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899: How to Speak Smarter When Put on the Spot with Matt Abrahams

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Matt Abrahams outlines six steps to improve your spontaneous speaking skills.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to feel more comfortable speaking on the spot
  2. Four tactics to keep speaking anxiety in check
  3. The easy formula for great self-introductions

About Matt

Matt Abrahams is a leading expert in communication with decades of experience as an educator, author, podcast host, and coach. As a Lecturer in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, he teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting. He received Stanford GSB’s Alumni Teaching Award in recognition of his teaching students around the world.

When he isn’t teaching, Matt is a sought-after keynote speaker and communication consultant. He has helped countless presenters improve and hone their communication, including some who have delivered IPO roadshows as well as TED, World Economic Forum, and Nobel Prize presentations. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award-winning podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart: The Podcast. He is the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot. His previous book Speaking Up without Freaking Out: 50 Techniques for Confident and Compelling Presenting has helped thousands of people manage speaking anxiety and present more confidently and authentically.

Resources Mentioned

Matt Abrahams Interview Transcript

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

Matt Abrahams
Thank you so much for having me back. I’m excited to chat with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited, too. It’s been five and a half years.

Matt Abrahams
You can tell by the lack of hair and the more gray I have that it’s been a while.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Well, way back in episode 253 when the show was but a pop was when we covered that. I’m curious, in your world of research and communication, have you discovered anything new that was surprising and striking to you?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, so I’ve spent a lot of time since we last spoke thinking about several concepts: how to be more engaging, how to be more concise, and with the new book I have coming out, really, an amalgamation of those, combining those, and the notion of how to speak more effectively in the moment. A lot of our communication happens spontaneously. Yet, if we ever receive any kind of training or spend time thinking about it, it’s always for planned communication – pitches, presentations, meetings with agendas. And, yet, most of what we do in our personal and professional lives happens in the moment and on the spot.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And that’s just a great title here for your book Think Faster, Talk Smarter. And you’re bringing back some fond memories for me when I was in a high school speech team. Impromptu was my jam, although you still got, I think we had to divide eight minutes of prep and talking, and, ideally, it’d be about less than two minutes of prep with your notecard, so it’s still not quite on the spot. That’s more time than, “Hey, Pete, what do you think about this?” than you get in most circumstances.

Matt Abrahams
I love that you did impromptu speaking in high school. There was a time when I left High Tech before I started what I do today where I taught high school, and I actually coached some kids in impromptu speaking. And it’s a great way to learn how to be better on your feet, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then, tell us, when it comes to Think Faster, Talk Smarter, overall, what’s the big idea here?

Matt Abrahams
Well, first and foremost, I think the most counterintuitive idea is that you can prepare to be spontaneous. That’s the big thing. And then the second thing is that many of us feel that there are people who are just born with the gift of gab, and they can communicate effectively regardless if it’s planned or not. And I’m here to tell you that you can actually learn to get better at it.

And most people can improve dramatically by taking some time, putting in some practice, and adjusting their mindset to do this in a way that they might not have thought to do it. So, really, you can practice to get better. Everybody can do it. And the book and the process that I teach has six steps to it. The first four are really around mindset, and the last two are around what I call messaging.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m excited to dig into these six steps. Maybe before we do that, can you share with us a cool story of someone who felt pretty flustered when they were called upon to speak, and what they did, and the transformation they saw?

Matt Abrahams
Yes. So, I have worked with a great number of people from seasoned executives down to just everyday people, students, for sure, and there are numerous examples of people who have been put on the spot. So, one that comes to mind is an individual who was attending a meeting, he was just an engineer in the company. He was going to learn about the future releases of the product and different people around the table were sharing their pieces.

His boss, who was supposed to share his work, you can see where this is going, didn’t show up. It turned out that his boss’ wife went into labor, and he was obviously doing what was most important for him, but that left the person who was working with me in a moment of utter panic. He had to now represent his whole team’s work without having prepared to do so.

He did okay. It wasn’t the end of the world but he was definitely stressed out about it and a little bit traumatized, and that’s what brought him to do some work with me. And when I walked him through the methodology I introduced just a few moments ago, he later had a subsequent situation, not the same situation, but another situation where he had to step up and speak.

His team was doing a tribute to that part of the project he represented several months prior. They were celebrating what they did, and he was put on the spot by his boss to stand up and say something as a way of congratulating the team for their success, and he was able to do it with much more confidence and it came out much better.

So, just in a few short months, he developed the ability to speak better on his feet. He felt really, really good about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. All right. Well, let’s hear what are these six steps?

Matt Abrahams
So, when we start, we first have to start with mindset. And the very first step in mindset has to do with managing anxiety. Regardless if it’s planned or spontaneous, anxiety looms large in communication so we have to first take steps to manage our anxiety. The second step has to do with the way we strive for perfection. Many of us want to get it right when we communicate. I make the argument that there is no one right way to communicate. Certainly, better ways and worse ways but no one right way.

Step three has you reframing the circumstances you find yourself in. Many of us see these situations as threatening, we’re put on the spot, we have to defend our position, and that can actually make it very difficult for us. Step four in the mindset category has to do with listening. It sounds ironic but some of the things that help us best communicate in the moment is to listen more deeply and better.

And then we switch from mindset into this notion of messaging. So, I am a huge proponent of structure. I think frameworks help us in all communication but, especially, in the moment when we have to speak on the spot. And, in fact, the whole second part of the book is dedicated to different frameworks and structures you can use for different situations, like introducing yourself, making small talk, answering questions.

And then the final step, step six, also has to do with messaging, how to be clear and concise. One of the big problems when we speak spontaneously is we ramble because we’re discovering our content as we are speaking, and we tend to say more than we need to. So, being focused, clear, and concise is critical in all communication but, especially, spontaneous communication.

So, those are the six steps: mindset and messaging.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, maybe let’s tick through each one of these. For the step one, what are the top do’s and don’ts for managing anxiety?

Matt Abrahams
So, when it comes to managing anxiety, we have to take a two-pronged approach. We have to manage both symptoms and sources. So, symptoms are what we physiologically experience. Some people feel their heart really pounding, others sweat and blush, some shake, and there are some things we can do to manage those symptoms. I’ll give you examples in a moment. But we also have to think about sources. Those are the things that initiate and exacerbate our anxiety.

So, when it comes to sources, let me give you three quick things we can all do. Number one, take deep belly breaths, the kind you would ever do if you’ve ever done yoga, or tai chi, or qigong, where you really fill your lower abdomen. And, interestingly, what’s most important is the exhale not the inhale. So, you want your exhale to be twice as long as your inhalation.

Second, and this is a mental thing, remind yourself that you are speaking in service of your audience. Often, when we are asked to communicate, it is because we have something of value to provide to those that we are speaking to. If we really listen in to our self-talk right before we speak, we say lots of negative things to ourselves, like, “You better not screw up,” or, “You should’ve prepared more,” or, “That person who just went is far better than you are.” So, if we can remind ourselves that we actually have value to bring that the audience can benefit, that can cancel out some of that negative self-talk.

And then, finally, what we need to be thinking about is our body and how our body is reacting. So, if you blush and perspire, you need to cool yourself down. If you shake, you need to do some purposeful movements, like stepping in if you’re standing up. To cool yourself down, holding something cold in the palm of your hands will reduce your core body temperature. The palms of your hands are thermoregulators for your body. So, those are some just quick tips of what we can do for symptoms, and there are many others.

The second side of the equation is sources, and there are many sources of anxiety. One source is that we’re very nervous about not achieving the goal that we’re trying to accomplish. So, if you’re an entrepreneur, maybe you’re trying to get funding. If you’re one of my students, maybe you’re trying to get a good grade. If you’re working in an organization, maybe you’re trying to get support for your cause.

What makes us nervous is we start thinking about what will happen if we don’t achieve that goal, and that can make us very nervous. So, what do we do? We have to get present-oriented because worrying about a goal is worrying about something in the future. So, becoming present-oriented can short-circuit that. For example, you can do something physical. Actors and actresses will shake their body out. You can walk around the building. If you get in your body, you’re not in your mind.

Second, you can listen to a song or a playlist, it helps you get very present-oriented. A very simple way to get present-oriented sounds silly is to say a tongue twister. You can’t say a tongue twister right without being in the present moment, and it warms up your voice. So, lots of things we can do to manage symptoms and sources to help us with the first step of the spontaneous speaking methodology.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Manage anxiety, understood. We got the symptoms, we got the sources, and that’s handy. In terms of getting present, I’m intrigued, are there some additional ways that you recommend folks get into their body as opposed to their mind?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah. So, a great way, if you have an opportunity, is to connect with people, have conversations. So, if I’m ever in a physical space with other people where I’m presenting, maybe I’m running a meeting, or I’m giving a presentation where I know I’m going to get Q&A, and it’s appropriate, I’m out talking to the people, just getting to know them. It’s very hard to have a conversation with somebody and not be in the present moment. So, I’m listening, I’m connecting, that helps.

Another simple kind of fun way is to start at some hard number and count backwards by an even harder number. So, start at 100 and count backwards by, let’s say, 17s. That can be very challenging. So, there’s a lot that we can do to get ourselves present-oriented.

Pete Mockaitis
Seventeens.

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, try it. you can do the first one, that’s 73. Oh, I’m sorry, 83, and the rest are really hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now let’s hear about the second step when we’re thinking about striving for perfection.

Matt Abrahams
Yes. So, when many of us speak, our goal, we feel, is to do it right, to say the right thing, to be perfect. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves. Society doesn’t help. If you ask people, “Who’s a really good speaker?” they will typically pick people who are professional communicators. They’ll say some TED speaker from doing a TED Talk, some politician, actor, actress, and that sets an incredibly high bar for the quality of what communication should be like.

Now, we seem to forget that these folks have been trained, and coached, and practiced a lot. In the case of TED Talks, sometimes they’re even edited. So, we need to be thinking about the criteria we use to judge and evaluate our communication because we set the bar really high. That said, we try to achieve it and we want to be perfect and right. And we can disabuse ourselves of that.

I start my Stanford MBA course every quarter I teach with this saying, I say, “Try to maximize your mediocrity in your communication.” And let me tell you, Pete, these folks’ jaws drop. They’ve never been told in their lives to be mediocre. But the value of this is when you strive just to get it done, you put less pressure on yourself, which actually boils down to cognitive load.

Your brain is like a computer. It’s not a perfect analogy but it works. And you know on your laptops and or phones when you have lots of apps or windows open, your system performs a little less well. It’s not performing at its top speed because it’s doing too much at once. The same thing is true with you when you communicate. If I’m evaluating and judging everything I say, that means when I communicate, I have less cognitive focus and effort in what I’m actually saying.

So, you can reduce that by just telling yourself, “Hey, dial down that judgment and evaluation.” I’m not saying never judge and evaluate. You should. But if you dial that down a little bit, you can just focus on getting it done. And when I explain this to my students, I end the class by saying, “Maximize mediocrity so you can achieve greatness,” and they get it. They understand that the pressure they’re putting on themselves actually works against them.

So, that’s step number two. Just get the communication done. And, in so doing, you’re likely to do it very well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And how about the third one, service as an opportunity?

Matt Abrahams
Yes. So, many of us, when we think about our speaking situations, and we think about, “Oh, you’ve got to answer questions on the spot,” for example, or, somebody asks you for feedback, or to introduce somebody in the moment. Many of us don’t say, “Oh, this is a great opportunity.” We think, “Oh, my goodness, I’m going to screw up. I can’t believe I’m in this situation. I have to defend myself or my position.” So, we get very defensive.

And that affects not just how we hold our bodies. We get tight and tense. Our tone gets more curt. Our answers get really short and brief. We can adjust that by reframing the circumstance even in the most difficult spontaneous speaking. Let’s imagine a Q&A session where somebody is just coming at us, fast, furious, spicy. We can still see that as an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to connect, an opportunity to potentially find areas to collaborate, and, in so doing, it will change our approach.

We become more open in our body posture. Our answers become more detailed. Our tone becomes more collaborative. All of that will help us do better in the interaction. So, reframing these situations not as hostile and challenging but as opportunities can fundamentally change how we approach this.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Let’s hear about listening.

Matt Abrahams
Well, so I host a podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart. I’ve not done nearly as many episodes as you’ve done. We’ve just come up on our hundredth, and it’s all about communication. And across these hundred episodes, what has been very clear to me is that listening is critical. We absolutely have to listen better. Most of us do not listen well. We listen just enough to understand what the person is saying so we can then respond, rehearse, evaluate, and judge. We need to listen deeply.

I once heard a video where somebody was talking about jazz and jazz music, and he talked about a teacher he had. And the teacher told him that when he’s listening to jazz music, to really understand it, he has to listen until he sweats. And I love that. When you listen to really connect and in the moment with somebody, you have to listen intently. Listen until you sweat.

So, when it comes to listening, I have a framework that I borrowed from a colleague of mine at the business school, his name is Collins Dobbs. And he talks about, in crucial conversations, three things. And these three things apply to listening beautifully, so I borrowed it – space, pace, grace. To listen truly well, you have to give yourself pace, space, and grace. By pace, I mean slow down.

All of us move so quickly and we have so much going on, we distract ourselves, so we need to slow down so we can really listen. We need to give ourselves space, not just physical space. Move into an environment where you can listen well, but also mental space. We have to give ourselves space in our minds to really focus, be present, and pay attention.

And then grace, we have to give ourselves permission, not only give ourselves pace and space, but to listen internally to our intuition. So, when somebody says something, if you said to me, “Hey, Matt, I’m doing great,” well, the words might say one thing but my sense is the way you said them might mean something else, and I need to give that some credence, and then act upon that as well.

So, the ability to listen minimizes the likelihood that you will respond poorly in a spontaneous speaking situation. For example, you come out of a meeting and you look at me, and you say, “Hey, Matt, how did you think that went?” And, all of a sudden, I hear, “Feedback. Pete wants feedback. Well, Pete, you did this poorly. You could’ve done this better. This should be different next time.”

But if I would’ve really listened, I might’ve noticed that you came out the back door, not the front door, that when you asked me, you were looking down, your tone of voice was very different. What you really wanted in that moment was support. You didn’t want feedback, and I missed it, and I made it actually worse not better. That’s why we have to listen really well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then when it comes to some of your frameworks, what is the framework for introducing yourself?

Matt Abrahams
Well, let me give you an all-purpose framework first, and then I can give you a specific one when you do an introduction toast or tribute. So, my favorite structure in the whole world is three simple questions: what, so what, now what. The what is your idea, it’s your product, your service. It could be the person you’re introducing, including yourself. The so what is why is it important to the people you’re talking to. And then the now what becomes what comes next.

So, if I were introducing you, Pete, I might say, “I’m really excited to introduce you to Pete. He’s a very talented person. He does many things, including host a podcast. In talking to Pete, you’re going to learn so much from his vast experience. Now, I’m going to turn the floor over to Pete.” Did you see I just did what, so what, now what as a way of introducing you?

Now, if you’re doing a toast or a tribute, where you’re introducing an idea, a product, maybe a group of people, another structure can work really well, and that is what I call WHAT. What is, “Why are we here? What is the event?” The H is, “How are you, the person doing the introduction, connected to the event?” The A is an anecdote or story you might tell that’s relevant and appropriate for the group. And then the T is some kind of thanks or gratitude.

So, imagine you are the MC, the master of ceremonies at a wedding. You would start, you wouldn’t have to necessarily say why you’re all here. People can figure that out as they see everybody all fancy dressed and probably came from a ceremony. But you might want to explain how you’re connected. You might say, “I’ve known the bride and groom for 10 years. In fact, I introduced them.” And then you would give an anecdote or story that’s relevant and appropriate, and then you would thank everybody, and then maybe bring up the next speaker.

So, the WHAT, why are we here, how are you connected, anecdote or two, and then thank you can be a helpful way of introducing people or an event.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, could you show us that in action? Let’s just say there’s a project kickoff, everyone’s getting together, and they’re going around introducing themselves. Matt, could you show us the introduction of self in action?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah. So, I hate the, “Let’s all go around the table and introduce ourselves.” I think there are so many better ways to get to know each other and names. But if you have to do that, so what I like to do, I do a slight variation of what, so what, now what, in that I start with something provocative. Rather than saying, “Hi, my name is…” That’s boring. Everybody sort of tunes out.

