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KF #20. Interpersonal Savvy Archives - Page 2 of 13 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Jun 23
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1069: Eight Steps for Excellent Listening with Emily Kasriel

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Emily Kasriel reveals how to build powerful connections with anyone through her eight-step listening process.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why every professional needs to master listening
  2. A demo of the listening approach
  3. How one question leads to deeper conversations

About Emily

Emily Kasriel has had a distinguished career at the BBC for over two decades including roles as an award-winning journalist, editor and media executive. She developed the Deep Listening approach as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College Policy Institute in London, drawing on her experience as an accredited executive coach and workplace mediator.  Previously, she’s been a Visiting Fellow at Said Business School at Oxford University, and a Senior Advisor to the Skoll Foundation. An MA graduate of the University of Oxford and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (as a Rotary International Fellow), she lives in London. An academic paper demonstrating the impact of Kasriel’s Deep Listening approach has just been published (Feb 2025) by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Resources Mentioned

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Emily Kasriel Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Emily, welcome!

Emily Kasriel
Thank you so much. Delighted to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your book, Deep Listening, and the transformative power of listening. And I think we should kick it off with you telling us your Nelson Mandela story.

Emily Kasriel
Okay. So, this happened just after I started my work as the BBC Africa reporter in Johannesburg. And we were told that a story was unfolding in Pretoria. So, we got into the van and arrived in Pretoria, and there were hundreds of former uMkhonto weSizwe soldiers. These were members of the ANC’s Armed Wing before the new South Africa. They had been integrated into the South African Defense Force, but they were not happy. They demanded to see their leader.

So, they waited, and we all waited and we looked up in the skies to see if the new leader of South Africa would arrive. And, eventually, we had the swirl of the helicopter wings above us. And so, we went to look at the newly erected podium to see what the leader, Nelson Mandela, would have to say, but he wasn’t there.

So, instead, I found him walking amongst the crowds, walking amongst the soldiers, and asking them, “So, tell me, what’s your name? And where do you live? Oh, yes, I know that road. Alexandria Township. Is that right?” “Yes. And the corner of which street? Ah, I know. And tell me why are you here?” And the soldiers told tales of their bad food, of the fact they’d been downgraded their rank in the new South African Defense Force. And at their humiliation of having to serve these white officers who only, months before, had been their former enemy. And Mandela listened.

And only after he spent a whole hour walking along the throng, amongst the throng of these soldiers, did he get back on that podium and talk to them. And he said, “I have heard you. I’ve understood your grievances,” and he outlined them. And then he said, “And now is the time for discipline. You need to go back to your barracks because we need to build the new South Africa.” And the soldiers, quietly and peacefully, walked back to their barracks.

And it was such a profound moment because it subverted the sort of whole power hierarchy of who should talk and who should listen first. And that very respectful, deep listening that Mandela exhibited with his soldiers, with his comrades, really impacted on them because they had felt heard. They had felt truly listened to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is so powerful. And what’s getting me here is he did not grant their requests, make their wishes come true. They were good and rankled up when he arrived. And so, the listening alone and acknowledging that they had been heard was sufficient for them to persist in some unpleasant conditions.

Emily Kasriel
Yeah, no, absolutely right. And the research really backs that out because we’re all so longing to be heard, and we’re heard so rarely in life. And when there is anybody who hears us, particularly if they are in a position of power, or we care about what they think and say, this really affirms our own dignity. It makes us feel respected and, therefore, we’re going to be in a far better place to listen to them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. Well, tell us a little bit about this research about the rarity of being listened to and the impact of when we do receive that.

Emily Kasriel
So, in 2022, we conducted an experiment because, for the BBC’s 100th birthday and with the British Council, we recruited a thousand people in hundred countries in order for me to train them virtually over three weeks in deep listening. And this was a really diverse group of people. The countries most represented were Malaysia, UK, New Zealand, and Iran. Very diverse group of people, but all speaking English.

And so, I thought, “I’m not doing something that scale without seeing if it actually worked.” So, I reached out to some academics and we established a control group who had a very difficult conversation about a matter they disagreed with, with no training, and we compared their experience with the group who had been practicing deep listening and then had a similar difficult conversation. And the results have just been published in the Bedtime Reading, not Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

And it evidenced that, when people practice deep listening, they felt safer to express themselves and genuinely understood. And they felt a greater connection with their conversation partners, even though they came from such different countries. And this bit, the third bit is the most critical, they became more open to re-examine their own attitudes, which really is a bolster to what happened with Mandela.

Because once the soldiers felt heard, they then were able to see that bigger picture. They were able to understand that more than one perspective may be possible, and that is so exciting. Because I think one of the reasons that we really fear listening is that we think, if we listen, we’re going to have to do what people want and, therefore, we close them down. We fear that if we listen, we’ll be contaminated by ideas that we might find abhorrent. And so, we shut our ears and we close people down.

And once people realize that real listening doesn’t mean agreeing, doesn’t mean obeying, doesn’t mean that we get contaminated by ideas, somebody said to me in one of the trainings, they said, “You’ve given permission for me to listen to difficult ideas.” And I thought that was so interesting, like, “Who was I to give permission? Anybody can take that permission for themselves.” And it is so exciting once we realize this. It’s freedom.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, all that sounds really excellent. So, why don’t we all do it all the time?

Emily Kasriel
Well, there’s many traps that get us caught in deep listening, “I don’t have the time.” So, when I’m working with a business people, that’s the number one trap because we’re waging a campaign for completion. We don’t have time to hear all the details. That is the most cited obstacle. But cutting people off before they really have time to explore ideas, stops people from sharing critical information, stops them feeling heard, stops us understanding them.

So, let me give you a work example. Let’s say if your boss says to you, “Is it okay if you take on a piece of work?” And you say, “Sure, yeah.” And your mouth is smiling, but not your eyes. And you go, “Great. Fantastic. Two weeks, that will be fantastic.” How do you feel? Whereas, in fact, you could actually try and listen to what they’re really saying, and say, perhaps, “Ah, you’ve said yes, but, at the same time, I’m getting a sense that perhaps there’s too much on your plate and you already feel overloaded, and maybe you don’t feel comfortable saying no.”

Suddenly, you can have a real conversation, which enables you to either do the work or take off another task or, you know, it’s a genuine conversation. You’re going off script. So even though people say they don’t have the time, not having the time prevents people from expressing worries, prevents people from having real meaningful relationships.

And then there’s another thing that stops us from listening, because a lot of us feel a pressure, “I want to win. I need to win. I need to prove that I’m right.” We look out for any chink in our opponent’s armor, anything that can be exploited. And there’s another thing that a lot of us feel, which is that, “I am in charge.” We might see our role as the leader who instructs, who explains, who adds value, who provides a solution.

So often when we listen, and actually this is more men than women, we think that our role is to provide a solution so we cut people off and tell them how to sort their problem out, whether it’s our partner or our colleague. And, in fact, we’re depriving them of agency and stopping them coming up with their own solution, which they’re far more likely to implement.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, so, can you lay it out for us, how do we do this? You’ve got an eight-step approach. What are the steps?

Emily Kasriel
So, the first step is about creating a space. So, this is both a kind of metaphorical space, a space where you feel centered. I just took a little sip of tea there to center myself, but it’s also a space where the speaker feels a sense of psychological safety. So, if you’re in an open-plan office and you want to find out about why your team worker hasn’t completed their part of the task, not so good in the open-plan office, even if there’s a glass screen.

It also is about lighting. Harsh overhead blue white light, not so good, makes us feel stressed. Far better are side lights, especially with a longer spectrum, a sort of yellowy warm light makes us feel more relaxed.

And a bit of wood or a bit of material can absorb some of the sound waves so there’s less echoes so people can hear more clearly. Particularly important if one of the people who is speaking or listening is older or has a hearing impediment.

So, step two is about listening to yourself first, because you can’t really be open to listen to someone else until you’ve done some listening to yourself. Perhaps the person you’re speaking to, you’re not actually listening to them as an adult. Instead, you might feel five, age five, because they’re reminding you of a bullying older brother that you’ve had.

And so, until we do take that step, and figuring out our own skin in the game, what’s our real agenda, we can’t really be in a place to truly open ourselves up to the other person. And I would say that this isn’t for every conversation. I mean, if I were to ask you, if you wanted a cup of tea and you were to say to me, “Hmm,” and really listen, that would be totally weird, yeah? We’re talking about deep listening for the conversations that really matter.

So, step three is about being present, about taking the time, and it might be only one breath in and one breath out to center yourself. Because if you can be centered, the person speaking will feel far more open to be relaxed themselves and to be able to talk more authentically about what’s really going on for them.

And that’s why being centered, it’s so important to deal with the worst external distractions, our phone. Not just no notifications, not just with a black screen, even out of sight, because there’s research that evidences that even the sight of that screen will distract us because we feel pulled, the gravitational pull, all those brilliant, well-paid minds who learn to allure us away.

And then there’s internal distractions, like, “I really want to listen to you, but I’ve got to go home in time to pick the kids up,” or watch the game, or whatever. So, being aware when those distractions come up and becoming present, again, can be really effective. And then step four is curiosity. Be curious because so often, when we listen, we assume we already know what the person is going to say.

So, what we’re doing is preloading our verbal gun with ammunition, ready to fire about with our next question or our next comment, or we just go through the motions and listening is performative, “Yeah, yeah, I get you. Yeah, yeah, I understand.” And the person knows it.

And, instead, if we can assume that we don’t already know what they’re going to say, if we can be truly curious, that allows the speaker to share something, which makes us more curious and then even empathetic, like understand a bit more what it’s like to be them. And from there can grow respect. And what’s important is respect for the person, for the humanity of the person, not for what they’ve just shared and whether or not you agree with them.

And step five is the gaze. Now it’s quite hard on a Zoom call or a Riverside podcast chat like we’re having. So, I’m trying to look you in the eye at the camera, and I can’t quite see your body language. It’s difficult, although I have shrunk your image and put you directly under the camera to make it a little easier. But so much easier in person, if we can really maintain our gaze on the speaker.

And this gaze is not like a Foucault gaze, you know, Michel Foucault, the French philosopher who talked about prison wardens making prisoners feel perpetually enslaved because of a really horrific glare. This is a much warmer empathetic gaze, which the speaker will often go silent and look elsewhere. But the fact that you’re holding them, you’re looking at them as they continue the journey means they’ll have far, far richer thoughts.

And then step six is holding the silence. And when I train people in deep listening, silence is something that they, without exception, tell me how uncomfortable it is when they get to practice deep listening, because I invite them to use, you know, five, 10 seconds, even more of silence after the speaker has finished speaking.

And yet when I catch up with them later, a month or two down the line, they tell me this is the element of deep listening which has made the most difference to their lives because in silence, it allows so much to happen, not only for the blood pressure and the heart rate of both you and your speaker to kind of calm down, but also for your speaker to think new thoughts.

If you think of a companionable silence where you don’t have to fill in all the gaps, and I know this is can be hard. But it takes a little bit of practice. And to encourage you, there was a paper that came out in 2021 called “Silence is golden.” And it did experiments with two sides of a negotiation.

And it found that, when both parties were instructed to use 20 seconds of silence, number one, they never got to 20 seconds. They rarely got above 17 and a half seconds. We always overestimate silence, particularly the listener. But more significantly, they came out with many more win-win situations when both parties benefited rather than zero sum, “If I win, you lose.”

And then this also leads us, because silence has another factor, which is that it allows you, the listener, to make sense, not only with your mind, but with your heart of what you’ve just heard. Because step seven is reflecting back. And you may have been on active listening courses where you say, “Yeah, yeah,” you reflect back, you paraphrase, you go through the motions. It’s performative.

Deep listening reflection is much more authentic and it’s about using the whole of you to figure out the real meaning of what the whole of your speaker has shared. And so, you say, “Hmm, I think what you said…” and you must include not just the words, but the notes between the words and their emotions, whether or not they’ve expressed them in words.

The research shows that if I don’t include what you are feeling about what you’ve shared, you won’t feel heard. And it’s then the speaker’s opportunity to say, “Yeah, you know, you haven’t quite got it.” So, one question you can ask is, “Tell me more,” or they’ll say, “Yes, and…” and they’ll go deeper.

And this brings us to the final step of deep listening, the deeper narrative, step eight. Because this is really about the values and the motivations of your speaker. And, in my book, Deep Listening, I go through all sorts of clues you can use to really unpack what’s going on for your speaker.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. There’s so much I’d like to follow up on here. So, let’s just see, a couple of finer points. So, create space, listen to yourself, be present, be curious, hold the gaze, hold the silence, reflect back, go deeper. Now when it comes to listen to yourself, if you say, “Hey, this person is reminding me of a bully,” right? So, you’ve figured that out, which is great. You’ve identified a dynamic that’s present.

Well, then what? What do we do once we notice something within ourselves that we say, “Ah, this is probably not ideal to be in the mix for great listening”?

