a lot of the time, because I need superfast internet, we’re tied to a dock, so I’m not just bobbing around in the ocean or anything.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, has that been working out well for you, you’re pleased with the decision? And what are some of the pros living on a sailboat maybe others should consider?

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, there are some pros and cons. The pros would be it’s kind of a simple life. Again, I have some clothes and a laptop and not much else, and you really don’t need much. And, like, manatees and dolphins come swimming by, and there’s lots of cool stuff. And, of course, during quarantine, it was easy to be on a sailboat because when everybody had to be inside their house, well, my house moves so I could go places and still go out and do things. I can snorkel, I can swim, I can do lots of fun stuff.

But there are some cons as well. So, this is my podcast studio, so we’re recording a podcast from a boat. It’s loud sometimes. There are certain things you have to think of with a sailboat, like, there’s not a ton of room, so we kind of jockey for position on who gets the cool space on the couch during the day. And there was an octopus incident that involved an octopus coming through our air-conditioning vent. That was not the best day ever.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. Well, cool, you’re making it work. That’s exciting.

Amy Morin
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m also excited to hear all about mental strength. You’ve got a series of excellent books, including 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, and I loved your TEDx Talk, we will put a link to that in the show notes, for sure. So, tell me, when it comes to us humans and mental strength, is there a particular surprising discovery you’ve made about us in the course of your practice and research?

Amy Morin
Well, I guess the first thing was that mental strength really depended on what not to do. We talk so much about all the healthy habits and all the things you should do.

Pete Mockaitis
Exercise.

Amy Morin
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Breathe.

Amy Morin
And as a therapist, I was taught, “When people come into your therapy office and they tell you what’s going on in their life, figure out what they’re already doing well and build on that,” and that makes sense on the surface, like, “Yeah, I’m going to point out your strengths and we’re going to keep doing that.” But, at some point, I thought, “Well, if I want to go see a physical trainer and they told me to run on the treadmill, yeah, I’m going to run on the treadmill.” But if they didn’t mention, “Hey, by the way, that junk food you’re eating kind of negates all that work you’re doing on the treadmill,” I’d be kind of mad.

So, I thought, “Let’s take a look at this. What are the common unhealthy habits that we all do but, yet, those little things keep us stuck?” And so, for example, you can practice gratitude quite often but if you still feel sorry for yourself sometimes, kind of negates the gratitude. So, most of us have moments where we feel thankful, but we also have moments where we feel sorry for ourselves. So, let’s focus on getting rid of that in our lives, and then the good habits you have already become much more effective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, beautiful. So, then when it comes to talking about being mentally strong, how do you define that? Is being mentally strong distinct from mentally healthy or are they kind of synonymous or interchangeable?

Amy Morin
I’m glad you asked that because they’re different. People will say that sometimes, like, “Ah, I wish I could be mentally strong but I’m depressed,” or, “I wish I could be mentally strong but I have anxiety.” Not the same thing at all. It makes more sense to our brains when we think about it in terms of, like, physical strength and physical health. You go to the gym, you can build physical strength, yeah, that improves your physical health, too. But even a weight trainer can still develop, like, high cholesterol or some sort of physical health problem down the road, you might injure your knee, mental strength is the same.

It’s all about the exercises we do every day, the strategies we employ in life, but knowing that despite how much mental strength you have, it doesn’t guarantee you won’t ever develop a mental health problem. So, even when you’re mentally strong, you might still develop something like depression, anxiety, OCD. Those things happen to anybody, but mental strength can prevent some problems, it can make you feel your best no matter what kind of mental health problems you might be struggling with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve got a distinction. And then, so what’s the definition then of a mentally strong person is blank, or mental strength equals this?

Amy Morin
Well, I’d have to say, the easiest way to define it is that there’s three parts to it – the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you behave. So, when it comes to thoughts, it’s not about like super positive thinking all the time. It’s about knowing that your thoughts can be realistic so that, all right, when things are bad, you might just accept, “Yeah, they’re bad,” but, on the other hand, you don’t want to spend all your mental real-estate worrying about things that will never happen or ruminating on things that already did. It’s about just taking some control over your mind and your thoughts.

And then when it comes to our emotions, sometimes people will be like, “Oh, be mentally strong. Don’t cry.” That’s not the case either. Sometimes it takes a lot of mental strength to just acknowledge how you feel, to express those feelings, and to know that you can be comfortable even with some uncomfortable emotions. But, on the other side of that, there are times when maybe you’re so angry you can’t think straight, so you need the power to reduce your anger. So, a simple way would be to be in control of your emotions so that they don’t control you.

