KF #1. Ensures Accountability Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Maria, welcome.

Maria Ross
Thanks for having me, Pete. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited, too, to hear about some of your wisdom about empathy in professional contexts. So, I’d love to start by hearing, if there’s a particularly surprising or shocking discovery you’ve made about empathy in professional context since you’ve been researching this stuff for years and years and years.

Maria Ross
Yeah, so many. I mean, there’s so much data and research out there that shows that being an empathetic leader and colleague boosts engagement, performance, innovation, results in better customer loyalty, better customer lifetime value. I think what was most surprising to me in the early days was discovering that, for some companies, there’s a link between their empathetic culture and their stock price being favorable.

So, we all know, personally, that when we’re dealing with people that are empathetic or dealing with brands that are empathetic, we do feel seen, heard, and valued, and that actually translates to bottom line results. So, it’s been a fun mission to go on, to show people that empathy is a strategic advantage and by no means is it a weakness.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s beautiful to hear you say that because, I don’t know, I’ve just been on this YouTube kick in which I’ve been hearing about the playbook of big tobacco and big pharma and big food and big chemicals, and it seems like, “Okay, someone says there’s a safety problem and you just deny, deny, deny and infiltrate research and all that.”

That kind of seems like the opposite of empathetic leadership, is that, like, we’re not trying to understand, “Oh, shoot, we might be causing harms,” but rather, it’s like, “No, no, no, no, you’re all wrong, and it’s not what’s up.” But I’m thinking even in these contexts, we think an empathetic culture would be a more lucrative one.

Maria Ross
Yeah, actually. And it’s funny because, yes, of course, we can all find examples of companies and leaders who are the opposite, the antithesis of empathy, and yet they are succeeding. But I think my message is all about you can be both empathetic and high-performing. You can be empathetic and achieve amazing results. You can be empathetic and hold people accountable, and that they’re not either/or. I think the examples you’re citing are the examples of companies gone awry, and organizations that are harming people rather than helping people.

But from a sustainability perspective in the long run, employees are looking for cultures. It’s sort of table stakes for them, “Will I be seen, heard, and valued in this culture?” But also, brands are now needing to appeal to generations of people that actually want to know what’s going on under the covers. They want to know what’s going on under the hood. And so, they actually do care about how you’re treating your employees, how you’re treating the planet, how you’re treating your community.

And we saw in the pandemic, through several studies that were done through an organization called DoSomething.org, that especially Generation Z buyers and younger Millennials were actually making purchase decisions based on how well companies were, I guess, responding to the needs of their employees and their communities.

I know when I was 17, I didn’t really care, but these generations do care and they vote with their wallets in terms of who they will support and who they won’t. And so, when we look at long-term viability and long-term sustainability, some of those outdated tactics may work for a while, but eventually those organizations are going to die out.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, what’s coming to mind here is I’m thinking about some friends who worked at a medical devices company, and there are some stories in which the leadership of such companies say, “Hey, take a look at someone. They’re going to come on stage for our annual meeting and we’re going to see how we saved their life and meet their spouse and their children.” You’re like, “Wow, look at what we do with our work.”

And then other leaders are just, like, all about EBITDA and cash flow projections and growth and da, da, da. And so, they’re doing the same thing, they’re making medical devices, and yet the presentation in the big meetings has a very different flavor, “Look how this enriches people” versus “Look how this enriches shareholders.” Well, the folks that I know left the company that is all about the shareholder enrichment view. So, I think that is very resonant in terms of engaging that stuff is powerful.

Maria Ross
Absolutely. And there’s a host of research, it’s sort of tangential to the work that I do around how purpose-driven organizations drive more innovation and drive higher retention and higher engagement from their employees for exactly the reason that you cited. It doesn’t get us excited to do our best work for a company that we know is just making a few people at the top much richer.

So, what is our actual purpose? What is our actual mission? Why are we here dealing with the slog of everyday work life if not for something that motivates us and inspires us to be our best selves? And that’s not just something fluffy. That’s about, “Do you want your team operating at maximum cognitive ability? Do you want them coming up with new ideas and being innovative? Or do you want the people that do that to go work for your competitor?”

That’s really the choice that a company is making if they choose to just focus solely on the money-making aspect, because that might be very inspirational for those that are benefiting from that at the top, but it’s not beneficial or enough of a motivation for the people that are within the organization. And as an example, recently a study came out that comes out every year. It’s in its ninth year. It’s called the State of Workplace Empathy Report. It’s done by an organization called Business Solver. And you can go check it out. It’s free.

But one of the things that they consistently find over and over again is that when employees are asked, “How does your company show empathy to you?” They actually cite some benefits as empathetic. And the top benefit that they cite is not higher work compensation. That’s like 13th on the list. The top ones are flexibility and also employee assistance programs. So, getting the support they need and also having workplace flexibility is more important to many of our best workers. Now that’s not to say we underpay everybody, but it is to say that that carrot of money only takes you so far.

Pete Mockaitis
And just to be clear, employee assistance, is that money or is that something else?

Maria Ross
Employee assistance programs are like mental health benefits.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, got you.

Maria Ross
“Do I have somewhere to go within the organization to get help that I need?” Assistance for new parents, assistance for bereavement, “What are those employee-assistance programs that you have in place to support me as a whole person and not just a body at a desk?”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay, so empathy is great. Your book is called The Empathy Dilemma. It doesn’t sound like a dilemma, Maria. That just sounds like a great thing to go do a lot of. Where’s the dilemma?

Maria Ross
It does. So, the first book on the topic was called The Empathy Edge, and that was really the business case of the ROI of empathy for your organization, for your team, for your brand. And what I was hearing from people over the last five years, because that came out in 2019, right before the pandemic lockdown, I was hearing from people, “Great, we’re sold. We are converts, right? But here is where trying to be a people-centered leader gets really hard. Here’s where it gets challenging for me.”

And especially in the environment we’re in right now, we’ve got this group of managers and leaders in the middle who are being squeezed by the expectations of the business and the demands of their people, and they’re trying to be human-centered leaders, but they are burning out. They are experiencing a lot of poor performance. They’re seeing quality slip, and they’re wondering what they’re doing wrong.

And so, The Empathy Dilemma is really about helping people balance the needs of the business with the needs of their people by presenting five foundational pillars that will help them be both empathetic and effective at the same time without burning out, which is the key.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you tell a story to illustrate that picture? What is me having so much empathy that I burn out and become ineffective look like in practice?

Maria Ross
One senior director I remember speaking to was talking about the fact that she had an underperformer on her team, and she had bent over backwards during the pandemic to provide flexibility and support to her team, and all of that resulted in good things that we don’t want to go back on.

We are talking about mental health more at work, we’re understanding that, again, people don’t park their humanity at the door when they come to work, and things going on in our culture, in our society, in the world, impact our ability to populate an accurate spreadsheet at work. We don’t forget those things. And so, all of those conversations were good, but what was happening for this particular senior director is that she had one employee who was constantly taking mental health days, and constantly citing, “This crosses my boundaries. This does this. This does that.”

And her response as a leader was, “What am I doing wrong? I need to support this person better.” And her idea of support was not having difficult conversations with her, not wanting to confront her, wanting to take on the work for her. And what she finally realized was that, in the name of empathy, she was actually not doing empathy. She was people-pleasing, she was caving in, and she wasn’t having confident and tough conversations head-on. And what that was doing was that that was not empathetic to the rest of the team who had to pick up the weight of this person constantly failing in their role.

So, when she finally was able to have a direct conversation with this person, and say, “Look, these are the expectations we’re holding you to, and you’re not meeting them. So, tell us what’s going on for you. Is this something where you need to be in a different role? Do we need to build different skills?” And in that situation, that employee was actually not responsive to her at all, to the point that they ended up parting ways because that person could not succeed at work. And nobody wants to come to work and fail every day.

So, what happened with this leader was she thought she was being empathetic the whole time, and what she was, was something else, and that’s what I talk about in the book, about the differences between empathy is not people-pleasing, it’s not caving into unreasonable demands, and it’s not even agreeing with someone. So, you can still make a difficult business decision, but it’s how you do it.

How do you communicate? How do you show up? How do you build a culture of trust so, when something like this happens, you’re able to have a really difficult conversation with someone, and say, “I’m not going to put it off. I’m not going to put it off because it might hurt their feelings. I’m going to have the conversation I need to have because I need to protect the rest of the team, and I’m here to do a job. I’m here to deliver something to my organization.” Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can do that and still make tough decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, do you have any guiding principles, or maxims, mantras, distinguishing guiding lights to help us as we’re making these distinctions or, I don’t know if it’s a tightrope, or if it’s a two-by-two matrix, or how you conceptualize this so that we’re playing the game just right and not falling into the zone of being a jerk versus a people-pleaser, but we’re being empathetic and effective at the same time?

Maria Ross
I think the biggest thing people need to understand is that empathy is anything but weak. Because for you to be able to take on another person’s perspective or point of view without defensiveness or fear, that actually requires a very strong person. And so, empathy for others actually begins with working on yourself. So, are you self-aware enough? That’s actually pillar one, self-awareness.

Are you self-aware enough to know how you show up in an interaction and in a conversation? Do you know what your strengths are? Do you know where your weaknesses are? Do you know what your emotional triggers are? That’s a hard one for people. I spoke to a CEO this past year who, very successful business, finally did some sort of personal development and some self-assessment, and realized that one of her biggest triggers was actually not being believed.