Emily Kasriel
That’s such a great question, Pete, because the very first step is noticing, because when we don’t notice, so we don’t think that we’re listening to our bullying older brother, we think we’re listening to that individual and he is evil.

And it’s when we don’t acknowledge them that they’re at their fiercest. I would say that if you’ve experienced trauma, starting to do this shadow work without support is perhaps not the best idea because it is difficult. It’s a life work of a lifetime for all of us to understand ourselves more clearly.

But, first of all, even identifying that that person reminds us, and it is possible to acknowledge that and then put it aside and recognize that the person opposite speaking is not our elder brother, can itself be very, very freeing. And it might be that we need to think of ways if, for example, during that conversation with that individual, we feel ourselves getting defensive and stressed out, then we can choose an anchor before we start the conversation. Something that makes us feel safe inside.

It might be the idea of a beautiful place in nature or somebody who really loves us or stroking a favorite pet. Having these little anchors to help ground us can be really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s great. Thank you. And so, when we hold the gaze, we do so in a way that’s friendly and not like a prison guard. Good to know. I mean, how long is too long?

Emily Kasriel
I think that, as long as it’s not rigid and like, you know, as long as it’s warm and you’re listening, and it does mean you can turn aside if you’ve got a crook in your neck, it’s all about being authentic. I think that the intention and authenticity is the most important thing, because what’s behind your work as a deep listener is what your speaker will sense.

So, rather than feeling you’re performing anything for any amount of time, it’s about being curious and empathetic and wanting to know more. And the gaze is important, but what’s more important about is what’s behind that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then with the silence, you did mention that folks were challenged to do 20 seconds of silence. Is that optimal in some sense?

Emily Kasriel
I think 20 seconds is an awful long time. If you were actually to time it, I think most people would find, and as I mentioned in that experiment, which they did with many, many people, almost no one held the full 20 seconds of silence because we always overestimate. You’ve got to figure out what works for you, and it does depend on your culture, on your relationship, on the other person.

And I do think, though, that you can get better at silence. So, at the beginning, I would just try three seconds, four seconds, and see how that feels. And you may choose to share with your speaker that you’re practicing a bit of silence or not. It’s all about being real and in the moment and being open in your heart.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I suppose, if you’re going with a longer silence, you probably want to give them that kind of a signal in terms of, “Hmm, I’m thinking about what you’ve said there.”

Emily Kasriel
Yeah. You could well do that, yeah, you might do that. But often, what’s interesting, is when I train people, it’s often the listener who worries more about the silence than the speaker.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. Okay. And then with reflecting, we’re reflecting both the words and the emotions. So, even if they didn’t say the emotions, you’re suggesting a best practice is to go ahead and venture out to infer what we think they were.

So, as I am reflecting the words and then also venturing to infer the emotions there, is it better to do this even if occasionally we get it wrong, and say, “No, no, I wouldn’t say I was frustrated so much as disappointed”? Like, if they give you that correction, are we still, I guess, net positive having ventured and gotten it wrong than to not have ventured at all?

Emily Kasriel
I’m so pleased that you asked that question because it’s really, really important. Of course, we can never really know about what’s going on in another person, particularly about, for example, an emotion that they haven’t expressed in words. And so, whenever we are offering something back in that case, we are venturing because it’s not just the emotions. It’s also about what’s really at the core of what they’ve said.

And it’s absolutely fine to get it wrong, as long as you realize that you’re reflecting back with humility. It’s like you’re borrowing some beautiful finery that’s not yours. You’re trying it on for the first time, and so you’re saying, “Well, I think that you said this and I’d sensed that you feel this,” because it’s through their correction that they can understand themselves better and also then share that with you.

It’s that process of getting to the deeper core of what they really mean. And they often do it through you getting it wrong as much as you getting it right. Because the whole idea is it’s in service of the other person, understanding and expressing themselves more clearly.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And I’m imagining, as we’re getting our first practice reps in of venturing to identify the emotion, it’s probably safer to go with not the most intense emotions, “So, it sounds as though you were enraged or flabbergasted or desolate.” Like, if they are enraged, you’ll know it.

Emily Kasriel
Well, I think what’s most important is that it doesn’t come with judgment. So, if you were to say to them, “Huh, it sounds like that you were pretty desperate,” they’ll feel that you’re making a judgment about them. I think what’s more important is to deliver these thoughts about what you think they’re feeling with humility and without judgment so that they don’t feel judged.

Because we know as soon as we feel judged, our defenses go up and we stop sharing openly and authentically, and stop being able to think new thoughts. And that’s one of the things that’s so exciting about deep listening. And I know that from my own work as an executive coach, that when you really listen to somebody else, they’re able to have thoughts that they didn’t ever imagine before. And I think that’s one of your ambitions as a deep listener, not just to provide a space for them to recite old ideas, but to create new ones.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that non-judgmental piece, I think, plays through everything. And now I’m just thinking about our own tone of voice within which we say all things can suggest judgment in terms of, it’s like, so if I said, “So you were confused by the website,” which means, like, even that tone, that’s not too intense of a tone there, but it suggests judgment in terms of, like, “What kind of an idiot are you if you found this website confusing?” even though the tone can be subtle. Do you have any pro tips on that?

Emily Kasriel
Yeah, I think it’s such a good point. And tone of voice, actually, when you’re trying to understand more about what the speaker is saying, tone of voice is far more reliable than gestures or facial expressions, the research evidences. So, tone of voice is a very powerful way that we communicate. I think about, again, when we’re thinking about our tone of voice, it’s wise to think about our intentions. Are we feeling judgmental about the other person?

Because, actually, often, we get most irritated with people who remind us, in some way, of our own weakness. And once we can acknowledge that perhaps we feel embarrassed that we are confused about websites, that’s why we’re being so judgmental about the other person, we can let that go and then be able to say to them, “So I sense that you felt a little confused using this website. Is that right?”

And it’s the same words, but you aren’t judging them because you understand that their life experience is different to yours. And, therefore, you don’t really have a right to judge them on some level.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, yes, let’s do a demonstration now.

Emily Kasriel
Okay. So, Pete, let me ask you, what food reminds you of home?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what first comes to mind is a whole meal in terms of I’m thinking about childhood dinner at the round table. And we would have this plate, which had a big heart on it. It said something like, “Today is your special day,” which would be given to whoever’s special day it was, like, if it was a birthday or graduation or some sort of achievement or something. For one reason or another, it was your special day.

And then, you know, my sweet mother would ask what I would want to eat on this special day. And for a good while, I had a meal, which was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and cheese sauce. So, that meal in its entirety was, it’s my special day meal. That’s what I wanted, and it was perfection. And I was a pretty skinny kid. I wasn’t a big eater except when it was my special day and it was my meal, and I just went to town.

Emily Kasriel
So, I’m hearing you say, Pete, that that round table and that special round dish, your special day was that sense that your mother was creating this whole meal. It wasn’t individual. The whole point was that it was everything together that made you feel nurtured and loved and celebrated and able to just really tuck in, even though that’s not something you would normally do, because it was everything coming together.

You spoke about the wholeness of it and feeling whole, and that even now you were really there, I sensed, when you were talking about it. And it just gave you a really great grounding to feel in that space of love and safety. Is that right?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Emily Kasriel
And tell me more.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s dead on, yeah.

Emily Kasriel
And so, I sense it’s a kind of longingness and yet also a joy when you’re able to go back there in your mind as a kid again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it is, it is nice. And it just makes me think about how I should probably be more proactive in asking my own children now about what would make their meal or day special because that was such a lovely time and experience and memory in my own childhood. And I don’t think that I’ve been very intentional in trying to provide that for my kids. And why the heck not? You know, we got to eat something. Let’s make it special.

Emily Kasriel
And so, it’s a realization now as an adult of that love and sense of recognition that your mother gave you of making that whole fried chicken, mash, broccoli, you know, everything and cheese sauce that you loved, and the sense that perhaps there’s a gap between you not quite fulfilling that, but still have the potential to give that to your children today.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes we’ve gotten into a little bit of a grazing groove in terms of whenever they’re hungry, they eat whatever’s there, as opposed to really stopping, pausing, and being deliberate about creating an experience.

Emily Kasriel
And so, this conversation, perhaps, is providing you with an opportunity to do more of that for your own children, something precious that you can gift them as a gift, the same way your mom gave you. I had a sense that it sort of nurtured you and given you a confidence, that feeling that you were special and unique.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it totally did.

Emily Kasriel
So, roughly, how many questions did I ask you there?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I wasn’t counting. Maybe five-ish.

Emily Kasriel
Yeah. Actually, I just asked you one question, “What food reminds you of home?” Now, as a journalist, I had loads of questions. I wanted to know where you grew up, where your parents came from, what state, or do you have siblings? I could have asked you a billion questions, and had I done that, I would have gone down my avenue where I was interested.

And, although, I sensed you were a bit reluctant to tell me too much, there was a sort of privacy, a kind of, “I’m going this far and no further,” I did get a sense and I feel I know you more and I feel more connected to you because of what you did share on your own terms of where you wanted to go. What do you think, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, think that’s a fabulous illustration there in terms of “How many questions did I ask you?” I said five, you said one. And so, because, exactly the path of the follow-up questions is going deeper, yeah, I guess that’s the main insight for me is that you could very much have gone in any number of directions. And I think that’s often what we do. It’s like we are interested in what we’re interested in.

So, Emily, if you had a woodworking hobby, you’d be like, “Oh, round table, huh? Was that like an oak or a walnut or…?” Right? And so, it’s laughable because, like, “The point wasn’t the table.  That’s not what we are getting at.” And yet, I think we do that all the time in terms of, “Oh, your mom, huh? Okay, so was she a full-time homemaker? Did she work as well?” Because maybe that’s what you’re into is careers or women and empowerment and having it all.

Or, maybe you’re into cuisine, like, “Okay, so what kind of cheese sauce we’re going with? Is that more of a cheddar or a Velveeta?” And so, I think people do that all the time. But in contrast to what you’ve done in this context as we’re chatting, it feels like, obviously, night and day, the wrong way to talk to people so that they feel heard and connected with is the, “Huh, let me dig into the piece of what you said that I find most interesting,” as opposed to, “Let me dig into the piece of it that seemed most meaningful to you, speaker, as one who has said it.”

Emily Kasriel
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And your illustrations are really fun of where we could have gone down. And especially as journalists, we love to think of ourselves as coming up with these great questions. Even as coaches, when I was delivering this training to a bunch of executive coaches, they said, “It’s so much of a relief because I feel like I’m not listening because I’m trying to come up with this brilliant killer question,” which will help the coach client unpack what they really mean. So, you’re absolutely right.

But I wouldn’t be too judgmental. I mean, it’s not that you can never ask interesting questions where you’re curious, because I think deep listening is something that you can sprinkle in conversations. You can try as you learn more about the steps to use more of them, but it’s not all or nothing. And the one question I did ask, actually, I did ask two questions, was, “Tell me more.”

Because I sensed you were being a little bit closed, you kind of didn’t want to go further. And what’s good about the “Tell me more” question is that the speaker can define what more is rather than you, the listener saying, “Tell me more about the wooden quality of the table,” or whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Thank you. Well, Emily, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Emily Kasriel
I think that there’s so much loneliness in our society. So many people are not being heard. And if we can deeply listen to them, we can do something to make a dent in loneliness and also in polarization, which we know is tearing America apart because we can listen to people who think differently to us at work or at home.

And let me tell you a little quick story about loneliness, I think, really, which was a little while ago, I was visiting the pharmacy to collect drugs for my daughter. And there was a lady sitting on a plastic chair waiting for her own drugs. And the pharmacist asked me, what was the birth date of my daughter. So, I said, “Third of July 21.” And she looked at me, “Are you sure?” And then I thought for a moment, I said, “No, no, third of July, 2001.” And the lady on the chair started laughing at me.

And she said, “Wait a minute. How can you not know the birth date of your own daughter? What’s going on there?” And I said, “You know, you’re quite right. That’s pretty silly of me.” So, we started to have a chat, and she told me, we’re talking about birth dates, about her grandmother who’d recently, in her nineties, reached a milestone birthday and how proud she was. And she said, “Yeah, I’m really proud.” And I said to her, “I sense that you’re proud, but there’s also something else going on.”

And she said, “Yes, I think I’m going to die before my grandmother.” And then we talked more, and she shared about her condition and she started crying, and then she apologized for crying. And then we had a laugh and then I walked away. And I had a sense that she needed to be heard.

And it was only because I was mindful in that moment, which I’m certainly not always am, to be able to pick up on the sort of nuance in the word proud, and also maybe that I’d made myself a bit vulnerable by making that silly mistake about my daughter’s birthday and not being defensive and having a laugh about it, but she felt safe to be vulnerable too.

