Deb Mashek reveals the critical factors that make workplace collaborations less painful and more productive.
You’ll Learn
- The key ingredients of great collaboration
- Why hiring good collaborators isn’t enough
- The key questions to kickstart great collaborations
About Deb
Dr. Deb Mashek, PhD is an experienced business advisor, professor, higher education administrator, and national nonprofit executive. She is the author of the book Collabor(h)ate: How to build incredible collaborative relationships at work (even if you’d rather work alone).
Named one of the Top 35 Women in Higher Education by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, she has been featured in media outlets including MIT Sloan Management Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Inc., Forbes, Fortune, The Hechinger Report, Inside Higher Ed, Reason, Business Week, University Business Insider, and The Hill. She writes regularly for Reworked and Psychology Today.
Deb is the founder of Myco Consulting LLC, where she helps networked organizations (e.g., consortia, collaboratives, associations, federations, etc.) avoid the predictable pitfalls of complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives so that they can drive impact and achieve big visions. A member of the Association for Collaborative Leadership, Deb has been an invited speaker on collaboration and viewpoint diversity at leading organizations including the United Nations, Siemens, and the American Psychological Association.
- Book: Collabor(h)ate: How to build incredible collaborative relationships at work (even if you’d rather work alone)
- Book Website: Collaborhate.com
- Website: DebMashek.com
Resources Mentioned
- Article: “36 Questions to Fall In Love”
- Book: The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track by Liane Davey
- Research: “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings” by Arthur Aaron, Edward Melinat, Elaine Aaron, Robert Vallone, Renee Bator
Thank You, Sponsors!
- Jenni Kayne. Use the code AWESOME15 to get 15% off your order!
Deb Mashek Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Deb, welcome.
Deb Mashek
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to talk about collaboration and/or collabor(h)ation with an H, silent or not silent, but we’ll get into that. But I’d love it if you could kick us off by telling us a super fascinating, intriguing discovery you’ve made about us humans and how we collaborate well and not so well.
Deb Mashek
I think the most interesting finding in my research over the years and then writing the book Collabor(h)ate, is that we’re not taught how to collaborate well. So, it’s critical to our jobs, workplace employers, they demand it, this is what they’re hiring for, they’re expecting us to be great at it, but we’re not actually educated in how to do it.
So, it’s kind of like all these other social relationships we have, whether it’s how to be a good friend, or how to be a good parent, or how to be a good spouse, most of us don’t receive direct education and training on how to do that. The same thing is true for collaboration, and I find that gap absolutely fascinating, that it’s an essential skill. It’s required by workplaces, and yet we’re not learning it in college, we’re not learning it in business school, and we’re not learning it on the job.
Pete Mockaitis
So, we’re not being explicitly directly educated in the art and science of collaboration. So then tell us, maybe in the US professional workforce, roughly speaking, what’s the state of collaboration? Are we generally doing okay, terribly, fabulously? What grade would you give us and why?
Deb Mashek
So, we know from the US Bureau of Labor that people in the United States spend more hours in the workplace working than they do on all other waking tasks combined, so we’re doing a lot of work. And in my research, when I asked people, “Okay, so tell me about your thoughts and feelings about collaboration.” Whether I’m giving workshops or running, facilitating teams, or actually conducting research with people, I say, “What are the three words or phrases that best describes your true feelings about collaboration?”
And people say these really deliciously positive things, like it’s exciting, it’s essential, it’s about possibilities. And alongside that, they list these really negative things like it’s grueling, it’s painful, it’s miserable, it’s horrendous. So, I find that really interesting. And when I was writing the book one of the things I did is send out surveys to a bunch of people who were in the workforce who were collaborating, and I said, “Have you ever been part of a collaboration that was absolutely horrendous?”
And something like seven out of ten or eight out of ten, I forget the exact number, said, “Yeah, yeah, I absolutely have.” And I also said, “How about, have you been a part of a collaboration that was thrilling and positive and amazing?” and a whole bunch of people, I think that one, that was also really high, like seven or eight out of ten, said that as well. So, most of us know the highs and the lows of collaboration.