And then the last part is about our behavior, the action you take. You can be an optimistic, happy person, but unless you take action, those things don’t really matter. So, it’s about knowing, “Okay, even on the day I’m tired, I’m still going to go to the gym,” or, “Even though I don’t feel like doing this thing, it’s the right thing to do so I’m going to do it anyway.” And knowing when to push yourself but, of course, also knowing that it’s different to, say, run on a sore leg versus a broken ankle. There are days where you need to say, “Okay, being mentally strong sometimes means taking a break, taking a step back, or even quitting or giving up.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that’s nice and clear. All right. So, we got a picture of those three things. And tell us, Amy, to what extent are they learnable? And can you maybe share an inspiring story or research that says, “Hey, people have made transformations here all the time”?

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, it’s definitely all learnable and it’s things that we can learn and practice and put into our daily lives, these small things, just like all of us could choose to build physical strength by working out, doing some things differently. We can all choose to do things differently when it comes to building mental muscle and there’s lots of stories of Olympic athletes and Navy SEALs and people who go out there and do really cool things with their lives.

But I can share my own story and life, and tell you that I don’t come by this naturally but I’ve learned a lot over the years. As a kid, I was the kind of kid that never raised their hand in class. I actually hated school to the point that I vomited before school every day until about the fourth grade. In high school, I never spoke in class either. I was the shy kid in the back of the room. I became somebody that was able to give a TED Talk that’s now been viewed by 20 million people, and I can do lots of things I never ever thought I could do before but it was about practicing and putting those things into place.

And as a therapist, I knew some of this stuff but it wasn’t really the books, the textbooks that taught me anything differently. It was mostly my life experiences. When I was 23, I lost my mom. When I was 23, my husband passed away. A few years after that, my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. It was like my 20s were awful. I went through all of this hard stuff but I learned from it, and what I learned was like, “Okay, don’t sweat the small stuff. There really is a lot to be said for that.”

There are things I never thought I could do that I can. And even as a therapist, I’d be teaching other people about their self-limiting beliefs but, at the same time, I think I really believed that I had a lot of limitations that I didn’t. I can get out there and do so many things now that I never thought I could do by putting these things into practice, by giving up unhealthy habits that were holding me back, and by truly just saying, “Okay, let’s get out there and try these things.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear the things. So, there’s 13 things mentally strong people don’t do. Can you give us that rundown?

Amy Morin
Sure. You want all 13?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, please.

Amy Morin 
I’m going to cheat by looking at the back of my book because now that I’ve written five books, I get a little out of order after a while. So, the first one is that mentally strong people don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. They don’t give away their power. They don’t shy away from change. They don’t focus on things they can’t control. They don’t worry about pleasing everyone. They don’t fear taking calculated risks. They don’t dwell in the past. They don’t make the same mistakes over and over. They don’t resent other people’s success. They don’t give up after their first failure. They don’t fear alone time. They don’t feel like the world owes them anything. And they don’t expect immediate results.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. That’s it, that’s 13. Okay.

Amy Morin
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, then as I hear them, that seems to make sense, like, “Yeah, it’d be better to not waste time feeling sorry for yourself. It’d be better to not give away our power. It’d be better to not shy away from change. Yup, yup, yup, that seems good.” I’m curious, though, if we are doing some of this stuff, how do we begin to make that change?

Amy Morin
Yeah, so it’s easy to say, “I don’t do those things,” or, “I don’t do them very often,” or, “It’s not a problem.” But the truth is we all do those things sometimes, and we all expect immediate results, for example, and that’s part of the world we live in. We now have Google and Amazon where you can get an answer, or on a click of a button, you can get something delivered to your door almost immediately. So, then when it comes to changing our lives, we think this will happen this week.

And you can even look at it with like New Year’s resolutions. Most of them go out the window within two weeks. I think January 18 is the day that most people have already given up on their New Year’s resolution because we expect things to happen fast, “I’m going to lose 100 pounds this year,” “I’m going to change my life,” and it doesn’t happen according to our schedule. But whenever we find ourselves doing these things, the first thing is just become more aware of it.

And even though I’ve written books on this and I talk about it all the time, I still find myself doing certain things. I give away my power, for example. I blame somebody else for putting me in a bad mood, or ruining my day, or making me do something. No, those are all my choices. And just recognizing it, that was the first step, and then being able to say, “Okay, what am I going to do about it? How do I get rid of this habit? What am I going to do instead?”

And, luckily, there’s an antidote for all of this stuff. If you want to stop feeling sorry for yourself, just take a moment and say, “Well, what do I have to be thankful for? What can I be grateful for in the moment?” You find yourself expecting immediate results? Find a way to say, “Okay, now I’m going to figure out how do I track my progress?” Whether you say, “I’m going to make a certain amount of money,” “Pay down a certain amount of debt this year,” or, “I want to have this fitness goal,” well, what can I do to track my progress? It might just be as simple as putting an X on the calendar every day so that you don’t expect this to happen overnight.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, actually, I really like these antidotes. Can I hear 11 more?

Amy Morin
Sure. And there’s a lot of about all of them. There’s science behind it. It’s not just things that I made up. But if we were to talk about not fearing calculated risks, for example, we tend to think that our level of fear is equal to the level of risks, so, “Applying for that promotion feels scary so I shouldn’t do it because it must be risky.” The truth is that our emotions have nothing to do with the actual level of risk that we face.