And if more of us can practice deep listening to those around us, to our kids, to our family, to our colleagues, and even to strangers, what a difference we can make to the world. And for me, that’s really inspiring. And I really hope that people feel inspired to practice and would love to know about their adventures in the wild.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Emily Kasriel
So there was one experiment which was measuring people’s attitude extremity, how fiercely they felt. And it came out that, when people felt truly heard, they dialed down their attitude extremity, where the people were talking about organ donation or Palestinian Israeli prisoners or really controversial topics.

And to me, that is so important in that way in terms of combating polarization, that when people feel heard, they’ll be more likely to be able to listen to other perspectives.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Emily Kasriel
I think this book, Carl Rogers, I’ve been so influenced by this psychologist, On Becoming A Person. But I also really enjoyed Stephen Grosz, who’s a psychoanalyst, The Examined Life, about listening in that way.

And then Daniel Kahneman, who I knew and very sad to have lost him, Thinking Fast and Slow.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Emily Kasriel
I find the Waking Up app really great because I think to be able to practice mindfulness, not when you’re in the middle of a difficult conversation, but other moments, allows you to be more present in the moments when you are having a difficult conversation and when you really need to listen. And what’s so great about Waking Up is that there are so many different, brilliant thinkers on that app.

So, I’ve learned about so many people. So, for example, Loch Kelly, who I interviewed in my book, who’s a fantastic meditation teacher and psychotherapist. I learned about just from listening to him on the Waking Up app.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Emily Kasriel
I like cold water swimming in Hampstead Ponds even when it’s cold. So, I do it throughout winter, which is kind of crazy. But for me, being able to get in the cold, even when it feels like crazy and frightening, kind of means that I can do anything for the rest of the day.

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

Emily Kasriel
So, you can go to my website, which is EmilyKasriel.com – Kilo, Alpha, Sierra, Romeo, Italy, Echo, Lima – EmilyKasriel.com. You can follow me on LinkedIn, or you can buy the book where I’ve given an awful lot of myself in it. And I hope that you will enjoy it because it’s got some lovely stories and illustrations and a lot of ideas of how to practice deep listening.

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

Emily Kasriel
So, number one challenge is to find somebody you feel really relaxed with, you’ve got a great relationship with, and just try and practice some of these eight steps. And then, when you get a bit more confident, then choose somebody who you don’t agree with, then have a deep listening practice with them.

And I should say that when you reflect on these practices, even if you weren’t able to deeply listen, the very intention is a fantastic first step. So, don’t be too judgmental on yourself. Just ask yourself, “What have I learned for next time?” And you might even want to ask the speaker for feedback what did it feel like to be listened to by you?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Emily, this is beautiful. Thank you.

Emily Kasriel
Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure to talk to you, Pete. Thank you.

May 12
0

1057: How to Improve Your Next Conversation with Jefferson Fisher

By | Podcasts | 2 Comments

Jefferson Fisher shares his three-part communication system for handling difficult conversations with ease.

You’ll Learn

  1. The best first word to use
  2. How to set boundaries people will respect
  3. Two tricks for handling disagreements

About Jefferson

Jefferson Fisher is a trial lawyer, writer, and speaker whose work to help people communicate during life’s everyday arguments and conversations, with his practical videos and authentic presence, has gained millions of followers around the world, including celebrities and global leaders. He is a sought-after speaker on communication at Fortune 500 companies and governmental agencies, and hundreds of thousands of people subscribe to his actionable email newsletter and podcast. 

Fisher is a Texas board-certified personal injury attorney and the founder of Fisher Firm, where he helps people all over the United States connect to trusted legal services. He lives with his wife and two children near Beaumont, Texas.

Resources Mentioned

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Jefferson Fisher Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jefferson, welcome!

Jefferson Fisher
What’s going on, Pete? Great to meet you, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you too. I’m excited to be chatting. And I want to kick it off with just a little softball opener question. Jefferson, tell me, what’s the most surprising and fascinating thing you’ve ever discovered about humans and communication in the course of your career?

Jefferson Fisher
Oh, just a nice little softball. Thank you. That was great. Like, how much we struggle at it and, at the same time, how much we need it. One of my comfort shows is a show called “Alone” on Netflix.

And have these survivalists that are all amazing, and they go out maybe in somewhere in the Alaska wilderness. And it’s a very slow-paced show, and they’re supposed to survive, really, for however long that they can or sometimes they put a deadline on it.

But a lot of the times, I’ve seen that the number one reason they tap out, in other words, they call and say, “Take me home,” is just because they miss people. They miss the sound of their loved one’s voice, or we’re just not meant to be alone. And that’s what I find so interesting. It’s not that they couldn’t keep up with the skill. It’s not that they couldn’t survive. It’s that they miss other humans.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we need it, it’s in us, it’s part of our very human design. So, when we’re not out in the remote Alaskan wilderness, are there ways that our communication needs are regularly being unmet?

Jefferson Fisher
Every day, our interactions are littered with miscommunication, where what we say does not match what was heard. And you can take that from the living room to the boardroom to wherever you are. And so, we find that the communication struggles are not uncommon, really, with anybody in any situation that we’re in.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, misheard intentions not translating into what’s received. Understood. You’ve got some wisdom for us in your book, “The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More.” Tell us, what’s sort of the big idea of this book?

Jefferson Fisher
The big idea of the book is that some people teach you how to play an instrument. I teach you what chords to play. I give you the sheet music in terms of communication. And so, I am telling you how to use phrases that are going to improve your next conversation, from how to say things with control, meaning, instead of controlling them, you’re going to learn to control yourself and regulate yourself to where you stay calm and composed.

Two, we’re going to say it with confidence, meaning you’re going to use your assertive voice. You’re going to say things that don’t sound like you’re hesitant, or you’re unwavering, and you’re going to say things that are direct, but at the same time kind and respectful. And three, we’re going to say it to connect, meaning you’re going to have that difficult conversation go much better than it ever would if you had not read the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that sounds handy. Could you share with us an inspiring story of someone who started doing some of this stuff, a little bit of the before and what they did, and what happened afterwards?

Jefferson Fisher
We have tons of examples. Really, in our membership is a wonderful example of that. So, have an online membership where people are able to practice a lot of the tools that we teach. One of the persons who comes to mind, her name is Michelle. Michelle’s a single mother of two kids, and she was going through a really bad divorce.

And when she picked up the book, this is really what she was looking for, and they’re kind of on the tail end of all their legal proceedings. And she was really trying to find ways to not only speak to her new ex-husband, but also how to speak to her children about it. And the biggest takeaway that she said was that she really took control of her emotions by regulating her breath.

So, rule number one in the book is let your breath be the first word that you say. And so, by really leaning into that principle to regulate yourself and not get so wrapped up into the emotion, she says she’s been a much better communicator with her entire family. She’s feeling like it’s a much better impact in a positive way for her.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jefferson, that’s very Tweetable, “Let your breath be the first word that you say.” And so, zooming way in, practically speaking, that means, in most conversations, I will, literally, before uttering a word, have a breath?

Jefferson Fisher
No, I wouldn’t take it that extreme. So, mostly in your difficult conversations, your heated conversations, they’re going to have some friction in it. When somebody is saying something to you, we get into the habit of getting wrapped up and having to have an immediate response.

Somebody sends you a text you don’t like, somebody says something to you and you kind of get caught off guard and your whole body wants to fight or flight. You either want to say a hurtful word to eliminate the threat or you want to run from it. You want to hang up the phone. You want to slam the door.

And so, what I encourage people to do is to simply take a breath before you say anything. And often that is exactly, it’s all that you need to make sure that you keep your emotions in check, and your logical and analytical side of your brain at the forefront, so not every conversation, no. But you take it, for example, like in the business context.

If you’re getting interviewed, the person who, if you’re asking me a question and I take a breath and I’m thinking about it, and then I respond, it sends a different message that I really listened, I acknowledged, I thought about it. I’m not being flippant about it. So, what I’m about to say is going to mean more.

Pete Mockaitis
And it also, just on the receiving end of that, just comes across better than, if we were to replace the breath with, “Oh, well, you know, I would say…” that whole phrase, that it also is more powerful and polished and makes you seem more knowledgeable and authoritative.

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, even if you were to say, “Hey, Jefferson, how are you? How was your day?” and I immediately said, “Oh, it was good. I mean, yeah, it was fine. It was good,” versus you asking me and I just took a breath, “You know, Pete, it was good. It was a good day.” Like, you can tell which one you’re going to believe more, the one who sounds a little bit more intentional, the one who sounds a little bit more in control.

And so, that’s what the pause, the breath does, is it gives you time to choose. Time to choose whether or not you want to say that, whether or not this person is worth your time, whether or not this person is worth your response, and to be able to make sure that what you’re going to say is intentional.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s just, that question right there, “How are you doing? How’s your day?” is often among the very first of questions when meeting somebody or starting a conversation. It’s real nice to kick it off with a tone of trust and believability, like, “Right from the get go, I think Jefferson is being honest with me about his day,” as opposed to the flippant automatic robot response, “Fine.”

Jefferson Fisher
Exactly, yeah. And it helps release the tension in your body. When somebody is saying something that catches you off guard in particular or something that might be a little bit more offensive, our body tenses up and we tend to hold our breath because we’re readying to either say something hurtful or leave.

And when you use your breath, it’s telling your body, “What’s happening to me is not threatening. This person is not a threat. Their words are not a threat.” And so, that’s what the whole part of saying it with control is about. It’s not looking for what’s going to control them. You’re, first, looking at the conversation of what’s going to control you, and your breath is what’s going to help regulate and calm your body down.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, in your section on “Say It with Control,” we’ve got a chapter, control yourself, control the moment, control the pace. Can you speak a bit more on controlling the moment and controlling the pace?

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, both of those kind of hint at the same concept. And that is the person who’s able to slow down their words is the person who’s always going to be more in control. People who speak very fast, it’s like listening to music that’s very fast. You kind of get, in some sense, it is very low-grade anxiety trying to make sure you can really listen to this person. You don’t want to miss anything and it rushes you.

Sometimes you’re around somebody and just their mere presence makes you anxious because they need to go, “We got this. I got this.” And they just can’t slow down. You compare that with somebody who is, let’s say, your grandfather or your grandmother.

And you go to their house and I’d say, mine is I have a papal. I’d say, “Papal, do you have a screwdriver?” And he’d go, “Yeah.” I mean, like just that right there. There’s something about the calm energy that we’re drawn towards like a moth to a flame, that we really, really want that secure presence.

And so, when you can be around the people who have calm energy and, in fact, if you can be the person who radiates that calm energy, controlling the moment means, instead of just spurting out words or putting your foot in your mouth, you’re taking time, you’re thinking, and you’re slowing it down. There’s a difference, Pete, between me saying, “I already told you. I’m not going to say that,” versus, “I already told you. I’m not going to say that.”

Now it’s the same exact words. All I did was I lowered my tone and I slowed down my words. Now which one of those sounds like someone who’s more grounded, more centered, more in control of themselves to say, “No, I’m not being moved by what you say. Your raised voice, your yelling, that doesn’t threaten me”?

So, you use just simply what’s already in your body to help control yourself, and you do that by controlling the pace and the moment by slowing it down.

Pete Mockaitis
That really rings true. And I’m curious, I suppose as you’re saying this, this strikes me as a great way to be most of the time. Occasionally, are we better off picking up the pace if our other party would prefer quicker responses? Or is it still more often the winning move to keep it slow?

Jefferson Fisher
I think, on average, people speak much faster than we need to. You think you’re talking slow, you’re really not. Most of the time we’re still rushing our words. We live in a very fast-paced life here in the United States of America. We rush everything. We can’t even watch a TikTok or a video for more than two seconds. And that’s maximum time.

So, I find that, yes, there are times when not rushing your words, but picking up the pace is not a bad thing. There’s such thing in music of just having dynamics, meaning your highs are going to be high and your lows are going to be low. So, if I were going to talk to you, and maybe I’m trying to be persuasive, maybe I’m trying to make my point and maybe you don’t believe it and I believe it and sometimes nobody believes it.

You hear that kind of dynamic in my voice that sometimes I’m going to rush little bit on the points that I’m really wanting to draw attention to, and I’m going to slow down on the parts I really want people to listen to every detail, because when you slow it down people will listen to a pin drop. So, that’s the power of just using that pause to hang on to every word. It makes a big difference.

Pete Mockaitis
It does. Folks tend to lean in and wonder, “Well, what’s coming next?” It works on me.

Jefferson Fisher
It works on everybody. I mean, we love stories. Humans love stories. We love to hear what’s going to happen around the corner. That curiosity is always in us.

Pete Mockaitis
So, rule one, say it with control. We talked about that. Before we move on, I’d love to hear, in addition to breath, are there any winning moves for regaining control of ourselves?

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, it’s funny you used the word winning. So then in the book, probably the most quotable line that I have is “Never win an argument.” And it is very counterculture, I suppose, in a world where all we want to do is win, particularly arguments. You see it in so many books and blogs.

