Gravitas Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Matt, welcome back!

Matt Abrahams
I am thrilled to be back with you. We had such fun last time. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, thank you, and kudos on all your success in terms of the book and your podcast. It is just blowing up and you’re appearing in big arenas digitally, and so I just think that’s so cool. So kudos, the good word is getting out and you’re getting out some more good word with an updated edition of your book.

Matt Abrahams
Thank you. Yeah, it’s all exciting. The goal is to help people feel more comfortable and confident communicating and it’s always great to have conversations on the topic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so Think Faster, Talk Smarter. We’re coming out with a fresh edition and, apparently, this AI business is fairly consequential when it comes to communication.

Matt Abrahams
I’ve heard. I’ve heard. Do you find you use AI to help you in your communication?

Pete Mockaitis
Selectively. I use it a ton for research and I love that. I cannot tell how many times I’ve said, “Show me human randomized control trials on the impact of X on Y,” because I was like, “Get right to the real science of the stuff,” as opposed to, you know, what random influencers are saying. And then follow up questions.

So I think that I’ve been having too much fun using AI for research. And with communication, I do it pretty sparingly. It’s usually, like, I’m really kind of stuck, “I want to make this email. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to be kind of assertive.”

But the blunt answer is like, “Hey, this is our agreement. Read it,” you know? But, “What’s the nicer way to say that?” So I find it helps when I have some emotional hang-ups with my language to just be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s just the easy words to use. Yeah, go ahead and do that,” you know?

Matt Abrahams
And I think that’s a wise way to use it. Use it as a check on tone, as a check on vocabulary, again as a partner, not necessarily as the drafter and originator of the information.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I’ve heard that said very well. And we had Jeremy Utley, understandably.

Matt Abrahams
Ah, Jeremy is a good friend and a colleague. He’s awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, he really nailed it. I don’t remember if this is his words, or if this is from Brendan at The Leverage Class. We’ll put links to all of this stuff, to think of AI as a sparring partner instead of an oracle, or a teammate instead of an oracle. And that’s been very helpful.

Matt Abrahams
Yes, that’s exactly right. That is Jeremy’s language for sure. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So that’s handy. So that was one of the reasons you thought, “Hmm, a fresh edition of this book is warranted already,” because it’s not that old. But lay it on us, in terms of your view of AI and how it’s impacting communication and professionals.

Matt Abrahams
Right. So AI gives us an opportunity for all of us to be perfect and polished in our communication, and that’s a problem. That’s a problem because it brings to us what I’m calling an authenticity crisis, where we never truly know if what somebody says is their own thought process, is the result of that, or if it’s something AI created.

If you think about it, communication is the end stop of a whole bunch of thinking that happens. Critical thinking is important and critical in our communication. And if we can never truly know if what somebody is saying is theirs, then we’ve got an issue of authenticity.

So much so that companies are requiring in-person interviews again because we want to make sure no Cyrano de Bergerac is going on, people looking at the screen or getting advice in their ears. Universities like where I teach are bringing back blue books. You and I both remember putting pen in the blue books to answer questions because we’re just not sure.

So we need to, I believe, in a world of AI where polish and perfection are just a few keystrokes away, being able to demonstrate that we’re human and we have thought through our information is critical. And I believe, while AI can be incredibly helpful in being a sparring partner, in helping us think through our audiences, in testing our reflexes around certain types of communication, we want to make sure that we avoid just relying on it for all of our communication.

And there are things we can do to signal that we are actually human in our communication. And that’s really what this chapter, the new chapter about AI is all about.

Pete Mockaitis
And this signaling, I’m imagining, is more sophisticated than removing em dashes.

Matt Abrahams
It is a little bit more sophisticated. If you think about it, I believe that in a world of AI, the ability to speak in the moment, on your feet, and be responsive in an agile, appropriate way is the thing that will set those who are expert apart from those who aren’t.

And so there are things that we can do to signal that. So, for example, we can connect what we’re saying to our life experience. So I could say, “You know, when I think about the answer to your question, it reminds me of a time when…” and then we tell that story.