So, I’ll start by saying, “I’m somebody who’s passionate about communication. My name is Matt, and I am a podcast host, an author, and a teacher. And I look forward to sharing with you what I’ve learned about communication and, more importantly, learning from you what you know about communication.” That’s how I would introduce myself. It’s a little more engaging. It allows me to animate and demonstrate my passion. And it really sets up the next step of the interaction.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now let’s talk about being clear and concise.

Matt Abrahams
Many of us, when we speak spontaneously, we discover what we’re saying as we say it. So, we say more than we need to. My mother has this wonderful saying that really helps get to the crux of this. And I know she didn’t create it but I certainly attribute it to her. And her saying is, “Tell me the time, don’t build me the clock.”

Many of us are clock builders. We say way too much either because we want to demonstrate how much work we’ve done, or how smart we are, or just so into whatever it is we’re talking about, we give way more information than people need. And, in so doing, we can bore them, we can cause them to get confused, we can lose our place and where we’re trying to head. So, really being concise is critical, and there are lots of ways to be more concise.

The two that I like to start with is, one, you have to know your audience. You have to understand what’s important to them. The more relevant you can make your content, the more likely you can focus it on the needs of your audience. That’s number one. And number two, you really have to think about your goal. Whenever you communicate, you have a goal, and you have to think about that goal such that it will help you focus.

And, to me, a goal has three parts: information, emotion, and action. In other words, what do you want your audience to know? How do you want them to feel? And what do you want them to do? And even in the moment, when I’m walking into a situation where I have to speak spontaneously, I can quickly say what I want them to know, feel, and do, and that helps me focus what I say.

I bet, when you were doing impromptu speeches in high school, at some point, before you started speaking, you would think to yourself, “What is it I’m trying to accomplish here?” And whatever that answer was helped you focus your communication so you were clearer and more concise.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Matt, this is quite a lovely rundown here. So, those are our six steps. And so, I’m curious then, maybe we’ve done all that prep, and yet, still, someone puts us on the spot, we’re drawing a blank, what do we do?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah. So, the number one fear people report to me is, “What do I do when I blank out?” And we can reduce the likelihood of blanking out by having a clear goal, thinking about our audience, and leveraging a structure. Because, if you think about it, a structure gives you a map, and if you have a map, it’s hard to get lost.

So, I might know, not remember, or know exactly what I want to say next, but if I’m using a structure like what, so what, now what, and I know that I’ve just covered the what, I know that so what has to come next. So, it helps give me directionality. So, we can avoid blanking out by, first, really leveraging a structure and knowing our audience.

Now, let’s say the worst happens. Even though you’ve got a structure, even though you’re feeling good about your communication, for whatever reason, you blank out. In that moment, there are two things I recommend you do. One, go back to go forward. Repeat yourself. When you repeat yourself, often you will get yourself back on track.

It’s like when you lose your keys or your phone, what do you do? You retrace your steps so you can find your way. Same thing works. Second, if that doesn’t work, distract your audience. You just need a few seconds to get yourself back. Here’s how I do it.

Pete Mockaitis
“Look over there.”

Matt Abrahams
Not so much that way. Not the smoke and mirrors distraction. But here’s what I do. When I teach, I teach the same strategic communication course multiple times a year at the Stanford Business School, and sometimes I’ll forget, “Did I say that in this class? Have we covered this already?” And I just need a moment to collect my thoughts.

So, I’ll just stop wherever I’m at, and I’ll say to my students, I’ll say, “I want to pause for a moment. I’d like for you to think about how what we’ve just covered can be applied in your life.” And when I say that, my students don’t think, “Oh, Matt forgot.” My students think, like, “Oh, how could I apply this. It’s important. We should apply it. It’s nice that he’s giving us time to do that.”

I think all of us can come up with a question that we could ask pretty much anywhere in our communication that would give us just a few seconds. So, imagine you’re in an update meeting, a product meeting, you could pause, and say, “What’s the impact of what we’ve just discussed on our timeline or on the product we’re coming up with?” People will think about it, and in that moment, you can collect your thoughts.

So, if the worst happens, repeat yourself. If that doesn’t get you back on track, ask some kind of question, assert something that gets people thinking in a different way, and that gives you time to rethink what you’ve got to do.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And then I’m thinking of the project management or project kickoffs setting, it might be any number of great things to prompt people to think about it. Now, I guess in some ways, if the question is too far afield from what you were talking about, they’re like, “Huh? Why were you asking us to do this now?” Like, “I’d like for you to anticipate some of the sticking points as you imagine this playing out in process.” Like, “Really, you’re telling us about the financial projections? I don’t know why we’d do that now.”

Matt Abrahams
Yeah. Well, of course. So, of course, there are certain constraints but you could certainly say in the midst, you can say, “Now I want everybody to think back to the previous project. What were some of the sticking points that got in the way? Or, what are some of the financial issues?” Depending on whatever it was, people will start thinking.

And you could even say, “We’ve got some new people on the team. They don’t remember what it was like last time. I’d like each of you to just turn to somebody and share what a big issue it was for our last release, and then we can start talking more about where we’re going.” I don’t think a single person would question that at all, and it will help you be more effective.

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

Matt Abrahams
Yeah. So, I would just like to re-emphasize the fact that everybody can get better in their communication. The process I’ve delineated might sound intimidating, might sound like hard work. It’s not. You can do it in bite-size pieces. You can practice. The reality is this: the only way you get better at communication is the way you get better at everything else in life – repetition, reflection, and feedback.

If you’ve ever played a sport, a musical instrument, you had to practice. And then you had to reflect, “What’s working? What’s not working?” And then, finally, seek advice, guidance, and support from others so you can get better. I’ve seen it in my own life, I’ve seen it in the people I teach and I coach. You just have to take the time. You take small steps forward and it makes a huge, huge difference.

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

Matt Abrahams
So, a quote that I love, Pete, and thank you for asking this, is a quote by Mark Twain, and it’s got a little tongue in cheek here but it proves a point that I just made about how we can work to get better at spontaneous speaking. And Mark Twain said, “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”

And the point behind this is you have to put in work. You have to practice to get better at spontaneous speaking. Mark Twain knew it a long time ago. It still holds true today. And it puts a smile on my face every time I think about it, and I think it helps others understand what’s possible when it comes to spontaneous speaking.

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

Matt Abrahams
I have lots of favorite research points but I’ll share some research from a friend and colleague, her name is Alison Wood Brooks. She teaches at Harvard Business School. And a while back, she did some research that looked at how we can reframe our anxiety around speaking not as something that makes us anxious but as something that excites us.

It turns out that our physiological response to excitement and anxiety are exactly the same. Our bodies have one arousal response and we can reframe that and relabel it. So, instead of saying, “Oh, I’m so nervous,” we could say, “Hey, I’m really excited to do this.” And we can attribute those symptoms we’re feeling to excitement. And it actually ends up with us performing better, that is we feel better about how we did. And the audience sees us as doing better. So, I love that research.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Matt Abrahams
So, one of my favorite books of all time is a book called Improv Wisdom. It’s a book by Patricia Ryan Madson. I know Patricia, I’ve gotten to know her over the years. A very skinny book but it’s got lots of life changing advice that comes from the world of improvisation.

There are very few books that I have read where, upon closing the book, I have fundamentally changed my life based on what I’ve read. And this is one of those books, and it’s a book I return to often. So, it’s called Improv Wisdom Patricia Ryan Madson.

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

Matt Abrahams
So, I’ve already alluded to a few, there are two. Actually, you know what, there are several that I use. Let me share the most useful tool I think I use, and that is paraphrasing. I think paraphrasing is the Swiss Army knife of communication. You can use it for so many things. As a podcast host, I use it to really clarify what I heard my audience members say, my guests say.

I also use it as a tool to distribute airtime in a meeting. So, if somebody’s talking too much, I’ll paraphrase and throw it over to somebody else to talk some more. And I also use paraphrasing to clarify in my own life what it is I just heard somebody say. So, if one of my teenage kids, or somebody else in my life says something, and I want to validate that I heard it, and make sure that I got it right, I’ll use paraphrasing. So, that is the single most useful tool I use to be awesome at what I do.

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

Matt Abrahams
Well, first and foremost, I invite people to listen into Think Fast, Talk Smart, that’s a podcast I host. It’s short episodes all about communication. Definitely consider checking out the book Think Faster, Talk Smarter. I’m not that creative with my naming. It’s all about spontaneous speaking. And then if you go to MattAbrahams.com, you’ll find a whole bunch of resources I’ve put up there for all things communication. And if you’re a big LinkedIn user, feel free to link in with me as well.

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

Matt Abrahams
I challenge everyone to think about the impact communication has on the work that you do, and on the others that you work with, and I encourage you and challenge you to work on your communication so that you can be a better version of yourself, a better colleague, a better partner, a better parent. Communication will help you do that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Matt, this has been a treat. I wish you many fast thoughts and talks.

Matt Abrahams
Awesome. Pete, it’s been great to be back with you. Keep doing the good work that you do. Keep thinking fast and talking smart. Thank you.

890: The Five Laws to Asking for What You Want with Laura Fredricks

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Laura Fredricks shares battle-tested tips to confidently ask for what you want.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to respond to “I’ll think about it.”
  2. Why you want to talk only 25% of the time
  3. Persuasion pitfalls to avoid

About Laura

Laura Fredricks is an author, speaker, and consultant who trains and coaches individuals, businesses, and nonprofits. Her latest book is Hard Asks Made Easy: How to Get Exactly What You Want. Through her previous six books, Fredricks has helped hundreds of global executives, industry trailblazers, marketing and communication leaders, boards, fundraisers, entrepreneurs, teenagers, artists, philanthropists, and everyday people achieve their best professional and personal lives possible.

Since 2005, Fredricks also has taught at New York University School of Professional Studies.

Resources Mentioned

Laura Fredricks Interview Transcript

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

Laura Fredricks
Welcome, welcome, to you, too, Pete. Glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to chat about your book, Hard Asks Made Easy: How to Get Exactly What You Want. It sounds super useful. But, first, I want to hear, as the ask expert, what are some of the wildest asks that you’ve come across in your days?

Laura Fredricks
It was two kids that wanted a dog and parents weren’t having it. They weren’t having it. So, I came across them and they came to me, and, of course, they’re doing all the stuff. So, I said, “What are you doing?” “Oh, we’re making the bed where the dog could go, and then we’re baking cakes for them, have the dog get them.” And they were doing all these extraneous stuff. It was hysterical.

So, I said, “Well, one thing you could do is wake up early every morning as if you’re going to walk the dog, because you know what’s on your parents’ mind. We’re going to get the dog and we’re going to be taking care of it.” I said, “Sure, you’re responsible so wake up early. Get that powder and go. And then you got to ask for the dog. You can’t just keep saying, ‘I want a dog. I want a dog.’ That’s not an ask.”

“Say, ‘Look, mom and dad, we wake up early every morning. We’ll take care of the dog. This is really important to us. We think it’s going to be great for the family. Can we go out this Saturday and look for a dog? Please, it’s important.’” And they did, they got the dog, and away we go.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Laura Fredricks
I did something sneaky in there, Pete. It’s all what we’re going to talk about. Every ask, two sentences, and a question.

Pete Mockaitis
That is absolutely something I’m going to ask you about. It’s funny because I can imagine this is in my future. Our kids have made reference to wanting a dog.

Laura Fredricks
It’s coming.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries you’ve made about us humans when it comes to asking during the course of your research and career and writing on this stuff?

Laura Fredricks
A lot. And this is the number one thing. Confidence wins the day. The more confident you are, the more likely you are to get what you ask for. I get this ask all the time, Pete, “Do women make better askers? Do men make better askers? If you’re at the top of your field, does that make you a better asker?” It’s all about confidence. And so, one of the things I try to do is create confidence in preparation first, and then actually asking. But you will get more of what you want by just a confident delivery.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I was going to ask specifically how you define confidence. So, you say a delivery that comes across as confident.

Laura Fredricks
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
So, whether you believe you deserve it or whatever is not so much relevant?

Laura Fredricks
No, it is. Because when you believe it, you deserve it, you look confident, there’s no way you can look any other way. So, that is the stepping stone to being confident. You have to be 100% sure that this is what you want, what you need, and what you deserve.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There we go. Now, let’s dig into the book, Hard Asks Made Easy: How to Get Exactly What You Want. What’s sort of the big idea or main thesis here?

Laura Fredricks
There are five laws of asking.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Laura Fredricks
I can walk you through them if you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, let’s do it.

Laura Fredricks
Good. So, I always like to do it this way. Pete, tell me one thing that you need this week or this month.

Pete Mockaitis
I need my team to chug ahead on, frankly, a pretty boring, repetitive project.

Laura Fredricks
Okay. Okay. Good. So, here we go. And that’s a good one because I just did an interview with someone, actually, which is really exciting, and she needed more sponsors for her show, so we walked through that one, which was great. But this is asking a team to keep going even though it’s not exactly exciting work. Did I get that right?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Laura Fredricks
Okay. So, here we go, Pete. Law number one, know exactly what you want with numbers and dates. So, knowing that, how would you ask your team? Numbers and dates.

Pete Mockaitis
I need all 890 of these episodes converted over for dynamic ad insertion by September 25th.

Laura Fredricks
There we go. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. Notice you didn’t say, “By fall,” “By the end of the summer,” by whatever. That, really, “Now, I’m crystal clear of what we need to do. I’m your team member. I’ve got a good idea.” Good. Now, law number two, stay with me, write the old-fashioned way, or type it on your phone but it has to be brain to physical here, 15 things your team is going to say to you.

So, I’ll help you out. “Don’t have that kind of time,” “Can’t make that deadline,” “Why do you need it by that date?” “What’s in it for me?” “Do I get extra pay?” “I’ve got these other tasks to do,” “Where is this on my priority list?” Okay, I just gave you seven. Now you fill in.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Well, my team is so fantastic that I think they’ll probably say, “Oh, hey, well, we’ll try. I mean, yeah, we’re going to do our best but I don’t know. I mean, that’s kind of a short deadline.”

Laura Fredricks
“Well, what happens if we don’t make the deadline?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Laura Fredricks
Okay. “Can we get extra help if we don’t make the deadline?” “Once that’s done, what else am I getting?” You get the point, 15 things. And we do this because of this reason. The number one reason people don’t ask, it’s not to hear, everyone here knows it’s not fear of rejection. It’s they’re afraid they’re going to hear a response they’re not prepared for.

And so, law number two, get you prepared. First step is 15 things you think they’re going to say, and then you go back, and what will you respond to each of them. That gets you right into the beginning of the show we talked about, law number three – deliver with confidence. Now, your listeners can’t see but every time I do an important interview, like the one we’re doing now, I stand. You’re standing, too. Why? It’s confident. No one exists in my universe right now other than you, Pete. Nobody.

Pete Mockaitis
Why thank you. Felt good.

Laura Fredricks
My voice is up, my energy is great, this is it, but people just step over this, like, “Oh, I got this. I’m good. I know my boss.” Just like you said, “My team is great. They love me. We love them. It’s all fine.” But we’re not delivering with confidence.

Law number four. Clarify what you think you heard. So, let’s say, one of the responses, which is very common, not that your team would give it to you, but let’s say they do, “Oh, Pete, you know, I got to think about it.” What would you say?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, I suppose when I’m thinking about something, usually, there’s something pretty specific under the surface that I need to think about in terms of, like, “Well, I’m wondering if I have that capacity given that there is a vacation scheduled.” And so, often “think about” really means gather some more information and do some research to bring a little bit more certainty to an unknown.

Laura Fredricks
Right. So, the thing about that, which is a very common response which we’ll have to prepare for, is your only job is to find out the “it.” What is the it? Now, you went down and said, “There’s research. There’s something to contemplate on,” there’s always something. But you need to find out in that moment what it is.

So, anyone hears I have to think about it, this is what you say to your team member, “Thanks so much for sharing. This is great.” This is my words, use whatever, “To the extent you feel comfortable, can you share with me what you’re thinking about?” And here’s the most important part, “I’m here to help you,” and you bring it back in. It’s not I threw something at you, you threw a response back, time is going to take care of it. There we go.

“To the extent you feel comfortable, can you share with me what you’re thinking about? I’m here to help you.” And you know what? They tell you. And exactly the reason might be that you just said, “Well, you know, here we are. It’s August 3rd, I have the last two weeks of August off. I don’t think I can make the September deadline.” And now we know what it is. It’s the timing.