And what I teach is that when you set out to win an argument, you often will lose the relationship. Meaning, all you’ve won is really their contempt. You’ve won to be the first to apologize when you set out to try and win an argument, because you’ll say things that you don’t mean, and they’ll trust you less, they’ll respect you less, and, really, you’ve lost that connection.

And so, I teach that, instead of seeing arguments as something to win, see them as something to unravel, where there’s knots in the conversation, knots in the communication. And when you can have the discipline to try and see where the other person is coming from, but not in just the metaphorical sense, but meaning you’re actually asking, “Help me understand. Help me see the knot. What am I missing?”

Things that you, instead of just tugging and pulling to say, “No, you have to see it my way. No, you have to get my point,” and you just ask the question of what they see from their end instead of, “That’s not what I said,” you’re asking the question, “What did you hear?” You’re always going to find a much better conversation at the end of that.

Pete Mockaitis
And the visual of knots is, I think, very useful, because when we encounter knots in life, like literally in a rope, in a shoelace, etc., our reaction is not – N-O-T – so much to slice through it with a sword or a knife, but rather it’s like, “Okay, we’re going to have to take a closer look at this, maybe literally have a breath and see. Okay, how did this knot come to be? What’s stuck in what? And what needs to be backed up a little bit in order to get this smoothed out here?”

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, it’s a mindset. A mindset that says, instead of “How dare they talk to me like this? How dare they, I mean, challenge me. They don’t believe me?” instead of having this, “I need to remind them who they’re talking to” kind of aggressive mentality, a much more winning mindset is asking yourself, “Huh, I wonder where this is coming from? I wonder what’s driving them to say that? I wonder what’s happening in their day? I wonder what they’re dealing with?

You start to look at it from the flip side and that often leads to a much better conversation at the end of the day. The knot is something that the harder you pull on it, the harder it is to loosen, the harder it is to undo. And you know people and I know people that have pulled on the knot for so long that they can’t undo it. Not for a long time.

We have people that haven’t spoken to their adult children in years, or they’ve lost that best friend because of one issue, then they never want to bring it up because they know that the knot is just too tight. It would be too painful. It’s like getting a backlash when you’re fishing. I mean, sometimes you just have to cut the whole thing out. It can become a very, very draining process if you don’t address it early.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess, to that point, I would love your perspective on, if we think that a knot is just too big, how often is that an accurate assessment versus just us rationalizing an internal fear situation?

Jefferson Fisher
Problems happen when you think one conversation is going to be the cure-all for everything. Like, one conversation is going to, all of sudden go, “You know what, you’re so right. I was so wrong all these years.” I mean, that never is going to happen. So, let’s say, you and I have had bad beef over time, and we have a knot.

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, you pulled some stuff, Jefferson.”

Jefferson Fisher
“Right. Of course I did.” And we have a conversation. You see how it would be much harder if I say, “Okay, let’s get one thing straight, Pete. You’re the one…” and, all of a sudden, you’re back to ground zero as soon as you utter that kind of stuff.

Instead, if you have the mentality of, “I’d like to talk with you, and this is a conversation that can last as many days and many months as it needs to about healing our relationship because I want a friendship with you again, Pete.” You hear how that is saying, “Look, I don’t know the rules. I don’t know how this is going to go, but I’m willing to tell you what my goal is.”

“And my goal is for us to have a new friendship. And what I’m saying is this is not a conversation that’s finished in a day. This is not a conversation that’s happening tomorrow.” So, if I’m telling you my conversation is over several days or weeks or a month or whatever, it’s very helpful to the other person to almost have a release of, “Okay, we can actually work through these things,” and not squish it all within this timeframe.

It happens very well, too, in the business context, that if you need to tell someone, “All right, I need to have a conversation with you over the next few days. And this is a conversation that’s going to last about a week,” you hear how all of a sudden there’s not pressure to solve it right then and there. You’re letting it organically involve in the way that it needs to happen, that people pulling out each little thread at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really good. And I think it’s telling. I’m thinking about it, if I read news articles about diplomatic relations between countries, it’s interesting because sometimes your secretary of state or the equivalents of other nations will say that they had very productive conversations. You’re like, “Well, what does that mean? Is the war over?” Well, no, it’s not. And yet they viewed it as very productive conversations.

And it’s just a little reminder, whenever you read such news articles, that some issues very, very much require numerous conversations, bit by bit, thread by thread to be smoothed out.

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, it’s part of acknowledging to the other person that the issue they raised is a true issue. It is real issue. It helps to not keep people getting defensive. When you can tell them, “I agree,” and not in the sense that you agree with them. What you’re saying is you can’t think micro, you have to go macro. It’s this idea of, “I agree that’s worth talking about. I agree that’s an issue. I agree this is a topic that we should discuss.”

Simple as that, all of a sudden, their defenses are going to be lowered. Or you tell them that you’ve learned something or what’s been helpful, “That’s helpful for me to know. Thank you.” Or, “You know what, after listening, I can tell this is a really important issue to you.” All of a sudden, their defenses just go down, and now you can actually start addressing the knot that’s right in front of you.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Thank you. Well, let’s talk a little bit about saying it with confidence. Tell us a bit about establishing boundaries.

Jefferson Fisher
Boundaries are something that a lot of people struggle with, and for good reason. They’re hard to raise around people that, I’d say, take advantage of you not having the boundary. Like, the person who always gets to cut in line in front of everybody and, all of a sudden, they realize they’re not able to do that. That’s the person who’s most upset because they’ve taken advantage of you not having that boundary for so long.

I teach that just, because someone doesn’t agree with your boundary, doesn’t make it wrong. It means that it’s working. And we find in our culture today boundaries are a whole big thing. Everybody seems to be talking about boundaries and they’re not hard to say. They’re much harder to enforce. You could say a lot of platitudes or things of, “No is a complete sentence. You don’t need to justify yourself.”

Boundaries are really, to me, three simple components. That is, one, you’re telling them what the boundary is and it’s beginning with the I, “I am not going to be treated that way.” Two, you’re adding in the condition, “If you continue to treat me this way, if you continue to speak to me this way…”

Three is the consequence, and that’s the biggest part because you have to be able to actually own it and be willing to do what you say you’re going to do. So, the consequence could be, “If you continue to talk to me this way, then this is the end of the conversation.” That’s probably the most common one that I use in communication.

Let’s say I have an opposing counsel that’s just gone off the rails talking about their case. I might say, “Look, I’m not going to be spoken to like that. If you continue to speak to me like that, this is going to be end of the conversation.” I have a really quick way of being able to redirect their energy because you have two sides of the coin.

It’s either I can give you a remote control, Pete, and you can press my buttons, and for me to say, “You can’t talk to me like that. Don’t yell at me,” and you’re just pressing my buttons and you’re have complete control over my emotions. Or, what I teach in my membership is how to have your manual.

So, in other words, if somebody speaks to you in a way that they should not, or that you don’t like, it’s this mindset of, “Hey, if you turn to page 82, you’ll see on paragraph D, line A, yeah, I don’t respond to that volume. So, it’s this set of parameters, say, “If you want to communicate with me, this is how we’re going to do it. And if you don’t like it, then it’s the breaks. That’s how we’re going to have a conversation or not.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, I’m curious, Jefferson, we’ve covered some good pieces here, any top tips, do’s or don’ts you really want to make sure that come across?

Jefferson Fisher
Probably one of the most common ones I get, particularly with somebody like in your audience in the workplace, is how to effectively disagree, how to disagree with someone you don’t want to sound disagreeable. So, instead of saying, “I disagree. No, I don’t like that,” which they’re going to take that personally.

They’re going to start defending their position against yours. So, meaning, as soon as you say, “No, I don’t like that,” or, “I disagree,” what I think is whatever you’re about to come out, they’re not going to accept it. Why? Because you just shut down theirs and it just becomes a battle of ideas.

Instead, what I want you to say is, “I see things differently. I see things differently.” And because it works, and not getting them defensive because you’re not arguing their point. You’re talking about their perspective. So, when I say, “I see things differently,” the key phrase is I see, “I see things differently,” or, “I view it differently,” or, “I take another approach,” or, “I tend to lean the opposite.”

I’m not saying anything they’re saying is wrong. I’m just saying, “I see it from a different side. That’s all.” And people don’t get defensive over that. Another tip that I like to give, particularly in the workplace, is if you find that your ideas are getting shut down in the board meeting, in front of other people, instead of getting frustrated that they didn’t accept your idea, because, really, all it is, is just an idea contest of people aren’t going to like your idea. Why? Because it’s not theirs.

Use percentages to your advantage. So, I would encourage you to say, “All right, I have about 20% of an idea here. I need your help with the other 80%.” And now, all of a sudden, they don’t see it as a competition. They don’t see you as a threat. They see it now as a collaboration to help get you to the 100%. Now they want to join in on it. Now they want to help. So, percentages is a quick little trick to help get conversation moving in the right direction.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. In your book, you’ve got a section called “The 47-Second Version.” Can you lay it on us?

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, rule number one, any time that you begin to try to control the other person in the conversation, you’ve lost. Instead of focusing on them, look for what’s going to control you. And you do that by regulating your emotions. The key to that is your breath. Let your breath be the first word that you say.

Two, the rule is how to say things with confidence, meaning you’re going to use your assertive voice. If you want to be more confident, then you have to sound more assertive. Confidence is as assertive does. So, you’re going to say things that’s not littered with adverbs, like literally, obviously, basically. You’re going to not over apologize or undercut your words. You’re going to sound more assertive and, therefore, feel more confident.

Three, when it comes to saying things to connect, it’s all about making sure that, when you have that difficult conversation, you’re upfront instead of going, “Hey, so how are you and your kids? You good? Okay. Hey, listen…” Instead of that typical horrible beginning to difficult conversation, just tell it to them.

It’s going to sound like, “This is going to be hard to hear,” or, “This is going to be tough for us to talk about,” or simply, “This is going to be a hard conversation.” Anytime you can lead with the honesty and directness, it’s going to always end in a much better outcome.

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

Jefferson Fisher
My grandfather has this line that he laid on me when I was a teenager. I was telling him about something I had done, and I was kind of frustrated about it and I didn’t feel good about it. And as soon as I told him, he looked at me, and he said, “Well, son, you can’t look back and hoe a straight row.” That was his line.

Meaning, anybody who gardens, if you’re hoeing the ground, if you look back, it’s going to be zigzag. You can’t be able to do a straight line. You always have to look forward. And that’s been a philosophy that stuck with me.

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

Jefferson Fisher
One of my very good friends is Vanessa Van Edwards. She also does a lot of communication. She does like body cues and stuff. And her, I forget the exact number on it, but how quickly we can make our opinions about someone in a first impression.

And so, that to me is just you treasure the time that you first meet someone because you never get that chance again. After you met them, you’ve already met them. And so, I just love the idea of you have a chance to really cultivate something cool with the first person that you meet for the first time.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jefferson Fisher
Right now, well, it has been for a long time, “Team of Rivals.” It’s a book on Abraham Lincoln. And Doris Goodwin, she’s just fantastic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m an Illinois boy, so we love our Lincoln. And a favorite tool?

Jefferson Fisher
I have this thing called Tonal. I’m not sponsored by them in any way, but it’s a workout machine.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, a workout thing.

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, it’s a workout machine. It’s fantastic. Fantastic. I use it every day, and I’m in better shape than I was when I played in college, so it’s awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was about to ask about a favorite habit. Is it using the Tonal or something else?

Jefferson Fisher
Yeah, I do really like Tonal. My favorite hobby is finding new music. I love finding new music. In a different life, I would have loved to have been the person who goes to, like, little dive bar concerts and finds this, you know, new talent. I love new music. I love music festivals. I play several instruments. So, I love that world. So, I’m always looking for new artists on Spotify.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that gets quoted back to you often and retweeted and Kindle book highlighted?

Jefferson Fisher
It’d probably be that “Never win an argument” line. Here’s one that I would leave with for anybody who finds themselves to be a people pleaser, and it would be this. It’s okay to be a people pleaser as long as you’re one of them. That’s what I like.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m going to chew you on that already. So, you can please other people, but you got to make sure you are also one of the people being pleased, as opposed to a sacrificial martyr who becomes bitter.

Jefferson Fisher
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It’s okay to be a people pleaser. Just make sure you’re one of them.

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

Jefferson Fisher
So, they can go anywhere on social media. My Instagram is my favorite on Jefferson Fisher. You can find my accounts there at JeffersonFisher.com. You can get “The Next Conversation” wherever you like to get books – Amazon, they’re in stores now, airports. It’s been a whole lot of fun, so, yeah.

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

Jefferson Fisher
Believe in the power of your next conversation. It doesn’t matter if you and another person haven’t always hit it off. You can change everything with simply what you decide to say next. It really does make a difference.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jefferson, thank you.

