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Aug 03
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887: How to Navigate Conflict and Find Clarity with Marc Lesser

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Marc Lesser shows how to navigate difficult emotions and conversations to build thriving relationships.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we shouldn’t be afraid of conflict
  2. The one question you need to ask when dealing with difficult people
  3. How to assess any relationship in 4 words

About Marc

Marc Lesser is a speaker, facilitator, workshop leader, and executive coach. He is the author of four books, including Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen, and CEO of ZBA Associates, an executive development and leadership consulting company. Lesser helped develop the world-renowned Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program within Google and was director of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Zen monastery in the Western world. He lives in Marin County, California, and leads Mill Valley Zen, a weekly meditation group.

Resources Mentioned

Marc Lesser Interview Transcript

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

Marc Lesser
It’s great to be here. I think it’s really important to be awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And I think you’ve got something to say that will be helpful in that quest with your latest book, Finding Clarity: How Compassionate Accountability Builds Vibrant Relationships, Thriving Workplaces, and Meaningful Lives. That’s stuff that we’re into over here.

Marc Lesser
Yeah, and I think it’s no small thing just to have the aspiration to be awesome at your job. I’ve noticed it’s easy, cynicism is easy. Awesome requires work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know what’s funny, when I was doing the original research to put this together, I was using some survey tools and trying to get a sense for, “Does anyone care about this thing I might want to make because I don’t want to build something nobody wants?” I’ve learned that lesson about four times. And, yeah, it was about 4% of people were ten of ten extremely interested in listening to such a show.

And so, that means 96% were not, and I don’t blame them. There’s a lot of different domains of life to focus on or to be awesome at, and sometimes people just want to leave work at work, and that’s okay, in certain times and seasons.

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, I’m not saying anything everyone doesn’t know, it’s that we spend a lot of time at our work. And any place where we spend a lot of time, man, we should be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. And that’s the vibe, I think, with me and listeners that it’s just more fun being awesome discovering how to be more awesome, contributing to awesomeness in others, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Marc Lesser
Yeah, it is. It is. It’s a great word. It’s a great word – awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know what’s funny, you just got me going. I almost deliberately chose it because it was a little bit radical even. Because I remember one of my first speaking engagements, I was talking to the Illinois CPA Society, so a bunch of accountants, and there was this partner who was talking about professionalism, and she said, “I, for example, would really not appreciate it if a youthful member of my staff were to say that something was awesome, for example.”

And I thought, “Really? Because I love that.” So, I guess I’m sticking it to her. No, I wish her the best. I really do. But I think it conveys a little bit of a vibe. It’s like we’re going to be ever so slightly irreverent and would be professional enough to pass along with your teammates and colleagues but, hopefully, edgy enough to keep your interest.

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, awesome is way up there on the continuum of aspirations. Awesome is pretty high up there, but I think it’s good, too. I’m a big believer in the importance of being aspirational.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Yes. Me, too. And, Marc, it’s funny, usually we spend the first couple minutes of me learning about you. But look at you, you’ve got some compassion and some vibrant relationship-building action going on over there.

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, it took us some time to get past the title of the podcast but I think we’ve almost achieved that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so speaking of titles, you’ve got a fun one. You were once the director of a Zen monastery. What’s the story here and maybe some cool experiences from that role?

Marc Lesser
Yeah, that was kind of an amazing experience. My one-year leave of absence from Rutgers University when I was back in my college days, that one year turned into 10 years of living at the San Francisco Zen Center. And five of those years were at this amazing place called Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, which is in the mountains in Central California, and it functions as somewhat, I have to be careful, traditional Zen monastery.

Very traditional in certain ways in terms of the schedule based on kind of some ancient processes and formations of Zen practice but also California, men and women living together, children living at this monastery. But traditional in the sense that, man, we got up early in the morning, 3:40 a.m. wakeup bell, and a lot of meditation, a lot of study, a lot of ritual and being together, but also a lot of work.

And it was there in that role as director that the lightbulb went off for me, and I realized that I thought of myself as a Zen student but I was leading, I was in a leadership role, I was managing. So, this Zen monastery turned into a conference center and resort in the summer time. So, very quiet and chill, secluded all winter but very much like any other conference center, workshop center, 70 or 80 overnight guests, gourmet vegetarian meals served, three meals a day, so it was pretty intense kind of workplace.

And the aha I had was that I was in a leadership role, and that I loved it, and that I got to get the experience, very much the full-on experience of integrating meditation, mindfulness, spiritual practice with running a small business, managing a staff, dealing with money, dealing with all the problems and opportunities of any small business.

And I wondered, “Why isn’t everyone integrating these, what looks like these two different practices?” And that kind of set me on the path of this whole wonderful world of mindful leadership, and it was why I got the call several years later from Google, saying, “Hey, we want you to come and develop a mindful leadership program for Google engineers,” and that was also another amazing opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when we talk about mindful leadership, is there a key way you would articulate what that is and how it differs from normal or sort of mainstream traditional leadership?

Marc Lesser
Well, now we’re going to go back to where we started. Yes, it’s an aspiration to be awesome but awesome, I think, I’m kind of teasing but I’m also being real that I would say that mindful leadership is about bringing one’s full heart, mind, body, spirit into your work, and that all those things really matter, and that it’s great aspiration for results and effectiveness and doing things at the highest level possible, and bringing in a great sense of one’s humanity and emotional intelligence into leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds swell. Tell us, along the way, any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you made in researching this or putting together the book Finding Clarity?

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, this has been my life. Finding Clarity is actually my fifth book, and all of my books, in some way, have been about, I’d say, this integration of one’s whole life, that everything in your life alignment, and a wholeheartedness. I know you’re going to ask me this later but I’m going to give you the answer to this right now.

One of my favorite quotes is from the poet David White who says, “The antidote to exhaustion isn’t rest. The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.” And I would say that, like, “Well, what is it that makes one’s work awesome?” One answer that I have is about to be wholehearted, meaning that your work is fully aligned with what you believe in, with what your values are, with some aspiration that you might have of doing good things, doing important things. Your work is an offering that you’re making to the world. So, to me, these are all ways of talking about, again, whether you use the language of mindful leadership or wholehearted leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, then tell us, what’s this concept of compassionate accountability?

Marc Lesser
Yes. So, compassionate accountability, I’d say, is maybe a subset of that. It’s a focus on holding oneself and others accountable. It’s interesting, accountable is a word that’s used a lot in the business world, as it should be. But generally, often people have sort of a negative connotation with this word accountability. So, I sometimes substitute the word alignment, which is maybe a softer, gentler form of accountability.

But accountability, people usually think of it as obvious things like doing what you say you’re going to do, like having goals and benchmarks and being accountable to them, like actually being able to look at and report on how is it going, but, really, accountability is about aligning about what success looks like, but also, I’d say, aligning around how we’re working together, how we are dealing with success and failure, with conflict, what happens when things are difficult, when there are challenges. Then what?

And the compassionate piece is marrying accountability and alignment with a sense of care and trust and compassion. Compassion is kind of one step up above. Empathy is talked about and the importance. There’s a lot of studies on how important empathy is. Empathy is feeling the feelings of other people. And compassion is feeling other people’s feelings and wanting the best for other people, wanting to heal people’s suffering and stress and anxiety.

So, compassionate accountability, it’s beautiful. They seem like they’re contradictory but they are two, I think, essential practices in the workplace, and I think important practices toward working with more awesomeness.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you perhaps paint a picture with some examples of, “Here’s an approach that we would consider compassionately accountable,” versus some other common approaches that are lacking either in compassion or accountability that are rather common?

Marc Lesser
So, I think what I’ve noticed is that accountability is hard in the workplace because it means dealing skillfully with conflict. And dealing skillfully with conflict is, well, it takes skill but it also takes emotional intelligence. So often, whenever there are gaps in people not meeting certain goals, they might be financial goals, they might be product goals, they might be you’re trying to build a team or roll out a particular product.

And accountability means paying attention and checking in and really looking wide-eyed and with as much clarity as possible about, “How are we doing in meeting those goals? What’s working well? What’s not working well? Where do things stand?” and having those conversations where you’re not overreacting or underreacting.

So, compassion is I think of compassion as the sweet spot of being able to be direct and clear, and, at the same time, to be caring and to be building, to seeing anytime where there are gaps between what we’re trying to accomplish and where we are, that those gaps are opportunities to build trust and connection as oppose to eroding trust and connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you maybe give us a demonstration in practice if, let’s say, someone was underdelivering on a goal or commitment, how might you approach and articulate some messaging to that person?

Marc Lesser
Sure. Yeah, I was thinking of an example that I often use, and maybe this is close to what you’re saying. An example is you’re carpooling with someone. And day after day, they’re late. You’re standing there in the corner and you have an agreement that they’re going to pick you up at 8:00 and it’s, sometimes, 10 after 8:00.

And most days, you just get in the car and you don’t say anything. But, at some point, you say, “We need to talk about this. There’s a gap between what we’ve agreed to do and what is happening. And here’s what I’m seeing, and I’m kind of feeling not so good about it. In fact, I’m a little angry. I don’t feel respected. What are we going to do to close this gap to fix this problem?”

But then you have to listen because you might find out some things that surprise you about what the other person’s experience and story is, having to do with either family matters, or some sickness, some health issues, that, “There was construction on the road that wasn’t supposed to be there, so I went another…”

But it means being able to have such a conversation. Now, these conversations and these gaps are very much affected by context and by role and relationship. The one I was just talking about was kind of equal people, one person just picking up another. Now, if I’m the person in charge, and you are regularly late with handing in the accounting information that I needed, that might be a different conversation.

That might be, “We have a problem. Here it is. I hear there’s a lot of reasons why your reports are late but this is really important and this needs to be fixed.” And it might be, “Do you need some support? Is there something you’re missing?” So, the compassion piece might be caring enough to ask, “Hey, do you need some support?” understanding what the problem might be, understanding why these accounting reports are regularly being handed in late, maybe being willing to help support and fix them. So, that’s the compassion piece.

The accountability piece is bringing it up and talking about it, and having the clarity and the skill, the directness to say, “We’ve got a problem here. We need to talk about this.” And it’s amazing how often that doesn’t happen.

Pete Mockaitis
It certainly doesn’t. Can you share some key drivers as to what’s behind that happening so rarely?

Marc Lesser
I think people don’t like conflict. People are often afraid, “Is this person going to be mad?” I think we all want to be liked. We all want to be loved. We’re afraid, “If I bring this up, is it going to make it worse? It’s not really going to fix the problem anyhow.” Or, any set of stories about, I think, fear of making it worse or I’ve noticed often people just give up.

You might bring up a conversation and it didn’t go the way that you wanted it to, and you stop having those conversation, and just go home and complain to your spouse, or just let that ulcer build, let those stressors. And I think this is how not to create an awesome workplace, is to not face into the gaps. I think this is such an important…and not just in work. I think in all our relationships.

Like, not only do I want to be awesome in my work. I want to be awesome in my marriage. I’d like to be awesome as a father. I’d like to be awesome as a brother. And it means, actually, leaning into, “What does awesome look like? And what are the gaps between what I’m feeling and observing and seeing now and my own desire, my own aspiration, my own vision for what awesome look like?”

So, there’s the kinds of examples I’m giving. Awesome looks like agreeing on when we’re going to get picked up, and it actually happening, or agreeing on when those reports are going to happen. But there are also, I think about, that we’re working together in a way that feels supportive and energetic and clear, maybe even fun, at least enough fun.

Yes, so being able to hold those aspirational visions and to work skillfully with others in working to close the gaps in order to make things if not better, maybe even awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’m curious, do you have any pro tips if someone is having that thought, like, “Okay, I probably got to say something about this issue but I’m scared. I want them to like me. We might make it worse. Last time that didn’t go so well”? If we’re in that loop of self-talk, do you have any, I don’t know, statistics, or data, or reframes, or wisdom to help us get over the hump?

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, yeah, there’s many, many pro tips. Here’s one, one of my favorites. A really easy way to find a way into such dealing with some of those gaps or some of those conflicts is to start by saying, “You know, the story that I’m telling myself is that you’re late every time you’re supposed to pick me up, and, therefore, you don’t respect me. You’re not respecting me and my time. That’s the story that I’m telling myself.”

So, it’s a way of, “I’m taking responsibility. This is something I’m experiencing and seeing. I’m not blaming. I’m not coming after you, saying you, blah, blah, blah, you don’t respect…No, it’s like this is something, this story I’m telling myself is really…” Again, this isn’t for every situation but it’s one way to start the conversation is by leaving the blame.

And often what happens is, by the time we have these conversations, there’s some anger built up, there’s some resentment built up, and you don’t want to…it’s usually not very skillful to start these conversations with anger or blame, but to start with, “Here’s what I’m noticing. Here’s what I’m feeling. Here’s what’s happening with me.”

“And I’m curious, what’s happening with you? What story are you telling yourself? What’s happening with you? And what do we need to do? What do we need to do to close the gaps?” Or, “Here’s a request I have for how I think it would go better in the future.” Any one of those. Those are all a few different tips there.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And I imagine when you open that way, with, “The story I’m telling myself is that you don’t respect me that’s why you’re late,” it’s probably pretty rare that your counterpart says, “You know, you’re right, Marc, that’s exactly what’s happening. I don’t respect you and that’s why I’m late.”

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Part of the other answer, I think you were asking about, like, “Why don’t we have these conversations?” I think most people are incredibly vulnerable, and we all have, I think, a pretty well-developed inner critic, inner judge. We are hardwired to be very cautious and careful, and we don’t want to be hurt. It’s almost like a kind of death that to be vulnerable enough to show how we’re really feeling, to show our vulnerability, to show that we feel disrespected or we feel not seen. All of that comes up.

And so often, it’s not actually what’s happening. It’s not real. So, it’s a little bit unnerving, a little bit vulnerable to come forward with things where we feel where we’re being let down or hurt or challenged, any of those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s beautiful. Thank you. Well, you’ve got a number of great tidbits in the book, and so I’d love to hear your view on how we could shift our thinking associated with “difficult people.”

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, this is where, I think, I tell the story in the book of, often, in public trainings and workshops, it’s not unusual that someone will ask, “How do I deal? Give me some tips for how to work with difficult people.” And I often will wonder if the person asking the question is one of those difficult people. Now, I think I have to say, of course, there are difficult people, there are people who are toxic, just go around leaving trails of stress.

But those such people, I think, are very, very rare, are very small miniscule percentage of the population. Mostly what we’re talking about is our bosses who just don’t act the way that we want them to all the time, our coworkers who, again, are doing things differently than, in some way, we’re not as comfortable with, or many, many situations where anytime things don’t go the way we want them to, we can then label those people as difficult people.

Now, I’ve been CEO of a few different companies, and I make it a habit to do anonymous surveys of my employees. And I’ve learned that I’m perceived, hard to believe, but some people find me difficult. So, what’s interesting is that some people who work for me feel that I don’t include people enough, and that I’m making decisions too quickly, not being inclusive enough.

And other people find me too inclusive, too slow, asking for the input. So, it’s like, man, we all see the world through different lenses. So, I think this is the key to, I think, working with so-called difficult people, is to start by being curious about, “What lens am I seeing the world through? And what lens are these other people seeing the world through that’s making it difficult and challenging for me?”

And this is chapter one of my book Finding Clarity, is entitled ‘Be curious, not furious.’ And this, I think, is maybe step one about working with these so-called difficult people is noticing if you’re furious, noticing feelings and anger and emotions that are coming up, and to start by being curious about yourself, start by being curious about, “Huh, wow, this has a real charge for me. I wonder what that’s about.”

And, also, a key thing about working this issue about difficult people is to not confuse impact and intention. This is one of those classic rules of thumb in having difficult conversations. So, impact is you do something, Pete, and I’m like, “Ouch! That hurt. That didn’t feel good.” Well, we humans are wired, we go right to thinking, “I know why, that I know your intention, that you must’ve had some bad intention.”

But instead of going right from impact to intention, to be curious, “Hey, that hurt. What just happened there, that didn’t feel good to me. I’m curious, what was that about? What were you thinking? Why did you just do what you did?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, you talked about the anonymous surveys for a moment. In practice, how does one execute that? You just, anything, Google Forms, Typeform, or a specialty consulting 360 feedback company that you engage? How does one execute that if they say, “Ooh, I want anonymous surveys”?

Marc Lesser
Well, there happens to be one in the back of my book that when I was CEO of my last organization, I was doing a lot of work with Google, and my friends at Google were happy to provide me with a very well-developed anonymous survey that they used at Google. And I took it and I worked with my team and we customized it and worked it to be as useful and effective for our environment.