And so, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation where someone accuses you of something, and you immediately start searching through your sent mail of like, “No, no, I know I didn’t say that,” or, “I know I said that,” or, “I know I have proof of this.” That was setting her off with people that really were just communicating that they didn’t understand something or that they had a misperception of something. She would sort of go off the deep end.

She realized this about herself and she realized that in those moments she wasn’t showing up as her best leader self. She was showing up very defensive and very much from a place of fear, to even hear what the other person was saying. So that’s what we mean by understanding our triggers. And so, when we work on ourselves first, we can show up in the conversation with more grace, with more patience.

It’s kind of like, you know, I have a 10-year-old, and I am the worst mother in the world when I’m hungry and tired, when I don’t have my own well full, when I don’t have my own battery charged. And so, in order to be empathetic with someone and stand strong, you need to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself, that you are re-energizing yourself, helping yourself think in different ways. That’s why the second pillar is actually self-care.

So, self-awareness and self-care can help you create the foundation you need to have a more empathetic exchange with someone without blowing your top.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, yes. And we had, boy, one of the early episodes, we talked to Jim Tamm, and he kept coming back to managing your defensiveness is just transformational in terms of having effective conversations and working through this. And some of those parts boil down to self-awareness and self-care.

I would like to chat about the five pillars, and maybe, since we’ve already introduced self-awareness and self-care, could you give us perhaps a top do and don’t, associated with each pillar based on what you are seeing most frequently and what seems to be the most effective or disruptive?

Maria Ross
I love it because there’s a lot of strategies and then actionable tactics that people can try in the book. And I do want to just offer this, you don’t have to do all of them all at once. And they’re not meant to be linear, but if you do start with self-awareness, you can uncover “What are my weaker pillars of the five?” And you can mix and match and experiment with a few of the tactics within each of those pillars to see how you can shore up your empathy and show up as a more confident leader who can also make room for compassion at the same time.

So, self-awareness, the biggest tip is, take a self-assessment. There are a bazillion of them out there. There’s Enneagram. There’s Myers-Briggs. There’s DISC. Whatever could work for you, put your ego aside. Ego kills empathy. Put your ego aside and say, “I know that there’s got to be things that I could work on,” and help pinpoint what some of those things are. And that also can include seeking feedback from others and being okay enough with accepting some negative or constructive feedback.

With self-care, it’s making sure that you make time and hold it sacred for what charges you up, what lights you up. Self-care doesn’t have to be passive. It doesn’t have to be massages and manis and pedis. It could be, for some people, it’s rock climbing. For some people, it’s being in a play or doing improv. For some people, it’s knitting or running or whatever it is, training for a marathon. So, make sure that you’re making time for the things outside of work that light you up.

The things where you’re in flow, the things where you’re thinking about the present, because the more mindful you are, the more you can actually be present for someone in a conversation and read their cues, read their body language, hear their tone of voice, see what they’re doing in terms of, like, they’re fidgeting or their gestures. You can only do that if you are charged up. So that’s self-care.

The third one is clarity. We cannot hold people accountable to an expectation that we’ve never set. And too often, we, as leaders – I’m guilty of all of this too, by the way – we, as leaders, think we’re being clear about something, or we’re making assumptions that everyone in our organization or our team knows what professionalism means, or has the same definition of it, or understands what we mean by effective communication, or what we mean by hierarchy, or whatever the term may be.

Spelling out those things when you work with a team is really important to make sure that you’re coming back to shared goals. So, do we have like a document that goes beyond like the pretty bullet points of our values on the office wall? Do we have something that says, “This is how we communicate. This is how we run meetings. This is how we honor each other’s time. These are the expectations of our culture”? And make sure that that’s documented and it’s clear. Because if it’s not clear, you can’t hold people accountable to it.

The fourth one is decisiveness. And this is a good one, and you might be able to relate to this, and so will your listeners. But many of us, in the name of empathy, we understand that multiple points of view hold value. We understand that we make better business decisions. There’s a whole host of research around that, around diversity and inclusion, and belonging in terms of what makes a really good business decision. When we have diverse voices at the table, we can uncover opportunities we’ve never seen, we can avoid risks we might have missed.

The challenge is when you try to be an empathetic “leader,” you think that making a decision means making everyone happy, and that’s not what it means. There’s no such decision that will get unanimous consensus. I guess unless it’s, “Hey, you all get a million dollar bonus this quarter.” But what it’s about is being able to swiftly synthesize multiple points of view, make a decision, and then be able to communicate that decision back to your team in a transparent way, “Here’s why we made this decision. Here’s why, Pete, we weren’t able to implement your idea, but please keep those ideas coming because they’re useful.”

And being able to communicate in a way where people can say, “Okay, I disagree, but at least I commit.” Disagree but commit, “Can I at least get on board with the decision because I understand how it was made?” And the fact that you made it, that you didn’t just let it fester because it was uncomfortable or hard, or because you were waiting for the right sign from above to tell you it was the right decision, that leaves people in limbo. That stresses them out. That makes them anxious. They want to know what the plan is going forward. And so, being able to be a decisive leader is actually empathetic.

And then, finally, this one you might really enjoy, the fifth pillar is joy. The fifth pillar is creating levity, creating comfort, creating an environment where people can relax and be themselves is an important part of building an empathetic culture. Because when you do that, you build trust, you build psychological safety, and brain science shows us that when we are under stress or we’re being punished for something, our executive functions shut down. They’re not working because we’re in survival mode. So, no one’s going to learn, no one’s going to grow if they’re in an environment of fear and anxiety and heaviness all the time.

So even if the work is not always fun, we can create an environment where we can have levity, where we can laugh at ourselves, where we can have awards for the best failure of the week, where we can have fun Slack channels that say, like, “This is the curated lunch channel, and show us what you had for lunch for our remote team.”

There are so many ideas and so many leaders that I spoke to for the book that shared some really interesting ideas with me, but the possibilities are endless. And you can solicit those ideas from your team. You don’t have to just, as the leader, come up with all the ideas for how to make work more fun. There is research out there as well, again, tangential to my work, that shows that if you have a friend at work, you’re more engaged, the quality of your output is better. And in environments where it matters, safety goes up.

So, do you have a friend at work? Not all your workmates need to be your best friends, but do you have a friend or a best friend at work? That actually goes a long way to creating an environment where people actually want to show up and do the work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I feel like I’ve got a good sense of some top do’s and don’ts for self-awareness and self-care. Could we hear a couple of your faves on the last three: the clarity, the decisiveness, the joy?

Maria Ross
Clarity, I actually offered up, which is to create a document for your team of, like, a memorandum of understanding, is what one company called it that I interviewed for the book, but sort of a code of, not a code of conduct, but sort of a rules of engagement for your team. Document that, “What will we put up with? What don’t we put up with? What are we asking of people?”

It could be something like, “We do not have to check our emails on the weekends, but if there’s an emergency, the leader is allowed to text someone.” It could be, “On Fridays, we don’t have meetings.” It could be, “In meetings, don’t get upset if we challenge your idea. That’s part of our culture is to be additive and to always try to up-level everyone’s ideas. It doesn’t mean you’re being attacked. It means we’re adding to it.” So, things like that, whatever is true of your culture, there’s really no one example, but being able to document that.

We often talk about like the unsaid rules of our team or our culture. Don’t make them unsaid. Write them down. Make sure everyone understands them. Decisiveness, one tactic I came across that I really liked, was putting a limit on your decisions. Meaning, if you know you have trouble making decisions, put a decision date on your calendar as a task, and say, “I will make this decision by next Friday,” and let everyone on your team know, “Hey, I’m making this decision by next Friday, so weigh in before that because I’m going to be making the call on Friday.”

That actually gives you a forcing mechanism that now people are expecting you to make a decision, and they know they better get their input to you before then or it’s not going to be factored into the decision. And then for joy, I gave you some examples of companies that are using some really creative Slack channels, or doing really great team-building exercises that are not forced team building, forced fun for people. But can they tie their team building back to either a skill they’re trying to build or to their mission?

Can they do a community event that supports their mission? Can they do something that also is inclusive of everyone in the organization? So, when you’re planning, the default is, “Let’s do a Friday happy hour.” That’s not really that kind or empathetic to those in your organization who might be recovering alcoholics. It might not be kind to someone who’s got to go pick up their kid at daycare at 4:00 o’clock. So, are you doing a mix of activities or modalities for injecting joy into the workday so that it accommodates people with different needs?

Pete Mockaitis
Could I hear about a particularly brilliant team-building thing that’s not happy hours or forced fun?

Maria Ross
So, I interviewed a woman named Teri Schmidt. She runs a company called Stronger to Serve, and I interviewed her for my podcast, The Empathy Edge, because she had such a unique take on team building. They have created seven experiences that you can choose from, or you can work with them to customize your own, where they’re tying the activity into a company’s purpose or mission.

And what they’re doing is, the first half of it is actually a skill building, a professional development exercise. So, let’s say, one of her packages, it is helping folks deliver difficult performance reviews or deliver difficult information. So, at the beginning, they worked on delivering how they could up-level their ability to deliver tough information in a nurturing and compassionate way and in a confident way so it didn’t leave people confused.

And then the second half, and it’s escaping me what it was, they did some sort of a service project around that that helped them use the skills they had just learned at the beginning in the project they were doing, and they were doing a service project as a team. And her research shows that when you engage in service, in acts of service together, it actually bonds you as a team.