It could be, “Well, I’ve done 90% of this project. I don’t think I should do any more. I think this other teammate should do it because I did 90% of it.” You don’t know what the “it” is, so figure out the “it.” And then law number five, and this is very important, right there and then, plan your next move while you’re talking about it.

Because if it’s, “That’s great. Go back. Think about it. We’ll circle back. August 3rd will be closed.” August 15th becomes August 30th, and too much time goes by. So, you could say, “Great. Work it out with your teammate. Friday 10:00 o’clock, let’s meet again and finalize this.” And now you’ve taken a big topic and you’ve condensed it, and you’re going to get an answer in a short amount of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. There we have it. The big idea is those five laws, and you just laid out what are those five laws. And I think the part that’s vibing for me the most is the idea of we fear more getting a surprise question that we can’t answer than we do getting a no. And I think that resonates, well, for me. I guess maybe you’re suggesting it’s universal.

Because if I get a question I don’t know the answer to, I feel, I don’t know what the word is. I feel kind of like a loser in terms of, “Okay, guys. So, you’re coming in here asking for a special favor, and then in reply, I have a very basic clarifying question to ask of you, and you have no idea. That feels kind of disrespectful to me who’s being asked that you don’t have your act together. And so, that’s what I’m feeling.”

Laura Fredricks
It does. It does. And, also, like you said the word, surprise is correct. I always say, “You don’t want to have that deer-in-the-headlights look, like whatever.” That’s why I did law number two of writing down the 15 things because you’re pretty much going to hit the parameter of where it is. And many people in leadership positions, this is the reason why they don’t ask.

Think about it. You don’t get to be CEO, you don’t get to be in the C-suite, you don’t get to be the VP out of the sky. You’re prepared, you’re good, you’re knowledgeable. You’re the one to have that role, and a lot of times they don’t step up and ask for that same reason.

Pete Mockaitis
Because if you’re the vice president of whatever, and you ask the CEO, and the CEO asks you a sensible question, and you’re like, “Ugh, I have no idea,” then you’re sort of worried, like, “Uh-oh, maybe I’m not going to be the next CEO because the CEO now thinks I’m dumb and unprepared.”

Laura Fredricks
You’re supposed to know it. You feel judged.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I suppose when you do these 15 things, you can have the polished version of “I don’t know” at your disposal.

Laura Fredricks
Well, what you can do, and I recommend to everyone, like use this as a positive moment. We’re kind of on audio here but the visual matters. When you hear something you don’t like, normally, your body language tanks and you just give it away. Just say, “You know what, that’s a great question. Let me circle back. How about Friday 2:00 o’clock? I’ll have the answer. We’ll go from there.” Use it to your advantage. Use it as a leverage point. Don’t let that take you away. If response number 16 came and you weren’t ready, keep that list. That becomes number 16.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so I like the clear formulations here. So, we got our five laws. You’ve also got three rules and a formula. So, let’s hear these, too.

Laura Fredricks
Yes, I do. Well, these all came from… asking has always been left from luck, chance, and time. If I ask enough people, one person is going to say yes. If I spend so much time with Pete, he’s going to naturally know what I want. And that’s how asks had gone, and I said, “I have to put organization, structure, and focus because when people have a path, they’ll follow it, and they’ll do it. Without steps, they’re not going to do it.”

So, my three rules, which are pretty easy but you’ve got to follow them, is be prepared, be personable, be present. And the preparation is what we did in the second law, but it’s also beyond doing your research. Really get to know a person. This comes to play when people want another job and they want to network, and they want to find a reference, and they want to find someone who might be in the company that they’re about to go in, where they’re a candidate for.

So, first of all, if someone is going to say, “Hey, I know this person, and it might be good for you. I kind of know them, kind of don’t,” there’s a lot of questions you need to ask, “Do you know anything about them? Do you know their interests, how they like to be communicated with? Are they kind of a person who is relaxed, likes jokes, very formal?”

All that stuff you can gather, makes you prepared for when you want to use that person as a reference should you ever become one of the top candidates. Just be prepared. I think people step over, it’s like, “I know Pete. He’s a good guy. The conversation will go well.” It won’t. Be prepared.

Second is be personable. And what I mean by this is, it’s one of my mantras that I love, your tone is as important as your words. Everyone who comes to me, it’s like, “What’s the right words? What’s the magical formula to ask?” And I can do that, but I always practice with them, “How do you sound? Take your phone, record your voice. Do you like it? Are you using one or two words way too much?” Your tone is as important as your words.

And then the last is be present. And I say listening with presence matters so much. Now, it’s gotten a little bit easier since a lot of us still do a lot of communication on Zoom, so we can look at our computer screen and focus. And you’ve prepared all your guests like me, to have no distractions, cellphone off, landline off, windows closed, the whole bit. The same applies when you’re going to ask. You have to be present. Nobody exists but the person you’re asking.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And can you also share with us the 75% to 25% rule?

Laura Fredricks
Yes. That gets to listening with presence. How many times, think back, that you had a conversation or even someone asked you where they’re overtalking it, they’re selling it, they’re pitching it, they’re selling it again? And by the end of the conversation, you don’t know if you’re supposed to think about something, you don’t know if you’re supposed to respond to something, and it was a great conversation but you’re kind of clueless.

So, I say, especially when you’re in the ask, it has to be they talk 75, you talk 25, which gets us to the ask formula of two sentences and a question. You end on a question so that the person you ask speaks next.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, two sentences and a question, and the goal there is that you’re not overtalking, and they do the next speaking, as opposed to dead silence, “Okay, now what?” So, can you give us a few examples of sentence, sentence, question, sentence, sentence, question?

Laura Fredricks
Sure. Sure. There’s a person I knew who wanted, she was the vice president and the CEO position came up. She’s in Colorado and she contacted me. And, again, people can go too heavy on what they accomplished so that they should naturally rise to the next position. And I said, “Listen, let’s do this in preparation. Let’s frame your interview. Let’s frame your ask. Go in there, and here we go.”

First always, “Thank you for your time. This is great. It’s a wonderful opportunity and I’m really looking forward to it” sentence number one.” Number two, “I’m here today to share with you my three points of taking this company to the next level in the next year,” sentence number two. Question, “Is this a good time to talk about it? I’m really excited about it.”

So, this is a job interview. Now, what did I do? Two sentences and a question. We’re going to get to asking for the job in a minute but I like this prep first. I like saying, “I have three things to share with you,” because what does that do, Pete? That means I’m waiting for number one, I’m waiting for number two, I’m waiting for number three. It focuses the conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Laura Fredricks
Now, we’ve advanced why I am going to be the best CEO because I’ve already thought of how we’re going to advance the company. Listen to the back and forth, they’re going to talk about the stuff. And so, at the very end, saying, “I hope I’ve answered all your questions. This is so important to me in my career,” and here we go, “I’m asking you now to consider me as the next CEO. Can you do that?”

Nobody asks for the job. They talk around it. But when you ask for it, there’s laser focus that you are the person who really wants this. You’ve put a lot of time and energy into it. You’re going to advance us and you actually asked for the job.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. “Can you do that?” and they’re like, “Sure. I can think about that.” Or, I guess they’ll say, “Well, no, actually, someone else is going to get it. So, sorry about that.”

Laura Fredricks
And that’s fine but at least you planted a major seed that this is something they really, really want, especially if you’re moving up in the company. There can be way too many assumptions that, “They know me. They’ve seen my work. We’ve gone out. They know my plan,” and when it comes to this moment, you have to treat it as if they kind of know you, kind of don’t, but you have to be the person who asks for the job because you want the job.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Can you give us another demonstration of the two sentences then question?

Laura Fredricks
Sure. Sure. Let’s go back to the interview I just did. The woman said, “I need more sponsors,” which we know from law number one is not an ask. I said, “Give me an example.” She wanted Coca-Cola to be a sponsor for 25,000 by September 1st. Okay, that’s what we wanted. Okay, it was kind of a framed ask. It could be any sponsor. It could be a local bank. It could be whatever but we used Coca-Cola because everyone knows it.

So, anyway, we go in and say, “You know what, first of all, what’s in it in for them?” “I’ve studied your company, and a lot of people tune into my podcast, and I think this can be a tremendous partnership. What I’d like to talk to you today is about Coca-Cola being a $25,000 sponsor by September 1st. Can we talk about it now? What else do you need to know before you make this important decision?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so, they’re clear on, “Well, here’s what I need. I need to know your demographics, your dah, dah, dah.”

Laura Fredricks
Precisely. You’re right down the runway, “It’s 25,000 by September 1st.” And then you get into everything else. Here we go, “I’m not the decision-maker. The budget is over. We don’t support podcasts.” Then you get into the 15 things, and you’re going to respond.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And let’s do one more example.

Laura Fredricks
So, there’s a lot of people that need more personal time now or through the end of the year, or they want a promotion, or they want a raise, but I’m going to go with personal time because more people are coming to me, that’s as important as raises and promotions.

So, here we go. And when you speak to your boss, you’ve got to remember, they don’t remember how much vacation personal time you have. I think they think it’s emblazoned in there, like, an Excel spreadsheet but they don’t know. So, go in there and say, “You may be aware or not that I have 10 personal days in calendar year 2023. I’d like to ask for three more personal days that I can use in September. And if we have to count them against my 24 time, that’s okay. Is this something that you’re ready to decide now? How can I help you make this decision?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, there we have it. Well, so I like that we got right into a lot of the pro tips on the formulation of the ask. Can we maybe back up a little bit and talk a bit about that asking reluctance. We talked about the fear of not knowing what to say. You’ve also formulated what you call two devils and three temptations when it comes to asking. What are these?

Laura Fredricks
Well, the two devils are assumptions and expectations, and that can just sabotage, even your thinking, about asking. So, there’s a lot of assumptions. Let’s go back to the person who wants to be CEO. They can do a lot of assumptions of, “I’ve been here X amounts of years. I’ve taken this company here. Everybody knows me.” And, like, in what we ever say, “It’s going to be a slam dunk,” but that’s way too much assumptions.

Or, “The more time I spend with someone, the more likely they are to know that I want their business.” This happens a lot in sales, a lot in real estate, “Take the person out for a thousand times, and they know that that person is going to buy the house from them.” Assumptions. Wipe it away.

Expectations. This comes a lot in personal relationships, especially, when we expect someone to know, “You need to clean the house more.” We expect someone to know, “It’s your turn to do food shopping.” We expect someone to know, “We have been on vacation. We’re going to take the biggest one we ever have.” Wipe away expectations and assumptions. You do need to ask and you can’t rely on those two.

And then my three devils, I mentioned them before, and they surface all the time: luck, chance, time. “If I ask,” and I hate this, “ten people, one person will give me investment.” Chance, “Well, my chances are pretty good because I just went out with them last time, and they’re going to know, and they’ll just do it, but I’m going to take my chances. I’ll sit back and wait.” And time, fall back on the other one, “The more time I spend with people, the more naturally they’re going to know what happens, and I don’t have to ask. It’s just going to happen.”

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

Laura Fredricks
Yes, there’s a couple things that I like. Just keep in mind, anytime you ask, it’s a conversation, and anytime you ask, it’s an opportunity. A lot of times, people can ask because they feel like they’re taking something away, the person is going to have less than they had before, but always think it’s an opportunity. They’re going to say yes, no, maybe, move on, but I’m guaranteeing you, if you don’t, there’s someone right behind you who’s going to ask that person. So, remember, it’s an opportunity.

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

Laura Fredricks
“The quality of your life depends on the quality of questions you ask yourself and others.” I made that up and I like it. It’s my guiding principle.

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

Laura Fredricks
I look a lot towards two things – The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Advancing Philanthropy, just because I know the mindset of people with a lot of money, what they’re doing with it, why they’re giving it, why they’re not because that comes up in a lot of asks. Most asks have a monetary element to it, so I monitor those two. And, also, I’m an avid reader, I read The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post every day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Laura Fredricks
To Kill a Mockingbird hands down. It’s my favorite book then. It’s my favorite book now. and, Pete, one of the wonderful things is I got a chance to see Jeff Daniels be featured as Atticus here in New York City. And what’s so wonderful and sometimes terrifying is that the lines, the original lines from the book, in the play made people gasp because they’re timeless. We’re still dealing with these issues. And so, to write that kind of book and still have it so relevant so many decades later is just amazing.

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

Laura Fredricks
A couple because I’m on the road a lot, I use Egnyte because then I can access any of the documents I have, any of the press releases, on and on, and I like that a lot. Oh, my MailChimp, I could not live without that because that gets out my newsletter. And if anyone wants to be on my newsletter, it’s laura@expertontheask. Send me your email and I will put you on. I do a newsletter once a month, and it’s called 2S 1Q, two sentences and a question.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

Laura Fredricks
So, those are my best. And then I invest in a lot of good lighting because it’s sometimes very difficult in a New York condo to get the right lighting, so I always invest in good lighting.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Laura Fredricks
Read The New York Times religiously every morning, and my other two, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post because external forces govern internal decisions. You have to know what’s going on locally, regionally, nationally, internationally because they affect every ask you can do, won’t do, or need to do. And I also want to know what’s on people’s minds when people are asking. People don’t think about your ask in an incubator. They know what’s going on in the world and it’s on their mind so you have to be prepared for that.

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

Laura Fredricks
I gave one before, “The ask is a conversation,” “Your tone is as important as your words,” and, “Listen with presence.”

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

Laura Fredricks
Two ways ExpertOnTheAsk.com or simply my name LauraFredricks.com.

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

Laura Fredricks
Make more asks. Don’t hold back. Use the five laws. Honestly, they really, really work. Be prepared. Be personable. Be present.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Laura, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck with all your asks.

Laura Fredricks
Thank you. Likewise, my friend.

870: Becoming More Memorable and Persuasive with Diana Kander

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Diana Kander says: "If it's not memorable, then it's mediocre."

Diana Kander reveals the simple secret to creating more memorable impressions and persuading others to say yes.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Precisely how forgettable you really are
  2. The simple secret to becoming more memorable
  3. Why you don’t want to start with a self-introduction

About Diana

Diana is a serial entrepreneur who entered the United States as a refugee from Ukraine at the age of eight. By her early thirties, she’d launched and sold millions of dollars’ worth of products and services. Today, she is an innovation consultant, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author whose books have been taught in over one hundred universities. She can juggle, do a handstand, though not at the same time . . . yet.

Resources Mentioned

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Diana Kander Interview Transcript

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

Diana Kander
Pete, I’m so excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to be chatting again. I remember, it’s funny, we’re talking about being memorable, and we’re just chit-chatting about how I remember a lot of the things you said the last time, even more than the average guest, even though they’re all swell and awesome. So, yeah, you’re walking the talk here, so I’m excited to get into some of your insights.

Diana Kander
Pete, I came here with a present for you. I’d hoped it would be here in person, but the mail service is not my friend this week. But you’ve done such an incredible job with this podcast, and when you’re on YouTube, you get those YouTube Awards. And in podcasting, there’s no awards, like nobody sends you anything in the mail. And so, maybe it’s presumptuous of me, Pete, but I made you this 20-Million Downloads acrylic plaque. Imagine me holding it. Here we are.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Diana Kander
And so, I’ll send it to you after the show for you to put on your desk, but what an incredible feat for you to accomplish.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, that is so thoughtful. Wow, I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to placing that prominently. And I wonder, because we’ve had other episodes about how to, I don’t know, get people’s attention, or be persuasive, or cold email, or break into warm-up relationships, or whatever, and I don’t get very many cool gifts. I get a lot of pitches but it’s a pretty rare gift, and I didn’t even know this is coming. We said yes to you just because you’re fantastic and we want to hear what you have to say, so, but this is just pure gravy, so thank you for that.

Diana Kander
Yeah, bonus. Gravy is where relationships are made, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Quoted already, there you go. Well, it’s fun. We’re already warmed up but I had to know about your 2023 goal of doing the splits, because we talked about your plank insights last time, which was fun. So, I want to hear about you and the splits. How is that going?

Diana Kander
Every year, I pick an impossible physical feat. So, I teach people how to be more curious and innovative in their lives. And the way I push myself out of my comfort zone is I pick something that feels impossible for me to apply those skills to. So, between the plank, I did a handstand, I did pullups, and then this is these splits, and it’s going pretty good. Not even out of my comfort zone. It just takes a little bit of practice, and the right tutorials, and commitment.