We know that it sometimes feels amazing, it goes great, I’d call it “collabor-great,” and other times it hurts. We want to get out of it. And those are the relationships, those are the experiences that we come to collabor(h)ate.
Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. So, we’re talking about this on the dimension of the experience of doing it, so certainly we would like to have more positive, fun, enjoyable collaboration experiences. That would be delightful. At the same time, I’m thinking about how sometimes an uncomfortable collaboration is just what the doctor ordered in terms of having a little bit of friction, a little bit of disagreement, a little bit of different perspectives and tension bring us into a place of growth and achieving more than what we could have if we were nicely aligned. So how do you think a little bit about that distinction between the feeling of collaboration and the “true” effectiveness of that collaboration?
Deb Mashek
I think the distinction I would challenge us to make here is that collaborating, should I agree, absolutely involve conflict and tension, viewpoints coming together, figuring out how to optimize across perspectives. That’s different than feeling like your ideas are never being listened to, that the other person is going to take you down no matter what they do, that your outcomes are so tied to another person’s that you don’t trust them or like them, such that, whether you like it or not, they’re taking you over the bridge.
That’s really different because you can have conflict and viewpoint diversity and challenge within a container of mutual respect, of trust, of realizing we actually do have a shared goal in common that we’re jamming toward. And so, pulling those constructs apart, I think, is useful there. I’m curious if you agree.
Pete Mockaitis
I absolutely do. And, in fact, you have a matrix. Tell us about it.
Deb Mashek
I’ve developed a lot of models of collaboration, and there are also just a lot of others out there in the world. And the one that I highlight in the book is called the Mashek Matrix, because why not have a little alliteration? And the idea is this, that if you think about what makes for a high-quality collaboration, there are really two independent dimensions.
The first one is relationship quality. And relationship quality is just your subjective sense. It really is, in your heart, “How good or bad is this relationship with a particular other person?” And, fascinatingly, so my background is as a social psychologist who studies close relationships, and in the close relationships literature, this idea of relationship quality is the most studied construct in the entire literature, which is fascinating.
And we know that – I’m stepping outside of work relationships for a second – we know that in romantic marital relationships, people who have higher relationship quality heal faster and have lower mortality compared to those who have lower relationship quality. So, there’s this whole stress response and the protective nature of positive relationships. When we think about then in the workplace, where we’re spending, again, a whole lot of our waking hours, why would relationship quality not also matter there?
So, this is, anyway, one dimension and it involves things like trust, feeling a sense of interdependence, and, at some point, we can go through all these different ways that you can actually improve relationship quality in the workplace for collaborations. But the point at this stage is just to know that relationship quality is one of these two dimensions.
Now, make another dimension, I go left to right, X-axis on the other dimension of interdependence. Interdependence is the extent to which your outcomes are tied to the behaviors of another person. So, they start to control what resources you have access to, perhaps, or they start to influence it, they start to influence what sort of rewards you’re getting for your work, what sort of accolades, attention, raises, it can be all sorts of things. So, you’ve got these two dimensions, and you can imagine now these two dimensions making four quadrants.
When relationship quality is really, really high and interdependence is high, it feels amazing. This is the quadrant I label “collabor-great.” This is where I know if I toss the ball, you’re going to catch it. We both know our roles and responsibilities. We do it. We trust each other. We have really high accountability. I give you honest feedback on how things are going, and I know that when you’re giving me feedback, I’m not taking it as critique or I’m not taking it as attacking critique, but as challenge that’s going to make me better. So, this is a beautiful quadrant to be in.
In contrast, when you have really, really low relationship quality and interdependence is really high, that’s the quadrant I label collabor(h)ate. This is where we’re miserable because we don’t like the other person, we don’t trust them, and we don’t think they’re doing good work. We don’t think they understand what our needs and interests are. They’re not taking our needs and interests, our abilities in mind. They might be stealing turf. They might be taking credit or placing blame. There are all sorts of really bad behaviors that can bubble up in that quadrant.