So, I thought that was a really clever way of trying to, like, feed, I hate to say kill birds with one stone anymore, so I say feed birds with one scone. Not only does it check off professional development, it checks off team-building, and it checks off acts of service related to your mission or your purpose. So, it kind of ticks all the boxes for people and creates a memorable experience that they can bond around, but that actually has meaning to their day-to-day work.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. I dig a lot of these, and what I’m thinking the most about now is with clarity, it’s astounding how one word can mean completely different things to different people. And I remember I was chatting with a buddy of mine, and he said that he was thinking about his culture of his company. He was disappointed that someone quit and they gave two weeks’ notice.

And he said, “I understand that this is a norm in organizations and employment, but in our organization, we’re all about setting each other up for success, and this really didn’t do that because it put some folks in a tight spot. You try to replace and backfill and reshuffle things.” And he felt like that was a bit of a failure in terms of communicating the culture, is that apparently this message didn’t apply because they didn’t even, like, apologize or acknowledge, like, “I know.” It’s just like, “Oh, yeah, hey, I’m moving on, so, okay.”

And so, he sort of took that on himself, like, “Well, we really got to be clear about what do we really mean about setting each other up for success.” And I think that’s, in many ways, what makes cultures fun and interesting and distinctive from organization to organization. It’s like, “Hey, this is a normal practice in many places, and here it’s not acceptable, and this is why, and what’s behind it, and what setting each other up for success means in our vernacular.”

Maria Ross
Right, “And what does it mean here?” That is such a great example, Pete, because that’s a thing about assumptions. And that’s also an assumption based on generational. That’s an assumption based on maybe what group you’re from. So that is such a great example of the fact that when we make these assumptions about these unsaid rules, we set ourselves up for failure.

And there’s a great book I’m going to recommend, not mine, that’s called Unlocking Generational CODES. It’s by a generational expert named Ana Liotta, who you should have on the show, and it’s one of the clearest breakdowns of the differences in the generations, not because one’s right and one’s wrong, that we’re all formed by generational operating systems.

We’re all informed by our generational operating systems that usually stem from, within the generation, something, some seminal event that happened around we’re 10 or 11 years old. It actually shapes the way that we view things. And so, it went all the way from what she called a traditionalist, which were like way older, like my parents’ generation, like ‘30s, ‘20s, ‘30s born, down to what she called Nexters, because she actually wrote the book before the term Gen X or Gen Z came out. And also, she gave, like, tips on how to get around those communication snafus that you have. But what I loved about it was it talked about for each generation, within their operating code, what were the differences around how they view information, for example, how they view communication, how they view professionalism.

So, one example is some of the older generations look at information as something to be hoarded. It’s an aspect of power. It’s “The more information I have, the more important I am.” It’s not right or wrong. It’s just what was part of their DNA, part of their generational DNA.

If you look at Millennials and Gen Z, they see information as a catalyst, “The more people that have information, the more innovative we can be, the more we can problem-solve, the more we can get creative.” So, you can imagine someone with that perspective trying to talk to someone with the other perspective about making decisions or transparency or, “Why didn’t you tell us that was happening?”

All of those things that cause all of these barriers to us being able to connect and, more importantly, perform, it comes down to clarifying what do we mean by these things, and understanding that people will have different definitions of their own based on where they come from, based on their own experiences, based on their ages, based on their sexual orientation, based on so many factors that it behooves us, within a culture of a team, to say, “These are our rules for operating together, and we don’t want to make any assumptions.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love to get your take, Maria, for folks who are all in on empathy, and so much so that maybe they even struggle with non-empathy, people-pleasing behaviors, and that’s just in them, any pro tips on how to shake that off and be empathetic and more effective in those times in which it’s you got to call someone out, to hold folks accountable, to point out mistakes or development opportunities and difficult things?

Maria Ross
As you go through the self-awareness phase and understand your behaviors and your actions and your triggers and your strengths and your challenges, you can then determine, “What are the other pillars that I need to shore up in order to be in a position where I can have these conversations without giving away the farm, without taking on extra work because I feel sorry for someone?”

Once those foundations are shored up for yourself, you have a bigger likelihood of success of having an empathetic interaction with someone that still gets the job done, that still holds them accountable. I spoke to one leader for the book, who is a CMO, a chief marketing officer, and I had worked for her at one time. And her ability to get to know her people was by design.

She would keep, you know, this sounds kind of creepy, she would keep files on people, like family’s names, kids’ birthdays, interests, all that kind of stuff so she could have more meaningful interactions with her team, so she could get to know them outside of work, and understand, “For this person, this is how I need to motivate them. For this other person, this is how I need to motivate them.” And she was a master at actually managing up as well, being empathetic to her managers and her bosses, because empathy flows both ways.

And when I spoke to her about this dilemma that a lot of folks are experiencing, especially around leaders who say, “Oh, my gosh, I have so much work to do, and now you want me to be a therapist?” she was very candid and said, “I am very clear that my role is to generate revenue and drive growth. My role is not to be a therapist.”

“I can still get to know someone personally so that I can motivate them and inspire them and have fun with them, and be clear with them in a way that they can understand because I know them. But I’m very clear that my primary goal is this. And I’m not here, I was not hired to help you figure out your boundaries with your mother-in-law. That’s for someone getting paid $300 an hour who is an actual therapist.”

So, what I loved about that is that we conflate these things that actually make it harder for us to lead with empathy because we don’t have to be someone’s therapist. It’s not the same thing as getting to know someone on a personal level. And so, I think that that’s one of the biggest tips I could give is make sure that you understand the difference between where your role and your goal ends, and some other modality or some other intervention is required.

And for this particular leader, she was very good about understanding that “If the conversation gets to that point, then I need to direct that person to the resources or the employee assistance programs that the company provides. That there’s a line between what I’m able to do as I’ve gotten to know this person and motivate them and have fun at work, to what this person might really need.”

And I think if we’re more aware that there is a line, that we don’t sort of bleed into the people that we are managing, I think that’s a better way for us to more strongly set our boundaries. And I really like sharing that story because it’s about clarity of boundaries, but it’s also about clarity of role and clarity of goals, and why she is there in that company, what she’s there to do, and what she’s not there to do.

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

Maria Ross
No, I think we covered it all.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now let’s hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Maria Ross
A favorite quote of mine is from Eleanor Roosevelt who said, basically, I don’t remember the lead into this, but it’s how it’s so hard to please everybody because you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. So do what you think is right. That has actually been a really big driving force for me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Maria Ross
Drive by Daniel Pink, and it’s about understanding the secret factors that motivate us. So, I just think that whole field of motivation is fascinating and his books a great read. It’s called Drive.

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

Maria Ross
I think it might be the closing tag to my podcast, which is something I came up with when I was writing The Empathy Edge. It’s that “Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive.”

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

Maria Ross
They can visit my main hub at Red-Slice.com. They can find all the socials there. I’m on Instagram @redslicemaria. And my podcast is at TheEmpathyEdge.com, or on your favorite podcast player.

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

Maria Ross
Yes. Do not fall into the false narrative that empathy is weak. Bring it into your career, bring it into your work, bring it into your life. And if you practice it at work, it may just spill over into your personal life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Maria, this is fun. I wish you much good empathetic moments.

Maria Ross
Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun.

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

Urs Koenig
Thanks, Pete, for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me too. Me too. I was a Model United Nations student in high school and college. So basically, we’re the same.

Urs Koenig
So, how’s that, Pete? Tell me more about that.

Pete Mockaitis
No, no, there’s no danger zones. We just sort of dressed up in Western business attire, as we called it, and argued over our resolutions and who was going to put their hands on the keyboard and go to the printer. But I want to hear you share with us a riveting tale from your work as a UN peacekeeper that kind of shaped some of your thinking on leadership?

Urs Koenig
Well, two things, actually. I went back to the military after having been out for 22 years. And so, went back to serve as a peacekeeper, left the business, left my kids to volunteer to make a difference. On the second day of reporting to my peacekeeping command, I dropped my flak jacket. And the sergeant, 25 years my junior and well below my rank, is chewing me out for dropping my flak jacket. And I’m here to be of service to make a difference, and this young punk is chewing me out.

So, it takes all the…and that’s the title of my book, all the humility I possibly can master, not to make a snarky comment, but I picked up the vest and I say nothing at all. But it was one of the first lessons in humility I would have to learn over the next nine months as a peacekeeper. Just a small one, but there were plenty more later on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m curious, Urs, did that gesture of humility have some positive impact on that relationship or did you just never bump into him again?

Urs Koenig
No, no, oh, no, I had to work with him later on, for sure, and he ended up being a nice guy. He was just posturing on the second day. But actually, so if I may, Pete, what then happened was I deployed into the peacekeeping mission and I opened my book with that story. We were escorted to a school play, end-of-year school play, and escorted to the front as part of the peacekeeping force, and I sat down and we were treated to a reenactment of the Kosovo War.

These are kindergartners, first and second graders, massacring their fellow students on the floor, shooting and shouting them, all with a roaring applause, to parents, teachers, and other students. And so, that was another lesson in humility. I thought I understood the conflict. I understood what’s going on. But when I sat there, I’m like, “You know what? I really still don’t get it.”

When you think you get it in a conflict zone, something happens, comes out of left field, like the school play, and you go, “You know what? I still am a student here and I need to ask bigger questions.” So that was another lesson in humility that I learned through the peacekeeping work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I can imagine you being in that scene, watching that unfold, and just kind of scratching my head, like, “What is going on here? And what does this mean?” And tell us, Urs, what was your takeaway from having witnessed that?