Jefferson Fisher
Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

Apr 24
0

1052: Building Better Relationships through Radical Listening with Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener shares powerful insights on how to listen well and deepen your connections.

You’ll Learn

  1. The hidden barriers to listening
  2. Why we should interrupt more
  3. The secret to handling disagreements better

About Robert

Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener is a researcher, author, and consultant with 75 peer-reviewed academic articles and has over 27,000 citations. His previous books include The Upside of Your Dark Side (New York Times Bestseller, 2014), and the 2007 PROSE Award winner, Happiness. He has presented keynotes to Lululemon, Deloitte, Humana, AARP, The World Bank, and others. In 2024, Thinkers50 named Robert one of the “50 Most Influential Executive Coaches in the World.” He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he enjoys drawing and rock climbing.

Resources Mentioned

Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Robert, welcome.

Robert Biswas-Diener
Thank you, Pete, so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to hear about your wisdom. And you’ve got the coolest nickname ever, one I think I would like for myself. You’re known as the Indiana Jones of positive psychology. So, I’m imagining rolling boulders, whips, all kinds of adventures. Tell me, what’s the source of this nickname? And can you give us an amazing adventure and discovery to back it up?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. Like all nicknames, I did not give it to myself. That is important for everyone.

Pete Mockaitis
“They call me T-Bone.”

Robert Biswas-Diener
Everyone should know that right up front. One of my colleagues said this about me because, unlike other psychologists, I wasn’t just running studies in the laboratory with college students. I was going out in the field, and pretty far field. I was studying happiness, among other things, with the Amish, for example, with Maasai tribal people. I stayed in the very Northern tip of Greenland where I was working with Inuit hunters. So, I spent several years, almost five years sort of traveling the world and studying happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Thank you. So, we’re talking about your book, Radical Listening, and I’d love to get to kick us off with an inspiring story of someone who upgraded their listening game and saw phenomenal results coming from that.

Robert Biswas-Diener
Yeah, absolutely. There is a woman I interviewed, in fact, for this book, she’s a very senior leader, works in an international organization. In fact, they own a bunch of subsidiaries, which means their footprint is across industry, across linguistic groups, across cultures, across national boundaries.

And she always thought of herself as a fantastic listener, but then she realized, “I really can’t even understand the language of some of these people. I don’t understand the cultural fabric or context of many of the people I’m trying to listen to. And perhaps most importantly, my role suggests that I’m not even interested in what they’re interested in.”

So, she’s thinking big strategic ideas, and they’re often looking at just sort of day-to-day operations. And she realized that she kind of just fundamentally can’t understand them, that her role is an obstacle to listening. And one of the things she did was recruited listening ambassadors to listen on her behalf and become sort of like Rosetta Stones or translators of the line worker up to the senior leadership.

And so, the thing I think is so remarkable about that is not just that she recruited these ambassadors, which is kind of a cool idea, but that she recognized the limits in her own listening and moved to correct it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there’s a fun thought, a listening ambassador, and, in some ways, it feels a lot more wholesome and upright than, I guess, the non-consensual listening ambassadors called a spy. It’s like, “Spy on people and gather the information,” as opposed to a listening ambassador is like, “Oh, we all know what’s going on here. And I feel appreciated because you have made an investment to have someone gather my perspective when it may be difficult because of a language barrier or geographic barrier or something to see what’s going on.”

So, that’s a fun idea in and of itself in its specificity, but also, in terms of a general concept of, “Let’s take listening seriously. Let’s invest in it. Let’s build some infrastructure and acknowledge how valuable this is and get after it.”

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. Let me just say that I’m very tickled that you used spy as an example. My co-author and I on Radical Listening used loads of examples of professional listeners, psychotherapists, managers, all sorts of people who listen for a living. And we did not include espionage as an industry among it, but only through oversight. As soon as you said it, I wish that we would have included that in the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, maybe the sequel, we’ll see. But I’m sure you’ve got boatloads of insights for us and we want to dig into it. Tell us, is there a key message or big idea that you capture in your book, Radical Listening, that folks who want to be awesome at their jobs should know?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. It is time for listening to have a refresh. Let’s start there. All of us grew up with or have been trained in so-called active listening. And active listening is a good start, you know, make eye contact, summarize what the person says, check for clarification, “Am I reading you right?” It really emphasizes comprehension and it positions listening as if it’s just about understanding.

And what we do to extend that is suggest that there are many intentions for listening, that you might listen in order to entertain a group, you might listen to just appreciate someone, you might listen to influence, you might listen to learn something, you might listen to argue or rebut. And whatever your intention is, that’s going to direct your attention. And it’s a very, very efficient form of listening. So, a courtroom litigator, for example, is not listening to validate opposing counsel. They don’t care how…

Pete Mockaitis
“It must be really hard for you, plaintiff. It must be really difficult.”

Robert Biswas-Diener
That’s exactly right. Just like, “Ah, I can really see that this must be difficult,” or, “Wow, even trying this case must be such a burden. I’m sure you had to stay up late,” all those types of things. That’s out the window. And you don’t even have to worry about what’s the emotional state of the opposition. Instead, you’re just focused on the things that are goal-oriented for you. So, weak evidence, spurious arguments, logical fallacies, inconsistencies, and that’s what you’re listening for.

And it turns out that whatever your intention, if you want to listen to validate someone, you are going to listen for their emotions. If you want to listen to learn, you’re going to listen, pay attention to key words, to connections between what they’re saying and your own web of knowledge. So, just the idea that there are multiple intentions, you should know your intention, and your intention guides your attention.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Robert, is it fair to say that our limited human brain capacity can’t have it all, we can’t get all the logic and all the learning and all the education and all the emotion at once?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. I’m glad that you’re bringing that up because I do think it’s a common belief, and I certainly have held this belief in the past, that, “Oh, I’m a great listener, and I can just sort of sponge all of it up. I’m getting everything. I’m getting the motive behind what you’re saying. I’m noticing what you’re not saying. I’m noticing your tone of voice. I’m noticing everything.” And it’s just not the way that attention works. So, being a bit more judicious with this limited resource can be, I think, very productive.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s lay out the flavors of intention, just make sure we have the full menu documented here.

Robert Biswas-Diener
So, broadly speaking, you might think of there are sort of three umbrellas that we could put these intentions under. One is sort of pro-social motives for listening, so, “I’m listening to appreciate you. I’m listening to connect with you. I’m listening to partner with you to solve a problem.” Those would be three pro-social motives.

Three anti-social motives, “I’m listening to find fault. I’m listening to undermine you.” Those are kind of related. And, thirdly, “I’m listening to defend myself against you.” And then we also have three, kind of, we call them self-focused, although I’m not sure, to be honest, that’s the best way to look at it. But these are just three things that sort of help me. And that is, “I’m just listening to learn something new. I’m listening for comprehension,” that’s sort of the classic act of listening. And those are kind of the two big motives that are helpful to me as the listener.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a distinction between listening to learn something new and listening for comprehension?

Robert Biswas-Diener
So, listening for comprehension is, “Do I understand what I’m hearing?” Learning is, “Now that I understand it, can I integrate it? Can I find use for it? Can I synthesize it with my own existing body of knowledge and skill in usable ways?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then I suppose the implication of this is to thoughtfully choose your intention upfront in advance of the conversation, as opposed to just showing up in whatever brain state you happen to be wearing at the moment.

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. And where you see this go wrong, imagine a team meeting, for example, where you’ve got a pretty funny person on the team and they just keep cracking jokes. And it’s nice when it works because it cuts through tension, it lightens the mood, but maybe they default to it too often. And it’s because that’s just sort of a default listening mode for them, like, “I’m just listening to entertain people.”

So, those kinds of people listen for pauses because pauses are where you insert jokes. They’re listening for themes because themes are what you’re going to riff on. But it might not be helpful because that might not be what is needed. So, you also need some alignment with sort of what is contextually or situationally appropriate.

If someone wants feedback on a presentation, you should be directing your attention towards that, “I want to listen with a critical ear and see what works, what doesn’t. What do I know about you in terms of your ability to take feedback? How much do I need to sugarcoat it?” those types of things. So, a little bit of matching your listening intention with what’s being asked for.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think it’s interesting how we may very well have that default mode. You mentioned entertainment, which I guess wasn’t on the menu. So, I guess there’s many flavors beyond the eight you’ve suggested is my takeaway there, is that we may very well have a default state all the time in terms of– I remember I had a sweet friend and mentor, Marilyn, and she just knew this guy who was a billionaire, and she just thought that was cool.

And she was working with some students and she just thought, “Hey, these students have an entrepreneurial interest. They might just have fun, you know, dinner with this guy. I know him, I know the students, let’s just do this.” And so, she’s talking to with the person, and he just says immediately, “Okay, so what do you want?” because that’s what he’s accustomed to. It’s like, “People tap on me to make requests of my resources.”

And she said, “Well, I’m sorry that this is just how life goes for you. We just think it’d be fun to hang out and get to know you and learn a little bit about your world.” And he’s like, “Oh, well, that sounds really nice. Let’s set it up.”

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. And one of the things I like about that story is that what they’re trying to do in a very explicit way is just make sure that they’re aligned, “What is it you’re asking for? What is it I want?” We all know times that someone sort of complains to you and really all they want is a bit of validation.

They just want you to say, “I get it. You’re a victim. You’ve been done wrong here. I’m so sorry. You’ve put on a brave face. You’re doing great.” And instead, what we give them is a bunch of advice and try and solve their problem. And when that misalignment happens, it actually is a bit destructive to the relationship. It feels off and disconnecting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that sounds like a key benefit just right there. It’s like when you’re matching the intention appropriately, relationships are enriched because this folk, is like, “Oh, this is beautiful. This person is giving me just what I need in this moment, and it just feels good. And I like them more and I am less annoyed and frustrated with them.”

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. And, look, I want to be cautious and honest. I’m not one of these people that writes a book, like, “Oh, I wrote a book on listening. And guess what? I happen to think that listening is the thing that’s going to cure the world and all the problems.” I don’t think that. I think listening is sort of like opening the door, but then you still have to walk through it and do some exploration. I think listening is a good start.

I think listening, in the way that you just mentioned, where you kind of listen with positive intent, you have respect, you both feel aligned, that’s a great place then to build a relationship, then to cooperate, then to engage in teamwork or change or whatever it is you’re going to do. So, I think it starts with listening, but I don’t think listening by itself is the whole picture.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And let’s say we’re all in, Robert. That sounds great. I would like to do that and I would like to do that well and I could see the benefits. And yet, you also highlight a few internal barriers to listening. Can you lay these out for us?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. In all honesty, this is one of my favorite parts of everything my co-author and I have put down on the page. Some of the barriers, everyone’s going to already have an intuition about, “Oh, let me guess, distraction, technology, your phone.” Sure. All of those are barriers. But the ones that I think are really kind of almost the insidious ones are the ones that you may be less aware of.

So, for example, feeling that you’re right about something is a barrier to learn, “I mean, why listen, because I already know? I already have made up my mind and foreclosed on my own rightness about this.” Politeness can be a barrier to listening. Like, instead of really paying attention to you, I’ve just sort of dismissed in my mind what you’re saying and I’m just nodding along and saying, “Yes, yes, yes,” even though I don’t mean it, and I’ve just checked out, but politeness is sort of this cloth that I’m swaddled in that protects me from real listening.

One that I find really interesting, I call it walk with me. In the book, we call it time urgency. And it’s this idea that you go to someone and you’re like, “Hey, I’ve got something I need to speak with you about,” and they say something along the lines of, “Walk with me. I’ve got a meeting here, it’s going to start in eight minutes, but come with me, walk with me.”

And it’s so well-intentioned. To the listener, the person saying “Walk with me,” it’s this idea that, “Oh, look at me, how gracious I am. I’m making time for you.” But it can really feel awful to the person who has this urgent request. They’re sort of saying, “There’s something very important.”

And you’re saying, “My mind is already to the next thing. At best, I’m wedging you in. I am already a bit distracted. I’m giving you a limited amount of time and we’re catering to my needs rather than your needs. In fact, you’re going somewhere you hadn’t even intended to go.”
And so, although it’s well-intentioned, I think it runs the risk. And there’s a whole bunch of these that are well-intentioned, but run the risk of just standing in the way of great listening.

Pete Mockaitis
More of those, please. Lay them on us.

Robert Biswas-Diener
These are cousins, conceptually speaking. One is comparing. And we’ve all done this. Comparing is when someone mentions an experience and then you’re like, “Hey, I’ve also had that experience.” And so, you share that with them. They say, “Oh, yeah, I went to Hong Kong last summer.” You’re like, “Oh, wow, you know what? I went to Hong Kong last summer, too.”

And again, it’s well intentioned because what you’re trying to communicate is, “Look, we have this common ground. We have a shared experience. Like, we’re cut from the same cloth.” And yet, what it does is it sort of shifts the spotlight away from them. It often does work, which is why we do it. But when it doesn’t work, it’s sort of like saying, “Enough about you and your Hong Kong stories. Let’s talk about me and my Hong Kong stories.”