Deb Mashek
So then when you have this low relationship quality and low interdependence, for example, what would be the case when someone first joins a team? So, they first joined the organization, they don’t know anybody, they’re not really on any projects yet, so you have low-low. This is, I needed a very neutral word to label this quadrant, and I just labeled it emerging.
There’s potential here but it could either shoot over to that collabor(h)ate space if we start putting people onto super interdependent teams and projects before we’ve given them a chance to build relationships with other people, or it can move in the direction of what I called high potential. So, these are where you already have high relationship quality but you haven’t yet turned the dial to increase the interdependency in those projects and those relationships.
So, any questions about those quadrants before I talk about maybe how to move through them, depending on where your relationship is?
Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I think about the word interdependent, I mean, sometimes that feels structurally just in the nature of what’s up. Like, “I’m more interdependent with my wife than I am with the person at the DMV.” And then we have some level of interaction, collaboration, but much more in my home than over there at the DMV. So, but you suggest that increasing our interdependence is a thing we might want to do. What might that look like in practice as a means by which we increase interdependence?
Deb Mashek
Yeah, so I want to touch on your DMV example first because you do have some sort of a relationship with that person, at least for, I’m going to say, five minutes, but more likely two hours that you’re sitting there. And one of the ideas that you’re starting to touch on there is to, “What extent is a relationship exchange-oriented versus communal-oriented?”
So, when you’re in a more exchange-based relationship, it’s very tit-for-tat. So, I give the bus driver my $3 and they drive me across town, or I pay my gym membership and I get to go use those cool ropey things. Just kidding, I don’t use the ropey things because I can’t figure out how to do it, but theoretically I could. So, those are more exchange-oriented relationships.
Communal relationships, we’re not tracking inputs and outputs. It’s not, “Your turn to take the meeting minutes and my turn to take the meeting minutes.” It’s not about, “I sent around the agenda last time, you have to do it this time.” It’s really about looking for ways to improve other people’s experiences at work, to make little contributions, not because you have to or because it’s your turn, but because you know that, in the long haul, things are going to balance out, that other people are going to be contributing to you in equal measure as you’re contributing to them, and you don’t need to be monitoring this. So, this is a more communal orientation.
And it turns out that that setting up that, you know, more communality is one of the ways we can increase relationship quality. So, I wanted to mention that because the DMV example is so fantastic. Now to the point of, is it good to increase interdependence? The answer is not always.
So, if you’re already in that collabor(h)ate quadrant of the model, or if you’re in that emerging quadrant of the model where you have low relationship quality and low interdependence, you don’t want to jump right in and rev up interdependence by having you engage in more diverse activities together, or making the outcomes more contingent on the other person’s performance, or what would be another one, making you spend even more time together. All those interdependence moves can actually set the situation up for negative collaboration experiences.
So, when do you want to increase interdependence? You want to increase interdependence when relationship quality is already high. So, I know you said most of your listeners are not necessarily in leadership positions yet. Is that right? So, this is really interesting because if you think about when you came on to your job, what did onboarding focus on first? Was it about focusing on, “Here is the org chart,” “Here is, you know, you need to do a deep dive on the projects,” “You need to figure out how to use our project tracking system, our CRM”?
Or did it focus on, “You know what, your job this first week is to go have coffees with everybody else on your team. It’s to figure out what makes other people tick. It’s to give yourself a chance to be known by other people”? Those are all moves that increase relationship quality, and that I advise the leaders I work with to give that space and, say, you’re onboarding for people to know and be known as individuals before they’re just known as an avatar of some role and responsibility. So that’s just some initial thoughts on when you want to increase interdependence.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, those are cool thoughts on interdependence. Thank you. And I want to talk a little bit about approaches to boost relationship quality. But first, I’d love to get your take on just how much is really possible when boosting relationship quality? I think many of us might think, “Ah, that person’s just a jerk, and I guess that’s what I’m stuck with.” Could you inspire us with a tale of a team that really saw some tremendous strides in boosting their relationship quality?