Urs Koenig
Well, you know what, my takeaway was asking bigger and harder questions, “So, is it our role as peacekeepers to not just build peace in their cities, but also in their hearts? What stories do these kids need to be taught at home and at school so that this nation can actually transform into a peaceful nation?” And so, the more I learned, the less I understood, it seems, but the quality of my questions improved, and like that’s no small feat. So that was a real takeaway.

The same in the Middle East a couple of years later. The quality of your questions improved but you’re always a student. You constantly need to learn because being in a conflict zone like that it’s just a humbling experience in itself.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Urs, you put together some of your insights into a handy book, Radical Humility: Be a Badass Leader, and a Good Human. Can you tell us any particularly surprising or counterintuitive or extra fascinating discoveries you made while putting this together?

Urs Koenig
The best leaders are actually deeply humble. In my personal experience, the best commanders in the peacekeeping force, they ask great questions, they’re deeply self-aware, they let their team members shine, and they constantly ask for feedback on how to get better. And we can look at the corporate world. Microsoft, Satya Nadella, how he transformed the tech giant from the Steve Ballmer command-control into what it is today, based on his own values, curiosity, constant learning, growth mindset, and humility. And so, those are two examples.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, what’s sort of the big idea or main thesis of your book here?

Urs Koenig
The main thesis is that, to actually win in today’s world, we need to be deeply humble. Leading in today’s environment is, by definition, humbling. No one person can have all the answers. And so, that is the big idea. The best leaders, the most successful leaders are actually deeply humble. It’s not the show-off folks who win at the end.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you maybe tell us an example of someone that you got to see up close and work with who upgraded their leadership by adopting this radical humility approach? What were they doing before, and what did they do differently, and what results emerged?

Urs Koenig
So, one of the best commanders I’ve ever had in the peacekeeping mission, he opened one of the meetings we had in his office with these words, he said, “I love you, Urs. You know I do, and this is not even close to being good enough.” So that’s a deeply humble approach. So, his words made me shrink in my chair, and I turned myself inside out then to produce the very best work I could over the next nine months.

Now if the guy would have chewed me out, if the guy would have yelled at me, I would have tuned him out. But because he deployed a core element of humble leadership, namely strong relationship-building, we had a very close relationship, he got me as a whole human being versus just somebody who did work for him, I knew he cared, he was supporting me in my career path, I was really able to hear and take in his message.

So that’s an example of radical humility in action, building meaningful, collaborative relationships with your people while holding to the highest standards. I call that tough on results and tender on people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, so in your book, you’ve mentioned five key shifts. Could you give us a quick overview of each of those five?

Urs Koenig
Sure. So, the first is dig deep. So that’s the first pillar of leading with radical humility. It’s deep self-awareness, really understanding, and that’s what people think about when they hear humility, like seeing myself accurately, not having an overly low or high picture of myself. So that’s deep self-awareness. What’s tied in there is also the humility to know that I can’t achieve everything, but I can achieve almost anything I put my mind to. So, there’s the notion of focus.

The second pillar of leading with radical humility is tough on results, tender on people. I just talked about that. Holding our people to the highest standards while building meaningful and trusting relationships with them. The third shift is called lead like a compass. So, this is getting out of the spotlight, empowering my people to execute at the frontlines, getting out of the weeds, leading with my eyes on, hands off, and comprehensively delegating.

The fourth one is full transparency. If we want our people to really be empowered to make good smart decisions at the frontlines, they need to know more. And the only way they’ll know more is if we share more. And all the research consistently shows that we think we over-communicate as leaders and the message still doesn’t get heard. So, heard, 150 times, seven different ways, and only when you hear your people paraphrasing back what you’re talking about, then you know you’re heard. What’s also tied into full transparency is, and I write quite extensively about this, the value of vulnerability.

Vulnerability is the quickest way to build trust with your teammates as a leader, as a peer, and as a direct report. So being transparent about my shortcomings and what I want to do about them. And the last shift is to champion a fearless culture. There, I’m leaning on Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety, providing an environment where it’s safe for anybody to speak up with questions and concerns without fear of being shamed or, worse, risking their career. So, these are the five shifts of leading with radical humility.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we’ve had Amy Edmondson on the show, and we’ve heard some of the cool research on psychological safety. Can you tell me, are there any other veins of research or data or experiments or studies that really make this stuff pop in terms of saying, “Whoa, this is not just your opinion. This is gold”?

Urs Koenig
So, there is a particular study I’d like to talk about, but there is actually research on how humble leadership transforms into better bottom line results. So, there’s plenty of academic studies: higher employee engagement, better relationships, you know, healthier team dynamics, and ultimately actually better bottom-line results.

There was just an HR study published last week which showed that humble leaders are actually more likely to get promoted themselves. Why? Because they’re talent incubators. They grow and build their people up, and, as such, they become more successful leaders themselves, “So who do I promote? I promote the people who build other people up.”

But one particular study I’d like to talk about is this notion of vulnerability building trust. So, there is this study where pairs of complete strangers are brought into a lab, and they’re tasked for 45 minutes to ask and respond to meaningful personal questions, such as, “What does love and friendship mean to you, Pete? And if you only had one year to live, what would you change?” At the end of the 45 minutes, these complete strangers were asked to rate the level of trust they developed with their partner, 45 minutes.

When they responded, they rated their level of trust about as high as the level of trust they have with their average person in their lives. Some even rated it as high as their level of trust they have with their significant other. And I love this, one pair even got married. But what the research shows is that even sharing for brief periods of time with vulnerability is an incredibly powerful way to build trust in relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you demo some of this for us in terms of either these conversations or these questions? I guess it’d just be really nice to get a view of what is this humble leadership, radical humility stuff look, sound, feel like conversationally, as opposed to perhaps the average or the norm that we’re accustomed to in our professional communication interactions?

Urs Koenig
It looks like asking for feedback. You know, Pete, it’s all simple stuff, but it’s not always easy. At the end of every one-on-one with my team members, I ask for, “Hey Pete, what do I do well as your manager? And what can I do better?” Increasing our self-awareness by constantly asking for feedback, and we don’t have to be a leader or a manager to do this. We can do this in project teams, right? We can ask our team members, “What do you see me do well? What can I do better?” That’s one thing.

Another piece is wanting to get to know my team members or also for the project team, my teammates, on a more personal level, actually having a conversation about what’s going on personally with their lives. So, getting to know people as whole human beings versus just worker bees. So, self-awareness by asking for feedback and deepening relationships.

And Gen Zs want this. Like, it’s all the research out there shows we want meaningful and trusting relationships at work, and some studies even show that those young adults actually value relationships and relationship culture more than they value salary and money.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Urs, since you’re an example for vulnerability, I’m just going to put you on the spot. When you’ve asked people these questions, what have they shared with you and what changes have you made as a result?

Urs Koenig
I have been told that I, especially early in my career, that I was too rigid. I’m Swiss, right? Too organized, too structured, and not flexible enough actually, and so that I needed to sometimes soften up a little bit and maybe look at things from a different vantage point versus just powering through the original plan. So that’s one of the things I most definitely learned about myself.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how have you implemented that to become more flexible?

Urs Koenig
Well, I actually then, what I do is, “So Pete, you give me that feedback, what suggestions do you have for me to actually do this?” And so, I have team members hold me accountable for it. So, I say, “Okay, I’m working on becoming less rigid and more flexible. Give me feedback in the moment when you see me go down a rabbit hole, and just stick to the original plan because we said we should,” instead of asking, “Hey, what other options can we look at here? Or, how might we approach this a bit differently?”

Pete Mockaitis
And then, tell us, if folks are asking for this feedback, and folks are reluctant to give it, do you have any pro tips on how we can encourage that all the better?

Urs Koenig
Yeah, it’s an excellent question. It happens all the time, right? So, one of the options is to actually call it out explicitly. Say things like, “Hey, I know it can be uncomfortable, Pete, for you to give me feedback. I feel exactly the same way with my boss but I actually see your ability to give me honest feedback as part of your professionalism.” That’s one thing, call it out explicitly.

The second piece, the second thing we can do is we can actually say, “Hey, Pete, I’m working on becoming a bit more flexible. What feedback do you have for me on how I’m doing with this?” So instead of keeping it just open-ended, I make you give me feedback on a goal I already identified for myself so that it makes it less threatening for the person to be honest about giving feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And I’m reminded of some of my work experiences where I’ve had folks, managers I’ve worked with, and we talked about some things I was looking to work on and learn from the project, and then they just flipped it right around and said, “Okay, and here’s what I’ve been working on.” I was like, “Oh, wow, okay.” And it was just really cool to see, as well as, “All right, well, hey, as we start working together, how about you chat with some other folks who’ve worked with me historically and they’ll give you a little bit of a sense of what I’m like to work with?”

And I just found those so striking in terms of like, “Oh, wow, you are a human who is aware that you are imperfect, and you have no need to try to hide that from me or show me how impressive you are as the big boss,” and I just immediately respected them more from right off the bat.

Urs Koenig
You know, I love what you’re saying here. It’s exactly that. So how many of us have bosses who are so arrogant and so full of themselves because they’re actually deeply insecure, right? So, actually, people challenge me sometimes, “As a humble leader, you’re just weak. You’re an emotional doormat.” But, no, to actually humbly invite feedback and share what I’m learning, what I’m working on myself, I need to be fundamentally confident in myself, have a fundamentally strong sense of self, only then can I do what your boss did as well, or I’ll humbly ask for feedback on what I can do better. I need to fundamentally be confident in myself.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. You have to have some self-confidence and some courage. So, help us out, Urs, what if we don’t have that yet, and we’re like, “Oh, my gosh, that sounds really cool in this utopian happy work-life world, Urs, but that actually sounds kind of terrifying to me”? How would you speak to those folks?