And so, yeah, I think it actually takes some thoughtfulness to develop what are the things that you want to measure, what are the things that you want to know from your employees. And, yeah, so it’s designing just the right questions, and it can be a handful of questions, or, I think, the one that I have in the back of my book is about 60 questions. It’s pretty thorough because it gives you a benchmark around culture, around management, around the CEO.

And once you have it, yeah, you just put it out there as any. There’s a bunch of different platforms you can use for forms, and collect the information, and spend a lot of time looking at the results, and it’s hard. I wanted, I’ve always aspired to have awesome workplaces, and, generally, the results of those surveys can be surprising to find out that a lot of people might find the workplace awesome, but a lot of people maybe don’t find it so awesome, and to get more information about what are those gaps, and what can we do to close those gaps.

One of the things that I found out was that things like spending time with employees’ personal and professional development was something that mattered a lot, and that it wasn’t, as CEO and in the last company that I helped grow, there was a gap there. We were not spending, we were not prioritizing really making sure that people felt that their personal and professional development was a high priority, and that we had to put in different systems and mechanisms for being able to support employees more in that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You’ve also got a good tidbit. You say that there are four most important words to assess a relationship. Lay them on us.

Marc Lesser
Yeah, I think the four most important words are, “How are we doing?” And I tell a story in my book about having that conversation with my adult daughter, where I think there’s just something about, again, I think especially if there is any tension or anxiety or gaps in any kind of relationship, the tendency is to not address it and to not talk about it.

And my experience is that’s usually a bad idea. It’s a bad idea in the workplace. It’s a bad idea in our primary relationships with our partners, with our children, with our parents. So, just being able to check in, like, “How are we doing?” But it takes some skill and some presence, actually, to ask that question and to ask it in a way that is real and where you’ll get some real feedback.

Because, usually, I hear this a lot, and I’m sure especially with young kids, “How are you?” “Everything’s fine.” It’s always fine. In the workplace, generally, “Everything’s fine.” So, you might have to dig a little deeper and ask, “Well, what are some things that aren’t fine? Tell me, there must be one thing or a couple things that could be improved in how we’re working together because I want this workplace to be awesome, and it sure doesn’t look to me that you think this is an awesome workplace. What could be better?” And I think it starts with the, “How are we doing?” conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
And if I may ask, where did the conversations with your adult daughter go in terms of highlighting ways to be doing better?

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, it wasn’t easy. I got to hear, which I really wanted to, about some things that were bothering her. There had been some challenging miscommunications that happened between me and my daughter, so I suspected there were some lingering feelings, some gaps, some resentments, and I got to hear about those things.

But I felt like talking about them and airing them was really important as opposed to shoving them under the rug or pretending that they didn’t exist. And I also got to express how much I appreciated my daughter being able to tell me about things that were bothering her, and I let her know, “That’s really important to me. I want to know that.”

And I got to express my own sense of how important that relationship is and how much I loved her, and how much all that good wonderful yummy stuff that we get to do with them, our children.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d also love to get your view of when it comes to storytelling, if that could be an effective means of producing compassion accountability and awesomeness in environments. Any perspective on how we can share and receive stories all the more effectively?

Marc Lesser
Yeah, I’ve been working with a few different leaders on the importance of storytelling as a way of expressing. I think it’s a really important skill to be able to express a vision, to be able to tell stories about things that were awesome, things that were successful, specific stories about what customer engagement, employees that went above and beyond what was expected to do, things that were amazing, and to tell stories about failures, and breakdowns, and what happened, and what we learned.

Yes, storytelling, I think, is, I’m surprised there aren’t more MBAs, more business school classes on the art of storytelling, such an, I think, important competency and skill for leaders.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so it’s important. Any tips on doing it better?

Marc Lesser
It’s funny, I used to do and I still do it, a fair amount of keynote speaking. And being able to be a good storyteller, I remember years ago, hiring a coach and consultant. And part of it is practicing, practice telling a story. Take specific events and talk about them. I think the typical arc of any story is describing what’s happening, what’s the challenge, and how we overcame that challenge, and what we learned from it.

It’s like the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey starts with that we’re all heroes in the journey of life, and it starts maybe with the aspiration for awesomeness, the aspiration to find our true home, to find meaning, to find connection. And then there’s always the challenges and how we find our own power to meet and overcome these challenges. Star Wars, apparently, according to George Lucas, was based on his reading of the traditional hero’s journey process of stories and of life.

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

Marc Lesser
I think we’ve accomplished a lot here.

Pete Mockaitis
I think so, too. Well, so now you gave me it before, but I want to hear it again. It’s so good. Favorite quote, drop it on us.

Marc Lesser
Well, I’ve got many favorites. I started and ran a greeting card company for 15 years so I am a professional quote collector. But one of my all-time favorites is Wendell Berry, who’s a fifth-generation Kentucky farmer, who said, “Be joyful though you’ve considered all the facts,” which I think is great on a hard day in business or reading the newspaper. Like, don’t shy away from the facts but practice with joy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Marc Lesser
Oh, man, favorite study, bit of research. Yeah, I love some of the studies on meditation and how studies showing how meditation will, over time, change the gray matter in your brain, and studies showing that meditation, the relationship between meditation and developing one’s own leadership skills and emotional intelligence. Lots of studies out there, thousands of these people studying meditation and mindfulness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Marc Lesser
Well, the book that I was thinking about while I was talking today is a book called Difficult Conversations. And it’s a book that’s one of the best edited books. Every word in that book matters. Yeah, it comes out of the Harvard negotiating team and it’s simply called Difficult Conversations.

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

Marc Lesser
I love my MacBook Pro. It faltered as I was starting it this morning, I said, “Oh, no, I depend on this computer so much these days.” So, yeah, I love my MacBook.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Marc Lesser
Getting up every morning at 5:30.

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?

Marc Lesser
Yeah, the four most important words, “How are we doing?”

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

Marc Lesser
My website, MarcLesser.net with lots of my writing and audio and video. Yeah, worth a visit.

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

Marc Lesser
Yeah, don’t avoid conflict. Learn to get awesome at noticing and working skillfully with the gaps between what is and what would be awesome.

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

Marc Lesser
Thank you, Pete. It’s been a pleasure.

Jun 29
0

878: Saying No Masterfully to Reclaim your Life with Vanessa Patrick

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Vanessa Patrick shares the science behind why we struggle to say no—and what you can do to get better at refusing.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three competencies of empowered refusal.
  2. What to do when someone’s being pushy.
  3. Why it’s better for your reputation to say no.

About Vanessa

Vanessa Patrick, PhD. is the Associate Dean for Research, the Bauer Professor of Marketing, and lead faculty of the Executive Women in Leadership Program at the Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston. She has a PhD in business from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts you in Charge of your Life.

Resources Mentioned

Vanessa Patrick Interview Transcript

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

Vanessa Patrick
Hey, Pete, lovely to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your book, The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts You in Charge of Your Life. This has been a challenge that many of our listeners are facing so I think this is going to be so cool to get into it. But, first, I wanted to start with is there a particularly memorable no-story you could share with us to kick things off?

Vanessa Patrick
Well, I start the book with a didn’t-say-no story that motivated this whole stream of work. I’m happy to tell you about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it.

Vanessa Patrick
Well, it all began when I spent my 24th birthday staring at a fax machine, and it was a memorable day because I spent the evening at the office waiting for a fax. It wasn’t even an important fax. It was just a fax, which said that the client had received a fax that we had sent earlier. And I spent the whole evening waiting for the fax because my boss told me to do so.

And it was a moment where I realized that we very often, in work and life, get stuck doing very trivial things, pretty meaningless things some of the time, that we could easily say no to. And that moment made me realize the importance of learning to say no when the situation merits it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, how late was it when you left?

Vanessa Patrick
So, I wanted to leave at 5:00 o’clock. It was a Tuesday. The fax arrived at 9:30 in the evening. And so, I basically spent four and a half hours just staring at a fax machine waiting for that white paper to spew out of the machine, and all that white paper said when it arrived, was, “Received with thanks.” And I remember my 24th birthday and that crinkly white paper so distinctly because it was so trivial.

And, Pete, if I had to redo this all over again, if I were me when I was 24, if I was me, the me now, when I was 24, I would’ve negotiated that ask. I would’ve said something like, “Can I come early tomorrow morning and pick up the fax and put it on your desk? Or, can I ask a friend to please stay back and do it if it was that important?” It didn’t have to be me, and I did not have to spend my time doing that, and yet I did.

Pete Mockaitis
Wait, I’m sorry. You said you were 24 years old, and then you said birthday. This was, in fact, your 24th birthday?

Vanessa Patrick
And I missed the birthday party.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my goodness.

Vanessa Patrick
It was quite sad. I’ve recovered. Don’t worry.

Pete Mockaitis
But it is definitely seared. We could tell that memory was really seared into you because you remember it was a Tuesday and the exact text of the fax, and the time that it arrived. Now, these are some details.

Vanessa Patrick
Yes, because when you’re sitting over there for four and a half hours, knowing that everyone in your house is having a party, people are coming and going, people are eating dinner, they’re leaving, you think about these things and you realize, “Why am I doing this? Is this worth it?” And those are the feelings that we need to kind of capture and memorize so that we don’t make those same mistakes again.

So, I talk about, in the book, the importance of learning from our mistakes, and the fact that when we say yes when we want to say no, we sometimes have to pause and actually let ourselves feel bad about that because we naturally, as human beings, have this coping mechanism, something called the psychological immune system, which jumps in as soon as we feel bad and tries to repair the situation, trying to find the silver lining, trying to look for something good out of that bad situation.

And that is why we don’t learn very well from bad situations. We need to stop, embrace that horrible feeling so that we learn from it, so the next time we’re in that situation, we can manage it a little bit better.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And what’s interesting is because of the drama of this particular instance, like it’s a task that is so trivial, I don’t know, maybe there’s lives on the line associated with this fax.

Vanessa Patrick
There were not.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, there weren’t. So, it seems super trivial, and it’s four and a half unnecessary hours in which you’re not actively engaged, and you’re missing out on something really cool, all really come together. So, in a weird way, I like the notion, the psychological immune system, this was kind of a blessing because you had an epiphany that, I believe, has served you well over the subsequent years, and now you’re enriching many thousands with this work. So, indirectly, I guess we can thank that boss for this request.

Vanessa Patrick
Yes, I do think that it did kind of change the trajectory of my life. You start questioning. It was my first job, you start questioning, “Is this the kind of job that I want? Is there something more meaningful and important I could do?” And, also, the curiosity about “Why do people do this? Why do people behave in certain ways?” which has shaped my career as a consumer psychologist.

Pete Mockaitis
And for many of us, when we say yes when we should’ve said no, the pain we experience is more minor. It may not be enough for us to really rewind, evaluate, and make some changes.

Vanessa Patrick
But we do feel resentful very often. A lot of the people in my studies often talk about the fact that they’ve said yes when they want to say no, and they feel very resentful towards the other person, and really wished they did not do that. And so, in many ways, but we also search for reasons as to why we said yes and come up with the fact that it might be a growth opportunity. It could open doors. It could lead to a promotion. So, we make up these things to make ourselves feel better but sometimes we need to just see it for what it is and not make the mistake again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s interesting how we resent them, and, though, I guess we’ve got at least 50% responsibility as to having said yes.

Vanessa Patrick
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you’ve done a lot of studies, you’ve engaged a lot of people here. Any particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made here when it comes to us humans and our relationships saying no?

Vanessa Patrick
Yes. It’s no surprise that, of course, human beings have trouble saying no, but one of the things that come out consistently in my research is the fact that no is a gendered issue, that women struggle way more to say no than men do. Women are more likely to say yes to a workplace request than men are. Women are more likely to be asked to do unpromotable work, or unpaid work, or the office housework, but they’re also more likely to take those things on.

One of the most interesting things in my studies is something that I call the spotlight effect. And the spotlight effect is this feeling of being in the spotlight when someone makes their ask of you. So, in a study, I put people in different conditions. In one condition, I told them that they were asked to do something that they didn’t want to do, and there was a crowd of people who had already agreed to do it.

And based on the research of social psychology, we know that we are more likely to conform to that ask. The spotlight is going to shine way more brightly on us when we know that other people are watching and expecting us to say yes. So, of course, both men and women are more likely to say yes when there are lots of people watching even if they want to say no.

I also do another scenario where that request is an interpersonal request. There’s no crowd, it’s just one person versus another person, the asker and the askee. And in that situation, you find that men are significantly more likely to say, “No, this is not going to work,” if it’s a one on one, but women still respond at the same level as if there was a crowd watching.

So, women, it’s almost like women have conjured up this imaginary crowd that is watching them, and the spotlight shines brightly on them, whether it’s a one-on-one interaction or whether it’s a group. I, personally, think that’s a super interesting finding, and it’s fascinating to think about why that is, and why women feel that pressure to say yes, feel more intense spotlight regardless of whether it’s a one-on-one ask or it’s a crowd.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share with us a rough sense of these figures here, the crowd effect versus the one-on-one effect, that is at stake here? Is it a smidgen more pressure and probability of saying yes, or is it like double, triple, quadruple?

Vanessa Patrick
So, when it was a social ask, and when both men and women responded equivalently, so about five on a scale of one to seven, on, “How much attention did you feel was on you?” That drops to four for men, which was significantly different, statistically significantly lower compared to women who remained at around 4.5.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, got you. And I guess I’m curious about the percentage of percent of time said yes and didn’t want to.

Vanessa Patrick
The number of times they said yes, so we don’t have that. In the experiment, we didn’t look at that. The scenario required everyone to say yes or no.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you.

Vanessa Patrick
So, everyone wanted to say no. It was a clear scenario when no one wanted to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
What is our scenario?

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah, so it was something like spending your spring break doing some volunteer work for a friend who just caught you. So, it was the first day of spring break and someone pulled you aside, and said, “No, you need to help me with this volunteer work, and spend your entire spring break doing this, making calls on my behalf,” which is something we pre-tested no one wanted to do, no one wanted to spend their spring break doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it would have to be some pretty, meaningfully interesting, powerful calls. It’s hard to dream up the scenario where that would be a win, like, “Oh, yeah.” Okay. Cool. Thank you. All right. So, there we have it, interesting tidbits there. So, then, overall, what would you say is sort of the main thesis or big idea behind the book The Power of Saying No?

Vanessa Patrick
So, a lot of people, successful people, and, in general, most people know that it’s a good thing to say no to the things that you don’t want to do. The question is how. So, the big idea behind the book is the way in which you communicate your refusal and something called empowered refusal, which is the basis of my research.

Empowered refusal is a super skill of being able to say no in a way that’s effective. And what effective, essentially, means is that you are able to communicate a no response while maintaining your relationship with the other person and securing your reputation.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds perfect.

Vanessa Patrick
It does.

Pete Mockaitis
How do we do that?

Vanessa Patrick
So, I talk about the fact that you need to develop three competencies to develop the skill of empowered refusal but, essentially, empowered refusal requires you to say no by looking inwards. You need to say no by giving voice to your values, priorities, preferences, and beliefs. So, it’s a no that stems from your identity. And when you say no that stems from your identity, giving voice to what you believe, the way you believe things should be, people are less likely to give you pushback and more likely to be persuaded by your no.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, what are the three competencies and how do we develop them?

Vanessa Patrick
Right. So, the three competencies, I call the ART of empowered refusal, A-R-T, awareness, rules not decisions, and totality of self. So, your empowered refusal begins with self-awareness. It begins with you looking inwards and developing a sense of what you uniquely bring to the table, what you care about, what do you value, how do you want to find meaning in your life.

So, an awareness of your preferences, your beliefs, your values, forms the foundation of step number two, which is setting up a system of rules, and not having to make decisions all the time. So, once you understand yourself, then you can set yourself up with a set of personal policies or simple rules that guide your actions and decisions. So, if you have rules in place, or policies in place, it’s much easier for you to say no because you already have a very firm stance on what you believe and how you want things to be.

And the final piece of the puzzle is the way you communicate your empowered refusal, which is using your whole self, using not only your language but also your nonverbal cues. Nonverbal cues that both convey empowerment but also secure your relationship with the other person. So, I can give you a few examples.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Vanessa Patrick
Let’s imagine that someone asked you to fly somewhere. Unprepared, unannounced, you’ve got fly over the weekend to do something that is not part of your job, and you don’t want to do it because you do not work on weekends, or weekends are family time as far as you’re concerned. So, you have a personal policy in place about how you’d like to spend your weekends, and you are able to better communicate your refusal based on that stance.