Or we could, in our communication, tell how we are feeling in the moment, like, “That question really makes me ponder or question this approach.” And it is through those little tells and reveals that we actually show that we are thinking in the moment, that this is us live processing.

And that makes a difference because it allows us not only to demonstrate proof of human and proof of thought, but it’s endearing and connective instead of just rote recitation that many people are relying on.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right. And I like that so much because that’s very simple, clear, and direct and the AI doesn’t tend to share with us its emotional reaction because it doesn’t have emotions, nor does it share its personal background history stories because it doesn’t have those either. And so that’s very simple right there.

And I think you really nailed it with regard to our live conversational exchanges, quite an impact in how folks judge us because if we look at any number of artifacts, whether that’s documents, reports, spreadsheets, whatever, it’s like before, I mean, we even see this in our business with the hiring for podcast production services.

Before we say, “Okay, well, we’ll ask all these questions, and if they can answer them, then they must be pretty smart.” And then now it’s like, “Well, we can’t do that anymore. It’s because they can just get those answers readily.” And not because the test has been published somewhere, but because ChatGPT can handle it, no problem.

And so you’re right, if the artifacts aren’t telling the story that I’m highly competent, then one of the few things we really have left is the live conversation in which we’re showing off how we think and what we can do.

Matt Abrahams
Absolutely. Communication is about connection and is demonstrating thought and empathy. And those are things that are difficult to do with AI. Again, AI has a place in our communication. I truly believe it can help us be better.

I talk about the empathy paradox. If I need to have a conversation with you, Pete, where I really want to make sure that my messaging aligns with your way of being in the world, I can work with AI in advance and have it help me think through ways of approaching you that might be different than I would normally approach other people. That’s great and that’s a useful tool.

However, if I just outsource all the most difficult communication I have to have, a bad performance review, or a breakup, or something of that nature, you know, empathy is a muscle. You need to train it. And if I just outsource it, I can have empathy atrophy. And that concerns me greatly, especially for younger generations who haven’t had to have those difficult conversations in the first place.

So we do need to take the time to really think through our communication, leverage AI appropriately, and then make sure we demonstrate that this is our own work. You and I grew up going to school where you had to show your work, and this is part of how we do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us some stories that illustrate what you’re seeing with regard to empathy atrophy, or the landscape of us human thinkers, empathizers, communicators, and how we’ve already been influenced or altered by AI?

Matt Abrahams
So let me start with a story that I actually start the new chapter in the book with. And this happened to a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine. Like me, he teaches communication at the university level.

And he was applying for a new job. And he had a bunch of stuff going on in his life that was difficult for him, and so he prepared with AI. So he created answers through AI for questions he knew he was going to get asked. He memorized them. He had them up on the screen when he did the the Zoom interview.

And in the midst, you know, he gave good answers to questions that were prepared. And then the follow-up or the surprising questions he completely floundered on. And it was because he hadn’t done the necessary thinking through process to help himself be who he really was. I mean, he was eminently qualified for that job. Absolutely. He just had not prepared properly.

And this is happening all over the place. An investor I talked to, worked for a VC firm, I coached for a while. And he was promoted because of how good he was as an analyst. He was an amazing analyst. He relied on AI almost extensively to help him with the communication, the slides he presented, the documents he created.

And he was promoted to an investing position where he actually had to engage in conversation, give difficult feedback. And he was woefully inadequate because those communication skills that his leaders, bosses saw in him were not truly his. And he was in a position that he did not do well.

And it took a long time for him to get to a place where he could deliver at the level both his bosses and he expected of himself. So these are the ways that we’re seeing this over-reliance on AI manifest itself. Not to mention the times where people just jump to it whenever there’s a slightly difficult conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so, Matt, give us some step-by-step goodies that you recommend in such a world.

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, so a few things I’d recommend that people do. One is, as you are crafting communication to leverage the skills that AI can bring to you, the help, use it, as you mentioned, as Jeremy likes to talk about, a sparring partner.

So, for example, if I know I’m going into a job interview, I can have it present to me questions that I try to answer. Not like the person I talked about, to memorize the answers, but just to get through the pattern recognition of answering questions and, “How do I start?” It’s an agility drill. Athletes do a tremendous number of agility drills. AI is a great tool for that.