Urs Koenig
Start small. If you’re concerned about asking your boss for feedback or as a leader or your direct, ask a peer. Ask your best friend at work. So, ask somebody who you’re close with at work for some feedback, and start there and then build from there. And you know what, it’s a contact sport. So, humility is not for the meek or the weak. So, it is tough, right? So, there’s no two ways about it. We need to make ourselves uncomfortable to actually grow. So, in time, I would encourage and push everybody to just always take a step further than what you’re comfortable with.

Pete Mockaitis
These are cool examples, Urs. Can you lay some more on us in terms of transformational conversations that unfold in this radical humility style that you’ve seen go down, people talking and growing as a result?

Urs Koenig
So, one example I love is Brad Smith, the former CEO of the financial technology company Intuit. He’s now president of Marshall University. He volunteered to his board to do a 360 survey. A 360, as many of you listeners probably know, anonymously surveys everybody around you, around your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. But he then shared his 360, which he volunteered with his board, but he sent the report to the entire company via email.

So, the anonymous feedback that he got back, he sent to everybody at the company. He even taped, back then, a copy to his office door. He even taped the copy to his office door for everybody to see. So, what happens in the process? The top dog is sharing his shortcomings and strengths, with some vulnerability, publicly, and in the process makes it safe for everybody at Intuit to start working on their own stuff as well. So that’s humble leadership in action.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, do you happen to know any of the spookiest elements on that 360 report?

Urs Koenig
I am sorry, I don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’ve received a lot of feedback that I’m a total jerk and a toxic boss. Very helpful. Thank you.”

Urs Koenig
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess, because you wonder, Urs, like, in terms of how much volume vulnerability is too much, or in terms of it’s like, “Oh, shoot, we’ve uncovered some deeply troubling things here. I don’t know if I want to broadcast that to the world”?

Urs Koenig
Absolutely. So, a couple of things there. So, I often talk about humility in three acts. So, the first act is me. The second act is what I’m sharing, maybe an insecurity, something I’m working on. And the third act is, “What am I doing about it?” So, give me the three acts. Don’t just talk about all the stuff you suck at. Go all the way to the third act.

And then the other piece is there is definitely, this is why this is a thinking-person sport, places and times where you share more, and places and times where you share less. And so, this is about reading the situation, knowing your audience, and in a one-on-one with somebody you feel close to at work, you probably reveal a bit more about your weaknesses than publicly in your first senior leadership management meeting. So, it’s situational, is the best I can say here.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And with the notion of being tough on results and tender on people, I’d love to get your pro tips on if folks are so tender on people, they find it difficult to be tough on the results, they’re softies and they realize they need to hold people to a standard, but they’re very uncomfortable doing so, any pro tips for them?

Urs Koenig
It’s actually one of the most common mistakes people make when they hear my topic, when they hear about humility, when they hear vulnerability, then they are too conflict averse, and they think that it’s not actually holding team members accountable. So, one thing, identify the one tough feedback you know you have to give and you haven’t given it, and go and do that. Just one. One tough feedback. Identify it and go and give that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Urs, can you give us an example of a time you’ve done this, and what you identified, and what you said and what went down?

Urs Koenig
Well, I had, during my peacekeeping command, my first warrant officer was so nervous and so on edge that he endangered all of us in his handling of his weapon. So, I had to let him go, and he was the nicest guy. It was really hard to do. He was so motivated, the nicest guy but he just didn’t have it in him. So, I had to basically sit him down, and in a very loving way, tell him, again, “I love you, Marcus. You’re a great guy. You really try hard but you just don’t deliver. I cannot take you on a mission. You’re not fit for mission. You’re fired.” That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what did he say to that?

Urs Koenig
He cried.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Urs Koenig
He did. Yeah, but he accepted it, and he had no choice. And, to this day, we actually exchange WhatsApp messages.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it sounds like he understood that what you said was the truth, though he didn’t like it.

Urs Koenig
Exactly. I mean, Management 101, this wasn’t obviously the first conversation we had about this. There was a long process coming and lots of, in the business world we would call it performance improvement plans and whatnot. So, we had plenty of ongoing conversations around it. It wasn’t a surprise to him at all, and it never should be a surprise. That’s the other piece.

When we give our people feedback in performance reviews or otherwise on a regular basis, if they’re hugely surprised about the feedback, then you have not actually done your job as a leader. Because it’ll be an ongoing conversation, right? Not only asking for feedback, but also providing feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have any pro tips for the actual delivery of the feedback, do’s and don’ts in that conversation?

Urs Koenig
Well, try to take the emotions out of it as much as you can. I mean, this is such a cliché almost, right? Center yourself, because often these things make us nervous. We’re anxious when we have to deliver the feedback. So, I actually use breathing exercises to calm myself down before difficult conversations like that. So, whatever your technique is, and be in a good mind space yourself, be clear around your talking points, think about what the other person’s reaction might be, have contingency plans, but be very firm on what you want the message to be and stick with your message.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I am a fan of Breathwrk. I actually subscribe to the Breathwrk app. So, Urs, what’s your go-to “Calm down because I’m freaking out about this conversation” breath protocol?

Urs Koenig
Well, so I actually go and work out. So that’s the first thing I do, and that really helps me. So, I go and work out and then I do the two-minute sitting meditation basically, where I just focus on my breath. That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And for the workout, are we talking cardio, are we talking strength, are we talking both, are we talking intense, are we talking light?

Urs Koenig
We’re talking, for me, personally light cardio, in that case, because I don’t want to tire myself out. I want to still be ready, but the cardio certainly. I mean, the research shows it over again, helps to calm the nerves down and helps us to be centered.

Pete Mockaitis
And your light cardio is more intense than a leisurely stroll? Or where would you put that intensity?

Urs Koenig
Yes, it’s a run, or a StairMaster, or a treadmill, something like that.

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

Urs Koenig
One that comes to mind is General McChrystal. So General McChrystal. He was the commander of the taskforce fighting terror in the Middle East. And his taskforce was losing the war on terror, you know, Al-Qaeda, much more nimble, much more flexible, and McChrystal was leading top-down command control, very old style, what I call heroic leadership. But he had the humility to recognize that he needed to change the way he led his taskforce.

So, he shifted from top-down command control, or as he put it, he said, leading like a chess master, controlling his pawns on the chessboard to leading like a gardener, providing the right environment, the right culture, so that his people could execute more swiftly, and more precisely, more independently. If you think about it, as a gardener, we can’t actually make plants grow, you can’t make flowers bloom, but what you can, what you must do, is plant the right seedlings at the right time and the right spot, provide a nurturing environment by watering, weeding and keeping pests out.

So, from top-down command-control leader to humble creator of the right environment, strong relationships, radical transparency. He got into trouble with the intelligence community because he was sharing too much with everybody. And so, that was a really interesting transformation that McChrystal, a tough military leader, went through to become a more humble leader.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool. I like that metaphor, because, well, I like chess and gardening. So, you really do get the sense for, that is a very different vibe in terms of, “I am having all the great ideas and I am masterfully commanding that they be executed. I have all the smarts. You do the smart things I’m telling you to do,” as opposed to, “I can’t do much other than create a better environment that works for you.”

And so, that’s a fun example, sharing so much information, intelligence communities are upset with you. Any other examples of master-guarding behavior from General McChrystal?

Urs Koenig
He said, “Thank you became my most important word, and, nodding and showing appreciation, my most important behaviors.” And so, I don’t know if you’re familiar with his book, Team of Teams. But in terms of networking his taskforce, he asked that everybody know somebody else on every other team. So, you don’t need to know everybody in HR, you don’t need to know everybody in Ops, but you need to know one person, so that when you need to work with this other team, you don’t imagine some adversary, but actually a friendly face.

And so, he builds strong relationships across and up and down the taskforce by applying this team of teams approach where everybody knows somebody on every other team.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you.

Urs Koenig
And, by the way, the taskforce became measurably more effective because of his approach. Al-Qaeda’s ability to strike was reduced by a factor of 17. And once again, or not once again, I haven’t probably mentioned it, I’m not advocating for humble leadership because you want to be nice or liked, because it produces bottom-line results, like McChrystal’s taskforce shows.

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

Urs Koenig
“Nothing changes if nothing changes.” Unless we make small changes every day, the big changes won’t happen.

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

Urs Koenig
So, I like the vulnerability research I just shared, and then Project Aristotle by Google, showing that psychological safety is the best predictor of a team’s performance, more important than talent, more important than the size of the team, who’s on the team and so forth.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Urs Koenig
My favorite book is Endurance by Alfred Lansing. It’s about Ernest Shackleton’s voyage.

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

Urs Koenig
I like the Johari Window. The Johari Window which identifies our blind spots. It’s a two-by-two matrix, basically.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that is popular, resonates with folks, you hear quoted back to yourself?

Urs Koenig
People like the tough on results, tender on people. I get asked about that all the time, and that gets quoted.

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

Urs Koenig
My website, UrsKoenig.com, or on social, I’m primarily active on LinkedIn, actually.

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

Urs Koenig
Just ask. Ask for feedback. Just ask. And ask to get to know your teammates better. Just ask.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Urs, this is fun. I wish you many lovely exchanges full of radical humility.