And the cousin to it is competing. And this happens when, often in a complaint scenario, when someone will say something like, “I was up till 2:00 working on that report last night. I only got six hours of sleep, so I’m a little tired today.” And as a rejoinder, you say, “Six hours of sleep? I only got three hours of sleep.”

Again, it’s well-intentioned. You’re not trying to put them down or invalidate them. You’re trying to say, “We’re cut from the same cloth. We’re both people who are sleep-deprived,” but it comes across, oftentimes, as being dismissive.

So, there’s many of these things that are intuitively appealing to us as conversationalists that I think serve as these kinds of murky barriers that we might not even be aware of that, that often sort of burst the bubble of connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what seems the underlying theme of all of these is, “To what extent are we allowing our conversational counterpart, our interlocutor…” I’m thinking Plato, “…to take center stage?” versus, “Does it need to be about me?”

Robert Biswas-Diener
One hundred percent. And I think that is the core of Radical Listening is the idea that, “When I interact with you, I want you to feel like you do have a spotlight on you, that I do have genuine concern for what you’re talking about, that you do have the space to articulate your thoughts, agenda, ideas, opinions, whatever it is that you want to share.” And whenever we sort of grab the podium away, that’s where things get problematic.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’m reminded of, I had just a fun conversation with a midwife who said that she used to work in hospice, and she was amazed when the family arrived in the final days before someone was about to pass away. And she said, “I was astounded at everyone’s ability to make the dying person about them. It’s like, ‘You know, I just got the call. I had to change my flight.” Like all these things, like, as the hustle and bustle, as they get into the hospital room, like in the final days, because they’re like, “Hey, you better get here because they don’t have much time left.”

And she said, “I was amazed at how this happened again and again and again.” And I think it’s really telling because it’s an extreme situation and it highlights that, for many of us, I mean, it sounds bad, but I guess it’s maybe accurate language. We have such a self-centered preoccupation running in our brains, we don’t even realize how off-putting it can be. And that happens maybe, I don’t know, for some of us all the time and for some of us, you know, occasionally. But it’s sort of spooky how common this blind spot is.

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. And it’s all of us. It’s me. It’s probably you to some extent. We are the protagonists in the plays of our own lives, right? And if someone said, “Oh, by the way, do you know you’re actually just a supporting character?” That’s kind of an unsettling way of thinking. One of the things I noticed about you, Pete, I mean, as a professional listener, right, you’re listening to guests all the time, but you’re sort of doing this balance of it’s not only about the guest.

I mean, if you were just silent and then the guest spoke the entire time, that wouldn’t be very gratifying either. So, there is this sort of dance between you inserting key moments, but giving sort of the lion’s share to the guests. And, in general, I think that’s kind of how conversations go, that if you listen with respect, you really make the person feel valued in what they’re saying, then it will come back around to you and you will get to be the main character for a time. But then you also have to be ready to relinquish that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, Robert, it’s an interesting situation here because, I mean you no disrespect, but the most important stakeholder in this conversation isn’t here and it’s the listener and it’s all in service of them. And so, it just happens to work out nicely that we’re both fascinated by this topic that we’re in, because I get tons of pitches and we reject the vast majority of them.

So, the fact that we’re here means I’m into it, you’re into it, and that’s just good, and that’s good content for a listener. But, yeah, it’s interesting because that’s the game, is if you have the coolest story, but it’s not in service of the listener, I’m going to try to move us on and then the audio editors will remove it later. And that’s kind of the game we’re playing right now.

Robert Biswas-Diener
It’s so interesting. I never, in a million years, would admit to what I’m about to admit to.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m into it.

Robert Biswas-Diener
Yeah, but I’m going to because of the direction that this conversation just took. During this conversation that we have been having, in my mind, because I’m also monitoring what I’m saying, a thought popped into my head and it was, “Be careful not to give away all the content of the book, Robert, right, because you want the listeners out there to be hungry for more and to go buy the book.”

And as soon as I had that thought, I thought of that as a disservice to the listener. And I thought, “Really, this is in the service of the listener. What we want is to give them as much usable content, as many fresh ideas as possible. And whether they buy the book, don’t buy the book, should not be my primary concern because that is that egotistical bias. But instead, I really should be doing this in service of them. Can I just tell you as much information as possible and you, the listener, can decide what’s useful for you?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, while we’re riffing on these things, that reminds me of, I’ve been reflecting lately. I think it was by this book by Marcus, somebody, called They Ask, You Answer, and it’s about content marketing. And so, he says, “Consumers find it very frustrating,” and I agree. If I’m on a website and I want to know, say, “Hey, what’s this thing costs?” and they will not give me a price, or even like a guideline of what the price might be, it’s frustrating.

Because, as consumer, it’s like, “You know the price or the price range, and I know that you know it, and you know that I know that you know it, but you’re choosing not to give it to me,” especially on a frequently asked questions, an FAQ, “Really the price is not one of the frequently asked questions? That seems like among the most frequently of asked questions.”

And so, likewise, there are some YouTube channels or podcasts, and I won’t, you know, poo-poo them by name, but it sits a little bit wrong with me when I know. I’m all about building curiosity and teasing and being intriguing. But if they say, you know, for example, if we were to tease this interview and we started with you with a clip saying, “And the number one most transformational key to listening is…” and it like bleeps it out and it like blurs it.

It’s like I, as a listener, a consumer, I find that troubling because like, “You know it, I know it, you’re deliberately withholding it from me. And I don’t like that. And in order to get me to listen, to watch more, to view the ads, or whatever. And I think it’s counterproductive. Because if you give me something mind-blowing, I’m like, ‘Whoa, Robert, this guy has got insights. I better listen to more of him.’” So that’s just my take on that practice.

Robert Biswas-Diener
Well, I absolutely love your take. And I love the direction that this conversation has taken because it’s like a real moment of authenticity in, otherwise, what could feel scripted. You ask me some questions about the book. I’ve been on lots of podcasts. I give you lots of answers that I’m pretty practiced at. But here, suddenly, we’re getting into, I think, a very real example of listening and all the foibles around listening, which is sometimes I have my own agenda and it interferes with another agenda. Sometimes I’m not sure what to do. Sometimes I don’t have a clear intention.

And all of this is happening within us while we’re trying to be good listeners. And that just feels very realistic to me. So, I’m not a person that’s like, “Oh, go buy the book, learn these five steps, and I promise you, you’re going to be a transformed, perfect listener.” You won’t. I mean, I think that you’ll learn more about listening. You might appreciate listening more. You might experiment with some things. People might notice that you’re listening a bit better. And I think there is some mileage to be had in that kind of realism.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I understand that you cannot give us the magical spells, the super five things that will cure all listening foibles but, nonetheless, I do want some of your actionable tips. Do we have some big dos and don’ts that just make a tremendous difference in your listening and all the relationship goodness that unfolds with great listening?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. So, we present six skills and, again, let’s be honest, there could be eight skills, there could be five skills. We chose six. Three of them we think of are internal. They’re things that would be invisible to your interlocutor. They’re just happening within you mentally. And three of them are behavioral, things that your conversational partner would notice.

So, I’ll just give you one that’s a little counterintuitive about what you would notice, one of the behavioral ones. We say that interjecting, or if you prefer, interrupting, is a highly engaged form of listening. And for most people that’s pretty counterintuitive. Most people have learned that politeness equals turn-based conversation, you speak, I speak, you speak, I speak, back and forth. And yet there are excellent reasons to interrupt.

So, I’ll just start by saying that if interruption is just overlapping speech, if that just means two people are speaking simultaneously, we’re all doing it all the time. So, if I say, “Mm-hmm,” while you’re talking, that’s a short interruption. If I say, “Oh, wow,” while you’re talking, that’s a bigger interruption. If I say, “What? Wait, I can’t believe it. No way,“ while you’re talking, that’s an even bigger interruption.

If I jump in and say, “Wait a minute. Say that again. What?” those are all forms of interruptions, and those are excellent because they show the person, “I care about what’s happening. I’m right here with you.” And the alternative is letting the person prattle on for 10 minutes. And then in return, you say, “There’s something you said 10 minutes ago that I’d like to go back to.” And that can feel really kind of dismissive to the person because they’re like, “Why did you just let me talk for 10 minutes if the thing that was interesting to you happened 10 minutes ago?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really strong perspective. But, again, following that principle of your conversation partner is taking center stage, the interruptions are in service of them and your understanding, like, “Wait a minute. He said what? But didn’t he just say the opposite?” Or we could go, “Yes, he did. And that’s why this is a big deal.”

And so, you could see how the conversational vibe goes into a very connected place with that interruption as opposed to waiting, and just makes sure you clarify. It’s like, “Wait, Robert? Oh, no, that Robert. Oh, okay, now I’m tracking with you. I’m on the same page.”

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. And that clarification, that’s a perfect example, and we do these all the time. Another type is called an alert. So, let’s say you and I are both talking about that Robert, and here comes Robert, but you can’t see him because your back is to him. And I might say, “Pete, shut up. Here he comes.” That’s an alert and that’s an interruption, but you never think that’s rude because you think it’s in the service of you. So, anytime that I’m essentially jumping in, but then returning the turn to speak to you, people just don’t even clock it as rude at all.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, interruptions can be helpful. What else you got?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Absolutely. Let’s do one on the other side of the fence. One of the internal skills. Let’s start with just, I think, a tough one, and that’s acceptance. This is probably the toughest skill we have, and I just say it like, “Oh, just accept the other person and what they’re saying.” But anyone who’s been alive for five minutes knows that that’s really, really a hard pill to swallow.

So, what we mean when we say acceptance is not that you are agreeing with the point of view. You’re welcome to present counter evidence, alternatives but, at some point, you have to sort of understand that the person you’re speaking with has a right to a point of view. And to do this, it requires some personal intellectual humility. And intellectual humility is like a cousin to actual humility.

Humility is thinking that you have no more fundamental worth than another person. But intellectual humility is a recognition that you are limited, that you haven’t figured it all out, that you do have some natural biases, that you do have a skewed vision, that your personal experience colors your vision of life. And it’s fine for you to come up with moral reasoning or professional expertise, but it’s equally fine for another person. And you can’t just assume, you’re wiser, you’re smarter, and you happen to have landed on the truth, lucky you.

You should think, “You know what, that person may have different values, they’ve had different experiences, they have a different professional role, and so they’re going to arrive at slightly different conclusions. I don’t ever have to agree with them, but I always have to respect their right to have them.” And that takes some work, but when you engage in that, you have more types of conversations and you open a door to conversations that you might otherwise avoid that can ultimately be productive conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us an example?

Robert Biswas-Diener
I think, day to day, this happens at work all the time. And it’s just, you know, one person wants to greenlight a project and the other person says, “No, I don’t think we have capacity for it right now,” or, “I don’t think it’s fleshed out well enough,” or, “I don’t think the strategy is in place for it.”

And you have two totally opposing views. And often what happens is the two parties are embattled and they simply aren’t listening. It becomes this sort of feat of who can bully the other into getting their way, “If only I can lob so much evidence at you, so much passion at you, I’ll convince you that my chosen direction is the right direction.”

But it gets back to the kind of that seven habits idea, you know, first seek to understand and then be understood. Kind of like, “Look, I already know what I think, but I am curious what you think. What is it you’re looking at? What is it you’re seeing that I’m not seeing?” And when you do that, every once in a while, you’re surprised. It helps you retain a more positive view of the person you’re talking about.

They’re not just some, you know, bumbling dolt that that happen to arrive at something, that they actually are pretty thoughtful and pretty intentional in their approach. And you may or may not get what you want out of that, but it is going to lead to a better team dynamic in that.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, Robert, tell me anything else you want to make sure to put out there before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Robert Biswas-Diener
I’ll just mention that this applies, to some degree, across cultures, but culture is kind of interesting. We learn cultural scripts for interacting with one another. I’ve recently been traveling with someone. I’m American, and the person I was traveling with was not American. And I just realized that they didn’t have a script for some basic conversations.

Like, “How does this coffee shop banter work? The person asked me how I was, not just what I wanted to order. And I don’t know the level of depth I should be answering that question in, how much honesty I should be giving them.” Things that we would just take for granted because we have a good intuitive sense for those kinds of answers.

I was in the elevator with him and I was speaking to strangers on the elevator, and he’s like, “How did you know you could do that? What were you taking into account that made it okay for you to speak with strangers?” And I just started realizing, “Wow, this is really, really different across cultures.” And some of the things that listening does across cultures is, for example, the role of silence.

People interpret silence differently across cultures. So, for example, in Japan, just to use one instance, silence is often considered respectful. It is a sign of thoughtfulness and it’s usually perceived as something, not the absence of something, and you are kind of paying attention to silences. So, like, if people aren’t talking, maybe it means they don’t agree, but they don’t want to say it. And so, you are kind of trying to read the silence a bit.