Pete Mockaitis
So, now, when it comes to the splits, what are the primary muscles that got to get real flexible? Is it the hamstrings? Is it about all of them?

Diana Kander
Oh, boy. Yeah, it’s quads and hamstrings.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Diana Kander
And your goal is to not tear anything while you’re trying to get to it. But, for me, the splits felt like an impossible goal. I’m over 40, I have never…I can’t even sit in a straddle. Some people might know that, like, with your legs. Even the little part, like gymnastics for my kids, I can’t do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Diana Kander
And so, it felt like, literally, “Is this even possible for an older person like me?” And, in fact, it is.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you’ve done it?

Diana Kander
I’m getting close. I have till the end of the year.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you’re way ahead of schedule.

Diana Kander
I’m feeling pretty confident.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you feel like it’s just a matter of time.

Diana Kander
That’s it. It just takes time and determination.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, I want to know, as these muscles loosen and your range of motion improve, do you experience less pain or better posture or other benefits? What I’m getting at, Diana, is do we need to have a stretching episode for How to be Awesome at Your Job, or is that not at all that…?

Diana Kander
I know that you’re a big fan of The ONE Thing, Pete, and I thought this was going to be my one thing, that if I learned how to do the splits, I just imagined, like, a world of just general flexibility and posture. And I will tell you that that is 100% not the case. Like, I have no additional skills, like nothing else is stretch-ier. It’s just this one teeny tiny thing that I can do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, now we know, but it’ll be still cool.

Diana Kander
Still very impressive and I can do it anywhere, unlike pull-ups, like I need a lot of things to be right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, when you say it like that, I’m imagining you’re just chatting with someone you just met, you say, “Hey, check it out, I can almost do the splits. Watch this.”

Diana Kander
I could it at the airport, yeah. People asking, people know I’m working on it, they’re like, “Can you do it?” I’m like, “Let me do it right here for you.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. Lovely. All right. Well, we are talking about, you’ve got a book here, a fresh one, Go Big or Go Home: 5 Ways to Create a Customer Experience That Will Close the Deal. And I loved it when you were sharing with us, “Hey, I got this book,” you did part of our work for us in terms of, like, well, you know what, not all of our listeners are really in the world of sales or customer relations or customer experiences, but you’re like, “Hey, how do make your presentations memorable or how to double your closing rate for pitches.” Like, “Oh, well, that sounds great.”

So, lay it on us, any fascinating discoveries you’ve made while putting this together?

Diana Kander
Yeah, if we want to talk about being memorable, Pete, I think it’s important to understand how forgetting works first. So, let me tell you the research. An hour after you do your pitch, your presentation, you’re trying to get a new job, you’re presenting something, and you’re trying to get a big decision, an hour afterwards, they will forget 50% of what you said. And the week afterwards, they will forget 90%. And, unfortunately, you don’t choose the 10% that’s left. It’ll be like what shirt you wore or how many times you said uhm. Like, it’s a random 10% of the presentation.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Diana Kander
So, the only way to mess with those statistics, to have them remember more of it, is to have them have emotional peaks during the presentation. So, emotion is directly tied to our memory. That’s why you can remember almost everything about 9/11, or, a happier note, your wedding day. You can remember the weather, like every special part of that day. But you can’t remember a month before that what happened, anything about what happened that day.

So, if we can tie our presentation to some kind of peaks in their emotion, then we’ll have a lot more luck having them remember it and pick us. Then we’re talking to them on a subconscious level and we’re saying, “Hey, this just feels right.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, emotional peaks, that sounds great. I mean, fundamentally, how can I get someone else to have an emotional peak?

Diana Kander
Yes, how do you do it?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking that Hollywood is awesome at this. We got the musical scores, and the shots, and the lighting, and the multimillion dollar budgets, and the most talented actors in the world, and the director saying, “No, no, no, no, no, no, that’s not good enough. Let’s run it again,” and have accents, I guess, in my own mind’s eye. So, how do we do that when we’re just humans talking to each other?

Diana Kander
That’s exactly it. Think about how you can remember lines from movies. Like, can you remember a line from a presentation? No.

Pete Mockaitis
Only a few.

Diana Kander
So, how do you get it in there and get it sticky? And so, in the book, we outlined a framework that spells out the word MAGIC, so five different things that you can do to create that emotional connection. And I’m happy to go through some of them or all of them with you today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so I think that I’m in, in terms of let’s hear those five things. I’m thinking, have we established sufficient why? That’s one of my little internal guidelines I’m thinking about. Being memorable sounds great. Being persuasive sounds great. Any other compelling reasons why being memorable and having emotion transmitted will be fantastic for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Diana Kander
Let me tell you how this book came together. So, I got a call from a CEO, his company creates experiences for, like, stadiums, universities, and he said, “I want to write a book about our company and what we do.” And I said, “Good luck, buddy. I do not want to be a part of this effort.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, do you want me to write that for you?” Okay.

Diana Kander
And he said, “Okay, I get it. Will you at least come take a tour?” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll come take a tour.” And I show up, and he’s walking me through this really impressive facility, and then he says, “Look, that’s the world’s biggest 3D printer.” And I was like, “That’s pretty cool.” He said, “We use it to build the world’s biggest 3D printed thing for the Raiders new torch.” You know, they have a torch in their stadium?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Diana Kander
And I was like, “How did a company out of Kansas City win this huge deal?” And he said, “Oh, we have a move. Like our typical close rate is 45%, but when we do this move, we’ll close 90% of deals.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is what I love. Therefore, Diana, lay it on me.

Diana Kander
And I was like, “Okay.” And so, he explains what they do, and I was like, “This sounds amazing.” And I started interviewing employees at the firm, customers of theirs, other people who do move-like things, and I’d become obsessed with this idea. And by the end of it, I’m begging him to let me co-author this book about this method they do so that I can share it with as many people as I can. And so…

Pete Mockaitis
What’s the move?

Diana Kander
He did to me, you know. It’s about connecting with the person that you’re talking to on an emotional level. And you can do it even if you never even meet the person, and it’s about using these tools that are at your disposal that most people neglect, and because they’re not memorable, they are just mediocre. They blend in with everybody else who’s pitching or trying to get the attention of the people that they’re pitching.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, it sounds good. Now, Diana, before we get too excited, I’m wondering if there’s any nervous folk in the audience, saying, “Wait a minute, Diana, is this manipulative if I’m stirring up emotions in another person deliberately?”

Diana Kander
Yes. I don’t think it’s about being manipulative. I think it’s about showing exactly who you are. I think that a lot of times we want to connect with other people, we’re excited about the thing that we’re trying to sell, but we don’t know how to communicate that. We can’t be like, “Pete, this is an exceptional book, and you’ll have to know about it.” Like, that’s just mediocre. So, how do we connect soul to soul, Pete, like, establish deeper trust and connection with people in a way that just our words alone can’t do?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got you. So, I think maybe some fundamental principles associated with, “Hey, it’s something you really believe in. It’s going to be for their best interest and for their benefit. You’re not a flimflammer or a con artist.” Okay, so assuming that’s true, let’s proceed.

Diana Kander
Okay, let’s assume that’s true. So, the framework spells out the word MAGIC. Do you want me to give you all of them? Let me open up the book. M, you make something surprising; A, you analyze them on a deeper level; G, you give the pitch in the right order; I, you include a 3D object; and C, you co-create together.

Is it embarrassing that I had to open up my own book to read those five short statements to you? I just wanted to get them right.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, no, I dig it. I think that will facilitate Googling it everywhere, when they’re, “Who was that guest that Pete had who was so amazing, and there’s magic, and it was…?” So, that’ll be useful. It’ll trigger the keywords just right. So, yeah, let’s go through it. How do we make it surprising?

Diana Kander
All right, Pete. Make it surprising is doing ordinary things in unordinary ways. It is finding little ways…

Pete Mockaitis
For listeners, she’s sipping from a How to be Awesome at Your Job mug, which you have had printed because they don’t exist in my world.

Diana Kander
Yeah, I made my own mug. I love schwag so much, Pete. I love schwag, I have an account at the place where I made your award. I love schwag so much I made my own How to be Awesome at Your Job schwag.

Pete Mockaitis
That is fantastic. Thank you. And now I want one. And I’m wondering, so when it comes to schwag, you didn’t print 300 of these.

Diana Kander
I didn’t.

Pete Mockaitis
You did one. So, first of all, it’s very practical, who lets you do just one?

Diana Kander
You got to find ways to do ordinary things in unordinary ways. So, for instance, people who are applying for jobs can find creative ways to convey their information. I’ve heard of people who put their resumes on a cake, or in a box of donuts, or in a chocolate wrapper, lots of food items. But you basically communicate the same thing you would communicate otherwise, but in new and unique ways. And that could include having some kind of sight or sound or color. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
That is so good. You know, back in the day, when I was doing tons of case interview coaching for aspiring consultants, there was a guy who was awesome. He was having trouble getting attention from, I believe, it was McKinsey & Company, and it’s one of these good selective consulting firms. And for his birthday, he sent a cake to the office that had some of his contact information, and it said, “All I want for my birthday is an interview with McKinsey.” And they didn’t respond right away, but they got around to it and he got the job, so that was cool.

Diana Kander
That’s amazing because it was memorable. And this could be as simple as, when you send an email to somebody, to send a video instead, or maybe use some kind of music. Just changing what people are expecting, it could be as simple as changing your signature line in your emails to be something that is surprising, unexpected for them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And very practical little piece here, where can I get schwag printed on a one-sy, two-sy basis instead of, “Oh, buy 500 mugs”?

Diana Kander
Zazzle.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Diana Kander
Do you know that website?

Pete Mockaitis
There you go. I do now. Thank you. Zazzle.

Diana Kander
Oh, yeah, I have a block membership for those, and it’s official.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’re surprising, we are doing something that is unexpected, and it’s maybe physical. Just for funsies, could you give us a couple more examples?

Diana Kander
Yeah, I think it’s all about researching the person. So, for instance, we started this interview and I had that award, but in order to come up with a thing that I wanted to surprise you with, Pete, I had to listen to a bunch of your old podcasts, and I had to think about, “What would Pete care about? What would be valuable to him?” And so, it’s about really just being thoughtful and starting the conversation off by saying, “This interview is going to be different than your other interviews,” and just making them feel that teeny tiny tweak.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, indeed. I dig it. I love it. And that takes some hustle, some effort, some time and energy. And I guess you could have help to assist you with some of that in terms of background legwork research, but a part of that I guess really does need to be from you.

Diana Kander
You have to care so you can’t do the move on every project. You can think about if you have a sales process, how to add pieces of magic that are consistent but it still requires this move. This special kind of connection with others, requires you caring and doing a little bit of extra in order to make them feel special.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And what’s funny, and I think I get a lot of the opposite in terms of…well, I get a lot of pitches, and it’s a blessed place to be.

Diana Kander
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Better than the first few where we were pounding the pavement, asking lots of people and only a fraction said yes. Now, this is, “Oh, so many incoming pitches,” but they say, “Oh, I love your show,” it’s like, “Hmm, do you? I don’t know if you’d listened to my show at all, particularly because this is so not relevant.”

And so, that’s a real bummer when it’s just straight up, I don’t know, lying or inauthentic. And so, yeah, so you do that and it’s surprising. It’s very cool. Could you give us some more examples? We got a cake, we got 20 million downloads, we got the mug.

Diana Kander
It depends on what you’re doing. So, if you’re trying to get a job, again, it’s about getting somebody’s attention in a meaningful way. If you’re trying to create a memorable presentation, surprise could be something funny that happens that’s just different than how most speeches start. We believe in this idea of the golden window, which is you have 30 seconds that they’re paying attention and their brain is asking themselves, “Do I know what this is like? Like, have I seen something like this before?” And if the answer is yes, they’ll pull out their phone.

So, if in that first 30 seconds, you can do something that says, “This is different. You need to pay attention,” because if you think about it, Pete, like what your body does when you’re surprised, you kind of make this, “Huh!” face. You’re open, your hands are open, your eyes are open, your mouth, you’re just taking in as much content as possible. And that’s what we’re doing to them, we’re making them surprised, and then they will pay attention to the next part.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, for the start of a speech, you might give a counterintuitive fact.

Diana Kander
Absolutely. I start my speeches on curiosity with a picture of Snoop Dogg, and I say, “How many people in the audience know who this is? And what’s he up to these days? What job is he doing?” And now I have all eyes, all attention on me because they’re like, “What’s happening? I thought I was learning about strategy in business.” And they are, but we’re going to get there in a very fun way.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it, Snoop Dogg. I’m impressed even more, Diana. Just more examples. In the context specifically of a speech or presentation. Snoop Dogg, they didn’t think that was coming up. What else?

Diana Kander
Adding elements of music like nobody’s expecting, like a soundtrack behind you. Some people include funny videos or memes, just anything that disrupts, like, “This is going to be educational, this is going to be boring.” “I have education for you,” anything that you can make surprising.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’m thinking about another speaker, this is hilarious. He was all mic’d up and they were reading his bio, it was like, “So and so, he’s presented in so many countries,” or done whatever, and he just said, “Oh, my, that’s impressive.” It was like, “We know you wrote the bio that they’re reading right now.” That just tickled me. I guess I’m in the speaking world but that just tickled me because it was surprising, like, “Nobody does that.” And, sure enough, it got me in a receptive mode.

Diana Kander
Yeah. And let’s talk about some of the other elements of MAGIC because this can be stacked, so the more of them you can do at once, so, for instance, I got your mug on How to be Awesome at Your Job and that is a 3D object, which we’ll talk about in a second, plus the element of surprise. So, how do we combine some of these together?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. All right. Well, let’s hear about the A.

Diana Kander
Okay. So, A is analyze them on a deeper level. Most people, when they’re pitching somebody, are doing demographic research, which is, “How long have they been at their company? How big is their company?” Just like imagine creating a human-shaped wallet, that’s what you’re doing. You’re just figuring out what the wallet looks like, but you’re not getting to know them as a person.

And what you really want to do is psychographic research, which is understanding their values and what they really care about and things that are tangible, like on the surrounding edges of what they actually do for a living because that will help you connect with them much more than anything that you talk about in the presentation.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Diana, now I want to know what are my values that the public doesn’t know so much.

Diana Kander
Well, you heard earlier when I was like, “Well, Pete, you love The ONE Thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
I do.

Diana Kander
You do. And now I can talk about my content in terms that resonate with you, if that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s so funny, that didn’t actually resonate with me as much, not that you’re wrong, I really do love The ONE Thing. But I guess I love The ONE Thing so much, it’s like, “Yes, of course, every human being…”

Diana Kander
Everybody loves it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s just as it should be for all of humanity. Shout out to Jay Papasan. Listen to that episode where we talked about The ONE Thing. So, yeah, it’s funny, I’d even recognize that as distinctly me because it’s like the water that the fish swims in.

Diana Kander
I will tell you, Pete, a lot of people still don’t know what The ONE Thing is.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s true. It’s true.

Diana Kander
They don’t know about it. So, it’s about understanding this person and what they care about, like I know you care a lot about systems and productivity, and you’re exceptional at creating systems around this show on how to make sure that you have a really good show that doesn’t take up a lot of your time away from three kids. And these are all points for me to communicate, like how we value the same things.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. It’s true. Well, yeah, it’s funny, that might not have surprised me in terms of, like, yes, like, “Wow, you figured that out about me,” but I was sort of dialed into like, “Yes, clearly, we are on the same page here. Proceed.” So, it was a positive impact, if not a surprising one, yeah.

Diana Kander
Do you know how jury consultants work, Pete? Have you ever heard of this job?

Pete Mockaitis
Just a little bit. Only from the movies.

Diana Kander
Okay. So, you go into a trial, and at the trial, they’ll start with 48 people sometimes that they have to narrow down to 12.

Pete Mockaitis
Voir dire.

Diana Kander
Yes. And as soon as they come up with this list of 48 names that they hand to the lawyers, the lawyer scans it, and sends it to, I’m not going to say guy in a van, but, today, guy in an office that now starts doing what is called psychographic research on each one of these people by looking at their social media profiles, like everything about their lives, their criminal records.