Deb Mashek
One of my favorite examples of someone who, this comes from the story of a leader, who saw a challenge and this is how they navigated it. So, it was a large international manufacturing firm, and they had two people, so they were cross departments who needed to work together often, but, really, it was an oil-and-water situation. They were not getting along well, and every time they were in the room, the snide comments would start, eye rolls would happen, and there was just friction.
What the leader decided to do was ask one of them, “Would you be willing to move over to this other division for a while?” Then the two people who were oil and water, they were invited to come and do various relationship-building activities, and we can talk about what some of those looked like. So, what you’re hearing here is that they worked on relationship quality separate from interdependence. So, they totally severed, there was no more interdependence. They were in totally different places.
They got to know each other, they got to understand things like, “What do you care about? What variables are you optimizing for in your work?” So, some of us might be optimizing for quality, others might be for on time. Some might be optimizing for, “It’s really important that we engage everybody.” And others might be optimizing for, “You know, it’s important that we get the best decision possible as quickly as possible.”
And what they realized is that the two individuals hadn’t taken the chance at all to understand where the other one was coming from, what their work even looked like, what their roles even were. So, other than, “Here’s your title. Here’s what I think you do.” But they sat down and had conversations like, “Okay, walk me through what your day looks like. What are the pressures? What are you really juggling with? What happens if you don’t do your job? What’s at stake there for you, for your team, for these products that we’re trying to manufacture?”
In other words, it was a whole lot of empathy-building, closeness-building, getting to know, and coming to understand. So, love that story because then what happens is the leader, after it was something like six months, it was like, “Oh, we’re going to do another reshuffle,” brought them back together, and now their relationship quality is actually high, and they’re able to engage in that interdependency with a lot of vibrancy, with a lot of energy, cool ideas coming up. So, I love that story. Can I share another example with you?
Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes, please.
Deb Mashek
So, this one was, she’s actually a friend of mine, Susan, who started a job at an advertising agency, and so she was new and she is a total fangirl of collaboration, so she’s all gung-ho, “You know we’re better together,” and it’s all about “Let’s bring together our strengths, and we can make amazing things happen.” So, she loves collaboration, she’s really good at it, she’s conscientious, all these good things.
So, she joins this team, and within, I don’t know, it was like maybe the first month, it’s time for her to work on the first big project for one of their big clients, and the whole team gets together, they set up their timeline, they say, “Here are our milestones. We’re going to do this. And I’m going to do that. And here’s who needs to do what by when.” So, it was all beautifully laid out. Everybody agreed to this timeline, including her supervisor, John. Everybody was involved in designing it. Everybody signed off on it. Awesome.
So, the first big deadline comes, I think it was maybe a month later, and, Susan, she knocks it out of the park. She has her deliverable in place by Monday, just as planned, and she hands it over and is expecting feedback from John by Thursday. Crickets. She doesn’t hear anything from him. Friday. Nothing. Monday. Nothing. And, eventually, like sometime in the next week, John finally gives feedback, but, of course, now the turnaround time for the big client moment is now just a few days away.
So, Susan has to decide, “Gosh, what do I do here?” because she was supposed to be having weekend plans, and she had to decide, “Do I say I can’t do it because you got your feedback to me late? Do I say I’m going to have to half-ass this and just do sub-quality work, but that’s going to let the team down? It’s not going to show me in my best light, it’s not going to be great for the client? Or do I forego my weekend plans and work my butt off over the weekend to make up for this gap that John has created by not doing what he said he was going to do?”