And so, the antidote to this one is just taking a look from a rational perspective, which, in some cases, might be taking a step back, and saying, “What would I say to my friend who had this problem?” because it takes a lot of the emotion out of it. So, if you said, “Gee, I had this opportunity to apply for a promotion but it feels scary, so I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

Well, if your friend came to you and said that, you’d be like, “Hey, go for it,” or, “I think you’ll do a good job.” You’d probably have some kind words unless you really thought that they shouldn’t apply then you might be willing to be honest, and say, “Actually, maybe not yet.” Well, give yourself those same words, and it takes a lot of the string out of it, the emotion out of it, and you can make a better decision.

Or, if we were to say, let’s talk about not giving away your power, if we went back to that one. The antidote to that one is changing your language. How often do we say, “My boss makes me work late”? Nope, your boss doesn’t make you work late. It’s a choice. Maybe there’s a consequence. Maybe your job would be at risk. But just recognizing, “All right, the expectation is I’ll get this report done by tomorrow. I’m going to have to work late to do it, but that’s my choice.” There’s something super empowering about just flipping your language around so you could say, “It’s up to me to decide how I’m going to do this.”

Another one is about not resenting other people’s success. Well, how often do we, say, flip through social media, and you look at other people, and you’re like, “Ugh, they’re happier than I am. They’re healthier, they’re wealthier, they’re more attractive, they have a better life than I do.” It’s those comparisons that keep us stuck. And studies will show that if you look at somebody as an opinion-holder rather than your competitor, then you’ll learn from them.

So, if you just look at somebody that, say, drives a really nice car, you might be able to say, “Well, what can I learn from that person? Maybe they have a really cool job, or maybe they know how to negotiate a good deal on a car, or maybe they gave up something in their life so they could afford this car.” But just saying, “What can I learn from that person?” rather than, “That person is better than I am,” it keeps you from feeling bad about it.

Amy Morin
when it comes to failure, we have this idea that, “Failing feels bad and I don’t want to feel bad so, therefore, I shouldn’t put myself out there.” Well, one of the insane things we do is we talk about success stories. So, they looked at high school science teachers, and all the science teachers were telling kids about, say, Edison, Einstein, all these famous scientists who were really successful.

And the more that they talked about how successful these people were, the kids’ grades started to decline. So, then they had them talk about how all these famous people failed. Edison had a bazillion experiments that didn’t go well, Einstein had some theories that probably were a little off base. And when they started talking about these people’s failures, the students’ grades started going up because then they knew, “Well, gee, failure is actually part of the process, so the way to succeed, you have to take a risk, put yourself out there, you have to guess sometimes, you have to do things that are going to be really hard.”
And once the students started doing that, they took more risks, they raised their hand, they guessed on an answer if they didn’t know, but they were willing to do harder things, and their grades went up. And I think that’s a great lesson for all of us. When we look around these dotcom businesses or successful business leaders who now have programs out there and they’re trying to get us to buy them, we hear about how successful they were but we don’t always know what it took for them to get there. Just by studying famous failures, it will give you courage to try so that then you’ll know, “Okay, well, if I failed, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just part of the process.”

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. And how about not shying away from change?

Amy Morin
Yeah, so that one, a lot of people come into my therapy office, and they’ll say, “I’m ready to change my life,” but then when we talk about making change, they’re kind of like, “Eh, I’m not so sure about that. Change is uncomfortable.” And we like it when things are predictable. Even though they’re bad, if it’s familiar, somehow we think, “Well, that’s not too bad.”

So, with this one, there’s a few different things that you can do but sometimes just putting a name to your emotions goes a long way. So, if you just label how you’re feeling, “Okay, I’m anxious,” “I’m sad,” it takes a lot of the sting out of it. And there’s science behind this one, too, that our brains and our bodies need a little help making sense of things. So, when you have all these stress hormones going on, just take a moment and be like, “Okay, I’m feeling anxious right now,” you automatically feel a little bit less anxious.

And then the next thing you can do is, once you identify how you’re feeling, is to be able to say, “Well, is this a friend or an enemy right now?” because so often we talk about feelings like they’re either positive or negative. People will say, “Well, excitement is a positive emotion and anger is a negative emotion.” But when you think about it, any feeling has the power to be positive or negative. Yeah, anger is helpful if you stand up for your friend, maybe, or it gives you courage to stand up for yourself. It’s not helpful if it causes you to call people names or to say things that you wouldn’t normally do or say.

But excitement, on the other hand, we love it. When you’re looking forward to a vacation and you’re excited, that feels good. But what if somebody comes to you with this, like, a get-rich-quick scheme and they guarantee you that there’s no way you’re going to fail?

Pete Mockaitis
“Ooh, no way I can fail, Amy? Sign me up now.”