I’m not saying you need to do that about your business contacts, but you would understand them at a deeper level. But you would be surprised at how much information is available, articles that they write, things that they care about, that could just be little hooks for you to bring up as conversation points during your interaction.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really good, and I suppose I did not know that, although it makes total sense now that you say it. I just sort of assumed they were looking at the broad strokes in terms of, “Oh, this is a woman. That is going to be good for us.” “Oh, this is an elderly person. That’s bad for us.” But you’re saying, “Oh, no, no, no, we go deeper that surface level. Uh-oh. Whoa!”

Diana Kander
And it usually takes, like a lot of people think that takes a lot of work. No, it takes, like, 15 minutes if you’re looking in the right places to find. And we’re looking for moments of connection. We’re looking for a good reason, you know, not to get them off the jury. But it’s pretty much the same thing that you would do in a conversation with somebody, Pete, where you’re like, “Oh, where did you grow up?” but you’re doing it ahead of time before you’re actually in the meeting.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And in your experience, folks generally like this as opposed to, “Whoa, that’s creepy, Diana. How do you know all this about me?”

Diana Kander
Yeah. Well, you don’t show up, and you’re like, “Ah, Pete, I see here that you live at this address, your house is worth this much, and your children’s names are so and so.” Like, you don’t want to try to freak them out. You got to be cool. But you find ways to, in a cool way, make it a part of the presentation, whatever you’re pitching.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve got that. How about the G?

Diana Kander
The G is you give the pitch in the right order. So, Pete, most people, and they mean well, but this is how most presentation starts, they say, “Hey, let me tell you a little bit about myself, then I’ll tell you about my company, and then I’ll tell you why you should choose the thing that I’m recommending.” And that is the opposite order in which you’re supposed to pitch.

We do it because we think that we need to establish credibility, but they don’t really care about us or anything we have to sell until they believe that we understand them and how they see the world. So, every presentation has to start with them, and communicating to them that you see the world in the same way that they do. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it does. And now I’m thinking about webinars because the formula…

Diana Kander
That’s exactly it.

Pete Mockaitis
…is always the same thing, it’s like, “Well, let me tell you about my story.” It’s so funny, it’s like, “Yeah, I don’t care about your story.”

Diana Kander
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
But what they’re trying to do is, “See how I’m relatable and like you. Like, I, too, had dry eyes, or this pain, or a business that was floundering, or I was overwhelmed by looking at different marketing approaches.” So, I get that that’s what they’re trying to do. I don’t find it as grand but I think what you’re trying to reconcile is, I think what you’re saying is the point is less like, “I went to Harvard, and that’s an impressive school, and I got really good grades, and I’ve been in this industry for 20 years.” It’s, like, that’s not so interesting. But if you also love The ONE Thing, or whatever, that that is conveying that you’re telling me about yourself but you’re, more so, conveying we see the world similarly.

Diana Kander
Yeah, and I think that we do that by starting with them and not us. So, your listeners know very little about me right now, actually. They do not know that I’m a refugee from the Soviet Union. I was born in the Ukraine. These are all interesting things but they have nothing to do with them and what they’re trying to do in their lives.

I want to come in just bringing a lot of value. And at the end, if I’ve done my job of showing them why this can really help them at work and in their business, then I’ll tell them some stuff about me, then they’ll want to know, like, “Who’s this person that I now care about? What are some interesting things about them?” That is the place to bring in stuff about yourself and your origin story and why you’re passionate about this. But at the beginning, it’s just like it’s glazing over and nobody’s listening.

Pete Mockaitis
And the way I am able to share that is I’ve done my research, the deep analysis, previously, and so I’ve got that. So, you gave me, hey, The ONE Thing, and I like The ONE Thing. Could you give us some other key sentences that you’ve seen make a world of good impact when shared early? You could say, “Hey, this was the audience, this was what someone said and they loved it.”

Diana Kander
Yeah, I think the best way to start early is with a question. So, if you have an audience, especially one that you can interact with, the best way to start is by asking them a kind of question that makes them reflect on their own lives where they tell you. So, for instance, when I start the “Go Big or Go Home” keynote, I’ll say, “What does it feel like when somebody’s pitching you? Like, you go to your door, and there’s somebody sitting there with a clipboard, and they’re like, ‘You’ve been pre-approved.’”

And so, they talk about, “Ugh, it feels icky.” And then I say, “Well, what is the sound? Can we make a sound out of that feeling?” And so, then we, as a room together, make the sound, and it sounds like, “Ow, blech,” you know, a terrible sound. Now, all of us, we are pitching on a daily basis, and what we want to be is like a magician. So, what is the sound that you would make when a magician performs their trick and does so flawlessly?

Pete Mockaitis
“Ahh!”

Diana Kander
Yes, that is how we want people to feel about us. We want them to feel that sound. And so, now, we as a group, have done something together. We’ve made that gross sound, we’ve made that ahh sound, we are on the same page, and now we can move on to something interesting or maybe even more surprising, but now we’re doing something together as oppose to me coming in, and being like, “Let me tell you about my sales experience and how this is a method that could really help your company.” You’re like, “Okay, I’ve heard this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and it’s so funny that the sound about an emotion is really resonating because I’m thinking about David Allen, Getting Things Done, we’ve had him on the show a couple of times. He’s great. And he talks about, when you have a list of stuff, a to-do list, or whatever, and you look at it, you just go, “Ugh!” And that’s one of the things I remember most of all the things he said in the hours of David I’ve listened to and read, is the “Ugh!” because I feel it, and I think it later.

And then he brings me for home, he’s like, “Well, part of the problem is you haven’t clearly identified the next action or started your to-do list with clear verbs associated with, well, ‘What does mom mean on your to-do list?’ It’s going to lead you with an ‘Ugh!’ because it’s unclear, that’s one of a dozen things.” And here, now, I feel connected to David and what he has to say. So, I’m with you on the sound emotion.

Diana Kander
Well, that’s surprising. Most people communicate their ideas with words not sounds. And so, that’s another way for us to combine some of these elements together.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And the I?

Diana Kander
The I, include 3D objects. So, there’s some crazy research, Pete, about how our brains memorize. So, we’re not talking about understanding what your learning method is but I’m talking about remembering, and we all remember visually. And so, you’re going to remember something that’s a picture much more than you will just text alone, but you’re going to remember 3D objects even more than the picture.

And so, I have this example during the keynote where I talk about a product which is called the poo trap, and it is this harness that you put on your dog, that captures the poop at the moment it comes out of your dog, so just imagine that. So, I’m describing, I read the description, but then I show you the photo, which I had to put up on the screen now, but it’s like this S&M-looking contraption for your dog with a bag at the end.

And then everyone laughs, and I’m like, “Look, this photo is so much more memorable than the description,” and I go to my bag on stage, and I’m like, “I’m going to pass around this 3D version of the poo trap. Let’s see which you remember the most,” and they’re like, “Oh, my God!” So, how do you bring your ideas into the physical world?

I’ll give you another example. My friend, Abe, is a cancer researcher, and he goes to these conferences of cancer researchers, and he has this incredible work about how to get your T-cells to fight cancers themselves, like how to arm your T-cells so that you don’t need chemotherapy and you don’t need radiation when you have cancer. But when he goes to these conferences, like everybody’s working on something miraculous, so it’s hard for him to get people’s attention.

So, what he did was had another friend of ours, his kids go to my kids’ school, and we had another mom from our kids’ school make a 3D model of a T-cell fighting a cancer cell, it’s just like a big blob with plastic icicles coming out of it and some lights, like it’s a 3D rendering of science. But he puts it on a table, and he goes to a cancer conference and just flips it on, and everyone flocks to him because they want to know what the thing is.

Pete Mockaitis
“What is this thing?” Yeah.

Diana Kander
It’s different. It’s different. This is about standing out. It’s about being memorable. It’s about piquing somebody’s interest. And it has sparked so many conversations that are so valuable for his research, all because he brought this intangible idea into the 3D world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s juicy. And so, now I’m thinking, I have almost signed up and gone to ATD, the Association for Talent Development conference a few times.

And so, as I’m thinking, if I were to have a table as an exhibitor, and so, “Hey, I’ve got a podcast about being awesome at your job,” I might just have a big ole microphone at the exhibition booth table. And that’s kind of weird and different, and it’s just like, “So, what’s up with the microphone? Like, that’s all there is, huh? That’ll do it?”

Diana Kander
Or it just depends on how creative you want to be but anything that is a representation of what you can create. I spoke to this group of insurance sales folks, and one of them talked about bringing a jar full of pennies with him to appointments. And it’s not a big jar of pennies but it’s this much a month that protects your family in case this horrible thing happens. And you look at it, and you’re like, “Well, I could part with a jar of pennies like that.” And so, it’s just about taking any part of your presentation and making a physical element of it, just something to bring people to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, lay it on us some examples of if things feel abstract, like happiness, joy, a fulfilled employee who wants to stick around longer because they’re engaged and motivated, what are some of the things?

Diana Kander
So, like when you’re pitching, when you’re pitching, Pete? Is that what we’re talking about?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, sure. I’m just thinking to make a 3D object out of the intangible, what are some cool ideas or examples of how that’s done?

Diana Kander
Sure. So, one way is to make 3D objects about them, so it has nothing to do with your product offering, just your enthusiasm for what they do. So, the mug, the plaque, these are all examples of my enthusiasm to be here with you today. Second, you can show a 3D, something physical that is an example of what you’re talking about.

So, people that I’ve helped get jobs before, they have printed out their number one reference, referral, on a thick piece of paper and left it. And it’s different than emailing it to somebody. Do you know what I mean? Like, one really thick piece of cardboard with this valuable testimonial. They’ll be like, “Do I throw this away? I don’t know what to do with this,” but they’ll handle it, and so it’ll go into a different part of their brain.

Somebody else that I worked with, she went to a presentation and she brought a bunch of tacos with her, and she said, “Our city has the best tacos, and taco stands for…” and then she had something for each of the letters, like tenacious, audacious, I don’t know. Each one of the taco letters stood for something, but they were representative of what she would bring to the job, and it was very competitive. Then, again, she got it.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. And I’ve got a buddy, Kevin, who was presenting, like, “Hey, this is what could be possible if you sort of let our organization just take care of this whole event,” because there was a coalition, it was complicated, a lot of infighting, whatever. And so, he had some large card, like you might find in a preschool, large cardboard-like bricks, and so it looked like red bricks.

He’s like, “So, hey, this is how many people we have right now but our projections are, with this estimate and these funds and the initiatives, we’ll be able to have this many people. We’re going to build it up so it’s six times bigger.” And so, you could put that on a stacked bar chart on a slide, sure. But sure enough, it’s like, “Ooh, that’s a lot of bricks,” just hits people even though it’s the same thing but it’s in 3D.

Diana Kander
Pete, yes/and. So, what I would do in that case is I would bring something that is elaborate that they would not have money to spend on their event but would be cool. So, like as an example, one of those cameras that spins around you and produces really fun social media footage

Anyway, you would bring something that’s like, “We would never be able to afford that,” and be like, “Yeah, you can. Let me show you how to afford this thing. It would be really cool for your event because we’re going to run it a little bit different.” So, like, something that is aspirational, you know.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Diana, I’m curious, since you are an innovation and creativity expert, if folks are thinking, “That’s a really cool concept,” and they’ve only got two ideas and they feel pretty lame, how would you recommend they creatively generate some better ones? Should we hire you for consulting, Diana? Is that right?

Diana Kander
I think it’s about trying to work with people and brainstorm, like, what would work best in the situation, and just volume, volume of ideas. I really believe in creating top ten lists. I think we may have talked about this last time, but we often stop at the first or second idea for something. But if you can push your brain through creating ten different ideas, like some of them will be terrible, but the best one will probably be in the middle, and you would have prevented yourself from getting there by stopping at the first or second.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. So, now, what’s the C?

Diana Kander
The C is co-create together, and we have this really interesting piece of research that was done. This woman followed Hollywood executives around and CEOs as they were getting pitched. So, these are people that are getting pitched a lot of times. And her quote is that people think that just having a good idea will sell itself, and they are wrong because these people who are getting pitched a lot, they kind of try to put you in a box as soon as you come into the room, and stereotype you in some way. And the only way for you to get out of that box and to close the deal is to ask them to co-create a piece of that presentation with you.

So, what that means is we can’t have a fully-baked idea that we go in with. We can have kind of parameters of what we think the idea is, but if we can get them to co-create with us, like, suggest their ideas, kind of like you’ve been doing today, Pete, you’re sharing your experiences, making it a richer experience for everybody else, then that is a true art of seduction.

So, this woman who followed all these executives around, the people who had the best chance of winning the pitch are the ones that had an element of co-creation in it, not ones that are just like razzle dazzle them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Can you give us some examples of how that might be articulated?

Diana Kander
Yeah, we have examples in the book of how people come with an idea up to 50% and then they say, “What do you think? How do we solve this problem? Let me articulate the problem. How do we solve it together?” If you’re doing a presentation, it’s about having chunks of the presentation where people get to interact. They are voting. They are responding. They are doing something to be a part of the experience in a way that if I were to do this again, it would never be the same exact experience.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, is it sort of like, “Hey, we see there’s four options. Vote here”? Or, how does that sound?

Diana Kander
So, one of the things that I do at the end of my presentations is I will create a top ten list with the audience. So, I say, “I know how this stuff is important in your work but I don’t do what you do every day. So, can we come up with a list of ten things that are like ahas, or takeaways, or things that you would want to share with the rest of the audience?”

And now, they are co-creating the presentation with me. It’s my framework but then they give examples from their own lives, and they enrich the content even better, and give everybody else ideas in the specific industry that I’m talking to.
Pete Mockaitis
And, ideally, those will be all the more precise and specific to their experiences, whether they are in the food and beverage industry, or industrial mining, or whatever.

Diana Kander
That’s right. And for the people listening to your podcast, they have a job, they’re pitching to their boss, if you come in and you feel like you have to have all the answers, they’re not going to be as bought in as if you say, “Let’s solve this problem together. I’ve done this much legwork, I’ve got this much figured out, I’d love your feedback on what you think about this part, or this part, or help me brainstorm here.” And if you genuinely care about their opinion, they’re going to be a lot more invested in the overall outcome.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Diana, tell me, any final do’s or don’ts you want to put out there in terms of being memorable and persuasive?

Diana Kander
I think that thinking about how to create more magic in your life is the key to building better relationships. It helps you get gifts for your spouse and your kids. It helps you improve existing relationships and build new ones.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right, Diana, now let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Could you start with a favorite quote?

Diana Kander
I’m going to give one from the book, which is, “The only way to connect with people in a way that no one else can is to do research that no one else will.”

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

Diana Kander
We talked about this study in the book about how they put people into an fMRI machine, and they can actually predict your decisions 11 seconds before you can rationally understand them, which means that we’re making decisions in our gut, and then it goes up to our brain where we rationalize why we’re so smart and we made that decision.

But our body is a much older system than the rational brain alone. Like, almost all of our decisions are made on an emotional level in our gut. And so, if you know that about a person, then you want to be able to speak to their gut, and connect with them on that emotional level, because if you just try to stick with logic and reason, you’ll never break through to that very important level.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, Diana, I’ve heard that many times before, that we make decisions emotionally and then rationalize them later. This fMRI 11 seconds is new to me, so thank you. Can you expand on the protocol for this study, that they say, “Hey, do you want to do this or that?” and they could see, “Ooh, the brain is lining up on excitement here and dread there, therefore, they’re going to pick A”? Is that how it goes down?

Diana Kander
That’s exactly it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Diana Kander
And there’s an additional study where they asked people, you know, that study, “Coke or Pepsi? Which do you prefer?” And when the cans were blind, you can’t tell which one is which, people overwhelmingly prefer Pepsi. But when you can see the brand logo, people overwhelmingly prefer Coke. And in the fMRI machine, they can see that when they get excited about Coke, it is their emotional-like memory chunks that are lining up, and Pepsi does nothing for those. I don’t know how they got in there but it is the emotional connection.

Pete Mockaitis
You mean the actual can inside an fMRI machine, it is a picture?

Diana Kander
No, their brains. The brain. But it is our emotional connection to certain things that gets us excited and drives us to action. And if you want to get a yes in a room, you want somebody to pick you, you want them to do what you’re recommending, then you have to talk to them, you have to spike those emotions in some way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Diana Kander
So, related to the topic that we’re talking about and doing research, there’s a book by John Ruhlin called Giftology that I really got a lot of. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t think so.