Urs Koenig
Thank you, Pete. That was fun.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
Thanks so much for having me, Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of the wisdom you got in your book Becoming Coachable: Unleashing the Power of Executive Coaching to Transform Your Leadership and Life. But first, could you open us up with a really powerful story about how being coachable was really impactful for somebody?

Jacquelyn Lane
One of my favorites is of our friend Hubert Joly. And Hubert Joly was brought in as the CEO of Best Buy at a time when Best Buy was fully expected to go bankrupt. I’m sure a lot of people remember Circuit City had gone out of business just a year or two before, and Hubert was one of those people who had just come from McKinsey, he’d been a McKinsey consultant and then he’d been the CEO of another company called Carlson.

This is self-described, by the way. He described himself as being someone who had all the right answers, who knew how to do things, and that was a lot of his job, especially as a consultant, was to be the person with the answers. But he realized very quickly with Best Buy that he didn’t have all the answers and that he was going to need some help.

Luckily for him, he had Marshall Goldsmith as his coach at the time, and they decided to go against some of the conventional wisdom, which was, at that time, to cut headcount, to right-size the company, reduce expenses, and try to save it in any way they could. But, instead, he realized that the frontline workers probably had some answers.

So, he says his favorite thing that Marshall taught him was that he would go into a store, and say, “Hello, my name is Hubert Joly. I’m the CEO of this company and I need your help.” And in that moment, he became very open to other people having the answers, including, again, these frontline workers, people that he wouldn’t normally have gone to. And they did have a lot of suggestions for him about how to compete with Amazon, and what they were hearing and seeing from customers.

And, ultimately, he took their feedback and advice. He right-sized the company, or actually they didn’t actually reduce any headcount because Hubert came up with a term, he said, “We can’t afford to reduce heart-count. And heart-count is really the heart of our company. That’s how we’re going to turn things around.” And it was this amazing story where, over the course of, I think, five or six years, the company grew 330% at a time when the S&P 500 remained almost flat.

So, it’s this amazing turnaround story all because he was open to being coachable, leaned into the process, and made real change.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, “I am the CEO and I need your help.” That sounds about as coachable as you can get right there in terms of “I am almost desperate in terms of, seriously, you’ve got the stuff.”

That’s awesome, Jacquelyn, about the Best Buy CEO there.

I’m curious if you have another story about someone who’s perhaps more in the middle of their career.

Jacquelyn Lane
So for the sake of anonymity, I’m going to change some details of the story and just say that this is a mid-level leader at a major manufacturing company. And, we were approached about finding a coach for him.

There were some things that he was struggling with, where he just wasn’t listening to feedback particularly well. Some people on his team were either a little bit afraid of him, certainly intimidated by him, just had this attitude that he knew best. And, I remember when we talked to the head of HR, and she told us about him, she mentioned that this is a great guy that we would love to see promoted in the organization, but the reality is he’s burning people out.

And he’s making a little bit of a hostile work environment for them. And so unfortunately, if these things don’t change, this could be the end of his career. Right? We may need to actually get rid of him. Even though we would love to be able to promote him. Because we think that he could be someone who, let’s say, could be a major executive in the future.

And, she was skeptical, certainly, that he was going to be open to being coached. But again, he really started leaning into that process and recognized that he had to make a change. And he got excited about the process of making a change. Because he started working with a coach who was really fantastic and I think inspired him and painted this picture for how life could be different.

And so they started working on some things together. And amazingly, within three months, he got one promotion. And that was great, and they came back to us again, and three months after that, so six months have elapsed, and he got a second promotion, and they said, the head of HR said, “You would not believe the transformation, not only has he completely changed the way that he interacts with his team, they’re all, gelling as a team so much better, and it’s so much healthier, but he attributes all of this change and growth to getting a coach, and so the entire organization is now saying this is an amazing transformation.

We’re interested in being coached as well,” and she said, “But the other thing I didn’t tell you six months ago when we first talked was that there was someone else in the organization that had a very similar situation, and it was very clear that he could also benefit from some coaching, but he didn’t really want to get a coach.”

And so unfortunately now, six months later, not only has this other guy gotten two promotions in rapid succession, but that other guy is no longer with the company.  So, I think that’s a great example, too, of someone who, who leaned in and the difference that it made for them, for their life, and for the entire organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And then I’m curious then,  what would be an example of a behavior that someone starts or stops doing and discovers from a coaching kind of a process that  can make a big impact in terms of changing the trajectory from gonna get fired to gotta get promoted?

Jacquelyn Lane
For this gentleman, he was originally all about himself. He cared about his own role and positional power and authority. He was very proud of the life and career he’d built for himself and was vocal about that. And again, the attitude was, like, “I’m in this for me.”

And the major change was that he realized he was not going to be a leader without followers. That he needed to change his perspective into serving the people who reported to him, and to removing obstacles from their path, putting their needs first, not, you know, understanding how they were feeling, understanding the culture of the team and the organization, and just, and, the funny thing is, of course, by shifting his perspective away from himself and towards other people, he created so much more for everyone.

He created a healthier work environment for them, but he certainly created more for himself, since he did get those two promotions in rapid succession. So, it’s just amazing that that one shift can have such a profound impact.

Pete Mockaitis
How prevalent is coachability in this day and age in the workplace? And how do we measure such things?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. It’s funny, I think of coachability as being very much a spectrum. It’s not quite as binary as coachable or not coachable. I think we’re all coachable to some extent. And do I believe that there are people who are truly un-coachable? I’m not totally sure, the jury is out for me there but that’s part of why we used the word becoming in the title of our book Becoming Coachable because it’s always this journey of becoming.

So, it’s not as common though as you might think for people to really understand what that means or how to lean into that process. Coachability is a word that’s being thrown out more and more these days, especially I hear in the world of executive search and other companies that are looking to identify successors to major C-suite roles. They’re asking, “Is this person coachable?”

So, it’s becoming more and more requested, more and more looked for, but I would say most people, maybe half of the people we talked to at the 100 Coaches Agency are ready, willing, and eager to lean into the coaching process. But I think by the way that we work, and then working with a good coach, they naturally become more coachable and more open to the process. So, if they’re going to get any results by the end, yes, they are definitely a coachable leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I think about the word, and I’d love to hear your definition, it is a spectrum. But, generally speaking, those on the less coachable side of the spectrum, when you offer some input, you’ll hear defensiveness, why that’s wrong, excuses, and more or less the input is one way or another rejected. And versus those on the opposite side of the continuum, when very coachable, would say, “Wow!”

They really think about that, they chew on it, they ponder it, and then they seek to understand it, “Can I have some examples? And then they get after that. And so, that’s how I view the word coachability. Do you have a particular definition that you like?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah. Now, I love the way that you broke that down, Pete, because I agree. It does have a lot to do with the way that we respond to different stimuli. It’s a mindset and some of these behaviors. Certainly, we can get into some more of that. So, to understand what coachability was and what that meant, my co-authors and I decided to talk with a lot of the people that are within the 100 Coaches community and just hear their thoughts.

Because, again, over and over and over we heard the same thing, that the best coaching engagements are with people who are coachable, that that’s the major differentiator. And so, we started digging into this, trying to understand, “What does that really mean? What goes into coachability?” And there were four key elements that came up as common themes repeatedly.

And that’s being open to change, open to feedback, open to taking action, and open to being held accountable. And if a leader can do those four things, then they most certainly are coachable.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And do you have a sense from your research, just what kind of an impact on career trajectory do we have if you’re highly coachable versus not so coachable?

Jacquelyn Lane
I think it has an amazing impact on someone’s life and career. And that was one of the most surprising findings as we were really researching and writing this book was that the leaders who are the most coachable, they go on to be some of the most successful leaders.

And the reason is if you are a leader who’s open to change, open to feedback, open to taking action, and open to being held accountable, then those are all qualities of great leaders. And so, it has an enormous impact on their career trajectories, where they can go, and the type of impact that they can have on the broader world around them.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, going meta for a moment, talking about coachability, are there some beliefs you had about coachability that you used to have but you’ve since abandoned or changed those beliefs?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, I used to believe that coachability was a little bit more binary. I did really believe, for example, that some people were beyond being coached, that they were not coachable. But really, if you are willing, I think that’s kind of the first word, willing or open, then you can be coached. But I would say a lot of people have disbelief at first, and I think a little bit of skepticism is common, and maybe even wise.

But if you’re willing to suspend disbelief for just a little bit, lean into the process, and recognize that none of us do this alone, that we all need support in some form or fashion, then that really begins us all on the process of becoming coachable.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to maybe step into the shoes of someone who might be on the lesser side of coachability or might have some valid concerns or skepticism, and say, “Hey, I think I’m coachable. It’s just that most of the feedback I’m getting is from total idiots who are way off base.” How do we discern that, Jacquelyn? Like, maybe we’re getting some garbage feedback or input coaching, or maybe we’re being super defensive and resistant about it, and we got to look in the mirror. How do we make that judgment call and discern and disentangle that?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. And maybe it’s some of both, it probably is. Most people are not very skilled in giving feedback or not trained in that. And, similarly, people are not really skilled or trained in how to receive feedback, so it’s no surprise that it’s a little bit messy in that area. I find that acceptance is a great first step. Just hearing it for what it is, and Marshall has this great simple rule, he says, “No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what the feedback is, whether you agree or disagree, it’s glowing or it’s horrible, just say thank you and only thank you.”

Because if you respond to a first piece of feedback, and you say, “Wow, that’s so great. Thank you so much for that feedback. That’s fantastic.” And then the next piece of feedback that person gives, you say, “Hmm, okay. Thank you. I’ll think about that.” And then the last piece of feedback, you respond and say, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true,” or, “I don’t know if that’s on base.”