Amy Morin
Right. That’s why we see really smart people fall prey to, like, really stupid get-rich-quick schemes because they’re so excited about the payoff that they overlook the risks. So, sometimes it’s just helpful to say, “How am I feeling right now?” Put a name to that, and then say, “Is that helpful or harmful?” And if it’s helpful, embrace it. If it’s harmful, then you say, “Okay, what do I do about this?” and make a different choice.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Amy, I love this so much. “Positive emotions” and “negative emotions” I guess we might re-label that as pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions. Like, it’s pleasant to feel excited about the get-rich-quick scheme but that’s not going to serve you well. It’s going to be harmful to you. So, you could say that’s…in a way, I don’t even like the words positive and negative in relation to emotions because they get things a little bit fuzzy versus friend versus enemy, I love it.

And I want to dig a little deeper here on the emotional management stuff because, all right, so you’ve probably heard this poem, and it’s very short so I’ll read it in its entirety, from Rumi, “The Guest House,” and it has a perspective on emotions. A couple guests have brought it up, it says,

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

​Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

​The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
​
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

So, that’s a poem. I think there’s some profundity. I chew on that, and I think, “Wow, that sounds like a cool, free, liberating way to live,” but I don’t know if it’s optimal, and it may be harmful. And what’s your hot take, Amy, when it comes to emotional management, calling things friends or enemies, versus they’re all just guests, they come and they go and they serve us?

Amy Morin
I think there’s a lot of power in just sometimes allowing emotions to come in. I think a lot of our suffering in life comes from our attempts to fight feelings. So, something anxiety-provoking, we don’t want to feel that way, so then we try to get rid of the anxiety rather than solve the problem. I think life gets a lot better when we get better at answering the question, “Should I solve the problem or solve how I feel about the problem?”

Sometimes we have a problem that’s huge but it’s so anxiety-provoking and I feel anxious about it so I just want to solve my anxiety rather than tackle the problem. This is why people develop, say, substance abuse issues or compulsive behaviors, “It feels better to do this right now than it is to tackle that problem, so I’m going to do what’s in front of me, whether that’s grab a drink or eat too much. Something to take care of my feelings rather than take care of the problem.”

And I can’t tell you, I mean, I’ve noticed this in my own life but it’s something I constantly work with people in my therapy office about is just honoring our emotions sometimes and knowing that the more we run from them, the more they just keep following us, and they show up wherever we are, and they show up in different areas of our lives.

So, if you’re sad, sometimes it helps you honor something you lost, you have to go through those sad feelings. But, instead of going through them, we do a lot of effort to try to go around, do everything we can to go under, over, skip it, we distract ourselves constantly because emotions, certain ones, are uncomfortable, we don’t want to be bored, we don’t want to be lonely, “Who wants to be sad or anxious?”

And in today’s world, it’s so easy to distract ourselves with our phones, with constant noise in our ears, all the things that we can do so that we don’t have to tolerate a moment of discomfort, but if we spend our whole lives trying to avoid just being uncomfortable or making it so we don’t experience emotions that are unpleasant, life gets even worse in its suspicious cycle.

But I also don’t think we have to tolerate it. So, again, when your emotions are saying enemy, when they’re not helpful, then you don’t have to sit and suffer with them. Sometimes we need to say, “Hmm, maybe I should do something else.” If you allow sadness to stick around too long, you might find yourself in bed, and then it lies to you. People become depressed, their depression tells them, “Don’t go to work today. You just stay in bed and you’ll feel better.” Well, nobody’s ever felt better by staying in bed all day but our emotions can lie to us. It can make us irrational.

If we took the example of sadness again, never negotiate when you’re sad. You’ll take a horrible deal when you’re sad because you’ll think, “I don’t want to counter offer because I just don’t know that my ego can handle one more blow, so I’ll accept whatever deal you offer me.” Or, when we’re anxious about something, our anxiety from our personal life spills over into work.

So, let’s say you just had a health test, you’re waiting on the results, you go to work, your boss offers you a new opportunity, you’re going to be like, “No, thank you. I don’t think I can handle that,” because your anxiety spills over and you’re not even going to recognize it. So, as much as we talk about emotional intelligence, I don’t think we’re there. I think we need to just go back to the basics sometimes and figure out, “How am I feeling? Is that feeling helpful or harmful? If it’s harmful, how do I change my emotional state?”

Pete Mockaitis
And let’s say, how does one change their emotional state? We say, you figured out, “Okay, hey, I’m sad but I’ve got a negotiation coming up in half an hour. I recognize that me being sad is not great for this upcoming challenge but, nonetheless, I feel sad. What do I do about it?”

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, let’s say you lost your pet last week and you’re sad about it, obviously being sad helps you honor that lost. It’s okay to be sad for a while, that’s sort of a thing. But in that moment where you’re, like, “I’m about to walk into this meeting and I need to negotiate an amazing deal,” then you can do two things. Number one is change how you think and change your behavior. So, we tend to do something that keeps us in whatever state we’re in. When you’re anxious, maybe you pace. When you’re sad, you just sit and stare at the wall.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, look down.