What usually happens when people ask you for something that you want to say no to is that we grasp for the first available excuse. And excuses are much less effective than policies. Policies reflect a long-standing stance which stem from something that’s important to you, something that you value. And when you use a policy, you are more likely to get compliance than if you use an excuse.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. You say compliance, as in the requestor just overrides you.

Vanessa Patrick
No, the requestor will either push back or they will respect your refusal. Those are the two main options. So, when someone asks you something, they typically expect a yes. It is societally expected that an invitation, an ask, a favor, is going to garner a yes response. There’s a ton of research that shows that we say yes to the most ridiculous requests because we are socialized and hardwired to help.

We are conditioned to be cooperative. We are psychologically poised in many ways to say yes than to say no. And because of that psychological makeup and that socialization, when we say no, we often get pushback from the asker.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing on so many levels. One, I’m thinking that’s kind of absurd that that’s in us humans. Two, I’m thinking I guess there’s probably a set of contexts that make that true versus not true. So, the majority of my emails are pitches from publicists and authors, etc. to want to be on my podcast, maybe the plurality of emails.

And so, I would imagine they don’t really expect that I will say yes because, in their own experience of any sort of recruiting, sales, business development activity, the majority of people say no. And I find it a little funny when they say, “I’m just making sure you got my email. Like, this is the weirdest thing that you didn’t reply.”

Like, in some ways, I find that a little bit irksome because there seems to be, like, almost dishonesty there. It’s, like, “You don’t really expect a response. Of course, you would like one.” So, I guess that’s what I’m thinking. Like, in the context of a stranger who’s asking hundreds of thousands of people the same thing via an impersonal platform, email, I don’t imagine they expect a yes. But you tell me, maybe they really do.

Vanessa Patrick
You hit the nail on the head in terms of the impersonal platform. So, we are 34 times more likely to say yes to a face-to-face request.

Pete Mockaitis
Thirty-four.

Vanessa Patrick
So, email is actually the best way to say no to people because it’s impersonal, as you just mentioned. You take away that face-to-face concern. I also think that if you think about the studies that people have done, like Vanessa Bohns, for example. She has people ask people to do the craziest things: defile library books, “Can I play in your backyard?” “Can you mail this for me?” completely crazy things, and she finds that people are much more likely to say yes, even to those completely ridiculous requests than say no.

And there’s a lot of evidence out there that people do struggle with saying no, and so it’s just easier to say yes. And so, I talk about it in terms of the fact that society favors the asker. So, if you’re the asker, you get to ask and then everybody feels really terrible about saying no. But we have to remember that an ask is just an ask. We don’t have to say yes to every ask that comes our way. And for a lot of people, they struggle with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Thirty-four times. Well, now I’m intrigued. Do we know where phone calls stack up, because in a way it’s live and real time, but there’s not a face? So, I imagine it’d be in the middle. Do you have the numbers on that?

Vanessa Patrick
No, I do not. But I’d imagine that it’s somewhere in between the face-to-face and the email. But I think, because it’s technology-mediated, it becomes easier to say no even on a phone call compared to a face-to-face request.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s powerful right there.

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah. So, one of the things that I mentioned is the importance of putting technology in between you and the asker when it becomes a very difficult ask, or when you’re dealing with a very pushy asker. Convert the conversation to a digital medium or put some technology between you. It’s easier to text, it’s easier to phone, a phone call converted to an email than to handle people face to face.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’m reminded of I’ve got a buddy who’s a priest. He tells me that after church, there’s crowds of people, and they shake hands and say hello. Well, it’s a good way for people to have a little bit of a relationship exchange, community-building there. And he said that he was inundated with requests, like, “Oh, you should come over have dinner. We should hang out in this way or that way.” And he used to say yes all the time, immediately, and schedule, he’s like, “Oh, my gosh, my calendar is out of control.”

And so, he decided his new policy was, when they make an invitation, assuming he doesn’t want to immediately do it, he says, “You know, that sounds great. Please call the office on Monday and talk to Debra, or whomever, and she owns my calendar, and she’ll find a good time for us.” And he said, invariably, like way over 90%, he told me, of the incoming requests just disappear because it’s quite a difference to say, “Hey, I had this fun idea. Why the heck not?” versus, “Okay, I’m going to actually have to remember to put into my calendar, to call the administrative assistant, and get that sorted out.”

So, I thought that was brilliant in that you’re continuing to show interest and it’s not blowing them off.

Vanessa Patrick
I think your priest friend has got two principles right in the book, that I talk about in the book. Never say yes in the moment, like always buy time. And second is, if you have the opportunity to delegate to someone, and that person says no on your behalf, it’s a win. So, Debra from the office, if she says no to the person, it’s not going to feel as bad as when your friend has to say no.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And just the dramatic reduction in terms of folks who even do that is huge.

Vanessa Patrick
Will follow up, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, now, tell me, when it comes to the rules, I don’t know who, if this is from a TV show or a movie somewhere, but someone was hiring a nanny or a housekeeper, and they just laid it like, “I don’t do dishes, I don’t do laundry, I don’t do cooking, I don’t do diapers.” And it’s sort of like, “Okay. Well, this isn’t going to work, is it?”

And so, I think that emotional side of us, in terms of a rule, that sounds like, “Ooh, that sounds awesome.” Like, you can communicate a rule, you have some extra conviction, they understand not to ask again, so that has a lot going for it. But it can feel a little more scary, “I’m not just saying no once. I’m saying no to a potential hundreds of future requests in one fell swoop.” And that’s even scarier to say, Vanessa, so how do you think about the articulation of rules?

Vanessa Patrick
So, these rules are just simple rules that you set up for yourself to increase things like your productivity, to enhance the quality of your decision-making, to make your relationships better, to advance yourself in your career. These are things that all of us care about in working life, and these are all the things that we need to think about, setting small rules.

It is not this rule, like the nanny you were talking about, not to do the job that you were hired to do. It’s about doing the job the best possible way you can. And sometimes you have to protect your time to be able to do that job. I think one of the things that we see in the workplace right now is the tyranny of the number of meetings that you’re dragged into. You don’t actually have time to do what you were hired to do.

And so, sometimes just setting up rules around when you meet and when you work, or when you can take some time to do some deep work that needs to be done and protect that time, these are simple rules that just enhance your productivity and actually make you a more valuable member of the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that sounds awesome. Do you actually articulate some of that stuff if you were to, say, have this conversation with a manager?

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah. So, think about what your priorities are, what the job is, what do you need to do? So, one of the conceptualizations that I really love that I use in the book is this notion of, “What is good work?” And Howard Gardner from Harvard University, he’s an educational psychologist, comes up with a lovely definition of what is good work, good work that is meaningful.

Good work has three main dimensions, kind of like a DNA strand. It is excellent, it is emotional or engaging, and it is ethical. And so, when we do good work, we are essentially devoting ourselves to work that brings out the best of us, that leverages our strengths, that showcases what we bring to the table. When we do good work, it is emotionally gratifying. It feels good to do. We feel as if we’ve achieved something meaningful. And, finally, is that it does good, like it has an ethical dimension. It makes the world better. You leave the place better than you found it.

And so, when you think about work, and when we think about work, if we can think about this framework of work, and then try and achieve on a daily basis that sort of quality work, and in order to do that, we do need to set up these personal policies that facilitate that sort of activity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, to tackle the fears head on, if we fear that, “Oh, I’m going to be perceived as not a team player, or I’m lazy, I’m not manager or executive material because I’m not truly committed with my rules and my no’s,” do you have an answer, or even better, some real data on what it’s like on the receiving end?

Vanessa Patrick
So, this is the concern for reputation. So, there are two main concerns for why we say yes when we want to say no. One is we want to be liked. So, one is a concern for relationships, and the other is a concern for reputation. The concern for relationships deals with the need to be liked, to be included in a social group, to have friends, to be part of something.

And our reputation is the other thing that we’re really concerned about, the notion that we want to be seen as competent, on the ball, a team player. Reputation is, essentially, what people say about us when we leave the room, and we want people to say good things.

And so, these are two key drivers for why we say yes when we want to say no. So, your point about, “Oh, I’m concerned about these things that people will say,” is the reputation concern. And I always say, of course, you should take on things that you can handle and that you can fit into your schedule, but I call it the house of cards trap.

Essentially, if you think about every ask that comes your way, and if your goal is to be a team player and to be seen as competent, and you just keep saying yes to that stuff, you’re essentially adding more and more cards to an increasingly fragile house of cards that is going to collapse if you do not, at some point, essentially.

And so, thinking about your reputation in the short term, like, “If I say yes right now, they will like me, they will think I’m competent,” as opposed to thinking about your reputation in the long term. If you keep taking more stuff, you’re going to drop the ball, you’re not going to be able to deliver, you’re not going to be able to deliver quality.

And so, I always argue, “Is it better to say no up front, because it is just something that is not in your wheelhouse or doesn’t leverage your strengths, or you simply just don’t have the time to do it? Say no now or drop the ball later, and have your reputation take a hit, or a bigger hit perhaps.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you give us some example articulations of the no that is artful and it’s an empowered refusal? And I say, “Hey, Vanessa, I would love it if you could stay late. We got this really big client presentation coming up on Friday, and I think we’re behind, and there’s really a lot at stake. So, could you stick it out for a few hours?”

Vanessa Patrick
That may not be the best time to say no.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Vanessa Patrick
So, one of the things I talk about is deciphering the ask, like, “How do you decipher to say yes to and what to say no to?” If it’s a high stakes, really important thing that you need to pitch in for, it may not be the best thing to say no to. But if someone asks you, “Hey, can you organize the retirement party because someone is retiring?” That is something that is not urgent, not terribly important, and anybody can do it. That may be the thing to be saying no to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s good. Well, I was going to ask, in terms of we’ve got our rules, how do we think about bending rules and under what circumstances?

Vanessa Patrick
I think they are your rules and they are meant to be meant. But if you bend them every single day then it’s not a rule. You need to have rules, and you need to have contingencies, and you need to have a sense of, let’s say, “I never work in the evenings because 6:00 to 8:00 is family time.” Assume that that’s my rule. But as you just said, if someone says, “Hey, Vanessa, can you pitch in because we have this really important thing, and can you make an exception and come just this Thursday evening because Friday is this big deadline?” By all means, you can break your own rule if you choose to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you recommend articulating that in a special way?

Vanessa Patrick
So, I often talk about saying things in terms of using very absolute words, “I don’t,” “I always,” “I never,” “It’s my policy.” These are words that communicate that you are speaking from a place of power, so they are empowered language. They also reflect your stance on the matter. So, “I don’t,” “I never.” So, one of the research studies that we did was compared words like, “I don’t” versus “I can’t.”

So, whenever you frame a refusal, you can always say, “I’m really sorry, I can’t do this,” or, “I’m sorry, I don’t do this.” So, let’s imagine you’re at a party and someone is offering you chocolate cake. You can say, “I’m sorry I can’t eat the chocolate cake.” It comes across as disempowered and you’re most likely going to get someone saying, “Why not? It’s just a piece of cake. Go ahead and eat it.” You’re going to get the pushback.

Imagine that you say, “I’m sorry, I don’t eat chocolate cake.” No one pushes back. This is your rule, “I’m not a chocolate cake-eating person.” It implicates the identity. And using language that implicates the identity is less likely to get pushback.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. It takes an extra level of courage and curiosity to dig into that. And I think most people probably wouldn’t feel comfortable saying, “Well, why not?” but rather is just, like, it’s almost you have to do more mental work to think about how I engage that conversation further if I were going to, such as, “Oh, that’s interesting. What led you to adopt this policy?”

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah, and most often you don’t get that conversation continuing. Most people accept a refusal when it stems from your identity because that’s who you are, that’s the kind of person you are, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I remember when I was at a party, and someone said, it was a husband and wife, and she said, “Oh, Ricky doesn’t drink anymore.” And so, I’m so full of curiosity, I was like, “Well, now I really want to know what happened with Ricky’s historical drinking.” It’s like, “I’m not going to.” I just met the dude and he’s friendly and cool. I hope we get to maybe have that conversation later. But not the time or the place for me to dig into his history of his relationship with alcohol, though I’m so curious now.

All right. So, I hope Ricky is doing great. Now, you also recommend that we frame our refusal using more nouns instead of verbs. What’s the thinking here?

Vanessa Patrick
So, research shows that nouns, again, implicate your identity. When you say, “I am a writer,” “I am a teacher,” “I am a mom,” these are nouns. They describe your stable stance. Whereas, verbs, like, “I write,” “I teach,” lots of people write, lots of people teach, you are just one of them. And so, verbs, essentially, describe an activity, whereas nouns describe who you are, again, implicating the identity.

And so, if you have to talk about yourself, and there’s research that shows that when we talk about ourselves in terms of nouns, we come across as more authentic and, like, stable individuals who can communicate what they do. And so, there’s some work that talks about how we should talk about these things in our resumes and in job interviews by using more nouns than verbs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now, Vanessa, we didn’t quite do a demo because you wisely mentioned, “Maybe this is not the time to say no,” but now let’s say it is the time to say no, and I’m saying, “Hey, Vanessa, could you pick up my drycleaning this afternoon? It looks like I’m not going to be able to make it there after all.”

Vanessa Patrick
“I’m sorry, I go to the gym every afternoon between 3:00 and 5:00.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, and that’s that. There’s no elaboration.

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah, know it’s a complete sentence.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There we go. Let’s try again. “Vanessa, could you scan these documents and email them to me?”

Vanessa Patrick
“I believe we have someone who does those kinds of things. I’m not the person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is fun. I can do this for a while.

Vanessa Patrick
Are you just going to do this all day?

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe. Maybe. I don’t know. Okay. “Vanessa, could you look over this proposal and make sure I didn’t make any silly mistakes?”

Vanessa Patrick
“Sure, absolutely. I’m really good at looking at proposals, and it leverages my unique strength, and I’m happy to strengthen your proposal for you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s a yes, and that’s cool?

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah. And so, when you’re talking about this, the deciphering the asks, it’s really, I come up with this framework where you can use this mental model to help you to figure out what you say yes to and what you say no to. So, all the things you asked me, I, essentially, looked at them through that framework, and said, “What is the cost to me and what is the benefit to the other person?”

So, there are some things that are low cost to me but huge benefits to you. Like, looking over a two-page proposal and scanning it and making it better, that’s my strength. I’m good at it. I can make it better. I know it’s not a huge deal. I’m going to say yes because it’ll benefit you. But this, “Pick up my drycleaning,” and, “Check the weather and do this rubbish,” that is stuff, no, you shouldn’t be asking anyone to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do we know, from the person who makes a request, and they received a no done artfully, do we have a sense in terms of their thought about you, like the relationship and the liking that we’re worried about that’s at risk? To what extent is that a boogeyman of our minds versus that’s real?

Vanessa Patrick
I think we exaggerate the impact that our no’s will have on others. Most often, when you say no to somebody, they simply go ahead and ask the next person. If it’s something that anyone can do, they just go down the list. We do that ourselves. If someone says no to us about something, we just find somebody else to do it. You don’t really think that much about it.

If it’s something that is meaningful and important to you, then, by all means, think about taking it on after you’ve asked the necessary questions, “Is it important? When does it need to get done? How can I contribute? Why did you ask me? Is there something unique that I can do?” By asking questions, we can figure out what to say yes to.

So, I call these the hero’s journey asks. The hero’s journey asks are the ones that are high effort on our part but hugely beneficial to others. And so, we should say yes to those hero’s journey asks because those hero’s journey asks is what makes work life meaningful.

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

Vanessa Patrick
I have this concept in the book that most people seem to like, which is called the walnut trees.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it.

Vanessa Patrick
And so, there are some people, despite your artful no, will not take no for an answer. And so, we need to figure out how to deal with these pushy askers. And in my book, I talk about these pushy askers as walnut trees. There are several descriptors of these kind of people in the literature – pushy people, bullies, etc. – but I choose to call them walnut trees, and I can tell you why.

A walnut tree is, essentially, this big tree with a luxuriant canopy, and it has a root system that spreads out 50 feet. But what it does is that it exudes in the soil a chemical called juglone and it stems the growth of everything around them, and so that’s why I call it that. It’s easier to deal with people when you can recognize walnut tree behavior, and say, “Oh, that’s walnut tree behavior,” when someone is being an exceptionally pushy asker. And there are strategies that you can develop to deal with walnut trees when they are being pushy, including, like we talked about, bringing in technology, delegating the ask, etc.