Diana Kander
Okay. Well, it’s on how to give really meaningful gifts. And we ended up interviewing John for our book, but it is, like, the gospel on how to give professional gifts in a way to create connection with people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Diana Kander
I have to talk about Notion, which is my new second brain. I used to write down everything everywhere, and now I have literally all my thoughts and ideas in one place, and I’m so grateful for it.

Pete Mockaitis
And I might just follow up here a little bit. I’ve used Notion just a smidge. But can you tell me why is Notion superior to, like, an Evernote, or a Bear, or the Notes, Memo app that’s native to phones?

Diana Kander
Because you can create, like, let’s say you have an idea, you can create pages within that idea, so it’s not everything just one straight line. So, for instance, I have, let’s say, marketing for my company, and then I have a newsletter hub, a webinar hub, so each of those is a hyperlink to another page. And in that other page, you can create tables, and you can create that do math for you, and you can create content ideas, and you can add documents and links to…it’s all saved in one place. I don’t know what to tell you but I do know that, now, I have three tabs open on my Chrome. And before Notion, it was a thousand.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Diana Kander
It is drinking 100 ounces of water every single day, Pete. And I’ll give you a rule that helps me do that. I think you have to have rules to help you do the things that you want. And I promised myself that I will drink two glasses of water before having a cup of coffee in the morning, so that helps me in the morning. And then every time I go to the bathroom, I drink a glass of water. I don’t know if you’ve heard the Tiny Habits book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, BJ Fogg, he’s great.

Diana Kander
And now it’s like a cycle that doesn’t end.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what is the impact you have observed of drinking 100 ounces of water per day versus just whenever you’re thirsty?

Diana Kander
We don’t fully understand how much impact just having enough water in your system does for your nutrition, like, just washing toxins out of your body, staying healthy, having the ability to have more energy throughout the day, being able to go to sleep on time. Like, it’s an unbelievable amount of benefits that you can get.

Pete Mockaitis
And speaking of hydration and sleep, do you have a hydration cut-off time?

Diana Kander
Oh, definitely, like 7:00 o’clock. I stop the cycle.

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

Diana Kander
I think a way to sum up this conversation is if it’s not memorable, then it’s mediocre. And I think we overestimate how much of an impact we make on others. And our goal shouldn’t just be to do our best job, but it is to be memorable. And when we make that the focus, we’ll bring a totally different game to the challenge.

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

Diana Kander
I am very prevalent on LinkedIn. I would love to connect there. And you can go to my website, DianaKander.com. And, oh, Pete, I brought a gift for all your listeners, not just for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy.

Diana Kander
I care about them. I want to connect with them. It’s a pretty good gift, actually. If you want a copy of the book but you don’t want to buy one, just email me diana@dianakander.com, and I’ll send you a digital copy of Go Big or Go Home so that you can benefit from the lessons. You just got to tell me why you want it, and it’s yours.

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

Diana Kander
As I think about your audience, Pete, I think the number one thing I would say is dig your well before you need it. Make sure that you have the relationship. Like, things are happening at a very fast pace. Things are changing, you’re going to need relationships in your life for whatever the next thing is, so make sure that you’re investing in all of those individuals so that you can help them or they can help you later.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Diana, this has been a treat. I wish you much bigness and fun.

Diana Kander
Thank you so much, Pete.

862: How to Create and Choose Better Solutions with Sheena Iyengar

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Sheena Iyengar reveals the secret to how the world’s best thinkers come up with their biggest ideas–and how you can do it too.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How the world’s best ideas come to be
  2. How to identify what the actual problem is
  3. Where emotions fit into the creative process

About Sheena

Sheena S. Iyengar is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School. She is one of the world’s experts on choice and innovation.

In 2010, her book, The Art of Choosing, was ranked by the Financial Times, McKinsey, and Amazon as one of the Best Business Books of the Year. Her recorded TED Talks have received a collective 7 million views and she regularly appears in top tier media such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, CNBC, CNN, BBC, and NPR.

She regularly appears on the Thinkers50 list of the Most Influential Business Thinkers. In 2012, she was recognized by Poets and Quants as one of the Best Business School Professors for her work merging academia with practice.

Iyengar holds a dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania, with a BS in Economics from the Wharton School and a BA in psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD from Stanford University.

In her personal life, as a blind woman, Iyengar intuitively used Think Bigger to find her calling and strives to inspire others to do the same.

Resources Mentioned

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Sheena Iyengar Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Sheena, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Sheena Iyengar

Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to dig into your book Think Bigger: How to Innovate but, first, I want to get your take. So, you’re regarded as one of the leading experts on choosing. I’d love to hear about one of the trickiest decisions you’ve ever made and how you thought through it.

Sheena Iyengar

Wow, the trickiest decision I ever made. Well, I would say there were two really big choices I made in my life. The first was what was going to be my career. And I would say the best choice I ever made was to study choice. It wasn’t an easy choice, and it was a long path and, in many ways, I used…at that time, I didn’t know I was doing it, but I, essentially, created Think Bigger as I created that choice for myself. The second tricky choice I made was that I ended up getting divorced after 18 years of marriage, and that was not an easy choice to make.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, I bet. Wow. And thank you for sharing. And to the extent that you feel comfortable digging into that, how does one make such a choice?

Sheena Iyengar

Well, I, actually, in many ways, used my learnings in my own research to help me make that choice. I kept asking myself the question in lots of different ways. I kept looking at my own data, as in “What would be the worst-case scenario for me if I did X versus Y? What would be the best-case scenario? How would I handle it?” And I looked at what had happened to other people. And so, what did the science show about the consequences for other people?

And then I would ask myself, “If those consequences were to happen to me, what would I do about it?” And I found that no matter how I asked the question and how I framed it, I kept coming back to the same desire. And so, then I realized that I didn’t really know how it was all going to work out but that was enough to tell me, after about two years of going back and forth on it, I realized that I had made the choice.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that, and that’s certainly thought-provoking.

Sheena Iyengar

But you don’t want to make a decision like what career are you going to do for the rest of your life, or whether you’re going to get a divorce in a second.

Pete Mockaitis

Certainly. Well, so now let’s hear about your book Think Bigger. Any particularly striking discoveries here that have really stuck with you?

Sheena Iyengar

I would say that the most important thing about Think Bigger for people to understand is that, up until now, everything we’ve been taught about how to innovate, how to come up with your best ideas, is old, it’s outdated. What Think Bigger does is takes advantage of recent research in neuroscience for the last 20 years that, literally, tells us how the mind works when it forms thoughts that we haven’t been leveraging it to help us actually become better ideators.

And Think Bigger is the first book that does this. It brings together neuroscience and cognitive science to give you a new way of ideating. And so, for most people, the go-to method, when they need to solve a problem, or when they want an idea, is they engage in some form of mind wandering, or they say, “Look, I’m stuck. Let’s get a bunch of people together, and let’s do a brainstorm.” And Think Bigger says, “You know what, you can do better.”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so I’m intrigued. Fundamentally, is there a key factor, or factors, that distinguish those who come up with amazing ideas from those who don’t? Is it just about the practices they’re engaged in?

Sheena Iyengar

You mean what distinguishes the people like the Einsteins and the Bezos and the Bill Gates, so to speak?

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah.

Sheena Iyengar

I would say, yes, we tend to think that the great innovators were special people that happened to be in special places or in special moments. And while you can often tell a lot of people’s stories that way because those are really good narratives to tell, I think, in truth, when you look at all the great innovations throughout history, there is actually a common denominator as to what the method is.

Until now, the great innovators did it subconsciously but we actually know how they did it, and having that knowledge enables anybody to do it. And that’s, essentially, what Think Bigger is. It shows you the framework and it gives you the toolkit so that whatever problem you have, you can actually just, in a very disciplined way, go about and come up with an idea. So, think of Think Bigger is offering the alternative to brainstorming, or sort of uninhibited or uncensored mind wandering.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so I’m eager to go into each of the six steps here for a bit of time. First, maybe could you kick us off with a cool story of someone who did just that, they walked through the process and saw some great stuff at the other end?

Sheena Iyengar

So, one of my favorite examples is Nancy Johnson mainly because we don’t really talk about her very much and, yet, she actually produced one of those rare products that is universally liked. It’s very hard to find somebody who doesn’t like what she put together. It’s accessible whether you’re rich or poor. And it’s hard to find anybody that hates it.

So, Nancy Johnson was the one who made it possible for every single person, no matter where you are in the world, to have ice cream. In the early 1800s, ice cream was very expensive. In fact, George Washington paid $200 for ice cream. That’s expensive today. Just think how expensive it was back then.

Pete Mockaitis

And it rotted his teeth so he had to have wood ones.

Sheena Iyengar

Exactly. And so, Nancy Johnson lived in Philadelphia. She was a woman in her 50s. She was the wife of a chemistry professor. She was also an abolitionist, so she was part of the underground railroad. And so, she’s noticing how ice cream is being made, and why it’s so expensive. And so, back then, they would have a big bowl, they would fill it with ice, and then they would put a smaller bowl in there, fill it with cream, and they would stir, stir, stir, stir, stir.

And while they were stirring, the ice cream would start to melt, and it would also form lumps, and it was also backbreaking labor. And so, here’s what she did. And, in fact, I’ll describe to you the story in a way that also essentially gives you the method. So, she said, “Okay, how do I make the process of making ice cream easier and, essentially, cheaper? Well, what’s getting in my way?”

“First, it’s backbreaking labor. Second, how do I keep it cold as we’re stirring it? And third, how do I prevent lumps?” So, those are the subparts of her problem that she needs to solve for in order to solve for the bigger problem. Well, how do we keep it cold? You take a large water pail that had already been around for 400 years, you fill that up with ice, and then you find something that you put in it that knows how to keep things cold.

Well, what was something that people regularly used to keep liquid cold? In the taverns where she was, as a woman, not really allowed to go, they would serve beer in pewter mugs. Well, what about putting the cream in pewter? So, now you have a pail filled with ice, and the inner bowl made of pewter. You put the cream in there.

Now, how do I make the labor of stirring it not as arduous? What if we take a grinder, a hand grinder that was used for making coffee, for grinding coffee or spices? Now, how do we prevent the lumps? I’m going to attach to that grinder spatulas that have holes in them. So, one of the things that she learned from the runaway slaves that often came from the sugar plantations was that when making molasses, they would have to stir really hot liquid that could easily form crystals.

And what they found was that if you put holes in the spatula, the liquid would go through and it would be less likely to form crystals. Why not do the same thing with a cold cream? You put these elements together – the pail, the pewter, bowl, the hand grinder, the spatula with the holes – and you have a new technology that was deemed a disruptive technology in 1843 by the Library of Congress.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. There you have it.

Sheena Iyengar

I happen to love ice cream and I love the example of Nancy Johnson.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s a cool one, for sure. And so, I did see that outline, we got six steps. Step one, choose the problem. Step two, break down the problem. Step three, compare wants. Step four, search in and out of the box. Step five, choice map. And step six, the third eye. So, I’d love for you to elaborate on each of these a bit. But, first, I’m just going to say, I noticed none of the steps, nor in the story, is there a, “Oh, have a eureka moment in which a thunderbolt of insight arrives out of nowhere.” Where does that fall into the things?

Sheena Iyengar

We love eureka moments, and I certainly want you to continue to have eureka moments because they’re powerful in terms of helping us keep motivated. But when you actually look at people and you follow them over the course of weeks, whether they’re a scientist or an artist, it turns out that about 20% of your ideas happen as eurekas, about 80% happen not as eurekas, they’re just happening during your work.

We tend to initially love those eureka ideas because they feel special somehow and it happens in your dream or when you’re doing a jog. Over time though, most of those eureka moments are less likely to actually be adapted. So, we do tend to overweigh the aha moments. That doesn’t mean that they’re irrelevant because those aha moments can help us in reframing the question, and they just remind us why we care.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Okay. Well, so if it’s not a eureka moment, then is the moment in which the new idea appears more like, “Oh, let me try this. That didn’t quite work out. Maybe if it were a little bit longer or maybe if it had holes in it”? Is it more like that, “So, let’s make a modest adjustment to this thing I just tried”?

Sheena Iyengar

So, that’s when you’re talking about being purely experimental. You can actually be more strategic and more deliberative about that. A great idea is “I’m having a problem with X.” So, let’s say in my case, I am blind. I remember when I first started to teach, nobody knew how you could have a blind person get up and start teaching. Nobody had the answer to that, like, “Well, I don’t know, you can’t engage in eye contact,” or, “You’re not going to see people raise their hands,” or a gazillion things came up as to what a blind person could or could not do.

And so, the way you frame the problem is you say, “Okay, how would one engage an audience if you can’t see them? What would you do?” Well, what does an audience want? And what other kinds of people can help you with that? So, for example, you couldn’t give them eye contact, but what are other things, that other kinds of entertainers, different from teachers, use? And so, I actually learned quite a few tactics from actresses, from personal trainers, from comedians, and that’s how I pull together a teaching style.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now I want to know. What do they do? And what do you do?

Sheena Iyengar

What do I do?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Sheena Iyengar

Oh, well, lots of things. For example, I had an actress that taught me things like body language and hand gestures. Rather than having people raise their hands, I’ll often have them clap their hands, “If you agree with me, clap your hands. If you disagree, now clap your hands.” And then I’ll let them tell me which side was louder. It’s actually, in some ways, better than having them raise their hands.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool.

Sheena Iyengar

Those are just two examples.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, so, yeah, let’s hear about each of these steps here. Step one, choose the problem. That sounds pretty direct and straightforward. But is there some nuance here, Sheena?

Sheena Iyengar

So, most companies end up, about 72% of companies end up failing in their solution because they end up discovering, after they’ve created the solution, that it’s actually the solution to the wrong problem. We’re terrible at actually defining our problem right. As Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to save the planet, I would spend the first 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.”

And there’s a lot of wisdom in that statement because a lot of your solution really depends on defining that problem well. We either define our problem as too vague, or too big such that it’s unsolvable, or so trivial or irrelevant that nobody cares. It’s really defining it in a way that’s both concrete and meaningful. And you want to define it in a way that’s a question rather than embedding a solution in it because it’s only when you define it as a question that you’re going to be open-minded.

Pete Mockaitis

Can you give us some examples of well-defined problems versus their poorly defined counterparts?

Sheena Iyengar

Oh, that’s a great question. Okay. Well, “How do I solve the problem of climate change?” Terrible question.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Sheena Iyengar

“How do I create a car that’s affordable?” That’s a doable question.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, the first one is just so huge.

Sheena Iyengar
It’s just too big.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s not getting us anywhere helpful from an innovation perspective.

Sheena Iyengar
“How do I know if somebody is passionate?” Not a good question. Too vague.

Pete Mockaitis

And then what would be the better version of that?

Sheena Iyengar

“How do I find something that I want to spend many hours doing?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And can you give us some better versions that are climate-adjacent to sharpen the contrast?

Sheena Iyengar

Sure. “How do I create a substitute for meat that people want to eat?” And we already see companies doing that.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, let me get your take on this one. “How do I create market incentives for automakers to reduce their emissions?” How’s that feel? Pros, cons.

Sheena Iyengar

So, for that one, you have to first know, “Is the problem emanating from the car companies or from the buyers?”

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, got you. Yes, so there’s a solution or assumption embedded in it.

Sheena Iyengar
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, it sounds like choosing the problem, we’ve got to do some homework before we can even hope to make a statement that is a good choice. Is that fair to say?

Sheena Iyengar

You’re going to do a lot of work, and you’re going to probably keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking the problem you’re trying to solve till the very end.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Sheena Iyengar

It’s just like writing a paper. You often write your first sentence at the very end.

Pete Mockaitis

Understood.

Sheena Iyengar

Although you knew what it was, generally speaking, at the very beginning, and you keep writing towards it, but you’re still tweaking.

Pete Mockaitis

Okey-dokey.

Sheena Iyengar

So, then just like Nancy Johnson, after you’ve defined the problem, you then break it down into its most important subparts. Now, every problem has many, many layers, so you’ve got to be able to identify the most important ones. And I say somewhere between three and five, sometimes I let you go up to six, but beyond that it’s cognitively paralyzing so you’re not going to do a good job. You’ve got to make this doable.