If you’re going into a meeting with a bunch of different people, assign AI different personalities, the skeptic, the supporter, and talk through with the AI what you would do and how you would respond. Again, helping you with pattern recognition, helping you expand your repertoire of communication in the moment. These are ways to leverage the tool to help.

And then when you’re actually delivering the communication, lean into the things that make you human. Share your in-the-moment feelings. Stop worrying about saying “um” or “ah” too much. These are things that we do in our normal everyday communication that help us connect.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Okay. Well, so as we’re implementing these pieces, do you have any pro tips, do’s and don’ts along the path?

Matt Abrahams
So it takes time and it takes practice. I mean, the only way you get good at communication is three things: repetition, reflection, and feedback. So you need to get the reps. So if you want to figure out how do you incorporate AI into your communication or improve any communication, practice. Try it.

Do different things. Explore. AI can actually help you. You can say, “How can I use you to best help me in this circumstance?” Or, “How have others used you to help?” So you have to get the reps in. You then have to reflect.

One of the big challenges I have with my students is they’ll get information out from AI and they don’t take that extra step to reflect on the quality, the sourcing, or even, you know, “Is this helpful to me and what can I learn?”

There are ways, and I actually use AI in my classes, have my students use AI to help them. So they might, in preparing for a big presentation in my class, put in an outline and ask AI to make certain parts more concise or make parts more engaging. And then I force them to think about and talk about what the suggestions were.

Not that the suggestions the LLM created are correct, but, “What is it doing in this moment? And can you make a choice to lean into it or perhaps do something else?” So it is repetition, it is reflection, and then feedback. And you can use AI to help you give feedback. You can record things, upload it, and have it give you feedback.

But ask other people, as a result of whatever preparation you’ve used with AI to give you feedback, are you starting to sound like AI? A fascinating research recently released shows that our language choice, the words we’re choosing, is beginning to sound more and more like that that comes from AI. So we have to be careful.

If we all start using AI so much, we’re going to start to sound like AI and lose our way of expressing ourselves. The words we use reflect the thoughts we have and the way that we connect. So, to me, the answer to your question is repetition, reflection, and feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m intrigued by when you said, upload the recording and have AI provide feedback. As far as I know, I hope you’re about to blow my mind with something new, no pressure, as far as I know, they can transcribe that and then give you feedback on the words. But are we also getting feedback on the vocal pitch, intonation, the pacing, like the pausing?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, there are tools out there that leverage AI that do that. And some of the LLMs generally available have features as well. So, yes, it can talk about intonation, filler words, words of hesitation. And, again, this is all information that can be helpful to you, not to say that what the AI says is correct or perfect, but it’s information for you to reflect on and try and experiment.

A lot of successful communication is about A-B testing, trying different things out, getting feedback. I think real human feedback is essential, but also leveraging tools to help can be a good thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, no, I’m right with you with regard to the sparring partner idea and then the reps, and just as a tool for reflection as well. I remember I was working with someone who’s trying to improve on sales, and she was sending the whole transcript of the sales conversation, you know, through the AI and say, “Hey, I’d love your input on, like, what went well, what could have gone differently.”

And, again, none of us viewing it as the oracle of the almighty sales guru who has all sales knowledge, but rather by saying stuff back, you then have the opportunity to respond. And sometimes the response is, “No, you’re totally off base. That was exactly the right move.”

And then, ideally, you talk to an expert as well who will give you feedback in terms of it’s like, “Well, no, actually, the AI was on the money,” or, “No, it’s more nuanced than that,” you know, whatever. But just having something come back at you, just like hitting a ball against the wall, enables you to reflect on that and send the ball back to the wall. And in so doing, you’re getting better at hitting the ball with a bracket.

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, in all the work that I do, I get to travel all over the place, helping people and working on communication skills with people. You know, people define success of communication is survival, “I got through it. I’m done.” And they leave and they don’t think about, “How can I do it better? What did I learn?”

So this colleague who’s, you know, feeding things into a system, that’s a great way to start that process. But you then have to take it to the next step, and say, “Well, what could difference look like? How could I do this in a different way?” And that’s how we improve, and that’s how we all can get better. So that reflection step is really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. And tell us, what are the tools that will also give us feedback on our pitch and pacing in a presentation?