Amy Morin
Right. And those kinds of things reinforce how we feel. So, sometimes you need to act the opposite, so get up and go for a jog, or you look at a funny cat video online, or you call somebody and talk about a completely different subject just to shift it. And you could also change what you’re thinking about. When you’re anxious, maybe you’re replaying something over and over again, or dwelling on the worst-case scenario.

Or, when you’re sad, you’re just thinking about more sad things. Take a moment and purposefully think about something that’s happier just to give yourself that little mood boost when you need it in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Okay. Well, let’s see, there’s a few more things that mentally strong people don’t do. Maybe you want to hear some antidote if you find yourself doing it. How about when we’re focused on things that we can’t control? What’s the antidote?

Amy Morin
That one is about sometimes just pausing and saying, “Okay, what is within my control?” It might only be your effort, your attitude, your behavior, but it’s tough to do. We want to control the outcome. Or, we find ourselves doing these things, too. Like, let’s say you have a pain in your knee, and suddenly you start Googling. And within two minutes, you find out either it’s nothing or you’re about to die, depending on which website you look at.

And so, to control your anxiety, maybe you just keep researching, researching, researching, and it’s not helpful. Well, what can you control? Well, you can control when you call the doctor, if you make an appointment, or what you do about it. So, sometimes it’s just about taking a step back, and saying, “What’s within my control right now?” and then taking some kind of action, but making sure that that action is about moving forward. Ending up in an endless loop of research, you could research forever, and what’s that going to do?

Or, if you have something coming up this weekend and you want to make sure it’s a sunny day because you have outdoor plans, checking the weather compulsively every two minutes isn’t going to change the outcome. So, maybe you just ask yourself, “Well, okay, what’s the worst-case scenario?” and then kind of play that through of, “All right. Well, if it rains this weekend, what’s going to happen? My plans get ruined. Well, if my plans get ruined, what will I do instead?” And just playing that tape through sometimes reminds us that, “All right, even if the worst-case scenario did happen, it’s not the end of the world.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if we’re worried about pleasing everyone, what do we do?

Amy Morin
Again, that one is a difficult one for chronic people-pleasers. When you tend to always say yes to everything, sometimes it’s just a matter of stepping back and having a new default answer, because if somebody calls, and says, “Hey, can you do me this favor?” and you always say yes, take a moment and say, “Ah, I’m going to check my schedule and get back to you.”

And just having a new script, and maybe you already know the answer is going to be yes, or maybe you already know, “It’s something I really don’t want to do,” but in that moment, it’s hard to say that. So, just having a pre-planned script, like, “Let me check my schedule and get back to you,” or, “I’ll have to see if that works for me but I’ll let you know.” Just having that little pause sometimes can then give you enough time to think, “Okay, is this something I really want to do or not?” then you can get back to the person with a better answer. But I find a lot of times, people-pleasers, just their default is to always say yes to everything, so they need a little bit of time to decide, “Do I really want to do this or not?”

Pete Mockaitis
And what if we’re people-pleasing not just in the saying yes or no, but in the broader sense of what we choose to ask for, like, “Ooh, I don’t want to ask for that. That might be too much. I don’t want to inconvenience them,” in that sort of a way?

Amy Morin
Anytime we’re afraid of something, the best way to overcome that fear of saying, “Okay, I’m afraid to ask for something. I’m afraid to take care of myself,” it’s just about doing it in small steps. So, maybe you ask for a little less than you actually want just to see what happens as an experiment. I’m a huge fan of saying, “Let’s try behavioral experiments,” and test the waters. Sometimes people will be like, “Oh, I can’t ask for that because my boss might be mad,” or, “I can’t ask my coworker for that favor,” or, “I can’t speak up and say, actually, that’s an unreasonable deadline.” Well, try it and see what happens.

And to know that you don’t have to feel brave to act brave. Just put yourself out there and do it anyway, as an experiment. If something terrible happens, you can learn from it, but I think nine times out of ten, you might discover that the worst isn’t going to happen, people aren’t going to be mad, they’re not going to freak out, they’re not going to look down on you if you asked for what you need.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I like that notion of the little steps. So, that might even just be like, “Try writing the email,” or, “Try writing out the script,” “Try asking for…” instead of saying, “There’s no way that’s going to happen, boss. Forget about it.” It’s like, “No, actually, that’s going to be very challenging based upon these other things, and it may require that I’m up until midnight if we don’t re-prioritize some things. So, how do you think about the priorities?” Like, “You got to stay up till midnight, aargh.” Versus, “Oh, I had no idea. I’m so sorry. Let’s see what we can do here.”

Cool. And if you’re dwelling on the past, how do we un-dwell?