And she’s the new person, she wants to show what she’s got. So, she changed her weekend plan. She worked really hard. The deliverable went out. The client loved it. Great. Next time there’s a new client, John does the same thing, and of course at this point, Susan’s getting pissed. She’s like, “Why am I giving my all if supervisor guy can’t hold up his end of the bargain and get the kind of input he needs to give in order for us to deliver this big project?”
Now we’re talking about the third big client. This is like a year into the job. Same sort of, or she goes into it as she’s working on the project, she’s not actually giving it her all. She’s cutting corners, and, she’s basically sitting there with her arms folded, looking petulantly like, “Yeah, I’m not going to even invest in this. It’s not worth it because I know John’s going to flake off anyway.”
And so, this example of we’ve got someone who is really, really skilled at collaboration, she’s a rare bird, she’s really, really skilled at this, and feeling antagonistic and checking out. And if I am an employer, I’m also starting to wonder at this point, “Wow, is this person a flight risk? What else needs to happen in order to use this incredible skillset and leverage it for our team, for our clients?”
So, I love that example, too, because it shows that it’s not enough to hire good collaborators. That’s like the first thing you should do, but you also need collaborative cultures, you need collaborative processes, and there are ways of getting all of those wrong.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, Deb, I have to know what happened. So, we have three incidents of the same behavior being troublesome and her response or reaction is that, “You know what, forget this. I’m kind of tuned out. I’m not as into it.” So, then what happened?
Deb Mashek
She did the right thing of trying to have the conversations about, “Here are my expectations, or here were the expectations we set together. Here are the behaviors that I observed. Help me understand how you make sense of this discrepancy. What are you going to do differently next time to address this?” And, eventually, I mean, she lasted, I think, two years in that position, and then she was like, “Never mind, I’m going to go to another team.” So, in fact, she was a flight risk.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, Deb, my curiosity is just insatiable. So, I think that’s a fun turn of a phrase, “Help me understand how you make sense of this discrepancy.” If I’m on the receiving end of that message, I’d be like, “Yeah, I’m sorry. I just kind of got overwhelmed with all my other stuff, and I put you in a tight spot and that wasn’t cool and I’m really sorry about that. I’m going to try to make sure I got some space on my calendar so that we’re in a better situation next time. And, by the way, if there’s a day you could take off to try to have some fun on the weekday, to make up for some of the weekend plans shattered, please, take that.” So, anyway, that’s how I would imagine receiving that message.
Deb Mashek
That sounds lovely. That sounds really lovely, Pete.
Pete Mockaitis
How did John receive it?
Deb Mashek
I don’t even remember. Honestly, that degree of repetitive, I’ll just call it flakiness because I think that’s what it is, tends to be driven by things like, and I don’t remember how he, in particular, received it, but it tends to be driven by just people are juggling way too many things, or a time pressure issue. It can also be a function of when we decide who needs to give feedback when.
Sometimes it ends up looking like everybody’s trying to be involved in everything, and so he might be overwhelmed in part because too many projects need minutiae sort of feedback as opposed to organizing projects in the first place so that, depending on where they are in development and review, to actually get out the door, you need different levels of feedback.
It could be that he just hasn’t taken his commitment seriously or that he hasn’t thought about the impact of his behaviors on the experiences and ability of his teammates to really shine, to do their thing. I’m a parent, I’m a pet owner, I’ve been a teacher, and what we know, this is like one of the biggest truisms of psychology, is that what gets rewarded gets repeated. And so, I would also wonder about what in John’s learning history has rewarded that sort of behavior? And has there been an absence of negative consequences that, as a result, it’s keeping that behavior in place? Because the same is true of kids, of pets, of students, what gets rewarded gets repeated.
Pete Mockaitis
And it’s just sort of our own personalities in terms of, “How profoundly uncomfortable do you find that conversation as a learning experience?” Where it’s like, “Ah! She’s kind of upset. What are you going to do?” You know, like it rolls off the back versus, for me, it would trouble me maybe more than is ideal for mental health and wellbeing, but it would trouble me pretty substantially. And so, do we call that agreeableness, or neuroticism, conscientiousness, maybe a combo of them all? But, yeah, it hit me.