Matt Abrahams
Well, there are many of them that exist, and everybody has to find their own that works best for them. I mean, I don’t want this to be a sales pitch for my stuff, but one of my students, upon graduation, created an AI coach version of me.

So I tried to get ChatMatt as a URL, but you can actually talk to it and feed in vocal cues and clues, and it’ll give you feedback on things like pitch and rate, etc. So there are tools out there that do it that can help you. But, again, communication is not all just that. It’s the constellation of everything that you do, and the rehearsal, the practice, the thought process, that’s all what’s critical.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, that’s kind of you to not want to turn this into a pitch session, but feel free. So ChatMatt…

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, it’s a thing. Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
…will provide feedback on my pitch and my pacing in addition to my words.

Matt Abrahams
Absolutely. And it’ll give you feedback on lots of other things. If you’re struggling asking your boss for a raise or you have to raise an issue in a meeting that might be sensitive. My wife actually prefers to talk to my chat bot than to me. She said it actually listens better than I do.

When it was first coming out, we tested it with my two 20-something kids. Believe me, they put it to the test because we didn’t want it teaching bad things or inappropriate things. And with my younger son, the tool actually made him feel guilty.

He asked some silly question and it said, “I am a tool for serious communication development. When you’re ready to work on something serious, come back.” I thought that was lovely. We encoded guilt into it.

So it’s a tool that it’s been trained on my teachings, my work, and again, leveraging AI, I hope, for a good purpose. Literally, the way it’s designed, and again, this sounds too sales pitchy, but there’s a phone number you can call, like you’re calling a friend, and when you call, it will connect to the AI coach once you’ve signed up and everything.

And you can literally just have that, you say, “I’m about to walk into the room. I didn’t expect my boss’s boss to be in there. What’s something I can say that…?” you know? And it’ll respond in my voice. And so trying to use AI to help bring communication to the moment where people need that communication coaching.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good. Well, now you’ve got a fun term, you say old-school AI, which is authenticity and influence. You shared with us a couple quick tips in terms of making something all the more authentic and you. Anything else you’d add about influence in the age of AI?

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, absolutely. So in a world of AI, what becomes really important is the emotional connection. When we go to persuade people, it is really important that we not only persuade on facts and figures, which are important, but we also think about the emotional connection and component of our communication.

And that is something that is uniquely human. And we have to think about, “What is that emotional connection? How can I address and make that move forward?” And so we have to be thinking about that aspect as well.

So when it comes to persuasion, you know, some of these key elements we’ve known for millennia. It’s facts and figures, logos, it’s emotion, pathos, and it’s your credibility, how you show up in the background that you have.

I like to distinguish when I teach credibility to my MBA students, there’s what I call career and college credibility and Costco credibility. And career and college credibility is what most of us think about. It’s what’s on our LinkedIn profiles, on our resumes, on our vitaes.

But Costco credibility sometimes is more important. When you go to Costco, they give you free samples of food. Why would they do that? It’s not a great business model unless, when you try the food, you like it and then you buy it. They’re showing you the value.

So career and college credibility, really important. And AI can help you perfect that. But your lived experience, the showing of your credibility, that’s where you can really lean into this emotional connection.

You know, it’s one thing to say, “I won the Sales Person of the Year Award five times in a row.” It’s another thing to say, “Here’s how my sales methodology worked in this particular session, and this is what helped me close the deal.” Very different way of communicating your credibility.

So it’s thinking about the emotion, it’s leaning into the lived experience of your credibility, that’s the old-school influence piece that really makes a difference. And when you partner that with some of the things AI can bring to you, can make a really powerful combination.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that a lot. The ‘show me’ instead of ‘telling me’ of it, and the Costco sample concept. As we speak, I’m looking at my sound absorbing panels in the studio. And I ordered them from Music City Acoustics. And the way they got me was I was just looking up some YouTube video, like, “Okay, so how do I think about echo in this room? And what do we really need to do with that?”