Amy Morin
So, yeah, sometime we dwell on like something bad that happened six weeks ago, sometimes it’s like the conversation that happened at lunch, maybe you got home from work after a bad day and you just keep replaying over and over again, and thinking of all the things you wish you would’ve said, all the things you wished the other person hadn’t said. It’s like this tape that gets stuck in our head and we rehash it over and over and over again.

So, one of my favorite exercises for this one is to distract yourself. We call it changing the channel in your brain, and we’re pretty bad at it at first. So, maybe you had a bad day, you get home from work, and you’re still thinking about that bad thing that happened, and you say, “Well, don’t think about that.” Well, we actually are going to think about it more.

So, I’ll do this exercise with people often. We can do it right now if you like, where I say, “Spend about 20 seconds thinking about white bears. White bears, white bears, white bears. Polar bears, stuffed white bears, how many white bears as it gets.”

Pete Mockaitis
Like a Coca-Cola advertisement?

Amy Morin
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
They’re so adorable unless they’re mauling something, I guess. White bears, white bears, white bears.

Amy Morin
So, then spend the next 20 seconds thinking about absolutely anything you want but, whatever you do, do not think about a white bear.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, it’s challenging. I’m like battery recharging. Recharging batteries. Battery rechargeables, like it’s hard. I’m drifting.

Amy Morin
Okay. And then one more quick thing then. For the next 20 seconds, see how far you can get from the alphabet from Z to A, see if you can get all the way through the alphabet backwards. Ready, set, go.

Pete Mockaitis
Out loud?

Amy Morin
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T, S, R, Q, P, O, N, M, L, K, J, I, H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A.

Amy Morin
Oh, that’s impressive that you just did that. Good work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Amy Morin
So, when I said think about white bears, did a white bear pop up in your head at least one?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Amy Morin
And then when I said don’t think about white bears, think about anything you want, did you find, did a little white bear pop up maybe at least once?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Amy Morin
And then how about when you just went through the alphabet backwards, did you think about any white bears then?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, I was trying really hard to impress you and the listeners by nailing it, so I was putting all my mental energy there.

Amy Morin
Well, let me tell you, I was impressed. That was really, really fast.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. That’s what it’s all about, baby.

Amy Morin
And that is an example of how to change the channel in your brain. If you tell yourself, “Don’t think about white bears,” or, “Don’t think about that awful conversation,” it’s going to pop up in your head. But if you give yourself a little task to do at home, you’re probably not going to be like, “Okay, I’m going to go through the alphabet backwards,” but you might give yourself something to do. Like, “Okay, instead of sitting on the couch and rehashing this awful thing that happened earlier today over and over again and staying stuck in a bad mood, what can I do?”

And it might be about calling a friend to talk about a completely different subject, maybe you go outside and do something, maybe say, “I’m going to organize my closet for 10 minutes,” but give yourself something to do, sometimes getting up, moving around. The point is when you’re dwelling on something that already happened, you can’t change it. You can learn from it but when you just rehash it and ruminate on it over and over again, you stay stuck in a bad mood. And then telling yourself, “Don’t think about it,” actually makes it worse.

But if you get up and do something, give yourself an activity, it can boost your mood just a little bit. And even though you’re probably going to eventually go back to thinking about it again, when you feel a little bit better, you might be able to see it from a different angle, and say, “Okay, maybe it wasn’t so bad, or maybe the next time this comes up, I’ll have a different strategy.” But the point is, you just don’t want to sit and dwell on something that makes you feel bad and keep dwelling and then you feel worse.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, I dig it. I dig it. And I’m thinking, in particular, that the alphabet backwards is the example of it has a little bit of a challenge or a game-like quality to it. And I’m thinking about if there’s a quick game, like, I don’t know, Wordle from The New York Times has been a lot of fun, or Tetris, or, I don’t know, online math problems or something. It seems like, maybe it’s just me, but, like, something that it makes a bit of a demand upon you, like, “I’m going to have to try to apply my attention here in order to prevail, and I like prevailing so I’m going to choose to spend all my attention on the thing.”

Amy Morin
Right, because that requires your mental energy. It just gives your brain a bit of a break, and sometimes we need that because sometimes bad things do happen. So, we’re talking about something traumatic because sometimes when people have PTSD, they need to get professional help because it does stay stuck in their brains. But when other bad things happen, and we just keep thinking about it over and over again, and maybe you try to put a positive spin on it or something, but you just can’t get unstuck, sometimes you just need to find something to give your brain a break so you can feel a little bit better before you go back and think about it again.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so, if we are making the same mistakes repeatedly, what’s our antidote there?

Amy Morin
So, of course, we just want to learn from our mistakes so that we don’t repeat them. And quite often, we shame ourselves for making a mistake, like, “Ugh, I’m such an idiot,” or, “I’m a bad person.” Well, guess what? When you think you’re a bad person, you’re going to think, “Oh, I’m doomed to repeat that mistake.”