Well, what you’ve done right there is you’ve graded the feedback. You say, “I agree,” “I’m not sure,” and “That’s horrible.” So, A, C, and F as if you’re going to give letter grades for that feedback. And that actually makes people less likely to tell you things that you don’t want to hear. So, the best thing to do, and maybe it’s a little bit unnatural at first, the best thing to do is to say thank you and just thank you, nothing else. And that really begins that process.

But, of course, once you receive that feedback, it’s time to chew on it a little bit. Again, this goes back to what I’m saying earlier, maybe just suspend disbelief for a moment, just sit down, think about it, ponder it maybe overnight, sleep on it. And if it still feels like it was completely off base, it’s still telling because they still have that perception of you.

And so, if only for that reason, it’s very interesting to note. And they’ve given you a great gift by telling you what they really think. So, at the end of the day, if we can just change our relationship with feedback and see it as the gift it is, I think we’ll respond much better.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s well said, Jacquelyn. And feedback, really, is a gift, and that’s almost cliché, it’s like, “Oh, feedback is a gift. I’ve heard that.” But I think I’m realizing just how wisely true it is because, one, it takes a risk for someone to share something with you, particularly if it’s challenging, as opposed to, “You’re great, Jacquelyn.” “Well, thank you. That’s awesome.”

Jacquelyn Lane
“Yeah, I feel good about myself.”

Pete Mockaitis
But if someone gives you a critique, they’re really putting themselves out there, and they’re taking a risk for your benefit, maybe. And there are some sociopaths out there from time to time who are not doing it for your input. They love to watch you suffer. That happens, unfortunately, but for the most part, people who are helpful do share, they are doing so at a risk, or a cost, or some discomfort to themselves for your benefit, and it truly is a gift.

And it’s funny, in the world of podcasting, I’ve been really just going dorking out on stats lately, and I was looking in Apple Podcast and this thing called Followers, and just how, over these years, I have had thousands of people go through the effort, which isn’t that easy, to do several taps on Apple Podcast and click unfollow the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast, which is heartbreaking.

Jacquelyn Lane
What a shame.

Pete Mockaitis
But not once has someone said, “Pete, I’ve decided to unfollow your podcast, and here’s why. There are four things that you’re doing with your show that really aren’t working for me, and so I thought it might be helpful for you to know about them.” That’s never happened once. And, likewise, I think in our own lives and professions, there are lots of people noticing lots of things we’re doing to our detriment that are harming us and our ability to get where we want to go, and are not opening their mouths when we are just blindly stumbling in the dark, fundamentally unaware of these pieces of input that we need.

You got me on a soapbox, Jacquelyn. So, where feedback is a gift, I don’t think it’s just a cliché but it is a profound truth that we reject because it usually sucks to hear.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. And, again, we’re not trained at how to give or receive feedback very well. Again, it’s one of those blind spots in our education system. You would think that somewhere along the way, we would learn this but, unfortunately, there’s not a great system yet. And so, of course, I think of myself, anytime when I was working in corporate America, if someone said, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” What was the first thing I did? I immediately buckle up and I prepare myself to go to battle, or to be told something really abysmal.

Like, I have a physiological reaction to hearing the phrase, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” I think a lot of people do because we don’t normally call positive feedback, feedback. We usually call it a compliment or praise. And so, usually, when people say, “Can I give you some feedback?” they’re really meaning, “I want to give you some constructive criticism.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. They rarely say, “Hey, I want to give you some feedback about that report you gave me.” “Okay?” “It was perfect in every way. Do every one just like that, please.” It’s usually not what comes after that sentence.

Jacquelyn Lane
Correct. So, I really would love to rebrand the word feedback in that way, and start using it in both a positive and constructive way. But Marshall gets around this by doing what he calls feedforward. So, Marshall says that the word feedback, kind of by definition, is referring to something in the past. Feedforward is about, “What can you do differently looking forward?” So, that’s another way to frame it that just kind of naturally, by construction, feels a little bit more positive and a little bit more constructive.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the feedback receiver, and say, okay, fair enough. There’s a baseline physiological reaction in which someone is giving us feedback, we don’t like it. So, that’s sort of there. Can you share with us, is there a way we can learn to love it?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah. Again, I think this is a training exercise that we all go through, and I will certainly speak for myself, and say that I work on this all the time. Of the four elements of coachability – change, feedback, action, and accountability – feedback is the one I struggle with the most. And it’s some of my own, again, experiences in corporate America and my own relationship with that word.

But it’s this constant exercise that I have to make with myself to say, “Feedback is a gift. Feedback is a gift. I’m going to remind myself that this person is sharing really valuable information with me, and this is for my ultimate betterment. Whether it’s something I can improve, a way that I can grow, or simply understanding how it is that I’m perceived in the world, that is a wonderful gift to receive.”

Because, again, none of us do this alone. And especially for people who are in leadership positions, we need the reflections of other people. And it becomes so much more difficult for leaders to get feedback, especially, because there are some real and perceived power dynamics that are at play. So, especially for people who are leaders, we have to be constantly asking our team, asking the people around us, “What can I do better? What can I do differently? How can I serve you?”

And I find that people, they’re often a little shy at first, but that feedback has been just so rich, and has allowed me to grow exponentially faster than if I didn’t have that in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And it’s interesting when you mentioned these senior executives, it’s rarer and rarer, and harder and harder to get. I’m reminded of a friend of mine who’s a relationship therapist say that she’s given some tough feedback to some big-deal corporate executive folks and they love it, like, “Wow, nobody gives me this sort of perspective on how my behavior is problematic. Nobody, except you, relationship therapist.” And they eat it up. So, like it’s rare but, boy, they’re open to it and it’s hitting the mark.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I love that they’re hungry for it. I think that attitude will take us so far. If we’re hungry for it, if we’re asking for it, I find that that is really positive. That’s another thing that’s helped me. Because when someone says, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” That’s feedback you weren’t expecting. But when you ask for feedback, “Hey, do you think you could tell me how I did in that presentation? Do you think you could tell me how my latest podcast appearance was?” then the feedback is solicited and expected, and I find that I am much better prepared to receive it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. So, being open to feedback, we shared that key part of it is just embracing that mindset, feedback is a gift, and returning to it. Likewise, for the other open-to’s – open to change, open to taking action, open to accountability – are there any master paradigm shifts or perspectives that really open that opening all the wider?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I think, for me, the other big one is change. And that is the reason that open to change is the very first in our construction, is that, really, everything is changing. And we find so many people have this idea of control, or that they want other people to change, “If only other people would become coachable. If only other people would change their perceptions of me. If only other people would make changes, then my life would be better.”

But I think the call is to look at ourselves, first and foremost, and especially for those of us who are in leadership roles, to really lead by example and be open to making changes ourselves. And the way that we live that and the way that we communicate that with other people has enormous ripple effects.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s say that maybe I want to be open to change, but I’m naturally not. It’s uncomfortable. I’ve got a good groove going. I don’t want to rock the boat, but I know I should be more open to change in order to unlock new business of opportunity and goodness. So, how do I shake myself up?

Jacquelyn Lane
Again, I think it comes back to that idea of awareness or openness, and that’s part of why we use the word open to, to describe every element of coachability because we find that just that openness makes such a difference. But, again, the idea with change is recognizing that if we’re not getting better, we’re getting worse. I don’t think, especially with so many things changing in the world around us, I don’t think there’s any such thing as just staying in the same place.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you expand on that? If we’re not getting better, we’re getting worse. Can you prove it?

Jacquelyn Lane
So, I think of a few different executives we’ve seen over the years, and again that was roughly the attitude they had, they said, “Oh, I got here because of my skills, my merit, my natural personality and gregariousness, or my innate leadership skills. And I’m pretty satisfied with the life and the career I’ve built for myself. I think I’m doing pretty good. I don’t think I need any support. I think I’m going to stay here.”

And I get that to some extent, but the reality is the company continues to grow and to change. The person they’re married to continues to grow and to change, and, ultimately, that person gets left behind. And I have seen them be blindsided by both a company that has decided they’re no longer really serving the needs of the organization, and how that’s evolved, or a spouse who decides, “You know what, this just really isn’t working for me anymore.” And so, I think there’s an openness to reinventing ourselves because the world around us is not staying still.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. In some ways, that’s self-evident, and yet, if you really stop and ponder these implications, it is just a very tidy logical argument. Your surroundings, environment, world, profession, everything is changing. If you are not changing, then, by definition, you are fitting worse than you used to. And by that measure alone, you are worse.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. That’s correct. Yeah, if you have certain skills that got you here today, by tomorrow or next year, those skills will no longer be enough.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you put a loss frame on it, it really sort of sparks the motivation.

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think to myself of the example of professional athletes. No professional athlete could possibly consider themselves at the very top of their game without, at least one, and probably multiple coaches, because they recognize that even if they’re the best in the world, if they’re not still consistently pushing the limits and getting better, and working with someone who can see them from outside themselves, then they’re not going to stay in that number one spot very long.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. Okay. So, we talked about openness to change, open to feedback. How about open to taking action?

Jacquelyn Lane
I think this one, it feels the easiest in some ways, or at least the easiest conceptually, where you can express being open to change and open to feedback, you can talk your way through those things, but action is where the rubber meets the road. So, in our example of, let’s say I want to get in shape. I can express that I’m open to making a change in my life or my lifestyle, and I can hear some feedback and some ideas from the people around me about going to the gym, or getting a trainer, or changing my diet, or any number of things.