And they showed me this detailed use of a software program and a microphone to calibrate it, to figure out the decay rate of different frequencies, and I was like, “Okay, this guy is a super expert on room echo maybe more than anyone that I’ve ever encountered, and he’s, you know, less than an hour away in Nashville. We’re just going to go ahead and hire them.” And that was that.

Because you get sound panels from a lot of places, but these folks are going to optimally size and place these bad boys better than I could possibly understand.

Matt Abrahams
Absolutely. And that experience you had influenced you, and that makes a big difference. Showing, it really does help.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Matt, tell me, anything else we really should make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Matt Abrahams
The one thing that I heard the most when I was traveling all over the world is people said, “How do I deal with conflict that sparks in the moment, you know, all of a sudden, you’re having a conversation, and somebody gets upset?”

So I added a whole chapter in the applied section of the book, talking about this, how to manage conflict in the moment. And it really boils down to just some very straightforward, simple practices. First, you have to acknowledge what’s happening, right? You don’t have to agree, but you have to acknowledge, “I hear, Pete, that you’re bothered or upset or passionate about that issue.” Name it.

And then give somebody room to actually state their position. We often go into defense mode and we assume that anybody’s position is equal in valence and significance to ours. And so we have to really listen and understand, and maybe even explicitly say, “How important is this to you?”

I’ll give you an example. My wife and I learned from some friends of ours a long time ago to do this. If we have a potential disagreement, the very first thing we’ll do is we’ll say, “How important is this to you on a scale of one to ten?”

And if you have a partner that you can trust, this is a wonderful way to diffuse conflict. So let’s say my wife, we agree we’re going out to dinner, but she says she wants Mexican food and I would like Chinese food. Potential conflict.

But if she says, “Hey, Mexican food is a three,” and for me it’s a seven, then there’s no conflict. We make this assumption that our partner or partners that we’re struggling with see the world and have the same level of import to whatever it is we’re discussing that we do.

So you have to acknowledge, you have to listen, you have to ascertain priority, “How important is this?” And then you have to do the hard work of figuring out, “What are the ways that we can work together to consider this, knowing that it’s about collaboration and not about competition?”

And so if we can do these things, all of a sudden, in the moment, spontaneous conflict and challenge can be managed much more directly. And then you can rely on some of the tools and tips that I’ve shared with you and others that are earlier in the book around, “How do you structure your information?” You don’t just ramble and list things.

You might use a structure like, “What?” “So what?” “Now what?” “What?” “Here’s my position or my suggestion. So what? Why it’s important and how I think it’ll help us. And now what are my suggested next steps?”

So in any spontaneous speaking situation, you have to deal with mindset and you have to deal with messaging. So the mindset is acknowledging, listening, understanding the prioritization. And then the messaging is taking whatever solution collaboratively that you come up with and packaging it in a way so somebody else can say it.

So, sorry for the long-winded answer, but that’s also another important part of this update and, really, a significant part of how we get better at communicating.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that’s very helpful and needed, and that’s a nice move in terms of, “How important is this to you?” And, indeed, you would have to have some trust because, then, I guess you could win every time, like, “Nine. This is nine-level importance.”

Matt Abrahams
Well, with my kids, everything is a ten. Everything with my kids, that’s a ten. So you have to calibrate. You have to calibrate, but it makes a big difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. And I also want your take, in terms of in the heat of the moment conflict, I think those are very great. Maybe you’d say, top down perspectives in terms of the issues, and how important they are, and thinking about them logically and rationally and not jumping to conclusions about, “Oh, they’re really mad, and they must have it this way,” you know? So very wise.

I’m curious about some of the, maybe, bottom-up perspectives of just keeping your cool in that moment. Any pro tips there?

Matt Abrahams
Right. So it can be really hard. We can be emotionally triggered very easily around something that’s really important to us. There’s a whole bunch of other factors that could go into it. If we’re tired, if we’re coming out of, you know, the fourth meeting, this is the third thing that didn’t go well today.

So the ability, and this comes from mindfulness training, the ability to acknowledge, “This is how I am feeling,” gives you a little bit of space to do something about it. So rather than being absorbed by the feeling, say, “This is me feeling frustrated.” “This is me feeling really sad by what the person just said.”