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

Vanessa Patrick
My favorite quote, and one I say to myself almost every day, is, “Be in demand. Stay in control.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Vanessa Patrick
I read a lot, so it’s hard to choose. But my favorite book of recent time has been Lessons in Chemistry.

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

Vanessa Patrick
QuillBot.

Pete Mockaitis
And what does that do?

Vanessa Patrick
It’s an AI-writing tool.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Vanessa Patrick
I wake up every morning at 5:15 so that I have some alone time. I thrive on the solitude of the morning and the serenity of the morning.

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

Vanessa Patrick
“It goes the way you say.”

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

Vanessa Patrick
I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter @vpatrick23, and on Instagram vanpat23, and my website is VanessaPatrick.net.

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

Vanessa Patrick
Yes, don’t be afraid to say no. Invest in the art of empowered refusal and say no to the things that don’t matter.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Vanessa, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you much luck and fun in all of your refusals.

Vanessa Patrick
Thank you. You, too.

Jun 15
0

874: The Five Questions that Build the Best Possible Relationships with Michael Bungay Stanier

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

Michael Bungay Stanier reveals the simple secret to forging better relationships at work and in life.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The key factor that builds and ruins relationships
  2. The way to mend damaged relationships
  3. The simple question that helps maintain your relationships

About Michael

Michael Bungay Stanier helps people know they’re awesome and they’re doing great. He’s best known for The Coaching Habit, the best-selling coaching book of the century and already recognized as a classic. His new book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, does what it says on the label. Michael was a Rhodes scholar and dabbles in the ukulele. He’s Australian, and lives in Toronto, Canada.

Resources Mentioned

Michael Bungay Stanier Interview Transcript

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
Hey, I’m grateful that you’ve got a short memory and you keep inviting me back. I am thrilled to be back. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. Well, you don’t give yourself enough credit. You just keep generating more groundbreaking intellectual insights that the world must hear.

Michael Bungay Stanier
You know, I do better when the expectations are lowered at the start of the conversation rather than raised, but I’ll do what I can to kind of rise to the challenge. But, thanks for saying that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s try again. Well, you threw together some words, half of it is probably AI but let’s see if we can muddle through this.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Thank you. That’s perfect. I can do that. I can crush that.

Pete Mockaitis
You got it. Well, so you’ve always got a lot of fun stories. I’m curious to hear the last year, two or three, any really cool coaching moments, or relationships transformed, or highlights for you?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Oh, man. Well, the biggest one for me, and that plays a role in this new book, was, and this is only going to go deep and maybe slightly really dark really quickly, but my dad died a couple of years ago. And I had flown back to Australia, I was living in the house with mom and dad, and dad had made it out of the hospital, and he had about two months living at home before he finally died.

And it was a miserable stressful time for everybody, mom and dad in particular, and they’d been a really good couple for 55 years, like they’re really tight, they loved each other, they supported each other, they were just like a role model in terms of how you wanted a married couple to be. And they were kind of a bit snippy with each other.

Dad’s stuck in a bed, he can’t do the stuff he normally does, he’s a little bit, “Hey, Rosie, get me this,” “Hey, Rosie, can I have that, please?” and mom was like, A, stressed that her life partner was dying, B, stressed a bit, going to being the servant, all of a sudden, in the household, in a household where chores had always been shared pretty equally.

And I kind of plucked up my courage and suggested that they have a conversation about how they wanted to be with each other in the remaining weeks or months of dad’s life together because I really didn’t want, mom in particular, to go, “I wasn’t the best version I could be in a stressful time in the last time I have with my husband.”

And so, we facilitated this conversation, mom was like, “This sounds like the worst thing on earth.” My dad was like, “This sounds bad but we should give it a go,” and we just had that conversation about how they wanted to be with each other in this final time. And they did so well, I was so proud of them and thrilled for them, and it just took a little bit of an edge off those last days together.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that really is beautiful. And did your mom talk to you about that conversation later?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, when I first suggested it, my mom was like, “Absolutely not. That sounds terrible.” And then the third time I suggested it, she’s like, “Well, maybe but do I have to be there?” And I’m like, “I think you do have to be there.” And we have talked about it since then in terms of just talking through those last days and talking about my memory of my dad, of course.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that really is beautiful in terms of just positioning the richness, the value, all that is really wrapped up in our relationships and the conversations we have with those people. It’s big. And it does take some courage to have a conversation about your conversations, and yet really cool things are on the other side of them.

Michael Bungay Stanier
That’s right. As I’ve been kind of teaching some of the content from this book, I often ask a group, “Think of a really miserable working relationship you’ve had, or even just one that wasn’t terrible but just was kind of diminishing in a way, and think of what was said and done, and then think of the impact on you.” And then when you see what people put in the chat, it’s like, “I felt belittled. I felt shrunk. I lost my courage. I lost my sense of self. I did poor work.”

And then when you flip it, and you go, “Think of a really great working relationship you had, you might remember that, remember that back and forth, now what was the impact on you?” It’s like, “I feel braver. I feel more courageous. I did better work. I took bigger risks. I kind of expanded into the next version of who I am so I grew and I learned about myself.” And it’s like such a determinant of your work success and happiness in terms of the health of your working relationships.

But so often, we just cross our fingers and leave it to chance and hope for the best because it is an unusual and somewhat courageous conversation to say, “Hey, Pete, before we start working on the stuff, I think you and I have a conversation about how we do this best together so that we can not screw each other up and we can bring out the best in each other at the same time.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m a huge believer in this, and this has come up, I think, with my conversation with Mary Abbajay about how to manage your manager. She had a book about managing up, which is excellent. And she said that she surveyed folks, her audiences, and she said less than 1% of folks really have such a conversation.

And so, when I spread the gospel at different trainings and events that I’ve been at, and folks are like, “Oh, no, that seems kind of weird.” It’s like that’s how their fear gets articulated or manifests, “Oh, that just seems sort of weird. I don’t know about that,” as opposed to, “Pete, I’m terrified of engaging in those words.” They don’t say that, they’re like, “Oh, it just seems weird.”

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, it is a bit weird. At least, if not weird, it’s unusual. And your statistics point to it, less than 1%. It’s a rare thing somebody says, “Let’s talk about how we work together before we talk about what we work on.” But I love the point you’re making, I hope people heard that, which is, this isn’t just for the people you manage and lead.

It’s for the working relationships, so you can do that with your best customers, and you can do that actually with your prospects, and you can do that with your colleagues you have to collaborate with, and you can do it with your boss. So, there’s all sorts of ways that you can enrich and strengthen and make safe and vital and repairable these key working relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, the book is called How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships. As you were putting this together and researching it, did you have any surprising moments of discovery along the way?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Part of it was trying to figure out what the goal was in these conversations, and it felt helpful to realize that it wasn’t to create the best working relationship but the best possible working relationship. If you think of your working relationships you have, it’ll be a Bell curve. You have a few at one end where you’re like, “I love this person. I love how we work together, and it’s just thrilling.” And you have a few at the other end where you’re like, “This is sand in the gears. This is kind of a miserable experience kind of working through it.”

And it’s not always that because they’re nuts or a psycho or whatever. It’s just that sometimes you just can’t figure it out with the other person. And then there’s a bunch of people in the middle where it’s good enough, and it’s solid, and it’s great sometimes, but less than great some other times. And each one of those different categories has the potential to be better than it is now, make the bad ones trending towards good or less bad, make the ones in the middle better than just average, and make the ones at the top end sustainable so that they stay sparkly and powerful as long as possible.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. So, then that’s the notion of a best possible relationship, I suppose, is knowing that not every relationship is going to feel magical no matter what conversation you have but there is untapped potential that we can get after with some of these questions. So, shall we jump right into the questions, or how would you frame how we start getting into such a conversation where we engage these questions?

Michael Bungay Stanier
So, I want to get into that conversation and those questions but maybe a moment just to talk about the three attributes of a best possible relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael Bungay Stanier
So, I’ve mentioned them but let me say them again. It should be safe and it should be vital and should be repairable. I think one of the interesting things that I’ve learned is these aren’t A + B + C, they’re not additive. They’re actually in a dance with each other. They’re actually in tension with each other. The place to start is safe. And everybody who’s listening to this podcast will have talked about it and heard about psychological safety as a kind of key attribute for success.

Google Oxygen and Google Aristotle, all those projects alike, it’s safety that allows people to grow. Amy Edmondson, kind of the OG in this area, kind of championing and helping us understand what psychological safety means. And that is, a sense, to kind of move away from fear, and say, “I say what I need to say. I can show up as who I am without that fear.”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s kind of ironic that Amy Edmondson is researching and teaching about safety and yet she’s a gangster.

Michael Bungay Stanier
I hadn’t thought of that.

Pete Mockaitis
I know. I love the verbiage. I’m just joshing with you. We had her on the show, she’s great, and that’s fair. It’s a fair assessment. You could call her the grandfather/grandmother as well but OG hits me in my Danville, Illinois roots.

Michael Bungay Stanier
There we go. But she blurbed the book, and I said, “Amy, can I call you the OG of psychological safety?” And she’s like, “I don’t know what that means.” I’m like, “I’m not sure what that means. I think it means original gangster. I think that’s what it means.” Then she’s like, “Maybe you can call me Harvard Business professor.” And I’m like, “Sure. Okay, we’ll go with that. I totally get that.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael Bungay Stanier
But in balance with safety is vitality. Every relationship needs to be vital. And I like the kind of play on the words there, Pete. Vital meaning essential, but vital also meaning alive. And there’s a way that you want a relationship to push, and provoke, and challenge, and take you to the edge of your competence and your confidence, and what you can, and who you are so that you can…you want it to be fun and exciting.

And I think safe and vital are often in this kind of play with each other. There’s a way that you can make a relationship so safe that, actually, it loses some of its sparkle. There’s a way that you can make it so dangerous that it becomes unsafe. So, with whoever it is you’re talking to, you’re trying to find the right balance between safe and vital for you and that other person.

And then the third element is repairable. And as part of writing the book and reading around the book, I was reading people like Esther Perel, and Terry Real, and Dan Siegel, and John Gottman, some of the really big names who’ve written about the dynamics of marriage and romantic relationships. And one of the recurring themes across all of their work is how bad we all are at repairing damaged relationships.

Mostly, “Ah, I’ll pretend it didn’t happen,” or, “I’ll be sad and sulk about it,” or hopefully the fabric will just repair itself. But actually, it’s rare that people more actively say, “How do we fix this thing that got dented or cracked or banged up in some way?” But you can bet that any working relationship is going to go off the rails at some stage. And the ability to say, “How do we get it back on the rails? How do we get back to where we were before?” is a really powerful one, and the key contribution to a best possible relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, what are some common best and worst practices in the realms of safety, vitality, and repairability?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Good question. In some ways, that question takes me back to my roots, and it makes me think about questions, and it makes me think about not asking questions. I think that the act of remaining uncurious is one of the ways that damages safety and vitality. If you have a certainty about how right you are, how your point of view is all you need, how you should be the one who solves it, fixes it, comes up with the idea, explains a problem, sets the team going, there’s a way that that is a diminishing act for the people around you.

And I think part of one of the other things that’s diminishing or can detract from vitality is… it is an inability to see them for who they are and be curious about who they are. The question I suspect that could be most powerful for unlocking a sense of what vitality might mean is, “What do you want?” “What do you want?” is one way of coming at “Who are you? Who are you over there?”

Human beings are these messy, complicated, amazing, obscure, unpredictable people who we have to work with. And so, asking, “What’s your best? What makes you alive? Who are you? What do you want?” you’re using curiosity as a way of unlocking their humanity, the person in front of you. And when you unlock their humanity, when you see them more completely, you have a better chance of both creating safety and vitality.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Okay. So, when it comes to a relationship being repairable, I could think it’d probably be good to say, “I apologize” from time to time when you screw up, and to maybe just acknowledge and not ignore, or hope, or pretend that things are just going to get all better. Any other pro tips in that repairable world?

Michael Bungay Stanier
The fifth question of the keystone conversation, the fifth and final question, is “How will we fix it when it goes wrong?” because it will go wrong. And there’s something really powerful about having a conversation about “How will we get around to fix this even before anything bad has happened?” And what’s interesting is less, actually, the answers to the question. What’s powerful is a recognition that, at some stage, something is going to go wrong, something is going to be dented, somebody is going to be disappointed. How will we go about fixing that?

And if you and I were having a conversation, like, “Okay, Pete, you and I are working together. We’re going to do a joint podcast. It’s going to be amazing. You’re the lead guy because you’re smart and you’re handsome and you’ve got a voice for radio. I’m the tall guy because I’m taller than you. I’ll change the lightbulbs and make the lighting work but we’re going to work together.”

And if I go, “All right. Look, how will we screw this up?” And you’ll go, “I’ve worked with people like you, here’s where it goes wrong, and here’s what I do, and here’s what you do.” And I’m like, “I get that.” And I’ll go, “Pete, when I’ve worked with people like you, prima donnas behind the mic, let me tell you how it all goes wrong.” And you’re like, “Okay, I get that.”

I’m like, “Okay. So, how do we fix that?” And I might say, “Look, for me, if you just come up and say, ‘Look, I screwed up. I’m sorry,’ that’s it. That’s all I need. I don’t need an explanation. I don’t need to work it through. I don’t need to workshop it. I just need that.” With a former boss of mine, we agreed that we’d have what we call an off-your-chest session.

So, if I came up to Dave because he’d done something annoying, I’d say, “Dave, I’ve just got I need to have it off my chest with you,” and I just get a chance to rant a bit. And we both knew that his job was to sit there and listen. He didn’t even have to apologize particularly. He didn’t have to fix it or justify. He just had to listen to it. And it’s the negotiation to say, “How will we try and tackle this?” that makes repairability more likely.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s really cool. All right. Well, so how do we kick off such a conversation in terms of I imagine we probably won’t just launch into some questions, like, “So, what’s your best”? Or, what do we do?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Well, I think it depends on who you’re talking to and what the setup is. I think you almost, in an early conversation with some people, you can kind of launch into it. And as an example, when I’m working with a vendor, somebody who’s supporting my small business in a way, in that first call, all I can say is, “Hey, I want to tell you about this project but before I tell you about the project and we get into too much detail about it, what is a good working relationship with somebody like me look like? Tell me what makes for a really good client. And then let me tell you what makes for a really good vendor.”

“And then, when we disappoint each other, and then how will you screw up this relationship? Now, let me tell you how I’ll screw up this relationship. So, how will we fix it?” So, there is a way that you can kind of plunge into it. I will you tell that when I do this with vendors, you can see their eyes widening a bit, they’re like, “What the…? What’s going on here?” But it allows me to have an interaction, a transaction, that has a chance of being the best version that it can be.

But if you’re working, say, with somebody on your team, you might choose to do this in a slightly different way. You might provide a little bit of setup. And I think it’s as simple as dropping them a note on Slack or email or something, and say, “Hey, I’d like a conversation about how we can best work together. Are you up for that?” It’s hard to say no to that invitation, because it’s like, “Yeah, I’d like to know how we can best work together as well.”

You can go deeper than that if you want. You could say, “Look, here are the five questions I think could be useful. I’m going to do some thinking about it in preparing my answer for that. If you have a chance to do that as well, so much the better.” Because it is true that everybody will have some first answers to the five questions. It’s also true that if you’ve thought about it, and you do some of the exercises that are in the book that will deepen and make more subtle and more nuance to your answers, that’s going to make for a better conversation as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let us discuss these five questions. Lay it on us.

Michael Bungay Stanier
So, the first one is the amplify question, and the way it’s written in the book is, “What’s your best?” I’ve been thinking about it since the book has been written and created, I’m like, “Not sure that’s exactly the best phrasing of it.” But I’ll tell you what’s behind it, Pete. I didn’t go want to go, “What do you do best?” I didn’t want to ask, “What are your strengths?” I wanted a more general holistic sense of, “Who are you at your best? Tell me what you look like when you’re in full flow, when you’re working to your strengths, when you’re loving the work, the way you contribute best? What does that look like?”

And one of the nuances within that is, for instance, teasing apart, “What are you good at?” versus “What are you fulfilled by?” Because there’s also a way that what happens in our organizational life is we collapse thinking that just because somebody is good at it, they must enjoy doing it. And as we all know, we’ve all got something in our kit bag where we’re like, “I’m pretty confident that, man, this task sucks the life out of me. I don’t want to do that.”

But that’s a really powerful start, “Let’s just talk about what’s our best. What’s your best, Pete? What’s my best, Michael?” Now, we know the best version of each other, the strengths that we should be living with.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And I’ve heard, I think we had Dan Cable, won some awards for a rock and scientific paper for a very simple intervention that involved just that, new employee sharing that, and then unlocked all kinds of things, like, “Wow, that’s a pretty good ROI for a little exchange of information.”