Whereas, you imagine in the United States, silence is often felt as awkward and we rush to fill it in. So, some of these kind of communication exchanges, some of the communication technology is going to shift a little bit based on people’s cultural script.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Robert Biswas-Diener
It comes from George Bernard Shaw’s play, “Julius Caesar,” and it is, “Forgive him, Theodotus, for he is a barbarian, and thinks the ways of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” And I just love the idea of kind of intellectual humility built into that.

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

Robert Biswas-Diener
One of my colleagues, Shige Oishi, had people shoot basketballs or shoot darts, and he saw how well they did at each. And he invited them back the next week and said, “Take your choice. Do you want to do baskets or darts?” And the Americans who did well at one wanted to stay with it and keep doing the one because they wanted, wanted to stay with the thing that they felt good about.

And the Asians and Asian Americans in his study, if they did well on one, they wanted to shift and do the opposite one because they were more inclined to want to master something new. And I’ve always just felt like that was a very clever methodology and a very interesting cultural study.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Robert Biswas-Diener
This is a recency effect, but I just finished Dracula and I loved it.

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

Robert Biswas-Diener
A pen.

Pete Mockaitis
Any particular brand or type or features?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Well, I do a lot of drawing also, so I like anything that doesn’t smear, but I just use a lot of Bic roller balls.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Robert Biswas-Diener
Oh, my favorite habit is to wake up extraordinarily early and draw for one hour before I start the day. I always prioritize my wellbeing so that I feel strong and centered before embarking on everything else I’m going to do.

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

Robert Biswas-Diener
Yeah, a recent one, and I stole this actually from my co-author, but just the idea that you should remember that everyone is in the middle of something. And if you just approach everyone all the time with, “You know what, they’re in the middle of something. I’m in the middle of something. They’re in the middle of something,” it can make you a little bit more forgiving and a little bit more patient.

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

Robert Biswas-Diener
I would point them to my website, IntentionalHappiness.com. And I’d love to hear from people.

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

Robert Biswas-Diener
Yeah, absolutely. And let’s keep it thematically aligned with listening. I would pay attention to times that you, this coming week, feel really listened to, and note what the other person is doing. What’s happening that makes you feel so heard, so validated? And see then if that’s what you can do to pay it forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Robert, thank you.

Robert Biswas-Diener
Oh, thanks so much. This was super fun.

Mar 27
0

1044: Becoming the Boss that Everyone Wants to Work For with Sabina Nawaz

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Sabina Nawaz shows you how to cope with the pressures that come with leadership.

You’ll Learn

  1. The perils of getting promoted
  2. Why asking for feedback isn’t enough
  3. The power of shutting up

About Sabina

Sabina Nawaz is an elite executive coach who advises C-level executives and teams at Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic institutions around the world. During her fourteen-year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company’s executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly a thousand executives.  She is the author of YOU’RE THE BOSS: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need).

 

Resources Mentioned

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Sabina Nawaz Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Sabina, welcome!

Sabina Nawaz
Thanks so much, Pete. Looking forward to this.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited. You have studied managers up close and personal and in the trenches with them. Could you start us off by sharing one of the most particularly surprising and fascinating and counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about us humans and managing from all your years at work here?

Sabina Nawaz
So, this book is not about how to become successful. It’s how to remain successful, and it’s about not all the things that people know, but what do they not know, as you said, counterintuitive stuff. Three of those.

One, being promoted is the riskiest time in your career. It is not power that corrupts, but pressure that corrupts. Pressure changes, not only stresses you out, but changes your actions. And power then blinds you to the impact of those actions. So, the higher you go, the less you know about the impact your actions are having on other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, those are big, and those are heavy. Well, I’m excited to dig into all of these promptly. But maybe, first, before we do, can you maybe just orient us to what’s the big idea or main message behind the book, You Are the Boss?

Sabina Nawaz
The main message is that pressure and power can be used for good or for harm. It’s your choice. And the choice comes from not needing to get a personality transplant, or to go on retreats for weeks on end, or to study emotional intelligence for the rest of your life, which I would still recommend you do, but by making a choice to use some simple tools and strategies to tackle the combined effect of the diabolical twins of power and pressure. The higher you go, the more important this becomes.

Pete Mockaitis
Diabolical twins. Okay. We’re sounding the alarm. We’re raising the flag. Okay. Well, so maybe could you share with us a story of the destructive potential that might be lurking for us that we’re not even aware of? So how about you give us a twin tale? Let’s hear a tale of surprised destruction, and a tale of disaster averted through prudent preparation.

Sabina Nawaz
Well, I’ll start with my own tale, because I tell a lot of tales in the book about a number of my clients, and I am not immune from this. I was a lousy manager at Microsoft, but that wasn’t always true. At first, I managed software teams and most of my people said I was the best boss they ever had, I cared for them, I coached them. Those were great years. And then everything changed.

I was running Microsoft’s management development when I was about eight months pregnant. My boss left the company so I took on her job responsibilities, and on my first day, as I’m getting ready to get back to work from parental leave, my assistant Lori calls me, frantic, “Where are you? Steve’s expecting you in 30 minutes.”

She reads the memo I’m supposed to discuss with Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, as I’m hitting warp speed on my way to the freeway. And that set the tone, Pete, for overflowing inbox, packed calendar, infant at home, no peace, no sleep, no patience. I’m sure this sounds familiar to you and to your listeners. And, in a moment, I went from being caring and compassionate to snippy and short. Still 5’3″, but now short-tempered.

In my rush to meet those deadlines, I had no time for detailed instructions or to repeat myself, and I thought I was being efficient. I also micromanaged because I was worried that my team or I would look incompetent to these high-level executives. So, I’m thinking, “I’m killing it. I’m being efficient. Look at how much we’re getting done for the senior-most people in the organization,” until my colleague, Joe, comes to me.

And I take one look at Joe and I know he’s about to give me bad news. My shoulders are tightening, and then Joe says, “Zach is crying in his office because of what you said.” And my gut falls to the floor. Joe has my full attention, not multitasking as usual, and I feel my whole body turned hot from shame, I cannot make eye contact with Joe, I feel so guilty, and I think, “How did I get here? How did I go from being caring and compassionate to this, somebody people apparently fear and really don’t like?”

So, I take a drink of water, I walked across the hallway, knocked on Zach’s door, “Will you go for a walk with me?” And a minute into the walk, I say, “Zach, I’m so sorry. There’s no excuse for how I reacted in that meeting.” And Zach’s eyes brim with tears. And it was in that moment of connection, Pete, I realized, “This is what I want, to treat people with humanity.”

But why had I started behaving badly all of a sudden? Why did I have no idea about it, the impact it was having? And why did more people not tell me? Because pressure corrupts. I wasn’t a bad person. I was a boss behaving badly. But the worst part is I had no idea because power then insulates us. So, that would be a story where things did not go well.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. And, Sabina, I hate to bring you into, it sounds like, a genuinely traumatic experience for you. But for the question mark lingering of curiosity for our listeners, they got to know, what did you say to Zach?

Sabina Nawaz
It wasn’t just one thing. The problem was it was a whole stream of things, which sounded like a stream of being discounted and insulted to Zach. So, he was about to bring up a new idea, and I said, “Nope.” And not only did I say it, I had my hand out there, right almost at his face, going, “We don’t have time for that,” expletive. “We need to get going. Did you not hear me the first time? We are under a really tight timeline.”

So, my voice is elevated. I’m cursing. My hand is out there in front of his face. And then another, a little later in the meeting, Zach says, “It’s okay if you say no to this idea, but can I bring it up?” And I said, “Yes.” And he brought up another new idea, and I said, “No,” right away. No, “Thank you for thinking through ideas. What made you suggest this right now?” None of that.

So, it was this very abrupt, shutting-down action that I reacted to. I stopped thinking. I certainly wasn’t leading. I wasn’t even thinking, and I’m just reacting, reacting to my circumstances and the pressure in an inexcusable fashion. And, you know, of course, as I’m sure you’re aware, when managers treat employees badly, employees then go back to their office, not just crying, but they play video games or research shows that they even deliberately sabotage results.

Pete Mockaitis
Update their LinkedIn, take a look at the opportunities out there.

Sabina Nawaz
Yes, start a secret group chat about you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Yeah, and thank you for sharing that. What’s really intriguing here is that, I think we hear stories associated with bosses behaving badly in these ways. And I’m thinking about Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, where he talks about demon mode, or, you know, tales of Steve Jobs, or any number of famous hard-charging executives. And I think what people often tend to assume is like, “Oh, that’s just their personality. That’s just their management style.”

And so, you’re posing something quite fresh, and it’s like, “Oh, no, perhaps we have a whole lot of humanity buried under there, and it’s these diabolical twins that is going to work on some of these people, and that’s why we see these behaviors manifesting.”

Sabina Nawaz
Absolutely. Absolutely. With very rare exceptions, just like there are no purely good people or purely bad people, we all have good behaviors and bad behaviors in us, there are no purely good bosses or bad bosses. It’s our reaction to the circumstances. That doesn’t mean it should take us off the hook, but it’s not inherent in our personalities.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. Well, so then, by contrast, could you share with us a tale of someone who got the heads up and didn’t end up succumbing?

Sabina Nawaz
Well, I’ll share the tale of somebody who did succumb, then got the heads up, because that’s what usually happens. I come in; the feedback I’d gotten about this person was he was terrible to work with. He was a bully, people called him a thug, and much worse, words that I won’t use on your show. And we worked together.

Now, this guy, Adam, suffered from what many of my clients suffer from, where they think they’re successful because of some of these traits, not despite these. So, they become innocent saboteurs in their own fate and the fate of their organizations, and that was certainly the case for Adam. He made jokes because he thought that was encouraging people. He used sarcasm to motivate them. Of course, this was all coming across as bullying behavior.

Once he recognized that, so this is why I was saying the heads up comes after the fact often, because nobody wants to tell the person in a position of power what they think they don’t want to hear.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, especially when they’re behaving in a way that says, “I might get my head ripped off for this.”

Sabina Nawaz
Exactly. “Who in their right mind is going to do that? Not only get my head ripped off, I might lose my job.” So, you continue on thinking you’re doing just fine, because, of course, people would give you feedback. You’ve asked for the feedback, haven’t you? Asking for feedback is a waste of time when you have high authority. You’ve got to deploy some other techniques.

And so, in Adam’s case, when I interviewed a bunch of his co-workers and got this devastating feedback, he did work to turn that around. By the way, I never experienced Adam as a bully or a jerk. I experienced him as a wonderful human being, because, of course, we didn’t have that power gap in our relationship through which everything gets filtered as more dire, more directed personally at us either.

And a year later, I interviewed people again, and then people said, “Oh, I was dreading having to work for him again. He’s so much more respectful. I trust him so much more. He is a thousand percent better.” So, that was a beautiful ending to that story.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, indeed. Okay. So, well then, let’s dig into these particular truths that you shared. When we’re promoted, it’s the riskiest time in our career. Can you expand on that?

Sabina Nawaz
Well, of course, it’s also a time for celebration when you’re promoted, but once the bubbly settles, what you might realize is that the very strengths, the superpowers that have gotten you there, are now going to be seen in a very different light. So, for example, as a manager, you can say exactly the same things you said before, but now they’re going to take on a harsher light, a louder tone, a more personal note for the next that are craning up. Their views are less charitable.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Let’s say you are somebody who’s assiduous about details, how might you be seen as a manager?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, a micromanager.

Sabina Nawaz
Yes, a micromanager. Let’s say you’re really calm under pressure, how might that come across?

Pete Mockaitis
You don’t care. You’re not invested.

Sabina Nawaz
Exactly. Ooh, we could keep going back and forth like this, but you get the idea. Strategic becomes manipulative. All of these things can be seen in a whole different light. You need to start to look at your strengths not from how you see them, but how they’re going to be seen from people below. The higher you go, the more that view gets distorted, like a funhouse mirror.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what do you recommend we do when we find ourselves in such a spot?

Sabina Nawaz
One of the first things you can do is, actually, inventory your strengths and start writing down ways in which others might describe it, and put yourself in those shoes. So, one of my direct reports, what would they say? One of my skip levels, what would they say? Somebody who’s a junior employee who reports to one of my peers? Somebody from the outside who now sees my bigger title? So, imagine those soundbites coming at you, and once you see that, you can start to temper things.

Somebody I worked with was very, very strategic, and she would take her time speaking up in meetings because she wanted to see where the thread of the conversation was going, who was speaking, who wasn’t speaking, what was the tone, what was the vibe of the meeting, and, people started thinking that she was very political instead of strategic. They said, “Oh, she’s going to go where the wind is blowing. She wants to see what people above her are saying,” and so on.