By saying those words to yourself, you give yourself a little bit of psychological distance so that you can do something. It gives you just a little bit of space. Also, if you can do something physical, ground yourself, feel the ground through your feet or your shoes, touch something. That gets you out of that emotional state so you can make a more rational decision.

Now I am not saying that emotions are bad. They are very important. Emotions signal that something needs to be done. But, at the same time, when emotionally triggered, it can hamper or actually lead to bad communication. So we need to actually give ourselves a little space.

And maybe the best thing for me to do, Pete, is to say, “You know, that comment was hurtful. And I need to take just a little bit of time before you and I can come back and talk about this more.” Taking that time out for yourself will help you tremendously. It’ll help you get your thoughts ordered. It’ll help you sort through the emotion. And it, ultimately, will help you deliver a better message.

So, you’re right, emotions loom large and we have to be prepared for those, and we have to just name them and maybe do something physical to help give us just that little bit of space.

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

Matt Abrahams
“No matter where you go, there you are.” It really helps to remind me that the place I need to be at this moment is right here and with the person or people that I’m with, instead of the three other things that I could, should, would be doing. It makes me chuckle a little bit because it’s a little, you know, it makes a lot of intuitive sense, but it’s also very memorable.

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

Matt Abrahams
I’ve been talking a lot about language and framing. And so my favorite framing research is very simple. These researchers went to a group of people and said, “Imagine you have a terrible disease. We have a potential cure. It has a 67% failure rate.”

They then went to another group of people, just like the first group, and said, “Imagine you have a terrible disease. We have a potential cure. It has a 33% success rate. Would you like to take it?” I hope you agree, a 67% failure rate, a 33% success rate is the same thing. Yet dramatically, people take the treatment, the imagined treatment, when it is framed as something positive.

And I’m not saying this means you should always frame things positive. What I’m saying is we need to think about how we use language to help us. I’ll give you an example. I work with a lot of people pitching ideas. You can frame a pitch as a problem that you are solving or an opportunity that you’re going to capture. You get a choice.

And you have to think about, “Which way will work best for my audience?” And here’s where you can test it out on people, or you can use AI to help you think through your audience, “Are these the kind of people who are more problem-focused or more opportunity-focused?”

But the way we use words to help us move people in the direction we want to, really, is something I’ve been focusing on a lot lately.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is intriguing, and I actually want to dig into this a little bit more.

Matt Abrahams
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I would imagine, you tell me, since you’ve lived it with so many clients. My hunch is “the problem we’re solving” frame works better if the investors are folks who care passionately about that specific issue, like, “Hey, you know what, my child had that problem. Wow, yes, I am touched and moved and would love to be a part of solving that,” versus if they’re just, you know, money-hungry and return-maximizing investors, “Oh, yeah, let’s talk opportunity.” That’s my guess. What’s the reality, Matt?

Matt Abrahams
I think your intuition is probably right. If people have a connection to an issue, a problem, that framing it that way works. The breakdown that I, typically, see and talk about is, when you have people who you’re communicating with, who are deeply in the depths, the belly of whatever the topic is, people who are deeply financial, people who are highly technical, people who are very scientific, they tend to like to solve problems.

When they were in school, they did problem sets. They didn’t do opportunity sets. So framing it for the way they are in the world, their background, works. But when you’re in sales, when you’re in marketing, when you’re in senior leadership, often it’s about the opportunities that lie ahead.

So I think it’s multidimensional. I think part of it is people’s backgrounds and just how they are in the world, but also, their connection to the topic also makes sense to me. I just am not aware of any research that bears out your hypothesis, although, to me, intuitively, it makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Matt Abrahams
The book I’ll share with you, from my dear friend Patricia Ryan Madsen. If you don’t know Patricia, you should get to know her. She wrote a book called Improv Wisdom. Very short, little book. It’s about how you can apply improvisation principles to your life.

So it’s not about getting up on a stage and trying to be funny. It’s about, “In my everyday life, how can I leverage ideas from improv to help me be more responsive and to be more connected and communicate better?”

It’s a lovely book. I mean, this is a book that I return to and I think everybody should give it a read. It is fun and helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Matt Abrahams
I’ll give you an app because I use it all the time. And, again, I’m not trying to sell it, although, I have. It’s called Superhuman.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. I use it all the time.