Michael Bungay Stanier
Exactly. The second question after that is about your patterns and your preferences. It’s a steady question. Because, over the time, we’ve all built up the ways we work and the ways we like to work. And that is everything from the rhythm of our days, “I’m a morning person,” “I’m an afternoon person,” “I’m not a lunch person.” It’s the technology that we tend to default to, like, “I’m not a Slack person,” “I am a Slack person.” “Don’t ever leave me a voicemail.”

It’s right down to our kind of identity stuff around, “What’s my name? What’s not my name?” Like, “My name is Michael Bungay Stanier.” It’s a real mouthful. When I got married, I took my wife’s name, and it became Bungay Stanier. It doesn’t have a hyphen in it, which only complicates it. So, people are like, “Are you Michael Stanier? Are you MBS? Does that mean that you’re running Saudi Arabia?” I was like, “That’s a different MBS?” “Are you Mike?” I’m like, “I’m never Mike. There are only four people in the world that call me Mike, and it’s my brothers and their wives. That’s it.”

So, I’m best as Michael. And, in fact, before we hit record, you’re like, “What shall I call you?”

Pete Mockaitis
Even though we’ve interviewed before.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Exactly. And I really appreciated that because there was this little moment around, “What are your practices? And what are your preferences?” It’s like we’re having that conversation now to set this up. Because, just imagine, we’re halfway through this interview, you’ve been calling me Mike the whole time, I’m like, “Dude, this is a mic.”

Pete Mockaitis
M Sizzle.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
What up?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, that I can go with. If you live with that, I’d be like, “This is the best interview I’ve ever had.” It’d be perfect. So, that’s the second one, which is like, let’s exchange information about how we best work so that we can just start spotting the stuff where we’re well-synced on that, and the stuff where, “Well, we’re kind of out of sync on this. How do we want to manage this between us?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it’s a steady question, “What are your practices and preferences, time of day, communication, technology?” All right, let’s hear the next.

Michael Bungay Stanier
So, the third and the fourth questions are kind of a matching pair – dark side and light side, and they’re called the good-day and the bad-day question. The good-day question is, “What can we learn from past successful relationships?” because here’s the thing to take away. Your past relationships are a predictor of your future relationships. Even though I know your past relationships are in a certain context with a certain person, with a certain thing going on, a lot of the patterns that play out will play out again, dollars to donuts.

So, the first thing to talk about is like, “What has been really great? What happened? What did you do? What did you say? What did you not do and not say? What did they do and say, and not do and not say? What were the things that made this flourish?” And then you answer it, and then they answer it, or vice versa, but what a gift to know that this is the context, this is the way to make this person really flourish. This is all the things that can contribute to something working really well.

And then the pairing question is the flipside of that, which is like, “What can we learn from past frustrating working relationships?” because we’ve all had those, and we’re like, “Man, that sucked.” And even though it would’ve felt personal and individual at that time, there are patterns there, there are stuff happening there that if you can explain it to the other person, they’re like, “We should avoid that. We should avoid doing as much of that as possible.”

And so, the more that you can communicate what’s happened in the past that is both amplifying the best of you and shutting you down and making your life miserable, the more you’re able to go, “Hey, why don’t we try and avoid what we don’t like, and amplify what we do like?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the repair question?

Michael Bungay Stanier
And then the repair question, which we’ve touched on already, but it’s like, “How will we fix this when things go wrong because things will go wrong?” It’s just there’s no way of sustaining a perfectly undented amazing working relationship forever. Somebody will screw up, somebody will break a promise, something will be misunderstood, something will be missed, some damage will happen. So, when there’s a tear in the fabric, what are we going to do about that?

And the power of that, and we said it before but I want to say it again, it gives you permission to keep talking about the health of the relationship. That’s where the magic happens with all of this. It’s the answers themselves but it’s, really, we can now keep saying, “Hey, we’re trying to build the best possible relationship here. How are we doing? Is this good enough? Do we want to tweak anything? Do we want to adjust anything? Do we need to say something that hasn’t yet been said? Do we need to clear the tables, reset, get ourselves back on track? What needs to be done?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, I’d love now, could you share with us some of the more interesting answers to each of these questions that you’ve bumped into in your travels?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, it’s everything, really. So, if the people who are listening to this think of their own answers, you can imagine people saying exactly the same as you, and exactly the opposite to you as well. So, when people say, “Michael, what’s your best? Who are you at your best?” I’m like, “You know what, I’m best when I’ve got something to create, I’ve got a way of trying to, what my friend Shannon says, to thingify stuff, to try and make     abstract ideas feel more real tangible and more real.

I’m at my best at designing experiences. I’m at my best at trying to understand what a reader or a participant is looking for, and trying to design to their real and actual needs. That’s some of the stuff that’s at my best. It’s like having ideas, I’m great at having ideas. That’s some of the best stuff for me.” But I’ll talk to my wife, who I work with for many years, and she’d say none of that.

She’d say I’m at my best when I get all my emails answered; I’m at my best where I get to have conversations with people and work with people one-to-one and kind of champion them and coach them on; I’m at my best where I get to kind of push back against authority and kind of point out that the emperor has no clothes. This is why we no longer work together because I’m the so-called emperor in this business, and I’m like, “You know what, I know you want your…you’re not necessarily for the man but I’m the man. You’ve got to be kind to me. We’re married.”

So, you get all sorts of different answers. That’s really the point, in some ways, which is it is very easy to assume you know what the answers are going to be. And when you assume you know what the answers are going to be, you’re kind of like, “I think I already know who you are,” and you actually stop that moment of engaging with them as a full human being, and you’re like, “Seeing you as I kind of I’ve boxed you in, giving you a Myers-Briggs label, and I’ve given you a this, and I’ve given you a that.”

And what this does is actually say, “Your answers are going to be different and unique. My answers are going to be different and unique. And then how we bring them together to build the best possible relationship is where things get really interesting.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so now we’ve had the conversation, we’re doing this stuff, can you chat with us a little bit in terms of maintenance? How do we keep that rocking over the long haul?

Michael Bungay Stanier
So, it’d be lovely if this was a one and done thing. You have the courage, you have the conversation, and you’re like, “We nailed it. Now we can just go about our business and, like, never need to bring this up again.” But, as with all living things, maintenance is required. So, there is a way to say, “How do I best stay present and active in this relationship? How do I stay open to doing what I can to keep it alive?”

And for us to name a single thing to do around this, Pete, it would be to ask the question, “Hey, how are we doing?” It’s to actually just move out of the hurly burly of all the everyday stuff that needs to get done, say, before we plunge into all of the tasks and all the to-do’s, because there’s always an endless amount of work to be done, let’s just have a conversation and check in on how we’re doing, “What’s working for you? Here’s what’s working for me. What’s not working for you? Here’s what’s not working for me. What’s one thing we can do differently to improve the way we’re working right now?”

And one of the questions, Pete, that I ask, and I think it’s particularly powerful if you happen to be the more senior person to hold more of the positional power of the conversation, the question is, “What needs to be said that hasn’t yet been said?” I started a company 20 years ago, and about four years ago, stepped aside from that for Shannon to become the CEO of that company, but I still own it so she and I are in conversation all the time and kind of, I guess, calling me a board member would make it big hat, no cattle, but kind of that type of conversation.

And there’s a power dynamic between us because I’m the owner and she’s the CEO trying to run the company as best we can. And we ask each other that question all the time, “What needs to be said that hasn’t yet been said?” because it’s that little nudge give us permission to talk about the needly stuff, or the stuff that might feel too small, or the stuff where it’s felt, “I just haven’t found the moment to mention this awkward thing.” It really clears the space, and says, “Now is a chance to mention anything that you’ve got just lingering there so that we can make sure that we clean it all up, if that’s what needs to be done.”

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
I’d say one of the unexpected benefits of doing this work and, perhaps, creating this book is that you deepen your own knowledge of yourself. It was very much about the relationship but, actually, there are exercises in the book. For each of the five questions, there’s three different exercises to help you deepen and enrich and make more subtle and more nuanced your answers to that.

And even if you’ve never had a best possible relationship, and you never had a keystone conversation, if you do the work and you come to understand in a more nuanced, more grounded way, “This is actually who I am. This is actually how I work. This is actually how I thrive. This is actually what shuts me down,” you’re better able to control and manage your work so that you can thrive and be awesome at your job.

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
So, Pete, I might’ve mentioned this the last time we talked, and so forgive me for coming back, but it’s a favorite quote, so it’s still my favorite quote. There’s a poem by the poet Rilke, it’s called “The Man Watching,” that’s the English translation. And it tells a story of wrestling with an angel, so it’s an allusion or a nod to kind of the Bible, and Jacob wrestling with the angel.

And it talks about being ambitious for the bigger things, the bigger things that open us up and challenge us, and bring out the very best of us. And there’s a couple of lines in that poem which I think are extraordinary. I actually keep a little printout on my desk. And the quote is this, “Winning does not tempt him. His growth is to be the deeply defeated by ever-greater things.”

And this idea of hoping, I hope this for me, and I hope it for others, but I hope I still have the courage to seek ever-greater things and be deeply defeated by that. That’s what I’m hungry for.

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
There’s a book I’m reading at the moment by Ed Young, and it is about how animals experience the world. And so, this is a little bit kind of a sideways angle into this, but we, as human beings, tend to assume that animals mostly experience the world kind of like we do. We tend to project the way we kind of embodied in this world onto all the animals around us. And nothing could be further from the truth.

As a very kind of slightly pedestrian way of talking about it, if you think of zebras, hey, however you want to pronounce that, in their black and white stripes, when you ask most people, “Why are zebras black and white striped?” they’ll go, “Well, it’s camouflage. It helps them blend in so they can hide from the predators.” But actually, lions have eyesight that is so shortsighted that they can’t see the stripes in a zebra. They just see it as a kind of a grey donkey. And, in fact, the stripes of a zebra are there to confuse a tsetse fly so that they don’t get bitten by these flies.

And as I’ve been reading this book in bed at night, every three pages I’ll say to my wife, “Oh, my God, did you know…?” “Oh, my God, did you know…?” as I keep hearing about how animals just experience so much more of the world than we do in a way that we can barely even imagine it. And why I bring it up is because, even on a human-to-human level, the person across the table from you experiences the world in a way that you don’t fully understand. And it’s so easy for us to just kind of think, “Ah, I know who they are, and I know how they’re feeling, and I know what they think because that’s who I am and how I feel and how I think.”

And this ability to stay curious about who is that other person, and how do they see and feel the world, opens up that ability for a more human-to-human connection and relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. And a favorite book?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Nonfiction, my favorite book is Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bill Bryson, as a writer about science, he has this ability to make the world feel miraculous because not only does he kind of make science less dusty, less boring, and kind of have the life gets sucked out of it in high school for us, but Bryson has this ability to say, “Look, this is amazing. And look what these people are discovering about our world.”

And then on a fiction level, there’s an Australian author called David Malouf. And one of his very first books is called An Imaginary Life. It tells a story of Ovid, the Roman poet, getting exiled to the shores of the Black Sea, as it is now. And it talks about him unlearning his urban ways and finding a new language and new way of being on the edge of civilization. And this integration between head, and heart, and the mind, and the senses is a really powerful journey.

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
I love the pens from Baron Fig. I’ve got one on my desk here made out of copper, I’ve got one other one on my other desk over there where I write, and I’ve got one in the little leather sheet. And I was home recently in Australia, and my mom has basically hundreds of cheap pens shoved in jars and cups all over the house. I have three pens and I only have three pens, and I love them. But writing is such an integral part of how I interact with the world, not just writing my books but kind of checking in my journal most mornings, that having a pen that brings me joy is an essential tool for me.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Michael Bungay Stanier
Making my wife coffee in the morning. And we both like coffee. I have espresso, she has an oak milk flat white but it’s the joy of the taste and the smell of really good coffee, but also the joy of being of service to my wife.

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, retweet it, etc.?

Michael Bungay Stanier
In The Coaching Habit book, I said, “Look, you can sum up this whole book as a haiku.” And I’m going to misquote it slightly, which is ironic, but it says something like, “Stay curious longer. Your advice is not as good as you think it is.” And “Your advice is not as good as you think it is,” is what I hear often from people.

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
You can find more about me, in general, at my website MBS.works. And if you’re interested in the book, BestPossibleRelationship.com.

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

Michael Bungay Stanier
Yeah, it can feel a little overwhelming to listen to what I’ve been talking about with you, Pete, and go, “How do I do that with all these people?” But if you can be the person who reaches out, who says, “I’ll take responsibility for starting to build the best possible relationship,” that is a great gift you and to them, and to your organization. So, don’t try and do it all, but perhaps pick one person, one key relationship that matters, pick one question of the five, and start a conversation where it says, “How do we work better together?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Michael, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and great conversation.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Thanks, Pete. You are a gracious host.

Mar 20
0

849: How to Build Better Teams through Better Inclusion with Sally Helgesen

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Sally Helgesen says: "It’s easier to act our way into new ways of thinking than to think our way into new ways of acting."

Sally Helgesen provides practical ways to foster solidarity and inclusion rather than division.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The merits of true inclusivity.
  2. Why it pays to give the benefit of the doubt.
  3. How to manage your triggers effectively.

About Sally

Sally Helgesen, cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership, is an internationally best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach, honored by the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame. Her most recent book, How Women Rise, co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith, examines the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women, and its rights have been sold in 22 languages.

Her previous books include The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, hailed as the classic in its field and continuously in print since 1990, and The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, which explores how women’s strategic insights can strengthen their careers. The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, was cited in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and is credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business.

Resources Mentioned

Sally Helgesen Interview Transcript

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

Sally Helgesen
Thank you, Pete. It’s wonderful to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your book Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace. Well, Sally, I’d love to kick it off by hearing about a particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made along the way when it comes to this inclusion stuff since you’ve been studying it for quite some time.

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, Pete, I’d say the thing that most jumps out at me is that the approach to inclusive culture that’s taken in many organizations, which focuses on unconscious bias, is possibly the least effective focus that we can take. And I know a lot of people have been through unconscious bias trainings, and sometimes they can stir real insights, and sometimes they can make us pretty angry, but whatever the response, they usually don’t lead us with much of a path forward to creating more inclusive relationships, getting along better with people we perceive of as different from ourselves, or creating inclusive teams or cultures in the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, that’s intriguing. Let’s dig into that. And maybe, first, just to make sure we’re all on the same page with regard to terms. What do we mean by being inclusive, fundamentally?

Sally Helgesen
I think an inclusive culture, whether it’s a team, whether it’s an organization, whether it’s a community, we always know it because it is one in which the largest possible percentage of people feel that they are valued for their potential, not just their contributions, so they really feel seen and feel as if they are part of a ‘we’ not a ‘they.’ So, it’s a real cultural belonging in that sense, and that’s why it’s kind of the acid test. If you have a culture and people talk about the organization, say, or the team as a ‘they,’ you can be pretty sure that they’re not perceiving it as inclusive.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful, or corporate, or ‘they,’ it’s like the other folks.

Sally Helgesen
Yup, exactly. So, there’s no possible way that the person who’s using the word ‘they’ perceives themselves as really seen or valued, and so that’s how we know.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, fundamentally, what are some of the key drivers that get in the way of having a real big ‘we’?

Sally Helgesen
A lot of times people are concerned about, or shy about, or fearful of saying things, for what they might imagine would offend somebody who they perceive as having a different background, different values, people across gender, race, age, ethnicity, etc., so people may feel and sort of do a self-censuring so they don’t really feel like they’re being themselves when they’re talking to people who they perceive as being different. And then the other person picks up on that and recognizes that they’re rather stiff because of this perception of difference. So, that’s one of the things that can get in the way.

On the other hand, another thing that can get in the way is we can have an awareness of what someone else might perceive as problematic. So, a lot of it comes down to both of those situations I’m describing, is trying to read other people’s minds and figure out what they might be thinking. Much better to be really transparent and to just ask questions, “How do you like to be spoken to? How do you like to…? What enables you to bring your best talents to work? What talents do you have that may not be viewed? Is there anything that really upsets you when people say it?”

Those kinds of conversations are really helpful at building relationships across boundaries in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you say something that often is not getting the job done is unconscious bias training. Could you paint a picture for what does unconscious bias training look, sound, feel like in practice so folks can sort of recognize that, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I did one of those a few years ago”? And then why isn’t it getting the job done?