Actually, the way to think about Think Bigger is that there are, essentially, two tools. The first is a choice map, and the second is what we call the big picture, it’s where you compare wants. And so, the choice map is where you define your problem, you break it down. And then for every subproblem that you have, you then go search. You search first in industry, and then you search across to many other industries that have nothing to do with your industry, but you’re searching for the way in which they have solved for an analogous problem.

“What other objects do people use to keep liquid cold?” for example. “What other sorts of backbreaking labor is there that has the problem of things getting lumpy?” Another example. So, you look in totally different industries that have to deal with an analogous problem, and you see what they’re doing, and then you obviously have to, in some ways, adapt or edit their tactic but you’re importing it in.

And so, you do that for every subproblem. You’re searching. So, we often think that the part of ideation is just sitting there and reflecting. I’m not doing that. I’m saying the actual ideation process itself is its own exercise, a mental exercise. And so, you create a choice map where you have your problem, you break it down, and for each subproblem, you find ways of solving it that has worked in the past. And now you combine those tactics, just like Nancy Johnson did to create a machine. That’s how you have your greatest innovations.

That’s true whether you’re looking at Nancy Johnson’s ice cream machine, or Henry Ford’s car, or Netflix, or Amazon, or Paul McCartney’s great song “Yesterday.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s intriguing. So, songwriting, you follow the same process.

Sheena Iyengar

It’s the same thing, yes. Most innovators though are not being as deliberative as I’m saying. Most innovators are doing what I’m talking about subconsciously. What Think Bigger is about is making you more conscious so that you can do it whenever you want. You can do it on command, and you can practice it and get better and better and better at it.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m really intrigued with the example of a song. Can you walk us through how those steps apply when the innovation doesn’t feel so much like a patent or invention but a work of words put together?

Sheena Iyengar

Let’s take something that’s a little more visual that might be easier to explain. So, let’s take, say you want an example from, say, Picasso or Lady Liberty, let’s take Lady Liberty since that’s a piece of art that everybody, no matter where in the globe, would have seen. So, everybody knows the Statue of Liberty.

And we love the Statue of Liberty for all that she stands for and what she means, etc. Now, we assume that the person who made her was a genius, and certainly what he did and what he created, ultimately, is a masterpiece. But how did Frederic Bartholdi get the idea? So, I’m going to strip away, I’m not going to tell his life story, I’m not going to tell you all the hardships and struggles he had. I’m just going to answer the question, “How did he get his idea?”

So, he loved the massive sculptures that were guarding the Egyptian tombs so much so that we have seen earlier drawings of a big lady dressed in robes, carrying a light that he wanted to be made for the Suez Canal entrance. So, Lady Liberty kind of has that feeling to her. There was, at the time, when he was building Lady Liberty, a very famous painting in Paris by a painter by the name of Lefebvre called “La Verite,” “The Lady of Truth.”

There was also Libertas, the Roman goddess who was on every five Franc coin at the time when Frederic Bartholdi was making Lady Liberty. And so, you now have Lady Liberty, the posture which we get from “La Verite,” Libertas, which was how he get the crown. Now what about the face? The face of Lady Liberty, there’s many poems written about those eyes that are inscrutable yet kind. That face was that of his mother.

So, what does every person do when they generate a solution, whether they’re an artist, whether they’re a scientist, whether they’re someone who’s making a new patent or product, whether they’re just trying to come up with an idea? They are combining elements that they have come to become aware of, and they’re combining them in a new way, and that’s what makes them creative and unique.

Now, of course, it’s not mere combination because many combinations are clunky. And so, there is an artfulness to the combination where the whole has to feel greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, that’s cool. Understood. So, combination, that’s what makes it creative. And then the steps are means by which that unfolds.

Sheena Iyengar

That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yeah, could we keep cruising here about step three, compare wants.

Sheena Iyengar

So, compare wants is where you get away from the choice map or you get away from the gathering of information that’s both in your industry and out of your industry. Compare wants says, “You know what, let me also ask, what is it that I want the feeling to be like if I were to come up with a solution? What do I, the creator, want? What would my customers, or whatever, my target audience want? And who might be my gatekeepers and allies? And what would they want?”

And so, think of these as those emotions. So, emotions don’t go into your choice map, which is where you’ve got your problem, your subproblems, and your strategies. The big picture, the compare wants, is where you are really highlighting, “Okay, I, as the ideator, I want to be famous. I want it to be used by everybody. My customers, well, they want it to be affordable. They want it to make their life feel more luxurious. Gatekeepers, might be, ‘Well, how do you deal with competitors that might try to thwart you?’ Allies. Well, who else would care about this and want to help me make this happen? So, what do they want.”

And so, once you collect up the desires of all these different entities, what you do is you now look at your various solutions that you’ve created, and you ask yourself, “Which one fits the most number of these desires?” and that’s how you pick.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then, I’m curious, within the choice map, do we have a specific picture, diagram, document that that looks like?

Sheena Iyengar

Yes. So, I know we’re doing a chat here on audio but, yes, we do have. I think of the prototypic choice map as a five by five where you have, let’s say, on average, five subproblems, and, let’s say, on average, per subproblem, I really try to get people to at least get five different ways to solve that subproblem because you need choice, and only one or two of them can be within an industry. The bulk of them should be out of industry because that’s how you get out-of-the-box ideas.

And so, what you then do is you now, let’s say, have a five-by-five matrix filled out, and now what you do is you take one tactic per row, and you line them up in your head, and you ask yourself, “What could I imagine doing? How would I combine these?” That’s how choice mapping works. I have different strategies by which I teach people how to imagine and how to take strategies that you wouldn’t ordinarily combine together.

So, there’s also like a random component to really get you to come up with some really unusual solutions. But in a five by five, you can generate about 3,125 unique solutions. That’s actually far more than your typical brainstorming session.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, could you give us an example there in terms of what might be five columns and then five rows, and then a couple combinations?

Sheena Iyengar

Okay. Well, that’s going to be quite a bit to keep track of. So, let’s imagine Netflix. So, when Reed Hastings, so what was the problem he was trying to solve when he initially got started, “How do I make movie-watching more pleasant at home?” That was his irritation. And so, he had the first was, “Well, how do I make it so that I don’t have to lift my butt and go down the block to return a movie every day, otherwise I get a late fee?”

“How do I reduce the cost of, say, the inventory of actually having a store at every block, that actually cost money in terms of rent? And I also want to, while I’m at it, increase the number of options that people have.” So, let’s just take those two. So, let’s say the first, like, “How do I reduce the inconvenience of having to raise my butt, move my butt?” Well, he could have it in every building, maybe have it as a soda pop machine, but now you’re going to give people movies. That could be one solution.

Or, he could do what Bezos was starting to do, which was, well, he was sending books to people, vis-à-vis, online. So, any one of those tactics could be used. In fact, there is a company that sells videos, or you can go rent videos using a soda pop machine. “How do I create a fee structure that isn’t annoying because I really find it annoying to have late fees?” Well, there are other options that you could use other than late fees to make sure you get enough revenue.

“Well, it could be that I use the gym membership model where you can use it as much as you want, and you just have a flat monthly fee. Or, I could say, ‘Look, I’m only going to give you a certain number of movies per week.’” The list goes on in terms of how many different ways in which you could create your fee structure but you had to go out of industry. At that time, it was unheard of to do anything other than what Blockbuster was doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’ve got some specific tactics that can meet the no travel or no late fees.

Sheena Iyengar
Yeah. And so, ultimately, what did Reed Hastings do? He takes the fee structure of gym membership, plus the no inventory cost, and yet a lot of movie selections, or not no inventory, less inventory costs and yet a lot of variety through going online. And then he takes advantage of a brand-new technology that had just come into the market called the DVD, and that creates your first mail-order movie. People often forget that it actually started with mail-order movies.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, the Netflix as a whole is the combination of several tactics that each are solving a key subproblem.

Sheena Iyengar

Yes. And so, Netflix, when it first got started was just a combination of Planet Fitness plus Amazon, plus the DVD.

Pete Mockaitis

And I’ve heard that, is it called the high-level pitch or the concept pitch, which is often how a lot of things are explained? Like, “It’s like Airbnb, but for your car.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. I understand what you’re saying.” And then, in a way, that concept of pitching or summarizing an idea is just sharing the combinations that are popping for the choice map.

Sheena Iyengar
Yeah, you’re extracting the most relevant tactic but you’re not, like, stealing all of Amazon, you’re not stealing all of Planet Fitness, but you’re extracting the most relevant tactic that applies to your subproblem. And so, yes, analogical thinking is relevant. You’re absolutely right.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then step six, the third eye. What’s this about?

Sheena Iyengar

So, the third eye, a lot of times people spend a lot of money once they have an idea, and they decide they’re going to either pretotype or prototype, and they end up prototyping a lot of mediocre ideas. And I don’t think you need to rush to do that. There’s actually very inexpensive and fun way to actually learn how your idea will be perceived because we all have that feeling where you’ve got an idea, and you think it’s great, and yet you go describe it to your spouse, and they’re like, “Huh?”

And so, what the third eye is it’s a unique way of learning how others will perceive your idea. I call it the good way of getting feedback but it’s not getting feedback by asking people, “Hey, I’m going to describe this to you. Tell me what you think.” No, I never ask you what you think because that’s actually not helpful to me to know if you like or hate it. How is that useful to me?

What I really need to know is, when I describe my idea to you, what questions do you ask me? If I were to ask you how you would describe my idea back to me, how would you describe it? Because that’s how I learn what you heard and what you’re seeing, and what stuck out at you and what didn’t, and what were the gaps. And that then helps me to further flesh it out.

And so, to give you an example, if that would be helpful here, let’s take Paul McCartney’s legendary song “Yesterday.” If you read the folk stories about it, it’ll say that he just woke up one morning with the tune in his head, and the rest is history. It’s true that he woke up with some tune in his head, and he immediately got up and he wrote it down, but he didn’t actually know whether it was a good tune or not.

He had that insight to understand that he just had no idea if he had just reinvented the wheel or what. By the way, most of the times when we have a new idea, it is often redundant with whatever is already out there. So, that was actually a very useful insight on his part and a useful worry on his part. But what he did was he created some nonsensical phrases to just hold the tune in his head. And he started to just hum the tune to different people, and say, “Hey, have you heard this before?” He didn’t ask them, “Do you like this?” “Have you heard this before?”

“No, no, it sounds familiar but, no, I don’t think I’ve actually heard it.” And every time he plays it and he hums it, he starts fleshing it out a little more, “Hey, have you heard this before?” “No, no.” Eventually, after he’s built it out enough, he realizes, “Hmm, let me start putting some real words to this.” And he put some words, and then he takes a guitar.

And he was lefthanded but he was given a righthanded guitar, and he just played it with the wrong hand because, in part, he just wanted to hear how it was sounding, and let other people hear so that he could see whether they were hearing what he was hearing. Was it a song? And so, that’s how, little by little, he’s forming the song.

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

Sheena Iyengar

I think, too often, we think that creativity is like magic, and that it’ll just happen. Like, when you least expect it, it’ll happen in this flash of a second, and that it’s kind of out of your control, it happens to special people or in special moments. And I guess what I most want people to take away is the idea that it actually is not magic. You can train yourself to do it, and you actually do get better and better with practice, and it is something you can practice doing.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

Well, my favorite quote is by Bob Dylan, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s not about finding anything. It’s about creating yourself.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Sheena Iyengar

I still really am surprised at how good the jam study was that I did so many years ago. I didn’t realize how important a study it was even when I did it. But if you show people six jams versus 24 jams, when they see 24, they’re more likely to get curious and stop and sample it than when they see six, but they were 10 times more likely to buy a jar of jam when they encountered six than when they encountered 24.

And that, I did in the year 2000, and I didn’t know that it was actually a moment, it was a tipping point that we were actually entering a world where we really were having exited the amount of choice we had in the ‘90s was high but that it was really going to get even higher. And so, yeah, I think that ever since, if anything our world has become more complex, more information, more choices, and that understanding that we do have cognitive limitations, so that the best way for any of us to get the most from choice, to get the most from life, is to actually be very mindful about what kind of choices we want and for what.

In fact, the choice map that I was describing to you, it’s a tool you can use for ideation but it’s, ultimately, a decision-making tool. You can use the choice map to help you discern which choices are better and worse, to help you figure out what are the most important criteria you need for any choice that you’re looking at to fulfill. So, it’s not just a choice-creation tool, it’s also a picking tool, choice-selection tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Sheena Iyengar

I suppose whenever I need inspiration, and I’m feeling down or anything, I always love, one of my go-to books is The Prophet. I also really love Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

My favorite tool then probably is my Apple Watch. It keeps me on time. It has actually made my life a lot easier. And actually, this might surprise you, it’s now old fashion to use paper and pen. The equivalent of that for a blind person is Braille paper and a stylus, like slate and stylus. It’s like handwriting Braille, almost no blind people will handwrite Braille anymore because your Braille, just like give a laptop for normal typewriter, you have that for Braille. But I still find being able to hand-Braille to be really, really useful. It just helps me think better.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

Every single day, the first thing I do when I wake up is I ask myself, “What are the three most important things I need to do today?” And that helps me reduce the clutter because there’s so much coming at you every single day.

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?

Sheena Iyengar

To get the most from choice, you have to be choosy about choosing.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can come find me at the Columbia Business School where I’m a faculty member. You can email me.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

Never feel that you can’t make your life better. There’s a lot of times we have dreams, and not all our dreams get fulfilled, but the great thing about dreams is they come in in endless supply pack. And if you’re able to pick other dreams and figure out which dreams you can make come real, do it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Sheena, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and many big thoughts.

Sheena Iyengar

Thank you.

861: Helping Others Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood through Active Listening with Heather Younger

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Heather Younger shares the simple steps anyone can take to help others feel heard and valued.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why others feel like we aren’t listening—even when we are
  2. The wrong and right way to paraphrase what you heard 
  3. How to keep your patience when things get heated 

About Heather

Heather R. Younger is the founder and CEO of Employee Fanatix. She is an international keynote speaker, host of the “Leadership with Heart” podcast, and a workplace culture, employee engagement and diversity, equity and inclusion consultant. Heather has a law degree from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the best-selling author of The 7 Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty and The Art of Caring Leadership.

Resources Mentioned

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Heather Younger Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Heather, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Heather Younger

Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom of your book The Art of Active Listening: How People at Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood. That sure sounds handy.

Heather Younger
It is very much handy, yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Well, I’m intrigued. I love that you’ve really done your homework here. I saw that you had done surveys of over 30,000 people here in your research putting this bad boy together. I’d love to hear, when you have this rich treasure trove of data, any particularly striking, surprising, counterintuitive discoveries popped out at you there?

Heather Younger

I’ve got to say that this is an evolution, and of the 30,000 surveys were surveys I did on behalf of clients where we reviewed every single comment inside those employee surveys, and hundreds of focus groups I did personally facilitate. And so, in that, I have to just say that it came down to listening, like it was the lack of feeling heard that was a huge determining factor as it related to internal employees and external customers.

And I’ve known it for a while. I started off doing kind of customer experience and listening to customers, and doing that in a variety of ways but also with surveys. I would just remember one particular gentleman, he was a lab tech at a hospital, and this has been, like, probably 14 years ago. And I remember him giving some feedback, and then he asked us to adjust some things related to this conference we were doing, and then we went back and we made the changes and requests based upon the tweaks he was requesting in the conference, and how we had things set up changed.

We told him that they’re going to change, and he came to the conversation, he saw that the flow changed. And he came to me after, and he said, “I’m going to be honest. We’ve been working with this company for years but this is the very first time I’ve ever felt heard.” And it was because we took in the feedback, we sat as a group to figure out what we were going to do about the feedback, we acted, and decided we were going to act, we let him know we were going to act, acted, told him we acted, he saw we acted, and then we followed back of each other to determine if that action was good enough or not, that we followed a process.

And I noticed ever since then when I was working with internal customers and external customers, that using that process for active listening is what, in the end, make people go, “Aha, I’ve actually been heard.” It made all the difference.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, Heather, it’s funny, that doesn’t that revolutionary, no offense, and yet I have a hunch that this sensical approach may not be so much common practice if that client said, “This is the first time I felt heard.” Is that your vibe? Like, what proportion of folks do feel heard versus unheard?