We see this with teenagers sometimes. Like, if a kid messes up a lot and his parents shame him, and says, “Oh, you’re an idiot,” or, “You’re a bad kid,” well, guess what? When he’s 15 and somebody says, “Hey, you want to try drugs?” who’s going to try the drugs, the kid that thinks, “I’m a bad person,” or the kid who, when he messed up, was just taught, “No, I mess up sometimes but I’m a good kid”? Well, we know the kid who thinks, “I’m a bad person” is like, “I’m going to make a bad choice because that’s who I am.”

Well, we do that to ourselves as adults, like, oh, when we mess up, we say, “Well, I’m not smart enough. I’m stupid. I can’t ever do anything right.” When you think that way, you’re going to then think, “Well, I’m incapable of doing better next time.” So, just catching how harsh we are on ourselves sometimes, and saying, “Well, how do I talk to myself the same way I’d talk to a friend again?” you do self-compassion. If you end up shaming yourself, remind yourself, “No, I just messed up and that’s okay. I’m capable of doing better next time.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if we’re uncomfortable being alone and with silence, what do you recommend?

Amy Morin
So, this one takes some practice. So, sometimes people will say, “Oh, I love alone time,” and then I’ll say, “Well, what do you do when you’re alone?” and they’ll say, “Well, I text my friends or I’m scrolling through social media,” but they’re not really alone with their thoughts. They’re sort of consuming stuff, they’re listening to podcast episodes, they’re doing something. But this one is really about sitting alone with your thoughts, which can be uncomfortable. Most of us want to be productive. We want to be doing something. And the thought of being alone with our brains is scary.

So, one of the strategies for this one is to just schedule a date with yourself. It might be that you go to dinner, maybe you go watch a movie, maybe you go for a walk on the beach. Go do something all by yourself. And you don’t have the pressure to perform to make somebody else happy. You don’t have to make pleasant conversation. Just go do what you want to do, and make it more pleasant to spend time with yourself, and then that becomes less scary over time.

And people will say, “Well, gosh, this is hard,” or, “It’s embarrassing to do these things alone,” or, “I’m not comfortable,” but start small. Maybe it’s just taking a quick walk. Maybe it’s going somewhere to eat where you at least know somebody, the waitress or somebody there, but just go do these little small things. And as you become more comfortable with yourself, you get to be more comfortable with the things going on in your own brain.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And, finally, if we do feel the world owes us something, well, one, how do I identify that, because I imagine many people will deny that, “Oh, no, I don’t do that, Amy”? And, two, if we catch ourselves, in your description, what do we do about it?

Amy Morin
Yeah, I hear older people say, “Ah, the younger generation feels entitled.”

Pete Mockaitis
“They’re so entitled.”

Amy Morin
Right. But the truth is we’re all entitled sometimes, we think, “Well, geez, I deserve better than this,” and, of course, sometimes we do deserve better. You don’t deserve to be treated poorly by somebody, or you don’t deserve to be abused. But, on the other hand, yes, sometimes you have to wait in line a little while longer than you wanted, or sometimes life isn’t fair.

But when you catch yourself just leaving a little bit of a sense of entitlement, take a step back and just remind yourself, like why you’re keeping score because so many people will say, “Well, I’m a good person. I deserve better,” or, “I’m going to put all this good stuff out in the universe,” but then they’re really only doing it because they expect it to come back to them, like, “Oh, if I earn enough karma points, then good things will happen.”

So, just remember that whatever it is you have to offer the world isn’t a loan; it’s a gift. You have plenty of things to give the world, but if you always expect to get the exact amounts of things back that you’re putting out into the world, you’re not going to be happy. So, just knowing, it’s wonderful that you have gifts and talents and skills and things that you can give to the world but you’re not guaranteed that, just because you’re a nice person, good things are going to come your way.

Pete Mockaitis
Indeed. And I want to ask you, we had another podcast guest, Robert Glazer, do you know him?

Amy Morin
I know of him, yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, he quoted you in his email, so you got that going for you. And I really liked this a lot, you say, “The more you practice tolerating discomfort, the more confidence you’ll gain in your ability to accept new challenges.” Now, that sounds true. Do you have some awesome studies or data or research backing that up as well?

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, I guess when it comes to discomfort, we do in therapy something we teach people is distress tolerance skills. And so often, again, our default is to run from distress, but I see it all the time in my therapy office, when people learn to tolerate distress, the things that they thought were really scary, really aren’t that scary anymore.

So, distress tolerance skills can be anything from developing a mantra in your brain that you repeat over and over, so that when you start thinking, “Ah, I can’t handle this,” or sometimes it’s just about tolerating something a little longer than you think that you can. So often we’ll think, “Oh, I can’t stand this.” Well, you can, and you’ll train your brain to see things a little bit differently if you tolerate it a little bit longer than you think you can.