Sally Helgesen
Well, what it looks like in practice often, and, of course, there is some unconscious bias training is more effective than others, but, basically, what it looks like is people being asked, either through a test or through a conversation to understand where they might have biases, prejudices, beliefs about people. It can be anything. It can be gender or race, but it could also be people with tattoos on their necks or whatever it is.

So, something that really tests and helps you identify what your beliefs are is where it’s focused. And that can be fine as far as it goes, but there’s no how there, there’s no, “How do you move forward from that?” As someone I worked with once said, “It’s all aha moment, and no ‘now what?’ We don’t know how to proceed.”

And what I’ve tried to do in Rising Together and in the work I’ve been doing, generally, for decades is focus on the how, what are the practices. People perceive us based on our behaviors not on our biases. Really, whatever happens to be running through our heads at the time, that’s how they’re impacted, that’s how they’re affected.

So, I think a stronger approach is to start by practicing more inclusive behaviors with people. It’s also easier to, as I like to say, to act our way into new ways of thinking as opposed to thinking our way into new ways of acting, because once we try out something, we may learn something about it. And so, then we’ll think, “Okay.”

Well, for example, you might think, “Well, this person seems to be this way.” And then you have a conversation with them, and you realize that your presumption was wrong. But if you were trying first to address what was in your head, what your thoughts were, you wouldn’t have any evidence to begin changing.

So, it’s interesting that we seem to often get it backward. We think we need to change our minds so that we can change our behaviors rather than change our behaviors so that we can change our minds.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is powerful, Sally. And I was just about to ask, if some folks have had the unconscious bias training, and they had the aha moments, but not the ‘now what?’ I was just going to ask, so folks have determined, “Okay, I’ve got some unconscious bias against people with tattoos, or trans people, or Trump voters,” I mean, you name it, you have some unconscious bias about any grouping of folk. What is the ‘now what?’ And maybe it sounds like your answer is maybe don’t even bother to think yourself into new ways of acting. Is that fair? Or are there some useful thought-to-action approaches as well?

Sally Helgesen
No, I think it should be action to thought rather than thought to action. It can really keep us stuck because when we’re thinking, “Well, what about this person? Or, what if they…?” etc. So, I would really recommend in those situations going to action. We’ve all had this experience where you go into a store and it looks like you’re going to have a slightly hostile encounter.

So, you practice being almost aggressively nice to that person. You act as if you never noticed any hostility from them. You act as if they were treating you superbly, “Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that,” without being too sucky-up but acting as if you don’t notice that they’re treating you in a slightly disrespectful way.

Often, not always, but often they will kind of…you’ll be cuing them, “Oh, yeah, you know, I am a nice person. This person, okay, they seem to be responding to me in a positive way.” And nine times out of ten, they’ll switch their response to you. I know, I’ve watched this be true throughout my life. Somebody’s water is dripping down from their bathtub in an apartment above mine, and I know it’s because they were having kind of a lost weekend, and I knock on the door, and say, “I can’t believe you would…” and all that kind of stuff. Well, it’s going to escalate.

If I go up there and trying to diffuse the situation by giving them the benefit of the doubt, “I’m sure you didn’t realize this but the water in your bathtub overflowed and it’s doing whatever it is. And I’m sure this isn’t something that you had any awareness of,” then they’ll, “Oh, well, okay. I’m so sorry,” etc. We don’t do this, and part of the issue in the workplace today is people are kind of primed to be on the search often for microaggressions or, “Does that person think…?” or, “What about their response?” and so we’re not accustomed to diffusing those situations. We feel like we have to react to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was going to ask specifically about getting people a benefit of the doubt. I think most folks are, generally, familiar with what that phrase means. But could you expand upon, in practice, what are the thoughts, the assumptions, the practices, that one embodies when they are just habitually giving people the benefit of the doubt as their default way of being?

Sally Helgesen
Well, I’m not advocating passivity because passivity, when we do that…what I’m really talking about is being able to write a script for yourself. Okay, somebody, let’s talk about gender. So, a woman thinks, “Oh, men just can’t listen to women.” She feels unheard in a situation, “Men just can’t listen to women.” If we just kind of passively accept that, or grab a friend and complain, “I can’t believe that guy. Men can’t…” etc. that’s not an approach that’s going to be helpful.

But often, just saying, “You weren’t listening to me. Men can never listen to women,” that’s not a good path forward either. So, we want a way to give that person the benefit of the doubt. So, in our head, we can write a script, “You know, maybe he couldn’t hear what I was saying because there was noise in the room,” or, “Maybe I didn’t phrase this using language that was that familiar to him. I think I’ll give it another shot.”

Then you go to the person and you say, “I noted that you didn’t seem to hear what I said in that meeting, and I figured it might be helpful to you if I were to rephrase it,” and then you do that. Well, usually, they’re not going to say, “No, I didn’t hear what you said because I wasn’t interested,” or “because I have a terrible time hearing women.” Generally, they’re going to say, “Oh, okay, thank you.” Then you have a way to begin a constructive situation. So, it’s neither defensive nor is it passive.

Now, what is so remarkable, and I’ve used this in coaching for quite a while, what is so remarkable about this technique of writing a new script is that it is effective whether or not we believe that person really earned the benefit of the doubt. If we think that they might have intentionally said something to us in a way that bothered us, or if we think this is part of a pattern with them that they never really listen to us in a fruitful or effective way, even if we think that, if we write that script and then act as if we believe it, it will usually serve us better than the stock response or negative script that we’ve been invested in, in the past.

It will usually serve us better and it will also give us a path to potentially building more of a relationship with that person where they could serve in some way as an ally for us, and we could serve as an ally for them. So, it’s very effective even if we don’t necessarily buy it. And knowing that you don’t necessarily buy it is where part of your power lies in doing this because it’s not a Pollyanna, “Oh, they must be a wonderful person even though…” It’s a very realistic testing and probing to see, to discern an alternate path so that you can connect with that person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s beautiful. Thank you. Well, now I want to hear, in your book Rising Together, you identify eight common triggers that undermine our ability to connect. Could you first define what do you mean by trigger? And then could you give us the quick rundown of each of these eight?

Sally Helgesen
Sure. What I mean by trigger is any situation or stimulus in our environment that stirs an emotional response in us.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is this a negative emotion response?

Sally Helgesen
It can be a negative or it can be a positive response. It could be positive as well as negative.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, “I’m delighted by this.”

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“You triggered delight in me, Sally.” Okay.

Sally Helgesen
Wonderful, Pete. I’m so glad to hear it. So, they can be negative or they can be positive, but it’s the negative ones, obviously, that are more likely to undermine us in the workplace, so that’s why I’m focusing on triggers that can often stir a negative response. But what’s important to recognize is that they’re environmental. They happen in the environment so we can’t really control what triggers us.

They lie outside our circle of control, if you will. We can only find a more effective way to manage them than we may already be doing. So, I think we waste our time by trying to create an environment in which we are shielded from any potential triggers, and that’s what’s happened to a lot of younger people coming into the workplace because, in their colleges and universities, there’s such an emphasis on trigger warning, etc.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, really?

Sally Helgesen
Guess what? Our environment is always going to give us trigger warnings. What we need is to understand an effective way to address them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you then share with us some of these common triggers?

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, a couple of them that really stand out, one is visibility, which we don’t necessarily think of as a trigger but it really can operate, and it can operate in a number of ways. Number one, we can feel triggered by people we feel are very good at being visible, “Oh, he’s such a showboat. He’s always talking about himself. He’s that kind of person. I’m a wonderful person. I’m not like that.”

Or, we can just simply feel triggered by our own lack of visibility, “Oh, nobody ever notices me. I guess I’m just not the kind of person who grabs attention. Oh, well, I know that I’m a good person, and this, that, or the other, couple of my friends like me,” but we’re being triggered by that, by that reaction. Or, we can, if we are really good at it, and I’ve seen this with senior executives I’ve worked with, if we’re really good at it, we can be triggered by people who are not good at positioning themselves to be visible.

We think we can dismiss them, “Oh, well, he’s not a player. He’s not very good at bragging on himself or tooting his own horn. He seems to have some moralistic inhibition against doing it, so I’m not going to waste my time with him.” I heard that a lot from people who are good at it. So, it can trigger us in all kinds of ways.

But, here, you see this is a really good demonstration of how triggers work. What they do is they stir up a kind of automatic or stock response in us, “Well, he’s a showboat. I don’t want to be like him.” And I’ve heard people say this for years, “Yeah, well, if I act out like that jerk down the hall to get noticed in this organization, no, thank you.” Why is he a jerk, because he gets noticed? Maybe learn from him.

So, they stir up a stock response, and then that response keeps us from being able to think of a more positive way to address the situation, “Hmm, okay, I see that I am being triggered by that person’s skill at getting noticed. I wouldn’t necessarily want to use the same techniques, but I think that there is probably something I can learn here. Maybe I’m going to start watching him and thinking about how I might rephrase things he says in a different way, a way that’s more comfortable for me.”

“So, for example, if he’s saying, ‘Well, I had that client eating out of my hand,’ we might think, ‘Okay, that’s helpful.’ Maybe it would be more useful for me to phrase it, ‘Well, that client and I really bonded together.” But it’s helpful to understand and watch what he’s doing in a constructive way so that we’re rewriting that script, “Hey, here’s someone I can learn from.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful in terms of the notion of our automatic response, and it just closes down the whole universe of possibility and opportunity. And I think we do this all the time with so many things.

Sally Helgesen
We do. We do.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell us, Sally, what are some ways to catch ourselves in the moment regardless of what the trigger is?

Sally Helgesen
Well, I think, number one, when we recognize ourselves going into telling ourselves a story that’s kind of negative and defensive, or telling ourselves, in particular, a story that’s very self-serving about who we are, “Well, I’m not the kind of person who would ever…” The minute we hear ourselves telling ourselves that kind of story in our heads, we should recognize that, “Ah, okay, I’m probably being triggered.”

“Now what is triggering me here? In this case, it’s the fact that I feel that that person is better at getting noticed than I am. Okay, that’s triggering me. How could I rewrite this or take a different path of action that would be more helpful to me, that would serve me better and might also help me figure out a way to connect better with this person instead of, judgmentally, dismissing them?”

So, defensiveness, judgment, self-serving narratives, these are all keys that we are being triggered. And if we want to address them, we should take heed and then think about how we might more skillfully and usefully respond.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so given those things to be on the look out for, could you share with us another one of the common triggers called ‘that’s not funny’?

Sally Helgesen
‘That’s not funny.’ Exactly. These are triggers that are based around humor. And humor has become, I think, are really challenging thing to deal with in today’s workplace because people have different perceptions in terms of what they think is funny. Also, jokes, especially jokes that would’ve been acceptable and thought of as sort of fresh and interesting a number of years ago, now have a way of giving offense to a lot of people. And that has made humor, to some degree, really challenging in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Sally, could you give us an example of a joke or piece of humor or reference that might’ve been fine and dandy five to ten years ago, and now is, ooh, risky business?

Sally Helgesen
Yeah, any joke that has to do with gender, lots of jokes that were in the workplace – I don’t want to necessarily repeat them right now – that had to do with women who were sort of hot quantities or a presumption that men were always trying to seduce women in one way or another, those kinds of jokes. I came of age; I was in the Mad Men era when I started working. I worked in advertising and it was really like Mad Men, and there were all kinds of stuff that, today, would get somebody fired on the spot that was happening.

So, there are a lot of people who kind of come from that era, or just a bit afterwards, when it was sort of rock and roll time, and anything would go. And there could be jokes about who somebody picked up at the bar last night. Well, that’s fine, that was then, but now that’s going to rile up a lot of people. Anything that pertains specifically to someone’s looks or appearances is really out of bounds. Even very simple things.

Like one example I give in the book, which is a classic sort of golf joke where the husband comes home, and the wife said, “Well, how did it go?” And he said, “Well, it was fine until the sixth hole when Charlie had a heart attack.” And the wife says, “Oh, poor Charlie. What happened?” And he said, “Well, he expired on the sixth hole, so it really was a drag after that because it was all hit the ball, drag Charlie, hit the ball, drag Charlie.”

I heard this joke told probably far too many times at various conferences in Palm Springs, right up through the ‘90s into the end of the last century, as it were. And people would always laugh, depending on if the joke teller, number one, was skilled in telling it, and, number two, if he had a high-enough rank in the organization, everybody would yuck it up. But today it wouldn’t work.

For example, a lot of younger people would think, “How is this relevant? It sounds like the wife is at home waiting for the husband to come back from a golf game. This isn’t a situation I identify with.” Or, people who had had a relative who had a heart attack would be prone to think, “Well, that’s not funny.” That wasn’t how people thought 30, 40, 50 years ago. It just wasn’t.

So, people need to be a little more careful but, very importantly, we cannot ban humor from the workplace. We absolutely can’t do it. It is one of the most important qualities that helps people bond and create relationships, and it makes work more fun, so we can’t get into a very uptight situation where we’re constantly scanning the room to think, “Who could this offend? Who could this offend? Oh, better not do this. Oh, better keep my mouth shut.”

Much better is to create an environment where we look at things that are obviously meant to be offensive, and there are a lot of them, and things that might misfire a little bit, like that ‘hit the ball, drag Charlie’ joke. They might misfire, somebody thinks, “Wow, so and so just had a heart attack. How is that going to play with them?”

And we need to be, I think, a little less hard on people, unless we perceive that they were really trying to be provocative and offensive. It’s also important to try to find the humor in situations rather than dragging in jokes, because jokes rely for their power on their capacity to be provocative and, to some degree, outrageous. They cross boundaries. That’s what they do. That’s where that sort of twist that makes a joke funny comes from.

And so, having an awareness that, “Let’s find the humor in our situation,” in self-deprecating humor, making fun of yourself, not too much, but enough when something goes wrong, when you say something stupid, that is especially effective if you’re in a position with some degree of power.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Sally, we talked about a few behaviors and habits that are great in terms of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and watching yourself and your triggers, and if you’re just riling people off, and constructing self-flattering narratives that are defensive left and right. Are there any other key inclusive behaviors that make a world of difference for folks in organizations?

Sally Helgesen
Oh, certainly. One of the things that I really heard a lot about when I was working on the book was the power of nominating other people for awards. And one of the women I interviewed, she said, “I really learned a lot about creating allies from a much older executive when I was very early in my career. And this executive came up to me, and he said, ‘I am trying to see if I can get a certain number of nominations for some big award in the industry.’ And he said, ‘I’m wondering if you would nominate me.’”

So, she said she was shocked on two fronts. Number one, she said she was shocked because she didn’t know that that’s how it was done, that people who got awards often lobbied for it. She said, “I just thought they got awards.” She said, “I never really thought it through.” She was early in her career at that time.

But she said, “I was also astonished that someone who was at such a senior level would ask someone junior like me.” She said, “Again, that really, really…I didn’t know you could do that.” She said it made her very aware that this is something that you can do that earns you tremendous gratitude from your colleagues. It’s not only agreeing to nominate them but volunteering to nominate them, “You know, you’ve really been in this job, and I saw that…” whatever it is, whatever entity it is “…is taking nominations for people who are outstanding in our sector. I thought that I might nominate you. How would that be?”

Well, this is something that people really, really respond to. And, again, I think it’s important to recognize that this is something that we can do really early in our careers. We can also ask people what would be helpful to them. And, again, we can do this even if we’re very junior in our career. We can recognize that part of our job is always going to be trying to make our bosses, our leaders, the people we work for, part of our job is making them look good, so we can be clear about this.

So, we can say, “I understand that I want you to look good in this initiative. Is there anything I can do that would be especially useful to you in letting the people in the organization know what a terrific job our team is doing, and, therefore, you, as our team leader.” So, asking a question like that can really be eye-opening and it does a couple of things.

“You solicit my ideas for how you could be helpful,” but it also suggests to the person that you say that to, that you really understand how things work in an organization, and that you’re not naïve about it. You understand and accept that part of your job is making them look good. So, that kind of puts you on a different footing than you might’ve been before.

Of course, there are plenty of things senior people can do as well, “What talents do you have that you feel you may not be using? Do you have any skills in this job that you would particularly like to develop? Is there anybody you would like to meet that I might know who could be helpful to you in the future?” Those kinds of questions, we don’t ask those kinds of questions enough wherever we are in our careers.