Heather Younger

Well, I think there’s many of us that don’t. If you think about, particularly in the workplace, customers often are left feeling like they’re just a means to an end of us arriving at a number on our end goal, of our revenues, so they’re often not feeling heard. Then you have employees who feel like they’re victims inside the workplace, like things are happening to them all the time and they have no say with how that’s all going to happen, how it’s going to roll out for them.

What I would say about the five, the cycle of active listening is that most of the steps are super intuitive and most people do about 60% of them, 60% of the framework, and 40% they don’t. And the 40% that don’t is where they drop the ball and why most people don’t feel heard. As we walk through the process, I would say decoding and closing the loop are the two that seem to be the most foreign for most when I was speak from stages about it.

Decoding is this idea that, after we receive feedback from someone, after we listen to someone, we lean in to hear what someone is saying to us, and we think we got it, we think we know what’s going on. Most of us jump straight to the fourth step, which is action. We want to go act upon what they just asked us to do. We want to go act on what we heard to solve an issue.

And what I’m telling people is not to go act immediately, unless it’s a life-or-death situation. You need to pause. And the pause could be two days, two weeks, normally it’s two months, but it’s some time to process what it is we heard, to reflect by ourselves or with other people, to research maybe what our response should be based upon what the people are telling us, and then act, or then go back to the client and tell him you want to act, or then go back and tell him you can’t act.

And after you’ve acted, go back to the person and say, “Well, I listened to you, I heard what you said. You wanted this thing and we went and did that thing. And I don’t know about you, but it seemed like the results are great. What do you think? Okay, because we did this based upon your feedback. Thank you for giving us that feedback because it helps us get better, and you helped us get better by using your voice.”

That is a complete foreign concept, Pete. Most people are not doing that. Most people, most organizations do not do that process. They don’t close the loop. They don’t go back after they’ve taken action on behalf of another person, and tell the other person that they’ve taken the action because of them.

They don’t go back and thank them for that feedback. They don’t go back and tell them about the tweaks they’re making in the process as they’re making them. And that is where we drop the ball and there’s the gap between when we think we’re listening and when people feel heard on the other side.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s really powerful. And I’ve been guilty of that myself. I’m thinking about one of my producers, Ria, who’s great, and she did a really great job of proactively highlighting how my vocal processing sounded a little different under certain circumstances on the podcast, and I was completely unaware. And so, I dug deep and did all the stuff and through quite a process of sort of thinking through what are all the steps associated with how the audio gets mixed and mastered and whatnot.

And then it’s sort of like, “Oh, yeah, by the way, thanks for mentioning that because we did this whole thing and changed it up, and now I think it’s a lot more natural.” And she’s like, “Oh, well, thank you for letting me know. I had no idea.” I was like, “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t unless I would say it, and I didn’t say it.” It’s funny, I don’t know what the holdup is. Maybe it’s just the time gap there in terms of it’s like, “Oh, we had that conversation months ago,” and then I’m off to another thing.

Heather Younger

Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly what happens with most people, too. Time goes by, they think, “Oh, do we really need to give them that? Do they really need to know about that? I don’t think I have time for that. It’s not that important to that person that I do that,” and that is the wrong way to think about it.

We actually give people a gift by doing this whole process. When they see that we’ve taken the time to reflect on their feedback, that we’ve processed it, that we’ve done our research, that we’ve decided how we’re going to act, and we go talk to them about it, we do that action and we tell them that we’ve done it, and they see the direct correlation between their voices, they’re actively using their voices, and our response to them.

It’s powerful, because, otherwise, again, we’re just kind of sitting around like this, like in the world wondering, like you did wondering, “What? I didn’t know that.” We think we see something change, we think it’s based upon our feedback, but we have no clue it’s directly tied to us until the person or the people who did the thing tell us it was because of us.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. And that feels so great because I think all of us like to contribute, feel like we matter, made a difference. And if you can feel like you are a part of having made a real difference or contribution, by merely having maybe a quick conversation, it’s like, “Hey, remember we chatted about 15 minutes about that thing one time? Well, now, look how the world is completely different for thousands of people based on that conversation.” Like, “Oh, awesome. That’s the coolest thing, huge impact, low effort. Can I get some more of this, please?”

Heather Younger

Oh, I love it. Yes, exactly. So, I think that’s exactly right. You feed the need for people. And when we think about that baby who’s in the crib, you think about us when we’re babies, we’re in a crib, and we start making noises, and we go, “Ooh, ahh,” we make all kinds of noises, and our parents come, and go, “Oh, how are you, sweetheart, dah, dah, dah.” And, all of a sudden, we’re just like, “Ahh,” we’re just like, “Oh, they heard me.”

I’m thinking about I have four children, so I don’t know who’s listening, who has any kids, but I have four children, and as I think about each of them, and a couple of them are more rambunctious than others, as they would make those same sounds and I would not respond to them, they would start to throw things out of the crib. They would kick the crib. They would make all kinds of noises because they were like, “Wait a second. You usually come. You’re not coming now. Are you hearing this thing I’m using? It’s called a voice. Are you hearing me?”

That is innate in us. Our voice is a significant part of what makes us, us. So, the more we use that and people respond to it in kind, it makes us feel powerful. It makes us feel important. That’s a gift we give to people.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now, we talked about the five-step framework a bit. Could you share with us each of the five steps and maybe a demonstration or a case of it unfolding in action?

Heather Younger

So, the first step is recognize the unsaid. And it kind of speaks for itself but it’s kind of like those unspoken cues, the signs within a culture, the signs within our office that something is just not right, and we don’t recognize those signs if we’re running around with our heads chopped off, if we don’t take time to pause, but those signs could be blind spots in a really big way into relationship failures, conflicts that are brewing, customers that aren’t happy. There’s a lot of things that we are missing if we don’t take time to pause and recognize those things.

So, recognize the unsaid is the first step because we need to get there for our awareness to expand so we can then go to the next step, which is seeking to understand. Once we see the signs, now we have to go deeper, have the courage to go deeper, and start asking and leaning in and asking questions, and going back and forth, and trying, with curiosity, figure out what’s happening, what the person needs from us, what took place, whatever. But we can’t do that until we recognize the unsaid. And so, the seeking is that whole reflective listening, it’s the empathetic listening, it’s the leaning in, it’s trying to understand what the other person needs from us.

That third step is the decoding phase, which is what I talked about earlier, which really is the time we take to go reflect. We pause and reflect on what the person told us in the seeking to understand phase. We go reflect. We research. We do it by ourselves. We do it with our management team. We do it with our team, our colleagues, whoever we need to, that’s what we do in that phase.

And the decoding says to the person on the other end, “I think you are so important that I’m not going to rush to a decision. I’m going to pause. I’m going to take some time with what you said. It’s important what you said.” And then action is the next step. So, okay, you’re going to take action, or you can’t action but maybe you can come to a compromise. Or, what kind of action are you going to take? So, you’ve got to take some kind of action because people will say, “Oh, the dots really start to be connected then. Oh, they actually changed something. They did something different based upon what my voice said to them, what I said to them. Oh, okay.”

And then the closing loop is that last step, which is to come back full circle to say what you’ve done, what you plan to do, or what you can’t do but how you might be able to come to a compromise so that they know, “Okay, Pete took time. He sat with me. He took the view that he told me I was going to take a few days before he could research and come back to me.”

“But he came back to me when he promised he’d come back to me. And then when he came back to me, they had a solution. And the solution was better than what I thought it was. And they told me they’re going to go about kind of putting the solution in place, and they did it. And Pete told me when they did it, and I looked, and I saw, and it was great, and it was because of me.”

That’s the five-step process. That’s kind of how that comes together, and that is kind of a real-life working because there’s stuff that’s happening all day to us. How we respond in a moment that makes all the difference.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, could you give us a demonstration?

Heather Younger

Well, I think part of it is just, like, you come to us, you say something to me. Let’s just say, a customer is complaining about a process. So, let’s say you’re a customer who complains to me about there’s a process that’s happened and I’m leaning in, “So, tell me more, Pete. Tell me more what’s happening?” and I’m asking all the questions.

And I get to the point where I’m like, “I think I understand. So, Pete, I just want to make sure I understand. This part of the process was really frustrating you and your team. It’s making the whole relationship kind of go downhill. You’re frustrated and you’re at your wit’s end at this point. And you’re coming to me because you feel like I’m the last person that you can listen to you, that can maybe do something about what’s happening to you, right? Is that what I’m getting to? Is that what’s happening, Pete?”

Then you say, Pete, “Yeah, that’s exactly right.” “Okay, Pete, thank you so much for that feedback. I need to go and talk to a few different departments and maybe even, like, my manager, to see what we can do, and, actually, just to look into this more fully. Is that okay if I come back to you within the next 72 hours with what we found, and maybe a solution?” And Pete says, “That’s great. Thanks, Heather. Thanks for at least trying.”

Okay. So, I go about and I’m talking to the shipping department, and this department, and I go talk to the manager, and I go, “Here’s what’s happening to the customer. They’re not happy. Here’s what they’re really wanting. Here’s part of the process that’s really broken. And I talk to these different people, and I look at this process, and I think the client is onto something. There is a part that’s broken but I don’t think you can give the person exactly what they wanted but we can maybe give them this. What do you think about this?” And this is what the person’s talking to the manager about.

And the manager goes, “Yeah, I think that’s possible. Research a little bit more here. Go over here. Go over there. And if you think you can come up with this, then go back to the customer and let him know we can do it. We can do this thing, this more narrow part of the thing they want me to do.” “Okay, great.”

So, I go back do the thing, come back to the manager, “Yup, manager, it’s good. I think I’m going to go ahead and tell the customer we can’t do the entire big thing but we can change this back.” So, now, I go back to the customer, and I go, “Customer, thank you so much for that feedback. I told you I’d be back in three days. I’m here. I’m here with you. I did a lot of research, talked to all different people, and here’s what we think we can do.”

“We can’t quite do all of this thing, but, as we looked at it, you’re right. There was a part of the process that is really a problem. So, here’s what we’re thinking we can do, and I wanted to come back with you to see if you thought this would work.” Then I tell the person what it is, and they go, “Yeah, I think it’s possible. Or, can you go a little further?”

Okay, I don’t know if you can see how it can go, but it’s going to require us to go more back and forth. It’s a tennis match of requests and meeting a request, and communicating back to them. And, at the end, let’s say you get to the point, and you boil it down to what it is they really, in the end, that you’ve met their need, and now they’re happy. Now they’re like, “Great. Thank you for being one of the very first people ever to hear me.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And during the course of those actual conversations, are there any particular words, phrases, questions, that you just love and seem to really go a long way?

Heather Younger

one tip I would give you as it relates to the seeking part of that cycle is when you’re listening to someone and you want to go try to paraphrase what you heard, paraphrase, do not parrot. So, don’t go back to them with exactly what they just said.

Instead, take in all of the emotions that are going on as they say it. So, you sense their frustration, you see their hesitation, you can sense their anxiety. What you do is when you go back to them, you make sure that you reflect back kind of the gist of what you heard them say and how that makes them feel, or how it made them feel, or what you sensed they felt.

This is going to take more effort for some people than it will for others, but if you pay close to attention, you’re going to see, like, there could be shifting in their body language, you’re going to hear the tone of their voice, you’re going to see the grimace in their face, knowing that there’s anger, frustration, whatever the feelings are.

Because when they see that you recognize this, like part of what they said, you recognize the thing that you’re seeing kind of what you’re experiencing and what they’re saying, now it starts to add up for them, they’re like, “Okay, what I’m saying, they’re actually hearing. They’re not hearing something different. They’re hearing what I’m saying and they’re sensing what I’m feeling about what I’m saying.” It’s powerful.

So, I would say that’s kind of a big one. Do not parrot. Don’t parrot back because that’s super frustrating. What I mean by that is this, “So, Pete, what I heard you say is…” dah, dah, dah. And then they say, “Yeah, because this…” And then you go, “Okay, so what I heard you say just now is…” dah, dah, dah, and they say some more. And you go, “And what I heard you say just now is…” that’s the parroting. That’s actually super frustrating, very irritating, it feels very robotic.

So, just calm yourself in the interaction, don’t feel the need to respond to every single sentence, calm yourself, take it all in, what you see and what you hear, and then start to ask thoughtful questions, and then wrap in the emotions of the thing that you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. That’s good. Anything else we should avoid?

Heather Younger

I would say that’s probably the biggest thing. There’s probably a lot of other little things that you should avoid as you’re in them. For example, you’re really not going to be in conflict for long. Don’t go into something with your desire to be right or your desire to respond. Go into listening with your desire to find a connection, your desire to find a midway, your desire to land on solution, not to be right. I would say that to be the other thing.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And if we do have conflict, disagreement, tension, any pro tips on how we can listen effectively there?

Heather Younger

Sometimes you have to just agree to talk about it later, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to be in a superheated situation and handle it right in the moment necessarily, unless, again, it’s life or death, or something. For example, even if it’s a client, a customer at a counter, I’ve done this before where it gets a little heated, and they’re, like, yelling, and I go, “Excuse me, I just need to take one moment. Is that okay? Just one moment.”

And then I go in the back, and just kind of go, “Ahh, ahh,” because I really want to strangle the person. I just go, “Ahh,” process it, and then come back out, and go, “Okay. Sorry about that. I just needed to kind of gather my thoughts or whatever it was. Okay, so now I want to make sure I hear you,” and then you can kind of go into it.

I would say the biggest thing is seeking and going in with curiosity because, in conflict, in most cases, we want to be right. We’re seeking to win our side. So, in conflict, if you feel yourself like in it, remove yourself from it for the moment, or totally table that discussion for later if you can.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

No, I would say that’s it. As we think about it, active listening is a gift, and our presence and undivided attention for people is the biggest gift we can give them. So, we just have to remember that, as we ask ourselves, “Well, I don’t have time,” or we say to ourselves, “I don’t have time to listen like this,” or, “Listening is not that important,” or, “I think I’m a pretty decent listener. That’s all I need to be.” Think about what kind of gift you want to deliver.

Do you want to deliver one that’s frayed in a box that’s been, like, banged up? Or, do you want to deliver the gift that’s, like, it is beautifully wrapped box with a bow, where someone goes, “This person really thought a lot of me.” And that would be for you to answer.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

So, it’s by Marianne Williamson. It’s the deepest fear quote. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Pete Mockaitis

Yup.

Heather Younger

Here’s part of it. It’s not the full thing. “We ask ourselves ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are we not to be?” And it’s actually a much longer quote so I would definitely invite everybody to go look at it, but it really is this idea of not minimizing ourselves for the benefit of others, not making ourselves smaller so that others can feel bigger, that’s really up to them to do, that’s not up for you to do.

I absolutely love that quote so much because, often, depending on your personality, if you have kind of a personality that’s bigger than life, or you have goals that are really big, oftentimes, we want to minimize because we can see other people aren’t in a good place, or they may not take in whatever it is you’re going through and they may be negative about it. And I say, well, that’s their issue, not yours.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Heather Younger

I love pretty much anything John Maxwell, so The Leader Within, all those leader books by John Maxwell are the best. They’re thin so you can get through them really quick on an airplane ride or while you’re at home. Anything by John Maxwell is, what I would say, books I love.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

This is a love-hate relationship but I’d have to say my iPhone. I probably do 90% of my things from there, like emailing, texting, social, just everything. So, when people are like, “Oh, when you do this on the desktop,” and I’m like, “I don’t do much from the desktop so I don’t know what you mean.” So, iPhone would probably be my best tool.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Heather Younger

I like to eat the same breakfast every day.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, what is this breakfast?

Heather Younger

See, now you’re intrigued, right? Two eggs with spinach with a little bit of parmesan cheese and, like, a Pico de Gallo on top, and a piece of sprouted grain toast and natural peanut butter, and some blackberries. That’s my breakfast.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate, folks quote it back to you often?

Heather Younger

I think the idea that listening is…being present is, in fact, a gift to others.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

I’d say go ahead and go to LinkedIn, just look for Heather Younger, and, boom, I’ll be there. That’s probably the biggest way for them to kind of follow me, contact me is LinkedIn.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

I would say that we all have the ability to own the listening that we do and how well we do it. And be really reluctant to give away your power. Don’t point the finger or blame your manager or somebody else in the organization. Instead, stand in your own shoes and own your own presence when it comes to people around you.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Heather, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun and gifts of active listening.

Heather Younger

Thank you so much for having me.