Deb Mashek
It really gets to that point of, “Can we depersonalize feedback and imagine it’s not an attack on the core self? It’s a critique of a behavior.” And I struggle with that too, and I’m always trying to remind myself, “Don’t take it personally. Don’t make assumptions about what this person is saying,” and see if I can separate those, but it’s not always easy. Some days it’s better than others depending on what else is swirling about, and where my energy and focus is.
But I agree with you. That can be challenging feedback to hear. And it can help, before we give that sort of feedback, to reaffirm our commitment to the shared goals first, of like, “This is what we’re after, and this project’s important to me, and I really want to shine for our clients. With that in mind, this discrepancy I noticed, how do you make sense of that? And what can we do differently next time to make sure that you’re able to give your feedback, I’m able to have my weekend, and most importantly, we’re able to really just knock it out of the park for that client?”
Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, tell us, Deb, before we hear about some of your favorite things, could you tell us some of your tippy-top absolute favorite things that are pretty easy but make a world of difference in boosting relationship quality?
Deb Mashek
My favorite one, and I feel like I’m cheating because this is also my favorite quote, so maybe we’ll just skip that part on the favorites, but my favorite one is simply to ask, “How do you see it?” So, what you’re doing there is inviting another perspective in. You’re doing it without ego or commitment to your perspective, and it invites collaboration because it’s like, “Oh, now we show how we’re seeing the world differently and we can integrate that.”
Other things, asking people, listen, I feel so silly even offering this as a suggestion, but I really believe it, “How are you?” And if they ask you that, and you answer that question in less than 30 seconds, I think you’re doing a poor job. So, “How are you?” is an opportunity to let yourself be seen and to be known. And so, when they answer, hopefully they’ll say something other than “Oh, I’m fine” and flip it around. So, it’s that very rote, this is just how we tend to how we tend to respond. We’re, like, trained socially like, “Oh, you just give the two-word answer, and you get out of there.”
But, “How are you?” is an opportunity, if the other person tells you something, to get to know them as a person. It’s an opportunity to follow up with them. When they say, “Oh, gosh, I have just had the most chaotic weekend,” and they tell you that on Monday. And then on Friday, you see them again, and you’re able to say, “Is the chaos settled a little bit? Do you think this weekend’s going to be better?” And what you’ve just done there is you’ve told them “I listened to you. I paid attention to what you said. And I care enough about you as a person to just check in on that.”
And you don’t need to be creepy about it, and be like, “You said you had this at two o’clock on Tuesday. Did that go?” You don’t want to be a stalker about it, of course. But curiosity and genuine interest in other people is a fantastic way to build relationship. That idea that I call the tip, really, here is to bring the donuts. So that idea of investing in the communal good by doing things like, you know, your office mate’s chair is super squeaky, you happen to have a can or a jar, what’s it called?
Pete Mockaitis
WD-40.
Deb Mashek
Yeah, WD-40, and you’re like, just bring it in this week, that way it’s not squeaking, and it didn’t take you any extra effort to do that. I mean, it took you a little bit of extra effort and maybe that person would totally appreciate it. Or when you’re on the Zoom call and you realize that someone’s mic has gone out, just typing and telling them like, “Hey, your audio dropped.” And so, you can do little things just to take care of each other and that increases relationship quality and that empowers that ability to really unlock what’s possible with collaboration.
Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot, taking, just remembering, or maybe even just jotting it down if you’re inclined to forget over a four-day window about asking for the next weekend, and just to be a little bit more proactive and think. I love that rule of thumb, maybe just because I love numbers, 30 seconds is a good gauge for go ahead and share that much or more in response to the question, “How are you?”
Which, it’s funny, I’m thinking now, it’s like, “Oh, how might I answer it the next time if someone asks?” It’s like, “Oh, I’m doing pretty well. I had a cold for a while, which is really annoying. And so that is almost over, and it feels good to be back in this almost swing of not feeling sick anymore.” Okay. There’s a little bit more than fine.