So, I love to run. One of my challenges is I try to run a six-minute mile every day. I can’t quite do it yet but I do it. I attempt to do it anyway. And it never fails, about the three-quarter mile mark, my brain tells me, “You can’t do this.” But I know my brain is lying, like I can keep running at that pace, and despite the fact, though, that my brain will keep telling me, “You’re too tired. Your lungs can’t hack it. Your legs are going to give out,” whatever it is, we go through this lengthy list of reasons why my brain wants me to quit because it’s uncomfortable to try to run.

But I know, I can trick my brain or I can prove to my brain that it’s wrong. And, slowly, over time, my brain now is like, “Okay, I know that you’re going to keep running, anyway but we’re going to keep trying these things on you,” and our brain will try to trick us and tell us that we can’t stand it, but we can. And the best strategy I know to do is to just prove your brain wrong. Know that your brain will underestimate you, it will tell you that you’re not capable, you’re not competent, but when it tells you that, just say, “Okay, challenge accepted,” and push yourself a little harder and see what happens.

And over time, you can train your brain to see you as a little more competent, a little more capable, and that will give you the confidence to know, “Okay, I can handle being uncomfortable.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And that could happen either through doing the thing that is unpleasant, either through physical exercise, running as you mentioned. I’ve actually been…I got on a Wim Hof kick, if you know this guy. I’ve been dunking my hands and face into ice water and, well, actually, it’s rather refreshing in and of itself but it also hurts and is unpleasant.

And so, that’s kind of the challenge, it’s like, “Oh, I really want to take my hand out of this ice water now.” It’s like, “Well, I will do that in 10 seconds.” And in so doing, I don’t have the data here, but I think that this is doing something good for me and the ability to tolerate discomfort and have confidence in my abilities. And so, I guess, Amy, I’m not crazy. Shoving my face and hands in ice water can be helpful in this way?

Amy Morin
Yeah. And that is right along the exact same theory, and that’s one thing that I have refused to do. I grew up in rural Maine where a lot of people don’t have running water. To be honest, there are still a lot of poverty there. My parents both grew up in extreme poverty and worked really hard to make sure that I had hot water. Like, I cannot do that to my parents, to then say, “Hey, guess what? I’m taking a cold shower for fun.” So, I don’t do that but it’s absolutely along the same lines, to say, “Okay, how do I put myself in an uncomfortable situation?” And then prove to myself that, “Yeah, this is uncomfortable but I can stand it.”

And then when you teach yourself, “I’m going to do this a little longer than I would like to,” it just teaches it, “Yeah, I can go out there and do hard things. And although it’s uncomfortable, it’s not the end of the world.”

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

Amy Morin
Gosh, no, I think you’ve covered so much about mental strength. I appreciate that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. All right. Well, then can you start with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Amy Morin
So, something my mother always used to tell me was, “Never let your morals get in the way of doing what’s right.” She didn’t make that quote up but I’m not sure who said it, but it’s something I remind myself quite often. There’s plenty of things out there, sometimes it may not be what I think is the moral decision but then when you really stop and think about it, you think, “No, but this is the right thing to do.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or piece of research?

Amy Morin
I think one of my favorite studies is the one where they took a look at older men who were like in their 80s, and they decided to rewind the clock. Most of these men had some physical health issues, maybe some cognitive decline, but what you’d expect from elderly men. And they decided to put them in a situation where they pretended like it was back in like 1950, back when they’d still have been vibrant men in their 40s and physically capable, and they made their surroundings looked like it was 1950.

And they found that, by doing that, some of these men started to stand up straighter, their health got better, their mental health improved, their cognitive abilities improved, simply because they thought this is how they were supposed to be. And I guess what I take away from that study is sometimes we think, okay, whether it’s about aging, or it’s about a person with a certain illness or ailment, or whatever it is, we have this notion of, “This is how I should be when I’m 40. This is how I should be if I have high cholesterol or some physical health issue,” but it’s really our minds that make all of those things happen.

And so, if we can just remind ourselves, “Well, if I want to behave like the person I want to become, I want to be a vibrant healthy younger person,” or, “I want to be somebody who’s happy and full of life. I want to be a confident person,” act like that person now and you could become it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Amy Morin
My favorite recent book is The Gift written by Edith Eger, she’s a Holocaust survivor.

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

Amy Morin
One of the things I do that still probably helps me the most is I keep a paper calendar so I can have it in front of me, and so I can look at dates and things going on, and still writing down lists and having that with me at all times instead of just relying on technology. It helps me feel better.

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

Amy Morin
I would say running every day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people quote back to you often, they re-tweet, they Kindle book highlight, it’s the Amy original they can’t resist?

Amy Morin
Yeah, I think I said something to the effect of whomever said time heals everything lied to us. It’s what you do with your time that matters.

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

Amy Morin
My website AmyMorinLCSW.com.

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

Amy Morin
I would say set a goal this week and challenge yourself to do it, and then check in and see what happened, and what can you learn from it, and ask yourself, “What did I do to become mentally stronger this week?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Amy, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and success and mental strength.

Amy Morin
Thank you. I appreciate it.