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

Sally Helgesen
A couple of things I do want to mention is it’s very hard to try to identify when we’re being triggered and then think of a different path of action. And we will always be more successful at it if we are bringing other people along on our journey. This is part of this theme of asking, of saying, “You know, one thing I’m really trying to work on…”

Fairness is a trigger in the book we didn’t talk about, “One thing I’m really trying to work on is coming to a better understanding of what is fair and what isn’t fair in this organization because I realize that I often think something is unfair but it may not be as unfair as I think it is, or I often recognize that something is actually much more unfair than I was thinking it was. Can I bounce my ideas off you once I have a perception about this and kind of get your thoughts on it?”

So, it’s a kind of seat-of-the-pants pure coaching where we engage other people in our own development. In this case, our development as we try to think about what undermines us in terms of building strong relationships really broadly.

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

Sally Helgesen
I think a favorite quote of mine, because it’s one that I use virtually every day, and I referenced it a bit earlier, comes from the really terrific old self-help book by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And it was, “Always seek to discern what lies within your circle of control, and to align it with your circle of concern.”

In other words, don’t waste your time trying to address whatever concerns you but you can’t control. And, in fact, probably don’t spend too much time being concerned about it if you can’t control it.

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

Sally Helgesen
I would say that the research done by Daniel Kahneman, who basically invented the whole field of behavioral economics, about how people don’t always, or even often do what really serves their own long-term interests, that we’re often a lot more irrational and reactive in terms of how we respond to everything, ranging from how we manage our financial lives, to the decisions we make about where we live or how we interact with our families, that we often make decisions that don’t serve our own interests.

And I think this work was so important because it brought a whole recognition of the fact that humans are not as rational as they imagine themselves to be into the discussion. And, in fact, that’s really influenced a lot of my thinking about how triggers operate. We tend to be triggered by things and respond in ways that do not serve our interests.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Sally Helgesen
I think my favorite book, in fact, I know this because I start most of my days reading it, is Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, which translates as a manual for power. It is a complete listing of deeply counterintuitive insights about the nature of power and how we use it, especially in the RW Wing translation. I find it a fantastic way to begin every day. Real insights into human behavior and how to understand human behavior but also use it in ways that serve what we’re trying to be and contribute in the world.

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

Sally Helgesen
What I use to be awesome at my job is basically Word documents. I’m a writer and my preferred method for communicating with the world is, and always has been since I was a little child, writing. And I find Word such an improvement upon typewriters, and that sort of stuff we used to use to erase words on typewriters. So, I just absolutely love it and couldn’t live without it.

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

Sally Helgesen
My favorite habit, I think, is my ability to admit vulnerability. When I don’t have a skill, when I’m not good at something, I don’t try to cover it up. And I think that really helps me. I deal with a lot of things all day long, and if I had to spend energy trying to pretend I was good at what I’m not good at, I don’t think I’d have much success.

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

Sally Helgesen
I think it relates to something that I said earlier, that it’s easier to act our way into new ways of thinking than to think our way into new ways of acting. Since my work has been focused upon the ‘hows’ for the last 35, 40 years, that really resonates with me. I think we want to act in thoughtful ways, learn from how we act, and then let that shape what our opinions and our views are.

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

Sally Helgesen
Well, to my website, SallyHelgesen.com. And I’m active on Twitter and 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?

Sally Helgesen
Yes, I do. Being awesome at your job requires a little bit of humility, a little bit of willingness to recognize when your stock responses do not serve you, but it doesn’t require self-effacement. We should never equate being humble with being humiliated. We can be humble and acknowledge what we need to learn without beating ourselves up or telling ourselves a negative story about who we are or what we’re trying to do in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sally, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in rising.

Sally Helgesen
Thank you, Pete. Thank you so much.

Jan 26
0

834: How to End Micromanagement Once and For All with Lia Garvin

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Lia Garvin discusses how employees and managers can work together to put an end to micromanaging.

You’ll Learn

  1. The three telltale signs of micromanaging
  2. How micromanaging makes everyone less effective
  3. How to expertly respond to a micromanager

About Lia
Lia Garvin is the bestselling author of Unstuck, TEDx speaker and workplace strategist with experience leading team operations across Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Bank of America. As the Founder of the The Workplace Reframe organizational strategy firm, she equips innovative organizations of any size and industry with the tools to cultivate inclusive, motivated, high performing teams resulting in higher retention, more efficiency, and better business results. She is a sought after expert in the media, featured across Inc, FastCompany, ABC News, CNN Business, US News & World Report, HBR, and more.

Resources Mentioned in the Show

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Lia Garvin Interview Transcript

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

Lia Garvin
Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into what you’ve been up to lately, and I understand, in particular, you have developed a fascination with the topic of micromanagement. What’s the scoop here?

Lia Garvin
Yes, with micromanagement and how to end it once and for all, I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, lay it on us, what’s the story?

Lia Garvin
Yeah. Since we last met, I actually ended up leaving my corporate job and launching an organizational consulting business really dedicated to bringing out the best in teams. And since we’ve all heard people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers, diving in and really making sure managers are equipped with the tools they need to be effective and empower their teams, that was one of the first places that I wanted to start. And then micromanaging was one of the biggest sorts of acute problems in that space.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I’ve heard it many a time. So, maybe to kick it off, could you precisely define what is micromanagement? Because some folks will say, “Oh, no, no, that’s just management,” like if there’s a gray zone. Is there a bright dividing line between, “This is when you’ve gone too far, buddy”?

Lia Garvin
So, I think a lot does depend on the kind of job and the industry, so I’ll say that. I don’t think there are the hard and fast answer that applies to every situation, and I think that’s where it can get tricky because if we’re used to something in one environment, we may be bringing that to the next environment. Let’s say we’re in a sort of job where instructions need to be followed exactly one specific way. And if you deviate from that, it’s a real problem, maybe a safety issue.

Let’s say we bring that into a job that’s more about ideas and many paths to success, then you’re going to be in a real complex. So, I think the first thing to do before we dive into how to recognize if you’re micromanaging is if you’re a manager, to being open to adjusting, and saying, “Hey, what’s the right way to interact with my teams depending on what kind of the working norms are in this team?”

So, as I thought about it a lot, reflected on my own personal experience with many, many managers over the years and feedback that I heard from other colleagues, I think there was three real tells that I landed on around how to know when you’re a micromanager. And the first one is you are spending every waking moment in meetings.

So, this is a big problem that I think has gotten even worse with COVID and remote work and everything we do with a video conference but this is not an excuse to not reflect and say, “Hey, am I in the right meetings?” So, when a manager is in every single meeting, it’s a sign that they’re too far in the weeds, they’re too much in the details. And if you are finding yourself where you have no time to drink a glass of water, go to the bathroom, or eat lunch, there’s an opportunity to let your team members step up.

And so, I would suggest in that situation to take a look at your calendar and see, “Which meetings am I absolutely critical, critical to be at? Am I a decider? Am I approver?” And all the rest, which one of those could you delegate to somebody else to drive?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what are the other two tells?

Lia Garvin
Number two is everybody’s coming to you for every single little decision, nobody is actually taking action, it’s always coming back to you. This is a sign that people either don’t feel empowered to make decisions, or they think that you want to be involved in making all the decisions. So, if you’re finding yourself where every single kind of question decision comes to you, this is a moment to have a conversation with your teams around what decisions you want to be and should be involved in, and which they’re empowered to run with on their own.

So, I think sometimes one thing I’ve suggested to managers is to classify the kinds of decisions, “Which ones are this category where they need leadership, discussion, and buy-in? And which ones can they push on the organization?” Because if everyone is coming to you, that means they’re responding to a signal you’ve probably sent them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And number three?

Lia Garvin
So, the third thing is when people are continually coming to you and saying, “Hey, I have bandwidth. I want to take on more responsibilities,” or, “What can I help with?” and you’re not necessarily taking them up on it. And this is a sign that people are recognizing that you may be spread really thin as a manager, you’re not noticing it, or you’re holding on to too many things. And when people are actually asking you to let go, that’s a real moment to listen to them and think about that.

And if you’re finding that situation, it’s a moment where you can think about, “Well, what are all the tasks on my plate? What’s everything I have this week or this month? And what are the things I can let go of that are actually worthy for someone else to take on?” Delegating isn’t about giving people all the list of stuff you didn’t want to do, that nobody wants to do.

It’s about finding, “What are the high-impact activities that someone else can do that’s going to be worthwhile because it gives them visibility or development opportunity, or something in line with where they want to go in their career?” So, if we’re finding ourselves in those three places, too meetings, too much control over decision-making, and people are asking for more, that’s a sign, “Oops, I’m in too deep. Got to take a step back and let go a little bit.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s how we know when we’re there. And I’m curious, could we maybe zoom out a little bit on the macro scale, do you have any sense for just what’s the cost of micromanagement? And I don’t know if there’s a study, like billions of dollars, or attrition rates, or percentage of people who say they suffer it. What’s kind of the scope of things here?

Lia Garvin
Yes. So, there’s a lot of data coming out of the Gallup organization around employee engagement going down. And one of the big reasons that’s cited is a micromanager, or feeling your manager either doesn’t have the right sort to skills, is not invested in you, or is not managing effectively. And I think the cost of someone being a micromanager is pretty widespread.

So, first, for the manager themselves, they are so much more likely to reach a state of burnout because they are taking on too much. And so, I think if only it affected the managers, this is already really an expensive cost because people are getting burned out. They’re feeling like, “Okay, I can’t scale right now. Folks are having to do more with less, with layoffs and cutbacks.”

And so, it ends up putting so much more work on someone’s plate and creating more single points of failure. But it’s really detrimental to the broader team because when people can’t step up and own more, they often feel kind of disillusioned with the work. They start losing motivation. I think this is a real contributing factor to quiet quitting, people feeling like, “Well, I’m kind of giving it bare minimum and that’s about it because I’m not really empowered to do more.”

And, also, what can lead to so many people leaving the workforce because they’re not given the space to really grow, to demonstrate their strengths, to solve problems in their own way. So, micromanagement, I think, can really light the spark that starts to have someone questioning, “Do I have a future here on this team?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Lia, so we’re talking micromanagement. We’ve also had some guests speak about the concept of undermanagement, they’re kind of managers sort of checked out, not paying attention, not really aware of the stuff that folks are working on. Do you have a sense for which is more dangerous?

Lia Garvin
Ooh, I love that. I think it goes back to depending on the situation and, potentially, the level of seniority that you’re managing, the level of complexity of the work. But undermanaging is a serious issue especially for folks that are newer, if there’s no onboarding, if you kind of get hired, you’re working out a year, bedroom, you haven’t seen anybody in person, and you’re trying to figure out how to navigate life in a new company, and your manager said, “Okay, figure it out.”

This can drive that same sense of disconnection with the work and with the company than having someone with all the details because you feel like you’re left on an island and you have no idea what to do. So, I think they both have serious consequences but they both kind of have the same, I would say the issues at its core, of a manager not having potentially the right confidence or the right skillset around how to actually manage effectively.

So, there’s a real skill gap, and that’s what I love to dive in with teams, is just figuring out, “Well, here’s the sharing, the fundamental skills that will help bridge that gap, how someone can feel more comfortable assigning responsibilities, or reining it in a little bit, but finding that balance, finding your own authentic style, and then where to deploy these different tools and different situations.”

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a sense for, given the state of management these days, roughly what proportion of managers are micromanaging, managing about right, versus undermanaging? It may vary wildly by industry, by geography, but what’s your sense on the ground?

Lia Garvin
I got to say I think a lower number are managing just right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lia Garvin
I don’t know, I would say, the under and over. I think I know less about, like, the percentages-wise. I think what I would guess is they come as a pair. Micromanaging can often look like that helicopter managing, which you know we’ve all heard of helicopter parenting, where you’re really, really in it and you’re kind of out on the sidelines where I think it can look like both.

And for different people, I think, doing micromanaging and then being absent, that’s a reaction to needing a sense of control, or feeling stressed, or feeling overwhelmed. People sort of fall onto these different patterns. So, I think it could both be a personality type and situational, which is your tendency as a manager when you have this skill gap. But I think, like I said, the lowest, and I got to say I think the lowest percentage would be people that found that balance and are doing it just right.

And that is because, again in this Gallup data, most managers are in the position of a people manager because they’ve been in the company a long time, or they were a really, really strong individual contributor, or they have really strong technical skills, so they’re given a team, and it’s like, “Go for it.” And there are some stuff that’s got to happen between getting a team and leading a team effectively that, I think, not enough companies are investing in.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, let’s say we see some of ourselves in that description, we’ll go both sides, as the manager and the managee, or the person working with the manager, if we are the manager and we’re doing some micromanaging, how can we cut it out?

Lia Garvin
So, I think the biggest thing that managers can do is switch from problem solving to coaching because when managers take on the responsibility of, “A team member brought this up, so I need to solve it for them,” they are never going to teach that person how to fish, so to speak. They’re always going to be needed to solve that problem again and again.

And so, talking to your team members using a coaching mindset, using open-ended questions when someone comes to you, saying, “Hey, I can’t solve this problem,” you’re saying, “Here’s how I would’ve done it.” You jump right in with a solution. That person hears that and maybe they go in, take that solution, and they don’t deploy it exactly as you would, and then they’re still stuck. Or, they take the solution and they deploy it, and it works out well, but then that happens again. Now, they come back to you for another solution.

So, I think when folks come to us with a problem, one of the easiest reframes a manager can do is to ask some open-ended questions, “What do you think went wrong? What are some of the other factors we can consider here? What did you learn here that you want to try next time?” So, these different kinds of open-ended questions allow the problem to be kept in the sort of problem-bringer’s court so that they’re working through the solution.

There’s absolutely opportunity to course-correct, and say, “No, no, no, here are some of the things that I’ve seen go wrong in that situation,” or offer more support, but really keeping that in the other person’s court helps ensure that you’re not holding on to too much control over a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Anything else?

Lia Garvin
Yeah, I think I mentioned the strategies of making sure you’re checking in with yourself continually. I think for managers, when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed or burned out, or you’re in too many things, to just check in. So, maybe you start and put in the calendar, “Every Friday, I’m going to do a gut track. What does my calendar look like?”

“What kind of questions did people bring me this week? Where does my delegating look like?” so that you’re not letting it get too far where it’s been six months and you realize, “Oh, gosh, I’m in it and I think people are starting to quit, and I didn’t even realize it.” So, I’d say, to really have a routine where you check in on those three tip-offs of being really too far in the weeds so that you can course-correct before it gets worse.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if we are the one being micromanaged, how do we speak up effectively? That could be tricky, that managing up discomfort.

Lia Garvin
Oh, it can be really tricky. And this is why I think sometimes we take the route of just quitting, and going, “Well, I’m going to look for someone because I don’t want to deal with it.” I think a lot of folks struggle with doing that managing up, as you call it out, and giving that feedback.

And so, I think a couple things that I’ve tried in my career, I’ve seen folks find in order to deal with this, are, first, have a conversation with your manager around skills and things that you want to develop so that, at least, you’ve put it out there on, “Hey, here are some projects I’m interested in taking on this year. Here are some different things that I want to be building. Here are some things I’m interested in.”

So, you, first, feel like, “Okay, I’ve done the first step of having the conversation, putting it out there,” to the extent that you feel comfortable. If you’re in a situation where your manager, let’s say, dives in and starts, like, line-editing an email you sent, or telling you who to add to all the invites to a meeting, or whatever is happening that feels a little bit heavy-handed, saying something like, “I’m really excited to take the lead on this and to try and demonstrate that I kind of got this and I’ve figured it out, so I’d love the opportunity to take the first step and then come back to you for feedback.”

I’ve tried this, something along those lines, and it’s been well-received because you’re not saying in an accusatory way. You’re framing it around the way that you’re wanting to learn, and a good manager wants you to be wanting to learn, so it’s a little bit of a win-win there, and you’re still offering them an opportunity to give feedback.

So, you’re not saying, “Get out of here. I got this,” but you’re saying, “Hey, I’d like to try this. And can we check in once I’ve done the first round of it so that I can learn and then you still have an opportunity to give feedback?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, Lia, could you give us some really juicy stories of micromanagement and the uncomfortable details folks are living with and, hopefully, some happy endings for how they resolved those issues?

Lia Garvin
Yes, absolutely. So, one of the examples that comes up a lot is with writing and communication. I mentioned line-editing emails, and I worked with folks that have shared they’ve had managers where they had to…let’s say they had to send out an email that’s going to the whole team, maybe a couple hundred people, and the manager wants to read the draft of the email, give inputs, they have 95 iterations.

Then it goes from structure into word choices, then you have a really robust in the Google comments on the side, a discussion of “Do we even want to send this? Is this the right word?” you’re getting grammatical suggestions, you’re getting all sorts of things, another person is added to the chain, that person is removed, we go back to thinking, “Do we want to do this email?” when you’re just supposed to write one email that was going to not really be a big deal. It’s announcing, like, a lunch that’s happening next Friday.