Once she recognized that piece of feedback, she went back to her team to explain to them what she was doing, “This is why I’m doing what I’m doing. I have a rule. I don’t speak up right away. And then let me show you, let me demonstrate to you how that has benefited. For example, I was going to go to this meeting and I went in with this particular point of view, but it wasn’t until I heard the third person speaking that I realized this point of view is actually incorrect and it’s going to antagonize, unintentionally, three people in that meeting. Wasn’t it better not to speak up first in that particular case?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy. Okay. Well, so it sounds like the master keys there are just let’s get a sense of what is the perception and then let’s provide some context, some explanation. It’s funny, that takes humility on both sides of that there.

First, to put yourself in a position where you’re willing to hear it, and then, secondly, to explain it. Because you might say, if you were less humble, “I’m the boss. I don’t have to explain myself to these folks.” And yet, it seems that, in order to be a great manager, maybe you very well do, in fact, need to.

Sabina Nawaz
Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you’re a manager who has a “yeah, but” raging at the moment, saying, “Yeah, but I don’t have time to do it,” think about how much time you spend undoing things and that it would take a fraction of the time to do it instead.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And you said simply asking for feedback doesn’t work. What’s the means by which we get to the truth?

Sabina Nawaz
Yes, this is really tough because here you have a boss who has no idea how they’re coming across, and an employee who’s not willing to tell you because of the fear that they have across this power gap. So, simply saying, “Hey, would you give me feedback when you notice something?” employees are going to say, “Yes, boss,” and all they’re going to give you is very mild stuff, cushioned in praise.

So, when they tell you everything is fine, what they’re actually meaning is, “Oh, what an ass.” So, you have no idea. So, first of all, any feedback you get, you might want to add a couple of numbers to it to upgrade the severity of what they’re saying. But here’s the other thing, you can actually ask more specific questions, because the quality of feedback you receive is directly proportional to the quality of the question you ask.

If you simply say, “How did I do in that presentation or that meeting?” people are going to say, “You were fantastic. In fact, you should get on the TED stage next week,” because that is not asking for feedback. That is simply asking for reassurance. Instead, if you said, “On a scale of 1 to 10, where was I?” Let’s say they say 8, which you know is going to actually mean a 6 or a 5.

Then you can say, “What would it take, what’s one thing I could do to get to a 9, to get to a plus 1? What’s one thing I did that worked well? What’s one thing I can do to get to a plus 1?” Don’t ask for too much feedback. If you cut it down to one thing, people are more likely to be able to give you something, and you’re more likely to be able to act on it.

One other way to ask for feedback is to externalize the ask. So, instead of saying, “Pete, what’s one thing I could do better at on this podcast?” I might say, “Pete, if you were to channel your most skeptical, your crustiest listener, what would they say about the one thing I could do better?” Now, Pete is freed up, it doesn’t impact our relationship. In fact, it looks like Pete is working for me by channeling some of his listeners.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot, especially when you’re the one asking for the feedback and you suggest the third-party voice. That seems like a real powerful combo. And I’m reminded of, well, some interviewers, I think John Stossel, in particular. He’s just always devil’s advocating, John Stossel. It’s like, “Well, some might say that this is just a means of bringing costs down, and that’s necessary.” He even has the voice, you know, which just cracks me up.

And so, it almost feels a little bit less than courageous when he says, “Hey, I’m not saying it, but it’s some third party,” which, at the same time, as an interviewer, can make your interviewee feel more comfortable, and so, you know, it works. But it’s even better to invite them to think about that third party.

Sabina Nawaz
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, so then, in terms of, like, the asking, is this sort of in person, via survey, email, all of the above? What’s the mechanism of collection that you favor?

Sabina Nawaz
All of the above is great. I favor direct conversation, in-person or virtual, of course, these days, especially, but somewhere where we are making eye contact, looking at each other and having a live conversation because you can start to read the cues of the person who’s providing you with that feedback as well, and you can tone it down a little bit more.

You can make sure you’re conveying nonverbal feedback at all times, because they’re, of course, hyper-aware of any twitch that’s going on on your face, because they’re going to go, “Oh, my gosh, I’m fired.” So, it allows for more information to be exchanged as you’re doing this process. It also shows that you truly care. You’re willing to invest live time for it as opposed to a survey.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. Well, thank you. Well, now let’s dig into a little bit the second thing you dropped there with regard to it’s not the power but the pressure that corrupts. Can you expand on that?

Sabina Nawaz
It’s just like when I had all that pressure in that job and I started acting out. So, by corrupting, I mean your behaviors change. Your behaviors change in a way that impact other people adversely. You raise your voice. You have a tone to your voice. You provide harsher criticism than necessary. You cut people off. You interrupt them. All of those things show up when you’re under pressure.

Now, of course, there’s not a single person on the planet who’s not under pressure both at work and outside of work. And I’m sure, Pete, that you have moments where you’ve been under pressure and you’ve done something you’re not proud of, and, gosh, it would be mortifying if that was caught on video and put up on YouTube or TikTok.

And so, it’s no different for bosses. The problem is that the higher we go, the more pressure we have on us, and the more likely we are that one of those is going to subvert our actions and take over.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then when we are in that spot where we are feeling the pressure, what are the best practices to not being a jerk?

Sabina Nawaz
The first thing is to just shut up, and I have this term called your shut-up muscle. And as a manager, it becomes important to buff up your shut-up muscle. So, there’s a shut-up exercise which has many steps, but a couple of those. First of all, be, at least, the third person to speak. There’s no reason for you to jump in the minute somebody asks a question.

All you’re doing there is training everyone to become over-reliant on you and take the back seat, be lazy, or not grow, or feel disempowered on the other side. So, be the third or later to speak. That would be one way to exercise your shut-up muscle.

Another, when you’re on video calls, put yourself on mute by default. So, when you have that fast twitch desire to speak, you can speak, and people are going to go, “Oh, you’re on mute.” And by the time you unmute, you can go, “Oh, actually, that train has passed. I’m good.” It gives your brain a moment to get out of that reactive mode and get back to your senses to be more strategic, and say, “Do I really need to say this thing? Not really.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. The shut-up muscle, that’s really good, because sometimes, in my experience, I am quick to speak because I’m excited, it’s like, “Oh, oh, that thing that you said. Also, this!” And so, I can see what you’re saying when you compare it to a muscle, is it takes some discipline, some restraint, some strength to say, “Yes, I’m very excited. And I can share that in 90 seconds, if it still seems valuable then, and that’s okay.”

Sabina Nawaz
And that’s another key piece, if it still feels valuable then. Another tool for the shut-up muscle is to take margin notes. That is, you’ve got your notepad, and, then in the margin, write down all of your ideas that you’re so excited about, that are getting in the way of you being fully present and likely to cause you to interrupt other people.

If you wait for a while, let’s say you have five notes in your margin, three of those might be suggested by somebody else. That’s great. That means that they’re taking initiative. They’re going to start working harder than you for a change and reduce some of the pressure on you. And the two things that haven’t been said, maybe only one of them needs to be said.

Now you’re going to have a lot more impact because you’ve gotten rid of what I call a communication fault line, which is verbal overkill. If you have just one thing to share and that one thing is shared just by you, it’s not an idea other people thought about, that’s a way you can truly add value in a meeting.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And can we hear about the power blinding us?

Sabina Nawaz
Well, it’s the part about “Who wants to get their head bitten off?” And also, with power comes the, well, power to take away or give things to other people that matter to them: a raise, a promotion, their very jobs. As a result, people are not going to say things to you that they think will displease you and that don’t feel safe. So, as a result, you’re cushioned by people who are saying yes all the time, cushioned by a lot of praise.

A CEO I worked with, it was the day before their CEO ship was going to get announced, and they said, “You know what, tomorrow I’m going to become the funniest person in this company,” because your jokes suddenly are funny, your ideas suddenly are brilliant. So, you get blind to what else might be going on.

Pete Mockaitis
And what shall we do in that scenario?

Sabina Nawaz
The end of the book has an assessment of 40-plus questions called “360 Yourself,” and it looks at every power gap, every kind of power gap and every kind of pressure pitfall you can fall into, and ask you a few questions to say, “Which of these do you fall into the most?” If you don’t have time, 15 minutes or so, to look at those 40 questions, think about these few.

One, you never receive pushback or different ideas once you’ve shared your idea. That might mean you’re in one of those blind power traps. People think you’re funnier, smarter, faster than you know you are. You justify all of your actions with a “yeah, but.” All of these so you can self-diagnose, “Hmm, yep, that’s happened, that’s never happened, this always happens, therefore, it must mean I’m surrounded in my own echo chamber.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, good to know. Well, Sabina, tell me, any other top do’s and don’ts you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Sabina Nawaz
Because pressure corrupts, and it’s so important to allow pressure to help you shine, like we sometimes do, you know, when we have that deadline and we’re at our most creative, we want pressure to fuel us, not eviscerate us. Our tendency when we get into pressure-full situations is to work harder, to hunker down.

So, my favorite strategy here is to employ what I call blank space, which is actually do nothing. It’s two hours a week, back-to-back, that you schedule to unplug. No reading, no online presence, no conversations. You simply sit and think. And if that’s too much for you, do it in baby steps. Start with 15 minutes or even 5 minutes or 30 seconds. We are human beings, not human doings, but we’re very uncomfortable just being.

Those clients who have taken that time to do blank space have had transformational results. They’ve transformed their companies, they’ve averted disaster from the competition, they’ve even changed their careers completely. It’s a game changer. It takes the calendar management discipline to actually take that time. And then you can do a variety of different things to make use of that time.

You could simply do nothing. You could go for a walk. You could lie in a hammock. These are all things people have done that have worked with me. You could doodle, mind map, draw pictures, whatever, because research shows that our best insights come when we switch off this very busy working part of our brain, right? We’re in the shower. We’re running. We’re commuting. Those are the times where those answers come.

So, when you’re under pressure, thinking, “I’m such a loser. When am I going to get fired? I’ve got to double down,” stop and do nothing and trust that you already know the answer. All you have to do is let the noise die down so that the signal becomes amplified.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So then, it sounds like there’s a variety of things that are acceptable during doing-nothing time, but what’s not okay is talking to other people or engaging with our digital devices.

Sabina Nawaz
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you can walk, you can lie, you can sit, you can have a notebook, and then just roll with it.

Sabina Nawaz
Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And then, in so doing, that’s when these brilliant, transformational, creative ideas just emerge. It’s during the do-nothing time, or is it after the do-nothing time? Or is it both?

Sabina Nawaz
Both. Sometimes you come back, I had somebody who had a near panic attack before his first blank-space time, like, “What do you mean? Tell me again. I’m supposed to do nothing? Nothing at all? How is that going to work?” I said, “Just trust me. Just go do it.” He came back, he’s like, “Nothing happened.” I said, “Well, you know, at least your brain was better rested.” Guess what? After three blank space states, magic started happening. So, it might take a while, or it might be instantaneous.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now can we hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Sabina Nawaz
My favorite quote is from the author who wrote The Little Prince, and I cannot pronounce his name. And it says something to the effect that perfection is not when there’s nothing more to add, but when there’s nothing more to take away.

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

Sabina Nawaz
It would be the one I referenced earlier, which is when employees are treated badly, they deliberately sabotage results. Now think about that, Pete. That means they’re screwing themselves over just to diss the boss. And I read about this in a book by Bob Sutton called The No Asshole Rule.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, we had Bob on the show. And a favorite book?

Sabina Nawaz
I am not monogamous in favorite books, and so it shifts quite a bit. Currently, my favorite book is Martyr by Akbar Kaveh.

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

Sabina Nawaz
I use the Pomodoro technique often, which is setting a timer for 25 minutes and using that as focus time so I’m not monkeying around with every little distraction that comes along.

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

Sabina Nawaz
The one they quote back is actually the shut up, shut up more, and sense more as a result. Say less, sense more. Sense more what is going on because no one else is going to tell you.

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

Sabina Nawaz
Take one thing that you’re going to do to improve, and you already know what that is. Everybody does. In fact, you have probably a list of a dozen things. Break it down into the smallest, most ridiculously small unit and do it every day as a micro habit.

So, if you are going to be awesome at your job by being a better listener, once a day, your job would be to paraphrase somebody, or, for five minutes a day, to detach yourself from your phone, leave your phone in another room.

If you’re going to be awesome at your job through better health and well-being, instead of thinking you’re going to go to the gym for 30 minutes a day, do one push-up a day. That’s what a micro-habit is

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sabina, thank you.

Sabina Nawaz
Thank you, Pete.

Jul 29
0

982: How to Build Trust, Repair Relationships, and Make Collaborations Great with Dr. Deb Mashek

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Deb Mashek reveals the critical factors that make workplace collaborations less painful and more productive.

You’ll Learn

  1. The key ingredients of great collaboration
  2. Why hiring good collaborators isn’t enough
  3. 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.

Resources Mentioned

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  • 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.