Deb Mashek
Yeah, and that’s such a great example too, because some people will say, “I don’t want to reveal my inner self or my inner soul. I don’t want to tell people about the divorce I’m going through or how my kid is really, really sick, and is having a major medical. I don’t want to share that.” That’s fine, but the example you just shared, you told us something real and it wasn’t particularly revealing or vulnerable, and it felt appropriate for the podcast where the public is going to hear it.
If you and I were colleagues and we’ve been working together for a year, we might be engaging in deeper self-disclosures at that point. Maybe, maybe not, because it does depend on the comfort level of the individuals. But the idea is that there are ways of being honest and open with other people that are context-specific and relationship-specific that are still really valuable for developing relationship quality.
Pete Mockaitis
And now I’m thinking about it, flipping it to the other side, so there’s, you know, go ahead and disclose. Is there a question that might be more probable to get us a bit more of a self-disclosure response as an alternative to “How are you?” Because in some ways it’s almost autopilot, “How are you?” “Fine.” It’s just like, “I didn’t even think about your question. This is just what I respond to as a knee-jerk reaction.”
Deb Mashek
Can I tell you? I have a 14-year-old and I love talking with him and his friends in the car on the way home from the mall or wherever it is, and I never ask, “How was it?” It’s always, “What was the most surprising thing you saw somebody else do while you’re at the mall?” So, give them something specific to react to, or of the things you purchased, whether it was the coffee drink, “What one brought you the most joy? Why?”
It’s just like, and I’m making these up on the spot. It’s not like I have a set list of questions that I ask, but I avoid “How was your day? How was school today?” It’s usually something like, I might say like, “What’s something that pissed you off today?” or, “What’s something that brought you joy?” or, “How did you make the world a better place?” or, “What’s something you felt grateful for?”
And you can use these in the workplace, maybe not exactly worded like that, but “What’s bringing you satisfaction in your work right now?” or, “What’s something you’re looking forward to over this next quarter in your work or in what the team’s doing?” “Where are you feeling a little frustration or tension that you’re looking to resolve?” And those start to open up some really good conversations.
Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much, and questions are fun. Podcasting, I like questions. And, surprise is a fun one just because we’re getting in. It’s by definition, surprise is almost the most interesting thing that there is, and you can say, “What’s the most interesting thing that happened in the mall?” And it’s like, “Oh, I don’t know.” But you call it surprise, it’s easier to like, “Oh, yeah, this thing, that was kind of crazy,” “The coffee drink is now $8.” “What? When did that happen?” And so, then you’re off to the races, as it were, in that conversation.
And then I’m also thinking about, sometimes I might feel uncomfortable to just go there right away, but other times, folks ask questions that bring about self-disclosure, and yet also have utility for the team or the business. I’m thinking, is it Peter Thiel who has a question something like, “What’s something you strongly believe that 99% of people believe the opposite?” And that’s cool, it’s like you’re going to learn something when you go there both from self-disclosure as well as, “Huh, okay, there’s an opportunity that had never occurred to me. And as an investor, that’s good to have a broad knowledge of such things.”
Or, like, “What’s the most fascinating thing you’ve read recently?” If you’re talking to a group of podcasters, “Hey, what’s a new development of podcasting that struck you?” “Oh, there’s this company called Introcast, which is a really cool way to potentially discover new shows and grow a show on a paid basis, whatever,” and off you.
Deb Mashek
And, honestly, those same questions are fantastic in networking situations, where rather than, “So, tell me what you do,” and people launch into their elevator speech. You can ask instead, “What has your attention? What are you most excited about coming up?” For me as a relationships-person, I see more opportunities to connect in a more authentic way with people when there’s authenticity there.
Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?
Deb Mashek
So, back to good questions, you can ask it after the movie, after the book, after the meeting, after the, you know, someone pitched the project. Whatever it is, just, “How do you see it? How are you thinking about this? What strikes you about this?” I love that as a quote and a question.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?