But when it comes time to actually do the work, am I going to show up and go to the gym, and put in the reps, and do it again and again and again and again? Because, let’s be honest, change is hard. But it only works if we work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. No doubt. So, if we’re feeling lazy, do you have any words of wisdom to spark us into getting going, taking that action?

Jacquelyn Lane
Again, for me, this is where I find that I need support, I need a coach. And now, a coach can come in a lot of different forms. Certainly, this can be someone you hire as an executive coach, or a life coach, or any number of different areas and specialties that exists out there. And there are some great agencies and organizations that help people find the right coach or the right resource for them.

Or, this can be a friend, a close accountability partner, a peer that you work very closely with. In some cases, it can be a supervisor, kind of depends on the relationships that exist in someone’s life. A mentor is similar, not quite the same thing as a coach. But depending on some of those different relationships that exist in your life, you may be able to find that support that helps you remember your goals and actually take the steps to achieve them.

So, for me, again, using my own example of I want to get in better shape, I had to hire a personal trainer. New Year after New Year, I was committed to getting in better shape, and the gym was crowded, I came up with too many excuses, I can’t get up early, I don’t want to do the work. But it wasn’t until I started paying money to a personal trainer, and I knew I was going to be paying the money, whether I showed up or not, so I might as well show up. And that was what I needed to really make the change, take the action, and make it stick.

Pete Mockaitis
Jacquelyn, I really appreciate you sharing that and the humility there because you are a high-powered, high-achieving, very capable woman.

Jacquelyn Lane
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Your accomplishments, your credentials are plentiful. And you want to be in better shape, and yet you were unable to accomplish that for yourself for years until you hunkered down and parted with money to have someone assist you in the matter. And in my experience with personal trainers, no offense to the personal trainers listening, it is less about their deep expertise in anatomy, physiology, and movement, and more about the fact that they make you do the thing that gets it done.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I could not agree more. And I’ll give you another example. So, Marshall Goldsmith, who’s my co-author at Becoming Coachable, I’ve spent a lot of time with Marshall. Marshall is, by most people’s accounts, the number one coach in the world, and has been for decades. He invented a lot of the tools that we use for coaching today. And Marshall literally pays someone to call him every single day for the last, I don’t even know how many years, to ask him his daily questions.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. We had Marshall on the show, and we discussed that, and I love that, so underscore there. So, a key to taking action is perhaps having another human being help you to take that action.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that kind of says that we’re already talking about your fourth open to, accountability. What do you got to say about this?

Jacquelyn Lane
The key idea behind accountability is you want to make the change lasting. So, accountability is especially pertinent if you have reached a certain goal. Again, you’ve gone to the gym, you put in the reps, so taking that action and the accountability are intertwined.

But then, at some point, I think when I’m no longer working with that personal trainer, am I still going to maintain the habits? So, I’ll give you another example, I was working with a personal trainer for about a year and a half. Again, got in great shape, I had a great relationship with him, and I was seeing him twice a week to go to the gym. But when I stopped working with him, there was a moment in time where, again, I kind of fell off the bandwagon. I stopped working out and I got really frustrated with myself, and I realized it’s because I needed accountability.

And so, my husband actually became that accountability partner for me. So, now, twice a week, we have it on the calendar, and we’d go to the gym together. If my husband does not go to the gym with me, I don’t go to the gym. Period. And I consider myself a pretty motivated person, and yet I’m so good at finding excuses why I can’t, “Just too busy,” “I got to send that email,” “I got to call that person,” “I got to clean the house.” But there’s something about having an accountability partner, be it a coach, a trainer, a friend, who just says, “No, we’re going to do this,” makes a world of difference.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Jacquelyn, tell me, any other critical do’s or don’ts you want to make sure you put out there to help people become more coachable?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah, I think the big thing is to remember why we’re doing it. Why does any of this really matter? And I think the answer that we came to in writing this book is, yes, being coachable helps us get more from our coaching. We have goals and ambitions that we want to meet, and that’s great, and those are important. But it’s even bigger than that. It’s not just about having a better life. It’s not just about becoming a better leader. And I agree that becoming a better leader is a great thing as well.

But engaging in this process and becoming coachable also makes us better human beings. We learn how to interact with the world around us better, to see ourselves reflected in the feedback of other people, and so we start to see our place in the world, and our impact in the world, in a more accurate way than if we just see things from only our vantage point.

Have you heard the many eyes theory? So, it’s like when a school of fish are swimming, and it looks like the whole school of fish just moves around obstacles, or again a shark will swim into the school of fish, and they will seem to disperse and rejoin. But it’s this idea of many eyes, that a single fish actually can’t function very well on its own. It’s more susceptible to predators, which is why they end up staying in schools.

And, in fact, they kind of have this mind that melds in a way where there’s these theories that the fish see through the eyes of the others, that they become aware of things in a way that they could never do on their own. And, similar, when we become coachable, that we can experience life through the many eyes. And, ultimately, the power of that is that in understanding the impact we have on people and on the world around us means that we can live more flourishing lives, we can have more flourishing communities, better flourishing families, our companies, and certainly ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Jaquelyn’s about to share her favorite things, and one of my favorite things are our sponsors: Today, Stanford Continuing Studies and UpliftDesk.com.

At Stanford Continuing Studies, you can Immerse yourself in a diverse selection of courses, available both online and in-person. This winter, perhaps explore the captivating field of AI and expand your horizons about what lies ahead…or dive into essential business skills in marketing, communication, decision analysis (My favorite! Did somebody say hypothesis-driven thinking and issue trees? I did, that was me. Boosting decision making skills can be so game changing in life). , project management, and more. Continuing Studies courses are open to everyone. That’s right, you don’t have to trek it out all the way to Stanford’s campus(though it’s beautiful and I recommend you visit some time) to enjoy some Stanford learnin’. Winter registration is currently open. As a How to be Awesome at Your Job listener they’re hooking us up with a tasty 15% discount this quarter. To snag that, simply use promo code: AWESOME when you enroll. If you’re ready to embark on your educational journey, discover more at Continuing Studies dot Stanford dot EDU.

Big thanks to our sponsor UPLIFT Desk.com who’s providing us with a 5% discount with the code AWESOME. I use my Uplift Desk every work day when I’m recording the show, preparing the show, and doing everything. Being able to go from sitting to standing and back in seconds is just huge. I purchased an uplift desk over five years ago with my own money and have dutifully moved it multiple times when other furniture didn’t make the cut during moving. And just recently I got another for my home office. I love enjoy standing to get the creative juices flowing and to become more productive and alert. And then sitting again when I want a breather. Uplift Desk doesn’t wobble. You can customize it with over 100 desktop choices and hundreds of accessories. Their configurator is super cool and fun. They offer free shipping, free returns, a 15-year warranty, and awesome service. I’ve had great experiences with them and their 4.9 Google Rating and thousands of reviews share a similar story. They shipped the desk super fast, making it the quickest delivery of a piece of online furniture I’ve ever experienced.
Go to UPLIFT Desk.com and use code AWESOME for 5% off your order. That’s UP-L-I-F-T Desk dot com, to get 5% off your entire order with promo code AWESOME

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

Jacquelyn Lane
One of my favorite quotes attributed to the Buddha is that, “A single candle can light a thousand others and never be diminished.”

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I am really loving this study currently called “More in Common.” It talks about how much commonality we have with people even on opposing sides of the political spectrum. And if we can just learn to remember the things that we have in common instead of our differences, how much more powerful we can be as a collective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jacquelyn Lane
My current favorite book is David Brooks’ new book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. I think it is the most important book written this year. I highly recommend it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, right now, it’d be hard to say I don’t love ChatGPT. That has been my go-to for a number of different use cases, and I’m sure everyone is coming up with creative ways to use it. We certainly are over at the 100 Coaches Agency as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let us know, Jacquelyn. It’s so funny, when I play with it, sometimes I’m annoyed and frustrated, and other times I’m amazed. And so, it’s just I’ve yet to really get clear on the boundaries of, “This is what this is amazing for, and this is what it’s totally terrible for.” So, tell us, what do you think it’s amazing for?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, I am currently using ChatGPT where I’ll tell it, “You are a world class therapist, or a world class coach. Here’s what I’m struggling with, or here’s what’s going through my mind. What would you advise me?” and just asking it for some ideas. And I can even instruct it, “Ask me a few good questions,” and I’ll answer those questions, and then the cycle continues.

So, it’s a really powerful thing if I want some quick feedback or some quick ideas to, essentially, stop looping and get out of my own head. I found that that’s really powerful. Great for summarizing content, especially on notes from a call or anything else, and putting together action plans and next-steps. It’s been really fantastic.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I do find that the idea that’s resonated with people has been the third section of our book, which is called “To what end?” and that’s where we talk about human flourishing and the power that great leaders can have on the world. It’s really this aspirational and inspirational idea. We’d love to hear what people think about that.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I would send them to, you can go to 100 Coaches Agency, that’s Agency.100Coaches.com. Or, you can go to BecomingCoachable.com. Of course, you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Jacquelyn Lane. And please connect. Let’s stay in touch.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I think just keep that growth mindset. Keep an open mind. Stay humble. Stay hungry. Ask for feedback. You can’t go wrong with any of those.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Jacquelyn, thanks so much for this. I wish you much fun and much coachability.

Jacquelyn Lane
Thank you so much. Right back at you, Pete. Thank you.