And so, I think this is the kind of thing that happens, is someone either they’re feeling out of control and so they go in and they just go to town on you. Imagining if you’re that person, “I was just trying to send this email out,” and the amount of kind of time and energy being spent on picking apart your little insignificant trivial email, it starts to really feel yucky for that employee.

Pete Mockaitis
It does, indeed. And so then, in that world, do we do just the things you mentioned? How might we say that? Like, “Hey, I’d love to show you I got this. I’d love to demonstrate my skills. I’d like to take the first crack at it.” It sounds like there are multiple cracks taken in this story.

Lia Garvin
Right. Which of the cracks are we…? Well, I think in that situation I might ask, and again it always depends on the relationship with our manager. I want to caveat that because I know some people listening might say, “Well, I can’t say that to my manager.”

So, let’s say if you have a dialogue where you feel like you could say something on the lines of, “It’s looking like we’re spending a lot of time on this email, and I want to better understand which of the situations where we really want to roll up our sleeves and dive in with this level of involvement? Or, which are the ones I can kind of run with to just be done with and get off our list?”

So, I think it can sort of flag, like, “Hey, this is a little bit much,” and also giving opportunity for feedback by asking an open-ended question that doesn’t sound defensive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you give us some examples of these questions or key verbiage, sentences you love that can be really handy here?

Lia Garvin
Yes. So, I think a little phrase that’s really useful is “I want to better understand.” Another could be, “So we can all be successful, I’m eager to learn and give this a try on my own, to build up my own skills here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “I want to better understand” is way better than “So, what’s your deal, dude?”

Lia Garvin
“What the hell, man?” Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, and that really does help you out because that’s, I think, what’s frustrating with the micromanaging situation, is that that’s how I felt, it’s like, “Am I missing something here because it seems like this isn’t that big of a deal? You know, the time and effort and iterations you’re putting on this would make it seem like it is a big deal. So, seriously, help me, like, genuinely, help me understand. Isn’t this just a fun lunch that we’re announcing? Does it matter if everyone goes or doesn’t go?”

And then maybe, sometimes you’ll get a great answer, it’s like, “Well, actually, the issues being discussed at this lunch are very sensitive from a legal and liability perspective, so it’s very important that we don’t say anything that, in the course of a discovery, should we be sued, is going to put…” It’s like, “Oh, I had no idea.”

Lia Garvin
“Well, now I know.” Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, thank you, that makes a lot of sense why we’re getting into it.” Or, maybe they’ll just chill out, it’s like, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

Lia Garvin
Exactly, yeah. And the key here, I think, a couple things, is really it could be frustrating when you’re in that moment, it’s like, “Oh, my God, literally, what’s going on?” When you’re under the micromanagement wrath, it can be very frustrating. But to take a step back, to sort of let that subside, to remove the frustration from the way you’re communicating, and to not come across as defensive, offensive, whatever, whichever one is more appropriate, like to not come forward with that.

Because I think when someone on the counterpart feels accused, it just makes it…it throws the whole thing off, and that’s going to be, I think, someone could say, “Well, of course, it’s important.” Especially, if they had a real big reason, they could think, “How do you not know that? Are you not taking care in time?” So, I think really having the conversation when you’re not feeling defensive or frustrated, really having an open, with curiosity, “I’m genuinely curious around this level of oversight and involvement, I’d love to learn more, I’d love to better understand.”

And so, this might mean it should not be written in an email or a chat. Like, I think there’s so much open for misinterpretation in written communication that just walking up to your…if you’re in person, walking down to your boss’ desk, and saying, “Hey, got a second? I want to better understand,” or asking to have a quick five-minute meeting over video conference, I just think it’s going to spare so much further miscommunication to actually talk face to face or over the phone if needed.

Pete Mockaitis
And as I think about the times I’ve been micromanaged, it’s funny, I think sometimes it’s my own fault and it’s necessary, it’s like, “Hey, Pete, there were several errors last time that were problematic, so we’re going to take some time to make sure we go through those.” And, in a way, that really was coaching.

But it felt like, “You’re all up in my business and I don’t like it,” but the older, wiser Pete recognizes it was necessary at that time and that season and that piece of work in that context for them to be up in my business, even though it was unpleasant and I didn’t like it. So, I think those were kind of my takeaway.

Lia, is it fair to say, sometimes, like the boy who cried wolf, the colleague who cried micromanagement, it may, in fact, just be appropriate management that just is uncomfortable and unpleasant in the moment?

Lia Garvin
Absolutely. And so, this is why one of the core programs and workshops that I offer for teams is how to give feedback effectively because, I think, feedback given ineffectively can feel like micromanagement. When you don’t have a strong relationship with your team, it can feel like micromanagement but, actually, we should be able to give feedback.

And I don’t want any manager listening to this to go, “Well, I can’t say anything to my team members.” It’s not that. It’s about, I think we said in the beginning of the conversation, getting to understand the style of communication that’s really the norm in the organization, in the company, in the team, and then meeting that, and if you’re really finding yourself hitting those kinds of tip-offs.

And that’s why the tip-offs weren’t people coming to you and saying, “Stop micromanaging.” It’s like, “What are the external signals that I’m too much in the weeds?” And so, that’s the difference there, is if we’re finding, then it’s a moment to check in. But giving feedback is critically important, and it’s one of the most important things you can do as a manager. And receiving feedback effectively is one of the most important things you can do as a non-manager because this is how you’re going to grow and develop.

So, I think feedback and micromanaging is very different. I typically see micromanaging as level of involvement, I think, in your direct reports or in your management chain beneath your business affairs day to day. And then if your level of involvement sort of could feel like you may think it’s feedback if it’s around some kind of deliverable.

But feedback, let’s say, on an email or on a presentation is reviewing it at a certain point maybe later on, not every second, and then giving some specific tips and waiting for someone to come back to you, as opposed to rolling up the sleeves and thinking you’re going to sit side by side and finish banging out the email together.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that expectation alignment is huge because, like, when it comes to decision rights or how that unfolds. I’m thinking other times I felt micromanaged, both of them I was like planning social stuff, and so I thought, “Okay, this is just for the kids,” if you will, the folks on the team who are in larger numbers, and there are relatively fewer sort of managers, directors above.

And, one, it was to say, “Okay, so what are going to do for the office-wide fun time?” And so, I did the survey, I put it out there, and I said, “Hey, what do you know, sailing is the thing they like the most out of the options. That is kind of cool.” And so, this director just kept digging into it, like, “Well, I’m curious if we really segment that data, my hypothesis is there’s a small subsegment of folks who are strongly in favor of this sailing, and many others…”

And it was like, “Okay, that is pretty convoluted, and, well, no, we could slice the data survey another way,” which we had, which is kind of ridiculous for a survey about the social stuff, it’s like, “Well, no, it still looks like this.” And then so what my takeaway was, “All right, dude, you just don’t want us to go sailing. It’d be nice if there were options that were totally unacceptable to you that you just let us know in advance, like, ‘For whatever reason, hey, sailing sounds really cool and fun but we can’t do that because of X, Y, Z. that’s going to be problematic for a large swath in our office who are seasick.’”

I was like, “Okay, fair enough. All right, you know what, we won’t even put it on the survey, and it’s good to know that upfront,” as opposed to, “We’re all stoned out sailing and then…”

Lia Garvin
And he said no, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Then to approve for these not great reasons in terms of, like, if we squint and sliced the data in such a way we can get there. And other times, there’s just a team event, like, “Hey, let’s go let’s do laser tag.” And I guess the manager who was in the room, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for that, like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s do it,” and he’s like, “You know, I don’t recall seeing a survey collecting the team input regarding the team activity.” I was like, “Oh, sorry. Well, we just got to talk about a few things, and this one was, by far, had the most energy and enthusiasm.”

And so, it was just sort of like…and then I was sort of shamed for inappropriately gathering incomplete feedback. It’s like I would just respect them so much, it’s like, “Dude, just say, ‘Hey, I want to participate, too. I know this is like for the kids or ‘whatever’ and I hate laser tag, and so I’d really appreciate it if you could find something else to include me.’” I guess maybe that’s too humble and vulnerable, or I don’t know, for them.

Lia Garvin
No, but I think that and then the example around the previous, where we’re talking about the email, what you’re saying is it’s transparency and context. Like, if there was a reason, say it upfront.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally, yeah.

Lia Garvin
Yeah. And I think you mentioned director in that, and that stood out to me as I think that’s a real…the level of seniority and the level of depth should match. And I think that’s another thing that can be frustrating, is when you have a VP or SVP or director that’s very in the details around planning something or orchestrating something that it just doesn’t feel like an appropriate match.

I think a senior leader, it’s really critically important to demonstrate interest and support for the team, this kind of stuff, but is it really necessary to be providing inputs on activity level beyond setting some expectations and constraints? Not really. Because what happens is that person, whether they mean to or not, will have veto power because they have the highest level of hierarchy, and then it throws off the whole dynamic.

So, I think for any senior leaders listening to this, I’d say recognize your own position in a company or a team, and think, “Hey, do I need to be in this conversation? Am I actually inadvertently throwing it off? Am I sharing my opinion and it’s carrying more weight because of my hierarchy, when it really shouldn’t?” and then taking a step back.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And just expectation, alignment, I guess I was thinking, like, “Hey, the senior leaders…” I guess the way I view the activities were, “These are primarily for us, because, one, we outnumber you, and, two, you make gobs of money, and then this is part of the recognition and appreciation for that.” So, anyway, maybe that’s an unfair view or characterization or expectation for the social activities. Wow, this is really…

Lia Garvin
Well, that’s interesting because I had that same observation working on my roles in tech or around team operations and establishing team process. And I always found that the recipients of process were actually very open to it. It was like other people that would say, “Oh, I don’t know about this,” other team operations or other managers, never the recipients of that thing.

And I think I understand what you’re saying because, like you said, the people that want it, they were going to engage in the activity, they’re all like downed with the laser and with the sailing. And so, that’s another question maybe to think about when you’re maybe shutting down an idea or giving feedback. When I talk about feedback, I always think I encourage people to ask, “Am I the right person to give that feedback?”

And so, in your situation, like, “Am I the right person?” is, “Am I even attending this event? Do I really care? And what’s my stake in this situation?” And I think, for the leaders in your situation, it’s like, “You know, I’m best suited just to support the activity, to pay the bill, and show up and welcome everybody, and like leave it at that.” So, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And then, again, if they had a differing expectation, it’s totally cool to share that, it’s like, “Hey, you know what, this is a cool opportunity we have to really just flatten the hierarchy, in which the managers, directors, VPs, whatever, get to be silly and ridiculous right alongside, and it’s so stressful dealing with blah, blah, blah.”

Lia Garvin
Exactly. So, it’s setting that context up front.

Pete Mockaitis
“So, I know it might seem silly but we want to play, too.” And I would find that endearing, it’s like, “Okay, okay, director. Thank you. I understand. That’s cute. Let’s do this thing you like, too.”

Lia Garvin
Exactly. And so, like you said, it’s setting the context. I think with these team-related activities, there’s a lot of…I think it’s really important to be inclusive, make sure everybody can actually participate in the activities, that there’s not overtly focused on alcohol, or in they’re in the right times of day where people can participate if they have to be doing caretaking and pickup.

So, like there’s a lot of constraints, and I think sometimes, so it’s really important for leaders to set that context for folks so that they can then plan something that’s inclusive and appealing to everybody. So, there’s a lot to navigate, and it can be a trap for micromanagement, so a little bit of both.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it really can because I think it’s funny because, it’s like, “All right, let’s let the junior employees run with something.” It’s like, “This isn’t that important so you can just own it, but you don’t own it.”

Lia Garvin
Yeah, “But you don’t really own it.” And so, this is something when I talk about delegating that is so critically important, is there’s a lot of ways in delegating but saying, “What is the task? What does success look like? And then what is my expectation of involvement?” I think that’s the one thing that managers don’t always talk about.

They say, “Okay. Here, go run with this. This is what success looks like. We’re all good.” And then the manager is like, “Well, where we at with that?” And they want it to be regularly updated, they want to be in the loop, they want to know what’s going on at these different time periods. That goes in the conversation upfront.

So, if we say, “I want you to take on this status report that goes out every Friday,” if you really want a preview of that status report on Wednesday, you’re going to say that, not just show up Wednesday, like, “I need to see this today,” because someone thought they had till Friday, and then they’re going to feel like, “Oh, gosh, I had no idea that was coming.”

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

Lia Garvin
Yeah, I think there are so much opportunity right now with so much change in the workplace to really get right how teams are operating. And I think a lot of that comes down to, as we talked about today, really making sure our managers are set up for success, both for themselves so they’re not burning out, and for their team members so that they’re staying motivated, engaged, and enabled to do their work best.

So, I love working with teams, that is my focus, diving into figure out what’s really getting in the way of teams operating their best. So, if you want to learn more about that work or how to support your team, reach out at LiaGarvin.com.

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

Lia Garvin
Ooh, favorite quote. Oh, man, I’ve got to think about this in a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. No problem.

Lia Garvin
Oh, man. Ooh, okay. So, something that I’ve been finding inspiring is the quote, “Make the why bigger than the fear.” And this is something, I think, for any of us to think about that are doing something new. So, this was really motivating for me as I launched my own business and left the corporate world, was the thing that’s really fueling you to do it, let that be bigger than all the reasons that are telling you to stop and go back and keep it safe.

And I think, for teams, right now where there’s a lot going on, it’s really uncertain, people are cutting back, and so remembering, “Why are we here? What are we trying to create?” I think that can really help, especially if you’re a manager. Create a sense of certainty even when there’s so much uncertainty happening.

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

Lia Garvin
Yeah, my favorite study, I’d say, year over year, is the Lean In and McKinsey & Company Women in the Workplace report. It’s a wealth of information around people’s experiences. They’ve added in the recent years the intersection of gender and race, and really deeply understanding the experiences of women, why women are leaving the corporate world in higher rates than ever.

This year, a lot of the information talked about lack of recognition and visibility. This is something that managers have so much control over, making sure people feel seen, like their work matters, making sure it’s getting the right level of visibility. So, that’s a study I go back to every single year as they put it out to really inform where I focus and some of the things that I can highlight for the teams I work with.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Lia Garvin
So, a book that I read over the holidays was Lead to Win by Carla Harris. And Carla Harris has these series of books around her pearls of wisdom. She was vice chairman at Morgan Stanley and has a ton of great insights around career, sponsorship, how to really build up your skills as a leader.

And this one specifically dives into how to build great teams, how to drive inclusion on teams, really kind of a playbook for managers trying to break through the next level. So, that’s something I’ve been really loving reading.

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

Lia Garvin
Tool, yes. Otter.ai, I believe, it’s called. It’s an app where you…it’s a voice notes app, but it does AI transcription, so it’s pretty flawless transcription. And whenever I have to write an email, now this is great if you’re, like, writing a cautious response to maybe some passive-aggressive behavior, or you’re trying to get your ideas out. I will speak out this email into the voice app, and then I have a great thing to copy and paste into my email.

I think a lot of times when we’re writing, we can get stuck on having the perfect wording. So, if I’m writing a bio for something, or, like I said, a difficult email, or something I’m just getting stuck on, grabbing the app, talking it out into there, and then copying and pasting, and taking the good parts, and having that be the written form is just a huge shortcut.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Lia Garvin
Favorite habit, I guess it’s called multitasking, but I have a walking desk, and I do work while I’m walking on the desk. So, I like to do two things at once that allow me to get two things done at the same time. Some call it multitasking. I would call it layering two activities.

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?

Lia Garvin
Yes. When you’re feeling stuck, or you encounter rejection or failure, it’s not you. It’s your approach. And when you change your approach, you will change your outcome.

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

Lia Garvin
Yeah, so I would say connect with me on LinkedIn. Wait, let me do that again. Sorry. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from folks, especially what resonated from this episode, or reach out on my website at LiaGarvin.com.

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

Lia Garvin
Yeah, I think for folks, giving yourself a little bit of permission to be figuring it out right now. Right now, it’s a really, really hard time in the workplace. There’s so much uncertainty. And figuring out what do you need to be able to face every day feeling more optimistic or more supported. So, if that’s taking a walk, doing a meditation, whatever, making your favorite coffee, whatever it is, figuring what that thing is and building that into your routine so that you have a sense of, “I’m doing something for myself every day.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lia, thanks. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and little micromanagement.

Lia Garvin
Thank you so much.