Deb Mashek
This one, also, my mind’s thinking in the direction of self-disclosure. Art Aaron and his colleagues, back in the day, created this protocol that they call Fast Friends, and it eventually became the study that went viral via the New York Times article about 36 ways, or 36 questions to make you fall in love. These questions were never designed to make you fall in love. They were designed to increase closeness and intimacy, meaning, sense of connection.
And in this study, Art and his colleagues, within the protocol, takes about 45 minutes to an hour to administer, and all you’re doing is bringing total strangers into the room together and staging a series of self-disclosure questions that are reciprocal. So, I’m sharing and you’re sharing. And over those 45 minutes, the nature of the questions escalates in how vulnerable they are asking you to be.
So, for instance, at the beginning it might be like, “What did you have for breakfast this morning?” and by the end, the questions are things like, “How do you think you’re going to die?” Really, like it gets core, some core mortality salient stuff there. But what I love about this study is it gives us empirical evidence of the value of self-disclosure, and it tells us how to structure it.
One of my favorite factoids, and I happen to have been a graduate student in Arts Lab, so it might be one of the reasons I love this study. But one of my favorite factoids is that one of the stranger couples, so they came in as strangers, they were paired together as a couple for this activity. That’s how they met. They eventually got married. So, in that case, they did fall in love. But empirically, what they showed in the study is that people, on average, felt closer to that stranger after just an hour of this intense self-disclosure that a lot of them did to their best friends. So, it’s a real powerful strategy.
Pete Mockaitis
It is. It’s a great set of questions. And though they weren’t made for people to fall in love, I did once do that with a girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, and it was cool. It was really cool.
Deb Mashek
It’s so cool. And not surprisingly, there are so many question decks out there and relationship intervention decks that are focused on this precise mechanism. I love them. I do them too.
Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?
Deb Mashek
I love Liane Davey’s, The Good Fight, and it’s about how to fight well in the workplace, and it’s fantastic.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?
Deb Mashek
I love thinking visually, so whether I’m writing a talk or anything, I like to have the picture of it. So, I have totally fallen in love with these digital whiteboards, like Miro, where it’s just infinite and I can drop pictures and drop links and move things around and have connections. And I have one for every project, whether it’s a personal project or a work project. I love that tool.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?
Deb Mashek
I never have my phone on. I mean, it’s on but it’s always silenced. There are no notifications. And I do this because I don’t like the idea that other people can be in charge where my attention is, and this is to me such a sacred resource. And so, I choose, you know, kind of a sacred reclamation idea. Like, I have, for a long time been committed to when I decide I want to break, I’ll check my phone. And it is so good because I really get to fall into my thinking, into my doing in a way that my friends say they can’t.
And it does create some challenges and some relationships where some people wish that I was responding to them the second they send a text, but I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it, and I’ve chosen to celebrate my ability to hold my own attention.
Pete Mockaitis
I’m 100% with you, and I do the same thing. And is there a particularly resident nugget, a Deb-original quote, that people really dig and quote back to you often?
Deb Mashek
Yeah, people like, when I’m talking about collaboration, I often say it’s not rocket science; it’s relationship science, and people, really, they like that one. They also like just when I point out that we’re not taught how to collaborate, and it’s a big surprise. It’s difficult and challenging, and it’s learnable.
Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Deb Mashek
I would go to DebMashek.com or Collaborhate.com.
Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
Deb Mashek
Be “collabor-great.” I mean, this stuff is so worth it for you and your happiness, but also helping other people unlock their capacity, and helping your team do amazing things, and helping your organization, whether you’re at a non-profit or a for-profit or wherever you’re working, we’re able to do together better, or when we’re able to do together better, we’re really able to have a great impact and change the world.
Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Deb, thank you for this. I wish you much “collabor-greatness.”
Deb Mashek
Back at you. Thanks for having me.