Matt Abrahams
Yes, it is great. So you know the power of it. It allows me to be more efficient in my written communication. And I am at least 30-35% more effective in my emails, of which I get hundreds, and it helps me be smarter in the way I communicate. So that is probably the most useful tool that I have.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so funny, Matt, we usually have to keep the fast phase fast, but you’re just so intriguing here. So I love Superhuman because, one, it’s a blazingly fast interface. And it really kind of subtly trains you to use those shortcut keys.

Like, “Hey, these are here. Go ahead and use them. You know what? You’re right.” So it’s super responsive. The shortcuts, I’m grooving in with them. Oh, I like the split inboxes. It can identify a pitch roughly with AI so that they’re just in a separate tab of pitches. So I just go forward them to all of my team. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! But tell me, what are you finding transformational about Superhuman?

Matt Abrahams
So I, as a teacher, pretty regularly, send out very similar messages to people, and they have a feature called Snippet, and it allows you to, very quickly, send out similar emails. That’s the one that I rely on a lot as well.

And their built-in AI, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used the built-in AI to help me find like, “Who is that person I talked to in an email three years ago?” you know? And it used to be I’d scroll through my sent folder and try, I might misspell their name. So those are the two features beyond what you have said that I use.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I guess that semantic piece really can come in handy. It’s like, “I don’t remember the key word we said, but it was a guy trying to sell me a thing with a video a couple years ago.”

Matt Abrahams
Thing, yeah, three years ago.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like enough of those, you know, very vague descriptors chained together. It’s like, “Oh, I can work with that.” And then it’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s the one. Thank you.”

Matt Abrahams
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Matt Abrahams
This is going to sound funny, but I play darts. So I have an outdoor dartboard, and every day I try to go out. I’ve done martial arts for a long, long time, and as part of that, I took up archery and I found it very calming to focus.

Unfortunately, my wife won’t let me shoot arrows in my house, or around my house, and the archery range is a little farther away. And I found that throwing darts is helpful as well. It helps me be very present, it helps me focus, and I kind of have fun doing it. So that’s a habit that I’ve been enjoying recently.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks, they quote back to you often?

Matt Abrahams
The one that I think most recently and relates to the new edition of the book is, “You can prepare to be spontaneous.”

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

Matt Abrahams
I would point them, first and foremost, to FasterSmarter.io. FasterSmarter.io is the source of all of the resources and the show, Think Fast, Talk Smart that I host. I’m a big, big user of LinkedIn. Happy to have you jump on there. And we have a newsletter you can sign up for at either FasterSmarter.io or on LinkedIn, and would love to connect with people in any way.

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

Matt Abrahams
Yeah, so I challenge everybody to take a moment to work on and reflect on your communication. I’ll tell you a practice I do. Every night before I go to bed, in my journal, I will write one thing that went well in my communication that day and one thing that didn’t go as well.

And then every Sunday, I go back and review for three or four minutes, and I make a plan for the following week of how to improve something that I was not pleased with. And that act of doing that makes a huge difference. I’m not saying I’m a great communicator, but I’m a much better communicator because of that.

So I challenge everybody listening to spend some time just reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, either in your communication or others, and think about how you could change your communication for the better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Matt, thank you.

Matt Abrahams
Pete, thank you. This has been a wonderful pleasure to come back and chat with you. Thanks.

Pete Mockaitis
Montana, welcome!

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

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

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

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

Montana Von Fliss
I think so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that a lot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Montana Von Fliss
Absolutely. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, and a favorite book?

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful.

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah.

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. There you have it.

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

What do I do?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool.

Sheena Iyengar

Those are just two examples.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar
It’s just too big.

Pete Mockaitis

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

And then what would be the better version of that?

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

Understood.

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

Okey-dokey.

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Sheena Iyengar

Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger
It is very much handy, yes.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

Yup.

Heather Younger

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

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

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Heather Younger

I like to eat the same breakfast every day.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, what is this breakfast?

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

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

Pete Mockaitis

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

Heather Younger

Thank you so much for having me.